CHANGING NIGHTMARES INTO DREAMS

“I screamed to the heavens….loudly screamed….
Trying to change our nightmares into dreams…” – Maya Angelou

It’s unlikely that Maya Angelou had the struggles of gays and lesbians in mind when she wrote the poem “In & Out of Time,” but I feel the lines quoted above speak to the experiences of many gays and lesbians.

Much has been said about Lisa Lings latest documentary for the Oprah Winfrey Network titled “Pray The Gay Away?” which explored differing perspectives on whether or not one could be gay and Christian. I chose not to watch the documentary, and I probably won’t, because I have lived what it seeks to explore, but I have paid close attention to the conversations taking place because of the documentary.

I have heard people refer to the attempt to “pray the gay away” as sad, pitiful, and stupid. My own thinking tends to agree with those assessments, but I turn my comments towards the society and culture that makes someone feel they need to pray away their sexual orientation. Yes, heterosexism and homophobia are sad, pitiful, stupid, and a lot of other horrible words.

I believe that those who seek to “pray the gay away” are as the quote states, screaming to the heavens, loudly screaming, trying to change their nightmares into dreams. My own attempts to “pray the gay away,” were ultimately attempts to change my nightmare (homosexuality), into my dream (heterosexuality).

It’s important to understand that I, like many people who are told that they are inferior, less than, or abnormal because of who they are, had no choice in whether or not I saw homosexuality as a nightmare. I was raised to believe that being gay was a sin and everywhere I looked in society there were confirmations of this teaching. TV shows, movies, songs, and playground culture all reinforced the gay as nightmare message.

Like others who are told by society they are not “normal,” I searched for a way to be normal. How could I cleanse myself of the stigmas of being gay to become and benefit from the privilege of heterosexuality? As a gay teen I used the tools I had, and that involved turning to the god I had been raised to believe answered all prayers. I wanted to be what the dominant group said I should be, I wanted to be heterosexual like everyone else, and so I prayed, prayed and cried, prayed and cried.

I never became straight but I did learn to love myself unconditionally. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it’s one that I am proud of having walked. I have come to realize that the nightmare is not my sexuality; the nightmare is the homophobic society that I live in, and the rigid religious belief system I had been indoctrinated in. The dream for me, and perhaps for many others, lie in accepting myself, no longer internalizing homophobia, and no longer being a slave to mythical belief systems.

I have the utmost sympathy for the gays and lesbians who are trying to turn their nightmares into dreams. I hope and know that many of them will avoid trying fit snugly into the nightmare. I also know that many won’t, and will continue to miss out on the dream that is self acceptance and self love.

My advice to gays and lesbians, who are praying to become straight or anyone else struggling with self-hatred, is to remember that we have to be taught to hate ourselves. None of us emerge from the womb ashamed of who we are. We must remember that anything that is learned can be unlearned, and self-acceptance starts with unlearning the self-hate that we have been taught.

Active self love, not prayer, will help us change our nightmares into dreams.

The Pecola Breedlove In Me

This essay allows me to merge my two loves, history and English, and provide a window into the life of a black gay male living in a heterosexist society. As I look back on my life, I can appreciate the role that literature, and great literature at that, played in giving me the keys to unlock the mental cage I was being held captive within, setting me on the path to freedom. The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison is a book about freedom, and it was integral in helping me release my mind from the shackles of mental slavery and self hate. The first time I read The Bluest Eye, like most student’s I appreciated the message of the story, but it didn’t resonate with me as it today, as a grown adult man, growing up in a society that seemed eerily similar to the one Pecola lived in. As a feminist, one of my core beliefs is “the intersection of oppression.” The “intersectionality of oppression,” is an outgrowth of the “intersectional theory,” created by feminist Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 and brought to prominence in the 1990′s by Patricia Hill Collins. According to Susanne Knudsen, “Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, class, or disability do not act independently of one another; instead, these forms of oppression interrelate creating a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination.”  It is through that lens that I was able to find my voice in the story of Pecola Breedlove. For most people, the thought of white supremacy and homophobia being connected, never crosses their mind. As the descendants of the civil rights movement, many of us are raised to believe that it is racism and racism alone that impacts the lives of persons of color on a day to day basis. Little attention is paid to the way sexism, homophobia, or ableism are thrust upon the black community, both inside and out, and the consequences of those forms of oppression. If Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy, then my story is of a black boy growing up in a society dominated by heterosexism. Readers of The Bluest Eye are familiar with the consequences of white supremacy, and this too is often the case with heterosexism in a society, the end result can literally alter the mind of those trying to live within such an unattainable system.

