Post By: Ry Hormel
I found the article “At Least I’m
not Gay” very frightening yet very relevant. To be gay in the black community is one of the most
forbidden things imaginable. It
goes against culture, religion, and pretty much everything else. This reminds me of a story my friend
told me. He immigrated to America from
Africa. He told me when he first
got to the US. he was watching TV with his friend and his friends dad. On the TV two men kissed and his
buddies dad paused the TV and told them that if they ever had “Gay” thoughts he
would hurt them. This is a perfect
example of the type of pressure and ideals some people have within the black
community. Or even within every
community.
The
part of the article that caught my eye the most was the section titled: Threats
and Violence. This section talked
about kids in school hurting gay people thinking they would sexually harass
them. The source of this thought
seems to usually come from their parents.
What this shows me is that the reason for these thoughts and actions are
a result of lack of knowledge. The
kids that feel this way about gay people are stereotyping and have it completely
wrong. It is hard to read
something like that knowing that it happens. The severity of that example may or may not happen on our
campus, I don’t know. But it tells
me that there needs to be more education in that area to not only the black
youth but every youth.
Ry, I think your comment about the 'Threats and Violence' component of the article was very relevant, for I too was struck by the severity of their homophobia and its consequences. In high school, I was in a play called 'the Laramie Project' that was a theatrical account of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student from Wyoming who was kidnapped and beaten to death simply because he struck up a conversation with a heterosexual man in a bar. The homophobia and hostility exhibited is downright disgusting, but it alludes to the harsher reality that people often resort to violence due to their ignorance. The crimes committed against Matthew Shepard show the cowardly nature of the homophobics.
ReplyDeleteThese kids in the article were extremely violent toward homosexuals and this also concerned me. They constantly were questioning a person's sexuality, and there was even an instance where they all played detective and used biological clues to find out one's natural sex. They did this in an extremely underhanded way, and they did it because there were conflicting "gender markers". The kids also liked to insult people out the window in order to reinforce their heterosexual identity. Then there are the worse stories about the threats. What really interests me is the fact that these boys thought that if someone were gay they would "sexually proposition anyone, even straight friends" (Froyum 617). I think that this is really a dumb thought, because these heterosexual boys probably didn't proposition their heterosexual friends who were women. Clearly, these boys are too worried about their own appearance.
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