Would You Sleep With A Homophobe?
I am a fan of the television show, The Bold Type, mainly because it is one of the few Hollywood series that not only tapped into the feminist concerns of our generation, but was unapologetic in its depiction of the sexuality of a queer Black woman. Kat Edison (played by Aisha Dee) is bisexual and Black, and very fiercely protective of her identity, always determined to risk everything to ensure the recognition of the things she stands for.
Which is why I – and other fans of the show – were stunned when, in the show’s fourth season, Kat was paired romantically with Eva Rhodes (played by Alex Paxton-Beesley), a White conservative lawyer whose powerful father finances conversion therapy. Kat was made out to be too close-minded about dating Eva, despite the latter’s compliance with the active harm her father enacts on a community Kat belongs to. What it came down to – the show’s writers wanted us to believe – was that this was simply a difference of opinions, and that if Kat could just agree to disagree with Eva’s conservative views and tacit support for her father’s actions, then they could go on to have a love life together.
This storyline led to a revolt, not just by fans but also by Aisha Dee, who plays Kat. In an Instagram post, she took the show’s creators to task over their bungling of her character, including the lack of diversity in the writer’s room and director’s ranks, ultimately lampooning the show’s creative leaders as not living up to the ideals they championed through the series.
The showrunners must have paid attention, at least to the decrying of Kat Edison’s story arc, because in the very first episode of the fifth and final season, she dumped Eva.
“We’re too different,” she says in the scene leading up to the breakup. (Watch below) “I would love to live in a world where I don’t have to fight for everything all the time. You know, I would love to just chill out and sleep with whoever I want to sleep with, and not worry about what it says about me or what I stand for… After we slept together, I really – I didn’t like myself.”
She goes on to point out that they both “see the world differently” and how the things Eva believes in and works to protect hurt people like her; how these issues make it difficult for her to be proud of any romantic affair she may get into with Eva.
“I want to be proud of who I’m sleeping with,” she says, speaking to how she’d previously attempted to hide the sexual relationship from her friends, Jane and Sutton, because of how embarrassed she was that she was sleeping with a woman who stands for everything she loathed.
And I can relate to this.
A few years ago, a guy I’d been chatting with from Grindr eventually came to see me. We lounged on the bed, chatting about this and that, and just generally getting to know each other more. We weren’t in a hurry to get down to the business that brought us here. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, the conversation went in the direction of effeminate gay men and the discrimination they go through.
And this guy – this tall, leanly-built, averagely-good-looking person who had flirted up a storm with me days before on WhatsApp, turning me on with promises of all the things he would do to me in bed – opened his mouth and was saying the most judgmental, condemnatory things about effeminate men. He sneered as he talked about how they were responsible for the discrimination they suffer because they know the kind of society we live in, and yet, they won’t man up before stepping out of their house. He dismissed femmephobic violence, saying that if people would just respect themselves, nobody would bother them. He flaunted himself as an example, boasting about how no one would ever know that he fucks guys, because when he goes out, he leaves “all that gay stuff” behind in the bedroom and acts like a man. He even intimated that the signing of the antigay law may have been the fault of the gay community, because he was sure that some LGBT advocates must have been making enough noise to provoke Goodluck Jonathan’s administration into deciding to take the action they did.
Annoyance.
Shock.
Horror.
Rage.
Disgust.
These emotions struck me one after the other as he progressed from one opinion to another. At first, I tried to debate with him, to point out the flaws in his judgment. Then I stopped talking and simply stared at him, my very first confrontation with internalised homophobia.
The last emotion I was assailed with was disgust. In my eyes, all the sex appeal had been stripped away from this guy, leaving behind an ugliness that I could not bring myself to get close to. Even then, I was thinking to myself: Let’s just fuck and then you can go, and then I’ll never have to see you again.
Yes, even after everything he’d said, I still imagined we could have sex, and then, I could block him from my life.
But when he touched me, I felt my insides recoil. When he pulled me to him and tried to kiss me, I felt nausea swell inside me, making apparent all those things that passion and desire usually blinds us from noticing. In microseconds, I was acutely aware of the smell of the lunch he’d earlier had on his breath. His nostrils loomed large, two openings from which I could almost picture germs floating out from to contaminate me. His tongue that slipped out to push at the teeth I’d gritted shut when his lips met mine felt like a snake: a small, wet, slippery snake trying to invade me.
None of this felt sexy.
My stomach was churning as though threatening vomit.
My already limp dick shrunk even further inside my pants.
And all the while, my mind was possessed with the thought that this guy was something of an enemy: a femmephobic, homophobic, ignorant something of an enemy.
And then, I’d had enough. So I pushed him away, told him I couldn’t do this, and asked him to leave. He rightfully guessed that I was reacting this way because of the things he said, and scoffed at my reaction, saying I was too sensitive to see that he was right.
