My paper is about the specific stigma that Black gay men face as a result of the intersection of their race, gender, and sexuality, and how Ballroom culture can be a healing and safe space for these men. Although trans men, trans women, and cis women are also populations that are accepted within the Ballroom community, I will be specifically focusing on cis gay and bisexual Black men. I am interested in this topic because I think that intersectionality is crucial to understanding all types of identity, but especially queer identity. I believe it’s important for white queer people to center the experiences of people who exist within multiple marginalized identities, like disabled, fat, Black, Indigenous, POC, and trans perspectives, and Black gay men are rarely talked about in mainstream queer culture, despite the fact that much of gay “lingo” is appropriated AAVE. Black gay men are alienated from the queer community, which largely focuses on the experiences of white people and often expects Black people to hide or give up parts of themselves to conform and be accepted (Bowleg, 2013, 760). The study by Bowleg also concludes that they are also often excluded from portions of the Black community, which can be homophobic, though it is important to note that the Black community is not a monolith and that homophobia is received differently by different people. One of the men interviewed said, “the Black community, once again is composed of many different communities, and often what is seen as concern or consensus of the community is often the issues of the middle-class, heterosexual Black men who usually go to church” (Bowleg, 2013, 761). That being said, many of the Black gay men who offered their perspectives in the readings I referenced felt excluded from the Black community because of their sexuality. As a result, Black men often feel that they are doubly marginalized; to be in queer spaces means they have to deny their Blackness, and being in Black spaces means they have to downplay their queerness. This pressures Black gay men to choose one identity as more important than the other, either being a Black gay man or a gay Black man -- for those who choose to be Black before gay, their queerness is something that’s isolated and activated or deactivated depending on what type of environment they’re in (Hunter, 2010, 87). They have to shut down a part of themselves in order to be accepted.
In her essay “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Maria Lugones describes something she calls “the coloniality of gender,” and I think that this concept helps to explain the particular oppression gay Black men experience. Under colonialism, being distinctly man or woman, heterosexual, and white becomes the marker of humanity; only civilized people are straight and white, and anyone who doesn’t fit into those categories is not fully human, nor is deserving of being treated like a human (Lugones, 2010, 743). Black men deviate from this norm by being Black, homosexual, and not performing masculinity in the way that men are expected to. The separation of the genders became the distinguisher for a society that was already civilized versus one that needed to become civilized through violence. The increased risk of violence and hate crimes towards Black gay men is a method of social control to punish them for their subversive behavior and to get them to conform. Lugones says that the solution to dismantling the coloniality of gender is to resist and decolonize gender through decolonial feminism, and by creating community with other people. She says,
“One does not resist the coloniality of gender alone. One resists it from within a way of understanding the world and living in it that is shared and that can understand one’s actions, thus providing recognition. Communities rather than individuals enable the doing; one does with someone else, not in individualist isolation… But it is important that these ways are not just different… These ways of being, valuing, and believing have persisted in the resistant response to the coloniality.” (Lugones, 2010, 754)
Ballroom culture provides a unique space where Black gay men are not only allowed to be Black and gay simultaneously, but are praised for doing so. Ballroom culture is a form of Black gay agency in creating a place where Black queer people are not denied their humanity and are offered refuge -- this resistance chips away at the colonial gender system. Ballroom culture provides real and tangible benefits to Black gay men. Black gay men are at a higher risk for contracting HIV/AIDS, and in his essay “Performance as Intravention,” Marlon Bailey describes the specific ways that the Ballroom community helps to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and also provides a support system for those who have the virus. Bailey’s research focuses on Detroit, where many Black individuals live in poverty and don’t have access to the same resources that white people with HIV/AIDS have. Because communities susceptible to the virus are stigmatized, their perspectives often aren’t taken into account, and solutions that come from outside of the community are largely ineffective. Bailey asks for us to stop thinking about these men as a “community at risk,” and instead call them a community of support (Bailey, 2009, 216). Community members create a counter discourse and provide social support in the form of relationships and prevention Balls (Balls that are held to raise awareness or funds for HIV/AIDS), and House mothers and fathers provide guidance on important aspects of health, like sex, relationships, and hormones. Support is crucial for people living with HIV/AIDS, and these individuals should be valued for their resilience in the face of crisis (Bailey, 2009, 214).
