Straight Women and Situational Homophobia, or When Queer Sidekicks Go Bad

Remember The Queens Court, that cyberbullying extravaganza popular YouTube show that vintage rapper Khia hosted with her homegirl Ts Madison? You know, the one where the “My Neck, My Back” rapper insulted everyone doing better than her which is the whole entire earth issued “hilarious” court rulings against your favorite urban celebs?

Yeah, that’s dunzo.

Things fell apart after a production dispute went full left, climaxing with a 25-minute video rant in which Khia basically dragged Madison—a transgender woman—by calling her a man in a wig.

This after months sitting in Madison’s house and calling her sister.

While the black vlog community has spent weeks dissecting Khia’s apparent treachery, I’ve been busy filing my nails.

That’s because as a founding member of #TeamRainbow, I’ve been around long enough to recognize this same old pattern in which straight women befriend queer men and trans women, then show their entire ass when conflict arises.

Excuse me while I aggressively wave this Mahalia Jackson fan in the air.

If we ever want to mend rifts between the Rainbow Tribe and the Straights (and straight cisgender women and queer men especially), we need to start having an honest conversation about this dynamic. That involves holding all parties accountable, from the straight girls guilty of opportunistic friendships to the queer folk who enable their own exploitation.

Of course, queer folk and straight folk can and do have real, healthy friendships every day.

But today we’re talking about the vicious draggings so many queer men and trans women in particular have endured privately and in public at the hands of cis women they called friends.

Ts Madison is just the latest casualty.

The drama stemmed from a February Queens Court interview with comedian Mo’Nique. Problems with sound and recording led a frustrated Khia to roll out halfway through the live-cast show, leaving Madison literally crying in front of an online audience of thousands.

A hot stankin’ mess.

Soon both Khia and Madison posted videos explaining what led to the implosion. Except Khia’s videos got ugly fast: They started with her blaming Madison for hiring “sissies and punks” to handle production and hit peak ignorance when she called the trans woman “Mandie the Man Whore”—purposely overpronouncing “man.”

She even tossed in a few “My Hotep friends told me not to mess with y’all gay asses” for good measure. As one gay vlogger recently put it, a queer man can be a straight woman’s best friend until he makes her mad. Then he’s just a faggot.

This ain’t new.

Just reference The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which has a long history of queer sidekicks, and an equally long history of homophobic comments when the shit hits the fan. Y’all may recall that this was blamed for the departure of Miss Lawrence, who complained about being a token gay person on a show where “the first time an inflammatory situation arises, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is ‘queen’.”

Why hasn’t this gotten more attention? To start with, people don’t want to believe that cis women can be homophobic. Moreover, it’s easy to write off the occasional “Queen!” as isolated bad behavior, especially when these women so clearly love the Gays.

After all, they adore their style and their makeup tips and their slang. I mean, that’s love, right?

Yeah, screaming, “Yass, honey!” and keeping a few queer boys around to beat your face doesn’t mean that you love, appreciate or even respect the Gays, any more than a white supremacist wearing Jordans loves the Blacks. It just means you tolerate them as long as they have something to give you.

A great lightskint man once called that fake love. Better known as bullshit. Better known as high-key phony with a dash of cultural appropriation that’s mind-boggling considering that this is one minority group accessorizing another.

That speaks to the role that queer folk play in this. Khia has clapped back, saying that we only yell homophobia when it’s convenient. She’s right on one front: We need to start calling out homophobia the instant it starts, not just when it reaches a boiling point or when circumstances are no longer favorable to ignoring it.

Ts Madison sat next to a woman who called queer people snapdragons and other slurs for months and did nothing. Was she blinded by the coins or the potential thereof?

Maybe it’s time for Madison and all of us to consider the cost to our dignity.

Where do we go from here? If you’re Khia and Madison, apparently it’s to your separate corners. After a failed attempt to revamp, they’ve called it quits and moved on. Well, kind of: In one of her latest videos, Khia shifts gears from anti-trans to anti-lez, accusing a reality-show star of “bulldaggin’.” Just in time for Women’s History Month. That’s beautiful!

For the rest of us, I’m hopeful that this episode can spark a conversation that can lead people, gay and straight, to recognize and reverse their harmful patterns.

And If you don’t like the Gays, that’s fine—just stay your not-liking-us ass out of our salons, makeup chairs, homes and everywhere else we beez around. Don’t worry, we’ll be OK!