"Malcolm X was bisexual. Get over it." A most provocative headline from the Guardian during Black History Month in the UK. About the writer, one BB commenter responds, "The thought of actually having a black LGBT person talk about black LGBT issues never crossed the Guardian's mind?"
"Malcolm X was bisexual. Get over it."
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"Malcolm X was bisexual. Get over it."
"Malcolm X was bisexual. Get over it." A most provocative headline from the Guardian during Black History Month in the UK. About the writer, one BB commenter responds, "The thought of actually having a black LGBT person talk about black LGBT issues never crossed the Guardian's mind?"... More.
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Never heard that. Interesting. Is it actually true?
According to that article, it seems more accurate to say "Malcolm X Was a Male Sex Worker During His Pre-Islam, Junky/Petty Criminal Days."
To be fair, the same article calls Greg Louganis a "prominent black LGBT." Huh?
Greg Louganis was part Samoan, I suppose that could be considered black but the few Samoans i've known take offense to being called black.
Message slightly marred by it coming out of the mouth of Peter Thatchell, a man not exactly enamoured by most LGBT people of colour because of his limelight-stealing, litigation happiness, paternalism and strange attitude towards muslims and Jamaicans.
The thought of actually having a black LGBT person talk about black LGBT issues never crossed the Guardian's mind?
I'd never heard of it until now so there was nothing to get over. Now that I have heard it, there still isn't anything to get over because I couldn't care less which gender(s) Malcolm X wanted to or did have sex with.
The only thing I wish anyone would get over with is telling me what to get over with.
I think those who are supposed to get over it are the black community who deny that he was bisexual, as if this would have anything to do with what he did as an activist.
The solitary source that the author gives for this claim is one book published in 1992 that no one has ever heard of. This seems odd.
because I couldn't care less which gender(s) Malcolm X wanted to or did have sex with.
C'mon. This seems simplistic and silly. You don't think a black Muslim civil rights pioneer being bisexual adds an incredibly interesting dimension to an already interesting figure and cultural story?
the few Samoans i've known take offense to being called black
Well, if you were from Nebraska, would you like to be included on a list of prominent Floridians? If you were Yemeni, would you like to be included on a list of prominent Paraguayans?
Greg Louganis is of Samoan and Swedish descent, and was raised by Greek-American adoptive parents. Samoa is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sweden is in Northern Europe. Samoans are Polynesian. Swedes are white. Samoans are not black, and neither are Swedes.
If this article can't get that right, it casts aspersions on their other claims. And in any case, even if Malcolm X was bisexual, that was never a part of his activism.
The problem we're running into here, of course, is that in more than a few dialects of English, "black" as a human skin color apparently covers anything from a sort of pale cafe-o-lait color which is frankly lighter skinned than some "white" folks from sunny areas, all the way down to an extremely dark blue-brown-black color.
Sometimes the speaker means "and also looks vaguely like they might be descended from someone from Africa in the last 500 years or so", sometimes they don't, which continues to muddy the waters.
Native Australian aborigines are ethnically Polynesian like Samoans, but are still referred to as "black", whether they want to be or not.
I guess the long and the short of it is that humans are really stupid when it comes to race.
I agree that humans are really stupid when it comes to race. Sometimes it makes me take offense to being called human.
Jerril --- I see what you're saying about the non-specificity of the term "black." There's "black" meaning "has ancestors who lived in sub-Saharan Africa at the beginning of the 15th century or so" and there's "black" meaning any one of the peoples of the world generally characterized by dark skin and kinky hair. The thing is, though, that this category --- Australian Aborigines, Melanesians, Papuans, etc. --- doesn't even really cover Samoans. Polynesians (including Samoans) are an Austronesian people whom one can trace back to Indonesia and Malaysia, and ultimately back to, suprisingly, Taiwan. Their skin tone is generally more in the "olive" range and their hair is of medium coarseness, generally more wavy than kinky.
They are not particularly closely related to the Australians, Papuans, or Melanesians (who are, in turn, not particularly closely related to the people of sub-Saharan Africa, despite some superficial resemblances).
The only thing I wish anyone would get over with is telling me what to get over with.
Amen.
The only thing I wish anyone would get over with is telling me what to get over with.
Um,... get over it?
Add two more Xs and the gay porn version of his biopic has a ready-made title.
The word "black" is used differently in the UK than it is in the US, for example to describe South Asians, or anyone with non-European ancestry.
