Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the down low black men who have sex with men as well as women and do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual has exploded in news media and popular culture, from the "Oprah Winfrey Show" to R & B singer R. Kelly s hip hopera "Trapped in the Closet." Most down-low stories are morality tales in which black men are either predators who risk infecting their unsuspecting female partners with HIV or victims of a pathological black culture that repudiates openly gay identities. In both cases, down-low narratives depict black men as sexually dangerous,...

Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the down low black men who have sex with men as well as women and do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual has exploded in news media and popular culture, from the "Oprah Winfrey Show" to R & B singer R. Kelly s hip hopera "Trapped in the Closet." Most down-low stories are morality tales in which black men are either predators who risk infecting their unsuspecting female partners with HIV or victims of a pathological black culture that repudiates openly gay identities. In both cases, down-low narratives depict black men as sexually dangerous,...