![]() None of this is to say that I May Destroy You is hateful towards queer people. It's definitely important to have a trans character, particularly a Black trans character, presented as desirable in a non-fetishistic way – but we wish he could have been given more agency outside of teaching cis people about trans identity. The ensuing scene feels more centred around teaching her (and the cis audience by proxy) not to be transphobic than actually giving him his own agency – even with the life Cunningham puts into the performance. This is especially true with Kai (Tyler Luke Cunningham), a trans man who Terry flirts with and goes on a date with in the penultimate episode before realising he’s trans. Outside of Kwame, you can feel how queer people are instrumentalised and basically become teachable moments. This seems to ignore the way that so many queer people break out of that mould, creating bonds that move past this prescriptive model and break the binary thinking that one type of relationship must be more meaningful than another. In this, a hierarchy of relationships is created the romantic supersedes the carnal, and relationships that form (or at least mirror) the heterosexual family unit are prized above all. Beyond Kwame, Damon (Fehinti Balogum) the closeted guy that he tried to hook up with on the night he was assaulted, has also found happiness in a relationship, and this almost feels the only way by which queer people in I May Destroy You are allowed to be happy/at peace. It’s the kind of ideology that says chastity before marriage is outdated, so you can be promiscuous in your 20s, but then, of course, you’ll settle down with The One and be complete.Įssentially, Kwame has moved out of the "sleeping around" phase and into a more "serious" part of his life, with dinner dates and no more random hookups. It now becomes part of a progressive but still limiting attitude to sex and relationships, which is sex-positive, but only to a point. This resolution reframes his earlier sexual liberation in a harsher light. In the finale, he’s happily coupled with Tyrone in a way that feels almost domestic.Įveryone’s route to healing from trauma is different, but it feels strange that the sexually liberated Kwame has to find his healing in a type of relationship which easily registers as "normal" for the presumed heterosexual viewer. The two begin dating and Kwame talks about how since they’ve started seeing each other, Tyrone (Gershwyn Eustace Jnr) is making him a better person. This is kind of played for laughs, but Kwame does stay and just have dinner. In episode ten, 'The Cause, The Cure', Kwame attends what he expects to be another hookup, but the man ends up having cooked him a meal. The other problem with Kwame's character is how his arc is brought to a close - at least, within the frame of the show. Instead, the show centres the reactions of Nlufer and Arabella (straight women), meaning the complicated and much-needed conversation around the non-disclosure of sexuality is never actually had. The problem is that although Arabella and Kwame reconcile on a personal level, he never really gets to defend himself, and the broader structural issues at play here are never unpacked. Coel deliberately creates very messy characters with their own hang-ups, and this blurring of lines is a key component of I May Destroy You. The problem isn’t even that these harmful ideas are an undercurrent in the character reactions. While Kwame seems pretty secure in his sexuality, what about the next man who isn’t? Does this new person not discussing their sexual/romantic history make them a predator?Ĭrucially this also ignores the societal violenceand stigmas which make some queer people, particularly pan/bisexual people, not so eager to discuss their sexual history with every new partner. This particular stigma is even higher when it becomes to Black gay men specifically, who are disproportionately represented amongst the population of people living with HIV/AIDS.Īnother is that bi/pansexual men are just "gay men in denial" or somehow illegitimate in their attraction to women, so are therefore operating in bad faith when they enter into sexual/romantic relationships with women. The first of which is that queer men are somehow "dirty", a large part of which is borne out of the homophobic panic around HIV/AIDS and the idea that this is a disease spread almost exclusively by gay men. The idea that non-disclosure of sexuality is adjacent to assault echoes some homo/biphobic ideas. In framing the situation of Kwame and Nilufer as adjacent to sexual assault, something emphasised by how Kwame’s physicality directly mirrors that of his rapist a few episodes before, a false and worrying equivalence is implicitly created. ![]()
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