The Historical Erasure of Black Queer Masculine-of-Center Women

The assertion that black queer subjects epitomize anti-blackness mitigates a conclusion that there is only one type of “black,” and if this is true, who has the authority to articulate what character composition this “black” person should inhibit? The same myopic understandings and teachings that guided Eurocentric thoughts on blackness are now inserting a visceral girth in the understandings of what it is to be a black queer. Despite lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights being overwhelmingly relevant in the current discourse, black masculineof-center women are often isolated from the history of their cultural communities. As we move further into the 21st century, understanding the contemporary and historical affects of the Civil Rights movements on the queer subject reinforces the importance of black queer masculine-of-center women asserting their own narratives and reclaiming their humanity without the neoliberal agenda of the ‘gay international’, as termed by Sokari Ekine; and further perpetuating black respectability politics adhered in black history. This qualitative research seeks to investigate and explore the ways in which black queer masculine-of-center visual artists intentionally use images and art to interrogate possibilities of a future that rests in dissolving heteronormative notions of blackness, sexuality, and identities that combat invisibility and silence and evoke a futuristic aesthetic in an era that proclaims LGBTQ rights to be the new human rights movement of the 21st century