Since when? In all the 25-or-so years I spent growing up in the UK, nobody used "black" except to refer to people of African descent.
Perhaps it's a regional thing? I cringe every time my dad refers to "coloureds" but that's plain old ignorance.
The whole issue seems pretty irrelevant to me either way. It doesn't matter if any of those people were gay or straight or bi-sexual (or for some of the people mentioned in the article, black). If being a certain race, religion, orientation, or other group wasn't a part of what their efforts were focused on no one should be focusing on that aspect of their lives now. We should let people's life's work be their legacy and not allow the fact that they happened to belong to a specific group play a imbalanced part in how they are remembered.
Focusing on Malcolm X being bisexual would be like trying to focus on F.D.R. being disabled. He didn't. We shouldn't. Lots of Malcolm X's efforts focused around his being black and his being a muslim, so it makes sense that we shouldn't overlook his specific race and religion, but he didn't really focus on addressing or working on gay issues, so we shouldn't either.
From TFA:
"Right now, there is not a single living black person who is a worldwide household name and who is also openly gay."
RuPaul? Little Richard? Langston Hughes?
Langston is dead, but RuPaul and Little Richard are both still alive right? I mean I only scanned this article, but seeing that line just makes me dismiss everything this idiot wants to state. I'm sure I could think up some other living, gay famous black people, but really...who cares. Also, I'm not a "journalist" so fact checking isn't part of my job.
"Swedes are white. Samoans are not black, and neither are
Swedes."
I´m surprised nobody has reacted to Adamnvillani´s comment. Your mind seems to have stuck in the Middle Ages, man. One of the most famous Swedes I can think of is not exactly "white":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Larsson
Nice try on trying to paint me as a racist, korrontean, but any reasonable person reading my post would know that I was writing of Swedes as an ethnic group, not a nationality. I know who Henrik Larsson is. Nationality-wise, Greg Louganis is American. It's his ethnic background that we're talking about.
Mr Tatchell wants to change the hearts and minds of GB's blacks by identifying one of the black community's most powerful and enduring icons as gay. Fair enough. But something is off-kilter. In Tatchell's original article, Malcolm X's homosexuality is suggested. Tatchell presents it as hearsay and treats it accordingly. Somehow though, without any additional evidence I can see, his latest article states it as fact. And he demands blacks not only accept the fact, but "get over it." What changed between the first article and the second - besides Tatchell's conviction?
Any one else wondering how Malcolm would take to this? Heh.
That being said isn't there an implication in some works that Malcolm's male sex experiences may have been unconsensual? Since when does the sex one has as work or in prison count as one's orientation?
Mea culpa, adamnvillani!
My apologies.
So by ethnic group you don't mean anything relating to culture or shared sense of belonging or identity self-definition, but rather, er, "race".
I think you'll have to give this one one more spin in your head.
This article isn't terribly convincing and seems to be more interested in pushing the writer's own agenda rather than anything else.
As stated in the article itself, Malcolm X had same-sex relations when he was basically turning tricks for money. Is this really bisexuality or just someone willing to do anything to survive and get his fix? Even in the article it admits that afterwards he quit his relationships with men so that doesn't sound he was a true bisexual ie continuing to have same-sex relationships thru-out his life.
As others have mentioned, his activism had nothing to do with his sexuality so he wasn't and isn't some shining beacon for LGBT to graviate towards and glorify any more than J. Edgar Hoover is.
On another note - Greg Louganis? WTF? Do British people call anyone of remotely darker skin black? Considering how pasty many of them are that could be most of the planet.
Jesus H. Christ... I'm talking about anthropologists and biologists doing studies to trace the history of various peoples across the earth and through time. Yes, "ethnic group" is a complex concept, but that's not the point. Reductio-ad-absurda arguments pointing out that everybody traces their history back to Africa eventually duly noted, and getting back to my original point and using your own terms, Greg Louganis shares neither biology, culture, nor a shared sense of belonging or self-identification with black people. He's not black. This is not a statement indicating any kind of positive or negative value judgment, just a matter of fact. The only definition under which Greg Louganis is black is that of a weird, nonstandard, outdated, and Eurocentric British meaning.
I believe he was referencing the stonewall "Some people are gay, get over it" campaign.
http://www.stonewall.org.uk/education_for_all/news/current_news/2043.asp