In response, I picked up my phone and as I blocked him on WhatsApp and deleted his contact, I told him what I was doing.
“You can go to hell with what you think is right,” I said coldly. “And I hope these people you are conforming for will catch you in your homosexual moment. Then you will know that homophobia does not respect how manly you are.”
I tried it, but I couldn’t sleep with that homophobe.
Kat Edison tried it, but she couldn’t date a woman who represented everything she stood against.
I have heard about Black Americans who have discontinued romantic relationships with Trump supporters.
A friend of mine who lives in Chicago last year unfollowed the model, David McIntosh, and this year, felt his crush on some other guy in the US cool after they started talking – because these two revealed themselves to be COVID conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.
What about you though? Would you date or have sex with a homophobe, a sexist, a racist, or really anyone who stands for any ideals that you are very opposed to?
Written by Mandy
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16 Comments
Delle
August 05, 10:52I can’t. It’s not even possible that I find you sexually attractive after expressing bigotry; the very thing I stand against with the entirety of my being. Nehh.
And rightfully so too. I think it is a disservice to oneself to fuck someone who would very likely encourage, if not join in, a mob attack against you. I think it is pathetic to validate their shabby sentiments by sleeping with them after they have established themselves to be against your existence and theirs. I think it’s hypocritical to preach against something, claim to loathe it and end up coddling it when it presents itself in a package of muscles and dark skin.
These people need to know that there shall be no ass or dick for anyone who is bigoted. The reward for any form of homophobia shouldn’t be orgasms, please!
trystham
August 05, 10:53Yes. I will sleep with them (for the love of dick) AND I will kiss and YELL after. God wee now help him that he serves below par dicking. ṣé ó ló stupid ni.
Dunder
August 05, 15:22I wouldn’t punish a child for the sin or ignorance of their parents. I don’t think it fair to stand in condemnation over someone because they hold ultra liberal views. Rather than call out my team online for a creative gamble, I’ll rather quit if I’m not up to a role. That kind of manipulation and entitlement is just sick. A gay conservative is not a devil. If it’s about slavery or whatever racial segregation happened in the past, why is there never hate for people like us whose ancestors owned fellow black people and sold them wholesale to the few white ones who then came to recognise them as people our own ancestors never saw them as? When do we get dragged for reparations?
This reminds me of all the heat Meghan McCain got while on The View. Liberal viewers said it was her attitude but is it not strange that every single conservative or libertarian that they’ve ever had also had a so called attitude problem and has left the show to succeed despite it? From Jedidiah to Kate etc? There may be an attitude problem but I doubt it’s that of the conservative women. You want an echo chamber on the AM. Own it. Fox still has all their liberals.
I think those on the left really ought to be careful not to make a religion of politics or a jihad of every opinion. I don’t think this decade will pass without MLK being cancelled for being a republican or Gandhi’s legacy being rubbished for the racist views he held as a younger man. Your mother birthed no saints and you cannot exist in perfect isolation.
The heroes worshipped on both sides of the political divide find it easy to live close to each other and trade together while the Mujahedeen burdened with agenda see enemies everywhere. The Obamas moved to probably the whitest gated community in the land instead of going back to crime-ridden Chicago. Apparently, no one wants to live in a ghetto that gets burned down everytime a killing hits the news. Trump has been the perfect host to the creme de la crème of liberals for decades at his hotels, even running his show on their favourite network. He’s playing golf with them in Florida right now.
For all his troubles, the merchant of division, Al Sharpton is a multi millionaire who doesn’t spend a dime if his pastor money on the poor black people he galvanizes for his own interests every election cycle. Jesse Jackson gets on a plane, and goes collecting cheques from the presidential palaces of African nations anytime he is short of cash and when Bill Clinton isn’t terrorising women or knocking them up without paying child support, he collects from the mega rich to finance himself while the poor unpaid models on his NGO’s marketing materials get zilch or the comical 79 cents a day. Pelosi is worth over a hundred million dollars and doesn’t have a dime of it to give perpetual victims who vote for her hoping for job security. Trump was to be the saviour of big coal- really, how did that go for the poor white man? Fools chant “Jews will not replace us” while their leader enjoys his parent’s multimillionaire pockets and the same fools lose their jobs while Jared Kushner laces his CV with the opportunity of a lifetime, even getting KSA to initiate trade with Israel, thereby annihilating Kissinger’s and Hilary Clinton’s career. While the White poor cheered on anti-gay legislation, they watched Dick Cheney’s daughter, with her wife and kids attend all the big political balls while their own lives stayed miserable. They gay republican lobby fed fat through that administration while evangelical predators fleeced the puritanical poor using wetdreams of how Dick Cheney will hurt his own grandchildren for their miserable Appalachian vote. Did Trump save them from drugs? I’ll help you with the answer. Never.
