Table of contents for November -December 2019 in OUT

DEAR READER, THE OUT100 IS OUR MAGAZINE’S GREATEST and most well-known tradition: a prestigious compilation of the year’s most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people. For quite some time, I’ve found it an absolute treasure trove of discovery—a mix of the celebrities we all know and call our own with the activists and community leaders who are pushing our agenda forward. This year, of course, is no different. You are holding one of six special covers we’ve produced, featuring a stunning roster of incredible talent. But, before we get to the many wonderful living folks who are doing incredible work, we must first honor those we’ve lost. That was the mission of The Trans Obituaries Project (p. 56), a stunning, multi-pronged feature reported on and authored by our executive editor, Raquel…

There’s one thing you should probably know about Darnell L. Moore: He’s been doing the work. For the past two decades, Moore has best been known as one of our foremost intellectuals and thought leaders when it comes to matters of intersectionality, social justice, and the Movement for Black Lives. Last year, Moore unleashed the full extent of what his mind and heart had to offer with a memoir titled No Ashes in the Fire, allowing readers a glimpse into the man behind the brain. In the book, Moore recounts his upbringing in Camden, New Jersey, and later, his devotion to fixing the systemic issues that harmed the people he loved most. So it’s no wonder that his name and talent would soon appeal to the streaming giant Netflix. In…

IN 2013, Oscar Nuñez and fellow DJ Adam Rhodes were tired of going to parties catering to white, cisgender gay men—and were thus inspired to create a party that centered queer and transgender people of color. In the years since, they’ve brought on illustrator Mohammed Fayaz and expanded from their original 72-person capacity bar to a venue with an occupancy 10 times that. In turn, they’ve established Papi Juice as an internationally recognized art collective. From the beginning, the creators were explicit about their intentions, right down to the tagline: “celebrating queer and trans people of color and the people that love them.” At the time, “that wasn’t necessarily language that was included in or associated with parties,” says Nuñez. Creating an intentional nightlife space—something the group has even taught…

I DIDN’T IMMEDIATELY FEEL THE ABSENCE of a life when I entered Aracelis Polanco’s home in Yonkers, New York, on an early Friday morning in September. The home wasn’t cloaked in shadows and despair—in fact, the ceiling’s bright fluorescent lights mixed seamlessly with the sunshine emanating through undrawn window curtains. There was a surge of everyday energy stirring among the inhabitants: the hustle and bustle of Polanco’s youngest son, Salomon, shuffling out of the front door to his first job of the day, and the adorably ferocious yips and yaps from the resident terrier, Dercy. I was receiving frantic texts of reassurance from the eldest daughter, Melania Brown, that today was still a good day for a cover shoot despite her morning ritual of dropping her children off at school.…

“No corporations, no police marching, no barricades.” Earlier this year, many of us were worried that the corporate blitz planned for World Pride and Stonewall 50 would fail to properly commemorate this historic event for our community, or address the current rollback of queer rights in America and around the world. Enter: The Queer March and the Reclaim Pride Coalition, who organized the day, banned corporations, and prioritized our most marginalized members. “We worked all year to create the opportunity, but it was the hunger of the community that brought 45,000 people into the streets to protest, celebrate, and just revel in their freedom,” recalls Robin Scott, transgender artist and activist. “No corporations, no police marching, no barricades. Amazing signs and banners and costumes—all spontaneously and freely created to yell…

AARON PHILIP Aaron Philip’s emergence in the fashion industry is revolutionary. As a person who lives at her intersections (Black, trans, gender noncomforming, uses a wheelchair), it’s unheard of for a person like Philip to be accepted into the business. And yet, here she is, signed by Elite Model Management, doing her first runway show for Willie Norris, and chatting with Naomi Campbell for magazine covers. But right now, she’s just happy to graduate high school. “I’m not interested in being sensationalized or patronized because of what my identity is objectively,” she says, pointing to Rihanna and the star’s Fenty brands as what true diversity and inclusion look like. “I am a teenage girl—a woman—with a job, who’s in a wheelchair, and comes from a family of Antiguan immigrants who…

YOUNG M.A IS A WHOLE MOOD. Dressed in a black Gifts of Fortune snapback, a red Since 1982 sweatsuit, and crisp Air Forces, she’s all smiles, at once shaking the hands of every single person on set and marveling at the tattered carpet and wallpaper of the Hendrick I. Lott House. She’s just walked into this preserved, white picket-fenced home in south Brooklyn, which was once a stop on the Underground Railroad. While so many others on set succumb to the eerie ambience, M.A laughs, quite literally, in the face of fear—an attitude for which she credits her late brother, Kenneth, who’s part of the inspiration for her debut album. “He’s a big part of who I am today, why I’m so strong, and why I’m so unafraid of anything,”…

