A couple of years ago, I complimented a classmate on her outfit as we were waiting for the professor to arrive. “I love that lipstick color on you,” I said. “Thanks!” she replied. “It was just a red lipstick kind of day, you know?” “Well, I don’t really wear red lipstick, but it looks so gorgeous on you,” I said. “Why don’t you?” she asked. “I bet you’d look amazing with it … [Read more...]
Mixed-Race, Non-Binary, Queer Fat Femme: How I Fail and Succeed in Finding Liberation
I am a Black, mixed-race, fat, queer, non-binary person. Most saliently, I am femme. I have come to understand radical femmeness, femme magic, femme community, femme love, and femme power through my relationships with other womxn and femmes of color. While femme communities evoke safeness and security for me, they also often exist on the basis of trauma. Femininity leaves us … [Read more...]
Why I Refuse To Believe Being Femme Invalidates My Queerness
My femme identity is rooted in conjuring up as much softness and pleasure as I can. This world can be incredibly hard and harmful, especially for marginalized folx. Femme-embodiment is my magic of choice to help me navigate through it all. As magic as it is, my gender expression also prompts people to approach me with the “… but you look straight” comment upon "discovering" … [Read more...]
Let’s Stop Acting as if Queers Need To Look a Certain Way To Be Queer
In my city, there’s a monthly queer-women-and-company dance event called Flannel Takeover. It’s supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the visuals of being a queer woman: someone who wears lots of flannel. Line up, ladies and trans gents and non-binary folks! Grab a beer, don your snapback, aaand let’s perpetuate the lazy stereotype that queer woman equals masculine. A … [Read more...]
Ain’t We Femme?
This post is dedicated to all of the femmes! When I was a child, Easter was my favorite time of year. Every year, my mom always got me an Easter basket full of goodies. At church, we got to recite our Easter speeches in front of the whole congregation. And after the sermon, they would host an Easter egg hunt for the young folks. They even had a golden egg with money … [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...]
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...]
Fat Black Queer Femmes Are the Fetishized Backbones of Our Communities — But Who Takes Care of Us?
This article was originally published on Rest for Resistance as "Labor, Chaotic Desire & Belonging: On Blackness, Femininity, and Queerness" and is republished with permission. This is for the queer fat Black femmes. As children, we learn that we never occupy just one, but all, of our identities. Not a fat girl or a Black girl, but a fat Black girl. In elementary school, … [Read more...]
