25 Search results for "masculinity studies"

The violence of Black fratenities is a Black masculinity problem
by Daniel Johnson James Baldwin’s January 1985 essay for Playboy, ““Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood”, engages with a discussion on androgyny and the American idea of sexuality in which he raises questions about the American idea of masculinity. In the essay, Baldwin affixes violence as the key to the (white) American imagination of […]
Our reactions to Black men embracing in public highlight Black masculinity’s dehumanizing expectations
by Daniel Johnson The topic of masculinity, what it is and how it is expressed in both immediate and popular culture, is one that always seems to be spurred on or perhaps made more visible by conversations which happen on social media, usually centering around how men showing each other affection seems to be taboo. […]
Black men, we need to acknowledge that we are the problem. Let’s talk toxic masculinity.
By Shekinah Mondoua I cannot pinpoint the exact moment I began to question the masculinity of African-American men as toxic. At one point I found myself constantly attempting to live up to the standards presumed from my Black male counterparts. Acceptance from my Black male friends was something that I sought out more than accepting […]
The internet, as a digital looking glass, can normalize violence for Black boys
by Donnie Moreland I’m entering my apartment lot, around 9:45 PM, having returned from the gym. My vision often obscured around this time, I’m hurried to brake as two figures creep along in front of me. The two feel my headlights on their backs, thus they oblige my curiosity, and turn around. They are Black […]
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, […]
How heterosexual Black men project the psycho-sexual traumas of the plantation onto our queer brethren
This essay contains discussions of racialized sexual violence and mentions r/pe by Donnie Moreland There is this thing with us, as Black men. This war. Well, less war and more an inter-communal pogrom, wherein any Black man who shows no desire to lay with women exclusively is designated a cancer, subject to extermination. The prevention […]
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 […]
Guns too often become tools of intra-communal violence at the hands of cis het Black men
Trigger warning: domestic violence, gun violence, mention of suicide by Donnie Moreland On April 3rd, 1964 and at the Cory Methodist Church, Malcolm X would give one of his most quotable speeches. The speech was titled, The Ballot or the The Bullet. He began with these words, “The question tonight, as I understand it, is […]
High rates of femicide make it hard to be a Black woman in this world
CW: graphic descriptions of femicide For, while the tale of how we suffer is never new, it always must be heard. -James Baldwin My grandmother once said to me, “the hardest thing anyone can be in this world, is a black woman.” Although I’ve carried these words with me throughout the years, it is now, […]
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 […]
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 […]
How Black cis het men’s relationship to our bodies contributes to our violence against Black transgender women
by Donnie Moreland This essay discusses transmisogyny and the murder of Black trans women It’s odd; where the mind of a young man goes in boredom. It’s often sexual—at least in my experience. It’s a lot of thinking about who you’d fuck and how. What’s even more telling is when we commune in boredom. […]