Review: Panorama, an Upcoming Memoir by J. Ross Victory

From its opening pages, Panorama, authored by J. Ross Victory, shows the reader that self-growth and self-discovery are not easy journeys to embark on. Positioned as a standalone narrative but also an extension of the author’s memoir Views from the Cockpit, Panorama is a soul-baring look at how one man reckons with identity and healing past wounds, told through a series of narrative vignettes based on the author’s time in South Korea and his life post-return to the United States. His voice is a welcome one to the world of memoirs, as there is a noticeable literary dearth of bisexual Black men openly discussing their challenges and successes in love and life. 

Coming off the heels of recent representation via Love is Blind, the Netflix reality show in which a man named Carlton made a name for himself by going on a hyper-misogynistic rant about being rejected by his fiancée for being bisexual, Black bisexual men have been on the offensive doing damage control. With an essay after the book’s conclusion positing the development of a BSP (bisexual-sapiosexual-pansexual) identity umbrella, Victory’s positioning of his bisexuality within the larger story arc is a needed reminder that hypermasculinity and biphobia do more than just oppress people who are on the receiving end of it; they develop a form of spiritual death in the people who embody them as well.

In talking about his love(s), loss, and the consequences of avoiding pain, Victory seeks to remind readers that our decisions are ours alone to make, and while you cannot undo something once it has been done, you can use that knowledge to grow as a person. Whether that growth is always at another person’s expense is up to us to decide.

While Panorama is better contextualized when read directly alongside Views from the Cockpit, it reads easily on its own once you, the reader, understand that the book drops you in the middle of an existing story. It can be a bit jarring at first because you feel like you’re missing some important background information, but everything that needs to be explained, is, over the course of the book. This kind of structure demonstrates the tension and urgency that Victory feels, due to the stream-of-consciousness narration style at certain points. Within this tension is, to me, the fundamental question the book wants us to answer: “where do we find love?” and its companion, “what do we do with it once we’ve found it?”. 

Panorama does a great job of telling us what NOT to do with love. The major concern that most people have when reading a first person narrative about real life is the risk of an unreliable narrator. We’re only receiving one side of the story so it would stand to reason that the author would want to make himself look better. If that’s the case in Panorama, then the real story behind some of the experiences described in the book must be abhorrent, to say the least. Victory is not a particularly likable character for a decent portion of the book — I often found myself wanting to shake him back to reality or give him an Iyanla Vanzant-esque dragging for his behavior. 

Panorama’s power lies in its nonchalance. On its face it appears to be simply part of a memoir by a Black bisexual man who has chosen to publicly reckon with his misdeeds via his art. And while it is that, it also pushes readers to look at themselves and where they find themselves — politically — in the world. Where is love there? How can we all extend grace to ourselves for what we feel are unforgivable mistakes? Victory doesn’t answer this for readers, obviously. But by sharing his story, after reading, you are left with a need to reach into yourself and see how you can answer those questions. I urge you to pick up a copy of Panorama — and Views from the Cockpit while you’re at it — if you are interested in a Black ex-pat perspective of South Korean life, want to support a Black bisexual male author, or want to know how one man has chosen to search for answers to life’s difficult questions.

Link to Panorama

Link to Views from the Cockpit

Ross Victory’s Website

Instagram: @rossvictoryofficial

In Defense of Silly B*tch Behavior

Historically, I’m a silly bitch in relationships. In this era of fuck feelings, get a bag, I find myself floundering in my desire to uphold this mentality that conflicts with everything I’m used to. Since I was a child, I found myself doing things I didn’t really want to do in the name of “swallowing my pride” to make a relationship work. Even with friends.

As someone socialized as a girl/woman (with a heaping helping of Blackness on top of that), allowing people to violate my boundaries was just par for the course. This pairs nicely with a lifelong inability to manage rejection well and a desire to prevent it at any cost. Compound that with my Blackness and the idea that I would be taking care of people for the rest of my life, I quickly came to understand that it was exclusively my job to make sure that my relationships would sink or swim. It’s not lost on me, though, that although silly bitch behavior transcends gender, it’s overwhelmingly present in people who are in relationships with men.

