Leave It To Whoopi Goldberg To Defend Blackface

Guest Post from Renee of Womanist Musings, who is all that and four bags of ketchup flavored chips.

Watching The View this morning, I was given yet one more reason to wish that Goldberg came with a mute button.  You know it's a bad day, when you find yourself saying thank heaven for Sherri Sheppard.

It all began when Whoopi Goldberg brought up the incident in which 6 Southern Miss Sorority girls were suspended for wearing Blackface to dress as the Huxtable family, from the 80's sitcom The Cosby show for Halloween.

"Though it is clear that these women had no ill intent, it was also clear that they had little cultural awareness or competency, and did not understand the historical implication of costuming in blackface," Dean of Students Eddie Holloway said in a news release.

What "probation" means exactly is unclear. Phi Mu Fraternity National President Kris Bridges said Phi Mu does not make public specific disciplinary actions taken against individuals.

Bridges said in a news release that she is "deeply disappointed" in the actions of the girls but added she does not believe they had any "malicious intent."

"That is why some of the sanctions the members will face will include opportunities for education on this topic," she said.

Chapter sanctions include diversity and cultural competency educational requirements, including the sponsorship of a campuswide program with a nationally known speaker on diversity appreciation. (source)

I think to most people, dressing up in Blackface is understood as an instant no no, but there are others who always seem to find a reason to defend it and they are not always White, as the following transcript from this mornings segment of the view will show.

Whoopi: I think it's bull. They weren't out there with big red lips and walking around like they used to do in the old days. That's now what they were doing. They were doing a show, that was actually on tv, that had an entire Black family.  Now, when I did the queen of England at the Oscar[s], isn't that the same thing?
Behar: What do you mean, like Blackface?
Whoopi: I was in Whiteface. But the idea that these girls dressed as The Huxtables, feels very different than someone doing, say
Behar: something with the big lips
Walters: Also minstrel shows were banned because they were all so hokey and it was all portraying
Whoopi: Right but that's not what these girls were doing
Walters: But if you're doing Othello and your doing it on stage, and your a White actor, nobody thinks a thing, of if it's halloween and you want to look like - I don't know
Whoopi:  Me
Walters: You know, I think this is when the politically correct goes, this is incorrect.

Okay, so if your intent is not to demean, that supposedly removes all of the history and racism that is encoded with Blackface? Ummm, in a word, NO.  It is not right for a White person to play Othello and it is only recently that Black actors have been given a chance to play this role.  This of course because of discrimination, and so the idea that we willingly accept a White actor in this role ignores the man ways Blacks have been silenced every time we have complained about this.

Sheppard: I got a different about it, I think that - not upset at this girls that they didn't know the cultural references.
Whoopi: which cultural references?
Sheppard: of Blackface, when it was originally done what it meant.
Behar: Do you know what it meant?
Sheppard: When they would do the Blackface and you can correct me if I'm wrong Whoopi, you studied this.  As I understand it, when Blackface was done, it was because Black performers could not perform as themselves and they had to wear cork makeup on their face, so it was saying to them, you're not good enough as you are to perform, because White audiences would not accept Black people performing in the venue
Whoopi: Right
Sheppard: Unless they were in Blackface and Blackface has been taken throughout those years. It takes the most horrible stereotypes of Black people and the cruelest stereotypes and it puts it out there.
Whoopi: Let's be clear that's not what these girls were doing.
Sheppard: that's what I'm saying. If you know the history that Blackface is coming from
Behar: The dean of students - let me read this to you, his name is Eddie Holloway from the university of southern Mississippi. "It was clear that these women had no ill intent, it was also clear that they had no cultural awareness of competency and did not understand the historical implications of costuming." This is at a university. Maybe they should teach them.