One of the most important ways that Houses help their members is by providing housing and financial support for Black gay youth who have been disowned by their families, or failed by the system and forced into poverty in other ways. Mentors take care of these House members, and there are also often House funds, which are communal funds for House members (Bailey, 2009, 225). Many young gay Black men say that what brought them to the scene was the acceptance and lack of judgment, and that they didn’t need to suppress themselves the way they did around their “real” families (Kubicek, 2013, 1529). The relationship between House parents and their children is mutually beneficial; House mothers were once children themselves, aided by their own House mothers, and they make the conscious decision to sustain that safe space for the younger generation. This creates a cyclical, self-sustaining culture of children being helped by their House mothers and then going on to do the same for others. In his book on Ballroom culture, Ricky Tucker says,
“House culture is born out of the human need to have a lineage, and to find freedom. Every gay parent and child is a chance to start anew and undo the generational trauma of homophobia, although these families may have the same problems as biological families (drugs, poverty, abuse), but they are miraculous and fill a void. Everyone in Ballroom has an origin story of how someone took them under their wing.” (Tucker, 2021, 90)
Ballroom culture honors both sides of Black gay men’s marginalized identities, rather than forcing them to choose between the two. Within Ballroom, Black gay men are humanized and told they are deserving of love and care. For many men, a Ball is the first experience where they’ve ever seen another gay person; as one man said, “The positive thing was it was just -- it felt kind of good to be around people like you” (Kubicek, 2013, 1533). As Kubicek says, support is the most crucial thing, and it offsets the negative stigma that Black gay men live with and dissuades negative risk-taking behaviors. For young men who experience discrimination on a regular basis, this support might be extremely hard to find outside of the Ballroom scene. In this environment, individuals are allowed to express themselves and find a creative outlet in a safe and supportive place. “Thus, the Ballroom scene could be described as encouraging and celebrating shamelessness, a strong contradiction to internalized homophobia which has been described as [young men who have sex with men] applying negative attitudes to themselves, often hiding their sexuality and/or feeling ashamed of their attractions and behaviors” (Kubicek, 2013, 1536).
The biggest failure of the research on Black gay men and Ballroom culture is that there is so little of it, and that most of what exists focuses on deficit structures and doesn’t prioritize Black gay pride. I don’t think this is the fault of Black academics or researchers, but of white supremacy within academia overall and the way that research prioritizes white queer experiences, if queer experiences are brought up at all. I imagine it’s also difficult to find funding for research that focuses on positive Black gay experiences, rather than trying to research or fix an existing problem. Positive emotions are also hard to measure quantitatively in a research setting, but something that was brought up in most of my research, regardless of whether it focused primarily on deficit structures or not, was the resilience of Black gay men. Although colonial white supremacist patriarchy negatively affects these men, many find pride in their identities and feel that they’re stronger people because of the circumstances they’re put into. Many of these men “wouldn’t have it any other way” (Bowleg, 2013, 762). In one study, many of the Black gay men interviewed cited the same benefits of being a Black gay man. They said that their experiences as outsiders made them more introspective and interested in social justice, made them feel liberated from traditional gender roles, and that their feelings of discomfort made them seek out new opportunities (like pursuing education or moving to a city) they wouldn’t have pursued otherwise (Bowleg, 2013, 765). In the future, I would wish for Black queer people, and specifically Black trans people, and their perspectives to be included in scholarship and centered in discussions about queer identity.
In conclusion, Black gay men experience unique oppression because of their identities as Black men and gay men under colonial white supremacist patriarchy, and the structures created by the coloniality of gender. Ballroom provides a safe space for these men to be themselves, honor their identities, and create a family outside of cisheteronormative ideals. Black gay men are incredibly resilient, and research should emphasize asset structures instead of deficit structures when talking about Black gay men, and Black and queer communities in general. There also needs to be more research that includes Black trans perspectives.