Table of contents for June/July 2019 in OUT

MY EARLIEST MEMORY OF PRIDE TAKES PLACE right in front of New York City’s iconic Stonewall Inn in 2011. That evening, my group of friends from New York University learned that the state legislature was poised to make a landmark decision on marriage equality. So, we walked from the subway stop towards Christopher Street, dressed in our finest, tightest T-shirts and denim shorts. When we finally arrived, we encountered a whole crowd of smiling faces: children made up in rainbow glitter on their fathers’ shoulders, elders sitting on lawn chairs parked outside of the bar, and more drag queens than I’d ever seen in one place. And, of course, there were students, just like us—youth who had grown up during this fight for marriage equality, hoping that, by the time…

STONEWALL WASN’T DONE OUT OF A SENSE OF PRIDE. It was done after a buildup of shit from constant police raids in Greenwich Village. It just came to a head like a pimple—and it got popped. The memory of that first night doesn’t come to me with a sense of joy or happiness, because so many of the girls and a few guys got really hurt. After the city police barged into the bar—with numbers and attitude—the prevalent feeling that night was fear. Looking at the riot squad was like watching Star Wars stormtroopers, but they were in black with riot gear, sticks, guns, mace, helmets, and shields. The brutalization as they moved across and down the street was like a tidal wave hitting a coastline city. It just hit…

CHRISTIAN MITCHELL WAS FRESH OUT OF the Fashion Institute of Technology when he first got a very coveted job working for MAC Cosmetics. In fact, before his employment, he was something of a regular at the Christopher Street location—stopping by for products or touch-ups to perfect his outlandish looks before turning it out on the dance floor at the legendary Limelight Disco. But, shortly after his very first months as a bona-fide MAC Pro, tending to all the denizens of New York’s West Village in the ‘90s (“On Saturdays and Sundays, we’d actually have a line of people waiting to get in,” he says. “Lady Bunny would do the door!”), he felt his career had reached a major peak. “Queen Mother” RuPaul descended onto the store to celebrate a newly-launched…

IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE POSE’S FIRST SEASON, the script initially centers on Damon, portrayed by Ryan Jamaal-Swain, who is kicked out of his house by his parents and eventually adopted by Blanca Evangelista (portrayed by Rodriguez), a tenacious young house mother hoping to secure her legacy after splitting from Elektra Abundance (Dominique Jackson). So when Rodriguez walked in for her audition with Ryan Murphy, the show’s prolific creator, she prepared the monologue that would become the most pivotal of the pilot: Blanca, incensed that the New School’s dance program had bypassed Damon, storms into the classroom to convince the professor that he deserves a proper chance. “This young boy has been discarded,” she says, impassioned. “And he’s so young, he believes that it has something to do with…

WHILE TRANS AND RACIAL JUSTICE HAS RIGHTFULLY ascended in new conversations about queer liberation, so much is left behind when we ignore disability. According to Alex Locust, a counselor and speaker at the forefront of these discussions, when we do finally tell disability stories, they often come at a cost. “Disability is commonly portrayed as inherently negative, the source of pity and tragedy, something to be overcome. Inspiration porn, if you will,” says Locust, explicitly calling out depictions of white cis men in media that nab Oscars on the backs of his community, and with a somber redemption story tacked onto it. (Eddie Redmayne in Theory of Everything, anyone?) “What if instead we viewed disability as a generative force? Something powerful and a source of creativity, innovation, and joy?” he…

THE TEA IS THAT THE GATEKEEPERS OF LANGUAGE and their “proper grammar” are often ableist, classist, elitist, and/or transphobic. Where queer people rarely get to define ourselves on our own terms, here are a few words we kindly submit to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for consideration. 27 boi /boi/ noun Often adopted by butch lesbians and trans people of color to describe someone who identifies as masculine, but not necessarily as a man. e.g. Sis, your boi is out here making out with someone in the hotel lobby. 28 genderfuck /jen-der-fuhk/ verb The act of defying the roles of the gender one was assigned at birth as a mode of self-expression or social activism, often utilized by the gender nonconforming community. e.g. You are genderfucking so hard in that purple lip…

