By Khalil Amani, S.A.

I’m sick of it! I’m sick and fucking tired of the disrespect to women within hip-hop! I’m especially pissed at the way video models and strippers are portrayed! This ain’t no diatribe about sexual exploitation of women either! I am officially announcing that the video model/stripper is hip-hop’s “5th Element!” Move over MC, DJ, graffiti artist, and break-dancer! It’s recognition time!

I’m an equal-opportunity sexual liberator! I’m not just for gays in hip-hop and I don’t subscribe to the whole “women exploitation” argument. Hell, we’re all exploited in one way or another! These are grown-ass women who choose to expose their bodies (some out of necessity and some because they love it) for our consumption! It is art! We certainly don’t view male strippers as exploited! Having been a male stripper myself, it was the most liberating feeling to shake my tallywacker in the faces of adoring women… and get paid!

There is nary a music video that doesn’t have some very bodacious, phat-booty women strutting their stuff, which allows these rappers to sell their music. (Hey! If their music sucks, we might as well be ocularly entertained, right? Is that a word? “Ocularly.” Charge it to my Ebonics.) But then we wanna label them “video hoes”—while we’re eye-fucking them. If they are “whores,” then what does that make us—johns? You damn skippy!

We are voyeurs of their work, yet we criticize their profession! Y’all already know I’m “Ya gay friend’s favorite straight friend” (Hoodgrownonline.com), but some of these straight cats are some of the gayest dudes! (Yes homo!) Negroes are actually mad and repulsed at the female anatomy! Well, I’m not! And I love looking at beautiful women—of all races and tongues!

Women, whether they be models, strippers, exotic dancers, video/magazine eye-candy, porn stars or whatever—they deserve respect—the same respect that male dancers like “Chippendales” or Las Vegas’ (by way of Australia) “Thunder From Down Under” gets! Kill the double-standard!

If hip-hop is the “savior”—the “Jesus” of young, urban ghetto-dwelling America, then the Video Vixen/Stripper/Porn Star/Model, who is commonly referred to by misogynistic (women-hating) men as a “video ho” is hip-hop’s Mary Magdalene, the infamous and erroneously labeled prostitute. But really, who was Mary Magdalene? I know you’ve been taught that she was a prostitute, but that’s simply a lie conjured up by the machinations of sexist men—an attempt to downplay her importance and relevance in the Jesus Movement and in Jesus’ personal life—done in the name of religion. Mary Magdalene was the “Holy Grail”—the vessel which God used to further Jesus’ message. Check your religious history pimpin’!

Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ closest follower, who was “hated on” by the twelve disciples because Jesus used to “tap-that-ass” make love to her on the regular and was always sticking tongue down her throat smooching on her in public—what we call “public displays of affection” (P.D.A.). What? How dare you speak of Jesus like that! Hush yo’ mouf and let history speak and let’s leave your kindergarten understanding of Jesus in Sunday school! In the Gnostic book, “The Gospel of Philip” (a book omitted from your Bible for obvious reasons), it states, “And the companion of the Savior [Jesus] is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it [Jesus & Mary’s kissing] and expressed disapproval. They said to him [Jesus], ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The Savior answered… ’Why do I not love you like her?’” See? Jesus loved his male disciples, but not in a touchy-feely-kind-of-way—the way you love a woman! In another book omitted from your Bible, “The Gospel of Mary,” the case is further made that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a “special” relationship when they wrote, “Sister [Mary], we know that the Savior loved you more than any other woman…For he knew her completely and loved her devotedly.” (6:1, 10:10) In biblical terms “knowing” a woman is a euphemism (nice language) for “fucking” and Jesus “knew” Mary Magdalene “completely!” Draw your own conclusions!

This is the woman that the Roman Church made into a prostitute—a ho! And by extension, through history, any woman who exhibits their sexuality is seen as a whore. Most of our Christian denominations teach that Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute—a ho! Thanks to Pope Gregory, in his confusion over the “three Marys” mentioned in the New Testament, he just said, “Awww, what the fuck! They are all the same person and she was a prostitute!” Thus, the label stuck to her, but 20th century scholarship by religious scholars has spoken in unison; Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute and never was one! Religious scholars agree that the characterization of Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute has no biblical foundation and probably came about as the result of the city she was from—el Mejdel, a city infamous for its licentious behavior. The Mary Magdalene of history was a woman who came into the Jesus Movement, who was healed of “seven devils,” a sign of some psychological pathology, not a symptom of being a prostitute. (Luke 8:2).

Go further research that shyt and slap the next preacher who teaches otherwise!

