Buller Men and Batty Bwoys: Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities 9781442671645

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Entering and Opening the Black Closet
Part One: Oh My God! Look Who's in the Closet! Hidden Black Men Having Sex with Other Men
Chapter One. Hidden Men
Chapter Two. Collaborative Connections: My Biomythography
Part Two: Negotiating Everyday Life
Chapter Three. Family
Chapter Four. Community
Chapter Five. Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity
Chapter Six. Pleasure, Love, Identity
Conclusion: Seeking Inclusion
Appendix A. Participants
Appendix B. Partial List of Interview Questions
Appendix C. Chronology of Duller and Zami Activities in Toronto
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

DULLER MEN AND BATTY BWOYS Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities

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Duller Men and

Batty Bwoys Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black

Communities

Wesley Crichlow

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com University of Toronto Incorporated 2004 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-8942-9

Printed on acid-free paper

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Crichlow, Wesley E.A. (Wesley Eddison Aylesworth), 1961Buller men and batty bwoys : hidden men in Toronto and Halifax black communities / Wesley Crichlow. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-8942-9 1. Black Canadian gays - Ontario - Toronto. 2. Black Canadian gays - Nova Scotia - Halifax. 3. Heterosexism - Ontario - Toronto. 4. Heterosexism - Nova Scotia - Halifax. I. Title HQ76.2.C3C75 2003

305.38'9664'09713

C2003-903929-3

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction: Entering and Opening the Black Closet

3

Part One: Oh My God! Look Who's in the Closet! Hidden Black Men Having Sex with Other Men 23 1 Hidden Men 25 2 Collaborative Connections: My Biomythography 41 Part Two: Negotiating Everyday Life 3 4 5 6

77

Family 79 Community 106 Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity 128 Pleasure, Love, Identity 150

Conclusion: Seeking Inclusion 172 Appendix A: Participants 189 Appendix B: Partial List of Interview Questions 191 Appendix C: Chronology of Buller and Zami Activities in Toronto Notes 197 Bibliography 213 Index 227

193

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Acknowledgments

Research for this project was made possible through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts. I am most grateful for this valuable financial support. In addition, I owe a special debt to the men from Halifax and Toronto whom I interviewed for this book. They made the invisible visible by trusting me with their personal life stories and risking the possible consequences of been outed in hostile environments. I also want to thank the men from AYA (a defunct Black Gay Men's group of which I was a member) who supported and encouraged me in the early stages of my project. Without these three groups of Black men this book would not exist. Many professors, colleagues, and friends from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto read different chapters of my earlier work in thesis form, and shared their thoughts with me. I thank Dr George Dei, Dr Sherene Razack, Dr Kathleen Rockhill, and Dr Roger Simon; they have all been avid supporters of my work, and I have learned a great deal from them. I also acknowledge the contributions of Dr Livy Visano, Dr Kobena Mercer, Dr Nigel Thomas, Margo Francis, and Andenye Chablitt-Clark. In many cases, they may not even remember our conversations, but all of these people have helped in the development of this book. Their support and responses reaffirmed my faith in a scholarly community that respects one's work, while not always necessarily agreeing with some of the arguments and positions. I was fortunate to be asked to talk about my research at the Canadian Learneds Societies Conference at the University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago), and at conferences and community gatherings

viii Acknowledgments

in both Canada and the United States. The opportunity to share some of my ideas with diverse groups was invaluable, and the critical engagement has been instrumental in revising my work at various stages. I am grateful to all the organizers for coordinating these talks, which provided me an opportunity to share my ideas and see them grow. I am deeply indebted to everyone at the University of Toronto Press for their work and support in the completion of this book. In particular I thank Virgil Duff, my acquiring editor, for his expertise, enthusiasm, and patience. I also thank Matthew Kudelka for his copy editing skills, John Beadle for designing the cover of the book, and the staff of the publicity and marketing department for selling and promoting the book. To my great mother, Christina Crichlow, and father, Emrah Crichlow: I thank you both for my passion for learning, and for giving me the motivation, encouragement, and strength to write this book. At eightyplus years you constantly remind me of the importance of education and that learning never stops. Finalement, ce livre est dedie a I'amour de ma vie, qui a su m'appuyer lors de tous les stades de sa redaction et de sa correction, alors que je doutais de 1'avenir meme de ma carriere. Tous ceux qui sont passes par ces epreuves en connaissent les perils. Ta patience, ta comprehension et tes encouragements des la genese de cet ouvrage ont ete pour moi une source de force immense. Merci du fond du coeur, je t'aime.

BULLER MEN AND BATTY BWOYS Hidden Men in Toronto and Halifax Black Communities

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Introduction: Entering and Opening the Black Closet

In Jamaica, women engaging in same-sex relationships are called sodomites and/or man royal, a term peculiar to that country. Makeda Silvera says of these labels: Dread words. So dread that women dare not use these words to name themselves. They were names given to women by men to describe aspects of our/their lives that men neither understood nor approved. Makeda Silvera, A Piece of My Heart

So I would say of buller men and batty bwoys. This book is personal, situated in my own life, but it is also collaborative1 and dependent on the assistance of other buller men2 and batty bwoys3 living in Canada. My goal is to interrogate how these names and the associated experiences shape the daily realities of Englishspeaking4 African-Caribbean men living in Toronto and African Canadian men born or raised in Halifax who engage in sexual and emotional bonding relationships and practices with other men. Purpose and Structure of the Book This research is limited to the life experiences of English-speaking African-Caribbean bullers and batty bwoys and African-Canadian gay men, who live their lives in communities that articulate oppressive notions of sexuality. In this study I will try to make at least some of these experiences explicit and clarify what it means for these men to negotiate communal structures of dominance that are informed and regulated by heterosexist thinking. I use the term negotiate in reference

4

Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

to how men live emotionally, physically, and socially in ways that ensure their safety and pleasure. I critique the discourses of Black communal solidarity that help legitimate the structures of dominance. It is not always simple to theorize or explain how Black men negotiate their same-sex practices. It requires affinity with or membership in the culture of the community in question to understand the unwritten codes of same-sex social and cultural practices. So this book has a fourfold purpose: • To make public the communal and family experiences of bullers and batty bwoys. • To show what it means for buller men to negotiate communal structures, which are informed by certain types of heterosexist thinking within Black communities. • To critically analyse how discourses of Black communal solidarity and bionationalism legitimate cultural forms that are oppressive to this segment of the Black community. • To examine the politics and ethics of Black communal life in ways that take into account the joy and suffering of same-sexed people who are members of the community. In essence, this book urges bullers, batty bwoys, and heterosexual Black communities, as Audre Lorde so eloquently put it, to 'commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness' (1984: 142). This book also attempts to answer a pressing question raised by Lorde: How do we do this? A brief discussion of each of these objectives is warranted, and follows. To make public the communal and family experiences of bullers and batty bwoys. There is minimal awareness about the issues that affect bullers and batty bwoys within Black communities. This book addresses Black heterosexism and homophobia not because Black communities are more virulently heterosexist and homophobic than others, but because it is in Black communities that heterosexist suffering is an everyday reality for myself and many other bullers. We suffer and yet we continue to embrace and laugh with Black heterosexual brothers, sisters, aunts, mothers, fathers, and friends. Making public the pain of the men interviewed should be seen as an ethical and effective form of politics.

Introduction 5

Making the men's pain public to Black communities is a responsible task in a project of liberation. I contend that making public the debate around Black same-sex male relations is an effective method for getting others to reconsider the oppressive structures of dominance that the community, organizations, families, and churches enact on a daily basis. Effective change is going to require a conceptual and practical rethinking of the place of bullers and batty bwoys in Black communities; also needing to be addressed is the lack of actual support from Black organizations. Will my analysis lead to more acceptance for bullers and batty bwoys? Because of this book, will some members of the Black heterosexual community rethink the place of bullers and batty bwoys? Will this result in more communal and family support for buller men and batty bwoys? Will the younger generation of bullers and batty bwoys of Caribbean parents born in Canada, use this as one of their many tools to challenge and disrupt the heterosexist codes within their families and communities? To show what it means for buller men and batty bwoys to negotiate communal structures that are informed by a certain type of heterosexist thinking within Black communities. Some if not most African-Canadian and African-Caribbean men who engage in same-sex relations often find that they must deny their selves and their sexuality if they want to be accepted in or become part of Black communal solidarity and Black familial expectations. For them, heterosexism is a daily reality, and one that most of them are not allowed to comment on, complain about, or challenge. This general sentiment seems to be shared by most of the men in this book, when asked about the Black community and how they negotiate their lives. Black heterosexist thinking is grounded in very specific gender expectations of masculinity, which the men in this book must live up to; the alternative for them is to suffer the public and communal violence that is associated with being labelled weak, buller man, batty bwoy, feminine, or race traitor. These men's negotiations are not free from the gender trappings of sexism and sexual oppression, because sexual oppression and Black nationalism are about traditional roles. If they want to be accepted in Black families and Black communal settings, and to work alongside Black nationalists, these men have no choice but to subscribe to a heterosexist and hypermasculine orientation. It is impossible to begin to discuss notions of negotiation for these men without talking about violence, public and communal shame,

6 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys suicide, and self-hatred. So I begin with the assumption that the life of buller men and batty bwoys, while not solely about oppression and pain, does include a considerable amount of sophisticated negotiation in order to survive Black heterosexist structures of dominance. My discussion of sexuality and the negotiative aspects of it is also linked to questions of desire and pleasure. To discuss one's knowledge about identity in terms of desires and pleasures is to talk about what one perceives as pleasurable in the realm of sexuality. Whether one is heterosexual or buller, the following questions arise out of these discussions: How do you pursue your pleasures? How does one explain desire? Does desire always have to be accounted for? How do you live a life that acts on the erotic and sensuous side of different experiences? Why does what or whom I desire trouble others? Do you feel that your sexual desires are too rigidly policed, and by who? To pursue a sexual identity on these terms seems impossible for buller men beyond considerations of safety. With the term safety I am referring to the threat of exclusion and the possibility of experiencing violence. Buller men and batty bwoys must negotiate their pleasures so as to minimize their exposure to those in the community who see their behaviour as shameful, sinful, morally corrupt, sick, and traitorous. A buller is often forced to develop ways of participating in communal structures that allow him to pass as heterosexual while continuing to pursue same-sex pleasures and desires. A buller who cannot negotiate this form of participation must isolate himself from the larger community, within a relatively self-contained pocket of same-sex associations. Bullers are often forced to form relationships with others outside Black communities, and this ultimately isolates them from the larger Black community. These networks and support groups of bullers, zamis, and batty bwoys are sharply critical of the heterosexual Black community. To critically analyse how discourses of Black communal solidarity and bionationalism legitimate cultural forms that are oppressive to this segment of the Black community. As an activist and intellectual in the Black community, it is important for me to engage the notions of language, leadership, and ideas that constitute a framework and vision for what Black communities might be, in relationship to future political work and the intellectual development of the Black community. To understand the degree to which discourses collaborate with the pain in Black men's lives, it is imperative to examine the Black canonic intellectual discourses that circulate. I am a buller man and I affirm a

Introduction 7 Black, same-sex, nationalistic politic that is attempting to make sense of how Black men experience domination through Black nationalistic political discourse. This discourse is more than simply abstract politics; it implicates Black men in the process. This needs to be radically challenged and transformed. In beginning this work, I must refer to the torrent of works published by dissenting same-sex and antiheterosexist writers such as A. Lorde, J. Gomez, B. Smith, E. Hemphill, K. Mercer, C. Clark, bell hooks, E. Hardy, and J. Baldwin; and filmmakers Marlon Riggs, Parbita Parmar, Isaac Julien, and Cheryl Dunyne. They have informed, challenged, and continue to challenge my understanding of Black samesex identities, desires, pleasures, difference, and sense of nationalism; and they have strengthened my belief in developing a non-hierarchical approach to Black nationalism and Black consciousness. For example, filmmaker, writer, and activist Marlon Riggs suggests that a hierarchy of identities on Black issues raises problems, since all characteristics can be 130th nurturing and nourishing of your spirit. You can embrace all of that lovingly equally' (Simmons 1991b: 191). Clearly, Riggs's work and that of others in this tradition have provided a cornerstone of excellence on this ground-breaking taboo subject. I also investigate how bullers and batty bwoys make sense of and derive their self-worth from their sexual identities. And I also interrogate theories relating to the regulation of desires, pleasures, and processes through which the body is controlled when one is suspected, coded, or marked as a buller or batty bwoy by others. I examine the many different ways that buller men and batty bwoys negotiate pleasure and their lives in the context of the Black heterosexist community; this includes negotiations around Black activism, Black families, Black churches, Black community demonstrations and meetings, and forms of Black music and popular culture. To add to the diversity and complexity of this new and emerging field of buller men and batty bwoys in Caribbean and Black studies, I draw from my own life experiences as a buller man. To examine the politics and ethics of Black communal life in ways that take into account the joy and the suffering ofsame-sexed people who are members of the community. In this study, I limit myself to the lived experiences of bullers and batty bwoys, my own personal experiences, and the various positions of social life, education, immigration status, and cultural background of men living in Toronto and Halifax. I provide a framework for understanding how buller and batty bwoy identities

8 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

and experiences are negotiated within a Black cultural formation that is becoming more and more hegemonic. Through an intertextual reading and conception of Black nationalist, heterosexist writers such as Eldridge Cleaver, Molefi Asante, Louis Farrakhan, Frantz Fanon, and Haki Madhubuti, I establish an index of the circulation of their hegemonic canonical discourses and make a connection to Black same-sex practices. I attempt to make sense of how Black men experience domination through Black nationalistic discourse as a political discourse. As I noted earlier, this discourse is not simply abstract politics. The logic of this domination corresponds with how bullers are implicated in the very processes that I assert need to be radically transformed. I will attend to a variety of sexual practices that clearly define a range of sexual identities; these will rupture the notion that the categories buller, batty bwoy, and heterosexual are singular and uniform. I will articulate and complexify the varied forms that exist under these homogenizing delineations. Methodology There is a very large population of buller men and batty bwoys living in Toronto and Halifax, notwithstanding attempts by Black community leaders to deny that such populations exist. All you have to do to find us is visit certain 'gay' bars or private spaces where Black 'gay' men and bullers socialize. If, as Foucault claims, nothing is prediscursive, then it is essential for the recognized discourse of Black culture to incorporate all possibilities within that discourse. H. Nigel Thomas's novel Spirits in the Dark (1993) begins to address a discourse of exclusion based on normative ways of Black sexuality, by developing a language derived from anti-imperial discourses, violence, postcoloniality, and sexuality, while critiquing contemporary Caribbean homophobic communal societies. We Black same-sex men need to voice and share lived experiences. This would allow us to see ourselves as contributing to a public discussion about the violence of homophobia and how it gets enacted on Black same-sex bodies in Black communal living. Furthermore, Canadian Black male same-sex history should not be denied, especially at a time when Black history and culture is becoming broader and more inclusive. As a central component of this, I present the survival stories of a selected sample of Black men who practise same-sex relations.

Introduction 9

The focus of this presentation is the many ways these men negotiate structures of dominance and violence within Black communities. In organizing the interview material presented in this book, I have used a framework derived from the marginalized5 'biomytho-graphy' of my own experience as a buller man. hooks calls this 'a politicization of memory that distinguishes nostalgia, that longing for something to be as it once was, a kind of useless act, from that remembering that serves to illuminate and transform the present' (1990: 147). Remembrance, as a product of memory, is easily warped by trauma, shame, silence, memory lapses, forgetfulness, and all-too-human selectiveness. So the narratives presented in this book are organized around the codes of Black communal life. If anything, the men's narratives inform us that these complex problems provide different ways of examining the histories of the men that this book has set out to explore, one that shifts the focus from some of what the men 'really experienced' to how people use the past to produce individual or collective meaning and identity. A sense of collective community oral history is central to this work. Jennifer Browdy De Hernandez, in 'The Politicization of Memory and Form in Three American Ethnic Autobiographies,' has coined the phrase 'communobiography' as a way of placing great importance on the memories and experiences of the ethnic group to which one belongs. She is here especially interested in the works of Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, and Gloria Anzaldua (Browdy De Hernandez 1996). As will become evident, there is an urgent need for Black communities to embrace that which is coded as different and deviant, both as a matter of justice and in order to broaden the present theorization of Black life and Black subjectivity. Sample Selection The sample consisted of nineteen men who have same-sex relations. I interviewed them specifically for this book. Five of the men were from Halifax6 and fourteen from Toronto. At the time of the interviews, they ranged in age from fifteen to sixty-five.7 For brevity's sake, I will call the two interviewed populations the Toronto and Halifax men, though this oversimplifies complex identities.8 Thirteen of the fourteen Toronto men were born in the Caribbean and immigrated to Canada as either young children or teenagers. One of the Toronto men

10 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys was born in the city to first-generation Black parents. The Halifax men were all indigenous9 Black Canadians. All the interviewees had a university or community college education. As a group, they were highly educated and were engaged in a variety of occupations and current living arrangements. This rather select sample reflects the intersection of my method of soliciting potential interviewees and my own social location as a Black male associate professor. It also reflects a recognition on the part of those who agreed to participate that this research was important to their lives and to the future of Black communities. As well, the men seemed to possess the confidence to articulate their experiences and to attempt to place them in the wider perspective of their own marginalization. Obviously, the sample does not represent the total population of African-Caribbean and African-Canadian men who engage in same-sex practices. Appendix A provides a tabular summary of the information given above, as well as a reference to the pseudonyms used in this study. I interviewed all the men who responded to my request for interviews. These solicitations were accomplished through several means. I placed advertisements in local publications that might conceivably be read by Black men who participate in same-sex relationships. The Toronto publications included Xtra Magazine, a local gay and lesbian community magazine; Share News Paper, Pride, and Metro Word, all publications of the Toronto Black community; and Word Up, a newsletter from a Toronto Black arts organization, Canadian Black Artists in Action. All ads stated: 'Black gay and bisexual men from Toronto and Halifax are needed for a research project on their life experiences10 living within Canada's Black communities. This is the first book to be written about Black gay life in Canada and all interviews will be confidential and one's real names will only be used at the request of persons.' The ad listed my name, mailing address, and telephone number and stated that I was interested in the personal life stories of men of all ages. At the time, I was a member of a Toronto-based support group for Black same-sex, bisexual, and transgendered people. At three of our monthly meetings, I explained my interest in recruiting interview participants and provided interested parties with a copy of a research proposal detailing the goals of the project. Some men volunteered immediately, while others had their reservations about the seriousness of the project and their trust in me. To the men who agreed to

Introduction 11

participate, I gave my telephone number and address; others wanted to think about it and then contact me in a more private setting. I recruited some participants simply by meeting them in Toronto gay clubs, or by running into them on the streets, in coffee shops, or at socials and informally explaining my intention to write about the lives of Black gay men. Everywhere I went, I carried with me my excitement about the project. I also posted my request for interviewees on a general discussion list on the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education e-mail system. And I posted it at the offices of Xtra Magazine and the AIDS Committee of Toronto, at the Glad Day Lesbian and Gay Bookstore, and on college and university campuses. Other sources included the Black same-sex men's support group in Halifax; e-mail messages posted on the Net for Black men engaging in same-sex relations with other men; and referrals by those I was already interviewing. In Halifax, I was introduced to men who were affiliated with a Black male same-sex support group. Most of these contacts were facilitated by my great friend11 and his friends. An advertisement was placed in The Wave, a Halifax gay and lesbian magazine. My request was also posted at the Red Herring and Trident bookstores in Halifax. In addition, some men were contacted through personal networks, including those of respondents. To obtain diversity in my findings on the perceptions and experiences of these men in the context of various Black communities, I tried not to select too close a network of friends or neighbours. As noted earlier, I interviewed all men who agree to participate. In doing so, I hoped to find a sample that reflected a variety of same-sex experiences and identifications: out same-sexed identified men, closeted men, and men who engage in same-sex practices but whose sexual identities and identifications are not limited to labels such as buller man, batty bwoy, gay, and bisexual.12 In Diana Fuss's (1995) terms, the men in this project help us both to complexify and to show how they depend on one another for theorization: 'Identifications are erotic, intellectual, and emotional. They delight, fascinate, puzzle, confuse, unnerve, and sometimes terrify. They form the most intimate and yet the most elusive part of our public personas - the most exposed part of our self's surface collisions with a world of other selves - we experience our identifications as more private, guarded, evasive ... In essence, every identity is actually an identification come to light' (205-208). Fuss and the men in this book remind us that identities are

12 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

not stable - they are subject to change and open us to the possibilities for challenge. Each man was given a consent form to sign before being interviewed. Only eight of the men did not sign the consent form.13 These men were dismissive of formal research academic protocol: 'Come on, we trust you, it is just an interview,14 and besides, this, eh no law contract, it is just about buller men and batty bwoys' life and besides, me doh like to sign too much papers, leaving paper trails, you know what ah mean.' 'Do what you want with the information, just doh use meh name [laughs] and everything go be ok child/ Procedure All the participants were asked a series of open-ended life history questions. These were designed to facilitate an exploration of the following: perceptions on the moral regulation of their sexual behaviour, sexual desires, and complex identities by Black nationalists; responses from and relations with family members and friends; choice of partners; opportunities and desire for community participation; the experience of bisexuality; the importance of religion in their lives; and their sites of fun and pleasure. The open-ended, relatively unstructured interviews included thematic probes as well as specific questions about the men's responses to communal and family violence. Interviews were sixty to ninety minutes in length. All names and places have been changed to protect the participants' anonymity. I have assigned pseudonyms to the men at their request. I framed the interviews with the men so that they could talk about their specific social locations without fear of violence or incrimination. To paraphrase Trin T. Minh-ha, it is voices the men long to hear to gain agency and prominence (Minh-ha, 1989). I conducted the interviews one on one and tape recorded with the interviewees' oral permission after they granted informed consent. For a variety of practical reasons, I did not transcribe complete interviews. The narratives offered in this book are edited versions of raw transcripts of the taped interviews. After several intensive sessions listening to the tapes and taking notes, I decided on making selective transcripts of sections of the tapes. Sometimes I deleted substantial amounts of the original material so as to reduce unnecessary repetition within and between narratives. Also, I rearranged some materials for readability, since some of the men constantly revisited certain

Introduction 13

themes. I transcribed the tapes with the goal of eliminating repetition. At the same time, I made sure not to diminish the essential narrative expressions, while focusing clearly on the themes I had already chosen. Analysing the Transcripts I organized the questions thematically, so many of the conversations naturally followed this thematic agenda. My initial data analysis was structured around these themes. I listened to the tapes carefully and noted the data excerpts that were pertinent to the themes. A sheet was used for common quotations, themes, and new issues; this enabled me to revise my questionnaire and develop common areas to which the interviewees referred. I have organized the data presentation to clarify how structures of dominance are implicated in the social forms of Black everyday life. A number of themes flowed out of the data or questions that I asked the men initially; others were a product of our conversations. Themes included shame, fear, outing, loneliness, guilt, masculinity and hypermasculinity, same-sex identity, identification and labelling, femininity, interracial relationships, community participation and community exclusion, suicide, marriage, religious guilt, family, religion, bisexuality, bisexual men and children, Caribbean dialect/language, Black nationalism, machismo, and fun. The reader will find discussions of all of these issues and experiences - and more - in the pages that follow. These men (and myself) claim and are claimed by at least three and as many as five communities: Caribbean communities; Black communities; Black buller men, batty bwoy, gay, and lesbian communities; bisexual, transvestite, and transgendered communities; and broader white gay and lesbian communities. Often, no single community fully respects, appreciates, or understands the complexities of buller men's and batty bwoys' lives. Thus, every person's story contributes to a new Black Canadian buller man and Black same-sex theoretical discourse. Finally, I think that perhaps my own position as an insider can to some degree be credited for the breadth of the data this study has collected. As a buller man, I offer a perspective and the views of a population that has always been marginalized in Black Canadian and Caribbean politics and communal living. To some extent, the depth and quality of the interviews are a function of who I am. When I

14 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

listened to the men, I found many similarities between my life experience as buller man and their own. I have stood where many of them have stood, seen much of what they have seen, felt the degradation and insults they have felt, and struggled just as they have struggled for respect and acceptance in Black communal settings and families. These situational issues made it possible for me to interview and work with the men in an atmosphere of trust and delve deeper into the closets. Trust was established between the men and myself because of our shared history, culture and experiences. My knowledge about where to find some of the men, my understanding of their social practices, and my identity as a buller man were crucial to the final product: richly informative conversations. My method fits the 'heuristic15 approach' described by Douglas and Moustakas as 'a passionate and discerning personal involvement in problem solving, an effort to know the essence of some aspect of life through internal pathways of self ... connected with everyday human experiences' (1985: 39). All of the men requested that I report their stories as told. The regional forms of English expression used in some of the excerpts respect the culturally specific vocabulary and syntax of the interviewees. I have maintained the argot and linguistic cultural dialect of these Black men in order to provide a degree of authenticity that respects their localized voices and experiences. However, in some situations this practice would have been counterproductive. Here I am guided by Patricia Tomic and Kathleen Rockhill. Rockhill, a woman whose first language is English, in correspondence with Tomic, whose first language is Spanish, wrote that 'maybe we can't go so far as to fully mix codes, but at the very least, the insertion of a phrase in Spanish every now and then - alerts the reader that the English text hides far more than it reveals - Yet this is difficult, when we know that the standards against which our work will be judged' (unpublished paper, 1995). The buller men, batty bwoys, and same-sex identified men in this book use and create language as a means of communicating and representing the specificity of their/our experiences and perceptions of self, identities, family, community, Black nationalism, self-worth, joy, and oppression. With respect to the use of male same-sex Caribbean linguistic markers, all the men living in Toronto, who migrated from the Caribbean, used the terms buller man and batty bwoy whether they applied these labels to themselves or not. This reference was a consistently negative one. For example, it was often hinted that 'well you

Introduction 15

know back home they does call yuh buller man, batty bwoy or panty man and they does laugh at you, sometimes stone yuh, beat yuh up, and if they could kill yuh, they will.' This was all too evident in the case of David, a young Jamaican man (see Jamaican Observer, 20 October 2002). As Tony Thompson, writing for the Observer, informs us, every one of David's scars tells a terrifying story. There is the one where his throat was slashed by a mob that chased him through the streets of downtown Kingston, the incident in which his arm was broken in two places, the horrific ordeal during which his right hand was almost severed at the wrist by a blow from a machete. Then there are the marks on his feet where he was beaten with sticks, the eardrum perforated by a blow from a baton, and the emotional scars from the time he was forced to run into the sea close to Norman Manley Airport and swim against the tide for four exhausting hours to escape certain death. All these attacks took place because he is a batty man in Jamaica. David, now twenty-six, was recently granted asylum in the U.K. on the basis that homophobia and the homophobic violence that accompanies it in Jamaica are so severe they represented a serious threat to his personal safety. The fate of batty men reveals a deep strain of homophobia in Jamaican society. In Jamaica, homosexual intercourse is a crime. Buggery is punishable by ten years' imprisonment with hard labour, and any two men caught in a compromising position the definition of which is left up to individual police officers and in the past has involved nothing more than holding hands - can be charged with gross indecency and sent to prison. Human rights violations like David's, my traumatized past both in Trinidad and Canada, my knowledge of family and community violence against many of my same-sex friends, and the negative connotations of these linguistic markers within Black communities changed the original title of my project. In the original title I used the word gay because I thought this was the only way I would be able to get Black men and my academic institution to take the research project seriously and to communicate with a much wider audience. I did not use the English Caribbean historically venomous labels buller man and batty bwoy, because if I had used these words, I doubted that my academic institution and the men - even if they were 'out' - would have regarded my project as legitimate research. The degrading connotation is too strong. As I have said earlier, these words have not yet been reclaimed. Given that I was intimately aware of the negative history of

16 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

the terms, I did not use them in my call for life stories from my respondents. However, the more the men used the terms in interviews, the more I felt I had a political and social responsibility to begin a politics of visibility, theorization, and voice that would both problematize and embrace these labels in Black Caribbean and Black Canadian academic contexts. Though some of the men I interviewed had no problem applying the label to themselves and joking about it, this was clearly a problem for others. As a strategy of resistance to the oppressive forms of heterosexism and homophobia rooted in a Black bionationalism, I decided to use this book as an occasion to reclaim the culturally specific terms that mark those Black bodies who participate in same-sex relationships as sick, effeminate, other, and deviant. While some of the interviewees shared my identification as a buller man, others did not, or may not approve of the title and language of this work. Nevertheless, I have chosen to risk this disapproval in an effort to make visible and public that which has been hidden in Black communal life, and in order to initiate dialogue over the issue of who is currently being denied full status in two of Canada's Black communities. Making Intelligible and Holding Accountable: The Concept Black Community At present, the term or concept Black community functions as a floating signifier. That is, its meaning shifts in accordance with who is doing the defining, and to what end, and in what context the defining is being done. In Toronto, after five recent gang-related shootings of young Black men, Toronto's police chief called on the 'Black community' to help in the investigations (Toronto Star, 26 October 2002). The federal government has declared February Black History Month, and the Black community is supposed to celebrate Black History Month. The problem with deploying the term Black community is that it is so culturally specific and encompasses so many grounded assumptions that it conceals as much as it reveals. No matter who is doing the defining, there will always be some who are excluded though they shouldn't be. For a good example, rarely are bullers and batty bwoys included in anyone's definition of 'Black Community,' be it the polices,' the media's, Black activists', intellectuals', or that of the white mainstream, except perhaps as an afterthought. Skin pigmentation and cultural behaviour do not constitute the only

Introduction 17

sense/spirit of community, nor does geographic location. The term 'community' (derived from the Latin communitas, from communis, meaning 'common') allows historical and emotional bonding and a sense of security, a sense of sharing. Within groupings of individuals around specific cultural traditions, practices, and behaviours, there will be elements of communitas. It is clear that all cultures contain elements of communitas, even if the members are not grouped together physically. They may share the same larger geography but not the same residential neighbourhood(s). In the Canadian context, a Black essence of communitas can be said to exist where members of cultural groups share space for certain events and experiences, and/or a sense/spirit of being, a commonality of history, interests, and so on. (This can be broken down, using general sociological descriptions of communitas.) In this sense I am attempting to work with two specific communities within the larger Black community. On the one hand, I am referring to a group of Black men who engage in same-sex practices and relationships, who are subjected to compulsory hegemonic heteronormative thinking from their Black families and the wider Black communities, as well as to racism in the wider and white, majority society. A same-sex desire was or is the engine that powered their sense of community among themselves. This same desire caused anxiety among these men, who found themselves ostracized by family and community. But more importantly, the Black same-sex men's community shares a 'community of memory' as a geographic and perceptual space. This book will tell you about painful stories and a sense of shared suffering that have created a deep identity, as well as - for some of the men - a secretive community lifestyle. In this sense, the bullers' and batty bwoys' community of memory and pain is relative to and shaped by the compulsory, heterosexist Black bionationalist community. The second group of Blacks who form a community (or communities) are the families of those men who engage in same-sex practices and relationships. This group, besides families, can also be said to include broader cultural groups, institutions, and organizations. The men interviewed for this book all have roots in this community, and of course so do I. Both groups have many things in common. Involved here is more than a territorial base. This book seeks to theorize a future that will be more inclusive and that will more explicitly locate bullers and batty bwoys as part of the community into which they were born. This book is specifically about

18 Bullet Men and Batty Bwoys

men, but I am in no way seeking to exclude Black lesbians, and I do not want this work to be seen as reproducing the same problems I am attempting to rectify, The Significance of This Work This work is significant in that it develops a language for beginning to talk about bullers' and batty bwoys' lives, about a group of men who are often cast as the exotic and sexualized other. This book is meant to be shared and is intended to evoke questions, discussions, and a reevaluation of Black communities' positions on a variety of social issues, not just Black male same-sex oppression. It critiques Black bionationalism, Black families, Black religion, and Black communities, and it asks if there are other ways to give expression to the lives of those labelled as deviant, sick, traitorous, and feminine. This book gestures to the importance of hidden history in social work, Caribbean studies, cultural studies, lesbian and gay studies, and sociology that is part of the Black diasporic experience, be that experience Canadian, African, or Caribbean. In North America, bullers and batty bwoys constitute a dimension of Black existence that has not yet been taken seriously. I am here alluding to Black formations within which Black same-sex sexuality has not been accepted as a significant aspect of many people's lives. My book rests at the very heart of the sociological imagination in that it applies biographies as means to highlight the importance of lived experiences as they play out in relation to the social structure at particular points in the culture and history of Black communities. My work is an attempt to create not only a vision, but also a language of inclusion that is collective and communal and does not passively accept the terms of a particular biological orientation. This aligns it with other projects about historical, political, and cultural formation. I refer in particular to Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), a brilliant study of cultural territory that may well provide the basis for a cultural solidarity among Black folks living in different places. Gilroy is of course not the only scholar to have investigated the cultural economy, the historical and sociological discovery, of the transnational territory. Kobena Mercer and Robert Thompson have also made significant contributions to the study of a cultural expanse that did not vanish with the abolition of this peculiar institution.

Introduction 19

Gilroy's work, however, is significant and distinct in its systematic and quasi-totalizing cartography, with which it maps out a space for and within the diaspora. Gilroy's notions of popular culture as a basis for integrating diverse communities in the diaspora focus on the historical and sociological discovery of diversity. The interviews in this book provide a unique perspective on a dimension of Black communal life in Canada that until now has been hidden. In my analysis of these interviews I emphasize how these men negotiate the structure of heterosexist and homophobic domination that defines the circumstances of their lives in Black communities. Their narratives let us enter imaginatively into their struggle to negotiate and survive in communities that are important to them, even while those communities engage in the hostile and exclusionary practices of bionationalism. Their stories reveal a common struggle to remain a part of Black families, communities, and churches, and their lives are a profound expression of human experience and spirit. They demonstrate that sexual identity and lived experiences are complex and filled with ambivalence. These things are never neatly situated along the axes of homo and hetero, pleasure and pain, dignity and defeat, Black and white, or good and bad. I maintain that bullers live lives of value and that to deny this is to do violence to our ability to conceptualize the lives of those whom bionationalists have thrown out of Black communities. Why should we care about these men and their hidden history? We should care about what the men say and how they say it because they speak in the terms of a new or alternative discourse for thinking about Black nationalism, Black identity, Black pleasure, Black relationships, and Black love. This discourse is not a moralizing one and is not coming out of the blue; rather, it is a discourse consistent with an understanding of what can be learned from the interviews. The men's lives, the importance of those men's lives, and how they tie to the larger project is what my work is all about. As for my own experience, it locates me in a buller man subculture in Trinidad that existed before I was born and in my present subculture in Canada. I have not done the historical work to document the lives of bullers in Trinidad and Tobago; that said, my own experience points me in the direction of further investigations that would allow me to uncover that history. I can now make the general point that prejudices and human rights violations do not exist in the abstract - they come with unique and distinguishing historical particularities. A bringing to light

20 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

of these particularities will, I hope, make Black communities more accepting and understanding of bullers and batty bwoys. The bashing and exclusionary practices in our families and communities will not win anyone any airmiles. But one can hope that in time, through projects like this present one, more and more Black men will come out of the closet and weaken the taboo against homosexuality in Black communities. I hope that the following chapters, which look beyond single-identity Black politics to address multiple oppressions, will help us make more intelligible the praxis for understanding all oppressions, not just some. Chapter 1 examines the broader issues that inform this book: Black communities and the position within them of buller men and batty bwoys; names for Black gays and the politics of language; gay Blacks in a white gay world; and the rejection of bullers and batty bwoys by their own Black culture. I begin chapter 2 by locating and analysing myself as a buller man, in order to theorize on some of my own personal and political experiences. This is important to me, because as a buller man, much of what I have lived through has not been documented. This analysis complements the lived experiences of the men in this book, as we attempt to create a model for other bullers and members of the larger community through diversity and commonality. In chapter 3, I introduce the methodological framework and begin analysing the interviews. I continue the discussion of Black family relationships and their importance to the lives of buller men, batty bwoys, and men who have sex with other men. I am especially interested in how the men were able to negotiate a place within their families. In this context, I discuss family violence, positive family reinforcement, suicide, and professional help. Chapter 4 continues the discussion of the interviews and of the issues those raised around the importance of participating in organizations, both secular and religious. Here I ask a number of key questions. What does it mean for these men to participate in, feel affirmed by, belong to, and identify with the Black community? I am interested in the men's stories about community participation. Do they feel invisible within Black communities? What impact have Black religious values had on their lives? What violence have they experienced, and how have they dealt with it? I investigate all this under the rubric 'Belonging and Identification/

Introduction 21

In chapter 5,1 discuss the men's understanding of Black nationalist discourse and how it has affected their ability to participate in Black communities and have intimate relationships with other men. I also investigate how heterosexism and homophobia in Black nationalism and the construction of a Black hypermasculinity have affected the men in this study. To accomplish all of this, I conduct an intertextual analysis of how the buller man as a concept is articulated, constructed, and given a set of connotations within Black intellectual hegemonic discourse. I analyse how race, identity, representation, pleasure, desire, and sexuality are constructed within the realm of Black heteronormative hegemonic practices in Black communities. For example, I clarify how the legitimation of particular texts in the Black cultural canon contributes to the development of a cultural formation that defines the desirable and proscribed norms of Black identity. More specifically, I explore the systems of thought invoked by Farrakhan, Barraka, Fanon, Morrison, Cleaver, Hare, and others when they construct Black same-sex bodies.16 Given the centrality of the canon to the development of a cultural formation inclusive of Black diasporic historical social development, it is critical to interrogate the canon as well as the discourses that circulate as a consequence of canonization. This process of interrogation involves uncovering and making visible the terms of conduction and forces of regulation inherent in these discourses. In chapter 6, through interviews with bullers and batty bwoys, I try to interpret how they live and negotiate their relationships in specific Black communities in Toronto and Halifax. I also query how they feel about their own sexuality, bisexuality, and lovers and relationships, and how they live these aspects of their lives within the larger structure of dominance in Black communities and the wider society. I examine how they negotiate oppression as it pertains to their sexuality as well as how they negotiate pleasure and identity. The analysis in this chapter sheds yet more light on the structures of dominance referred to earlier. In chapters 7 and 8, I conclude that there is a Black bionationalistic discourse that is heterosexist and oppressive to the same-sex segments of Black communities, and that this discourse sets up a regulatory politic that excludes the men who are the subjects of this book from Black communal life. I also ask a number of questions: Can a dominant regime such as Black bionationalism be challenged, contested,

22 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

and changed? What are the counter-strategies by which churches, families, and communal institutions can begin to subvert Black bionationalism and its regulatory forces? Finally, what are the theoretical underpinnings for all of the above, in relation to rethinking communal Black discourses so as to ensure that they integrate and respect the dignity of all bullers in all Black communities?

Part One: Oh My God! Look Who's in the Closet! Hidden Black Men Having Sex with Other Men

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Chapter One

Hidden Men

There comes a time when silence becomes dishonesty. The ruling intentions of personal experience are not in accord with the permanent assaults on the most commonplace values. For many months my conscience has been the seat of unpardonable debates. And the conclusion is the determination not to despair of man, in other words, of myself. The decision I have reached is that I cannot continue to bear a responsibility at no matter what cost, on the false pretense that there is nothing else to be done. Frantz Fanon, Pour La Revolution Africaine

It is often hard to sustain meaningful dialogue between members of heterogeneous Black communities - that is, heterogeneous in terms of family histories, classes, and sexual orientations. Even in the absence of overt heteronormativity, men who engage in same-sex practices are overlooked or forced into the homogeneity of the Black nation, the Black family and the Black communal structure; this leaves no room for difference or visibility. Hence the reference to 'hidden men' in the title of this chapter. Giving these men a voice might help make Black communities more positively aware and accepting of buller men's and batty bwoys' lived conditions. Both in political contexts and in the context of friendship, such a project could be enriching. But in order to reveal the wealth of experience in Black communities, we must address the heterosexism and violence these men experience. It is not my intention to represent Black communities as more heterosexist and barbaric, more lacking in logic, compassion, social justice, and sensitivity to human rights, than other communities. Rather,

26 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

I wish to recognize that at present, bullers and batty bwoys are persona non grata and must push the community to revise its 'normative' frames of reference of Black identity1 of the sort that permit the buller-bashing rhetoric presented by community activists, performers Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks, and Louis Farrakhan and other religious leaders. This must take the form of what Paulo Freire calls 'a social praxis ... that is helping to free human beings from the oppression that strangles them in their objective reality' (1985:125). For buller men and batty bwoys, the oppressions of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism are intricately linked. Despite the different patterns that oppression takes, many of its machinations follow the 'blame the victims' syndrome. All of these 'isms' deny bullers and batty bwoys their human agency. They regulate, oppress, deny, and suppress the fantasies, differences, desires, and practices of bullers. The Black church, Black nationalism, and the Black family constitute the triple pillar that obstructs progress on the issue of Black same-sex loving. As Lorde states, compulsory heterosexuality 'operates from the premise that heterosexuality is the norm or privileged practice and any other form of human sexual, or emotional existence is deviant, sick or abnormal' (1984: 28). The 'othering' of same-sexers by the Black community is often interpreted by other communities as an indication that we are more heterosexist and homophobic than they are. But Black heterosexist analysis is based on race first, which in essence is reductive politicking. In the ongoing debates over race, racism, sexuality, and gender within various Black communities, race is still viewed as absolute, and all other identities such as gender, age, disability, and sexual orientation are put aside or completely ignored. The argument made is that 'the white man' (racism as gender specific) sees colour and does not see sexual identity or orientation. Here, race and racism are manipulated to subsume Black same-sex desires, and in doing so blur and suppress all interplay between same-sex desires, gender, and racism. Craig Owens has argued that 'homophobia is not primarily an instrument for oppressing a sexual minority; it is, rather, a powerful tool for regulating the entire spectrum of male relations' (1987: 221). In the context of Black male relations or bonding, the effect of this heterosexist regulation is that Black men must act in hypermasculine ways and display themselves as cool, tough studs in order to prove their masculinity or maleness. The male sex-role ideology, Charles Socarides (1978)

Hidden Men 27

argues, 'embodies the competitive ego-centricity of the capitalist market system, that further militates against the solidarity of the homoerotic bond which threatens the atomizing methods of domination' (1978: 228). The regulatory forces of heterosexism, as lived through racism, deny Black men the opportunity to be affectionate, emotional, and compassionate with the women in their lives and with their children, never mind with one another. This power paradigm is firmly ensconced in a heritage of brutality. Many of the men I interviewed voiced the pain of having been silenced or excluded because they were perceived as 'being different/ or 'not masculine enough/ or 'not Black enough/ or 'an embarrassment to the Black community and the Black family.' Black structures of dominance manifest themselves in many ways, including public shame, loneliness, and exclusion from Black communal living. By the phrase structures of dominance, I am referring to the myriad ways in which bullers and batty bwoys are positioned within social relations of Black community life, to the point that we come to anticipate that our presence will provoke practices of marginalization in the form of symbolic if not physical violence. Nikki Giovanni (1983) reminds us of the symptomatic and cathartic violence that must be challenged in order to transform Blacks from victims into active subjects. Structures of dominance are created by the hegemonic discourses2 of a well-articulated Black cultural formation, produced by Black consciousness and 'collective struggle.' By collective struggle, I mean a set of community practices organized in ways (dominated by men) to solve historic problems in the struggle for self-determination - especially attempts to promote Black liberation, nationalism, decolonization, and empowerment. By 'Black cultural formation/ I am referring to a form of consciousness - specifically, a regulated, complex set of material and symbolic practices that organize and 'normalize' 'the Black community.' Within these processes, social forms become projects of moral regulation - projects that establish the notion of 'norming' and that set the limits of 'properness' within Black communities. Michel Foucault suggests that structures of dominance and oppressive conditions are always locally contested within discursive fields: The power to control a particular field resides in claims to (scientific knowledge) embodied not only in writing but also in disciplinary and professional organizations, in institutions (hospitals, prisons, schools, fac-

28 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys tories) and in social relationships (doctor/patient, teacher/student, employer/employee, parent/child, husband/wife). Discourse is thus contained or expressed in organizations and institutions as well as in words; all of these constitute texts or documents to be read. (1980: 67)

In Black communities a variety of 'discursive fields of force' compete with one another for legitimacy; that said, the Black church and groups devoted to promoting a Black nationalist identity dominate the discursive fields, which act as moral regulators of everyday life. Philip Corrigan states: 'Moral regulation through its reproduction of particular (proper, permitted, encouraged) forms of expressions fixes (or tries to fix) particular signs, genres, repertoires, codes, as normal representations of "standard" experiences which represent human beings as far more standardly "equal" than they can be in fact' (1990: 111). To illustrate this point, within the Black communities of Toronto and Halifax, 'moral regulation' is articulated and legitimated by a heterosexist alliance that includes not only intellectuals, ideologues,3 activists, and religious leaders, but also entertainers and clothing designers. It is important to understand Black heterosexist thinking as continually concretized in practices that promote heterosexuality. These practices have the effect of constructing same-sex relationships as abnormal and outside the normative framework of Black life and Black identities. I underline the fact that this thinking is heterosexist in order to emphasize the common assumption that everyone in the Black community is heterosexual. Insofar as this book challenges this assumption, it challenges those who espouse these narrow views to confront their own prejudices and bigotry against bullers and batty bwoys. Black heterosexist thinking is rooted in a cultural formation encapsulated by prevailing discourses that emphasize Black nationalism and, furthermore, the policing of the body as a necessary element of that nationalism. In other words, this cultural formation, built into the Black political project,4 is intended to assert a Black national identity; in turn, this identity mobilizes elements of moral regulation that attempt to purify racial and sexual identities by silencing 'difference.'5 The incorporation of these discourses by Black leaders and the recirculation and adoption of these discourses in Black popular culture increase the discourse's hegemony by regulating morality. As a concept, Black popular culture raises problems. 'Black popular' already assumes a fixed, understood, commonsense, and popular iden-

