Yes, I do but I think it is a reaction of discrimination/prejudice.
I was an LGBTSGL Youth Coordinator—-my cohort were 14 to 27—-technically speaking that is about 3 Life Stages but I also ran the Total man group, which we designated as 20s/28 and up for funding purposes. Grants generally provide more for males under 28, pointedly minorities because of co-existing CDC rates around HIV infection designating “youth” as being under 28. Hence the demarcation in my programs.
But one of the big issues in a program that focuses on acceptance of the sexuality of young men/trans, etc. is that they are all sexually curious, active, interested, confused and frankly, indiscriminate.
One issue was the demarcation between the Youth Group and the other Groups. I was brought on after the dramatic diva leaving of the former YC—-how else could he leave, and his decision to take with him the group he’d been nurturing for several years. I didn’t know all of this drama when I was given some cash and shopping cart to take food up to the Bronx (!) from Manhattan for a summer cook out. As I had just been laid off of a job up the block I was thrilled to be employed a week later, working, LGBTSGL focused so I shopped, I train hopped, I found the backyard in the Bronx. They were openly hostile towards me, which was the first deep tip that there had been issues with the youth, the former YC and the other Coordinators.
BUT
As I took myself and cart back home—-thankfully not welcome in the hot ass summer in a hot ass backyard in the Bronx…I had to ponder what kind of program I would create and what had gone wrong.
What had gone wrong was from both the group’s side and the overall agencies.
Sexualization of the Youth
The agency, GMAD—-Gay Men of African Descent had been around for decades by then and had started all of these sub groups to try and reach/accommodate/support men of color and their sexualities ……… in a world that hates and fears mutants.
And as I stated above, the grant monies is chunkation from the youth, potentially infected with HIV, potentially stopping them (as a mission) and supporting them in their non-heterosexuality.
Ok, so there were like 2 members, who never felt comfortable with the previous YC and his group—-it had become clickish, staring at me—-”what we gonna do/be, Kyle?”
I started recruiting—-whipped up some pamphlets, had food prepped every weekend, shoo’ed anyone over 28, besides me, but I refused to do some of the things that had been staples of the previous incarnation.
No PlayStation video games the whole programmatic time
No exclusionary closed door diva drama.
No exclusionary clicks.
Which meant that yes, I had to start directly teaching about sex, sexuality, relationships—-distilling down what I was doing for the 28+ men’s group to youth. And we immediately ran into two issues:
- The men/staff sexualizing the youth.
- What was appropriate sexualization of youth when the whole fundamental membership card is based on sexuality?
I eventually got computers to do MS Suite trainings, financial games—Monopoly and then Cash Flow 101 and 202—-to teach financial management; relationship pamphlets on how to negotiate conflicts; negotiating living together; negotiating dating; and negotiating boundaries. Which is where all hell broke loose.
So the office was almost an entire building floor, sub-divided and other organizations rented out space. Those orgs were run by men who spent an inordinate amount of time coming through my youth office/area to see what was “new”. And simply logistically there was no way to “stop” this attention.——-because as the Executive Director (who later embezzled monies to support a crystal meth habit so he could, HIV+ himself—-and vocal about it for years—-attend barebacking parties/breeding parties to have sex, outside of his relationship—-which he flag waved for years——with strangers—-ironically, I’d met him years before that when such a party was happen across the street from my building and I’d stood there and the Daily news interviewed me about it—-and then the Exec. Dir. had asked me to do a New York 1 cable news show interview about the organization as a member, which I did—-long story short of how I got involved)——the lookie loos brought up an interesting sticky point I was trying to navigate with mentoring the youth.
- One, in my recruitment, the resistance to new youth coming to GMAD itself, was that it had a history and reputation of chicken-hawking—-older men trying to get with the young tenderonis’. I eventually got the youth membership up to 80+ strong because of my personal reputation of not crossing that line and being vocal about any of the older men around who tried/did so.
(There was one coordinator who had a bad seed youth—-and used him to lure other youth teens to young adults—-to his apartment with PlayStations and weed—-and then encouraged them to have sex in front of him. Pisces.)
2. I couldn’t control or derail what happened outside of the program/office but it did bring up a lot of interesting points about—-what is consent?
