After the viral video that showed baseball players Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Atlanta Braves, sharing an intimate moment of affection, social media flipped with wavering opinions. While some people appreciated the display of tenderness from the two major league baseball players, others weren’t as open to the idea of two men, especially in sports, displaying this type of affection. According to reports, Albies comforted Acuna, whose mother passed away during the Game. Still, that wasn’t enough to get naysayers from poking “fun” at the two best friends’ consoling moment.
If you haven’t seen the video, take a look here.
Black social media couldn’t stop with their homophobic rave; frowning upon what was a naturally empathetic experience. Hypermasculinity, the term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, became a topic of discussion when it exposed the true feelings of how people expect men to show feelings, and affection, or not, especially toward their male counterparts.
This idea of hypermasculinity paints this picture of our men to be these physically strong, aggressive and overly sexual beings and anything opposite of that, is wrong or abnormal. Hypermasculinity says that men shouldn’t cry, or be humanly sensitive even when life happens. It says men shouldn’t embrace other men in emotionally physically ways, or show compassion; empathy. It says that men must learn to hide their true feelings for the sake of appearing “manly” or masculine.
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We should be very careful when it comes to the messages we say to our boys; our black boys.
Another example would be how this photo below went viral--but not for the way you may think. It had people saying that it was "gay" for a father to kiss his son on the forehead. Or that it wasn't masculine? Others were saying that more Black men need to express love to their sons.
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So, clearly, it may be time we rewrite this narrative.
The truth is, it is absolutely okay for men to cry, hug, and show love. Crying is a very natural reaction to sadness, pain and even happiness. Telling our boys that crying is equated to weakness shuns out a side of them that is completely natural and human. Crying is our body’s way of dealing with grief. When we internalize our emotions, it makes the coping process harder; which means we never get to face it. What we’re teaching is backward.
We openly express we want our men to be “men”; to be able to handle things as maturely as they can; to be able to communicate effectively. But on the other hand, we’ve taught them since birth that showing emotion physically, or verbally, is “gay”. The two can’t thrive together.
Furthermore, Women, how can we expect our men to show us compassion, be understanding or empathetic to our needs, when we send so much backlash to them for wanting to experience that within themselves? The only time we want our men to cry is when they see us walk down the aisle to them on our wedding day? This is absurd. Male introversion is a real thing and it puts a real hindrance on the emotional intelligence of a person.
For our community specifically, hypermasculinity dates back to slavery when our black men were seen as super strong--desired specifically for their strength to endure hard and strenuous labor. Slave owners desired these black men who didn’t show emotions because that meant that obeying “orders” and “commands” would be an easy task.
It meant that owners wouldn’t have to sit through the heartbreak of cries when their slaves’ wives and children were being sold just a few feet from their eyes. It meant that they would internalize whatever they felt, and learn to “deal with it”, even when their insides were burning from agony, torture, and pure pain.
And to think, we’ve somehow adopted this mentality and made it our own, even after it held such a huge negative stigma.
Our very own oppression is tied to hypermasculinity and we’ve decided to carry this around in our pockets and purses and praise it to be true, without worry or disregard. It wasn’t until slaves began to rebel against their owners that the world started to view black men’s strength as a weapon.
Now, they were suddenly viewed as dangerous beings. We see this today with how the police handle our black men, with so much aggression and force compared to our white counterparts. To them, a black man’s strength wasn’t the only thing that made them dangerous, but it was their lack of emotion as well.
And this is something we want to agree with?
We must show society that this is not our black man’s narrative. They should not be defined by their strength, or ability to repress their emotions. So we must start to teach the opposite.
It is okay for our black boys to cry without fear of being called gay. It’s okay for our black boys to identify with their sensitive side without being ridiculed by their peers. It’s okay for black boys to have joy. It’s okay for black boys to shine!
It’s okay for our black men to show a woman affection without being labeled “corny” or “feminine”. We need to stop questioning their manhood when they decide to act outside of this hypermasculinity box.
We need to allow our black men to hug other black men and feel embraced by their masculinity. We need to allow our black men to outwardly and openly grieve and be comforted.
We need to allow our black men the right to tell another man, “I Love You” and mean it.
We must allow our black fathers to kiss their black sons so that those black sons grow up to be responsible and loving black fathers.
This hypermasculinity narrative was written about us, for THEM.
It’s been time to write our own.
We need to allow black men the freedom to be, Black. Because black is fearless. Black is brave. And black is the audacity to DREAM when the world expects us to be a nightmare.
Abril Green (Edwards) is an author, spoken word artist & motivational speaker; founder of #BumpyButNotBlocked Ministries & Spoken WorDship where she spits "Poetry with A Purpose". Currently a Literacy Interventionist at Chicago Public Schools, Abril believes "the greatest relationship outside of Man and His Higher Power, is between a Pen and HER Paper."
