In period of seeming stagnation it is easy to relinquish oneself to you're emotions. The destructive ones seep into the fore of my mind. And I try to find someone to blame. The rapid motion of the year has come to a lul. The goals and ambitions that we had at the start of the year, individuals have resigned themselves to their fate. The routines that we have grown accustomed to this year have sunk their claws in deep, making it an uncomfortable (almost painful) task to pull them out of you and throw them aside.
But as of Tuesday, September 18th 2024, there are still 111 days left in the year. That is more than enough time to change trajectories. That is more than enough time to set goals and chase after them. It does not have to be January first to start a new chapter, and it does not have to be the sobriety that birthdays bring, eluding to a year passed and in some lenses a year closer to ones death that spurs us into action.
It feels like the yearly wind down. As the heat subsides, and the energy stills to a freeze, we tend to reflect the same. The sluggishness, the lack of excitement. Attempt to apply that same vigor and zest for life that we always bless summer with, for our Autumn and eventual Winter.
Take a second to reflect on the goals you made for yourself at the top of the year. Have you accomplished any of them? Are any of these goals still within reach? It is always viable to reframe, and reorient yourself for what is achievable in the present set of conditions you're in here and now.
Reminder: Not much is out of reach if you make a consistent effort to place yourself closer to them on a daily basis.
Recently
As the summer winds down and we are now able to reflect on a third of our year, it is useful to take a second to stop and breathe. See if the goals that you set out for yourself have been accomplished or are accomplishable in the time you have left. If so, continue at this rate and if not, it is useful to reframe what we view success as for now. There is so much time. But as we are quickly all learning is that one day is so important. That one decision, one moment, one iota of a second can change so much when we zoom into the grand scheme of the year.
One lazy day, one missed workout, one missed class or moment to attend to yourself and you're elevation can prove to be the catalyst for stagnation in abundance. Therefore, making the difficult and almost tortuous decision at times to just show up for yourself can prove to be abundantly useful when we stop and reflect. Because when we look up after perhaps a year of workouts, we do not remember the pain of that final rep, or the absolute chore it was to get up and drag you're butt to the gym, we are able to reflect on the “body of work” and be proud for what we were able to accomplish.
As i age, and as we get further and further away from the binary that is school, with standardized testing and accomplishments embedded into the system, I see a lot of individuals in this limbo. A limbo i find myself in at times. But the worst thing about this limbo is not the comfort to stop and think. Rather it is the stasis that individuals can find themselves within. The comfort that is feeling and doing nothing is a dangerous numb to sit within for too long.
I begin to witness more and more, individuals giving up on their dreams. Their lofty ambitions when they were in their late teens was smacked with reality leading them to trash their dreams for what they could best accomplish in the here and now. When often times, reality is what you make it. This delusion that proves to be so useful in aiding the movers and shakers of this generation everyone possesses, but sadly many people do not retain through adulthood.
“You're dreams are not too big. The world is you're oyster. Every goal you set for yourself is attainable given time and patience”
While it would be ideal for me to be an individual without mental illness, the family I was born into guarenteed that such a situation was not my fate. For all the multitudes of mental illnesses included within the DSM-5, I am in a twisted way grateful that bipolarism was what I was met with. It provides such a unique life perspective. Through the highs and lows that are induced by manic depression, it gives such an interesting appreciation for just the mellow moments. The moments where there is no euphoric high or unbearable low. The days where you stop and realize that you are just “okay” and that realization is more than enough to provide comfort and solace.
We in this society, especially through social media are inundated with success and instant gratification. If we don't get that, there is a big problem. If we don't reach our goal right away, if our post doesnt get enough likes right away, if we don't get the person we want right away, everything is right away with no time to just stop and smell the roses.
So I guess what I am trying to get at is, during the process that is our day, and the unfolding of multitude of these to compromise our weeks, months and years to stop and breathe. To realize where you are at in this journey that is you're life, and reflect. So that you do not go about you're time unconscious. So that you do not live a life unaware of the potential you may have missed out on.
Things take time. Remember that.
blackness vs queerness
There are some stark differences between the two however there are far too many similarities that I’d like to take the time to address and I find the exploration insightful. These themes are perfectionism, self-destruction, and the reproduction of inequality. One difference to highlight is the disparity in progress between the two communities. We can begin with the self-destructive nature that both communities have unfortunately adopted.
The black community has a well-documented history of self-destruction in the form of violence, against men, women, children, businesses, and very ideals of one another. From black boys being subject to violence for centuries, due in part to how black people were taught to raise one another, perpetuated to how they relate to one another. The violence, taking their much-justified rage for their situation out on people that are nearby, which more often than not are black people, leads to this cesspool of hatred. The lack of social cohesion among black people, the common occurrence that a black person is much more likely to trust someone that doesn't look like them prior to trusting someone that looks exactly like them. While in personal experience, the prevalence and history of gang culture in certain areas, myself hailing from Long Beach California, almost contextualizes the lack of social cohesion and self-destructive nature of black folks in a way that makes sense. For people that cannot move, ideas such as fear, respect, protection, and outside perception are of the utmost importance to your very livelihood, thus making the cyclical violence almost understood. (Ex: someone hurt my brother that wears red, I'm going to hurt people that wear red. Someone from red got hurt by the person that was retaliating for the hurting of one's brother. Then they get back at the person or his friends for… see where I am going?) But once exposed to areas that are a bit stripped of that gang culture, yet violence persists [Baltimore], was what solidified the idea of the self-destructive nature of black people. Taking pop culture into consideration, rappers are often the individuals within the black community given status, power, and who folks within the black community want to be. However, it does not take long to see how often black rappers are targeted, robbed, and killed for occupying this position by other black people that would have no chance to occupy that position themselves. Thus this hatred for one another is in part created by institutions that seek to continually marginalize and financially cripple the community, however black people ensure that the cycle will continue even when outside of those financial situations. Regardless of you're vocation, your accomplishment, your contributions to society or the culture, you are not free from the potential violence you face from the folks that look exactly like you when your skin is black.
This self-destructive nature is also seen within queer communities. (While saying the queer communities my greatest reference point is the cis male homosexual community, however, I am also aware that much of these points apply to various sects within the queer community which is why the broad term is being used). Due to many queer persons being ostracized, traumatized, and violated in some way during their adolescent development, many of which do not seek therapeutic assistance to assuage their pain, this is perpetuated in relations amongst other people. I have been in West Hollywood [WeHo] many a night and seen individuals mean-mug other queer people, seemingly just over the fact that they are there. Be that due to them being intimidated, spiteful, personal politics or any other reason, the animosity and anger present amongst many queer spaces is an interesting parallel when black people congregate.
The self-destructive and perfectionist ideals do somewhat go hand in hand. For both black and queer people, there is an expectation of perfection. Black people have to be high achieving, emotionally regulated, and exemplary in every form for others within the community to even look their way or provide any sort of acknowledgment. In comparison, mediocre white men get the praise and adoration exceptional black men to struggle to receive. Just thinking of the black men that are often spoken about in history books (written predominantly by white people), these are exceptional individuals, and cultural icons, however, a just meh white person can be on the same page. Much of the same is true for queer people. To justify their simple existence in spaces they have to be the best, the brightest, and the most deserved praise to receive any. From familial relations to job acceptance, there is the expectation of excellence that is not present for other groups of people. Chris Rock said “In my neighborhood, there are four black people, hundreds of houses, four black people. Who are these black people, well there's me, Mary J Blidge, Jay Z, and Eddie Murphy? Only black people in the whole neighborhood… Do you know what the white man next store to me does for a living? He’s a fucking dentist”. This idea that you have to work twice as hard and be one of the best to ever exist, just to be next to someone not nearly as accomplished within their field and receive the same treatment is a well known inequality within the black community. Yet this is also true for queer people, working so hard to get the validation of their brothers and sisters from family, when they are working harder, achieving more, making more, doing more than their counterparts ever may just for a nod.
Yet there is a stark difference between the black community and queer community, progress. Within the same time frame, the queer community has seen a fast track to progress, to somewhat humane treatment and fought in the face of stigma to receive life-saving treatment that has led to the revitalization and proliferation of a generation of queers that have the privilege to live which their predecessors, unfortunately, did not. And within that same period, black populations have seen a hard stomp into the ground to signify the lack of progress. The only observable difference between the two communities is that white people make up the queer community. That is the ONLY difference between the trajectories of these two communities in terms of the progress made. White people occupying this marginalized group and becoming the faces for it when they were not the ones that put their lives on the line when they were not the ones that received the pain and pushback from society but enjoying all the privileges that their white skin provides is the sole reason white the gay community has seen progress. If the gay community was made up of the black and brown people that started the community, their existence would be erased into obscurity as it was for centuries beforehand. The gay best friends in movie shows, the ones that are in commercials, are all white. While just now we are seeing an inclusivity movement to force 1 person of difference to occupy the gay role for every 5 or six times a white queer person occupies the role, the case is still very much true. Black queerness, besides the blockbuster that was Moonlight, nope. Middle eastern queerness, nope. Asian, nope. Mexican, nope.