This was a great explanation as to why Blackface is wrong.  I absolutely reject the idea that it is a matter of cultural ignorance though. Whiteness has the choice to educate itself about Blacks or live in ignorance, and ultimately many are so wrapped up in their privielge that they don't bother to learn, however the ongoing debate about Blackface is far from obscure.  Blacks are constantly speaking out about how offensive Blackface is and every Halloween their is a round of discussion when invariably some White people thinks that Blackface constitute a costume.

Whoopi: Don't you see that the fact that they dug the Huxtables enough to want to dress like them, says that they have cultural awareness. I'm sorry, but the Huxtables were Black, they were the first whole Black family we ever saw on tv, who actually had jobs on both sides.
Sheppard: If you take the Huxtables, you know Dr. Huxtable, he had this family - they were an affluent, educated Black family.
Walters: Do you think these girls should not have done it? Is that your point?
Sheppard: I think that they were not aware that this is something that causes a lot of emotion in people. You're reducing to me, the Huxtables to this kind of buffonish character
Whoopi: Now hold up, there's a difference between what the Huxtables looks like, and what actual buffonery looks like. Now there's a huge actual difference. Basically what you are saying Sheri, is that no one can put on makeup to darken their skin. Now I know you were darker when you were younger. [addressing Behar]

There is absolutely no reason for a White person to dress up like a Black person. Even if their intent is not mockery or outright racism, you cannot divorce the historical meaning of this action.  It is not a true limitations to White people to avoid Blackface.  The world already caters to them and so the fact that they have to avoid Black characters does not constitute any form of oppression.

Behar: When I went to a party one time, I really went as an African woman. I was wearing what I thought was kind of a deshike kind of thing, the hair came curly and I wore tinted make up on my skin, so I looked a little darker. Now, I thought that was kind of an homage basically to a beautiful - a looked good - to a pretty African woman. I wasn't making fun of anything, I was basically saying look at how good this can look on me, I like that.
Sheppard: And you made a point [addressing Whoopi]  you know how you dressed as the queen of England, you know White face  and I would say to that, White face was never historically meant to oppress White people.
Whoopi: Listen, Black people were infuriated with me that I would do that.
Sheppard: Why?
Whoopi: I don't know. Here's the thing, that means that none of us can ever be anyone historical, we can never be any characters that we see, who are not absolutely Black. I think that it's too limiting.
Walters: and you cannot have a White actor playing Othello.
Whoopi: Yeah, we're going to keep talking about this.

This is the point at which I wish that Goldberg would stop talking about it. Considering that she had a role to play in Ted Danson's Blackface incident, I am hardly surprised that this is the position that she chose to take. Whoopi is the White man's best friend, when it comes to excusing or otherwise justifying racism.  Her position is clearly an example of internalized racism, and I fear that it will be used to justify Blackface in the future.

Her actions are dangerous because they serve to support White supremacy.  What sell-outs like Whoopi fail to acknowledge, is that Whiteness rules with the aid of Blacks exactly like her. Whiteness is highly invested in ensuring that its privilege remains beyond question socially. It further emboldens the ignorance and arrogance that goes into not acknowledging or learning about the historical wrongs committed by Whiteness against Blacks. Essentially, Whoopi's comments make it seem as though Blacks are just ruining simple fun and complaining about nothing.  It's similar to those who charge that historically marginalized people are on a constant mission to look for something to be offended about.

I truly wish that I could ignore every single word that Whoopi says, because she has shown such an extreme amount of ignorance over the years about various subjects.  I cannot afford to sweep her under the rug and forget about her specifically because she is a public figure.  Blacks are not seen as individuals socially, and so even though Sheppard did publicly agree with Goldberg, what will be remembered is what Whoopi had to say, because it was in the service of White supremacy.  Just as many White people turn to people like Obama and Oprah Winfrey to point out how good Blacks have it today, they will turn to Whoopi to defend Blackface.

Womanism, Women And The World

TransGriot Note: This is a 2010 post from the brilliant editrix for Womanist Musings but needs to be seen.  There is still way too much misinformation and attempted erasure of womanism and Renee and other womanists have been helpful in my own personal evolution toward embracing it. 

