terms & observations. (a poem to ground the old me)

i’ve found myself enticed by the thickness

that lay below waist level.

Dragged off to dungeons.

Shitting blood, butterflies, and metal horses.

Called master. Dominated.

a nigger. down-low slut.

fuck toy. pig. pissed on.

Wrapped in loving arms at the advent of misery.

held and kissed passionately.

Fucked violently and repeatedly in the same week.

And never once did I think I was a slut.

Places of Healing.

 

I wish my experiences with health care were not lived through the parameters of race, class and gender, but they are. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of African slaves brought to this country and worked to their bones. I cannot conceive of hospitals and medicine without thinking about the thousands of Black womyn who were involuntarily sterilized in this country. I cannot conceive of hospitals or medicine without seeing my grandfather – in his winter – lying on the couch, exhausted and in pain from chemotherapy. I cannot conceive of medicine or hospitals without noticing that the majority of HIV/Aids deaths (and infections) in this country are usually poor people of color who have little to no access to the medicine and precious knowledge that would save our lives. These experiences stay with me. They are apart of my very being and breathe as real as I do.

A few months ago when I was diagnosed with having the HIV virus (something I will formerly address on this blog later- but it is part of the reason why post have been so scattered), I immediately found that having to come into more direct contact with Western medicine was going to be a rehashing and analysis of trauma. Part of the mission of this blog is to express and explore the human experience from the perspective of a Queer, Black, Male bodied, Communist and that still holds true. I am excited to start a new chapter in the life of this blog- starting with this post. I hope it makes up for my long absence.

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“That’s a lot of trauma.”

The White doctor uttered as I sat in the chair giving him a rundown of my childhood. I suppose that I can be summed up in that manner: trauma. I also suppose that most of the people I grew up with can be assessed the same . . . But our lives are not merely death marches. People of color in this country have had to make beauty from the torn shards or poverty and destruction. And so it naturally follows that we would not solely view our lives as that. I may have grown up materially poor and dealt with the ills of drug abuse and domestic violence but I also knew about “love” and the movings of things not understood by White folks. In this case – as is most times the case when White folks seek to analyze experiences they have never had- cynicism is a White thing. Because that Doctor, in all of his knowledge and wisdom didn’t understand what Nikki Giovanni put so well in a poem: “Black love, is Black wealth.” Because of their privilege and materialistic socialization of Western thought, I would argue that White people have a harder time understanding the meaning of that quote because they see narratives of color as a doomed work of fiction- where there is little hope because of the poverty and inability of the people to move out of their social condition. (Never mind racist capitalism and the absurdity of pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps) I understand the trauma of my youth and the joy. I see them as the ongoing dialectic that has created me. I understand and love those experiences in order to make peace with them, so that when life’s great storms return I can better deal with them. I left the office horribly upset. It wasn’t until later that day, once I could process with a friend, that I realized how important race was in that situation. The doctor’s inability to connect with me on that spiritual point was an issue for me. With the HIV population growing in communities of color, there is also a rising need to have care providers that are of the communities they serve. I do not need to be under that White gaze while I am trying to figure out what is wrong with my body.

This is true of healthcare in general. People of color often have distrust for medicine in this county because of the historic underpinnings of the interactions had in the hospital. Black folks, in particular, have been the subject of experiments with drug vaccines, disease, eugenics, forced breeding, and other genetic manipulation. When you combine that with the fact that most people in this country cannot afford health care decent enough to see a doctor whenever necessary and the additional fact that the institutions of high education that give out credentials, to become licensed, are mostly White- then you have a pretty strong material reasoning to avoid/ distrust hospitals. Western medicine has given us little hope, despite the immense promise it holds when combined with a more holistic realm of thought.

