J Afr Am St (2008) 12:378400 DOI 10.

1007/s12111-008-9053-6 A RT I C L E S

I Am Just So Glad You Are Alive: New Perspectives on Non-Traditional, Non-Conforming, and Transgressive Expressions of Gender, Sexuality, and Race Among African Americans
Layli Phillips & Marla R. Stewart

Published online: 7 June 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008

Abstract In this paper, we argue that both traditional psychology-based group identity theories related to race and sexuality and perspectives on the politics of difference obtained from poststructuralist queer theory underdetermine identity as it is experienced by a distinct subset of individuals, emblematized by non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive Black queers. We offer a new explanatory model for these emerging identities that is rooted in metaphysical explanations of human experience. To support our model, we draw historical and contemporary illustrations from African American popular culture. Keywords African American . Black . Gender . Sexuality . Race . Identity . Identity politics . Queer theory . Spirituality . Metaphysics . Gender identity . Sexual identity . Sexual orientation . Queer . Racial identity . Popular culture In mid-autumn 2007, the November issue of French Vogue appeared on newsstands featuring a statuesque bearded black man sporting a feminine mushroom bobbed hairstyle, a fitted turquoise Burberry mini-length trench coat, high-heel ankle boots, a giant cocktail ring, and lip gloss. This 28-year-old New Yorker known as Andre J., captured in a giddy pose with skinny blonde supermodel Carolyn Murphy, presented not only a stark contrast to his more conventional cover mate and the norms of hegemonic Western beauty culture, but also a visual challenge to established scripts related to black masculinity, black gay manhood, and even black transgenderism. Whoor whatwas this person? And where did he come from, literally as well as figuratively?? Numerous interviews with Andre J reveal an intriguing and complex set of self-characterizations: Most people are conditioned to think of a black man looking
L. Phillips (*) : M. R. Stewart Womens Studies Institute, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3969, Atlanta, GA 30303-3969, USA e-mail: layli@gsu.edu M. R. Stewart e-mail: marlarenee.stewart@gmail.com

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a certain way. They only think of the ethnic man in XXX jeans and Timberlands, and here Andre J. comes along with a pair of hot shorts and a caftan or maybe flip-flops or cowboy boots or a high, high heel. (Trebay 2007 November 25). Im just expressing myself and not hurting anyone and taking myself to a place where I want to be, where the world is beautiful (Trebay 2007). I was put on this earth to be a bodhisattva, to just glow, emanate love, respect, peace, pizzazz (Larocca 2007 March 4). Clearly, while the world may view Andre J. through the lenses of his unambiguous race and his ambiguous gender and sexuality, he views himself through other lenses. In Andre J.s world, race, gender, and sexuality are close to irrelevant, and self-expression and spirituality reign supreme. And, as a marker of how social reactions to such radical difference may be shifting, Andre J. recounts that the best unsolicited comment he ever received from the proverbial person on the street was, I am just so glad that you are alive (Larocca 2007 March 4). How should cultural critics and social theorists cognize such phenomena? What do people like Andre J. (and his admiring onlookers) tell us about emerging and perhaps under-theorized trends in identity and identity politics? In this paper, we argue that both traditional psychology-based group identity theories related to race and sexuality and perspectives on the politics of difference obtained from poststructuralist queer theory underdetermine identity as it is experienced by a distinct subset of individuals, emblematized by non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive Black queers. We offer a new explanatory model for these emerging identities that is rooted in metaphysical explanations of human experience. To support our model, we draw historical and contemporary illustrations from African American popular culture.

Explaining Identity: Queer and Black Perspectives Diverse sexual and gender identities have received increasing attention in both mainstream and academic discourses over the last two-and-a-half decades with the growth and visibility of both the lesbian and gay rights movement and queer theory. The lesbian and gay rights movement, on the one hand, has fought for the legal and civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex (LGBTQQI) people in everyday life, while queer theory discourse, on the other hand, has established within the academy a theoretical framework for thinking about heteronormativity as an oppressive and dehumanizing social force. Neither discourse has sufficiently incorporated issues, concerns, and perspectives related to race, ethnicity, or culture, particularly in the US. Psychological models of queer identity (e.g., Cass 1979; Weinberg and Bell 1978) have taken their form from established and widely accepted stage models of racial and ethnic identity (e.g., Cross 1971, 1991). These models begin on the presumption that individuals define themselves in terms of socially ascribed classifications, also known as social address categories, such as Black or gay, and that they progressively disidentify with stigma and move towards pride. One problem with these models that still has not been resolved in the social science literature is the fact that many people maintain some psychological affiliation with multiple social groups simultaneously, for example Black and gay (and male and Christian and middle-class and Democratic,

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for example). Thus, these models are not sufficiently complex. An additional flaw is that they are inescapably additive (see Spelman 1988, for a debunking of the additive model of identity). A final challenge relates to the fact that, increasingly, people are self-identifying in ways that defy social address, and, indeed, social classifications themselves are, in some instances, beginning to blur (La Ferla 2003 December 28). While social constructionist theories from the humanities have ostensibly presented a more sophisticated approach to explaining identity, there has been very little integration of perspectives across disciplinary boundaries. In the social sciences as well as the humanities, the notion of identity has bounded the discussion of sexuality, gender, and race, opening up certain avenues of discussion while foreclosing others. By focusing on queer identities, such discussions have allowed individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, or intersex to attain voice and visibility against a context of social repression, as did discussions concerning the identities of people of color in decades past. Yet, these same discussions have reified notions of social address and reinforced processes of social ascription and categorization. LGBTQQI people have been tacitly encouraged to self-categorize, often in ways that split them from other valued identities and affiliationsbe they racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, or something elserather than resist categorization and labeling. This system has allowed society to maintain people in boxes that defy the lived experience of full humanity as a potentially unbounded and multifarious phenomenon, thus maintaining the very social hierarchies that predispose prejudice, discrimination, and violence. In this paper, our intention is to open up the discussion of gender, sexuality, and race by highlighting modes of self-expression and behavior that fall outside traditional boxes. In so doing, we purposefully distance ourselves from and step outside already well-established discourses pertaining to identity, particularly gender identity and sexual (orientation) identity, but also racial identity. While we find the concept of identity useful and the literature on identity to be rich and informative, we wish to create another avenue for thinking about what people do when they do gender, sexuality, or race. In particular, we focus on people of African descent in the US who do gender, sexuality, and sometimes race in ways that are considered by themselves or others to be unconventional or boundary defying, and we examine their larger significance to ongoing theorizations about social and personal identity. In this paper, we also utilize three interrelated terms to organize our domain of interest: non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive. Non-traditional refers to expressions of gender, sexuality, or race that would be rated as outside the mainstream as it is defined by both insiders and outsiders. Non-conforming refers to expressions of gender, sexuality, or race in which people consciously go against the grain of the mainstream in the pursuit of personal authenticity. Transgressive refers to expressions of gender, sexuality, or race in which people purposefully confront and contest mainstream conventions as part of a larger political agenda for social change. Non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive expressions of gender, sexuality, or race mayand often dooverlap; they are, by design and in keeping with the messiness of everyday life, not mutually exclusive. Indeed, what distinguishes them is the standpoint and intent of the person making the distinction. While traditional discourses surrounding queer sexualities, gender variance, and even intraracial diversity have tended historically to rely on dichotomous splits such

