Stereotypes and Sexual Orientation
African American men who are on the D.L. -- "down-low" -- have sex with men unbeknownst to their girlfriends (if they have one) and families. They don't consider themselves gay, and they identify with hip-hop despite the music's homophobia. They've been a source of controversy in the black community.
Black Entertainment Television ran an entire special on the "growing" presence of D.L.'s, complete with how-to-know guides for black women questioning their man's sexuality. A recent episode of NBC's "E.R." featured an HIV-positive D.L. brother who "risked" infecting his girlfriend.
The African American literary world is rife with D.L. characters, subplots and sensibilities
Author James Earl Hardy's "B-Boy Blues" and "The Day Eazy-E Died" got things started. E. Lynn Harris' series ("Invisible Life," "Just as I Am" and "Any Way the Wind Blows" -- is still insanely popular. The controversy swings from seeing the D.L. man as the primary spreader of AIDS in the "mainstream" black community to an insistence that they come out of the closet so they can be "out and proud." But as the brother at the BART station told me, he was out, but in a new kind of way. Moreover, he was going to get his groove on at the sex party, safely.
Behind these AIDS fears lies the heterosexist assumption that AIDS is born and bred in gay communities and then venomously spread outward. Much of the anti-D.L. rhetoric from the black media hides the painful fact that many straight African American women and men are HIV-positive and spread the disease among themselves, without any help from "evil" gay black men.
D.L. brothers are often no more insecure about their sexuality than anyone else. They've just embraced a low-key, mellow style that lets them admit to same-sex desires without necessarily coming out in the traditional sense. They come out as D.L. D.L. is also about celebrating a hip-hop sensibility, as seen most clearly in the East Bay's small, vibrant gay black scene. Here, D.L. brothers, homo- thugs, out lesbians and gays mix and mingle. It's a place of possibility.
The scene revolves almost exclusively around two popular nightclubs in Oakland and Hayward: Cabel's Reef, sandwiched between a Korean restaurant and a beauty salon, and Rimshot at Club Rumors, sitting neatly between two appliance stores in downtown Hayward.
At Cabel's and Rimshot, demarcations among queens, lesbians or D.L. brothers don't seem to exist -- folks just come together to get their groove on to the DJ's hip-hop and R&B beats. There's something special about black bodies, rhythms and sounds filling these spaces, even while gayness may be under siege in the larger community.
Many of the men partying all night on Saturday at Cabel's or Rimshot can be found in church on Sunday morning. That's no surprise, for Cabel's on Saturday is a kind of church itself. Shirley Caesar's "God Made Me Who I am," never seemed so appropriate until sung by a Christian, black drag-queen.
In moments like these, it makes little difference if you're a D.L. brother, lipstick lesbian, weave-wearing drag queen or a journalist. It's about sweating to the beat and learning how to "catch the spirit" -- a spirit of community, sexual fluidity and self-respect nurtured by a gay, black, hip-hop culture.
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, July 24, 2003
Frank Leon Roberts**

Black Men's Hidden Sex Lives Imperiling Female Partners

Patricia Nalls runs the Women's Collective, a non-profit organisation in Northwest Washington, D.C., for women living with HIV/AIDS. The District ranks highest among major US cities in the rate of new AIDS cases a year. Blacks account for 80 percent of those cases.
In 2001, 33 percent of all AIDS cases in the District were in adult women, more than a 400 percent increase since 1981, said Guy Weston, director of data and research of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration. Nalls believes the high percentage of HIV among heterosexual women results from an unnoticed trend: women who are infected by husbands or boyfriends they don't know are on the "down low," an expression describing black men who have sex with other men and never mention it to their female partners. A 2001 CDC report showed these men to be a major bridge for transmitting HIV to heterosexual women.
In the black community, homosexuality is a taboo subject that clashes with interlocking issues of race, religion, and gender, according to Ron Simmons, executive director of Us Helping Us, an organisation for black gay and bisexual men in Southeast Washington. "Black people don't talk about homophobia - not in our churches, not in our living rooms - so you have men afraid to come out, fearful of telling their families what they're really about."
"There is a lack of open dialogue, and this side of the story of how black women are getting HIV hasn't been adequately addressed," noted Carole Bernard, spokesperson for the Washington-based National AIDS Minority Council. "It makes it very hard for women to protect themselves when they don't fully know the sexual behaviour of their partners
Caushun RAP SINGER : Say it loud: I'm gay... and I'm proud

In the macho, homophobic world of hip hop, an unlikely new star is emerging. Rather than rapping about guns and girls, this former celebrity hairdresser waxes lyrical about his 'homie-sexuals'. Jane Czyzselska meets Caushun.
