here’s to all the quiet queers.
all the queers who eat micro-agressions and secretly cry themselves to sleep.
the queers who dress the way their cis mothers told them to.
the queers who think about killing cis fucks every half hour, but never say a word more radical than “sorry.”
the queers who sip tea at their friend’s house while considering suicide, since that’s just about all they can think about.
the queers who are living double lives.
the queers who put on makeup at 2 a.m. in a hand mirror, making sure to wipe it off before school the next morning.
the queers who go to work dead and come home to see the world.
the queers who fuck, and suck, and kiss with the same hands and lips they use to eat dinner with their well-meaning shitty-acting parents
the queers who are ugly to you, too fat for you, running from you with lips sewn shut
here’s to the quiet queers, since it’s about fucking time we stopped shaming them.
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"Most spaces identified as radical queer spaces, unless they are explicitly for people of color, generally lack any significant attention to or inclusion of struggles that are not specifically queer. In this context, unfortunately, those spaces are not radical alternatives to gay identity, but a continuation of the legitimization of white identity that exists in gay mainstream culture. This has led to deep-rooted forms of racism in alternative sites of resistance. Organizers of these spaces may give lip service to an anti-racist agenda, but in practice their actions maintain the status quo. I have tried over and over again to be a part of these radical spaces, but unless they are specifically for people of color, I am generally the only brown face in the bunch."Priyank Jindal, from “Sites of Resistance or Sites of Racism?” in That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (via queerandpresentdanger)
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"There is little precedent for fat androgyny. Generally our androgynous icons are svelte and lacking in secondary sex characteristics. David Bowie, Tilda Swinton, Katherine Hepburn; these small-bodied, predominately white figures of androgyny have created an aesthetic with little room for deviation. This means that for those of us with bodies that do not conform to traditional standards of androgyny, we are often misread and misunderstood, even in queer spaces."Fat Queer Tells All: On Fatness and Gender Flatness - By Allie Shyer
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Paris Is Burn-teeng
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"What do we really learn about sex when one of the first things we may learn is that we are not allowed to openly discuss the questions we have? What about when we learn that penises are referred to as “wee-wees,” “pee-pees” and “ding-dongs,” and female genitalia are referred to as “down there” or as “vaginas” (thereby ignoring the vulva, clitoris, and mons)? When we ask about “where babies come from” and we are told that “when Mommies and Daddies are in love…,” what happens when we find ourselves sexually attracted to people for whom we have no such feelings? The ways in which we communicate about everything sexual can be carefully analyzed to reveal our cultural values."Rebecca F. Plante, Sexualities in Context: A Social Perspective (via quitequiteblue)
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What does casual racism look like in LGBTQ spaces? A lot like casual racism everywhere else.
Casual racism thinks mixed race people are “exotic,” penis size is determined by race according to “some studies” that probably don’t exist, black women are aggressive, and just about every other common racial stereotype under the sun.
Really, stereotypes fuel casual racism in all its forms.
Casual racism also thinks that LGBTQ people have transcended all responsibility for dealing with racial issues.
For example, if you’re a queer person of color who wants to vocalize a racial concern in a predominantly white queer space and casual racism rears its head, you could be accused of being divisive (extra irony points if you were pointing out divisiveness that actually exists).
Sometimes casual racism masquerades as inclusion or open mindedness. For example, there are some gay people who go out of their way to date someone of another race just to say they’ve done it.
Such gays then receive the Congratulatory Cookie of Open Mindedness from people of color for letting us sleep with them.
But not really, because dating someone because of their race is as ridiculous as rejecting someone because of their race.The same applies to predominately white gay groups that go out of their way to snag token people of color (oblivious to the fact that these spaces don’t always feel inclusive to the people of color in question).
Tokenism may seem progressive on its surface, but it’s really just another form of othering.
So if you see casual racism, remember it. And talk about it.
Notice if you’re ever guilty of it and, if you are, take responsibility for it.I would say explain it to other white LGBTQ people, but it’s frustrating when it takes a white person saying the same thing people of color have been saying for ages to convince other white people to change their actions.
Instead, tell them to take the race related concerns of LGBTQ people of color seriously – as in listen to us.
As LGBTQ people, we get silenced all the time, told we’re too sensitive, told not to flaunt our sexuality.
Sexual minorities of color can find themselves silenced further when their concerns about race are dismissed by the predominantly white, mainstream LGBTQ community.
Let’s keep working to change that.
"Jarune Uwujaren, “How White LGBTQ People Can Be Inclusive Of People Of Color,” Everyday Feminism 2/5/13 (via racialicious) -
» College Health Plans Respond as Transgender Students Gain Visibility
Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms. But the front lines have shifted fast, particularly at the nation’s elite colleges, and a growing number are now offering students health insurance plans with coverage for gender reassignment surgery.
