CRY MAGAZINE | IDENTITY
Home?
Where does the black queer man find this?
Where do you call home?
Nooo.
Do not tell me your actual street or apartment number. Where do you feel safe? Secure in self?
This was the first question I asked myself some weeks ago while sitting in a therapy session. It was something I thought about while doom scrolling on Twitter, realizing that I haven’t really, established, with myself, what home is or what it feels like. (Pro-Tip, this is a conversation you want to have with your therapist.).
After that session, I discovered that what I call “home” surpasses just a physical space, but rather, the people I meet and have long-lasting connections with. I attempted to juxtapose this with my own childhood experiences centered around abandonment and stability issues.
During my formative years and even recently, I spent a lot of time moving. Between parents, between houses, between parishes, and between countries. This isn’t however, what has caused my general sense of displacement or unwelcomed-ness. I just genuinely, usually feel like a fish out of water.
The only exception? When I’m with my friends.
I spent a lot of my time as a teen, imagining spaces where I could feel more at home. At that time, I was very into the Canadian comedy-drama, “The Kink In My Hair”, by Trey Anthony, which helped to remind me of Canada, but through the lens of the black diaspora.
Looking back, I think I also loved it because of the space created by this black woman, in her hair salon, for other black women from different walks of life. Without prejudice, judgment, or prescribed identities.
And black men dare say…. “What about us?”
We are literally our worst enemies.
Let’s talk about the absence of safe spaces, for black men, and this is from the perspective of the queer man.
Now, imagine, a straight guy and a queer person walk into a black barbershop, who will be the first to feel like a scourge to society?
Patriarchy allows for the straight black man [close to] as many privileges as it affords the straight white man, and that’s just the truth. Yes, some privileges are affected by varying intersections such as race and class, but I like to think that a straight black man is closer to being equal to a straight white man than a cis-gendered black woman, black persons of trans experience, genderqueer individuals, and queer men and women.
Recently, I saw a tweet asking for safe spaces for black men. But how can black men ask for safe spaces when we’re partly responsible for creating unsafe spaces for ourselves.
Straight black men want to have spaces where they can be heard and they often talk over anyone else wanting to speak. Yes. You’re hurt. But you’re hurting me in the process of healing yourself and you simply do not give a fuck.
Half of the time that safe spaces exist for black men, they are used to perpetuate and support oppressive systems and institutions. Going back to the barbershop example, I often feel as if there are added things I have to check for in spaces, predominantly occupied by black men, for my own safety.
From the moment I walk in, my guard is up. I treat every man I see as the enemy, even the attractive ones because you just never know. I spend the few seconds it takes to scan my environs for the most suitable place to sit, usually beside a woman with her toddler waiting for a cut or the woman who helps with maintaining the shop. Women are usually most likely the saviors in these situations.
You’d probably say I’m projecting. You’d probably even say that it’s internalized homophobia. It is homophobia but more like the systemic kind.
Finally seated, I’ll glance at the faces around me, making my judgment with every scan so that I’ll have an idea of their politics. A smirk, a snicker, or a glare are usually their tells before they say some homophobic or misogynistic shit, then I’ll know. This is not a safe space.
Once I’ve made my assessment, I try my best to stare into space or at a screen and keep still. This is important because once you’re still and silent, you disappear. I become so small and holed up, even if I’m in an open space, that my existence only returns when I’m called to the chair.
It doesn’t end there.
The performance continues as I adapt the voice and demeanor of the straight black man, just for this moment. I remain quiet because even though I’m extremely passionate about the Tory Lanes and Megan situation, I just know that anybody who is in opposition to Tory would be outnumbered. I don’t want to support and I sure as hell can’t oppose, so I just shut up.
And you’re telling me this is a safe space?
Barbershops were sometimes used as bases for activism and social awareness. They are supposed to encourage you to speak and be passionate about causes affecting the black community. But instead, they have been molded into spaces of toxic masculinity and the dumbing down of conversations which should help to holistically improve our community. Or possibly, they were always toxic? Who knows.
I want the freeness that my female friends have when they visit their nail techs or their hairdressers. This goes beyond giving allowance to a person so that they can say actual words.
I would like to live out loud, outside of my friend group, and still feel safe to do so. I don’t want to feel safe in only one space but in all spaces, because that is what is supposed to happen.
Will we get there? The truth is I don’t know.
