01. Lesbians Love Beyoncé
I can confirm
Happy Pride Month everyone! Welcome to my first Substack post! This is going to be kinda long since it’s an accumulation of several thoughts from the past few weeks. They’ll get shorter, I promise. Since today is the first day of Pride Month, I’m going to share my queerest thoughts as of recently.
I love Pride Month. Every time June comes around, I feel so much lighter and happier. Trust and believe my queerness is very present in me 24/7, 365 days a year and has been since I was 8 years old but during Pride Month, I do feel more in tune with my queerness and I’m sure that’s the same for many other queer people, too. I think this month brings the best out of us and offers us safety in numbers to be ourselves. It just makes me so content to see queer people living their lives queer and free!
But…I know this year will be more tense than recent years. The amount of anti-trans and anti-drag legislation lately has been so scary. It truly feels like this country is regressing. It also seems like nobody in our government has the backbone to do what it takes to protect queer people. I think of my friends and my family and myself and the troubles we might face just trying to be ourselves. The thing about us though is I know we have support and safety within each other. It’s the children and people who are completely isolated, in queerphobic environments, or they’re just scared to come out (because they have every reason to be) that I worry for the most. I know that for me, if it weren’t for a few openminded elementary school friends, I probably never would’ve fully discovered myself or that who I am is okay. It breaks my heart that not everyone has or had that. For some of you, reading this right now is the first time you’ve ever been aware of my sexuality so I guess this is my coming out to you, but that’s the least interesting thing I want to discuss with you in this post.
The majority of this post will be about what it means to be a Black queer woman. If you’ve been on my close friends list on Instagram for a while now, you know I’ve talked about Whitney Houston and Raven-Symoné lately and I’m going to talk about them again right now for anybody who wasn’t present for those words:
Raven-Symoné became known to me growing up in different characters such as Olivia, Nebula, Raven Baxter, and Galleria. Who would I be without those last two roles? As Raven Baxter in That’s So Raven, Raven-Symoné gave me and the audience of Disney Channel its first live-action show with a Black female lead. For a long time that was the only Black female representation on television that I had and Raven was DAZZLING! Raven Baxter was funny, stylish and I really resonated with her and I know millions of other Black girls did, too. She did the same thing as Galleria Garibaldi in The Cheetah Girls where she led a fierce girl group for two movies. She was just so powerful in everything she did. I admired her immensely as a kid. The reason I brought Raven up in this post is because a few years ago, I found out she’s gay and she’s been aware of her sexuality since the beginning of her Disney days. Now just sit with that for a minute while I talk about Whitney Houston.
Whitney Houston was such a special person and truly a one of a kind talent. Recently I was told to watch her new biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, on Netflix and very quickly while watching, viewers find out Whitney was bisexual. She had a female lover at the start of her career and because of pressure from her parents and religion, she and her lover were forced to breakup. After watching the biopic and doing some light reading, it seems that Whitney had a lot of internalized homophobia within her. She felt ashamed of her queer feelings and I completely understand. She was already struggling so much just being a Black woman in the spaces she was in and adding queerness on top of that…I know it was a lot.
With Whitney Houston and Raven Symone, I can’t help but to think about how different life for them and all of us would be if they were allowed to express their queerness during the height of their careers. What if society had progressed enough that Whitney Houston could’ve been the superstar she was with a girlfriend and Raven-Symoné could’ve been gay on Disney Channel? I believe Whitney would possibly be alive today if she wasn’t forced to turn to men and specifically a man who abused her and then encouraged her drug use. This is what we mean when we say homophobia kills. Then with Raven, I just think about what that would have done for me as a kid to see a Black, gay, young, female actress completely dominating the television network my life revolved around. Raven-Symoné’s work is invaluable to me as it is but it’s that queer part of her identity that was hidden for so long that could’ve done so much for me and others. I wish she didn’t have to hide that for as long as she did. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from both of these women it’s that we need to make space for Black women and girls to be queer.
Black women and girls go through so much. SO MUCH! I don’t think I will ever be able to fully express the entirety of that and even if I could, if you’re not a Black girl or woman, you’re never going to understand. Sometimes with my queerness, it just sits there, I’m not going to lie. At this point of my life that part of my identity has caused me the least amount of pain because me being just gay and femme, it’s not something I have to wear on my sleeve the same as I have to wear my Blackness. I don’t like that. I don’t like that I feel as if my queerness is smaller than my Blackness because they’re both so me. You want to know something? I get offended when people assume I’m straight. I hate it. A part of me that is just so me isn’t showing up at all for some people. What do I do about that? I don’t want to change myself or my appearance. Do I need to wear rainbows all the time? Just being a Black girl and minding my business has already led to intense vulnerability and tears so would I even be able to handle the entire world seeing me as queer too? I don’t know.
