When we talk about interracial dating in the new millennium, we are facing a new reality in America. In the above clip at UNC Chapel Hill, we see how youth feel about interracial dating. Unsurprisingly we find that many are open to interracial dating, except for the two black women Litesha and Ally. Additionally, Si-on lm, an interviewee, admits that her parents would be concerned especially if her chosen partner was black. Yet the prevailing feelings (or at least the director’s closing statements) were that the “deciding factor” should be about love between two people regardless of race.
Archive for the ‘Homophobia’ Category
Interracial vs Intraracial dating, loving and fucking: Part 2
In the above clip, we discover that in 2000 roughly 95, 000 black women were married to white men. By 2006, the numbers had grown to 117,000 black women are married to white men. Anchor person Mara Schiavocampo of NBC poses the following:
“One reason for the increase in interracial relationships may simply be access. As black women continue to make strives in the workplace they often move into new social circles. Some black women say they have a hard time meeting black men who can match their professional accomplishments. That imbalance is foreshadowed in the classroom where 64% percent of black college students are women [, and] at some schools, they [women] out number black men seven to one.”
Transsexual, Transgender, DragQueen, Internalized Homophobia, and Liberation???
When I was in the six grade there was a kid in my class (we’ll call him Rudy) that was what I like to call “The Kyle Washington type”(for all of those who have seen college hill south beach you know exactly what that means). If you have not seen College Hill, allow me to explain.
The “Kyle Washington Type” encompasses characteristics like being loud, flamboyant, over-weight, insecure, and always taking there internal hatred out on the innocent victims that rub them the wrong way, no matter how justified that person might be. For anyone who is relatively familiar with the gay community, the “Kyle Washington Type” is no secret. They are the best friends of some, and the worse enemies of others.
Now imagine all those characteristics in an openly gay 12 year old transgendered kid. To put it lightly, Rudy got made fun of A LOT. The students teased him to the point that his parents pulled him out of the middle school that I attended. I was never one of those individuals who initiated the attacks against Rudy, but I cannot lie and say that I never laughed at him. I knew he was gay—he never tried to hide that—I knew I was confused about who I was suppose to like at that age and I knew that laughing at him would make me safe from being ridiculed for my hidden homosexuality.
This is a very small case of internalized homophobia on my part. That’s what I call it when someone that is gay/DL, in attempts to hide their “true self”, bullies or ridicules other LGBT people. I have seen internalized homophobia on greater scales. I knew a football player in high school that brutally beat and teased every LGBT kid he could find. Then the same football player tried to come on to me.
People are many times afraid of what they don’t understand.
People are many times afraid to be what others don’t understand.
It seems the only way out of this vicious cycle is for people to educate themselves. And this cannot always be done by reading a book on the subject. One reason why Rudy got made fun of so much is because he was different, and his peers—including myself at the time—did not understand him. Most adults to this day don’t understand the differences among being transsexual, transgender, and a drag queen. So allow me to take a moment to break down these terms.
Individuals who identify as “transgender” or “transsexual” are usually people who are born with typical male or female anatomies but feel as though they’ve been born into the “wrong body.” For example, a person who identifies as transgender or transsexual may have typical female anatomy but feel like a male and seek to become male by taking hormones or electing to have sex reassignment surgeries. Transgender is the umbrella term for gender identity. Transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them. To be transsexual relates to having some type of sexual reassignment or a sex change. A drag queen is a person, usually a man, who dresses, and usually acts, like a woman often for the purpose of entertaining or performing. There are drag artists of all genders and sexualities who do drag for various reasons.(Main source of information comes from Intersex Society of North America http://www.isna.org/)
Many people I grew up with in my church would not of taken the time to finish the last paragraph. So to conclude the series on a Gay Man’s Struggle, is liberation possible? So far Wisconsin, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, have all formed some type of legalized marriage or civil union. Not to mention the United States has to deal with the thousands that got married in California last year. And every generation that passes becomes more understanding and accepting of the LGBT community. It is only a matter of time before liberation—legally and socially—becomes a reality. Once people begin to reach out and try to understand something they didn’t want to talk about before, that is the beginning of liberation and that is when this fear of a certain group of people begins to end. History speaks for itself, with every movement. The gay movement is only leading to one place. A place where discrimination ends, and equality is gained. Then maybe a gay man’s struggle will become a gay man’s triumph.
A Gay Man’s Struggle: “Why DL?”
One of my friends came to me this week and told me one of those stories that make you shake you head in disappointment. My eighteen-year-old male friend (For Blog purposes we will call him Timothy) was approached and asked out on a date by an older man (We will call him Bernis). Bernis was in his mid-thirties and initially seemed to be a nice person. After a couple weeks of interaction between the two of them Timothy realized Bernis was DownLow (which he understood to be problematic but Timothy did not mind dealing with that aspect.) Timothy stopped interacting with Bernis when he saw a picture of him at a Vacation spot with a woman and two kids. When Timothy asked him about the picture, Bernis came clean and told him he had a wife and two kids.
