Down-low (sexual Slang) - Media Interest

Media Interest

The first known person to use "down-low" in a homosexual context was George Hanna, who used the term in the 1930 song Boy in the Boat about lesbian women. The term was popularized in the late 1990s and after by a series of mainstream media reports emphasizing the danger of such men transmitting HIV to their unsuspecting female partners.

The first mainstream media account of the down-low as closeted homosexuality was reported in the Los Angeles Times on February 7, 2001. By the end of the year, numerous major media outlets had reported on the down-low. They included The New York Times (11 February), USA Today (March 15), Columbus Dispatch (March 19), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (April 1), New York Times (April 3), Chicago Sun-Times (April 22), Atlanta Journal-Constitution (June 3), San Francisco Chronicle (June 4), Village Voice (June 6), VIBE magazine (July), Jet magazine (September 8), Essence magazine (October), San Diego Union-Tribune (December 2), and Los Angeles Times (December 7). Nearly all these stories connected the down-low to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African-American community.

In the summer of 2003 Village Voice contributing writer and NYU professor Jason King published "Remixing the Closet: The Down Low Way of Knowledge", in the newspaper's June 2003 "Queer Issue," a controversial op-ed piece that questioned the relationship between HIV/AIDS and men "on the down low". The article was the first mainstream piece to openly criticize negative mainstream media depictions of down-low men and put a different spin on the DL phenomenon. King argued that the use of the term "down low" was a way for many African American men to admit to having sex with other men without necessarily identifying as "gay" in the traditional sense. On the heels of that article, San Francisco Chronicle contributing writer Frank Leon Roberts published "Stereotypes and Sexual Orientation: The 'down-low' – Coming out your own way in black clubs" in the newspaper's July 23, 2003 issue.

Then in August 2003 the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story called "Double Lives on the Down Low", written by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. Several episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show were also dedicated to the subject including an episode aired 16 April 2004 and titled A Secret Sex World: Living on the 'Down Low' ; the show featured J. L. King discussing his book On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of Straight Black Men Who Sleep with Men. The down-low was also part of story lines on episodes of the television shows Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, The Starter Wife, ER, and Oz.

In 2003 Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr. wrote a full-length play entitled Dancin the Down Low that he directed and produced at Northwestern University in April 2004. In addition, McCune has dedicated a dissertation on this topic. His study examines DL discourses closely, while also exploring how DL men handle masculinity and sexuality.

Using a content analysis of more than 170 articles written between 2001 and 2006, sociologist Richard N. Pitt, Jr. concluded that the media pathologized black bisexual men’s behavior while either ignoring or sympathizing with white bisexual men’s similar actions. He argued that the "Down Low" black bisexual is often described negatively as a duplicitous heterosexual man whose behaviors threaten the black community. Alternatively, the "Brokeback" white bisexual (when seen as bisexual at all) is often described in pitying language as a victimized homosexual man who is forced into the closet by the heterosexist society around him.