Author Archives: J Marie

About J Marie

J. Marie graduated from Duke University with a degree in International Relations and dreams of being a creative writer--dreams she's now realizing as a musical theatre writer in NYC. She's passionate about global black identities, black representation in media, and leather-bound notebooks. She also loves backpacking through a new country at a moment's notice, and speaks Spanish, Swahili and Standard Arabic.

‘Black Sails’ Is the Queerest, Most Progressive Show On TV (Also, Pirates)

What is the queerest show on TV right now? Is it lesbian Latina sitcom One Day at a Time? Or Ellen? Or the Kristen Stewart episode of Saturday Night Live?

Nope, it’s Michael Bay’s queer feminist pirate drama Black Sails.

Yes, you read that right. And yes, that’s Transformers’ Michael Bay.

You have a right to be skeptical. Unlike Transparent or Orange is the New Black, Black Sails has not won any awards for its LGBT activism. But it should. The show explores – not exploits – lesbian, gay and polyamorous relationships exploits. The show doesn’t play the relationships for shock value but delves into them with utmost care. Let’s look at a few more in-depth.

(For the sake of spoilers, I won’t use names.)

The protagonists are lesbians.

Lesbian relationships abound. From the very first episode, two of the show’s main characters – one of whom is a sex worker, the other a defiant entrepreneur – are shown in a lesbian relationship.

As the show progresses, the relationship dissolves and evolves, but it’s never played as a cheap trick or queerbaiting. The women are fully human, and they are fully in love with each other (but they love themselves more).

Sex is used as empowerment.

One of the characters, a sex worker, doesn’t just use her body for manipulation. A devious, scheming woman who seduces men in order to control them is an old trope, but this character is different.

Even though other characters have used sex to control her, she uses it in order to heal others and reclaim control of her own body. She later becomes the madam of a brothel, where she treats women fairly.

Polyamory is a dynamic and valid relationship structure.

A man (we’ll call him Captain Mouth) discovers that his longtime lover (Captain Hat) is having an affair with the woman above. Instead of getting angry, he says, “Just come back to bed when you’re done.” At some point, he even has a threesome with his lover and her girlfriend.

Love doesn’t need labels.

Come to think of it, this show is big on threesome couples. The show’s most dangerous character is a hardened criminal who killed his boss to steal his wife; now he keeps that wife captive on a tiny island in the Bahamas.

Except, that’s not what happened.

The actual events are much more scandalous: The criminal and his boss fell in love, and although the criminal and the wife had a brief fling (condoned by the boss), the criminal and his boss are the show’s true love story. That doesn’t mean the boss neglected his wife – rather, all three of them shared a secret and satisfying relationship.

A word of caution:

Don’t get me wrong, this show is far from perfect. It depicts brutal violence, sexual assault, slavery and plenty of bad haircuts. Also, pirates.

But this show is a queer landmark for its ability to bend and transcend gender roles and monogamous heterosexuality. If you’re looking for an honest, thoughtful exploration of sexuality, then watch Pirates next.

What Is Platonic Polyamory, and Is It Right for You?

When you think polyamory, what do you picture? Do you think it’s three people in one relationship? Do you think it’s two people cheating on each other out in the open? Do you think it’s all about sex, sex, sex?

What about polyamory without sex?

You’re probably thinking, “What’s the point?” After all, sexual freedom is a large part of polyamory.

But sex worker Eva is in a platonic, polyamorous relationship with her best friend, and they never have sex. Recently, she sat down to discuss her experiences.

Eva was monogamous for her entire life until she began working as an escort. Because her job required her to sleep with men for money, she and her girlfriend became polyamorous in order to make things easier. After they broke up, Eva thought that she wanted to remain single. But then she fell in love with her best friend.

This isn’t the Hollywood, romance-and-sex type of love. She and her best friend grew closer and closer until they described their feelings as being in love…but they’re not interested in sleeping with each other.

So you might be asking: Isn’t that just, y’know, friendship?

Not quite. Eva and her best friend are getting married soon, have plans to purchase a house and intend to foster children. They vacation together and make all life-changing decisions together. Says Eva, “We basically function as a couple, just without the sex.”

However, they’re not celibate – far from it! Eva still sleeps with men for her job, and they each date and sleep with other people. But Eva considers her girlfriend her “primary” relationship and can’t see herself getting serious with anyone else.