Which brings me to being a silly bitch. For me now, in the midst of my quarter life crisis, feeling rejected triggers my insecurities about being my authentic self and my not-so-secret fear that no one will actually like the real me, and that when I’m rejected because I’ve been trying to be who I thought someone wanted me to be it’s just a sign that the person wasn’t going to like the real me. The act of being who I think someone wants me to be is in and of itself, silly bitch behavior and I recognize that. Authenticity is something I’m working hard on in therapy, and part of that means knowing how to set boundaries in the first place that will stop me from wanting to perform for people so they’ll like me.

Establishing boundaries is hard enough in the first place, but getting over your habit of letting people backflip over them is an entirely different beast. And honestly, that’s all silly bitch behavior boils down to. Tap dancing for a partner’s approval, doing labor you otherwise would find irrational, or even going as far as committing violence in the name of showing someone you care about them are all manifestations of how we react to having our boundaries violated.

But what is the boundary violation, really? And why does it make us act so out of character? Generally, we’re not feeling prioritized or we’re being otherwise disrespected by that person we care so much about.

The prevailing culture of monogamy we all grew up with indicates that someone not doing right by us is OUR fault, that our partner is responding to a lack of something in the relationship to keep them invested. This is usually used as a justification for cheating, as an example. By extension, we now have to prove ourselves to keep this person around. Cue the spending on lavish gifts, alterations to our style or bodies, overlooking someone not tending to our needs, or even potentially dangerous behavior like stalking.

We tell ourselves that if we work harder, then they will finally love us the way we want to be loved. Regardless of the numerous ways they’ve fallen short of our expectations even with explicit communication. This is to say nothing of the cultural directive that tells Black women to “be a man’s peace” or be a “ride or die”. I could get into how that mindset is almost never reciprocated by men, because women are supposed to desire the affection of a man above all else and we’re socialized into this role.

It’s hard because once we’re out of it, realizing we’ve participated in silly bitch behavior is, among many things, shameful. It’s comical sometimes to look back on our relationships, or read someone else’s story, and see the ridiculous things we do for love. But silly bitch behavior isn’t always as obvious as taking back your partner who’s cheated on you 10 times or got you so upset you keyed their car. Sometimes, it’s as small as swallowing your frustration because they, yet again, forgot to do something you asked. Everything doesn’t have to turn into a fight in a relationship, but there comes a point where ignoring your reaction to something is more detrimental than just confronting it.

Nine times out of ten, engaging in silly bitch behavior for someone is a sign that the relationship isn’t going to work out without intentional communication and change from everyone involved. So when it doesn’t work out and we have time to reflect on what we did, it’s embarrassing more than anything else. But I get it. For everyone who’s been a silly bitch, I see you and I want you to have patience with yourself. We can’t undo what’s already been done, but we can hold our L in the moment and resolve to do better the next time we’re put in that situation. Recognizing what prompts us to act a certain way can reveal a lot about our insecurities, fears, and anxieties. But, choosing to confront them rather than putting them to the side is not only useful for avoiding dumb bitch behavior in the future, it also helps us grow as people.

I’m not saying I’ll never do some goofy bitch activity in a relationship again though. But, I’m learning to be okay with letting things be, and that sometimes mean removing someone from my life before I let myself do something foolish because of them. This requires confronting my fear of rejection, and understanding that no matter what hat I put on, I won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Realizing that has made it a lot easier for me to stop trying to be who I think people want me to be. It’s definitely cost me relationships, but the ones that have stuck around as I continue this journey towards authenticity have become closer and deeper as a result.

Black Women, Let's Rethink Our Loyalty

“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.”

—Malcolm X, 1962

I came back from a month-long social media detox to this garbage. Part of why I decided to take time away from the internet was because I felt like I was becoming too consumed by toxicity and it was exacerbating my anxiety. I wasn’t wrong.

I originally thought about a long twitter thread in response to this but decided against it. I try not to be too reactionary when I’m frustrated and calling this dude a fool in a couple different replies to the original tweet seemed sufficient. I’m also hyper-aware that the majority of my Twitter (and blog) audience is white and this is one of those things that felt better suited for an intra-community conversation. But, things needed to be said and I’ve taken it upon myself to say them, so here we are.

Because it’s not really about him, it’s about his mentality and the reality that’s created for young Black women like me. Because let’s be honest, the City Girls and Baller Alert chicken heads he’s referring to are Black women.

