Fusion has an article online now entitled, “Straight white men get more mainstream gay magazine covers than queer people of color” that has some pretty tough accusations coming from singer Mykki Blanco,
“When Vogue and Vanity Fair are more progressive than your gay magazine, that’s a huge problem,” Mykki Blanco told me over the phone Tuesday night.
The rapper and I were discussing the lack of diversity and representation found in mainstream LGBTQ media, an important subject that has gained a lot of traction on Twitter this week under the hashtag #GayMediaSoWhite. The conversation is not new: Queer and trans people of color have been raising the issue of intra-community erasure since white privilege immemorial. But the renewed sense of urgency over the past couple of days feels impossible to ignore—and it’s about time we pay attention.
The conversation that ultimately became #GayMediaSoWhite started (well, “started”) on Monday afternoon, when Jesse Saint John, a songwriter and friend of Blanco’s, tweeted: “‘Gay media’ needs to reevaluate their content when the major corporations’ ad campaigns they’re covering are more progressive than them.”
Blanco—the rap alter ego of Michael Quattlebaum, who goes by female pronouns when in character—retweeted Saint John’s missive and added, in a series of subsequent tweets:
I wonder everyday if ‘Gay Media’ in 2016 are at all embarrassed when you go to their websites/content and it’s only shirtless white guys… I think I will probably be dead before White Gay Media ever becomes inclusive, I think none of us living now will ever see it LMAO… [There’s] a reason people like me don’t get invited on LOGO, or GLAAD or OUT or ATTITUDE
The tweets were met with a defensive reply from Out, one of the gay media outlets named. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that you’ve been profiled in the Out 100,” someone operating the official @outmagazine Twitter handle wrote in response. “[We] wanted to again last [year] but u could not make shoot,” they added, implying that Mykki is in some way responsible for the low level of attention she receives from gay publications.
The tweet has since been deleted.
Blanco—whose debut full-length album, MYKKI, drops in September—told me that Out editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin later sent a personal email apologizing for overreacting to her tweets and initially misunderstanding her broader message.
“An an entertainer, it is not in my best interest to scapegoat people who might give me editorials and articles or…[go] against the press,” Mykki said. “But hello! Why did the hashtag pick up such steam?”
This certainly raises a larger discussion. It comes from the perspective of the outlet, and many do employ a majority of white men, and it’s true other voices need to be heard. This type of discussion shouldn’t be shied away from, but at the same time, the attack culture of Twitter makes it difficult for an open dialogue sometimes. Anyone is much less likely to listen to someone’s P.O.V. when they are being scapegoated, accused and yelled at in any situation, let alone a public forum. But as we know, nice talk doesn’t get the attention. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Ask those drag queens at Stonewall in 1969.
Blanco says,
“People of color, gay men of color, lesbians and transgender people of color have felt the brunt of this the most from gay bars in the Castro having discriminating door cultures, to the hookup culture of ‘no blacks, no Asians, no fats, no femmes,’” Mykki said. “I kind of hate that the issue gets reduced to a hashtag because once the hashtag is over…[the underlying issue is] still going to exist in gay bars in Texas or Boston that don’t want black or Latino people as patrons. [It’s still going to exist at] gay franchises that only hire, you know, white go-go dancers or muscle-y white bartenders… [It’s still going to exist] so long as white gay men exist in this bubble of ‘don’t touch me, don’t look at me.‘”
What he said. For the rest of the article, check out Fusion here.