Part of my communism, is believing in an alternative health system. The advancements of technology under capitalism are wondrous. The beauty of humanity is that we have become able to envision and see a world much larger than the one that currently exist- this applies to medicine and the science that is constantly pushing it forward.  The tragedy of capitalism and the mind/body dichotomy of the West is that we cannot see the full potential of our work because of the nature of the system. Capitalism is a system of waste and profit: it wastes our energy and planet in order the gain profit for the wealthy. Because the goal of these industries is capital then it makes no sense to cure disease or make medicine free because fully healthy workers could not be as easily exploited due to the fact that our minds and bodies would be stronger. We would be more able to struggle against our conditions. Western thought, in medicine, has led us to view our bodies as battlefields. Most medicine is designed to destroy the problem at all cost- meaning you might end with a more severe problem than you started with. One has to look no further that the barbarism of chemotherapy to see my point. I believe that this is because the West has never understood that treating the body requires spiritual health (by this I mean things like: being at ease with a doctor who understands you, having a peaceful home life, having meaningful relations with other humans) and a connection with nature. More and more research is finding that the biggest part of fighting the diseases we face is no more than changing our diet and pursing bliss. [that was overly simple but still truthful.]

And so, in my journey and in the service of communism, I see it as an important part of the project to share my narrative and examine the intersections of these life events as they (and I) evolve.It is important to reclaim the older knowledge from our ancestors as we move forward. Solutions to our problems will come from the combining of old wisdom and new thought. I apologize for my absence from this blog and promise to be more active. Here is to a new and powerful 2012, filled with health, life, and revolution! Luta continua!

Queers and Capitalism Part One: The Dialectics of Moving Towards A Larger Social Acceptance

“. . . the waters around you have grown “

I remember the first time I saw a B.Scott video. I sat in my freshman dorm and listened to this very flamboyant, very androgynous, bi-racial man rant and rave about Shemar Moore’s penis being exposed online. A moment like this sounds very mundane and trivial, but has profound meaning when placed into context. As a queer person it is very rare that I see myself reflected, even if it is slight, in media and this doubles when we’re talking about queer people of color, who are all but invisible in the culture. So when we see representations of ourselves it becomes something spiritual, something affirming, something that touches us and says: “you are worth attention and love.” The 7-minute rant did that for me. Move ahead 5 years and we get this . . .

The same B.Scott I knew and loved is now a bonified star complete with music videos, red carpet appearances and celebrity interviews. Looking at this very feminine, queer, man of color on the screen brings all kinds of questions to the surface for me:

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

and “What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

I want to think out loud a bit about these things . . .

“Has society come to a place where we can accept queers as people?”

For someone like this and many other gay figures to come to such prominence in our time means that there is a large shift in society. Homo-life is a commodity now, something being placed onto the pedestal of consumer culture and devoured: your favorite pop singer has probably stolen swag from the ballroom, and there is a gay plotline on just about every show. In addition to that, more and more states are sanctioning some degree of union between gay couples and DADT is becoming smaller and smaller in the rear view. The state and big business are slowly adapting to a shift in public opinion. I believe that much of the work of 60’s queer activists to prove that gay culture was just as legitimate as others paved the way for certain aspects of the culture to take center stage in the way that they have thus influencing public consciousness. I also believe that the majority of this “gay is okay” push comes from capitalism’s understanding that it cannot afford for the queer population to be isolated in total from the whole of society.

I’ve always said that queer people represented a very particular threat to capitalism, especially in the United States, because of their positioning in the society. Queer folk prior to many of the movements of the 60’s and 70’s had little to no material connection to the American melting pot. And it can be argued that in certain communities of color the nature of queer oppression had a different character because of the fact that people found themselves already segregated and marginalized. Thus, many queers of color a.) Identified more with their racial caste and were kept in the embrace of their families because of their shared oppression and/or b.) weren’t given access into larger queer spaces because of the segregation.

However, I believe that the generalization can be made that queer folks challenged the stability of capitalism because of their status as people pushed outside of the nuclear family, which is one of the most basic oppressive structures of society and patriarchy. It becomes too dangerous to have pockets of the society that have no material attachment to it. It is also dangerous for capitalism to have spaces in which the development of such a critique can be developed and shared.

