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| From Spike Lee's School Daze, Laurence Fishburne: Wake up! |
The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters.
-James Baldwin
I had a very brief, but interesting and cordial conversation with Joseph, the subject of my previous posting “Love Is Where You Find It.” (It turns out that the gay community is, indeed, small and Joseph and I have a friend in common.)
He had wondered why his essay had caused so much controversy and I remarked that I didn’t think it caused any controversy whatsoever, just an opportunity for discussion. He said that would only be true if my essay was the only response he read. He also wondered why so many people focused on that first part of his essay and not the part that talked about HIV education (he did, by the way, offer some compelling insights on how to reach a particular population with information to prevent the spread of the disease). I imagine that people focused on the introduction because it was so incredibly inflammatory.
He then posed a question:
"Do you think 'gay' and 'homosexual' mean the same thing?"
I told him that I honestly believed the words were as synonymous as the dictionary indicated. But I also told him that both labels were irrelevant and that the bigotry and violence we face as men who love men and men who have sex with men is contingent upon our romantic or sexual actions. Homophobic oppressors, it turns out, don’t really give a fuck what we call or don’t call ourselves. If we’re two men loving or having sex with one another, in the eyes of those who despise us, we’re faggots—period. To imagine that we can escape that judgment through a sincere alteration of previously established identities and the contrivance of false distinctions—that is, if we renounce our allegiance to the most “offensive” elements of our community (read: the out sissies) and form a new alliance with the oppressor—is, in its own strange way, noble, clever even, but also incredibly naïve.
History provides us with a precedent: The descendants of Africans in this country have gone from niggers to Negroes to colored to black to African American to people of color. It makes us feel better to be regarded with the label of our own choosing—particularly if we suppose that the label provides a distinction between ourselves and the “bad” members (read: niggers) in our group. The labels prove useless, however, in preventing the police officer’s baton from busting our heads open. They have been ineffective in protecting us from how casually and callously he shoots us down in the street. Even those of us who have done precisely what we’ve been told to do, behave exactly how we were told to behave so as not to incur the oppressor’s wrath find that we encounter it anyway. Ask Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This occurrence is known, affectionately and admonishingly, in various places around the country, amongst black folk, as the “Nigger Wake-up Call.” A call to remind us that united we stand, divided we fall.
I’d like to think of this, then, as a loving, cautionary “Faggot Wake-up Call" and this is the point I tried to make to Joseph, a position he seemed to understand even if he did not completely agree. But others, those who hyper-identified with Joseph’s position, viewed my original essay not as an attempt at discussion, but as a call for war. They thought I was advocating that all men who have sex with men immediately stop hiding, come out of their respective closets and tell the entire world who they fuck. I could certainly imagine worse things, and no one seems to have a problem with heterosexuals announcing—routinely and in a myriad of ways—who they fuck. But that’s not at all what I was promoting.
Specifically, I was rallying against the reasons for Joseph’s position, namely, the religious and familial bigotry that left him feeling so ashamed of his sexuality that he had to draw an imaginary line between himself and all the other men out there having sex with other men, an act designed to make him feel superior to them (in his rebuttal to my essay, Joseph insists that “gay” and “homosexual” mean two different things, but he, himself, uses the two terms interchangeably throughout). What I was denouncing was the idea that femininity—expressed as vouging, diva worship, and various other behaviors deemed unbecoming of “real men”—is what makes one categorically gay (as opposed to simply homosexual). In his original essay, it seemed pretty clear to me that what Joseph was using to distinguish himself from the gay title was his own Christian values and his perception of male femininity.
But others disagreed. Words evolve—I was told—whether I liked it or not. The difference between being gay and being homosexual, in no uncertain terms, is that gays make their whole lives about their sexuality, while homosexuals are simply male human beings who just happen to have sex with other male human beings. I wonder if that works with other groups. Are “niggers” people who make their whole lives about their race, while “people of color” are human beings who just happen to have dark skin? Are “bitches” people who make their whole lives about having a vagina and “women” human beings who just happen to have one? More importantly, whose interests do such paradigms serve? (Sounds like an effective divide and conquer strategy to me.)
I’d like to think that I’m smart enough to recognize bullshit when I smell it. Here is as much truth as one can bear: There is a sociopolitical movement urging black men to stop identifying as gay and start identifying as Same Gender Loving because some white gay activists refuse to include matters affecting black gays in their agenda and because the media refuses to meaningfully and honestly portray the lives of black gays. It's a conscious and organized protest. And I can get with that. However, this is not what these individuals I’m dealing with are trafficking in.
No, these men are not political; semantics is an entirely different matter. These men are afraid--perhaps rightfully so. They don’t want to be associated (at least, not publicly) with the feminine men they view with contempt. They want nothing to do with Same Gender Loving men who might occasionally wear pumps and a dress or who dare to hold hands in public (Oh, the horror!). They despise the connection because they’re witnesses to how the oppressor regards effeminate men (with scorn and brutality) and they wish, more than anything, to escape that fate. Sissies, they believe, bring it all upon themselves for being so unmanly; and simply by existing so openly and freely, they make it tough for anyone else who might want to get fucked in the ass (and believe me when I tell you: It’s the ones who get fucked in the ass who loathe sissies most). So men like Joseph believe that with the invention of another term, they will be put in a different, safer, holier, manlier, more clandestine category.
If only secrets remained so. If only history were on their side.
Whatever our disagreement, Joseph is my brother. I wish him nothing but the greatest happiness. Though I imagine he’s going to realize—quickly and I hope not too painfully—that his joy will be dependent on much more than what he chooses to call himself.