I had to look up the New York State penal law because remember my Youth were also having sex with each other and they were varying ages. K to 12 schools are able to better deal with this because they are segregated by age (and sometimes by biological sex) but I had Middle School, High School and College aged raring to go hormone filled young men and trans in a confined space.
What were the rules—-legally and socially?
14 to 16 is where New York State falls when it comes to consent of a minor to be sexual but that is in regards to a other minors, not to adults. More pointedly to heterosexual children's, specifically girls. It answers by age but doesn’t criminalize as harshly based upon being male or male to male or non-hetero sex.
It seems simple to administrate the rules, right?—-but then the youth, 18+, might come to the Total Man meeting, which technically (by the grant letter) was 18+ to 80 years old, in participants. It was impossible to screen age ranges when one, I was the leader of both; and two there had been no Chinese Wall between them before because they were all dealing with some of the same issues—-and to some degree had some of the same maturity levels.
(I think we can all agree that I earned that paycheck for 2+ years.)
So one guy, 30+ starts dating another guy, 19, and they (insanely? I can see it but they assert it on the foundation of their sexuality and we’re the pro-sexuality space, right? Even though the 30+ year old started using the SS#’s of the 19 year and his 21 year old brother to claim them on his taxes, get back more cash and then break them off a couple of hundred. To youth who don’t know taxes/tax returns it seems like Christmas, right after Christmas——-and he’s got his own apartment! they’re struck Black gay man gold!) call it love. Is it appropriate? By what standards? Heterosexual standards?
What if it were a 30+ year old guy and two sisters?
Or let’s get modern, a 30+ year old woman, and two teen brothers—-she’s schtupping one, from the office next to hers?
Problematic? Yeah, we’d find it problematic—-heterosexually.
But isn’t there kind of a……. well, they gay and are what they are right? Let them do their thing in Gay World? Laisse faire.
How many GAY children’s advocacy agencies do you know of?
And that’s where the rub comes in about discrimination.
Sexual (ity) Discrimination Promotes Sexual Exploitation
Several of that 80+ youth I eventually recruited after a year, were homeless and couch surfing or in shelters due to their sexuality. So older men would offer shelter in exchange for sex—-which yes, is what increases the HIV rates among youth, particularly of color—-this offer occurs regularly to young men by older men, in exchange for barebacking/raw unsafe sex. Or younger men offer themselves for the resources of older men.
My goal was to make as many of the unstable living situation youth stable and move them along in life—-work and school—-I transformed the program from a video game and popcorn useless depot—-to a useful program and resource in their lives. I also recruited from all over the city—-including the Piers off of Christopher Street, based upon the strength of my reputation (and two of my first TAs—-Shon and Norman—-30s and 60s with non-profit/teaching experience and most importantly boundaries about age range of lovers. Sadly both died during the height of COVID.)
But I couldn’t control the liaisons that occurred outside of the program nor the sloppy boundaries of even the social worker who was “in love” as he put it, with one of the youth he was counseling—-BUT what’s 19, 20, 21 to a 40 year old man in Gay World? You see the dilemma. I can speak to professional boundaries but Gay World, particularly Gay World of Color, doesn’t have such strict boundaries based upon emotional succor, support and needs.
What I can offer from a clinical perspective is that the youth did represent the older men’s maturity levels so for me it was like being the only adult in an office of man-hormone-teens. Luckily, I’d come from a charter school, law firms and corporate America so I had boundaries and kept all of my relationships far, far, far away from not just the agency but even the regular haunts of the clients and workers. I dated two guys and we agreed one would never come back and the second only visited me once after hours as I was closing up——which others tried to turn into a sex scandal—-lol—-because I represented an authorities threat to the exploitation coordinators were doing to youth/young men. Did I mention that by the time I left one of the directors had launched an escorting site, starring some of the older youth and was acting as their pimp and web designers? Another new coordinator wrote a letter to the Exec. Dir. threatening to quit over sharing an office with what can only be described and Cyber Client Call Boys.
One of the reasons why I left and never returned is because I saw how deeply pathological the staff was—-I was running through them on a list and out of 15, only 2….were…sane.