In addition, radical queer politics, much like feminism challenged many of the assumptions of the culture and capitalism. What does it mean for white supremacist hetero capitalism when the nuclear family, male/ female socialization and personal identity are challenged? Many older, less fabulous, leftists would say that it means nothing or very little because the means of production, the material ways in which capitalism operates, are not immediately being challenged. But they would be wrong on multiple fronts.  The challenging of patriarchal social relations not only means liberating womyn from unwaged labor but also brings the political and the personal together. Something desperately missing from a lot of movements of the past has been the revolutionary observation and transformation of gender identities. By this I mean, that feminism and anti-patriarchal ideology have never really been taken seriously by groups involving a straight male majority and that’s because it strikes at the most guarded and unchallenged of our identities; our gender. Feminist and queer movements of the past have sought to turn this on its head by placing an emphasis on personal development along these lines along with organizing in the workplace.

Slowly and subtly, queers have been brought into the fold. One interesting moment in this history was in the wake of the 60’s and 70’s, in the middle of the AIDS crisis-we saw thousands of gays –revolutionary or otherwise- pass away at epidemic levels. This crisis had varying effects on gay communities, some of which are relevant to this post and some aren’t. Something that is important to recognize is that the effect of the AIDS epidemic and the response to it not only left a vacuum of leadership in queer spaces but it also paved the way, in part, for queer struggle to be co-opted through the nonprofit industrial complex. This is important because we see a very distinct change in the character of queer activism around this time.  Friendlier, more passive things like quilt making and appealing to the state for sympathy became more prominent. A little later on, queers became more attached to the causes of DADT repeal and marriage rights, the latter can be understood partially in the context of having to watch loved ones die without any recourse or protection from their biological families. I would argue that this more identity based activism, and less aggressive stance in the mainstream, had a less alienating and more tolerance inducing effect on the some of the population.

So I think the boost in queer visibility can be attributed to a push and pull between forces. I think that movements against patriarchy and capitalism paved the way for aspects of oppressed peoples humanity (specifically queers here) to be accepted in the mainstream and capitalism, by it’s very nature and need to survive, adapted to this shift by exploiting and incorporating what it could.

“Does capitalism need homophobia (patriarchy) to exist?”

For me, a struggle against homophobia must mean one that addresses capitalism. I see my oppression as a Black, gay male as one whose roots are intrinsically linked with the beast of capitalism. In order for the power structure to maintain itself it needs to suppress certain parts of the population. Does this mean that we will never see wealthy gays? No, San Francisco is proof of that. However, it does mean that the majority of queer and trans folk, especially those of color, can bet that they will never be apart of the ruling class. The very nature of the society cannot allow for that. Queer folk, being a one of the more vulnerable parts of the population, find themselves subordinated into lower levels of the working class through homophobia or excluded entirely as seen in the case of trans folk. This strengthens the elite and their machinery because the horizontal violence (homophobia) maintains a division of labor and permanent caste position. We also see the building of a surplus army of labor (the unemployed) to be used against working people who may feel the need to challenge their abuse at the hands of the elite. Workers who seek to withhold their labor (strikes) until better conditions arise are quickly met with the leagues of unemployed folk who will scab (break the picket and replace the strikers) and that makes sense in a society where there is no space for the entirety of the population to work for a decent wage.

Also, just as in the case of race, socialized gender is a one of the pillars of capitalism. In using patriarchy as one of it’s stepping stones, capitalism has created the conditions under which it’s demise cannot come without attacking the gendered division of labor, homophobia, etc . . . This means that our ascension into the utter fabulousness of liberation means that gender, and capitalism must be destroyed because the destruction of such a poisonous ideology (patriarchy) would mean the crumbling of walls built between working people. The system needs us isolated into paranoid fractions.

“What does this mean for queer struggle and activism?”

It is in the best interest of capitalism to bring queers into the fold (through a very narrow, white supremacist, patriarchal view of course) the potential to expand capital through an exploitation of queer images and culture is vast. At the same time this gay assimilation dulls the blade of radical queer politics. Because capitalism’s veil of justice and equality is kept in place through the façade of acceptance and limitless upward mobility, embodied in the emerging queer ruling class, it becomes harder for queer militants to argue for the necessity of a revolution against capitalism itself. Reform to the system is popular when the connection between class oppression and patriarchy isn’t clear. If I believe that patriarchy is something completely separate from the otherwise redeemable capitalist world order then it makes no sense to seize the means of production as apart of liberation because my conceived liberation is tied to the eradication of an ideology within certain people and not connected to a material struggle against the bourgeoisie (the top 10% of people who own everything) to end the totality of oppression. Radical queers, in this historical moment, find themselves struggling to articulate the need for a queer struggle that includes a radical class analysis and positive program that reflects such. We must also win people away from bourgeois delusions like equality under capitalism.

