Malaika

This past week, sex workers have been holding marches in big cities across the country to support Bedford v. The Government of Canada, which aims to decriminalize activities surrounding sex work.

New York is more than taxi cabs, street food, and crowds. There’re also mice, rats, and cockroaches! Lots of them! How exciting, right?

I want us to all take a moment to let this sink: according to the largest study on same-sex parents and their children ever conducted, the kids are not only okay, but in some ways more well-adjusted than the children in heterosexual-parented families.

Who was I to even want these things that I wanted? Who was I to ask for them? I was open, naked: This is me. This is what I want. I need your help.

Instead of judging people on whether or not they eat meat and have organic kale with every meal, we should be asking ourselves who has access to healthy food and why.

New York has histories and politics etched deep into the subway lines it could take me a lifetime to study; so I start by studying the woman seated across from me.

Will all these wonderfully complicated characters learn to unravel their complications and fears? Probably not. But will they braid them together to form a community? Don’t you hope so?

I like to think all of this travelling has taught me a few things, or else what would be the point? Here’s a list of 10 things I’ve learned as a prairie homo in the great wide world.

Your dog doesn’t care that you’re an anti-social drunk bookworm.

I like to think my gender identity changes with the seasons. In the winter I can channel my great Canadian butch, and in the summer I can femme-it-up.

These are three of the amazing Indigenous female writers, activists, and artists I’ve been reading this week. I may not be the best person to write about Indigenous issues, but I can certainly read what I think are some of the best, educate myself, and encourage you to do the same.

Wait, so this hadn’t happened yet?

This is my unique perspective on being a half-black, half-white human who sometimes feels uncomfortable using the term Person of Colour to refer to myself.

Sometimes a prairie homo has nothing to write, so she writes about it.

Check out this list of queer prairie sites to visit when you’re not reading A Prairie Homo Companion.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave orders to the Supreme Court to make changes to Russian adoption laws in order to prevent same-sex foreign couples from adopting Russian children.

In anticipation of my future homesickness, I’ve compiled a list of 50 things (in no particular order) I’ll miss should I leave the prairies.

This spring, as you shed all the layers of winter, it’s important to love your prairie homo skin and not feel bad about its colour, its stretch marks, or whom or what it responds to.

This is the best recipe of all recipes.

From March 13-22nd, it’s the University of Alberta’s first ever Pride Week, and you should go!

Very simple, yet very delicious.

ELIXHER is “your go-to resource for all things empowering, thought-provoking, and pertinent to the Black female queer community and experience. You’ll find news, uplifting profiles, local events, political commentary, personal reflections, and more.”

In which Tegan lets me know that her songs are like her babies, she has a tea-drinking schedule, and she doesn’t want you to build a shrine to her in your home.

This is a book about being a queer girl in the 1970s, about traveling the world, and about trying to be a writer by the woman who would go on to co-found Seal Press and write award-winning books because who says you can’t accomplish what you dream of doing?

Since I easily dismissed the strange looks people gave my white mom and her three brown-skinned little kids and the questions about where I was from as just ignorant things people said, I grew up not very aware of racism and micro-aggressions. I didn’t think of myself as black or as white.