Black people are going through the same things there were in the 50s and 60s. The same violence, the same setbacks, the same conversations with children, the same. A book such as To Kill A Mockingbird, which was published in 1960, is still being read to children today. The same social commentary made 20, 30, and 40 years prior are the exact same issues plaguing black people right now. So there has absolutely been a halt. While there are superficial changes, there are now acknowledgments and plaques, and while there are symbolic laws put in place, the consensus state of black people has been the same for decades.
For queer people, while there are certainly many issues that are still plaguing the community and they are by no means free of violence and bigotry, there has been a drastic change. In the aids crisis, with inventions such as PReP and PeP, queer people can significantly reduce the chance of getting HIV and subsequent AIDS, and even for those that contract HIV, there is ART which can reduce one viral load down to a point where it is undetectable and untransmittable allowing folks to lead a pretty normal life, aside from the stigma regarding HIV within the community.
However, these same conversations are not had with black people, with black women being most likely to get HIV and black men being disproportiantely affected by the HIV epidemic. Although sexual wellness and prevention is a point of importance and emphasis for queer populations, still black people are managed to be marginalized. For cis het populations, there is little to no conversation about these things other than putting the onus of responsibility often times on women to prevent pregnancy. This lack of accountablility and the withholding of information is yet another crippling of the community at large.
Colorism is an issue that plagues the black community at large and those within the queer community are not free of it's ills either. Colorism is seen within black relationships, conceptualization of sexual self labels as well as stereotypes perpetuated against black people. Colorism provides those of lighter complexions the freedom to exist as they please, unconfined by the boxes that we put Black people and more specifically more heavily melanated black people into. Racism and subsequent colorism manifest themselves within queer communities a plenty. In a space where masculinity is overperformed to denote some form of separation between men, black men are held to a different standard where their masculinity is expected to be heightened and above all others. The hypermasculinity that black man are held to is almost a prerequisite among queer spaces. These damaging social expectations in tandem with the stereotypes that accompany black men; such as being hypersexual, physically aggressive, hypermasculine, having massive dicks and an assumed sexual proficiency. These correspond with racial fetishes that men of other ethnicities impose upon black men such as the idea that they are “thugs”. It wouldn't take the asking of too many black queer men on dating apps if they've been asked if they have a “bbc '' or have received other harmful and damaging assumptions about them simply due to their blackness. Furthermore, black men and more specifically dark skin black men are more heavily associated with being members of the DL community. The DL community already has connotations of secrecy, sexual promiscuity as well as sexually irresponsible behavior. All these preconceptions of blackness lead to a lack of acceptance of black difference. Black queerness, femininity, and gender fluid expression being met with resistance with mainstream society but also met with resistance from members within the queer ranks.
Yet, both communities have interesting ways of perpetuating the inequalities they face. For black people, their homophobia is rampant still. In part due to their religious indoctrination by Christian zealots to provide some form of legitimacy towards their literal enslavement and perpetually being a rung below their white counterparts. Yet there is also the idea that the queer community would lead to the feminization of man, leading to the erasure of traditional gender roles. Yet I would argue that the feminization of man, while something that is certainly not the queers' fault, is not a bad thing for the black community at large to adopt. Black people exist in a toxic masculine space. They exist in a hyper-masculine space. This hyper-masculinity is a thing that can never be achieved, why because it is not real for human beings, it is an idea that is above humanity that unfortunately, black people aspire to. Thus this lack of emotion and emotional intelligence, overt aggression, and financial and physical domination are not aspects of masculinity that necessarily do our culture any benefit by keeping. We have had a hypermasculine space and that has led to the men that perpetuate that being either dead, in jail, on the way to jail, or just getting out of jail as broken men, crippled by a system that will handicap them for many years after being physically incarcerated. To the black men that scream, queer people are destroying the children, no you are destroying your children by not allowing them to be themselves, through these rigid rules of who they must be and what they must do to be valid within the family and overarching communal eyes. The need to hold onto these ideals of what a “real man” and what a “real woman” are, were created by white people to serve white communities during a time when whiteness ran supreme, these ideals are not transferable to black situations. Patriarchy has done a number on our black people. And until the straight black community acknowledges that their homophobia as well as their ideals on what they want to aspire to are heavily inspired by white people, they will continue to exist in a cycle, confining themselves to a proverbial iron maiden.
The queer community also perpetuates inequality towards black people. The fetishization of black people is a phenomenon that I have experienced personally. During the black lives matter movement, it didn't take too long to look into a crowd to find a sign that went along the lines of “don't kill black people, who are gonna fuck me now” rhetoric splayed. Black people being reduced to stereotypes, misconceptions and their humanity denied by a community that knows all too well about marginalization is quite disappointing to experience personally. While I have received somewhat decent treatment, that is due to my being conventionally attractive to these individuals to overpower the fact that my skin is black. But let me be less so, and the treatment would be as blatant as ever (might delete, unnecessary). White communities continue to dominate the queer space, in part due to them being the ones with the economic capital to create these spaces and maintain them, thus the exclusionary nature of being queer is only magnified once blackness is thrown into the mix. To be gay and queer means to be relegated to a small sector of queerness and have much of the rest denied to you, when it was on you're back that the very community was built.
Furthermore, the current societal spotlight on queer people and what as well as what is not socially acceptable about them is a big topic of conversation. White queers having the voice to cancel black people for seeming slights when the point was not queerness but black marginalization is why the occupancy of white people within the queer community and being at the fore of such is so detrimental. With a case such as Dave Chappelle’s, while I do not by any means condone transphobic comments or the like, his point was not to call people faggots, but to highlight that he was not a nigger. Yet the calling of himself a nigger yet outrage at the use of the word faggot is the exact point that white people, regardless of whatever other marginalized group they occupy can prove still very much damaging to already marginalized communities.
While queerness is being more societally accepted (begrudgingly so), blackness has seen a stagnation so egregious that it is almost overlooked. It is how things have been. That is how things will remain. Black people and queer people can have the same marches. But queer people will surface from those marches bruised but with rights because white people occupy queer ranks. Black people will only surface from those marches with bruises and no progress to show for it.
This intersection of hypermasculinity with queer energy leads to volatile reprecussions, as can be seen with what happened to the now late O'Shae Sibley. Black men, of all walks of life are presentd with a conflict that is hard to not only define but to address due to its innate nature once one comes to understand that they are black and what that means not only personally but within the larger picture that is America. This inability to represent key aspects of humanity in order to maintain the facade hypermasculinity has created has done immense damage to the black community. This is represented in not just the lives lost but the lives unable to be lived in a true and authentic way.
This internal conflict, this resistance to anything feminine is so palpable. Because masculinity and femininity are both essential aspects of the human experience. And by burying one side of experience, it leads to this friction. This want and need to be seen as a human and not torn down for experiencing life like everyone else. So many accounts of black men describing how they procss pain and grief is alone, keeping a poker fac towards the entirety of the world yet break down once alone, as if that is how things are supposed to be. Yet this pent up emotion manifests in incredible insecurity.
This wretch against the feminine shows truly that in this hypermasculine space, there is no room made for it. All things feminine are looked down upon. Thus eliciting the ire that many a gay man receive, due to their innate/ percieved proximity to the feminine. Their struggle against the box they confine themsevles in manifests in the violence that is oten suffered by those that embody feminine energy, be that spouses, partners or the random bystander. The same energy that leads to a trans woman suffering violence is the same vein that lead to this tradgedy and along the same vein that woman of all kinds have and will suffer in the future.
While these occurences are dissapointing, by no means are they surprising. The self destructive environment that black people as a whole exist in is bound to cosume its members one by one until nothing is left. This cancerous tumor that grows within the black body comes to erode all attempt at social cohesion or progress if left unattended. While I cannot hope that there is no solution, I have no idea of one, other than nuturing the next generation of black children. So they do not inflict pain on one another the way that every single generation previously has.
Its so fascinating how binary individuals in drastically different communities exist in. The man to woman binary in the hetero world and the man to man, woman to woman binary in queer worlds is easily understood as well. Yet at the prospect of bisexuality there is a wrench thrown in things. There is immediate resistance and revulsion from both sides.
From queer circles theres the look amongst friends and the eye roll of annoyance, with the common notion that bisexuality is a way point for individuals on their queer journey not yet completely coming to terms with their sexuality in totality so they say bisexual to soften the blow, to themselves as well as family and friends. The closer one is to straight, the better in their eyes. Thus the exasperation from queers, having seen the straight to bi to totally homo has been seen for years and will be seen for many more, and the sentiment doesnt necessarily come from annoyance as much as it does from how repetitive things become.
From straight circles, there is a simple binary. Its either youre straight or gay. I have had many a young woman quote their bald headed father say “aint no such thing a bi, either he straight or gay but aint no in between”, thus leading to the wave of women, particularly in the black community that shudder at the thought of having a bisexual man for a partner. The disgust of men being together, and automatically categorizing him as effeminate for that act, on top of the notion that bisexuality is synonymous with infidelity cooks up a gumbo of trouble.
