a training break regarding lesser-known types of DV and shared our philosophy of making abuse pay you back when we talked about abuse reparations2 . In November, we touched on emotional and digital abuse again while featuring verbal and financial abuse. In December we closed 2021 by covering one of the most hidden forms of DV in the Black community, spiritual/religious abuse3 . A phrase I have heard often in our community when people are specifically speaking about Black women and DV - long before beginning this work and still even now - goes like this: “Black women don’t put up with that mess [DV]. Maybe them white women will put up with that, but not a Black sister. We/They don’t play that. ” That’s an interesting thought. The reputation of the Black woman is that a man could never get away with that with us. Well, if you’re talking about someone walking up to a Black woman and slapping the taste out of her mouth and her just taking it, you’re right. We don’t play that. If you’re talking about a man going out on a date with a Black woman and suddenly slapping the taste out of her mouth and her just taking it, you’re likely right again. We most likely won’t play that either. However… THAT’S NOT HOW IT USUALLY GOES DOWN, Beloved. Most men wouldn’t dare try a Black woman that way. Most men don’t try us THAT way. It’s silly, sloppy, stupid, and just doesn’t happen that way in most cases. However, there is a way that most abusers who approach a Black woman do step to us. They lay down an initial pattern of behavior that gains trust in the areas that most Black women need to have trust established in order to bestow L-O-Y-A-L-T-Y. Once loyalty is given by a Black woman? Very difficult to reverse. So how is that pattern or path laid for Black women? How does THAT look? We’ll spend much of 2022 laying that out through July. We’ll start in this article. Here’s the perpetrator pattern roadmap: L-O-Y-A
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