Holding Space for Black Queer and Gender Non-Conforming Youth

In his 2020 Black queer “memoir manifesto,” All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson stresses the importance of having affirming family as a gender-nonconforming young person growing up in a rabidly anti-Black homophobic culture. Reflecting on the strong reinforcement provided by his grandmother “Nanny,” Johnson notes, “I know that there are hundreds of other ‘Nanny’s around the world who fight for little Black boys and girls and gender-nonconforming people who are considered different. They notice the signs and step in to make sure that those children know they are loved unconditionally… They put the seed in me to now be a voice for other Black queer boys who didn’t know there was someone out there fighting for them.”

Given the current climate, it’s no surprise that Johnson’s unapologetically queer voice and message are threatening to white Christian nationalists. His alternately fierce, painful, and joyous exploration of Black queer boyhood has led to All Boys being one of the most banned books in the nation. Planting seeds of resistance that allow gender-nonconforming Black youth to thrive is especially critical in an era of normalized right-wing assaults on trans and nonbinary bodies and communities.

Yet, truth be told, these right-wing assaults are in lockstep with Black community violence against and opposition to gender-nonconforming individuals and communities. Of the hundreds of trans women who are murdered each year, approximately 78% are African American. The majority of their assailants are cisgender Black men. Cultural stigmas against gender-nonconformity in African American families and communities are deep and insidious. Writing about these issues in her article, “The Trans Agenda: Queerphobia in the Black Community,” Ivana Fisher notes: “the structures of masculinity and femininity, and the roles assigned to these characteristics, are so prevalent within Black households that many Black people share the experience of gender policing”.

For Black youth, gender policing, reinforced by popular vernacular, can be deadly. In his trailblazing 2006 documentary, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt unpacks the toxic pairing of the misogynist B-word with the N-word in Black youth and hip hop vernacular. The phrase “B*$%N — az” is a stark encapsulation of how misogyny and anti-LGBT sentiments combine to demean gender-nonconforming Black folks as well as Black women and girls. Being called that epithet is the ultimate insult and symbol of “emasculation.”

In mainstream America, Black men and boys who don’t behave according to normative gender expectations are dismissed, marginalized and erased. They are still told that if they do anything little girls do, like play with dolls or dishes, it will undermine their masculinity. They are still stigmatized for crying or expressing vulnerability. And they are still bombarded with messages in marketing, advertising and retail, that reinforce binary gender roles.

In his unpublished piece, “Of Boys and Baby Dolls”, activist Derrick McMahon writes:

Given the way that we raise our little boys and girls, why is anyone shocked or surprised when the little boys we raised to only be tough and hard grow up to be men who lack relational skills like compassion, tenderness, love, and the ability to be nurturing. You don’t have to nurture a toy gun, you don’t have to be tender with a toy gun, you don’t have to be compassionate with a toy gun. The only thing you have to do with a toy gun is hold it and shoot it. But the baby dolls that we deny our little boys so often require that the owner be nurturing, tender and loving.

We teach young boys from a very early age that they must not do anything that is considered feminine or womanly. Being nurturing, compassionate, loving, cooperative, kind, tender, accessible, and vulnerable are not attributes that we allow young boys to display.

Although patriarchy and toxic masculinity have always been baked into American culture, the recent surge in far-right cults of white male supremacy, empowered by Trump and the MAGA movement, have jeopardized decades of progress on gender equity. For example, virulently anti-abortion cults touting so-called “biblical masculinity” or “biblical manhood” seek a return to some mythical “barefoot and pregnant” era of white female submissiveness. These thinly disguised efforts to jack up white birth rates have been given oxygen by Trump’s recent “pronatalist” rhetoric about cutting government checks to (white) women who have more babies. Some white Christian nationalists have even proposed repealing the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote in 1920. Others have advocated banning women from holding office or from being hired in “male professions.” As Human Rights Blog contributor Hannah Stiverson notes, “Digital harassment, violence against women, girls, and gender minorities, and a rollback in reproductive rights — might seem like a random grab bag of issues impacting our world, but they inform and shape each other.”

