Shame and Money, a Gay Man’s Journey
By: Kayus Fernander
Tags: Love, Growth, Shame, Self, Money

Shame and Money, a Gay Man’s Journey

It’s taken years to undo internalised feelings of lack and brokenness.

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

I was 8 years old, getting dressed with my family for a big night out, a banquet to honour a teacher who played a big part in my life and the lives of my siblings. The house was a flurry of activity, and I saw this as an opportunity to get really dressed up. We piled into the car and made our way to the hotel.

It was only when we were all sat around the banquet table, that my parents realised that I had covered my cheeks with my mother’s rouge makeup. Some people laughed, others were angry, and the look on my parents’ face of sheer disappointment was enough to crush me. I felt so much shame and confusion, all I could do was collapse into tears.

I don’t share this cringe-worthy memory for the sake of self-deprecation or to relive my curiosity about what my mom and sisters got up to in the mirror. This story is about my feeling ashamed and what I did with that shame.

That shame and pain turned into many, many years of overcompensating.

I overcompensated so much that by the age of 20, I had accumulated over $20,000 worth of debt that I was struggling to pay. That burden then turned into another cycle of shame for not being responsible and capable enough to honour my financial obligations.

So imagine, you have this vicious cycle of shame for being gay, taking it out on your finances, and then being ashamed and depressed because you’re not taking care of yourself.

Yep, that was me. It got so bad that I was buying groceries on my credit card.

But behind that “nice guy” activity, was a longing to feel loved and accepted.

And you want to know the worst part? I was making good money, so I really had no excuse for being in debt, having no savings, living paycheck to paycheck. I had no excuse, but I had a reason. I had a completely destructive attitude towards money, because I had a poor sense of self-worth.

In your close circle, how many of you would be described as “the reliable one”? That’s me. And what that used to mean was that I was the one everyone could come to for money. So I found myself giving out cash for years.

But behind that “nice guy” activity, was a longing to feel loved and accepted. So in many ways, you could say that I was buying acceptance. This was unconscious, but nonetheless a strong motivation.

About a year ago, I was giving a workshop to a room of about 50 people, many of them black, gay men, like me. In preparation for the talk, it struck me that there were very likely to be people in that room who either went through or were going through the same struggles that I had with money. And I guessed that it was also quite possible that those struggles might have had something to do with their own struggles with shame, brought about by their sexual identity and/or race.

I introduced the room to 3 personalities that I’d observed.

Either in myself or others, that I thought would help illustrate the ways in which our shame would often manifest itself in the ways that we dealt with money:

Paul the Perfectionist

We all know Paul. EVERYTHING about his life just has to be perfect, and he spares no expense in cultivating/having the perfect body, the perfect home, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect vacations, the perfect gadgets…anything that proves to the world and to himself that everything is alright, that he’s made it, in spite of himself.

Paul perhaps feels a sense of emptiness and disorder, brought on from the internalised notions that he is broken, imperfect and somehow needs fixing. He’s heard the untruths about himself and is motivated to counteract those ideas in the pursuit of perfection.

Carlton the Caregiver

Carlton takes care of everyone, even those who probably don’t deserve it. He puts his own needs second, just so he can prove that he’s worthy, reliable and good enough. He reaches into his pocket again and again, even if it’s hurting his own financial situation, because he has tied his sense of self-worth to what he can do for other people.

Carlton has internalised the lie that he is worth-less, that he is not worthy of love, respect or affection. So, he uses his finances to demonstrate his worth, to convince others that he is worthy.

Leroy the Life of the Party

Who doesn’t want to be around Leroy? He believes that tomorrow isn’t promised and as a consequence, he should live life to the fullest. He doesn’t worry about saving or the future because who knows if the future will ever come?

Again, Leroy wants to be the biggest character, the most fun in his group of friends, the one who never says “no” to a good time. And he’ll go to whatever lengths necessary to prove that YOLO is the way to go.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Now, I don’t want you to get me wrong. I’m not saying that any of these exaggerated characters are “bad” in and of themselves, but I believe that these are ways in which many of us deal with the shame, pain and confusion of growing up in a world that is hostile towards us because we’re both queer and BAME (for those of you outside of the UK, this is a widely-used acronym for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people). For you, that shame or feeling of ‘otherness’ might be for other reasons: gender, socio-economic status, level of education, disability…anything at all.

Furthermore, I’m an advocate for many of the attributes that the 3 characters display: ambition and aspiration, caring and compassion, living in the moment.

What I should mention is that I’ve displayed all 3 of these personalities in my life.

Believe me, each of Paul, Carlton and Leroy STILL pop up in my behaviour from time to time. However, when I was really struggling with these archetypes, Carlton especially, I was doing so to my own detriment. I was literally smothering my financial well-being — at which point, this personality trait was doing more harm than good.

Back to my workshop. When I addressed that room of people last year, my main hypothesis was that as black and queer people they were likely to be harming themselves financially — this wasn’t a scientific assessment, simply my view derived from years of personal experience and observing others. And from the nods and audible affirmations in the room, it seemed that this hypothesis connected and had some truth.

What I wanted them to understand was that the result of my behavior took much longer to undo than the time it took to create.

The second motivation for having this conversation was because I believed (and still do) that there is a myth out there that needs to be dispelled. Have you heard of the Pink Pound? In the US, it’s called the Pink Dollar? This is the amount of purchasing power or wealth that exists in the LGBT community. It’s estimated at £6 billion in the UK and almost $1 trillion in the US. There is this belief that queer people, especially gay men, have more disposable income than our straight counterparts.

While this might be statistically true, I question whether that purchasing power translates into real net worth and financial well-being. Having lots of money to spend is great, but does it leave us in a better position financially, if all we’re doing is being either Paul, Carlton or Leroy? I don’t think that it does. So the idea of the Pink Pound can be misleading, especially to those of us who it’s meant to describe — giving the false sense that we’re doing just fine because we don’t have the same financial obligations as everyone else (in particular, not having children, although that is changing now).

I also worry about black LGBT people. While the Pink Pound theory suggests that being part of the LGBT community means having access to more money, I wonder to what extent this really applies to queer people of colour. The reality is that black people experience a significant wealth gap and there’s no reason to expect that this doesn’t apply to black LGBT people.

What does this mean? It means that we are being left behind. And that’s what I want to address. Let’s face it, queer people are less likely to have children to look after them in their older years, less likely to have family support. So my question is: what happens to the queer person near the end of their lives? Have they earned, saved and invested enough to enjoy retirement? This is an urgent question for me as a gay man, and for everyone else in the community.

The facts are:

We have more debt than our straight counterparts.

We have a lower savings rate and little emergency savings.

We are not using financial advisors and don’t plan to use one.

We may not have as much family support.

So, while I do the work of sharing the message of financial literacy and taking decisive action on a consistent basis, I think back to that young kid, sitting in shame. I feel a strong obligation to him, a desire to give him the support and reinforcement to look after himself — including his financial health. And while my perspective is that of a black, gay man, my motivations are wide-reaching. I want everyone to see how their financial destiny oftentimes has nothing to do with the reason that they typically blame — that they’re not earning enough money. If they’re anything like me, it has a lot to do with mindset and approach to money.

It is my passion to introduce people to the idea that seeing themselves as fully in control, regardless of where they are today, is the first step to making radical changes to their future. When I realised that I didn’t have to use my money to prove my worth, and that I had a duty to look after myself, then I started on the path to completely turning my life around. My hope is that this awareness becomes much more commonplace in all of our communities.