| Description |
For gay men the coming out process marks their acceptance of and in the gay community. The stories of "coming out" that they tell allow them to share in similar experiences and create a bond that ties them together. These narratives tend to emphasize similar experiences, seen as commonplace to a fully actualized gay identity. Typically, a man must not only acknowledge his own homosexuality, but must also express it to others, either through coming out in words or deeds. Additionally, coming out stories are political expressions that present a picture of gay life that a straight world can relate to. Historically speaking, coming out as gay is a recent phenomenon and yet the gay community has politically positioned a typically white coming out story as the universal model. However, not all coming out stories are the same, and not every gay man has the same opportunities or desires as the next. For African American men a history of racism and segregation in America has left many of them without place in the gay community that has formed over the course of the twentieth century. In this paper I will argue that gay identity has been built in the context and service of whiteness and that for black gay men seeking to come out into a gay identity, there are certainly limitations and pressures unique to their experience of race. Through looking at their stories, I show how race complicates the "universal" (white) coming out story in ways that, although not politically expedient, reflect the gay black male experience, bringing them out from social invisibility. |
