Coercion Is An Issue That "Having Game" Should Be Separate From

   
  Courtesy: instagram,com/kendrick38
With the success of last year's inaugural Teen Vogue Summit, it returned for two iterations in 2018. The most recent one took place on on November 30th through December 1st. Surely, many thoughtful discussions took place and many thoughts were shared. Those in attendance I can almost be sure left feeling more enriched than when they first walked in.

With all of this withstanding, I did come across the below tweet and it most definitely piqued my interest.




Kendrick Sampson, who plays Nathan on HBO's Insecure believes that "game" is defined as getting a woman to do something that she does not want to do. As I watched the clip, I thought it came off as him having an epiphany of sorts; he might agree. I also thought that I have never considered game being a process in which I force a woman to acquiesce to my requests. For those who aren't familiar with the urban jargon, game is simply how one charms someone else that they are interested in.

Everyone has a different type of game. There are different styles. In football you have quarterbacks who work well in the pocket, and you have quarterbacks that can kill you with the run. In basketball, you have spot up shooters, and you have slashers and so on. As it pertains to dating, there are different attributes that can lend themselves to your game, or be your game altogether.

Some people have drop dead great looks. Those folks may not rely much on charm but they also may have an abundance of confidence. Those same people can in fact be charming and clever and have the gift of gab. Me, well me personally, I'm not light skinned and tatted up necessarily. I'm not chiseled out of granite nor do I have intoxicating brown eyes. I do however possess dimples, a nice smile and an amazing sense of humor etc. Those things lend to my game for instance.

What Kendrick is alluding to, at least in my eyes is harassment. Coercing someone that you are pursuing isn't right. I hate to think that his idea of game is this form of harassment. I understand the issues that have come to light in recent years regarding sexual assault and street harassment. I'm well read on those subjects and I feel that we should continue to define them as such.

I would however, like to say that anyone who defines egregious behavior as game should think twice about it. We should define disrespectful approaches to anyone as their understanding of game. We also, as a community, need to speak more on how to respectfully approach people that we're interested in. It's evident that there are more examples of this needed.

The examples of game that were revealed to me not only came from older guys in my family but from other friends too. It's also about taking account of who you are and what you know you can unequivocally offer. So this isn't an issue where I'm solely speaking of what I learned from one source. These are also lessons I've learned from a variety of other people. There has been enough experience with enough of a sample size throughout my life to know that game does not mean "get a woman to do something that she doesn't want to."

Until this day, this is the only time I have ever heard of game defined this way. I think that Kendrick means well. The discussions involving coercion are necessary. Street harassment is rampant and wrong.  Too many men have the wrong idea about what game is. Maybe what Kendrick was taught could have been wrong as well. I don't want to say that he subconsciously incriminated himself and his actions, but that would be for him to confirm. What I do know is that after he said what he said, I immediately scratched my head.

I've said this many times, but as men we have to be better, all of us. This goes for the ladies as well if you approach any ladies or fellas too. But to my guys, since our stories of misconduct are more prevalent, we have to be better and school those coming up on the best practices. Teach these dudes what game really means so that more of us have the correct and clear distinctions. These are my words and I make no apologies.

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