I love Janelle Monae. A few years ago I swore I’d marry Janelle Monae if the chance ever arose. A few weeks ago Janelle Monae released their “Lipstick Lover” music video and I saw a clip of the video when scrolling on Instagram and I instantly froze. I was hypnotized. I remember snapping out of it and being like “Woah.” I went about my day for a while and then there came the Internet being the Internet. In came the dumbest discourse around Janelle Monae and this music video. “Since when is Janelle Monae gay?” “Janelle Monae is showing off their body?” “Janelle Monae is sexual?” Everybody shut up. All they did was make a hot gay music video for hot gay people. If you’re not a hot gay person then what is all the chatter for? Why can’t gay people enjoy things in peace? Janelle Monae isn’t doing any of this for you, they’re doing it for me! Just kidding, but not everything a person does needs to have an explanation for nosy inquiring minds.
My least favorite thing about Black femme-ness is being constantly critiqued. Everything has to be an investigation and everything we do has to make sense to people I personally wouldn’t let touch me with a ten foot pole or spit on if they were on fire. There’s a quote, my favorite quote, by Solange Knowles and it says, “I feel a lot of freedom in not having to choose to exist as one.” This quote has stuck with me since I first read it in 2020 because it’s just about everyday that I get met with something real or something stupid where I wonder why is it that Black women and femmes just can’t exist? Why are we the ones that can’t grow and change and find ourselves? Janelle Monae goes from being covered head to toe in suits to having their bare tiddies out and people demand to know why. Who cares? Is Janelle or any other Black femme or woman not allowed to grow and change? Why is it that we’re stuck being perceived just one way and we have to fight to express ourselves any differently? Why is it that who we are has to make sense to others or it’s just not valid? I could go on and on because this irks me to no end but I’ll leave it here for now. I’ll definitely come back to it again and again because it’s everyday. Two days ago it was Megan Thee Stallion daring to date somebody new. Yesterday it was Lizzo daring to be comfortable while fat. At what point does society stop making the expression of Black women something that needs approval?
But anyway…I’m so excited to see what Janelle Monae has coming. I am ready to accept them and consume them in any way they would like to share themselves. I just want to sit back and appreciate a Black femme making Black femme art because rarely do we get to have that. I just wish everyone else would do the same. I’m sure Janelle Monae wants us to have thought provoking conversations about queer expression with gender identity and sexuality, but now we got a bunch of men sexualizing them and women saying they’re selling their body so…lovely. Maybe society will progress one day.
I want to take a second to talk about Renaissance and what Beyoncé has done with that album. I had been waiting for Beyoncé to release a new album for years and never ever did I think the album would be gay. I love Renaissance. This album makes my heart happy. Beyoncé has gotten criticism for making artwork dealing in communities she’s not directly apart of which I think is a more than fair criticism, however Beyoncé has acted as a bridge for so many different communities. I would argue that she might be the most influential Black person on the planet so her centering HBCUs, Africa, and the LGBTQIA+ community in her work has forced so many people to pay attention to those communities. I truly think this is where a valid conversation of appropriation vs appreciation comes in because with those things, I feel like it’s really appreciation. I see her centering those groups, not herself. I also feel like she has spent twenty years building up herself and now she wants to give to others. I’ve seen so much beauty and community-building from this album and I’m so glad she went with it. No one else was going to bring this many Black queer people together. I’m going to see her on tour in Atlanta in August and thinking about it makes my heart want to explode. It’s not just because I’m seeing my favorite artist live, but it’s because Atlanta is the Black queer capital of the south and my southern Black queen is hosting a pride party for 60k of us. I’m never going to experience anything like that again. I just think about a stadium full of queer people of color doing the “Heated” chant, the “Alien Superstar” intro, and ALL of “Pure/Honey” together and I just know it’s going to be one of the best nights of my life to be surrounded by such unapologetic queerness. Before this album, I never would’ve thought Beyoncé would be the one to give me that. I didn’t even think it was possible to have that…but I have always been a very lucky girl.
[NOT IN VOICEOVER, SORRY] Something I am very worried about is in what capacity Beyoncé will be able to do the show in certain states that have anti-trans and anti-drag legislation because her dancers and audience are queer and specifically trans people of color. The show is just very Black/Brown and queer. I just pray that as the tour gets to America and moves around the country that everyone remains safe. Beyoncé said at her show last night in London that, “This show is about being free. Y’all are free. Y’all are safe. We are all safe.” Her saying those words and creating these spaces of queer community and safety means so much to me. I really really hope she can ensure that for the rest of the tour. This country is just really scary right now.
Well that’s everything I had to say!
Happy Pride!
Listening to Janelle Monet’s album had me thinking the entire time-- this is renaissance but made by a queer person for queer people-- this is what I meant when I felt weird with the way we’re gassing up Beyoncé for making a profit off of gay influences and culture. Beyoncé’s renaissance can be an homage and it can be important (and it can slap-- which it does), but there’s something that it will never fully have as compared to a work like Janelle Monet’s The Age of Pleasure, and that’s actually being explicitly for, about, and by the LGBTQ+ community.