Quoted: Andreana Clay on Queer Women of Color and Hip Hop Masculinity

Even though I was a little uncomfortable with this display, I didn’t leave the bar, which is probably what I would have done had I been in a straight club. In a mixed setting, the lyrics and sexual display denote a different power struggle for me: with women more clearly marked as objects and men as subjects. That expression of sexual desire is one that all women see in music videos, movies, and hear it played out in the music we listen to. Similar to Laura Mulvey’s definition of the male gaze in popular culture in which the female is the fetishized object and the men are the spectators, mixed clubs are assumed to be spaces where women are expected to take on the passive quality of “to-be-looked-at-ness.” Over a hip-hop beat, men then possess the ability to look, taking pleasure in looking at and dominating women. I am not suggesting that straight women have no power in these settings. Mulvey has been rightly critiqued for her failure to go beyond men as spectators and women as passive objects. She, and other feminists, forget that every once in a while, a woman might like to “pile [he]r phat ass into [he]r fave micromini [and] slip [he]r freshly manicured toes into four inch fuck me sandals” for her pleasure as well as his when she goes out to a club. However, I do suggest these are the expected and most displayed roles in hip-hop music. What I am interested in is what women do with these roles.

Moreover, the expression of sexual desire between two queer women of color is rare, if at all existent, in popular culture. In these all female, queer club spaces, the decoding of black male masculinity is exciting, normalized, and even “safe.” First, these displays can demonstrate what queer women do and whom we do it with. Second, there isn’t the fear of violence or being overpowered that may be associated with mixed, straight clubs. Popular discourse often warns women, gay or straight, about the dangers of going to clubs alone. We are all too familiar with the Dateline specials on GHB or “roofies” which capitalize on horrible stories of women who go to bars sober and end up being sexually assaulted. While these stories are used to make women fear and regulate our sexuality, I have never once been worried about these “dangers” when I have walked into queer clubs alone, freshly made up in tight jeans and revealing blouse.

All queer women of color spaces have been one of the most liberating places for me as a Black queer woman, and consequently, as a feminist. I feel validated as a woman of color living in the current context of the L-Word, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Queer as Folk where a majority of queer people are men and most of the lesbians are white. Scrambling to see images of myself and make connections with other women of color is an ongoing struggle in the twenty-first century. And it is always more than pleasurable to tell your homegirls that you like to throw lips to the shit and have them know the queer context I am speaking of. In these moments we engage in what Stuart Hall calls and oppositional reading of rap lyrics and hip-hop music. Queer women of color construct new meanings of the text and become active consumers who change the context of sexuality and masculinity.

In her research on drag kings of color, Halberstam points to this type of reading in her conclusion that “when a drag king lip synchs to rap, she takes sampling to another level and restages the sexual politics of the song and the active components of black masculinity by channeling them through the drag act for a female audience and through the queer space of a lesbian club. ” I argue that the same is true or lesbians and queer women in the clubs I have been to. For instance, some of the women in the clubs look and dress as hard as the men in rap videos. In these moments, black masculinity is changed in that these women are exploring their masculinity in relationship to the women they love and have sex with.

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