Content note: This article discusses eating disorders (including bulimia and anorexia), weight loss, and "thinspiration". It began with a love of tattoos: the permanence of art on an impermanent body, the buzz of the machine, the stinging and the bleeding and the healing. And by “it,” I mean how I taught myself to call my eating disorder “inspiration” -- and thus … [Read more...]
5 Ways To Maintain Your Queer Identity in a Relationship People Read as Straight
This article originally appeared in EverydayFeminism.com and is reprinted by permission. In a way, there is a safety that comes with being out in public holding a boy’s hand. I’m seen as straight, feminine, the “right” sort of woman. Nobody harasses me, leering and telling me to kiss him so they can watch. Nobody calls me the d-word or threatens to “turn” me straight. As far as … [Read more...]
3 Reasons We Need To Be Critical of Compulsory Sex Positivity in Queer Spaces
Sex positivity often acts as an implicit — or sometimes explicit — foundation of leftist, feminist, and LGBTQ+ spaces for completely valid reasons. As women and queers, sex has been the driving force behind both our oppression and the spaces we create to separate, heal, and liberate us from our oppression. Sexualized spaces for socializing predate our modern understanding of … [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...]
Coming Out as Non-Binary in Class
I've been identifying as non-binary for three years. Until recently, being misgendered in my college classes was something I simply lived with. Being a non-binary person in class can be a difficult experience. In the beginning, I was much too shy and anxious to announce my identity to anywhere from thirty to three hundred strangers. I had no idea of my classmates’ knowledge of … [Read more...]
Superfat Erasure: 4 Ways Smaller Fat Bodies Crowd the Conversation
For most of my life, and especially since coming into a fat identity, I have usually been one of the fattest people if not the fattest person in any given room I enter. When I came into fat activism, I did it operating under the (false) assumption that my experience of fatness was the same—or at least similar, or perhaps comparable—as other fat people’s. The more my community … [Read more...]
Witnessing Beauty on Purpose: 5 Small Ways To Make Someone Feel Visible
Given the current political climate, it can be hard to believe that the small acts of our lives can make a difference. I too woke up the morning after the election swimming in a sense of helplessness. How could I keep writing now? Then I remembered something. At an event some months ago I was listening to a poet read but something distracted me out of my peripheral vision. A … [Read more...]
The Paradox of Transgender Day of Visibility: Reflections on Visibility and Vulnerability as a Trans Woman
On March 31, throughout the world and across the Internet, people observed the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDoV). I found myself, as I have in previous years, feeling ambivalent about this event. Because honestly? For many trans women, visibility is exactly the problem: it is involuntary, and it leaves us vulnerable to both physical and social violence. We get mocked, … [Read more...]
