ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 outlines the theoretical frameworks that contextualize this project and support its conclusions. This monograph is an intersectional endeavor, as the author unites queer, Critical Race, and Black feminist theories in order to deconstruct racialized expressions of masculinity and sexuality. Thus, this chapter discusses the coconstitutive sociocultural phenomena of identity, power, and performance. The author uses Du Bois’ “double consciousness” and Anzaldua’s “borderland” to frame the split identifications of men who are both queer and Black, while employing “queer of color critiques” such as Johnson’s “quare theory” to unify them under the banner of intersectionality. Moreover, because sexuality is crucial to masculine practice, this chapter unpacks the significance of sexual performance to masculine identity to argue that, since proper expression of masculinity is limited to cis-heterosexual middle-class white men, the masculine practice of queer men of color is marginalized and subordinated. Relatedly, a major goal of this book is to shift from a psychological to a sociological perspective on sexuality, that is, to understand these performances as representing a social control of bodies. As such, the chapter explores how constructing racial difference through constant comparison to the white ideal, as gay pornography does, is crucial to maintaining white cultural supremacy.
