Today while browsing my secret twitter, I stumbled across an article that was published for MUSE mag about the fetishism of masculinity in the gay black community.
I saw people adding their two cents about it here and there and no one, that I came across, echoed my feelings; it pissed me off.
Not because it was poorly written, the topic was explored thoroughly or that I disagreed with the authors position. The article touched on a larger issue that prevents me from fully identifying as a "gay black man"; the value system.
The dictionary defines a community as follows:
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.
I bolded certain words in that definition because I will briefly expound on why I feel a sense of isolation as a member of this "community".
1) Gays can only be described as a group because of our common charasteric and not our interests. The unified characteristic is homosexual; the lust for flash carrying the same reproductive organs.
2) Our interests vary greatly for the sake of not generalizing gay men, take a look 10 gay men's social media accounts and you'll probably find some iconic image of a woman; preferabley lighter skinned, long straight hair and a singer (as much as we like to talk about how 'different' we are, we love to indulge in the societal standard of beauty).
You will also find some sort of external communication method like kik, bbm or a twitter handle so we can discreetly connect with one another. Now this isn't a new phenomenon, it dates back to when Oscar Wilde and other discreet, not discrete, gays would wear colorful carnations on their lapels to identify one another without drawing too much attention for the castigating general public. Sound like a similar practice? Thought so.
Last, but not least, we love excessive drama. Whether its the Kardashian, the Real Housewives or any other show that depicts women as catty, ignorant and combative, we enjot the mellow drama. We even employ it in our own social lives, often forming cliques and using the physical and material flaws of other to form a pedestal for our false hierarchy.
3) Perceiving itself as distinct. Gay men are divided on racial and socioeconomic levels despite the fact that we believe we are so different from the general public. Since we are ostracized as a whole, the elite, and often white, gays lead the crusade against conservative family groups while the educationally deficient and pauper suffer from higher amounts of wage discrimination and health illnesses (including HIV rates climbing in minority communities which are ignored by wealthy whites that can afford treatment).
As different as gay men like to pretend that they, they, or we, often fall into the same materialistic, social hierarchies that our straight counterparts do and isolate those of us that make us "look bad" or aren't as involved in the causes as the rest of group.
This is where I find myself conflicted. I am a member of a community that is divided racially and economically; that I often find myself disagreeing with and for that reason being isolated from.
When it comes to black gay men, I notice that even our most prominent mouth pieces for advocacy like Mused and Cypher Avenue, if there are others fill me in, often go back to the petty arguments about masculinity or "does HIV matter?"
I find myself wondering if we are incapable of identifying the other issues: like poverty, employment discrimination and disease control that the majority (white) gay population sees and attacks while leaving us out.
Or do we simply not care because we only see playing russian roulette with HIV, wondering each other's sexual positions and how masculine other men are as the only tangible issues we can discuss on any intellectual level.
I find it heartbreaking that the only time we can manage to discuss HIV is when we are demonizing other men for having it or highlighting harrowing stories, like the Michael Johnson HIV scare case, when as a "community" so many of us are impacted by it or exposed it in social and sexual settings.
I find it disappointing that the most attention we choose to give one another on a given day is the hamster wheel conversation about perceived masculinity; hell Cypher Avenue is DEDICATED to it.
Then there are the porn blogs that perpetuate the objectification of young black men that are in fact stricken by limited employment, broken families, poverty and often end up with HIV that see sex for money and their looks as their meal tickets to McDonald's.
Enough is enough, it makes me sick. Often times I think I hate the idea of being gay and the gay community, but I realize that I cannot do that and say that without hating myself.
We need a new vanguard, a new path and better ways to identify issues impacting our community or truly face extinction through self-hatred, division and sheer ignorance.
I just hope we wake up in time to make a change.
- CGN
No comments:
Post a Comment