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as normal/deviant and normative/transgressive, we wish to highlight greater variegation within the sphere customarily relegated to outside the mainstream. Indeed, we reject a binaristic approach to thinking about gender, sexuality, and race in a socially defined context and seek a language that moves beyond such linguistic conventions, such that researchers and laypersons alike may approach gender, sexuality, race, and other dimensions of human experience with greater verisimilitude to and sensitivity for subjective experience. A Critical Examination of Queer Theory and Lesbian and Gay Rights Discourses The queer experience has often been conflated with the experience of white queers due to the cultural visibility and academic productivity of white gay men and lesbians. A cursory review of notable queer anthologies appearing within the last two-and-a-half decades reveals a paucity of scholarship reflecting race-d perspectives on queer sexuality or queer theory generally. Early anthologies often contained articles about queer people of color or about queerness among people of color by authors who were not themselves queer or even, at times, of color. Among more recent anthologies, there remains a segregation of writing about raced queer experiences and perspectives by queer writers of color. While these writings originate among queer members of a variety of racial, ethnic, and cultural communities, often these writers are not engaged in cross-cultural communication. The argument that queer theory must incorporate both an integral consideration of race/ethnicity and considerations of queerness generally by people of color has been vigorously advanced by of-color and white writers alike; in addition, a number of authors (e.g., Battle et al. 2002; Faderman 1991; Kennedy 1993; Maskovsky 2002) have emphasized the need to examine class in conjunction with race/ethnicity and sexuality. Yet, the separatism of everyday life has continued to pervade queer discourse inside and outside the academy, constraining its liberatory potential. Queer theory can trace its origins to the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements of the mid-twentieth century (Goss 1993). Both gay liberation and lesbian feminism valorized naturalized notions of homosexual persons and developed languages and cultures of gay and lesbian identity. Such notions of identity, while liberating for some with respect to the political backdrop of the times, proved to be homogenizing and constrictive for others, and were limited in their ability to facilitate a critique of certain structures of social domination, such as heteronormativity. Queer theory, then, was born out of the struggle between the discourse of the essentialized lesbian or gay person, often combined with a Marxistmaterialist understanding of social-political relations, and the discourse of poststructuralism, which gave voice to those sexually multifarious or gender variant people whose experiences of self were painfully underdetermined by prevailing notions of lesbian or gay identity. From these mutinies at the margins of the margins emerged queer theory, with its radical politics of difference (Seidman 1996) and its radical critique of identity. With queer theory, the goal was no longer to explain and normalize the homosexual, but rather to explain and denormalize heterosexuality and rethink social theory from there (Butler 1990, 1991; de Lauretis 1991; Fuss 1991; Sedgwick 1990; Seidman 1996; Warner 1993).

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Queer theory has had a lot to say about identity. Butler (1990, 1991) has argued that identity is politically constructed, stating that power produces what it claims to represent (1990, p. 2) and that juridical structures engender, naturalize, and immobilize [identities] (1990, p. 5). Thus, identity for her is a vehicle of social control and regulation, a policing mechanism, and a pawn to the normalizing categories of oppressive structures (1991, p. 13, but see also Foucault 1978a, b). Fuss (1991) endorses Foucaults characterization of identity as perpetual reinvention rather than final discovery, thus locating identity in the arena of performance rather than knowledge. Seidman (1996) describes identities as composites infinitely variable combinations of social locations, labels, or practiceswhich can shift as a function of context. Thus, any specific identity construction is arbitrary, unstable, and exclusionary (1996, p. 12). In addition, identities are tense and unstable (Butler 1990). For these reasons, identity, it is argued, does not work as a basis for politics (Butler 1991)an assertion that might be contested by some queers of color (for example, see Anzaldua 1981/1983; Cohen 1997; Ferguson 2004; Johnson and Henderson 2005; Muoz 1999). Warner (1993) has characterized queer theory as an anti-normal epistemic position rooted in the experience of same-sex desire and taking into account the way this desire reconfigures social and political life. While queer theory cannot, by definition, posit a unified utopian vision, it is expressly liberationist in that it seeks to bring down those oppressions that marginalize people through the imposition and enforcement of standards of normalcy. Normalcy is understood to originate in the hierarchical binaries that define Western cosmology, in particular, the dominant pole of such axes. This binaristic worldview parses all experience into discrete and non-overlapping oppositions such as masculine/feminine, hetero/homo, black/white, subject/object, self/ other, public/private, and in/out (Fuss 1991; Sedgwick 1990). According to the theory, these incommensurable oppositions generate such discomforting psychological consequences as alienation, splitting, and identification (I am this, but I am not that), which in turn constitute the basis of all social oppressions at the collective level. One goal of queer theory is to instigate the collapse of all such binaries (Fuss 1991) and, as such, dismantle the oppressions they engender. This, presumably, is achieved by troubling, interrogating, and destabilizing the binaries and their attendant normalcies, and by embracing indeterminacy, provisionality, and disenchantment to prevent their reinstatement. Identities, as the in situ representatives of these binaries, become targets of troubling and destabilization. The boundaries between all binaries, all identities, are to be transgressed, transcended, or problematized (de Lauretis 1991). From the rubble of complete destabilization, disintegration, and dismantling, it is hoped, new forms of self, community, and social relations will emergeforms that encourage social differences to surface (Seidman 1996) and which render identity obsolete (Wieseltier 1994). Queerness, in theory or in act, is thus viewed as a form of or a vehicle for social change (de Lauretis 1991), first by its influence in the thought sphere and later in the arena of material conditions. When normative homophobic and heterosexist thought is dislodged and decentered, the reasoning goes, avenues of psychological wellness and self-valuation open up for queer people and, in parallel, antipathy, discrimination, and violence among straight people towards queer people decline. Barriers to economic and political equality based on homophobia and heterosexism then

