XXL Feature ‘Too Short’ on Common Sense, Long on Misogyny

A Harris Publication publication

XXL Feature ‘Too Short’ on Common Sense, Long on Misogyny

by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan

My daughters don’t know who Todd Shaw, aka Too Short is, yet he claims to know them, as he advised their males peers—provided instructions—as  to how to rape and sexually assault them.  

In a society that continues to assert its familiarity with the bodies of Black women and girls—the rhetorical groping of the Michelle Obama being only the most visible example—Too Short advising  boys to “take your finger and put a little spit on it and you stick your finger in her underwear and you rub it on there and watch what happens,”—what we all know as a “finger f*ck”—is, unfortunately, not all that surprising; seems more like the status quo for Black women and girls.

Those offended by the feature, a video that initially appeared at the XXL website, quickly responded.  As Jamilah Lemieux write at Ebony.com “This FORTY FIVE YEAR OLD MAN wants the young fellas to "get inside a girl's mind”…Coercion, perhaps even assault, is of no consequence here. Hence, no explanation of how to proceed if the target in question says "Stop! I don't want you to do that!." 

A group of scholar activists organized an on-line petition, demanding that Harris Publications, the publisher of XXL, remove the magazine’s editor-in-chief Vanessa Statten.  And Statten has to go; allowing such content to be posted, whether it crossed her desk or not, is unconscionable and bespeaks a larger crisis we face in journalistic integrity.  The feature also bespeaks, as well, our willingness to use Black girls as commercial fodder, deemed expendable, because they are perceived as lacking public voice.

XXL Magazine and Shaw, have since issued an apology, but as Akiba Solomon notes, it’s an apology that takes no ownership for statements that encourage and sanction criminal acts against girls. And this is not simply about political correctness; besides advocating rape and sexual violence against Black women and girls, diatribes like Shaw’s also further criminalizes Black boys, within institutions—our schools—in which Black boys are always, already criminalized.

Harris Publications, which also publishes King, Juicy and Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement (equipping law enforcement with the very tools to be used against Black boys), knows this dance well; it’s a blueprint for disengaging yourself from controversy, deployed brilliantly daily by shock jocks, elected officials and a host of professionals—some of them even Black—knowing that there will be little recourse to their brand. 

Fact is that few, who are regular subscribers of XXL or regular consumers of their content will feel compelled to reject the publication, no more than those offended by statements, by say Misters Whitlock or Martin (as examples of two recent controversies) will stop watching Fox Sports or CNN (or listen to Tom Joyner). 

We need some new strategies—this protest, petition, and wait for the apology, suspension, removal is getting old.  

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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press) and Professor of African & African-American Studies at Duke University. He is founder and managing editor of NewBlackMan and host of the weekly webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan.