Filed under: News
From NewsOne: This week CNN premiered "The Sissy Boy Experiment," an Anderson Cooper 360° special three-part series. In the special report, Cooper examines the life of Kirk Murphy, a suicide victim tormented by childhood psychological and physical abuse. Murphy's parents, in hopes of discarding Kirk's feminine behavior, took the then 5-year old to a UCLA psychologist in hopes that he would someday live "a normal life." Murphy would later be subjected to unrelenting abuse from his father, and ultimately take his own life.
As horrendous as Murphy's story is, the Black community, too, is no stranger to its own "Sissy Boy Experiment." African Americans have historically and statistically exhibited disproportionately negative attitudes toward homosexuality. We've all seen and heard it before. Young Black males are pressured to live a life void of any and all things effeminate. I can count the instances where I heard the "sissy" moniker spewed to debase young boys who weren't manly or tough enough. That rhetoric is more harmful than any physical abuse could ever do. Homosexuality has long been a taboo among Blacks, which continues to haunt the race today.
Read more here.