Brittany Luce

This episode was edited by Nina Potok.

Our supervising producer is... Barton Girdwood.

Our VP of programming is... Yolanda Sanguini.

All right.

That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR.

I'm Brittany Luce.

Talk soon.

Allow me to take you back for a second to the daytime TV of yesteryear.

The year is 2004.

I remember sitting in my living room, well, my parents' living room, watching Oprah with my mom.

And there was this conversation about DL men.

That's men on the down low, meaning that they are discreet or secretive about having sex with other men.

That was 2004, but now it's 2026.

And if you open up TikTok right now, you'll hear the same thing.

The DL man is a recurring character in Black culture.

Someone who comes up in messy story times as a cautionary tale or even as a reason to explain away bad behavior from straight men.

If he beats on women, I promise you he's DL.

So I'm trying to understand, what is it about our culture, and maybe this moment specifically, that has us so obsessed with the dealings of DL men?

Specifically at a time when people are being surveilled and scrutinized for their sexual behavior.

To find out, I'm joined by Dr. Jeffrey McCune, author of Sexual Discretion, Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing.