Recently, rapper Young Thug referred to “straight-passing” gay men’s behavior as deceiving and breaking “man-code.”
Appearing on the podcast Perspektives with Bank, Thug discussed his broken relationship with fellow rapper Gunna. According to Them, their relationship has been fractured since Gunna pleaded guilty to racketeering charges involving Thug’s record company YSL Records—Georgia officials claimed that members of the label where actually committing violent gang activities.
In the interview, Thug compares the betrayal he felt with Gunna to discovering someone is gay. He was quoted as stating, “I feel like once you break a rule from your manhood, once you rat or once you turn gay. If I look at you, if I meet you, and you gay, it’s like, ‘OK.’ If I meet you, and you portraying that you a man and you’re not gay—I don’t got nothing against gay people. You know what I’m saying? If you’re portraying a certain thing …”
Later, Thug comments on men that have labelled themselves as DL or “down low,” people who publicly claim heterosexuality while secretly engaging in homosexual relations.”If I look at you like a man, and we fucking bitches together, girls together, and we doing certain shit together, I’m looking at you in a man light. Then I find out you gay, it ain’t really nothing you can say to me. I’mma just look at you like you broke a man code.”
This statement comes not long after fellow rapper Snoop Dogg also critiqued homosexuality on a different podcast. He was complaining about the rise of LGBTQ+ representation in children’s movies; however, the understated homophobia still holds.
Not only are these statements insulting, they also insinuate that queer men are not actually men at all because of their sexuality. Although it is true that being a gay man creates a more complicated relationship with their gender identity, it most certainly does not mean that they are no longer a man.
Photo courtesy of Young Thug
