Serve and protect. That’s the phrase we most commonly associate with police. So how do we deal with the reality that so many Black and brown people live in constant fear and terror of blue uniforms? Thanks to modern-day Black liberation movements like Black Lives Matter, the reality of police violence against marginalized communities is frankly undeniable. We no longer live … [Read more...]
Feminist Rage: 4 Ways White Feminists Continue to Silence Women of Color’s Anger at Racism
Women are angry, and rightfully so. I only have to write the words “Brett Kavanaugh” — a series of events so deeply disturbing in their unmasking of elite frat boy rape culture that I stopped my compulsive news watching for three weeks after — to convey how deeply US women are under attack by the Trump regime. As white women in particular are justifiably encouraging each other … [Read more...]
Thwarted Belonging and Reasons for Hope: Queer Black Trans Pain Matters
Content note: This article includes (non-graphic) discussion of a completed suicide. One of my closest friends died by suicide. The days after their death were jarring and bewildering. I carefully tried to drink water, only to involuntarily spit it up while sobbing. I tried to eat, only able to eat soup and beans. (To my horror, the hot Funyuns a friend offered made me … [Read more...]
Summer Is Not for Street Harassment — Regardless of Gender, Race, or Size
Ah, summer. Enduring six months of a freezing New England hellscape in order to re-enter the world of soft, swirling sand dunes and jeweled salty ocean waves. The perfume of sunscreen. Living in the city, battling the humidity as I take my dog to the park. Existing as a curvy, white, queer femme, cisgender woman. Feeling men’s eyes travel over my ass and my boobs as I walk down … [Read more...]
Mixed Doesn’t Always Mean Part White: Uplifting Non-White Mixed Race Identities
Growing up queer, mixed race, and Asian in the American South, my identity often felt like an absence of any identity at all. For a long time I existed in a kind of limbo state, not having a language to describe myself. Until my early twenties, I was unaware the word “mixed race” existed, much less as a term I had the option to identify with. Because I neither knew nor saw any … [Read more...]
Black in Maine: 4 Ways Black Folks Take Care of Each Other in Majority-White Communities
NOTE: This is an article about Black bodies in white spaces, but this is really a love letter to all of the beautiful, dope ass Black women – femmes and non-femmes – speaking the truth and holding it down in one of the whitest states in the country. They’re my homegirls. After the 2017 white terrorist attack in Charlottesville, VA, an article about a man flying a Confederate … [Read more...]
4 Ways to Fight the Whitewashing of Pride
It’s Pride season! For us queer folks it can be a fun time to be extra gay and loud about it and go to parades. However, we can’t forget that the first Pride was a riot and this holiday would not have happened without Marsha P. Johnson, a Black bisexual disabled trans sex worker. Even with the history being well known at this point, many communities’ Prides are incredibly … [Read more...]
Sharing Our Whole Selves in Community: 3 Self-Love Practices I’m Embracing This Ramadan as a Queer Black American Muslim
Ramadan began two weeks ago, and across the world, Muslims who are observing the month abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset for thirty days. For those of us who fast, readiness is a layered concept. For some of us, it’s the physical component that is difficult to prepare ourselves for. Denying yourself food and drink during the daytime hours is difficult. It’s … [Read more...]
3 Ways Black People Have Shown Solidarity with Asians That We Don’t Talk About
Asians generally don’t participate in discussions about white supremacy. Even more rare from our communities are conversations about our own active part in racism, specifically the ways we let ourselves become weaponized to perform anti-blackness. We subscribe to white supremacy’s “Model Minority Myth,” believing that we do not share the same experiences with black … [Read more...]
“You Are Not Alone:” Uncovering the Dark Secret of Black Women and Sexual Abuse
Rape was not explained to me. No one sat me down and told me what it was. When I was a young girl, I heard a news story about a rape in Central Park—the park my school took us to for physical education and recess, so I paid attention. The victim’s face was slashed during the attack—cut with a broken bottle, I think. So for the longest time, I used to think that being raped … [Read more...]
In Response to Sean Grant: Online Bullying, Misogynoir, and the Concept of being an “Ugly Black Woman”
On Tuesday, November 27th, Facebook alerted me that a man named Sean Grant posted a picture of me. I didn’t and don’t know Sean. But, I recently performed at book release for the phenomenal Bay area poet, James Cagney, and thought that perhaps he was someone who attended the reading and snapped a shot. I was excited to see what was there because I knew that I was styling and … [Read more...]
How Conservatives are Using Cis Women’s Bodies to Destroy Trans Women’s Lives
Content warning: references to sexual assault; graphic transphobic violence With very few exceptions, almost every woman and non-binary person closest to me has been a survivor of sexual violence, often committed by people in their own families. The perpetrators of these crimes have overwhelmingly been cisgender men, correlating with national data demonstrating … [Read more...]
Misogynoir: Black Women and Femmes Surviving in the Face of State-Sanctioned Violence
This is supposed to be an essay about misogynoir and the state. For me, state-sanctioned violence against Black women and femmes is an issue that is as hypervisible and super-exploited as it is misunderstood. Long before Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey created the term “misogynoir,” the phenomenon has wreaked havoc on African people worldwide, reinforced by a … [Read more...]
The Good, the Bad and the Weird of Being Queer and Muslim
Both of my parents converted to Islam in the early 1970s, so I was born and raised as an African-American Muslim in the US. When I was younger, my connection to Islam, spirituality, and Allah was tenuous at times. I wouldn’t understand faith and spirituality in a deep way until I left home for college. This is the way for many people who were raised in religious … [Read more...]
The Body Is Not an Apology
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