“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.” – Audre Lorde

Who is Pecola Breedlove? Who am I?

Pecola Breedlove is the protagonist of the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison in 1970. In the novel Pecola Breedlove receives messages from the dominant society that white is the standard of beauty, and thus feels that she is ugly. All around her the message is being reinforced that to be beautiful she must embody the white ideal, which was blonde hair and blue eyes. In her quest for this ideal, Pecola loses her mind in the process, only acquiring the eyes she so desperately wants at the expense of her sanity.

I am not a fictional character, but the similarities between me and Pecola Breedlove are numerous. Where Pecola Breedlove thought herself ugly for not living up to the white supremacist ideal of beauty, I thought myself ugly and abnormal, for not living up to the heterosexist ideal. Like Pecola, all around me the message was straight was the way, and anything other than that was not only wrong, but even worse, sinful. Like Pecola I knew all too well growing up what it felt like to be an outsider, one who failed to live up to the ideal put forth by the dominant culture.

Absorbing the Message

The pressure to conform to the dominant ideal in a given society is one that many of us struggle with on a day to day basis. For Pecola Breedlove, it was trying to fit herself into a white ideal that was impossible for a little black girl like herself, but in spite of that Pecola longed desperately to be normal, to fit into what society had deemed normal. ” It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights–if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Reading that passage still brings back painful memories for me. I can remember being a young boy desperately wanting to be normal or what I thought was normal. I had learned early on, much like Pecola did, that I wasn’t exhibiting what I should be. For Pecola it was eyes, but for me it was the gender identity and sexual orientation that is required of young black men in the United States. As Pecola longed for her eyes to be different, I longed for my mannerisms to be different. If only I could prevent myself from switching, if only I could hold my hands in a fist, if only I were different, more masculine like the other guys who were revered for their masculinity, I too would be changed! Where Pecola longed for blue eyes, I longed to rid myself of the “sugar in the tank,” that seemed to be the source of my discontent. Sometimes the message is so strong that the receiver longing to be normal turns to a higher power for consolation. Before becoming the atheist that I am now, I was everything a well brought up Christian boy should be, despite raging internally of course. Pecola, like me, turned to prayer, “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she prayed” (Morrison 46). Looking back, I have to laugh to stop from crying at the state that I was in as a young gay boy, hoping desperately to fit into a heterosexist ideal. I too said the prayers, sending up enough “Dear God’s” to equal a mega church worth of prayers, but to no avail. Each morning I woke up and I was the same ole me, the prayer hadn’t worked, and I was forced to live another day in torment, failing to live up to the masculine and heterosexist ideal being forced on me. There’s something very tragic about a child longing to be normal, but that is the way our society is organized, and that is what most parents unfortunately instill in their children, to strive to be normal, as opposed to appreciating the abnormality or difference.

“A group of boys was circling and holing at bay a victim, Pecola Breedlove. Heady with the smell of their own musk, thrilled by the easy power of a majority, they gaily harassed her” (Morrison 65).

To survive a childhood on the wrong side of patriarchal masculinity is something remarkable in and of itself. Obviously all children are teased in school, as school children will no doubt find any fault to dwell on, but being the “faggot,” is a unique experience, if not a traumatic one. The thing about numbers is that it makes people who would otherwise not act turn into invincible monsters. Where a single person might overlook certain things, the group is sure to tap into their collective disgust, and produce something terrible for their victim. Being the recipient of harassment was something that Pecola and I both shared. I can remember otherwise happy days turning from bad to worse all because some idiot or idiots decided to bring me down for being “different.” Of all the names a young boy can be called, faggot is perhaps the worst. While other words like “nerd,” “poor,” “dumb,” etc left a young boys manhood intact, faggot cut right through to the bone, and severed the recipient of his manhood, a fine cut from a metaphorical Samurai sword. As insults go, on playgrounds around the country, none is quite as effective on debilitating the confidence of young men as “faggot.” The fact that I was smarter than them, better dressed, wealthier, and more popular meant nothing, being labeled a faggot reduced me to the lowest of the low. My straight A’s and my perfect attendance meant nothing that that point. All that I had built my reputation on crumbled in that instant, I was the butt of the cruel joke. Fortunately trouble doesn’t last always, and the moments of being shown the worst side of patriarchal masculinity would end. Although for Carl Joseph Walker and Jaheem Herrera, there only refuge from anti-gay bullying, would lie in suicide.