Black women are one of the statistically least likely demographics to partner and marry interracially, second to Asian men last I checked. Black men, on the other hand, are one of the most likely to partner and marry outside of their race. There’s a lot of reasons for this, mostly relating to desirability. Black men, as a group, are considered more socially desired than Black women. There are also a lot of reasons for this, mostly relating to racist ideas about Black men’s sexual prowess. This desirability, in general, allows them a level of romantic and/or sexual access to non-Black people that Black women don’t generally experience. The stereotype about the successful Black man with a white wife isn’t an accident or a particularly negative one depending on who you ask. But I digress. (yes, you “not all Black men” keyboard warriors, I know this doesn’t apply to every Black man, but enough of y’all either agree or don’t care enough about Black women to say something about it yourselves.)

“But Sexology Bae,” you’re probably saying, “people can’t help who they fall in love with. Are you really shaming Black men who don’t partner with Black women for their preference?”

At the risk of psychoanalyzing a whole group of people to make my point, if your preference is rooted in considering a group of people as inferior, then yeah. You’re trash and so is your mindset. The tweet above is concerned with being taken advantage of by Black women specifically, not women in general. As if non-Black women are somehow less likely to be gold diggers. Or, is it that those women deserve “the bag” even if they come across it dishonestly and Black women don’t deserve it at all?

When raging about this tweet in a reply thread on Twitter, my friend Lex touched on the concept of racial meritocracy, which is at play here. If Black women are at the bottom of the barrel as far as our racial hierarchy is concerned, then any woman above us is more deserving of the benefits they’d get from a Black man. Black women are more likely to be better educated and make more money than Black men so why are we the ones regarded as gold diggers? There’s a long legacy of racist characterizations of Black women as money hungry, most obvious the “welfare queen” of the mid/late 20th century. According to this joker and the bums who think like him, we can’t come across love for a Black man naturally, we have to be getting something out of it.

Which brings me to the point about being “trapped”. Did you know there are ways to prevent pregnancy? And maybe you shouldn’t fuck someone in the first place if you think they’re going to get pregnant on purpose just to keep you around? I don’t really desire to have kids so I always have trouble relating to this perceived mindset of women who have kids just to spite men and/or keep them in relationships

I’m sure it happens, but I think what’s more likely is people being on two separate pages about the nature of their relationship when they’ve decided to add a child to the mix. Pregnancy and childbirth, plus the stress of raising a child seem like excessive reactions to spite someone.

Less excessive? Having a child with someone because you love them and think they love you too. But I could be wrong about this, I don’t even desire a child with my partner of nearly 7 years because kids are a lot of work so I can’t even begin to imagine having one because I’m ANGRY.

But Black Patriarchy has us fooled. Black women have been the backbone of our communities and movements because we understand that racial uplift requires unity. But misogynistic leaders have warped that messaging to convince us that we must protect and stand by Black men at any cost, even if it’s to our detriment. What if we let go of this loyalty to people who did not have our best interests at heart?

Even in the responses to the tweet above, most women were calling him (rightfully) trash and challenging other Black men to call him on his behavior. But there were still a few women who agreed with him, saying that we (Black women) got ourselves into this predicament by adopting an “Independent Woman” mentality, being argumentative or aggressive, and idolizing women like the City Girls, Cardi B, or Megan the Stallion, who pride themselves on getting over on men who don’t respect them as fully realized humans in the first place. I argue that flipping the script on someone who wasn’t going to respect you (regardless of what you did) so you get something out of the interaction isn’t inherently dishonest, but of course it’s seen that way when you’re historically expected to take that kind of treatment laying down.

I’ve seen the argument that Black women have let white feminists convince us that we don’t need Black men which is why our race hasn’t made any progress. Not only is this infantilizing, it’s gaslighting Black women into thinking that our experiences with gendered abuse at the hands of Black men aren’t valid.

What if I said that we’ve been receiving messaging like the above tweet for generations and of our own volition decide that we don’t need to tolerate abuse? I know that I’ve been called a bed wench for dating outside of my race by Black men who’ve also dated interracially.

But because loyalty to your race is only one sided, there’s no derogatory equivalent for Black men. Expecting accountability or critiquing how the treatment we’ve historically received at the hands of Black men colors our interactions today does not make Black women man-haters. It doesn’t mean we don’t care about our people. It means we care enough to want to undo the trauma that plagued our foremothers.

I can only hope that one day, we’re ready to have a conversation about how loyalty to and support for Blackness should not be contingent upon an infallible loyalty to men who will cast us aside for more worthy options.