I started out being a feminist.  I learned very early in life that sexism greatly affected how people chose to interact with me and the limits that I was given.  As I searched for answers, feminism felt like a natural fit, but the more that I explored, the more that I realized that though gender is a site of oppression for me, my race complicated my interaction in feminist spheres.  I could not forget for one moment that as a Black woman I faced unique challenges that feminism seemed determine to ignore, or cheapen when it did bother to address them.  Though I found the works of feminists like bell hooks to be fascinating and affirming, in the end, it was not enough to heal the chasm that White feminists had created with their absolute desire to maintain their privilege. Once again I found myself searching for a label that would best describe my desire to work for change and properly support my political beliefs.  Africanna Womanism is a natural fit for me.

Over time I came to know more women that identified as womanists and not all of them have been Black.  I have also seen the backlash aimed at these women for choosing to identify as womanist by those who seek to keep a womanist identity as completely Black.  This is policing and privileging one group over another and it is no different than the White feminists who sought to exclude us from their organizing drives.  There can be no doubt that Black women face unique trials and that we have no institutional other, but that does not mean that race does not negatively effect the life chances of other women of colour.  Can we really afford to reduce racism to something White people do to Blacks, when it has become an institutional part of our communities, effecting every single Brown/Black and Asian woman on the planet?  Simply because the racism that other WOC experience manifests differently than when Black women are on the receiving end, does not make it any less soul destroying.

First Nations women are dying.  There are over 500 missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada alone.  Indigenous women are 5x more likely to die as a result of violence and 60% of the known perpetrators are White men.  Race and a history of colonialism very much effects the life chances of Indigenous Women.  Their presence in the media is minuscule, making the crimes against them that much more invisible.


Though Latina women are more visible in the media, (Note: preference is often given to those that pass as White) they are typically constructed are played as spicy hot women who breed like rabbits to attain legitimacy. They are often perceived socially as wanton sluts whose very wombs signify danger to White society, that is when they are not picking fruits, or working as maids. They exist to raise the children of White women but certainly not have any of their own to love and cherish. Think of the Latina women that you have seen in the media recently, what messages did their characters send you?

There is also the lie that Asian women are a special class who have completely been elevated to the status of honorary White women.  They are servile to a fault and desperate to correct so-called flaws, like their eyelids, which remind society that they are indeed Asian. The good Asian woman is a wilting lotus flower waiting for a White man to command her and the bad one is the evil dragon lady who refuses to fulfill her so-called natural submissive role.  Even who we call Asian is specifically designed to ignore those that are Brown creating yet another hierarchy within a group of marginalized women.

No matter where you go in the world, WOC must directly confront race and gender.  Even in countries like Japan, which is largely filled with indigenous people, western ideals (read:Whiteness) permeates the culture, creating false images of what constitutes desirable and acceptable. As long as one is outside of Whiteness, womanhood is complicated by race.  What does it mean given the pervasiveness of Whiteness to decide that the term WOC implies Black and that womanism is a movement meant to serve as a liberatory vehicle solely for Black women?  Are we not then employing the masters tools to recreate a hierarchy because it benefits us, even though the cost is a loss of solidarity with other WOC? 

We have been trained to distrust and abuse each other by Whiteness because such a division helps support White supremacy. We sin against one another, appropriating and shaming with will and determination, because we believe the lie that our elevation depends upon the cultural demise of another.  Hierarchy, hate, jealousy, fear -- this is what we have been taught -- and this is what we live. The blood that results is our own but we ignore the knife as it slides between our ribs and comes to rest in our breast, because what we truly need to kill, what we truly need to maim with our righteous rage remains ever illusive hidden behind the walls of so-called normalcy.  This is the evil of Whiteness; it divides even as it conquers.  It is the evil of patriarchy, because it teaches women to see each other as competition, even as it tell us that we are incompetent to pursue our life's aspirations.

