1. They Love Saying “Yas Kween!” But Don’t Actually Have Black Friends

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out and a white gay dude gets all up in my grill and says something like “yass bitch!” or “shake your weave!” Uh, no. First of all, I don’t know you like that miss gorl. Secondly, I’m a person, not a neck rolling, mouth popping caricature you saw on television! The irony of all this black cultural appropriation is that many white gay men appropriate all these amazing black cultural products but they don’t have black friends or maybe, even, don’t actually like black people. They love our shit but they won’t fuck us. When you relate to someone as a caricature you reduce them to something that is only used to entertain you, to metaphorically suck you off to completion, no recip. You don’t see them as a person with desires, hopes, dreams and fucking feelings.

2. It often feels like they don’t know people of color actually exist

As the great American cultural philosopher Steve Grand recently said, “Young, good-looking, white, gay men – we love to hate those people.” Yes, let’s! When you’re brown, going to the local gay bar or club is just a reminder that you’re not white. They scroll past our profiles on Scruff and OKcupid, they block us in public and eagerly pass us over for the cute white guy standing behind us. That’s fine – get that white dick. But what makes me mad is that I’m standing right here and I know that I don’t even exist to you. This isn’t about white acceptance. I don’t need to be accepted by white gay men or by anyone, really. It’s a matter of principle. What kind of community can you build when you only notice or pay attention to half of it?

3. White Gay Men Don’t Understand Their Own Racism — and they should

Racism is such a bad word, one nobody actually understands. Racism isn’t just saying things like “I don’t like Asians!” It’s the fact that there are few representative people of color almost anywhere in gay media – television, film, porn, magazines, advertisements and all the rest. It’s all so white, white, white. Seriously. When was the last time you picked up a copy of a gay magazine that had a black or Asian guy on the cover? When was the last time you watched a mainstream gay porn scene (mainstream, not niche) that had a hot black guy in it that wasn’t premised on his “HUGE BLACK DICK”?

4. Only Being A Minority When It’s Convenient

When Azealia Banks uses the word “faggot” all the white gays freak the fuck out and lobby and boycott and protest. Cool cool. But when black people are wrongfully shot by the police or when someone tries to talk about race or broader discriminations, suddenly there’s radio silence and no one wants to listen or talk about it and whitesplains it away.

5. White gay dudes can afford not to listen — And that’s the problem

There’s going to be some angry people in the comments and that’s really cool, but hear this: people would stop writing articles like this if white gay men just understood their own racism and by extension the broader racism within the gay community. Hand-in-hand with not understanding your own racism is also not realizing your own privilege. Me? Privileged?! NOOOOOOOOO. White people of all stripes are quick to point out that white privilege isn’t a real thing – that they, too, have struggled in life or come from modest backgrounds or are minorities or whatever, and so therefore could not possibly have any claim to white privilege. When I complain to my white gay sisters about what it’s like for me as a gay person of color in the community all I’m asking for is an ear. I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not blaming anybody. But please don’t belittle my personal experience or whitesplain anything to me. All you have to do is listen. When you don’t listen all I hear is, “Not about me, don’t care!”

We would make so much progress if we just learned to hear each other out.