THERE ARE DOZENS OF COUNTRIES WHERE homosexuality, sodomy, buggery, or whatever you want to call queer sex remains a criminal act. Here are 68 United Nations member states where consensual, same-sex acts between adults are illegal, as well as two other countries where such acts are criminalized de facto, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Association. Notice how almost all of them were once colonized, occupied, or otherwise tampered with by a European power that once criminalized homosexuality itself? That’s not a coincidence! Anyway, here’s to a future where this is no longer the case, and where the queer people in these countries can live freely. Afghanistan Algeria Antigua and Barbuda Bangladesh Barbados Bhutan Botswana Brunei Burundi Cameroon Chad Comoros Dominica Egypt (de facto) Eritrea Eswatini…

WHEN APRIL REIGN’S #OSCARSSOWHITE HASHTAG ballooned into a social media campaign with major impact—making headlines, galvanizing mass demonstrations, and prompting decisive change by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a chief critique of the effort was that the Oscars were actually the last stop on the train ride of Hollywood production. The production pipeline, not the awards show and its nominating body, was the problem. After all, the Academy can’t nominate a film or performance if the studios aren’t making movies with diverse actors in lead roles. As Hollywood has begun to shift into an onscreen beast more diverse, inclusive, and representative of the sea of moviegoers—with writers, producers, directors, and other behind-the-scenes talent slowly following suit—studio executives with the power of the purse are still largely white, cis,…

BY THE TIME JAMES BALDWIN WAS 16, he was already creating the world in which he wanted to live, one where the words others used to describe him—Black, gay, poor—had little impact. “All of the American categories of male and female, straight or not, Black or white, were shattered…very early in my life,” he wrote in the 1985 article “Here Be Dragons or Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood.” “Not without anguish, certainly; but once you have discerned the meaning of a label, it may seem to define you for others, but it does not have the power to define you to yourself.” This world—which the late writer-activist called “the new Jerusalem”—was a place where people like him had nothing to prove, one where a person’s identities were not…

 IFTI NASIM Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the lineage of the queer ancestors that fuels my practice today. To discover Ifti Nasim, an openly gay Pakistani-American immigrant poet who wrote of queer love in our native tongue of Urdu, was mind-blowing. Between starting Sangat, a South Asian LGBTQ+ youth organization and his lifetime of charismatic activism, there is a bright reflection of my community in his magnificent truth. MOHAMMED FAYEZ ARTIST  BABAYLAN I didn’t learn about Babaylan, the third-gender shamans of a pre-colonial indigenous Philippines, until well after I transitioned, having left my native country at 15. They were leaders in their society and were thought to have special powers. Over the years, their legacy has inspired me to recognize that those of us who…

“[OUR] IDENTITY DOESN’T GET PASSED DOWN… YOU’RE BORN, AND YOU HAVE TO FIND EACH OTHER.” ACCORDING TO MARTI GOULD CUMMINGS, Kent County, Maryland, was once a place where stepping outside prescribed notions of being a man could be embarrassing for one’s family. So when the drag performer was preparing to go back to their hometown from New York in 2017 to put on the first iteration of their show Broadway by the River, they planned on doing so without all of the hair and makeup most audiences knew them for. To wit, the local Kent County News story announcing the performance ran alongside a photo supplied by Cummings, of themself not in drag. Tess Hogan, then theatre manager of the Garfield Center for the Arts which hosted the event, called…

BY THE TIME ACTIVIST Phill Wilson stood in front of the International AIDS Conference in 2012 as an opening plenary speaker—immediately preceding then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—he hoped the reason behind his founding the Black AIDS Institute had finally changed. Maybe by now, 13 years later, he thought, the amount of effort and resources put into ending the epidemic in Black communities would mirror that invested into white ones. But it was, unfortunately, still “a tale of two cities,” he said: the best of times for some, and the worst for others. Seven years after that address, as Wilson’s Los Angeles-based advocacy group celebrates its 20th anniversary, this divided reality persists. “The largest percentage of people in the world living with HIV, at risk for HIV, or even dying from…

Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg would be the first openly gay president, if elected next year—but his campaign raises important questions about what it means to be a pro-LGBTQ+ candidate. JUST TWO DAYS BEFORE THE 2016 presidential election, Zoe Leonard recited her iconic poem, “I Want a President,” at New York City’s High Line Park, documented for posterity on YouTube. She’s perfectly framed by three patriotic buntings behind her, wearing a brown leather jacket and a bulky burgundy scarf, with her hair styled in that close-cropped, curly on top, distinctly queer kind of way. “I want a dyke for president,” reads the artist and activist, her tone measured and steady. “I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with…

