“Do you have a big one?”: do you know about sexual racism?

“Do you have a big one?” “I would like to try that on you.” “Where do you come from? Because I don’t know your country, but I would like to know it tonight…” The RÉZO organization is launching an awareness campaign to end sexual racism among GBTQ+ men.

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“To be reduced to an object, to a fantasy, to an experience, is demeaning, it can cause us to still experience rejection and discrimination within the very community that we feel like. belong,” explains Steve Bastien, social and community worker at RÉZO, a health and wellness organization for gay, bisexual and trans men.

What is sexual racism?

Sexual racism is a set of beliefs and attitudes that are perpetrated against black and racialized men in a sexual context. “These are phrases that reduce to exoticism, to the size, to the size of the sex, to our origin, while several black men, like me, were born in Quebec, in Canada, but it is our parents who are there. immigrated or our grandparents”, explains the social worker.

Racialized men can live from it, “as much in dating applications, in social places, in bed, in the living room, in a bar,” he continues.

“It hurts, it hurts, you feel rejected. We don’t feel like going any further and being a sexual object. Our ancestors have worked hard so that we are no longer objects since the end of slavery, ”he underlines with emotion.

RÉZO’s awareness campaign, for which Steve Bastien is responsible, aims to open up dialogue between racialized and non-racialized men. “What we want is for us to talk about sexual racism, fetishization, telling the real stories, not being afraid to say that it has an impact on the mental and sexual health of men from the gay community,” said the speaker.

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Fetishizing is racism

While some people may reject the possibility of sexually engaging with racialized men outright, others will fetishize the idea of ​​doing so. And it’s just as much sexual racism, argues Steve Bastien.

“Fetishizing, in the sexual context, encloses individuals in a box. People only see us from one angle. The black man, virile, has a large penis. The Asian man, submissive, does not have a great penis. The Arab man, we are afraid of him, but he is virile,” he says.

He believes that physical preferences are entirely possible, but that the way these preferences are expressed can be marked by racism.

“Not to reduce myself to a penis, not to reduce me to my virility. I am more than that, I have feelings, I have a heart, I am a panoply of things”, he asks, for himself, as a gay black man, but also for all racialized men in a situation similar to his.

Impacts on sexual and mental health

Steve Bastien is adamant: sexual racism is a form of microaggression. “And to be told repeatedly [des commentaires racistes]it’s tiring, it’s frustrating, it can cause disappointment, anger.

Sexual racism can also have effects on the physical and psychological health of those who experience it. Rejection, for example, can cause low self-esteem and affect the sense of belonging, notes the speaker. “Not being accepted, experiencing racism in the community large and in the LGBTQ community, it has impacts.”

These effects can go so far as to affect the physical health of certain individuals.

“Some men will take more risks and have risky behaviors, live a sexuality in hidden places, in places where the wearing of condoms is not negotiated”, which exposes them more to sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, concludes Steve Bastien.