Hidden Men 29

tity, by which all Blacks must abide. In essence, it is a regulatory concept that polices the performance, actions and expectations of all Black bodies be they bullers, batty bwoys, bisexuals, or heterosexuals. In this context, 'Black masculinity/ under the guise of a universal Black culture, will always erase Black male same-sex eroticism, desire, and pleasure. Community activists and academics like Molefi Kete Asante seek to legitimize Kwanzaa6 as a celebration in which all Black people can share. Yet this festival asserts a unity for Black heterosexual nuclear families, one within which Black heterosexual men and women supposedly love each other in procreative ways. Same-sex practices are represented as part of the 'external/ as a white man's disease. As a spiritual and communal celebration emphasizing heterosexist family values, community participation, and concepts of love and togetherness, Kwanzaa is promoted by the same community leaders who organize public demonstrations and administer Black programs and services. The reproduction of communal events like these in Black communities does much to foster a particular form of Black masculinity, while erasing Black same-sex practices. The Politics of Language The general lacunae of sociological (or any other) studies of these men mean I must try to establish a framework for describing the complexities of their lives, one that accounts for the intersections of race, nationalism, identity, and sexuality. This framework must uncover the structures that inform and signify the indexical relationship between categories of social life and the experiences of those whom these categories seek to characterize. The task7 of writing about these intersections raises a necessary set of preliminary considerations. Most particularly, how do historically specific categories of sexualized identities, interwoven with assumptions of race and nation, shape the experiences of men with such identities? There are correspondences among the politico/sociocultural structures of my research subjects, myself, and the text: we need to understand, name, experience, and negotiate heterosexism and create survival spaces in various Black communities. The complex issue of signifying a racialized and sexualized identity is raised by Audre Lorde (1994) in her critique of 'lesbian' as a term for Black women who engage in same-sex relationships. She asserts the cultural and historical specificity of a Caribbean same-sex identity, an identity that requires its own linguistic self-identification. Lorde

30 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

suggests an alternative word: 'zami/8 For Lorde, zami signifies a cluster of meanings, associations, issues, concerns, and structures of identification that differ from those associated with 'lesbian' - a term with distinct origins and associations in white Western culture. This is not to say that zami is a monoreferential term without differences. However, Lorde argues that those Black women with Caribbean and African-Caribbean backgrounds who engage in same-sex relationships are articulating a sexual identity different from the one designated by the term 'lesbian/ This difference is captured through the historical specificity and location of Black women who, in very particular community circumstances, live out their lives in social, functional, and erotic relationships with one another, through actual social practice. Zami, therefore, is not just simply Black equivalent of 'lesbian' (a white concept); it is a historically specific term that makes visible hidden experiences and newly acknowledged Black same-sex communal realities. For Carol-Boyce Davies the term zami implies 'a similar move to find new language and new starting points from which to express a reality, as is, for example, Alice Walker's definition of "womanist"9 as another term of meaning for Black Feminist' (1994: 121-2). Madiha Didi Khayatt also questions the universalizing assumptions behind the concept of lesbian: 'The incompleteness of the conceptual framework currently in use to discuss "lesbian" identity has meant that the experiences of women whose cultures have produced different identities but similar desires are not fully recognizable under the term' (1995: 3). In other words, using a word that reduces the complex forms of social regulation and resistance that have evolved to only one form, modelled by European traditions, excludes the experiences of those women it claims to describe. These critiques of white Western lesbian politics by Lorde, Davies, and Khayatt are the starting point for my project on English-speaking African-Caribbean and African-Canadian men from Toronto and Halifax who engage in same-sex relations and practices. Like these authors, I am seeking appropriate language to begin to theorize Black men's same-sex practices from a non-Western perspective. In this book, Black men who engage in same-sex relations will be defined as buller men and batty bwoys. For the purposes of this work, the familiar10 Caribbean epithets 'buller men' and 'batty bwoys' will be used interchangeably to define the living, social, and political conditions of Black men from the Caribbean and Canada who have sex

Hidden Men 31

with other men and who do not accept a label, as well as for those who have sex with other men and who do accept a same-sex identity.11 The vernacular character of the terms reflects the cultures of samesex practices that are specific to Black Canadian and Caribbean12 men. The life stories of buller men and batty bwoys are not perfect records; rather, they are fables, or fabulous strategies, that represent testamentary accounts and selective memories of the past which they wish to share with us. Their life stories show the very notion of a sexual identity to be suspect. In this condition, in a mixed diasporic space such as Black Toronto with its amalgam of cultures, terminology varies and even conflicts. For African-Canadian men in Halifax these terms are at least at first external, learned through popular cultural musical forms (rap, reggae, hip hop, calypso, movies) and socialization with people from the Caribbean living in Halifax. African-Canadian men in Halifax do not have the same associations with these terms as men with a Caribbean heritage. Still, I choose to apply these terms to both groups - the Toronto men and the Halifax men - in order to define a Black same-sex identity. This may expose me to criticism, yet I hope it will open the debate. Something concrete and significant, and also specific to their conditions and social situations, is evoked when we represent these men as buller men and batty bwoys. If the terms 'buller man' and 'batty bwoy' are to have more than the most facile of significations (i.e., designation of phenotypical racial features), we must come to understand how lives marked by sexualized and racialized identifications are lived within very specific communal relations. This is a group of men whose heritage is an integral part of the history, geography, political economy, and culture of the colonized English-speaking Caribbean. How they live amid the relations of the family, the workplace, and community, and how they engage others for purposes of pleasure and utility, must be recognized as historically instantiated, as culturally specific. In search of safety, these men negotiate their relationships within structures of dominance that exist within violent and homophobic Black heteronormative communities. Heterosexist violence takes place against individuals in same-sex relations in many communities, not just Black ones, but there is a specificity to that violence in Black communal settings. The act of identifying oneself as a buller man or batty bwoy places an individual, historically and geographically, in proximity to a specific set of narratives, images, and values. This naming ties identity to

32 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

the history of the Caribbean people as well as to a historical, cultural, collective, and personal sense of ancestral heritage, language, body gestures, and memory that is specific to African-Caribbean and Canadian men engaging in same-sex relations. To recall Lorde's zami - not 'gay' or even homosexual, but buller men and batty bwoys. Sociologically speaking, these men reference a particular lived experience that is not a white experience. This book documents and analyses that experience to produce knowledge and to understand the naming of difference within a historical specificity similar to Lorde's reclamation of zami and Walker's proclamation of womanist. The Invisible Men The lack of literature by or about buller men and batty bwoys in Canada marks the buller as analogous to the 'invisible man' in Ralph Ellison's classic novel (1947) of the same name. A buller is not seen or heard, even though he exists. In Canada, bullers experience a triple form of oppression: racism and heterosexism within white society; racism and the sexualization of racism within the white gay community; and heterosexism within the Black community. There is a rich literature on white, gay, and lesbian cultures in Canada, yet very little has been written on the lives of buller men and batty bwoys, so very little is known about how these men negotiate their identities in Canadian and other North American societies. The denial of heterosexist privilege, combined with white racial privilege, has led to this void. There have been few opportunities in Canada for bullers and batty bwoys to publish. Like their heterosexual brothers and sisters, white gay academics continue to write as if they have access to everybody's experience and emotions, instead of offering room for us bullers to depict ourselves. In our racialized communities, same-sex relations are treated as taboo or a form of gender inversion, and we are denied the luxury of writing and researching. As Chan (1987) has observed, although studies of lesbian and gay experience in North America have proliferated in the past two decades, they have most often been studies of the white, middle-class experience (16-18). Some, studies, such as that of Green (1994), note the complex interrelations between racial identity and the many factors that create sexual orientation,13 many of which relate to language (243-51). Because Blacks and whites have different epistemologies, language signifies differently for each. Even a brief glance at the dif-

Hidden Men 33

fering epistemologies of bullers and batty bwoys, as opposed to gays, suggests that unacknowledged racism requires us to continue the project of examining, documenting, and analysing the language and tools of human agency used by buller men and batty bwoys. Language transmits the specificity of culture. As indigenous terms, buller man and batty bwoy locate specific men within a set of social relationships that share an understanding of these terms, which constitute part of the culture and community of Caribbean speakers. To a degree, these men identify themselves through the language that is used to privilege and maintain values that are central to Caribbean culture. For Mikhail Bakhtin, language has its own embedded history and memory: 'Language has been completely taken over, shot through, with intentions and accents ... All words have the "taste" of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life; all words and forms are populated by intentions' (1981: 293). Someone who defines himself as a buller man or batty bwoy is accepting a set of communicative relationships in which the parties share a history and parlance that together define a specific place within a shared culture. These terms are full of specific intentions; they suggest picaresque constructions and surreal scenes. They arise from a mother tongue, a language with a history that was instituted before we were born and that will continue after our death. Its patterns can be filled with one's own motivations and cultural context. Speakers fill language with intentions, occupy it for the span of their lives, and leave it behind for other users. In essence, there is a historical, cultural, linguistic, collective, and personal sense of ancestral heritage and memory for men of African-Caribbean and Canadian heritage, and this is reflected in their conduct. There is a need to reframe sexualized identity through a language that incorporates some historical specificity and that makes visible who people are. Bernabe, Chamoiseau, and Raphael, in their study of the Creole language, argued that taking over oral tradition should not be considered as a backward mode of nostalgic stagnation. To return to it, yes, first in order to restore this cultural continuity without which it is difficult for collective identity to take shape. To return to it, yes, in order to enrich our enunciation, to integrate it and go beyond it. We may then, through the marriage of our

34 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys trained senses, inseminate Creole in the new writing. In short, we shall create a literature, which will obey all demands of modern writing while taking roots in the traditional configurations of our orality. (1990: 896)

Duller men and batty bwoys have long been seen as among the sexualized exotic, dangerous and violent, but still visible in only two dimensions. They have not yet been reworked by their objects in Black communities in such a way as to enjoy a positive identity and location. In this project, white communities are far ahead. So this book is in part a political project that has as its goal to do for them what has already been done within white communities for "queer/ 'fag/ 'gay/ 'homosexual/14 and so on. I hope to expand the theoretical tradition established by Audre Lorde, Madiha Khayatt, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, Kobena Mercer, Isaac Julien, and other gay and lesbian activists and academics - and also to make buller men and batty bwoys subjects, not objects. Examples of the Black male as exotic and sexually racialized can easily be found in most male same-sex magazines and in Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs: Black + Male = aesthetic, erotic object. Whatever the sexual orientation of the artist or spectator, this system of images suggests that the essential truth of Black masculinity lies in the domain of sexuality (1994: 143). One result is that the Black male body loses human agency and is stripped of dignity, self-worth, and voice by a process of commodification. If we are to understand bullers and batty bwoys, Western terms will not suffice. Terms such as queer and gay are embedded in dominant Western and European notions of sexual difference - notions that do not assume a Black Caribbean or North American Black experience. When we rethink and reappropriate terms such as buller man and batty bwoy, we will be attempting to destigmatize and politicize these concepts. We need to accept and use Black, same-sex, Caribbean-identified terms if we are to carve out a space for ourselves in Canadian society, Black communities, and majority gay culture. This book enters the terrain of buller men and batty bwoys with the clear understanding that buller man and batty bwoy don't mean the same thing as gay and that we must begin to reference sexualized identity through language and racialized notions of culture. Bullers are not gay. Their lived reality - their sense of knowing what they know epistemologically - is quite different from that of white gays. Given this, when bullers and batty bwoys begin to create a language

Hidden Men 35

for developing their own political agency, they will find that buller man and batty bwoy are useful terms. Of course, such agency will require more than a name change. To understand something of the experience of Black men who engage in same-sex relations with other Black men, one has to understand the specificity of that lived experience. And that experience, that identity, must be coded as different, if one is to begin to describe the actualities of Black men's lives, instead of subsuming those men into the generalized specificity of gay white lives. Shifting the Gaze For many Black men in the Caribbean and in North America who are engaged in same-sex relationships, the terms 'gay' and 'queer' conjure stereotypical images of a population that is white, effeminate, weak, and affluent. These descriptors efface Black men's sociopolitical and cultural history, which is one of colonialism, racism, sexism, imperialism, and so on. All of these have played a role in their social construction. Essex Hemphill (1991) comments: 'The post-Stonewall white gay community of the 1980's was not seriously concerned with the existence of Black gay men except as sexual objects ... It has not fully dawned on white gay men that racist conditioning has rendered many of them no different from their heterosexual brothers in the eyes of Black gays and lesbians' (xviii). Same-sex activism in white Western society has embraced 'queer' as a term of identity social practice, and political activism. 'Queer' has been appropriated by white gay men to affirm a positive identity and social practice. 'Queer' has become a way of renaming and reappropriating a historically negative concept15 and affirming same-sex identifications. It has also posited same-sex practitioners in Western societies as an ethnic group, in accordance with arguments that have supported the creation of a flag, annual Gay Pride events across North America and Europe, and a distinct, politicized language. These claims are similar to those that have been used historically to define ethnic minority groups through language, customs and food. In his discussion of the term's use in gay politics, queer activism and social justice,16 Michael Warner, contends that 'queer' is 'thoroughly embedded in modern Anglo-American culture, does not translate easily and is politically unstable. Queer dates from the George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney era' (1993: xxi). I be-

36 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

came familiar with the concept of queer after migrating to Canada and socializing with primarily white gays and lesbians in this country. I cannot recall how many times I was confused when my white friends used North American political and cultural expressions to talk about their gay and lesbian lives.17 In Trinidad when I was a child, the word gay was used only in the less specific version employed in standard English, to express a sense of happiness, or of people having a fun time, as is demonstrated by Trinidadian writer Raoul Pantin in Black Power (1990). Pantin, writing about the aftermath of the February 1990 Black power revolution, states: 'And for all the Black Power Rhetoric, the crowd still seemed in an a gay, lighthearted mood' (58). Samuel Johnson, in The Economist of 29 June 1996, captioned a cartoon as follows: 'Avoid unwanted Carnival Babies. A few days of gay abandon can mean a lifetime of regret. Go to your family planning clinic' (1996: 88). In the Caribbean, it was usual to hear our grandparents and parents use the term 'gay' to describe the behaviour of people who behaved 'happily,' who 'partied it up/ or who were 'crazy' or 'insane.' The inappropriateness of these terms for bullers - including those living in or leaving from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia - has not been a concern for members of the white gay and lesbian movement. The inapplicability of Western terms for homosexuals such as 'queer/ 'fruit/ 'lesbian/ and 'gay' to Caribbean and other Black, identified bullers is important to remember in establishing the political, cultural, and racial grounding of Black same-sex loving. Questions of class and colonial discourses are also important elements in this debate. James Baldwin, a native Black American, often spoke of his discomfort with the term 'gay' as he tried to synthesize his racial and sexual identities. When asked if he felt like a stranger in gay America, he replied: 'Well, first of all I feel like a stranger in America from almost every conceivable angle except, oddly enough, as a Black person. The word "gay" has always rubbed me the wrong way ... I simply feel it's a word that has very little to do with me, with where I did my growing up. I was never at home in it' (1961:150). Interestingly, his insistent rejection of this label closely parallels what the Black men I interviewed expressed. Baldwin has been severely criticized by many for distancing himself from the term. Because he took an unlocatable position regarding his sexual identification, his literary and activist work during the Harlem Renaissance was accepted by many in his milieu, Black and white alike. He argued many times in public that he did not think one's sexual identity made a difference. In his novel Giovanni's Room, his emphasis is on Giovanni as an indi-

Hidden Men 37

vidual who suffers the consequences of being afraid to fall in love, not as a same-sex symbol. The literature used by many theorists and activists in North America does not address the Americocentrism and colonialism inherent in the gay and lesbian movement. In the same vein, the literature produced by Black lesbian and gay activists in North America does not address the concerns of bullers and batty bwoys in the Caribbean and in non-American parts of the Diaspora. The white North American gay and lesbian movement is practising a form of cultural and academic imperialism, one that homogenizes and at the same time renders invisible all experiences of same-sex people. It does this by presenting universalized frames of reference as if they pertained to all forms of same-sex naming and same-sex oppression. For Black men engaging in same-sex relations in the Caribbean and even (often) in Canada, these terms have little or no relevance, given their dual or triple identities and the manner in which they live and organize their lives. Shame and Contradiction in Black Cultural Frameworks 'Coming out/ for Black men, is an important part of self-affirmation. That said, those who reject their cultural framework by doing so are in for a humiliating experience. Black male nationalists such as Amiri Baraka, Louis Farrakhan, and Eldridge Cleaver are obsessed with the notion of 'gayness' as a 'white man's disease/ Dr Llaila O. Afrika in African Holistic Health views 'gayness' as a disease. He also argues that 'western man' (i.e., white man) is the victim of AIDS18 and, further, that 'those Black men who follow western sexual perversions are AIDS victims' (32). According to this Black nationalist, not only is the buller man diseased, he is also AIDS-ridden. Furthermore, for some, gayness is evidence of European decadence or a weak masculinity. In this context, Black men who have sex with other men, especially with white men, are often regarded as race traitors. It is important to note that this violent and oppressive view held by some Black intellectuals and leaders has done much to generate shame and contradiction in the psyches of the censured, and to marginalize them. Yet these leaders appeal to a fairly large percentage of Black populations in North America and the Caribbean, and their ideas are circulated and embraced by those many who believe in their work. Buller man and batty bwoy are still highly negative labels in Black Caribbean and Canadian communities. Men may identify with these terms, but if they are culturally unspeakable, they may not want to be

38 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

publicly identified with them. There is no question that in the Caribbean, buller man and batty bwoy choose not to be named or identified as such, and not to name their acts as 'buller oriented/ This attitude is quite common, in particular among those who have both heterosexual and same-sex relationships, who in Western terms are 'bisexual/ This public refusal to be named a buller man or batty bwoy has many roots. Lesbian activist and scholar Jewelle Gomez has noted: 'It's very difficult to cleave to that negativeness' (in Clarke 1983: 63). So why do some men still desire to be identified as bullers and batty bwoys? Some individuals embrace these terms in order to help erase their negative connotations. In other words, they do so in an effort to take the sting out of them and to develop a culturally specific Black Canadian and Caribbean language that is consistent with their lived realities. In addition, these terms constitute a point of self-reference. As linguistic markers, they tell many English-speaking African-Caribbean men who they are. These terms have historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts. When used against a man suspected of practising same-sex loving and sexual relations, they assert public and familial shame. This shaming often results in feelings of uncleanness, guilt, effeminacy, and isolation. These conditions are the result of the oppressive language used in churches, combined with lack of support, in terms of social services, available to buller men and batty bwoys. The Victims' of these terms endure a violence - psychological, mental, economical, emotional, communal, and familial - that forces them into invisibility, and they must find a way to internalize the resulting pain. In a society that values and privileges heterosexual loving over same-sex relationships, that uses these constructs as well as brutal force to silence bullers and batty bwoys, they are denied the agency manifest in a same-sex relationship. Bullers who accept the terms are overcoming their isolation, and this helps them overcome the shaming. In Black communal settings, particular bodily practices are morally regulated. As one aspect of this regulation, Black nationalists label buller men as 'diseased/ 'race traitors/ 'feminine/ and 'sick/ Religious practices have a similar effect. Black nationalism19 and Christianity have tarred Black same-sex relations as an evil embedded in Black communities, as something that people in such relationships ought to feel ashamed of. The nationalists and the churches together offer powerful signifiers about appropriate sexuality, about the kind

Hidden Men 39

of sexuality that presumably imperils the race/nation and about the kind of sexuality that is beneficent to Black families, the Black nation,20 and Black nationalism. Shame, then, is grounded in a Black ideological logic that is translated into claims of what constitutes 'a good Black nationalist' or 'good Black Christian/ The moral opprobrium heaped on Black same-sex practices in African-Canadian and African-Caribbean communities encourages us to start setting a counteractive agenda for Black same-sex sexual agency and its bodily practices. The shame of buller men and batty bwoys is culturally specific; but this is not to suggest that it is based exclusively on Christian beliefs. The shame felt by buller men and batty bwoys is embedded in specific cultural markers and collective memories of African-Caribbean religion, a religion scattered across the Diaspora. In a 12 January 1993 article in the Village Voice on buller men and batty bwoys in New York City, Peter Noel states: 'Legend has it that the Buller man is cursed with a Jumbie, an evil spirit sent by the Obeah Man. Bullers can only become "straight," so the legend goes, when the Obeah man himself is lured with bark, calabash, Julie mango and angel hair trapped in a rum bottle under a silk cotton tree.' In Trinidad, Jumbie is an evil spirit of the dead that assumes human form and sheds its skin at night in order to raid the abode or steal the voice of the living. It must complete this operation before daybreak, when it must hide (Allsopp 1996: 317-18). The Jumbie is supposedly a ghost, a mischievous or malevolent spirit, creature, or person that goes about at night (Mendes 1985: 71). In some Caribbean islands the Obeah man or woman is feared as someone who deals with evil spirits, the 'Jumbie/ rather than with God, Christianity, and biblical teachings. White colonialists failed to understand the religious and spiritual practices - Obeah and Shango - brought to the Caribbean by enslaved Africans. They Christianized - in their terms, 'civilized' - the Africans as a means to understand and thereby control the many forms of slave resistance to white domination. John Mbiti, in Traditional African Religions and Philosophies, contends that terms such as superstition, witchcraft, and magic are often applied to African world views: 'Most [traditional] peoples ... believe that the spirits are what remains of human beings when they die physically. This then becomes the ultimate status ... Man does not and need not, hope to become a spirit: he is inevitably to become one, just as child will automatically grow to become an adult' (1969: 69).

40 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

Mbiti states that African religions reject the socially constructed dichotomies between sacred and secular, spiritual and political, that are so prevalent in Western societies. While there are many negative views of these African-descended beliefs, some Black Caribbean cultures reaffirm Obeah and the Obeah man as able and willing to cure spiritual evils, not just perpetrate them. According to Allsopp, 'Obeah is a system of secret beliefs, in the use of supernatural forces to attain or defend someone from evil.' It uses herbs, flowers, rice, candles, incense, and poisons, aimed at mystical healing, harming, or charming. The Obeah man or woman is a person who wo'k's obeah, that is, 'who carries out the practice of Obeah as a secret profession and has paying clients' (412). Parents often take their children suspected to be bullers to the Obeah man or woman to be 'cured.' To be cured of being a buller, you must pay the Obeah man or woman a fixed sum of money. The spiritual healing is done over several days or weeks. Obeah's unusual power is often sought in any situation in which there is some deviation from 'normal' behaviour that can be seen as demonic. The Obeah man or woman, then, is the ultimate force that can cure a buller man from evil and sexually unclean temptations. Clearly, the shaming of buller men and batty bwoys is embedded in specific cultural markers and practices that emanate from collective memories of African-Caribbean religion. In this chapter I have begun to discuss the oppressive discourses that serve as policing agents in the lives of bullers and batty bwoys. I have also laid out this study's terms of reference. All of this amounts to a starting point for making sense of differences and for creating the momentum for collective action.

Chapter Two

Collaborative Connections: My Biomythography

Ethical Concerns and Biomythography And when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive. Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorns Poems

The stories you are about to read - mine in this chapter, and those of the interviewees in chapters 3 to 6 - are not exclusively stories of oppression. They do, however, express a considerable amount of pain and humiliation. This process of articulating my own story and asking other bullers to make public their stories is an attempt to assert and broaden the reality of Black male same-sex existence, which too many people for far too long have tried to erase. If we are to facilitate more humane social relationships, it is essential that we begin to assert and represent the existence of bullers in Black communities. I recognize that those who read these stories of pain and humiliation, including myself, may be voyeurs of the exotic other. This process may objectify my life and present it as a thing, hence there is a possibility that some may see my life experiences and those of the other men as entertainment. Objectification, argues Richard Schmitt (1999), pretends to do what cannot in fact be done - namely, turn human beings into things (40). When one's life is turned into a thing, then one's life is also reified, and that process of reification creates/operates repressively in our culture, creating alienating conditions for some human existence. (Gabriel 1980: 25). This inevitable danger of being turned into a thing threatens to objectify these men's lives so that their experiences serve

42 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

as entertainment. So it must be asked: Does the academic and political project of this work justify the public presentation of this pain? How can readers avoid becoming voyeurs? I urge readers to reflect on these questions and to ask themselves consciously how they might be complicit in the stories I present. Problems of voyeurism and objectification arise whenever someone presents excerpts of people's lives and codes them into data. In presenting the material that follows to people who have not experienced how bullers live, I must confront a number of ethical concerns. In particular, I must ask readers to adopt an ethical stance in their analytical practices, just as I have tried to do. I must ask them to analyse critically how their failures to challenge these oppressive practices affect the lives of bullers and batty bwoys, and how they are complicit in the oppression these men confront every day in their families, on the street, and in their communities. Academic writers have an obligation to account for the framework they are using. Because I am from the Caribbean and because the parents of many of the men I interviewed are also from the Caribbean, these men and I share a social location - in fact, some of my experiences intersect with theirs. Because of my shared social location and my professional and personal commitment to equity and social justice, I must as a buller man work for positive change and social justice. When we engage in work to which we are personally committed, our academic contributions are more likely to come out of a creative, politically engaged self, one that adds social to academic purpose (Olson and Shopes 1991: 200). As Trin Minh-Ha has put it, 'the place of our/ my hybridity is also the place of our/my identity' (1992: 29). After pondering how to discuss these interviews, I decided to juxtapose my own experiences with those of the interviewees, thus elucidating the similarities and differences. In (re)presenting others' experiences in this book, I have found myself compelled to work consciously through my own position as voyeur. After all, I live in the same milieu as they do, and face the same oppression, which burdens all our lives. My awareness of the complex issues involved when they and I make these lives public has informed my ethical approach to this research. The absence of dialogue between Black heterosexual communities and Black male same-sex communities will be a central theme in this study. Both hooks (1988) and Lorde (1984) have urged dialogue within Black communities to unearth Black epistemological claims to truth and knowledge. Dialogue, in this case, takes place when bullers, batty

My Biomythography 43

bwoys, same-sexed Black men, and heterosexuals meet to talk about and reflect on their lived experiences and to create social ties. Yet dialogue seems almost impossible, at least for now. In Gayatri Spivak's terms, I see myself as subaltern - as representing self and relating to other similar yet unique experiences in a developmental exploration of other bullers' lives and identities. All representation is constructed and thus partial - it can never fully reproduce 'reality/ It is always interpreted by a particular system of thought here, by Black heterosexist structures of dominance. Canada's Black nationalistic heterosexist community contains structures of dominance, within which Black heterosexism and morality prevail. Thus, as a subaltern, I speak from a contested place. This book shows how buller men and batty bwoys make sense of their lives within the confines of Black nationalism, Black communal living, Black families, and Black churches. It analyses the experiences of a group of Blacks who suffer at the hands of a heterosexism that, I argue, is paralysing Black communities. I do not collapse together the experiences of all the men, as if samesex relationships were the same for men and for women. And, of course, this book is gender-specific. It is possible, however, to examine at another time the lives of zamis/lesbians from the Caribbean diaspora in Canada. Bullers and batty bwoys have always been objects of contempt in Caribbean culture. They are part of a communal setting whose teachings and practices involve the policing of same-sex relationships, grounded in religious canons. Same-sex relationships are still a crime on most Caribbean islands,1 one of a list, already too long, of oppressive 'isms' in society. For Caribbean folks, these 'isms' have not created any new spaces; they merely serve to continue the tradition of oppressive thinking. I am a Black buller man, born in Trinidad and Tobago to Caribbean parents of Black, South Asian, and Asian background - commonly known as mixed race or half-breed and by some as 'Dougla.'2 It is from within this ethnically rich cultural heritage, imbibed from grandparents, parents, relatives, and friends, that I begin my journey. In this book I use biomythography, as coined by Audre Lorde (1994) - that is, my life story, or representation of self - to translate my experiences of communal heterosexist oppression. The approach points to Lorde's interest in using her life story to create a larger framework for other zamis. In her work, the individual becomes the collective as she recognizes the women who helped give her life substance. These women include 'a hybrid group of friends, family, lovers, and African goddesses - Ma-Liz, Delois, Louise Briscoe, Aunt Anni, Linda, and

44 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

Genevieve; Ma-wuLisa, thunder, sky, sun, the great mother of us all; and Afrekete, Ma-wuLisa's youngest daughter, the mischievous linguist, trickster, best-beloved, whom we must all become' (255). By taking this course, Lorde enables the move from the singular T to the collective 'we' in Black or autobiographical writing. Anne McClintock (1995) argues that 'Lorde's refusal to employ the prefix "auto" as the single, imperious sign of the self expresses a refusal to posit herself as the single, authoritative, engendering voice in the text. Instead, her life story is the collective, transcribed life of a community of women - not so much a perfect record of the past as a fabulated strategy for community survival' (315). Marlon Riggs, in his documentary film Black Is Black Ain't, links his individual identity with that of his grandmother's 'gumbo'3 - a metaphor for the plurality and rich diversity of Black identities. He brings us face to face with Black people - bullers, batty bwoys, zamis, samesexed individuals, young, old, heterosexual, urban, and rural - grappling with the many often-contested definitions of Black life, with Black oral inscriptions and Black identities. Identity here is represented as coming to being through Black communities. This book continues the tradition of Riggs's gumbo and Lorde's biomythography. The absence of frameworks for bullers and batty bwoys makes it imperative that I incorporate the same practice of remembrance, testamentary traces of my lived past, the biomythography of myself into this book, to help me develop a framework for talking about the lives of bullers, batty bwoys, and same-sex Black men. I do not set myself up as a single, authoritative voice. Rather the opposite - my relationship to the lives of the men in this book was central to my project. For me, biomythography has been necessary, because I am living proof4 of some of the experiences of the men in this book. To truly question 'is to interrogate something from the heart of our existence, from the center of our being' (Van Manen 1984: 45). As a Black intellectual and buller man, I find that this genre provides greater legitimacy to my project in relation to my community (Gramsci, 1971). Yet the questions that arise are not superficial, nor do they disappear, merely because I am a member of the community. In Gramsci's sense, an organic intellectual experiences the consequences of living from a certain social position and then articulates a set of problems associated with the lives of himself or herself and others. Gramsci's essay 'The Formation of Intellectuals/ first published in 1957, describes the organic intellectual: 'Every social class, coming into existence on

My Biomythography

45

the original basis of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates within itself, organically, one or more groups of intellectuals who give it homogeneity and consciousness of its function not only in the economic field but in the social and political field as well' (118). These people develop a close and familiar relationship with people, can think through issues, and can thereby change the structures of dominance. It is critical for me to locate myself in this book - to bring into being a self-conscious buller with a particular set of experiences and social history - to clarify the experiences and ways of understanding that inform my theoretical framework. There is a close relationship between the men in this book and myself, between their experiences and mine. According to Lila AbuLughod, there is a 'discourse of familiarity': 'Others live as we perceive ourselves living not as automatons programmed according to "cultural" rules or acting out social roles, but as people going through life wondering what they should do, making mistakes, being opinionated, vacillating, trying to make themselves look good, enduring tragic personal losses, enjoying others and finding moments of laughter' (1993: 27). The complex experiences of buller men and batty bwoys have inspired my research and provided a forum for articulating the strength, pride, and dignity required to negotiate Black communal living. In my biomythography, I recall my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, and use these to chart my life in Trinidad and then in Canada in terms of family, religion, school and community, clothing, sports and trades, popular culture and mass media, girlfriends and exploring the erotic, dislocation (through migration to Canada) and identity, and group organizing within the confines of a compulsory heterosexual and heterosexist hegemony (in Toronto). I use the term 'heterosexist' to refer to the characteristics of an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes non-heterosexual forms of behavior, identity, relationship, and/or community. The end result of these experiences is daily acts of violence, oppression, and intolerance. Family I was raised in a heterosexual nuclear family. My elder brothers and sisters left home5 and migrated to North America early in my life. As a result, the youngest five of us formed a close relationship. I grew up with my two elder brothers and had very little in common with them. I felt that I could never compete with them in the arenas of sports,

46

Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

dress code, physicality, masculinity and charm, so I avoided these contexts. I was very close, however, to my sisters. Within my family, discussions on same-sex relationships came up only in private and between adults. My parents raised us to embrace constructs and values that were inherently heterosexist. We were told what 'good, pure, and clean' sex and sexuality was, and which member of the opposite sex we would marry and go on to form a nuclear family with. My mother grew up as a second-generation Caribbean South Asian.6 During my teenage years, my parents would often ask me about the girls in my life: 'Do you have a girlfriend yet?' 'Why haven't you ever brought home any girls?' 'Are you okay?' These questions were a way for them to assure themselves that I was 'normal.' They were also a warning from them to me that they were policing my sexual choices so as to ensure a heterosexual position within the family and society. It was always acceptable for us as young men in the family or the community to talk about having more than one young woman in our lives. If we failed to mention any young women, our parents would suggest potential girlfriends. Most of the time, our parents suggested girls who were Indo-Caribbean, light-skinned, mixed race, and well educated. They often told us that Blacks were not a progressive group and that if we wanted to succeed in life we should avoid them. We had a Black neighbour and very good friend who would compare Blacks to crabs7 in a 'pitch-oil pan'8 - as one tries to climb out, the other pulls him or her down. Parents often spoke in parables to pass messages to children, and if we did not know what they meant, they would say, Tf you doh want to hear now, then you would have to feel later on in life.' Needless to say, my parents never once asked if I was interested in same-sex relationships, and they would not speak about or allow any other sexual identities or options beyond an oppressive heterosexuality.9 This situation imprisoned me within compulsory heterosexuality and constructed same-sex relationships as sinful, traitorous, and deviant. Lorde writes: 'As a forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feministsocialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group defined as other, deviant, inferior or just plain wrong' (1982: 47). In my family, heterosexist cultural norms about sexuality produced through communal and societal living defined same-sex sexualities as unwelcome. This unwelcoming family environment, and the resulting private nature of homoerotic sexuality, are realities for most bullers in the

My Biomythography 47

Caribbean. My family assumed that like my father, I would have a family (heterosexual, of course) and maintain the family name and identity through paternity. As hooks (1992) has argued, Black men are expected to reproduce and maintain the Black family. This pressure accounts in part for the stereotype of the 'village ram'10 - that is, the Black man who feels he must 'plant his seed everywhere/ Part of this pressure also stemmed from my close relationship with my father and his expectations of me. In many respects, my father was like an older brother to me - he trusted me, and we did a lot of things together. When I was eight, my father showed me how to drive his motor vehicles and how to do basic auto repairs - something he never showed my older brothers. He also taught me basic welding, plumbing, and masonry repair, and he would often call on me when repairs needed doing around the house or at the homes of my brothers and sisters. My masculinity was always affirmed and reassured through him and the physical trades and acts we both engaged in. Also, we had some common friends and socialized in some of the same places. I accompanied him to the grocery store, did market shopping with him, and paid the bills. After I attained legal driving age, he would let me drive him almost everywhere, and around his friends he expressed pride in me. When going places, we would talk about local and international politics, relatives, and social issues, and each of us had very vocal opinions on most subjects. My father and I played cards together with his adult friends, many of whom I highly respected. In Trinidad, playing cards - especially 'all foes'11 - is a popular sport among males. In village competitions, my father and I were often partners at cards. I was only a teenager, so this meant a great deal to me, especially because it helped hide the signs that I was a buller. I thoroughly enjoyed my relationship with my father, and the distance I felt because I was hiding my sexuality from him caused me great pain. It made me feel dirty, dishonest, emasculated, and insecure, because he did not know and I did not tell him. For all the activities we shared, I never felt comfortable enough to let him know about my same-sex feelings and desires. This produced a deep ambivalence in me. I grew hesitant about working closely with him, yet I had no way of refusing. I also knew that my masculinity was secure when I was with him, because his friends would often say, 'Your son is so nice - he will grow into a good man/ I felt that the tasks I performed with him were 'manly enough' to hide the signs of my

48 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

emerging same-sex attraction and confusing sexuality. Within the family and community, I constructed a hypermasculinized persona to cover up my confusion. My relationship with my mother was very different. It mattered greatly to her that we got an education, had three meals a day, and were healthy and happy. She was a very busy woman who listened to everyone's problems and managed the family finances. She was a very hard-working woman, determined, strong, proud, loving, kind, assertive, and beautiful, and her children meant the world to her. I would often turn to her for permission to go places or for money to buy clothes or food or to socialize, but she and I did not talk much about other people, political issues, or my life. She was very private and very cautious about what she said in front of us, always reminding us that if we could not say good things about someone, then we should say nothing. She hated any form of gossip and was always ready to remind us that we should not keep bad company. She instilled in me a different type of structure, and I was even more cautious around her than around my father. It was my mother who would chastise my behaviour when she thought it stereotypically feminine. 'Stop acting like a girl,' she would say. She had very clearly defined gender roles for her children, which decided the chores we were assigned. The boys always did the field or yard work; the girls did the housework. She considered food shopping feminine, but her sons had to do most of it, because it meant lifting heavy baskets or boxes of food to feed a large family. She avoided physical signs of tenderness or femininity. The only 'soft' tasks for the boys were polishing and whitening shoes for school, cleaning fish from Saturday market, shelling peas, and cleaning sorrel.12 I believe my mother always knew I was a buller and that she hoped religion or a heterosexual relationship would cure me. She was very particular about where I went, about who called for me, about my clothes and hairstyle. For her, codes of appearance were vital to appropriate male behaviour. I never imagined that I could fool her, so I always felt great discomfort in her presence, when I remembered her religious beliefs and their relationship to same-sex practices. Religion Christianity is the dominant religion of most Caribbean islands - a relic of British colonial rule. Community members who object to samesex relationships often invoke religious discourse to condemn those

My Biomythography 49 relationships as immoral and sinful. All religions in Trinidad and Tobago - Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism - have traditionally viewed same-sex sexuality as sinful and have sought to regulate its practices. I went to church every Sunday, and the pastors often referred to biblical verses condemning same-sex relationships - for example, Genesis 19; Leviticus 18: 22 and 20: 13; Romans 1: 18-32; 1 Corinthians 16: 9; 1 Timothy 1: 10; and Revelation 21: 8 and 15. The passages in Leviticus are the most explicit: 'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination' (18: 22), and Tf a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them' (20: 13). My mother always mentioned these teachings when she saw a buller man or heard about someone thought to be a buller. I was uncomfortable when pastors spoke about marriage and 'family values,' for they always found a way of talking about men sleeping with men. Thus in church services and Sunday school I felt confused and ashamed, because I was aware of my sexual feelings and tendencies. I continued to attend services, hoping for a 'cure' for my desires and feelings. The sense of duality articulated by Dubois takes on an especially painful and specific meaning for Black bullers, who experience powerlessness, rejection, alienation, and shame in Black communal living. Although DuBois analysed the concept of 'the Negro' in the United States, his ideas are equally applicable to Black men who engage in same-sex practices and who are seeking agency, acceptance, and approval within Black communal life. Dubois (1903) wrote about double-consciousness, or the two-ness of being - the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others. I always looked to family, the parish priest, and friends for approval. As a buller man, I found that my double-consciousness hampered my ability to make up my mind on significant issues such as same-sex sexuality, identity politics, and speaking out in support of buller men. Dubois (1903) argued that with a strong cultural sense of self and a commitment and connection to African people, Blacks will move beyond double-consciousness. He urged us to consider the duality of conflict produced by living in an oppressive or racist society. Being both Black and a buller meant harbouring 'two warring souls': 'A sort of seventh son, born with a veil and gifted with second-sight in this American world - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world ... One never feels his two-ness, their unreconciled striving; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength

50 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

alone keeps it from being torn asunder' (1903:16-17). This longing to attain self-consciousness and to merge into a Black man was a source of psychological confusion and moral regulation that existed inside me and other buller men in Trinidad. I also went to the mosque, often for the celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr13 (when my mother's families were having prayers) or for weddings. The Imams (priests) in Trinidad made clear their opposition to samesex relations. Dr Yusuf Al-Quardawi wrote recently about this sort of relationship in The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam: It is a reversal of the natural order, a corruption of man's sexuality and a crime against both males and females. The spread of this depraved practice in a society disrupts its natural life pattern and makes those who practice it slaves to their lusts, depriving them of decent taste, decent morals and a decent manner of living' (1995: 2) According to Al-Quardawi, the Qur'an states, concerning the people of the prophet Lot, that 'homosexuality is a sin, homosexuals seek public recognition and acceptance, they become violent against people who are Godfearing, they seek to perpetuate their evil on the righteous' (2). He contends that this type of relationship 'militates against family life, procreation, responsibility, sacrifices for children, for love and care, is based only on physical gratification' (2). In his classic text Homosexual Oppression and Liberation (1971), Dennis Altaian maintains 'that societies impose upon humanity a repressive regime that channels our polymorphous eroticism into a narrow genital-centered, procreative-oriented heterosexual norm' (74). This confining of sexuality manufactures the illusion of sexual liberation. It forces the subordinated to bear the social anxiety that is involved in repression (Adam, 1978: 44). Gayle Rubin calls this the 'erotic pyramid' of sexuality, which has heterosexual procreative masculinities at the top: Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value. Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are at the top of the erotic pyramid ... Individuals whose behavior stands high in this hierarchy are rewarded with certified mental health, respectability, legality, social and physical mobility, institutional support and material benefits. As sexual behavior or occupations fall lower on the scale, the individuals who practice them are subjected to a presumption of mental illness, disrespectability, criminality, restricted physical and social mobility, loss of institutional support and economic sanctions (1984: 278)

My Biomythography 51

The idea that the sexual impulse exists solely for procreation, not for pleasure, is rooted in the Bible, the Qur'an, and the Bhagavad-Gita, which have fostered religious interpretations and hegemonic practices that exclude same-sex relationships. The ongoing debate about respectability, cleanliness, and decency is conducted in social forums such as churches, schools, and families. These institutions mediate how people view sex, sexual practices, and same-sex acts and relationships. Within these institutions and discourses, state and non-state organizations control sexuality, sexual identity, and communal cultural identity. Because of the religious and moral regulation of the body and its practices, I always felt that my identity was deployed against the subjective dichotomies of good/evil, black/white, moral/immoral, guilty/ not-guilty, sinful/not-sinful. In this scenario, the core of consciousness, as espoused by the various Black communities in the Caribbean and as instituted and maintained by schools, communal life, churches, the state, and Black families, erases the realities of bullers and batty bwoys. School and Community Living School was a crucial phase for me in dealing with my sexuality and coming to terms with manhood. As a teenager, I listened as my schoolmates and friends expressed their hatred of bullers. I recall conversations in school and in the community in which my friends proposed stoning to death men whom they suspected were bullers. In his Village Voice article on 'Batty Boys in Babylon: Can Gay West Indians Survive the "Boom Bye Bye" Posses?' Peter Noel writes about the violence against batty bwoys in Jamaica; there, hunting these men is as instinctive as the craving for fry fish an bammy, a national dish. The mere sight of them can trigger the bedlam of a witch hunt. When the toaster rapper (Hammer) Mouth discovers two gay men in a garage, he yells: 'Hhok up an ah kiss like ... meangy dog ... Run dem outa di yard.' 'Murder them/ advises another toaster, 'kill them one by one. Murder dem till dem fi change dem plan' (1993: 83). Tony Thompson, in the Jamaica Observer (20 October 2002), lets a young Jamaican man describe the harassment he endures every day: 'It's terrible. I can't have peace and freedom like everyone else. If I walk down the road, all I hear is "batty man, him hafi dead, shoot him, slit him." I can't find work - I had to leave my last job when my boss found

52 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys out - and I can't find a home. It doesn't matter how much you try to hide it. If you are seen in certain places or with certain people, you get branded as gay ... I was going downtown with two friends. Suddenly I saw a group of men coming towards us with big sticks. We ran to the police station and told them what was happening, But then the policeman took up a big stick and ran us out of the station. When we got to the steps, the mob was waiting for us. So we had the policeman behind us with his stick and the men in front of us with sticks.'

