Introduction to a Developing Essay

We continue to critically interrogate the cyber world, as we search for visuals that can potentially provide connectivity between the “cyber” and the “real,” furthering our understanding of how this relationship reinforces and transforms inequality.The cyber-world has actively participated in the blueprinting of Queer life;what seemed to be utopia at first, has turned into the producer of misguided digital narratives that provide the fundamental pedagogy on what and who Queer is. The cyber-world has been perceived to be a judge-free community where many closeted and non-closeted Queers explore sexuality with out the gaze of a normative society. With the growing epidemic of cyber hate, and the extreme degradation of Queerness through technological invention, we conclude, that in fact, this is a myth.

Russell K. Robinson, professor of law at UCLA, informs us in his essay, “Structural Dimensions of Romantic Preference” on “the impact of structural conditions on preference regarding intimacy.” He suggests that our “preferences” regarding intimacy are imaginations and not natural or fixed desires. Robinson examines a number of romantic “market” places(dating sites, hook-up sites);one of his claims is that the representation of gay men of color on these sites is for the most part a commodified and racialized imagination. As we translate these representations into “real” life, we see that Queer men are forced to conform: “.. in predominantly white and gay romantic marketplaces, men of color are forced to conform to certain racialized sex roles, such as the “aggressive Black top, and the submissive Asian bottom”

I wish to further extend Robinson’s claim by suggesting that pornography has served as one of the major cyber producers of these racialized images. In my recent research on black male subjectivity, it is impossible to escape the visual of the “aggressive top” in pornographic narratives. I have even began to notice that more often than not, when two men of color are the visual, the darker one is “on top.” I can hear bell hooks saying that this explicitly illustrates that societies’ antipathy for dark men of color is greater than their antipathy of men of color in general.

I define this process through the following language: The Black Male subject in interracial gay pornography is an archetype;he is constructed through a process of dehumanization -- further producing a digital narrative that is replicated in the everyday performance of gay sexuality.

Sites such as Its Gunna' Hurt and Blacks on Boys are not only popular, but consumption of interracial pornography is ever growing. In terms of analysis, I fundamentally rebuke the idea that any analysis of power can emerge from the “top/bottom” invention. That some how, if the man of color is on “top,” some type of overcoming of racism is occurring. I would argue that in fact, the white man remains in power. Through a process of dehumanization, the weapon that administers pain becomes the subject -- the black penis.

After the dehumanization process has been played out by a white supremacist tradition, we begin to see the destructive trends of capitalism suggest the socioeconomic slavery status of men of color. A majority of these disturbing narratives depict a poor black men. The trend of ghettoizing pornographic plots is everywhere; in many instances the black man walks into the room, fucks the white man, and walks out. He is wearing urban-style clothing, and the suggestion of lower-class status is either explicitly or implicitly suggested. One might ask why in a video about “sex,” these types of issues would even be narrated? To me, they are crucial in the context of white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, as they suggest neo-colonial and profoundly imperial implications of the social condition of race.

The slave/master relationship is reinforced though the use of pornographic narrative; colonizing black sexuality is essential for the sustainability of white supremacy and the perpetual destruction of the black male subject.

The most disturbing of all is that this dehumanizing narrative is replicated in the performance of sexuality. We experience Queer dating sites where people are requesting “a black top,” or suggesting that their primary interest is “ethnic men.” Queer men of color are socially forced to conform to these racialized sex roles. While we assume that whiteness is not “ethnic,” and that whiteness only needs to practice sex; Practice sex in the purest of ways – free from implications. Queer men of color are not only forced to practice a political sexuality, but one that is fabricated and fundamentally unauthentic.