I would also throw in here the constant—-what do you bring to the table refrain from the men at GMAD—-was in truth a capitalistic equalizer-demand. Because men are seen and therefore see men transactionally in regards to relationships. (Women, potentially able to have children, are harsher as the products in the transaction ON the table. But perhaps more valued because of that.) Yes, another screed I’ll write up.
Visiting Nurse Services and City Year turned into incredible silent partners to me for resources, jobs, scholarships for college to do what I literally did in the last 6 months of my working time at GMAD—-eradicate, disintegrate the very youth program I’d spent 2 years building up.
My last client, ironically my first, I had lined up for a rehab in Santa Barbara—-I did the most hardcore negotiation with them to get him a scholarship there, it was $36,000 for 30 days, but had a connected sober house/job training for a year afterwards and he could “start over, a new life” on the West Coast—-he was 27, homeless, a prostitute, family-less but not a “bad person”, and playing with drug addiction and the idea of allowing his regular clients to infect him with HIV because it would insure he could get HASA—-NYC Welfare for HIV+ folk—-which would get him an apartment, money, food and stabilize him.
He purposefully missed the van sent to pick him up; and I moved on to my new job/life.
A few months later he declared he was HIV+ (though myself an an older, good counselor had talked with him for hours about not availing himself to infection for stability. The counselor was in his 60s, HIV+ himself and would die a couple of years later of AIDs related complications. Ironically was headed to the Gay and Lesbian Center to meet a friend and walked into his memorial. Serendipity.) and moving into a HASA paid for apartment while doing porn and hooking on the side.
Prostitute/Hooking Youth
Many of my clients/students were not only prostitutes but also did porn. There was a famous porn series—Coco Dorms—-it really looks like a reunion special of at least a dozen of my clients.
In Bizarro Gays of Color World, I often had to not only teach about but directly mentor youth who had to do what they had to do to survive. That meant one day shutting up in the office with the 27 year old and having a discussion that I would later term Pimp 101—-where I bluntly told him how to insure his safety while turning tricks—-not being high, not getting drunk, not accepting more money for condomless sex, not using the 16″ black dildo that a client have given him, as a gift—-he gave it to me for me to use in safe sex workshops. it is so large and therefore so distracting, that ironically it plays better on TV than in person. I have a human 6″ clear one that I use in workshops—-so as not to scare dudes.
But then I found myself having to have—-So You Do Porn workshops——because Coco Dorms offered something below minimum wage AND included that the males could live in the “dorms” apartment that was heavily covered with cameras and they got $50 for topping and ejaculating and $100 for being topped/bottoming and ejaculated into. The apartment turned into what can only be called a desperate sex frenzy of unsafe sex. Of course there were a dozen other porn studios clamoring for anything under 25ish or a legal looking 18…. or younger. There’s a further discussion in here about Daddy/Son fixations with men and in porn these days.
Yeah, I’ve seen it all from ground zero. lol
Another young man, lost his job, and before you could say “Rewind!” he’d gone from living with his parents, working at Lord & Taylor to doing porn. Luckily, he had some college experience so it was a few scenes and bye for him—-less than a thousand dollars. Porn, even the rampant screwing in Coco Dorms, pays very little, but pays more for youth.
Another student—-this trailing all the way to Columbia some years later——called me from the bathroom of a porn set—-the crew and Mr. Ready To Screw, were all waiting on him, what should he do? He was naked and unsure.
He and his brother, homeless, bouncing from shelter to shelter—-I would often then, years from GMAD, take them to dinner, walk them around the City talking, counseling and then deliver them to the shelter—-often hidden in buildings so as not to disturb neighbors—-where they would sleep on shelving built a few feet above the floor. But better than screwing some old dude in his house bareback, right? (Which eventually this student, and several others, did. The older 50ish man, demanding raw dog sex with the less than 21 year old youth.)
I told my student that he had two choices, and he was over 18, he was man, he had to make a choice. It was something like $200 for naked pics with the guy, $400 for full sex/penetration—-pictures, but especially video, were forever. And as Uncle Prince told it: “Forever is a mighty long time…..”
He had the right to say no, but he also had the right (and need) to say yes, I understood. But once you say yes, you must understand it is forever. He chose just to do the pictures—-and having seen them—-it was amateurish, hopefully deleted.