When situations like this happen, usually both the gay and straight community criticize and judge the DownLow man. In some sense I think those older men should be criticized, but I also think people need to understand why those men have hidden in the closet for so long and why they continue to drown in their infidelity with the same sex.
There are all types of DownLow men. I have talked to men on the DL who were “self-proclaimed” thugs, businessmen, lawyers, drug dealers, educated, non-educated, educators, Black, White, Brown, and everything in between. And I have been DL once upon a time. I tried to hide who I was and pretend to date girls so others would think I was straight. I’m just glad that I was strong and confident enough to break out of my “straight façade.”
It always involves a combination of these three aspects: The American Dream, Religion and/or Homophobia.
The American Dream is not a reality for many living in impoverished areas across the country. However, there is still a paradigm that consistently leaves remnants of ideas that root from our “countries dream” which causes any young boy (or girl) to not want to be labeled as “deviant.”
Things like growing up and having a wife and kids are programmed into the minds of individuals from the time of their birth. If you are apart of any lifestyle that deviates from what is considered normal, acceptable, or the status quo you will be ostracized and many have even been brutally gay bashed.(Read about Matthew Shepard)
People don’t decide to be DL once they reach adulthood. It starts when you’re just a teenager. When I was a young boy in middle school discovering how much discrimination existed towards black people in the past, I did not want to be discriminated against for two things that I could not control—Being Black and Gay. In middle school I decided early that it was best to suppress the thought and feelings I had for other men. And for the next six years of my life (from 12-18) that’s exactly what I did. I lied, had fake relationships, and stressed my masculinity so that I could be considered normal and not have to deal with the ridicule and judgment of society. In the black community, when oppressions develop in society, black people have a history of finding a haven within the church. But with gay oppression, that spiritual haven is non-existent, and the vulnerability of struggling gay men and lesbian women only escalates.
We live in a society where homophobes are displayed on news channels for beating and sometimes killing people for their sexual orientation, where the mentality of a mass amount of people believe it would be best to get married/make 2.5 kids, and where a church says your going to hell if you don’t change your sexual orientation. With all these different aspects going on at once, it would seem smarter and wiser to just stay in the closet for a lifetime in some sense.
The reason we have 35 year old men approaching 19 year olds males after being married with kids, is because we live in a society that ridicules those individuals who are courageous enough to decide to be out and proud. I am not condoning a cheating man’s actions, but I want to explore why a man could live half his life and still be hiding his true self. Bernis is just a product of what society says he should be. We can call him a coward, but the truth still remains, if people come out of the closet, they will have to face more hardships in life.
I decided to come out because I refuse to go through life under the oppression of anyone else’s opinions. I believe for a man (or women) to get to a point where they stop hiding, they have to stop caring what everyone thinks and feels (which is much easier said than done). When I came out, I had to not care what my family thought (the same family who fasted—literally stopped eating—and prayed for me when I told them I was gay), I had to stop caring what my friends thought (some of the same friends who abandoned me once they found out), and I had to re-evaluate my religion (a religion that had been the backbone of my life since I was a three year old in Sunday-school). I cannot blame Bernis for not wanting to deal with the oppression and rejection that gay and lesbian people encounter on a daily basis.
One thing I can take hope in is that things are getting better. The Laws (slowly but surely) are changing to support and protect all people. The first gay minister 
was appoint in the last decade, and people are starting to understand you can still achieve success and find acceptance as an out gay man or lesbian women. I suppose it is up to us (Straight and Gay people) to make sure our society stops giving such a negative and unnatural connotation to the word “gay” and everything that comes with it. Maybe then 35-year-old men will finally be able to accept their true identities.
Why I want(ed) to be a Disney Princess
Declaring possibilities!!
What I find hard to process about the previous post about not wanting to be a Disney Princess is that the author belittles “traditional fairytales.” She [the author] claims that “they are limited and untrue for poor working class black girls like [herself].” She asserts that “Prince Charming does not come,” and “that happy endings are not promised especially when there is an intersection of various devalued social identities [i.e., when you area a poor, black, woman and etc you get no happy ending].” What she fails to see is that all of these endeavors particularly for the Little Mermaid happened inside of Ariel taking action and living with a purpose.
The Cry Heard Around the World…He was the Best Father
It was the cry heard around the world when 11 year-old Paris Jackson said, “Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine . . . I just want to say I love him so 
much.” From coast to coast, eyes wept for her sorrow and tears trickled down faces as a poignant realization set in, Michael Jackson, the icon the alleged pedophile was a father. Not just a father of one child, but a father of three. Wow. All of this says that Michael Jackson celebrated Father’s Day. He made sure his children had a capable if not loving, nanny, Grace. He played games with them like dangle infant Blanket from the balcony. He even willed his children to his mother knowing she would love them unconditionally. Michael Jackson was a father. I know what many of you are thinking not another post about Michael Jackson. True, there are countless blogs and news articles about the King of Pop’s death. However this post is more about redefining masculinity than about Michael Jackson.
