On Intersectionality: Race, Religion, Gender and Sexuality
I suppose it’s ironic that in my experience of being part of the Black community, I am also part of a community that practices homophobia and transphobia with varying degrees of ease.
Privilege is a lot like sitting in a friend’s car who smokes. As a non-smoker you can smell the stench of cigarettes a mile off. However, when you sit in their car and you comment on the smell, the smoker is oft so used to it they do not notice as easily. Yet, you will also find smokers that acknowledge the smoke can negatively impact those around them. To paraphrase academic Sara Ahmed, those that do not inhabit a norm, see it more clearly. Whilst the privilege to dominate news headlines and conversation in our present moment is one relating to race (i.e white privilege), the privilege I’ll be touching on in this write-up are ones relating to sexuality and gender norms.
Growing up Black, it is difficult not to notice that many around me were freely homophobic and transphobic. It is only now I’m older, that I’m realising the number of comments I witnessed of this nature that were passed off as jokes. Whilst these “jokes” carried on, this is the same community that is now practicing anti-racism / anti-blacism, and saying there’s no room for racist jokes against Black people. If our anti-racism does not include Black trans and non-binary lives and Black lesbian, gay and bisexual lives, is it really anti-racism at all?
The penny dropped when I started university in 2016, this was the first time I met someone who was transgender.
The comments I heard had come full circle. The feminist-activist author Audre Lorde once said “Your silence will not protect you” and in being Black, I am part of one marginalised group. However, in being cisgender, I have privilege. And in staying silent on transphobia I saw as a teenager I enabled violences in my environment. In my ignorance, before starting university, I let it pass unchallenged. Now, having seen both sides, I understand how this sort of discrimination becomes endemic within the institutions of our society.
As a Black, cisgender man, I have faced discrimination. But I am cis and I am not gay, trans or non-binary. So, I am privileged by this cisnormative, heteronormative, transphobic, patriarchal world. I have experienced racially-motivated attacks but I have seldom felt unsafe, travelling at night. I am not at the same threat as my (Black) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and / or non-binary colleagues. After the recent spate of murders by police, I still see Black people spouting “Black lives matter” whilst spewing homophobic and transphobic hate speech — using their religious beliefs to whip up anti-LGBT+ sentiment. If your anti-racism does not include the welfare of Black gay people, Black trans people and so forth, you are not an anti-racist.
In my tenure as a student union sabbatical officer, I encountered a fundamentalist student faith group, many of whom were Black British of West African heritage. In my role, I was made privy of their harassment of out lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and non-binary students on campus. When challenged on their tactics, they would then claim the University and the Students’ Union were discriminating against them based on their beliefs, but more loudly on the grounds of race. From the LGBT+ Officer at the time, I was made aware of incognito hush hush meetings for Black and brown students that were part of the LGBT+ community, but weren’t out. They felt intimidated by not only the faith group mentioned, but the repercussions on their personal safety if this information made its way back to their home countries — places like Myanmar where gay sex is a crime punishable by ten years in prison. As a student union officer, I was witness to the violence that can happen when race intersects with sexuality / gender binaries, often instigated by people that look exactly like me.
Despite there being concepts of homosexuality and flexible gender binaries in indigenous cultures and on the African continent, far predating the concept of LGBT+ by thousands of years, this is not public knowledge and there is so much nuance in these diverse histories
The perpetrators of this violence at university were so often Black, cisgender men. The BBC’s I May Destory You by Michaela Coel explores rape, male violence and sexual assault. Unlike many films and shows of this nature, it has a focus on Black gay cisgender men and Black cis women in the British context. Recently, I also watched Disclosure on trans representation in film and the history of trans actors / actresses in America’s popular culture. Nonetheless, culture is borderless. So, it would be naïve to isolate my experience as a UK problem. When we discuss Black Lives Matter, I often think society is looking down the narrow lens of cisgender binary norms.
Whilst it is incredibly useful to follow the callous murders of people like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others, the predominant narrative around ‘police brutality’ in this country and the United States follows a cisgender, heterosexual norm of thought. For example, the murders and hate crimes against Black trans women do not get the same level of attention as their often straight, and cisgender colleagues. Those who get included in media cycles that fit into straight-cisgender norms, are also a drop in the ocean of the “cis-straight” community, so what hope is there for people that break out of gender binaries, who are even gay or on the autism spectrum as well?
Speaking to my LGBT+ colleagues, as well doing some reading, I think it is beyond reasonable doubt that the links between their community and autism are evident.
Anti-racist work also means having an intersectional approach to women’s rights, gay rights and trans rights. The Black Lives Matter movement cried out across the world in justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others killed by police officers. In the UK, we marched in solidarity, remembering Black British victims of police, including Mark Duggan and Sarah Reed. However, violence against Black people does not begin and end with white racists. Some of the most homophobic and transphobic acts I have seen came from Black people, people that look like me, including Black people in positions of power. How leaders in Black African and Caribbean families talk matters just as much as having inclusive curricula at our schools and universities, as well as LGBT+ access to healthcare services and mental health services.
Just like how Black communities are pressuring white communities to step up in relation to Black Lives Matter, it cannot fall on just Black trans people to educate cisgender people, particularly Black cisgender people, on why Black trans lives matter. Same with Black gay and lesbian people in educating Black straight people on the issues that come with being Black and lesbian / gay. Today, my friends are working-class; they are cisgender; they are gay; they are Black; they are white; they are trans; each with different views of the world.
In talking to my transgender friends and colleagues, they tell me about the challenges of systemic transphobia, especially for those who are working-class, trans and Black — unable to access gender affirming surgery or employers that do not foster hostile environments. Whilst I hear folks chanting “no justice, no peace”, it would do us well to remember that the bulk of the victims consumed in media cycles of ‘police brutality’ benefit, even in death, from the privilege of dying in an institutionally transphobic society.
Indeed, it is horrifying for victims such as Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and the others that have been killed by police, but at least we know their names.
Interesting Links
tw: murder, death, brutality