I recognize that groups need private spaces where they can be free to discuss their various marginalizations, but if we place this kind of border on womanism, we risk recreating the very same conditions that have soured so many women on feminism.  WOC must incorporate all those who identify as non-White and womanism must be our activist arm, which we reify to fight for the justice that has been so long denied.  There are always going to be those that seek to fight the battle on behalf of patriarchy and Whiteness and we must not aid them in this mission by creating more walls, more barriers -- that is the job of the oppressor.

Not All Beauty Is Natural

Another insightful guest post from Renee of Womanist Musings


Womanist Musings has been up and running since April 2008, and that means that there are a lot of archives.  There are some posts that continue to bring in hits and comments, but because they are buried in the archives, most miss what's happening on them.  One of the most popular posts, is a piece I wrote about a poll which sought to question which race has the most beautiful women.

Since the original onslaught of comments, most people that arrive on this post stop by to tell me that it is only natural that White women be understood to be the most beautiful women on the planet.  For the most part, I tuck these comments into the delete folder and move on, but I would be lying if I said that it does not bother me.

I know that despite the post racial nonsense, and the yaya sisterhood in the feminist movement, that women are not perceived of as equal.  When I look in the mirror I see a beautiful woman, and this is largely because I have let go of Eurocentric beauty ideals.  The standard of beauty in the western world has always been White, and the closer someone is able to conform to this, the greater the chance that they will be perceived of as attractive. This is why colorism continues to be such an issue within communities of colour. This is why surgeries exist for Asian women to make their eyes rounder.  This is why skin bleaching companies are making a substantial profit across the globe, despite the fact that their products are far from healthy and in fact are downright dangerous.


I don't think that what we find sexually attractive in terms of race is naturally occurring.  One may be born straight, gay, asexual or poly, but one is certainly not born appreciating Whiteness over bodies of colour, when we teach children from birth which race to value.  No matter what network you tune into, the one thing that is guaranteed, is that those largely who are featured will be White.  They will fulfill a variety of roles, and be held up as people we should aspire to be.  Even children's books are not benign.  Quite often the majority of the protagonists will be White, because the gatekeepers are largely White. 

We don't just happen to have a type, we are conditioned to find specific bodies attractive.  Certainly there is a biological imperative at play to find healthy mates however, there no race that exists without markers of health.  The other side of this coin are those that date inter-racially, but claim that they just are naturally more attracted to people of colour.  Quite often, this comes down to a simple fetish and this is far from complementary.  People don't fetishize Whiteness, because it has been so normalized and those who fetishize people of colour, won't admit that this is what their suppose attraction is about; it's a kink like any other and it is reductive. Whether you think you are going to get a submissive lotus flower if you date Asian women, a hot tamale if you date Latina women, or a sqaw who is going to live to work when you date an Indigenous woman, it all comes down to racism. 

What bothers me the most is that cultural differences are used as a justification for these beliefs.  Far too many believe that Asian women are just raised to be naturally submissive, or that Indigenous women are raised to believe that their role is to work for the benefit of men, that they will be more than happy to dedicate themselves to the double day and family. It's just culture and has absolutely nothing to do with racist constructions that Whiteness has created for people of colour.  Of course, the moment these women defy these stereotypes, there is a penalty to pay.  Have you ever wondered how the Asian woman moves from the submissive lotus flower to the dragon lady? What about the fact that Black men can quickly move from ovary bumping passionate lovers, to rapists when daddy finds out?

The individual sexuality is something that one is born with, but the sexuality and the gender identity/ performance in which the body is coded to belong is completely a construct of society based in race.  We are hyper masculinized and hyper feminized depending on whatever fetish is at play.  Some of us even appear on bucket lists, as something to fuck before death, because we are understood to be exotic experiences rather than people.

