Performing Black Masculinities and Homophobia as Reinforcement

The landscape of my body, like that of my mind is not dictated by my race or my sexual identity delineating one territory from the other, in which a border crossing is negatively constructed as passing. Nor does a social script that may delimit my expressive possibilities also dictate the specific topography of my body. It is a site in which the borders of my identity are only limited by the reach of my desire. When I cross over those borders I pass – not passing as in denial but passing as in extending. I pass- not passing as in faking, but passing as in making myself known. (81 Butler)
Butler depicts that in her world, one can roam freely not as a separate entity from one point to the next, but rather that as a human being she is free to roam back and forth and at the same time between and within her multiple identities. It is a world in which one is not relegated to modes of behavior that run contrary to ones nature. You are who you are and there is not black and white dichotomous system in which people are cast into the dark edges of this or that, but rather are given the opportunity and chance to become whole and complete.
When we examine this ideal way of life that Butler proposed when looking at current cultural stratifications of masculinity within our global systems of patriarchy, we can see how this concept of what it means to be a man is spread throughout the world and can be seen in multiple forms and even more so can impact one another through the transcontinental exchange of culture and knowledge. Specifically examining masculinity within American Black culture and the use of homophobia as a reinforcement of masculinity, we can examine other cultures and their views of “masculinity” and the employment of homophobia as an indicator of cultural acceptance of patriarchy. Upon examining other cultures in comparison to the American Black experience of hegemonic masculinity, we can observe the disfluencies of masculinity itself and recognize its place not as a super structure to which we all must conform, but rather a system of control and oppression that we as a society must abandon if we are to reach true democracy.
It is this wholeness, this completeness that is shattered in systems of oppression that delineate the human person into a dichotomous sphere of this or that. Specifically examining the concept of masculinity within the realm of the United States, we see how masculinity is reinforced through homophobia as a use of power differentiation among affluent men within society. The implicit use of homophobia has left many people within the American society broken and isolated into camps that do not complete their whole experiences as human beings. Masculinity in itself has been used as a means of oppression in multiple forms that have resulted in a cramped and often isolating realm known as society. Masculinity is the arena in which men beat their chests and proclaim to the world, I am right and you are wrong. It is where men can prove to the world and most importantly themselves, that they fit into this historically situated, socially constructed ideal way of life that has been based on past presumptions of power and control. In order to maintain these levels of control and dominance, homophobia is employed as a way to establish power as well as to reinforce cultural norms revolving around the cultural “ideal” of perfection.


Hegemonic masculinity is the image of masculinity of those men who hold power, which has become the standard in psychological evaluations, sociological research and self-help and advice literature for teaching young men to become “real men”. The hegemonic definition of manhood is a man in power, a man with power, and a man of power. Masculinity is in essence the way by which our patriarchal society is defined and the way we go about our everyday lives. It is the system those in power have put in place to maintain systems of oppression for years and years. It is not an act of self fulfillment, of joy or sweet release but rather, an abandonment of these characteristics to establish levels of dominance and control.
To maintain these systems of dominance and control, in our culture homophobia is engaged as a buffer zone to not only compare size and strength from man to man, but also to serve as a guideline as what not to be. This then is the great secret of American manhood: We are afraid of other men. Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. “The word ‘faggot’ has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears of homosexuals,” writes Daved Leverenz (1986). “It comes out of the depths of manhood: a label of ultimate contempt for other men will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do no measure up, that we are not as manly as we pretend, that we are, like the young man in a poem by Yeats,” on that ruffles in a manly pose for all his timid heart.” Our fear is the fear of humiliation. We are ashamed to be afraid. (88 Kimmel) In our culture homophobia is a tool employed to say you are in and you are out, and as directly taken from the previous statement, we see how this inflicts a deep and dark wound in the hearts of men who are forced to conform to this great ideal. It has plagued our nation and this world for years now, and has affected everything from homophobia, to sexism to racism.