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diminish or, in a best case scenario, disappear. Ideally, this effect carries over into other marginalities not based on sexuality, such as race, class, gender, nationality, and so on, leading to a society in which binaries based on socially ascribed vectors of difference no longer define social relations. As Seidman (1996) observed, all dichotomies produce oppressions and all oppressions produce queers. Thus, queer theory becomes bigger than putative sexual (or gender) dichotomies and ultimately encompasses all oppressive binaries. This observation is particularly germane for queer people of color, whose polyvalent difference, despite being lived and experienced as integrated wholeness, challenges the dominant social structure and mainstream understandings about human beings on numerous levels. Using the definition established by queer theorists, it can be argued that queer people of color are radical by definition, as the living antithesis of straight, white, capitalist, male norms (Anzaldua 1981/1983; Combahee River Collective 1983; Lorde 1984; but see also Cohen 1997; and Phillips 1998). Indeed, the philosophical worldviews, value systems, and social institutions of such individuals often defy existing notions of reality, at the same time as they fly under the radar of dominant discourses (Phillips 2005, 2006). As such, race-d queer discourses often queer queerness itself in ways that are, as yet, un- or underarticulated. Rejecting alienation, fractionation, deconstruction, and disintegration in favor of integration, reconstruction, transcendental holism, and revolutionary love (Alexander 2005; Anzaldua 1981, 2002; Keating 2000, 2005, 2007; Phillips 1999, 2006; Sandoval 2000), these other queers reconfigure the vision of post-binary queer utopias. As we will argue later, much of the impetus for this differently flavored queerness relates to metaphysical belief systems transmitted through indigenous cultural connections and ancestries.

Beyond Queer Theory: Emerging New Forms As indicated above, queer theorists have predicted the emergence of new forms of self, community, and social relations once sufficient troubling of the binaries has taken place. Without being able to know definitively when sufficient troubling has actually eventuated, social observers, scholarly and otherwise, can nevertheless be on the lookout for the emergence of these putatively new forms. Cases like Andre J., who is simply a single, highly-visible individual trumpeting boundary-free selfexpression in ways that skeptics could write off as self-promotional and selfcommodifying, might nevertheless cause observers to take note and imagine an emerging trend. Significant aspects of Andre J.s self-presentation include his emphasis on spirituality and what metaphysically inclined scholars (e.g., Emoto 2005; Hawkins 2002) would refer to as vibration, as well as his skillful, ebullient, and apparently effortless ability to synthesize diverse identitarian referents in a holistic and novel fashion. In a case where it is unclear (and perhaps irrelevant) whether art imitates life or life imitates art, we observe in Andre J. what can only be described as a new spirit or attitude, or, as the metaphysically inclined scholars might label it (in a nod to quantum physics), a new morphogenetic (M-) field or attractor site. This M-field quite possibly relates toor hails, to use the language of Althusser (1971)a remarkably different kind of identity constellation that is

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explainable neither through sociological stage models of ascribed identity development nor through purely social constructionist poststructuralist formulations. As a general rule, social scientific perspectives on identity, particularly in psychology, have lagged behind insights developed in the humanities and the more humanistically oriented social sciences like anthropology, history, and sociology. In turn, humanistically oriented disciplines have typically lagged behind the most theoretically adventurous and often compelling perspectives provided by interconversant fields such as theoretical physics, metaphysics, and the highly systematized yet technically non-academic ancient wisdom traditions. Scholarship on identity by LGBTQQI thinkers of color has often been uniquely innovative (for example, see Phillips, L. (2004). Pride and prejudice: Homophobic victimization across lines of race and gender. Unpublished manuscript; Battle and Bennett 2000; Battle et al. 2002; Greene 1994, 1997; Monteiro and Fuqua 1994; and Parker et al. 2007), primarily because both intersectionality (Collins 2000)the interaction and interpenetration of multiple identities, affiliations, and oppressions (including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, and class)has been a central feature of the lived experience of people of color inside and outside the academy. Thus, it is inevitable that intersectional perspectives would inform this research. Beyond this, however, numerous theorists of color tacitly draw from bodies of spiritual or metaphysical insight tied to indigenous traditions related to their heritage (for overt examples, see Anzaldua in Keating 2000; and Alexander 2005).

Reconciling Queer Theory with Metaphysical Approaches to Identity, Selfhood, and Social Liberation How do queer theory and metaphysical approaches inform each other with regard to considerations of identity, selfhood, and social liberation? First, both queer theory and metaphysical approaches support framing the discussion of gender, sexuality, and race in ways that go beyond the language of identity, which is category-based. Queer theory also supports the link between non-mainstream expressions of gender, sexuality, and race and comprehensive, across-the-board social liberation, based on the argument that non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive modes of self-expression are reciprocally liberatory for individuals and society. While queer theory emphasizes the reconstitution of societal structures as a vehicle to liberation, metaphysical approaches to identity and liberation, which more properly might be called approaches to Self (Self-realization, Self-actualization, Enlightenment, Nirvana, and so on), rooted in the principle that internal structures or states are externally mirrored in the material world, emphasize the reconstitution of internal structures of thought as a means to both individual and societal liberation. Queer theory acknowledges the risk to individuals who are marginalized by existing, dominant social institutions and regulatory structures (material or symbolic), thus warranting sensitivity to potential assaults on psychological or social well-being without resorting to a psychopathology or criminalization based approaches as the social sciences have historically. Metaphysical approaches offer energy-based (a/k/a vibrational) approaches to addressing such assaults to individual and group well-being (e.g., Byrne 2006; Emoto 2005; Hagelin 1998; Hawkins 2002; Patanjali [Shearer trans. 2002]; Vicente and Chasse 2005). Thus,

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metaphysical approaches provide significant new insights to the consideration of phenomena related to identity as well as non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive expressions of gender, sexuality, and race. In the sections that follow, we examine the lived experience of AfricanAmerican public figures known for their non-traditional, non-conforming, or transgressive expressions of gender, sexuality, and, to some extent, race. Using biographical data from a number of sources, we will highlight a multitude of ways that gender, sexual, and racial identities have found expression. We have intentionally employed an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on narrative data and various forms of qualitative analysis to preserve both complexity and meaning in the lives of the individuals examined.