“THE QUEER COMMUNITY HAS OFTEN HAD TO LOOK OUTSIDE of the mainstream for support, mental health-wise,” says Shira Erlichman, writer of Odes to Lithium about living with bipolar disorder. “But the idea that we have to bear the entire weight of others’ struggles, or provide consistent emotional labor, or even put ourselves in harm’s way to aid a friend is a dead-end.” Erlichman is referring to the ways trauma is inherent to queer upbringings. And as a consequence of our disenfranchisement, we often don’t have access to the necessary resources or mental health counseling we deserve, and therefore turn to each other and our chosen families for emotional support. “Unless we’re social workers, we’re not social workers, so employ boundaries and share your limitations as openly as you do your…

THERE’S KIND OF AN UNSPOKEN RULE IN Columbus, Ohio: Black folks don’t go to Pride. I was planning a cookout with other queer Black trans folks as an alternative to the annual event in 2017. While I was shopping for the occasion, an activist friend called and asked to meet at Starbucks. When I arrived, she was with a couple of other activists I know, and they said they wanted to interrupt that year’s parade—they were tired of the white queer community erasing the Black queer community, and they were tired of the police presence. There were plenty of reasons to join the protest, but the main one was that Pride is not at all a safe place. Trans women get sexually harassed by gay men, and Bible-thumpers shove and…

When we think of the quintessential chosen family, we usually have a certain picture in mind. Some very Lost Boys- or Breakfast Club-type ensemble of cool misfits, eating Chinese takeout together on Thanksgiving Day in a dirty one-bedroom apartment. And where that image is a queer paradise, there is no such thing as a “quintessential” chosen family. “That chosen family can be as small as finding one other person who really gets you,” says Kathy Tu and Tobin Low, hosts of the queer podcast Nancy. “Sometimes it can feel like, unless you have a whole crew of ride-or-die friends, you’re not doing it right. But maybe you’re in a situation where you are only able to find your way to one or two other folks who you feel really comfortable…

Personhood should be recognized over anything else, and that should be profitable in fashion. It’s inaccurate to think people are all just white, tall, able-bodied, skinny, beautiful, cisgender models and that clothes should only be tailored to those sizes and body types. The world is moving in a direction where everyone wants to be seen for who they are without having to compromise. By that, I mean the runway and brand campaigns should be more authentically gender-variant, where clothing offerings transcend the binary of what male or female traditionally is, and more accessible to a wide range of folks. I’m a Black woman in a wheelchair, who is trans, and I want to be respected for that. Why should I be different from any other girl who wants to be…

47 Make health care a fundamental right. Crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe and YouCaring are stacked with transgender people trying to raise money for essential medical care. Although trans people are perhaps more likely to resort to these methods to pay for their medical care than cis people—due to the community’s disproportionate poverty and unemployment rates, along with stringent insurance policies that deem medically necessary procedures “cosmetic”—an increasing number of Americans, trans and cis, are turning to crowdfunding sites to afford life-saving treatments. Health care is a human right, but the American health care system continues to treat it as a privilege reserved for those who can afford it. Many of the candidates seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination support a single-payer model of health care, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and…

BALLROOM CULTURE IS EVERYWHERE. It’s at the center of television shows like FX’s Pose and Viceland’s My House, music videos like Teyana Taylor’s “WTP” and Sam Smith’s “Promises,” Kim Kardashian West’s Kimoji ads, and the upcoming Cannes premiere film Port Authority. And then, of course, brands like Coach and Red Bull are sponsoring or hosting major balls—the Council of Fashion Designers of America is partnering with nightlife impresario Susanne Bartsch to put on the third Love Ball, in June. All of this means voguing has gone mainstream for the third time. The initial ascent occurred when Madonna and Jennie Livingston brought the art form and the affiliated Ballroom community to the world via their projects “Vogue” and Paris Is Burning, respectively, in the early ‘90s. The second was the rise…

