No Rice, No Curry, No Blacks 2
The Sexual Racism Running Rampant Within The LGBT Community
by Yusuf Tamanna
Side headings, Numbering, underlining, bold print and highlighting by FuelMix:
6. Black Men: Discrimination And Fetishisation
1. A group within the LGBT community which experience both discrimination and fetishisation on gay dating apps emphatically is Black men. The stereotype of the black man being dominant, having an extremely large penis, being rough in bed and borderline aggressive is an idea many users on gay dating apps, adopt and see no problem in enforcing. Even worse than that, there are examples of cases where users on Grindr have called black men then the N-word and likened them to Zoo Monkeys after their advances haven’t been reciprocated. Interesting to note here that such objectification isn’t just at the hands of white gay men, in fact many gay men of colour have been known to fetishize black men in the same way.
2. Black men are objectified from the get-go on gay dating apps and when they challenge the status quo they’re met with derogatory racial insults. Fed up with the constant barrage of ignorant and racially fuelled requests and abuse they get on dating apps; some black men have taken to social media to expose the true extent of what they experience.
3. When I spoke to Derrien, 23 year old, black gay man, he told me, “I’ve stopped posting screenshots (on Twitter) to the same level because I would get people making jokes about it in my Twitter mentions. I would think to myself it’s not funny so you must not be able to empathise for you to laugh about it.”
4. He told me that the reason he started posting screenshots of the messages he would receive on Grindr and Tinder was because, he wanted to see what other people’s reactions would be. He found that many of his own black friends weren’t at all shocked by the messages, as if to ask ‘What do you expect?’. When he would show his non-black friends Derrien told me, “something just wouldn’t compute with them. They would see it and just shrug their shoulders and be like ‘oh… okay.’” But on Twitter Derrien would get private messages from other gay black men sharing their own experiences with him and thanking him for speaking up for gay black men.
5. Sadly, it is an issue that isn’t being addressed or tackled seriously enough by mainstream gay media. You only have to peruse Buzzfeed’s LGBT section to see countless articles in the vain of ’25 Worst Grindr Conversations… And you won’t believe Number 6!’ These articles do little in asking why some users on Grindr think it’s okay to ask a black man ‘Will you be my BBC (Big Black Cock) tonight daddy?’ and instead see it as hilarious internet fodder, and something that those on the receiving end should just laugh about because it’s never that serious.
6. But for Derrien it is that serious, he has even gone as far as to write on his Tinder profile ‘Black men are humans not walking dildos, so treat me accordingly’ in hopes of deterring those who fetishize black men. “Everyone tells me Tinder is not as bad (as Grindr) but it’s just as worse for this sort of thing.” Derrien said. One man, who happened to be White, told him that the issue of other gay men fetishising Black men as just sex objects with large penises and nothing else is ‘only an issue if you make it one.’
7. “If you’re not going to respect me then leave me alone because I don’t need that. It’s not validating and your attention is not flattering to me.” He has reached the stage where seeing ‘No Blacks’ on profiles on Grindr is less likely to offend him but rather help him weed out the bigots amongst the pile. “Have that on your profile. Good! So I can block you and move on with my life. I’m not going to cry about it.”
8. These sentiments that are echoed by Curtis, another gay black man who told me he regularly receives messages from other men on Grindr who are only interested in whether he lives up to the myth of the black man. “Obnoxious questions like ‘How big are you?’ are part of the territory that comes with using apps like Grindr, but I usually just read it and block them.
9. Derrien told me that not everyone has quite reached that stage yet. It takes a long and arduous time to know you are worth more than a means to explore someone’s fetish. This train of thought hasn’t been adopted by all gay BME men who frequent on gay dating apps, with many of them choosing to perpetuate the stereotype put upon them based on their race. For every one BME gay man refusing to be objectified as a fetish or kink, there are two other BME gay men identifying themselves on Grindr as ‘Big Black Cock Tops’ or ‘Rough Dom Arabs’.
10. So that makes me think, how can we as Gay BME men cry foul at the prejudice we experience on apps like Grindr and Tinder, when our very own actively play up to the stereotypes put upon them for validation and attention? It’s like a never-ending vicious cycle.
11. It’s not all bad however, there have been conscious efforts to both address and tackle the problem of sexual racism within the LGBT community. Most recently, RuPaul’s Drag Race finalist Kim-Chi, who is South Korean, used his time on the show to shed light on the racism he experiences both in person and on apps such as Grindr. It’s a step in the right direction but other people think the apps themselves should be doing held accountable for championing change too. Nasir told me, “Apps like Grindr maybe don’t cause racism amongst gays but the way they’re designed does encourage it and they do have a responsibility to make it clear that it isn’t okay”.
12. It’s all very easy for me to sit here, as a South Asian gay man and make claims of racial discrimination within the LGBT community and complaining that they continue to go unchallenged because unless it happens to you, you’re not to know. But when we are telling you about it, don’t just huff and puff and roll your eyes thinking BME gays are just being overly sensitive. More needs to be done to open up a healthy conversation about a whole plethora of problems that plague the LGBT community, because it would be silly of us to think we’re not without our faults. And once that happens perhaps articles like this one, that draw attention to racial discrimination aren’t just seen as niche pieces that only ‘those ethnic gays’ can resonate with.