Likewise, I often witnessed verbal harassment of bullers or effeminate men as they walked past gatherings of men standing on street corners.14 Many men, including my friends, disliked batty bwoys and bullers and often attacked them violently, Noel writes that in Jamaica between 1983 and 1988, many suspected homosexuals were stabbed or shot dead in Kingston (1993:84). This was the type of psychological and emotional fear I lived through as a teenager in Trinidad. This attitude is also very common in many Black communities in Toronto and Halifax, for example, at community events. Many men who define themselves as bullers or batty bwoys, or men who have sex with men, often are afraid to attend these events, or even to pass in front of a group of men, who most times poke jokes at them as they pass, and who often verbally abuse them to provoke them into starting a fight. I often heard my older brothers, when we had arguments or fights, tell me to stop acting like 'ah she or Reginald.' Reginald was a man whom many in the community suspected of being a buller. The reference was dismissive and reinforced the obvious fact that I was younger, and not quite a man yet, and needed to be warned or policed about what not to become. Whenever his name came up in arguments, it substituted for heterosexist oppressive language, induced guilt, and encouraged shame and emasculation,151 consciously resisted arguing with my brothers, for fear that they would call me Reginald in front of my parents or friends. Anger toward zami queens seldom surfaced because most people expected women to carry themselves in traditional ways. Women played highly feminized gender roles, raising children, cleaning house, cooking, washing, dressing, and behaving in ways that excluded labels such as 'lesbian/ 'butch/ 'zami/ or 'man royal/ According to Judith Butler, gender is a corporeal style, a way of acting the body, a way of wearing one's flesh as a cultural sign (1990: 256). That is,

My Biomythography 53

gender is a sign, a signifier of an underlying biological sex and a discernible sexual orientation. Women wearing men's overalls or doing physical work traditionally constructed as masculine did not challenge women's traditional gender roles. If anything, some of the clothes women wore reflected poverty, and it was acceptable for them to wear them until they could afford something new. Clothes functioned as visible signs of identity that were subject to disruption and symbolic theft, and this challenged the role of clothes as grounds for gender. Furthermore, acts such as physical aggressiveness, when a woman was fighting for her 'male partner, children, girl friend, or a good friend,' were reconfigured and represented as very womanly - the act of a strong woman and at the same time a girlish thing to do. Observers never assumed that a woman protecting another woman from male violence had a sexual interest in her or that women who listened to one another's problems had a same-sex attraction. Rather, women supported one another in response to violence and shared communal experiences. Jacqui Alexander calls this a 'gendered call to patriotic duty. Women were to fiercely defend the nation by protecting their honor, guarding the nuclear family conjugal family, "the fundamental institution of the society" guarding "culture" defined as the transmission of a fixed set of proper values to the children of the nation' (1990: 13). Or, as patriarchal Black nationalists have argued, a woman's role 'is omnipresent as the nurturer of Black children, the cultural carrier ... and the teacher of the community' (Wahneema Lubiano 1997: 241). The public practices and gender expectations of Black women did not correlate these occurrences with sexual preference. There was a stereotypical form of gender for women, but it was blurred for women in ways that it was not for men. Within a Trinidadian community, some codes of behaviour allowed women to go unmarked, less rigorously policed in terms of regulated notions of gender behaviour and their connections to sexuality. Notions of what it meant to look and act zami were not as overtly marked as notions of what it meant to look and act like a buller man. A male's sexual identity would be interrogated if he wore the wrong clothes or colours, failed to participate in particular sports, or did not protect his female partner or show an interest in events constructed as 'boyish' or 'mannish/16 The sexual identity of men who stepped outside their traditional masculinized or mannish roles was always in question. Yet many bullers had very good relationships with older

54 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

women in the community. Some women, mostly housewives,17 had no problems forming close relationships with bullers, as long as the males displayed laughable, gossiping, stereotypical, flamboyant, feminine characteristics, and as long as they presented themselves less as maligned than as humorous. During my teenage years, in an effort to temporarily secure my masculinity - that is, my hypermasculinity and hegemonic heterosexuality - I participated in events such as stealing18 (sugar cane, cocoa, coffee pods, plums, mangoes, and other fruits), breaking bottles with slingshots or stones on the street, engaging in physical fights, and 'hanging on the block'19 with the boys until late at night. These heterosexist, hypermasculinist constructions were ways for me to assert and test my physical strength and to 'prove' my heterosexuality. During my childhood these physical acts secured my masculinist persona. For me, heterosexuality was, as Judith Butler puts it, 'a normative position intrinsically impossible to embody and the persistent failure to identify fully and without incoherence with these positions revealed heterosexuality not only as a compulsory law, but as an inevitable comedy ... a constant parody of itself' (1990:122). For many of us these forms of hypermasculinity were like walking with or having a permanent 'hard-on' - necessary performances that bought our way into the communal construction of a normative heterosexuality. Our fights usually indicated an 'overt disdain for anything that might appear soft or wet - more "a taboo on tenderness" than a celebration of violence' (David Morgan 1987: 48) - a 'matter of learning to identify being male with these traits and pieces of behavior' (82). Young women helped young Black men maintain this form of behaviour and sometimes looked up to them for being able to do all these things and not get into trouble. Furthermore, these activities demonstrated 'power' to parents, women, teachers, and friends, who were proud to see that a young man was not a buller, a sissy, or a coward. In school, young men often called me 'buller man' if I refused to harass young women, laugh at the clothing of economically disadvantaged students, play sports after school, or 'break I'ecole biche' (skip classes).20 They also used the label because most of my teachers liked me and I was always a favorite to be class prefect or student body representative. I often scored high marks in my academic courses and failed miserably in trade and technical courses. My associates saw these qualities as feminine and believed they had the right to call me a buller.

My Biomythography 55

Many days I felt unsafe going to school but was afraid to let my parents know why. Homophobic violence and fear in school, and homophobia within my family, left me with nowhere to turn for help or advice. On several occasions I left for school but never arrived. Throughout high school I lived in fear of men who wanted to beat me because they thought I was a buller man. For me, acting macho was a product of what I now see as masculinized resistance. I presented myself as tough, independent, loud, aggressive, and in control - attributes of traditional dominant gender constructions and of their definitions of manhood - in order to erase all signs of being a buller, a Reginald, or a Shirley. I negotiated heterosexist violence in another way, by forming relationships with bullers who were constructed as heterosexuals.21 These men were tough, big, masculine, and aggressive. No one dared cross their path. They were considered heterosexual because of their large frames, their hypermasculine actions, and their heterosexual relationships. They were the 'cool guys' on the block. Many young men 'hung out' with them when they were going to the movies, smoking pot, going to the river to 'make a cook/22 playing cards on the block, or going to football or cricket matches. Most of these bullers had bluecollar jobs in car, appliance, or sugar cane factories. By working in these places and providing for their families, they showed their masculinity and evaded questions about their sexuality. Their masculinized fronts made them appear heterosexual - like true men and brothers. I associated with these men and confided23 in them in order to avoid or mitigate verbal and physical violence. My contacts with them protected me from often-violent attacks on bullers by gangs of young men, who were always ready to protect their gender and their hypermasculinity. I often heard my friends talk about the beatings they had laid on men they caught at the river, or in the savanna in the night, having sex with other men. These acts of violence often had police24 support. Thus, the victims were left without state or communal support. These men exposed me to a culture of same-sex sexuality through magazines and books. They confirmed my sexuality and provided an avenue for me to accept myself as a buller. They also told me secrets about other men with whom they had sexual encounters or that they knew were bullers. My association with these men reduced my ambivalence by affirming my sexuality; it also protected me from heterosexist violence. They were also friends with my brothers, yet I

56 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

never heard my brothers suspecting their sexuality - they perfectly presented my brothers' social construction and understanding of heterosexual masculinity. Knowing these men helped me understand my same-sex sexual desires and made me feel a bit more comfortable. I was not alone. Despite this enabling self-recognition and my growing awareness of my sensibilities and possibilities, it was impossible for me to 'come out' in any way -1 was too afraid at all times of heterosexist violence. A process of negative self-identification was emerging out of my feelings and understandings, and out of how other people were naming me and subjecting me to violence. Violence against 'queers/ argue Bill Wickham and Bill Haver, is 'installed ... in that ideological, lived relation termed daily life itself, as well as in the objectifkation, thematization and valorization of everydayness' (1992: 36). Compulsory heterosexuality denies many the possibility of positive self-identification. To avoid violence, I embraced a heterosexual identity of the sort that is constructed and regulated within families, schools, churches, and the popular culture. As a young teenager I positioned myself as a buller, but I also adopted - as I show next - the appropriate heterosexist clothing to escape violence. Clothing The 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s saw rigid, gender-based restrictions on colour in Trinidad. As a man, I was not allowed to wear pink, red, yellow, or any colour that appeared too 'flamboyant or bright.' These hues were viewed as weak, feminine, and 'un-cool' - usually they were worn by bullers or white boys. The socially coded buller man's body is stereotyped as 'flamboyant/ 'effeminate/ and 'flashy/ and in some cases as loud and childlike. The flamboyant buller who became friends with older Black women could braid his hair, wear headbands and bright clothing, and speak with a feminine voice, as long as he allowed others to laugh at him and make him the village clown. Gay historian Jeffrey Weeks wrote: 'The male homosexual stereotype of effeminacy and transvestism has had a profound yet complex impact on men who see themselves as homosexual. No automatic relationship exists between social categories and people's sense of self and identity ... The most significant feature of the last hundred years of homosexual history has been that the oppressive definition and defensive identities and structures have marched together' (1981:117).

My Biomythography 57

Black men who contravened these codes were always marked as bullers within our culture and/or community. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick stated in her classic essay in Michael Warner's Fear of a Queer Planet: 'Indeed, the gay movement has never been quick to attend to issues concerning effeminate boys. There is a discreditable reason for this in the marginal or stigmatized position to which even adult men who are effeminate have not been relegated to the movement' (1993: 72). For Black men generally, effeminophobia has always been a real threat to their masculinity, while for some bullers it is another way of reclaiming parts of their identity that they have been taught to hate and despise. For many bullers and batty bwoys, effeminacy is 'undesirable,' 'blightful,' or 'sinful/ because Black society condemns it. Yet some bullers employ it to challenge misogynist and sexist practices in Black cultures, performing drag or cross-dressing to express themselves. Sedgewick writes about oppositional forms of sexual self-expression that challenge the traditional norms and values that imprison Black masculinity and Black communal living. It certainly is dangerous to resist traditional notions of masculinity. As she writes: A more understandable reason for effeminophobia, however, is the conceptual need of the gay movement to interrupt a long tradition of viewing gender and sexuality as continuous and collapsible categories - a tradition of assuming that anyone, male or female, who desires a woman must by the same token be masculine. That one woman, as a woman, might desire another; that one man, as a man, might desire another: the indispensable need to make these powerful, subversive assertions has seemed, perhaps, to require a relative deemphasis of the links between gay adults and gender nonconforming children. (1993: 72-3)

It is not surprising, then, that fear of violence, be it actual or psychological, affects the lives of men who define themselves as bullers or batty bwoys. Both my actions and my fears of communal and family violence emerged from this psychological trauma of same-sex practices, which I attempted to erase through activities such as sports. Sports and Trades My involvement in competitive sports such as soccer and cricket was a means of survival. Sports was an arena in which young men could

58 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

exercise their masculinized personhood. Parents and teachers strongly encouraged sports. It was common to hear parents and coaches talk about how big and muscular the boys were becoming and to hear schoolgirls scream at the display of Black bodies in competitive boys' sports. Once, while I was playing football in the savanna with my male friends, a young man walked by. My fellow players yelled out, 'Look ah buller man, check she how she walking nah. Leh we go beat and kill de man nah?' The young man walked on in fear, hoping the harassment would stop and for his own safety choosing not to respond. My friends went up to him and insisted that he fight. His refusal led to more name calling and physical attacks, which left him bruised and alone. I stood and watched and did nothing. This experience made me question my own safety and wonder how I could publicly affirm a same-sexed identity and inform others of it. I started to think about how lonely my life might be if I did tell my family and friends about my sexual orientation, and about the effect it would have on my family and associates. I did not want to lose my male friends, who were calling me buller as a put-down, as a way of telling me to get tougher and stronger, to act more masculine. To this end, I continued to act very macho - hypermasculine - as a means to negotiate the heterosexist, homophobic, and violent daily occurences of living in that culture and community. Here I am reminded of Foucault, who argued that the emergence of the term 'homosexuality ... as a distinct category is historically linked to the disappearance of male friendship. Intense male friendships were perceived inimical to the smooth functioning of modern institutions like the army, the bureaucracy, educational and administrative bodies' (1985: 43). Even more disturbing for me, there was no protection from the state, nor were there organizations that supported bullers. My friends called me a buller when we played sports. They thought I put too much emphasis on being clean, on getting home on.time, and on resisting fights. I also remember the mother whose house stood where we played cricket in the streets. She would tell her sons and the other young men not to pick me for their team, because I did not like to get dirty, would bat and then go home, or was not strong enough, since I was a buller man. If I was selected, I tried to act like a 'really tough man' and to avoid her and her children. All my older brothers played excellent football and cricket and were very good athletes. I never mastered sports, but I still immersed my-

My Biomythography 59

self in them to erase all signs of femininity and possible suspicions of my sexuality. When I played soccer, men often made fun of me because I could not kick the ball as hard as my brothers or because I did not score as many goals as they did. Most times I was excluded from playing, except as a substitute - a position with which I became all too familiar. It was useful to learn trades such as welding, plumbing, carpentry, and masonry in school, to be able to do basic repairs and simple construction at home. Most communities called on their men for help when a community project or a house was being built. Men would do the physical labour, women the cooking. The person or group being helped was expected to supply large amounts of food for the workers. Sometimes those who could afford to pay for work did so, besides serving food. Many men, including me, felt proud to have helped a family build a new house by mixing cement, welding fences, or laying bricks. These projects also allowed men to project their masculinized selves to the community, and in that way earn popularity. Especially when women were around, men would often show off their strength by hauling heavy loads and comparing their accomplishments to others'. As Ray Raphael wrote, 'our competitive initiations tend to exaggerate rather than alleviate male insecurity and the greater our insecurity, the more prone we are to overcompensating for our weakness by excessive and aggressive male posturing' (1988: 138). Sports and trades were - and still are - valued by some Trinidadian young men more highly than academic achievement. Many young men in Trinidad still contend that academic subjects such as mathematics, history, physics, and English are for bullers and women, whereas trades are for men. This embrace of a physical form of knowing - displaying dexterity and knowledge of one's own body - was and still is a means for young men to graduate into their Black male coolness, machismo, and masculinity. In this way, schools, families, the popular culture, and the pressure of other men's expectations have formed social values and helped maintain them. 'Macho, or cool, as constructions of masculinity, is just one more indication of insecurity/ Raphael notes (1988: 3). Fathers, older brothers, uncles, neighbours, friends, and relatives reminded us of how big, strong, and tough they were and how hard they worked to protect and provide for their families. They boasted about the many women in their lives. Someone who did not have as many women as they did was 'sick/ 'suspected as a buller/ or 'not the

60 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

average young Black male/ My father, however, never fit these stereotypical constructions of manhood. He was very gentle and never worried over the chores he did in the home. Nor did he have more than one female in his life. Yet these stereotypes continue to frame judgments of Black men. Popular Culture and Mass Media The American movies that were shown in Trinidad in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were full of violence, stereotyping, and American heterosexual family values. They also displayed a colonial and sexist mentality. The market was inundated with racist and colonial representations of cowboys and Indians, Black rapists, Black macho studs, and Black comedians. Evil was invariably equated with 'Blackness.' We watched television shows such as Bonanza, The Brady Bunch, Dark Shadows, Days of Our Lives, flipper, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, Lost in Space, Tarzan, The Million Dollar Man, and Planet of the Apes. Around the same era came the 'Blaxploitation'25 genre, which depicted Black machismo and Black language/slang. These movies included Black Belt Jones, The Black Godfather, Cleopatra Jones, Coffee, Held Up in Harlem, Sheba Baby, Shaft Big Score, and Urban Jungle. Kobena Mercer and Simon Watney argue: "The hegemonic repertoire of images of Black Masculinity, from docile "Uncle Toms," to the shuffling minstrel entertainer, the threatening native to superspade figures like Shaft, has been forged in and through the histories of slavery, colonialism and imperialism' (1988: 136). Many Black Caribbean men imitated this representation of themselves in the Blaxploitation films, adopting codes of 'machismo and Black masculinity' to recoup some power over their lives. This depiction of manhood, masculinity, and hypermasculinity transformed how Black men in the Caribbean acted and how they treated women and gays. Most of them started to wear big Afro-hairstyles, plaid pants, and platform shoes, to adopt American and not-so-American accents, and to claim an identity they interpreted as cool and popular. These changes in style and politics were also partly influenced by the Black Power movements of the time, which, again, were driven mainly by Black American male activists. For Richard Majors and Janet Billson, in Black Manhood, 'cool' is 'the presentation of self many Black males use to establish their identity ... It is a ritualized form of masculinities that entails behaviors, scripts, physical posturing, impression manage-

My Biomythography 61

ment and carefully crafted performances that deliver a single, critical message: pride, strength and control' (1992: 4) Parents caught up in the Hollywood dream started to name their children after Black movie stars. This seemed to suggest that male Black babies would grow up to be bodies without brains, insecure and animalistic, without feelings or compassion. This representation heightened Caribbean Black men's existing insecurities; it also reinforced the racist stereotypes they already faced. Slave masters defined, labelled, racialized, and sexualized Black men and women as 'other' without understanding, valuing, or respecting them. In 1970, Trinidadian and Caribbean TV culture encountered a new form of sexual politics. NBC's New York studios began broadcasting TV's first Black male crossdresser - a Black American male named Flip Wilson, playing the role of Geraldine.26 "The Flip Wilson Show Tonight' was the first successful Black hosted variety show in television history. Watching him was painful to me, for my family and friends directed derogatory and heterosexist remarks at him throughout the show. Some of my friends said they wished that they could pull him out of the television screen and 'put ah good lash and beeting upon him and straighten him out.' My parents would caution us about the program, insisting that we not watch it unattended or recommending that we do schoolwork while it was on. People would often express disbelief that a buller man was on television and wonder why he would embarrass Black people by acting so stupid. This show came at a time when the North American feminist movement was beginning to establish itself and when women in the Black consciousness movement were questioning their role and place in society. Here we were beginning, in an unofficial way, an open public debate on gender, sexuality, and sex. Wylie Sypher reminds us that comedy also 'reappears in its social meaning, for comedy is both hatred and revel, rebellion and defense, attack and escape. It is revolutionary and conservative. Socially, it is both sympathy and persecution' (1980: 242). Redd Foxx's big-screen movie Norman Is That You? (1976) was a little more controversial, with its jokes about sex, sexuality, and the sexual revolution. Norman Is That You? was based on a Broadway play by Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick about a young man who is Black and gay. Redd Foxx's character has not seen his son Norman for more than ten years when he pays him a surprise visit. Norman at first hides his effeminate white boyfriend, Garson, who tries to persuade him to tell his father they are lovers. In Norman's absence, Garson

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returns to pick up his clothes and opens the closet door by packing a dress in his suitcase in front of his lover's father. The father tries to convince his son that he is not gay by asking him to walk and say 'Mississippi' and by reminding him that he never dropped the ball when they used to play football. He even tells Norman to go to a physician for help. Norman Is That You? was the first movie shown on Caribbean TV and in theatres to depict an interracial same-sex relationship. This was just at the time when most people in the Caribbean were denying such a relationship was possible. For many Trinidadians, the decadence of whiteness explained Norman's status as a buller. According to their heterosexist logic, whites were infiltrating daycare centres, prisons, and schools, where they were turning Black males into sissies, bullers, and weak traitors to their race. Many Calypsonians, most of them men, sang about Norman that year and the next. It is common for Calypsonians27 to make fun of buller men, village women, and public figures. This music often appropriates sexist, homophobic, and misogynist themes in a society in which hypermasculinity is the key to manhood. Calypsonian Dennis Williams (aka Merchant) captured Trinidadian pop culture with his 1977 hit 'Norman Is That You?' His calypso launched a debate - in communities, on television and radio, and in the print media - about same-sex relationships. Many other Calypsonians, especially those without record labels, continued during carnival seasons to sing and make fun of bullers in the most hostile and violent way. That year, people started to identify some mass bands as buller and some as heterosexual. Hecklers on the street or even within families would call a male who walked, spoke, or acted in a feminine manner 'Norman.' The graphic, violent, and homophobic calypso 'Pepper in the Vaseline' - a threatening reference to sexual practices - reflected prevailing attitudes toward bullers and batty bwoys. The message that Calypsonians were sending then, and are still sending today, to bullers and batty bwoys: 'Come out at your own risk.' Soon after, a Calypsonian named Crazy (aka Edwin Ayoung) recorded Take ah Man,' a controversial song that became a private anthem for many bullers in Trinidad, as well as a way for them to reclaim power. The song was not intended for them, yet it spoke to them by invoking a double meaning. Crazy's most empowering words for some bullers: 'If yuh cyar get ah wooman, take ah man.' In disco-

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theques and at private parties in Trinidad, this song was loved and played often by bullers. As a buller, I found the calypso and the debates about the bands illuminating. I started to learn about places in Trinidad that had a culture of bullers. I discovered how they created their space for survival and their sites of pleasure. I did not attend their events or visit their homes, but at least I knew I was not alone and that there was an emerging culture of bullers that I would be able to embrace someday. If you were an out buller man, everybody called you Norman, buller, anti-man, Shirley, or 'she/ and you dared not respond, because physical and verbal violence would follow, with no police protection. Buller men both challenged and confirmed heterosexist norms, but they could not offer a transformative challenge. Norman Is That You? became a great concern for pastors, who reminded their congregations about the evils of same-sex relationships. There was a moral panic about men becoming bullers, and our parents warned us not to become bullers like Norman. I saw two options for me: be silent, or join in the slander of bullers. Most of the time I joined in the slander, because it helped me erase the guilt and provided privileged membership in the hypermasculinized heterosexist club. There was very little for me to read about same-sex issues. The Bible, the local newspapers, and traditional psychology and psychiatry all condemned bullers. Trinidadian newspapers such as Bomb, Punch, and the Express slandered men and women suspected of being in same-sex relationships. They often published pictures of these people and wrote articles about them to damage and belittle them as much as possible. Sometimes they urged them to leave the community or even the country. Bomb and Punch reported Trinidad's first known buller wedding in 1982. By exposing the names of the two grooms and their families, they forced both men to quit their jobs and move to Canada, where they now live. Through this irresponsible reporting, I learned a great deal about other bullers and zamis and about the violence I could expect if I decided to come out. I often hid from family members when I read these stories. In reading rooms and libraries, the subject of homosexuality appeared only in the sections about law, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, or sociology, under the topics of deviance, immorality, or mental illness. After noticing this, I stopped looking for reading materials on

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same-sex issues. I turned to books by Black writers such as Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, Bobby Seal, and Eric Williams, hoping to find a paragraph or two on Black same-sex relationships, issues, or communities. However, most of the ideologues of the 1960s and 1970s had negative views on the subject, grounded in the historical and often virulent presence of racism. For brevity's sake, I will not develop further an analysis of the Black Power Movement and its impact on homosexuality in Trinidad and Tobago. However, Black literary works, consciousness, ideology, and nationalism, and the discourses of Black activists, have sought to present the race/group in the 'best light/ often depicting Blacks as having qualities, values, and beliefs admired by white, patriarchal, right-wing society. This explains why many Black writers have felt great anxiety about discussing sexuality, same-sex desire, and feminist politics. In the words of bell hooks, Black nationalism has been constructed as a 'dick thing.' Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has written: 'That is not to say that the ideologue of Black Nationalism in this country has any unique claim on homophobia. But it is an almost obsessive motif that runs through the major authors of the Black aesthetic and the Black power movements. In short, national identity became sexualized in the sixties and seventies in such a way as to engender a curious subterraneous connection between homophobia and nationalism' (1993: 79). Nonetheless, these texts continue to shape Black culture, communal solidarity, and identity. Girlfriends and Exploring the Erotic Because of social pressures and family and community values, I felt that I had to have a few 'girlfriends/ with whom I was intimate, and that I could only fantasize about men. This pressure arose from two forces: the normative prescriptions of hetrosexuality, family, and community, and my own fear and guilt about my attraction to men. Lacan notes in his writings on fantasy: 'The phantasy is the support of desire, it is not the object that is the support of desire. The subject sustains himself as desirable. This is apparent enough in the form of the scenario it assumes, in which the subject, more or less recognizable, is somewhere, split, divided, generally double, in his relation to the object, which usually does not show its true face either' (Cowie 1984: 71).

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Thus I sought out intimate relationships with women, to deal with my sense of two-ness or split and with my sexual confusion. I hoped these relationships would cure my same-sex erotic feelings and attach me to the heterosexist cultural rules that family and community had set out. Being intimate with girlfriends, exploring 'forced' heterosexuality, and having multiple female sexual partners was another means for me to exhibit my toughness and masculinity, to stay 'safe in the closet/ and to erase public suspicions that I was a buller man. But these explorations of heterosexuality only demonstrated to me the power and influence of the closet and strengthened the repression of my homoerotic self. The hegemonic power of the closet and the state demanded heterosexism, and this did not allow me, as Lorde wrote, to 'begin to demand from ourselves and from our life pursuits that they/we feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be perfectly capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives' (Lorde 1984: 150). Because my homoerotic self was unexplored, my relationships with women did not last long. I was never fully comfortable or satisfied with this exploration of my erotic, emotional, and physical feelings; my 'true' feelings remained a fantasy. I use the term 'exploration of the erotic' in a broad sense, as Lorde has defined it: 'our deepest knowledge, a power that, unlike other spheres of power, we all have access to and that can lessen the threat of our individual difference' (1984: 53). A form of Caribbean state-ordained nationalism and/or religious hegemonization has discouraged such exploration by creating a 'dualism central to Caribbean/Western thought, finding parallels in distinctions between good/evil, man/woman and a range of other binarisms, which have shaped the glass through which institutionalized Christianity (religion) has viewed the world: either/or; good/ bad; us/them; soul/body' (Sedgewick, 1990: 123). I judged my samesex attraction within these religious binarisms; as a result, I often felt ashamed, unhappy, sinful, and dirty. As Steven Seidman argued in his classic essay 'Identity Politics in a Postmodern Gay Culture,' the gender system (or prison) 'is said to posit heterosexuality as a primary sign of gender normality. A true man loves women; a true woman loves men. Sex roles are a first and central, distinction made by society' (1993: 114). The gender perfor-

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mance, as constructed for Black manhood, has been both heterosexist and sexist. Marcel Saghir and Eli Robins have stated that 'a majority of gay people irrespective of race [over half of gay men and more than three-quarters of gay women] have had heterosexual experiences' (Saghir 1973: 92). This practice is common in the Caribbean, although not unique to that region. Michael Warner calls this heteronormativity 'the domination of norms [sic] that supports, reinforces and reproduces heterosexual social forms' (1993: vii). According to Warner, a reproductivist conception of the sexual relations buttresses this heteronormativity (vii-xxviii). As a social construct, heteronormativity permeates what Gayle Rubin has called the 'sex gender system/ which codes everything from social class to race according to a particular set of sexualized and gendered identities, which constitute and reproduce the social system in which we live (Rubin, 1984). Clearly, most bullers have accepted heterosexuality as the norm and view homosexuality as 'abnormal, deviant, or different/ Perhaps this explains why, for bullers, according to Saghir and Robins, the most frequently encountered emotional reaction following heterosexual involvement is that of indifference. It is not an aversion, nor a conscious fear of heterosexuality, for most homosexual women and men find no emotional aversion and feel no trepidation in becoming involved heterosexually. The determining factor in the subsequent avoidance of heterosexual involvement is the lack of emotional gratification and true physical arousal with opposite sex partners. (1973: 214)

These norms invade same-sex practices by feminizing some Black men, who when engaging in same-sex practices act hypermasculine in order to secure their heterosexuality and masculinity. Black nationalists and Black individuals embracing stereotypical constructions of masculinity and Black self-expression have sought to regulate and control the masculinity and sexual practices of bullers, batty bwoys, and same-sex men, the point being to discourage all same-sex sexuality. When we bullers attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct the traditional Black, nationalist, male, heterosexual gender 'norms,' we encounter great hostility and sometimes violence. Nevertheless, I resist the myopic definitions of 'Black masculinity' and 'manhood.' I do so to free myself from the Black gender prison imposed on us by white

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racist constructions of Black masculinity, which go hand in hand with Black ideologues' construction of family and Black masculinity. Dislocation and Identity I immigrated to Canada in 1983 and immediately faced the omnipresent reproduction of whiteness and heterosexism, which were dominant in Canada both socially and politically. 1 constantly sought out books, magazines, and films that contained any form of same-sex representation. What I found was mostly stereotyped and white - a reminder once again of my parents' and the Black community's view that same-sex relationships are immoral, sick, deviant, and found only in white society. Accordingly, I sought support and positive reinforcement from the white gay and lesbian community. I was later referred to a Black lesbian and gay support group called Zami28 Zami offered me a space - a place to grow and to develop my political consciousness regarding the complicated interactions of race, culture, class, sexuality, gender, and identity, relative to African-Caribbean culture, Black consciousness, and the Black community in Canada. As the various dimensions of my subjectivity expanded, I began to come to terms with my own position as a buller and attempt to come out.29 For me, coming out in Canada has meant a total break with family traditions, religious norms, and Black communal forms of sexual regulation. Each has been shattered by my conscious effort to assert in every social or public situation that I am a buller. There are no transparent signifiers or markers of what it means to look like or to be a buller, to allow others to see my sexual identity, so I have had to come out explicitly, by self-naming and by affirming that I am a buller man. I have tried to accept, my position as a buller man, with all the culture, language, desires, pleasures, identities, and values that come with it Once started, that process never ends, for until homophobia and heterosexism are eradicated, there can be no true escape. Because of the normalization and institutionalization of heterosexism, bullers must, in every new environment and with every new friend, announce that they are buller men, batty bwoys, or manicou men.30 For example, if society truly is to leave behind heterosexism, my parents, brothers, and sisters, when questioned about me, must learn to say something about my living situation. Of course, they undoubtedly work hard at denying the same-sex eroticism in my life and at

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avoiding discussions about my sexual identity. Neighbours in Trinidad often ask my parents what I am doing, when I am coming for a visit, and if I am married yet and have any children. Exchange like these require the families of Black same-sex women and men to come out, too. They must, if Black community life is to achieve its much-needed transformation from heterosexism. Coming out and accepting a same-sex identity means liberation and emancipation for some. However, many people cannot or will not come out and are forced into marriage and denial. These people cope by repressing themselves in public while accepting themselves in private; one can hope that they achieve some level of personal comfort, and those who are out should not disturb this. My coming out in Canada was positively affirmed by a group of Caribbean men and women from Zami. In Toronto in the early 1980s, two women welcomed me into their home, along with many other African-Caribbean women and men who engaged in same-sex relations. This reduced my exposure to antibuller violence31 in Canada and made the process of coming out less painful than it would have been in the Caribbean. We met regularly at their home, sat at the kitchen table, and talked about Black Caribbean same-sex politics and sexism among bullers. We also advised one another about how to cope with our families, our finances, work, school, communities, and religious turmoil. We shared news about the club scene, told one another where to find the gay community, and talked about the impact of racism and sexism on the white gay and lesbian community. In Trinidad, no such networks existed,32 and bisexuals, bullers, and zamis did not socialize in groups. As I developed my political consciousness and began coming out, I met Black married men (still living with their wives) who were having sex with other men and who also had same-sex relationships. Because of my heterosexual experiences, I was able to understand these men. I could talk to some of them about how I lived and how they lived and in this way develop a support system within the Black community. These men had to keep their same-sex relationships private in order to survive in the Black community and continue working in Black organizations. They often asked me not to do or say anything that would lead the community to doubt their heterosexuality. Being in the closet was - and still is - safest for these men, in that it allowed them to be anything they wanted to be in Black community life. That made it

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seem like a desirable choice - a place to make and call home. Judith Butler has noted: 'The prospect of being anything ... seems to be more than a simple injunction to become who or what I already am' (1993: 45). In the words of Michelle Cliff (1980), it is a process of 'claiming an identity they taught me (us) to despise or reject/ It is time to open up the closet, to create the possibility for men to come out, with all their various and complicated identities. Besides Zami, white gay-owned and -operated gay and lesbian clubs offered a haven.33 While coming out at white gay and lesbian clubs, I already knew about racial harassment and the sexualization of racism within gay and lesbian communities. Even so, I felt great being in a dance club with other 'gay people.'34 Race and racism did not preoccupy me - I just wanted to be free, to be a buller, to leave behind the frightening starkness of life under Black heterosexism and violence. At moments like these, I deliberately avoided invoking or adopting any type of race or political consciousness; I simply wanted to have fun, be a buller, without trying to justify it. In the absence of Black same-sex support groups, spaces, and agencies, Black people need white spaces in order to support and affirm their same-sex identity. Community Organizing and Heterosexism I can vividly remember a panel discussion at the University of Toronto in February 1989, during Black history month, that centred on Black relationships and the Black family. Black consciousness and Black nationalism have always assumed that Black relationships are heterosexual. Present at this meeting were Black men and women who had been constructed as bullers, batty bwoys, zamis, men royal, and-bisexuals by heterosexual members of the Black community. There were also heterosexual men and women who, like their gay colleagues, were undergoing decolonization and developing a sense of Black consciousness. There were university students, members of the Black community at large, Nation of Islam brothers,35 Rastafarians, and a range of other Black activists and intellectuals. A young Black woman, describing herself as a woman who loves and sleeps with women, challenged the heterosexist discourse and asked our various communities to recognize same-sex relationships and families. Responses - mostly from men - included 'abomination,' 'sickness/ 'bwoy dem people naasti sah/ 'get out de room,' 'you must

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be crazy/ 'aal yu is a disgrace to jah Rastafari/ 'ah kyah believe what ah hearing, dem man taking man up de ass and dem ooman suckin' pussy/ The verbal abuse reminded us that we were to be seen and not heard, to speak only when spoken to, and that we were only to answer when called upon. We were also told that same-sex relations were 'genocidal' and against the Bible and the Black race, and that the white man had inflicted a sexual sickness on us and made us the way we were. This discussion quickly deteriorated into physical threats. Some lesbians, womanists, feminists, mothers, daughters, and sisters left the room in tears, vowing never to work in the Black community. With others, I sat there, frightened and intimidated by the angry, ignorant, and violent group of Black nationalists, activists, and ideologues. And as I sat, I started to wonder whether I could attend Black history classes with these men and how I could live in the community without being harassed by them. We were being told at that meeting that because the white man sees race first, our sexual orientation was not important to our identity as Black people, despite the comfort with which we lived that sexuality and the importance we attached to it. In other words, because of white male gendered racism, some Black nationalists base their entire identity and experience on a (sic) psychologically and traumatized one. A young buller man got up to talk in support of his zami sister and was told by the men in the room, 'Brother, please sit down and stop embarrassing us/ He responded, T am one of the people you hate and you cannot call me a brother if you hate me/ He was told he was a sell-out, could not be a 'real man/ and should shut up and leave. He did leave, humiliated and embarrassed. One young man turned to me and asked, 'So yuh ahh buller man, too?' In a deep, 'manly' voice - to hide my own fears and insecurities - I tried quickly to embrace a level of intelligence above his: 'If you are asking me for a one-word answer that adequately captures all my past and present inclinations, alliances and fleeing sexual erotic and economic recognition and/or politically inactive childhood, as well as asking me to cast a net for my future trajectories, I cannot answer your question/ He said, 'What exactly are you?' and left it at that. Clearly, we bullers and zamis find it hard to gain acceptance among our heterosexual brothers and sisters. We are inhibited by their silence and by their fear that our sexual identity will damage the 'purifying' cause

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of Black nationalism. A fundamental issue that I have faced working within these Black nationalistic circles focuses on this question: Who speaks and or represents Blacks in the diaspora, and on what authority, and at whose expense? As a partial response, Lorde in Sister Outsider comments: 'As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole eclipsing or denying the other parts of self (1984: 65). From my own experience, I conclude that some Black activists tend to engage in a form of racial essentialism in order to legitimize their claims to authenticity. Which leads me a painful realization - there is no dialogue in our communities about difference, no place for reconsidering traditional notions of family and for giving voice to the many facets of sexuality and identity. Instead, the community depicts bullers and zamis as outsiders, as the Other. 'Othering' and various exclusionary mechanisms define 'authentic' Blackness through negation. A Black lesbian is not woman enough, an 'effeminate, passive, and bisexual' Black man is 'not man,' and the buller is not Black enough. We are told to accept negation and yet to join the struggle. The diaspora here in Canada writes Black nationalism on the body and on its own heterosexist infrastructures. Black nationalism practises a form of surveillance that seeks to deny difference. According to Homi Bhaba, this situation 'leads to a mediation on the experience of dispossession and dislocation - psychic and social - which speaks to the conditions of the marginalized, the alienated, those who have had to live under the surveillance of a sign of identity and fantasy that denies difference' (1994: 63). Underlying the project of decolonization as expressed in diasporic Black nationalism is the notion of Black families as heterosexual. Such a project embraces 'one set of narratives which gets sanctioned over another because it can exert authority and privilege elsewhere' (Dent 1992: 1). Central to the discussion at the University of Toronto that night in February 1989 were two questions: How can we model ourselves after African families living on the continent? And which Afrocentric constructs can we apply that present models for family living and for the construction of the Black race as family, community, or collective? Such questions are crucial to the continuing debate about Afrocentricity36 and Black nationalism.

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Afrocentricity - a concept central to the works of Dr Molefi Kete Asante - is 'systemic nationalism.' It focuses on the consciousness of the individual, not on the collective of the Black nation. Asante defines a discourse that articulates the needs of 'the Black community' and how to fulfil them (1988: 6). Afrocentric thought contains homophobia, sexism, and heterosexism, and many Black writers and thinkers challenge it. Paul Gilroy observes: 'Afrocentric thinking attempts to construct a sense of Black particularity "outside" of a notion of a national identity. Its founding problem lies in the effort to figure sameness across national boundaries and between nation-states ... The flow is always inward, never outward; the truth of racialized being is sought, not in the world, but in the psyche' (1992: 305-6). Gilroy argues further: In contemporary attempts to interpret the crisis of Black politics and social life as a crisis solely of Black Masculinity ... the trope of the family is central to the means whereby the crisis we are living - of Black social and political life - gets reproduced as the crisis of Black Masculinity. That trope of the family is there, also, in the way conflict, within and between our communities, gets resolved through the mystic reconstruction of the ideal heterosexual family. (1992: 312-13)

I remember an incident that occurred after I joined the board of directors of the Black Secretariat.37 A Black man left a message on the organization's answering machine, asking why there was a buller on the board and whether the secretariat knew I was a buller man. It was, he said, an 'embarrassment' to read in Share (a local Black newspaper) that a buller was on the board of a progressive group representing 'Black values.' His remarks did not deter me; that said, in the short time I spent with the secretariat, that group did nothing to address the community's homophobia. More recently, while I was working with the African Canadian Legal Clinic, a board member accused me of having a 'gay' agenda because I was asking too many 'gay questions' of potential employees while I was on a hiring committee. This member resigned, and refused to apologize or to acknowledge any responsibility. Heterosexist principles and policies in the Black community place the burden of shame on the bodies marked as sick, traitorous, or immoral, and accuse us of disrupting a pure Black organizational culture.

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Coming Out: Black versus Gay When Louis Althusser (1971) wrote that ideology represents 'not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live' and which govern their existence, he was also describing, to my mind, exactly, the functioning of sexuality and sexual orientation. An engendered space is negotiated within Althusserian Marxism, which is one of the most humanistic branches of Marxist thought. Here, negotiation describes the process of including a formerly excluded concern. So if, for example, many in the Caribbean or Canadian Black communities do not see gay and lesbian politics and existence as an important consideration, it is our responsibility as bullers, who carry the burden and have a stake in social justice work, to start that political discourse. Nowadays I am openly proud to be a buller. At the time I chose to come out, identity politics in Canadian Black communities concentrated on race and heterosexuality. I have struggled to overcome my own internalized homophobia and to speak out against heterosexism. As a result, I have endured the anguish and pain that often accompany coming out or being outed. I have also overcome my fear of maligning the Black nationalist movement and of damaging the image of the race by coming out. I have heard many times that homophobia is not an issue and that the image of the race comes first. While Blackness informs every act, the transgressive logic of heterosexist Black nationalism threatens my contacts with the very people with whom I intend to work. However, while the social construct of Blackness, or of the Black race, is one of many starting points for my work for social justice and the community, Blackness by itself it is not enough. In other words, as seen through the lens of some Black nationalists, activists, and ideologues, a Black who engages in same-sex relations cannot be authentically Black. In other words, there is among Black hegemonic activists a nationalistic need to claim to have 'discovered' authentic Blackness. Over the years, while working for equity and social justice within Black organizations, I have had to negotiate my sexuality. This is because I never know when they will harass me, shut me out, or not take me seriously. In the beginning, I was silent38 about Black same-sex relationships, but I was always searching for the right moment to say

74 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

something. The right time never seemed to come because of the compulsory heterosexist regulation of Black community life and organizing in Toronto. I had given speeches and addressed Black gatherings but I had never identified myself as a buller man. Although my work in most organizations included resistance to heterosexism, I constantly had to consider when to come out and to whom, or when to raise issues of Black same-sex relationships. As I became more independent and came to terms with my sexual orientation, I risked coming out and my struggle became even harder. These encounters have made me even more determined. At meetings of the Nation of Islam, the Biko-Rodney Malcolm Coalition, the Azania Movement,39 and other Black heterosexual groups, analyses of Black consciousness ignored the complex links between race, sexuality, and gender. These groups felt that those who pushed for a more inclusive political consciousness were not good Black nationalists and could threaten the moral stability of Black heterosexual families and their religious beliefs. These nationalists may have changed their slave names, but they have not changed their slave mentality; they continue to be chained by false ideas, and they must be decolonized if we are to forge a more authentically progressive and inclusive Black nationalism. I refuse to be dismissed, ignored, or silenced by Black ideologues, activists, and intellectuals. I have always been driven by a desire to serve my community, and I believe that those who live in it understand its problems. Some of those intelligent, sensitive, understanding, and resourceful people are women, buller men, and batty bwoys. I am often told that I can support and be active in heterosexist Black organizations, attend sit-ins and street demonstrations, fight against police injustice, and work with homeless youths and their families. But I must not 'flaunt' my 'sickness,' because it runs counter to Black unity, Black family values, and Black collective consciousness. The split between being a good Black person and a not-good Black gay person can be dangerous, for it oversimplifies the complicated intersections of masculinity, whiteness, and white supremacy. It also indicates acceptance of the racist stereotyping of the virile Black man even while denying differences within our Black communities. Cornel West concludes in Marlon Riggs's documentary Black Is Black Ain't: 'We have got to conceive of new forms of community. We each have multiple identities and we're moving in and out of various communities at the same time. There is no one grand Black community or Black

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male identity' (1995). Stuart Hall, too, has called for a new kind of politics, one that is based on the diversity of the Black experience and on recognizing Black people's historically defined Black experiences. Hall's plea for 'a new kind of cultural polities' insists that we 'recognize the other kinds of difference [e.g., those of gender, sexuality, race, and class] that place, position, and locate Black people' (1992: 30). In the same vein, I am pushing for a more inclusive Black community, and at the same time for the recognition of diverse Black communities, ones that embrace all forms of loving. In summary, the lack of support in Caribbean communities for people engaging in same-sex practices, the violent attacks on people who seek same-sex agency or identities, and family, community, and religious oppression have made it impossible for people to engage in same-sex practices and be open about it. Caribbean communities have policed desire along the lines of good and bad, clean and unclean, and have imposed very stereotypical roles and expectations on men and women. In this way they have constructed an exclusively heterosexual identity. We did not have a Stonewall riot in the Caribbean that would have fostered a Black same-sex politics that would support bullers and batty bwoys politically, economically, and socially. And the situation among Blacks in Canada is all too similar to that in the Caribbean.

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Part Two: Negotiating Everyday Life

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Chapter Three

Family

The Black 'homosexual' is hard pressed to gain audiences among his heterosexual brothers; even if he is more talented, he is inhibited by his silence or his admissions. This is what the race has depended on in being able to erase homosexuality from our recorded history. The 'chosen' history. But these sacred constructions of silence are futile exercises in denial. We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home. - Essex Hemphill, Brother to Brother

The interviews I conducted in Toronto and Halifax form the basis of the next four chapters, in which we look at these men's connections with family (chapter 3) and with community (chapter 4), at the fear, violence, and hypermasculinity that so threaten them (chapter 5), and at their search for pleasure, love, and identity (chapter 6). We learn how Black nationalism and its ideological constructs seek to regulate Black male same-sex bodily practices. I examine how Black men negotiate their everyday lives in Black community settings, and I look at the techniques they employ to be Black, to have sex and relationships with other men, and to be male in a context that denies their reality. The brilliant stories, painful experiences, and joyous moments of the men in this book constitute a historical moment. In this chapter you will read their stories of family life - about family relationships, family-based violence, positive family reinforcement, suicide attempts, and the recourse to outside/professional help.

80 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys Family Relationships

For most buller men and batty bwoys living in Canada, the family is a crucial site of potential affirmation and support. This role is strengthened by the tensions and hostilities of the racism they encounter in white society and by the loss of the support of extended families that is the result of communal dislocation and migration. The family, as a set of social relations, is primary to buller men's lives. Studies of Black families have focused on a variety of themes, such as motherhood patterns and their consequences, extended family relationships, and kinship bonds (Benson 1986; Hill 1972; Nobles 1974; Staples 1974). For example, Wade Nobles has suggested "that the task of the Black family has been to prepare its children to live and be among white people without becoming white people' (1975). Hill and Nobles connected family to the African context, postulating two guiding principles: 'survival of the tribe and oneness of being. A deep sense of family or kinship characterizes African social reality' (1974b: 12). These practices strongly present in the Caribbean, where both blood and non-blood relatives are seen as part of the family and act as community support1 networks for people living in close proximity. But family relations are never outside the ideological structures that foster notions of how to think about and enact sexuality. Put another way, the church, Black nationalism, and the expressed norms of communal living are all stitched into family relations. Thus, for bullers and batty bwoys, family relations may offer affirmation and support as well as alienation and pain. Few studies have addressed the relationship between Black men who participate in same-sex relationships and their family members. What literature does exist is often homophobic, emphasizing male same-sex practices as characteristically effeminate, weak, traitorous, and a result of European pollution of the race. Black nationalistic heterosexist discourse has set up an ideological construction that regulates same-sex practices - part of what the men in this book face as they try to negotiate their lives in family and communal settings. A central theme in the stories that follow is the interweaving of guilt and shame. At stake for many men is what Sedgewick calls 'an experience of the self by the self - that moment when the self is felt as a sickness within the self (1995: 136). This 'felt sickness' is often multilayered and traceable to the norms that regulate participation in family and community. It takes the shape of self-contempt, which often cripples these men's participation in Black communal life.

