GAY MEN: SHAME IN THE BLACK AND GAY COMMUNITY
I hear a lot of reasons for why closeted gay men don’t want people to know that they are gay. Reasons range from “I can’t let my family down” to “I may lose some Facebook friends.”
One of the more interesting reasons for closeted gay men not wanting people to know they are gay, is as they say, because they don’t want to be associated with so called feminine gay men, drag queens, and in their eyes other less than desirable aspects of the gay community.
Now let me explain why this is interesting.
If your reason for being ashamed of your sexual orientation hinges on the fact that “some” people might make you look bad and you might be compared to those people then what does that say about how you view something like your race?
Take the Black Community for example. I am a member of the Black Community a community that has many positive and negative attributes about it. I don’t appreciate Black men who father children and don’t take care of them, I don’t care for Black men who sell drugs, I don’t care for Black women who choose men over their children, but I somehow manage to not let these cases make me ashamed to be black. I am still a proud black man even though some Black men don’t take care of their children and some Black men sell drugs.
You see my pride in my race and my community is not tied to whether or not I can be associated with bad aspects of the community I belong to.
Feminine gay men make up the black community. Rupaul is apart of the black community. Every black so called feminine gay man is apart of the black community.
AND YET!
AND YET!
I don’t see these closeted gay men who cite feminine gay men and drag queens as reasons for not wanting to be seen as gay talking about how ashamed they are to be Black. How ashamed they are to be members of the black community.
The same feminine gay men that make you ashamed to be apart of the gay community also exist in the black community so shouldn’t that mean that closeted gay men should also be ashamed of the Black community?
Feminine gay men are still apart of the black community!
Which leads me to believe that this particular reason cited as a justification for being ashamed of being gay isn’t a very strong one. Otherwise there would be a lot more Black gay men ashamed to be apart of the Black community as well.
But honestly your pride in your sexual orientation, your race, your gender, etc should not be dependent upon whether or not certain members of the respective communities make you look bad or good.
Posted on March 13, 2010, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Personally, as a white, gay MAN with many (masculine, as it happens) gay black MEN as my friends, I reserve the right to hang with whom I choose, and, frankly, really don’t wish to hang out with many queeny, effeminate men (regardless of their colour, of course). I live in London, England, which is probably one of the most racially integrated cities in the world – and that includes sexually as well.