Angry Black Hoemo

Just a guy, striving to be a good person and an even better bottom

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It’s Past Time To Raise Our Standards for “Allies”

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At the 2019 GLAAD Media Awards, held last Thursday, Beyoncé and Jay-Z were presented with this year’s Vanguard Award. This is an award is meant to annually acknowledge people who don’t identify as LGBTQ, but are considered to have made great strides towards promoting the acceptance of LGBTQ people (in other words, it’s an award for LGBTQ “allies”). When I first learned that GLAAD was planning on presenting them with this award a couple of weeks back, I…immediately had questions.

In doing a little digging to figure out what all, exactly, Bey & Jay have done to help advance the plight of LGBTQ people, the answers that I found largely just reaffirmed what I’d long figured. That their advocacy is cool, but nothing particularly risky, threatening to the status quo or revolutionary. Look, y’all know I love me some Beyoncé (and Jay-Z is cool too, or whatever). But let’s be honest. This award is just…not it. [Read more…]

Navigating Friendships with Non-LGBTQ People

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A PSA for my fellow Gay men, and perhaps anyone else in the LGBTQ community.

I’m gonna start this by laying out a little scenario:

Let’s say you’re a Gay man who primarily has non-LGBTQ (a.k.a. cisgender-heterosexual or “straight”) men as friends (which you likely applaud yourself for, daily…but that’s another issue). Y’all are just casually hanging out and they’re all talking about sex. They’re exchanging stories of their recent “conquests,” and are having an absolute ki. And then, you try to chime about your last sexual experience, in the exact same way that they just did.

…but you feel the good vibes noticeably drop. It gets awkward, and you immediately get the hint that you should back off from your story. You deflate, retreat into your own head (where you’ll likely quietly replay that moment in a cringeworthy loop), and let them take back over the conversation.

This is likely not an unfamiliar experience for Gay men who hang around folks who are non-LGBTQ. And many people’s go-to response may be to just roll with it and not see it as a big deal. But let’s be clear about one thing: [Read more…]

The Disposability of Black LGBTQ Lives: “Allyship” is Only A Theory

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This is the final part of a multi-series blog post, concerning instances of violence against Gay men within the Black community, and different factors that feed into these incidents. In the first part, I discussed the murder of Giovanni Melton, a 14 year-old boy killed by his own father. The second part goes over the case of Gemmel Moore, murdered by an affluent white Gay man. In the third part, I went into ways that both WhiteGayze™ and Black cishet folks routinely fail the LGBTQ people in our community. And in this final piece, I’ll be expanding on Black cishets further.

No need for a fancy lead-in. Let’s just pick up where we left off from part 3.

Black cishet men, in particular, draw the most ire from me. Not only are they a primary source of direct violence towards Black LGBTQ people, but the so-called “woke allies” of that demographic refuse to step up and say anything. There’s no real social clout to be gained from affirming Black LGBTQ identities…and, in fact, there’s more to lose. As I’ve said in previous work, in this colonized idea of Black masculinity, “Gay” is considered the worst thing a man can be. Therefore, men are deathly afraid of any proximity to it. So, if cishet men were to stand up and affirm us (like their performative politic would clam that they do), then they stand to be deemed “Gay,” which leads to the risk of being ostracized. And since most cishet men are spineless trash and lack the fortitude required to actually stand up as an individual, they’re unwilling to risk the potential backlash that comes with centering Black Gay men, Trans women and other Black LGBTQ identities in their day-to-day work.

Now, cishet men are the absolute worst offenders, but I think we also have to be honest in acknowledging that some cishet Black Feminists/Womanists are also often terribly inadequate in putting their “intersectional” theory into actual practice. They’ll spout the theory all day (again, for retweets and follows…some of these folks depend on their “platforms,” as well), but will turn around and be as silent as their cishet male counterparts in the times when it really counts.

That awkward moment when your idea of “intersectionality” stops at (cishet) Black women. [Read more…]

The Disposability of Black LGBTQ Lives: When Buzzwords and Hashtags Aren’t Enough

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This is the 3rd of a multi-part series, where I highlight how this system often works against men/boys who live in the intersection of Blackness and Queerness. In the first part, I discussed the murder of Giovanni Melton, a 14 year-old boy killed by his own father. The second part goes over the case of Gemmel Moore, murdered by an affluent white Gay man. Here, I’ll be discussing the overall theme, of how the general disregard for Black LGBTQ people enabled both of these tragedies.

I decided to focus on the murders of Giovanni and Gemmel because I felt like both cases, together, highlight conflict that all Black Gay men (and Black LGBTQ folks, overall) face. There’s risk of discrimination, erasure and violence in most any space that we’re in. There’s anti-Blackness in many LGBTQ spaces, and anti-Queerness in many Black spaces.

Black LGBTQ folks are constantly put in a position of having to choose between race and sexual/gender identity. Worse, not only are we expected to “pick a side,” but it never is to benefit us. WhiteGayze™ expect us to fight for Gay/LGBTQ causes through a white-centered lens, with no regards to race. Black people (primarily cisgender & heterosexual) expect us to fight for Black causes, but through the lens of cishet men (i.e. “Race first”**), with no regards to sexual/gender identity. And any time we try to fully affirm ourselves, we’re labeled a “distraction.”

Truth of the matter is, the goal isn’t to advance true liberation by subverting white supremacist, colonial systems. The real goal of many people is to see Black cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied men and/or WhiteGayze™ sit in the position that white, cishet, able-bodied men currently hold. And they want us to happily and quietly take every bit of their abuse in the process. [Read more…]