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Black families, like other families in the Caribbean and Canada, tend to presuppose a heterosexual orientation, and they avoid discussion of sexual topics, especially same-sex practices (hooks 1992; Mercer 1994). The overpowering social pressures on Black families from Black religion, diasporic nationalism, and the norms of communal living at times compel Black men who engage in same-sex practices to marry and procreate. In the narratives that follow, there is a wealth of information about how Black men try to negotiate their lives through a heterosexist front to protect their gender, identity, and family and community. Devon confirmed how this regulatory force works against Black male bodies engaging in same-sex practices in Black communities. Why did you get married? Well I couldn't live in my community and not have a girlfriend and a child: in my community manhood is measured by how many children a man could have. My father had six boys and that was great, so somehow I felt I had to do the same thing, so that they wouldn't think that I was a buller man. My aunt is always telling me about how many women my father used to have and that I should live up to it too.

Mohammed talked about marriage as a 'cure' and what it meant for him to be asserting a same-sex identity at the same time. I got married in the Caribbean where I came from and then moved to Toronto with my wife and three children. Marriage is, if I might add, a 'normal' outcome for men and women in the Caribbean regardless of their sexual orientation, in particular when the family, religious, and cultural codes of the day warrant it. I also thought that it would cure me from being ah buller man too. I was married for twenty-five years before I came out to my wife and children. When I came out to my wife and children, this was what happened. My wife responded: 'Almighty Gawd ye have fer pray for this old cursed sick sinner' and she kneeled down and started to pray for me to be saved from the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah. She then proceed to tell me to 'seek the kingdom of Heaven and I will be saved.'

For Devon and Mohammed, marriage or having a girlfriend was a required form of 'closet/ A girlfriend (for Devon) and marriage (for Mohammed) represented both fulfilment of social expectations and protection from violence. In this sense, marriage as a form of closet prevented these men from claiming or assuming a same-sex identity.

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At the same time, it did allow them to experience communal connection and avoid communal fear and shame. Family and community are tightly interlinked - certain family practices actually enable certain types of community participation. I develop this linkage throughout this chapter and the ones that follow. Given this strong emphasis on the family, some respondents were deeply concerned with meeting family needs, with the obligations and expectations related to becoming parents and raising children. Both Devon and Mohammed believed that one is not fully a man until he has become a parent. Clearly, in this context, families often see coming out as a catastrophe. Mohammed continued describing his wife's response: The next thing my wife did was to telephone the pastor of the church we attend, asking him to pray for the family and for me. She was hoping that prayers will cure me of being a buller man. She also told me that I will get AIDS, which is God's judgment against batty men. She also reminded me that only white people are gay, not Black people, and that it's hard enough being Black and oppressed, now gay, oh God wah we go do?

And what did the pastor do? The pastor was from the Caribbean, and he came over to pray with the two of us. [Laughs] I felt that he only came to see who was this buller man.

Mohammed's wife had more than one discourse to 'try.' First she chose religion, then Black nationalism. Both discourses view same-sex practices as sinful, immoral, and outside the normative framework of Black identity. His wife's religious remarks reflected our culture's connection to the Bible and how it constructs same-sex eroticism as sinful, as a practice of the damned. Cornel West contends that there is a 'theological claim (or faith claim) that African Americans believe in, that God sides with the oppressed and acts on their behalf (1992:106). This religious discourse is more than a theological position about divine authority; it is also the vehicle for Mohammed's wife's and her family's connection to the Black community and for their avoidance of shame and guilt. For some Black religious families, the shame brought on by having a buller in the family is central to the communal production of public shame - Mohammed's wife calls the pastor, who pays

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them a visit. In the rituals of some Black churches, sinners are called upon to proclaim their transgressions and pray for forgiveness and redemption. Mohammed's wife's selective interpretations of religion and scripture reinforced homophobic attitudes. She and the pastor assume that Mohammed could be 'cured' by religious commitment. Clearly, the prospect of such outing limits the comfortable communal participation of bullers and batty bwoys not yet ready to deal with being 'outed' and reinforces their conviction that they must continue to lead double lives. Mohammed could no longer deny his same-sex desires. Religious confession was proposed as a way for him to resolve the contradictions he experienced in being both a buller and part of a Black community. Again, the pastor's participation was important, because in many Black religious communities, confession is a public event. This experience with the pastor was not a private communication between a sinner and a church authority, as in a confession booth; rather, it was a call for the pastor to come and help the family plead for God's intercession. Clearly, buller men must need be freed from bibliolatry the worship of the Bible - if they are to rid themselves of religious guilt. Mohammed's family was not alone in hoping that prayer would cure same-sex desires. Devon told tells us that he prayed to stay straight: I always wanted children and felt that I was wasting my life because I was getting older and did not have any children. So I got involved with a woman and did not tell my boyfriend, nor did I tell my girlfriend, and had a baby. After we had the child, I told her I was bisexual because I could not keep up the pressure in my life anymore. How did she react to you telling her this ? She felt betrayed and told me she hopes that I do not do this to other women, because it is a very serious and painful experience for a woman to have gone through. And what's your take on it? Yeah, maybe she is right - it is a wrong thing to do to people I guess and to yourself!

Devon displayed considerable honesty, despite what he did. He was telling us that same-sex couples may also want paternity or maternity but cannot pursue that desire openly in Black communities. Devon's desire for paternity was also problematic. Did he intend to be part of

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the family structure - nuclear in Canada - thought necessary to raise a healthy child? Having a girlfriend or boyfriend or using marriage as a 'cure' is not unique to Black men; it is common to all races, genders, and cultures around the globe. That being said, the legacy of slavery and racism seems to press Blacks to marry for the purposes of procreation and the maintenance of family. These ideas appear in the works of Black nationalist scholars such as Molifi Asante and Frances Cress Welsing, who contend that slavery has made it imperative for Blacks to go forth and procreate to replace those killed during that era. Shame then teaches bullers how to act, behave, and contain their sexuality in the name of heterosexism and communal fear. Tom's relations with a woman were necessary for him to closet his same-sex sexuality, prevent communal shame, and maintain his gender and family values. I got involved with a woman, did not get formally married, and had two children - they are both boys. Deep down inside I felt that I would free myself from the evils of sin and shame, and I also felt that, having sex with women and having children, I would cure my homosexuality and would no longer have to fight my feelings of guilt, shame, depression, and suicidal attempts. What are your views on living with women and family now that you have been there? I see having a girlfriend as something I did only to maintain a heterosexual front. But family I see very much as a support system.

Tom's rationale raises a fundamental question: How do the interconnections of Black communities and Black families reinforce the normative expectation to live a 'normal/ stable, supportive, heterosexual family life? When I was living with my girlfriend I felt very much a part of the Black community in Toronto, but when my marriage ended I felt as though I no longer had a community to call my own. Because we did things together in the Black community and that was a very pleasing thing on many occasions. It ended because I started to feel ashamed to be seen in the community after.

Having a girlfriend served Tom's desire for community. He was able to get support from his family, and he also felt connected to the community, partly through the social events that families attend.2 Much of

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Black communal life is lived in families, as an extension of Black solidarity and Black unity. Tom felt very much part of the Black community through his girlfriend. When that relationship ended he lost that sense of connection because he no longer attended events that focused on families. Tom's experiences throw light on Mohammed's, in that they show how some Black families and communities intertwine so that being a buller is not simply a 'private' issue. This is a key theoretical point sexuality in Black life is not a private affair. The public nature of Black sexuality constructs masculinity, and the participation of heterosexual families in community events emphasizes the importance of heterosexuality and marriage. In modern Western democracies, social policy is often directed toward protecting individual rights - 'My sex is my business.' Any real change for Black men engaging in same-sex practices will have to address the fact that Black families and communities are constituted differently. Black diasporic nationalism, Black religious life, and Black family and communal solidarity are linked so tightly that issues of sexuality are never simply personal. In Black communities, publicly accepting one's same-sex identity also means leaving the community, suffering alienation, guilt, and shame, and becoming the target of oppressive communal attitudes toward same-sex practices. Yet shame and guilt can also lead some men to tell their female partners about their sexual identity. Mohammed told his wife about his same-sex desires because he felt ashamed of them and had to inform her: What led you into telling her?

I was tired of living an unhappy life and felt that at age sixty I had nothing to lose and felt that I wanted to live the rest of my life with some truth and honesty. And what did you do?

Nothing. But cried and left the house in shame because she was very religious and felt that I had brought public shame on her and the family. So I left the house.

For Blacks, communal activities are family activities. This means that 'public shame' involves more than individual guilt and shame; it also threatens to bring shame on the family. The family also exists in part through its participation in the community, where its members work, play, shop, and socialize.

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How does public outing affect families? Mohammed's children were not happy with the public shame that they said he brought on them and the family. How did the rest of your family respond to you coming out? Well I have children, and they weren't happy. How many children do you have? I have three children, two boys and one girl. All of them are university educated, and I love them, because they have always been supportive of me and were always there for me. But this was before they found out about me. So how did your children react to all of this? My children told me to get out of the house, because I was ah blight and ah curse to the family and that the plants in the house will soon die, if I stayed around any longer. Mohammed's children worried about how having a buller as a father would affect them and the family as a whole. Their focus was on themselves and on how Mohammed affected them publicly, not on how they might relate to him or support him. If Black communities are to start understanding differences, Blacks must learn to think through the impact of the Black buller on the identities of those around him. Family circumstances and dynamics are important for Black men, as Mohammed's case shows. In communities where the family is seen as a site of desire and support and as an integral part of life, an experience like his makes family a site of loss. The influences of marriage, nationalism, and the nuclear family regulate a 'normality' that produces extreme pain and alienation for some men, including Mohammed: Well, just before I left my family I started to become addicted to alcohol and non-prescribed drugs. Today I am fighting very hard not to abuse alcohol and other non-prescribed drugs. I am also sixty-five and live a very lonely life. The apartment building which I live in has a seniors club, and I try to keep myself occupied with the club as much as possible. But there are times I wish my children would surprise me and visit me one day. I know they will, they cannot forget me completely.

Many bullers and batty bwoys are left alone. Many of them choose to find a girlfriend or a wife as a cure for what they perceive to be a disease; however, this often does not work. Lack of support for bullers

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is a serious problem in Black communities. Black communities in Toronto and Halifax seem to be in a crisis over the problems of samesex men. As George indicated, both communities, despite different histories of migration and settlement and different cultural practices, still view same-sex practices as unacceptable: I often felt that I was the only batty bwoy in town, so to hide it I went quick and got involved with a woman and had two children. I also went to church every Sunday. That hasn't changed me. You see I am fortyseven right now, and I do not want to continue living like this. I was tired of walking with my head down and hiding my face sometimes in front of Black people who I feel might suspect that I was ah batty man. So I felt that if I got involved with a woman people wouldn't think of me that way. I also use to feel guilt or bad if I look at men in ways that they might think ah want to make ah pass at them. I always felt that my mother knew that I was different, but she never asked me. So marriage was my solution to Sodom and Gomorrah. Many times I wanted to kill myself, feeling very depressed.

George, like Mohammed, Tom, and Devon, got involved with women to stay in the communal closet. All the men related that one way or another, being a buller man in a Black community is psychologically tormenting. Central to the narratives of these men was the belief that same-sex desires are morally wrong. Most of them were willing to risk serious damage to themselves to destroy this aspect of their identity. Many men who felt that they were sinning shared certain common experiences: severe depression, withdrawal, confusion, drug abuse, and suicide attempts. Some bullers adopted various survival techniques, creating their own mythologies, especially when desire, joy, pleasure, fantasy, and eroticism created moral panic and conflicted with their traditional values. I am trying here to uncover the manifold layers of guilt and shame that resulted from these men's attempts to accommodate the structures of domination that normalize Black communal and family relations. We have seen so far a triple layering: same-sex as morally wrong; leaving family and community as wrong, no matter how tough it is to stay within them, because of the demands of loyalty to race, family, and community; and living a lie - letting others believe that one is something one is not - as wrong.

88 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys One Christmas, George bought a book as a gift for his boyfriend and hid it from his girlfriend. Which book was it that you bought for your boyfriend?

Before I get to the book, let me tell you I was nervous like hell to enter the gay bookstore on Yonge Street. Anyway, the book was James Baldwin Another Country and Essex Hemphill Brother to Brother. Why these two books?

I thought that these two books were very important gifts, because it was the first time any one of us was going to read any form of gay literature. So on Christmas day I lied to my girlfriend, telling her I was going to visit some friends, and I went to get the books and deliver them to my boyfriend. How did that make you feel?

Guilty, dirty, and ashamed of myself after I did it. I also saw my mother that day, and she was not very happy, because I felt deep down inside that she knew that I was doing something wrong, but she avoided asking me about the men who I would often visit... Because I use to tell her that they were my work friends. What advice do you have for Black men who are going to try marriage or living with women as a way to conceal their same-sex practices, eroticisms, and desires?

They shouldn't try it, because it does not work. But the Black family needs to be more supportive of people who do that. And they need to take some pressure off Black men's back around this marriage thing forced upon us from young. According to George, the pressure exerted from within Black communities contributes to the lie maintained by some men who live with women. He was working toward getting Black communities to redefine family and communal life to make it more inclusive of same-sex identities. As Devon reminds us, having a girlfriend meant being a complete man: I thought that it would make me a complete person having a heterosexual front and family. The family picnics, Christmas dinners, travelling, and stuff like that I enjoy. It also takes all the pressure off people asking when are you going to get married. You please your parents, your community, and everyone else who is expecting you to be heterosexual. At that point in my life, I swear I would kill myself before I let anybody know.

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For many of the men who chose marriage or living with a girlfriend, the closet was the desired place. For George, having a girlfriend was a response to family pressure and community expectations, besides being a means to cure his same-sex attractions. Older Black same-sex men, bisexuals, buller men, and batty bwoys are alienated from the broader Black community and from the wider white gay and lesbian community. Some of them, because of the period in which they were raised (1940-60), tend to emphasize race as a primary indicator. The alienation also stems from their involvement and implication in same-sex politics. In raising race as an indicator, they are telling us that race is a factor in their lives; this is not, however, to suggest that they are creating the same pecking order of oppression as Black nationalists. Older Black men are more focused on race politics, family, and communal living. Black power movements, Black nationalism, and Black awareness did affect their consciousness, in both North America and the Caribbean. Their experiences of poverty and racism may help explain why some of them emphasize race over sexual identity. George, at sixty, is still living out the Black structures of dominance - an indication of how powerful they are. He discusses how his mother was traditional: What do you mean by traditional? Well traditional in the sense that she is always talking about marriage and having children, religion, sin, moral and ethical issues around the home. Believe it or not, although I am sixty, I don't feel safe to tell any of my relatives that I am sleeping with men. I have also tried to get help from Black social service agencies, but they are not ready. Every time I call them and ask questions around counselling for gay people, they say they have no counsellors and would often tell me to seek out white gay groups. So I never had any professional help or anyone to talk to about coming out or being gay and confused. But I am okay now, but back then, when I wanted to talk to someone, there was no help, and as far as I know there is still no help in Black agencies still. Why? Because they don't want to hear about these things, it is very taboo. Black social workers and Black agencies doh want to hear about gay issues, they only want to hear about racism. And for them Black people there are no Black gay people. You know what I am talking about?

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The denial of same-sex relationships - a denial exacerbated by the traditional values maintained within Black families - makes it difficult for some Black men to announce their same-sex erotic desires and relationships. Many Black men are uncomfortable coming out in the white gay community and in Black community at large, because of the twin stresses of racism and homophobia. But for most of them, coming out does not have the same political significance as it does in for white gays. The literature that supports white gays glorifies coming out as a memorable point of departure from heterosexism, as a milestone in personal and political development (Warner 1993). But white gay and lesbian activism has failed to take into account racial and cultural differences and the impact on minority individuals of coming out and breaking away from family life. Bill got married to conceal his sexual identity, and then told his wife what he had done: When my girlfriend found out that I was sleeping with other men, she asked me to try having sex with other women to be sure that I knew I was gay. My children told me that I couldn't be their father simply because I was taking it up the ass and only women get fucked. What have you done with your life since? I was also very involved with the Black community in Halifax and was a strong religious person. I felt that being involved with the church and the Black community would help me erase some of my personal guilt. But it never stopped, and I became angry and unhappy with myself, my family, and started to self-destruct. What do you mean by self-destruct? I started to take drugs and then got involved in a rehabilitation program. Then one of the counsellors put me onto a white gay group, and from there I started to deal with my sexuality and leave the Black community and the church behind. Why did you leave the church and Black community behind? Because they were the two things in my life that made my family and sexual life unhappy.

Unquestionably, Black religious beliefs have had a profound impact on the lives of some of the men in this book. Many of the Black men who had a religious upbringing and who believed in religion as a means to cure them of their perceived sins ended up worrying that their same-sex desires would be exposed to family, community, and

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church. The Black church and the Black family supported the continued suppression of these men's lives, and deepened their alienation. I deal with this issue in the section on religion. Family-Based Violence For some Black men, the family, instead of being a supportive network of personal relationships, is a collective of hostile and violent relationships. Most Black families join community organizations, share family networks, and belong to church groups and clubs; by extension, this makes Black families synonymous with community. So the first battle that bullers, batty bwoys, and Black same-sex men have to fight is against family and community. What the family and community think is important to them, and they need not have any affinity with the community to worry over what it thinks about them. The violence experienced by some of the men was not restricted to the private domains of the home. This violence can be understood as a response to buller men transgressing the 'normative' social form of the family. A buller's behaviour can threaten the identities of those who surround him - not just communal associates, but extended and nuclear family members. In a sense, these people perceive that their identities as family members and as members of a Black community have been compromised by their link to a buller. So bullers are a threat to them, and this threat is often met with violence. Desmond was a victim of heterosexist family violence and neglect. When he was fifteen, he suffered physical violence at the hands of his parents, and he eventually became homeless. I was only fifteen when I told my mother that I have an attraction for men and I don't know what to do about it. I said to her one day, 'Ma, I doh feel right and I doh know how to explain it, but I think I like boys.' She said, 'Lord, what the hell you telling me you is ah batty man, look doh joke here to me nah.' And did you tell her that you were serious? Yes, and she tell me to leave the house immediately and doh come back into her life and that I am sick and she cannot help me. She also said to me if she wanted a girl child, or a sick child, she would ah make one. Then she went on to say it is a sickness and a sin to be ah batty man, so I shouldn't be joking about stuff like that. Then she raise she hand in the air, and she begin to perspire, hit she chest, and say 'Almighty God help

92 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys this sinful child of mine, he fer get AIDS them buller man sickness.' Then the next thing ah feel was ah good blow behind my head and was told at that point if I don't cure it I will have to leave the house. Here, Desmond's mother was defining her worth - her self - in relation to the type of child she has produced. She was also warning him not to make jokes about what she perceived to be a sin, and not to curse her mothering qualities, because saying things might make them come true. And what did you tell her at this point, when she was asking you to cure it? I said 'Ma, you cannot cure it, it is either you this way or that way.' And she got more and more angry and started to hit me again and again. It was at this point my stepfather came into the scene, and he started to shout and ask me if I am serious. Then he said to my mother, 'ah tell you he wasn't normal, he use to spend too much time in the bathroom and with makeup and all them girl things like that. Ah tell you, you, caar say I didn't tell you.' Then he hit me behind my head, it was hard. Ah remember meh head spinning. And what happened next? I had to leave the house and find somewhere else to live. Some Black parents are ready to disown their children because their being gay is a threat to identity and carries the potential to bring on public and familial shame. Where did you go to live? I spent one week on the street. Then I went to a friend for help, and he took me in and helped me find a job at McDonald's. And while in school I spoke with the welfare worker, who put me on student welfare, and she helped me to find ah apartment. Yeh, my coming out was rough. Have you and your family reconciled the situation? No, we still do not talk with each other. But I told my father in Jamaica, and he is okay with it, as long as I doh come back home with it. Desmond's father was reinforcing traditional Caribbean values regarding same-sex practices. He feared that his son's presence back in Jamaica would bring shame on the family and challenge his masculinity. Tom also recounted acts of physical violence.

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I was beaten by my father when I was much younger. I was about sixteen or seventeen when I tried to tell my father I was ah batty man, but that was in Jamaica, and I still have memories of it. When I told him he said, 'I doh want no batty man for ah son, so you better straighten out.'

Tom's father, like Desmond's mother, was very quick to threaten to disown him. What did you do? I went to see a priest because my father told me I could repent to the priest and ask for forgiveness. And I also went to see a psychiatrist. How old were you when you went to see the priest and psychiatrist? I was about sixteen or seventeen. But I was also confused because I also had a girlfriend and wasn't too sure what I was. So really I felt like I needed help to know myself better, so I thought it was a good idea to go and talk to some professionals. And how was it for you visiting these two professionals? It did nothing for me, because I never lost my attraction for men, and I never was convinced in what they were saying to me and my father. But I still went and got married to please my family.

Religion and the church play a special role in 'healing' the transgression of being a buller. Tom's parents asked him to see a priest to ask for forgiveness, not only because he was 'doing a sinful act' but also because his asking for forgiveness and repenting would let the transgressed family form be 'healed over.' This wound cannot be healed by just anybody: one needs a community agency with the legitimacy to certify acts of restoration and to pronounce that the chaos of sin has been resolved. Churches have played this role for centuries, which is one reason they are so central to so many diverse communities. In modern times, the medical profession has served the same function, pronouncing what one must do to be healed and certifying when that healing has occurred. Thus the psychiatrist and the priest seek a cure not only for the individual but also, implicitly, for families and communities. The two operate in tandem. This is not to dismiss the function of the church in the lives of Blacks. The church's capacity to bring about communal healing helps maintain communities. Moreover, the church has long been a source of inspiration for Blacks as well as a centre of resistance

94 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

to slavery and racism. Its crucial role makes a re-examination of Black theology essential. Some men are deeply affected by their families' religious beliefs and internalized homophobia, with the consequence that coming out strips them of immediate family support and networks. After physical and verbal fights, Mohammed and his family stopped communicating. My family and I, after having several physical, religious, and verbal fights, still do not speak to date. They have completely disowned me and argue that they are ashamed of me. Why couldn't you face them anymore? Because I was very angry inside, and I felt guilty and ashamed for being gay, because that was how they made me feel.

In most of the interviews, hatred and violence were common themes. The family serves as an agent of heterosexist policing; it does a great deal to regulate sexuality. But when considering the reactions of family members to bullers and batty bwoys, we must not forget that families are not islands - they are parts of communities. Positive Family Reinforcement Not all of the coming-out stories were filled with violence and fear. For some respondents, the family was and still is a strong support. Andy's experience with his family was a positive one. Are you out to your family, and do they accept your partner? Yes. When I told my mother and father that I felt as though I had sexual attraction for men and not women, my mother said, 'Well, you sure that is what you feel?' And I said yes. And she said, 'Well, I can't do anything about that, you are still my son.' My father, who I was expecting to blow up, said, 'We love you the same way.'

As we saw in the previous section, many parents respond initially to a son's coming out by feeling threatened and ashamed. In contrast, Andy's parents focused on their son's feelings and thoughts, not on their own. They did not perceive their son's sexuality as a reflection on their own qualities as parents. This has enabled Andy to experience continued emotional and physical caring. Chris also received support from his family, and this is why he was able to preserve a connection to his Black community.

Family 95 Are you out to your family? Yes, I am out to my family, and they know of Junior [his boyfriend]. I think my parents also like us, too, because we have been together for seven years now, so they see love and stability in us. I also feel being out to my family has made it easier for me stand up for gay issues in Black communities whenever the issue gets discussed. For Chris and Andy, family support made coming out easier. For Chris, this support also enabled him to involve himself in Black communities, speaking out against heterosexism. In contrast, some of the respondents who were still in the closet participated very little or not at all in the Black and gay communities, except in a heterosexist guise. No doubt, bullers' degree of participation in Black communities is linked to how much affirmation they receive within their families. At times, acknowledgment is solely tacit. Some men reported that their sexual identity never came up with family members; that is, it was accepted as long as they did not flaunt it. Take, for instance, Carl's situation. I never told my family anything about me. But they does come over to visit me and my lover, they have met him. We celebrate Christmas and have lots of family get togethers, and they never once ask me anything about being ah buller man. You know, it is like they know and it is okay with them, so I never had to tell them. And when it is meh little nieces' them birthdays, me and my boyfriend does go over and take them presents and little gifts and things like that, but nobody does say anything. How does that make you feel, and have you ever tried having a conversation with them about buller men's issues? Well I think that means they know and they accept it because if they didn't like me and it, they would ah tell me already. But I never tried having any discussion with them 'bout buller men and batty bwoys because I never once hear them say nothing negative. Laqueshia, who lives with his parents, reported family support. My parents goes with me to gay plays, and my mother will joke with me about other gay men. She does not have a problem at all; I does even wear some of her clothes. As a matter of fact, one day she said to me, 'As a mother, I will always feel the pain you feel, so I just want you to know that I am there with you all the way, and no one is going to hurt you. The

96 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys problem is only with Black folks out in the community who does harass you in Black spaces/

Laqueshia's mother, like Carl's, and like Chris's, was focusing here on her son's identity. Her language demonstrated a connection with her son's pain. She was securing Laqueshia's identity, and Laqueshia hers; in this way, mother and son were affirming each other. Brian also enjoyed familial support, in this case a sibling's. My sister knows that I'm gay, but my mother does not know, and my father is dead. But I have a very good and supportive relationship with my sister.

Brian's outing did not involve much public discussion. It seems, then, that in circumstances where family and community do not feel compromised, Black families and communities are more able to accept same-sex practices. Why do some families resist the heterosexist, bionationalist discourse? We may get answers when we interview the parents of these same-sex Black men, but that project must wait. In the absence of data, I will speculate. We should look at these families in terms of their geographical location. Perhaps they would not have accepted their sons' same-sex sexuality as easily in the Caribbean, where attitudes are so different. Also, same-sex practices are a criminal offence in the Caribbean, so discretion is much more important there. Because communal structures are different in Canada, some Black families of Caribbean origin may accept their sons' same-sex identity. Migration to Canada dilutes notions of the extended family. In Canada, sons do not have to live with their parents and do not always reside near those who would otherwise observe them closely. Neighbours are usually white; Black families often have very little contact with them, and no formal relationships of accountability. This lack of social visibility reduces communal accountability and erases some public shame. In Canada, Black men engaging in same-sex practices are aware that they are protected by human rights laws, even if their family environments are unsafe. Suicide Attempts Because Black men engaging in same-sex relationships are more likely to encounter hostile environments, including the problematizing of

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Black masculinity and verbal, physical, and economic violence, bullers are more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual Black men. In addition, many face unemployment and high rates of school 'push out' (Dei 1996). The pressures of coping with their sexuality force them further to the margins (hooks 1984). Black men generally are expected to be macho and to uphold certain heterosexist African-Caribbean and African-Canadian gender-specific roles. There is tremendous pressure to perform within these gender boundaries. Also, because Black families and community and religious organizations do not as a rule offer support for same-sexed people working out their sexual concerns, most Black same-sex men seek alternative ways of coping with their sexual identity. Desmond recounts: When I was thrown out of my home I attempted suicide because I had nowhere to go and I felt very depressed and emotionally drained. I felt like a piece of shit and that no one love me. So I attempted to kill myself, by trying to overdose myself with cocaine. A friend found me frothing in the bathroom of a burger place and rushed me to the hospital.

Mohammed attempted suicide after his family discovered his samesex identity. When my wife and children found out, the first thing that came to my mind was to kill myself. I went to the kitchen and drank kerosene oil from the lamp and as much pills that I could find in the house. But I think I also more than anything else wanted them to love me, so I showed them what they were doing to me, but it did not change their mind. Because after I came out of hospital one of my sons said, 'You should have died.'

Others who did not attempt to take their own lives talked about wanting to. George's age and loneliness often make him think about trying. I consider myself to be a senior citizen by this society's definition of what a senior is. I often feel very lonely, rejected and suicidal. Why? Because when you are old in a society that values youth you are not accepted and valued. You are made to feel less than a human being, especially in gay culture. I have tried going to Black gay clubs for support, but none of that worked. As a matter of fact I find I get more support from white gays and lesbians than Black people. That is why when I saw your ad in Xtra looking for Black gay and bisexual with

98 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys Caribbean and African-Canadian backgrounds I had to respond to tell my story before I kill myself or die. Because I always wanted to write about the turmoil in my life, but now it is for you to do.

Family rejection, lack of counselling, and economic turmoil seem to be at the core of these suicide attempts. George knows that his voice has been disqualified, yet he clearly sees his testament as important. He describes his hardships, but also how he has found the dignity, compassion, and self-respect to live to tell his story. Professional Help Same-sex practices and being part of a racial minority create a doublebind. The pressure to maintain two or more identities generates a unique form of marginalization. As a Black man, the buller must constantly consider his primary identification: buller man, batty bwoy, same-sexed, or Black male? All these questions lead to confusion and alienation. Despite the growing emphasis on same-sex issues, Black men3 who engage in same-sex relations have received relatively little attention and professional help. Michelle is quite typical. Have you tried looking for help in any other Black agencies, or other agencies in general?

Yes. I did not come across any. I also do not feel that I could talk with white counsellors or therapists about my issues, and I know for sure that there are no Black agencies that are willing to help buller men and batty bwoys.

After Desmond was thrown out of his parents' home, he sought help from Black agencies and community organizations. Did you seek support from any Black service agencies? Yes.

And how was it for you? It was a total disaster. No one wanted to help me because they all said I was too young to be gay and that they do not provide services to gay youth. And they referred me to this white agency for gay and lesbian youth. So other than your friend, you had no support? Yes, I literally had to suffer through this trauma of coming out and not getting support from Black agencies, my family, or friends. It's one of the

Family 99 biggest problems in our community. We have no support systems for buller man dem. I went to a social worker who said I did not have enough experience with women, so I do not know what I am talking about. He told me to go try sleeping with women first and to go back to my parents' home and tell them I would change my lifestyle. Was the social worker Black? Yes, and he was working with Catholic Children's Aid. You know, I felt I had someone to talk to when the school referred me to him, but it was a disaster for me. I will never go back to a Black social worker again, to go through this stuff again.

The failure of Black counsellors and social workers to address Desmond's needs left him with negative views of the profession and the community. The social worker was insensitive to the violence Desmond was experiencing, and he alleged that Desmond was too young to understand his own sexuality. His advice strongly reflected the common belief that heterosexuality is normal. The social worker's intervention was a disempowering experience for Desmond, of a sort that is all too common for Black men seeking help. When Michelle and Desmond sought professional help, being able to trust someone was a key issue. They strongly identified with the Black community, and they recognized that their culture was very important in the delivery of services to them. But they found no4 Black community telephone hotlines, nor did they find any organizations where they could discuss their sexuality and receive help in coming to terms with it. They found no newspapers, publications, or pamphlets listing the names of counsellors or discussion groups. The only positive channel was informal networks. In Toronto, a Black men's group called AYA attempts to help same-sex men, but Black mainstream social services do not know about it, or if they do, they don't mention it. This group meets once a month and is situated within the larger white gay and lesbian community; its appeal is therefore to more 'out' and seasoned Black same-sex men. George has found other avenues. I belong to a Black gay group and a senior's group, so I can still enjoy the pleasures of two worlds. You see, I am almost sixty, so I'm no little spring chicken child. The seniors group is predominantly white, and the other group, as I said, is Black.

And does that work for you in meeting your needs? Yes, because it gives me options in my life.

100 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

Social institutions within the Black same-sex community exclude older Black men such as George, who turns instead to a group for white seniors. Black same-sex groups such as AYA, most of whose members are young men, create barriers to socialization and acceptance. Most social support systems for Blacks are geared toward younger people. There is very little literature on Black same-sex identities and relationships, especially on the problems of older people. Another respondent, Bonte, went to a parish priest for professional help. This is a common approach in the Caribbean, considering the alleged links between sin, normality, evil spirits, and same-sex identities. Bonte also went to a psychiatrist. Who did you go to for help, and what were the professionals saying to you? Well, the priest said that it was evil temptations for the flesh and that Satan was controlling my life and I need to read the New and Old Testament and read especially the verses on Sodom and Gomorrah. The psychiatrist said that I was still developing sexually and was going through a phase and would grow out of it. He then put on some pornography for me to look at to see if I would get aroused, and he wanted to know how I felt watching the pornography. I thought it was a sick test, if you ask me, especially now that I look back at it. Did this change anything for you, or did it help you in any way? No! If anything I became more depressed and very angry toward my parents and toward religion and psychiatry.

Neither of these professionals posed useful questions; they were not able to respond to his needs. Their failure left him angry at his parents, psychiatry, and religion. Not surprisingly, Bonte developed a sense of anger and frustration because he was being denied a healthy environment for himself. Desmond was also taken to a psychiatrist. When I told my parents that I was attracted to men, they never wanted to accept it; instead they took me to a psychiatrist to get cured. The psychiatrist was a big fool, and all he did was give drugs to take my mind off of being sexually active, and then he would literally side with my parents every time we had a family group session. I got fed up of this, and one day, after we had gone to the psychiatrist, I went home and took a full bottle of medication pills and slashed my wrist. My father caught me just in time and called the ambulance to take me to the hospital. It was after this incident that they started to back off, and I ended up

Family 101 leaving home because I couldn't face them anymore. But I also missed the family support when I first left home. What did you miss? I missed what I perceived to be love at the time, a place to live, economic support, and all the things that parents provide for their children. Because it was not easy living on the streets in Toronto before I was able to pull myself together. But now I am okay, not very happy, but surviving.

Neil was eighteen when he attempted to share his same-sex desires with his parents. When I told my parents I was attracted to men, I was eighteen, and they felt that they could cure me because they said I was too young to know if I could be a batty bwoy. So my parents recommended a psychiatrist and a priest to speak with me. Did you visit the psychiatrist and the priest they recommended? Yes! But then I stop going to see them because I felt it was doing no good to me. It was at that point that my father felt that he had the right to beat it out of me. So he beat me one day and told me that a couple more beatings would cure me. How did you react to the beatings? After he had beaten me up the second time I left the home and went to live on the streets, because I couldn't take the beatings anymore. What was life like for you on the streets, and did you have any family contact while on the streets? I met other young gay men through youth serving agencies and got advice from them about where to go for food, welfare money, and shelter. As for family, I had no contact with them, and I am now twenty-five and still does not have any contact with them. I also do not go to places or events where I think I might run into my family because I feel I could kill them if I see them.

Mohammed, who also talked about killing himself, said that where he came from in the Caribbean, in his time, there were no social workers, psychologists, or counsellors. Pastors were the only people to turn to. I am from the Caribbean, and when I was growing up the only thing I use to hear about buller men was that they were sick and that they were a cursed people and that religion was the only way they could be cured. So I never talked about my feelings with anybody, because I automati-

102 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys cally decided to pray ah lot and then got married to cure myself from all this sin and evilness. Because I know they would have sent me to ah priest oh put ah good beating on me, so I kept my mouth shut and lived as though I was heterosexual. I am over sixty now and cannot be bothered with looking for help. Why did you keep your mouth shut? Because family is very important to me, and when I left the Caribbean I always went back to Trinidad to visit family. I got married in Trinidad, but living in Canada I also kept in touch with my family as a support thing. Especially after my divorce I tried to keep in touch with my brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles.

Black communities can and do offer a nurturing environment, as Mohammed attests. They can facilitate the development of a positive sense of self, and they offer the possibility for a healthy identity, personality, and sense of family and community. Yet in their responses to same-sex practices and identity, they seem oppressive. Black men are expected to be heterosexual and stereotypically masculine, to procreate the race, and to follow heterosexual cultural norms. Clearly, Black communities need to develop institutions to support men and women who are working out their same-sex identities. When providing support services for these people, Black heterosexual organizations and agencies can build on Black same-sex men's attachment to Black communities. But they will succeed at this only if they develop positive environments for Black men working out their samesex issues. If these Black men have weak attachments to Black families and Black communities - especially where heterosexist structures of dominance and Black nationalism are prevalent - Black communities will lose most of their same-sex members to other communities, thereby creating more distance between Black heterosexuals and same-sex Blacks. This gap can be bridged through the delivery of services and through ongoing community discussions about same-sex practices, and about broader issues as well - issues such as Black community life, Black diasporic nationalism, and the Black family. The Need for Support Systems The heterosexual family is a building block of Black community life. Sole-support parents and single men are not vilified in the same manner as men who are engaging in same-sex practices or who are at-

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tempting to create their own distinct types of family and community. We should be worried that so many parents of Black children are willing to disown their own for engaging in same-sex practices, for this works against the building of strong, inclusive Black communities. Many families are strongly influenced by the teachings of Black churches, which have a history of sanctioning sexual exclusion. These churches, which view same-sex practices as immoral, sinful, and deviant, play a coercive role in Black communities by censuring alternative sexual lifestyles. Black churches are a centre of resistance to white domination; they also inculcate hatred for same-sex practices, which they perceive as diseased and threatening. The community created through the church is a heterosexist one that rejects same-sex bodily practices. Black churches embrace a who-is-in and who-is-out paradigm - not fluid possibilities, but communal, bionationalistic family solidarity. This paradigm, which emerged from justifiable historical anger, oppresses contemporary Black culture and families. As Jewelle Gomez (1990) stated: 'It's even more dangerous for people of color to embrace homophobia than it is for whites to embrace racism, simply because we're embattled psychologically and emotionally as an ethnic group. Thus leaving ourselves in a weakened position.' Left without family support, many bullers seek support in white, Asian, Hispanic, transgendered, and bisexual communities; in doing so they are initiating new, broader definitions of family. Desmond reported that in the absence of Black support for his same-sex eroticism and desires, he entered white spaces, created white friendships, and felt welcomed to express themselves. I think some of my confidence about being a gay Black man came from some of the white spaces I used to visit. Some of the men who I met were open and out about their sexual orientation, and I after leaving my home felt I had nothing to lose but to do the same. So I went to some of the same clubs and meetings with them. They exposed me to some aspects of gay culture that I did not know. So I do not think I can say the white community was hostile to me.

Desmond was not the only one to take this course. That buller men and batty bwoys find support in white spaces only reconfirms for dogmatic Black nationalists that homosexuality is a white disease. The Black nationalist discourse itself generates exclusionary practices, and

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these encourage behaviour that apparently proves the discourse - that is, that whites infect Blacks with homosexuality. In the absence of Black communal support for same-sex practices, a new family or support system is being created that cuts across all lines of race and colour. Clearly, within Black communities and in most Black families, there is no room for same-sex eroticism. By recognizing sexual differences, Black families and communities will be able to start discussing same-sex eroticism. For now, the denial of such differences continues to divide us. Lorde, in an essay on exploitation and Marxism in Sister Outsider, wrote: Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion. (1984:115)

The Black family trope needs to restructure difference in the family as a formative dimension of Black nationalism and communal solidarity; it also needs to recognize that there is no single blueprint for Black families. Here we would do well to learn from Laqueshia's mother, who told him that 'as a mother I will always feel the pain you feel, so I just want you to know that I am there with you all the way, and no one is going to hurt you. The problem is only with Black folks out in the community who does harass you in Black spaces.' Same-sex Black families and children identifying as bullers or gay need to feel themselves part of the home, the family, and the community, and these institutions must learn to stop marginalizing sexual differences as problematic. Respect for and recognition of sexual difference must become an integral dimension of Black families, Black communal living, and Black diasporic bionationalism. Any autonomous Black group that is going to 'represent' the interests of AfricanCanadians and Caribbean Blacks should include Blacks from different social classes, sexual identities, and cultures. Black nationalists and Black families who regard sexual identity as a static given and who construct racial identity as a polar opposite of same-sex identity need

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to recognize that most if not all bullers and batty bwoys do not see their sexual identity as separate from their racial identity. It seems obvious that in any group, the members will have to negotiate differences, ambiguities, and tensions among themselves. My point is that Black heterosexist families and Black diasporic nationalists have failed to take into account the underrepresentation and oppression of Black bullers and batty bwoys. As Lorde has so eloquently reminded us, in a racist, capitalist, and patriarchal society, working together across differences is an essential political project. In summary, family reinforcement for some of the men's comingout stories suggests a counter-hegemonic discourse and the movement of some Black communities away from negative constructions of same-sex practices. While there is room for improvement and change is too slow, embracing these few positive examples as a model would probably be a good starting point.

Chapter Four

Community

The complex phenomenon known as 'the Black community' is often put forward as a homogeneous space with a common culture, language, and history. For many members of the African diaspora, 'the Black community' signifies home - a space where they feel they belong and where they can be themselves. But in my interviews, I found the opposite to be true for many Black men engaging in same-sex relationships. In their community involvement, these men have witnessed and experienced the tensions of heterosexism and homophobia. As a result, they vary in their commitment to and identification with Black communal life. Same-sex men who identify with their community often deeply resent its homophobia; some openly challenge their community's negative attitudes, or they reject their community or its most hateful elements. Some of these men find solace, communion, and opportunity for leadership roles in Black churches, yet these men also struggle with the condemnation they encounter for their same-sex practices. Identification: Working from Within Devon had a clear-eyed view of his position in his community. I have gone to things like Black community meetings and speeches and heard them say the most insensitive things about gay people, and they expect us to sit there and take it all. That is one thing I have observed here in Toronto. But I am a Black man, so I will always be a part of the Black community. So they could say what they want to say about me, I will always be here in the community. So they better get used to it, I ain't flaunting it, but they better doh touch me either.

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He well understood the situation of bullers in the community - they must ignore the humiliation or stay away from community events. Of all the men with whom I talked, he was the most aggressive in resisting the position the community offered him. He threatened to retaliate with violence to protect himself from any physical abuse arising from his sexual orientation. He was adamant that he would not be made invisible and that he would not be physically restricted from the community by any form of violence. Can you explain to me what you mean by [saying that] you will always be a part of the community and they better don't touch you?

I am a Black man, and that automatically puts me in the community. I might not be out there demonstrating and attending rallies, but I am still ah Black member of the community. And when ah say they better doh touch me all ah mean is they shouldn't gay bash me because I am going to fight back. I will not be silenced at any cost, I will fight back, I have a mouth and am quite able-bodied.

Devon identified with his race and was committed to Black communal living. He was willing to attend any event and be supportive of the community, but he was not going to submit to harassment. Needless to say, while Devon continued to embrace his rightful place in the community, he had constantly to contest with others for his right to do so. Bullers and batty bwoys must work toward eradicating conditions like these. Audre Lorde writes about the effects of silencing, violence, and fear in her essay 'The Transformation of Silence into Language Action.'1 A conversation she had with her daughter illustrates the role of silencing. Her daughter said, Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and hotter and hotter and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside' (42). Fear of others silences many people in Black communities. Wayne, like Devon, saw his life as very much part of the Black community, in both personal and professional terms. I asked him how he had kept in touch with the community. Well you know you cannot buy hard-dough bread, Ackee, Roti, Dasheen and Yams, you know what ah mean nuh, from Loblaws, Dominion, and Mr Grocer and feel the same way or get the real thing. So I still shop in

108 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys West Indian spaces for food, culture, and music. It is ah special feeling of being back home, when you buy yuh yams and the Black woman behind the counter tell yuh, 'God Bless yuh sonny boy, have ah good weekend.' It is not the same thing like buying from the big grocery stores. It is also ah very nice feeling to be among Black people, to hear them talk, watch them behave, and hear community gossip. These are some of the things that reminds you of your culture, home, and Black people. I am in touch with the Black community through my parents and their history of that culture that is passed on from generation to generation. Wayne clearly enjoys the textures of everyday Black communal life. There is a sense of being at home in his comments. He wants to be included in Black spaces; it would hurt him if he weren't. Everyday life is crucial to him. Things like cooking, the way we talk, the places we shop, the cultural artefacts that they pass on to us. The way we celebrate and prepare for Christmas, Easter, Caribana, and other related Caribbean holidays. And I still go to the same barbershop that my father used to take me to when I was a child. Men like Wayne and Devon cannot step out of the Black community, nor can they remove themselves from it. But this psychic investment turns against itself when they confront narrow and oppressive positions toward same-sex relations. Unlike Devon, Wayne is more cautious about publicly affirming his sexual preferences. He works with Black youths and is somewhat afraid they will learn about his samesex identity. What type of work do you do in the Black community? I work with Black youths, and they do not know that I am ah batty bwoy. [He laughs as he runs his hands through his hair.] Would you tell them that you are a batty bwoy? I think I might tell them if they ask. But I am also afraid to let them know because I do not want my job to be affected by my sexuality; I also need the money. Because after you let the cat out of the bag, people tend to judge your whole life around gay issues, so I do not want that kind of thing to happen to me. So tell me a little bit about your work with the youths.

Community 109 I do life skills, Black consciousness building, help them with school work, basic counselling and referral, HIV/AIDS-related work, immigration and refugee, you know, that type of advocacy work. Do you like what you do and who you work with? Yes. And sometimes I wish I could tell them about myself and other bullers and batty bwoys, but do not have the courage nor support. So it is this kind of fear that makes me angry with the community and sometimes myself, because we are so caught up in being afraid of gay people, I doh know. Do you feel that you or other bullers get recognized for their work in the Black community? Recognized, what is that! We are doubly invisible, from the white community and the Black heterosexual community. So there is no recognition and no respect I feel that is given to us, because many of us work very silently and we are never seen as having same-sex identities and eroticism within us.