Mary Magdalene was a symbol of black (yes, the people of that region were so dark that they couldn’t order a cup of coffee in 1950s Mississippi!) sexual womanhood, which the early church eschewed (hated) because of her obviously “close” relationship to the Divine (Jesus)—a scorned woman who has erroneously been labeled a “ho” by sexist men within the Roman Catholic Church—a victim of character assassination—a woman which some scholars believe may have been the wife of Jesus—a woman whom the “Gnostics” called “the woman who knew the all”— yet Christian history has relegated her to “whore status” – Jesus’ beloved, his boo!

The women between these pages are our daughters, sisters, nieces, and mothers! They are not “video hoes!” They are God’s children! They are our family!

Why does she gotta be a “ho”—because a sista isn’t afraid to express her sexuality through modeling or pornography? Nudity as “shame” is a religious device used to control women.

The video vixen/stripper is all women and, like Mary Magdalene, they have been characterized and scandalized as whores! They are being disrespected by the same men that would take this magazine into the bathroom and jack off! Hip-hop (Jesus) loves her (the model), but some of the disciples (followers of hip-hop) hate her. Well I’ve got news for all haters of strippers and prostitutes and it’s brought to you by your man Jesus who said, “Verily [truly] I say unto you, that the publicans [gang bangers] and harlots [prostitutes/hoes] go into the kingdom of God before you!” (Matthew 21:31)

You ask, “Why would Jesus say a whore will go to Heaven?” Because he, himself, sprang from the four forms of the whore (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, all of which had “something questionable or even scandalous about the activities of each of these women” as scholars have pointed out) and ended with his mother Mary, the “Pre-Monogamic Whore,” according to the noted mythologist Gerald Massey. (Matthew 1) This is his bloodline!

We say “No homo.” We say we’re straight! We say we love pussy, yet we’ve got our noses in the air at the stripper and the video model! We have a love-hate fixation with our women’s asses! We, heterosexual men, love Buffie The Body’s ass! In the words of the late great comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “I think I’m an ‘ass man. Everywhere I go, people say, ‘You’re an ass, man!’”

Black and Latino women are among the most curvaceous women on earth! If men are truthful—most of what we do in life is for the sake of a woman—to impress a woman with the end result of gettin’ the skins! Women are our motivation to rap, go to work, drive a nice car, wear nice clothes and brush our teeth! Without women, we’d be a bunch of nasty-ass, halitosis-having, no deodorant-wearing, dreadlocked idiots!

Women, like gays and lesbians are easy targets of hip-hop disrespect. I advocate for gays and lesbians in hip-hop and I advocate for women in hip-hop, whether they be of the righteous cover-your-body-up ilk or the woman who sees her body as art and has no problem displaying it. Why? Because at the end-of-the-day, these women will go on to be mothers, wives, teachers, hard-working, tax-paying Americans—just a harmless phase of their life.

As much as we might hate on the video vixen, we need them! If for nothing more than to make ourselves feel better about whom we are not. Like Toni Morrison’s character Sula, the “perceived” town whore, some of us need people like the video vixen—so that we can hang our heads high and have our noses in the air and say, “She’s beneath me!”—that our lives may have greater meaning! The next time you hear some cat dissin’ a video/magazine model, let them know what a bitch-ass gay-boy move that is.

Shout-out to Hip-hop’s Mary Magdalenes—(the beautiful Lia Cha, my personal fave!) and every woman in Straight Stuntin Magazine and all of you fine young ladies who are sexually liberated! And shout-out to DJ Kayslay for his act of liberation!

Black Ass (A Poem by Khalil Amani)

What is it about Black Ass that I love so much? Could it be the firmness of its stride?

Maybe it’s the form within a pair of jeans or the allure of an evening gown or the sassiness in a business suit or the shake in an old pair of sweat pants.

Or a whole lot of woman in some boy-shorts! Or a G-String wedged between cheeks.

Whatever it is, I love Black Ass!

Black Ass is Hottentot Venus epitomized!

Black Ass is a study in geometry!

Black Ass is poetry in motion!

Black Ass is the Law of Gravity defied!

Have you ever seen raw Black Ass?

Have you ever touched naked Black Ass?

Have you ever tasted melanized, African, gluteus maximus?

Grown, mature, sweaty, glistening, oiled-down Black Ass by candlelight. Heaven!

Buns of Steel? Leave it for the Pink Toes.

Give me that round mound, that junk-in-a-trunk, that toten-a-wagon, that Black Ass!

Maybe that’s why I love Black Ass so much! ….Hmmmm?

Khalil Amani, straight man, Spiritual Advisor to “Gay Hip-Hop,” has been featured in Straight Stuntin Magazine, Spin Magazine, LA Times and many other publications. He is the author of six books, including the groundbreaking hip-hop treatise on homophobia, “Hip-Hop Homophobes…”. Mr. Amani blogs at: MySpace.com/khalilamani, Hoodgrownonline.com, Gaymusicrevolution.com, Outhiphop.com.