You see something absurd. You hear something absurd. You read something absurd = Yeah,TNTG. Posts tagged homosexuality.
“ Some people say homosexuality is a sin. It’s not. God is perfectly cool with it, and he feels the same way about homosexuality as he does about heterosexuality. Now, you might say, woah, woah, slow down. You move too fast. How could you have the audacity—the temerity—to speak on the behalf of God. Exactly, that’s an excellent point, and I pray that you remember it.
— Ted Alexandro (via amorepeacefulvendetta)
I AM MAN: Black Manhood & Sexual Diversity
This is a very important documentary covering black masculinity and homosexuality within the black community in America - with a little insight into Africa too. Black masculinity has been constructed and deconstructed by white supremacist schools of thought as something that is a dangerous threat to the wider public. You only had to listen to the remarks David Starkey made about black masculinity on the BBC this week to know these attitudes are present here in the UK. As Dr Marc Lamont Hill rightly says even the black male body itself is considered something not worthy of dignity and respect and this is very clear in the culture of police brutality directed towards the male African-American community.
I also wanted to highlight Esther Armah’s comments on sexuality in Africa. I’m an African woman myself and I can relate to her comments about seeing young men in Africa hold hands and that not being sexualised in anyway. In Uganda boys hold hands all the time and because I have spent most of my life in London I always found it odd to see and even a bit uncomfortable because I was socialised into homophobia. I was at a dinner a couple of weeks ago and I was talking to a friend of mine from the Congo who now lives in London and then his friend came and sat down next to us. This other brother is originally from (North) Sudan and started rubbing his knee. I was asked ‘Why are you rubbing his knee??’ and the brother from Sudan read my discomfort and replied, ‘You’ve been in this country for too long’. And he was right. People always assume that the African is the violent homophobe, but as rightly pointed out in this video there are also external factors that have led to tragic cases such as that of gay rights activist David Kato being murdered in Uganda. For example, homophobia in Africa is funded hugely by fundamentalist Christian groups from America. Our legal systems that have criminalised homosexuality are also relics from our colonial past. All of these factors have to be addressed if people are going to be re-educated on sexual diversity. Sadly, progress is hindered by constant threats to black masculinity that leave a lot of black men feeling they have to affirm their manhood by living up to stereotypes in order to be accepted by their communities. Even if it leads to their emotional and physical destruction.
Please share this video and share your thoughts with me too. I’m always learning and this short documentary taught me some things.
*Bold+Italicized section is my doing
“ Usually when a black woman is attacked we find some way of making it her fault. We ask questions like what was she wearing? What does she do for a living? How many sexual partners has she had in the past? You know, the typical stuff that removes accountability from her attacker. But in this case, where a black woman minding her damn business awoke to an attacker in her second story apartment, normal victim-blaming would not work. So now what do we do, because we obviously can’t take a black woman’s story of violence seriously? Well, that’s simple. We marginalize the attack and focus the story on her brother, whose anger we can exploit because it fits into stereotypes of queer masculinity that provide comic relief. The producers used the footage to lock Antoine in a frame, to capture him in place, in order to tell a story that fits their truths—black women’s confrontations with sexual violence are either not real or unimportant. Framed under the guise of “news” this masquerades as a story about a woman awaking to an intruder in her bed but is really a story about a funny black man, hilarious in his anger. It was never about her… When you are made invisible through processes of erasure, people don’t even acknowledge that you’re gone.