Lorde comments on her own isolation, rejection, and constant struggle as a lesbian working for the Black community and on how her sexuality was always erased or made invisible in the process. Her experience parallels Wayne's. She writes: 'When I picketed for welfare mothers' rights and against the enforced sterilization of young Black girls, when I fought institutionalized racism in New York City Schools, I was a lesbian. But you did not know it because we did not identify ourselves, so now you can say that Black lesbians and gay men have nothing to do with the struggles of the Black Nation' (1988: 23). This is just like Wayne's dilemma. Wayne puts many hours into community work, struggling for Black communities' survival and their collective good. But, when it comes to providing much-needed support for Black same-sex people, he feels unable to raise the issue. Given how difficult he finds it to be accepted on his own terms, Wayne feels he will have to earn recognition for his contributions to his community before he can speak about same-sex practices in that community. You know another thing that does get me very mad? No, what is that? When ah hear Black people say you carr be Black and be ah buller man at the same time, despite all the hard work I thus put into the community.

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Wayne is implicitly raising crucial issues. Who is 'allowed' to be Black? Who defines Blackness and maleness? Essentialist and reductionist notions of Blackness must be open to examination, because they posit fixed notions of Black identity that serve only the privileged, selfdefined leaders and ideologues. Patricia Williams summarizes this marginalization: 'Disregard for other people's lives qualitatively ... is a system of formalized distortions of thought. It produces social structures centered around fear and hate; it provides a tumorous outlet for feelings elsewhere' (1987:151-2). Many Black same-sex men in Toronto and Halifax feel that they cannot find a home within Black communities, because of how those communities police Black same-sex practices. As the previous chapter showed, they may also be alienated within their families. Community isolation only compounds the feelings of 'elsewhereness' that are so common among bullers. Bonte's position resembled Devon's assertion of his rightful place; it also resembled Wayne's reluctance to fight for that desired place. Bonte was quite confident he would receive sympathetic understanding, but he also worried about disapproval. I think it is okay to be gay within the Black community; that is my opinion today anyway. How so? Because I think every Black heterosexual person know a gay person or have a gay family or friend, so I think they are sympathetic. But it is the male sexual act I think that they have a hard time with, because of their religious and moral upbringing [emphasis added]. Also too, I think when they think of sex, I think they see man and woman. So when two men make love automatically one ah them go be seen as the woman and one the man. And ah think they have ah hard time with Black males being feminine.

His tone was apologetic. He seemed to be suggesting that in his Black community, same-sex male practices are accepted as long as they are not openly discussed and acknowledged. Also, he was expressing a degree of Black solidarity in his gentle characterization: 'Ah think they have ah hard time with Black males being feminine.' And he was tracing this attitude back to both religion and nationalism, neither of which he was willing to disavow.

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Black nationalists will tell you that if the Black man is weak then the white man will take control of our women and our lives, so Black homosexuality I think is a big threat to masculinity and racism. This is why I think we appear to have more homophobia than white society. We are overburdened with hierarchies of oppression and protecting Black males. So you know when white people say we [Black people] have more homophobia and hatred toward Black gay people, I think they overlook how we laugh at all types of difference and prioritize oppression because of racism. What do you mean by that? Well, we would laugh at you if you have freckles, or a twist mouth, if you fat, too Black looking, or you have ah big mouth, you know what ah mean. I know right here in Toronto where some Black women know that the men are gay and they have them as friends, because they find them funny and compassionate. Because these men does help them baby sit, and they thus keep their company. So I do think that we gay men play a role in Black women's lives, but not in Black men's lives in the Black community.

Bonte was trying to be optimistic. He was suggesting that Black women are more progressive than Black men, but that Black men are coming around. But he himself chose to remain invisible, while waiting for other Black men to 'do the right thing.' And is that acceptable? Well yes, it is fun and part of our culture, we laugh a lot, but I think Black women are also very quick to accept sexual differences much faster than Black men. But you know what Black men will soon get over all this shit, and we will be doing more supporting of gay issues soon in the Black community. Are you active within the Black community? Yes I do a great deal of work with organizations, youths, and seniors within the Black community. But I do not like the invisibility to my work and that of other gays and lesbians in our community.

Bonte, Wayne, and Devon were contradicting themselves - affirming membership in their communities while recognizing that such membership can be quite fragile or non-existent. Brian's apparently confusing comments, which follow, were a reflection of very real tensions in Black communities.

112 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys Sometimes I am made to feel very 'out of order' and as if I don't belong by my own Black community. Why? Because I do not feel that I can go to spaces that are Black dominated or organized and be comfortable with my sexuality. I have never attended a Black event where they were willing to address gay and lesbian issues. I am very tired of being straight for my Black community and gay for the white community. It makes me very angry inside. I feel also too over the years I have drifted completely from the Black community here in Halifax, because of the homophobia. So what do you do?

I still support stuff whenever I can. I support Black education and Black economics like buying from Black stores and stuff like that. I also attend Black theatre and Black comedy. I buy books written by Black authors and stuff like that. You know, like it or not, we cannot be separated from what is a part of us, as much I am angry and do not attend the political discussions. Brian, Bonte, Wayne, and Devon were insisting that their Blackness and their cultural history tied them integrally to their communities, despite their oppression by those communities. As agents for social change, as members of Black communities, and as buller men, they were determined to shape their own destiny, despite the refusal of their communities to deal honestly with Black same-sex desires. Michel Foucault, writing on same-sex practices and identity, reminds us: Another thing we must be aware of is the tendency to reduce being gay to the questions: 'Who am I?' and 'What is the secret of my desire?' Might it not be better if we asked ourselves what sorts of relationships we can set up, invent, multiply or modify through homosexuality? The problem is not trying to find out the truth about one's sexuality within oneself, but rather, nowadays, trying to use our sexuality to achieve a variety of different types of relationships. And this is why homosexuality is probably not a form of desire, but something to be desired. (1982: 4) The respondents often complained or expressed concern about how their communities policed Black masculinity, and about the narrow social visions of Black masculinity, gender, and sexuality. These they saw as self-limiting, and as part of a disciplined project to secure

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heterosexuality as the only permissible form of male sexuality in the community. Challenging / Rejecting the Community As we have seen, some of the men felt like outsiders because they constantly had to negotiate their same-sex desires in their communities. Their lives, as a result, were often filled with shame and contradiction. Some of them, however, could not tolerate such contradictions. For them, the alienation and the pain outweighed whatever affirmations might still be available. Neil presented a clear example: I do not go to events, spaces, or places in the Black community because of the Black communities' view on homosexuality, which remains largely a taboo subject by definition.

Neil did not feel that he shared the views of many Blacks. Elaborating, he began to identify the norms of communal interaction that he could not and would not abide by - in particular, the attitudes toward masculinity which defined 'proper' ways of relating to others. What are these views, and why do you feel this way?

As a Black man, you are expected to behave in and dress in a particular way. 'What way is that?

Well, you see how them rappers and basketball players thus dress, with hoods and caps, and how they thus throw their body around searching for some kind of proper masculinity, as to erase all questions about their soft masculinity or homosexuality suspicions. He knew the consequences of failing to exhibit an 'appropriately' masculine demeanour. So how do you carry yourself?

Well, if we don't fit the masculine, strong Black stereotype for the most part, so they suspect that I and meh friends are batty bwoys, so they thus harass us very quickly. It is these kind ah things that thus make me say that I doh belong to the community. And I think having a white boyfriend makes you also feel like a outsider.

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Who does the harassing, and how does this harassment make you feel? It is mostly Black men acting macho, butch, and tough who I find does do the harassing. It turns me off from the community, the people, and thus make me feel I shouldn't go to anything they organizing and not to support any more Black events.

Carole-Ann Tyler has noted that 'the hypermasculinity of males ... is meant to allay the castration anxiety evoked by the spectacle of the man as the spectacle, like a woman' (1991: 36). Such overcompensation reflects the cultural values that 'real' Black men are expected to display while constantly being watched by the Black nationalist 'heteropolice.' Applying their ambivalent and contradictory dynamics, the latter prescribe rigid gender roles, constructing bullers and batty bwoys as 'the enemy within/ all the while serving up fantasies of sexual intoxication as the 'other/ Black nationalists and Black heterosexist academic writers see no possible dialogue between bullers and heterosexuals. This truncated view protects the claim that bullers are non-productive, weak, emasculated sissies, as well as traitors to the race. For Blacks who aren't aware of the threats that bullers face in Black communities, and know they face, this absence of dialogue reinforces the myth that bullers are reluctant to engage with other Blacks. Black communal settings are shaped by a particular popular cultural expression, one that is threatening and insensitive and that further reinforces ambivalent and contradictory notions of Black sexuality. It implies that there is some 'perfect identity' for Black masculinity and sexuality and that all Black males must get up every morning and put it on. Black nationalists, functioning under a fixed construct of Black masculinity and sexual identity, would do well to listen to the voices articulated in A Black Feminist Statement (1977) by the Combahee River Collective: "The notion of identity politics implies that neither politics nor identities is singular or fixed. Identity and the practices engendered in its name are constituted along multiple axes - social and discursive - which often appear contested and in contradiction' (365). Black masculinity and identity politics, as prescribed by nationalists, mirror those of white, patriarchal racist males. In doing so they erase the possibility for multiple forms of Black maleness, demanding instead a racist, fixed Black persona. Judith Butler's insights are relevant here: 'Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation

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itself. In other words what they imitate ... is a phantasmic ideal of heterosexual identity, one that is produced by the imitation as its effect' (1991: 21). Brian talked about the phantasmic construction of the authentic Black male, the purity of Black nationalism, and its regulated effects on bodies constructed as bullers and batty bwoys. Lawd me, I stay far from them Black people work here in Halifax, especially the Black religious and nationalistic ones. I fear that one day, I might flaunt the buller man thing in front ah them, and they go kick the shit out ah me. Why? Because they Gawd dam homophobic, and they hate bullers. And me is one ah them bullers they hate. So me! Hold on, I doh want none ah them to beat me and bust my head. I doh ever want my family to know I am ah batty man. So the further I stay away from them Black people, the better it is for me. Because you see my mother and them doh know I am sleeping with men, and I doh want them to know, so I thus stay far from all Black people. I doh act manly enough for most ah them, and ah doh ever want to flaunt me buller man style in front ah them. Why? Because I doh feel strong and good enough to come out to everyone yet, and the more Black people ah hang with the chances of my family knowing is higher. I am not sure if my grandmother and parents will react positively to me sleeping with men. So the fear is real, and I will not want my grandmother to get ah heart attack in she old age. I also do not want my family to disown me; it is only my sister who knows. They are very important to my survival, and I have a lot of fun with them. So there is all these things I do not want to lose, so those are some of my real fears. Are you comfortable being a buller man? Yes! But leh me tell you something again. If yo' fo' have to hide because unno ah batty man, or gay man, you saying something wrong with it and yourself. Buh dread, me parents and grandmother do see it that way, and I love them very much, to the point that I will do anything for them. That may mean not telling them about my sex life. I doh feel I have to act like what them call Black male masculinity, I does just do whatever I want to do, and sometimes I like to dress up in bright colourful pieces of clothing and walk around the street. So I know it is very hard for me to fit the Black male stereotype. You know the big, Black roughneck look that the media portrays and the image that some Black men like to internalize. I am not into that all.

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The construction of Black male masculinity continues to trouble bullers, who see it as something they must reject in order to be who they want to be. As Robert Connell informs us: 'Masculinity is a structured practice which exists at a number of different levels: which exists in political relations (institutional); which exists within economic relations (i.e. as the work place or division of labor); and in sexual emotional relations, too' (1992: 65). Black nationalists have embraced homophobia and fixed forms of masculinity, and Devon, Neil, and other respondents have internalized the effects of this. There is more involved here than the rejection of same-sex practices by Black communities. Those communities are rejecting the creativity and labour of their own people; by extension, they are rejecting potential cultural and economic resources for collective solidarity. Because of his isolation and oppression, Neil had developed a strongly negative view of Black community life. When asked whether he did any work in the community, especially to challenge homophobia, he expressed this negativity. You crazy? I love myself and do not want these Black men to beat me up and kill me. I had my bad experience two times: one in school and one in the Black community while walking with my boyfriend. So I have chosen not to attend events or support the Black community, because it is too frustrating and painful; I do not have the energy to fight my brothers and sisters and to fight the white man at the same time. So I will keep to myself and go to the white gay bars when I want to go to gay places and do stuff like that. You know, I do not feel I belong, and I feel very out of the Black community. And as a male you have to act as if you are inarticulate and talk like yoh boy and stuff like that, I think that is what they call masculinity in our community. So no I am not masculine enough to work in the Black community.

Neil uses racist constructions of the Black male body to characterize the normative Black masculinity that he perceives, as well as his position (or lack thereof) vis-a-vis its form. But other constructions circulate among communities. Michael recalls his experience of marginalization. I remember being to a Kwanzaa celebration, and at this Kwanzaa celebration we were asked to join a circle with men holding hands forming an outer circle. While the women in the room were asked to hold hands

Community 117 forming the inner circle. You get it - men outer, women inner. So I remember saying no, I want to hold hands with the women in the inner circle and not with the men in the outer circle. And what was your rationale for holding hands with the women? For me it was about attempting to break away some of the sexism, patriarchy, and perceived homophobia I sensed from these male protectors in the room. But the men in the room objected to me doing that, and I was made to feel as though I had betrayed Black masculinity and was not down with the brothers in the room, who were protecting the women. So what did you do next? Oh nothing. I did not feel that I could talk with any of the men in the room, because they had already made up their minds about the role of men and women in this celebration, like in society. And you have to choose your battles sometimes, and I felt that my very resistance to holding hands with the men was a major accomplishment, and I got my point across still.

Kwanzaa is a family event, during which members celebrate the first gathering of fruits and share their food and drink with other Blacks. It tends to suggest a cohesive, stable community, one that is held together by family, togetherness, love, and respect. However, these concepts tend to assume heterosexism as the norm. In challenging the form of a Kwanza ritual, Michael was attempting to challenge notions of Black masculinity that position and stereotypically limit the significance of Black women. He recognized the difficulties of challenging male / female gender roles, but he also contended that he would never leave the community, because he belonged in it. Even so, he would avoid community events. I will never attend any event put on by the Black community here in Halifax again, but as I told you earlier I will still support Black business and stuff like that. I have experienced on two occasions verbal harassment that made me feel very embarrassed, because they suspect that I was gay. On these two occasions there was no support for me from other people who watched it happen while I had to stand by myself and take it all. If this was a white person telling them off, the whole community would be up in arms supporting them. But it is the gay issues so they are afraid to support me. I am suppose to leave my gay identity by the church door, Black organizations' door, the Black family door, and not be who I am, in order, to please Black folks.

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Brian was anticipating a double life - that is, being compelled to leave his same-sex identity at various doors. Black men engaging in samesex relations are expected to support community events, take on stereotypical roles,2 and keep silent about heterosexism. They are also expected to accept verbal and physical abuse because 'they look for it/ After all, their way of life challenges heterosexual roles, values, and functions and embodies same-sex desires that are deviant and destructive of Black identity. For some men, this moral regulation of Black same-sex practices creates a double invisibility. Bullers and batty bwoys experience the racism that all Blacks face; at the same time, their marginalization by the Black community cuts them off from valuable support against racism. Black men who engage in same-sex relations also experience racism, high unemployment, police harassment, misnaming, and racist stereotyping. Like their heterosexual counterparts, they live in a hostile environment. Furthermore, they are often made to feel that they are not oppressed - or at least not as oppressed as their heterosexual counterparts, who say that bullers and batty bwoys have no responsibilities and that some of them sleep with the enemy. Yet, they remain excluded from housing opportunities and political participation, which most white citizens take for granted, and they are often restricted to neighbourhoods where crime, poverty, and police harassment are rampant. Neil shared a story about life in a racist society. Being stopped by the police is not restricted to Black heterosexual males, is an act I am also familiar with. And it is these experiences sometimes that is the motivating factor for me attending Black community events. The way we dress, walk, and talk gets targeted by the white racist cops and white society. We cannot wear hoods, sunglasses, and be seen alone or in a group because we are a gang or up to no good. I get stopped and questioned many nights on my way home by police, and it fucking upsets me. You know the things we share in common.

The most invisible visible Blacks in Black communities are bullers and batty bwoys. For bullers, Black communities are criss-crossed by the tensions of race and sexuality. Bullers are invisible to their community but remain visible to white racists. We still get constructed as the Black rapist, thief, and criminal when whites and other people look at us. The stereotype for heterosexual Blacks is the same for bullers too, because sexuality is not seen, but race is. So

Community 119 when I go into Batons and the Bay, they see me first as a thief, and I think that is where they stop.

Neil's in/visibility has been shaped by the same racism that has long been applied to his heterosexual Black brothers. He has been caught in a double subjection: the Black community looking down on his samesex eroticism, the white community criminalizing his Blackness. The gay white community sees itself as a white male middle-class enclave that writes us Black men out of its existence. How is this so? Well, when one turns the pages of Xtra, Icon, and Fab gay magazines in Toronto, all one sees is white male pretty boys posing and occupying ninety per cent of the pages - thus representing the entire community. You doh even see white women. So do you think they have a responsibility to think of Black people, especially Black gay men ? Well, I am not sure if they should think about us, but at least acknowledge that we exist. But you know what? What? They have no problem when it comes to sex, lust, fear, stereotyping, and them wanting to explore something different sexually. The Black heterosexual community should become more sensitive to these issues and recognize that we experience the same pain, misnaming, and misrepresentation, but on different sexual and community lines, that is all.

Neil was hinting at something here that had been absent in most of the interviews. Much of what I have been reporting suggests that same-sex Black men are simply accepted as bullers in gay white communal spaces. Many Black men do find support and relationships in white gay communities; however, there are racist dimensions to the forms of sexuality enacted therein. Neil was suggesting that white men enact a racist desire on Black bodies, which become literally a sign of sex. The buller may internalize that sign and reduce himself to 'superstud/ Another form of dissociation from the Black community works through a very different semiotic. Brian, because of his education and social class, feels that he is immune from racism - he seems to have a difficult time conceiving of himself as Black or as a racialized body. I think white society respect you when you are educated and have degrees in law, medicine, and other big-paying professions. So, I never saw

120 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys the need to be around the Black community - most of my friends have always been white, and the Black community is a very new concept for me to conceptualize and start thinking of. But the little experience I have had with them and from what I have heard people say about the Black community is that it does not like gay people. I have this vision of them as being very homophobic, and I am not sure as a gay man I want to be around them, [emphasis added]

Brian perceived education and his social class as factors protecting him from racism in a white-dominated society and from the effects of heterosexism in Black communal settings. (Education + social class = whiteness.) Brian's failure to see the world from the standpoint of being Black and same-sexed reflected his denial of racism. His associating racism with poverty and low education was another way of saying, 'I am educated; therefore I am white.' Brian, however, was the exception. Despite the acknowledged heterosexism and homophobia in Black communities, Black same-sex men dependent on their Black identity still desire an attachment to the living texture of their culture. As well, a number of interviewees had connections with Black churches. As I show in the following section, heterosexism within the churches creates conflict for same-sex men who desire to belong to them. Churches: A Complex Relationship As we will see in chapter 4, the churches have always been important in the lives of Blacks. A commitment to religion and spirituality is visible at most or all community events. Religion infuses most activities that Blacks engage in, whether they are shopping at West Indian grocery stores3 or merely greeting one another on the street. A religious sensibility helps bind the community together. At some community events, the organizers take time out to recognize spiritual ancestors and to thank God for giving those attending the strength to be present together. At the closing of a performance, some people say to the audience, 'God bless/ and thank God for allowing them to undertake the event or for giving them talent and spiritual guidance. Religion and the churches are woven into everyday Black life. The importance of religion in Black communities has resulted in confusion and pain for bullers. Consider first Neil's comments on his experiences as a church member.

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There were other gay deacons and choir boys, some very, very, very effeminate, and I was close to many of them. But I think the pastor and church denied it because no one made it public, or complained. We were good Christian men, something I think the church respected. What was your church position on same-sex relationships? Abomination, sick, sinful, unclean, and not worthy of trying.

Randall Kenan's biography of James Baldwin, Down at the Cross, illustrates how religion can hurt a same-sexed Black Christian. He argues that Baldwin was raised in a household headed by a very religious and traditional stepfather. His stepfather's influence led Baldwin to become a preacher and a devoted Christian. But his ambivalence and anxiety over his same-sex desires made him very confused and angry, because these desires contravened the teachings of Christianity (Kenan 1995: 33). Baldwin, like some of the men in this book, referred to these feelings as 'the evil within.' Kenan describes Baldwin's anger: 'Due to the way I had been raised, the abrupt discomfort that all this aroused in me and the fact that I had no idea what my voice or mind or body was likely to do next caused me to consider myself one of the most depraved people on earth ... I surrendered myself to a spiritual seduction long before I came to any knowledge ... Everything inflamed me and that was bad enough' (34). Neil echoed the same sort of anger. I asked him about the racial composition of his church. Was your church mainly a Black congregation? Yes! But I had enough of the pastor and congregation homophobia. I am very angry with how the church preaches love and practice hate against us bullers. Why do you think the Black church has such a hard time with seeing same-sex relations as okay? I think because they use Christian teachings. I have even heard my father quote Leviticus 20, verse 13, which is 'the Lord tell [sic] us: If a man lie with man as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.' I am also reminded of my Sunday school days, when the teacher will talk to us about heterosexual marriage. These discussions only caused confusion in my mind, and I felt very guilty deep inside because so much of my life at the time was built around family and church, which both condemned same-sex relations.

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Neil's confusion and guilt led him to reduce his participation in church life and to loosen his attachment to his community - an attachment that was clearly central to him and his family. Neil was the only Toronto resident who explicitly discussed church affiliation; however, three of the five Halifax interviewees enphasized the importance of the church in their lives. Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis William Magill, writing on the liberatory role of Black churches in Halifax's Black communities, contend that the church 'provided throughout the history of Black settlements in Nova Scotia, the basis for whatever genuine Black subculture developed. Black leaders and spokesmen vis-a-vis the wider society were usually the religious leaders and the Association was the base for unity and contact among the isolated Black communities' (1987: 68). From the time it was established in 1784 until the 1940s, Halifax's Black Church was, in the words of a respondent in Bernice Moreau's (1996) study, 'the lighthouse of our community.' Its function was holistic and all-inclusive; it was the centre of the lives of Black people from womb to tomb (154). Its economic and political leadership provided local Blacks with a sense of collective identity. It fostered solidarity, irrespective of sexual orientation (Clairmont and Magill 1987: 49). In North America, in Black settlements, churches have always provided the matrix for whatever genuine subculture has developed. They have provided a variety of social services and have been the home base for many organizations. They have given members spiritual and social meaning, offered support in and relief from daily suffering, and organized resistance to racism. Yet these benefits have come with a price for Black same-sex men. That price: moral regulation and the Black bionationalist stigmatizing of their bodies and sexual desires. Joseph, a Haligonian, was very reluctant to criticize the Black community. He was somewhat positive about its acceptance of his sexuality, yet he still chose to remain invisible. He indicated that the church was of real value to him, yet he continued to live in the closet. What are some of the issues that Black men are dealing with in Halifax? Well I find that the church and religion to be very important for us, especially in places like North Preston and Truro. You will always find us doing something in the church, singing and healing each other out you know what I mean, you have to see it to understand it.

Community 123 You talk about the church ah lot, how important is the church for you in Halifax? Well I go to church quite a bit, my family and friends also go very often, so I guess it is a very important thing in my life and my community life. You see we Black folks have always used the church to talk with each other and to meet each other. The church has always been very supportive here in Halifax and has I think been quite liberating for most of us. So it is a very good thing I guess. The idea that religion can be either an opiate or a source of struggle for liberation is well documented (see West, 1982). My respondents experienced the church in Halifax as a liberating institution and as a source of material and emotional support. According to Joseph, it holds a unique place in the lives of Black Haligonians. Through the church, the Black community meets many of its needs. Terrance told me that he gained in the Black church skills often denied to Black men in white society. I was the treasurer and secretary at one time in the church and was able to gain skills that I need to help me find work. I also know of other gay people who held positions like president, treasurer, secretary, volunteer co-coordinator, but all with a great degree of secrecy, privacy, denial of their sexual orientation. For other Black people, the church has been a site for socialization, as well as a focus of communal life. Lennox describes his double life within the church, even while emphasizing its importance to him. I went to an all-Black congregation in Halifax, where I met many other Black men who I knew were engaging in sex with other men. Many of them were also married and had sex in public places that I know of, but we never talked about it. I think we never talked about it because our Black convTiunity is so close-knit and religious that we never wanted to be embarrassed in front of other Black people. Some of us had children and were really mixed up around community, family, and religious values. Have you or do you know of anyone, group, or organization that has tried to tell the Black church that it is okay to have same-sex relationships? No! You see in Halifax, the church is very important in our lives. In North Preston, Truro, and Beachville, you could always find us Black folks in the church doing political work, providing support services, or

124 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys simply socializing. We are also very respectful of the older people in the church; I think we see them as providing very important advice for our survival. We may not always agree with them, but they are also the backbone of our community. How so? Well, what I find very interesting about Halifax is how people in the church and community identifies you by your parents' name, especially your father's name. So when I go to church I am not Lennox, but the son of Mr ... People also relate to us like that so you have no other choice but to have respect for the older people and the church.

The extension of family and communal living through religious socialization generates added pressures for men like Lennox. Community here is synonymous with the church, which identifies him through his father. If he is outed, he may cause shame to family and to community. He is identified both through his father and as part of the church. Because of this there was even more pressure for me to confront my being a gay man and to be honest with those whom I love and respect. Denial and repression of my same-sex attraction for men led me into having a girlfriend and children. I was convinced that having a girlfriend and being a good Christian would help cure me of my sexual temptations for men. I grew up believing in that.

Lennox's psychic investment in the church has led him to want to be open about his sexual practices. Some same-sex men find that their investment requires them to forget about these practices at the church door. Though he desires to be more open, Lennox has not come out publicly; rather, he has turned to procreation and common-law marriage, hoping for a cure. Clearly, churches dramatically affect how many Black men understand themselves and their sexuality. Among Black men in some churches, same-sex practices are common. Yet, as Lennox reports, when these men gather in church on a Sunday morning, they meet as if they were total strangers. There are a few men who I had encounters with outside of church, but we do not communicate that in public to other people, nor do we talk about what it is we are doing with our lives, families, or communities. For us it is a private matter, because all church and family discussions on the matter were negative. People in my community I felt became more

Community 125 negative towards gay people after they heard about AIDS and linking it to gay people, the way the media did it. Many Christians insist that God can change or cure same-sex desires. Many of the respondents, including Lennox, said they spent a great deal of time trying, with no success, to persuade God to change them. I have been told that they can't be gay and be Christians. So acting as if you are straight and very macho is the best way to hide it publicly, or laughing at other gay or feminine men is another way I gained, or at least felt that I gained, heterosexual privilege. But some men are happy to leave behind their same-sex attractions when they enter the church. As Joseph pointed out, discussions of homosexuality are not appropriate for church. I think of church as the place where we should never discuss gay and lesbian issues, because of God's view on the subject matter. When I go to church, I go to hear the word of God, not about gay people and who is sleeping with who. Now that does not stop me from having fun with other men sexually, but church is not the place for it. The church is to unify, uplift us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and unify us as Christians. I am a Christian and do not care what other people think. You see, the history of Black Nova Scotians goes back to the church, so I cannot leave it that easy. In order to feel spiritually and religiously satisfied, in order to appreciate 'the word of God,' Joseph has had to disavow his same-sex identity. Brian, while deeply attached to the church, has been much more conflicted. I really wish my family and the church would allow us to be whatever we want to be without forcing the word of God on us. I feel if the word of God is about love then they should not use it to talk about hating us. This is what really gets me angry. You see I go to church every Sunday, but I could never let them know that I am gay. Who are they? The priest, community members in the church, and my family. And another thing I like but at the same time hate is when they call us brothers and sisters. You know I don't feel you should call me brother if you do

126 Bullet Men and Batty Bwoys not mean it. But I like it when they say 'hi, brother' and 'hi, sister' -1 feel that it is a Black thing. Outside of the church on the streets and in the community, that kind of greeting is great, you know what I mean? We Black people in Halifax always greet each other. Chris found a conflicted position too difficult, and stopped going to church. I don't even bother to go to church because I don't have the energy to fight with the priest and other people who believe in God that at the same time espouses hate towards gay men. I will not want to leave that part of me outside of the church and pick it back up when I am leaving the church. I don't think we will ever respect gay men in our community, and as long as we hang on to this old age religious line we will not have respect from some gays towards the church also. According to George Mosse, 'respectability emerged in alliance with sexuality and helped to shape Black middle-class beliefs about the body, sexual (mis)conduct, normal notions of virility and manly bearing. The control over sexuality evidenced in the triumph of the nuclear family was vital to respectability' (1985: 2-10). This control clearly marginalizes bullers and batty bwoys in Black spiritual and religious culture. A challenge for Black churches is to confront this exclusion and begin to respond to men such as Brian. I have never felt that I was a part of the Black community and would love to be more involved, but I am not going to let the church and the Black heterosexuals control my life, because they hate gay people ... As Black gay people we need a safe place to express our spirituality, religious beliefs, and we need to know that those places exist within the Black community and their churches. You know what? What? I would love to see the day when our Black ministers here in Canada follow some of the Black ministers in the U.S., who perform same-sex commitment ceremonies. The Need for Community Change The men in this section, and others with similar life situations, pose a problem regarding belonging and identification. How can Black same-

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sex men step outside Black communities' religious orientation when churches are at the centre of their social intercourse? Church membership and religious culture do not consist only of the 'word of God' and services of worship. The socializing that goes on in churches provides some Black folks with the recognition that the wider society denies them. Many Blacks play leadership roles in churches, where they wield power and control to a degree it is difficult for them to achieve elsewhere. The Black churches play a central role in the lives of many Black people of all sexual preferences. For this reason, it is incumbent on them to (re)negotiate their position on same-sex relationships in order to live up to the claims they make about inclusiveness and love. Until now, inclusiveness and love have excluded bullers and batty bwoys. A challenge for Black churches is to redefine inclusiveness and love and their associated practices so as to embrace those whom they have historically excluded. Some respondents have pointed out that their churches have reduced love to procreation and have thereby instituted intolerance. Given the dual rejection felt by many of the men in this book, the Black heterosexual community should start to change its exclusionary attitudes. We need to address these issues - to talk about the politics of location, about the everyday traumas that bullers face, and their experiences in communal living, religion, and the family. Black churches that embrace same-sex spirituality can gain legitimacy by daring to combine the best of Black traditions with inclusion. Churches have a unique opportunity, privilege, and duty to 'reprove, rebuke, and exhort' and thereby bring healing and power to all people within their reach.

Chapter Five

Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity

In this chapter I examine Black heterosexism and its three wicked progeny - violence, fear, and hypermasculinity. As articulated by Black nationalists - and I look at a number of often highly regarded figures - these forces inform, express, and enforce the heterosexual structure of dominance within Black communities. I elaborate on the commitments and investments this discourse mobilizes, and I link them to the experiences of the Black men in my study. I hope to show why samesex practices remain outside the normative framework of Black identity and Black nationalism. Black intellectual discourse has helped generate a Black consciousness whose exclusionary practices are fuelling an ever-present tension in the communal and familial structures in which most buller men attempt to lead their lives. Violence: Black Nationalism and Heterosexism The socially constructed terms 'Black male' and 'Black masculinity/ as racialized and gendered categories, evoke a great deal of emotion, not only in Black communities but also in the wider society. Ed Guerrero has written: 'When we view Black men in our media, their representations generally fall into two reductive, disparate categories. On the one hand, we are treated to the grand celebrity spectacle of Black male athletes, movie stars and pop entertainers ... Yet in simultaneous contrast to this steady stream of glamour and glitz, from the vast pop empire ... we are also subjected to the real-time devastation, slaughter and body count of a steady stream of faceless Black males on the six and 11 o'clock news' (1994: 183).

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As Black men, our starting point is our indecision about our sexuality, look, and representation, because our representations of Black males inscribe and subscribe to the stereotypical notions of the Black male in North America. The construction of Black 'heterosexual masculinity' as a set of practices through which people signify 'Black masculinity' only further reifies Black men as heterosexual. This reification of masculinity has created a regime within Black communities that constructs the normative discourse - one that attempts to define the conduct of most Black males. Even more problematic, some Blacks (mostly heterosexuals) employ this subjugating discourse in their use of the normative construction of Black males; they thereby perpetuate their own brand of subjugation on bullers. This complicity is rampant within contemporary discourses of Black nationalism. Perhaps no one is more graphic in this regard than Eldridge Cleaver, about whom I say more below. A brief quotation from him will suffice for now: 'Black homosexuality is a racial death wish and a frustrating experience because in their sickness Black men who practice homosexuality are unable to have a baby by a white man' (1968: 65). In Cleaver's polemical condemnation, the Black body - gendered as male and in the throes of a wrongly constructed desire necessarily marked 'homosexual' - enacts an entire script of internalized, violently genocidal values. The buller becomes the locus for anxiety not only about sexuality, family, spirituality, and communal living, but also more specifically about identity and Black masculinity in crisis. As Paul Gilroy (1992) asserts, the figure of Black masculinity marks the racial, gendered, and cultural boundaries of counter-hegemonic Blackness. This counter-hegemonic discourse in turn constructs the Black nation, the Black family, and the 'authentic' Black (male) self. The ideal of the strong, uncompromising, new, and authentic Black man anchors the affirmative representation of a 'Black racial and sexualized masculinity' within the cultural formation of Black consciousness and collective struggle. This racialized positioning of the Black male body enacts a structure of dominance that casts as traitors those Black men who are unable to identify with and/or perform within the codes. This identity and its concomitant forms of representation inform the structures of heterosexual social power - structures that are manifested in the ideological construction of Black 'heteronormativity' (Warner 1993: vii-xxviii), which polices Black sexuality, masculinity,

130 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys subjectivity, and identity and which also produces a very specific identity politics. Lynn Segal (1987) contends that the assertion of Black manhood is both macho and largely heterosexist. This machismo enforces a form of policing on the performative of the Black male body, and does so in ways that construct a normative discourse for all Black men. This policing, which is often experienced as threats of violence, is built into the ways in which many bullers and batty bwoys negotiate everyday existence within Black communal life. Devon observed: I find them [Black nationalists] to be the kind of guys that is always demonstrating against police and racism. Sometimes they have good things to say, but for me I have never gone to any of the demonstrations, because I do not feel the issues are that important. Why? You know, because I just simply think that they wouldn't like me as ah buller and I doh feel that I could let them know that I sleeping with men. I feel too that they have to put some importance to me as a buller in the work they thus do too. If Devon is going to take up social activism, the agenda will have to include issues pertinent to bullers and batty bwoys. Have you ever tried telling other Black folks that sleeping with men is an acceptable act?

No! But from what I have read from some of the works by Molefi Asante, Farrakhan, and Eldridge Cleaver is that they doh like bullers. So I feel that if these guys [local nationalist leaders] are anything like them Black nationalist then they would take the same position on bullers and Black masculinity. Why would you take this position without talking to them? Because I have read the works of these people, and when I see these Black nationalists in Toronto on TV they sound the same way, and besides I never see any bullers and batty bwoys around them, and if they are there they are in the closet. Come on man, you know what I mean, wha kind of question you asking me? I does still go to Black barbers to cut my hair, and I thus take my little son with me, because I don't want no white boy to touch our hair. And when I go to the Black barber shop on Bathurst or sometimes up on Eglinton Avenue, all I does hear coming from these barbers' mouth and their clients whenever they talk about bullers and batty bwoys is negative.

Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity 131 At the barbershop, Devon comes in contact with the community. But Devon is not 'out' to these men, and he fears that if he does come out he will lose his connection to community, which he values. What are some of the negative things they have to say in the barber shop? For one, they all talk about killing them, because they make them sick to watch them. They also make lots of Vaseline jokes about putting pepper in the Vaseline to burn batty man arse and cock. I even heard a few men at the barber shop say, that they would go out and try to act like one ah them panty man so that they could get pick up by ah buller man. Then they would take the buller man an alley and kill him. Despite the negative atmosphere of the barbershop, Devon contends that it is a place of Black consciousness. But you know the Black barbershop was also a place where I also got a street education. How so?

Well, they taught me a great deal about Malcolm, Garvey, and other great Black people. They also use to talk about drugs and police and who not to trust in the community and stuff like that. Yeah, I think it was also a place of education; you know, I also like the guys because I feel at home with them culturally. So it is a hard one. I wish they could be a little bit nicer to us, because I like to hang with them and I do really like some of them and the discussions they have about Malcolm X and other Black issues in the community and the Caribbean. Why Malcolm X?

Because Malcolm was assassinated, and most people came to know it after that and what some of his views was, so I think in that respect he was popular. He also represented, I think, for many young Black men true manhood. What do you mean by true manhood?

Well, he wasn't afraid of the white man, and he stood up for Black people rights, he fought harder than King and Jesse and all they rest of people from the civil rights movement. You know, I think King was much too soft for fighting the white man, but Malcolm was always a righteous strong Black man. You know King was a weak man basically. Devon here is displaying a legitimate fear of Black nationalists because of their stated positions on Black same-sex practices, yet he is

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also recognizing the importance of an assertive nationalism and its contribution to Black liberation. Many of us, like Devon, remain ambivalent about the Black nationalist project, at least as currently defined in liberation discourse. This ambivalence clearly derives from the exclusions this discourse encourages, which are based on the intersection of nationalism and the body. This form of Black heteronormativity appears early in the development of Black nationalism. For example, in 1924, in the position statement 'What We Believe/ Marcus Garvey, then president of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) - the most successful pan-African movement to date - stated unequivocally that 'the U.N.I.A. is against miscegenation and race suicide ... It is against rich Blacks marrying poor whites. It is against rich or poor whites taking advantage of Negro women' (1924: 81). It seems as if the building of a Black nation within a diaspora has always assumed a biologically determined, gender-specific, and genetically maintained racial purity, one that inscribes the individual Black body with the investments of a nation. This nationalism has consistently implied the construction of a manhood based on strength and aggressiveness. Perhaps the classic statement is Ossie Davis's description of Malcolm X in the eulogy that he gave at Malcolm's funeral. In it, he defined exemplary Black manhood through the popular images and emotional resonances of Malcolm: 'If you knew him, you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living, Black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves' (1992: 66). Devon offered similar sentiments above. The implications of these constructions of Black manhood are clear to bell hooks: 'The contemporary Black power movement made synonymous Black liberation and the effort to create a social structure wherein Black men could assert themselves as patriarchs, controlling community, family and kin. On the one hand, Black men expressed contempt for white men yet they also envied their access to patriarchal power' (1992: 98). Eldridge Cleaver made explicit the anger embedded in Black nationalists' conceptions of heteronormativity. Nearly half a century after Garvey's UNIA statement, Cleaver, in Soul on Ice (1968), described Black homosexuality as the 'extreme embodiment' of a 'racial deathwish' and equated homosexual desire with a literal wish for whiteness: "The white man has deprived him of his masculinity, castrated him in the center of his burning skull and when he submits to this

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change and takes the white man for his lover as well as big daddy, he forces on "whiteness" all the love in his pent up soul and turns the razor edge of hatred against "Blackness" - upon himself, and all those who look like him, remind him of himself. He may even hate the darkness of the night' (103). Cleaver chose to address these practices in the figure of James Baldwin: 'Baldwin cannot confront the stud in others - except that he must either submit to it or destroy it' (106). Cleaver condemns Baldwin's work not because he refuses to address Black issues but because he is same-sexed. In Cleaver's text, the Black body, gendered as male and in the throes of a wrongly constructed desire marked 'homosexual/ enacts internally a script of violent, genocidal impulses. The Black male homosexual thus becomes the locus for anxiety about sexuality and Black masculinity in crisis. In addition, Cleaver interprets homosexuality as a sickness and implicitly contrasts it with the image of a Black male boxer in excellent form - a fantasmatic image through which he displays his own vision of the perfect model of AfricanAmerican masculinity (103). Cleaver's critique of gender, sexuality, and, particularly, same-sex practices is an attempt to establish various dialects and dichotomies, most of which are contradictory and complex - including Cleaver's own love and hatred for white women and white society. Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice while in prison. His meditations on heterosexual miscegenation and on homosexual desire reveal profound levels of anxiety about sexual desires the fulfilment of which can lead to imprisonment and even to death. In his opening essay in Soul on Ice, 'On Becoming/ Cleaver articulates how the consciousness of his desire for white women and the gratification of that desire led to carefully planned and orchestrated acts of rape, which in turn led to his imprisonment. In prison, his consciousness of self began to emerge, propelled by an urge for power and a militaristic, uncontradictory, reconstructive vision of Black masculinity. This vision incorporated the acts of terror employed against those Black men who were excluded from Cleaver's constructs of Black masculinity (as raced and gendered subjects). This entire process began in an uncomfortable moment of realization that preceded the complete dissolution of self. In his essay, Cleaver terms this 'a nervous breakdown' (1968: 11). For Kobena Mercer, the contradiction in Cleaver's masculinity (and in that of other Black misogynists) 'occurs when Black men subjectively internalize and incorporate aspects of the dominant definitions of masculinity in order to

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contest the definitions of dependency and powerlessness which racism and racial oppression enforce' (1994: 139). Cleaver also wrote about the death of Emmett Till. In 1955 in Mississippi, this fourteen-year-old Black from Chicago was murdered after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. His corpse was so badly disfigured that only an initialled ring he wore permitted its identification: An event took place in Mississippi which turned me inside out: Emmet Till, a young Negro down from Chicago on a visit, was murdered allegedly for flirting with a white woman. He has been shot, his head crushed from repeated blows with a blunt instrument and his badly decomposed body was recovered from the river with a heavy weight on it. I was, of course, angry over the whole bit, but one day I saw in a magazine a picture of the white woman with whom Emmet Till was said to have flirted. While looking at the picture, I felt that little tension in the center of my chest I experience when a woman appeals to me. I was disgusted and angry with myself. Here was a woman who had caused the death of a Black, possibly because, when he looked at her, he also felt the same tensions of lusts and desire in his chest - and probably for the same general reasons I felt them. It was all unacceptable to me. I looked at the picture again and again and in spite of everything and against my will and hate I felt more for the woman and all she represented, she appealed to me. (1955: 10-11)

Cleaver's account negatively conflates same-sex relations and miscegenation, in that both seem to challenge easily scripted notions of desire and set boundaries of the self. Biographical information on Cleaver reveals that he was in love with Beverly Axelrod, a (white) woman, but hid it from the general public (Elaine Brown, 1992). His desire for the white female body provoked a struggle within his own Black consciousness and decolonization. The dissolution of what Cleaver worked to combat is quite literal: Emmett Till's decomposing body helped develop the consciousness of an entire nation of Black people. Ms Bradely, Till's mother, insisted - against the explicit instructions of the local sheriff's department - that the badly mutilated and decomposed body of her son not be buried in Mississippi. She had it brought back to Chicago, where she allowed an open-casket funeral. James Baldwin also wrote about Till's death, as emblematic of the racist stereotyping and sexualization that have been so traumatic for

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Black people: 'The only reason, after all, that we have heard of Emmett Till is that he happened to come whistling down the road - an obscure country road - at the very moment the road found itself most threatened: at the beginning of segregation-desegregation-not yet integration-crisis, under the knell of the Supreme Court's all deliberate speed, when various moderate Southern governors were asking Black people to segregate themselves, for the good of both races' (1985: 40-1). Till's visibly tortured and badly disfigured body could stand for an entire spectrum of abuses inflicted on Black males throughout American history. Thus his body served to remind Black men of the various powers of containment and control that white society has over the Black body. According to Shelby Steele, The single story that sat atop the pinnacle of racial victimization for us was that Emmett Till, the Northern Black teenager who, on a visit to the South in 1955, was killed and grotesquely mutilated for supposedly looking at or whistling at (we were never sure which, though we argued the point endlessly) a white woman. Oh, how we probed his story, finding in his youth and the Northern upbringing the quintessential embodiment of Black innocence, brought down by a white evil so portentous and apocalyptical, so gnarled and hideous, that it left us with a feeling not far from awe. By telling his story and others like it, we came to feel the immutability of our victimization, its utter indigenousness, as a thing on this earth like dirt, sand or water. (1988:116-17)

For Cleaver, Till's dismemberment prefigured the dismemberment of his own psyche. In an effort to resist that dissolution and to rebuild that sense of self, he attempted to isolate the white woman at whom Till supposedly whistled and Till's body as 'obvious' disruptions in the maintenance of boundaries of a raced and masculinized self. In Cleaver's account, miscegenation represents a potentially dangerous disruption of the reproductive order; same-sex practices (read as complete, passive capitulations to white masculinities) represent the potential for a complete dissolution of a resistant Black self. Cleaver's position was not unique. Around the time Cleaver wrote Soul on Ice, Lionel Ovesey identified a pseudo-homosexual syndrome among men who showed no signs of homoeroticism yet feared they were homosexual (Ovesey 1969: 57). He presented the equation as follows: I am a failure, therefore I am not a man; I am castrated,