It might sound complicated, but Eva insists that she and her girlfriend maintain constant, open communication. Whenever any issues arise, they talk about them immediately. They don’t have secrets from each other, but they do have privacy.

What’s the most difficult part? Surprisingly, Eva says that it’s not the relationship itself, it’s how people react to it. Many people can’t accept that love can exist without sex. Her friends and family don’t quite understand.

Regardless, Eva is happy in her queerplatonic relationship. It just feels right.

Does this sort of relationship sound intriguing to you? You might be suited for a queerplatonic partnership. Learn more about that at HelloFlo and Meloukhia.

A ‘Frozen’ Fan Made the Queer Sequel

Frozen’s Elsa might be gay. Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way to know until Frozen 2 releases in 2019.

In the meantime, what are queer, Disney-loving women supposed to do? We’ve been twiddling our thumbs for ages, wondering when Disney is going to have a gay Disney princess.

Moana is a step in the right direction – it’s a breath of fresh air from the Princess-Loves-Prince-Charming plot or the recently popular Princess-Doesn’t-Need-Prince-Charming plot (Tangled, Frozen, Brave). Moana is notable because it doesn’t address men or sexuality in the slightest.

Still, hurry up with that gay princess, Disney.

In the meantime, we’ll just have to bide our time and wait for the maybe, slightly, possibly queer Frozen 2 to release two years from now.

Olly Pike couldn’t wait. And you don’t have to, either.

YouTube animator Olly Pike has created a short fairytale film exploring the life of a lesbian ice queen. The film is called The Ice Queen and Her Wife. The princess looks exactly like Elsa, from the dress to the blonde braid.

In this reimagined Frozen, the ice queen lives with her wife, Summer, in a gorgeous castle. Instead of fearing her ice powers, she uses them to make gifts for her wife. Her wife, in turn, has the ability to make plants flower on command. They live a beautiful life of ice and earth, snow and sun.

Pike says:

It’s sad to think that the heartache found in our story is the reality for so many LGBT+ couples across the globe. These people are forced to keep their relationships/sexuality secret or risk imprisonment or even death in certain places. We hope our story highlights how unfair and tragic it is to dictate whom may love whom. Our stories are aimed at a younger audience in the hope that we can educate them about equality and diversity, in order to build a kinder, more accepting society for future generations.

Although the story is aimed at younger audiences, it may be the burst of sunshine that you need today.

When you’re done, smile at their other cartoon, Jamie – A Transgender Cinderella Story.

Actress Debra Wilson Explains The Key To Queer TV

“I’ve never really played a gay character,” says Debra Wilson, the queen of playing gay characters.

Let’s back up a little. Debra Wilson is a fierce, tattooed actress who is bringing heart to queer television.

You may have seen Debra on the sketch show MADtv, where she gained a cultlike queer following for her portrayals of Whitney Houston and Oprah Winfrey. As a MADtv actress for fourteen years, Debra became one of the show’s powerhouses – she was the Kristen Wiig of the show.

When she first began on the show in 1995, she may headlines for her then-groundbreaking views on homosexuality. She said,

I don’t give a fuck who you fuck; that’s your business.” These remarks and her hilarious impersonations have been credited with bringing a large queer following to the show, which was unfortunately canceled in 2009, but was revived by the CW in 2016.

What has Wilson been up to since the show’s ending? She’s done a lot of voiceover work for popular TV shows and video games, and but her main project is playing the lead in the web series My Sister Is So Gay.

Written by and starring Terry Ray and Wendy Michaels, up-tight, homophobic Amanda (Michaels) crash lands in the home of her gay brother Seth (Ray) after finding her husband has cheated with her best gal-pal. Her misplaced distress about the break-up –- and increasing curiosity about Seth’s lesbian coworker (Wilson) – signal more to Amanda than possibly even she realizes.” – Huffington Post

Wilson has often been praised for her non-stereotypical portrayals of queer women; this is her third time playing a lesbian on camera. In a time before multilayered queer actresses such as Tig Notaro and Kate McKinnon, Wilson was important in breaking down the “butch, man-hating” lesbian stereotypes that prevailed in the nineties and aughts.

She told Huffington Post that she has always looked to the character’s tribulations, not the character’s sexuality. “I’ve never really played a ‘gay character.’ I’ve always played the person in the midst of a situation – who happens to be gay.”

