Gender : Navigating Masculinity

For those of you who have worked with me you know that I am constantly talking about 'gender' as a concept. The harm that our gender binary culture can create and ways that we can overcome this harm. Below is an article written by Kai Green on the website 'Everday Feminism' that is interesting reading. Kai particularly discusses navigating masculinity as a black transman. CLICK HERE

to read the full article.

“Straighten out your wrist, Brotha!” When my boxing coach yelled these words, I knew his call was about more than perfecting my jab.

I have experienced the demands of Black masculinity and the responses to my failure to perform properly are not alI that different from the experiences of failed masculinity that I felt within Black lesbian communities. 

But it is true, I am now a young Black American Male. People usually assume that I am somewhere between the age of 15 and 20. I’m 28.

The world is unkind to Black bois. The world is unkind to Black girls. But the way our gendered bodies are policed is different. Black bois are assumed thugs, thieves, rapists, and overly aggressive.

I knew this already, but I feel it more now like when I got kicked out of a Hollywood store because the owner assumed I was there to steal something.

He didn’t just make that assumption. This white man came over and hovered over me yelling for me to get out and to never return because “he knew my kind.”

I spoke calmly, but he kept yelling. I couldn’t help but think this man can’t see or hear me.

He could only see what he believed to be true about young black bois, and it didn’t matter who I was, who I had been, or who I might become. My future and past were predetermined in his mind.

I was the dangerous body that needed to be policed.