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therefore I am a woman and a homosexual (57). This equation works because, as Jonathan Dolliore has stated, "the negation of homosexuality has been in direct proportion to its actual centrality, its cultural marginality in direct proportion to its cultural significance' (1986: 5). There is no surprise here. The notion that to be masculine is to be dominant and that masculinity equals heterosexuality supports the many ways in which Black heterosexuals see same-sex practices as weakening Black communities and the very possibilities of racial uplift. Black community discourse regularly equates homosexuality with castration, so it is not surprising that other Black writers have joined the homophobic chorus. Soul on Ice is not the only cultural nationalist work in which miscegenation, heteronormativity, and male same-sex practices become the locus of anxiety. Many Black nationalists posit a Black heteronormativity that pathologizes bullers and casts them a threat to the Black nation. Writers and community leaders who engage issues of sexuality and, more specifically, same-sex practices - seem to operate within a realm of fantasy. If, as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (1992) has stated, 'the nature (subject) of the dream is the dreamer/ what then do Black writers such as Asante, Buju Banton, Farrakhan, Jones, and Madhubuti dream about, especially when they consider the buller man or batty bwoy? All of them have constructed frameworks that exclude bullers from normative Black identity. In developing Black consciousness and collective struggle through a regulatory cultural formation, they have created a hegemonic canon of Black bionationalism. They are seeking to define a corporate entity through the normative prescription, inscription, and proscription of bodily practices. This nationalism defines being Black narrowly as a certain performance - as a specific way of talking, dressing, eating, and having sex. In this view, same-sex practices are deviant and therefore corrupt1 an authentic Blackness. Black bionationalism posits a particular normalized notion of the true nature of Black women and men. One could argue that these views appeal to white supremacist corporate structures and right-wing fundamentalists. As Kobena Mercer argues, 'one can see the sexual politics of, say, Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam as a ghostly photographic negative of the embattled, siegementality that drives the fundamentalist offensive against liberal and radical democratic values' (1996: 121). For Nathan and Julia Hare, homosexuality 'is a white liberal plot masterminded to kill Black families and wipe out the entire race' (1985: 65) - Black boys become gay

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because of the preponderance of white female schoolteachers. White teachers, the Hares contend, infiltrate Black daycare centres, nurseries, and primary schools, where they compel Black boys to play with blond dolls in the name of progress (66). Haki Madhubuti, in Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? The African American in Transition, also adopts the 'white oppression model' of Black men: 'The U.S. White supremacy system's aim is to disrupt Black families and neutralize "Black men/" He further states that one tactic is to make Black men into 'so-called Women/ with the result that homosexual and bisexual activity becomes the norm rather than the exception. Men of other cultures do not fear the 'Womanlike' men of any race. Madhubuti's stridently nationalist agenda can also be found in his poem 'Don't Cry, Scream': 'swung on a faggot who politely scratched his ass in my presence. He smiled broken teeth stained from his overused tongue, fisted-face. Teeth dropped in tunes with Ray Charles singing yesterday' (1996: 31). The influential Afrocentricity of Molefi Asante blames the disintegration of the Black nuclear family on 'an outburst of homosexuality among Black men, fed by the prison breeding system, which threatens to distort the relationship between friends and strong family bonds' (1988: 57). He warns that 'we can no longer allow our social lives to be controlled by European decadence/ Furthermore, the time has come for Blacks to redeem their manhood through planned Afrocentric action (57-8) modelled after ancient African warriors. Asante's goal is to recover ancient African ideals and habits, which he regards as unpolluted by European decadence and as relevant to the challenge of Black male heterosexual nationalism and Black diasporic nationalism. He also proposes a new canon of Black-consciousness heroes, one that would include Asantewa, Legba, Nzingha, Obatala, Ogotommeli, Ptahhotep, and Shango (57-8). Yet he fails2 to mention the complexity of gender, sexuality, and sexual practices among the Ashanti and Dahomey peoples of ancient West Africa, among whom same-sex practices were not viewed as crimes or as caused by Europeans (Conner 1993). In the equally influential ISIS3 Papers, Dr Frances Cress Welsing attributes the entire disintegration of the Black community to 'Black male passivity, effeminization, bisexuality and homosexuality' (1991: 81). This is a result, she adds, of repeated literal, ritual, and symbolic castration. Welsing writes about her therapy: 'One method I have been using with all Black male patients - whether their particular disorders

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be passivity, effeminization, bisexuality, homosexuality or other is to have them relax and envision themselves approaching and opposing in actual combat, the collective of white males and females (without an apology or giving up in the crunch). The fear of such a confrontation is at the basis of most Black male pathology' (91-2). The influence she wields as a psychiatrist, therapist, and counsellor with a large Black cultural nationalist following is what makes us need to take her seriously. Her marginalization of bullers and batty bwoys continues she contends that passivity, effeminization, bisexuality, and homosexuality (i.e., buller traits) are being encountered more and more by Black psychiatrists working with Black patients. These issues are being presented by family members, by personnel working in schools and other institutions, and by Black men themselves. Many Blacks have now concluded that the problems Welsing is discussing have become epidemic among Black people in the United States, although they were an almost nonexistent behavioural phenomena among indigenous Blacks in Africa. (Welsing 1991: 81). The logic being, that diasporic Blacks have no sense of history and lack authentication, and that this is even more the case among those engaging in same sex practices. Alvin Poussaint, the noted Harvard psychiatrist and adviser to the Cosby television show, has stated in Ebony that 'some Black men adopt homosexuality as a manoeuver to help avoid the increasing tension developing between Black men and women' (1988: 79). He also argues that homosexuality makes Black men weak, emasculated, and failing (79). Attacks on Black masculinity as failing and as effeminate and weak continue to be popular among those who critique or reject Black male homosexuality and who posit emasculation. Almost every Black nationalist speaker and writer takes this stance, claiming that Black men are becoming an 'endangered species' (Hare and Hare 1985; Madhubuti 1990). Toni Morrison also seems to believe that homosexuality has been forced on Blacks by Europeans and that it is alien to African culture. In her novel The Bluest Eye (1970), she presents the 'light-skinned' Black man as weak, effeminate, and sexually impotent. Sopehead Church, 'a Cinnamon-eyed West Indian with lightly browned skin, limited his sexual interests to little girls ... because he was too diffident to confront homosexuality and found little boys insulting, scary and stubborn' (1970: 27). In Tar Baby, Morrison writes: 'Black homosexual

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men were self-mutilating transvestites who had dumped their masculinity because they found the whole business of being Black and men at the same time too difficult' (1982). Morrison's anxiety about same-sex eroticism parallels that of Frantz Fanon (1967): Let me observe at once that I had the opportunity to establish the overt presence of homosexuality in Martinique. This must be viewed as the result of the absence of the Oedipus complex in the Antilles. The schema of homosexuality is well enough known. We should not overlook, however, the existence of what are called there 'men dressed like women' or 'god-mothers.' Generally they wear shirts and skirts. But I am convinced that they lead normal sex lives. They can take a punch like any 'he-man' and they are not impervious to the allures of women - fish and vegetable merchants. In Europe, on the other hand, I have known several Martincians who became homosexuals, always passive. (1967:180)

Fanon's heterosexism and misogyny is best summed up from the above statement by Diana Fuss (1994), who writes that 'Fanon's discussions of not only femininity but homosexuality inextricably linked in Fanon as they are in Freud, have received little if any attention from' his critical commentators. Passages in Fanon's corpus articulating ardent disidentifications from Black and White women and from white gay men (for Fanon homosexuality is culturally white) are routinely passed over, dismissed as embarrassing, baffling, unimportant, unenlightened, or perhaps simply politically risky' (30). Morrison's presentations of men who engage in same-sex practices, as well as Fanon's, seem to reflect a limited understanding of samesex practices and gender relations; they also seem to support the Black nationalist and Black power rhetoric which claims that a man who is a buller or batty bwoy must be effeminate, weak, sick, and an enemy. In the same vein, Black consciousness activist Imamu Amiri Baraka contends that 'homosexuality is the most extreme form of alienation acknowledged within white society and it occurs among a people who lose their self-sufficiency because they depend on their subjects to do the world's work, thus rendering them effeminate and perverted' (1966: 94). Haki Madhubuti, in Enemies: The Clash of Races, suggests that there is a preponderance of Black homosexuals in the higher socioeconomic groups. As a result, 'it is a profound comment on the power of the

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system that [it] is able to transform Black men into sexual lovers of each other ... On many Black college campuses [and in] the Black church, homosexuality and bisexuality have become an accepted norm' (1996: 148). It is axiomatic in psychoanalytic theory that strong taboos against certain types of behaviour imply that people are strongly attracted to that behaviour (Adam 1978: 46). Perhaps, deep inside their phantasmic imaginary, people like Cleaver, Farrakhan, Morrison, Poussaint, Staples, and Welsing desire to explore and come to terms with their homosociality and homoeroticism. Perhaps they would like to get around the Black nationalist thought police and realize the full potential of their sexuality. Black same-sex liberation, with its diffuse articulations of place and power, would do away with certain deterministic traps of identity politics. Black liberation will not be able to move beyond the simple play of these new and emerging differences as long as those differences are posed as binary oppositions. Stuart Hall contends that there may be no difference at all between these supposed oppositions (1983). The newness, Dent argues, 'in any cultural politics of difference also depends on our being able to distinguish between these habits of difference, read through the mythic realm of culture and the emerging differences we must learn to read' (1992: 6). Nationalists seem anxious to defend heterosexist patriarchy against challenges by bullers (among others). Black diasporic communities should ask whose agendas are being served by a Black bionationalistic discourse that sets up a regulatory politic which excludes bullers. Fear: Black Nationalist Discourse and Black Masculinity Black activists, intellectuals, and academics are not cited in everyday discussions, yet they are influential. Black nationalism is a legacy of the resistance to racialized domination and has wide popular resonance. Even among those who are unfamiliar with the minutiae of nationalist policies, the nationalist agenda is clear to see in many various slogans - 'Black power/ 'No justice, no peace/ 'Say it loud: I am Black and I am proud/ 'Black is beautiful/ Tall, dark, and handsome/ 'Young, gifted, and Black/ and so on. These catchphrases signify a much-desired, much-needed agency. But as long as the writings of Black intellectuals continue both to structure and to be structured by the discourses of communal life, a bionationalist agenda will remain a

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priority and hence, from my perspective, an obstacle to Black liberation. This agenda asserts that same-sex desires and white racist domination are attacks on the Black family. Given the salience of family to notions of Black communal solidarity, it is no wonder that homophobia is so common. I asked the respondents about their understanding of Black nationalism and whether they were familiar with its literary works. Most knew very little about its positions on people engaged in same-sex practices. But Devon, like many others, acknowledged its importance, as fostered by informal popular culture and the media. I knew of these people from hearing my parents talk about them, from watching television documentaries on Blacks in the U.S., the civil rights struggle, or from attending Black community events where they were guest speakers during Black History month. Or the very Black activist might be here in Toronto to speak. I have also seen books written by these men in bookstores, at display tables, and at book fairs, Kwanzaa events, and other small community gatherings.

Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are legendary for their avowed hatred of homosexuals. I asked Andy about his awareness of Black nationalism. You mean them people who does wear them funny clothes and hats and they hate us buller men with a passion and the men dress like they in the army and the women hide their face? ... Their [the Nation of Islam] views on bullers is one of great hostility. One that is non-accepting, religiously and morally wrong, and they see it as a white man's sickness and a threat to their masculinity. You know, I do not think they see us as real men, we are feminine, sick people, who could never grow to become 'real Men' because we have no positive Black male role models in our lives.

Similarly, Devon identified Farrakhan as a key Black nationalist figure. He expressed ambivalence about Farrakan, who often addresses Black desires for empowerment and racial uplift, yet he also fully understood the threat inherent in Farrakan's views. I have always read Louis Farrakhan because I can identify with some of the things he is talking about that affect us as Black people. But he gets

142 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys me mad when he starts to talk about buller men and batty bwoys and sissies.

Can you tell me a story of when you heard Farrakhan talk about bullers?

Yeah! I have gone to hear the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan talk. Every time they come to Toronto, or I have even gone to Buffalo to hear them. And there haven't been one talk that I went to where they didn't find ah way to diss us bullers and batty bwoys.

Can you recall anything they have said about bullers and batty bwoys? Yeah! They does always say and you young men who are sleeping with other men and feel that it is right, I tell you God almighty or Jah say it is not right. Another time Farrakhan started to walk feminine, flip his wrist, and shake his arse and say those guys who are sleeping with men, I tell you it is a white man's disease and that they are putting you into prisons and turning you out into sissies. You are the backbone of your family, don't forget that: be a man, stand up, and take responsibility.

Devon was referring to a 1990 speech by Farrakhan, which was videotaped: 'Now brothers in the Holy world you can't switch. [Farrakhan walks across the stage like an effeminate man.] No, no, no ... in the Holy world you better hide that stuff 'cause if God made you for a woman, you can't go with a man ... Sister get going with another sister - the penalty for that is death' (The Time and What Must Be Done, 20 May 1990). Because of Farrakhan's homophobia, Devon had turned to other writers. Yo see, lemme explain it to you. I read books and watch movies and documentaries by Black gays and lesbians like Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, and Isaac Julien and them. Because I do not like to read all them negative things from Black people. Ah think I could say I am afraid of Farrakhan and other people who think like him. So why these Black writers and academics? Because I can identify with them, I also think most of them are gay, and their work makes me feel good and proud to be a buller man and cock sucker and that there are some of us who are brave enough to write and say gay things that some of us Black bullers are not able to write and say.

Black same-sex men can identify with Black same-sex writers who affirm their identity and who offer an alternative to Black heterosexist academic writers.

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Some Black men fear speaking out against heterosexism, homophobia, and misogyny. They worry that if they address these issues with too much empathy, their Black brothers will not accept them. Andy was quite clear on this point. So are you afraid of the men from the Nation of Islam and those who support their views? Quite frankly, yes! What exactly are you afraid of? Well I have attended lots of their talks and have read about them, and quite frankly I think it is all violence they are expressing towards us gay people. And when I run into the brothers on the street, they are always talking about our Black women and how Black men are not living up to their responsibility. Because so many of us brothers are on drugs and how much we are losing to the prison system and homosexuality. Once I said to one of the guys from the Nation of Islam, 'I do not see anything wrong with homosexuality/ and he almost eat off my head on the street corner. It is a good thing it was in public because I would have certainly feared for my life.

In a visit to Toronto, Farrakhan prescribed 'death' or 'stoning' for homosexuality. He warned on 15 October 1996 'that the world is very short and that with Sodom & Gomorrah, God is displeased with the sinful state that the planet is in.' I have heard Farrakhan exclaim: 'Those of you homosexuals4 [he walks across the stage, flips his wrist, and laughs], you weren't born [that] way brother. You just never had a strong male image or role model' (Farrakhan, 1990). Here, by making no reference to any other iDiblical sin or gender/ and by restricting the discussion to same-sex sexuality, Farrakhan was policing the buller body and coding it as unclean, sinful, immoral, femminized - therefore weak and uncommitted to the Black cause. His address was a reminder of what Blacks should do to bodies marked same-sex: find them and ostracize them. Mark Myrie, also known as Buja Banton, a well-known reggae dance hall5 singer, said, 'Shoot them/ referring to buller men, batty bwoys, and sodomites, and he argues that same-sex relationships and acts ought to be punishable by death in Jamaica (1993). Shabba Ranks, another Jamaican reggae singer, is also quoted in Peter Noel's article in Village Voice as representing the general sentiment of all Jamaicans by

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saying that 'if a man is thinking of homosexuality, he's thinking of disease and wrongdoings, so God Almighty himself hates homosexuals. In Jamaica if a homosexual is being found in the community, then we stone him to death' (29). More recently, in Toronto, a contributor to the Rastafarian newspaper Uprising called on batty bwoys and "faggots' to 'kill themselves and be eternally forgotten' (Uprising, 1996). He further wrote that 'any person with locks upon their heads and professing to be Rasta, while being participants in the ungodly crime of same-sex copulation, are wolves in sheep clothing ... plain frauds.' By his reasoning, Blackness, and 'Rasta Blackness/ equate heterosexuality with a strong Black masculinity: 'We Rastifarians reaffirm our inalienable rights not to accept nor sympathize with your morally corroding lifestyle. Not caught, you can't corrupt... Your end will be abrupt. Believe it or not your time is up/ Black nationalists' public denunciations of same-sex relationships seem to be gender-specific - almost always directed at men. They want to mark the buller so that he can be punished or publicly embarrassed and so that unmarked male heterosexists will not be mistaken for buller men. Black heterosexist nationalists and activists view samesex relationships as a male's debasement into femaleness and femininity. According to Richard Isay, 'the fear of humanity per se is secondary in homophobic men to their fear and hatred of what they perceive as feminine in other men and in themselves' (1989: 78). Heterosexism helps these men maintain a stereotypically constructed, masculinized persona. From their perspective, Black male culture is being feminized, and heterosexuals have a responsibility to stop all expressions of intimacy between men that appear soft and feminine and that bend or challenge traditional gender norms. Because of this perceived threat to Black manhood, some respondents in Toronto's Black communities suggested that it was much easier to be a woman who engages in same-sex relationships than to be a buller. Carl was one of those who made this point. I can recall walking up on Eglinton and Vaughan with two ah me lesbian friend them. And them was holding hands in front ah all these Black people, and them ah get in no trouble. Also too, for most Black heterosexual brothers I think they feel that they could cure these two women men by simply having sex with them. So it is less threatening because they feel they could cure it, and for gay men, heterosexual brothers have to kill us because for them to have sex with us is to make them gay.

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Why do you think they did not get harassed? Because I think they surprise the hell out of everyone, and the people them was shock to see two man royals. And I strongly feel two men would get them arse bust because they would have been threatening the men them. And besides I think my girlfriends them might of fought back. They are big, tough-looking women. Generally, bullers - especially stereotypically constructed bullers - are seen as gender-benders in the sense that they threaten the rigid gender boundaries within Black communities and threaten to embarrass the men in those communities. The presence of stereotypically feminine bullers challenges Black masculinized constructions of Black manhood and masculinity. Women engaging in same-sex relationships are less of a threat to Black heterosexual men. (This reminds us that Black communities are strongly patriarchal, that the men in those communities see themselves as superior to women.) Next I look at how all this has affected the everyday lives of the respondents. Hypermasculinity and Its Effects Some men have been forced by violence - and the fear of it - into acting straight and staying in the closet. Neil is one. Because I am in the closet I am afraid to support other Black bullers and batty bwoys when my friends or family are talking about them in a negative way. Because I also do not want to bring any shame on myself or suspicions from people who I respect and enjoy being around or where I work.

Some men see acting heterosexual, making the closet a desirable place, and internalizing homophobia as a strategy for everyday survival. For some Black men, coming out is unnecessary. For others, it isn't an option, because it would threaten their family, economic, psychological, and community ties. Some are bread winners, and coming to terms with a same-sex identity might effeminize them, thus distracting or inhibiting them from earning a living. Carl explains: Them think me ah straight, and ah go leave it like that, because I could fool them easier that way, act like ah man and provide all the information they need in my family and community to see me as a real man. Why do you think they see you as straight?

146 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys Because I does act cool and I am with them all the way, when they making jokes at batty bwoy and man royals. I join in and sometimes my girlfriends does call me at the barbershop or if I go to visit some of them. I does also act and dress very masculine, straight, and macho in front of them. You know things like that I does do around them so they always see me straight. I do not have the time to waste with coming out and all the problems that go with it; my life is hard enough being Black and poor. I need a good job and money; that is more important for me, not coming out and making a political statement. Carl, like other Black men in this book, seems to enjoy family and community, so he suppresses all same-sex dimensions that might jeopardize these ties. He acts hypermasculine to camouflage his same-sex identity. Why do you feel you have to act in a hypermasculine, macho, and straight way when you are in the presence of heterosexual Black people? Well, if I do not do that, they would call me buller man, batty bwoy, faggot, sissy, sick, and I also might be physically beaten up by them. So I avoid all unnecessary problems by fitting in, acting supermacho, or hypermasculine, as you said. Acting macho and hypermasculine affords many men autonomy, as well as mastery over their environment. They are projecting images that others see as appropriately male. Neil began to act hypermasculine to protect himself. I was beaten up in school by a group of four Black boys when I was in high school. What started the fight? They called me batty bwoy when I was walking along the hallway. They were hanging in the hallway, and I was walking down the hall going to my class. When they called me batty bwoy I said, 'and ah dam proud to be one.' Then one of the boys came from behind and kick me, then the three other guys jump on and beat the shit out of me. Did anyone come to your rescue? Yes, the principal came to my rescue, and he called the police, and the boys were given assault charges. How has this affected your life as a buller/gay man?

Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity 147 Well, I think if anything I started to become very angry inside myself for being gay. So one day I saw one of the boys alone who had beaten me up in school, and I kicked the shit out of him and cut him with a knife, and I was charged later. What happened when you went to court? When I went to court the Crown decided to drop my charges because she argued it was a rare circumstance, because I was reacting to gay bashing from a group of homophobic macho young men. But this violence was used only as my defence to the hatred and anger I have inside me for men or people who are homophobic and especially those who are violent towards me. I do not like anyone abusing me. Why did the Crown drop the charges? She said they were flexing their macho muscles on the wrong person. Incidents like these are very common in Jamaica, where most of my respondents were born. In the Jamaican Gleaner (25 June 2002), Nagra Plunkett reported one such attack: 'At Cornwall College in Montego Bay, St. James, yesterday, a student who was accused of being a homosexual and his mother were stoned and verbally abused by other students on the school's compound. According to reports, the attack took place shortly after 10:00 a.m.... the student... was allegedly caught in a sexual act with another student last week.' (The attackers accused this boy of being a 'Chi Chi Man' (the Jamaican term for batty boy).6 One of my respondents, who labels himself a transsexual, has not been able to adopt hypermasculinity to survive. However, Laqueshia's parents support his being a buller. I live in Scarborough, and one of the things I like to do is drag performance, and I leave home in dresses most times. You know what happened to my grandmother's house? Well, they throw eggs at it, and if that wasn't enough, the next thing they did was beat me up one day and tell me to leave the community. And they were all young Black men. Who are they? It was young Black men very macho acting and very, very homophobic. Another time I went to the community centre to play, and I had makeup on, and ah group of roughneck Black boys kick the shit out of me. And what did you do? Well, the worker at the community centre call the cops, and the boys got charged, but I did not go to court to follow up on the charges, because I

148 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys just couldn't be bothered with the hassles. I was also afraid of what might happen to me again if the boys were charged, so I just dropped the whole thing. I also know of lesbians who were beaten up by their brothers and fathers when they found out that they were lesbians. When I found out about these two women who were friends of mine I felt that I wasn't alone and just moved on with my life. So this must be very painful for you and others who have had to experience this violence? Well yes, but what can we do, the community I think encourages homophobic violence and the police does not really seem interested in helping. So you do feel alone, and it is worst when your family is telling you stop dressing that way and all the violence will go away.

Laqueshia has lost confidence in the Black community and in law enforcement for same-sexed people. His account reminds us again that many Black nationalists countenance violence against same-sex people. Shifting the Burden of Shame The narratives in this chapter have laid out a number of challenges. To begin, they have challenged Black nationalist presentations from the 1960s to the present. The Black same-sex episternology expressed in the narratives sees Black masculinity as a complex mapping of desires. This same episternology challenges and criticizes Black communities as Black bionationalism has constructed them. In Notes of a Native Son (1984), Baldwin wrote that because he loved the United States 'more than any other country in the world/ he insisted on the right to 'criticize her perpetually' (9). Our love for Black men demands no less here in Canada. The Black heteronormativity that is so important to militant Black nationalists, at some point in the struggle for Black liberation and Black solidarity has become an unwitting trap. Black same-sexed Canadians have paid dearly for their fellow Blacks' rigid adherence to the illusory and oppressive ideal of a unitary Black identity and Black masculinity. The exclusion of these men from full participation in community life has provided an epistemological standpoint for understanding and intervening in the politics of life and death. In the spirit of James Baldwin, bullers and batty bwoys must continue to argue, clearly and without compromise, that they have nothing to apologize for and nothing to feel guilty about. On the contrary,

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the burden of shame should be shifted and scattered onto those who really deserve it - Black bionationalists and those who have instituted the hegemonic discourse of Black authenticity, which continues to sow violence in Black communities. In essence I am referring to what Grewal Inderpal and Caren Kaplan (1994) have called 'scattered hegemonies/7 It is precisely by recognizing and addressing how these hegemonies shame and invalidate the lives of bullers, that we will require Black nationalists to accept the responsibility to work critically and constructively for the transformation of the basis for communal solidarity. It is not simply a question of giving up the arbitrary and coercive espousal of poisonous premises, percepts, and categories. It will require adopting the kinds of coherent thought that can actually end the power imbalances and policing of the Black same-sexed body and allow greater participation by bullers and batty bwoys. A critical appraisal of Black nationalism must therefore seek to address the injustices and violence perpetrated by its spokespeople and institutions. Teaching a critique of Black heteronormativity will not by itself transform communal practices. It may, however, offer heterosexual bionationalists a different consciousness of their world and of our place as bullers within it. What we are still seeking is the collective power to transform what is inhumane and unjust within our/their current circumstances.

Chapter Six

Pleasure, Love, Identity

Duller men's lives are not simply about oppression, pain, and suffering. Despite the oppressiveness of mainstream white society and the threatening aspects of heterosexist Black communities, bullers enjoy connections filled with passion, joy, and intimacy. Many of the respondents spoke about the things they like to do for pleasure and the satisfaction they derive from loving relationships. To present an adequately textured portrait of their lives, we must consider this. Yet as we shall see, the possibilities and opportunities for pleasure - both interpersonal and aesthetic - are constrained by the structures of dominance I have explored in this study. Pleasure, too, must be negotiated within the normative structures of Black community life. This chapter looks at three dimensions of the affective lives of same-sexed Black men - their geographies of pleasure, their struggle for love, and the nature of identity in the context of the links between bisexuality and hypermasculinity. Geographies of Pleasure I let George begin this exploration of the struggle for fun and love. I belong to a Black men's group which I think is about six years old and a group for older men, mostly white. From within these two groups I have created a network of friends whom I hang with. What are some of the things you do and places you socialize in? We go to the opera, ballet, live plays, theatres, gay pride, summer picnics, clubs, travelling, parks, socials at friends' homes - the regular stuff that heterosexuals do.

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The fact that a Black same-sex men's group emerged in Toronto only six years ago confirms the degree to which same-sex experience has been erased in Black communities. The activities George listed produce their own geographies of resistance and pleasure. What are some of the things you do with family? Well it is hard to have the same kind of fun with family, especially in my old age.

Why? Because not all my family knows about me. They all do not know that I fool around with men, so there are places I do not go with them. You see some of them know I had a girlfriend and they know of my children, but they do not know the rest of the story. So I reserve gay things for my gay friends only. What are some of the fun things you do with family? Christmas dinners, birthday parties, backyard barbeques, Sunday dinner, very mundane things. But when I am with my gay friends I would go to drag shows, gay clubs, and do gay things that we need to do in order to remind ourselves that we are human beings.

Black communal norms of heterosexuality have bifurcated George's social life. Lennox and Devon also note this split in their geography of pleasure. These Black gay men live their geographies of resistance in the midst of other hegemonic practices. They make these spaces samesexed or homoerotic by their very presence, by claiming their right to be there in sometimes flamboyant and obvious ways. While the notion of geography suggests a static location, their lives suggest that urban spaces dominated by hegemonic discourses can be infiltrated and contested at multiple levels. Lennox: I think it is fun to dress in hot GQ labels, the trend for the month, or the season, and I like to watch fashion television and buy the wear they suggest. I go to public events like ballet, live theatre, and even Caribana. Are there any other things you do for fun? I love reading, going to the movies, and cooking, with family and friends whenever it is possible.

In most of the men's narratives, family and friends seem omnipresent. Socialization with family also secures one's heterosexuality and helps camouflage one's same-sex practices. Devon made the link between family and geographies of pleasure quite effectively.

152 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys I like Caribbean plays, comedies and stuff like that; it is part of me and my culture. My family also like it, so I always go out with my family to see Caribbean plays, comedies, and attend Caribbean-style events and shows. For me, enjoying culture is a big thing, and my family is a big part of my life, so I always do things with them that I do not think I will enjoy in the same way with other gay people. I also take my children to things that I think might interest them, that is also lots of fun.

Devon limits his socialization with his immediate family to heterosexual events. This suggests that he is uncomfortable about going to same-sex spaces with them. But he also says he enjoys his culture very much and that he maintains it through constant contact with his family. I find that a lot of gay men do not like to go to straight Black spaces, so it is hard, I think, for them to have a good time, so I like to just go with my family and enjoy myself.

Devon makes it clear why the geography of pleasures is split for many bullers. Devon is not out, so it would be dangerous for him to attend Caribbean-style events with same-sex friends. It is not just a matter of one group of associates having a preference for particular activities over others - of bullers liking to do this, straights not. The structures of dominance that regulate Black communal life mean that bullers and batty bwoys cannot experience certain pleasures with heterosexuals present. For example, if a Black man brings his male partner, regardless of race, to a communal event, both men will be subject to various forms of policing and violence. In communal settings, Black men cannot easily and openly embrace their twin identifications: as bullers, and as participants in Caribbean culture.1 Because identity for Black men is tied into a form of public masculinity that makes problematic all forms of male-to-male bonding, such bonding always appears samesexed. For some men, this splitting drives them to construct alternative family forms. Depending on the buller's relations with his biological family, these can be either a substitute or a complement. Michelle is estranged from his biological family; Laqueshia has been accepted. These two men express the importance of close geographical social relations. Both are out bullers who do drag performances. Michelle:

Pleasure, Love, Identity 153 I like to go to things like gay pride day and watch people, and I like to go to warehouse parties and coffee shops and shop for expensive things. I find I get more fun with my boyfriend and his friends, who we call one big happy family. Travelling is also a big part of my life, and that is always done with my gay friends. Any fun things within the Black heterosexual community? No, I cannot be bothered, it is too much stress. What do you mean by too much stress? I do not like being harassed when I go out to have a good time, so I avoid all Black spaces as much as possible to have a good time.

Laqueshia, too, does not like socializing at Black heterosexual community events. Also, both he and Michelle are drag queens, so their flamboyant dispositions may make heterosexual community members uncomfortable. Laqueshia: I do not like to go to Black heterosexual spaces or attend their events because I get laughed at and harassed all the time, because of my feminine side. But I do things with my family because they give me a sense of belonging and community, which is very important for me. So if I do socialize in the community it is only with my family.

Laqueshia's family members are crucial in his social life. Because he is out to them, socialization with them is much easier. For socialization, men who are not out to their families find it crucial to create a geography of difference. Sometimes bullers actively construct social geographies of difference - in itself a pleasurable activity. For example, Lennox talked about the gestural language of 'finger snapping/ I like to ... do the finger snapping and reading of people, especially when I am in straight social settings. I saw it in Marlon Riggs's film and really fell in love with the idea.

In his documentary Tongues Untied, Riggs's shows Black same-sex men using snapping, or snapology, to communicate non-verbally in urban American culture. As Lennox explained, this practice makes possible a separate social space defined on a buller's terms. Why is this so important to have a language different from other Blacks? Well, it does two things for me.

154 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys What is that? First, it creates a social space for me and my friends among people who we are afraid of, and two, it is just plain fun to be able to communicate without other people knowing what you are talking about -1 love it. In essence, this practice allows Lennox and his friends to laugh at people who usually laugh at them, through a counter-hegemonic discourse of exclusion. In contrast, Michael, who sometimes attends Black communal events, speaks more often of humiliation than of pleasure. In the past, he has been 'othered' through practices that other people experience as popular comedy. Can you tell me a bit about that experience? Myself and a group of friends went to a fundraiser; no, correction! We were actually invited to this fundraiser for a Black organization called 'Each-One Teach-One.'2 Can you tell me what took place at the function? Well, a group of us went to this comedy-night fundraiser function for 'Each-One Teach-One' thinking we should support this organization because of some of the people in the organization and their commitment to working with disenfranchised youth. At this fundraiser they had a standup comedian who started to make his buller man and batty bwoy jokes. So there I was sitting with my other friends, and we started to look at each other while the crowd laughed and he continued his buller man and batty bwoy jokes. Now at this time I am fuming inside, my friends and I are getting angry. Here we are saying we came out to support an organization and have a good time. Instead it was a big smack in the face. So what did you or you all did next? I went up on the stage and looked him right in his face and said, 'I am one of those batty bwoys you are talking about, I do not think it is funny and you should stop making those jokes right now.' Then my other friends joined in and confronted him too. What happened next? Well, the organizers said we could have handled it differently, but they also got him to stop. But it did not end there. What do you mean? The comedy is now over, and the dance part to the function starts. The first song the disc jockey started to play was 'Boom Bye Bye,' by Buju Banton.3 I felt as though it was a direct stab at us, but at this point we

Pleasure, Love, Identity 155 thought that it was hopeless and left the event, so much for our fun evening.

In a painful situation like this one, the geographies of pleasure are radically contained. Black men often experience what bell hooks terms the dual nature of marginality, whereby marginality becomes a site of alienation and deprivation as well as a site of resistance (hooks 1984, 1990). When bullers and batty bwoys move from the oppressive margins of heterosexism in Black communities to disrupt narratives of Black heteronormative domination, they transform their support for institutions like 'Each One, Teach One' into political activism. But on an individual basis, this is neither fun nor necessarily productive. In such situations the marginalization of the men who are marked bullers sustains the conflict and division within Black communities. We must ask ourselves a pressing question: Has much changed today? The answer is a simple no. It is still common to go to dances, or turn one's radio to any urban radio station, and hear buller bashing as a normative, unchallenged frame of reference. One of the most popular songs today is by TOK, who advocates burning batty men in Jamaica. It reads like this: 'My crew (my crew) my dogs (my dogs). Set rules (set rules) set laws (set laws). We represent for di lords of yards. A gal alone a feel up my balls. From dem a par inna chi chi man car. Blaze di fire mek we bun dem!!! (Bun dem!!!). From dem a drink inna chi chi man bar. Blaze di fire mek we dun demm!!! (Dun demm!!!)' (Bobby Holly good, Diamond In The Ruff, hip Hop/Reggae Soul Controllers, 2001). This form of popular culture music, while not accepted by Michael and others, who chose to not leave their politics behind at the fundraising event, has become more popular today and accepted in gay and lesbian bars. It is not uncommon to attend gay bars and hear this song played on what is called the Hip/Hop-Reggae night the coded racist language for a Black night in white owned and operated clubs. Black heterosexist communities are being challenged to assimilate and accept Black people engaging in same-sex practices. Bullers are constantly negotiating their survival as they struggle with various Black solidarity organizations. Their struggle becomes easier when they create their own sites of pleasure within Black communities, and there negotiate their position on same-sex practices. Michael's struggle finds a parallel in the words of Lorde: 'It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled ... how to make common causes

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with those identified as outside the structures ... and learning how to take our differences and make them our strengths' (1984:112). As bullers slowly become visible, their presence disrupts Black heterosexist and nationalist views and institutions. This disruption sets in motion the project of reviewing communal positions on samesex practices and relationships. A public space of celebration thus becomes a public space of contestation for fun and enjoyment. The possibility of fun gives way to political work involving confrontation with homophobic structures of dominance. The Struggle for Unconditional Love Most of the respondents said it was very important to have a relationship with a Black partner. But for some bullers, relationships referenced practices and not necessarily a same-sex or bisexual identity; others felt a need to define or label their practices around a politics of identity. Lennox's narrative and the ones that follow it capture the complexities of naming practised in some of the men's relationships. Are you currently in a relationship? Yes. Can you tell me about your partner and the relationship you share with him? Well, his name is Junior, and he is Black and comes from the Caribbean. His family does not know that he sleeps with men. Our relationship has struggles around public affection because he is not out, he fears we will be beaten up by Black folks, and he is not as conscious as he should be around Black gay politics and the Black community. I also think politically, culturally, and socially my life would be much easier being with a Black person.

Lennox here is acknowledging a problem between two bullers over being out in public. He is asserting a need to stand up and contest the erasure and violence against bullers in Black communities. He and his lover must negotiate with each other how public they will be in the presence of Blacks. There is a lot at stake in Black men loving or not loving Black men. Lennox observes: How does being with a Black partner make your life easier politically, culturally, and socially?

Pleasure, Love, Identity 157 Well, first, I think that we share a common history and identity around what it means to live in a racist society. The other thing is we also are from the Caribbean and eat the same food and understand family and community in ways that we do not have to explain to each other. Also, being with a Black man is a very powerful statement in this era of Black self-hatred, racial oppression, and all the shit that is going on in Black communities. Then there is the issue of food, as simple as it might sound. When I feel to eat some good spicy, hot Caribbean food I do not have to worry about if he go like it or not. To eat that food with someone who share your cultural background makes the food tastier. No white man could relate to me on these levels, and this is important for me to have in a relationship.

There is some tension in Lennox's position. He contends that being with a Black person makes it easier for him, yet he does not address the political implications of Black male same-sex relationships vis-avis community violence or the role of church and family in their lives. Rather, he suggests that his relationship is free from harassment. How would you best describe the relationship between you and Junior? Very open, honest, loving, and supportive. We are not into the roleplaying shit that some Black men get into, and we are also both very independent. We also attend lots of Black community events together here in Halifax - something I don't feel I could have done with a white man. To walk with a white person into Black events just does not feel right. I feel as though he is taking up the space of a Black person and that he will bring onto me unnecessary problems and questions that I do not want to deal with from other Black folks. Do you have any opinions on interracial relationships? You know, each to his own. What are some of the issues that Black men are dealing with in Halifax? Well, we are, I find it to be a very religious community. There are high rates of unemployment, high school dropouts, police violence, poverty, bisexuality, and homophobia in our communities. For Black men to confront all these issues, still do community activism, and deal with each other, I think they have to be strong. And I am yet to hear of any discussions in our community or the church about gay men and AIDS, homophobia, or lesbianism, so we are far from close to making gay people feel welcomed in the Black community. We are silenced as Black gay people. So just put all of this together, and you will understand why

158 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys some of us may have white boyfriends, feel so silenced, not come out or take political positions on gay and lesbian issues. So these are some of the things that I think leads to us being silenced and self-hating.

Lennox highlights the role of church, community, and activism in addressing daily needs. He also speaks about the silencing, marginality, and oppression that Black communities face and how these problems make it harder for same-sex men to be out publicly. He contends that lack of support for these men contributes to silencing and selfhatred. Lorde asked: 'What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?' (1984: 41). A sexual politic of difference that silences and marginalizes gay men weakens Black solidarity. Lennox's desire for dialogue faces impenetrable barriers. The divisions among Blacks that arise from all this are multilayered and profound. I believe that at the heart of these divisions lies a communal heterosexism fuelled by a desperate need for a convenient 'other' within Black communities. Black nationalists, church leaders, and activists are searching for an 'other' whom they can blame for the disintegration of the Black family and mores - an 'other' who is not truly living up to their expectations of Black manhood, and whom they can blame for the identity crisis afflicting the Black male psyche. But this is not the only division that heteronormativity enacts. For Devon, Black solidarity cuts across all sexual lines and differences. Well, the brothers will come in the club and pass in front of you and not see you. You should try talking to them and see how they avoid talking to you, or they thus play head games with you. Like [they will say] I will be back in a minute, just going to use the bathroom, and never return. You know it is stuff like that I am talking about. Most brothers do not understand that if we love another that we could only have a special thing between ourselves that helps to build something empowering for our community.

Devon's thoughts on Black solidarity, Black love, and Black consciousness resonate with those of Ron Simmons, who advocates a form of same-sex consciousness among Black men in the United States (1991). His philosophy leaves much for Black bionationalists to consider in their doctrines of Black emancipation and Black liberation: 'We should acknowledge the "sensitivities" and "talents" within us, the root of

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which is Black gay genius ... As we balance and synthesize the male and female energy within our souls, we come closer to the Supreme Being. The inner voice tells us that our feelings of love are righteous. Black men loving Black men is indeed a sacred act' (214). Devon's narrative of Black love expresses a great deal of anger and frustration. How does this make you feel, being ignored by Black men in dubs? Well, I get very angry when I am treated like that by Black men because I expect it from white men, not from my kind. Even more disturbing is how they like to talk about love, respect, and support for each other. Oh we must love one another, and we must support each other whenever we can, and stuff like that. It means nothing. Because none of them practise it, most of them have fantasies and desires for white boyfriends, so in the end they are all for themselves.

Interracial relationships, sexual or otherwise, constitute an excruciating question within buller politics. All men, be they Black or white, yearn for the unknown, for the untasted dish. Devon highlights all of this by prescribing questions of his own: How do interracial relationships affect the development of a Black male same-sex politic? Whose body has been marked by history as violent and also as sexual promiscuous? Are sexual fantasy and desire located only in the white man's gaze for the Black sexual stud, and not the other way around? Marlon Riggs's film Tongues Untied has revitalized Black male same-sex cultural politics by declaring that 'Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act of our times.'4 This statement delineates the complex intersections of the myths of miscegenation, Black male identity, Black sexuality, Black masculinity, and Black nationalism. But its radically unifying revolutionary potential also reveals the disjointedness of its liberatory vision. Why talk about Black men loving Black men as a form of Black nationalism when what is really at stake is differing racial and sexual desires? Andy declared that interracial relationships were a form of betrayal to the Black race and an insult to other brothers. How so, Andy? Well, we live in a racist society, and sleeping with white people is like sleeping with the enemy, and besides they only want us for one thing. What is that one thing?

160 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys Yo' know, they think we are great sex maniacs and all of us have big dicks and can fuck all day; they don't even have sensible conversations with us. They try to talk about eating jerk chicken, curry goat, and rice and peas, as though that is all Black people do all day.

Fanon, in his classic Black Skin, White Mask, wrote about the relationship between Black and white men, observing that 'the Negro, because of his body, impedes the closing of the postural schema of the white man' (1967: 160). For Fanon, the sexualization of racism, or the hyperbolic virility that white gay men attribute to bullers, reduces Black men to a sexual object: "The Negro is taken as a terrifying penis' (177). According to Calvin Herton, the sexualization of racist logic 'arises from the phallic projections and anal-sadistic orientations in European culture that endow African men and women with sexual prowess' (1970). The racist myth that Black men have larger penises or are better in bed is one that the respondents and I are trying to overcome, by challenging white men's racist logic and fears of the Black male body. But as Hazel Carby (1993) reminds us, the fears of Blacks held by white audiences can only be placed on the Black man, the body onto which, she argues, all surplus fears are projected (236). Further, Kobena Mercer, in his dossier on Black masculinity, argues that this myth 'arises from the core beliefs of classical biologising racist ideology which held Africans to be "inferior" in mind and morality also on account of their bodies' (1988:119). He furthers this analysis in his article 'Fear of a Black Penis' (1994), by arguing that 'the anxiety in looking for the Black penis is thus also the anxiety of "the unknown" white gaze maintaining its subject position in maintaining its social control over the Black body on display.' It's the recapitulation of 'the history of lynchings in the United States - the Black man as the object of white male fear and fantasy, upon whose body history has inscribed the violence that white supremacy both abhors and yearns for' (80). Andy tells us that his relationships and desires will always be for Black men. Because white men can't relate to our oppressions. And for me, I love my Black community and will continue to go to events in the Black community. Can you see me taking a white boy in the Black community?

Andy's notion of desire evokes Isaac Julien's discussion with bell hooks about how certain strands of Black nationalism and desire get con-

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structed so that 'being with a Black person is kind of an end point' (Julien 1992: 130). Julien and hooks stress, however, that the intersections of discourses on miscegenation and same-sex practices reveal how simply 'being with a Black person' is always already a mediated experience. Julien, commenting further on desire in his film Young Soul Rebels, declared: 'Desire is - will always be - the axis along which different forms of cultural policing will take place. And the desire across racial and sexual lines was the site for constructing my film. The crossing of these lines causes anxiety, undermines binary notions of self/other, Black/white, straight/queer' (1991: 11). Desire and fantasy, then, can be a quest for the recognition of something that can be proved both aesthetically and politically to a particular end. It follows that if an informed sexual desire is policed, whatever form it takes or is subject to, it will constantly be influenced by the cultural narratives of the day. In this vein, Julien's assessment and formulation of the peculiar transgressive logic in his own work highlights desires, and fantasies, as forces and symbols of either radical transformation or radical and traumatic stasis. Clearly, his work is an attempt to come to terms with and 'settle' for himself the problematic of desire, as it is figured within an African diasporic tradition, especially within Black discourses of Black cultural nationalism. Andy tells us in effect that the discourses surrounding interracial same-sex relationships make his same-sex practices and identity more public and easily detectable. He tries to erase and hide this publicality by being with other Black men. For him, being with other Black men reduces the public suspicion that he is a buller, because the stereotype, after all, is that 'Black men are not gay.' Andy talked about what it's like to be with a white partner. [It's like] walking with a flag in my hand, saying traitor and batty bwoy all in one [laughs]. Then there is so many ignorant Black people who already think that being a batty bwoy means you could only be getting the diseases from white boys. I will only be confirming that for them. It is also hard enough being Black and gay in the Black community, and white boys will only make it harder for you to survive within the Black community.

