An excellent article by my friend and future colleague, Aymar, inspired me (finally) to take on this massive topic--on which, much more to come.
I was impressed with Aymar Christian's measured celebration and critical analysis of the achievement of having a gay black character represented in a flattering light on a black sitcom. This was a recent episode of Are We There Yet? from Ice Cube's production company, a rival to Tyler Perry's.
I was impressed with Aymar Christian's measured celebration and critical analysis of the achievement of having a gay black character represented in a flattering light on a black sitcom. This was a recent episode of Are We There Yet? from Ice Cube's production company, a rival to Tyler Perry's.
Beyond marveling at how he was able to sit through an episode of a trite sitcom (musta been the eye candy, right Aymar?), I was also impressed by the article's drive to point out the downside of supposedly positive representations. After noting the complimentary aspects of the show's gay jock character, he reflected on its limits. Specifically, a gay character who is tall, attractive, muscular, and isolated (i.e., no 'boo' in sight) goes down so smoothly as to call the achievement of his supposedly barrier-breaking appearance on-screen into question. After all, same-sex desire is what causes problems, and this gay jock seems to have none. By virtue of having not done things that seem to be gay, he becomes a gay who is not gay--problem solved, right?
That's certainly one way to achieve social harmony: Mort à la différence! ("Death to difference,"). Once there are no queers; homophobia will have no target (This is a bit like the fairy tale that hopes that "racism will end because one day everyone will be mixed and then we won't know who is not-white anymore." The reality of multiracial people didn't stop slavery in Virginia, New Orleans, or Haiti; it's no cure-all. Ditto for the assimilation solution: if you'd just become us we wouldn't try to remove you from our sight. Oh, that's a mighty generous gesture--embracing the whole world as long as everyone in it admires and emulates you). Unfortunately, these scenarios of permanent peace could only result from a planned genocide--through violent eradication, cultural re-programming, or gene therapy. Choose your poison.
But there's a more stubborn aspect of the fear of difference: antigay violence doesn't need actual gay people in order to exist and do its work. Some gay people don't trigger it; some straight people do. Homophobia is about fear, and fear is often based not on objective conditions but on what one imagines is happening. It's a pre-written script that often has nothing to do with what is actually in front of us. As Deepak Chopra once put it, "everything we are afraid of has already happened."
But there's a more stubborn aspect of the fear of difference: antigay violence doesn't need actual gay people in order to exist and do its work. Some gay people don't trigger it; some straight people do. Homophobia is about fear, and fear is often based not on objective conditions but on what one imagines is happening. It's a pre-written script that often has nothing to do with what is actually in front of us. As Deepak Chopra once put it, "everything we are afraid of has already happened."