Whiteness is not neutral when it comes to determining whether or not a person of colour is beautiful. Built into these determinations, are centuries of exploitation and out right colonialism.  To claim that anything involving race is naturally occurring, ignores the fashion in which our bodies have been plundered, just as surely as our lands for the pleasure of Whiteness. Individual White women may be beautiful, but they can only be thought of to be collectively more attractive than women of colour, if one has internalized the idea that anything White is good and that inversely, anything Black or of colour is negative.

White supremacy  has managed a maintain stranglehold on many and though after years of living as a woman of colour I know this to be true, it does not hurt any less.  It hurts to know that we are not thought of as beautiful but exotic caricatures ready to serve.  It hurts to know that the world is divided into people and then others, because as long as white supremacy rules the land, people of colour will eternally be thought of as other.  You don't need to have a White pride movement and all of the whining about being oppressed by people of colour, really comes down to an attempt to flout our efforts to dismantle an institutionalized condition which harms us.  Sojourner Truth once famously said ain't I a woman, but I think the more accurate phrase is ain't I human. 

Dear Slutwalk, Woman Is NOT Nigger Of The World

Renee at Womanist Musings tells it like it T-I-S is again.

Below you will find the image of a woman holding a sign at a New York Slutwalk that has led to a great deal of controversy online.  I am late to this issue but feel the need to discuss it, though it has been covered remarkably well by Latoya of Racialicious.

As I understand it, there has been quite a bit of controversy over this image on Facebook, as well as tumblr.  The organizers of slutwalk have released an apology that left a lot to be desired.

You may recognize that Woman is the Nigger of the World, as a reference to the John Lennon/Yoko Ono song.  It was problematic when they first performed it, and it is problematic today.  Though Ono is indeed a woman of color, she is not Black, and therefore has no basis from which to attempt to reclaim this word.  A White woman attempting to do so, is layered with a history of so much active oppression, that the racism in this sign amounts to a slap in face to all Black women who were in attendance, and have had the misfortune to come across the image online.

Unsurprisingly, it was a Black woman that asked her to take down her offensive sign. Note that she is surrounded by White women, and yet no one bothered to take offense to this.  When she was asked to remove her sign, she did immediately comply however, that does not in anyway mitigate the racism of her action.

Recently, I have attempted to have several conversations about slurs, because I believe the degree to which they are actively still in use is damaging to marginalized people.  Unless you belong to the group which the slur has historically been aimed at, you cannot reclaim the slur.  This means no matter her intent, woman as nigger is racist.  There can be justification or explanation of her behaviour that removes the offense and in fact, the purposeful nature of her actions adds a further layer of contempt.

Woman is not now, or ever will be nigger of the world.  Nigger is a slur that applies specifically to Black people.  This saying also implies that there is a similarity of experience between White women and Black women and nothing could be further from the truth. We have not forgotten that White women wielded the whip alongside their White husbands.  Many of the gains White women have made, are specifically because the heterosexual ones have been paired with straight White men or being related to White men has given them economic advantages that have not been offered to women of colour.  When White women weren't benefiting from their interactions with White men, they were using women of color as support staff to achieve their goals.  Woman can never be a monolithic identity.

Some have claimed that the woman in question did not have the benefit of learning about intersectionality and I call bullshit.  It does not take a sheep skin to know that the word nigger is unacceptable. This is beneath 101 level.  This is about the fact that equality for many White women is not about true sisterhood with women of color, but having the power to oppress in the same manner as their White male counterparts.  I think it is further important to note that there are plenty of resources from which to get a firm basis in intersectionality today.  If one is not able to attend university as I did, then there are blogs and libraries that are chock full of resources.  Ignorance today is a purposeful act.  It is privilege to decide that one does not need to educate oneself on the plight of historically marginalized people.

Finally, I would like to address the Slutwalk apology. 