I think it’s exciting to be alive right now, and to organize right now.  We have an opportunity to present a new proposition and deconstruct past failures with the intent of building a movement that can win.  For me, radical queer organizing looks like many things: the building of safe spaces where we can heal and build self determination, the challenging of straight and male privilege, and the inverting of gender roles with the intention to create the conditions where all beings can fully express themselves are a few of those. The incorporation ideas such as self-care, and consciousness raising around gendered dynamics are some others. The appropriation of queer identities by the mainstream has, in an unintentional way, given us the opportunity to observe and reflect on our organizing and position in struggle. It also has made the ground fertile to plant revolutionary seeds. More queers are out and engaging in some form of political activity than we’ve seen in a while. (Maybe ever, I would wager that the amount of queers campaigning for reform and the amount visibly/verbally opposing the reformist queers out numbers the activists of 40-50 years ago) And that means we have some work to do. We have some questions to pose. We have some ideas to raise. And we have some consciousness to change.

Seeking Boys With Soft Skin and Big Hearts

The outlines were once bodies

blowing gently on bathroom floors

and empty wash house basons.

Carrying war wounds

and lifetimes of “I’m sorry, you know I can’t love you like that.” or “What we got is real”.

Torn bits

reaching to cradle one another.

Pulling at skin,

holding each other as they dance about.

Struggling to make sense

out of lifetmes of having hearts at the bottom of shoes

or floating in the tips of condoms

or singing love songs to themselves

while pretending that fingers are some dream lover’s dick thrusting violently.

Wrapped in a cold embrace listening to pretend voices that sound similar to their  father’s-

whispering affirmations.

Longing to be apart of the chorus of “I love you’s” present at some family gatherings.

And in some intentional way. . .

lusting to subvert that love

with cock rings, gags, and whips.

They exist in some wet nexus trying to crack light

and see how big the moon is

and how soft skin is

and what human looks like

Spears & Flowers: Reflections on Queer Alienation

I have been very introspective recently. The beauty of radical queer politics, and the benefit it holds for all political tendencies and struggles, is it’s unflinching quest to challenge all aspects of the culture, including ourselves. radical queer politics questioned the family, feminism, patriarchy and other aspects of society through a look at their workings within human beings and our interpersonal relationships. In a recent meeting of a radical queer space that I love and am connected to, I was inspired to write this piece.

I often catch glimpses of who I want to be staring at me in the mirror, waving. I see a lot of what I am and more of someone I wish I was from time to time. But the purpose of all of this is to come closer to loving my reflection for what it is, when I see it. It is becoming more evident to me that self-improvement and self-love are not mutually exclusive. As I stand I see thousands of contradictions and things I despise about myself, but I also know that many of these are a result of being out in the world. They are not essential components of my character and I can change them. It also is important to look at that image, in the mirror, and love it fiercely. To embrace it for what it is at that moment: not who it was, could or should be. It is only when we strive towards a place of love for ourselves that we can truly work to combat the negative traits we despise.

P.S. I wrote somewhat dry because I wanted to get the thoughts out as clearly as possible without too much colorful language possibly getting in the way.

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In my younger years I sought to craft a master heterosexual disguise. This desire came from the fact that I knew that the boldness exemplified by some of my “out” peers was something that was not tolerable, something that was often met with violence. The most disgusting incident of this manifested with the murder of someone who lived on the same street as I did. The young man, who often cross dressed and defied the code of conduct by talking back to his hecklers, was found stabbed to death with shards of glass in his anus. Daily, I knew of boys who were raped or beat in school. The general attitude around these attacks was silence from the administration and larger community. Because of this, I learned, very early, that my survival was dependant on my ability to make myself invisible. Part of this pact with oppressive patriarchy, meant also that I had to often partake in the demonizing of my queer brothers and sisters. Eventually this meant that I began to absorb the rhetoric, let it run through my blood, and define myself with those same horizontal lines.