As a micro-cosim, looking at performing black masculinities within the African American culture we can see how masculinity has been taken to an extreme with great abandonment. The “real man” by the 19th century was neither noble nor serf. By the middle of the century, black slaves had replaced the effete nobleman. Slaves were seen as dependant, helpless men, incapable of defending their women and children and therefore less than manly. Native Americans were cast as foolish and naïve children, so they could be infantilized as the Red Children of the Great White Father and therefore excluded from full manhood. (90 Kimmel)To stray away from this ascribed submission and as a source of social acceptance and power and dominance, the black movement created a hyper masculinity that superimposed the idea of manhood on black culture. The structures of representation have had wide and varied permutations in the black community. For as we know the history of African Americans is marked by its noble demands for political tolerance from the larger society, but also by its paradoxical tendency to censure its own. W.E. B. Du Bois was rebuked by the NAACP for his nationalism in the 1930’s and then again for his socialism a decade or so later. James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison were victims of the Black Arts movement in the 1960’s, the former for his sexuality, the latter for his insistence upon individualism. Martin Luther King Jr., and Eartha Kitt, strange bedfellows at best, were roundly condemned for their early protests against the Vietnam War. Amiri Baraka repudiated a whole slew of writers in the 1960’s for being too “assimilationist,” then invented a whole new cannon of black targets when he became a Marxist a few years later. Michele Wallace, Ntosake Shange and Alice Walker have been accused of bashing black males and of calculated complicity with white racists. Not surprisingly, many black intellectuals are acutely aware of the hazards of falling out of favor with the thought police, whether in white face or black. In the case of artistic elites, the issues of representation arise with a vengeance. ( 230 Louis Gates) Looking at this rich history that has been subsided by masculinity within the Black community we can see how it has been abandoned and replaced with cultural representations that fulfill a hyper-masculinized version of what it means to be a black man. Thus status quo for black men is superimposed by a cultural mentality that says to be white is to be weak, to be weak is to be weak, to be anything that shows frailty means you are weak, and thus to be gay as in white upper-class culture, is to be weak. Black men in particular are faced with a day to day experience of having to subscribe to the dominant white male attitudes of how to live ones life, thus abandoning their performance of black masculinity or negating their white world and performing this delicate dance of identity to show the world they are not weak. Ultimately, it is a game they cannot win and ultimately one of oppression.
The account of one such individual experience is described by Bryant Alexander as follows: My face is black and notably not mean, though that is my own assignment. It shows my joy and my pain. It reveals my disposition of angst of frustration, of fear and overwhelming insecurity and more often than not, my joy, passion and compassion. “ Regardless of how I perform identity, my body is marked with signs that signify identities that exist outside of my desires, signs that exact, (mis) recognitions. It is these (mis) recognitions that acute the border patrol, that necessitate border inspections.” The visage of my sometimes stern Black male expression in staged performances or in daily wear which are almost indistinguishable always seems to be jarring for some reason. Even to those who claim to know me and see me narrowly as Good Man, a distinction that is its own place of entrapment. In this case I am relegated to a limited space within a margin of their comfort with me and with black men in general. (88 Alexander)
For a black man in today’s world, whose stereotyped image is that of this intimidating, strong and deviant beast. This is a stereotype that he must fulfill to be seen in many hours, but also a stereotype that he can choose to either embrace or to abandon, but either at a cost to his soul or full self. From the way one dresses, to the where one chooses to go, to even the type of language and dialect a person use is all under this guise of masculinity that deviates from the true identity of the individual. This point touches on the truism in studies of black discourse. Smitherman herself implies the testament to masculine prowess embodied in the black “rap”, explaining that, While some raps convey social and cultural information, others are used for conquering foes and women. And she further acknowledges the power with which the spoken word is imbued in the African-American tradition especially insofar as it is employed in masculine “image making” through braggadocio and other highly self assertive strategies. (Harper 247) These ascriptions on the individual are from the greater society and the picture that has been painted in all of our heads as to what an individual that looks like a black man, should act like. This image is also reinforced from within as well, as the black community has struggled to gain acceptance and respect from the much more powerful and controlling white society that has cast this dark shadow on the black person through masculinity.
If we can then imagine with this double entandra, what it must be like for someone in this culture who is gay or lesbian. With the Langston Hughes and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s abandoned by this culture, imagine just being a young person who does not conform to these cultural identities. Imagine a world where you don’t seem to belong in either camp and in which the identities to which you subscribe put you at the bottom of the totem pole. One of the biggest fears delineating from this homophobia was the travesty of AIDS on the African community. “From June 1981 through February 1991, 167,803 people in the United States were diagnosed as having Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Of that number of total reported cases, 38, 361 –or roughly 26 percent – occurred in male dos African descent, although black makes account for less than 6 percent of the total U.S. population. (Harper 239) It was and is something that is associated with homosexuality and therefore was and is not addressed a lot within this community of people. People pretend it doesn’t happen and more so go on to lead there lives pretending that something like this does not occur to people like them, because how could they have people like that in their community, making them one and of the same.
