Now, months after having the scene permanently seared in my memory, I decided to do a Google search on it as I was reminded of it while processing an experience I just had witnessing a couple white women in academia overtly pathologizing and literally labeling a young black woman as aggressive. Your article came up twice in the top 7 google hits, and was EXACTLY what I needed. Your reference to “Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships” was enormously helpful. I was mulling over how to call these white women out, and help them see & understand what they were doing in a way they might actually get, and now I have just the text and entrance point. Perfect! Thank you!! I will be back to your site. ☺

I’ve never processed this with anyone, and came across your site when I was googling the subject just now, months after having the scene permanently seared in my brain, because of an experience I just had where a young African American woman was pathologized and literally labeled too aggressive with potentially devastating consequences.

The reference you link – Between voice and silence: women and girls, race and relationship – could not be more pertinent to my situation, and exactly the type of credentialed text I need in order to be able to make my point heard by some white women doing the labeling.

Re: GLEE

I have some thoughts about your question: “Would it be harder for the show to have a gay character who looked and acted more like a “conventional” guy? Why does Kurt have to be, well, so gay?”

As a gay man, I am actually tired of media representations of us as ‘conventional’ and ‘just like any other guy’.

Yes, some of us are ‘conventional’ (also known as ‘straight-acting’ in our community – which has its own problems, but I digress). But the reality is that many of us are flaming, effeminate, or just plain gay-acting. And I’m sick of progressives thinking that the only way for people to accept us is to have us portrayed just like any other guy.

It would be like saying that racialized people need to be portrayed just like white people in the media in order to be accepted, instead of acknowledging the differences in culture and life experience that are influenced by race.

Portraying us all as the same doesn’t contribute to building tolerance for gay folks, or to knock down the underpinnings of homophobia (which are often rooted in strict gender roles and misogyny).

If anything it just reinforces internalized homophobia in gay folks, who often feel that the only way people will accept us is if we stop acting, well — so gay!

Let’s stop telling people it’s okay to be gay because it’s not different, and instead tell people that it’s okay to be different.