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| Joseph is a man who has sex with men (MSM). But don't call him gay. |
The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is virtually forbidden—as an unpatriotic act—that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood.
- James Baldwin
Labels may be problematic, but lies are even more so.
I recently read a blog in which an author by the name of “Joseph” explains why he refuses to identify as gay even though he has sex (apparently exclusively) with men.
He says:
I can't claim to be something I was raised to hate. I'm just me, and I do what makes me feel good. Besides, my folks raised me as a Christian and they would be really disappointed in me if I didn't live my life in the same steps that they were raised. So I'm not gay, even though I have sex with guys. And no, I'm not in denial. There are just some things about the lifestyle that I don't do. I don't club, I don't go to the Village, I don't do that Ball stuff, I don't geek over Beyoncé, I just live my life—I do what I want to do. There's such a negative stigma that comes along with identifying yourself as gay. I don't like feeling like I have to participate in a certain set of actions because of who I sleep with. It's the same thing as identifying yourself as black or white or Baptist. There's a set of standards that people automatically are gonna put in your face—that this is what you do because this is who you are. There are so many things that come with the gay stigma that I just don't want to be a part of.
Female and male. Black and white. Gay and straight. Poor and rich. Yes, all of these labels are constructs meant to identify us at best, and separate and imprison us at worst. But part of the problem here is that Joseph doesn’t even seem to know what “gay” means. Oh, he’s certainly hip to the pop cultural, co-opted meaning of the word—that is to say, the mass media portrayal of homosexuality as a flamboyant and decadent “lifestyle” in which one “chooses” to participate. But what the media portrays is intentionally mythical. For clarity’s sake, one isn’t required to vogue, go to the Village, go to gay clubs, or be a Beyoncé fan to be gay. Some gay men do those things and some don’t. Just like any other community on the planet, the gay community isn’t monolithic no matter what MTV, Eddie Long, or Dan Savage says.
Joseph rejects being called "gay" and probably anything else that points to his sexuality ("I do what I do," he says). But before one can reject an oppressor’s label, whether or gay or "black" or something else, one must first accept that the oppressor must be correct: There’s something inherently wrong with being considered gay or black or something else. I, for one, don’t accept the oppressor’s premise. I’ve no quarrel with what the terms actually mean: To be black means, at its base, to possess the obvious physical characteristics (darker skin, kinkier hair, etc.) which indicate a direct (or indirect) lineage from the African continent. To be gay (another word for "homosexual") is to be a person with one set of sexual equipment who is sexually attracted to someone else with the same set of sexual equipment. Anything added to the meanings of the words beyond that is dogma (of course, the words themselves are dogma, but I’m talking about the essential thing here, the purest definitions without added value judgments).
In giving name to these two groups, the oppressor has—most times, but not always—identified what distinguishes us from himself. I find no fault in that. After all, a bear knows he’s not a lion and a lion knows she’s not a deer. (And there’s no reason to assume that just because I have accepted a label, I’m automatically reduced to only that thing. Indeed, I’m also man, son, brother, lover, uncle, friend, artist, intellectual, human and much more.) For me, the crime lies solely in the oppressor’s declaration of his own superiority as a result of the distinctions. That’s what I believe requires rejection and, ultimately, destruction.
Still, I completely understand Joseph's desire to reject the label. He lives in a homoantagonistic world, a world sometimes violently so. I admire his stance on self-definition and self-identification. His impetus isn't so much cowardice as it is self-preservation. I get that. And he has my sympathy. However, I believe that he'll one day come to understand his current position as naive, if not wrongheaded and futile.
For example, we also live in a racist world. I could, in theory, refuse to identify as black, which might make all the sense it needs to make in my house. But the moment I step outside the door, it would be meaningless in the face of my skin and hair. Similarly, what Joseph fails to realize is that it isn’t the label that parents, religion or society have a problem with: It’s the action. So, he can certainly call himself “straight”—or more precisely, “not gay”—if that’s what pleases him. But the moment it’s discovered (and the discovery is inevitable) that he gets fucked in the ass by men (which he says he does), how he identifies himself becomes absolutely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Precisely at that moment, to those individuals that he wishes, more than anything, not to offend, he will be a “faggot”—whether he wears sagging jeans, Timberlands, pretends to date women, and says "I do what I do"; or if he wears a dress and pumps, declares that he has anal sex with men, and calls himself “Josephina.”
