*See the original article here. Photo of Desmond Is Amazing copyright M. Sharkey.*

These Drag Kids Are Proving It's Never Too Soon To Be Fabulous

February 27, 2018

Thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race, there’s no question that drag is having a mainstream moment. Their recent VH1 finale had nearly a million viewers, making it their most watched episode ever. From your local library’s reading hour to DragCon to YouTube, there has been a subsequent boom in all-ages spaces where drag is welcome. But as the art form moves out of bars and into living rooms, what does that mean for kids playing dress-up? Or for parents of children entering into what is, at heart, a bar scene built around adult gay men and trans women? And finally, what does it mean for drag itself — which at its best is often subversive, raunchy, and cutting — to suddenly have to cater to families?

*See the original, with more images, here.*

themstory: What It's Like to Be Trans at a Women's College

February 27, 2018

Indeed, if you’ve never visited Wellesley College, simply imagine the platonic ideal of a small, beautiful, northeastern liberal arts school, and you’ll probably be pretty close. Squint hard, and it might seem like nothing has changed since the school was founded as a women’s college in 1870. But look closer, and you’ll see that the school is grappling with a question that is both bigger than the college and fundamental to its existence: What does it mean to be a women’s school at a time when what it means to be a woman is being redefined?

*See the original, with an incredible short film by Luce Lincoln and Che Gossett, here.*

themstory: Kiyoshi Kuromiya, the AIDS Activist Who Marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

February 27, 2018

The next year, Life Magazine profiled Kuromiya in a piece on young activists, discussing his Civil Rights and anti-War work. But it didn’t talk about his gay rights activism or his close relationship with Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. In 1970, after helping to found the Gay Liberation Front, Kuromiya presented a workshop on gay rights at the Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

*Read the original, with more images, here.*

themstory: Claude Cahun Is the Gender-Nonconforming Anti-Fascist Hero We Deserve

February 27, 2018

The reason I find myself thinking about Claude Cahun today, however, is not their photography, but rather, their resistance to Nazi forces during World War II. During the war, Cahun and their life partner Marcel Moore (who was also Cahun’s step sister), lived on Jersey, one of an archipelago of islands that dot the English Channel off the coast of Normandy. When German forces conquered France and began using the island as a training ground for new recruits, Cahun and Moore waged a secret, two-person campaign of disinformation and morale-destruction, using a weapon the Nazis never expected: Surrealism.

*See the original article, with more photos, here.*

Themstory: Mabel Hampton

February 27, 2018

Mabel began her life on the stage as a dancer and singer with an all-black female ensemble at Coney Island. There, she met an older woman who introduced her to the word “lesbian.” Although she had fooled around with women before, this was the moment when Mabel realized there was a word for her desires, and for people like her. “I said to myself, well, if that’s what it is, I’m already in it!” she told Joan Nestle.

Jackie Shane, Genderqueer Soul Survivor, Prepares For Her Comeback

December 3, 2017

At the age of 31, Shane walked away from performing and virtually disappeared; for years, internet forums dedicated to the roots of rock ’n’ roll have trafficked regularly in rumors of her death. Yet now, she’s prepping for the release of Any Other Way, a double album of her material from the 1960s: 12 studio tracks and 13 live ones. From the repressed longing of the title track to the rebellious energy on her version of “Shotgun,” Shane’s voice captures the soul of an entire decade. The record blends or anticipates a half-dozen musical traditions, including Motown, soul, rock, R&B, and funk. It even includes a Shaned-up cover of the folk standard “You Are My Sunshine.”

*Originally published in Out Magazine September 2017*

Power to the People: Exploring Marsha P. Johnson's Queer Liberation

September 7, 2017

Marsha P. Johnson fought, and perhaps even died, for gay liberation. Although we still witness and experience violence and discrimination today, we live in an America that is vastly safer for gays and lesbians because of the life she lived. Yet the very movement that idolizes her does too little for black transgender women like her.

Publications

Topics

Tweets