Thus interestingly enough from both sides, there is two parties shouting “youre crazy”. Now to the point of both parties, starting with the queers it is true that many individuals go from straight to bi to homo and thats their way of rationalizing things and taking baby steps. From the straight community, (I personally) would say it is true that queerness isnt retractable and to be straight and queer is oxymoronic, they cannot coexist, its either one or the other in certain senses.
Yet to refute both parties, for the individuals who the bi label seemingly sticks to, for months or years, after the grace period of them seemingly transitioning to being fully homo should have occurred is up, i do not understand what the trouble is.
Its so fascinating to see the insecurity it breeds amongst both parties. Women dating bisexual men often feel like they dont have the “tools” to keep their partner satisfied in the long run. And if that man has experienced men in the past, there is the disgust of them being with another man. For men dating bisexual women (which has become much more socially acceptable in recent years in part due to the way women are sexualized and the WLW isn't totally accepted and as seen as an extension of a heteronormative fantasy), the man doesn't really respect the woman’s bisexuality. The sentiment is that the woman never found the “right” guy and that's what the “experimentation” with women is a product of.
While it is understood that some use their proximity to heteronormativity to benefit in queer spaces, (problematic topic for another day). But the majority do not and it is their reality. Respecting that just as one respects everyone else I think is beneficial in general.
Perhaps the dismissal of identity is just the cause of my writing. It does irk me a tad thus i took this opportunity to simply vent.
Good day
“Choosing ‘THAT’ lifestyle” is something i hear on a pretty consistent basis. Whatever letter of the alphabet community the individual may encompass, it is often sentiment that these members chose this life. They chose this existence. They chose to be so utterly different from the norm.
Tangentially, I think it is so interesting how pop culture is shifting into queer aesthetics. From music, to lingo, to photography and the very culture. This dabbling into and skimming the surface for what they perceive queerness to be, making it a reductive bare bones attempt is just so lazy, but i digress.
To anyone that thinks the alphabet members chose this life, just ask yourself one question, “would you choose to suffer?” What individual do you know that would choose suffering, just cause? Most conscious individuals understand the predicament that queer people face, even during a transformative period that is the accepting sentiment of today.
The violence and vitriol that members are subject to simply for existing, I don’t think anyone would choose. The constant cognitive dissonance as a result of much of mainstream society attempting to convince you that you are crazy, is even more alarming. The possibility of losing family, friends, and entire social networks due to your identity is not a route i think people would willfully choose either.
It is no coincidence that so many members of the queer community have mental health conditions. Their conditions are not indicative of them being impacted individuals to begin with, but is more so a testament to the compounding factors of pain that these individuals must experience on a daily basis. This suffering is not a choice.
While i have the privilege of being ignorant of the constant self monitoring or judgment when existing in the “real world”, so many of my counterparts do not. They have to monitor every word, how they say things, how they carry themselves and their very thoughts. This balance on the ladder is a dangerous and draining activity that so many have no choice but to embark on every day.
So once again i must ask the question again, “who would choose suffering?”
For a masculine, heteronormative presenting individual that can blend into everyday society without a misstep, there is little to no clash.
But for the more effeminate, for the gender queer, those that want to express themselves through dress differently than norm, trans individuals, all these persons do not have that luxury. The very act of stepping outside on a daily basis is a battle, a constant cognitive clash and a subsequent win to make it home. I am highly doubtful that any would choose that conflict, when life’s ills in general are enough to deal with.
The act of repressing who you are, can be not only psychologically damaging but lead to physiological symptoms as well. This “choice” is an act of self preservation. To just be able to withstand daily life. To be able to comfortably exist within ones own head.
Thus the limp wrists, the eyelashes and makeup, the binders, the different pronouns, the different kind of voices, the pills, the transitions, the same gender partners, the utterly different way of life. None of these acts are choices. They are necessities to continue living.
I will leave you with this example, Jane Elliot (wonderful woman) once asked a question to an auditorium full of white students in which she posed
“I want every white person in this room, who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats their black citizens… please stand. If you white folks in this society want to be treated the way blacks are… please stand”
As you can guess, no one stood. Everyone knows what is going on. They know that this treatment isn’t wanted for themselves. The exact same example can be done with a room full of heterosexuals. Everyone understand that it is still preferential to be straight. Society works if you’re straight. TV, music, traditions, mannerisms, the entire world appeases heterosexuality. Thus I don’t think it is a leap to assume that those that go, against the world are not doing so just to be obtuse but as a matter of necessity.
I live a boring and routinized life as an act of self preservation.
My family has always struggled with depression. It is hereditary, almost a familial heirloom of sorts. It is something that I had always been extensively warned about and cautioned towards, in terms of my own emotions as I matured, given the average age of depression onsets. So when I began to exhibit signs of depression, from during my time in high school to being away in college, it was all taken in stride because most members of my immediate family deal with the psychological pain of depression as well.
What I was not privy to, was that my family didn’t have simply hereditary depression but more intensely bipolar disorder. Now because of how bipolar disorder is commonly understood by society, the tell tale volatile emotionality was never so much so that I could put things together for myself. It wasn’t until taking a class about psychological disorders (in which they explicitly tell you NOT to self diagnose) where i realized that all these symptoms I exhibit myself. And once confronting family members about my condition, they quickly and unemotively confirmed it to be true not just of myself but of multiple members of my family.
While psychological disorders each have their own struggles to overcome and constantly battle, the unique issue with bipolar disorder is the rollercoaster ride that it can be. The tandem of mania along with the subsequent debilitating depression is an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
The problem with mania is that, even for someone that considers themselves to be a pseudo intellectual, i could not see past my condition. I believed at times I was the Buddha, or messiah-like figure here to save the world. These grandiose conditions, the being able to stay up days on end without being tired and the rest of the DSM criteria to qualify I probably hit one time or another.
So, now i live a rather boring life. To maintain a homeostasis that allows me to circumvent that condition . Now granted, I am grateful that my bipolarism doesn’t manifest as intensely as other people’s, and I am also educated on the matter to be able to take the correct measures in place to be able to work myself off the proverbial ledge before a manic episode begins, which most individuals with more extreme presentations of the condition can’t do. But from my refrain of drinking and smoking to having early bedtimes, I often times sit and think that I am already living like a middle aged man, yet I would rather that, then the volatile and self destructive loop that bipolar episodes can put one on.
The tragedy of many psychological disorders is how invisible they are. If I knew nothing about my family I wouldn’t know about their condition. And if you knew nothing about me, you wouldn’t know mine either. Many individuals that live with psychological disorders are high functioning, operating in the world and you would never know.
All that to say, that many individuals are fighting very silent battles. Kindness and grace, in navigation of relationships is what i have found to be the most beneficial way to move.
Happy Monday.
It has been so fascinating to witness the reproduction of misogyny in queer spaces. For ideals indelibly linked with femininity and freedom of expression, seeing how in many sectors of the queer community these freedoms have rolled back has been quite alarming. As queer visibility continues to increase, the diaspora of queerness (at least here in America) becomes apparent. It is becoming clear to mainstream society that queerness is not a monolith, with individuals from all walks of life and all different types of expressions. Yet sadly, within many of these spaces there is the same disdain for the feminine that has been ingrained in all of us through mainstream society.
Perhaps part of me shouldn't be surprised that those marginalized, continue to marginalize themselves and categorize themselves in some hierarchy of importance even at the bottom of the food chain, yet I am disappointed nonetheless.
Many come into queer spaces, feeling suffocated and out of touch, unable to express themselves as they truly feel inside. The introduction and ingratiation within these queer spaces allows them to express themselves as they truly are, with the love and support of many by their side. For example, men dabbling into many feminine concepts or the transition of many a queer person from their gender ascribed at birth to something different and more inline with their self concept.
With this context you would assume that the feminine is held as paramount and interestingly enough, in many regards it is. From the transition of many individuals it has been revealed to me how sacred femininity is to so many individuals and the immense sense of power that comes with that. I have watched people bloom from shy and insecure people to confident individuals whose presence dominates a room through their embracing of their feminine side.
Yet interestingly enough there is this tangential undertone of misogyny that accompanies all of this. It can most easily be seen by some queer men’s treatment of trans women and non-binary individuals. For individuals at large that are maligned and ostracized by mainstream society, it makes sense for all the alphabet members to treat each other like family, bonded by pain. Yet trans women and non-binary people are consistently treated as the bottom of the barrel even within queer spaces. Many a queer man still refuse to acknowledge trans women as women, call them the proper pronouns and disparage them in identical ways to their cis-het counterparts. Genderqueer individuals are treated as though they are sick and doing too much, with a massive hooplah given about pronouns and the application of them. This boils down even further towards queer men tearing each other down for femininity.
