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State of Fear
By LaMont L Troupe
When I first heard the question I was half asleep. I couldn’t believe it at first but I realized the television was on Good Morning America and the title of the segment was, “Are We Teaching Our Kids to Fear Men?”. With my eyes still closed, I listened intently to the talking heads and almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How can we paint men with such a broad stroke? Is there no limit to what fear can do in a society? My first reaction was to get out of bed and immediately start writing but I didn’t want to rush. Maybe I hadn’t heard everything clearly. Perhaps I was dreaming my family and I lived in some nightmarish faux utopia where men were looked upon as uncontrollable, unthinking savages.
My wife had an early appointment so that meant I was on baby duty. Our daughter was just waking up and seeing her face that morning struck a piercing fear in me. What if someone sees me holding my daughter’s hand as the male figure does in the Virginia public service announcement. Now all of a sudden, holding a child’s hand, perhaps my OWN child’s hand can be seen as sexual? This is complete madness! I could not shake the thought of police knocking at my door because someone misconstrued my affection for my own child as abuse.
Read more of LaMont's heartfelt prose in our Nov/Dec issue, due out the first week of November.
Inside the Current Issue
*** Your teenager is awfully fond of a particuar color and uses some fancy hand signs whenever he’s communicating with a certain group of friends. You’ve never thought twice about it; but maybe you should. Why? Because color specific fondness and hand signs could signify allegiance to one of numerous gangs that have no qualms about recruting your child to do their dirty deeds, including killing and theiving. Black and Latino kids are more likely to join gangs and as such, parents have to be wise about gang –related signs and symbols. Read about them in our current issue.
*** Making stepparenting work
*** Pursuing options in the struggle against infertility (cover story)
Pick up a copy today or contact us for a subscription to read these stories.
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