TY MITCHELL PORN STAR OF THE YEAR Though he was certainly on our radar from his work in adult films (or from his OnlyFans and JustForFans pages), Mitchell was thrust into the pop culture zeitgeist when he starred in a gay porn skit on Saturday Night Live, opposite one Emma Stone. And while that brought an outpouring of love from the community of porn performers, it’s his reputation as “the intellectual one” that has gone the furthest in distinguishing Mitchell from his contemporaries. But unsurprisingly, the performer isn’t the biggest fan of that sort of elitism. “I want people to know that sex workers can also be intellectuals, but I also want to push back on this idea that smart sex workers are more worthy of autonomy, safety, and respect…

ALOK Whether onstage or off, ALOK isn’t afraid to share no-holds-barred critiques of systems of oppression. It’s no wonder, then, that they ended up in front of our cover star Sam Smith about a year ago when the artist wanted to discuss their own journey with gender. “What I understand queerness to be is reclamatory power,” they say. “It’s insistence on saying these things that we have been taught are impossible are not.” JP BRAMMER The self-proclaimed “Picante Carrie Bradshaw,” JP Brammer gives readers the warm nudge they need to go after their dreams. In 2020, he will translate his Twitter-iconic signature voice into a memoir, Hola Papi: How to Come Out to Your Boyfriend in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons in Love, Race, and Sexuality. TOURMALINE…

KEKE PALMER HAD TO PEE. It was act two of the critically lauded and much-discussed Broadway production Slave Play, a two-hour intermission-less performance, and the multi-hyphenate star had to go to the bathroom. So, she did. Palmer stood up from her seat, crouched, raised a singular finger, and slowly started making her way down her row to the aisle. She quietly apologized along the way: “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” But the audience of around 800 Black folks in the John Golden Theatre on Sept. 18 understood the gesture; they knew the “church finger,” a hallmark of most Black Southern Baptist churches, now brought to Broadway. After all, they were there to witness Jeremy O. Harris’ Blackout. The inspiration for Blackout, a performance of Harris’ Slave Play viewed almost exclusively by Black…

In 2008, Leanne Pittsford and her brother were living in San Francisco, working on the “No on Prop 8” campaign, and teaching themselves in their spare time how to code. When her brother tragically died in his sleep two years later, Pittsford got even more into the tech industry as a way of connecting to the field he was so passionate about. “I fell in love with the way technology could connect people online, and the positive impact it could have on our community,” she says. It was when she combined this love of tech with her decade in LGBTQ+ activism that she started seeing magic happen. So, she founded Lesbians Who Tech, a community and series of tech summits that focuses on “increasing the visibility of LGBTQ women, trans…

It is decades after the AIDS crisis first reared its ugly head, and the LGBTQ+ community is still fighting. But as we explained at greater length in our Pride issue, any plan to end the epidemic in America must go beyond science. Outside of the medicinal and scientific support needed, we can’t “end HIV” without first addressing and eradicating the social stigma that surrounds those living with the virus, and the ways in which society and our community contribute to this stigma. As these leaders show, there’s a multi-pronged approach to fighting HIV—and all of it is worthy of our urgent attention—on World AIDS Day and beyond. GARETH THOMAS REDUCING STIGMA Superstar Gareth Thomas is best known as an accomplished rugby player who led Wales to their first grand slam…

MUHLAYSIA “LAY” BOOKER JANUARY 14, 1997—MAY 18, 2019 DALLAS, TX When all eyes were on her, Muhlaysia proved to be a fearless “ball of energy.” With dreams of becoming a broadcast journalist, she regaled her many Facebook followers with “Story Time,” her own report of the world around her. Just weeks before her passing, she gained a national platform after being assaulted, and fiercely spoke out at a rally to bring attention to the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of color. In honor of her legacy, her mother, Stephanie Houston, founded the Muhlaysia Booker Foundation.Visit muhlaysiabookerfoundation.org. DANA MARTIN FEBRUARY 6, 1987—JANUARY 6, 2019 HOPE HULL, AL A quiet storm of a woman, Dana was simultaneously “very private, sweet” and a “people person.” With her thick country accent, she exhibited…

“There’s no one better to speak to our struggles and dictate our needs than us.” Chase Strangio and Gavin Grimm have been fighting for equality with every fiber of their beings. Grimm, then a 15-year-old trans student, sued after his Virginia high school refused to allow him to use the bathroom that corresponds with his lived gender. After being turned away by the Supreme Court in 2017, he won his case in a lower court this past May after a nearly five-year battle. Strangio, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, was the lawyer in Grimm’s case. He again appeared before the Supreme Court in October to argue on behalf of Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who was terminated from her job for being transgender. Although Grimm is not…

NICOLAS GHESQUIÈRE IS, BY NOW, USED TO GOING LAST. After all, for the past five years, his collection has served as the grand finale of “Fashion Week,” an epic journey which really consists of a multi-city tour spanning New York, London, Milan, and Paris, and clocks in at a little over a month’s worth of runways, presentations, “re-sees,” and appointments. The trouble with going last, of course, is that the attendees—many of whom by now have witnessed 150 or more shows—are travel-weary, and think they’ve surely seen it all. That was the case in October, until they were ushered past the famous glass pyramid at the Louvre Museum and into an expansive courtyard. There, they entered a large box made of pine, and promptly found their seats. The best way…

