BREAKING NEWS: the muscle butchqueens don’t see what’s wrong with suggesting that the femininity of black cisgay men has been overrepresented in media and the means to combat that is—not discussing femmephobia and misogynoir but—portraying a masculine black cisgay man instead.

we have seen the stereotypes and caricatutes. addressing and resisting them is not the issue. however, the means of address and the methods of resistance matter. Jean Elie’s logic is dangerous because it is assumes cismasculinity to be a corrective for a structural/sexist problem

seeing more masculine cisgay men on tv won’t interrupt the misogynoir that structures a culture of representation in which black cisgay men are mocked and demeaned for their femininity, no matter how ostentatious. only addressing [trans]misogynoir and patriarchy will do that.

this logic is a part of the post-Moonlight ruse, wherein black cismasculine folk enter “queer” representational economies—and the scare quotes will remain until we decide what is in fact queer about Moonlight—under the false pretenses of reparative work on behalf of black queers.

the pretense is false because, though it is taken up as ad-/re-dressing a history of queerphobia in (black) cinema, the subjects that it preoccupies itself w/ remain homonational subjects—who through their cismasculinity are permitted partial entry into patriarchal state project.

these subjects do very little to unsettle their fold in patriarchy, provided by their cismasculinity, yet they become symbols for national absorption/accommodation of black queers, references for representational progress as the majority of black queer folx are left behind.