Results for: representation
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Coming Out Twice: On Being Gay and Asexual in a World Without Representation
Every asexual person has a moment when the recognition sets in. Those moments would come a lot easier if asexuality was more prominent in pop culture.
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I Didn’t Know Existential Therapists Were a Thing Until I Got One
“I’m an easy host, a rake, a card, I’m bejeweled, I have a gay face. I want to love and be loved. If reaching is a kind of being, it’s a reaching toward.”
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On Gender Fabrication and Femme Embodiment
There are so many things I may reach for to explain how I know I am a femme or an intersex non-binary woman but these words and concepts themselves are devised and constructed. Where do I anchor femmeness and how do I understand it?
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MISSED CONNECTION: Gay Brunch Apology
You: The two women from my past who I judged too quickly during a chance brunch encounter
Me: The dyke who apparently projected her own hangups about middle school onto you
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This Is an Essay About Penises
“I spent years not thinking about my penis — or, at least, thinking about it as little as possible. After I transitioned, my penis became the most important part of my body — at least, to other people.”
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From Willow to Waverly: A Decade of Being Out and Me and Queer TV
“I remember little moments so vividly — like Ashley kissing Spencer on the shoulder while they looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. This is what I wanted. And I wasn’t afraid of wanting it anymore.”
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The Time I Lesbianfiltrated My Mother’s Straight Book Club
LGBTQ representation in literature is important. Also, chicken picatta is delicious.
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Escaping Eden: Finding Lilith in Queerness
Lilith after all has become a sign of every socially unacceptable aspect of women, including and especially our sexuality.
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Every Trans Girl I Meet Is From the Future: Finding a Bereft Sisterhood
I find myself preemptively mourning the transgenerational communities and cliques and cults and clubs and covens of girls like me that could be and may not be.
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Sharon Stone Crossing and Uncrossing Her Legs
“I watched her zip up her white dress in the mirror; I watched her cross and uncross her legs; I watched her, and my friends watched her, and in the movie we were watching the other characters, men and women, watched her. I hated her so much, and so purely, with such satisfaction. I couldn’t look away.”
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On The 6: Confronting the Mortality of Girls Like Me
“Trauma wasn’t meant to happen at 9 a.m. on that August morning. Not when I was running on time, and somehow missed the long line for the day’s first cup of coffee. Nothing could have warned me that the meticulous construction of my person would be unraveled while my peers watched from their own cocoons of solitude.”
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Who Is It That Afflicts You?
Witchcraft, trials, death and the Devil: how the long road of history winds from 1692 Salem, MA to 2015.
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I’m Both an L and a T and I Don’t Want to Choose a Side
Really, I’m not sure why we feel like we have to keep on amplifying this fight. A solid two-thirds of trans women are on both sides of this so-called divide. We’re a part of both communities.
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Gay, Interrupted: On Navigating Gaybourhoods As A Queer Brown Woman
Gay districts are safer, more open and more profitable than ever before, but for whom?
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Learning to Use Chopsticks: Coming Out as Korean-American
“At 27, I came out as Korean-American. I was always Korean, of course. I checked the “Asian” box when filling out a form. My ethnicity was written on my face in the shape of my eyes and my small flat nose. But until a few years ago, it wasn’t an identity I felt connected to. There were many identities that came first — poet, bisexual, queer, feminist, activist, organizer, fattie, vegan. Being Korean was a fact, but not an identity.”
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Me, Piper Chapman, the Psych Ward, and the Incarcerated 2.2 Million
“Real human change requires space to be honest with yourself, honest with others; a space that doesn’t exist when you’re trapped by necessity behind a fortress of self-protection. As the inmate Poussey in Orange replies when a correctional officer pressures her to speak openly during a group therapy session: “Does it ever occur to you that actually feeling our feelings might make it impossible to survive in here?”
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La Virgen de Guadalupe: Brown Goddess in My Heart Forever
La Virgen de Guadalupe has always been dear in my heart and always will be, but the way I view her has changed throughout the years, through various lenses with different interpretations, including now as a queer woman.
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Butch Glam: Let’s Broaden What “Black” In Relation to “Female” Can Mean
I am not crazy; I am simply black, and queer, and butch, and transcultural, and therefore alone.
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Misadventures in Queer Lady Dating While Disabled: It’s Not Me, It’s You
“Given the message of acceptance and sex positivity that the queer community so openly espouses, I was hopeful that I had finally found a niche where my sexuality would be respected and validated. To my dismay, passive discrimination was alive and well.”
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Fifty Shades of White
Having the blessing – or curse – of lighter skin is a double edged sword. I never gave much thought to the idea that society needs positive cultural images of minorities until I came to embrace my Hispanic heritage and come out of the closet.