Homosexuality And Gender Stereotypes In The Negro Community

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Why would God make one an outcast in their own home? This is a question that must truly plague the GLBTQ community, just as it did DuBois in regard to the Negro community. Much like DuBois writes of how the African American wishes only to be Negro and American (DuBois 1903), members of the GLBTQ community wish only to be true to themselves and American, equally accepted into the society in which they dwell. Being a member of the GLBTQ community is being a minority no matter your race. Even for those that can physically identify with the, as DuBois called it, “white world”. Homosexuality and gender identification is its own intersection, which affects everyone regardless of group.
For many members of the GLBTQ community there is an implied pressure to …show more content…

When someone violates these norms they are often policed more stringently than one that does not. Society has constructed this very set guideline of gender norms, and linked it directly to sex, any deviation from this norm makes people uncomfortable. Drawing clear differentiations between items, such as sex, is something that allows people the comfort of expectation. So, when a member of a certain group, such as a white male, violates gender norms by being a homosexual male he is policed. However, he would be policed less than an effeminate homosexual male, because the effeminate male violates the norm to a more severe degree in the eyes of society. This likens itself to the experience of DuBois in how people outside of the community approach the issue halfheartedly, with sidestepped statements such as “I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville” (DuBois 1903). Those these statements are in a sense ignorantly compassionate, they are an indirect way of saying “how does it feel to be a problem?” (Dubois 1903). When the individual violates the norm to a lesser degree they are viewed as less of a

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