Pecola Goes Insane, I Go Into the Closet

In one last desperate attempt to be normal, Pecola forfeits her sanity, and only then achieves the blue eyes she so covets. “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl and the horror at the heart of hear yearning is exceeded only but the evil of fulfillment” (Morrison 204). The road Pecola traveled on ended in delusion and in many ways that was the path that I was one. I didn’t lose my mind like Pecola did, but I did begin to delude myself. There would be the time in middle school when I convinced myself that my sexual orientation was just a phase, something I could abstain from by no longer visiting the gay chartrooms on Yahoo and AIM. I’d stop talking to the guys I had met, I would finally give in to the girl in my class who wanted me to be her boyfriend, and I would emerge a heterosexual. That delusion I set up for myself lasted for about three months the first time around, and I would try it on and off throughout school until I came to terms with whom I was in the 10th grade. I could have ended up like Pecola though, as many gay men and women in this country so often do. They are those who project a heterosexual image to the world, despite being homosexual. They’re delusion becomes a coping mechanism for the heterosexist society they are forced to live in and unable to deal with. I was on that path but fortunately I got off and found my own truth, but for many gay men and women, they end up like Pecola, never finding their own truth. They get their blue eyes, there’s being heterosexuality, but it comes at the expense of their self worth and self respect, being true to themselves.

Collective Responsibility

If the product of white supremacy is a black community torn apart by colorism and other forms of racial self loathing, the product of heterosexism, is generation after generation of black gays and lesbians who hate themselves, loath themselves, and detest themselves for being that which they are. Pecola Breedlove is causality of white supremacy, and for the thousands of gays and lesbians who suffer under homophobia, they become casualties of heterosexism. Our inability to recognize or respect the differences and variety of humanity are all guilty of promoting and reinforcing the very ideology that drives the Pecola’s and I pray to be “normal,” whatever that means. One of the resonating quotes from The Bluest Eye that sticks with me comes on the second to last page. “All of our waste we dumped on her and which she absorbed” (Morrison 205). We can strive to put an end to the racism, the homophobia, the sexism, the ableism, and the classism, that we dump on our fellow human beings, and which they absorb.

“We are wrong, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too late”(Morrison 206).

Unlike, the narrators of the The Bluest Eye, we have the power to prevent it from being too late. We have the power to recognize the intersectionality of oppression, and correct our wrongness when it comes to rejecting and fighting against white supremacy and heterosexism. It doesn’t have to be too late for us.

The Master Narrative

I don’t think words can begin to express the love that I have for Toni Morrison. In terms of living authors, I would gladly put her at number one, and leave a considerable amount of space before the next slot. In terms of developing my worldview, her works have been instrumental in allowing me to broaden my worldview to a scope that I could have never imagined. From Song of Solomon, to Paradise, her work has given me the words to articulate the pain and pride that I experience in my life. As a black, gay, atheist, and feminist her work, especially her articulation of the “master narrative,” have been fundamental in me becoming the freethinker that I am. What exactly is the “master narrative?” Toni Morrison states that the master narrative is, “whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else” (feministteacher.com). Finding the strength to liberate myself from the master narrative was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life and continues to be a rewarding process with each new step that I take on my journey of personal autonomy. Living a life of one’s own choosing is the first step to rejecting the master narrative and something I have found to be very cathartic on my journey. Society will prescribe what is standard and normal, but it is not an obligation for us to accept this. Just like society told Pecola that she should covet white features and attributes, society tells gays and lesbians like me that the only acceptable way to be is heterosexual, despite bisexuality and homosexuality both being legitimate sexual orientations as well. Severing my allegiance to the master narrative is ultimately the act that separates me from Pecola Breedlove, but is the very factor that links so many of our generation to Pecola Breedlove. We may not be trying to fit into white supremacy, but there are certainly many of us trying to follow the master narrative at all costs. We only hang out with those who the master narrative tells us to hang with, we only follow the Christian religion, prescribed by the master narrative, we only major in the area of study prescribed by the master narrative, we think it necessary to fit into the sexual orientation as prescribed by the master narrative, and we even think it worthwhile to subscribe to and reinforce the outdated gender roles and expectations assigned by the master narrative. Do we realize that reinforcing the master narrative is often the key ingredient in our own marginalization? Or are we too busy in our praise of the master narrative to take notice of the consequences of such an act. There are many Pecola’s in the world, which have fallen victim to the master narrative, and speaking as someone who was a victim of the master narrative but now a survivor, I can attest that it is possible to move beyond the master narrative, to begin to live a life of your own choosing, just as I now do. You may not be like everyone else, and you may not be normal, but at least you are free! As I always say, slavery ended and I serve no master, especially not the master narrative. Demanding that element of freedom is an important lesson that I took away from The Bluest Eye and other works by Toni Morrison.

