"It's just a preference" he replied.
Yet the answer he gave me of "it's just a preference" didn't ease my concern, and in fact, it stayed with me well into my late teens. A preference is something simple (food, favorite color, t.v shows) not actual humans. It is ok to be attracted to something more than another- but to dismiss an entire race is ludicrous .If we used "It's just a preference." for an excuse to discriminate and exhibit racism , we would be set 50 years back.
The circle that I wasn't included in made me hypersensitive to being in gay spaces and digesting gay media. When I looked on T.V, the few gay characters that did appear didn't look like me at all. They all seemed to follow the same uniform: white, fit, and wealthy. The realization that I was not considered beautiful to people simply because the color of my skin was difficult. Being a teenager and being denied experiences such as dating, because I was gay was hard enough, but now I was being denied because I was black? Even out the field of dating I found myself experiencing racism from my gay peers- shattering the image of acceptance I had in my head before I came out. When I tried to explain the problem with racist thinking like this- I often received very hard pushback. I went to a predominately white Catholic school, so racism was no new thing to me, but the fact that it would exist in a community that had people from all walks of life in it, caught me off guard. If I wasn't wanted by the black community for being gay, and not wanted in the gay community for being black...where exactly did I belong?
The reality of this situation is the case for many gay people of color.
Not being wanted was an issue, but when I was wanted it was another. Often time I found I was being fetishized for the color of my skin. To be black meant to fit the expectation of being aggressive and well endowed. To exist outside of anything but that meant that you simply did not exist.
The pressure was on, and when I did something that didn't fit into those boxes I felt less than.
Then there's the misogyny.
In 2015, gay designers Dolce & Gabbana released an ad that resembles a woman being gang raped, to very harsh criticism. It turns out that you do not have to be attracted to women to be sexist. This sort of entitlement to women body is a problem that many gay MEN have, and it needs to be addressed.
Again, I found myself wondering how a community brim packed with people from all walks of life could be so problematic to individuals who did not fit in their gender roles. Particularly men, who possessed more feminine traits. The thought that acting feminine is to be looked down upon, is simply a manifestation of internalized homophobia and misogyny. The message couldn't be more clear: to be anything other than "manly" was no good. To be feminine is beneath man, which then implies that women and their traits that we associate with them are inferior.
To have problems in a community is normal, but we must handle them when they arise, or else we become bystanders to the discrimination around us. Instead of invalidating each other when we speak about problems that effect us, we should take the time to listen.
