Living While Black, Queer and Sometimes Mistaken for Male
My white queer friends don’t know why it’s such a big deal for them to not do any of the stupid and obviously illegal things they tend to do if I’m the one behind the wheel.
Yelling His Name: Black Trans Mourning and the Murder of Tony McDade
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.
MedSupplyDrive Relief Work Started with COVID-19, Now Includes Support for Protestors
We cold-called and emailed hundreds of places, heart in mouth, praying for someone to be generous. And people came through, offering gloves, masks, and more.
Black Rage as Catharsis
White supremacy thrives off of keeping us obsessed with respectability, when there is nothing respectable about kneeling on a man’s neck while he cries for his life. There is a time for everything, and right now is a time for rage.
Stop Asking Me If I’m Okay
In a time where Black people are experiencing new and old collective trauma whenever they scroll through Instagram, please stop asking us if we’re okay. We are not.
My Mother’s WeChat Mutual Aid Network Is a Project of Diaspora Activism
Participating in my mother’s diaspora mutual aid WeChat group helped me learn how far diasporic people will go for strangers sharing a common language when governmental aid fails.
14 Knuckles: How Many Knuckles in a Fist
When I teach Rachel how to tie me up and fist me, when I ask her to tell me what to do, when I teach her exactly how I want to submit, I give her permission to go on a journey with me and dive into an expanding world of pleasure.
I Grew Up In A House That Was Haunted
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
Learning To Live After My Younger Brother Died
When I unexpectedly lost my little brother to cancer, I had to learn how to close out his unfinished business and live life again without him.
What Being a Child of the AIDS Epidemic Taught Me About Coronavirus
All we have is each other. And we are the only ones we know, if we believe in the myth of ourselves enough to create truth, who will save us.
The Illusion Of Safety
I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. I’m kicking off Autostraddle’s first Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Heritage month by exploring the values my own South Asian and Japanese American parents and grandparents imparted to me, to learn to carry them forward.
14 Knuckles: The Bad Domme
The thing is: sometimes I like feeling disposable, like I’m just a bunch of holes that someone else is using for their pleasure. I know I’m fucking powerful, so sometimes I like to release control, let someone else do the work and have the power. That only works, though, when my boundaries are respected.
When the Emperor Becomes the Hanged One
While the Hanged One asks us to wait quietly instead of pushing hard, to surrender to the experience instead of fighting against what we cannot control, this is also a chance to understand what drives us, fulfills us, inspires us. What are you dreaming of? What has become more important to you, and what have you realized isn’t worth your energy?
How to Quit Smoking
Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.
Bipolar Disorder, Trans Dykes, and Celestial Catastrophe
One patient in the study “Observation of Trends in Manic-Depressive Psychosis” by O. Spurgeon English recounted that living with bipolar disorder “is like opening all my pores on a cold day and subjecting myself to catastrophe.”
I too have felt like a catastrophe of a person, a catastrophe of a star, a catastrophe of emotions.
Finding My Own Chinese American Community Through KTV
I’ve heard so many times that Asian America is about being caught tragically in the space between, never fully accepted in the U.S. and too Westernized to ever be Asian. Listening to my friends, I thought there was something defiant about singing in languages that we were told would never be ours, languages that this country wanted to force us to forget.
I Have a Mild Case of COVID-19 and I’m Battling it Out at Home
When I told my partner I thought I needed to call the ER for a telemedicine appointment, her face was devastated but not shocked. We’d been listing off symptoms to each other for weeks — dry throats, tight chests, nausea — trying to decide if what we were experiencing was anxiety or the onset of the virus.
What Self-Quarantine is Teaching Me About Gender Dysphoria
Three weeks ago I began my Coronavirus self-quarantine. Faced with the reality that I wouldn’t see anyone, I started an experiment. I wasn’t going to shave, paint my nails, or put on makeup — until I wanted to, for myself.
Lesbian Meme Culture Normalized My Abusive Relationship
Once I was out of an emotionally and sexually abusive queer relationship, I realized how lesbian memes can support unhealthy relationship dynamics. U-hauling and codependency didn’t feel like a joke anymore. I had to unfollow lesbian meme accounts to heal and learn new ways to approach queer love.
Imagining a Neurodiverse Future
What do Courtney Love and Greta Thunberg have in common? They both speak their minds, distrust power, and they’re both autistic. These two vanguards show us the power and political potential of autism while demonstrating how autistic people can shape a fairer and kinder world.