On Valuing Women's Bodies

A February 2015 ESSENCE article listed seven attributes which led a man to marry his wife. Written by a man, Point # 6, titled She Isn't Easy, caught my eye

She respected and valued her body. She wouldn't let me sleep with her on the first night, the first week, the first month like every other woman I'd met until that point.

She wouldn't let me. . .

Why were you trying?

Dear Men,

I am beyond tired of being told to keep my legs shut while you are trying to get between them. Why do I have to defend myself to be considered respectable? Why do I have to prove to you that my body is to be valued?

How 'bout you respect me by not trying to sleep with me on the first night, first week, first month? How 'bout you show me how much you value me by not pressing the issue?

Cordially,

What Kind of Ministry is This?

A December 2014 ESSENCE article was about an AIDS infected woman who had been featured twenty years prior. What caught my attention 

Rae Lewis-Thornton was a newlywed when her ESSENCE cover hit newsstands. “When we got married, my husband would say his ministry was to watch me die, and when I died he was going to travel the country sharing his story as my caregiver,” she says.

WHAT?!

I can't even. But I'm going to try anyway.

What kind of man, what kind of husband, is so self-centered, so self-absorbed, that instead of hoping for his wife's recovery, he anticipates her death so that he might become world renowned? How empty and insincere is his "pain"? An impassionate stare as she coughs in the other room; the perfunctory fluffing of pillows and a sad smile as he bides his time.

His "ministry" was to watch her die? How far from God do you have to be to watch someone die with a heart eager to profit from their death? How far, with a heart uninterested in caring for their life?

As her health improved, the marriage deteriorated.

Yea it did. God said, that was your ministry, not mine.