The hatred that many a queer man receives is not necessarily because of their bedroom activities but because it represents an “other”, something foreign, something feminine. This association of queerness to femininity brings the ire. The gay son thot daughter question, while becoming a cultural play is relevant due to how the two are viewed. A gay son is seen as equivalent to a daughter, due to the feminine aspects associated with queerness and that “violation” of gender stereotypes is what causes the judgment and often rage.
Masculine queer men do not receive the malice from society the way more effeminate queers do. The frank oceans of the world, that balance a perfect level of vulnerability and femininity within their art but reflect in mannerism and cadence almost identical to a straight man makes it palpable or individuals across the spectrum to enjoy their work. Even an individual such as Jacob Elordi, that even hint towards male crushes and queer coded roles, are lusted after due to their abundance of masculinity.
Masculine queer men are seen to be at the top of the proverbial totem pole within many a queer space, replicating the cis-het social norms that queer people of abundance tried to escape from. The hatred I have witnessed queer individuals receive for changing pronouns, wearing makeup, heels, skirts or anything more effeminate from members of their own community has been jaw dropping.
It is so disappointing that marginalized people have been so successfully indoctrinated that they continue their subjugation on their own. Instead of stepping out of the box entirely, they take the leap of faith out of the proverbial box, only to place themselves into their self imposed ones. So often queer men want an individual and to be surrounded by those that are “normal”, that normal word a substitute for the closest thing they could get to hetero individuals, that they forget that normality goes out the window once they join said community.
These ideals of “being a man’ and wanting to maintain a masculinity that was reflected and celebrated in their childhood lead to such turmoil. Now as said in previous, writings there is nothing wrong with preference. But as is a point made by black omen when black men often describe their reasoning for not dating black women, instead of just saying their preference they take any opportunity to disparage the other, in this case the other being queer people that act anything outside of the toxic masculine ideal.
The psychological pain that must come from individuals wanting to still fit within a box that was never meant for them must be intense. Yet the projection of this pain onto already vulnerable populations within the queer community is reductive and plain harmful.
It can be seen with many a young queer in relationships as they grow and explore themselves more, one may lean into an aspect of queerness such as more feminine tropes or gender queerness such as having different pronouns from those in line with gender ascribed at birth, leading to dissonance and eventual separation.
As queer visibility increases, I hear many a black man say that "theyre trying to destroy masculinity" and they want to bring back ages when "men were men". Yet the societal transition doesnt emmasculate men, it humanizes them. To be a "traditional man" is to lack emotion and personality. The traditional man is a cog in a wheel; replaceable; forgettable.
The hypermasculine space that these older generations of black men that exist in, which provided them no space to feel, no space to express themselves, no space to do anything but go to work and provide is not the epitome of humanity that they think their experience was due to it being all they were taught and allowed. By allowing subsequent generations the freedoms that they did not have the liberty to experience, it leads to only a greater quality of life for all those involved. For heterosexual couples, there is always a clear cut and rigid definition of roles to follow and ways to act, yet these ways of being often left both parties feeling unfulfilled and resentful of one another. It is once the men were allowed to feel that their female spouses were able to become more emotionally fulfilled and vice versa.
With individuals like Ryan Reynolds being the epitome of balance of the heterosexual masculine and feminine, this individual is whom men feel most comfortable expressing as their man crush. While this is not me casting aspersions upon the man, this simple open and confident display of humanity which encompasses masculine and feminine should not be such a spectacle.
By being close minded to change and versatility, it leads to stagnation and oppression. It should be the priority of queers to ensure that all within their alphabet umbrella feel welcomed because they personally understand what it feels like not to be. The world is already against all that is different, and that different is embodied by the feminine. Those that chose to embrace that aspect of self should not be maligned but instead celebrated for existing as their authentic selves. I do not know what can be said to highlight the humanity of the individuals that queers try to make seem as less worthy but this essay is my haphazard attempt to begin the conversation.
Even romantically, feminine men while certainly enjoyed by a specific demographic often face ire from queers at large. POC, Black, feminine men in specific are often put down or treated as wrong because of the masculinization of black people in general. Thus black trans women are given the rawest end of the stick in that way, forcing them to be hyperfeminine to even begin to acknowledge their identity.
These feminine entities are alsoheld to drastically higher standards than their more masculine counterparts as well. The feminine queers be them gay men, feminine lesbians or trans women are all held to be soft, smell delicate and dainty with suerlative hygiene while their more masculine counterparts are accepted if smelling sour, with rough features and lack of maintenance just accepted and even celebrated to some extent.
Even within the community it is so fascinating to see the lack of feminine love. The feminine queers rarely being seen in relationships with other feminine presenting men. This same anomoly can be seen within lesbian relationships with fem/fem wlw relationships being rare.
It is only with non-binary entities that i have seen there being some grace with how individuals express their femininity, yet even then there is a policing as to how individuals should be non-binary with some demanding a combination of masculine and feminine to even be deemed a "valid" non-binary individual.
The way femininity is policed and at the same time despised even within queer spaces that are supposed to be safe havens for such topics is alarming and dissapointing. Acknowledging the issue is the first step for individuals to go in the right direction. The next is calling out the issues when you see them take place in real time. I hope to discuss more and provide further solution as they come to me.
Whenever the issue of fetishization is brought up, peoples mind immediately go to the wildest of kinks. However, the fetishization of brown people, Black bodies in specific (particularly due to my ignorance of the ways other brown populations have been maligned), has been a prevalent concept for centuries.
My revelation to the concept has completely changed how i viewed intimacy within black interracial relationships and no matter how much i try to look at things with rose colored classes, I cannot. It is particularly troublesome given my background of not only growing up in a ethnically and culturally diverse city like Long Beach but also growing up in a black and Mexican household in which i naively thought love was simply love. I wouldnt exist if it werent for my grandmother breaking the law at the time, marrying & having children with a black man as a hispanic woman. Interracial marriage was overturned in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, meaning that my mother was born a bi-racial crime. However, these innocent ideals were quickly dispelled given my interactions and experiences in the real world. The love is not and pure and reality is quite bleak, thus making those rose colored glasses quite grey.
I became aware of the term “jungle fever” in high school, when discussing white women and black men. Given many a young white girls preoccupation with black boys of a certain lifestyle and absolute refusal to entertain anyone outside of that, it opened my eyes to the tip of the iceberg. There was this visceral, palpable lust that these young girls exhibited toward these young boys. Unfortunately these young black boys were already caught up in the hypermasculine entrapment imposed by society, thus they did not care how they were being perceived simply as a piece of meat and saw it as an opportunity to get pussy. This conquering of women, and beginning of a harmful relationship with intimacy as well as their self concept was furthered along. This “jungle fever” proved to be just that as these young girls and their unbridled lust for these black boys faded away and what was left was reality for them. These young girls grew up and moved on to their white boyfriends and subsequent husbands, to further achieve their American dream. Thus proving that black boys were a moment, a fling, a dark whirlwind of desire and nothing more, soon forgotten in the lifespan.
However, many still would label this simply as lust that could be chalked up to teenage hormones running rampant. However, when diving a bit further it becomes clear. Rarely the male counterpart (in heterosexual cases) ever desire black women's bodies in the same way that others desire black male bodies. And if there is the desire, it is raunchy, reductive and dehumanizing in the same way. But often times we do not see White, Asian, Latinx men with black women but we often see white, asian, latinx women with black men. These same patterns are replicated in queer spaces as well. When black queers express how problematic individuals of other ethnicities can be towards black men, often times they are discounted as bitter and lonely. When black women express how women of other ethnicities are not loving these men but fetishizing them, they are told to be quiet and that their opinions are result of misery. These observations often coming truthfully from a place of honest care and wanting to protect their kin, but due to the force that is hypermasculinity, it often blinds men of the truth and deafens their ears to reason.
Hypermasculinity leads always to insecurity due to being unable to attain the masculinity ascribed thus it creates an unhealthy concoction of misogyny and uncertainty. By not respecting women enough, they do not take their views as disrespect and thus the fetishization is not a serious issue.
“_______ men/women belong with black men” insert any non black group of people you choose and it has been said. When asking individuals why they prefer black men, it is only then that they begin to stumble and fall on their own reasoning. Everything from “how they treat me” to “more confidence” and any other arbitrary reason is made yet all these reasons simply imply that black men are a monolith and should be treated and held to such expectations. These questions and conversations often devolve into such discomfort for the non black person that they shut down.
It's not necessary that these attractions are harmful with intent. And I am also not saying that individuals cannot be very much in love and care for these black bodies, but by refusing to acknowledge their humanity, there is an aspect to love and care that will never be broached and thus an ultimate disservice will continuously be done to these black bodies until these non black people are made aware and avidly work towards humanity. Often times, when black women are in relationships with non black men, these non black men worship these women. There is a clear relationship based on respect and almost consistently a level of deference from the males part. The same cannot be said for non black women and non black queer men. (I say non black because even other POC groups exhibit racism towards black men unabashed. Any group you think would have comradery with black plight simultaneously fetishizes them in the same ways white people fetishize the POC groups if not worse. )
This fetishization is product of racism ultimately. The reduction of ones humanity, allowing these entities to be reduced to their sexual components is what made the assult of these bodies for centuries permissible. If one looks at individuals as like themselves, there is a cognitive dissonance that would arise after committing such heinous actions of these people but if reduced to subhuman, that cognitive dissonance goes away.