She also said, “If you stripped away who you slept with, you’d still be this human being who goes through the trials and tribulations, your joys, your sorrows, your celebrations and chooses how you experience and express your humanity.”

Catch My Sister Is So Gay here.

Kate McKinnon’s New Role? Driving The Magic Schoolbus

Would you take a ride on Kate McKinnon’s magic schoolbus?

Your favorite ’90s kids’ show is back, courtesy of Netflix’s seemingly endless crusade to resurrect all of our favorite shows and slaughter them.

However, this is one (of few) shows that is actually worth being excited about, if only for its lead star. Kate McKinnon, every lesbian’s imaginary wife (and my future real wife), is reprising the role of Ms. Frizzle. And suddenly twenty-something queer women around the world want to watch this children’s show.

The Magic Schoolbus book series and show taught children about science. In the show, a group of quirky and diverse schoolchildren followed their even quirkier teacher, Ms. Frizzle, on field trips around the world.

But not just any field trips – that wouldn’t be so “magic” now, would it? The eponymous magic schoolbus could turn into a plane, a spaceship, a surfboard or even a blood cell, to take children literally anywhere they needed to go. In one episode, the kids flew inside of a volcano. In another, they time-traveled back to the dinosaur age. If you’re not a Magic Schoolbus fan – or Frizzhead, as I think they should be called – then start with the definitive ranking of all 52 episodes.

So why Kate McKinnon? Of all the comedians in the world, why choose one of the most controversial? By casting SNL’s first openly gay cast member, Netflix runs the risk of upsetting the homophobic parents of children all around the world. (After being exposed to Kate McKinnon playing Ms. Frizzle, all of the female children will most certainly grow up to become gay.)

However, casting a queer woman in the role isn’t new. Ms. Frizzle was originally portrayed by Lily Tomlin, an openly gay comedian. Although Tomlin didn’t come out during her reign as Ms. Frizzle, rumors had been swirling about her sexuality since the 1970s.

Even before McKinnon was cast in the role, Magic Schoolbus fans had decided that she was a lesbian. For some reason, they decided to ship her with Mary Poppins. The Internet runs amok with Ms. Frizzle/Mary Poppins crossover fanfiction, for reasons unbeknownst to the natural world.

If you’re in the mood for a lot bit of nostalgia and a little bit of queer subtext, then tune into the show when it airs later this year. A date has not yet been announced.

Why the Lesbian Community Needs More Nature Hikes

When was the last time you went for a hike?

Maybe it was last week. Maybe it was last year. Maybe you’ve never been.

With the accessibility of digital entertainment and the constant pressures of everyday life, it can be difficult to connect with nature. Even if you like the great outdoors, you might look at the long list of equipment required for a rock climb or a camping trip and think, “What’s the point?”

A new Colorado-based program called Queer Nature is working to change that. This organization is focused on connecting queer women with the earth to show how important ecological health is to spiritual growth. They aim to make the great outdoors accessible to everyone.

The nonprofit Women’s Wilderness runs the workshops. Women’s Wilderness’ mission is “to broaden participation in nature and help women and girls strengthen their confidence and leadership skills through outdoor experiences.” The Queer Nature portion opened in Fall 2016.

So what sort of workshops does a Queer Nature program offer? Classes on impressing a cute girl with your rock climbing skills? Lessons on cooking a romantic meal over a fire?

No, this workshop is hardcore. In February, participants will learn how to track wildlife. In May, they’ll learn how to defend themselves from attackers and wrangle horses. Past participants have learned how to build fires from scratch, weave baskets out of pine needles and participate in equine therapy.

Accessibility is important to the Women’s Wilderness program. The classes are $10, and scholarships are available. By comparison, equine therapy classes elsewhere can cost hundreds of dollars and are rarely accessible to the queer and poor communities who may benefit most.

If you live in Colorado, check out the program here. If you live elsewhere but still want to connect with nature, check out OUTdoors, Gay Outdoors and Adventuring LGBT Outdoors Club.

This Dinner Party Will Teach You All About Queer History

The Haggadah, which is read during the Jewish holiday Passover, is a guide to performing a ritual called Seder. The Haggadah lays out the blessings you should say, the food you should eat, the way you should wash your hands and serve the food, and the history of the holiday.

