yeesindeed:

Hidden in the Open: A Photographic Essay of Afro American Male Couples

This is soo good! Trent Kelley has compiled over 100 images revealing a long legacy of Black male couples. These are some of my faves. Check out his flickr page for more amazing images.

(via rebekahloves)

hellisotherppl:

“Straighten out your wrist, Brotha!” When my boxing coach yelled these words, I knew his call was about more than perfecting my jab.

I have experienced the demands of Black masculinity and the responses to my failure to perform properly are not alI that different from the experiences of failed masculinity that I felt within Black lesbian communities. 

But it is true, I am now a young Black American Male. People usually assume that I am somewhere between the age of 15 and 20. I’m 28.

The world is unkind to Black bois. The world is unkind to Black girls. But the way our gendered bodies are policed is different. Black bois are assumed thugs, thieves, rapists, and overly aggressive.

I knew this already, but I feel it more now like when I got kicked out of a Hollywood store because the owner assumed I was there to steal something.

He didn’t just make that assumption. This white man came over and hovered over me yelling for me to get out and to never return because “he knew my kind.”

I spoke calmly, but he kept yelling. I couldn’t help but think this man can’t see or hear me.

He could only see what he believed to be true about young black bois, and it didn’t matter who I was, who I had been, or who I might become. My future and past were predetermined in his mind.

I was the dangerous body that needed to be policed.

And Black women have it too. Bearing the brunt of pathology, the Black woman has been told that she is the reason why Black people suffer. Because she has been too strong and emasculating. Because she is crazy and angry.

She needs to be put in her place by Black men and those outside her racialized community.

When my boxing coach told me to straighten out my wrist, it came after lots of criticism around my push-up form, my strength (or weakness). The way my body moved was sub-par especially in comparison to this ripped Black man.

I have gone from being a big, strong looking Black woman to occupying the body of a young, lanky Black man. The more my body masculinizes, the more I feel my femininity stands out as contradictory to those who invest in normative types of masculinity.

So What is Masculinity? How Did I Come To Learn How To Wear It?

When I was in high school, I learned there was a code to same gender loving life. You were either masculine or femme, a stud or her girlfriend.

I was told that my look was confusing. People couldn’t tell what I was. Someone told me that I was sporty “femme.” I didn’t know what that meant but I was happy that I had a name to call myself, a place to belong.

The first woman I went on a date with, was masculine presenting, a stud. She had a way of making me feel her masculinity as a direct opposite to my femininity.

I didn’t like the room I was given to move or to not move.

I know that this interaction was circumscribed by chivalry. She opened my door and closed it. She paid for dinner. Something about this interaction made me feel trapped.

I decided that I would be nobody’s femme and therefore I must be like her, a masculine woman, a stud.

I wanted to be in control.

I took the summer to learn my gendered role. I became a stud. And it worked because I was able to get the attention of the femmes that I was attracted to.

In those early teenage years, I mostly learned from other studs how to be. I remember the first time I learned about stud misogyny. I was 18 or 19 at the time and I was at a house party in the Bay.

There were many beautiful Black women in the space.There were studs and femmes.The host was a stud who wore cornrows, baggy jeans, and perhaps a polo or a jersey. She was good looking, but somehow I knew that was something I wasn’t supposed to articulate aloud.

I remember looking at her and examining the family photos that had been on display in her house.

The girl in the picture was different. She was femme. She smiled.

I wonder if the girl in the picture felt like she needed more room. I wonder if the stud she had become gave her more room.

I wonder how that room, that liberation that she felt came from dominating feminine women or perhaps the feminine that might have been a part of her.

I remember walking in on a conversation between two studs. One told the story of how her girlfriend broke her chain and how upset she was.

The other stud chimed in, “If that had been my girl, I would have slapped her.”

Everyone laughed, but I was afraid.

That’s probably one of the earliest moments that I felt uneasy about being a stud and the kind of masculinity we were creating and inheriting.