Non-Traditional, Non-Conforming, and Transgressive Expressions of Identity among African Americans in Popular Culture What does it mean to defy tradition, resist conformity, or transgress with regard to ones identity, particularly when one displays markers of particular ascribed social classifications? Where is the line separating normative from non-normative expressions of gender, sexuality, and race, and once one crosses the line(s), what distinguishes acceptable (or tolerated) variations from those deemed unacceptable (or punishable)? One approach to these questions involves surveying existing representations of nonconformity in popular culture, including literature, film, and journalism. In this section, we will discuss public figures of African descent known for their diverse forms of gender, sexual, and, by extension, racial expression. Rather than attempting to categorize such individuals to create a typology with presumed applicability to the general population, we will use these examples to demonstrate the unique array of variations constituting a spectrum of self-conception and self-expression. Traditional notions of gender and sexuality in the mainstream African American community rely on a putatively natural, essential, or God-given male-female dichotomy. Heterosexuality is the presumed norm, with homosexual sexual expression and identity acknowledged and tolerated, particularly when expressed asexually, secretly, or in terms of monogamous, intraethnic relationships. Less accepted are transgenderism and transsexuality, interracial same-sex relationships, and non-monogamous relationship forms, although informal polygamy is quietly condoned in some corners through a justification based on its presumed African origins (see Dixon 2002, for example). Women are expected to be feminine and men are expected to be masculine; androgyny, female masculinity, male femininity, and other forms of gender-bending trouble Black community norms (Collins 2004; Lemelle and Battle 2004; Stephens and Phillips 2003). While women are expected to be strong and men are expected to be expressive, men are considered sexually dominant and women are considered the nurturers of men and children. There exists a formal hierarchy of men over women, particularly within traditional family structures, although this formal hierarchy often defies the informal reality of male-female equality or female authority, particularly when it is based on age, within African American couples, families, or communities (Ogunyemi 1996). While changes in the larger culture favoring increased acceptance of lesbian and gay people as well as variations in gender expression are impacting African Americans, particularly among the younger

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generations, mainstream community norms have been slow to change and virulent homophobia still circulates, often taking the form of verbal or physical violence against gay men, lesbians, bisexual or transgender people (Phillips, L. (2004). Pride and prejudice: Homophobic victimization across lines of race and gender. Unpublished manuscript; Monteiro and Fuqua 1994; Pilkington and DAugelli 1995). Coming out of the closet is generally considered taboo and silence is rewarded with tacit acceptance (Beam 1986; Constantine-Simms 2000; Hemphill 1991; Moore 1998). Virtually no discourse exists around intersex people; they are invisible in the mainstream African America. Ironically, there is ample evidence that notions of gender and sexuality in continental African cultures were quite diverse and variable (Murray and Roscoe 1998; Wekker 1993). A discussion of the ways in which continental African practices, social institutions, and belief systems were transformed as a result of their transatlantic translocation is beyond the scope of this paper, even as residual and contemporary Africanisms are worth noting when they are visible. Given that community norms exist and are enforced, why do people do gender (West and Zimmerman 1987), sexuality, or even race differently? When individuals discover (or decide) that they are different from the norm, what do they do with that information? Alternately, when individuals choose to defy norms, what happens after that? A review of the ethnically diverse literature on non-traditional, nonconforming, and transgressive gender expression and sexuality reveals a host of reasons and purposes, including but not limited to: self-expression and the pursuit of self-actualization; personal rebellion; identity exploration; survival management; status negotiation; strategic collective action and political activism; performance and entertainment; money-making and fund-raising; and, simply, play. Ostensibly, these same categories could be applied to racial self-expression, particularly in a social context of shifting racial demographics that increasingly valorizes multiethnicity (La Ferla 2003). Looking at gender, sexual, and racial variation in terms of reasons rather than types casts varieties of identity and self-expression in a different light. Types classify, categorize, and separate individuals, placing people in boxes and lending themselves to hierarchization, while reasonswhich may overlap or change over timereflect the cognitively complex, ecologically embedded, and socially constructed nature of human experience around gender, sexuality, race, and all other aspects of social identity. In this section on representations, we will use examples from popular culture to exemplify these reasons in vivo. Some of these individuals are well known, while others are less well knownbut all have had their lives publicly documented. While such a list could proliferate exponentially, we offer only a few of the possible figures who could illustrate not only variation in gender expression and relationship modalities themselves, but also the interplay of possible reasons for expressing ones identity in ways that are non-traditional, non-conforming, or transgressive.

Black Bisexual Blues Women: Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Big Mama Thornton Blues music is a known precursor to many musical and cultural forms associated with African American life and a symbol of Black folk culture and its associated

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struggles (Davis 1998). One well-known feature of the blues is its blatant sexuality. In one sense, blues music has stood as the accepted historical repository for discourses of sexual diversity within the Black community. Prominent among these discourses has been Black female bisexuality and, to a lesser extent, genderbending or female masculinity. Three figures who are prominently associated with this tradition include Getrude Ma Rainey (18861939), Bessie Smith (1894 1937), and Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton (19261984). Ma Raineys famous song, Prove It on Me, recorded in 1928, proclaimed her unapologetic attraction to women, despite her marriage to Will Pa Rainey. A biographical account states: The newspaper ad that promoted the release of Prove It On Me featured Ma Rainey dressed in a mans suit flirting with two other women. Rainey was also outspoken on womens issues and was seen as a role model for future women entertainers who took control of their own careers. Ma Rainey was arrested in Chicago in 1925 when police responded to a noise complaint and found a room full of naked women in intimate situations. Rainey spent the night in jail for hosting an indecent party and was bailed out the following morning by her friend and fellow blues singer Bessie Smith. Some accounts link Smith and Rainey romantically, but no one is sure. But it is clear that Ma Rainey made no secret of her bisexuality (Tom and T.J. 1991). Based on these descriptions, Ma Raineys lifestyle demonstrated elements of female masculinity as well as a probable open marriage and perhaps polyamory, and also conformed to a relational style described as mati-ism by Gloria Wekker (1993). Mati-ism, as distinct from Black lesbianism, is characterized as sociocentric (group-oriented) rather than dyadic (partner-oriented). Among mati women, neither sexual orientation identity as such nor outness (sexual orientation disclosure) is an issue. Mati women are typically working class, and their same-sex relationships are often characterized by an age differential (rather than a gender-role differential). Mati womens primary emotional involvement is with other women, although domestic relationships with men are common, as are financial relationships with both sexes. After locating mati-ism in a postcolonial Surinamese context, Wekker traces Matiism to Ashanti and Dahomey social traditions, wherein certain allowances for homosexuality were made prior to the cultural clash associated with the transatlantic slave trade. Together, Wekker s research and Ma Raineys biography suggest a thread of non-conforming gender practice among women of African descent. As Ma Raineys mentee and perhaps lover, Bessie Smith also embodied Black female bisexuality in an era when respectable (middle-class) Black women actively deflected discussions and characterizations of their own sexuality (Hammonds 1994). Known for traveling with a coterie of women-loving women, including a male impersonator, she indulged her diverse sexual palate at buffet flats. Buffet flats, sometimes referred to as good-time flats, were small, privately owned establishments featuring all sorts of illegal activities: gambling and erotic shows, as well as sex acts of every conceivable kind. These buffet flats were usually owned by women, who ran them with admirable efficiency, catering to the occasional thrill-seeker as well as to regular clients whose personal tastes they knew intimately. (Albertson 1997). Unlike Ma Rainey, however, Bessie Smith was, to some extent, on the down low (Phillips 2005). While her song lyrics plainly and famously reflected openness to diverse forms of gender and sexual