This attitude echoes the Black power and Black nationalist ideas of the 1960s. Many of the bullers I interviewed believed when they were young that only white men are 'gay.' Andy's choice not to take a

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white partner with him to a Black community event revealed his discomfort about being out in Black communal living. He thus reinforced the notion that same-sex men's feelings of safety are threatened by the prejudice and ignorance of some Blacks. Race alienation and rejection are not unique to the Black heterosexual community. Many bullers also construct Black/white relationships as traitorous, but for different reasons. Some of the respondents contended that bullers who go with white people cannot fully commit themselves to the struggle for Black solidarity. They saw interracial relationships as contradictions. But if these relationships are contradictory, why do some Black same-sex men publicly choose to engage in them? Racial authenticity insists that 'true niggers ain't gay' (Ice Cube, 1991). Is the policing of interracial relationships, including samesex relationships, a constructive form of Black consciousness? This is not to suggest that some Blacks engage in same-sex relationships to become 'white' in order to be gay. Rather, Black bionationalism and homophobia compel some men who have same-sex desires to look outside the community to maintain their safety and at the same time fulfil their same-sex desires. Overall, what seemed most relevant to the men's geographies of pleasure and to their discussions about racial preference in lovers or sexual partners was the impact of ideological racial discourse and their past experiences and future expectations of others in their own community. In other words, negative experiences affected their Black membership and their investments in future relationships. For Mercer, 'Black male identity' and 'Black masculinity' are terms that are value laden, socially loaded, and ideologically charged (1988). Mercer and Julien write in their 'Dossier on Black Masculinity': 'Black men ... are implicated in the ... landscape of stereotypes ... organized around the needs, demands and desires of white males ... The repetition of these stereotypes in gay pornography betrays the circulation of colonial fantasy: that is a rigid set of racial roles and identities which rehearse scenarios of desire in a way which traces the cultural legacies of slavery, empire and imperialism' (133). As well, 'shaped by this history, Black masculinity is a highly contradictory formation as it is a subordinated masculinity' (112). But not all respondents shared the same opinion on Black masculinity and interracial relationships. For some, such relationships were not an issue. This finding refutes the racial authenticists, who oppose miscegenation and same-sex practices. It also inhibits the formulation of a Black same-sex politic. Neil:

Pleasure, Love, Identity 163 I have no problem with interracial relationship, because it is hard to tell a person who they could love and not love. I am cool with it because people can learn things from each other. Like what? Well, they could learn about each other culture, values, and stuff like that. And besides, it is easier to be with a white person than a Black one because the white community is less homophobic than the Black community. How so? I was walking with my white boyfriend one day, and a group of Black men start to harass us, calling us batty men and buller boys. We didn't do anything to attract the harassment, but that is how they are. Now I have never been harassed in the white community with my boyfriend who is white. Now why is that? It is so because we [Black people] are less tolerant about gay people than are white people, we are more ignorant. Do you know of any Black gay social services in our community that supports family and friends? I don't know of any, because we do not see it as important. So my relationships will always be with white men because I do not care about what others have to say about me.

Neil's anger and frustration constitute one of the challenges in his daily life. His anger toward Black communities and Black men may also reflect how Black men internalize the dominant culture's racist notions that Black communities are uncivilized and backward, as evidenced by their widespread homophobia. Men such as Neil tend to overestimate the white community's tolerance, but he is adamant that his sexual partners will not be policed. Have you had any other homophobic experiences in Black communities that allow you to qualify the Black community as being more homophobic that white communities? Yes! My mother is a good example. If she hears anything about gay people, she gets very mad and say things like 'they should kill them, they sick, they spreading AIDS,' and if any of her children are batty men she would throw them out of the house.

Identity: Bisexuality and Hypermasculinity Mariana Valverde argues that bisexuality was common practice but that 'bisexual networks and identities really only emerged after the recent wave of gay liberation and feminism had already emerged' (1985: 110-20). In the anthology Bi Any Name: Bi-Sexual People Speak

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Out, Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu are critical of gay culture 'for perpetuating a sexual code that privileges sexual object-choice as definitive of sexual identity and that assumes identities neatly fold into a heterosexual or homosexual one' (1991: xx). This explanation embraces the experiences of those individuals for whom sexual orientation is not a mutually exclusive choice or for whom a one-dimensional sexual orientation fails to adequately address their gendered experiences: homoerotic or heteroerotic. Prescribing a fixed homo/ hetero identity is problematic and therefore easily rejected because of its inherent instabilities and exclusionary practices. In my interviews with Black men, the concept of bisexuality continually destablized any narrow definition of homo/hetero polarity. Some interviewees, despite their having sex with other men, did not want to identify themselves as Black same-sex men, bullers, or bisexuals. Bill's narrative poses a number of complex, unanswered questions about identity and identity formation. I am still living with my girlfriend and two children. Sex with men is just something I do outside of my relationship. The way I live this double and sometimes triple life is hard for me to label or explain. I do not see sex with men as something that forces me to call myself gay. If anything, I would call myself bisexual for the interview because I know what you are doing. But other than that I am Bill, no labels please.

Bill's desire to avoid labels reveals that identity politics is neither simple nor static, but contradictory and often mixed with constructions of gender and race. Perhaps the designation 'bisexual' would threaten Bill's gendered status as masculine. The label carries with it associations of effeminacy and deviance. How do you usually label yourself or the sexual acts with men? I do not like labels or to label myself as buller man, gay, bisexual, or all ah that. I just don't think of labelling what I do, but as I said, for this interview I am bisexual [laughter].

There is another issue at stake here for Bill and other bisexual Black men. Often, there tends to be great hostility toward people who identify as bisexual. The alienation that a Black bisexual faces from the white gay and lesbian community and from Black communities discourages Black men from embracing such an identity. For Black women,

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to find out that their male partners are having sex with other women is cause for shame for self, family, and community. Men such as Bill go to great lengths to protect their 'gender/ 'race/ and 'masculinity' by eschewing labels. Bill explains why he rejects labels. Can you tell us why you do not accept sexual labels? Because we really do not need it, in the end I will do what I want to do and you will do what you want to do. Like I do not think that heterosexual men who have sex in prison are gay or bisexual. I see it as something they do in the absence of women. As for married men who have sex with other men I just see it as something they try with no commitment to it. I do not see myself living my life around this gay identity and gay politics. Does your girlfriend and children or any other family member know about your sexual desires, encounters, and experiences with men? No! Any particular reason why no one knows? Because it is not up for moral judgment. And besides, when I have sex outside of my heterosexual relationship I don't get fuck, it is always the other guys who I meet that gets fucked, and that also make me think of myself as straight. I also have sex only with white men, because I do not want Black men to talk about my business with other Black people that might know me. The chances of a white person knowing the Black people I hang with or my family is slim. But chances of other Black men knowing my family or people I hang with is very high, and besides Black men open their mouths too much. What do you mean by open up their mouths? Well, they will tell other Black people your business. Are you crazy? My wife and them do not know, and I keeping it that way. Did you have an experience that led you to saying this and desiring white men only to have sex with? Yes! I was sleeping with this Black guy, and he was cool with it. I told him that I was living with my girlfriend and children. He had no problem. But then I got tired of the relationship and I told him I could not see him anymore. Then he threaten to tell my girlfriend and Black people that I know. So after that one experience I decided I am not going to sleep with any more Black men. I also find that white men are more respecting of your space and privacy than are Black men. They are also very feminine5 and love to play the passive role, I also believe that they think that acting straight or macho is a turn-on for them.

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What is at stake for Bill in his insistence on a 'masculine' position of power in his relationships and his preference for white men, who secure his anonymity? He sees his white sexual partners as having more respect for his privacy and personal life. He tells us they are very feminine, and he implies that he is able to set up a social construction of gender differentiations and power dynamics that secures his masculinity. Well, the men are very girly, you know kind ah feminine, and I am not. I also only or prefer to have sex with white men. I also believe too deep down inside that if I am doing the fucking and the other guy is doing the receiving that I am more man than he is so I ain't gay. Fucking for me is about saying that I am the man in the relationship and the other person is the woman or less male than me. I also find that you can do anything to white men and they accept it, but Black men always challenges you. And besides now none of my straight friends and family know that I sleep with men, and if they find out that I am getting fuck they will really think that I am a woman or that I must be sick.

Bill would have us see his powerful masculinity. His hypermasculinity can be seen as a reaction to heterosexism within Black communities. Mercer argues that the 'hegemonic repertoire of images of Black masculinity, from docile "uncle Torn," the shuffling minstrel entertainer, the threatening native, to "Superspade" figures like Shaft, has been forged in and through the histories of slavery, colonialism and imperialism' (1988: 137). Sociologist Robert Staples suggests that 'the central strand of the "racial" power exercised by white male slave masters was the denial of certain masculinized attributes to Black male slaves, such as authority, familial responsibility and ownership of property' (1982: 137). Clearly, the sexualization of racism reproduces historical patterns, and these patterns are evident in some of the men's performance of their sexuality. Men like Bill, implicated within these racist constructions of masculinity and femininity, must hide their same-sex practices for fear of communal and public shame. I try very hard to keep it a secret from my friends, family, and the Black community. So everything I do have to be straight, and I will always take on the manly role in relationships and always try hard to act masculine and straight in front of family and friends.

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Bill excludes his family from his hidden sexual desires and experiences. He works to confirm their assumption that he is heterosexual. No one needs to know of the practices that would disrupt this assumption. His actions reproduce a heterosexual front and maintain an oppressive structure of sexual signification. He is complicit in exclusionary and oppressive practices against men whom he constructs as bullers or as feminine. According to Fuss, this idea of the 'logic of identity boundaries necessarily produces a subordinated other, where the social productivity of identity is purchased at the price of a hierarchy of normalization and exclusion' (1990: 1). Black men like Bill are more likely to maintain and engage in sexist practices against their white partners, whom they see as feminine. This misogyny may originate in their own experience of self-hate, because of the oppression they experience from family, community, church, and white society. Bill clearly expresses this hatred, which feeds the erotic of power. Also, Black men negotiating their safety in geographies of pleasures hide their same-sex desires and tend, when they gratify them, to choose white partners, because there are so few places where they can let out their anger, rage, and frustration. Their white partners become the outlet for these emotions separate from the communities of accountability. White men will assume that the conflict is related to cultural differences; most Black men would see it otherwise. Mercer argues that 'Black male gender identities have been historically and culturally constructed through complex dialectics of power and subordination' (1994:137). Furthermore, 'social definitions of what it is to be a man, about what constitutes manliness, are not natural but are historically constructed and this construction is culturally variable' (136). Bill's behaviour reflects the tendency for some Black men to enact their homoerotic desires without disrupting their constructed masculinity. They secure their identities within a powerful masculinity organized in terms of a bionationalism that shapes communal solidarity. For these men, projecting or performing a form of toughness helps them erase all signs of effeminacy and same-sex signifiers so that the wider culture believes they are heterosexual. Clearly, what defines masculinity for some of the men in this discussion is power and control. This dynamic cultivates forms of misogyny, visible in the ease with which some men label others as feminine and therefore bullers or weak. As we saw earlier, Eldridge Cleaver, in his attack on James Baldwin, and Francis Welsing, in her writings on Black men in therapy, equate male effeminacy with weakness and

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whiteness. Hence, within particular ideologies of Black masculinity, it is safer for some Black men like Bill to have sex with white men. Because effeminacy supposedly equals whiteness, they can keep intact their constructed gender while maintaining their Blackness. These men's sexual identities involve a recognition of the fundamental validity and importance of varying forms of sexual and cultural expressions of identity, pleasure, and negotiation. They must not be seen in isolation from their historical contexts. The Black historical context of secrecy, the denial of Black same-sex practices, and moral and religious shame force men such as Bill to locate their geographies of pleasures in white-dominated public spaces, far from Black eyes. As Bill's narrative informs us, these public spaces guarantee him his anonymity and secrecy. I maintain some Black and heterosexual privacy by going to bathhouses and sometimes using chat lines. But the best is the bathhouses, because everybody is in there for sex, and you don't have to worry about anybody falling in love with you or giving anybody your telephone number. Besides, there is great anonymity in public sex, and I love that.

Tom said much the same thing. For me, having sex with men is not the same sleeping with them, because I fuck the feminine men only. I think if I slept with them I may want to call myself a buller man! But I am not in any committed relationship with men, so I do not see the need to call myself a buller man. I might call myself bisexual if I am with another man, especially white feminine boys, the ones who likes to think that every man is gay. But I wouldn't let another woman know that I am bisexual.

Here we see similarities with some of the Black men in Isaac Julien's film Young Soul Rebels. In the film, the phrase 'Black and white unite and fuck' floats ambiguously in response to a Black nationalist's exhortation: 'It's all right as long as you are doing it to them!' (19). That sounds like some of men interviewed in this book. Tony Gould, the Black father of a gay son, wrote in Insider Outsider: 'What you must do son, is become a fucker and not become fucked. It's simple as that. Boys or girls, up the pussy or the arse, whichever you prefer but you've got to remember there is a cock between your legs and you are a man' (1983: 89). Doing the fucking represents and upholds an ac-

Pleasure, Love, Identity 169

cepted form of masculinity and avoids traitorous, demasculinized, or sick same-sex practices. Tom will not tell his girlfriend that he is having sex with men. Why wouldn't you tell another woman that you are bisexual? Because she will think I am less of a man, and I try hard to maintain my masculinity by fucking men and not being fucked and by having a wife for public image. I also have a family that expects me to be the head of the home and to provide. So there is all of that for me that makes it hard for me to want to keep some privacy on sexual matters like this one we are talking about.

The constraints of family life often create further problems. Tom is a typical example of a Black man who is trying to remain masculine by accepting white, stereotypically racist constructions of Black masculinity. His discourse frees him from taking on a buller or same-sex identity; others construct him as masculine and heterosexual, while he maintains an identity that he wishes others not to see or know. Here, sexuality is gendered and gender is sexualized. For erotic submission and domination to exist for Tom, Bill, and other such men, they must view the partner as woman or feminine. Here, clearly, dominance, submission, and difference mediate gender performance. This situation reflects cogently Judith Butler's insistence that performativity is the power of discourse (rather than the authority of the volitional subjects) to produce and reproduce the gender it names. Thus these Black men understand performativity 'not as the act by which a subject brings into being what she or he names, but, rather, as that constitutive power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains' (Butler 1993: 2). Tom explains his dilemmas. There have been men who I met at the baths or parks that I would have liked to spend more time with but often thought of my wife and children and so I don't get involved. Does your wife or children know that you have sex with men outside of the relationship? No, are you crazy? That is why I go to bathhouses and parks far away from where I live - so that I could maintain my privacy and anonymity. I like it that way, because I don't have to worry about family and societal problems. Like shaming the family or the neighbours and stuff like that.

170 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys Do you worry about any communicable disease and the spread of it to your wife?

No! I tell you I do not get fucked, and as long as I am fucking I will not get AIDS and them things. You only get AIDS if you get fuck without a condom and practice unsafe sexual acts or from sharing needles.

The fear these men have of any open acknowledgment of bisexuality or same-sex eroticism, and their concealment of these things, reflect Black communal dictates. Chris's views on role playing and gender identity and performance differ from Tom's and Bill's: he is much more comfortable with being labelled a buller: What do you mean by role playing?

Well, some of my friends talk about being the wife and the husband in their relationships. For the two of us, we are gay men, and whatever we do we try to find mutual respect for the positions that each of us take, and we certainly do not take on other gender roles in our relationship. I think role playing tends to be common among men who define themselves as bisexual, those labelling themselves as macho, feminine, men who are not out, and men struggling with their sexual identity. I think I have done some work and thinking on these issues and have made a very conscious choice not to be a part of this problem.

Chris and his lover do not see the need to define themselves publicly or privately as male in order to define or accept their masculinity. For the other men, gender performativity is not irrelevant. This raises fundamental questions. First, what are the traditional categories of gender marking in buller relationships? Second, how is this marking influenced by race, culture, and profession? Devon tells us that he does not think there can be any real union in same-sex relations - a view held by men internalizing homophobia, as well as by Black nationalists, who see same-sex practices as immoral, sinful, and destructive of the Black family. I do not think that there is any future to two buller men living together calling themselves family. I do not think that they would get very far at all, besides, it is a futureless, hopeless, and sinful situation to be in. Nobody is going to respect you. What makes you say that?

Look at how the Black community does treat batty boys. In Jamaica they will stone you, and here in Canada they laugh at you and ridicule you. I

Pleasure, Love, Identity 171 see that many times on the street and in the barbershop, with them Black people when they know that you bulling, man.

For Devon, having sex with men but not committing himself to buller men, politics, or identity is central to his existence. Shaking Gender Versions: By Doing Some Gender Bending As we have seen so far, (bi)sexual identification is a complicated issue for many of the respondents. The men who are living with women see themselves as holding a heterosexual identity through their engagement in macho or masculine sexual practices, and they see the men they fuck6 as feminine or women. Sexism and traditional gender roles shape their attitudes to same-sex practices. Gender, then, must be seen as foundational to identity. Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble and in the expanded Bodies That Matter, deals with the resonances of gender performance (1990, 1993). Gender, she argues, is performative.7 Gender and same-sex practices by these Black men 'ought not be constituted as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow, rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through stylized repetition of acts' (1993:140). Some of the men in this study seem to be telling us that same-sex sexual practices, gender, Black masculinity, and Black femininity are contradictory and unstable and do not necessarily coincide. 'Gender, itself, is an unstable and contradictory historical and cultural construction that operates as a linking process within various social practices in such a way that justifies, express and supports the power of men over women. As such, it is an important tool for giving men that hegemony' (Pogner 1990: 52). Although I agree that these Black men may be implicated in this hegemony, this hegemonic practice also suggests that gender, sex, and race are mutually constituted and mutually constituting.

Conclusion: Seeking Inclusion

My power and ultimate form of resistance is to be who I am in a visible and conscious way. Michael, respondent

I intend this book to provoke questions and dialogue aimed at reevaluating African-Canadian and African-Caribbean positions on samesex practices. In this study, I have asked people in Black communities to consider whether there are other, more humane ways to embrace Black same-sex energy and make its expression visible. I have attempted, as well, in this inquiry to present the voices of people constructed as outsiders, deviants, and sick. These are Black men who live in Black communal settings that oppose same-sex practices, but they have had the courage to express their sexuality within a Black community that does not always welcome them. What was once invisible and voiceless has become at least partially visible in the conversations that I have presented. Sociologist Norman Denzin contends that only two categories of storytellers exist in any culture: 'the ordinary people who talk and tell stories to one another and the self-and-society-appointed experts ... who write and tell stories about others' stories' (1990: 7). This book has given ordinary Black same-sex men an opportunity as 'outsiders' to tell their stories and speak to their communities, calling on its members to respond. They have, as bell hooks (1992) writes, 'pointed to what they see that others are not doing and calling them on it. We cannot privilege one way of knowing over another.'

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The respondents in this book have generously given us a glimpse of what it means for them to negotiate and regulate their everyday samesex practices. They have spoken of their violence, pain, anger, and joy, their outsider status, and their struggles to remain in their families and communities. They have shown how bionationalism as it is presently enforced affects their membership in Black communities. The bionationalist discourse is materially grounded in the norms and exclusionary violence of communal institutions, as well as in the cultural productions of Black nationalism. Indeed, in the pain and anger of the men, we can hear a critique of Black bionationalism and a need for Black communities to find bonds of solidarity other than persecution based on difference. My call is for people to be valued for what they do and not who they are, for solidarity to be grounded in the mutual support that is necessary for a vibrant collective communal existence. Here the task is to conceive of an oppositional politic that is based not on bionationalism or on unitary notions of family and identity, but rather on a non-hierarchical proliferation of identities and practices. To live in a holistic fashion is the ultimate goal of all bullers; they want to be able to live within Black communities, but without being controlled by a bionationalist politic. Black consciousness and bionationalism should be a political imaginary - both should reflect a desire for a racial community based on a common understanding of the shared past. In present fact, Black bionationalism is a form of accommodation; it is also an exclusionist ideology that responds reflexively to the history of racism and that rejects commonalities which transgress its ideological terms - explicitly, by denying agency to bullers and batty bwoys. In doing Black antiheterosexist work, we need not pity the buller brother or feel empathy for his plight as doubly oppressed. Rather, we need to recognize how the homophobic structures of dominance work against Black men engaging in same-sex practices and how these structures are embedded in Black communities. Nationalism may have its uses, but it is also a dangerous template. Black communities cannot afford to lose members, and it is very hard for them to see what they are losing when it is already lost. For these and other reasons, I suggest that bullers and heterosexuals begin to conduct a dialogue and to embrace each other's differences by challenging the binary logic of sexuality that marginalizes bullers. Difference often gets constructed as other and deviant. We must beware

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of constructions that perceive difference as an externally imposed corruption that destroys or weakens Black communities. When same-sex relations are projected in these terms, it is by a political movement that ideologically constructs Black heteronormativity. The broader discourse of 'family values' excludes many different people and practices. In this book I am calling for Black nationalists to view differences in sexual practices as an internal and integral part of their movement. Our goal should be to dismantle the bionationalism that is written on the Black same-sex body. Identity politics must not limit what we can desire or imagine for ourselves; as we move toward a project of social justice, we must not be limited to or focused mainly on the bonds of identity. In this chapter I outline a new vision of inclusion and then offer a plan of action to achieve it. In the following section I explain the central tenet of this new vision of community - inclusion - by discussing why Black communities should care about bullers and batty bwoys and what the nationalists could learn from them. I consider how discourses can be expanded so as to further the project of communal solidarity. Why Care for Bullers and Batty Bwoys? On what other terms might a Black revolutionary project exist other than through heterosexist bionationalism? This is a difficult question, given that the construction of a Black masculinity over and against the emasculated Black male has been a founding premise of Black nationalism. Until now, the overwhelming historical significance of race and racism has made it almost impossible for us to consider same-sex politics and identity as a political and public issue. Black, masculinized nationalism legitimizes itself by arguing that the Black male is an endangered species in North America. This argument has led many Black men to perceive themselves as powerless and has encouraged many of them to act stereotypically hypermasculine, because powerlessness means effeminacy. Racism thus blocks them from understanding their own sexism and heterosexism. This was especially true during the U.S. civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Gates, Jr, wrote: 'An almost obsessive motif that runs through the major authors of the Black aesthetic and Black power movement was heterosexist. In short, national identity became sexualized in the sixties in such a way as to engender a curious subterraneous connection between homophobia and nationalism' (1988: 79).

Conclusion

175

Given the above analysis, we can understand why bionationalism has been so psychologically and communally important. Regulation of the body has provided space for constructing a 'nationalism without a state.' This raises a number of fundamental questions. First, how can we work to transform bionationalism, having admitted its exclusionary nature and recognized its lasting consequences? Second, how can we organize a nationalist project that does not police the bodies? Third, what can be the grounds for a nationalism that recognizes disparate bodies and different notions of solidarity? Fourth and lastly, can we identify a Black project that is not about nationalism, but instead is about building a future for a disparate set of communities that base their solidarity on what they work for, not solely on who they are? These questions lead me to my next point - why we should care for bullers and batty bwoys. What the Nationalists Can Learn from Bullers and Batty Bwoys According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), in March 2002 in Jamaica a protest against homosexuals was staged in anticipation of a concert by the Village People (their appearance was later cancelled). In addition, when the Jamaican government suggested that condoms be distributed in prisons to guards and inmates alike, the insulted - one can say 'homophobic' - guards walked off the job, which started a series of riots in which prisoners killed sixteen of their fellow inmates believed to be batty bwoys or bullers. In the Bahamas, a cruise ship was turned back by the Bahamian government when it learned that the ship was filled with gay men from the United States. These are just a few examples of recent stories relating to issues that have plagued other Caribbean islands. It is indeed an understatement, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, to say that Caribbean culture has not been kind to men and women who engage in same-sex practices and relationships. This is obvious in the policing of bodily practices, in the institutionalizing of hegemonic heterosexist laws, in daily acts of violence, and in the denying to same-sex men their human rights and dignity. When Louis Althusser (1971) wrote that ideology represents 'not the system of the real relations which govern the existence of individuals, but the imaginary relation of those individuals to the real relations in which they live' and which govern their existence, he was also describing - to my mind exactly - the functioning of sexuality

176 Duller Men and Batty Bwoys

and sexual orientation. An engendered space is negotiated within Althusserian Marxism, one of the most humanistic branches of Marxist thought. Here, negotiation describes the process of including a formerly excluded, taboo, marginalized, or policed concern. In the U.S. Martin Luther King III, fourth president of the Southern Christian Leadership and widely regarded as a progressive leader, stunned many people when he said that 'any man who has a desire to sleep with another man has a serious problem' (New York Times, 11 February 1997). However, he later apologized, calling his statements 'uninformed and insensitive' (ibid.). His apology without explanation raises some fundamental questions. For example, what did it signify when he said that he was sorry he said it - that he did not believe it? Did he favour a discourse that would further solidify the hegemonic status of bionationalism? In his apology he did not speak of an alternative vision that would define more inclusive terms for Black same-sex people. Sadly, King perhaps crystallized prevailing attitudes within the Black community, and thereby placed himself rather close to the attitudes of Louis Farrakhan, who views same-sex practices as sinful, deviant, and sick. In 1997, in Venus Magazine, King's niece, Alveda King, opposed California bills AB 1059 and 257, which were intended to provide housing and job protection for gays and lesbians and to allow companies to provide insurance benefits for domestic partners. They would also have added gays and lesbians to the list of minority groups in need of fair employment and housing protection. She stated that 'to equate homosexuality with race is to give a death sentence to civil rights. I have met many former homosexuals, but I have never met a former Black person. No one is enslaving homosexuals ... or making them sit at the back of the bus' (Venus Magazine, 1997: 25). The Black gay and lesbian community in the United States has offered a variety of progressive responses to her statement. Sabrina Sojourner reminds us that 'King's statements narrow civil rights to being a Black issue and it is not. Anytime we narrow the civil rights discussion to exclude somebody we are actually creating the arguments for our own demise. Discrimination is discrimination. Pain is pain. Be it race, size, or sexual orientation' (Venus Magazine 1997: 25). Kevin McGruder, executive director of Gay Men of African Descent in New York, termed Alveda's reading of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr, narrow and disappointing. According to McGruder, Dr King had preached that 'people who are committed to the movement are com-

Conclusion 177

mitted to standing up to injustices anywhere/ McGruder accused her of buying into rhetoric that was being used by the religious right to divide Blacks and gays. 'Because people are gay and lesbian doesn't mean they don't have family values and that they are not part of families ... Homophobia is detrimental to building the Black family' (Venus Magazine 1997: 25). Sabrina Sojourner is calling for a counter-response to hegemonic Black masculinity, because it violates individual rights; Kevin McGruder is proposing a vision of Black community/family that includes bullers. My argument is that legal protection is not enough to resolve the problems of the Black community's heteronormative living. The community should care for bullers and batty bwoys because its current negative attitude weakens community, and because collective solidarity will empower everyone. The limited opportunities offered in a liberal capitalist state will not achieve racial uplift; only social forms of collective communal solidarity - not individual, personal success - will make that goal achievable. The problems of the Black community are going to ease only if a form of collective communal solidarity emerges that controls all the resources of the Black community. That is why in this book I have been examining a particular form of discrimination that violates individual rights. Bullers and batty bwoys possess a kind of double-vision, one that can transform Black diasporic politics. Again, this is not simply an appeal to Black heterosexuals (faced themselves with racial oppression) to be more sensitive to the double-oppression of their buller and batty-bwoy brothers. Rather, any building up of the Black nation will require inclusiveness. I propose a progressive movement founded on an alliance among those committed to achieving a communal vision that might pose a genuine alternative to bionationalism. What is needed are forms of communal solidarity that will connect bullers to Black communities in positive and constructive ways. Thus the urgent need for forums to reflect on, discuss, and plan how best to embrace men engaging in same-sex practices. Public community gatherings in Toronto and Halifax could be a beginning. If these forums do nothing but locate and mobilize interested people, they will be successful. The goal is to put to rest the hostility, pain, and alienation that have separated bullers from heterosexuals in our communities. Knowledge that lies in the everyday working lives of all Black people can be translated into Black power and Black consciousness, without excluding bullers and batty bwoys. The elimination of all systems of

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oppression will require everyone's participation. Heterosexuals policing gays, and Black bionationalists policing same-sex practices, must no longer be tolerated. These insights are not new; they constitute the legacy of writers such as Baldwin, Hemphill, hooks, Hughes, Lorde, McKay, Riggs, and Smith, who have laid out the path to education, social justice, and equality. It was Lorde (1984: 42) who wrote, pointedly: 'I am ... a Black woman warrior poet doing my work - come to ask you, are you doing yours?' It is not possible to be a Black activist working on racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia and not feel a profound sense of gratitude to these writers, especially to Audre Lorde. Expanding Discourses In this book I have set out the urgent need to articulate new terms for an expanded set of discourses for an alternative, visionary Black nationalism. We need to act on the critique of bionationalism provided here, but we must also respond to the testimonies provided by the respondents and to their demands for a new basis for communal life. Some call for a Black revolutionary movement as an alternative to bionationalism, one that would enhance their own economic, familial, and communal lives as well as those of Black folks generally. As long as bionationalists and those of like mind continue to mark Black men engaging in same-sex practices as sick and deviant, they will be doing lasting harm to Black communities. Bullers and batty bwoys who are alienated will suffer materially and will be disadvantaged generally. A universal commitment to community requires beneficial terms for everyone. To the extent that the community oppresses and constrains bullers and denies and frustrates their attempts to participate and reconstruct new values, and to the extent that bionationalists can force an arbitrarily limited set of choices on Black individuals marked as other, we all incur the cost. The Black nationalism I have addressed in this book has been a diasporic nationalism that resists racialized domination. Historically, diasporic nationalism has been viewed as a contradiction in terms. How can one have a national identity in a diasporic space? Cabral, Garvey, and others viewed this as impossible, and they proposed a move back to Africa. Some nationalists, especially Americans, have attempted to develop proposals for a Black state within the United States. Neither solution solves the problems of homophobia,

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heterosexism, sexism, and misogyny, nor do they seem viable proposals that most Black people would be ready to embrace. So we must ask ourselves what might constitute a viable and representative nationalism in a diasporic space. Any answer will require a nationalist movement that seeks to redress the injustices of homophobia and heterosexism and the misogyny of Black hegemonic masculinities. It is crucial to challenge heterosexism and homophobia, not just to relieve pain - although I think that this is much of what education, social justice, and compassion should be about - but also to defeat heterosexism. And this will require a reconstitution of Black nationalism. Toward Communal Solidarity The church is one of the few Black institutions that has the power to act as an ideological force. Many of the respondents in this study indicated that religion was of central importance in their lives. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing emphasis on the wholeness and sanctity of Black families and communities. This has meant, in some cases, a visibly stronger sense of solidarity with Black communal institutions. For some of my respondents, the Black churches' economic and political leadership has fostered a sense of collective identity. As well, the activities of the churches have enabled some of them to develop leadership skills - an opportunity not always readily available in the broader society. In addition, from my interviews we have learned that family and the church are very important to Black men. If these institutions, which are so integral to community development, are weakened by ambivalence about same-sex politics, bionationalists will force many bullers and batty bwoys out of the community. Also, if these institutions form the ground of support for challenges to racist practices, the weakening of them can only compromise people's commitment to them and hence to the struggle, whether that struggle is internal to the community or against those outside it. Those same-sex men who embrace the churches as religious and communal institutions must live with a certain splitting of the self that is often difficult and painful. The fact that many men continue to do so indicates their commitment to community, even though they are also victims of Black heterosexist theology. James H. Cone notes: Tf the struggle of the victims is the only context for the development of a genuine Christian theology, then should not theology itself reflect in

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its speech the language of the people about whom it claims to speak? This is the critical issue ... I think that Black religion or the Black religious experience must become one of the important ingredients in the development of a Black theology and liberation' (1979: 618). A Black theology of liberation is arguably in a position to address the plight and alienation of some of the men in this book, given their affiliation to church and community. West, in Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity, contends that 'a hegemonic culture survives and thrives as long as it convinces people to adopt its preferred formative modality, its favored socialization process. It begins to crumble when people start to opt for a transformative modality, a socialization process that opposes the dominant one' (1982:119). The role of Black churches and their leadership, then, is to embrace the two-ness of identity (to use a term of W.E.B. DuBois's), to reflect both the heterosexual and the same-sex congregant. This approach could create a space of worship and communion within which the discursive practices are non-hegemonic, culturally sensitive, and affirming of family networks - a contrast with the response of the wider society. The churches have been among the most successful Black institutions, and such openness would help communities by increasing churches' financial collections. The churches and a revised, inclusionary Black theology could also become a major site for rethinking homophobia and hatred of bullers. As West argues: 'Black religious leadership can make an enormous contribution to a counter-hegemonic culture and structural social change in society ... The freedom of Black pastors and preachers, unlike that of most Black professionals, is immense. They are the leaders of the only major institutions in the Black community that are not accountable to the status quo' (1982:121). Forces within the churches will mobilize against these changes, reducing the numbers who are willing to fight for these changes. It is the responsibility, then, of pastors and preachers not to abuse their powers and further contribute to the hegemonic structures of dominance that oppress the men in this book. The absence of a systemic analysis of the violence internal to Black communities has troubled many men engaging in same-sex practices. The Black churches have a unique opportunity to act as educational forums for tolerance, thereby transforming one of the most intolerant institutions in our community.

Conclusion 181 The embracing of men who participate in same-sex practices will provoke resistance within Black communities. Yet the struggle to construct a theology that embraces same-sex Blacks could enhance material, human, and ideological support against racism, sexism, and homophobia in the broader community. The conflation of heterosexism or bionationalism with 'normlessness' needs to be disrupted and contested. Despite the incipient movement against the forces of resistance and homophobia within churches and Black communities, it is still far too simplistic to idealize the communities in Halifax and Toronto. An Action Plan The purpose of the action plan I propose below is to open the path for an ethos of inclusion that will embrace the full complexities of bullers' lives. It has four elements: (1) disruption of heterosexist codes, (2) education for liberation, (3) provision of support services, and (4) education through popular culture. I hope this plan of action - this praxis - will be read as a strong protest against homophobia, and as a call for understanding, which is going to be so essential for community mobilization and community solidarity. 1. Disruption of Heterosexist Codes Stuart Hall, in taking up issues of representation, points out that 'the way a group of people is represented can play a determining role in how those people are treated socially and politically. This means that the process of representation is a politically charged act' (1988: 28). One of the respondents in this study, Michael, suggested that 'my power and ultimate form of resistance is to be who I am in a visible and conscious way.' So we must ask, how can Michael's type of power become a new form of Black power and Black consciousness, or Black male homoerotic power? How can 'being who I am' contribute to a Black revolutionary project? Michael's statement points to the need for us to cast communal solidarity in terms other than those of bionationalism. In a similar vein, Marlon Riggs, cited earlier, has provided a Utopian call: 'Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act of our times.' This can be a starting point for action that does not tie community life to bionationalism. The transformative force of Black men loving Black men has the potential to shift the bionationalist

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project to a different set of terms - terms that speak much more to principles of freedom and democratic participation. Peter McLaren and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva have provided a guidepost for educators and activists to consider. They contend that for those committed to social transformation, the task ... is to provide the conditions for individuals to acquire a language that will enable them to reflect upon and shape their own experiences and in certain instances transform such experiences in the interests of a larger project of social responsibility. It is a language that operates critically by ... brushing common-sense experience against the grain, by interfering with the codes that bind cultural life shut and prevent its rehistoricization and politicization, by puncturing the authority of monumental culture and causing dominant representations to spill outside their prescribed and conventional limits. (1993: 40)

What must be disrupted are the heterosexist and homophobic codes that bind shut cultural life. This task will require everyone to participate, not just those who possess a same-sex identity. I am not implying that only those with a same-sex identity have the necessary qualifications for the job. As Gilroy informs us, 'histories of suffering should not be allocated exclusively to their victims. If they were, the memory of the trauma would disappear as the living memory of it died away' (1997: 340). The direction here is not to establish a 'buller' movement separate from Black communities. Black politics cannot emulate the separation of white gay and lesbian identity-based movements. Many of the men in this study have stated that the Black community, for all its homophobia, is still their home in a white-dominated society. For them, to abandon the Black community would be to become homeless. 2. Education for Liberation

Our practice as bullers also requires us to consider how free we can be as African-Canadian and African-Caribbean men in our gendered, sexualized selves. A curriculum that includes Black writers, scientists, poets, and visual artists who have been or are same-sexed is a must for classrooms. Who appears in school texts, and under what sign, does matter. The existence of buller men and batty bwoys points to the endless possibilities of being human. The inclusion of Black same-sex representations in curricula may serve to empower Black youths who

Conclusion 183

are struggling with their same-sex identity. Buller youths may experience a form of self-recognition by engaging such materials; those same materials may also educate heterosexuals. But expanding the canon in classrooms to include Black Caribbean and Canadian male same-sex writers and activists will not in itself be enough to undo racialized and genderized hierarchies. A curriculum that offers no critique of the dominant practices of Black bionationalism and Black homophobia prevents any critique of heteronormativity. A broader definition of Black diasporic nationalism and sexuality would allow same-sex men to feel at home in the community. It follows that classroom materials that reflect the experiences of same-sexed people would encourage educators to contexualize and critique Black and white heterosexist dominant discourses. A broader definition of Black consciousness and Black nationalism in a Euro-Canadian context might then emerge. As one example of what might be involved in articulating and disrupting Black heterosexist discourses, teachers might reconsider their approach to teaching the works of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and James Baldwin and the activism of Bayard Rustin.1 For decades, these men and their accomplishments have been presented to scores of high school and university students as examples of the Black American contribution to the modernist literary canon. Hughes has often been portrayed as a great folk poet of American culture, and Baldwin as an early contributor to the twentieth-century literature of Black resistance to American racism. Yet rarely are these men recognized as Black men who invested their lives in the pleasures and desires of homosocial or same-sex practices. I am not calling for these men to be reduced to their sexual preferences, or for students to be given complete biographical accounts of their lives. That said, Hughes, McKay, and Baldwin did write and talk both explicitly and implicitly about same-sex sexual desire - Hughes in The Langston Hughes Reader (1958) and Collected Poems (1994); McKay in Home to Harlem (1928) and Banana Bottom (1933); and James Baldwin in Giovanni's Room (1956). To simply erase this aspect of their identity is almost to obliterate the possibility of these sensuously lived desires. My point is that there are great pedagogical possibilities in teaching the works of these men in tandem with an exploration of why and how their identification as same-sex men has been erased both in the dominant white culture and in hegemonic Black nationalism. Besides all this, teachers and counsellors working with Black youth need to know what materials and support services exist for those

184 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

searching for an understanding of their own sexuality. Perhaps more important, teachers and counsellors must grasp the risks - especially for Black males - inherent in such a search. In this book I have made it clear why so many Black youths do not want to identify publicly with a same-sex identity. Furthermore, even heterosexual youths may find it difficult to consider in public the transformation in Black communal consciousness I am calling for. This is why the systemic basis of the homophobia and oppression experienced by buller men is so important to study. Educators must strive to create classroom conditions in which it is safe for everyone to speak out against homophobic violence. I am aware that an inclusive curriculum can only accomplish so much. How can we encourage teachers to assess critically how categories of race, sex, and nationalism normalize certain practices? Teachers must understand, and must remember to examine, how hierarchies of power - especially local and historical circumstances - produce and replicate identities. 3. Provision of Support Services The spaces that bisexual Black men negotiate for pleasure and sexuality are fissured by notions of gender and hypermasculinity - notions that leave them at serious risk of exposure to HIV and AIDS. There are serious implications here for HIV/AIDS education, given the dual sexual practices of these men. The discovery and spread of AIDS in the late 1970s created hysteria among men engaging in same-sex relations. Homophobia and right-wing religious attacks increased against those labelled 'gay/ However, Black communities, at least in Canada and the Caribbean, have not responded to the crisis in the same manner as have white gay and lesbian activists. Many Blacks saw HIV/ AIDS as a gay and white man's disease - hence their slowness to respond. Many Black men engaging in same-sex practices construct themselves as macho, tops,2 heterosexual, and to some degree bisexual. They see themselves as immune from HIV, and they risk contracting AIDS for the sake of maintaining their masculinity. Some of those I interviewed acted on the belief mat T do not get fucked, therefore I cannot get AIDS.' By extension, these notions also put their female partners and children at risk. Can AIDS educators gain access to Black men who have sex with other men? How do the men identifying themselves as bisexual, het-

Conclusion 185

erosexual, buller man, or batty bwoy, or who employ no label at all while engaging in same-sex practices, obtain accurate information to protect themselves, their partners, and their children? How can those bullers who avoid Black communities and sex with Black men receive services from Black agencies and organizations set up to work with Black men engaging in same-sex practices? How can Black agencies such as the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP) and AYA reach these men? How can we construct situations where Black AIDS educators and bullers and batty bwoys have an explicit language for sexual practices that makes it possible for them to talk to one another about sex without being ashamed or humiliated? It is clear that Black men engaging in both same-sex and heterosexual practices must continually struggle for that space within Black communities. Support services in Black communities are a must, given the emotional and physical violence against bullers. There is a need not for separate service agencies, but rather for agencies and services within the community infrastructure. One approach that has met with some success is the locating of AIDS prevention services within agencies based in Black community organizations. A drawback here might be the reluctance of some Blacks to disclose their risky behaviour and use these services. Black agencies need to distribute free condoms and to display pamphlets in their agencies about AIDS and about support groups for buller men and batty bwoys. As well, they need to enforce policies that gays and lesbians will not be discriminated against in their organizations. Given that bisexuality and the racist construction of masculinity have enabled some men to think they are immune from contracting HIV and AIDS, Black agencies should move rapidly to reach Black men who are in danger of spreading AIDS to their female partners and unborn children. The staff at Black agencies can benefit from courses and training in human sexuality and can learn how to work with and handle any homophobic or same-sex situations that arise. These groups should also organize workshops at least once a year about the changing dimensions of Black families and same-sex coupling, and they should encourage participation by bullers and heterosexuals in local dialogue. Black community newspapers may want to present a monthly column on these issues to educate people whom workshops and pamphlets do not reach. This call for a more tolerant community recognizes that contradictions, differences, tensions, and ambiguities will arise in the effort to

186 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

challenge heteronormativity and to generate critiques of Black bionationalism and Black consciousness. Because many Black men do not wish to be identified with Black AIDS organizations, antiracism training in white organizations is a must. 4. Popular Culture Education The comedy is now over and the dance part to the function starts. The first song the disc jockey started to play was 'Boom Bye Bye/ by Buju Baton. I felt as though it was a direct stab at us, but at this point we thought that it was hopeless and left the event, so much for our fun evening. - Michael

Finally, there is the role of popular culture, especially popular music. Reggae, hip-hop, rap, house music, and calypso in different contexts of Black communal living have signified Black male homophobia and heteronormativity. Black musical forms reach all young people. We should think of these musical genres as media of education, given their widespread influence, especially on those with poor skills in reading, reasoning, and writing. Information technology has made it much easier to get antiheterosexist information to millions inexpensively. So it is important to encourage music that disrupts the circulation of homophobic discourses. This effort could be as simple as changing the radio station or the programming of dances to ensure that homophobic music is not part of an evening's entertainment. Doing this could help create a communal counter-hegemonic alliance among musical artists, writers, and cultural workers. Examples can be found in the music of Black female artists such as Queen Latifah, Salt and Pepa, Sister Souljah, and Tracy Chapman, who have reacted against the hyper-masculinity of rap, reggae, hip-hop, and house music. Music has the potential to disrupt homophobia. An effort should be made, then, to generate support for commercial productions that articulate inclusionist discourses. Creating a discourse against homophobia would also help eradicate the rigid identity markers fuelled by homophobia and by the anxiety-ridden hypermasculinity and misogyny that characterize much of current Black music. This may hurt the popularity of some currently successful artists. Perhaps they will change their tune.

Conclusion 187 Conclusion I have argued in this book that we Black men engaging in same-sex practices should direct some of our energy and creativity toward exposing and subverting the structures of dominance. Most of the samesex men I interviewed for this book oppose the homophobic structures of dominance and the bionationalistic practices that characterize mainstream Black institutions. These men demand the freedom to pursue new ways of defining themselves with respect to others, in association with those who share their commitment to participating in this process. Connecting critical consciousness with caring gives us a more adequate basis for engaging in resistance, because it better captures the circumstances in which we make decisions about ourselves and our relations with others. Based on this understanding of autonomy, in terms of critical consciousness and caring, we must commit ourselves to the collective effort of reshaping or reconstituting the bionationalistic practices and Black institutions that determine the circumstances of empowerment. Family, church, community, and education can together create counter-hegemonic conditions that will encourage bullers and samesex men to be courageous in confronting the forces of hatred and the oppressive structures of dominance within Black communal life. Martin Luther King, Jr, reminded us that 'the ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy' (1968: 135). Creating a more inclusive Black communal solidarity requires commitment and courage from bullers, parents, and antiheterosexist workers, who should work to develop a place where it is possible to challenge homophobia and bionationalism. Families who positively embrace bullers need to take a leading role. Members could, for example, create support groups and act as educational resources and emotional support to families that find it difficult to shift their oppressive views on same-sex practices. Family therapy with a psycho-educational focus, as well as workshops and kitchen table discussions, may allow sharing and resolution of feelings and concerns. Remember here that given the family's central place in the lives of the men in this book and within Black communities, the abandoning of Black brothers and sisters is tantamount to weakening the wider family. With families, churches, and other institutions and orga-

188 Buller Men and Batty Bwoys

nizations forming alliances and working with bullers, individual voices (of buller men and of heterosexuals) may begin to resist homophobia and bionationalism and articulate a form of coalition politics. With all these institutions and people working together, with each having its own terrain of discourse and articulating different forms of Black nationalism, we can build not only resistance but also counter-hegemonic communities and alliances. Finally, our Black community in its move to become more unified is still paralyzed and confused by the powerful misunderstanding that unity equals uncritical acceptance, no borders, and no conditions. In this book I have struggled with many issues, and concerns. Many of these are deeply enmeshed in the power relations between Black buller men and batty bwoys and many aspects of the wider Black heterosexual community. To conclude, I would like to paraphrase Foucault on the issue of power. In his essay Tower/Knowledge/ he reminds us that there can be no possible exercise of power without a certain economy of discourses of truth, which operates through and on the basis of this association. We are subjected to the production of truth through power, and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth. In the end we are judged, condemned, classified, determined in our understandings, destined to a certain mode of living and dying, as a function of the true discourses, which are the bearers of specific effects of power (Foucault, 1986). The struggle for unity in Black communities, and among bullers and batty bwoys, can thus be understood as a strategy of power without borderlines and as a struggle to normalize the life and sexual experiences of one another through identity categories. For it is within this process of struggle and through the creation of borderlines that very rigid forms of difference are policed. Chicana Poet Gloria Anzaldua reminds us that borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulatto, the half-breed, the half-dead in short, those who cross, pass over, or go through the confines of the 'normal' (1987: 3).