“If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.” – June Jordan

Works Cited

Feminist Teacher. “Exposing the Master Narrative: Teaching Toni Morrison’s

The Bluest Eye.” FeministTeacher. FeministTeacher, 13 April. 2010. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Plume Books, April 2000.

HOMOSEXUALITY ISN’T A CURSE BUT IGNORANCE IS!

This morning I woke up to the following forum topic on a website for black gay men that I frequent often:

IS HOMOSEXUALITY A CURSE?

The user went on to state:

DISEASES, SEXUALLY INTENSE ENVIRONMENT WHICH CAUSES PEOPLE TO WANT TO HAVE MORE THAN 1 SEX PARTNER, VERY FEW HOMOSEXUALS WANTING TO COMMITT TO OTHER HOMOSEXUALS, LAWS BEING MADE TO WHERE HOMOSEXUALS ARENT ABLE TO DO CERTAIN THINGS, SOCIETY LOOKING DOWN ON IT, NOT BEING ABLE TO HAVE KIDS, ETC…. WHAT YALL THINK

Now I am always dismayed by internalized homophobia this early in the morning, but I took the opportunity to share some historical information with him.

This is was my response:

You do know that people asked the same thing about Blackness?

If it was a curse.

That we were diseased laden.

That we were promiscuous.

That we couldn’t commit.

There were laws that prevented us from doing just about anything. Couldn’t vote, couldn’t hold property, couldn’t get an education, couldn’t get a fair trial.

Society looked down on us.

They tried to prevent us from having kids via eugenics.

Good thing our ancestors weren’t dumb enough to internalize that hatred because our community would have been wiped out of America years ago.

You know the funny thing about internalizing the dominant cultures attitudes and values towards you… It only helps further your oppression rather than help end it.

But you wouldn’t recognize that.

You see the thing that homosexuals don’t realize is that America and to a larger extent The World has always painted someone as the dangerous “Other.” At one point it was Jews, then it was African Americans, then it was Muslims, and now it’s Gays. We won’t overcome by internalizing the dominant cultures negative views of us as a matter of fact that will only further denigrate and oppress us. We have to construct pride in who we are. We have to construct self worth in who we are. That’s the only way we are going to over come.

SELF HATE THREATENS THE LEGITIMACY OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Is there something wrong with being gay? Is being gay something that is nasty, disgusting, deviant, abnormal, and shameful? I don’t think it is and most scientist don’t either, but the way many homosexual men act and live you would think being gay is the worst thing in the history of mankind. I understand well that being gay is looked down upon by society, but why should gay men and women let society dictate how they view themselves? It was only a few decades ago, that being Black was looked down upon by society, but that didn’t stop Blacks from constructing worth and humanity in their race.

I notice a lot of self hating gay men think that there is something wrong with being gay. They think the solution to changing societies overall attitudes towards homosexuality is by reinforcing the notion that there is something shameful and deviant about homosexuality, as opposed to rejecting that misconception. If the way you live and act gives credence to the notion that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of and something that is deviant then you become part of the problem and not part of the solution. As a proud and openly gay man I am offended by gay men and women who perpetuate this notion that being a homosexual is something that one should hide or keep quiet about. That being gay is something that’s shameful and dirty.

It’s true that homosexuality is not the dominant sexual orientation but that doesn’t mean that it’s inferior or abnormal just because it’s not the dominant sexual orientation. I challenge all homosexuals to see themselves as worthy of dignity and person hood and not deny their sexual orientation legitimacy nor live or act as if there is something shameful about their sexual orientation.

When the way you live or act reinforces the misconception that there is something wrong and shameful about homosexuality you give credence to the asinine notion that there is something wrong or shameful about homosexuality.

Homosexuality just like heterosexual and bisexuality is a legitimate sexual orientation.