Another lesson in studly masculinity came for me when I was in college. I had fallen for an older femme woman.

We’d spend time walking and holding hands in the New England chill. She taught me how to be a good stud.

“You should always walk on this side of the street, so that I feel protected.”

“You should always open the door for the lady.”  

I was getting schooled in old-fashioned chivalry and I was good at it. I was in love with it. The giving, the idea that I could somehow protect.

But it wasn’t simply that I could protect. There was an insistence that I MUST.

Anything else meant failure.

What if I was afraid? What if I needed to feel/be protected? Well, that was the sacrifice of normative masculinity.

After I had top-surgery, I needed help with my carry-on bags when flying. I wasn’t able to raise my arms above my head. No one could see that I needed help. I didn’t have any visible wounds, so I had to ask.

I asked a white stewardess for help and she glared at me. She was annoyed and she didn’t want to help me. I explained to her that I had just had surgery and still annoyed, she told me that next time I would need to check my bag if I couldn’t do it myself.

I was a young, seemingly able-bodied Black man. I wasn’t elderly.

Why did I need help?

How can we expect to create healthy men and bois, if they live in a society where asking for help is met with punishment and enforced shame?

Is there room for vulnerability in masculinity? We must make room.

Who I Am Today

I walk in the world today as an effeminate Black transman. Queer, indeed!

I never want to straighten out my wrist. I want it to flare, I want it to paint flame across canvass because I am unafraid of femininity.

It is the place from which I garner my strength.

The term Masculine of Center has been one that I have clung to for sometime now. Masculine of center (MOC) coined by B. Cole of the Brown Boi Project, recognizes the breadth and depth of identity for lesbian/queer/womyn who tilt toward the masculine side of the gender scale and includes a wide range of identities such as butch, stud, aggressive/AG, dom, macha, tomboi, trans-masculine etc.

When I discovered it, I thought, “Finally, a term that can hold me!”

But as I sit here today and write, my center feels feminine. Is there room for that? We must make it.

I have always carried with me both masculine and feminine energies, but I have often been forced to choose one over the other depending upon the space around me.

I have been on hormones since July 2011. I had top surgery in May 2012. It is 2013 and while some things have clearly changed physically and emotionally, some things have stayed the same.

I still bleed every month. For many this may seem to be a contradiction to my masculinity or maleness, but I cherish the moments.

I am thankful that my body carries both masculinity and femininity at its core, because at the end of the day, what we should all be striving towards is balance.

We need to build relationships between men and women that allow space for both parties to grown.

We need to build relationships between men and men, women and women, that allow space for both parties to move freely.

The gender binary affects us all in detrimental ways. And while masculinity may seem to offer more room, it also has its limitations.

And femininity, if only understood as masculinity’s property, is detrimental to women and other people who identify as femme.

Hi, my name is Kai M. Green. I am a Black Transman. I am a Black feminist and my center is just as feminine as it is Black.  - Kai M Green

(via twbasketcase)

fromthemindofateenagewolf:

This is so perfect.

(Source: rayisaperson, via bialogue-group)

queermuseum:

A’Lelia Walker and I have some things in common. She was “a striking, tall, dark-skinned woman who was rarely seen without her riding crop and her imposing, jeweled turban” (asEric Garber described her in his essay, A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem). And I too look great in a jeweled turban, when I happen to have access to one. Walker was the daughter of Madame CJ Walker, the first female African-American millionaire in America. I know this because I grew up about two blocks from her mansion in the small town of Irvington, New York, and we learned about her every year in school.

But nothing was ever said about A’lelia, her only child, who was one of the leading social lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Her salons walked the line between famous and infamous. AsMabel Hampton, one of the attendees put it, they were:

“Funny parties — there were men and women, straight and gay. They were kinds of orgies. Some people had clothes on, some didn’t. People would hug and kiss on pillows and do anything they wanted to do. You could watch if you wanted to. Some came to watch, some came to play. You had to be cute and well-dressed to get in.”