We regret that the woman who was carrying this sign felt it was appropriate for our space. We regret that it took so long for someone to tell her how wrong it was; and that this woman was a Black woman, a woman of colour, as we know that anti-racism is not the sole work of people of colour. We sincerely apologize for the emotional trauma this sign has evoked in everyone who has been affected by it. We apologize for not making it clearer to everyone who attended on October 1^st that racist, or indeed any oppressive language or behaviour, is unacceptable. We apologize that this space was not safer for Black women, Black people, and their allies.

It is unfortunate that this young white woman’s voice has been amplified through media and all over the internet, and the voices of our intelligent, passionate speakers and MC’s, many of whom occupy marginalized identities, or are allies, continue to be ignored. In an effort to break this silence, listed at the end of this letter are the names of all our speakers, with links provided where available.

We find it saddening that three of our speakers who are trans women of colour, two of whom are Black women, are being erased from public dialogue around SWNYC. This speaks to a deeply rooted cissexism, which we are committed to interrogating. We thank all of our speakers for their passion, for challenging and empowering us.

 I like to call the tactic that they employed bait and switch.  Here look over here, that is the real problem.  There can be no doubt that cissexism needs to be specifically addressed in women centered spaces.  This is especially true when it comes to feminism, which has a history of attacking or actively erasing trans women.  It was not that long ago that feminists were re-writing history to deify Mary Daly upon her passing.  Radical feminists still attack trans women whenever they get a chance and blogs that are supposedly intersectional rarely write about trans issues or have trans writers.

The outcry was about race, and to say the fact that the volume of the response is cissexist, is meant to shame and silence those who are complaining.  As terrible as cissexism is, it does not trump racism.  No ism trumps any other ism; they are all equally terrible.  I also think it is worth noting that they mention that two of the trans women who spoke were Black women.  As Black women, the racism expressed by that sign was directed at them.  You cannot separate people's identities at will to prove a point. These women did not leave their Blackness behind when they decided to transition.  They are not Black and then trans, they are Black trans women. I absolutely abhor gottcha politics.  Furthermore, why were these women not given the opportunity to address the issue personally?  I think that a Black trans woman would have an insightful nuanced commentary to add to this situation that is sorely missing in the response.  To me, the response of the slutwalk organizers smacks of othering these women.  They were used as a tool to distract from the conversation at hand, and that in and of itself is minimizing.  There are plenty of Black trans women who are extremely politically active, who they could shared  their thoughts and experiences about the ways in which race, cissexism, and sexism intersect.

I have largely stayed out of the Slutwalk debates, though I have actively read the thoughts of many women of color regarding it.  The truth of the matter is that whenever there are cis, straight White women are at the forefront of any organizing endeavor, there are going to be problems, because they have been immersed in a culture that specifically centers them.  Sexism is terrible, but it is far from the only marginalization that women face and until intersectionality becomes more than a cool buzz word, failures like this will continue to happen.  I can never again conceive of taking on the label feminist, specifically because it others my various identities, and those of women whom I love and respect.

Waiting for a Black women to complain about the sign, though it was highly visible, speaks of a collusion with the poster.  Deciding to use Black trans women as a tool to distract from racist actions is both cissexist and racist.  Stop apologizing and clean your house.  Women of color have been listening to the apologies of White women for generations, and we are now immune to the White women's tears and empty promises.

The Great Banana Bread Conspiracy

TransGriot Note:Guest post from Renee, my fave mommy blogger and the editor of Womanist Musings  


I love to be in the kitchen when I am able, and I love to cook for my family.  I watch hours of the Food Network everyday as I write blog posts, looking for new ideas.  I like to continually introduce my family to different foods and new flavors.  Baking however, is something that I am not a fan of.  It could be because cooking is art and baking is a science.  Whether you are baking a cake or cookies, inevitably the measuring cups and measuring spoons have to be used, whereas; when you cook, you can add a bit of this and that, and alter the recipe to your particular palate.

