Friends and family lovingly called him Tony the Tiger and recalled that he was big hearted. Tony is not the perfect victim — no Black person is in this nation’s eyes. So again and again I add #BlackTransLivesMatter to every post and plea I make.

There’s a difference between domination as a way to take control or claim power over another person — the way certain lovers have done with me — versus domination as a way to provide comfort and care, and to grow one’s power without harming anyone else.

Like so many others, I’ve been chirping about the end of 2020, as if the transition from one year to the next will somehow magically suture our open wounds.

There is a different level of intimacy and affirmation that I have found when having sex with other fat people. Thin people approach the fat body like a series of insecurities. They see the swell of a stomach or rolls of fat on the back and assume that you hate those parts of your body. When another fat person touches me, it is to be made whole.

Because of the positive affirmation I received during sex, I began to believe it was all I was good for. When people wanted me, I assumed it was my job to provide joy for other people. I gave myself to a lot of people in that way. I had to remember that I had a right to pleasure as well.

“It is the weekend Beyoncé releases her “Formation” single and a bad queen has just performed it without breaking a sweat. I am watching the queen and learning that the way not to sweat is to move so little that every move seems like drama. I’ve got the not moving part down, which is how I am here at a club with a roommate whose friends want to meet the Black girl she let live in her house.”

“When I was thirteen years old I began starving myself. I did so, in short, because I wanted so desperately to be thin. And by thin, I mainly meant white.”

“When will white feminists take collective responsibility for educating themselves? When will they understand the power at play that sings in their skins? We don’t exist in a vacuum and women of colour don’t exist to hold their hands and explain in painful detail why their behaviour continues to hurt us. Intersectional feminist politics are not for white women to co-opt as their own.”