No college or university offered such treatment just six years ago, but whenBrown University said last week that its student health plan would be extended to cover sex-change surgery beginning in August, advocates for transgender students said Brown would become the 36th college to do so. Twenty-five additional colleges do not cover surgery, but their student plans do cover related hormone therapy, and 20 universities have plans that cover some or all sex-change treatments for their employees, according to the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.
Those lists include many of the top American universities — Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, Penn, Emory, Northwestern, the University of California system, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Washington University and others. Colleges are not required to provide health coverage for their students, many of whom are still covered by their parents’ plans, but they generally do.
The idea still seems radical to plenty of people; last year, when Sandra Fluke, a law student, became famous for speaking in favor of an insurance mandate for contraceptive coverage, conservatives painted her as part of a fringe element because she also supported sex-change coverage.
But since 2008, the American Medical Association has advocated the same thing, for treatment of gender identity disorder. Other medical groups, like the American Psychiatric Association, have taken the same position. Several major insurers have taken the stance that the treatment, including surgery, can be considered medically necessary. The Internal Revenue Service considers the expenses tax-deductible.
The issue directly affects only a tiny number of students; no one knows how many. But universities recognize that their insurance plan sends a signal to the much larger number of students for whom the rights of transgender people have taken a place alongside gay rights as a cause that matters.
“Students notice whether the issues that they care about, that make them feel like it’s a more comfortable and welcoming place, are being discussed and addressed,” said Ira Friedman, a doctor who is associate vice provost for student affairs at Stanford and director of the student health center there. Stanford began covering sex-change surgery in 2010.
Princeton says on its Web site that it has been named a “top 10 trans friendly university” and that “recently, we launched an online guide” for transgender students. The university’s student policy covers hormone therapy but not surgery, but it is, along with Yale, one of several in that category that say they are considering adding surgical coverage.
“The university is actively exploring the possibility of offering benefits for gender reassignment surgery,” for both students and employees, said Martin A. Mbugua, a Princeton spokesman.
In this field, colleges and universities may be lagging behind the corporate world; the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights group, says that about one-quarter of Fortune 500 companies have health plans that cover sex changes, and a larger number cover hormone therapy.
“It is often more a knowledge and will gap than a mechanics and cost issue,” said Deena Fidas, deputy director of the Human Rights Campaign’s workplace project. “You have to start with Transgender 101, if you will, and demystify.”
Sex reassignment surgery encompasses a variety of procedures that alter the anatomy to create physical traits of the opposite gender, sometimes but not always including genital reassignment. Surgery is typically preceded by psychological counseling, and often by hormone treatments. The treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but college administrators say the additional cost of covering the services is negligible because so few people seek medical treatment for gender reassignment, and fewer still have surgery.
Campus activists say that the colleges that are covering sex-change treatments now are those that, 5 to 10 years ago, were among the first to take smaller steps like allowing a student who was born biologically male but identifies as female to have a female roommate and use a women’s restroom. For colleges that have not yet confronted such questions, “gender reassignment is a high bar,” said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, a national group that supports students who do not fall into the usual categories of sexual identity or orientation.
“Trans issues are new to many campus communities,” he said. “You ask a lot of administrators about it, even at places that are familiar with lesbian and gay and bisexual issues, and they look at you kind of blankly.”
In 2007, Campus Pride added sex reassignment coverage to its annual “inclusiveness index,” which rates several hundred colleges and universities.
The colleges providing sex-change coverage tend to have large contingents of socially liberal, privileged students, who take for granted that they can and should voice their views. Administrators at several campuses said it was students who brought the issue to their attention.
Calling it a lobbying campaign “would be an overstatement,” said Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services at Brown. “But students had been asking about it, so we’d been looking at it for a couple of years, whether our health plan was in line with our nondiscrimination policy.”
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Caught between the body beautiful ethos and abelism of the commercial scene and heterosexism of disability politics, lesbians with disabilities find themselves excluded from mainstream lesbian activities and organise separately. The venue may be physically inaccessible or the event may not have been structured so as to be attractive and welcoming to women with disabilities
”i don’t like to meet people because they say ‘oh you look perfectly fine / its incurable isin’t it?’. I don’t want to get back in touch with some peers because they say crap like ‘how can you not be better yet? why don’t you try this or that?’ and when I need to ask them for help, they get stroppy with me’. (Annie)
"‘What is she like? Lesbian Identities from the 50s to the 90s’- Rosa Hinley (via fyblackwomenobjectifywhitemen)
