MadameNoire Featured Video

ATLANTA, GA – JANUARY 09: Funky Dineva attends the birthday celebration of Mimi Faust at Halo Lounge on January 9, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Prince Williams/FilmMagic)

Funky Dineva, for those of us who are unfamiliar, is a Youtube personality and vlogger best known for his red lipstick and cheap wig wearing antics. From the inception of his career, Mr. Dineva has made content for and about Black women and in return, Black women have comprised the understructure of his fan base. Offering real time reviews of popular reality TV shows and the like, Mr. Dineva has in many ways solidified himself as a digital pop culture guru. On May 9th, 2018, Mr. Dineva posted two videos to his YouTube channel with the following titles: “Do Black Women Love Gay Men or Is It Convenience” and “Enough With This “Everyone Hates Black Women” Bull Crap!!!”

Here are some quotable moments from these videos:

“The moment y’all get mad with a gay man the first insult you wanna hurl is ‘You just mad cause you wanna be me. You wish you was a real woman, you wish you had a real vagina, you wish….’ No the f-ck we don’t, like newsflash. No the entire f-ck we don’t. True to the form, a real, like bonafide Gay man is turned completely off by the thought of vagina and disgusted by the thought of bleeding every month. Sis, nobody wants to be you.”

“First and foremost the word fish was never designed for y’all to participate in in the first place. Gay people have been referring to women as fish since before the Harlem Renaissance.”

“Gay men find refuge in female spaces, OK? We do. But we cannot pretend that it’s not a one-to-one exchange, neither party is benefiting more or less than the other…. When you’re gay, you are considered to be the antithesis of being a boy. So what does society do, they lump us with the girls and we find refuge with the girls…However, let’s not pretend like as we develop and get older, its not a one-to-one exchange. We end up having to be everything your girlfriend can’t and everything ya man won’t.”

“A lot of times I question do y’all really even give a f-ck about us…. It’s kinda like a side chick, you’ll f-ck us real good when we in private but then when we in public, it’s a whole different story. We become every sissy, fag, punk in the book.”

“Let us get into a argument, y’all will run up in our face, put your hands in our face, all of this right here, talk crazy. Now the minute I get up, ready to protect myself or just give you back what you gave me, now all of a sudden, magically i’m no longer your girlfriend, the sissy, yo good Judy, I’m all of a sudden a man…Or y’all do this magical thing where y’all got this unspoken rule that it’s okay for y’all to do all this in a man or a gay mans face (mimics aggressive gesturing and pointing) and simply because I got a dick between my legs, I’m supposed to just sit there and take it from my good girlfriend. “

“While I will never understand what it is like to be a Black woman in this country, you will never understand what it’s like to be a black gay male in this country, so who’s to say yours is worse than mine?”

“I feel like some of y’all wake up everyday and put on your ‘let me inspect and find who hate Black women’ glasses, so no matter what, because you lookin’ for that you find it”

“I understand that Black women are an underserved population, I understand for so long that they have not had voices. But if you think that’s something, try being gay and black.”

It’s hard to believe a public figure whose fan base, for the most part, is majority Black women would openly state such inflammatory views about them. I wish I could say this is a rare occurrence but this is something Black women have been experiencing, and excusing, for quite some time from members of the gay Black community. Misogyny is not a straight male thing, it’s not a Black male thing, it’s a male thing and Mr. Dineva is proof of that. From the repulsed manner with which he speaks about the female anatomy to his attempt to excuse physical aggression towards women, everything about Dineva reeks of anti-womanism.

The fact that a gay man, or any man for that matter, would open his mouth to condemn the female anatomy that made his existence possible is not only laughable but highly offensive and ignorant. And I draw the distinction between gay and straight men in this matter because this is a community that has been demonized, punished and ridiculed for their preferred sexual practices. So you would think if anyone would have an understanding of how ignorance and thoughtlessness can further stigmatize a group of people, it would be members of the gay community. Instead we see blatantly how a persons’ sexual orientation and the discrimination they may face because of it have very little bearing on their understanding of social equity. A person can love both owning and chasing penis without having to emote disgust at women and their bodies. And why would you want to?