My love and respect of food means that I cannot stand letting food go to waste.  The desire to ensure that everything we purchase gets consumed, means that at least once a week, I get into a battle with the kids about eating the leftovers. When I notice that the banana's have reached the point where they are singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot, inevitably I will bake a banana bread to ensure that they are consumed.  This is something that I used to hardly ever do, because my family loves bananas.  They are usually the very first fruit eaten, that is until recently.

The last three weeks, I have found 6-8 bananas well past their prime in the fruit bowl, and so I have made a double size banana bread, which was consumed in one day btw.  At first, I was really pleased that they ate the bread, but when it happened again the next week, I started to realize that something was most definitely up.

Last night, I couldn't sleep and so I decided to surprise them with peanut butter and jam muffins for breakfast.  The children love it when I bake, and I knew that this would be a wonderful breakfast surprise for them. As I mixed the peanut butter with oil, brown sugar, flour and eggs, I thought back to a few years ago when Destruction pointed out that other mommies bake far more often than I do.  At the time, I really saw it as him using my gender to get me to create culinary delights for them, and quickly pointed out that I would be happy to take him to the bakery. When that didn't work, he actually attempted to order me into the kitchen.  Though he was only four at the time, as you might well imagine, this did not have the result that he intended.

Each time I do get around to baking for my family, whatever I make gets consumed quickly.  They always ooh and aah about how good it is, and say that because I do it so infrequently, that they have to get their share as quickly as possible.  At any rate, while I was baking the muffins last night, I began to wonder if the sudden appearance of soft bananas, was to get me to bake for them more often.  How exactly do kids who are more than capable of eating 2-3 bananas a day, if I don't monitor them, suddenly stop eating bananas altogether?  Then I thought about the fact that the unhusband, and the kids have all taken turns mentioning to me that the bananas are getting soft, and that if we don't eat them soon, that something would have to be done. Uh huh.

There you have it folks.  The menfolk in my family are crafty, crafty, crafty.  I believe that they have avoided eating the bananas, because they knew that I would not let them go to waste.  I believe they have realized that if they could just forgo their desire for a little while, that the soft bananas would result in a warm and comforting banana bread.  Yes, if they stopped eating and then made a point of telling me how much they love the banana bread when I made it, I would be inspired to keep baking.  Readers, I am being exploited and manipulated.  It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but now I am sure of it.

I am sure that they were much encouraged when the peanut butter muffins appeared this morning.  Yes, those crafty, crafty, crafty menfolk must have believed that had finally broken me.  Not only did I bake a banana bread this week, I baked them muffins.  Earlier in the week, I had even mentioned making an apple cake, because this time of the year, apples are plentiful and cheap.  If you look in my fruit bowl right now, you will see that the menfolk have consumed all of the pears, but the apples mysteriously are still in the bowl.  Uh huh. I now firmly believe that they are attempting to shift the great banana bread conspiracy to apples, to get me to produce an apple cake.

I cannot prove my suspicions conclusively, but I do believe that the sudden lack of consumption of fruit, combined with the occasional comments about the possibility of fruit going to waste, amounts to strong evidence that I have been played.  This weekend, I plan to present the menfolk with my findings.  I am certain that Destruction will be the one to cave first. He has never been good at keeping a secret, whereas; Mayhem and the unhusband are like a vault.  I am not sure what kind of penance I should sentence them to once their guilt and manipulation have been revealed, but there most certainly shall be justice.  I have always known that they have the potential to be crafty, but to have all three of them manipulating me this way, is something I never would have expected them to be capable of. This is actually worse than Sparky's Beloved hiding the bread maker, to get him to bake him fresh bread daily by hand. Yes, it's treachery

I think that the three of them need to spend time in kitchen baking me something.  Yes, yes, I most certainly do.  Now that I am on to them, I shall hence forth give them the side eye every time they mention any sort of baked good.  There will be no more baking on a weekly basis.