The Stud BY: KB

"There’s a dead elephant in the room!”  We all acknowledge its presence, we know it's there — and we tread lightly around it, afraid to make eye contact because the medusa may turn us into stone…yet, we have already become stone because we are afraid to address the subject head on.  Acknowledging the existence of the elephant would throw off the delicate system of denial that we have built. Acknowledging would recognize the fact that the elephant is feeding and growing stronger on our avoidance. We should look, not like our collective gazes drawn to a car wreck or a horrific sight but look with inquiry in hopes to have conversation about the existence of the elephant and where the elephant fits in the scheme of things.  When we draw our gaze to the elephant and opt to look at the hide, we see that the hide carries the scars of racial strife, systemic homophobia from within and outside its community.

Black lesbians have a struggle equivalent to that of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s in that they are striving to find their place and voice, both as women of color and as lesbians.

While Black sisters don't like to hear this, I would have to say that all Black women are lesbians because we were raised in the remnants of a basically matriarchal society no matter how oppressed we may have been by patriarchy. We're all dykes, including our mommas. Let's really start getting past the shibboleths and taboos. They don't really matter. Being able to recognize that the function of poetry or any art is to ennoble and empower us in a way that's not separate from our living, that belief is African in origin.
Hammond, Karla. "An Interview with Audre Lorde." American Poetry Review March/April 1980: 18-21.

"Lesbian Studs". These are masculine lesbian women who date Feminine “Femme” women exclusively. "Stud" connotes macho breeders on slave plantations, infidelity, playboys, and hyper masculinity. I need no studs in my life.

What does it mean to be a STUD? For me – I rarely use the term Stud (only when talking to someone who uses the term)  I describe myself as butch identified; in that I subscribe to a dominant “male role  in hetero relationships”. It may be argued that I am role playing but I can state without hesitation that this is not the case. I am and have been socialized male.  In using the word “socialized” I am stating that my thought process and actions are that considered inherently male; whereas, I acknowledge and accept that I am living in a female body with female functions I am constantly at odds with the body. I do not and never get excited about Victoria’s Secret, shopping, make up, dolls and the likes. I love sports, tools, power cars, techno-gadgets and fine women and I can remember always being this way; memories dating as far back as the age of 5. I am the middle child raised in a single parent household; my role was that of “de-facto” man of the house  (never stated but implied by requests) – even though I had an older brother . I was deemed the responsible one. I was handy – called on to do minor repairs and assembly.  My mother had a quiet acceptance of me (she understood that I was “different” and like any parent she feared for my future but I know she allowed/ and often created a space for me to blossom)
I was blessed with the fortitude to stand firm in the knowledge of who I am; a difficult task when …society, religious conviction (of my parents, my peers, my community) put an enormous amount of pressure on me to conform. When did it become the norm to live a lie or to live a dichotomous life in order to please others?  When did love become a thing to challenge or question because “yours doesn’t look like mine?”  
I truly get angry when I hear people say (albeit said in ignorance) that homosexuality is a choice….my question to them is who in the hell would choose a life that opens them up to ridicule, scorn, indiscriminate application of laws and systematic denial of basic human rights? What heterosexual is a target for violence simply by holding hands or sharing an intimate kiss? Why is it when a person openly states that they are gay that thoughts immediately go to their bedrooms? – if John Q states he’s dating Jane Doe the worlds a wonderful place but no one asks about their sex life! Why is that?  Isn’t it time that we stop acting like lemmings and become human beings capable of conversing, accepting or agreeing to disagree without judgment or castigation?

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -The Declaration of Independence

I'm a supporter of gay rights.  And not a closet supporter either.  From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community.  There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.  ~Paul Newman

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?  ~Ernest Gaines

Everybody's journey is individual.  If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy.  The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.  ~James Baldwin

Who would give a law to lovers?  Love is unto itself a higher law.  ~Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963