American white nationalist websites now sell LGBT pride flags along with the Confederate flag. There are those who only talk about LGBT rights if it is to bash Muslims or migrants as a whole. Muslims are portrayed as an existential threat to gay people, particularly after Orlando. The far-right movements on the march across the western world are consciously trying to co-opt the LGBT rights campaign for their own agenda. Shangela, an actor, tells me that racism from the LGBT community “hurts more because it’s coming from people that I’m meant to share a kinship with”. The least that white LGBT people can do is to reciprocate and confront racism within their own ranks. Many of the rights and freedoms that all LGBT people won were down to the struggles of black and minority ethnic people: at the Stonewall riots, for example, non-white protesters. As Rodriguez puts it, seeing dating app profiles rejecting entire ethnic groups causes “internalised racism, decreased self-esteem and psychological distress.”
While LGBT people are much more likely than heterosexuals to suffer from mental distress, the level is even higher among ethnic minorities. There has been positive change in recent months, one leading black gay journalist tells me, but only because of the work of ethnic minority LGBT individuals “holding magazines to account, setting up their own nights across the scene” and using social media, blogs, podcasts and boycotts to force change. “The gay media is completely whitewashed.” “The only time they would write about people of colour is when they had done something homophobic,” he says. Dean stopped buying mainstream gay magazines two years ago. Historically, they’ve been dominated by white men, have neglected issues of race, and have portrayed white men as objects of beauty. “White LGBTQs who are truly against racism need to step up and take ownership of what is happening in their community,” she writes. After launching a petition against the event, she received threats of violence. The drag act featured “exaggerated neck rolling, finger snapping displays of ‘sassiness’, bad weaves” and other racial stereotypes, she says. When the Royal Vauxhall Tavern – a famed London LGBT venue – hosted a “blackface” drag act, Chardine Taylor-Stone launched the Stop Rainbow Racism campaign.
His Arab heritage was objectified and stereotyped by some would-be lovers, even down to presuming his sexual role. The rejection of people based on ethnicity is bad enough, he says, “but it can be just as gross when someone reduces you to your ethnicity, without consent, when dating/hooking up”. Malik tells about his experiences of what he describes as the near “fetishisation” of race. He says it has got worse since the Orlando nightclub massacre, where the gunman was Muslim.Īnd then there’s the other side of the equation: objectification. Michel, a south Asian man, tells me of being turned away because “you don’t look gay”, and being called a “dirty Paki”. Others speak of their experiences of being rejected by door staff at LGBT venues. Luan, a Brazilian journalist, tells me his country has a “Eurocentric image of beauty” and there is a “cult of the white man, which is absurd, given more than half the population is black or brown”. “I’m so sorry – I don’t do Indians! Indians are not my type.” Historically, LGBT publications been dominated by white men and have neglected issues of raceĪnd it is not simply a western phenomenon. Eventually, he was asked: “Where are you from?” When Homi answered India, the man was horrified. Once, at a nightclub, he was relentlessly pursued by a fellow patron. Homi tells me he has Persian ancestry, and is “sometimes mistaken for being Greek, Italian, Spanish, etc”. “On apps like Grindr,” writes Matthew Rodriguez, “gay men brandish their racial dating preferences with all the same unapologetic bravado that straight men reserve for their favourite baseball team.” It’s like a “bastardised ‘No dogs, no blacks, no Irish’ signs”, as Anthony Lorenzo puts it. On dating sites and apps, profiles abound that say “no Asians” or “no black people”, casually excluding entire ethnic groups.
Some are rejected because of their ethnicity on the other hand, some are objectified because of it.
According to research by FS magazine, an astonishing 80% of black men, 79% of Asian men and 75% of south Asian men have experienced racism on the gay scene. “The community is trained to accept a white, ‘masc’, muscled gay man and the rest of us are not really accepted or ‘one of their own’.” It’s not the individual he blames, but being conditioned by a community that venerates the “sexual image of a white gay man”.
“I’m sexualised for my skin tone and never treated as a person,” Saif tells me.