Read Will Smith’s letter of resignation to the Oscars academy … should he have resigned? Or was he simply protecting his wife’s dignity and sensitivity?
Let us know what you think!
LEIGH G BANKS WRITES: I will ‘slap you down’ A. if you assault or attack my children B. I will remonstrate with you to the point of a ‘slap’ if you refuse to apologise properly for insulting my wife C. I am likely to try to bring you down a peg or two if you call myself or any of my family a c*nt…
And I am proud to stand up and say this.
Isn’t this part of the DNA of being a man? We are the protectors, the aggressors, the ones who stand outside our fire-glowing cave in the middle of the frozen wastes with only determination and a knife carved out of a broken bone to beat off that sabre-tooth tiger.
I am not a thug, a fighting man or an idiot.
But I do take my job of being a bloke very seriously indeed.
I’m not a macho bully in the workplace, I do not belittle and insult others in the office or hold a reign of tyranny inside the secret confines of my little country cottage…
But I tell you what, I do stand up to bigots, racists, homophobes, bullies (of both sexes), liars, cheats, arrogant people, misogynists and narcissists.
And I do fight for the rights of children, men and women, the down-trodden, the weak and the miss-used, abused, cowed and broken.
And I will slap you if you do anything bad to my family.
Isn’t it time the Woke woke up to reality?
Why should somebody like the very slap-unhappy Will Smith potentially lose his Hollywood glitter, perhaps his career, all because some diminutive laughter-maker thought that he could make glitzy capital out of joking – however mildly – about a beautiful young woman who suffers from alapechia?
Isn’t that a slap in the face for anybody?
Losing your hair is a deeply personal and harrowing experience . (I was lucky, mine started to grow again after a couple of years but most people aren’t so lucky).
The notion that to be a man you have to be angry or emotionally unavailable is outrageous. Those who attack Will Smith are those who also say the toxic notion of masculinity is forced on young men before they even go to school.
Jonathan P. Higgins is a black, gay speaker and writer, has written of his own experiences: “I can remember hearing conversations between my mother and my uncles about how fearful they were for me because I didn’t exhibit the behaviors of masculinity. I was emotionally available, somewhat shy, and enjoyed connecting with people on a deeper level. Somehow, that was seen as effeminate and the men in my family worked tirelessly to “make me harder,” common rhetoric used in the Black cis-male community.”
Do you know what bothers me about Johnathan’s statement is the fact he writes ‘I enjoyed connecting with people on a deeper level … I have done my own work to unlearn the toxic nature of masculinity,’…
A deeper level that being proud of your own sexuality?
#c*nt #willsmith #chrisrock #academy #oscars #hollyywood
