Life, Death and Surrender: It’s Hard to Know When It’s Time to Say Goodbye
On losing a pet, resilience and vulnerability, human frailty and animal intelligence, and everything that goes into saying goodbye.
How Rape Jokes Sound Inside Queer Bodies
If the performer had known that I write about the horrific violence against my community by day and process the trauma of that work in my journal by night, maybe he wouldn’t have made that joke. But I bet you he would have resented the implication that he shouldn’t.
My Trans Body as a State of Desire
“My brain is lit like the map of a major metropolis at night. My body is, too. ‘I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire,’ Anaïs Nin wrote, and that’s pretty much it. Or, put another way: I have found an affirmation of selfhood, and I haven’t thought to immediately annul it.”
Laying Down My Bullshit and Dancing at Dawn
“In Berlin people talk about it, expats especially, in hushed, reverent tones. The sound system, which is supposed to be one of the best in the world. The DJ acts you’ve never heard of with names like Fuck Buttons. And that magical moment in the morning when the blinds at Panorama Bar are yanked open and the suddenly-illuminated, all-night revelers start to cheer.”
When Real Life’s Getting More Like Fiction Each Day
When I say I was obsessed with RENT, I mean obsessed. I grew straight out of American Girl Magazine into the world of wildly risqué musical theatre. My mother tended to encourage the things I was interested in, but this one… well, it baffled her a bit. How could a good church girl from the suburbs of Connecticut relate to this musical?
So, We’re Getting Married Now?
“Neither of us were comfy with the public spectacle of the thing, especially G. She didn’t like the thought of publicizing our private relationship. We also felt a bit blah about marriage itself, which can feel like an outdated institution. And there were practical worries, too — like how would we plan a big event, with so much on our plates?”
How Breaking Bread with Queer Christians Helped Me Rediscover Radical Love
“I put “they/she” on a pronoun button for the first time and countless people — moms, older gay and lesbian folks, and my peers — asked me to share what that meant and what genderqueer identity is because they genuinely wanted to understand ideas that were foreign and difficult for them so they could love me better.”
If I’m Queer But I’m A Preacher, Maybe He’ll Love Me
“My father has very few admirable qualities when it comes to our relationship: he doesn’t follow through on his promises, he doesn’t compromise, and he has a God complex. “
Coming Out To 50 People At Once Was So Much Easier Than Doing It One-on-One
“That’s right!” I shouted, feeding off their energy. “Clap because I’m gay!”
The Gift Of Asking: Diary of a SAD Girl #3
“I’ve come to believe that my one wild and precious life will never be full if I don’t aggressively dismantle my childhood hardwiring, if I don’t ask the people who love me most to give me what I need.”
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.”
17 Incredible Autostraddle Personal Essays By Trans Women
This post is 25% Mey Rude Appreciation Club and 75% “personal essays by trans women oh my gosh how do I pick only 16.” (I picked 17.)
Game Over: Diary of a SAD Girl #2
This week, it’s a cartoon. Next week, maybe I’ll write you a poem in the sky from inside a hot air balloon! Or, you know, just use my words. It’ll be an adventure. Me, you, and my Philips GoLITE BLU Energy Light, slogging through the snow and sunless days together.
All The Things I Should’ve Said In My Rural Town
“The first girl I ever kissed spent her summers on her uncle’s farm, helping him bale hay. She would come back to school with the insides of her wrists all welted-up like she had been stung by bees. I wanted to kiss each sting but I never asked.”
I Demand to Be Sexualized
This is a story about how the Buzzfeed series “You Do You” made me feel like someone might wanna do me.
Making the Dive and Loving Myself Dangerously
“But, like embracing the woman I am, I couldn’t stay back from the allure of the waves. The pull of my trans-ness and queerness, of course, would always be stronger, the strongest impulses I have ever known. The sea, like them, was a place that represented a kind of forbidden love. I needed to overcome my fears or I would feel that I was holding myself back from living authentically.”
Winter Is Coming: Diary of a SAD Girl #1
“Time Change Sunday is my personal gateway to hell. It gets dark earlier (and then earlier and earlier). It gets cold in the morning and night (and then stays cold all day and all day). I stay inside to keep warm and then I stay inside because I don’t want to leave and then I stay inside because I can’t get out of bed.”
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.
Natural Hair Was My Final Frontier to Self-Love as a Black Trans Woman
After removing my damaged locks, I realized that that was the easy part. Removing the Eurocentric straight- haired image of femininity embedded in my brain was much harder.
I’m Single, I’m 36, and I Think That’s Fine
“Becoming secure with being alone has relieved the frantic pressure to believe that every new person I meet might be the next person with whom I enter into a significant relationship, and instead it has provided me with the security and confidence to build a life on my own terms.”