FOR INSTANCE, THE LABELS USED TO DESCRIBE RACE HAVE EXISTED in many iterations throughout history—often first concocted by white leaders of a given location looking to stratify societies in malevolent ways. Nearly every generation in American history has discussed race and ethnicity—from “Negro” to “African-American,” Black people have had a journey. Some people champion using “Indigenous” over “Native American.” Still, there tends to be even more confusion for some on why “Hispanic” and “Latinx” aren’t interchangeable. What remains true is that, over time, people of color have taken the ignorance put forth by white supremacy and flipped, twisted, clarified, and reclaimed it to form new ways to describe how we navigate the world. Sexual orientation and gender labels have taken their own journey, too, from once-marginalizing psychological theories to badges…

“MY GOAL AS A SOBER NIGHTLIFE PRODUCER IS TO CREATE an experience that doesn’t require you to be intoxicated to have fun,” says Oly Innes, who has been producing queer parties in Los Angeles, New York, and London for three years. For Innes, that looks like an event that is “both entertaining and empowering without encouraging substance use.” Queer bars and parties suffer from a lack of resources in general, especially if you’re catering to anything outside the “G” in LGBTQ+. Aside from making sure his parties are inclusive and intersectional, Innes imagines a world where gay clubs and alcohol are not synonymous. Because party producers often make money based on how many drinks are sold, Innes tries to prioritize programming and the ambience, especially when it comes to drag,…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS in South Dakota introduced a series of bills that would have made life harder for transgender students. One of them, House Bill 1108, would have prohibited public school teachers in kindergarten through seventh grade from talking about gender dysphoria in the classroom, making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to discuss transness with their students in an honest, affirming, and informative way. That bill failed to become law, as did the other anti-trans legislation that entered the South Dakota Legislature that session, but the regulation of queerness in the classroom continues elsewhere in the country. In seven states, it is forbidden by law for public school teachers to talk about LGBTQ+ subject matter in a positive way—sometimes even at all. Health classes in Alabama,…

AT A PRESS CONFERENCE ON APRIL 23, 1984, then-president Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, made a significant announcement: First, that scientists had identified the virus that caused acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; second, that a blood test to identify people living with the virus had been developed; and third, that a vaccine for HTLV III (or human lymphotropic virus 3, which would later be called human immunodeficiency virus) could be produced within two years. When Heckler made her address, Reagan had yet to say the word “AIDS” in public. ACT UP New York would not be formed for another three years, meaning there was no collective organization holding the federal government or pharmaceutical companies responsible for their negligence. One year after the press conference, more people would…

WHEN BILLIONS STAR ASIA KATE DILLON became a viable contender in the 2017 Emmy Awards race, Showtime had a groundbreaking consideration on their hands: in which category should the nonbinary actor be submitted—supporting actor or supporting actress? The TV network requested Dillon’s preference, a concept the native of Ithaca, New York, had once contemplated, but never gave too much thought to. But this was their chance to decide, so they wrote an impassioned letter to the Television Academy for clarification on the gendered award categories. “The reason I’m hoping to engage you in a conversation about this is because if the categories of ‘actor’ and ‘actress’ are in fact supposed to represent ‘best performance by a person who identifies as a woman’ and ‘best performance by a person who identifies…

AS WE HONOR THE NAMES OF SOME OF OUR FALLEN FAMILY MEMBERS, OUR FINAL HOPE FOR A LIBERATED, QUEER FUTURE IS THAT WE NO LONGER WILL FALL VICTIM TO HATRED. THAT WE CAN WALK THE STREETS FREELY AND WITH OUR HEADS HELD HIGH. THAT WE CAN HOLD EACH OTHER’S HANDS, KISS EACH OTHER’S MOUTHS, LAUGH AND CHEER IN PURE, QUEER JOY AND NOT WORRY ABOUT THE GAZE THAT FOLLOWS US. UNTIL THEN, OUR SIBLINGS REST IN POWER, AND WE EXIST BOLDLY AND DEFIANTLY TO HONOR THEIR LIVES. Leelah Alcorn Gwen Araujo Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow Ava Le’Ray Barrin Blake Brockington Regina Denise Brown Vanesa Campos Ashanti Carmon Kayden Clarke Camila Díaz Córdova TeeTee Dangerfield Timothy Dean Marielle Franco Chyna Gibson Sean Ryan Hake Sarah Hawkins Mia Henderson Marsha P. Johnson…