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expression, her private life evidenced ambivalence around these issues, perhaps due to the constraints of sexism infusing her marriage. Her husband Jack, a heterosexual philanderer, was known for his violent temper, gun toting, and futile attempts to keep tabs on Bessie. Nevertheless, Bessie could match her husbands temper and proclivity for firearms head for head; the two would frequently argue and tussle in public. As such, Bessie portrayed what might be considered lower class behavior by some and masculine behavior by others. Either way, she departed from normative femininity and dominant relational scripts and left an indelible impression on the African American imaginary. Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton, best known as the original singer-songwriter of hit songs such as Hound Dog and Ball and Chainmade famous by Elvis and Janis Joplin, respectivelywas a reputed lesbian, also known to have relationships with men, who frequently dressed in mens clothes (Halberstam 2007). At 6 ft tall and over 300 lbs, with an imposing voice and growl, Big Mama Thornton had a physical stature that invited comparisons to masculinity. Whether she played up her stature, adorning herself in masculine attire for theatrical purposes or simply comfort, or used others reactions to her supposed masculinity to achieve justification for something she wanted to do anyway, is impossible to determine, but what is clear is that she openly defied norms with regard to both gender and sexuality in Black community contexts at various points in her life. Numerous photos, now part of the archive of collective African American history, depict her wearing mens clothing. Big Mama Thornton extends the tradition established by Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, confirming that female masculinity, bisexuality, and nonmonogamous relationship modalities are distinct and enduring, if not controversial, threads within African American culture.

Contemporary Male-Identified Black Lesbians in Everyday Life Documentary films are used to show the facts about everyday life with everyday people. The documentary frequently cited as making way for Black queer people is Jennie Livingstons Paris is Burning (1990), which showed the life of New York Citys drag balls and the various families or houses that participated in these balls. Since that time, particularly during the mid-1990s, there was a short boom of films portraying the Black queer experience (see, for example, films by Cheryl Dunye, Isaac Julien, and Marlon Riggs). Currently, there is a resurgence of Black American queer documentaries detailing the lives of a population that has existed amidst, but has been largely misunderstood by, the larger African American community, particularly among those with little personal connection to Black queer life. Both Butch Mystique (Wilson 2003) and The Aggressives (Peddle 2006), for instance, showcase male-identified Black lesbians and transgender people, providing insight into their own subjective understandings of gender and sexuality. Butch Mystique, which aired on both the Showtime and Logo television networks, is a short documentary about nine characters of various ages who talk about their lives vis--vis their butchness. Topics range from their performance of gender, particularly their female masculinity, to how they relate to femmes (queer feminine women). In this documentary, director Debra Wilson interviews several women and

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one transman (i.e., a person born with a female body who identifies as a man; see Cline 2004; Halberstam 1998) and shows footage of their everyday lives as masculine, female-bodied people. Most have experienced themselves as the pink elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about because their gender expression is male-identified and thus anomalous. This film shows each individuals pride in their gender expression, notably in the way they dress. All of them dress in male clothing because its comfortable, even though they understand that they are women in the physical sense. Johnnie Pratt, the one transman, has perhaps made the most exceptional interpretation of his butchness, identifying as both man and butch despite the fact that butch is associated with both femaleness and lesbian subculture. The language that he uses to understand his progression towards transgender identity shows not only the queerness of his Black experience with gender and sexuality, but also how his self-expression exceeds normative gender scripts in Black communities, moving past non-traditional and non-conforming expressions into the zone of the transgressive. A second recent film, The Aggressives, has aired at various film festivals and was recently released on DVD. Because it has been released on DVD, more people now have direct access to information about this particular population. Like Butch Mystique, The Aggressives is about male-identified lesbians in New York City. Because some of the women portrayed in this film also participate in balls, comparisons can be drawn to Paris Is Burning. Director Daniel Peddle followed six women for a period of 5 years and documented various aspects of their everyday lives, from hanging out with friends, to dropping out of school (and later finishing it), spending time in prison, job-hunting, shopping, dating, and child-rearing. One particular male-identified lesbian, Marquise, also identified as transgender. In terms of gender, Marquise understood her/himself as a female who is masculine; at the same time, s/he desired to grow facial hair. As s/he stated, I have thought about taking hormones. I look like a 16-year-old boy. Guys grow up and guys get facial hair. Puberty has got to hit sometime. After an exchange of dialogue with her/his girlfriend, s/he stated, Its not like Im going to cut my breasts off. Ill just get some facial hair. In order for her/him to achieve maleness, s/he stated that s/he bites [her] jaw line to achieve a more angular face and work[s] out constantly to make sure her/his arms stay well-defined. At the balls, one is rewarded for proving ones maleness, and such cultivated masculine physical characteristics make it possible for the judges to decide who is the most male. Often, in this setting, the line between realness and costumery is intentionally blurred, with the highest award going to the best performance, regardless of how one achieved it (Schleifer 2006; Troka et al. 2002). Marquise shows that her/his thinking transgresses normative views of gender and even sexuality as they circulate in the larger Black community. Those who see Marquise and her/his girlfriend out in public might presume a heterosexual relationship if they are unable to discern Marquises biological sex. Those taking a closer look might wonder, after figuring out that Marquise is a woman, whether Marquises masculine appearance equates with masculine sex acts in her/his relationship, i.e., heteronormativity. In the film, Marquise lays these questions to rest when s/he states: I eat her muffin, she eats mine. We are still lesbians. Because gender and sexuality are intertwined in non-traditional, non-conforming, and even