I think previous comparison is apt given that I believe Joseph’s issue is actually a modern kind of misogyny called effemiphobia—the fear and shame of all things feminine (especially feminine men), an equating of femininity with weakness. It’s a fear and shame that, by his own admission, he learned at the foot of Christ. Religion is, after all, where bigotry originated: Read any religious holy book and show me the one where God (by whatever name he’s called) isn’t used at least once to justify the subjugation and murder of the Other. At the very least, religion is where bigotry has been most successfully codified, institutionalized, and utilized.
In any event, there seems to be a kind of panic in Joseph’s writing, specifically concerning how his masculinity is perceived. A new acquaintance of mine must have noticed that, too, and referred me to a video from Cleo Manago entitled “Getting the Language Right: HIV and Healing in Young Black America,” which contains a hysteria of its own. It’s a provocative video in which Manago and a number of black men discuss what they deem to be crucial problems facing the black community—whether heterosexual or homosexual. One of those problems, according to Manago, is the failure of whites to allow black men to be men.
I think what Manago, whom I respect and admire, fails to identify is that the real problem rests with the pathological way in which masculinity is being defined. It’s strange because on the one hand, he chastises the black community for accepting what he feels is a white definition of identity as it relates to our sexuality. But on the other, he grants an exception for the equally damaging white definition of what it means to be a man. And what I am talking about here, in the main, is what patriarchy—whether Eastern or Western—tells us it means to wield power.
The patriarchal definition of maleness, if history is of any use here, means being strong, tough, aggressive, courageous, protective, and responsible (all of which are things women are and have been since the dawn of time, by the way; and they are no less women because of it). What the patriarchy doesn’t advertise (but makes evident by its actions) is the subtext: Men are also expected to be frightening, abusive, stoic, violent, unapologetic, unemotional, gun-toting, war-like, murderous, insatiable, destructive, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, and promiscuous. In this crazy, mixed-up world, men are defined in opposition to women, masculinity in opposition to femininity—like we’re colors or math equations instead of people.
Without question, Manago seems to accept the validity of the patriarchal definition of manhood (which seeks only to perpetuate itself) without recognizing the power present in femininity. (Isn't a whole being someone who utilizes their full self, yin and yang?) And how could he not, really, when the whole of our society has made masculinity so unfortunately seductive, while belittling femininity at every turn? After all, aren’t we told to admire men from Christopher Columbus to Donald Trump because of their accomplishments and wealth? (I'm never called upon to be more like Sojourner Truth, though.) But no one asks what they had to do to become so accomplished and wealthy. No one is brave enough to talk about the untold lives that were lost so that these men might inherit patriarchal privileges. No one will assess the damage. To what end and at what cost am I being asked to uphold and emulate their silent and historical genocide?
It seems to me that Manago has decided that there’s tremendous value in the former slave mimicking his former slave master and any attempt to thwart that transformation will be labeled emasculation. Fair enough, but there’s been absolutely no discussion about how the conversion requires the new slave master to find a new slave to give shape to his mastery. The bitterness we see in black community is not, as Manago insists, a result of “blackmanophobia”—an imprecise term which insists upon encouraging black men to be more patriarchal and more white in their masculinity, while black women are placated by promising them imaginary rights to heterosexual, masculine black men. No, the discontent in the black community is misogyny and homoantagonism, which is nothing if not a clear example of the new slave master attempting to corral his new slaves.
Here is the truth: If one believes that one can only be a man—can only be powerful—to the degree that he can subjugate someone else, then the psychosis is self-evident.
Not to mention that power isn’t really the issue here; autonomy is. The ability to think and act for the benefit of one’s self—without malice towards others—requires intelligence, not hostility; courage, not shame. And it’s not as small or limiting a performance as “acting like a man”; it’s as large and freeing as being human and humane. It insists upon following the example of peace, where gender is immaterial. It requires something vastly different from dominance, abject wealth and superficial displays: It requires integrity; it requires love.
Love is where you find it. And you won't find it anywhere until you've found it within.