I hated effeminate men. They were something unforgivable to me, something disgusting. I would lash out at my friends, and police them when we hung out. I despised the fact that I possessed those same qualities and wanted to exorcise them, from myself, through verbal assaults on other effeminate men.  Often times, in oppressed communities, the qualities that are picked upon by the dominant culture are those that are most harshly policed. It’s the same as problem I sometimes see occur in Black communities around “loudness”, “Black English”, and “dress”. Because we live in a society that is dominated by the straight white male lens, we must all act accordingly in order to move about with the least amount of trouble. Albeit, oppression and trouble are mainstays regardless of how much people desire to assimilate to the prescribed aesthetic. So we come to a place where we, as the various oppressed peoples, see ourselves through dual lenses and we posses what Dubois coined as “double consciousness”

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

-        W.E.B. Dubois

Recently, I have been challenging the way this internal hatred manifest in a different way: by looking at the men I lust for. I’ve always been attracted to a specific kind of man. My day dreams and night fantasies were dominated by very hard, masculine men. My dealings, in real life, have been the same. Regardless of the tragic amounts of repression within them and the dysfunction that it brings to the relationship, I wanted a “MAN”. I remember having a conversation with an ex, while we were dating, where he forbid me to be around other queer black men. This was also the same man who refused to engage with the option of versatility in the bed, who refused to acknowledge me sexually. And none of this is said with the intention of demonizing him. Quite the contrary, he represents the psychic dissonance formed within us in this society, where oppressed folk cannot fully come to a place of reconciliation with themselves and develop into semi-formed humans. The same thing goes for myself and my attraction to men like him.

In a recent video, the poet Yolo Akili, challenged the culture, specifically of Queer Black men, when he asked the question: “Are You The Kind of Boy You Want?” The video, which features a range of men, focuses on the fact that often times we pursue partners, and friends, out of a longing to negate certain qualities within ourselves. It highlights the lack of self-love we have. Personally, I know that my desire to be with stereotypical images of Black men or damaged men, who would ultimately lead to hurt, came from a disgust I had for myself. I outright rejected the notion that I would be in a relationship with effeminate men, with larger men etc . . . Looking back, I see a lot of my attitudes towards potential partners as reflective of a kind of alliance with White supremacy and patriarchy. I projected this prescribed image of Black manhood onto these men, dehumanizing them. At the same time, this image was something I desperately wanted to be because of my learned hatred of the effeminate parts of myself.

The nature of life in this society teaches us many things; among them is an intense self-loathing. From birth we are told that we are lacking and taught to consume in order to fill in for, or cover up our flaws. Combine this basic rule of Capitalism with White Supremacy and Patriarchy and we have generations of oppressed people consuming an ideology that is slowly killing them. And for that we both desire and loathe societal poison. The society hates womyn and defines “male” by what the former is not. And so it follows that men embodying traits relegated to womyn are seen as pariahs, or backwards. The tragic error in this confusion is that it continues that dissonance we spoke of by ignoring the full range of human expression and the material fact that nothing is essentially “male” or “female”.

In my search to come to a deeper love for myself, and therefore coming closer to a greater capacity to honestly love another person, I have come to some very hard truths. And it is difficult to approach a place of self-love after years of taught hatred but it is a healing we need. Many constructions of relationships between beings fall between the pillars of co-dependence and co modification. Our alienation brings us to seek an unhealthy validation in romantic partners. We disguise this often as “love”, all the while afraid to see our tolerance of abuse and longing for what they really are: reactions to the fact that we have not been told enough that we are loved or deserving of love. We commodify one another: looking at the value we acquire through virtue of being involved with another. I believe that this comes from the lack of self-love that comes with life under White supremacist, patriarchal capitalism. That’s why “love” is something radical, something golden, something revolutionary: because it is something diametrically opposed to the progress of the society which oppresses and exploits us. If we as militants, as revolutionaries, as any people who hope to bring joy to the world and ourselves, cannot deal with the love most essential to the revolutionary project then we have lost.

