Happy October! Or more accurately, hoping you experience moments of happiness this October. Along with being known for Breast Cancer Awareness, LGBTQ History, Disability Employment, National Hispanic Heritage, and many others, this month also celebrates Intersex Awareness.…
I was a weird kid. I was, in fact, a weird, queer kid. I was, further, a weird, queer kid who did musical theatre, had agoraphobia, and, as I reached my teens, listened exclusively to New Wave music, wore eyeliner, dressed strictly in monochrome, and dyed my hair blue—all in Houston during the 1980s. And just to frame the timeline exactly, when I say I was a kid in the ‘80s, I literally mean I was aged nine through eighteen…
Dallas-based artist S Rodriguez sees “gender as a technology, both in a precolonial, colonial and postcolonial state. Gender plays a role in the way you operate in society. It is very much a tool, just like any technology, that you can choose or is chosen for you. And you can choose to continue working with that tool or change that tool.” While for some, the “goal” of gender as a tool might be “passing,” for Rodriguez and many others who…
I tend to play video games that are escapist—ones that let me play at being stronger, faster, or smarter. They let me be the hero but rarely do they hold up a mirror to my own life. The Missing: JJ Macfield and the Island of Memories is a platform puzzle game about a 19-year-old trans girl’s pain—something that I myself remember all too well. The game takes a magic realist approach to how JJ (our protagonist) deals with this pain:…
I was in the sixth grade at Buckeye Elementary School in Salem, Ohio, a small town of 12,000. There really were buckeye trees lining the street outside of the school. This was a conservative time in a conservative state. The year was 1959. Eisenhower was in his second term. The Edsel was still the attention-getting new car. On State Street (our Main Street), the two focal points were the Woolsworth Five and Dime and the State Theatre, only three doors…
As a Black, queer, single mother of two young Black boys, I am struggling to have faith in society, our justice system, and humanity. When I was a young girl, I had a knack for sniffing out injustice. I had an innate fire in my belly that drove me to stand against anything I considered to be inequitable or wrong. I would relentlessly debate my mother and grandfather on issues of racial injustice, always seeking to understand why things were the…
I’ve had the great fortune of spending most of my life doing work in community. But my passion didn’t originally stem from wanting to change the world; it came from the desire to save myself. At age 20, I was introduced to the idea of sex work, a line of work I would ultimately participate in for years to come. When I entered the industry, and therefore began having numerous sexual partners, my mentors and friends stressed to me the…
Abortion is a polarizing issue, but every person who can conceive a child is worthy and capable of making the private decision whether or not to have the procedure. Historically, the anti-abortion crusade has been heavily targeted toward cisgender women. Yet, cisgender women are not the only people who can get pregnant or receive an abortion—many transgender men, intersex, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people can too.…
The Holy Roman Empire can often be difficult to talk about in sweeping terms because of its decentralized nature. But in 1530, the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (also known as the Lex Carolina), would mark the first body of German criminal law and attempt to unite the various principalities and kingdoms in the Empire. It also set the foundation for the prosecution of queer identity and life.…
On a stiff hotel sofa in Waco, Texas, I took out my phone and braced myself to begin reading Dear Twin, author Addie Tsai’s first semi-autobiographical queer, young adult novel. It was October, and I was in Waco for a work event, when I realized I had down time to fill before I had to leave. Her book had been sitting in my inbox since September, and I had failed to start reading it sooner because, 1) I procrastinate, and…