This racism spurred on the hypermasculine tropes that lead to such problems within the black community now. Yet these concepts of strength, sexual prowess, lack of emotion, and more are reflected in the way these men are desired. The “thug” trope is pushed so easily. With the adultification of black teenagers, their manhood is pressed upon them. Thus gays and women alike congregate in masses towards the strong black men with their crotches made damp and their heads empty of anything respectful towards these bodies. Heads filled with thoughts they’d seldom echo outside of the confines of bedroom privacy. The fantasies of being roughed up, and slapped around, of black men with their tattoos and muscles coupled with a cartoonishly large member to bring the fantasy around has been had for centuries and will be had for many more. The problem is, many individuals stop at just that… the fantasy. Never paying any attention to the person behind the skin, behind the tropes, behind the violence that is these stereotypes and you're lust.
When i have thought of a solution, I will revisit. But the first step of working through a problem is acknowledging that there is one.
Black History Month is a sad reminder of our stagnation. The beautiful deep black ebony that I visualize black history month bathing at least America in, has never been that. Reduced to kufis and black folks on posters for a few days does not suffice.
It now being 2024, the fanfare around black lives importance has died. The supporting of black businesses has lost its lacquer and we have went back to our normal lives.
The danger of the political correctness and the faux support now is that we have no idea where people really stand. People are being kind and respectful to save face, not because they truly feel like that.
Perhaps my most conscious fault currently is my conception of race. How i see it mediating all my interactions and flowing into the very fabric of our society. I am not at all saying that it doesnt and it isnt, however being consciously aware of that 24/7 is a bit exhausting. This can lead to me looking at innocent interactions with jaded eyes. This can and has lead to an inability to perceive the difference between how I am desired, if for who I am as a human or due to what I represent to suffice the black fetish that is subconsciously implanted within so many of us.
The older I get, I am now able to see in real time the transformation of desire and the peeling back of what it truly was underneath. I see the very individuals that used to drool over black men with an unabashed desire, now move onto their partners of their respective ethnicities, getting serious and settling down. These individuals that could not keep their hands off of black men, “maturing” and settling into their lives.
It served as a perfect illustration that to most of the world, the black body is a trend. It is something to lust after when you are young. The young black individual is the embodiment of what is youthful, cool and trendy. You can see it in pop culture. Yet this signaling and subsequent discarding of us leaves an indelible imprint on our psyche.
From the BBL’s to the lip filler, the spray tanning and hairstyles; it has been made clear that blackness is wanted, yet only for a moment, and only so much. Once society has had their fill, they discard the once coveted thing and return to their baseline.
Personally, experiencing what it is to be fetishized,by a spectrum of ethnicities opened my eyes to how universal it is. Sitting in a car listening to an asian girl describe that “asian girls and black guys belong together” and when she commented how black women called her out for her fetishization, she vehemently denied it, when that is clearly what it was.
It is so concerning when you often cannot see that you are being fetishized until it is too late. Until an offhand comment is made. Until they make the mistake of becoming comfortable and laying their hands bare. It is a disappointing revelation yet one that I have come to expect. From relational intimacy to platonic friendships I have become jaded and race is the first thing I see, with humanity following short after.
It is a shame, being a young boy growing up in Long Beach, California. Long Beach might be one of the most diverse places a young person can grow up. From philipinos, to Samoans, caucasians, mexicans, black people, and the whole gamut across, it was made clear at a very early age that people looked different, and people were different but we were all people.
Yet the older I get the more things seem to regress. The egalitarian ideals we were graced with as children did not extend to the real world sadly. Even in academic spaces, the topic of race was either put blatantly at the fore, or tucked away in the corner. The idea that I only got into schools due to being a black boy and the subsequent full ride i earned simply a diversity case.
I … (tbc)
Existentialism demands i write a letter to myself
People often ask why I started making art, why I started in creative fields. I always give the whimsical answer of “I thought it was cool, and I think artists are cool so I gave it a try” which isn't entirely false but it is certainly not the entire truth. I make art to outlive myself. As I get older the insignificance of a singular life becomes only more apparent. And thankfully these epiphanies only dawn on me when the existentialism of a birthday is around. However, creating art or an entity which never existed prior, and now exist forever more with a creator being yourself is an immortality that is almost intoxicating. Death is on my mind frequently. Not in a majorly depressive sense but the mystery of it, the finality of it and how often uneventful these things are. Our lives, and all we know are condensed into moments and then all of a sudden these moments stop and our world is done.
A prisoner of my own self imposed solitude my refuge has always been my mind and my imagination. Thus transferring the world that maintains my sanity from my head to a canvas isn't such a heavy ask. Yet existing in my fantasy world means I miss out on the “real” world and “real” experiences. Perhaps it is social media which exacerbates my FOMO like none other yet it is not just that.
When i catch myself out and about, i am always observing. I am observing the settings, the sounds but most importantly i am observing people. I find myself living vicariously through them because I am still unable to do it through myself. I always feel as though there will be a magic “moment” that will dawn on me and then I will be changed. I have waited on that moment for maybe a decade now. That moment hasn't come. And I doubt it ever will.
Living in the present moment and appreciating the day is a task often regurgitated in a self help book or a motivational tik tok or instagram story, yet it is so hard to do in practice. How can i truly measure how valuable this day is? How can i even begin to conceptualize the value of this moment?
What is the measure of a good life and a life worth lived? The connections we make? What if there are no connections made or those connections fizzle and die?
I am very much in my head and always have been and for the foreseeable future will be. For an introvert and individual that is a perpetual wallflower and social events, making connections is an extremely tall ask for me. Thus, I fear that as I grow older, my life and my worth will be forgotten. And while we all will be forgotten about three generations from now, I do not wish to be forgotten while my contemporaries proliferate around me.
This year for me has been one of patience, of persistence and belief. It is the running of my race where there is no one beside me, no one that I can see in front and I cannot feel the heat of individuals behind me on my trail. I just have to trust that the pace I am making will lead to the time I want. And along that ride, there will be cameras that I dont see and the cheers from individuals that I may never hear. Cyclical as it may be, its my race and I have to enjoy it.
Maybe i undermine my impact. Maybe the influence and love is overlooked because I don't want to believe it. But the immortality that creating pieces, that weaving a new world could provide is the only respite to calm my ever anxious mind of what it means to fade away.
“When the lights shut off, and its my turn to settle down my main concern, promise that you will sing about me”
Love You A
My introduction to fashion was not just based in freedom of expression and creativity but based in necessity, survival and fear.
I have long stated my biracial identity but that is only highlighted further in this instance. The individual that raised me, that I refer to as “Mom” is actually my biological grandmother. (Thus that throws off the family tree entirely on my side). But being biracial means that my grandmother was fully Mexican, not an ounce of black in her. And furthermore her introduction to blackness was through her first husband, my grandfather. Thus being born and raised in south Texas, during the 50’s which is a time where interracial marriage was illegal and often times she mentioned that being with a black man was equated to bestiality (“they acted like you were marrying a dog” my mother would remark). This obviously either consciously or subconcisouly affected her perception of black people in their entirety.
I say all that to say, rasingin a little black boy was not only foreign territory for her but with her being conscious of how the world would perceive me, did her best to keep me as far away from the danger that is black existence as possible. She did this in a plethora of ways but one of the most overt ways to humanize me from the immediate conception and label many a young black boy is slapped with is being “presentable”. The thick mess that was my Afro was countered with always meticulously planned outfits. From some of my earliest pictures in our scrapbooks, I was always fitted. And throughout the years within the scrapbooks, I would remain clean, sharp and pressed. My jeans would be starched. You could tell that the T shirts I wore had been sharply folded. And the shoes I always wore were tough and rugged, built to withstand the wear and tear that adolescent boys inflict on their shoes. And one rule that she ALWAYS maintained throughout my adolescence was I was NOT allowed to wear white. I always got it dirty. And that right there is the crux. She always went above and beyond planning out my fits so that I was not perceived as a dirty black boy. As a little boy that was unkempt, and thus assuredly incapable or unworthy to occupy the spaces that I had aspirations and the aspirations my family made me feel nothing but capable of accomplishing.
Throughout elementary school, from the earliest I can remember, I would always wake up early in the morning to my pants ironed crisp and a shirt that was equally as sharp. This was just convention that I unthinkingly went with because when you’re a child you blindly follow all your parents tell you to do. But when I went to about 3rd grade is when I really started to get the inkling that my mother was putting in a lot of effort into my appearance. While my mother never went deep into what she meant by saying “It’s important to look presentable.” It was clear that she meant every word by consistent effort she put into my appearance and clothing.
