Excerpt from an IM conversation tonight:
"Dude: hey its not like im some prize pig
Me: that depends on who's looking at u
Dude: well its not the right ppl
Me: that i can believe"
If it's not abundantly clear, I really like this dude. He's an ex of mine and being around him really makes me happy. He isn't necessarily the typical cat that I go for. He isn't particularly brilliant or industrious (thought he is caramel-complected with a small frame), but he has a genuine spirit and he makes me happy. He likes it when I'm smiling and he's not comfortable when I'm not happy. And I'm head over heels for this cat, but (as we can see in the conversation) I'm not the right person. And, though this isn't the first time someone has told me that they want someone...but just not me, it really hurt tonight. I won't say that I love kid like that, but I care a whole lot and I just really wanted him to be able to return it yo. I really did...
I guess this is particularly interesting given my previous post for today. Maybe I am crazy for not investing in looks like everyone else. But I can only be me...Eh.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
...On Corporeal Capital
In this life and particularly in the black non-heterosexual lifestyle, the value of aesthetic beauty is simply undeniable. Studies show that people who are seen as more attractive are more likely to be viewed favorably in job interviews and thus have an increased capacity for career advancement and the associated success. Obviously, aesthetic beauty increases one's ability to find a suitable (whatever that means) mate, even if only expanding the pool of interested 2nd parties. It has also been argued that many people prefer friends (of either sex, regardless of one's sexual orientation) who they consider to be attractive. And anyone who has attended a school knows that aesthetic beauty often affects one's social standing within a given group. That is, attractive people are popular. I think few people would argue with these statements. However, the question for me quickly becomes: What is the real value of it? More specifically, is the capital garnered by one's physical attractiveness as useful as one may believe? Also, is this corporeal capital as legitimate as social currency accumulated through other means?
This is not an argument for a move away from valuing aesthetic beauty. I know I love seeing a pretty smile and a nice body as much as the next man. However, I do not imbue power in this beauty to the extent that many of my compatriots might be more apt. Why am I blathering on about this? Well, this is why. For me, aesthetic beauty is nice, but its value wanes after I decide to get to know someone. For me, everyone moves toward the mean. (This is with the assumption that the person is worthwhile.) Unattractive men become more attractive, and attractive men become more mundane. By this function, each group moves toward average though they do not necessarily reach the same point. But, by the sheer virtue of the move toward the mean, attractiveness wanes in value/importance for me.
More often than not, this is not a problem in my relationships, because I value the personality of people that I deal with. And those who are worthy of praise receive and those who earn reproach receive that as well. Most people view this sort of reaction as sensible. However, the guy that I've most recently been involved with thinks that I put insufficient value on the fact that people find him attractive and therefore don't allow him the priveleges of personality deficit that previous men have. Many men allow him to treat them in ways they are not comfortable or will passively approve of his ill behavior because they find him attractive. However, because it has minimal value to me, I have no reason to allow him wiggle room to be a less-than-stellar person. I'm not interested in being associated with or emotionally tied to an attractive person thta I don't like to be around. However, he thinks I am being unfair or spiteful by disallowing him the priveleges tied to attractiveness.
This is where the aforementioned questions related to corporeal capital become critically important. What is the value of this corporeal capital? It is often said that we must "bring something to the table" in a romantic relationship. Is corporeal capital that "something"? Should one be forced to assign it the same weight as a caring heart, vulnerability, openness, and other things of that ilk? I do not argue that it should not be as important or more important than these other traits, for those who choose to assign that value, but I do question an ideology which expects everyone to assign that same value. For me, this is particularly poignant given that age destroys the aesthetic prized by many gays. Gay sex appeal is often characterized by youth, a trait with a constant, inevitable diminishing over time.
Maybe I'm crazy for not giving the value to aesthetic beauty that others assign, but I just prefer more lasting and more telling qualities in people with whom I enter relationships.
This is not an argument for a move away from valuing aesthetic beauty. I know I love seeing a pretty smile and a nice body as much as the next man. However, I do not imbue power in this beauty to the extent that many of my compatriots might be more apt. Why am I blathering on about this? Well, this is why. For me, aesthetic beauty is nice, but its value wanes after I decide to get to know someone. For me, everyone moves toward the mean. (This is with the assumption that the person is worthwhile.) Unattractive men become more attractive, and attractive men become more mundane. By this function, each group moves toward average though they do not necessarily reach the same point. But, by the sheer virtue of the move toward the mean, attractiveness wanes in value/importance for me.
More often than not, this is not a problem in my relationships, because I value the personality of people that I deal with. And those who are worthy of praise receive and those who earn reproach receive that as well. Most people view this sort of reaction as sensible. However, the guy that I've most recently been involved with thinks that I put insufficient value on the fact that people find him attractive and therefore don't allow him the priveleges of personality deficit that previous men have. Many men allow him to treat them in ways they are not comfortable or will passively approve of his ill behavior because they find him attractive. However, because it has minimal value to me, I have no reason to allow him wiggle room to be a less-than-stellar person. I'm not interested in being associated with or emotionally tied to an attractive person thta I don't like to be around. However, he thinks I am being unfair or spiteful by disallowing him the priveleges tied to attractiveness.
