A Single Black Woman's Reaction to Frank Ocean "Coming Out"

This past Monday night I tweeted: “Dear Future Husband, Let’s take over the world together. Sincerely, Jas.”

I was leaving a friend’s birthday party. It was late, the weather was warm, I was a little buzzed. As I walked the long way to my train, I felt good, so I shared a very personal, and perhaps uncharacteristically vulnerable, thought. Within minutes, I had dozens of replies. Many of them were retweets from other women, a few were replies from male followers willing to take me up on the request and several were from my own friends but their responses were somewhat surprising. They laughed. The joke became that my phone had been hacked; there’s no way that I had written that.

I said nothing.

Let me be clear, I don’t believe my friends meant me any harm. In fact, I know they didn’t which is why I didn’t respond. But I do believe that sometimes we get so caught up in wanting to be accepted that we will do so at the expense of others. Instead of taking a moment to really think about what I said and that it’s something they also want, they decided to make light of it.

After 24 hours of speculation, singer/songwriter Frank Ocean (via Tumblr) revealed (beautifully) that he was (at the very least) bisexual. He shared the very personal story of his first love, which happens to have been a man. Although the response has been refreshingly positive, the inevitable jokes and backlash surely followed. To some, his music has changed. They’re unsure if he’s singing to a woman or a man. For others, they took issue with the idea of bisexuality all together, reasoning that once you’ve been with a man, you’re gay. Then, some simply wanted a reason to ridicule him, proclaiming they “knew it all along” by his “soft” lyrics and fierce privacy.

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