I look out, as I try to free myself, and see rooms filled with Black men like me. Sitting underneath the horror of that ceiling and knowing, each day, that its existence is becoming more and more real – the air a little more thin.

I also see that, like all things, this doesn’t have to be the permanent definition of our existence. I draw inspiration from healing spaces, from spaces of challenge and love. It is easy to become overwhelmed and see it all as insurmountable. But that is the exact the opposite of reality: our individual projects of self-help and improvement lead us to a greater love for ourselves and for humanity. This has a material effect on our conditions because it brings to the surface a counter ideology that will move with us through physical struggle. The scars of the racist and sexist capitalist system are seen beyond economic oppression, they are apart of our spiritual fabric. Our oppressions intersect and harm on multiple levels. That is why this work and kind of analysis was crucial to the Queer liberation movement and Feminist theory. That is why revolutionary self-reflection is crucial to me.

I want to end with a quote, and some commentary:

“I believe that many of the destructive lessons taught in our childhood homes is the result of the desperation of our parents. They were children once and learned those same lessons. I don’t know how we begin to unlearn that behavior.” –Essex Hemphill

I believe that many of the destructive lessons learned in this society are the result of the desperation of our parents and the ailments of our society. As children we are torn asunder learning these lessons. The beginning of the unlearning, of the reconciliation of our torn selves lies in our ability to grasp warmly, hold up and affirm one another. Our power lies in our ability to recognize and reconcile with our own humanity: to take our scarred inner children and embrace them, allow them to cry and finally, to speak. Much of Western culture is a about running away from ourselves, being terrified of what makes us human and repressing it. It is my sincere intention to do away with this within myself. I want to see every raw bit and say “I appreciate you.”

100th Post.

There was an old queen at the end of my block, growing up, that would paint his face in the morning. He would hum low as he did. The neighborhood kids would tease, as they often do, when he would make his way down the block. And I knew, even back then, that I could not allow myself to become that. Fierce but alone. Exposed to the jabs and knives, and piranha and other things that come out to bit and maim.

I wanted to be out in the world. Wanted to take this life and make a shawl out of sunshine.

I wanted to sing a righteous gospel and make even the coldest winters in peoples bones melt till their chest opened like arms exposing love.

To love and be loved.

I wanted to be out in the world.

And I wanted to love a man. Hard. Wanted to find that one man, whose arms were designed specifically for me to fit into. And at night I wanted to rock with him into a deep intertwined sleep.

Not a man, who would take my love and put it in the bottom of his shoe and dance about town, stamping it into a nothingness.

Yes, ever since I saw that old queen I been trying hard not to become that. Been fashioning me and my wears as to be ready. So that when the big twilight comes I would be wouldn’t be caught wanting.

And my search has led me to dungeons. Flanked by able-bodied men looking to rip me asunder. Each one snatching at my boyhood. Slowly leaving me with nothing. As I lay spent, watching some white man’s back or some brotha exist the door once they were satisfied using me as a rag for their exotic curiosity or their emotion outlet.

My protests were all met with the same. “Nigger get outta here with that shit” speak.
The same “what the fuck else do you want?” speak.
The same “So we gonna fuck or what?” speak.
The same “If I wanted to hear what you thought I woulda took you out.” speak.

Using my back as a bridge to their salvation as I lay face down drowning in the wants and needs I don told my self I had to have.

And I’m left not knowing the sound of my own “no” because I so desperately wanted to not be an old queen painting his face in an attempt to cover up the stains of tears, permanently etched like scars, from years of misery and rejection.

It’s ironic. The joylessness of a punk’s song. The silence of his life. No color anywhere. And here is what else I have come to know.

To be Black and Gay is a contradiction of terms
Black is a word and condition unrelated to us because real niggas ain’t faggots. And those of us looking to beg our way back into the community can only offer payment with our tongues.
There are scores of us sitting mute in pews. Swaying in the breeze. Content to no longer paint our faces if it means someone will love us.

And so it seems a sad and cruel thing
To be a faggot and hope to sing.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode – Radical Queer Art

Radical Queer Art

Photography has always held the power to convey messages and inspire people. When I saw the following photos I was astonished by the way in which they expressed the intimacy and power of Queer Black men.