This is where the aforementioned questions related to corporeal capital become critically important. What is the value of this corporeal capital? It is often said that we must "bring something to the table" in a romantic relationship. Is corporeal capital that "something"? Should one be forced to assign it the same weight as a caring heart, vulnerability, openness, and other things of that ilk? I do not argue that it should not be as important or more important than these other traits, for those who choose to assign that value, but I do question an ideology which expects everyone to assign that same value. For me, this is particularly poignant given that age destroys the aesthetic prized by many gays. Gay sex appeal is often characterized by youth, a trait with a constant, inevitable diminishing over time.
Maybe I'm crazy for not giving the value to aesthetic beauty that others assign, but I just prefer more lasting and more telling qualities in people with whom I enter relationships.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Quick Update
Damn, the plan definitely was to blog at least every few days, but life has had me in the bed or otherwise entertaining myself, so I haven't been able to write like I prefer. For starters, my internet decided it didn't want to function for 5 days off and on. Yeah, so I had to call and curse out people at SBC DSL at least once a day, because I'd call, it would come back on, go back off, come back for a few minutes, go back off for a few hours, and I don't like payin for shit that I can't use. ESPECIALLY given the fact that I was trying to download episodes of Noah's Arc initially and some CocoDorm more recently. :-D
That problem is on the road to being solved, but more pressing over the last week has been my toothache-headache-ear ache combo. So Sunday, I started to have an ear ache. I had my mom to look at it and she said there seemed to be fluid in my ear. We were going to deal with that Monday, BUT Monday morning the ear ache was no longer alone. I now had a splitting headache to accompany the ear ache and my bottom left teeth were all throbbing with pain. Initially, I thought it was an infection in my tooth (the same as I thought this time last year), but it is actually a tooth that is giving me issues. I need to get it filled ASAP, cuz oral nerves ain't no punk. And I don't like being laid out in the bed full of pain and pain killers.
With all that said, hopefully, I'll be able to write on the regular now. I'm trying to add a few things to my schedule, so we'll see how that works. I have a new weight bench and I really want to hit it every day, study for the GREs every day, and work on my grad school applications. We'll see how that works out. Hopefully, be back later on today.
That problem is on the road to being solved, but more pressing over the last week has been my toothache-headache-ear ache combo. So Sunday, I started to have an ear ache. I had my mom to look at it and she said there seemed to be fluid in my ear. We were going to deal with that Monday, BUT Monday morning the ear ache was no longer alone. I now had a splitting headache to accompany the ear ache and my bottom left teeth were all throbbing with pain. Initially, I thought it was an infection in my tooth (the same as I thought this time last year), but it is actually a tooth that is giving me issues. I need to get it filled ASAP, cuz oral nerves ain't no punk. And I don't like being laid out in the bed full of pain and pain killers.
With all that said, hopefully, I'll be able to write on the regular now. I'm trying to add a few things to my schedule, so we'll see how that works. I have a new weight bench and I really want to hit it every day, study for the GREs every day, and work on my grad school applications. We'll see how that works out. Hopefully, be back later on today.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
A Marginal Identity - Revisited
Okay, I had previously stated that, for reasons I couldn't necessarily pinpoint, I prefer to be on the fringes of the homosexual community. Watching Wade on Noah's Arc reminded me of how nice it was to be dealing with men without having to subscribe to traditional ideas of homosexuality. But today I really put some thought into it and I really better understand why I prefer a marginal place in the community, as it is popularly described or understood.
The landscape of ideas in the Black gay community is widening, but there are still two major camps, which create popular understandings of a Black gay identity: one invested in n feminized, anti-masculine discourse and one invested in a hyper-masculine, anti-feminine discourse. There are those brothas who fall in the middle, but their numbers don't seem sufficient to really have a dominating voice. In fact, if this middle voice was more prominent, I don't think I would prefer to remain around the fringes of gay life. It seems like you have to be fem or a thug or one begins to question the authenticity of your identity. This is particularly highlighted by the use of female pronouns for men who have a masculine identity but not one sufficient to be a part of the trade/thug crowd, as a way to remind the man that he is not heterosexual nor sufficiently masculine. In my opinion, this reinforces the idea that sex with men diminished one's authentic manhood and what's sad is that this sort of reinforcement (the female pronoun use) is perpetrated by the effeminate homosexual population.
Have we internalized homophobia so much that we believe a man cannot be gay without sacrificing his manhood (unless he adopts a hyper-masculine identity to compensate)? Isn't this reminiscent of another group? More specifically, isn't this reminiscent of the problems of "authentic Blackness"? Blacks who are socially mobile, educated, poised, or otherwise non-ghetto become pariahs and are deemed race-traitors on one level or another. Even if they are not implicated as workers for the other side, they might be labeled a poser (i.e. "trying to be White", "acting White", etc.). And why? Because they don't subscribe to a particular identity that is not them. As much as I know that I'm guilty of having cultural preferences in the people that I deal with (i.e. I prefer to spend time around educated people who have an empathetic connection to a lower class ethnic identity), I would never demand that someone subscribe to the tenets of my particular aesthetic. And this is where my problem comes in with both the Black and Black gay groups: Why can't others define their own identity without threat of a Bush-like "Either you're with us or against us," wherein "with us" is defined by assimilation?