Out of curiosity, when did Black women become the scapegoat for people who have trouble choosing and keeping friends? Mr. Dineva has had some very public beefs with Black female bloggers and online personalities, in many instances being caught in the middle of ongoing drama between multiple Black women. And with very public fallouts taking place over the last few years, we have seen the venom with which Mr. Dineva treats his former friends. The question then becomes, is it Black women who have been less than deserving of your friendship or is it you who struggle to understand the authentic disposition of a friend? After all, by your own admission, most of your interactions with Black women were by force not by choice.

Essentially, the only spaces where you have been welcomed and received without judgement or appraisal have been spaces dominated by Black women. Interestingly enough, Dineva tells a story of being reassigned from a male dressing room to a female dressing room while touring with a Kandi Burruss production. The perplexing piece of the story is that although he identifies that he was removed at the request of his straight male co-stars, his frustration was taken out on the female producers who were left to rectify the situation. This rejection by straight men and by mainstream society is a recurring theme in Dineva’s narrations, so why is it that we never see him having these conversations with straight Black men? After all, isn’t that where your angst should be directed? Why not talk to the straight Black men who’ve been rejecting your version of masculinity since its inception? You’d think that would be more beneficial than repeatedly denigrating the only people who took you in, especially when that rejection is something you both have in common. Instead, it becomes the black woman’s problem to heal wounds she didn’t create, all while trying to heal herself.

Funky Dineva is as misogynistic as they come and completely undeserving of Black women’s support. As would be any man, regardless of sexual orientation or race, who expressed such nonsensical sentiments pertaining to Black women. Sure, Black women may at times turn to gay black men to fill relationship and friendship voids. And Black women have undoubtedly adopted much of the lingo and slang used within the Black gay community, but to ignore the fact that this is a result of gay men gaining access to Black women in ways that straight men are not privy to would be shortsighted. For gay Black men to desire straight Black male spaces, they sure do keep finding their way into female dominated spaces like the Beauty industry, where a bunch of gay men suppress their disgust while policing the appearance and anatomy of women.

Oddly enough, the criteria used by gay men to measure our worthiness is no different than the criteria used by straight men to measure our attractiveness, things like weight, height, body type, facial symmetry, etc. Proving overwhelmingly that sexual attraction is not a requirement for misogyny. We see this in Black Gay fashion influencers like André Leon Talley, Jay Alexander, and Edward Enninful, men who by no stretch would be considered “classical beauties” telling women how to be timeless, iconic and unrealistically flawless. Men who know everything about women’s fashion and nothing about womanhood. Contrary to Dineva’s rant, Black women have never stopped creating refuge for other people, not for gay Black men, not for straight black men, not for Black children, not for other women of color, and the list goes on. The only people we struggle to maintain safe spaces for are ourselves.

I am retracting my support from people who do not support Black women, people who in 2018 still need explanations as to why being both Black and a woman automatically makes you susceptible to a host of browbeating challenges and setbacks. We don’t need to look very far to find anti-Black women sentiments because Black men like Dineva have no issue making their gripe visible. I am not your “fish”, “cunt”, “b-tch”, or “hoe” and I won’t excuse the underhandedness of remarks like these in exchange for perceived familiarity. If straight Black men have disowned you, take it up with them. If straight Black men have called your manhood into question, take that up with them. If straight Black men have forced you into refuge with the likes of bitter Black women who you can’t stand, take that up with them and seek asylum elsewhere. But don’t vilify Black women for being victims of the same system. We are our own. We are our own to criticize, to chastise, and to reproach but we are also our own to heal. Red lipstick and a wig don’t give any man, especially not Funky Dineva, license to ridicule black women for the trauma that they haven’t endured alongside her. And in many ways, for the trauma that men, both gay and straight, have caused. You are unworthy of our friendship, of our unwavering support and of our sanctuary. But you can 100% keep the wig.

Comment Disclaimer: Comments that contain profane or derogatory language, video links or exceed 200 words will require approval by a moderator before appearing in the comment section. XOXO-MN