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Homecoming

When I speak of affirmation I am talking about a homecoming.

People often ask me about liberation and revolution and that’s because the words in the streets will soon be liberation and revolution. The ruling class have grossly misused the power they accumulated through blood and exploitation and we are now in a situation where we could see huge up springs of revolutionary action from the masses of people within the next ten years, given that we get out, organize and help to create a peoples army with the people. I speak on Black queer struggle because I am most familiar with that as a Black queer. And because of this I am often asked questions about Black queer struggle in relation to the Black community, if that mythical group indeed exists, and the entire working class. Usually, and very proudly, I am the first to say that I am not the correct person to be asked because I don’t know nearly as much as people project onto me but I wish to speak right now, if for even for a very brief moment, about two things; a homecoming, and a fire. I wish to speak, if even for the slightest of moments, about Black queer affirmation.

It is important for Black queers to know that the changing of our conditions will not come with our acceptance into the violence that created the very need for us to run away from home. That violence, which was born out of the evils of a rising bourgeoisie in Europe and strengthened through the rape of Africa, is something all consuming and all damning. It is important to recognize the dangers in basing the queer revolution on assimilation, especially for Black queers. The ability of our more privileged brothers and sisters to get married and so on will not result in decent housing for all, or an end to the system of profit over people. It can only result in the fortifying of the that violent system, the capitalist system, which has needs and desires diametrically opposed to our own as a people seeking liberation from oppression. That is because oppression against people of color, queers, and womyn are the very necessary preconditions for a successful capitalist society; the most oppressed and marginalized will become the most exploited.

Black queer folk occupy a very unique and key position in this country and system because of their caste positioning. We are an intersection of many disparate groups. Many of us have left the “Black community” because of the culture of patriarchal oppression against queers that, while prevalent in the dominant society, has a particularly damaging character in the Black community. It is often shouted that Blacks are the most homophobic of all peoples, which I reject most simply because Blacks cannot in-act state violence against gays in the same manner that the mostly white state can and does.

Essex Hemphill, that bold and often forgotten poet, once said:

“The return I call for is so we can do the work that no one else can do for us. The white lesbian and gay community can’t come in and interrogate our black churches about the homophobia. We have to do that. We’re already singing in the choirs, we’re already on the usher boards, but then to accept homophobic diatribes from the podium … I’m not expecting the white community to interrogate black intellectuals, writers and cultural activists about their homophobia. We have to do that first, and the only way we’re going to do that is to really consider and understand how important that home space is for us.”

I believe that it is absolutely necessary for the Black Queers to struggle within the Black community for the redemption of the race. Problems, such as homophobia, within the Black community are two fold. They are problems that cannot be solved without the larger culture making a shift and they must be addressed in order for the larger culture to make a shift. By this I mean that problems that Black folk face in their interactions with one another are often mirrored by the social ills at large; for example patriarchy is not exclusive to the Black community but sometimes has a particular character when we speak about the oppression of Black womyn under Black male patriarchy. So I contend that Black Queers must struggle within the Black community to attack the twin beast of patriarchy and homophobia.

Occupied Territories, reclaiming the erotic, and other musings

The radical discovery that I had done no wrong in wanting nothing more than my 7^th grade best friend’s cock inside me came as a revelation to me 4 years later.

I sat on the edge of my bed rereading Bible verses and going over and over again in my head how nonsensical it was to believe that I was destined for eternal hellfire forever for thinking a thought such as that. Like many boys, I was socialized to believe that my penis gave me supreme power over all. However, my queerness rendered all previous build up of the male ego useless. I wasn’t a man I was a faggot and as such had no right to sexual desire or expression. I had a disease. I was a pariah.

Black queer men occupy an interesting space between being male and non-male. It is the way in which we wish to use our sex that causes society to attack it so violently. I remember hearing a news story of a man that was shot, stabbed, and sodomized with glass for being gay. I felt something fall off a shelf inside me. I felt a part of me disappear forever. I suspect that this loss of power, through the erotic, is a common thing for Queer folk and especially Queer men of color who find themselves violent, state sponsored repression to be a common fixture in their lives. This loss is of great value when we look at the power that is to be derived from the erotic.

