Last year, I filmed two of my friends for a series of documentaries about being black, gay and male. Recently, I edited one video and uploaded it to You Tube. In the process, I'm editing a novel I wrote a few years back about a gay mulatto man who grows up in a racially hostile world. I plan to electronically publish the novel on Amazon Kindle (where i have recently published a 21 poem collection).
The recent return to these projects have sparked me to write about being a black gay male. My story. My experiences, which so many people have often pointed a finger at me and proclaimed that it was all my fault or all in my head. We all have our own experiences and some of us probably have come out better than the next person, but I feel that is no reason to discount someone's personal encounters. However, people tend to not want to go near lands where they don't understand the set up, the trail and the laws. A friend had told me once that he could not understand what it is like to be black and gay, yet he continued to cut down my experiences as if they were animated situations borne from an artist's pencil.
Anyway, I'm not here to complain or moan or groan or whine or bitch or cry or indulge in self-pity. I am here to jot down my history of being black, gay and male.
What is it like? To me being black gay and male means:
-that you are often believed to be unattractive in the general gay community.
-that you are often not heard, ignored, told to shut up when you do speak and often brushed off to the side in gay culture. Therefore, you're a second class citizen. However, you do get your own Pride Festival.
-that guys of your own race consider you competition and automatically dislike you upon meeting you.
-that even if you are not attracted to men outside your race, you are still thought of as a sell-out (in both gay and straight communities) because you don't listen to hip-hop, don't have a favorite black actor/author/singer/poet/director/porn star.
-that you are the center of someone's fetish. Instead of being yourself in sexual situations that you should be a thug or a mandingo or a gangsta or a slave boy who only wants to please his master.
-that you run into guys who, because they're white, feel themselves to be superior to you.
-that you will meet guys of other races who want to have sex with you but only in the dark and without their peers finding out.
-that you probably will not meet someone based on the fact that they're ashamed of their attraction to you.
-that you sometimes have to be some group's token.
-that when you speak of your experiences you're often told that you're whining.
-that you feel stupid because you thought a group of people who have faced discrimination would know what it is like to be discriminated against, which ends up being the most untrue thing in your life.
-that you have to learn early on that most times people just don't want to accept you as you are.
-and that now that there are a lot more guys exposed to black people and black culture and it seems the younger generation do not care as much about race as the generation you belong to - you feel a bit cheated. Just a tiny bit, though.
The recent return to these projects have sparked me to write about being a black gay male. My story. My experiences, which so many people have often pointed a finger at me and proclaimed that it was all my fault or all in my head. We all have our own experiences and some of us probably have come out better than the next person, but I feel that is no reason to discount someone's personal encounters. However, people tend to not want to go near lands where they don't understand the set up, the trail and the laws. A friend had told me once that he could not understand what it is like to be black and gay, yet he continued to cut down my experiences as if they were animated situations borne from an artist's pencil.
Anyway, I'm not here to complain or moan or groan or whine or bitch or cry or indulge in self-pity. I am here to jot down my history of being black, gay and male.
What is it like? To me being black gay and male means:
-that you are often believed to be unattractive in the general gay community.
-that you are often not heard, ignored, told to shut up when you do speak and often brushed off to the side in gay culture. Therefore, you're a second class citizen. However, you do get your own Pride Festival.
-that guys of your own race consider you competition and automatically dislike you upon meeting you.
-that even if you are not attracted to men outside your race, you are still thought of as a sell-out (in both gay and straight communities) because you don't listen to hip-hop, don't have a favorite black actor/author/singer/poet/director/porn star.
-that you are the center of someone's fetish. Instead of being yourself in sexual situations that you should be a thug or a mandingo or a gangsta or a slave boy who only wants to please his master.
-that you run into guys who, because they're white, feel themselves to be superior to you.
-that you will meet guys of other races who want to have sex with you but only in the dark and without their peers finding out.
-that you probably will not meet someone based on the fact that they're ashamed of their attraction to you.
-that you sometimes have to be some group's token.
-that when you speak of your experiences you're often told that you're whining.
-that you feel stupid because you thought a group of people who have faced discrimination would know what it is like to be discriminated against, which ends up being the most untrue thing in your life.
-that you have to learn early on that most times people just don't want to accept you as you are.
-and that now that there are a lot more guys exposed to black people and black culture and it seems the younger generation do not care as much about race as the generation you belong to - you feel a bit cheated. Just a tiny bit, though.
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