{"id":27940,"date":"2020-09-04T15:06:09","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T13:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/?p=27940"},"modified":"2021-01-12T08:53:47","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T07:53:47","slug":"im-black-gay-and-italian-and-im-ready-to-be-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/im-black-gay-and-italian-and-im-ready-to-be-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I&#8217;m Black, Gay, and Italian &#8211; and I&#8217;m Ready to Be Myself&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Stefano and I am 32 years old. I am from Florence, Italy, and for various reasons, I live in Barcelona, Spain. I work in a call centre, and I am fed up with answering these questions:\u00a0&#8220;<em>You speak Italian better than I do&#8230; Where did you learn it?,<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;<em>How big is your dick?,<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;<em>Are you an escort?,<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;<em>Are you masc?,<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0&#8220;<em>Why do you believe in God?&#8230;<\/em>&#8221;\u00a0I am tired of replying to your intrusive and humiliating questions on why I am <strong>black, Italian, gay, Catholic, and of the radical left<\/strong>. Who are you to ask me those questions on my family, my body, and my conscience?\u00a0I am going to tell you the story of how I grew up, and of how I live finally without any shame in being Stefano, despite my mistakes, your bigotry, and the actual climate of hate. And I am not asking for your permission.<\/p>\n<p>As a child, I enjoyed doing &#8220;girls&#8217; stuff&#8221; and &#8220;boys&#8217; stuff&#8221;. I combed my sister&#8217;s Barbie dolls. I was proud of my little cars, and I enjoyed the puzzles. I wanted to be a truck driver, like my grandfather, and Batman was my first love. <strong>At school, they called me &#8220;<em>cioccolatino<\/em>&#8220;<\/strong> (chocolate candy). In my village, I heard the words &#8220;<em>moro<\/em>&#8221; (Moor), &#8220;moretto&#8221; (little Moor), &#8220;nero&#8221; (black), while in the TV they used &#8220;extracomunitari&#8221; (immigrants coming from outside the European Union) or &#8220;people of color&#8221;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/second-generation-mother\/\">Read also: <strong>Second Generation Queer \u2013 How I\u2019ve Killed My Mother<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was 6 years old when I had to experience <strong>the first episode of racism<\/strong>. I was on bus 31, the bus that connects my village Grassina to Florence. An old lady wanted my seat. My mother pointed out to her that the seats reserved for the aged and the disabled people behind her were free. I remember that the lady got upset and started yelling things like: &#8220;<em>You don&#8217;t even have the bus ticket, ni**ers! You come to Italy to steal our jobs!<\/em>\u201d My mother got pissed and started to answer back angrily. She was almost going to throw our monthly passes on her face. My sister was crying, scared. I was paralyzed by how shocked I was.<\/p>\n<p>To put an end to this dispute, my mother told me to give up my seat to that harpy. It was probably then that <strong>my furious frustration<\/strong> emerged. It is frustration that makes me burst, yell, curse, and throw things at anyone who treats the people I love and myself unfairly and with violence.<\/p>\n<p>On Bus 31, I put on a good show. I went to sit behind my mother, and once seated, I shouted to the old lady: &#8220;<em>Blah blah blah, granny!<\/em>&#8221; I don&#8217;t remember what the lady said, but I do remember the slap my mother gave me. A child should never disrespect an adult. I learned two things on that day: the 2 times table, and that I am a ni**er. As such, <strong>I should endure in silence the insults<\/strong> and the unfair treatment of white people, to whom I should be grateful for (for what? Existing in &#8220;their&#8221; country?), while keeping inside the resulting rage and frustration.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27553\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bambino-nero-triste-accusa.jpeg\" alt=\"bambino nero triste accusa\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bambino-nero-triste-accusa.jpeg 900w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bambino-nero-triste-accusa-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/bambino-nero-triste-accusa-768x512.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/>Some years later, the &#8220;f*g frustration&#8221; piled on top of the &#8220;ni**er frustration.&#8221; I was living in Mauritius with my mother and my sister while my father remained in Italy. He has always been an absent husband and father. &#8220;<em>Shut up<\/em>,&#8221; &#8220;<em>don&#8217;t let them see you<\/em>,&#8221; &#8220;<em>tell it to the teacher, actually no, don&#8217;t say anything<\/em>,&#8221; &#8220;<em>just pretend that nothing happened<\/em>.