Everyone who was anyone came to her parties. As Lillian Faderman wrote in Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers:

“A’Lelia Walker probably had much to do with the manifest acceptance of bisexuality among the upper class in Harlem: those who had moral reservations about bisexuality or considered it strange or decadent learned to pretend a sophistication and suppress their disapproval if they desired A’Lelia’s goodwill.”

But her parties didn’t stop at The Dark Tower, her apartment on 136th St. - she also brought the Harlem Renaissance to Irvington. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and other literary heavyweights walked the main street of my town on a regular basis during the 1920s.

And I never learned a thing about it in school. So who knows what queer history your hometown is hiding…

-Hugh

(via ushistoryminuswhiteguys)

obey-skye:

-fuckthesystem:

sav-ed:

I’ve reblogged this 6 times since Thursday, I really love this picture

\m/

this is perfect omg

(Source: supgabie, via ladypandora16)

knowhomo:

LGBTQ* News Happening Right Now

California becomes first state in nation to ban ‘gay cure’ therapy for children

By James Eng, NBC News

Updated at 12:34 p.m. ET: California has become the first state in the nation to ban therapy that tries to turn gay teens straight.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed Senate Bill 1172, which prohibits children under age 18 from undergoing “sexual orientation change efforts.”  The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, prohibits state-licensed therapists from engaging in these practices with minors. 

“Governor Brown today reaffirmed what medical and mental health organizations have made clear: Efforts to change minors’ sexual orientation are not therapy, they are the relics of prejudice and abuse that have inflicted untold harm on young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Californians,” Clarissa Filgioun, board president of Equality California, said in a press release.

Read More Here

Graphic from NBC News (California state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, sponsored the bill to ban a controversial form of psychotherapy aimed at making gay youth straight.)

(via northstarfan)

zorascreation:

gowns:

josé julio sarria, gay latino who ran for public office in 1961 - many many years before harvey milk

he ran for the san francisco board of supervisors and almost won by default, until people noticed there was a gay man running and immediately submitted everyone possible for the position. he didn’t win, but he still got 6000 votes, which shocked conservatives

he was also a drag queen popular at many of the balls at the time…and he still does it today (lookin good for a guy in his late 80s)!

It’s so funny how White “Queerstorians” conveniently never tell us about this beautiful querido right here. <3 

(via northstarfan)

lgbtlaughs:

[Description: Screen shot of an answered ask. Anonymous asked, “Today I went to confession like always (Catholic, sorry) and finally confessed impure thoughts about another girl. My priest assigned a penance for the thoughts. I was scared, but tentatively asked if I should do more because of the gender. He was quiet for a moment or two then said, ‘Give thanks that God made you unique. Gender is irrelevant.’ I nearly burst into tears.” User beinggayisokay responded, “FUCKING GOT DAMN RELIGION DONE RIGHT OMGGGGGGFGODDESS THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS.”] (x)

Since Nobody’s Hero, I have been asked multiple times now how (especially as an atheist) I can write characters who are queer and Catholic. The answer is:

1. I rarely agree with my characters on anything. I’m not writing about myself, here.

and

2. This.

(via echelonslostangel)

Sara Beth Brooks, the founder of Asexual Awareness Week, on Fox News’ offensive and invalidating segment on asexuality. (via reallyfoxnews)

(Source: lezgetreal.com, via betterthanlegos)

Check out my blog hop post and enter to win a copy of my new book, By the River.

leopoldsfeathers:

My own view is that most homophobia, if one wants to use that rather crummy word, has almost nothing to do with sex.

“But have you any idea what these people actually do?”

