Pumps, Lipstick & Swagger: Gender & Sexuality at Morehouse

Pumps, Lipstick & Swagger: Gender & Sexuality at Morehouse
by Stephane Dunn | TheLoop21

I realized I’d walked into an unusual hot, personal debate soon as I approached my 1:00 p.m. afternoon class. I hardly cleared the door before my excited students begin practically yelling at me indignantly, "Have you seen it? You see how they representin’ us?" “It” was a new story in a former iconic outlet of hip-hop journalism, Vibe magazine.

Can a man of Morehouse be gay? Absolutely. But can he be a woman? Meet the plastics.

That’s one of the leading lines in the latest, almost infamous expose on Morehouse College’s gay and cross dressing “subgroups.” It immediately made my blood pressure rise. I am a woman, who works and walks around campus whose professor status and sometimes deceptive appearance grant me a degree of invisibility. Words like “bitch” are not rare in the passing conversations of men in reference to some of the Daisy Duke wearing women they see or in general reference to the Spelman women across the way.

Just yesterday, I overheard two students having a familiar conversation about the wayward, materialistic, cunning ways of these “hoes” out here. Other times, I’ve seen young men shoot a killing look at some high heel wearing, sashaying fellow diva student or even heard them mutter "faggot"—loudly, as if the very sight was a personal affront.

So I immediately thought that the opening tagline [of the Vibe article] absolutely personifies what’s wrong with not only this sensationalist story, but with too many of the recent public discussions regarding issues of sexuality within African American communities.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

The 'Mean Girls" of Morehouse?

Can a Man of Morehouse Be Gay? Absolutely. But Can He Be a Woman?

Diamond Martin Poulin, 20, teetering in strappy sandals with three-inch heels, steps into an eclectic clothing boutique in Little Five Points, a quaint cluster of shops and restaurants two and a half miles outside of downtown Atlanta. “Ooooh,” squeals Diamond. “What about this?” Holding up a white floor-skimming skirt with an eyelet hem, he swoons. The proprietor of the store looks up at Diamond, does a double take, and immediately picks up the cordless phone at the register. “There’s a man in here with heels on!” she whispers loudly into the phone. Diamond raises his eyebrows and continues browsing the racks. He shrugs when asked if the comment bothers him. “Isn’t it true?” he says, chuckling. “There is a man in here with heels on.”

Nibbling on sushi later that day, Diamond explains why he left after one year at Morehouse. A bastion for producing leaders in politics, community service and medicine, Morehouse College has long been viewed as the ultimate HBCU for young Black men, who are conferred with the mystique of being “Men of Morehouse.” Established in 1867 in Augusta, Georgia, as the Augusta Institute, the school counts such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr.; financier Reginald E. Davis; School Daze writer/director Spike Lee; the late Keith “Guru” Elam of Gang Starr; and the late Def Jam exec Shakir Stewart among its graduates.

That pedigree is what brought Diamond (pictured left) to Morehouse, but he says the school’s social conservatism drove him out. In October of last year, the Morehouse College administration announced a new “appropriate attire policy.” The dress code stated that students, referred to as “Renaissance Men,” were not allowed to wear caps, do-rags, sunglasses or sagging pants on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events. But what raised most eyebrows was the rule about women’s clothing: no wearing of dresses, tops, tunics, purses or pumps.

The new dress code resulted in a flurry of media coverage, prompting Dr. William Bynum, Jr., vice president for Student Services, to release a statement to several news outlets: “We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” During a recent visit to the campus, the poet Saul Williams wore a skirt in solidarity.

“Morehouse wasn’t ready for me,” says Diamond, who has the word “unbreakable” tattooed on his collarbone and the acronym C.R.E.A.M (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” coined by rap group Wu Tang Clan) wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m about freedom of expression. I’m about being whomever you truly are inside. I came to Morehouse because of all the historical leaders that attended and impacted the world so heavily. You know, I really wanted to follow in their footsteps. I don’t think Morehouse believes that someone like me—someone who wears heels and dresses—can uphold that reputation. But they’re wrong.”

Read the Full Essay @ Vibe Magazine

"Queer Eye for the Black Guy"

"Queer Eye For the Black Guy"
by Regina Barnett

"Don't Laugh, America." --Rollo (The Cleveland Show)

So, this is not a note to diss The Cleveland Show. As a matter of fact, I could have spearheaded the initiative for Cleveland (from Family Guy fame) to get his own show. I was ecstatic! Needless to say, last night’s episode, “A Brown Thanksgiving,” shot down the last shreds of my optimism. What started as a parody of Tyler Perry ended up a nightmare and a re-entrenchment of whiteness and its influence on black manhood.