I think in some way, this undoubtedly contributed towards the self concept that the individual that types before you now holds. It was in third grade that I began to take notice of how other individuals regarded me, not only my peers but also my superiors (teachers, janitors and the like).
(There was a black janitor. That I my mother and I would always run across because I would get picked up late due to me being in the after school program, which is usually the times that they begin to operate. And this black janitor, whose name unfortunately eludes me as of now, would be so crisp. He always wore blindingly white uniforms, with black shoes. And even running across him as he completed his arduous duties he would always remain crisp, as if he was just clocking in. And this man is someone that my mother made a point to highlight. “Look at how clean Mr. (*****) is all the time. There is not even a hair out of place” my mother would drill. I think this emphasis and dichotomy between dirty and clean, not just within the literal profession that he held but as a black man and how he presented himself was incredibly powerful. While I do not recall my mother or myself ever overtly thanking that Janitor for how he impacted me or the positive role model that he unknowingly proved to be, I am forever grateful. Often conceptualized as the dirtiest profession, Mr. (*****) was always the cleanest on campus.)
This necessity to be clean and presentable led to an understandable clash in styles when I grew into my teen years. The sagging, baggy clothes and rebellion against the uniformity that dictated my first 9 years of schooling proved to be at odds with what I was raised on. Yet every free dress day, the principles of matching, proportions and cleanliness instilled by my mother were always evident.
Obviously my style has changed considerably throughout the years but funnily enough, as it currently stands, the way I dress now as well as the pieces I create are very much in line with what I wore as a child. The mixture of formal “preppy” pieces along with the more contemporary baggy clothes is a perfect example of being true to my upbringing.
Young black bodies must overdo their cleanliness. They must overdue their presentation of status and capacity. They must overperform competency simply to circumvent the barricade that is racism in order to be perceived as themselves and not the dirty, monstrous animal that society has convinced everyone that they are.
That is why even with the baggy clothes, there are gold chains and teeth, that cost more alone that individuals entire outfits. The accessories to denote and offset the dumb and dirty implicit assumptions are not egregious black financially illiterate decision making but a financial investment that is necessary.
It takes me a while to process things. By a while, i mean a substantially long amount of time. Thus three years after the fact, i guess i am ready to begin to tell my story.
For as long as I can remember, I have been depressed. Not this doom and gloom cloud over my head, but just a constant existing in a depressed state. I’d compare it to living in a world desaturated of color. The beginning of The Wizard of Oz. It was not something that compromised my state of function, because it is all I have known. However it was not something I consciously acknowledged at the time. In my head I just thought i didn't feel or experience things as deeply as other individuals, I was operating with a numbing filter. Thus the sinking feeling that the depression is known to cause did not raise any alarm bells. I smoked weed, I felt alright and time would pass. For a while, I was just trying to make the time pass. Then of course the pandemic hits and it affects everyone adversely.
But the one area that I was caught completely surprised was my mania. Bipolarism is something that my family was predisposed to. However this topic was one that was tip-toed around. It was something that was known by the adults but something never spoken about thus my circumstance and the emotions and actions arising from such were foreign and caught me completely by surprise. My manic decent was a rapid whirlwind. Back to the Wizard of Oz analogy, not only did i get caught in the tornado but the tornado took me to a foreign place lush with yellow brick roads too bright, little people talking too loud and the fate of the world too much to solitarily bare on my shoulders. Every tell tale sign, extreme variations in emotion, thinking I am the buddha or some black messiah sent from the heavens to save humanity, staying up for days, not needing any sleep, typing out pages, making a plethora of art, doing anything and everything to get the bursting of energy out and to stave off the underlying feeling of anxiety There was a slow ramp up, a gradual increase in speed until before one knew it, the hyperdrive and lightspeed settings had been smashed, leaving me in the drivers seat unable to move, doing my best to hit the emergency STOP button.
As the anxiety ramped up, the internal unease, the sense that there was always someone watching or about to creep up right behind me, so did my experiences. It was almost as if the saturation filter was cranked all the way up on a picture, to the point where it was just cooked, reminiscent of a 2012 instagram photo. The feelings became too much. The lights became too bright. The sounds became too loud. It all became too much. The senses so overwhelming that I could not form a coherent thought.
It was even more maddening because i was operating in alost autopilot, with the sane part of my brain having to just watch through the window as I spiraled downward. The best example is Charlie from the incredible book Flowers for Algernon. He noticed his increasingly deteriorating mental space and did his best to fight it off yet to no avail. I would consider this period to be my fade to black, all the incredibly bright sounds, colors and experiences coalescing to black.
As children we quickly learn to categorize things we experience and only focus our attention on that which is most important so that even with the cacophony of sounds and bombarding all external stimuli, we are able to function. This filter was shut off for me.
Thus i just needed the noise, the sounds, the voices, the everything… to stop.
Black.
And once I hit the black I then received a reprieve. A silence. A solace.
But in the black we cannot remain. This purgatory is not eternal. The world moves on and one must return to the land of the living.
Thus when i returned, still sensitive to all that had previously overwhelmed me, I came upon a creation made during the mania. Something that is so intuitive, so instinctual but something I had never seen before. A sign so universal it could be placed in any time period and the message would be understood. Something to bring folks together. Something to tell others as well as myself to keep going. My mania induced god complex to save the world manifested a very nice gem. And this gem is what I have been able to turn into more.
Disillusioned by success and external rewards I lost sight of what was true and what was real. I lost sight of the pain that connected me to everyone else on this big blue rock and the experience, as unique as it is that turned a simple scribble into a passion.
This is what is known as a rebirth. My return from purgatory, a new genesis.
That is why, the next step, the first step, will be my beginning.
I've been thinking
Relationships. Heteronormative. Queer. They're complicated. However hetero normative ones (between cis man and cis woman) have thrown me for a loop for almost my whole life due to topics i am just now being able to articulate. The predatory nature of the power dynamic between man and woman as well as the relationship between partners is one that I found it worthwhile to delve into today yet much of these hetero normative ways of being are reproduced in queer relationships as well with the sexual self labels and self imposed ways of being.
From the very initiation of the relationship, the dynamic is the man is the hunter and the woman is the hunted. In any setting. The man is the human and the woman is the object of the man’s desire. It is custom that the man initiates the conversation. And many women have joked about their possibly being attracted to a man but only making it known in their head and a man needing to do seeming telepathy to not only pick up on but then act on that knowledge. And while often that joke is made in jest, much of it is the truth. With the domestication of women and our concept of what it means to be feminine, this mediates the precursor to interaction.
( I personally always found the concept a bit strange. Invading a strangers personal space because i found them attractive just seems… off to me )
Thus this fine dance of tug and pull between the hunter and hunted ensues. With the woman and her sex being the object of the man’s desires (at the crux). While during the act of pursuit, because the woman is the one being pursued, she is the one with the power of access able to provide and revoke at any moment. However the very interaction is one of conquering and allowing to be conquered.
Once (if) the final act of the play ensues, the conversation many times is one of disconnect between the man and woman. The man conceptualizes it one way and the woman conceptualizes it an entirely different one. The internal monologues completely different. For many a young man, a great time in bed is when the female partner is incredibly into it thus it eliminates the aspect of him hurting her, the predatory nature of things. If she is into it, it removes the hunter, hunted aspect and during this moment, the individuals are able to experience each other as that. More often, it is assumed that the man “does” sex onto the woman and she is just there to receive it. Her pleasure, her experiences are often times dismissed as a subsidiary of what the man is doing.
Woman rarely if ever are interested in seeing their male partner turned on. It is an assumed prerequisite. The value of a woman is often times reduced to her ability to provide sex and her attractiveness. Thus a man’s attraction to that is rudimentary and expected. And the very act of sex is one in which it is assumed that the male partner is turned on yet we all know that much of the act of sex comes in the mind and not of just the physical body so although there may be a visible physiological response, there is little to no care if the man is “into” it because it is assumed he is. And if he ever has issue, it is internalized by the woman as a shortcoming on her part.
Yet this contributes to the superficial nature of relationships and that in tandem with the paradox of choice (basically describing that the more choices we have, truly the less we have) leads to a crippled generation in healthy relationship building.
It has come to my attention that as our society becomes more liberal and open minded to change, my black populace remains steadfast in their bigotry. The very kindness afforded to my people in order for us to be deemed as human beings with competencies of everyone else is not being applied to other groups and it disappoints me immensely. The bigotry that is indicative of previous generation folk and individuals from a certain section are a large part of our inability to congregate and mobilize now. The fractioning and splintering of our community into who is valid and who isn't, when we do not have the luxuries to engage in those types of ideologies, is exactly what has our children still reading to kill a mockingbird 50 years later. We are stagnant. And the progress of our elder generations is all but a mystery to us.
