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| Who's afraid of the Big Black Cunt? |
“Black people in general and black men specifically,” I have been informed by several individuals who fancy themselves experts on such matters, “have very good reason for their intense hatred of homosexuals, particularly effeminate ones.”
“You see,” they say in tones that drip with Ivy League condescension (and the certainty that comes with never actually having to face the oppression of which they speak), “some blacks are homophobes because they have to assure themselves of their masculinity due to being emasculated in the past. Also, it has been well established that the nigh-fanatic homophobia in Jamaica stems, at least in part, from European colonization, where white plantation owners liked to punish slaves by forcing other slaves to rape them.”
The information is conveyed as a matter of fact, as an explanation and a justification. I was being asked, implicitly, to offer these “black homophobes” my sympathy rather than my ire. “After all,” the apologists insisted, “the key to undoing homophobia lies in identifying its causes.”
I wondered, immediately, if Jews are likewise asked to sympathize with Nazis, to understand the reasons for Antisemitism as a mechanism for dismantling it. I wondered, too, if this paradigm would have worked for blacks in their historical and contemporary fights against racism. For example, would it have been possible to reason with the slave master once the source of his madness was identified? Would the Alabama sheriff have been swayed by our understanding his motives? Will the Tea Party be moved by a sympathetic view of their cause? History says no.
My problems with the emasculation argument are legion.
To begin, there seems to be assumptions, regarded as inherent, that I am expected to accept at face value: Masculinity and femininity are opposites; masculinity represents power and femininity represents powerlessness. Therefore, any reduction of one’s masculinity is not simply undesirable, but criminal. Furthermore, the absolute worst position a man can find himself in—emotionally, physically, psychically, sexually and spiritually—is that of a woman.
This arrangement relies on the bedrock of all patriarchal thought: Men are, in every way that matters (and the ways that matter are determined, of course, by men), naturally superior to women. Man’s superiority over woman, it is argued, is not simply innate and self-evident, but also divine—for the bible tells us so. This is nature: Men are hunters; women are gatherers (never mind that science has revealed this as a false distinction). This is the root of sexism, a deeply held notion in many Eastern and Western societies.
From his self-appointed position of superiority (and that he is able to appoint himself to this position is used as evidence to support his right to hold it), the patriarchal man places value on all things masculine and devalues all things feminine. This devaluation gives birth to the idea that women should, therefore, be subordinate in all things from sex to worship. And as with all things that have been determined to be of little or lesser value, women, and the characteristics they (stereotypically) embody, come to be despised. The resulting hatred is called misogyny.
Emasculation, then, is viewed as the process by which a man is stripped of the god-given privileges afforded to him by testosterone and testicles (namely, a penchant for domination and promiscuity). The effeminate male (whether heterosexual or homosexual) is, therefore, seen as a traitor, a heretic, because he is willing to not only relinquish the masculinity from which his superiority and power stems, but to also embrace the feminine attributes of an inferior group. (The male-to-female transsexual is even more blasphemous because she, quite literally, replaces estrogen for testosterone and removes her testicles altogether.)
This is the pathological performance of the insecure. He who is not certain of self seeks, always, to lift himself by standing on the throats of others. That is simply how patriarchy functions. It is the model that Europeans used in their rape and plundering of Africa and North America. It is the form Nazis used in their murderous rampage against Jews. It is what Muslims employ in their dehumanization of women. And it is used, exquisitely, in the persecution of homosexuals. And so I reject patriarchal thought as a flawed, easily disprovable, but nonetheless seductive construction that appeals to one’s overinflated ego rather than one’s good sense.
I have been asked numerous times if I believed that blacks were more homophobic than whites. The answer is no. But the truth is that blacks are homophobic in ways that manifest, primarily, differently than it does in whites. And there are reasons for that. Next to women, the greatest students of patriarchal terror are blacks. After all, it is blacks who have been subjected to so much of it. It is blacks who have been conditioned to believe that manhood is defined in the insane and untenable ways that patriarchy has insisted. It is blacks who have taken that lesson to heart and who, as a result, have become the class overachievers.
