TOPHER CAMPBELL
Artist and activist Topher Campbell’s provocative short film Fetish explores what it means to be black, queer and male. Here, he reflects on his long journey towards finding joy in the richness of his identity
The Fetish film- maker on finding sexual liberation
Ever since I was a little boy I wanted to be free. Abandoned by my mother at a year old, I lived in care until I was 13. I dreamt of flying off to faraway places. Not knowing where I came from, I even imagined I had been born on an aeroplane.
I grew up in a white, middle- class environment and was one of only three black kids in my junior school. At university, there were few black students. As a kid and teen, I spent my life being culturally rootless.
This was a kind of freedom, but at the cost of feeling lost. I was a coconut: dark on the outside and white in the middle.
I discovered my blackness in ’ 90s Brixton, which at the time had a very hard- edged reputation for crime and violence. This was really a myth perpetuated by the media, because for me Brixton is the place where I discovered my sexuality and the beauty of my race. Brixton had a very developed black LGBTQ community, probably the largest in Europe, and one that was totally invisible to the white world.
I wasn’t taught that black people are beautiful. Instead, like everyone else, I was indoctrinated with the idea that whiteness and fair skin is the most desirable. My black maleness was reduced to a white fetish of being sexually dominant, aggressive and well endowed. Also, white people didn’t like rejection. It was expected that if a white man or woman wanted me, then I should be available, regardless of what they looked like or who they were. The two black identities available to me, the street thug or Magical Negro ( a black man who overcomes adversity and succeeds), were too narrow to encompass me.
My liberation came when I started sleeping with black men. Sex with my black “brothers” is richer and deeper and comes with the added bonus of no racial objectification. Instead, there is mutual admiration and respect — fuelled by raw passion.
The more sex I had with black people and people of colour, and enjoyed the feel and touch of black and brown skin, the more I longed for a place where the pressures of a white- dominated world didn’t matter. My sexuality, my need for other black and brown bodies, not only fulfilled my personal desire, but also became a celebration of our collective existence and repudiation of the centring of whiteness. Sex for me became political.
Thus began my lifelong love affair with blackness. I started to care about what happened to black LGBTQ people, because I experienced what it was like to be rendered invisible. People either saw me as black or gay separately. The idea that both could exist together and represent a positive reality was just not seen. To white, straight society, I was an “issue”; to the black, straight world, an abomination or race traitor; and to the white, male- led gay world, a big dick on legs.
I learnt quickly that as a black, queer man I was going to be subject to the twin pillars of racism and homophobia throughout my life, so I had better determine for myself who I was.
I became an artist and activist because I wanted to avoid the dumbing down of my complex existence and because I wanted to forge
a new, more exciting place of possibility. I wanted to be free. I have settled on a place, thanks to Stuart Hall, that I call radical homelessness. It’s Afro- centric and doesn’t depend on the hierarchy of existence dominated by western European traditions. Meanwhile, I take what I want from my Eurocentric education. It is a fluid place where my essence isn’t a matter of co- existence, where one identity is separated from another, but instead a place where my gender, sexuality and race are entwined like DNA.
My masculine appearance still means that people assume I am straight. I am aware that this gives me male privilege, but it also means I am racially profiled – meaning that whatever privilege I experience is fluid, depending on the context and location. This is why I have decided to signal my difference in subtle ways: by my dress style, nail polish or certain earrings or other jewellery. I love being a man who can shape- shift subtly.
More significantly, I am exploring my masculinity, my desires and lived experience through my films, writing and performances. I am also becoming more comfortable with my bisexuality.
The main purpose is to be visible, and in doing so, I am starting to achieve the kind of freedom I craved when I was a little boy. The freedom to be me as a total human being.
Sex- positive and breaking conventions, I am unapologetically Afro- Queer. Sometimes I am even able to fly.
To watch Fetish ( 2018), contact Topher Campbell on Instagram at @ tcimage_ 1
“my liberation came when i started sleeping with black men”