I’d been, I think, long attracted to men. To my white classmates. That was obvious to me. Though growing up in an era that was extremely racist and in the most marginalized corners of France, to acknowledge this attraction to them would have been an act of pure masochism.
I was a homophobe for a long time, too long in fact for my own mental health and I am still undoubtedly too transphobic for my own good. In debates, on social medias, at conferences, I must repeatedly listen to people, sometimes black people, “lecture” on black homophobia, black sexism, west-indian sexism, etc.
Black men were more complicated since they weren’t so many of them where I grew up. Very early on I was ob*** sessed with black men – I searched them out wherever I How worthy is my own experience? could. On the television. In the streets. I was fascinated My cousin. by their bodies, etc. This was really a quest for a role model, for sure. Some fresh air of negritude in this hostile and white world. And also out of desire, which took me a while, a long while, to admit to myself.
My brother, with whom I shared the same education and yet accepts without any judgment that I dress in women’s clothes without knowing how far I can take it. He sharesfreely his own attraction to other men.
Then when I moved in the city and began meeting more black men, and it was always in contexts that were extremely masculine and heterosexual, except for the usual and acceptable homeopathic dose of “homo-socializing”.
My old west-indian aunt in a Parisian suburb, who despite a lifetime of anti-gay and anti-trans indoctrination, now is a spokesperson for gay and trans rights, and who believes that what matters is self-acceptance above all else. When I visit her, I must watch with her, awful reality shows filled with tearful coming out stories.
I have always lived my love life as a straight man and it is still the case today. I learned after a lot of shed tears and a lot of denial, to finally accept that I desired men and to embrace this desire.
My lesbian cousin in Guadeloupe. Whom I adore. Through her experience, even if I wanted, I couldn’t ignore the bigotry against lesbians and gays there. When she hears my troubles and my questions, she tells
The rest of the story…. I cross-dress regularly, but it’s neither for fun nor entertainment. Very often it turns into an obsessive habit of wanting to transition. And then into despair in realizing how old I already am to do so. And I’m disheartened by all the time it took me to accept that I’m half white. I grew up in France, raised by a black Caribbean mother who paid a high price for the illusion that the white French patriarchy was somehow better than the west-indian patriarchy. My emotional and physical development was sabotaged by attacks from my father’s notions of race and gender. My WHITE. FRENCH father. In the white society where I grew up. 48
LGBTQI Afro-Caribbean
that she’d often thought that I was gay and says that if I decide to transition, I could come join her in the camp of outcasts of our Caribbean family. She says it with laughter. She hopes for it too. I know that the isolation makes her suffer. ***
Issue 9, June 2014