Tom of Fitty

Cue your copy of the Queen-vs.-50 Cent mashup, cuz BlackBloggah is pondering the shared aesthetic of 50 Cent and gay-porn illustrator Tom of Finland—but he's got a very serious point:

AN OLD SHRINK OF MINE USED TO SAY, "The fear is the fascination" as a warning to me about how we are attracted to and unconsciously become what we fear, despise and hate. I experienced this principle growing up in Israel when I suffered racism from Jewish children whose parents railed against Nazism while unconsciously inculcating it in their own culture. And, I believe that this same principle is at work in the twin appearances of rampant homophobia and homo-hate in corporate hip hop, Jamaican culture and African culture throughout the Diaspora - and the fact that Black women in the U.S. suffer from the highest rates of new AIDS cases contracted by million of men living the "DL Lifestyle."

As a people, we have not come to terms with the facts of homosexuality, nor have we come to understand that the fight for GLBT civil rights is the logical and moral extension of the fight for our own rights. And as Black men, our failure to acknowledge, accept, welcome and celebrate all people regardless of sexual preference is directly related to the fact that we pass on AIDS faster than any other demographic in the U.S. We become what we fear and despise, period.

So, I submit this little trope and the above bits of visual culture to serve my argument that - hyper machismo equals homoerotic.