Almost everything about the 25-year-old, Brooklyn-born pretty boy known as Caushun screams out "gay stereotype". He loves to pose in a knowing, unashamedly narcissistic way, whether it's bare-chested, dressed to the nines or chilling in his New York Yankees baseball gear. He not only worships clothes (the word he uses to describe himself is "fashionisto"); he even models them, for the hip-hop-inspired Phat Farm line. And he has earned his living in the past as a hairdresser - with a list of celebrity clients to rival that of Vidal Sassoon in his heyday.
But there's one thing Caushun does that is far removed from stereotype: he's a rapper. Not only that, but he has ambitions to become rap's next big thing. You know, the next Snoop Dogg. The next Tupac. The next Eminem, except with a greater level of physical comfort around members of the same sex. To put it mildly. Phat Farm has obligingly signed him up to its music subsidiary, Baby Phat records, and his debut album - originally bearing the politically risqué title Shock and Awe, but now renamed, perhaps aptly, Proceed with Caushun - is out next month. That may not sound a big deal on its own, but the chief executive of Baby Phat, Kimora Lee Simmons, just happens to be the wife of Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam and widely acknowledged as the godfather of hip hop. If Russell decides something is going to be huge, there is every chance it will be.
On a vaguely distracted first listen, the album doesn't sound much different from any other moderately well-produced serving of modern-day rap. It certainly does not want for machismo or colourfully foul language or swaggering wordplay swung around like a bottle on a drunken Saturday night. The thing that makes it different, though, is its overtly gay-themed lyrics. "Come out the closet, why don't you, babe?" goes one teasing refrain. In another number, Caushun does an outrageous cover of the Sugarhill Gang's classic "Rapper's Delight" with a twist of explicit gay sex: "I'm the gayest of all time/ I can show you who's greater/ Suck that dick till it swell up/ To the size of a skyscraper." It is music for what Caushun calls "homie-sexuals".
If it all sounds like a recipe for trouble, it probably is. After all, there is no musical genre out there more homophobic than rap. "True niggaz ain't gay," Ice Cube pronounced back in 1991, and the line has been taken pretty much as gospel ever since. Snoop Dogg has a well-known lyric about pissing on "that sissy". As for Eminem, he has had the entire homosexual Establishment of the United States out for his scalp ever since he came up with lines such as: "My words are a dagger with a jagged edge/ That'll stab you in the head whether you're a fag or lez." Or the brief but succinct: "Hate fags? The answer's yes."
In person, Caushun is cockily dismissive of the suggestion that he is asking for trouble. "People ask me, 'Caushun, isn't it dangerous to be up-front about your sexuality?'" he says. "And I tell 'em it wasn't exactly a walk in the park for Tupac and Biggie." Not exactly a reassuring answer, since Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls - the great rivals of the East Coast-West Coast gangsta-rap war of the mid-1990s - both ended up on a mortician's slab, full of bullet holes. But Caushun delivers the line as though it were no big deal anyway. Speaking in his Brooklyn studio, where he is putting the finishing touches to the album, he is in buoyant mood and emphasises how wholesome the entire operation is. "I would never out anyone," he says. "People are at different phases in their lives, and that has to be respected."
And the album? "It's better than good right now. I have something for everyone," he enthuses. "I talk about sexuality, but I also talk about friends and the neighbourhood stuff, too. I want to show straight folks what we have in common. I do the gay, animated thing, where the voice is more camp and the metaphors are more whimsical, but the main priority is to have fun and keep it real."
Keeping it real is, of course, the thing that rap stars have consistently tried and failed to do in this era of mega-commercialism - not surprising, perhaps, when rich, pampered artists pretend they are back in the ghetto, addressing their homeboys, when in fact they are catering largely to an audience of white, suburban teenagers. But Caushun insists - just like everyone else - that he's different. "I want to change things by showing how dumb some aspects of hip hop are," he says. "Hip-hop artists talk about keeping it real. Well, for me, keeping it real means being truthful about my sexuality."
And the macho thing? How real can that be for a supermodel hairdresser famous for his weaving (that is, hair-extension work) on the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Renée Zellweger? "I hang around real thugs," he insists, "and what I get from them is, they like for me to be real with myself. I grew up here in Brooklyn, I fought my battles and I'm keeping it real - 'cos real ain't straight if you're gay."