Appendix A

Participants

The following statistics highlight some aspects of the respondents' lives. Number of men interviewed: Caribbean* men, Toronto Canadian men, Toronto Canadian men, Halifax

13 1 5

*The Caribbean countries represented are Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago. Educational attainment: College University

10 9

Education is used also to indicate the traditional understanding of the men's social class. Ages of the men interviewed: Age groups

Toronto

Halifax

15-24 25-39 40-plus

3 7 4

0 5 0

190 Appendix A Personal identification: Bisexual Same-sex

6 13

Previously married or living with girlfriend and children Pseudonym and city identification:

Toronto Devon Mohammed Tom George Desmond Andy Chris

Halifax Carl Wayne Bonte Neil Michael Laqueshia Michelle

Bill Brian Joseph Terrance Lennox

4

Appendix B

Partial List of Interview Questions

The following questions and probes were used during the interviews with the men. The questions were broken into three categories: • family violence, intimidation, and shame • everyday experiences in Black communal living • same-sex relationships All the participants spoke English as a first language of expression and communication. Essentially, these questions were attempts to identify issues and concerns about respondents' everyday experiences, especially how they negotiate the structure of dominance in Black communal life - in family, the community, and various Black organizations. Family violence, intimidation, and shame Are you out to your family and friends? Are you married? Do you have children? Can you tell us any stories where you might have experienced family violence? Can you share with us some moments of shame you experienced in your family around your sexuality? Is your family connected to Black communities in any way? Is there any aspect of family life I left out that you would like to share with me?

192 Appendix B Everyday Experiences in Black Communal Living What have your experiences been like within Black communities? Can you share some stories of that experience, both positive and negative? Have you ever experienced actual physical violence in Black communities? Can you share that story with us? How do you negotiate your everyday life within Black communities as a person who has sex with other men? Do you know of any Black agencies doing support work for Black same-sex people? What are your views of Black nationalists? Who would you consider to be a Black nationalist? Why do you think it is so hard for Black communities to accept same-sex practices as 'normal'? Do you participate in events organized by Black communities and Black organizations? Can you share some stories of events that occurred in Black communities that you would consider to be heterosexist? Would you say Black communities are more heterosexist than white communities? Would you say our communities are very religious? What is your view on Black pop artists? What and who did you come out to in the Black community? Do you know of groups or organizations that are there as support systems for Black men engaging in same-sex practices? Is there an aspect of the community I left out that you would like to share with me? Same-sex relationships Are you currently in a relationship? What are your views on same-sex relationships? What are your views on interracial relationships? How do you identify yourself in your relationships - bisexual, gay, etc.? Is there any aspect of family life I left out that you would like to share with me? Do you have any questions for me?

Appendix C

Chronology of Duller and Zami Activities in Toronto

1983 Formation of the first organization of lesbians of colour. 1984 Formation of Zami, the first Black lesbian and gay organization for people of Caribbean origin. Xtra, Toronto's gay newspaper, has front-page coverage of Zami as a new Black gay and lesbian group in the Toronto's gay and lesbian community. Xtra, Toronto's gay magazine, runs an article titled 'Finding a Space of Our Own - Getting Together with Zami and Lesbians Of Colour.' Zami and gay Asians challenge the Body Politic on its racist advertising and the representation of gays and lesbians of colour in general at the 519 Church Street Community Centre. Showing of Lesbians, Gays & Race - a video on gay and lesbian Asians organized by Zami and gay Asians, followed by a panel discussion. 1985 Zami celebrates its first year anniversary with a dedication to The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Zami's first gay and lesbian pride parade and march on the streets of Toronto as out Black lesbians and gays. Zami's first Caribanna party. The Gay and Lesbian Community Appeal accepts Zami as a gay and lesbian community group, and Zami begins volunteering at dances and other events. Rites Magazine for lesbian and gay liberation runs an article by Douglas Stewart of Zami titled 'Closet Colored.' Zami membership reaches fifty. Zami releases its second newsletter.

194 Appendix C 1987 Formation of Sepia, a Black lesbian and gay organization, within Zami and Lesbians of Colour. Zami sponsors a community dialogue titled 'The Minority Within: Gays and Lesbians in the Black Community/ held at the auditorium at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (U/T). Black Men Meet to Examine Their Role in a Changing Society. This was the first community forum where Black gay and heterosexual men got together to discuss their roles in the Black communities. Held at the Caribbean Catholic Centre on College Street. 1988 A group of Toronto gays and lesbians of colour hosts the fifth International Lesbian and Gay People of Colour conference, with attendance from the Caribbean, England, and the United States. ZAMI presents a celebration of Black History Month at 519 Church Street Community Centre. Rites magazine runs a centre-page story on the fifth International Lesbian and Gay People of Colour Conference. 1989 Zami begins to decline, loses members, and moves to form a new group and find new blood. 1990 Formation of AY A, a new group for Black gay men. The first Black lesbian and gay retreat, north of Toronto. Formation of GLAD, the first Black gay and lesbian discussion group on HIV/AIDS. Formation of Young Ebony Sisters, a group for Black lesbians. Formation of the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention. 1991 The second Black lesbian and gay retreat. 1992 York University's Excalibur dedicates a series of articles to Black gays and lesbians. ZAMI holds an open house at the 519 Church Street Community Centre to attract new members to the group during Black History Month. The York University (Toronto) Caribbean Students Association holds their first public forum on being Black and gay in Toronto's Black community.

Buller and Zami Activities in Toronto 195 1993 AY A receives its first grant from Toronto's Gay and Lesbian Community Appeal. AYA's first retreat for gay men, north of Toronto. AYA's first Kwanzaa gathering. The Village Voice runs an article on batty boys, 'West Indian Gay Culture Comes Out in Brooklyn and So Does Violence/ by Peter Noel. 1994 AYA's second Kwanzaa gathering. Lexicon, a Toronto gay and lesbian newspaper, does a cover story on AYA and its members, 'AYA's Colour Correction: Black Gay Men Look Behind the Rainbow Coalition.' AYA's first fashion show, 'From Plantation to Paradise.' 'Propaganda, Privilege and Power,' by Andrew Zealey, an article focusing on the role of AYA in Toronto's gay and Lesbian diverse gay communities. 1995 AYA publishes its first newsletter, and also its first brochure, which outlines the group and its objectives. AYA's third Kwaanzaa celebration. AYA's second fashion show, 'Pandemonium.' AYA's summer picnic at Hanlan's Point. AYA's fundraiser, 'Pappy Show,' held at El Convento Rico, Toronto's lesbian and gay Latin bar and dance club. AYA hosts a reception held for Black gay artist Thomas Allen Harris's film Vintage. A Different Booklist Opens - Toronto's first black gay-owned bookstore and cultural space. Wesley Crichlow challenges Toronto gay publication Xtra magazine on media miss-representation of Black gays and lesbians. 1996 AYA celebrates Black History Month with a series of readings at A Different Booklist, Toronto's first bookstore and coffee house for Black gays, lesbians, and people of colour. AYA formally elects a board of directors to steer it into the new generation. AYA's third annual fashion show. Bobby Scale visits A Different Booklist for a book signing and reading session.

196 Appendix C 1997 Bestselling author lyanla Eyanla Vanzant is brought to Toronto for speaking engagement by Wesley Crichlow, owner of A Different Booklist. The Obeah Man Can Make You Straight/ by Wesley Crichlow article in a Toronto gay and lesbian bi-weekly magazine. Ma'ka Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Canadian Queers of African Descent, edited by Silvera, Makeda, Debbie Douglas, Douglas Stewart, and Courtnay McFarlane. Sister Vision Press. 1998 Black gay pride parade organized in Toronto as a response to exclusionary practices in the annual mainstream gay pride parade. 2003 Ontario issues marriage licences to gays and forces the federal government to acknowledge gays' right to marry.

Notes

Introduction 1 This book is informed by my own personal, professional, and academic experiences as a buller man and by the collaborative efforts of other buller men, batty bwoys, and gay men from Toronto and Halifax. I juxtapose my experiences alongside these men's experiences and narratives. I see this book very much as a detailing of the correspondences among the political and sociocultural structures of my research subjects, myself, and the text, in that I explore how we understand, name, experience, and negotiate heterosexism and create survival spaces in various Black communities. 2 Buller man is a derogatory term used to describe same-sex male relations in Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, St Vincent, and Barbados. To be a bugger; to be (male) homosexual. G - Said that he heard M - say that C - "bulled his way through the Gold Coast in St James'. G - Said that he understood the word "bull" to mean to be a homosexual. Thus it is also to gender with the male cow. The word appears to have a different history in Barbados. Sir Denys Williams, Chief Justice of Barbados, stated in a judgement dd 87/06/17 "that the natural and obvious meaning those words [he bulled his way to success] to a Barbadian audience is that the plaintiff engaged in homosexual activity ... that the plaintiff... had ... committed the offense of buggery"' (Richard Allsopp, 1996:120). 3 Batty bwoy/man is a derogatory term used in Jamaica, Antigua, and Guyana (Allsopp, 1996: 84) to describe sexual practices between men who engage in same-sex relations. I have not been able to discover its etymology as I have been able to do with buller man, but an adequate etymology of the term might enable its use in contemporary theories of African-Caribbean and Black same-sex sexuality.

198 Notes to pages 3-10 4 'English-speaking African-Caribbean' here refers to people from Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, Bahamas, St Lucia and Grenada. Absent from this book in fact but not in spirit are the Spanish, Dutch, French, and Papiamento speaking Caribbean peoples. 5 Marginalized here refers to my location in a white-dominated society and my everyday experiences of marginality in Black communal living, within which I must negotiate which parts of my identity should be made public or kept private. I am not recognized by some members of the Black community as a male or as man enough, hence my marginality is also constructed within a specific form of gender identity that marks my body as weak, sick, or feminine. 6 The Black population in Halifax was chosen for two obvious reasons: First, it was an eye-opener for me discover that there was a shared sense of community similar to that of some Caribbean islands. Second, there is a tendency for Caribbean Black nationalists in Toronto to organize in ways that forget there were Black populations in Toronto and Canada before they/we arrived. This oversight in organizing Black politics in Toronto reflects a Caribbean domination, and misses the many complicated aspects of Black identities and Black politics. This book attempts to correct that historic problem by adopting an approach which includes Blacks from two different aspects of Black Canadian identities and communities - namely, indigenous Blacks from Halifax and African-Caribbean Blacks living in Toronto. 7 Some of the men did not tell me their age. I did not want to add any more pressure by asking them twice, so I asked these men for an age bracket instead - for example, fifteen to twenty-five. Also optional was their profession and social class. I guaranteed all the men full privacy, in order to gain their confidence. 8 Through this approach, I also hope that the Halifax Black same-sex men and Halifax Black heterosexual communities will be critical of my work and engender debates within their communities on this tabooed subject matter. 9 Indigenous, a commonly used term among Blacks from Halifax to distinguish and identify themselves from other Blacks with a claim to a unique Black experience that is different in its roots, culture and origins from other Blacks who might have immigrated to Canada from other countries. 10 After interviewees responded, I explained to them the scope of the work, informing them that I was especially interested in hearing stories about

Notes to pages 11-25

199

their life experiences as they related to Black nationalism and community participation, were they out, and what did that mean for them? How did they negotiate their everyday lives as Black same-sex men within the oppressive structures of dominance found in Black communities? Did they think Black communities were more heterosexist than White communities? Had they ever experienced any communal or family violence because of their same-sex identification? These were some of the questions I asked to indicate to the men what the project was about before they actually took part in it. I l l am here indebted to my past boyfriend and lover Roger Grant, who introduced me to some of the Black same-sexed men from Halifax. As a native Black from Halifax, he introduced me to the political and social climate in which I found some of the respondents, and he helped me understand their social and political location in their home city. 12 Recent works on identity politics contend that there is no fixed sexual identity. Some of the men in this book have sex with men but do not wish to be labelled as bisexual, same-sexed identified, buller man, or batty bwoy. They have deployed the concept of hybridity in an effort to foreground the non-essentiality of composite articulations of a same-sex identity. Identity is performed collectively and individually by the men and may be understood as shaped by their political, racial, and cultural locations (Butler 1993 and Mercer 1994). 13 This raised the issue that among some populations, the formalized academic procedures for obtaining informed consent can sometimes actually generate mistrust. Some respondents in this study required only a verbal promise of anonymity. There is a need for ethical review practices to be culturally sensitive to the populations they are concerned with. 14 Some of the respondents minimized the importance of documenting our history as African-Caribbean and African-Canadian men by joking about it. This was, for them, a way of breaking the ice, before taking the interview seriously. 15 'Heuristic,' according to Douglas and Moustakas (1985), comes from the Greek word heuretikos, meaning 'I find'; thus it is similar to the familiar eureka. 16 Some of these Black thinkers may have since softened their views on Black same-sex relationships. Even so, it is important to note that such canonical discourses still serve as the foundation for this hatred, which we are seeking to eradicate.

200 Notes to pages 26-8 1. Hidden Men 1 'Normative frames of reference of Black identity' also includes buller and batty men bashing by Buja Banton and the reggae band TOK. In the early 90s, Buju Banton scored a hit with 'Boom Bye Bye/ which included the lyric: 'Batty boy get up and run ah gunshot in ah head man.' More recently the band TOK topped the charts with 'Chi Chi Man' - in which the chorus advocates burning gay men. More than thirty gay men have been murdered in Jamaica in the past five years. Last year (2001), one was shot dead as he sought refuge in a churchyard. A few weeks later, a group of university students were almost beaten to death. The issue of gay rights is one with which few Jamaicans have any sympathy. The slang phrases 'batty boy' or 'chi chi man' are in common usage. Last year, Jamaica's head of state sanctioned the exclusion of gays from the Boy Scouts: 'These are not the type of persons we wish to be part of the Scout movement/ he said. Jamaican music often celebrates the beating and killing of gays. For many Jamaican men, an allegation of homosexuality is the ultimate slur. Such claims were made against heads of both political parties during the recent election campaign. In 1997, when prison authorities attempted to distribute condoms to inmates at Kingston's main prison, it led to riots in which 16 allegedly gay men were murdered and 40 more injured. Jamaica's Prime Minister, PJ Patterson, vowed last year that he would make no changes to antihomosexual legislation, even though the law is in breach of human rights regulations. 2 In this book, discourse is a double-theoretical moment of articulation and representation of the phenomena of the way things will be pictured, named, or spoken because of a symbolic system that people use to communicate with one another. The manner in which identities, practices, and relations are pictured, named, or spoken is central mainly because of the historical, social, and institutional significance attached to symbols in any form of communication. Critical here are the institutional forms, social relations, material interests, and resources mobilized in order to put a practice of articulation into play. 3 These Blacks have a very rigid position on Black nationalism, Black consciousness, the Black family, Black sexuality, Black religion, and so on, and are only interested in their own position, views, and intellectual thoughts - not the views and opinions of others. 4 The Black political project is a call for the people of African descent to unite, recognize their heritage, and build a sense of community. It is a call for Black people to begin to define their goals, lead their own organiza

Notes to pages 28-30 201

5

6

7

8

9

10

tions, and support those organizations. This call rejects racist institutions and their values. In general, this book is a challenge to normative frames of white thinking that have historically characterized Black power movements in the 1960s. This call can be heard at Black rallies for social justice, from community spokespersons advocating Black empowerment, Black consciousness, and Black liberation. For me, the concept 'difference' has to do with how meaning is made through implicit or explicit constructions of people as buller man, batty bwoy, 'gay,' sick, other, or weak. Also, too, with how the repressive ideological apparatuses in question are able to alienate Black same-sexed identified people from the community by simply constructing or defining, or by labelling them as different. Kwanzaa is an African-American festival, celebrated from December 26 through January 1. It is based on the agricultural celebrations in Africa called 'the first fruits.' These are held at times of harvest and require reverence, commemoration, recommitment, and celebration. There are seven principles to Kwanzaa: umoja (unity), kujichagalia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujama (co-operative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith). These constitute a moral code that is perceived to oppose and or regulate samesex practices. 'Task' here reflects the beginning of the development of a Black male same-sex framework for addressing the lacuna in literature on Black same-sex realities for African-Caribbean and African-Canadian men. This book begs for a continuation of a dialogic relationship in Black communal living on a daily basis. Lorde, reaching back into the past, remembering her Grenadian mothers' history on a small island called Carriacou, tells us that zami is a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers. The word comes from the French 'les amies,' lesbians. For more on this, see Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1994. For Alice Walker, 'Womanist' embraces a spiritual function while acknowledging same-sex love among women. She thus attempts to avoid isolating same-sex practices from the signification of the term 'woman' (Walker, 1982). Using familiar words has been shown to help respondents understand questions and to increase their comfort with them. Familiar words are those commonly used by the subject or the population to describe the sensitive topic being explored by the researcher (Bradburn and Sudman, 1979).

202 Notes to pages 31-4 11 While the concepts buller man and batty bwoy signify a break with the white hegemony of lesbian and gay politics (and with the recent development of 'queer' theory), these concepts have a distinct history within English-speaking Caribbean culture. All of the African-Canadian men I interviewed became familiar with the concepts through popular cultural musical forms (rap, reggae, hip hop, movies) and by socializing with people from the Caribbean living in Halifax. African-Canadian Black men living in Halifax (or elsewhere in Canada, if they have moved from Halifax) do not have the same associations with these terms as men with a Caribbean heritage. Still, I choose to apply these terms to both AfricanCaribbean Canadians in Toronto and African-Canadians in Halifax in order to avoid locating the men in a white 'queer' discourse and identity, and in order to begin defining a Black-Canadian same-sex identity. 12 The Caribbean vernacular for talking about people who engage in samesex relationships is culturally varied. In Jamaica, for example, man royal and sodomite are used to describe the interaction, love, and social and sexual relations between two women. In Barbados, wicker describes the relationship between women, or as Barbadian legend has it, 'It is an old, cross-grained woman' (Allsopp, 1996: 603). But, in Trinidad, where I am historically located, and in Grenada, St Lucia, Dominica, Carriacou, and St Vincent, the term zami is used for women loving women. In Trinidad, the male vernacular for men in sexual relationships with other men is buller man, panty man, mama man, or marico man. In Antigua, St Lucia, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada, the terms used to reference sexual relations between and among men are batty bwoy, auntie-man, pantyman, or buller man. 13 According to Simpson (1994), sexual orientation refers to an individual's predisposition to experience physical and affectional attraction to members of the same sex, or the other sex, or both sexes. Established early in life, it is the result of a little understood but complex set of genetic, biological, and environmental factors. 14 Some might see the term 'homosexual' as a scientific one and thus not ethnocentric. Still, it has a particular origin in the study of sexuality, and is used to define a particular sexual practice as a pathological identity. The words homosexual, gay, and queer are European, and are derogatory in their origins, so they will not be used in this book to discuss same-sex relations between Black-Canadian men of Caribbean origin or descent. Even so, these terms must be clarified because they are in such common use in the West. Michel Foucault, using Carl Westphal's 'Archiv Fur

Notes to pages 35-42 203

15

16

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Neurlogie' (1870), contends that the term homosexual comes from the medical community, where it is constituted as a disease; it is then transformed legally and politically into a crime (Foucault 1978: 43). These connections show the social specificity of this word, which most people in the West take for granted as having a universal meaning. That specificity erases its applicability in the present context. Queer has replaced the word homosexuality, which has been removed from the list of diagnoses in the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Most studies of mental disorders among gay, lesbian, or bisexual people in the 1960s and 1970s addressed issues related to the status of homosexuality as a mental disorder (Bayer 1981; Morin 1977; Gonsiorek 1991). Studies by the above authors and by activists (mainly white) led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 and to removal of 'ego-dystonic homosexuality' from the 1986 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I borrow this concept from Paul Gilroy's article 'It's a Family Affair' (1992). As Gilroy suggests, America sees itself as the centre of the universe and thus as able to set the frames of reference for everyone else. In this case, Black same-sex subjectivity must develop a politic through white American gay political frames of reference. Here I am referring to language such as queer, fruit, diesel dyke, drag queen, gay, and other Western expressions. When I lived in Trinidad in the 1970s and 1980s, I did not use these terms, nor did my friends. For this and many more reasons, Black men are less likely to seek out HIV/AIDS testing and treatment. This reaching out is further impeded by their reluctance to reveal their sexual practices and preferences, because they fear Black homophobia. According to Wahneema Lubiano, Black nationalism in its broadest sense is a sign, an analytic, that describes a range of historically manifested ideas about Black-American possibilities, which include any or all of the following: racial solidarity, cultural specificity, and religious, economic, and political separatism. (This last has been articulated both as a possibility within and outside of American territorial boundaries) (1997: 234). 'Nation' here derives from the Latin natio, meaning 'birth,' 'race,' 'people,' 'nation/ or 'to be born.' Hence Black nationalism and the Black nation may not be geographically specific; rather, they may be used to refer to Africa as 'motherland/ the place of birth to which Blacks must turn for salvation.

204 Notes to pages 43-6 2. Collaborative Connections: My Biomythography 1 Except for the Dutch and French islands, which follow French and Dutch law. 2 In Trinidad and Tobago I grew up identifying myself as dougla and accepting that racial/ethnic label. It derives from the Hindu word bhojpuri, which means inter-varna marriage, with the connotation 'bastard.' For more, see Rhoda Reddock, 'Douglarization and the Politics of Gender Relations in Trinidad & Tobago and the Emergence of a Dougla Poetics in Trinidad and Tobago/ in Identities 5(4) (April 1999). Trinidad and Tobago's Hindu and African populations do not view this group very positively. This group is important to study because its members have been erased from Black and Indian nationalist discourse, racial construction, and identity politics. They are often ostracized by Trinidadian Indians as not being Indian enough and by Blacks as not being Black enough. They are seen as lacking indigenousness or racial and cultural purity. Trinidadian Blacks often perceive Dougla as having hair and in some cases skin privileges under a system of colourism. The term dougla has changed meanings many times in its application to different racialized bodies. In Canada, because of the social construction of racism, derogatory terms such as dougla have been reduced to a new social construction: Blackness. Herein lies my shift in racial identity from dougla, mixed race, or coloured, to Black. 3 A traditional Black dish in the American South made from a combination of seafood, poultry, meats, and sausages. For Riggs, the word expresses who we are as Black people - 'some are light skin, dark skin, Christian, aesthetes, men, women, women who love women, men who love men, a little bit of everything that makes whole Black communities' (1995). 4 I am not implying that my work cannot be challenged, but I have witnessed and experienced heterosexist Black communal violence as a buller man. That experience coexists with the painful everyday politics and violence that have aided my biomythographing and that help me legitimize the life stories of the men and their negotiated daily pain. 5 Home will always be Trinidad for me. Why? Though I possess a Canadian passport, I have never felt and probably will never feel that Canada is home. There is a sense of loyalty, rootedness, community, and knowing what and who to expect that makes Trinidad home for me. Canada is very cold, hostile, 'uncertain' place that I know I will never call home. 6 My grandmother was South Asian, and raised my mother within an Indian

Notes to pages 46-52 205

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11 12 13

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cultural tradition. This explains my mother's insistence that we follow such a route. Looking back on my childhood under a system of colourism - the racist British system that prevailed as well in the time of my parents and grandparents and that still exists today -1 realize that I never embraced or accepted a Black racial coding. What I accepted then under colourism, given my soft hair and light skin, was the racist classification of dougla. As my political and social understanding of race and racism matured, I accepted a Black racial coding of self, which was reaffirmed in my migration to Canada. In the early days, kerosene for oil lamps came in tin 'pans/ cooking oil also came in these pans, and these pans were used for many other purposes. One of which was to hold asphalt when repairing roads. Workmen would fill them with pitch and use a broom-like brush to paste it on the road and fill any holes with pitch and stone - hence the term 'pitch-oil pan.' It is safe to assume that if not all, the great majority of parents socialize their children in and around a compulsory heterosexual orientation. In this regard my parents were not much different from the great majority, who embrace a commonsense heterosexual orientation for their children. In our communities, people who raised animals often had a ram (male goat) or bull (male cow) for the purposes of breeding only. To them, villagers would take female animals for inseminating. Thus, the standing joke that men who had children with many women were nicknamed after the Village ram.' A four-hand card game played for fun or as a competition. A red, velvet-skinned fruit that is seeded, boiled, and made into a popular Caribbean drink (Mendes 1987:137). This Muslim religious festival is observed on the first day after the end of Ramadan, the month of religious fasting and the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. It falls twelve days earlier every year of the Gregorian (i.e., Western) calendar. The celebration is marked by feasting and acts of charity. In the Caribbean it is usually celebrated in Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, which have the highest percentages of IndoCaribbean people. More specifically, we tend to refer to this as 'hanging on the block' or just 'lyming.' bell hooks has referred to the emasculation theory espoused by Black male theorists as 'a dick thing.' Implicit in this argument is the assump-

206 Notes to pages 53-5

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tion that all the power Black men have in a white-dominated society lies in their sexual prowess. In Antigua, Bahamas, Dominica, Jamaica, St Vincent, and Trinidad, 'mannish' is a term used to describe the mannerisms of any person who acts in an unpleasantly precocious way. Any question about babies, intercourse, boyfriends, or girlfriends caused worry in the minds of parents: 'You better shut your mouth, you too mannish.' In Trinidad and Tobago, a male is 'mannish' who is assertive or self-reliant, as in 'I am a mannish Tobagonian. I don't want no outsider to tell me how to run my affairs' (Allsopp 1996: 370). Despite the verbal and sometimes physical attacks on the bodies of men labelled buller or batty bwoy, some Black women formed close relationships with these men, who often babysat for them, helped them clean their homes and wash clothes, and partnered with them in community gossip and in 'lyming.' Stealing mangoes, sugar cane, plums, guavas, and other citrus fruits from your neighbours was an acceptable 'rite of passage' for boys. These supposedly male acts involved a great deal of fun and excitement. Boys who did not partake in these acts were not viewed as real boys, and their sexuality and masculinity were automatically questioned. They were also viewed as feminine, sissies, buller men, panty men, and/or Shirleys. In Western society, the justice system penalizes minor theft from a corner store; in Trinidad, it is accepted as 'boys will be boys' and supported by many in the culture. 'Hanging on the block' describes a relaxing time of fun and pleasure, equivalent to passing the day at a shopping mall without shopping, or spending aimless time in the park. North American society may interpret this as loitering. A patois term: to stay away from school without the knowledge or permission of parents or teachers - in Trinidad, 'to break biche.' These young men, by constructing themselves as heterosexual while engaging in same-sex practices, were able to free themselves from any or all Western concepts of identity and sexuality politics. Young or old men often hung together and cooked food while socializing, and this is still common. This act of cooking and homosocial bonding is not considered feminine; rather, it is seen as manly, because cooking outside the home has traditionally involved using wood or bamboo as the source of heat. Chopping wood and bamboo is act of physicality usually restricted to men. Most times, an added dimension to the fun was that the

Notes to pages 55-67 207

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chicken was stolen from a neighbor's yard or the fish was caught in the river - very masculine things to do. Thus cooking was feminine only within the house, where women usually did it. I confided in these men and felt safe doing so because we had talked about our same-sex attractions. Some of us had our first encounter through touch and play with one another to confirm those feelings, but fought against them through relationships with women and family, and through denial and religion. Some of us felt comfortable because we held each other's secrets, which led us to conclude that we were operating from the same space on sexual politics and sexual identity. Some of the men also had moments where they shared their fantasies and desires about sleeping with men without being caught. None of these men ever accepted, publicly or privately, a buller identity, or spoke publicly in favour of such identities. In Trinidad and Tobago, the police are known for beating men engaging in same-sex practices whenever they are caught. Men engaging in samesex practices do not turn to the police for protection because the Criminal Code has criminalized such acts. In Trinidad and Tobago, the Sexual Offences Act or Sodomy Laws of 1986, sections 13 and 16, and the Immigration Act, Article 8 (18/1), prohibit and regulate sexual activities between consenting adults and declare homosexuality illegal. Blaxploitation films were about Black actors being trapped in the racist, stereotypic, 'other' position. White actors were cast as villains, heroes, or simply as smart. Blacks were always the thieving, shiftless, lazy, and unintelligent. They were often the first to be killed, or they acted in stereotypically humorous ways to gain acceptance. According to Flip Wilson, he created Geraldine because while he was working, white men would often come up to him and invoke the age-old racist and sexist stereotype that surrounded the question, 'Hey, can you get me a girl?' He took offence to this and wanted to erase white society's racist stereotype by creating a proud, independent, and dignified Black woman, so he created Geraldine. (Interview with Flip Wilson, November 1979. New York Times Magazine, by Tom Burke). Then there were Sparrow Jean and Dinnah. Zami was a Toronto organization formed by a group of lesbians and gay men from the Caribbean in the early 1980s. It offered a comfortable place where many of us were able to develop our political and social Black same-sex consciousness. Zami organized public forums and socials, took part in Toronto's gay pride events, and met Thursdays at the 519

208 Notes to pages 67-72

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30 31

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37

Community Centre on Church Street. Zami stopped meeting in the early 1990s. My first encounter with the concept of 'coming out' was through my exposure in Canada to white gays and lesbians. I had to struggle with it in attempting to embrace a same-sex identity. Its political and social connotations were very confusing for me, because I did not come from an environment and culture that allowed a political consciousness that embraced the idea. In Trinidad, a manicou is an effeminate man - derogatory for 'less than a man' (Mendes 1987: 95). Antibuller violence in the Caribbean is 'seen as an accepted form of violence' against a group of people who have no legal protection. It occurs against bullers of all age groups, but there is speculation that the young are especially vulnerable. In addition, perpetrators of antibuller violence often include family members and community authorities. Many young bullers are beaten and taken to the priest or psychiatrist to cure them. In Toronto, many of us African-Caribbean men and women engaging in same-sex relations were fortunate in the early 1980s. Two women welcomed us into their house, which became our home and a place for us to be free to gain support, affirm our identities, and express our same-sex feelings and desires. Such spaces made coming out possible in Toronto and less painful than in the Caribbean. These clubs were not free from racist experiences. Often a white scrutineer would ask, 'Do you know this is a gay bar?' or 'Do you have any identification on you?' or 'This picture doesn't look like you - are you sure this is you?' or 'You can't stand there without buying a drink.' Sometimes I was refused entry simply because I did not look and act convincingly gay. This is not to say that I became raceless or that I wasn't aware of racism. Rather, the white clubs were places to dream about what I wanted to see in the Black community - the place that I call home. Only men serve as public representatives and spokespeople for the Nation of Islam. The goal of Afrocentic thought and principles is to empower all African/ Black people to ensure economic, political, social, and cultural survival. It is a process of self-examination, with Africa as the point of reference for all activities in which African/Black folks engage. The Black Secretariat is a Black community organization in Toronto that cultivates community, economic, and political consciousness within the city's various Black communities.

Notes to pages 73-106 209 38 My silence within Black heterosexual organizations led my buller and zami brothers and sisters to accuse me of supporting the homophobia in those organizations. 39 I often attended meetings sponsored by these groups, because they helped me develop a Black consciousness and Black nationalistic discourse. I was also a member of the Steve Biko, Walter Rodney, and Malcolm X coalition. It was within that body in its final days that I started challenging and speaking out against heterosexism in the movements and the community. I did slowly begin to gain the support of some members, but we never were able to organize a community discussion on the subject. 3. Family 1 Families support one another in the Caribbean by providing services such as babysitting and meal preparation and by lending sugar, flour, or salt for cooking. Neighbours also support one another in times of stress and live comfortably with what little they have. This is not white anthropolgists' notion of Black extended family; rather, it is communal support based on economics, love, and unity. In some cases, poverty made this tight support system a necessity; it was a form of resistance to the harsh conditions created by colonialism. 2 Black communities tend to strongly emphasize heterosexual family events organized through groups or individuals. For example, Kwanzaa is a community event held each year from 26 December to 1 January. Caribana includes steel pan and calypso and brings together family and friends who may not have seen one another for a year or more. Caribbean plays tend to centre on family, culture, and the longing to return home. Inthe summer, Black organizations such as the Harriet Tubman Association and the Jamaican Canadian Association hold family picnics and community fairs. Independence Day celebrations for most Caribbean islands focus on family and nation. These events connect people to larger Black communities. 3 Professional help includes institutional and communal efforts to help individuals who are working through social issues that are affecting them daily. I am not assuming that Black women receive more help than Black men, but my project investigates the experiences of Black men who engage in same-sex practices, not those of Black women. 4 The lack of Black same-sex support groups is partly a result of population size. Such groups are found in most major British and American cities.

210 Notes to pages 107-43 4. Community 1 Lorde, 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action/ in Lorde 1984: 40. 2 Bullers, batty bwoys, and transvestites are sometimes welcome as long as segments of the Black community can laugh at them - in other words, they are tolerated on the terms of those doing the tolerating. This is especially true of Black men who do drag or are stereotypically feminine. They get asked to do babysitting, to help women buy groceries, and to keep the company of some men's wives, because they are harmless - they do not threaten the husbands' masculinity. 3 For me, one of the closest feelings of home (Caribbean) living in Canada comes from going to the West Indian grocery store to hear Saturday morning gossip, meet other Black folks from home whom I haven't seen all week, and hear the owner say, 'God bless you. Have ah good day. See you next week.' 5. Violence, Fear, and Hypermasculinity 1 The unconvincing logic is that same-sex practices are not 'natural' to the Black race, so whites must have introduced them; it follows that these practices must involve those with lighter skin (Toni Morrison, 1970). Lightskinned Blacks can be bullers or batty bwoys because of corruption and pollution by whites (Haki Madhubuti, 1978). 2 I am tempted to argue that Asante may not have known about the Ashanti and Dahomey peoples - hence his failure to introduce these complicated concepts into his theory of Afrocentricism. 3 Dr Frances Cress Welsing, in unveiling what she considers the true nature of white supremacy (racism), titled her book The ISIS Papers: The Keys to Colors, after the most important goddess of ancient Africa (specifically, Egypt). Isis was the sister/wife of the most important Egyptian god, Osiris (Lord of the perfect Black), and the mother of Horus. In the astral interpretation of the Egyptian gods, Isis was equated with the dog star, Sirius (Sothis). According to legend, Isis admired truth and justice and made justice stronger than gold and silver (1991: vii). 4 Black heterosexists disdain Black same-sex men in ways that they do not Black women who engage in such relationships. Hence the threat to his masculinity and to those whom he sees as protectors of women and as leaders of the revolution, the home, and the community. There is also the

Notes to pages 143-70 211 age-old Black nationalist argument that the white racist fears the Black male more than any other group, so the Black male is an endangered species (Hakim, Hare, Molifi, Farrakhan). 5 A type of reggae marked by electronically produced base rhythms, but without the message-carrying lyrics characteristic of reggae. It is heavily influenced by pop-music themes but maintains the popularity of the reggae beat in dance halls; hence the name (Allsopp, 1996:187). 6 But others seemed unconcerned about the incident; they went about their normal business - attending classes, participating in graduation practice, and taking photographs for the school's magazine. Several students were observed removing their red and gold epaulettes while leaving the compound and encouraging others to do the same. When asked why they did this, some remarked that they did not want to be labelled as 'chi chi men' (Nagra Plunkett, Staff Reporter for the Jamaican Gleaner, 25 June 2002). 7 Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, 'Introduction: Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity/ in Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (eds.), Scattered Hegemonies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 6. Pleasure, Love, Identity 1 Black men who engage in same-sex relations do have access to forms of Black homosocial bonding, but these are limited to activities and sports constructed as masculine. Nowhere is this clearer than in card games, cricket, dominoes, and soccer, which involve only males. 2 'Each One, Teach One' promotes achievement, excellence, success, unity, awareness, pride, identity, self-esteem and self-reliance accomplished through volunteers who act as role models to the youths who need help' (Each One, Teach One pamphlet). 3 Buju Banton is a Jamaican dance-hall reggae singer. In his 1993 hit 'Boom Bye Bye/ he sings: 'in a batty bwoy head ... two men hug up and kiss up and lay up and ah lay down in a bed. Shoot them now come mek we shoot them pow!' 4 Here Riggs, who himself was in a relationship with a white, sees the act of Black men loving Black men as a type of perfect, Utopian revolution or liberation. 5 Bill's choice of sleeping with white men only, because they are feminine and love to play the passive role, reflects/embodies white racist fears and white sexual colonial fantasies of a Black body with no brain. He does not

212 Notes to pages 171-88 see himself as dangerous or his body is monstrous, as racist colonial fantasy would construct him. Rather, he should be credited for not concealing what many bisexuals feel and enact but never state. 6 Here the men's limited understanding of their social construction of samesex practices and gender prevents them from seeing that their constructions of other men as feminine and themselves as masculine privilege power roles that enact a form of violence in their daily lives and in the relationships that they embrace. In this context their acts are violent. 7 The term 'performative' is described by J.L. Austin in 'How to Do Things with Words' as a speech act where 'the issuing of the utterance is the performing of the action' (Austin, 1975: 6). Conclusion: Seeking Inclusion 1 Bayard Rustin was Martin Luther King, Jr's principal organizer for the March on Washington in 1963 and for the New York City Schools Boycott of 1964.1 am not sure if King ever publicly recognized Rustin, but it is well known among African-American gay men and women that he was gay. 2 Here the concept of 'top' within same-sexed vernacular refers to men who narrowly construct sex, intimacy, and their relationships in terms of sexual penetration of their partner. The man who receives the penetration is the 'bottom,' or passive partner. Most Black men who do the penetrating argue that they cannot get AIDS.

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Index

Abu-Lughood, Lila, 45 Adam, Barry, 50,140 Afrika, Llaila, 37 Afrocentricity, 72-3 AIDS, 37 Aids Committee of Toronto, 11 Alexander, Jacqui M, 53 Allsopp, Richard, 39-40, 206, 211n5 Althusser, Louis, 73,175 Altman, Dennis, 50 Anzaldua, Gloria, 34,188 Asante, Molefi, 8, 29, 72,137 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 33 Baldwin, James, 7, 36,121,133,134, 148, 183 Banton, Buju, 26, 143 Baraka, Amiri, 37, 139 Batty bwoys, 1, 31, 33; identification with the term, 38,197n2 Bernabe, Jean, 33-4 Bhabha, Homi, 71 Bibical verses, 49 Bibliolatry, 83 Billson, Janet Mancini, 60 Biomythography, 41-5 Black community discussion, 16-18

Black cultural formation, 27 Black heterosexist thinking, 5, 210-11 Black nation, 39 Black nationalism, 35, 38, 203n20 Black popular culture, 28-9 Sexploitation, 60, 207 Buller men, 1, 31, 33; identification with the term, 38, 39,197n2 Butler, Judith, 52, 54, 69,114,169,171 Calypsonians, 62 Carby, Hazel, 160 Caribbean Muslim Standard (January 1995); 2 Caribbean vernacular for gay terms, 202nl2 Carmichael, Stokely, 64 Chan, C, 32 'Chi Chi Man/ 200nl Clairmont, Donald, 122 Clarke, Cheryl, 7, 38 Cleaver, Eldridge, 8, 64,129,132-3, 134,135 Cliff, Michelle, 69 Clothing, 56-7 Collaboration, 1 Combahee River Collective, 114

228 Index Coming out, 67 Coming out: black versus gay, 73-5 Community organizing and heterosexism, 69-72 Cone, James H., 179-80 Connel, Robert, 116 Conner, Randy P., 137 Consent form, 12 Cool, 60 Corrigan, Philip, 28 Cowie, 64 Davies, Carol-Boyce, 30 Davis, Angela Yvonne, 64 Davis, Ossie, 132 De Hernandez, Jennifer Browdy, 9 Dei, George, 97 Dent, Gina, 71,140 Denzin, Norman K., 172 Desire, 161 Difference, 28, 201 Dilliore, Jonathan, 136 Discourse, 200n2 Dislocation and identity, 67-9 Disruption of heterosexist codes, 181-2 Dougla, 43 Douglas, B., and C. Moustakas, 14 DuBois, W.E.B., 49 Dunyne, Cherly, 7

Fantasy, 64 Farrakhan, Louis, 8, 26, 37,141,142, 143 Flip Wilson, 61 Foucault, Michel, 8, 27-8, 58,112, 188 Freire, Paulo, 26 Fuss, Diana, 11,139,167 Garvey, Marcus, 64,132 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr, 64,174 Gender, 114-15 Gilroy, Paul, 18-19, 72,129,182 Giovanni, Nikki, 27 Girlfriends, 64-7 Glad Day Bookstore, 11 Gomez, Jewel, 7, 38,103 Gramsci, Antonio, 44 Green, B., 32 Guerrero, Ed, 128

Education for liberation, 182-4 Effeminophobia, 57 Eli Robins, 66 Ellison, Ralph, 32 Emasculation, 52

Hall, Stuart, 75,140,181 Hare, Julia, 136-7 Hare, Nathan, 136-7 Hegemonic discourses, 27 Hemphill, Essex, 7, 35, 79, 88 Herton, Calvin, 160 Heterosexuality, 46; heterosexual construction, 55 Hill, Robert, 80 Homosexual, 202nl4 hooks, bell, 7, 9, 42, 46, 64, 81, 97, 132,172, 205 Hughes, Langston, 183 Hutchins, Loraine, 163-4 Hypermasculinity, 54,114

Familiar, 30 Family, 45-8 Fanon, Frantz, 8, 25,160

Ideologues, 28 Inderpal, Grewal, 149,211 Indigenous Black Canadians, 10

Index 229 International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 175 Isaac, Julien, 7,160-1,168 Isay, Richard, 144 Jamaican Gleaner, 147 Jamaican Observer, 15, 51-2 Johnson, Samuel, 36 Jumbie, 39 Kaahumanu, Lani, 163-4 Kaplan, Caren, 149, 211n7 Kenan, Randall, 121 Khayatt, Madiha-Didi, 30, 34 King, Martin Luther, 64,187 Kwanzaa, 29, 201n6 Lacan, Jacques, 64 Language epistemology, 32 Lorde, Audre, 4, 7, 9, 26, 29, 30; defining zami, 30, 32, 34, 41, 42, 43-4, 46, 65, 71,104,105,107,109, 155-6, 158, 178, 201n8, 210nl (ch. 4) Lubiano, Wahneema, 53, 203 Madhubuti, Haki R, 8,137,138,139, 210 Majors, Richard, 60 Manen, Van, M., 44 Manicou men, 67 Mannish, 53 Man royal and sodomite, 1, 31, 202nl2 Marginalized, 9,198n5 Marlon Riggs, 7, 74,153,159,181 Masculinity, 116 Mbiti, John, 39-40 McClintock, Anne, 44 Mckay, Claude, 183 McLaren, Peter, 182

Mendes, John, 39 Mercer, Kobena, 7,18, 34, 60, 81,133, 136,160,162,166,167 Metro Word Black Magazine, 10 Min-ha, Trinh, T., 12 Moraga, Cherrie, 34 Moral Regulation, 38 Moreau, Bernice M., 122 Morgan, David, 54 Morrison, Toni, 136,138-9, 210nl Mosse, George, 126 Nation, 35, 203n20 Negotiation, 3-4 New York Times, 176 Nobles, Wade, 80 Noel, Peter, 39, 51,143-4 obeah man, 39, 40 Olson, K., 42 Ovesey, Lionel, 135-6 Owens, Craig, 26 Pantin, Raoul, 36 Patrick Chamoiseau, 33-4 Political project, 28 Politicization of memory, 9 Popular culture education, 186 Popular culture and mass media, 60-4 Poussiant, Alvin, 138 Pride (Black newspaper), 10 Provision of support services, 184-6 queer, 35, 203 Ranks, Shabba, 26,143 Raphael, Confiant, 33-4 Raphael, Ray, 59 Redd Foxx, 61

230 Index Red Herring Bookstore, 11 Religion, 48-51 Remembrance, 9 Riggs, Marlon, 7, 44 Rockhill, Kathleen, 14 Rubin, Gayle, 50 Saghir, Marcel, 66 Same-sex identity, 31,199nnlO-16 Scattered hegemonies, 149 School and community living, 51-6 Seal, Bobby, 64 Sedgewick, Eve Kosofsky, 57, 65, 80 Segal, Lynn, 130 Seidman, Steven, 65 Sexual orientation, 31, 202nl3 Shopes, 42 Silvera, Makeda, 1 Simmons, Ron, 7,158-9 Smith, Barbra, 7 Socarides, Charles, 26-7 Social justice, 35 Spivak, Gayatri, 42 Sports and trades, 57-60 Staples, Robert, 166 Steele, Shelby, 135 Structures of dominance, defined, 27 Sypher, Wylie, 61

Task, 29, 201n7 Thomas, H. Nigel, 8 Thompson, Robert, 18 Tomic, Patricia,14 Toronto Star, 16 Trident Bookstore, 11 Trinidad and Tobago Sexual Offences Act, 207n24 Tyler, Carole-Ann, 114 Valverde, Mariana, 163 Venus (magazine), 176-7 Village Voice, 39, 51,143-4 Walker, Alice, 30, 201 Warner, Michael, 35, 57, 66, 90,129 Watney, Simon, 60 Wave (magazine), 11 Weeks, Jeffrey, 56 Welsing, Frances Cress, 137-8, 210 West, Cornel, 74-5, 82,123,180 Wickham, Bill, 56 William Magill, Dennis, 122 Williams, Patricia, 110 Wilson, Flip, 61 Xtra (magazine), 10,11 Zami support group, 67-8, 207