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.)