Some time ago, I wrote a piece that questioned my place in an environment of men. I wrote from my life alone, and I asked from a personal perspective. Many readers responded with kindness and reassured me: “Yes, you are welcome.”
Still, whether I am welcome and whether I sit at the periphery are two different questions.
Having a space in any identity-based community is not, first and foremost, about being able to enter through the front door. It’s about the seats that are allocated after you enter. That allocation happens within identity-based groupings, based on the list of priorities within that group.
I feel peripheral when I attempt to
find community among straight men.
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I am a Black, African, gay man who has never come out. I live in a place of rampant homophobia. I have never gone on a date. I have only ever experienced a drunken kiss on the dance floor in a (straight) club. Still, my sexual orientation has always been a topic of speculation–even before I understood sexuality myself.
Growing up, others’ perceptions led to taunts, torment, and trauma I still feel. Throughout my teenage years, I felt different to the very soul of my existence, as if my chemistry and bones were derived of different elements. As if I didn’t breathe the same air.
I have lived through countless experiences in which I felt strange, was even declared so by others. Straight men have repeatedly displayed difficulty interacting with men like me who aren’t straight. A graceless awkwardness exists, and it is reserved for those who encroach upon their spaces of comfort.
I feel peripheral when I attempt to find community among straight men. It’s as if by not being straight, I’m not supposed to be a man. I shouldn’t dare to include myself in the space of men whose orientation is more socially supported and desired.
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Once, during college, I sat in a friend’s dorm room with a bunch straight guys when another friend walked in. Through his feminine tendencies, the other guys observed that my friend was not straight. He also had other friends who were “out.” It seemed to them natural to conclude he was gay.
He walked into the room, saw me, then the other guys, and suddenly an awkward tension built in the air. A perceived gay guy and the declared straight guys.
I realized how often I felt as my friend had — alone and cornered by silent, straight hostility.
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He had been through many similar situations, from what I later gathered. This level of discomfort wasn’t foreign to him. So he swallowed whatever anxiety he felt and came in. He needed a quiet place to sit for a while, as we were all tired from a long day of travel and moving into our dorms.
The tension was too strong. He turned to me and said, “How can you hang out with these guys?”
He whispered the question, but it was still audible enough to be heard in the silence of the room. I understood what he meant. He wasn’t comfortable in that space, and the straight guys did not feel comfortable with him in that space either. My friend knew he didn’t belong and wanted to know how I mustered a sense of belonging in such an environment.
He and I had never discussed our sexual orientations. Still, his question suggested that I was just like him.
In that moment, I could have simply fortified the closet I felt myself living in. I could have said something that positioned myself as “not gay.” I also could have told him to just ignore the silent contempt thickening the air. I didn’t. I didn’t want to drop him for whatever false sense of security I might have earned by denying the truth.
Instead, I said, “I don’t want to believe they are the monsters they make us feel like they are.”
I don’t know if anyone else heard. My friend didn’t respond. After a while, he sighed, stood, and left the room.
The other guys continued on as before. I couldn’t. Watching the scene unfold through my friend’s experience, I realized how often I felt as he had–alone and cornered by silent, straight hostility. I suddenly noticed how the other guys’ eyes didn’t meet mine when we spoke, how they conversed with me in an awkward “I don’t know what to say now” vibe. I saw what my friend saw–without nuance, fully real.
I might have once excused the interaction by thinking straight men are “just like that.” Instead, I could see how not normal it was and how not normal it was to accept such an interaction.
I wondered to myself–how could I honestly hang out with people who displayed a discomfort like going to a first dentist appointment whenever they interacted with me?
◊♦◊
Some people are abrasive towards those who are different and perhaps unusual to them. This can lead to behavior that gives “different” people negative vibes. It can make them feel unwanted.
As a Black, African man, it already feels like there are few spaces for me in this world. As a man who also frequently sets off gaydars, whether I express my orientation or not, there are few places outside my own house where I can feel free.
I hear the Netherlands and Germany are kinder to non-straight people. Maybe I should move there, learn a new language, and be a “freer gay.” But that might include the biases some Europeans display towards black men, especially in this time when there is a rise of nationalist rhetoric. Finding freedom in a country that grew to global stature by vandalizing my home country would be ironic.
Or should I stay in my country and be a “freer black person,” while enduring rampant, endorsed homophobia? Even the liberal side of the country isn’t so liberal.
I don’t expect spaces to magically “open up,” or for people to call out their biases. I do want people to be honest. As in, “Who is welcome in your space?”
If we are serious about efforts to redefine masculinity, then we must look truthfully at the fear and anxiety caused when those who occupy straight, typically masculine spaces feel that masculinity threatened — by gay men.
More important, we must understand the fear and anxiety those who are deemed “un-manly” feel when they occupy spaces with those who are “manly.”
Men say to me, ”I don’t agree with it, I think that its wrong, but it’s cool if you are…”
If I can only ever expect to encounter incongruous intention in men’s spaces — to be told “you can be a complete man here” while also being seen as “not quite” — I think I will sit this movement out.
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