Whether wearing a suit or dressed in casual wear, m black brethren spewing homophobia, and misogynoir in the guise of traditional living rarely recognize that those are not words of you, a black person, but the echoing of what white people have taught you. It has been years since we were property and we had a master to serve but those mentalities have long persisted.
Do my black people understand that if we play these games with the basis of science or traditional society, what argument do we have against the scientific backing that was once had to compare us to apes, or our position as slaves due to our faculties not being on par to operate on our own. Why some of our people would want to replicate the marginalization that we experience upon others of differing status is beyond me however we will always have uncle toms in our midst. How can we cry that our black lives matter if we turn around and treat people within our midst less than dirt?
Now I am not here to sit up on a high horse and act holier than thou as if I have never done the actions that are so morally reprehensible now. Slavery and the remnants of such institutions have successfully made it so that there are always seeds of distrust sewn into my interactions with minorities I do not know. I am always reserved when individuals are incredibly friendly or inquisitive as if I have any reason to be.
But to be an advocate for progress means it cannot be conditional. We cannot confine our moralities and kindnesses to those whose lifestyles we just agree with within a small box. We are taking a back step with our rigidity to traditional norms as if those norms ever benefited anyone but white men. The diversity of life and complexity of relations is what shows us the true progress and wonders this world has to offer.
The more i explore and the older i get, inevitably the more relationships i engage in. However this influx has resulted in a disappointing and repulsive revelation. My skin, along with the expectations of such are incredibly dehumanizing. And not just in the standard societal sense but in more covert ways as well. In some ways as a black man i benefit from the preconceived notions about myself, being a black man we are stereotyped to be uber aggressive, be incredibly endowed and insatiable in the bedroom, which has the potential to bring many a curious individual to see if the rumors and the whisperings are true. And if this was the case occasionally, with individuals being genuinely curious, that is one thing. But for entire populations of people to reduce you and you're likeness to a cartoonish phallic size and as if you are a mindless sex machine is quite disgusting. This is sentiment that has long been had about black bodies, with black women being given the whore label and black men being ideated as black bulls. While it has traditionally been white people that have subject black bodies to these labels and the originators of these stereotypes, much like many other aspects of society it has spread and been adopted by virtually all racial groups to some extent. Individuals are so fargone that many a time I have ran across an individual saying they “prefer black men” but when asked to expound further, they can provide no explanation apart from their physical qualities and broad generalizations as to why they are so enamored by the group.
Perhaps I am being too sensitive. Perhaps i am thinking way too deep about this and should just go with the flow, allowing myself to engage with individuals that on the surface seemingly highly value my presence. But I cannot bring myself to. Growing up in Long Beach, California; race was one of the last things on my mind. This ease was not due to my ignorance of my own condition but moreso due to this being one of the most diverse and liberal place to grow up, anywhere. I grew up around white people, asian people, mexicans, philipinos, etc. Cultures blended so cohesively there wasnt a second thought and people were looked at, as just that. However, i guess as ideologies cement and stereotypes take hold, even subconsciously, the issues begin to arise.
Black people fetishism extends to many aspects of society, be that sex, music, entertainment or politics. Black individuals have been dehumanized and reduced to basic aspects of self, with those being the traits that warrant the positive sentiment. They love you when you entertain them, when you please them but care nothing for you're plight as a human being. I remember vividly during the BLM marches individuals holding signs saying “where am i going to get dick from now?” and these individuals were being serious.
I think interracial relationships are beautiful. And I am a product of one as are a plethora of members of my family. However I think that we need to being to acknowledge black people as human beings before we label them as anything else and quantify their worth.
Just my quick thoughts.
This month was uneventful in almost every way when concerning black history, black people, blackness to any extent. The performative activism has been nullified and apparently the PR teams of corporations are learning that the act of blatant pandering to earn a few more bucks is instead viewed as insulting instead of endearing, who woulda guessed? It has become blatantly apparent that the support of black people to any capacity is rooted in their misery. It takes blood to be spilled, for their pain to be magnified and almost palpable so that even the most callus individual can begin to fathom the lived experience of what it is to be black for their to be even an iota of effort to advance the black condition. When was the last time we moved for black people… a man was executed on camera.
I have come to the conclusion that we have lost a generation of black progress. Our parents, stifled by a plethora of forces with intention to and eventual achievement of crippling social cohesion amongst black folks as well as removing leaders from the community. At the Guggenheim, a notable art museum in Manhattan, there was this massive painting of a black activist and at that moment i asked myself, “where have our black leaders gone?” There is no contemporary individual that i can think of off the top of my head that signals current movement and change. And the fact that there is no individual occupying that level of opulence is indicative of the predescribed predicament. The likes of Malcom X and James Baldwin are relics of the past yet their words reverberate and are as poignant in this day and age as they were in the past which is horrifying. The purpose is to look into the past to be able to build and grow from it but black stagnation is perhaps the most abhorrent occurrence of the modern day. The acceptance of the lack of progress, with the smoke and mirrors of one black person winning and that win involves them losing all aspects of their culture and jus being of black skin, to serve as a “look! See what can be done if you jus try” is demoralizing to say the least.
With the completion of my last piece, “the human zoo” i explored the concept of afro surrealism in a more intentional way, a term coined by Amiri Baraka. The idea of afro surrealism is artistic works that expand understanding of the black condition and how the absurdity of what it means to be black is unfortunately their everyday lived condition. Often blatant in symbolism to those that understand the meaning and for others, seemingly whimsical and just creative, this realm just clicked. To be black is to be constantly observed. To be black is to exist outside of your personhood. To be black is to have your condition and blatant demise, dismissed in the spirit of inclusivity. With the spaces that I operate in now, I notice that there is less and less of me, and within these spaces there is an expectation of performance. Although I have not nearly struggled as my ancestors in the past, the human zoo, in which black people were once exhibited in which white folks would gawk at and watch behind the enclosure, is not a thing of the past. The proverbial zoo is an enclosure all black folks still exist within.
I don't know if I ever looked forward to the month of February.
While this weekend was lovely being able to just work on art, the affirmative action ruling was stuck in my head and it brings me back to the wider topic of our concept of race in this country. The consistent narrative that affirmative action is racist and discriminatory to other minorities, and individuals should instead use solely place of residence, income, SES, etc to account for the difference in scores is so incredibly offensive and infuriating. No one is here acknowledging that there is something fundamentally different about being black. There is no metric or proxy that can account for the experience once individuals step outside everyday. There is no other group of people that can accurately relate to what it means to be black. This is not oppression olympics on who struggles the most or an attempt to demean or diminish other groups hardships. Native Americans, deemed savages, have been conceptualized in America as the place holders of this land before the Europeans came to take it off their hands and once they did that were forcibly erased from this land and its history books. But with black people there is no erasure, there is constant visibility. The necessity to see and show black people to highlight the power structure. The white man would not exist without the polarity of how they have created the black man to exist in America. The negro has never existed. The creation of this dangerous and savage entity that needs the white power structure to be able to exist in this world of such peace and civility has never existed.
Race does not just affect academic performance. It shifts the very reality that you experience and interact with on a daily basis. To deny that the black experience is not just unique but is indicative of suffering in which you are immediately and permanently placed at the bottom rung of society, deserving of all the bad that comes into your life is atrocious to say the least. The suffering of people from other minority backgrounds is certain and proven, yet the blatant suffering of the black human is just happenstance.
By removing affirmative action and saying that it is unfair, we have equated black suffering to commonplace circumstances. The disproportionate suffering that is black peoples existence in this country is now normalcy that needs not be addressed or acknowledged any further. That is what this ruling is saying.
The regression in morality at large in this country is such a shame. The catalyst being women losing their bodily autonomy, then businesses being able to deny their services to members of the LGBTQ community, it was only a matter of time before we felt the cold touch of regression as well.
And what kicks it off is how our middle class wants to be neutral and see things from both sides. “What about their religious beliefs and infringing on them?” Yet these questions and conversations can only take place if the context was one of neutrality. We have never been neutral in this country. The scale of justice has always been tipped so to acknowledge those already in positions of power as if they are in any way in the same position as those at the bottom is just nonsense.
It is truly a shame that many within my community will not get the same opportunities i got just years prior. It is a shame, that individuals really sat there and said people like me were taking spots from individuals more deserving, as if I was not. And if all that was the case, then I should have never graduated. Much less graduated top of my class. Much less as members of one of the oldest and most prestigious honor societies in the country… right. We have allowed this country and members of it to feel like our circumstance is our fault, then when we occupy positions meant to just begin to rectify centuries of damage, that we do not belong.
I am hurt. Deeply offended. But not surprised. My weekend was good. Just had a lot to think about.
Stepping on the tail of a rainbow
The two most transformative exhibits that I have ever engaged in, the ones that left lasting impressions on my psyche and left me clamoring for the sentiment that being within those walls surrounded by their works elicit. The first is Tristan Eaton’s: All At Once exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art. It was an absolutely awe inspiring experience, one in which it would be more than appropriate to walk from section to section with mouth agape and eyes bulging out of ones head. From the interactive drawing on parts of the exhibit, to the sheer mass of works, to the vibrant colors and the topics covered, I felt so seen and so full.Then the next gallery that I attend to elicit the same awe and mouth agape affect was Takashi Murakami’s exhibit at The Broad in downtown Los Angeles. From the larger than life scale, to the warbly depicted characters and the colors whose vibrancy still are seared into my mind led me to certain realizations of self.
