Narratives of violence and abuse are so familiar in our history and culture that we hardly notice them. Corinne Manning shares what it took to notice and transform these narratives in their own fiction and their story collection, We Had No Rules.
We were just friends the first night she stayed over. I only had a single bed and there was little choice but to press our bodies close together: one big spoon and one little spoon. My desire for her followed me around like a lost dog. It would scratch at the door, whining and begging to be let out.
There are multiple ways to be an activist. It does not have to be a large public gesture. In private, trusting conversations with someone very different from you, you can create the space for revolutionary change. Connecting with each other on every scale contributes to a stronger global fight against injustice.
By the time I got out of the pool, I had five messages. Waiting at the light, the slivers of passing headlights passed over the hood of my car like sparks. You’re hot. You have a pretty face. So you’re bi? You could have a three-way with us. What are you up to tonight? You should put up more pictures.
Boyshorts/Girltrunks 101: Including 78 boyshorts, girltrunks and boxer-brief suggestions for weirdos.
Screams are often ripped from us, either through fear or fervor, but rarely does one think, soberly and with intention, “ I would like to indulge in a scream,” and then do it. This is a mistake.
In finding out that the legacy of redlining was so connected to my childhood home, I started to wonder what else I harbored that no one had ever thought to explain to me. I wanted to understand how my family and I became this way: so oblivious to our direct complicity in white supremacy
I would spend many hours trying to diagnose the emptiness Amanda left in her wake. I had lost something, but didn’t know what. Surely there’s a queer space on the page for stories that lack a middle?
It takes effort to choose an ending. It’s a lot easier to get back together, to catch a flight, to miss a flight, to fuck someone else. It’s easier to be with someone until you hate them than to walk away with love.
If the Dean positions are largely dominated by men, guess who the most punished group in school is.
I was ready to declare myself and to bring everyone else who was ready along for the ride. I thought, “I’m going to put as many women as I can into one publication, and they’re gonna get to say whatever the f*ck they want.” And Selfish, the magazine, was born.
“I’m a passionate person” I might write in a dating profile, which sounds harmless and doesn’t touch the deep smolder I experience daily. We’re bringing you stories in this issue from people who are also deeply moved and motivated by their feelings — about desire, about truth-seeking, about fighting for change, about fighting the body.
There’s a staunch Puritanical and traditionalist bent that persists in New England, now resulting less in atrocities like the perennially invoked Salem Witch Trials and more in people being doggedly polite: here, that means ignoring each other in public, not making small talk when you can be direct, and extreme propriety around personal questions to the extent of depersonalization. It can leave a queer kid uninspired, and in communities where, for better or worse, coding is still a vital method of communication, it can make the world feel small.
The world tells us that we should not want anything beyond what is here and now, right in front of us, but what’s in front of us is violent and harmful. What’s in front of us is killing us. Wanting for more is such a queer project.
As COVID-19 brings the world as we know it to and end, queer, trans and marginalized communities need to transformative justice more than ever. But what does it mean to believe in a world without punishment in the apocalypse?
It’s time we stopped telling people to “love themselves” and started demanding fat liberation at every level, in every way. Here’s how we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of diet culture, and why that matters for the betterment of our communities and our future.
In a country that hates immigrants, every day immigrants are on the front line of imagining and enacting another world: One where they can safely live with basic dignity, respect, and protection.
When it comes to my queer desire, my favorite feeling is a juicy lack — I don’t have the person or thing I want and that tastes like salted caramel perpetually not in my mouth. The distance is not only enjoyable, it’s my edge, but sometimes it feels like there’s something missing.
Our ability to conceive of ourselves surviving and thriving into the future is a crucial part of manifesting it as a lived reality.
For a long time, my wildest dream was my parents’ acceptance, it seemed so far off. Those years of silent dinners, no questions, no answers. I didn’t dare dream of anything else.
Book archives and research on queer identity from the Institute for Sexual Science were destroyed by Nazi book burnings. Our history and culture got lost. What else had I missed about the queer past of my city?