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transgressive ways here, others may have difficulty processing or labeling Marquises gender or sexuality. Some might see this couple as a heterosexual couple, while others might view them clearly as lesbians. Yet, a third alternative is also possible, namely, viewing her/him as a representative of some as-yet-unnamed strand of human experience. Marquise demonstrates why conducting research on non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive gender expressions and relationship modalities is important: Thingsbe they socially ascribed categories, identities, or relationshipsare not always as they appear on the surface. Tiffany, another character in The Aggressives, adds additional weight to this claim. Although Tiffany is a male-identified lesbian, she also identifies as a faggot. Rather than socializing primarily with other lesbians as one might predict, she socializes primarily with Black gay men and transwomen (i.e., people born with a male body who identify as women; see Nestle et al. 2002; Stryker and Whittle 2006). At the beginning of the film, Tiffany explains that she only dates transgender women because it is her preference. Later in the documentary, alluding to pressure she has felt from others related to her choice of sexual and romantic partners, she says, I dont date transgenders anymore. By the end of the documentary, text notes that Tiffany dates both biological women and transwomen, suggesting that she has finally come to grips with the uniqueness of her sexuality and has ultimately resisted pressure from others, at least to some extent. Thus, Tiffanys life and loves demonstrate both gender expression and relationship modalities that are nontraditional, non-conforming, and potentially transgressive. By living her life, she challenges societal norms of what is appropriate and what is not. Having focused on what can generically be called female masculinity, with its many shades of androgyny, let us now turn our attention to expressions of male femininity in a variety of forms.

Disco and Drag: The African American Male Diva Tradition Male femininity is evident in the African American male diva (or queen) tradition, as embodied in pop culture icons such as Sylvester (19471988), RuPaul (1960), Willi Ninja (19612006), and now, more recently, Andre J. (1979). Although they will not be discussed here, figures such as Little Richard (a/k/a Richard Penniman 1932) and Dennis Rodman (1961) arguably could be located within this tradition as well (Galvin 1997). Even as they defy expectations for masculinity in malebodied persons, these figures also defy expectations regarding male femininity in key ways, highlighting the complex nature of gender expression and performance in Black community contexts. In the mainstream U.S. Black community, male femininity has often been accepted, or at least tolerated, among individuals who work as entertainers, whether as proverbial choir directors in an arguably sacred setting of the church or performers in the more mundane worlds of popular music, theater, and dance. Black male femininityunlike white male femininity, which relies heavily on camp and mimicry of the racialized cult of true womanhoodtends to carry overtones of gender fluidity and even third gender status, discussed below. These overtones, like mati-ism, can be traced back to, but are not completely collapsible with, past African

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cultural elements (Lorde 1984; Murray and Roscoe 1998; Wekker 1993). Gender fluidity is reflected in a number of ways, including highly individualized mixes of male and female elements, switching back and forth between male and female personae, and rejection of seemingly appropriate labels such as transgender and transsexual. Thus, the absence of clear labels does not negate the presence of discourses, however submerged, about non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive expressions of gender, sexuality, and race in Black communities. It simply demands highly nuanced approaches to research, as the following examples will illustrate. Sylvester James achieved fame for his gender-bending performances of disco music during the 1970s and early 1980s. Songs like You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), Dance (Disco Heat), and Do Ya Wanna Funk made Sylvester a sensation not only in the gay club scene, but also with crossover audiences. According to biographer Joshua Gamson (2005), Sylvester grew up and began performing in the Black church, but also evidenced irrepressible gender non-conformity as well as creative and sexual precocity at a very early age. While he was readily accepted by his mother and other family members, members of his church community treated him with great ambivalence. To quote Sylvester on this subject, The people that turned me out turned me out; that is, those who introduced him to homosexual sex also marshaled him out of the church to protect their own reputations. By age 13, Sylvester was already wearing make-up to school; within a few years, he was running the streets of Los Angeles with other Black gay and transgender youth, participating in a subculture that was not unlike the later drag ball subculture. Sylvester s crowd, known as the Disquotays, spent the week preparing their outfits, obtaining materials by hook or by crook, for weekend parties characterized by Gamson as an art form (p. 3). Parties for these youngsters (and their often older spectators and hangers on) were often held in the home of well-known singer Etta James. Sylvester was best known for his giftedness and creativity with costumery (with which he not only mimicked femininity, but also expressed avant-garde artistic visions) and also for being a diva, a queen, and an unbeatable yet gracious show stopper. Eventually, Sylvester moved to San Francisco and joined a largely white, gay, drag and performance troupe known as the Cockettes. Achieving considerable fame in this milieu, particularly as the only Black member of the group, Sylvester was eventually offered his own recording contract on the strength of his voice and his ability to draw a crowd. Conflict ensued, however, over how Sylvester would be portrayed on album covers. He desired to be represented as he livedan androgynous yet largely feminine, gender-bending gay male queenwhile his record company begged to differ, concerned that this image would be uncategorizable and would not sell to mainstream audiences, even in the flashy environment of the disco era. While Sylvester, feminine touches and all, remained extremely popular with largely white gay audiences, racial dynamics did not fail to come into play in this milieu: Sylvester s overt sexuality and theatrics were exogenously celebrated in manner reminiscent of Josephine Baker in France during an earlier era. A telling moment with regard to Sylvester s gender expression and his associated subjectivity occurred in 1977 during an interview with Dinah Shore. During the interview, Dinah asked Sylvester whether, in his relationship, his partner was the

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man and he was the woman, and his emphatic reply was, Im just Sylvester. Other anecdotes from Sylvester s life reveal his distaste for being categorized according to gender and sexuality labels, preferring to characterize himself in terms of his unique and individual self-expression. By all accounts, beyond labels would be a better characterization of Sylvester s subjective identity. The same might be said for RuPaul Andre Charles. His 1996 television show, The RuPaul Show, broadcast on the VH1 television network, broke barriers because it was the first program hosted by a man dressed as a woman, opening up discussions about gender, drag, homosexuality, and transgenderism in the U.S. mainstream. Already well-known within the club scene for hit songs like Supermodel (You Better Work) and Back to My Roots, and also famous as the first Face of M.A.C. (a cosmetics company), RuPaul became a poster child for gender-bending during the 1990s. Yet, his persona raised questions, particularly for those who were unfamiliar with queer lifestyles, such as: Is he a man or a woman? Is he a transsexual? Should I call RuPaul her or him? What does he consider himself? Like Sylvester, RuPaul answered many of these questions personally. For one thing, RuPaul occasionally appeared publicly or performed out of drag (for instance, see the film But Im a Cheerleader), indicating that his self-concept was larger than his drag persona. In addition, RuPaul famously stated, I do not impersonate females! How many women do you know who wear 7-in. heels, 4-ft wigs, and skintight dresses? This comment alludes to but also departs from Judith Butler s (1990) notion of gender performativity, i.e., gender as the imitation of an imitation, or gender as created by repeated performance and re-interpretation. That is, RuPauls statement suggests that, as a drag queen (particularly one who, at 6 ft 4 in., is larger than life), he is performing an extreme version of femininity that exceeds what biological women are likely to enact, thus detaching femininity from female sex and giving men as much claim to femininity as women. Yet, RuPaul is also suggesting that, in his performance, he is expressing his true self (a concept foreign to Butler, but significant for psychologists)despite the non-traditional, non-conforming, or transgressive nature of that self. To further allay public misconceptions about his gender, RuPaul has emphatically described himself as a gay man who performs drag. This statement removes any suggestion that RuPaul can be categorized as transgender, further decoupling gender expression from transgenderism. In an interview (Beck 2005), RuPaul stated, The superficial image I project is a social commentary on the world we live in. Im saying, Look, Im beautiful with all this stuff on, but that truth is who I really am has nothing to do with any of this stuff. I'm actually letting the cat out of the bag by saying it's not real at all. I never said it was (p. 1). The significance for social and behavioral scientists is that outward gender expression, however non-traditional or mixed, cannot be read as a certain marker of subjective experience or personal identity; further exploration of lived experience and further probing of personal philosophy is crucial to understanding individuals subjectivity and behavior. This latter point is evident in another statement by RuPaul, in which he connects his dualgender persona with spiritual practices in other cultures: There are a lot of young people who need to see someone living their life outside the box and being successful at it. The shamans and the witch doctors remind each culture to not take themselves too seriously. They mock our culture by being both male and female, but