“The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.” –  Audre Lorde

In this piece Audre speaks of the erotic being something that is healing for womyn and something that has been co modified and exploited by men. She speaks on it being something that is a source of power for womyn in this patriarchal society because it arises from the deepest passions for one another and can then become a radical source of healing. For queer men, we often find our sex, and power, through the erotic, to be stamped out.

It is in a similar fashion, that I believe, Queer Black men can find the beginnings of their new love movement through the erotic, through a radical reaffirmation of Black men loving Black men. It is still a very dangerous and revolutionary idea for two Black men to love one another boldly and proudly. My mind drifts to the poetry of Essex Hemphill, that magnificent poet. Hemphill created a world based around Black men’s loving of one another and their love being the catalyst for revolution.

“I want to start
 an organization
to save my life.

If Whales, snails, 
dogs, cats,
Chrysler, and Nixon
can be saved,
the lives of Black men
 are priceless
and can be saved.

We should be able
to save each other.”

Or

“Standing at the front lines

flanked by able brothers

who miss his eloquent courage,

his insistent voice

urging us to rebel,

urging us to not fear embracing

for more than sex,

for more than kisses

and notches in our belts.

Our loss is greater

than all the space

we fill with prayers

and praise.

He burned out

his pure life force

to bring us a chance

to love ourselves

with commitment.

He knew the simple

spilling of seed

would not be enough

to bind us.”

The last line is ever so poignant. Hemphill speaks of going beyond the physical encounters that are made to be the extent of most Afro-Queer love affairs in this patriarchal society. There is a wanting and demanding of more that must occur and that comes through an affirmation of the erotic within us.

When I think of how the erotic works for me I can think of a few distinct ways; the first being patience through intimacy.

Intimacy teaches us patience because it is an understanding of a person through the conditions that created them and your connection to them. It is an understanding that we are not beings to be looked at as a sum of the moments we are observed in but instead a sum of the years preceding that very observation.

I think of the knowledge that I am worth more than just high adrenaline fucks and blowjobs in the dark. This is not a condemnation of either, mind you. I am merely proposing that there exist more than that when we speak of the full extent of Black men loving one another. The bourgeois white media loves to harp on the myth of the DL Black man, loves to use Black Queer men as the scape-goat for Black womyn’s AID epidemic. And while it is true that there are a number of Black men living double lives and spreading the virus to their wives, it is also true that this phenomenon cannot be looked at outside of the larger society context. And that is Black Queer men’s oppression under homophobic and the suppression of our erotic self.

It now has become necessary, as it surely always has been, to reclaim our oppressed territories for ourselves. It becomes the historic task of our caste. For if we are to make any lager revolution, we must first start with ourselves and the radical affirmation that has yet to happen.

As We Fuck

They would rather us die off

Stretched out with their monstrous tubes running throughout

Man made oxygen pumping through nostrils

Clinging to borrowed time

Hey would rather us bludgeoned to death

Chased down the boulevard by other able bodied Black boys

Hands up, crying family

Glossed over by high powered news crackers looking for something more appealing

Cause the dead only matter here when they’re white

And niggers killing off one another is common place.

They would rather us choke to death as we go down on one another in alleyways

Kneeling in the shadows of god and his men

Praying for quarter to one another before Golgotha

Seas rising on salted tongues

Purple bruises on brown skin

Billy clubs on black tones

The state would rather us dead

Killed by our own nut as we exchange snatches of intimacy masked as high adrenaline fucks

Taken off to Betty Ford

The free clinics are sick houses, bloated with Black bodies

God’s great irony always comes when I’m confronted by some pale faced motherfucker

Beggin me to sign his “right to marry” petitions

What does the HRC, or any of these well to do gay organizations have to say about Duanna Johnson?

Or the New Jersey 6?

What is the Castro doing for me?

When I am murdered will I get remembrance?

These pink suit bourgeois half steppers are fighting for fucking in the church, their pick of third world babies, and equal distribution of rainbow flags in the old navy.

What demands do I have equal to that?

My revolution can’t be made in wedding chapels or adoption clinics

I just want peace

And decent housing

And if this mother can’t give me that then I’m finna burn it down