I hadn’t experienced transphobic violence in medicalized form before. But I’d experienced it in many others: in punches and pushes, through threats with weapons, or by being run off the road by cars while I was on foot.
Dementia used to be called madness, I was told.
“Don’t Tell the Babysitter Mom’s Dead” is a beautifully produced podcast for anyone interested in exploring themes of family and loss, but especially for people looking to connect to another queer soul who lost their mom young.
Some essays and stories about our Dads — the good, the bad, and the very complicated.
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.
Your family buys you weird gifts, your mom is kinda rude about your long-distance girlfriend, and you can’t move on after this breakup. Let’s get some shit done! Come on!
Sometimes being queer and black, bisexual and biracial, feels like contradiction, like too many things, and sometimes I’m not sure that I’d recognize myself if I walked by.
I wasn’t at all ready for the feelings I’d have about being adopted and queer and raising a toddler who still isn’t as old as I was when I came to the United States on an airplane.
In which a debate over body hair pushes a white mother and her brown daughter to the limits of mutual understanding.
“I feel like I’m lying to my my parents, hiding part of myself, and disrespecting my girlfriend by constantly avoiding mentioning her or referring to her as my friend when my parents ask what’s going on in my life. Of course, I know coming out can be difficult in general, but I’m wondering if you have any advice for coming out in the context of a toxic family relationship? How can I best protect myself from the inevitable insults, yelling, and criticism while still being honest?”
Being miserable at your 9-5 job, your family isn’t wild about your fiancee and you’re embarrassed to get married, you’re not wild about your current roommate, and people think you might be related to your gal BUT YOU’RE NOT. Come on in!
I was a newly minted queer and everything I knew about queerness was rooted in coming out. I’d heard about the relief that came with coming out from everybody. If TV was to be believed, I would feel free even as my parents stopped looking me in the eye.
I’m sharing tips and techniques that have been useful to me in the face of conflict for those of you who’ll need to advocate for yourselves in difficult conversations and fight the good fight this holiday season. We can do this. Hopefully one day we won’t have to.
As the daughter of lesbian mothers, I always knew I had a sperm donor, and that I could meet him when I was 18. I loved my moms; I loved my queer family. Still, I had always wondered what part of me was cut from a different cloth.
The first-of-its-kind study revealed some surprising findings on queer and disabled folks in particular.
“I think for many of us as disabled folk, we’ve come to terms with what we experience — but Nana’s experience of dementia is sort of different in that she doesn’t always know what’s happening or who and what she can trust. We can be empowered about disability at the same time as acknowledging that some of it really, seriously fucking hurts.”
When an in-law has a terrible reaction to your coming out, do you still have to go to their wedding?
Sometimes you have to step outside to remember who you are and who you want to be. And sometimes, you have to retreat to the epicentre of yourself, surrounded by whatever environment you can create.
“After any terrorist attack, we’re all sitting on the imaginary couch together being like, ‘Please don’t be brown, please don’t be brown, please don’t be brown.’ And it’s not even a joke.”
“It’s one of the hardest things most of us, as a community, will ever have to do and has the capacity to irrevocably change our lives… for better or worse.”