That's a clever line, one that, in the competitive world of hip hop, certainly gives him a unique selling-point. After all, Eminem's huge success is based largely on the conceit that he is white and is more than usually foaming with hateful lyrics. What marketing niche can the next aspiring superstar hope to exploit if not the polar opposite? Caushun's pretty-boy image, among other things, doesn't exactly allay the suspicion that he is nothing but a slick industry package.
Already, he is trading on the decision by one rap-music radio station not to let him perform live because he sounded "so gay". And he and Eminem have already started trading barbs in the run-up to a possible full-scale rap battle that can do nothing but boost record sales for both of them.
According to Caushun, Eminem recently said, "If the gay community is pissed at me now, wait until Caushun the Gay Rapper brings his new album out."
To which Caushun replies: "I don't think he'll dare say anything. If he was beat by me, it'd be all over for him. It's the ultimate put-down if a gay rapper snatches you in a verse."
Caushun may claim to be the first overtly gay rapper, but that isn't true. There are quite a few of them, acts such as Cyclone, Morplay, Prince Bee and the San Franciscans Deep Dickollective. The thing that makes Caushun different is that he is aiming for the big time, while the others are restricted to a specific underground subculture - a small but nevertheless identifiable gay hip-hop world that exists in discreet pockets across the United States.
At first you have to wonder what such people can possibly be thinking. It's as though some Jews had decided to join a gang of neo-Nazis (something, incidentally, that has also been known to happen in America). But then, it does make a certain sort of sense, once you start to think about it. Just look at all those rap stars - Puff Daddy is a good example - who pay meticulous attention to their clothes, who wear diamonds in their ears and rocks on their fingers, just like the trophy girlfriends they drag around behind them while they hang with the guys. There's more than a hint of gay subtext in there somewhere.
Have a look at the www.gayhiphop.com website and you will realise what a thriving scene there is out there. It is, perhaps, not surprising that it is riddled with contradictions and denial: men who fool around with other men while insisting that they are not gay; men who will touch another man only if he has a wife or girlfriend; men who hang out with other men and give them "the cookies" (their term for anal sex) because that's the way to prove how macho they are. "I'm not a faggot - I just mess around with other brothers," is a frequent refrain.
Pushing Queer Boundaries
What does it mean to be bisexual and black?
by Kai Wright
Eliyahou (Elias) Farajaje was an out, proud black gay man - had been since he was 16 years old. But one day he looked up and found himself in a long-term relationship with a woman. That woman was an equally out, proud black lesbian. In fact, gay activism was one of the passions they shared. For a while - certain no one would understand, and not entirely sure they got it themselves - the pair hid their relationship from friends and colleagues. But, ultimately, they both decided to come out as "gay-identified bisexuals." To many people, gay or straight, that would probably just make things more confusing. But Farajaje argues many of those who would be confused by it have lived, or are living, his same reality; they just aren't willing to embrace it.
"When I came out, everybody kind of gave me their closet bi story," says Farajaje, a professor of cultural studies at Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California. "I found out all of these kind of queer boundaries that I struggled to maintain just weren't there. There's a lot more of us out there than people are wanting to acknowledge."
But, as Farajaje and other bisexual-identified activists concede, that assertion begs the question of who is "us"? What does it mean to be bisexual and black? It's a question for which there appears to be no universally accepted answer. Nevertheless, most people have strong preconceptions about bisexuality in a black context. For some in the black gay community, to be bisexual is to be closeted. For many in the larger black community, it summons images of everything from exotic women to dangerously deceptive boyfriends and husbands. And for many in both, it's just a gentler way of saying homosexual.
"People use the word bisexual in a lot of different ways. So it's created all of this sort of negativity around the term," Farajaje sighs. "It's so heavily charged." Shanté T. Smalls says she's experienced those preconceptions most profoundly within the gay community rather than among straight people. Smalls, who identifies as bisexual, is dating another bisexual woman now. For the most part, people have no problem with their relationship. As long as she's dating a woman, she says, people don't care what she identifies herself as.
But a year ago she was in a relationship with a bisexual man. And, although she is a gay activist, and worked at New York City's Lesbian and Gay Community Center at the time, the reception the couple received within the community was icy at best.
"The only way I can put it is we got a lot of shit," complains Smalls, who now works on people of color issues for Amnesty International's LGBT project. "People were saying, 'You're bringing your heterosexual energy to this.' I felt like I was being policed."