Ultimately, in every aspect of masculinity and homophobia, this guise of what it means to be a man has hindered and impacted this specific community within American culture. It has abandoned some of our greatest hero’s and left an entire people vanquished in denial and doubt as to taking into account ones whole self. By comparing and contrasting this with issues faced by other minority populations in other countries, we can examine how each group dealt with the particular situation and we can see how culturally masculinity is defined in different ways. Following societies which have dealt with similar Afro experiences, we can compare contrast different cultural norms that might contribute to our greater understanding and comparative analysis of black culture in America and that of minorities in other parts of the world.
Looking at Brazil where over 40% of the African slave trade ended up creating a rich and vibrant community of Afro-Brazilians in this culture that were just as oppressed taken advantage of like American history. Reading an article that dealt with a small tribe within Brazil that found sexuality to be a fluid and accepted thing by society, we could see how the roles of masculinity and definitions of masculinity were changed as to what was acceptable and what was not. “The Peneleiros lovers are socially recognized as typical men. Men and women an equally fulfill their sexual desires. Classic studies such as Kinsey (1948) would consider them bisexual, but that is an undistinguished category in Anzois. Several studies based in cultures outside the Northern European /North American realm distinguish roles similar to the Anzois community: sexuality is understood relative to position rather than sex of the partner, and homosexuals assume characteristic social roles that are neither male nor female nor marginalized. They are not put out of the social interaction. “(Cardoso 66-67) A culture that is so forthcoming about sexuality and its fluidity can illustrate what the boundaries are between masculinity and femininity. The study conducted on this small Latin village shows how in a comparative country like Brazil, masculinity is more based on social stratification in regards to class than it has anything to do with race or gender, as well as the need for a sense of community as well as for reciprocity within the tight nit community. This small but very important village does not use homophobia as a tool to reinforce masculinity but rather ones income and skill.
Transcribing this small local villages experience onto the country as a whole and my own personal observations of such things like Carnival, I can conclude that even within the Afro-Brazilian community, masculinity and femininity are two extremes that have a high gray area in which both sexes stray in and out of. This illustrates that masculinity within this country is something that is not as formed or developed as within the United States, specifically the African culture. Given historical backgrounds of trading and cultural exchange, we must also ask ourselves how the transnational influence of music, television, arts, economies, and goods and services will affect these social archetypes of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman in Brazil?
Like Brazil, when we start to examine the cultural norms of yet another country in contrast with the United Sates in regards to performing masculinity within a minority population, again we can see some striking differences that further develop the idea that masculinity itself is a social construct and contributes to the detriment the human person, rather than to the development. As we turn towards South Africa it is important to look at the historical attributes to this young country in regards to race relations and the history of racism within the Country prior to Apartheid rule. The amount of hate and bias that existed in the pre-apartheid era was nauseating and with so much bloodshed over issues of race and class, one would make drastic conclusions that the ultimate result for any victory in any war of South Africa would conclude in even more bloodshed in the spirit of reciprocity. However, what is interesting to not in the case of South Africa is the fact that both cultures, full of masculine signals such as puffing the chest, violence, etc, etc…much culture of which was inherited from the colonizers the Dutch and the British, was not present at the end of the Apartheid. In fact what happened was quite the opposite in that at the end of the Apartheid a very stereotypically feminine attribute took place and that was one of forgiveness, compassion and reconciliation. This is an interesting note to observe, especially when comparing contrasting masculinity between cultures, but if we examine the ultimate outcomes of this particular society and the black community in America, we can see a remarkable difference between oppressed and former oppressed. In the span of only 10 years, South Africa has moved into this great spirit of equality and acceptance. To move from such intolerance and in my mind evil, to be able to so easily forgive and move forward living side by side with someone that murdered your child is fascinating. It says so much about the people there and can tell us a little bit about the ideas of masculinity and what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman, especially coming from the historically black population that was significantly beaten down and torn a part. If as a community these people were to come together, to bring together their community and to rebuild their shattered homes and hearts, this says a lot about their cultural attitudes and tells above their so called “masculinity” and what is valued within this subgroup of Africans.
Another Component to this astounding ability to come out of a horrible situation, was the communities ability to include gender as a primary concern in their country as well. As a nation to see that women are an intricate part of the system, that they contribute to this idea of “Ubuntu” in multiple ways, really demonstrates that what we have in the states is quite unique, one in which we are constantly vying for power and control, rather than to share in resources and to prosper as a community. We can see this sense of equality when we look at the number of women that serve in high positions within the South African government. We can also see this in recent legislation that extended the rights of marriage to Lesbian and Gay couples. This is one of four countries in the world who allows for this kind of gender equality. Ultimately, the communities within South Africa have demonstrated the great complexity of masculinity and femininity, but also illustrate the hyper masculinization we experience back in the States.
Coming back to America, examining the parts and pieces that are masculinity in its proud and boasting way, it is a cultural system that creates forms of oppression in multiple ways that affect multiple communities in adverse ways. It is important that as a country we examine our ideals against those of other countries to see the whole part of what we presume to be the human experience. In order to end systems of oppression and suppression, we must acknowledge one another’s humanity and allow one another to be full human beings without disgracing someone for who they might be.
In the end we are all wandering spirits that transcend the borders of identity from lover, to father, to mother, to sister, to brother, to star gazer to adventurer, when we are whole we are human and that is what we must work towards to inevitably have equality one day.