And this is why I'm clawing at a way to return to the margins. Too many groups are demanding a mindless submission to ideas that you had no part in constructing. The American Government. "Authentic" Black people. "The Black Gay Community." I'd rather sit on the outskirts...at least for the moment. Maybe I'll feel the urge to enact change sooner or later. (Knowing me, I probably will.)
The landscape of ideas in the Black gay community is widening, but there are still two major camps, which create popular understandings of a Black gay identity: one invested in n feminized, anti-masculine discourse and one invested in a hyper-masculine, anti-feminine discourse. There are those brothas who fall in the middle, but their numbers don't seem sufficient to really have a dominating voice. In fact, if this middle voice was more prominent, I don't think I would prefer to remain around the fringes of gay life. It seems like you have to be fem or a thug or one begins to question the authenticity of your identity. This is particularly highlighted by the use of female pronouns for men who have a masculine identity but not one sufficient to be a part of the trade/thug crowd, as a way to remind the man that he is not heterosexual nor sufficiently masculine. In my opinion, this reinforces the idea that sex with men diminished one's authentic manhood and what's sad is that this sort of reinforcement (the female pronoun use) is perpetrated by the effeminate homosexual population.
Have we internalized homophobia so much that we believe a man cannot be gay without sacrificing his manhood (unless he adopts a hyper-masculine identity to compensate)? Isn't this reminiscent of another group? More specifically, isn't this reminiscent of the problems of "authentic Blackness"? Blacks who are socially mobile, educated, poised, or otherwise non-ghetto become pariahs and are deemed race-traitors on one level or another. Even if they are not implicated as workers for the other side, they might be labeled a poser (i.e. "trying to be White", "acting White", etc.). And why? Because they don't subscribe to a particular identity that is not them. As much as I know that I'm guilty of having cultural preferences in the people that I deal with (i.e. I prefer to spend time around educated people who have an empathetic connection to a lower class ethnic identity), I would never demand that someone subscribe to the tenets of my particular aesthetic. And this is where my problem comes in with both the Black and Black gay groups: Why can't others define their own identity without threat of a Bush-like "Either you're with us or against us," wherein "with us" is defined by assimilation?
And this is why I'm clawing at a way to return to the margins. Too many groups are demanding a mindless submission to ideas that you had no part in constructing. The American Government. "Authentic" Black people. "The Black Gay Community." I'd rather sit on the outskirts...at least for the moment. Maybe I'll feel the urge to enact change sooner or later. (Knowing me, I probably will.)
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
New beginnings.
I've been blogging for a while, like 10 months, on another site. But I noticed recently that most of the blogs on that site were about bullshit and that all the deep brothas had blogs on Blogger, so I figured I should get with the program.
Some say I'm a difficult brotha to understand, because I have been taught from so many different schools of thought. I was born and raised in a predominantly Black inner city environment. The city smells of poverty, desperation, and death. There's even a dark cloud over the city (literally, because there is so much pollution). But, with all that said, I was also able to get out and study at an Ivy League university. I sat in the Ivory Tower for four years surrounded a wide array of people who spanned many races and ethnicities as well as economic backgrounds.
In another interesting dyad of ideologies, I was raised in the Church of God in Christ and therefore indoctrinated with many ideals of conservativism, spiritual elitism, and religious fundamentalism. Yet, on the other hand, I'm also a well-adjusted and happpy bisexual man, something the COGIC would argue cannot even exist.
A number of other seeming conflicts exist, but I guess you'll get to see those as you get to know me better. But, for now, I need to conk out, cuz I have work in a few hours.
BOOOOO 9-5 jobs. I need a fucking Ph.D.
Some say I'm a difficult brotha to understand, because I have been taught from so many different schools of thought. I was born and raised in a predominantly Black inner city environment. The city smells of poverty, desperation, and death. There's even a dark cloud over the city (literally, because there is so much pollution). But, with all that said, I was also able to get out and study at an Ivy League university. I sat in the Ivory Tower for four years surrounded a wide array of people who spanned many races and ethnicities as well as economic backgrounds.
In another interesting dyad of ideologies, I was raised in the Church of God in Christ and therefore indoctrinated with many ideals of conservativism, spiritual elitism, and religious fundamentalism. Yet, on the other hand, I'm also a well-adjusted and happpy bisexual man, something the COGIC would argue cannot even exist.
A number of other seeming conflicts exist, but I guess you'll get to see those as you get to know me better. But, for now, I need to conk out, cuz I have work in a few hours.
BOOOOO 9-5 jobs. I need a fucking Ph.D.
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