Suddenly, people couldn't understand what it meant for her to be bisexual and dating a man. Didn't she want to sleep with women still? "I would say, 'Well, we're having a monogamous relationship. What does that mean for you?'" Kevin McGruder, director of New York City's Gay Men of African Descent, says the confusion about and reluctance to embrace bisexual people, particularly among black gay men, stems largely from a popular confluence of bisexuals with men who are married or otherwise straight-identified but dating men "on the down low." He said his group has had trouble reaching out to bisexual black men because of this confusion.
"That's a real challenge, because in the gay community some people resent bisexual people," McGruder explains, adding that bisexuals are seen as would-be gays who are clinging to heterosexual privilege. "They're considered just closeted, or they're trying to perpetrate."

Smalls says she has seen much of the same attitude among women. She recalled several occasions when she met a woman who she considered dating, but who rejected her after discovering she is bisexual. Those women, Smalls explains, previously had negative experiences dating women who were simultaneously involved with men as well. "I tell them, you need to think about who you get involved with, not how they identify themselves," she says. "You're choosing to be involved with someone who is already involved."
The alienation of bisexual people has deepened in recent years. Men who operate "on the down low" have been increasingly demonised in both the gay and straight black community as public health officials have determined them to be a high risk group for contracting HIV - and for subsequently infecting both their male and female sexual partners. But McGruder and Farajaje agree that many of these closeted men, whether they be potentially gay or potentially bisexual, are provided too many compelling reasons by the gay community to remain in hiding. McGruder argues that the black gay community needs to do more to create an environment of support for people questioning their sexual identity. "If we are criticising men who are married and dealing with men, what are we offering?" he asks. "We have to acknowledge that we have work to do in terms of creating an environment where people feel they can grow, be in supportive relationships and be supported by their community."
Moreover, he adds, those who have in fact come to consider themselves bisexual are similarly encouraged to maintain a straight public persona. "I think people are ambivalent about identifying themselves in that way because they get criticism from gay and lesbian people and from heterosexual people." Which is why, Farajaje hastens to point out, just as many bisexual people live in gay closets, as he once did. "There's an erasure of bisexual people that goes on," he says. "A lot of people will go to events and simply pass as lesbian or gay." And, he adds, the notion that he is clinging to heterosexual privilege is ridiculous given the way the black community understands bisexuality. He argues that bi people are either dismissed as gay or looked upon as deceptive and promiscuous. Smalls notes that when she came out as bisexual to her parents, they told her they would prefer she be gay. "They think that it means I'm a slut," she explains.
Both believe the real issue is deeper than any given sexual identity. Rather, they say, the gay and straight black community's difficulty understanding and accepting bisexual people is part of the community's larger trouble with having active discussions about sexuality. "We don't really give ourselves an opportunity to explore sexuality. We just take on what's assigned to us," Smalls argues, pointing to the hyper-masculine aesthetic of the black male. "We've been so sexualised as a people that we don't feel comfortable articulating sexuality." But many black lesbians and gay people feel that is exactly why it's important for them to develop explicitly gay identities and challenge the larger community to consider their worth. Weaving in a bisexual identity only complicates the matter. And, some argue, it is ultimately up to bisexual people to similarly develop and vocalise their own explicit identity.
A number of black gay male activists have recently been meeting to come up with a national strategy and vehicle for articulating such a gay male identity within the black community, and thereby drawing attention to the challenges and issues they face. Earl Fowlkes, a lead organiser of Washington, D.C.'s Black Pride festival, is among that group. He says the group discussed whether to include advocacy for bisexual men or "men who have sex with men" - as public health officials have termed men who identify as straight but still engage in sex with other men. "We made a specific decision to continue to go as a gay black consortium," Fowlkes says. "Black gay men don't have a voice, so I can certainly appreciate the disillusionment the bisexual community feels. But part of that is they have to put their issues up front."
In her work for Amnesty International's OutFront program, where she assesses activism gaps Amnesty can fill in gay communities of color, Smalls has been looking for an outlet to build just this sort of bisexual advocacy and visibility. She's found little so far. However, she notes, her office hopes to eventually ally with organisations such as the National Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organisation, which is actively involved in bi-advocacy, and Bi-Network, which is cultivating a people of color caucus.
But on a more personal level, she stresses, both gay and straight black people are going to have to learn that there's more to the world of sexuality than they're willing to understand today. And until they become accepting of that idea, there's always going to be tension. "If I'm with a man the rest of my life," she lectures, "I'm still going to be bisexual. If I'm with a woman the rest of my life, I'm still going to be bisexual. It's very uncomfortable for both straight and gay people to hear that."
These are good articles I have found that deal with LGBT black issues. Jay