I know this Damoclesian choice from my own post-undergraduate experience, answering a “modelling ad” in Philly and the offer got pornographic but there was money on the table. I didn’t even make the appointment—-I rightfully thought: ”I might one day have political aspirations.” And a decade later I was appointed to a Community Board by the Manhattan Borough President.
But these were the youths choices because of discrimination.
Discrimination Fuels LGBTSGL Sexualization of Youth
See, heterosexuality prescribed those laws about 14 to 16 years old, consent, rape, minors, etc. But it never enforced them for same sex youth to the point where LGBTSGL MEN would hesitate in that GMAD office about what was going on in their homes, as professionals, what they were leering to and even the Executive Director allowing it by not enforcing age rules in the office. And also because half of my 80+ were castaways——no parent to come in and torch desks and raise all kinds of natural Hell if this were say a school, full of ostensibly hetero teens. The GMAD staff and members were primed by their own immaturity and pathologies to pounce on the youth.
I famously threw a State Senator out of a Youth Poetry Slam at the office, until he explained how he’d been invited—-he complimented me on how tight and protective I was on the door and for the youth.
Back to discrimination—-I couldn’t threaten anyone with anything because the laws, even when the police arrived, were so sketchy about gay folk, gay boys, kids on the Pier—-what they did to survive because there were no or slight social resources and shelters (like the Ali Forney agency who came and were helpful, but had limited beds) that oftentimes what the youth were doing was better than the shelter system they’d been forced to after discriminatory families kicked them out.
I was in charge of a low resourced program that I bartered everything but blood and ass for with other places to SNEAK in resources because the leadership of GMAD, when they weren't eventually embezzling for drugs, demanded so much money up front to have agency partnership access to their resource—-those youth who made a silver grant proposal gold—-that some agencies publicly bowed out like Visiting Nurse Services and GMHC and City Year——until my supervisors went home—-and they were waiting across the street with food trays, MetroCards, BBQ gift cards, money, social services, healthy social workers and staff with boundaries. GMAD indirectly and eventually even directly, got into straight up pimping the youth.
So it is a form of heterosexual discriminations that presses youth, in their teens and twenties, to be at the mercy of men who are older, employed, have apartments and houses.
To that point, for gay men who don’t or won’t or feel iffy about supporting young gay men, who are yes, legally over 18—-or at least 16——misunderstand, having been cast out of the (Learning) Man Cave that generosity is some ways the height of mature expression as a man, of the world/biology of Nature, IF they were dealing with females. It’s unusual for younger gay males to have money, shelter, education (I had one Princeton graduate in the youth program) AND have parental support and acceptance. So it is further (should be) natural for men with resources to responsibly and lovingly share those resources. But those older gay men were rarely taught manhood, to have a moral code. This I realized was what made me different because my parents taught me this, my university teaching professionally reinforced it and I’d just come from a a charter school where we, the teachers and administrators, all thought such generosity with healthy boundaries was sacrosanct.
Heterosexual men are taught to share resources with young women/women but again, discrimination pushes LGBTSGL men out of the Man Cave, and doesn't teach the male to male equivalency to those males/men so they use money and resources far more transaction ally than through affection and generosity. I found I was often teaching manhood and male to male Eros, pathos and logos love to all of the young and older men there. yeah, i scared the shit out of half of the hundreds I was teaching a week. But they kept coming back, young and old. The value of my work to the clients and popularity acted as a force field until I was so disgusted I decided to leave.
- Yes, I have used my resources to help countless youth/teens/young adults—-every teacher does. Luckily I had teacher experience and boundaries, so I knew supplementing the meager food supplied for my youth on Open Friday and Saturdays with $20-$50 more helped 30–50 of them have at least one hot meal. (Chicken, bags and bags of it, prepped at home, rice, beans, veggies, etc.. I can feed an army on $100.)
- I also made relationships with VNS, GMHC, GLAAD, City Year, Columbia University and BMX—-all of which had nights and programming that I could take 20 youth to (every agency/program needs numbers) because they had food and gift cards and it was a educational, social safe space. (I’m famous for my pre-meetings with programs where I politely threatened them all about boundaries until the clock hit 10pm—-when I was technically no longer on the clock as the Youth Coordinator.)
