The gatekeeping in the Black community is absolutely abhorrent to me. The idea that there is a "Black Card" or levels of "Acceptable Blackness" is one of the reasons I am not a part of the so called "community"

The ONLY people I spend significant time with who happen to be Black are people who experienced the same level of bullying by the Black community as I did for not being "Black Enough". We have the feelings about what it means to have brown skin but not accepted by brown people.

3/

The dialog @MLClark highlights from So Help Me Todd made me think:

Todd: What did you mean when you said you're not really gay?

Lawrence: Well, all I do is work. 17, 18-hour days. And when I'm home, if I'm home, I'm doing laundry ... What about this life is gay? How am I gay? Why does it matter if I have that label? All I am is a working, busy, tired father ... I don't feel gay. I'm not skipping around or .... driving around in a convertible with bubbles flowing out over the top...

4/

𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘨𝘢𝘺. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘨𝘢𝘺 ...

I don't feel Black. What about my life is Black ...

What does gay mean (to everyone else in the world)? What does Black mean (to everyone else in the world)? What does gay look like? What does Black look like?

This is why some queer people don't like or support stuff like Queer Eye or Drag Race and why some Black people don't like or support nearly ANY Black media ... because it either badly represents them or doesn't represent them at all.

5/

Black people spend 200% of their lives trying to PROVE they AREN'T "like all the other Black people" that white folks hate. They code switch, the adopt ways of existing ... to try and stand apart from all the "bad Blacks" all the "N-words" out there giving every single Black person a bad name. Because you know one Black person represents ALL Black people. One Black criminal brings EVERY BLACK PERSON down ... but white folks can have plenty of criminals and no one judges them the same way.

6/

I think many queer people feel the same about either blending in or hiding "gay affectations" and just existing in the world without trouble and open discrimination.

Black people can't mask being Black. No matter how well we speak, no matter how educated we are, whether we listen to classical music or opera or ski or fence or whatever else ... it doesn't change the fact that we are still Black. Some crazy white person will lynch me regardless of what school I attended.

7/

Being queer or being Black is absolutely different for each person. Black people are NOT all the same.

We do not all eat the same amount of fried chicken (I hate fried chicken), we don't all use AAVE, we don't all like basketball (I like golf), we don't all like hip hop and rap (I dislike most of it), we don't feel the same or have the same beliefs or politics ... EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT but the world doesn't recognize those individual differences, it just sees "Black" or "Gay" or "Other".

8/

Todd: What? What are you saying? Bubbles? What? Lawrence, being gay isn't only one thing or- or- or one way of life. Gay could be anything.

Lawrence: If gay can be anything, then isn't it nothing? Who cares if anyone is gay? Aren't we beyond labels now? Why do I have to be gay?

Because, Lawrence ... the world needs a category to put you into so they can know who to oppress, who to discriminate against, who to protect their children from, who to leave behind, who to kill ...

9/

The world needs to put a bullseye on SOMEONE ... on SOMETHING ... or else where's the fun? Where's the understanding of who is better and who is superior? How can their be a top if no one is on the bottom? In the same way that white people need Black people as a gauge of their superiority and somewhere to project their shame ... the world needs scapegoats and targets. Bullies need someone to bully. They need labels. They need names for what they hate or else they'd simply hate themselves.

10/

I avoid people who define themselves with very specific terminology and nothing else.

I avoid people who cannot see themselves as more than what the world has decided they are.

I avoid people who are so into a given thing that they make their life solely about that one thing and nothing else.

I avoid people who don't know who they are and would do anything to be part of a group including giving up the chance to find out.

Narrow and/or single-minded people are the most dangerous.

11/

I would never be a part of any group that had a fence, a gate, a membership card that could be revoked, or authentication tests. That's fucking psychotic.

We are more than what the world tries to tell us we are.

We are more than what our respective "cultures" and "religions" and well-groomed and utterly brainwashed elders say we should be.

We are more than what our selfish parents tried to make us into.

We are individuals.
We are who we decide we are.

That's all that should matter.

@thewebrecluse I loved that conversation and I love that show. I am hoping it can move to another network. It is such an excellently written and acted series.

@MLClark I doubt anything I have to say here is worth any kind of glee 🤣 Your essay just made me think about some stuff 👍🏾 As always, thanks for writing so epically. ❤️

@thewebrecluse

Oh, that was fantastic. I *love* watching your thoughts unfold in real-time. As I was writing my piece, I was thinking about other spheres in which this same politicization happens, but I was SO thankful to see one of those other spheres so brilliantly laid out.

The way "communities" assert themselves & lay claim to the kind of narrative arc we're allowed to have within them is crushing madness wherever it takes place. Thank you for your phenomenal YOU-ness, today as always. 🔥❤️

@MLClark ❤️ ❤️

@MLClark

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 "𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴" 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 & 𝘭𝘢𝘺 𝘤𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘤 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦.

See how you say things so simply but it takes me 7-10 business days to get my thoughts out 😭 ❤️

@MLClark @thewebrecluse

In 1990, Vito Russo (a queer activist and icon) told me that being gay wasn't about sex. That the sex acts could be done by straight people. It's a social identity.

And at the same time, I was reading Butler's Gender Trouble.

So I took that to mean that sexuality, like gender, is socially defined. It will differ over time and across cultures--and it's more about our social relationships than anything.

1/2

@MLClark @thewebrecluse

2/2

That doesn't mean we don't have a real, internal gender or sexuality.

It just means that the words we use and ways we act aren't determined so much by those things as they are by our culture.

@tyghebright @MLClark TRUTH!

@altucker Thanks so much for receiving my words so positively. I really do appreciate it. ❤️