Homophobia and the Myth of Masculinity

Homophobia bothers me ("no shit Sherlock"!). LGBT people are a convenient scapegoat for everything everywhere from economic woes to natural disasters, but I am perhaps irrationally most disappointed by black homophobia. I expect black people to know better than to jump on the band-wagon of persecuting a group because they're different. But I know that is ridiculously naive: look at the history of the Jewish people and how they treat the Palestinians in the land they stole from them now they have the power to do some of what was done to them to someone else.

That Christianity fuels so much black homophobia is equally galling. I do not presume to challenge let alone denigrate anyone's religious beliefs, but even the most cursory glance a the history of Africa (and Asia and South America etc) reveals "bringing the "Christian" message" as an excuse for the most inhuman atrocities. Yet it is homosexuality that is presented as an evil import from "the West". No amount of historical evidence shakes the ignorant belief that homosexuality didn't exist in Africa before encounters with Europeans.

I have read about how white rape of black slaves extended to both genders without censure and understand the resulting association among black people with violation and weakness, but does it really need to be said that rape and consensual love-making are different things? There is little pre-colonial Christian evidence that same gender relationships were undervalued by those societies- in fact there is evidence that they were often revered and given special status as they were among at least some of the Native American tribes. I am infuriated by suggestions that LGBT people are "letting down their people" and similar bullshit as John Fashanu said of his brother Justin before he took his own life.

Yes: black people have to grow thicker skins to exist successfully in white-dominated societies, but I argue that black LGBT people have to grow even thicker layers often to survive their own families and communities- AS WELL AS White majority societies. It is a mistake to observe and assess male behaviour as "effeminate" and to assume the male in question won't or is incapable of fighting back. One of my fondest memories is of sitting on the top deck of a London bus en route to "Global Village" (as was- now "Heaven") and hearing a commotion outside I saw a tall, skinny black queen with dyed white hair chasing three skinheads down Oxford Street swinging a pair of stack-heeled shoes like a South American goucho rounding animals with a bola.

It still takes a lot more bottle to be "obviously gay" even in the most liberal of places in public so I argue that gay men (for example) display more of what it means to be male than most of the heterosexual herd who hide among as many who look just like them as possible. It is no coincidence that 45 years ago, the modern "Gay Liberation Movement" was born in a bar catering to drag queens who were largely ostracised from 'respectable' Gay establishments; people with the least to lose are often the most revolutionary and strong.