When next you’re out on a date, judge the person, not his or her positions on issues. Consider the character, not just the opinions he or she may hold.
For a person in hiding, those with a bit more courage to be true may seem a threat. That is just ignorance and fear. We don’t know your date’s own brushes with violence. We don’t know how much he has to lose if word gets out. You may not sleep with him but deleting him just seems too much in my humble opinion. I don’t have the patience to be an unpaid therapist or life coach but at least, I can have a civil relationshipNot all gays people are activists and some people are at the extreme opposite of kitoers, just staying on their own lane, paying their way. Unfortunately, because most encounters in the gaybourhood are largely physical and temporary, we have not really learned to look for what matters. It’s like if real life were Tinder. This is a huge problem we need to address.
Just imagine if those who held the door for us had deleted us back then as religious fanatics running from their own truth.
For the Grinder generation, I think it unreasonable to cancel a human being because he has a fairly reasonable fear of losing his life and livelihood to Native Wear Agents or their boys roaming about Africa’s wild west. ut not to worry, no one is cancelled.
Pink Panther
August 05, 16:01I want to quote something you said.
“When next you’re out on a dare, judge the person, not his or her positions on issues. Consider the character, not just the opinions he or she may hold.”
Lol. This statement sounds, I dunno, somehow. Are you trying to divorce a person’s opinions from their character? Are you trying to say that a person’s positions on social issues says nothing about who they are? By that definition, we should cut social media homophobes some slack. After all, what they’re doing is just say their opinions. The actual bad guys we should condemn are the foot soldiers who are out on the streets lynching and victimising us, right? Seeing as the opinion does not a man make.
Francis
August 05, 16:55@PP that part too had me like WT.. So if someone is making excuses for rapists and kitoers, I should siddon and not judge. Please what character is left to consider in that kain person bikonu?
Eddie
August 05, 16:06This should be a blog post for real 👌🏾
Loved it!
I share a lot of your sentiments.
Many people need to hear this side of the argument.
I’d like to have an email correspondence with you if you don’t mind.
Delle
August 06, 08:18While I understand the crux of this post, I cannot help but see the faults in some parts.
A person is his views or opinions. You cannot extricate one’s views from their persona, it doesn’t and cannot work that way. An individual’s character is a culminated mesh of different facets and opinions are an integral part, it’s that simple. So, I do not know how I am to look beyond your positions, values and look to your character. What is left of the said character? The entirety of you is in question as far as I am concerned.
We all have gone through things in life, situations that have made us who we are at present and we need to know that we will be judged, not based on those experiences, but what we have allowed them turn us into. And that is valid, really. I cannot be making inferences on what I cannot see when I have traits very visible to use in measuring.
The last few paragraphs came off ableist and sort of put a gun to all the points you had tried to pass across prior. People will not be excused because they hold on to beliefs that are inimical, no matter how genuine those beliefs came to be. And it doesn’t matter your reasons for holding such positions, if they are warped, you should be intentional about changing them.
Nathan Bloom
August 22, 11:03What I just want to know is who is/are all the “liberals” that Fox still has? Humour me pls
Dunder
August 05, 15:23Sorry for replying under your comment bro. Honest mistake.
Eddie
August 05, 11:05I have slept with a femme-hating gay man and another with massive IH before actually…. but I was around like 20 and still very dumb.
The one with IH would even get extremely jealous when I tell him about other people I was hanging out with at the time.
Things some of us have done for intimacy though 🤦🏾♂️
Now, I don’t have time for nonsense…. I can’t abide fools no more.
Francis
August 05, 13:56I might have done it in the past when I started having sex but not anymore. I don’t do hate and I expect my sexual partners to act the same way.
Fred
August 05, 17:50The fact remains that some of us DO.
Let’s not forget KDians who hook-up with previously exposed kito scums and felt it is their God-given right to “test if KD reported right OR wrong”.
I don’t know how that “chemistry” works because bigotry can be associative.
Delle
August 06, 08:20You didn’t answer the question though. You just came to tell us what we already know which wasn’t necessary.
The questions asks if YOU will sleep with such people, not asking that you give statistics on those that do. We know people do, but does FRED do same?
Fred
August 06, 15:20FRED is in an exclusive/committed relationship. He would never sleep with any bigot. He may have had sexual relations with bigots in his early years but never with homophobes.
Black Dynasty
August 06, 16:20To answer the question, i wouldn’t and couldn’t. My sexual attraction to a man is largely tied to my interest in who he is and thus the irritation i would feel would mean zero attraction.
A difference of opinion and views i can respect, but when our moral values are not in sync or even close to adjacent, then ko le work.
Ken
August 09, 02:37There is a tribe that is notorious for this type of views. I am generally conscious of them and they usually don’t fail to disappoint