---"No Rice, No Curry And No Blacks" - The sexual racism running rampant within the LGBT community, Yusuf Tamanna, 1 September 2016, sbs.com.au
6. Black Men: Discrimination And Fetishisation
1. A group within the LGBT community which experience both discrimination and fetishisation on gay dating apps emphatically is Black men. The stereotype of the black man being dominant, having an extremely large penis, being rough in bed and borderline aggressive is an idea many users on gay dating apps, adopt and see no problem in enforcing. Even worse than that, there are examples of cases where users on Grindr have called black men then the N-word and likened them to Zoo Monkeys after their advances haven’t been reciprocated. Interesting to note here that such objectification isn’t just at the hands of white gay men, in fact many gay men of colour have been known to fetishize black men in the same way.
2. Black men are objectified from the get-go on gay dating apps and when they challenge the status quo they’re met with derogatory racial insults. Fed up with the constant barrage of ignorant and racially fuelled requests and abuse they get on dating apps; some black men have taken to social media to expose the true extent of what they experience.
3. When I spoke to Derrien, 23 year old, black gay man, he told me, “I’ve stopped posting screenshots (on Twitter) to the same level because I would get people making jokes about it in my Twitter mentions. I would think to myself it’s not funny so you must not be able to empathise for you to laugh about it.”
4. He told me that the reason he started posting screenshots of the messages he would receive on Grindr and Tinder was because, he wanted to see what other people’s reactions would be. He found that many of his own black friends weren’t at all shocked by the messages, as if to ask ‘What do you expect?’. When he would show his non-black friends Derrien told me, “something just wouldn’t compute with them. They would see it and just shrug their shoulders and be like ‘oh… okay.’” But on Twitter Derrien would get private messages from other gay black men sharing their own experiences with him and thanking him for speaking up for gay black men.
5. Sadly, it is an issue that isn’t being addressed or tackled seriously enough by mainstream gay media. You only have to peruse Buzzfeed’s LGBT section to see countless articles in the vain of ’25 Worst Grindr Conversations… And you won’t believe Number 6!’ These articles do little in asking why some users on Grindr think it’s okay to ask a black man ‘Will you be my BBC (Big Black Cock) tonight daddy?’ and instead see it as hilarious internet fodder, and something that those on the receiving end should just laugh about because it’s never that serious.
6. But for Derrien it is that serious, he has even gone as far as to write on his Tinder profile ‘Black men are humans not walking dildos, so treat me accordingly’ in hopes of deterring those who fetishize black men. “Everyone tells me Tinder is not as bad (as Grindr) but it’s just as worse for this sort of thing.” Derrien said. One man, who happened to be White, told him that the issue of other gay men fetishising Black men as just sex objects with large penises and nothing else is ‘only an issue if you make it one.’
7. “If you’re not going to respect me then leave me alone because I don’t need that. It’s not validating and your attention is not flattering to me.” He has reached the stage where seeing ‘No Blacks’ on profiles on Grindr is less likely to offend him but rather help him weed out the bigots amongst the pile. “Have that on your profile. Good! So I can block you and move on with my life. I’m not going to cry about it.”
8. These sentiments that are echoed by Curtis, another gay black man who told me he regularly receives messages from other men on Grindr who are only interested in whether he lives up to the myth of the black man. “Obnoxious questions like ‘How big are you?’ are part of the territory that comes with using apps like Grindr, but I usually just read it and block them.
9. Derrien told me that not everyone has quite reached that stage yet. It takes a long and arduous time to know you are worth more than a means to explore someone’s fetish. This train of thought hasn’t been adopted by all gay BME men who frequent on gay dating apps, with many of them choosing to perpetuate the stereotype put upon them based on their race. For every one BME gay man refusing to be objectified as a fetish or kink, there are two other BME gay men identifying themselves on Grindr as ‘Big Black Cock Tops’ or ‘Rough Dom Arabs’.
10. So that makes me think, how can we as Gay BME men cry foul at the prejudice we experience on apps like Grindr and Tinder, when our very own actively play up to the stereotypes put upon them for validation and attention? It’s like a never-ending vicious cycle.
11. It’s not all bad however, there have been conscious efforts to both address and tackle the problem of sexual racism within the LGBT community. Most recently, RuPaul’s Drag Race finalist Kim-Chi, who is South Korean, used his time on the show to shed light on the racism he experiences both in person and on apps such as Grindr. It’s a step in the right direction but other people think the apps themselves should be doing held accountable for championing change too. Nasir told me, “Apps like Grindr maybe don’t cause racism amongst gays but the way they’re designed does encourage it and they do have a responsibility to make it clear that it isn’t okay”.
12. It’s all very easy for me to sit here, as a South Asian gay man and make claims of racial discrimination within the LGBT community and complaining that they continue to go unchallenged because unless it happens to you, you’re not to know. But when we are telling you about it, don’t just huff and puff and roll your eyes thinking BME gays are just being overly sensitive. More needs to be done to open up a healthy conversation about a whole plethora of problems that plague the LGBT community, because it would be silly of us to think we’re not without our faults. And once that happens perhaps articles like this one, that draw attention to racial discrimination aren’t just seen as niche pieces that only ‘those ethnic gays’ can resonate with.
---"No Rice, No Curry And No Blacks" - The sexual racism running rampant within the LGBT community, Yusuf Tamanna, 1 September 2016, sbs.com.au
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