Holding constant the many allegations surrounding Michael Jackson’s indiscretions with children, I find myself ruminating if not secretly obsessing over the question of whether men can love, nurture, emote, and innocently embrace children without physically, sexually, and psychologically violating them. I know many people reading this blog would say “Yes, men can.” But before you answer this question, let me restructure the question: Do we believe that men can love, nurture, emote, and innocently embrace children without physically, sexually, and psychologically violating them? And I would venture to say if we are honest with ourselves, the answer would be variations of no’s and conditionalities “of yes, but . . .”
Perhaps, I should restructure the question even further: Do we see men loving, nurturing, emoting, and innocently embracing children without thinking to ourselves, “Something is wrong with that man, he must be mentally unstable, a pedophile, or gay?” Once again, if we are honest with ourselves and recognize how we internalize sexist thoughts, the answer to the question is quite evident. Given patriarchy, I believe it is difficult for us to believe that men can L-O-V-E children and greatly desire to be in their presence. We are okay with men providing material and financial support for their children (especially the government), but when men move into the territory of radical love we question their motive and their manhood. Well, what do you mean by radical love? I am glad you asked this question.
My feminist academic jargon definition would define it as men who challenge hegemonic definitions of masculinity and disown privileges garnered through proper masculine behaviors. However, my colored school teacher ethos would define it as men seeking to be unconvention
al in their approach to rearing children. They are the dads who “choose” to stay at home with their children while their partner labor outside the house. They are the fathers who endure years and years of therapy to deal with their emotional immaturities. They are the men who are unafraid to show affection, care, and love for all children irrespective of the child’s biology. As bell hooks states in Communion, these types of heterosexual men threaten the foundations of patriarchy because they show “that sexist, masculinist behaviors once believed to be innate not only is learned, but also can be unlearned.”
Perhaps, my obsession with this question of men loving children stem from my own absent and abusive father issues. Of all the heterosexual men I have encountered in my 26 years of life, I have only met one man who exudes this radical type of love. This is not to say that other men in my life are hopeless patriarchal barbarians because they are not, they like most men unquestionably enjoy the rewards of male privilege. This one man I know who’s seeking to exude this radical idea of love is a man married to a woman who’s well known for her feminist concerns and beliefs. One day as I sat in his study talking with him, he said, “Its taken him many years of therapy to understand the power and the need of emoting and that sensitivity is not weakness or unmanly and that men now-a-days lack initiation into embracing their emotions because everything around them 
tells them they are not suppose to emote and show love because if you do than you are not a man . . . you are something else.” After hearing this and observing his care, concern, nurturing, and non-dominating love for his partner, child, and congregational children, I was left completely baffled asking the question, Can we [can I] believe that men can love, nurture, emote, and innocently embrace children and non-dominance in their intimate relationships? I don’t know, however, this one man makes me think that it may be plausible.
So, when 11 year-old Paris said she loved her father against the backdrop of the media’s desire to let it be know Michael Jackson was an alleged child molester, I caught myself asking the question, given how we are socialized to see men as the bread winners and non emoting patriarchs, can we fathom let alone conceive of the idea that Michael Jackson was simply a man who loved children in ways that women are allowed to love children. I can not count the many times I have laid in the bed with the child I was babysitting either to put them to sleep or to settle them down to rest. And let’s be honest about our sexist thinking, women are no more capable of radical love than men, but yet we trust women with the care of children.
Does all of this mean that I am saying Michael Jackson is innocent of his alleged crimes? No, because I do not know, but what I am saying is that it’s difficult for us to believe and to accept that men can love, nurture, emote, and innocently embrace children. It is far easier to believe that men like Michael Jackson are child molesters, gay, and mentally unstable than to believe that they are men who simply love because it goes against the very fiber of what we have been taught about men. Yes, it was a cry heard around the world, “my daddy was the best father ever . . .”
Some Black women and gays love denegration?
As we prepare for CNN’s Black in America 2 (July 22nd & 23rd), let’s “keep it poppin’” with a discussion about some black women and black LGBT folks. In my experience, some women and black LGBT folks are into being disrespected. Disrespect for me ranges — from dancing and signing songs that screams: bitches, punk, sissy, battyman and hoes if you are a black woman and/or a member of the LGBT, —to public physical, emotional and political acceptance of being valued by someone as less than or as a sexual object (i.e., being humiliated). For me, acceptance is when you allow someone or somebody to humiliate you in public spaces. In writing it out, it sounds crazy to suggest that anyone is accepting of publicly being reduced to jokes and sex objects, but I have seen it and at times have allowed it.
Bow Wow vs B-Scott: HipHop homophobia
- Black Men being Hard together
In mid-April 2009, Little Bow Wow told a “funny story”, which was over a live web-chat, about not wanting to get his haircut by a barber that he assumed was gay. His comments sparked some controversy among gay media when his remarks were leaked. One such critique came from video-blogger BScott who is this self-proclaimed “gay as hell” “pretty man.” In his original post, BScott, took Bow Wow to task over his homophobia and alleged closet status (funny as hell in a problematic way).