Letters to the Editor
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feminization
The suggestion that black men in dresses is an attempt to neutralize black male masculinity, i.e. feminize it, is INSANE. It is actual insanity. Drag is not uncommon comedic repertoire around the globe. Monty Python's vicious bag-weilding ladies come to mind.
Really the debate has alot more to do with what the black community sees or wants to see in 'Their Men' and is about black obsession with one's OWN masculinity. Despite all the post-modernish and existentialist runinations that black men in drag is a sort of American Neo-Colonialism, A Psychological Thriller. Perhaps there is a bit of what might be called paranoia in such sentiments: that anything offensive has a root in American (and Worldwide) anti-black racism. For example: the supposition -- was it Welsing? -- that black men calling each other 'baby' was indicative of internalized inferiority complex instilled by white supremacy.
With all this talk, I have to think some of this has to do with homo-phobia whithin the so-called black community. Any egress into depictions of Black Men as fundamentally hetero-sexual and masculine is presumed to be an assault on mind and sensibility. Even better is the depiction of black men as raw and hyper masculine, and even though such depictions then represent him as being honorable and just, that masculinity, itself, is prerequisite seems, if anything, to be a neo-colonial wound in its own turn.