&#8221; That was what I was repeating to myself every day until my last year in high school. At 14 years old, I was <strong>an invisible teenager<\/strong> with little self-esteem, lots of anger, and a desperate need to be loved and listened to, even just a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone had someone to tell about the boy or the girl s\/he liked, the first time s\/he had sex, his\/her ideal relationship, and about his\/her love issues. Who did I have? My diary, the songs of Coldplay and T.A.T.U, my wet dreams, and God. No one else. At times, the despair and the anger were so unbearable that I felt like suffocating. I thought that no one would ever love me and that I would die alone. There was no alternative. <strong>On many occasions, I considered committing suicide<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>My only hope was to go back home, in Italy. I knew that Italy was certainly not the Netherlands, where the right of same-sex couples to get married was recognized some years earlier. But at least I could <strong>have been myself<\/strong> and have friends with whom to talk to freely, besides knowing other gays, partying in gay clubs, and flirting.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/second-generation-queer-i-am-happy-because-i-love-myself\/\">Read also: <strong>Second Generation Queer \u2013 I Am Happy Because I Love Myself<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once back in Italy in 2006 to start university, my 1968 began. <strong>I made new friends and became sexually active<\/strong>, while I started getting more familiar with politics, and issues related to secularism and homophobia. It was also a period of my life made of arguments and bickerings with my father that felt so much as teenage rebellion. I think that most of us LGTBQ+ millennials, who grew up with few or no role-models, have had our teenage crisis later compared to our straight counterparts. I believe it&#8217;s because, in your twenties, you are allowed to do things that you are not allowed to as a teenager: speaking your mind, going and working wherever you want, and studying whatever you want without the permission of an adult.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, like many of my age-mates, I was financially dependent on my father until I was 28. Moreover, I still had to put up with the not really tolerant environment at home and outside that forced me to be silent. But <strong>I finally accepted myself as gay<\/strong> thanks to the nights at the YAG and the FLOG of Florence, to movies, to the novels of Andr\u00e9 Gide and Alex Sanchez, to my friends (and some friends with benefits), and to my first Pride marches, besides from the growing LGBTQ+ activism in Italy.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27555\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sesso-anale-gay-interrazionale.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sesso-anale-gay-interrazionale.jpeg 900w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sesso-anale-gay-interrazionale-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sesso-anale-gay-interrazionale-768x512.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/>By 2010, I had completely embraced that part of me, even though my sister was the only one in my family who knew I was gay. I was living my life just like any 23-year-old small-town gay, until 2011 and the shooting in piazza Dalmazia. <strong>Two Senegalese immigrants were shot<\/strong> by a racist &#8220;mentally-disturbed&#8221; man. At that moment, I realized that, up till that point of my life, I had valued and fought for my homosexuality only, setting aside my Afro-Italian identity. I realized as well that it was mostly intentional.<\/p>\n<p>It was too difficult and exhausting to explain how offensive the word &#8220;ni**er&#8221; was to my friends who used it in their jokes. <strong>I did not have the courage and the right words<\/strong> to say when someone used the informal &#8220;you&#8221; when talking to my parents, when the ticket controllers asked me if I had my bus ticket and not to the white lady next to me or, even more humiliating, when someone on Planetromeo asked how much I took for having sex.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/racism-in-italy-a-statue-should-not-take-over-our-attention\/\">Read also: <strong>Racism in Italy: a Statue Should Not Take Over Our Attention<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The only thing that I did to protect myself from these micro-aggressions was to <strong>keep the frustration and anger inside<\/strong>, just like when I was six years old on Bus 31. I also isolated my Mauritian identity, and the people related to it, from the rest of my life, most of all my parents. I invited my friends home when my parents were not there and I avoided telling my friends about my family and some chapters of my past. Similarly, I never told my parents who my friends were and what we were doing together. In short, I took a part of myself away from all of them.