A Bond With Black Women

COMMENTARY: “Why do gay men always act like black women?” a former coworker, a white woman, once asked me. After whipping my head around, snapping sassily in her face, and then rolling my eyes, I said, “Huh? How do African-American women act?”

I have a high tolerance for really stupid questions. And that question is one I’ve heard all my life. In sixth grade, I distinctly remember another boy asking me, alarmed, “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“You…like, rolled your head around. Like a black woman.” And yes, I did it, unconsciously, while saying something sarcastic. These were the days of In Living Color, of ShaNayNay and "Men on Film," which hilariously conflated gay and black stereotypes. (“Two snaps up in a circle!”)

Was I born this way? I don’t know; I will have to wait until Lady Gaga’s new album comes out to find out if "Sassy Black" Woman comes part and parcel with being gay (Lady Gaga being the definitive source of all things gay, circa 2009-?). Maybe it’s the effect of my isolated youth in front of the television. Too many bad talk shows exploiting ridiculously stereotyped hillbillies, trailer-park dwellers, and inner-city black women who have four children, each of which has six potential fathers. Or maybe it’s a direct influence of Oprah Winfrey—today’s greatest rags-to-riches story, complete with a tragic upbringing and a complex psychology based on equal parts of racial identity, body image issues, and narcissism. She’s poised, articulate, understands the power of words, never stops trying to save the world, and she doesn’t take anything (except herself) too seriously.

I have always looked up to Oprah and other—as my fellow Irish American and faux gay man Kathy Griffin has ridiculously called herself—strong black women.

In seventh grade English class, my teacher—an African-American woman, Ms. Jones—made all the students in the class write a fan letter to our favorite celebrities. Most of the kids wrote to Magic Johnson, Marilyn Manson, Vanilla Ice, or some similar adolescent hero. I chose Whoopi Goldberg. At least one kid suggested I was kissing up to Ms. Jones by writing to a black woman. The truth is, I’ve just always admired Goldberg because she’s smart, funny, and defiantly weird. She doesn’t fit in and she doesn’t give a damn.

And it’s not like this is something specific to me: Look at Glee. The original token gay character Kurt’s best friend is Mercedes, the (still solo) token black character. They just relate, somehow, and that’s believable. They’re both outcasts—Kurt because of his sexuality and Mercedes primarily because of her above-average weight, but racial issues are occasionally brought into play on the show.

So maybe that’s it. (Is it, Gaga?) I can consciously recognize that as a gay man, I have confronted some similar social challenges, simply by not being part of the mainstream norm and by having been crammed into a sack of stereotypes by American culture. But maybe my identification with black women goes even deeper and makes me “act like black women,” as my former coworker claimed to have observe.

I hold many black women in the highest esteem. Some, like Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, I would love to emulate. (Who wouldn’t?) But I’ve never tried to act like a black woman. I just act like myself.