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photography—a style of portraiture that reveals dynamics of power, sexuality, and cultural norms—has become a favorite both in and outside of the art world. Case in point: His work appeared on the cover of Artforum earlier this year and then, on the cover of Vogue Ukraine. His signature, which usually involves deconstructed elements of sets and his own (often naked) body, may leave viewers wondering: Which person in this image took the photo? What is their body language trying to tell us? And, perhaps more obviously: Is it OK that I’m aroused by this? These arresting photos make Sepuya one of the most interesting artists of our time, but it was in this year’s Whitney Biennial that his genius further unfolded. His photographs, “a…

The planets are always making formations that we need to live out, channel, and explore. I choose to believe in a cosmology that always has the best of intentions. This year, we are wrapping a major life cycle and beginning a new one, which gives extra weight and gravity to our decisions—but we don’t need astrology to tell us that our ability to live sustainably on this planet is at a breaking point. At this moment in human history, it’s quite clear that the rent is due, the report cards are in, and the weight of previous actions is bearing down upon us. In whatever ways we can, we should capitalize on the excitement of living purposefully, honestly, and with no time to waste. At the beginning of 2020, Saturn,…

Tarana Burke: I think your reputation precedes you now, right? Everybody knows that you don’t want Ronan Farrow getting in your business—it may not end well. And I hate to ask because I hate being asked, but, “Where do you get your courage?” Ronan Farrow: Well, you’re the one who should be asked. Where do you get your courage from? You have lived it, you have overcome it. You are passing on courage to others. For me, I hope that the book is a raw, honest, emotionally revealing testament to the fact that it’s not easy. For a lot of the sources who were embroiled in this international plot, and a lot of reporters who banged their heads against the wall trying to get the truth out, the same was…

BRONSON FARR CHARLENE (who is most widely known on a first-name-only basis—Cher teas) began her career in local gay bars, quickly making a name for herself with jaw-dropping performances that created wildly visceral reactions from her audience, something that drew her to drag in the first place. “That’s what gay people are good at,” she acknowledges, “being audience members and contributing energy.” Drag also allowed her to “tranifest” her femininity, eventually leading to her transition, which she promptly used as material for her work. One of her claims to fame is injecting herself with estrogen during a live lip sync—a performance piece that’s become something of her signature. Gay dive bars and untamed warehouse parties provided “stages where I could enact the things I was feeling on the inside,” but…

Sports have always been an “American pastime,” which means they’re representative of our broader culture and politics, as well. That’s why it’s incredible to think that we may finally be reaching a point where there’s a generation of LGBTQ+ athletes who refuse to be sidelined due to their identity. Here, our Champions of the Year. MEGAN RAPINOE U.S. WOMEN’S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM CHAMPION AND FIFA WORLD PLAYER OF THE YEAR For an athlete who was already one of the most dominant soccer players in history, this was a game-changing year for Megan Rapinoe. The U.S. Women’s National Team won its second consecutive World Cup and fourth overall title since 1991, and FIFA awarded Rapinoe, the team’s captain, its prestigious Golden Ball and Golden Boot, a pair of honors given to the league’s…

01 PRIORITIZING SAFETY + SECURITY We must prioritize ending the epidemic of violence plaguing TWOC as a central goal of the LGBTQ+ community and movement. This means politicians and organizations who consider themselves “LGBTQ+ friendly” or “allies” must be made aware of the very severe circumstances facing TWOC, and Pride campaigns that include donations must prioritize organizations that do work specifically to help our community. 02 DEFINING VIOLENCE We must accept a holistic scope of violence for TWOC that includes domestic, intimate partner, and state violence. So often, when a TWOC experiences violence in state custody (whether in prisons or detention centers), would-be allies resist holding these systems accountable and don’t consider these instances as carrying the same level of importance as interpersonal conflicts. 03 MEDIA COMPETENCY We must accurately report on victims’…

PRABAL GURUNG THE VOICE This past September, Prabal Gurung celebrated 10 years in business—a major (and, sadly, increasingly rare) accomplishment for a designer who’s made New York his home. Unfortunately, his plans for his anniversary show were about to be completely upended in the eleventh hour. The show was originally intended to take place at The Vessel, a public art installation located at Hudson Yards. But just weeks out from his place on the schedule, Gurung read the headlines: Stephen Ross, the billionaire behind Hudson Yards, was hosting a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump. So, he pulled his show almost immediately. At his new venue, the models took their finale walk, each wearing sashes emblazoned with the words, “Who Gets to Be American?”—a boldly political statement not normally seen on…

ALOK: You said to me once that so many cis people have forgotten their own names because they have only been told that they are men or women. Can you elaborate? SAM: Over the last seven months of really discovering myself, which you’ve been such a huge part of, I keep coming back to the fact that I am just me. I am my own person. In the words of Jerry Herman, “I am what I am. I am my own special creation.” I just feel, looking around sometimes, that people are afraid of their individuality. A: What do you think it is about us as nonbinary people that challenges others so much? S: I’m very new to this, so I’m still figuring it out. I feel happier and more…