Dominant culture’s obsession with black masculinity in American popular culture is certainly not a new phenomenon. The often grotesque fascination with not only the physical body but what the body represents – hypersexuality, menacing intentions, and the straight up “bad nigger” – are often the consumptive domain for many black male characters on television. Cleveland Brown, however, goes in the opposite direction; he’s lovable, goofy, and downright non-threatening. One could argue that he is the reconstruction of an Uncle Tom or Coon figure seen so often in minstrel shows at the end of the nineteenth and early 20th centuries.

What strikes me as odd about Cleveland, however, is his laughing in awkward situations when, say, expressions of anger, frustration, or despair would be more cognitively appropriate. Whether intentionally done by the producers or not, what is highlighted is a lack of available discourse for black men to relay a healthy emotional response to crisis-moments. If Cleveland were a real person, he’d have hypertension, high blood pressure, and a zero chance of making it to retirement age. He’d also be in line for going postal. Indeed, Chris Rock used to joke that white folks were afraid of the wrong Negroes. The visibly hostile black men were virtually harmless, Rock quipped, compared to those unassuming and genuflecting, old black men that white folks always see as fun-loving and easy-going. Rock reported that underneath all of those toothy grins and warm handshakes were some of the bitterest, white-folk-hating black men on the planet.

Chris Rock’s observations aside, Cleveland’s laugh is especially prevalent in this episode of The Cleveland Show. The central focus is Auntie Mama, the matriarch figure of Cleveland’s wife Donna. Voiced by Kym Whitley, who is often the sexual Jezebel in most of her performances (which is a discussion for another day) Auntie Mama excuses her sexually explicit actions with “I’m Outrageous!” This is a double entendre – outrageous as in shock value and outrageous as in “I’m offensive and exaggerated.” She is literally sketched like an animated Muh Dear – grey hair, big breasted, and big boned. In short, Auntie Mama refigures black womanhood and black women’s sexuality. While she appears to be a 2009 Mammy figure, she laces her verbal exchanges with sexual escapades with various men. Off the rip, Auntie Mama could be Madea’s folk. Tyler Perry’s wildly popular envision of the strong black matriarch, Madea too distances herself from the traditional mammy caricature with sexual innuendos, a piece, and a girdle.

In similar fashion to Perry, Auntie Mama’s character is the matriarch of the family, portrayed as the savior figure of the black family. And, in similar fashion, both characters are men dressed in drag. The question begs to be asked: is the queering of the black male body in this episode a backdoor way – pun intended – for black men to affirm normative black manhood on the figurative backs of pathologized black women characters?

Read the Full Essay @ Nation of Cowards

Crisis in the Village? The Morehouse Dress Code

Crisis in the Village? The Morehouse College Dress Code

Mark Anthony Neal of NewBlackMan is joined by David Ikard (Florida State University), Simone Drake (Ohio State University) and Jeffrey McCune (University of Maryland) in a discussion of the Morehouse College Dress Code.

Listen HERE

Issues Beyond the Morehouse College Dress Code

Morehouse’s Crossroads Has Nothing To Do With ‘Ghetto Gear’ or Cross-Dressing
by Frank Leon Roberts

The conversation regarding the new dress-code policy at Morehouse College has been hijacked by a vociferous gang of socially conservative black pundits: some of them simply politically misguided, others merely proud homophobes; a few of them the ideological love-children of Ward Connerly and Bill Cosby. In the short week and a half since I became the first writer to report the news of Morehouse’s new policy, the college has become the subject of an intensifying national debate regarding the role that style plays in producing (or constraining) black male substance.

By now, there is no need to explain what went “down” at Morehouse. You already know. But while you may have already heard the details of Morehouse’s new “no grills or purses” policy, it’s quite possible that you have yet to hear an impassioned defense of grillz and purses in the spirit of Morehouse’s most illustrious progenitors.

There are those who have argued that it is inappropriate to incite a national public dialogue about what’s happening at a private, independently funded college. In the blogosphere, there have been comments in recent days such as “What goes on at Morehouse is a private affair between its students, alumni and administrators. There is nothing illegal about a private school enforcing a dress code. Any student who is unhappy with the dress code has the liberty to leave.”

These voices are misguided and unsophisticated. Morehouse College is much more than simply a “private institution;” it is a black cultural pillar. In other words, the institution we call “Morehouse” is quite similar to the institution we call “the black church.” One does not have to be a member of these institutions in order to be affected by what goes on within their walls. Given Morehouse’s stature as a historical pillar, all African-American men (not just those who are students or alumni of the institution) have an ethical obligation to contribute to this national dialogue about the politics of the college’s policies—especially in instances where it promotes a climate of rampant anti-ghetto-culture classism and femiphobia.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root.com