It was an incident involving a carload of gay Black men that helped me understand sexism and homophobia and begin to try to be a better person and man.
It happened years ago when I was just out of college.
My friends and I were in D.C., in Georgetown, in the hot sun hanging out when a carload of Black men slowed down near us and whistled at us. They complimented a few of us on our legs and shouted — “Hey cutie.”
It was probably some sort of dare on their part because they pulled off right away and zoomed up the street, laughing aloud. Some other people on the street found it amusing and chuckled as well.
My friends instantly insisted that we jump in our car and go after them. Show them that they could not talk to us like that. My friends quickly grabbed bottles from a nearby trashcan and began moving towards the car. Their thought was to chase them down and rain bottles on them and their car.
I told them “go ahead. I’m not going.” It was pretty instinctive. I didn’t even deliberate it in my mind much. It just felt awfully stupid to want to do that.
What in the hell, I thought to myself, had they actually done to us that we hadn’t done ourselves? And who cares what they said?
My friends didn’t go that day. I don’t know if it was because I said I wasn’t going and I didn’t think much more about it. Yet, it is a moment I have never forgotten.
How many times had I been with these same friends and they had said something far lewder to a woman on the street when we were teenagers? How many times had I heard some of them call a woman the “B-word” for not responding to them favorably?
How many times had I heard friends of mine before that day use the “F — word” towards a gay man in the city?
That one incident was my slow epiphany. I had begun to wonder about some of this behavior anyway but seeing my friends react in such an extreme manner pushed me further. I was going to try to change.
I had my own entanglements with homophobia and sexism (I was born and raised in America and the world) but I hardly had even processed it way back when. I am not gay and I never felt fear or anything when gay men were around.
I had gay friends (in the closet mostly) and most of my friends rarely ever discussed sexuality outside of sexually being attracted to girls. Yet, we Black boys, like most boys and men were always conditioned to feel a certain way about it all.
I began to question all of it. I knew right then I had been born into a culture and society steeped in sexism and homophobia and other phobias and “isms.” It was normal in that world to see women as sex objects.
It was normal to call gay men the “F— word” and think of them as lesser humans. It was also normal to think that there was something wrong with a woman (a girl) if they were lesbian and were attracted to and/or in love with another woman.
I was challenged in all of those spaces.
Luckily, I am shy and introverted. It helped me process it all better. I never went out much to parties or dances trying to pick up women because of all of that. I was shy; crowded parties made me overwhelmed mentally.
And whenever I met a woman, I liked to get to know them. Talk to them. Hear their thoughts and dreams. What music did they like? Food? What did they think of the world? Oftentimes, that got misinterpreted and my relationships sometimes didn’t get off the landing strip.
I never thought it was okay to bully anyone because I had gotten bullied just for being quiet and inquisitive. My parents had instilled in all of us a deep sense of respect for everyone and anyone who treated others with respect.
But it was and is a struggle.
The world I came up in was (and is) sexist, misogynist, homophobic, and many other things. It was (and is) everywhere. I encountered these values on the streets too. In my crew, amongst my friends. At school, amongst schoolmates.
And outside my home, in the streets, in school, on the playgrounds, literally everywhere, masculinity was defined in stark terms: have sex with women, don’t be gay or act gay (whatever that was), and be able to fight (kick-ass).
There was not much wiggle room either. If you didn’t have a girlfriend, if you were not having sex with girls, or trying hard to have sex with as many women as possible, you were either afraid of girls or gay.
And if you were gay, you were a lesser person. The world was an awful place for you — don’t be gay. Those were the unspoken and spoken rules.
Even being “soft,” or backing down in a fight or losing a fight, got you called homophobic epithets like the “S — word” and the “F — word.”
Everyone used those words too. They were as regular as the “N — word” and the “B — word” and they were fighting words. There could be no doubt about this either.
Show any sensitivity for anyone’s feelings (and I did, that is just a part of me) and you were soon in the crosshairs of this rigid code. Your only other way out of it was to be able to hold your liquor and use drugs recklessly.
That is why that moment a long time ago was so important for me. It wasn’t as if I was suddenly free of all the sexism and homophobia that had been pumped into my brain. It is still all there.
But I did know that if I took it one day at a time and embraced a different type of manhood, I could get better.
I could treat women with more respect. I could recognize the humanity of all people, regardless of sex and/or sexuality. I felt free of an ugly part of myself and something I knew intimately. I just had to take it one day at a time, one moment at a time.
Do not get ahead of myself either. I have friends who would read one book on feminism or sexuality and suddenly would tell me they were no longer sexist and were now a feminist. I didn’t say anything. I just said to myself — that is not my approach to this.
That is no different from when white people I know, so-called liberals, read about Black people, get a few Black friends and quickly proclaim themselves free of the pitfalls of racism and white privilege.
I think it is more of a day-by-day struggle. Our society is racist, sexist, and homophobic. It produces crude hierarchies of race, gender, and sexuality. It isn’t about individuals, values, and ideas but about our decisions regarding certain values and ideas.
That day, long ago, I decided to begin to reject all of it. Work against it. Give it no fuel to continue to do its work. Do it one day at a time.
I didn’t do it that much with talk either. I tried to do it with action. How I treated others. I knew I would stumble but I wouldn’t stop trying.
I can remember years ago I was out with a friend and I was complimented on something I was wearing by a gay man. My friend thought it was odd. I just said — “thank you.” It was genuinely how I felt too.
Small actions like that each day are how I try to get better. Not talk. My actions. It is day by day.
Ever since that day many years ago in Georgetown when I was just out of college, that has been my approach. And I think I have gotten better. And I know I feel much better about myself.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You.
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