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2015 and 2019, life forced me to recognize myself as <strong>gay and Afro-Italian<\/strong>. After my MA in Culture, Communication, and Globalization, I had to deal with unemployment and the fact that, in the Italian labor market, the presence of us, &#8220;second-generation Italians&#8221; is tolerated only in those industries that are not &#8220;fully Italian,&#8221; like tourism; or in call-centers, where our bodies do not risk to disrupt most of our customers&#8217; idea of an Italian society completely white and Catholic.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27557\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/uomo-nero-dolore-razzismo.jpeg\" alt=\"uomo nero dolore razzismo\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/uomo-nero-dolore-razzismo.jpeg 900w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/uomo-nero-dolore-razzismo-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/uomo-nero-dolore-razzismo-768x512.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/>Meanwhile, racism, sexism, and homophobia, all of them coupled with a certain classism, made the air <strong>oversaturated with hatred<\/strong> towards anyone different while making someone who was different hate him\/herself. At home, my parents said things not that were not different from former prime minister Matteo Renzi&#8217;s &#8220;<em>Let&#8217;s help migrants in their country<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Grindr, the &#8220;masc4masc&#8221; discourse was imposing itself more and more, requiring us gays who, until then, relatively accepted with our feminine side, to crush that side away under the weight of muscles in order to be as &#8220;masculine&#8221; as possible. Additionally, if you were black, you had to be <strong>a BBC ready to be used<\/strong>. I tried to adapt to that trend, by going to the gym and indulging in chemsex. I hurt myself, and my brain still bears the scars of that experience. I saw the darkest side of me and I almost lost myself.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/italy-racist-objections-pride\/\">Read also: <strong>Italy: Racist Protests at Pride? Let\u2019s Keep R-Existing!<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I got out of it thanks to that 14-year-old boy who was crying while looking at himself in the mirror, after the nth day of insults at school. He was feeling so lonely and empty that he could not see any solution. From the other side of the mirror, I could see instead a boy surrounded by the affection of many people and a God that has never abandoned him. That kid was full of life and talent, and he did not lack the capacity to love himself and others. I saw a courageous boy who went to school and got good grades, despite the scorn of many and the sexual harassments he never told about. At the right moment, <strong>he would know how to defend and accept himself<\/strong> and start building his own future. That kid could have ended up in an asylum, or in a coffin after committing suicide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Yet, I resisted<\/strong>, and if I did it once, I could do it again, in 2018, amidst self-destruction.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m feeling better. I\u2019m not perfect, of course, and from time to time those scars that I have inside open again. But I\u2019m learning to accept them as part of me and most of all, I&#8217;m not scared to be myself: Italian and Mauritian, black, gay, fem, Catholic, and yet in favor of a secular society. I want to commit myself to free us from this white, capitalist, and heteronormative patriarchy that incited me various times to destroy myself with drugs, suicide, or simply by trying to be someone else. <strong>I&#8217;m ready to be myself<\/strong> with my family and my friends and let myself go without overthinking.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m Stefano and I won\u2019t stop being myself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Stefano<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a92020 Il Grande Colibr\u00ec<br \/>\nimages: Il Grande Colibr\u00ec \/ elaborations from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pikist.com\/free-photo-soqpt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pikist<\/a> (CC0) \/ Il Grande Colibr\u00ec \/ Il Grande Colibr\u00ec<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My name is Stefano and I am 32 years old. I am from Florence, Italy, and for various reasons, I live in Barcelona, Spain. I work in a call centre,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":27560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[565,533,566,569],"tags":[5814,5815,5812,5509,5813,5811,5810],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27940"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27954,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27940\/revisions\/27954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ilgrandecolibri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}