Read More

have the guts to Enquire Within

(via northstarfan)

itsaspaceromance:

hawthornetaylor:

laydownanywhere:

• a great deal of show creators/writers are aware of fandom and slash. people have been tweeting creators/actors their fanfiction for a really long time. 
• also Google is a thing. 
• as is the New York Times, TIME, The Guardian and many other news sources. 
• fandom and fanfiction is not a secret; the idea that slash is popular among women is not a secret and that involvement with fandom creates loyal fans.
• thus creators and writers will throw little bones to fandom via queerbaiting
• this is sort of bad
• queerbaiting involves fetishizing queerness but never committing to it. queerbaiting is like playing gay chicken, queerbaiting is meant to tantalize but not explore the relationship, queer baiting is the equivalent of telling your friend you care but then screaming loudly as possible NO HOMO
• queerbaiting is not progress
• thank you for letting me use bullet points

TWO WHITE GUYS TOUCHING.

Mmmmmnope.

This. With regards to Sherlock especially and The Big Bang Theory. It’s not a running gag, it’s repeatedly offensive.

Yeah, what she said—I was thinking of Sherlock in particular where it’s used as a joke when I reblogged this originally. It’d be different if it was a Mulder/Scully tension thing that kept coming up. But it’s not, and it genuinely bothers me.

That said, there are a lot of TV shows and books around these days where characters do not explicitly come out and say, “Hi, I’m bisexual!” but are clearly written to be. I use bisexuality as my example because, of course, we’re the ones who are most likely to get erased by the “queerbaiting” accusation. And most people do not discover this about me because I announce it, but because I make a casual comment or do something that tells them. Because life.

The obvious example off the top of my head would be Stiles in Teen Wolf. He’s young, he’s inexperienced, he’s been hopelessly in love with one person since he was nine or something. I thought that it was made clear, however, that he was bi even before I knew the first thing about Jeff Davis—not because of the touching (everyone on that show is touchy) or because it’s a joke (though Stiles is, of course, hilarious), but because that’s just how the character is written—and people whose brains work like that tend to notice these things. I get a little “wtf” when I see people wondering why people don’t demand more of the out gay character, Danny, instead of insisting on Sterek. Um, because Danny’s a peripheral character whose dating habits have no bearing on the show, and it’d be nice to see an out bi lead character on TV who behaves like a real person instead of some absurd stereotype, maybe? Just a thought.

I won’t get into my own reaction to one of my own clearly bi characters being called “gay for you”. Let’s just say I chalk it up to a need for visibility and go back to work.

So yeah, I think accusing all of fandom of fetishizing is absurd, but I have seen it happen, and I think this is a good thing to carry in my brain about why the tactics some writers are using on TV today gets on my last nerve, basically.

saneoldsameold:

because another black trans* woman is dead three blocks from where Paige Clay was found murdered in April and major Chicago news outlets won’t even give her the basic respect of using her chosen name. 

Because our young black girls are dying at an alarming rate and even the queer community doesn’t want to talk about it

Because my own people (queer people and black people) are throwing these women into the streets and their blood is running there now

Because my black and brown trans* sisters are being murdered in the streets and the cis white gay rights movement is worried about how soon we can get married (which is important) but ignores the need for trans* folks to have housing options when they’re kicked out of their homes, which is far too often

Because gay men are still tossing around the t-slur that these women probably heard as they died

And it’s disgusting. Because nobody cares. The queer community will not speak of these women, and neither will the black community. I used to think it would take a rash of murders to wake people up, but I don’t know anymore. Because that rash is here. Tiffany Gooden was not the first. And I’m so afraid she won’t be the last. It kills me to think that my sisters are dying like this. Brown and queer and beautiful and with nobody to empower them. It absolutely kills me.

(Source: writingrhythmandretail, via fuckyeahhardfemme)

warrior-scribe:

So you still think homosexuality is sinful?

northstarfan:

“Let’s celebrate the gay marriage of the white, able-bodied cis dude while the disabled, POC lesbian dies in the gutter!” is probably the most accurate minority metaphor ever to find its way into an X-Book.