- And yes, I’ve paid a cell phone bill or two to keep clients connected to me/the world and yes, for years I rarely got all 30 Days out of a monthly MetroCard as I was passing it on, and to this day always have a second one with cash, to swipe someone through.
- And further yes, I have eaten at BBQs Restaurant far more often than even I would have liked so I could take a single or small group there on my dime, regularly.
- And yes, yes, yes—-after accomplishments, I take the young men to K&G or Men’s Warehouse—-buy one get one free suit days; they were crowded with me suiting up young men to have suits for job interview and to work in.
(I’m not telling you this to brag—-I’m telling you this so maybe, in your personal travels, you can see/know what you can contribute instead of exploitative transactional sex.)
- Let’s not forget, Brian Washington, restaurant owner and nightclub owner, who through his sommelier (who regularly attended my older total Men meeting) sent trays of food to us, week after week from his Native restaurant, and then provided free drink tickets to his nightclub where I took the ones over 21+ to teach them how to safely go out, drink (Know your limit. As I’d been taught at university at 25 by the late great writer and Professor Carlene Hatcher Polite, when I was her TA.) and have fun and chat dudes up.
What I did was act as sort of a Man Cave Hetero to Homo Mentor, compensating and teaching Life Lessons and how to navigate good, bad and no choices, that discrimination imposes.
See, if all the birds, regardless of which birds they liked, were treated the same—-even at the stopgap of alleviating youth homelessness—-sexuality being the biggest reason next to unwanted pregnancy—-then my youth 14 to 27, would’ve had some other safe haven than me——because my program was inside of the snake pit—-to some degree the snake pit designed by snakes to capture birds of varying ages, pedigrees, virginities (you have not lived until you see the rapacious hunger men example when a new man, even happened to me as a member, comes into the room—-it’s like Wild Kingdom——but with more glitter and sarcasm.)
Discrimination out of Hetero Mass Society, non acceptance of identity/sexuality, twists men, and the men it twists the most are those with the least amount of resources—-those in Poverty.
Again, I press that poverty is not simply financial—-as we glom it to being, it’s got 10–12 Dimensions—-in my workshops I teach about it so deliberately so that youth and adults can understand what’s missing and we can talk practically about what resources they need to infuse into their lives. Notice the first under Possessions is People. No age demarcation there.
In my teaching, I add Sexual Identity and Race/Cultural Awareness to the above chart to expand upon the areas that are missing and connect others. Sexual Identity in Poverty, which LGBTSGL Identity is as a Starter in Society, especially when coupled with minority status, devalues humans—-which allows discriminations to occur—-which then allows those devalued, discriminated against humans who are young, to be exploited———yes, even by the other devalued, discriminated, socially impoverished (older) men, sitting next to them. Perhaps, especially so.
The 12 Resources that human beings need to thrive are:
- Financial- Having the money to purchase goods and services, save for emergencies, and to invest. Having an understanding of how money works—being fiscally literate.
- Emotional- Being able to choose and control emotional responses, particularly to negative situations, without engaging in self-destructive behavior. This is the “state of mind” that determines the way we think, feel, and behave at any given moment. It’s an internal resource and shows itself through stamina, perseverance, and choice. This is about interpersonal skills for teamwork, teaching others, leadership, negotiation, and working with people from many backgrounds.
- Mental-Having the mental abilities and skills (reading, writing, computing) to deal with daily life. This includes how much education and training a person has in order to compete in the workplace for well-paying jobs.
- Physical- Having physical health and mobility
- Support Systems-Having social networks of trustworthiness and reciprocity that include people from outside one’s immediate circle. This is an external resource. Communities with rich social capital will improve life for everyone, even those with low personal social capital.
- Relationships and Role Models- Having frequent access to people who are appropriate, who are nurturing to children, and who do not engage in self-destructive behavior.
- Motivation and Persistence- Having the energy and drive to prepare for, plan, and complete projects, jobs, and personal changes. This is another internal asset.
- Hidden Rules -Knowing the unspoken cues and habits of both middle class and wealth.