Bibliography


Alexander, Bryant Keith “Passing, Cultural Performance and Individual Agency” Performing Black Masculinities, 2006, p 69

Butler, Judith “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of Identity” New York 1990 p 84

Cardoso, Fernando “’Fisherman’: Masculinity and Sexuality in Brazilian Fishing Community” Santa Catarina University, UDSEC, 2002, p 66

Gates, Henry Louis, “The Black Man’s Burden”, Fear of a Queer Planet, 1993, p230

Harper, Philip Brian, “Eloquence and Epitaph: Black Nationalism and the Homophobic Impulse in Responses to the Death of Max Robinson”, Fear of a Queer Planet, 1993, p239

Kimmel, Michael S “Masculinity as Homophobia” Race, Class and Gender in the United States, Sixth Edition, 2004, p 81


AUTHORS NOTES:

Fortunately and Unfortunately this paper was published before my journey around the world was completed. The paper was published somewhere between south Africa and India...and I so wish I could have gone to India before publishing this paper because it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life in regards to gender and masculinity. Going to India caused many more questions in my head. Self identifying as an out, caucasian gay male, it was so interesting for me, an American to observe masculinity in India where is is illegal to be gay, and women are seen as second class citizens, and YET the intimate relationships between men is incredible!!! Everywhere I looked I was forced to challenge my conceptions of "gay" because the men were all over each other, and yet they were all just friends. They were intimate, holding hands, touching each other and being what I feel is a natural part of ourselves which idealism in the West has done away with and why it is so important for me to tackle issues of masculinity and femininity because I don't feel we get to be our authentic selves when we are so worried about what the world will think of us. I loved INDIA in relation to this paper, because it challenges EVERY NOTION we in the western world have of what it means to be a "man" and a "woman". I loved india!! LOVED IT!