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in that context, there is a much deeper message, which is that we are all the same (Beck 2005, p. 1; see also Conner and Sparks 2004; and Harvey 1998, for discussions of the relationship between queerness, race/ethnicity/culture, and spirituality). One might argue that Andre J., as a phenomenon, is simply the most recent version of the male diva prototype, in the tradition of RuPaul or Sylvester. Like RuPaul, Andre J. makes significant references to his spirituality as the wellspring of his highly individualized self-expression. Like Sylvester, he refuses traditional labels for his gender and sexuality. Like both people, he creatively mixes various markers of gender, sexuality, and race (e.g., clothing, hair, movement) and, like both men, he works at the intersections of fashion, entertainment, and media. Yet, there is something more free-spirited and fluid about Andre J.s persona, perhaps reflecting the zeitgeist giving rise to Generations X and Y, on whose cusp he was born. This free-spirited fluidity is reflected in statements such as these: I woke up this morning feeling really spiritual, calm, easy, and free. Im grown, Im evolved, I can accept all that comes with being an individual. [Int: What comes with being an individual?] In my case, trust, faith, hope, optimism, courage, wisdom, enthusiasm, and pizzazz. [T]here is always a message behind the glam, and that message is, Become your dream. I want people to look at me and feel inspired, to feel hope, to smile. I want to surge positive energy in your body, confirm that you too can be yourself. (All quotes from Larocca 2007.) As mentioned previously, the watershed film Paris Is Burning (1990) highlighted the struggles of everyday life for Black gay men, both drag queens and transwomen, involved in ball culture. One character featured prominently in the film is Willi Ninja of the House of Ninja. Born William R. Leake, Willi Ninja was a Black gay man most famous for popularizing vogueing in the ball scene; later, his style of performance was brought to wider audiences by pop star Madonna. Although he identified as a man, he also identified as the mother of the House of Ninja. As mother, Willi Ninja not only embraced his femininity as a man, but he also infused the maternal role with Black gay sensibilities. Nigerian literary critic Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (1996) discusses the role of community mother as a residual Africanism that is accessible to people of any gender. In this role, a person serves as nurturer, guide, mentor, mediator, and disciplinarian to a group of people bearing no necessary biological relationship. The community mother leads people along towards a path of empowerment, using her or his accumulated power (based on seniority, experience, or personality) to protect and shepherd the group. Willi Ninja, an established choreographer, dancer, fashion model, singer, and film star, taught his children how to voguehow to walk like a female model, strike poses, and danceas well as how to survive in a world in many ways hostile to gender-bending people of color. Like Sylvester, Willi Ninja adorned himself in an array of eccentric garments, often blending female and male clothes together to come up with an eclectic, creative, gender-transcending style, and resisted external pressures to conform in terms of his appearance or personality. Like RuPaul, Willi Ninjas persona highlighted the performativity of gender as well as the orthogonality of biological sex, gender expression, sexual orientation. Taken together, these depictions of non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality among public figures of African

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descent convey a number of themes. First, gender is more complex than our common linguistic code expresses. In these queer Black figures, not only have we observed female masculinity and male femininity, but also what might be called stud femininity (feminine characteristics in a female-bodied person who identifies with maleness) and queen masculinity (masculine characteristics in a male-bodied person who identifies with femininity). Were we to focus on femmes (queer women who identify with femininity) or butches (gay men who identify with masculinity), we might also find evidence of femme masculinity and butch femininityadding additional layers of nuance to our understandings of gender expression and its psychic and social construction. Were we to scrutinize the myriad relationship modalities exhibited even within this limited sample, we would also observe the limitations of our conceptual scheme in the domain of sexuality. Our current language around gender expression and relationship modalities do not voice these possibilities, although we can gather behavioral evidence of their existence. Second, these continual subversions of our everyday and even scientific notions around gender and sexuality index the disciplinary nature of the gender construct in daily life (Foucault 1978a). One the one hand, individuals strive to express their inner directives (Maslow 1968), but, on the other hand, institutional social structures scramble to assort people into discrete boxes through which a hierarchical social order can be maintained (Rubin 1984/1993). People who question the system (Barthes 1957/1972; Sandoval 2000) transgress against norms, experiencing some admixture of liberation and peril. Scholars and others who are concerned about the well-being of queer people of African descent and others who are similarly vulnerable would do well to consider the ways in which unthinking adherence to the dominant social order delimits psychological and social well-being, not only for marginalized segments of the population, but for all humans (Martin-Baro 1994). Third, we notice that gender and sexuality are not the only vectors of difference around which inequalities and vulnerabilities accumulate. An undiscussed but visible factor is class, a/k/a socioeconomic status. Economic struggle and survival concerns add to and intersect with race-, gender-, and sexuality-based marginalizations, placing certain people at increased risk for the untoward effects of prejudice, discrimination, stigmatization, violence, and neglect (for example, see Phillips and Olugbala 2006). In matters as far ranging as healthcare, education, employment, and religious participation, class mattersand it must be taken into consideration in conjunction with race, gender, and sexuality when matters of well-being for non-traditional, nonconforming, and transgressive people of African descent are in question. Fourth and finally, these representations force us to consider how departures from normative gender and sexuality are implicated in the ascription or assumption of racial identity, or the lack thereof. Numerous anecdotal accounts relate how queer sexuality and non-traditional gender expression have brought accusations of not being Black enough and even evoked racial excommunication (Beam 1986; Hemphill 1991; Moore 1998; Riggs 1991; Smith 1983). Even heterosexual individuals who are perceived as sexually unscriptable are subjected to distancing maneuvers from the African American community (e.g., Lemons 2008), thus highlighting the extensive and totalizing nature of this disciplinary process. Throughout this paper, we have focused more on uncommon or highly individualized expressions of gender and sexuality than race, with the understanding that gender and

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sexual difference often predicate racial differencenot in terms of racial repudiation or disavowal, but rather in terms of racial reconfiguration and reinvention. People who have already taken liberties in one area of identity may be predisposed to take liberties in other areas of identity.