- Integrity/Trust- Trust is linked to two issues: predictability and safety. Can I know with some certainty that this person will do what he/she says? Can I predict with some accuracy that it will occur every time? The second part of the question is safety: Will I be safe with this person? This is an internal asset.
- Spiritual-Believing in divine purpose and guidance and/or having a rich culture that offers support and guidance.
and two more that I am including
- Racial/Cultural Identity -Having a historical and origin sense, understanding and pin point knowledge of where one comes from as an individual, family, community, ethnicity, race and culture.
- Sexual Identity-Having a basic understanding of the various sexualities that are possible to experience as a human being and being able to align one’s internal sense of self, physicality and sexual expression and attraction to a definition, that may be along a continuum and therefore change throughout one’s lifetime. A clear understanding that sexuality is individually decided and fluidic.
Predatory Men of Color and Others, Who Are LGBTSGL
I found men of color predatory towards younger men of color, not because they were “bad” people but because the larger society hadn’t/hasn’t made a clear pathway for how to be a man, love another man, express a sexuality, romance and seduce and love, and marry those sexualities. How to be good men towards men. What they instead learn is how to be sexual towards devalued men as devalued men.
So much of my work was about self esteem and self confidence even in the mind-blowing idea I began teaching constantly: “You are intended by God/the Divine/the Universe.”
Every time, it blew their minds that they were not cursed, scarred, wrong, bad, less than, worthy of scorn and derision or exploitation. That they too had a value to not simply sexuality but also to the concept of virginity. And the sharing/loss of that virginity didn’t have to be trashy or messy or sketchy. That they weren’t just to be run through.
Discrimination doesn’t just exclude, it disintegrates the self esteem of the man, woman, culture, teen, child and the empathy of those discriminated against.
In Sum
The 27 year old prostitute/porn star who chose to become HIV+, was the last “youth” in the program as I purposefully dismantled the chicken coop in a snakes’ den. I was laid off due to lack of funding the same day that I accepted a position paying double at another agency (lol).
How are the youth from my program today?
Thanks to their constant vomiting on social media, I can follow some of them—-several I was able to foster/support into college, have graduated, and even a couple have gone abroad for extended periods, with one living in Europe. Several others I was able to help secure good jobs, one even at Columbia. City Year is a TA/tutorial program that several clients did well with. A few others stay in contact, ask questions periodically, seek guidance—-which is good, natural for some fatherless, to seek mentoring advice, from an older male.
People often ask me did any of the youth/young adults try to seduce me? (the seduction is bilateral from youth to older men, mainly because of resources from the above chart)—-and yes, two or three seriously tried. Like uncomfortably so. But like a good schoolmarm, I shut them down, firmly, but completely. The first couple of weeks, I demonstrated to the group—-that no, you may not sit on my lap, and that no, I would not tolerate any belligerent, disrespectful youth who had been a member of the previous iteration group. I threw him out. You have to kill the first rabid dog to make it clear that you kill rabid dogs, you are pack leader and you will protect the others from that rabid dog.
And, yes there has been 1 student in well over 15 years that I thought was attractive—-BUT—-he was over 28 when we first met. And no, nothing happened but I too am human and he never knew that I liked-liked him because he was in one of my projects/programs/cohorts. Boundaries.
It was important for me to be completely transparent about identity, sexuality and such, but personally almost asexual, while there—-which someone I dated, pointed out, was another good reason to leave. A third reason was the prevalence of HIV amongst men of color, men there, the staff there, and the CDCs in house training that our Coordinator positions were the most vulnerable to infection/lackadaisical sex practices because we saw so many HIV+ folk living day to day normal lives. I take expert lessons to heart, got a Life/Business Coach and after 6 months with him, started changing my life, dismantling the program, and 6 months later was interviewing between 3 positions and gone.
When I see some of the former clients in public they talk to me about what an affirming space I created and as all students do—-they reflect back at me lessons that all teachers forget they are teaching—-one young man, cresting into 30, told me one evening, a chance meeting at a subway station, that he got from me the resilience and awareness of his having to constantly come out with people—-that it never shifted/change/evaporated.
No, I don’t remember teaching that explicitly but I can see how one, I would, and two, how I was preparing them for the constant societal discrimination.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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