The most intriguing idea that I encountered as I interviewed students regarding homosexuality was the notion that something was “wrong” with gay people not -- scholastically or morally, but that something was psychologically wrong. A Morehouse student athlete that I spoke with even equated the sexual preference with a disability.
So is there something “wrong” with homosexual people? At least 75 percent of the people I have interviewed (both heterosexual and homosexual) believe that sexuality is mainly learned behavior, so essentially people learn how to be gay. Now, I am no psychologist, but given these responses, I seem to be a person who moves in an environment severely impacted by a limited understanding of sexuality.
These misconceptions suggest that too many students understand very little about sexuality in general, not just in terms of the seemingly abnormal. The most common ambiguity/misconception that I have encountered has to be the defining of sexuality in terms of gender-specific characteristics.
For most people, the expression of certain gender-specific characteristics, commonly categorized as either masculine or feminine, define what it is to be a man or a woman. Yet, the position and expression of gender is not only a learned behavior, but also almost completely defined by the larger society, separate from biological aspects.
This means that I did not, as a woman, come out of the womb with the urge to wear mascara and hoard things in purses. My social environment conditioned me to do these things as I grew into my “womanhood.” This means that the crossing-over of gender characteristics among gay males or lesbians isn’t biologically nonsensical, per se, but more so culturally unacceptable. The thing about culture, however, is that it is constantly changing.
One hundred years ago, it was culturally unacceptable for women to wear pants or short skirts showing excessive skin. Now, these are both cultural norms, with our pop culture and fashion defined by these very traits. The question is: should our culture change to embrace men with atypical gender expression?
I cannot answer that question. Generations ago, people thought that the style of gyrating dance that Rock N’ Roll promoted would destroy the values of our society. This dance style has since then been largely accepted, but did it in fact damage our society’s moral stature? Who’s to say? The more important thing to look at, perhaps, is whose morals were we supposed to be following in the first place? In many African cultures, the gyrating dance was an encouraged way of expression but to an older European generation, it just wasn’t acceptable.
When talking about the United States, it is hard to measure such an intangible quality as morality, especially among such a diverse population. So, then, maybe there is nothing more psychologically “wrong” with homosexual people or those with atypical gender expression than there was with the generation of young blacks who refused to accept cultural norms and instead wore afros and dashikis throughout the 70s. Perhaps, even, there is something “wrong” with the people who cannot accept change in these forms.
For those who think that homosexuality threatens the family unit, then perhaps they should inspect the heterosexual family unit in America, where marriages are almost more likely to fail than succeed.
For those who think that it will somehow rub off on the larger society through cultural exchange, I say that every minority group will have an impact on the larger society, but only so much as is allowed by the consumer. Indian people don’t brainwash everyone who comes into a hookah lounge to convert to Hinduism, and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" doesn’t automatically turn people gay!
The heterosexual men of Morehouse, such as an SGA member who shared with me that the display of “feminine” characteristics in a male is nothing more than “faggotry,” remind me an awful lot of the powerful white majority of old America that would have liked for Blacks to act as White as possible and reject any other cultural expression non-complaint with their European one.
I think that America, and more specifically the African-American race and male gender, need to take more significant steps toward understanding and acceptance of the nonconventional in whatever form it comes. Tolerance can be forced but acceptance is a whole different ball game—yet, in a world where the NY Post still views blacks as monkeys, acceptance is apparently a rare commodity.
Khadijah Robinson is a Spelman College student and opinions editor of The Maroon Tiger, the Morehouse College student newspaper. Articles in the Opinionated section represent the opinions of the individual writers and do not reflect the views of Black College Wire or EMQ Networks. Article courtesy of the Black College Wire.
