24 Search results for "maleness"

On ‘4:44’, maleness, and the performance of the public apology
This article was originally posted at WaterCoolerConvos and has been republished with permission Recently, rapper Jay-Z released his thirteenth solo album 4:44. The album details his infidelity to his wife, mother of his three children, and perhaps the biggest superstar in the world, Beyoncé. He also covers his struggle with American capitalism and his reluctant growth beyond […]
What do you do when childhood trauma makes you close off from the care you need to heal it?
Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At BYP, we will be exploring gender, sexuality, transgender issues and queer theory, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. We want to hear from you! Send us your pitches at info@blackyouthproject.com My parents love me more than anyone […]
On being queer and mourning the loss of straight male friendships
Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At BYP, we will be exploring gender, sexuality, transgender issues and queer theory, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. We want to hear from you! Send us your pitches at info@blackyouthproject.com I have always been queer as fuck, […]
Steve McQueen’s ‘Bear’ is an exploration of intimacies among Black men
by Donnie Moreland Two Black men, their naked bodies shifting in-between spaces where shadows were not obstructed by an abrasive key-light. The slow moving image stripped bare of any noise aside from my own breath. Even still, their bodies colliding, their grunting, their moaning—though I could not hear—shook me as thunder might. I was disquieted, […]
Queer desirability politics and its implications on consent
by Avery Ware Writer Darnell Moore delineated how objectifying thoughts of oblivious passersby is rooted in “ sexist, misogynistic, and patriarchal ways of thinking — and being.” He further makes the connection to men in queer communities, and how this school of thought is ultimately linked to politics of desire: “if a femme person is […]
Reimaging consent, for Black cis-het men, in a world where touch can kill
This essay discusses sexual violence and mentions r/pe by Donnie Moreland I must have written this sentence ten times before settling on the question of this piece, as the only way to begin—what does consent look like, in a world where touch can kill? This isn’t an universal inquiry, but a meditation on that which […]
Black men’s body dysmorphia needs to be discussed more openly among us
by Donnie Moreland This essay discusses body dysmorphia, self-harm ideation, and fatphobia. I remember wanting to drop fire in my belly. Wanting to light a match, open my mouth and drop it in to burn the fat. This was one of the engrossing illusions I obsessed about, from age thirteen until an age very much […]
The colonial politics of desirability, fitness and gay manhood
by Avery Ware The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live. I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality […]
Maybe Black men protect white women because we see ourselves in them
by Donnie Moreland My crushes, in high school, were all white girls. I used to fantasize about asking them out, kissing them, fucking them. It was about the only way by which I judged my social value—by how many of them I was of interest to. In fact, the first girl to ever hear the […]
More role models for Black boys in school won’t fix anything if we continue to overlook Black girls
By Brittani McNeill It is common knowledge that Black children are on the low end of an ever widening racial achievement gap in this country. It’s even becoming more widely acknowledged that systemic problems and institutional neglect, as opposed to simply personal or even parental shortcomings, lead to this problem. An examination of this achievement […]
But Black women are not cocoons: I’m tired of being expected to mother Black men and applaud when they finally grow up
by Josie Pickens Even before Jay-Z sat down and began chatting with journalist and executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, I could tell that the rapper—turned business mogul—had come a long way from his origins as a Brooklyn based bad boy rapper who boasted on every record he released about how much […]
Why can’t we defend Blackness when a Black person does something wrong?
“Nothing exists in a vacuum” is a trite old aphorism used to explain how all actions have consequences. It is founded on a basic principle in physics that states that space without matter, by definition, contains nothing. The saying highlights the reality that any actions occurring outside of vacuums create ripple effects because matter connects […]