There is a common belief amongst people of color, particularly those of the African Diaspora, that homosexuality is a kind of illness, a spiritual failing, a wholly un-African perversion that was brought to the African continent by degenerate Europeans. For a very long time, this notion was even accepted among European researchers and scholars. It is, quite frankly, a myth. In fact, what has been discovered in recent years is that homosexuality is as natural to Africa as black people, that African homosexuality is as ancient as human civilization itself. As it turns out, what degenerate Europeans brought with them to Africa was homophobia.
It is not as if this information is not readily available to anyone who seeks it. But it serves many political purposes to instead perpetuate the myth. For example, the myth is used expertly to disable the struggle against oppression shared by blacks and homosexuals. And it gives blacks, like the impoverished whites before them, a group over which they can exert patriarchal superiority. And they do so with often sensual gusto.
In contrast, if bigotry can be civilized (and I believe it can be; that is usually when it is most dangerous), then whites, particularly the white elite, now seem to exercise a more cultured form of homophobia: reasoned, but disingenuous political maneuvering and philosophical debates about the institution of marriage, the importance of the nuclear family, and the safety of children now outweigh the “God Hates Fags” protests in terms of persuasiveness. I am not entirely certain of the reasons for this, but my guess would be that whites are up to their noses in groups to choose from as targets for their bigotry: blacks, Latinos, Muslims, etc. By the time they get around to targeting homosexuals, their bigotry has been somewhat depleted, so it does not have the same vigor it had, say, when blacks were their primary target (like during the Jim Crow era). It is still as effective, unfortunately; after all, whites still hold the keys to power. It is simply not as visceral as it once was.
Unlike white hatred, the impact of black hatred does not appear to be softened by division. Homosexuals have the great misfortune of being the one group in society currently viewed as lower than blacks (However, this may change soon as Muslims and Mexicans begin to occupy that space). Therefore, black fears, prejudices, and hatreds are focused in one place: on the backs of homosexuals—and the burden is immense. As a result, black homophobia, like Jim Crow racism, is visibly more brutal, intense, lethal, righteous, suffocating, unassailable, uncompromising, unfettered and unrelenting.
What escapes most blacks, however, is the irony: What was once done to us, we now do, with impunity and a kind of joy, to another. It is a willful blindness, however; sanctified and institutionalized by religion. And one must not underestimate the role of religion in this oppression. Indeed, if it were not for Allah, Jah, Jehovah or Yahweh (the same gods who, by the way, gave the East and the West access to a treacherous Middle Passage), homophobia could not flourish. Religion is, in fact, the source and shelter of homoantagonism. (The greatest tragedy in all of this is that it is only a matter of time before homosexuals, too, find a group to oppress. That is both the charm and heartbreak of patriarchal thinking.)
And what of the black women in one’s presence? What message does one send to them when one says that the worst thing a man could be is a woman? How is it possible to simultaneously love one’s mother, sister, girlfriend, wife and believe there is validity in that notion? Further, how could one deny the courage, strength of character and sense of self possessed by the man—the Black Cunt, as it were—who wears a dress, sashays and performs in public knowing that he must face the hammer and nail of the judgment reserved precisely for him?
The homophobe will never deal honestly with these questions because to do so would be to expose the private untruth of the position. And here is the knowledge that homophobes guard with their lives: Masculinity is not the opposite of femininity, but is, instead, its complement. Having, each one of us, come from one woman and one man, there is only one thing that can be inherently, frighteningly true: We are all androgynous; genitals be damned.
I will concede to the apologists that perhaps these matters can be viewed anthropologically; there is room in this debate to discuss how best to dismantle homophobia. But here is a fact that cannot be denied: Action speaks louder than words. Action—in this case, laws prohibiting homophobic oppression and stiff penalties for those who break those laws—saves lives. And life, it must be said, cannot be regarded as an academic matter.
Humility prevents me from speaking for every homosexual who has ever felt the violent precision of black homophobia, but my experience has shown me that an oppressor can neither be loved into submission nor intellectualized into tolerance. Besides, I reserve my sympathy for the deserving: the Emmett Tills of every gender, race and sexuality, rather than the bloodthirsty mobs demanding a sacrifice.
Power yields to a demand only. And I, for one, am unwilling to stand around attempting to fathom why on Earth homophobes want to slit my throat, giving them just the time they need to get close enough with their blades.
I think that is only pragmatic.