The connection between rising rates of public misogyny, anti-gender nonconformity and national anti-LGBT backlash is abundantly clear. Queer youth and girls across sexuality routinely report negative mental health outcomes due to bullying, harassment, and gaslighting in school. In The Trevor Project’s “2024 National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People,” 39% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual young people considered committing suicide, while 46% of trans and nonbinary young people did. The Trevor Project also reported that youth of color experienced higher rates of suicidal ideation than queer white youth. These dismal stats were compounded by the finding that only half of LGBTQ+ young people were able to access mental health services (there is no data on whether the mental health support they received was culturally responsive or culturally specific). At the same time, “more than half (54%) of transgender and nonbinary young people found their school to be gender-affirming, and those who did reported lower rates of attempting suicide.”

What does a gender-affirming school climate look like for Black queer youth who—in addition to experiencing systemic anti-blackness—face the added challenge of navigating homophobic and transphobic religious prejudice and discrimination? What does a gender-affirming school climate look like for students who see both Black cis and trans women being killed in their communities in disproportionate numbers?

At the Women’s Leadership Project’s LGBTQIA+ Youth of Color Institute in South Los Angeles, the majority of gender-nonconforming youth of color in attendance reported that religious stigma, prejudice and hostility are some of the primary reasons why they do not feel accepted and/or comfortable with being out about their identities at home and in the community. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 63.1% of Black youth “who were raised in a religion said their religion is unfriendly to LGBTQ+ people.” This trauma is especially acute for African American youth who are caught in the crosshairs of Black Christian homophobia and transphobia, which is reinforced by the vicious Trump/MAGA assault on trans communities.

In the midst of this climate, Black trans and nonbinary youth are experiencing higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicide than cisgender Black LGBT youth. They are especially vulnerable to being pushed out of school and their homes. They may have to endure hate speech about gender-nonconforming identities from their peers at schools where hypermasculinity, gay-bashing and pressure on boys to be “hard/invulnerable” are prevalent. By the same token, Black queer gender-nonconforming girls may experience body-shaming, victim-blaming and bullying for being “unfeminine.” According to a 2020 survey from the Gay Lesbian Student Network and The National Black Justice Institute, over half of Black queer youth felt unsafe at school due to their sexual orientation and approximately forty percent felt unsafe due to their gender expression.

Given these disparities, it is crucial to create and strengthen humanistic mental health and social-emotional supports for Black queer youth in our school communities. These supports could consist of making Black queer-affirming Young Adult and Adult literature available and accessible for youth; ensuring that school counselors and social workers are trained to identify and potentially address the culturally specific needs of Black queer, trans and gender-nonconforming youth; providing faculty with instructional tools to incorporate the lived experiences and social histories of diverse queer communities into their lesson plans (spotlighting Black trans and gender nonconforming stories); and developing campus affinity groups that explicitly support Black queer and trans youth.

Last month, I co-presented a faculty professional development training on “Creating safe spaces for Black and BIPOC queer youth” at my child’s high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although the presentation was fairly well-received, it took a year to get the session on the school’s calendar.

Only concerted community building and chosen family engagement will disrupt the normalization of anti-Black, anti-LGBT hate and toxicity which continues to jeopardize the well-being of our youth. As Johnson argues, “There are so many people who are young and out and looking for a support system. Build the support system you want to have around you. This won’t always be easy, I’m not going to lie. I won’t sell you the fable of ‘It gets better’ (but) tell folks, especially those who are non-queer and non-Black, to ‘Make it Better.’ Something better doesn’t happen without action, and you have every right to ask for that.”

In other words: we’re here, we’re queer, check your privilege, performative allyship and — on behalf of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha youth who (are) and will be running shit — get used to it.