Placing Non-Traditional, Non-Conforming, and Transgressive Expressions of Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Global and Historical Context While both the English language and Western culture are impoverished with regard to their ability to account for and represent people who fall outside the traditional gender binary, other languages and cultures better account for such realities. Several authors (most notably Williams 1986; and Roscoe 1991, 1998; but see also Brown 1997; Jacobs et al. 1997) have written extensively about third- and fourth-gender statuses in Native American cultures. These genders (which may, in rare cases, go up to six) are roughly translatable into female-identified male-bodied people and maleidentified female-bodied people, but may encompass intersex-bodied people as well as people who engage in homosexual behavior and people whose social or biological gender changes over the course of the lifespan. Far more than a descriptor for bodies and genders, these statuses often encompass meanings related to social role (frequently spiritual or economic in nature), sexual role (ritual, procreative, or recreational), as well as gendered characteristics that are beyond the scope of the English language. In the societies where these gender statuses are named and acknowledged, issues of self-disclosure (coming out) are virtually non-existent, and, more often than not, honor rather than stigma is associated with such gender difference, despite the fact that third- and fourth-gender people constitute a numerical minority. Other research demonstrates that third- and fourth-gender statuses and other recognized forms of gender-bending are not unique to Native American communities. Historically as well as contemporarily, such statuses have been documented in regions of Africa (Donham 2002; Lorde 1984; Murray and Roscoe 1998; Wekker 1993), Southeast Asia (Williams 1986), East Asia and the Pacific Islands (Murray 2002; but see also Lee 2006; and Leong 1996), Central and South America (Murray 1987, 1995; but see also Ramos 1994), and also within Islamic communities (Murray 1997). This is not to suggest that these statuses do not appear elsewhere, but rather to demonstrate the breadth of cultures recognizing gender and sexual diversity beyond the constraints of a binaristic system. A notable point is that many if not most of these statuses are integral parts of cosmological systems that are undergirded by spiritual or metaphysical understandings governing the universe in general and human characteristics and relationships in particular.

Transcendental Considerations: The Spiritual Self Spiritual motivations for life choices, including choices about identity, are underconsidered in most scholarly treatments of the topic. Postmodern thinkers who emphasize the socially and historically constructed nature of all subjective

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phenomena are particularly averse to giving credence to spiritual motivations claimed by social actors, although social scientists likewise have a history of neglect and negation of spiritual aspects of subjective experience. While the term spiritual, with its connotations of religiosity (which are not implied here), can be considered problematic due to its nonspecific nature, there are few terms that more readily capture the transcendental and immanent dimensions of human experience. Additionally, the word resonates with popular parlance, which increasingly seeks to articulate peoples highly personal experiences of connection with or inspiration by a nonmaterial realm of existence or activity, independent of any institutionalized religions or religious dogma (Conlon 2008 February 25). Because sexuality, particularly non-dominant forms of sexuality and gender expression, are demonized within many of the worlds religious dogmas, a potential link between sexuality and spirituality is often not explored due to questionable assumptions of its nonexistence. Yet, as mentioned above, many indigenous traditions posit a place for multiple forms of sexuality and gender expression within their spiritually-rooted cosmologies. In addition, accounts such as the ones presented in this paper indicate a tendency on the part of some people who express gender or sexuality unconventionally to autonomously and spontaneously make links to spirituality. Texts such as Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity (James and Moore 2006), Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Participation in African-inspired Traditions in the Americas (Conner and Sparks 2004), The Essential Gay Mystics (Harvey 1998), and even Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Brown-Douglass 1999) affirm this reality. Thus, scholarly consideration of spiritual notions of self (or Self, as it is sometimes written, to differentiate it from ego) are warranted and may provide extra explanatory power. While a full consideration of this idea is beyond the scope of this paper, its introduction is intentional and crucial to the ideas advanced herein. Metaphysical approaches to Self, including approaches based in theoretical (quantum) physics, certain branches of philosophy, the worlds multiple wisdom traditions, and mysticism, treat all manifestations of individuality as reflections of an inner state of consciousness, which can range from various experiences of individuality and particularity to a comprehensive and subsuming sense of oneness with all that is. Gender is an expression of a cosmic duality principle that extends far beyond male and female bodies, while sexuality is an expression of a tendency to return to oneness. Viewed in this light, infinitely proliferating variations in gender expression and sexual behavior reflect multiple reflections of underlying cosmic realities. This view is different from either traditional essentialism as it is expressed in rationalist and empiricist philosophy or social constructionism as expressed in postmodern philosophy. As such, it represents a third space and a new model of understanding identity and identity politics. The full implications of this third space and new model must be explored in future research.

Summary and Conclusions Collectively, the selected people we have presented as exemplars of non-traditional, non-conforming, and transgressive expressions of gender, sexuality, and race

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highlight the complex, diverse, and multifarious nature of sex, gender, sexuality, identity, and identity politics. Based on these examples, scholars and other interested parties should immediately note the limitations of identity labels and categorization schemes. Labels and categories, while heuristically useful in limited contexts, generally render invisible important details of peoples experience and meaning systems. Stated differently, peoples subjectivity is underdetermined by the labels that may be affixed to them (even by themselves) and the categories into which they may be placed (or may place themselves) for convenience. Although we focused on individuals for whom biographical material was readily available in the public domain, this research is also relevant to the largely hidden multitude everyday people whose own experience of non-traditional, nonconforming, or transgressive identity places them outside or beyond existing frames of recognition and articulation. It is our hope that our study inspires new research and scholarship aimed at better reflecting the full diversity of human experience around gender, sexual, and racial self-conception and self-expression, as well as other dimensions of Self, transcendentally considered. The ultimate aim of such research should be that all people regardless of gender expression, sexuality, or racial, ethnic, or cultural background can and will say, of themselves and to others, I am just so glad you are alive! References
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