Gay gangs
Home / gay topics / Gay gangs
They vouched for me to their friends. He grew up in a rough part of Washington, DC where there were no openly gay people, so his irrepressible flamboyance made him a target at a young age. 24. A few primarily-straight gangs had a critical mass of gay, lesbian, or bisexual members—anywhere from about a quarter to almost one half—which I call hybrid gangs.
Straight gangs were organized by neighborhoods, with men joining pre-existing groups, while the gay gangs were structured around their shared sexual identity, and many helped form their gangs.
One gang may fight with any rival group, another may sell drugs, and yet another might focus mostly on its social activities. Gang members’ experiences differ greatly depending on the gang’s makeup. Photo courtesy of Dana Flor.
Trayvon Warren remembers his first big bullying incident took place when he was elementary school and a slightly older kid started threatening him.
In contrast, men in hybrid gangs were much more willing to come out to their gangs, share personal details about their lives with them, and were more able to act in ways not typically associated with an aggressive masculinity. Opening up to the camera was hard at first, because he was afraid of how the world would judge him.
It also communicated a belief that was clearly nonnegotiable: a fundamental right to not be bothered simply for being gay.
—Vanessa R.
Panfil
Gay men sometimes join or form gangs, which may be surprising. That meant people like Warren had a certain amount of notoriety, which allowed him to go to pretty much any neighborhood in DC without people giving him much trouble for being, as he and his friends put it, “faggie.”
Flor and Oppenheimer’s documentary, which is currently crowdfunding its final stages of editing, follows Warren and some of his friends at a crucial point in their lives.
The film tells the story of how three bullied DC teens started the only documented all-gay or transgender gang in America—also called Check It—with Warren being one of the original ten members. However, most of the men I talked to still expressed conventional masculine ideals, like valuing toughness and fighting ability, and some were quick to insult (but not harm) men who they thought were “too gay” or who acted like “fags.”
Gang activities also differed.
The gay gangs’ violence mostly took place at or began from conflicts at gay clubs or gay-themed events. But, not all of them belong to the same types of gangs. They didn’t just think of them as associates.
He hadn’t known the others were gay, and they didn’t know about him, either.
This obvious contradiction was one of the main reasons I was drawn to the subject of gay gang members. They hang out at each others’ houses, mostly, as well as a local Denny’s and the Chinatown and Gallery Place Metro stations.
Some fought back even if they weren’t openly gay. In their words, they were able to be “the real me.”
Men in gay gangs were expected to be able to build a public reputation as a gay man – what they called becoming “known.” Being “known” means you’re able to achieve many masculine ideals – making money, being taken seriously, gaining status, looking good – but as an openly gay man.
In order to not be financial deadbeats, they resorted to sometimes selling drugs or sex; in order to not be seen as weak, they sometimes fought back, perhaps getting hurt in the process.
It all seemed to come from a desire to upend damaging cultural stereotypes of gay men as weak, of black men as “deadbeats” and offenders, and of gang members as violent thugs.
But it was important to them to be able to construct an identity as a man who wasn’t going to be messed with – a man who also happened to be gay.
Their responses were revealing: “I will fight you like I’m straight”; “I’m gonna show you what this faggot can do.” They were also willing to defend others derided as “fags” in public, even though this could signal that they were gay themselves.
A local go-go band called ReAction wrote a song about the gang and name-checked individual members.