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.

Across the country, Black TGNC people are performing serious emotional labor as organizers, healers, artists, sexual liberationists, and advocates. It’s time to give back.

“I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. It didn’t, but my hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body.”

One Day at a Time is so revolutionary in its depictions of what a family might actually look like in America. It’s got the same recipe of an old school family sitcom but turns the norm on its head because it centers the family’s brownness and provides ample social commentary to deliver a fantastic modern-day sitcom.

“Dating broken white women became a way to reprise a powerlessness that years of sexual abuse and generations of blackphobia had tricked me into believing in. I drowned this feeling of powerlessness in weed and seeking out relationships in which I could engage in yet remain completely hidden from view.”

“In ANCIENT FUTUREs, we see queers shaping their own realities. It’s a vulnerable moment to have in such a public place. It is anxiety-inducing and paralyzing. It is exhilarating, rewarding, life-giving, but in the end, it is a risk.”

“The Brown Grrrlz Project seems to view femininity as a form of resistance in a world where brown women are either terrorized or ignored. “