Queer Archives • Angry Black Hoemo

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

April 1, 2019 by Angry Black HoeMo

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

June 1, 2018 by Angry Black HoeMo

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…]

Anti-Queerness and the Nonsense of “Hate The Sin, Love the Sinner”

January 11, 2018 by Angry Black HoeMo

This is actually something that, after years of explaining, I’ve grown entirely bored with. However, this is a topic that comes up over and over again. So I want to give it a place on my blog for posterity.

RE: “I love Gay people. I just disagree with their lifestyle.”

First of all, falsely characterizing my sexual identity as a “lifestyle” that can be disagreed with is trash from the outset. Who I’m sexually and romantically attracted to is not a “lifestyle.” It’s simply who I’m sexually and romantically attracted to. Is there a such thing as a (Black) Gay culture and community? Absolutely, but Black Gay and Queer folks aren’t synonymous with that. Similarly to Black people, as a whole, Gay/Queer/SGL folks are not a monolith. Attraction to the same sex isn’t always synonymous with whatever your stereotypical ideas of Queerness are.

But beyond that, no…you don’t “disagree with” Queerness. “Disagreeing” with something that’s innate and exists outside of your own, personal mindset is a ridiculous concept to begin with.

What you actually mean is that you dislike (or more precisely, HATE) Queerness and are bigoted against it. [Read more…]

The Disposability of Black LGBTQ Lives: Giovanni Melton

November 9, 2017 by Angry Black HoeMo

In the wake of several instances of Black Gay/Queer men and boys who losing their lives due to interpersonal and systemic violence, I decided to do a 3-part series going over a couple of particular cases that have stuck out to me, the systemic factors that led to them taking place, and the overall response to them. I’ll start off with one of the most recent cases (as of this piece being written).

[Trigger/Content Warning for anti-LGBTQ violence/murder]

On November 2, 2017, a young Black Gay teen named Giovanni Melton was murdered by his own father. This happened because Giovanni’s father “disagreed” with his sexual identity and couldn’t handle having a Gay son. There are so many layers to this that it’s hard know where to begin. And I don’t believe I’ll even be able to touch on every aspect. But one central takeaway from this whole situation: Black Gay/LGBTQ bodies are undervalued and left behind. Even in this era of so-called “Intersectionality.”

First, I believe that the widespread notion that LGBTQ identities are a simply some idea that be “disagreed” with heavily contributes to this. All of the propaganda in church of “hate the sin, love the sinner.” The posts on social media casually asking baiting questions like “what would you do if this was your son?” The way people relentlessly debase men who do anything that doesn’t fall in line with this colonized idea of masculinity. Making AIDS “jokes” at the expense of Gay/Queer men. All of these things are factors, and all of the people who contribute are complicit. [Read more…]

Why “Love is Love” Is Bullshit

June 13, 2017 by Angry Black HoeMo

Continuing the “Gay shit” for Pride 2017, I thought this would be a good time to revisit a rant I’ve made before. Of course, said rant, in its original form, is currently unavailable, because fuck Twitter. So, might as well recreate it in blog form. I wanna take this time to break down why “Love Is Love” is a terrible way to advocate for LGBTQ people. Particularly, since this recently popped up on my Facebook news feed:

As with most any other trendy form of activism, “Love is Love” seems innocent enough on its face. It’s another form of pushing the message of equality for LGBTQ people…to advocate that we’re “just like” the heteros.

…but here’s one issue with that: [Read more…]