We often exist in a black and white world. And the pho color, excitement, novelty that social media poisons us with leads to the real world becoming ever more dull and unassuming. I very often am caught saying to myself “this is it?” due to how let down I often am by the now.
I saw in these galleries, an escape from monotony, an escape from the binary, an escape from what everyone tells me to be and what I am made to feel.To find novelty in the day and to operate in a space resistant to the monochrome that I have witnessed many lives becoming after a few years is a noble and worthwhile task. This task is what I am engaging upon. This beat down, this constant eroding, the destroying of a mountain thru the constant onslaught that is a stream is unassuming in the moment but monstrous in its effects.My black people have been beaten and pacified to a point of domesticity. The indignancy and anger only seems to be a point that youth are blessed with, and that sentiment is quickly sapped away through the years only leaving a husk of a individual with no more aspiration for change, no more aspiration for a relief from a reality that they have grown so accustomed.
The term afro-surrealism hit me recently, and instead the author wanted to remove the frontend afro moniker to just call it surrealism because precisely for black people the situations and conditions in which they exist are absurd, but it is only aloof until it is not. If everyone else in society is operating a if things are okay, as if there is nothing to make a fuss about, as though civility is the only way to approach the absurdity that is the black reality, then nothing will change. The wonky depictions and vibrant colors of Takashi that seared themselves into my mind only did so because others did not.
So that leads me to the question, what must we do now that is not being done in order to lead to a result that elicits change, that rallies a people so pacified and neutered that individuals taking knees in coofies seem to be sufficient.
To step on the tail of a rainbow, to catch the leprechaun wih the pot of gold is an outlandish task, usually leading to chuckles, but the hopes and aspirations to change the current condition of a people whose misery and misfortune has become so devalued that it takes a murder, recorded from start to the last breath being taken for any action at all to be taken.To even have the opportunity for people to listen to ones plight is the occasional California rainbow, and for any of that information to stick in the mind is the stepping on the rainbow, it is the seeming outlandish task that one can keep trying and trying at even before one can collapse to exhaustion from effort but take solace in the fact that they tried.
I tell myself that my imagination saves me. And my imagination most certainly has. It has proved to be a defense mechanism that has protected me from the most intriguing and excruciating of situations. But my imagination should not have to be my escape from the reality that I am forced to operate within.
Once reality for the marginalized is tolerable, not one that must be augmented or buffed for it to be beared, only then will the chase for the rainbow be in motion. And to step on the rainbow would be for the marginalized’s reality to be welcomed. For the day to be one in which individuals want to confront instead of circumvent.
This black and white world is one tolerable for the few. And perhaps to imbune this world with the color that captured my imagination and i felt so embraced within is able to be projected into the everyday world. Or perhaps it is just February Faith throwing me awry from reality. Only time will tell.
To kick off black history month, aka february, I am quite apprehensive. With each passing day I am noticing my views changing, minutely but changing ever still. I notice how prevalent my skin impacts everything I do. And for a young man raised in one of the most diverse cities I know exist, it is a bit frightening that my perspective has shifted this way. A bi-racial individual raised by the mexican side of his family, at one point i literally saw no difference between myself and my lighter skinned kinfolk. However those days are long passed. From friendships made to potential partners, the way I am perceived or more importantly the way my skin is perceived is at the forefront of my mind.
Maybe it's my sociology classes. Maybe it is the James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni Books. Maybe it's the Kendrick Lamar filled years. Maybe it's being followed around in stores. Maybe it's people assuming my name is Jamal or that I’m from Baltimore or whatever local hood is in proximity of the area I’m in. Maybe it's not feeling anything when people that look exactly like me, people that very well could be me are murdered. Maybe it's learning about all the things they left out in our high school history books. Maybe it's the fact that we are still reading To Kill A Mockingbird. Maybe it's when we talk about slavery or race the onus of responsibility of is mine… Maybe it's just that I realized i’m a nigga.
The apathetic disposition my black brothers have towards their condition is all the proof i need of my current predicament. The fact that I am even sitting here typing this out is what many wouldn't do because many just don't care that much because that’s simply how life is. Still young and not beaten down into submission as is my 40 yr old black counterpart, I care maybe too much about my condition as well as the future condition of those that come after I do. Their shrugs, “it be like that” is a conversation reflected across male black circles across the United States and I’m sure in many parts of the world dominated by the white male hand.
The Black Lives Matter chants stopped a long time ago. The collective rallying towards the black condition I am sure we all saw through. What were seemingly teams of individuals coming to speak against the black plight only proved to be mirages of few individuals putting true risk on the line. The truth is people never cared. The truth is they don't care. When middle class America clamored to read about The New Jim Crow, that was all the evidence I needed to cement my beliefs. Black people have been screaming for help for decades, generations but the public turns a blind eye and plugs up their ears. You witness folks dying on the news, flip the channel and ask what’s for dinner. The heartbreaking fact is that for every black life that is stolen, the societal value of the black life decreases that much further, as if it was ever that high in the first place. For any change to happen on behalf of black folks, they must die. Just think and remember the names, Trayvon Martin… and now Tyre Nichols. Do you remember the names in the middle? Do you recall the same speeches given by the particular anguished family with the misfortune to be chosen that time? No. You don't. Because I don't.
I went to the Guggenheim mid January, and in a gallery filled with white people, art made by white guys and curated by white old men, I saw incredibly heart wrenching black art, but also saw a massive portrait of a black man who was positioned to the left of the canvas leaving the entire right side with blank, paint filled space. And that brought me to ask the question, “where have all our black leaders gone?” I cannot think of one now. For all that happened during the civil rights movement, the comradery that those that lived through it displayed is palpable today. The “wassup sista/brotha” connection of black folks between complete strangers is so strong. That connection is non-existent now. I have never been a Kumbaya ass nigga, so I am realistic about black folks not realistically all coming together now. However the division that black people experience present day is no accident. Just as it was no accident that slaves would fight amongst each other over a 4 x 4 foot plot of land to do with as one of them pleased.
I am beginning to realize that the individuals we looked up to are phasing out and making room for us to be the leaders of the now. I am a bit nervous as to the route that we will take and the pain required for the progress for us to make. But there is no amount of preparation available to make the changes that need be. It's February first.
1/23/23
It is currently 8:45 in the morning (PST), after finishing a morning meditation as well as about a page of thoughts that immediately follow up that meditation. Today’s meditation was about intention and attention. To embody that theme it only feels right to discuss one of the topics which I often avoid. That is the topic of loss. The whimsical tune that rings in one’s head “you don't know what you got till it's gone” is quite menacing in how joyous it sounds yet how dreadful it feels in application. You never do know. I often think of my health. To be blessed to not know of pain waking on a daily basis or to not know of suffering that is many individuals day to day reality. Yet when I am sick, the only thing I want is to feel healthy again. Loss is an aspect of life which none will be free of experiencing. The more vibrant and blooming one’s social life is at one point, inevitably leads to a greater crushing sense of loss in the future. This loss, when it hits never is like in the movies. There is no slow mo, there is no immediate crashing of emotion or a flood of all the memories that one had together.
Loss, at least in my experience, is quiet, it is uneventful. That is what makes it so defeating. Regardless of their importance in your life, it moves on and you are carrying the burden of knowing what once was, of who once was. Loss in my experience is remembering an individual at the most unassumed of times. It is looking at the metaphoric rocking chair which once was occupied by an individual of such life and exuberance yet now lays still and unmoving. And what is stillness if you never knew motion? It just is. The older I get the easier it is to realize how replaceable and finite we are on this earth. Few people know of my losses, and I am totally ignorant to yours yet, these we are burdened to carry through the rest of our lives. Forming new, meaningful and lasting relationships is scary for those who have experienced loss so deeply. The underlying gnawing of panic and fear of them too one day not being there, either passing or simply a part of your life anymore is a scary thing. And to flippantly say, I don't care and whoever is meant to be in my life is going to be in my life is not the healthiest way to navigate things, completely abdicating your sense of responsibility and control in relationships which you take part in.
Maybe I wasn't paying attention in class about the section on grief or loss, or maybe it wasn't covered in undergrad. As is a running theme now there is no resolution, other than to acknowledge the pain and learn to live with it. I cannot imagine the pain of my elderly loved ones and the loss they must have faced. My mother saying that there was a point in my life where my great grandmother almost weekly got her black gown on to attend yet another funeral. Thrust into this life, and while alone we are all alone together and thus relationships form either through blood or bond and in allowing that bond to be deep means subjecting yourself to the eventual excruciating, incessant pain that is their not being there anymore.