Built, buff and metrosexually styled — such is the dominant stereotype of what queer men should look like. Magazines, websites, image-based social media and dating apps contribute to creating idealized images of muscular and fat-free men’s bodies. Is it any surprise that body dissatisfaction has been reported to negatively influence queer men’s mental, emotional and sexual health?
Voting. Boarding a plane. Driving. Buying a drink. Filling out paperwork for a new job. These are all situations where showing a driver’s license or state-issued ID can be nerve-wracking or even dangerous for transgender people.
With the assistance of a team of 80 volunteers and a year of outreach to the community, the first ever PRIDE festival in south Los Angeles will be held on on the Compton College campus Saturday, July 6.
Embracing queer pride while also rejecting corporate involvement and police violence, tens of thousands of people marched in New York City on Sunday as part of the Queer Liberation March.
Trans/Enby Yoga is Lizz’s brainchild: a twice-weekly yoga class for the non-cis folks of Seattle. “It’s a break from microaggressions, that’s what I’m offering,” they said. “It’s a little reprieve from microaggressions where people can be honest and vulnerable in their bodies and not need to have walls up around themselves.”
The Queer and Trans Youth Music Project (QTYMP) wants youth programs in the hands of the youth themselves. The project was birthed out of the legacy of Queer Rock Camp in 2016 and is a fiscal sponsee of the Vera Project. Under the umbrella of QTYMP are Camp Emerald and Rogue Rainbow. Camp Emerald is a week-long summer camp in Seattle where queer and trans youth ages 14 to 21 learn to play an instrument, join a band and perform in a show on the final night.
Here are a few slogans for you: The future is one where nonbinary youth do not feel it necessary to kill themselves. The future is one where we are free to break the binary without harassment or erasure. The future is one where cis folks with an agenda shut the fuck up about nonbinary people, and let us speak for ourselves.
One of the first garments in my femme wardrobe was a schoolgirl skirt. A black and red plaid thing, so short it barely covered my ass. Steel rings decorated its waistband, punctuating its gothiness. It would have looked perfect on one of the anarchist cheerleaders from that Nirvana video.
If you misgender someone whose pronouns you know, just correct yourself and move on. No need to make a big apology. This often pushes the awkwardness of the moment off on the person you misgendered who feels they have to forgive you for the conversation to continue which is manipulative and self-centered.
A red sun sets on Valentine’s Day 2018, with 1 wounded and 1 newly celebrated as a hero, as a Valentine’s Day celebration ran what some might call amuck. At 7:05 AM, Charlie Parsley, 28, woke up like it was any other day. They got up, dressed ,ate breakfast, and then began to scroll through their non-chronological instagram feed, liking videos of cats and memes trolling Cancers.
Queen Victoria Ortega was an activist since pretty much the beginning. Growing up in L.A.’s Boyle Heights, a neighborhood characterized by it’s Mexican American population, made it difficult to be trans, says Ortega. But being the child of activist parents taught her a lot of lessons that sit with her to this day.
Re-bar occupies a strange and lovely place in Seattle – both spatially and historically. The bar, located in the nebulous Denny Triangle, has provided a safe space for queer nightlife in the city for decades. It’s also where Nirvana staged its record release show for Nevermind (and where the band was famously kicked out of that same night).