Don't call us gay (even if we only have sex with other men).
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is exclusively homosexual. He said that he doesn't like the label "gay," nor does he consider himself gay because for him the label hinges not upon sexual actions, but on how one lives his life.
In his estimation, he can have sex with as many dudes as he likes, but as long as he doesn't make it public, as long as he doesn't enter into heterosexual-like courtships with these fellows, as long as romance doesn't enter into the equation, as long as there is no femininity involved, as long as he's black, as long as the idea of marrying or building families with these men remains silly at best and repulsive at worst, as long as the encounters amount to a "homeboys with benefits" situation: He ain't gay.
When I asked him what, then, would he call men who had sexual relations--exclusively--with other men, he said, "Just a regular dude."
Some might say he's simply internalized homophobia, that he wants to waddle like a duck, quack like a duck, swim like a duck, but be called a bicycle--and they might be right. But then again, there also might be some interesting sociopolitical underpinnings to his point of view.
I found the situation fascinating for three reasons:
1. I liked the idea of someone rejecting a social label and insisting upon defining himself.I talked a little bit about this before when discussing the Pashtuns from Afghanistan, whose sexual identities baffled American soldiers. There seems to be this idea among various peoples of color that gayness is a white thing, that it was forced upon slaves by their perverted white masters and it spread among African peoples like a disease.
2. I also understood his rejection to be coming from a place of deep and abiding shame: People of color can be some of the most homophobic people on the planet and I can completely understand a black man refusing to identify in a way that would alienate him from his tribe.
3. He not only perceived gayness as weak and unmanly, but he also perceived it as un-black.
That's utter bullshit, of course. And over at Mother Jones, Titania Kumeh breaks down the history of homosexuality and people of color in response to the homophobic mess going on in Uganda (white people may not have exported homosexuality, but they're damn sure exporting homophobia).
She points to a terrific historical affidavit that traces gay marriage and same-sex relationships all the way back to ancient Egypt.
So much for the myth of pre-colonization, African exclusive-heterosexuality.
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