Dildos, Enemas, and Good Friends: Teaching Black Queer Sex(ualities) in Pariah and The Skinny

• In Event: 29.024 - Dystopian Futures, Black Queer Sex, and Racial Rememory: New Critical Perspectives on Education Through Film

Abstract

Objectives

This paper explores how depictions of young Black queers in Pariah (Rees, 2011) and The Skinny (Polk, 2012) disrupt sexphobic silences around queer youth sexual practices in order to (re)cast Black queer youth as sexual agents. After analyzing these films as radical representations of Black queer youth’s sexual health, agency, desire, and pleasure, this paper concludes by considering the disruptive possibilities and implications of using these films to advance sex-positive discourses on Black queer youth across multiple educational and social contexts.

Perspectives

Longstanding constructions of queer sexualities as deviant and predatory have prevented many queer youth nationwide from accessing queer-affirmative sexual health education in K-12 schools (Greytak & Kosciw, 2013; Rofes, 2005). The absence of such curricular offerings poses major dilemmas for Black queer youth, whose location at the intersections of White supremacy, poverty, and/or anti-queer oppression increases their exposure to HIV infection and other sexually related risks (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). Drawing upon the attention to sexual agency from a queer of color critique (Ferguson, 2004), this paper considers how sex-positive depictions of Black queerness in films can operate as alternative pedagogical sites where Black queer youth and their allies can critically interrogate Black queer sexual identities, practices, desires, and pleasures.

Methods and Data Sources

The method of analysis for each paper in this session is a contextual reading of the chosen films (also the data sources) that situates them within, and explores how they reveal truths and tensions about, the social, cultural, political, and/or educational discourses that make them meaningful cultural artifacts (Ott & Mack, 2014). This particular paper pays close attention to scholarly and cultural discourses on queer of color sexual agency and pleasure. While cultural anxieties toward queer sex have led to intentionally de-sexualized educational discourses on queer youth (Rofes, 2005), a growing body of scholarship and cultural texts located beyond educational scholarship and spaces has brought sex-positive perspectives on queer of color experiences unapologetically to the fore (Allen, 2011; Decena, 2011; Rodriguez, 2003). Engaging sex-positive queer of color perspectives situated heretofore beyond educational scholarship affords this paper’s investigation of sex-positive educational possibilities for Black queer youth.

Results and Significance

This paper’s analysis of Pariah and The Skinny highlights three themes that distinguish these films from conventional cinematic depictions of education: (1) the recognition of Black queer youth’s existence; (2) the pedagogical roles of peer relationships among Black queer youth; and (3) the sex-positive representations of Black queer youth’s sexual desires and pleasures. After teasing out these three themes, this paper concludes by considering how these films can support Black queer youth’s own pedagogical work around their sexualities, as well as how these films might operate beyond Black queer youth-specific circles to disrupt the sexphobic silences that undermine Black queer youth’s sexual identities, practices, desires, and pleasures.

Author

• Edward Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania