His mother thought he was gay and liked women. McDaniel would dress as a boy wearing androgynous clothing and sometimes people would mistake him as boy. “I was absolutely terrified to come out,” he said. His mother is a conservative Christian and McDaniel said he grew up in the church and was taught it was not okay to be gay. “My own family didn’t accept me being trans so me being gay is a really big problem for them right now,” he said.
McDaniel, who works at Kroger, said he feels like his identity and situation is a “double whammy” and he is struggling to find a family. “I guess right now, it feels likes I’m not wanted anywhere,” the 22-year-old said. Victor McDaniel is a black, transgender gay man who lives in Portsmouth with his boyfriend, Elvis, a white gay man, as well as Elvis’ family. “It’s either going to continue to happen where we have these movements every few decades…or the system can be made even to where we don’t have to compartmentalize ourselves.” Victor McDaniel and his boyfriend, Elvis. “There’s been a lot that has been done, and centuries of conditioning, to get to where we are now,” he said. During protests or media coverage, there has started to be even more representation of LGBTQ individuals in the black community which Pryor said will hopefully help make a change toward acceptance. With the recent political unrest surrounding the discrimination of black people in America, Pryor said more are also looking at the difficulties surrounding black gay men. Pryor said those conversations are slowly changing in the black community, especially with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “It’s a lot to have to guard yourself on so many different fronts constantly.” “It all becomes compounded when you’re representative of some of those groups,” he said. Pryor works with HIV prevention efforts in the area and he said one goal is to help people learn empathy and understanding, instead of dividing a person into various categories.
Pryor said in his experience, part of this is because individuals aren’t discussing sexuality and prevention methods so many aren’t aware of how to protect themselves.īeing an HIV-positive black gay man in the modern day is a struggle because it’s yet another subset of a minority struggling for acceptance. Pryor has had even more of a social hurdle after being diagnosed HIV-positive.Īccording to the study, black men have an increased risk of HIV exposure due to complex factors of social environment, mainly being the stigma in the black community surrounding homosexuality.