Geeks OUT has created a secular Haggadah for queer people. Instead of focusing on Jewish beliefs, this book called Serving Pride discusses queer history and outlines a ritual that queer people can do in order to remember their predecessors.

According to the official Kickstarter page,

Serving Pride will guide a group of dinner guests through a ritual meal where history is retold through readings, songs, games, recipes, and artwork.”

With the guide, you’ll learn about the Daughters of Bilitis, who subverted gender norms to create one of the first known queer communities. You’ll recreate the drag ball culture of 1920s Harlem and get educated about queer trendsetters who pushed music, literature and fashion to the edges of possibility. You’ll chant along with the rioters of Stonewall and sing about queer revolutionaries.

Serving Pride contains dozens of original recipes that you and your queer friends can cook up together, and songs that you can sing as a community. The book is fully illustrated by emerging queer artists, so that you can be sure this is a queer project from cover to cover.

Queer history is for everyone regardless of socioeconomic status, so this book will be available for free as a printable PDF. A full-color version will also be available for purchase.

No single dinner party can completely encompass everything there is to know about queer history, even if you only focus on queer American history like this guide does. However, the book includes a handy bibliography so that interested guests can do further research on the subjects that interest them most.

The book will hopefully be available by June 2017 just in time for Pride. If you’d like to donate to the Kickstarter and reserve your copy now, head over to the official page.

They Key to Defeating Donald Trump? Lesbian Theatre

In the two months since Trump was elected President, America has become even more dangerous for the LGBT community.

In response, queer women have protested and marched. They’ve run for office. They’ve gotten magical powers.

And now they’re hosting radical theatre pop-up shows.

The experimental theatre project Sanctuary is a reality-disrupting venture that puts LGBT people and other minority artists at the center of art creation.

Sanctuary is a home for queer, feminist, POC, and other marginalized voices to respond through art and action to the incoming administration and the onslaught of attacks against progress, decency, and the safety of our community. We are creating Sanctuary to bring together artists and individuals in a coordinated series of programming to process, grieve, organize, learn, and ultimately unite for a brighter future.

This ongoing festival kicked off with an Inaugural Ball that lined up with the less awesome ball in Washington D.C. during inauguration weekend.

How does it work? Over the next two months, Sanctuary will showcase plays written by queer and minority artists. Selections include:

Pussy Sludge: A lesbian achieves value in society by menstruating crude oil.

Holding – A Queer Black Love Story: If society doesn’t want you because you’re black, female and gay, what does it mean for you to love yourself and find love in someone else?

Revolution: In a dystopian future that looks chillingingly like everyday life, cops, activists, clergymen and soldiers struggle with oppressive systems.

Next Nation: A series of narratives prove that young gay men need to stand up for the rights of all.

La Sirene: Freedom was born in Cuba.

That’s just the beginning of the festival. Other works include “A History of Nasty Women,” “Black Girl Magic Show,” and many more.

Sanctuary’s creators hope to spark dialogue among groups of people, Republican and Democrat, privileged and oppressed. However, their main goal is to create a space of community for queer people during Trump’s presidency.

Says the show’s creator,

If they’re feeling lost, if they’re feeling scared,” Salberg says, “they know that almost any night of the week there will be a community of people who are waiting there with open arms.”

Finally! Greeting Cards For Queer Women

You’re shopping for a Christmas card for your best friend, but Hallmark doesn’t carry anything specifically for a queer Latinx. You want to give your coworkers a card for their wedding, but can’t find any cards depicting two grooms. You want to surprise your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, but all the cards available are just, so…heteronormative.

Provoke Culture is here to fix that. Thank God.

Provoke Culture is an “online artique. “This art boutique features work by LGBT and other minority artists who “celebrate culture and identity through their work.” Each artist receives 75% of all profits, while the other 25% of profits is donated to organizations that help women and youth escape domestic violence and homelessness.

Yes, that means that when you purchase awesome queer art, you’ll be donating to charity at the same time.

Artists Jenny Cunngingham and Sam Kirk designed this new line because they recognized a void: Whenever they looked for cards depicting anyone queer or of color, they came up short. So they decided to make their own.

This new greeting card line showcases an intersectional mix of queer people and people of color from many different backgrounds.

One design features eight brown and black people dressed in clothing from all over the world. The title reads, “Happy Chrismahanukwanzaa’eid.”

The card selection updates quarterly, so restock your collection every three months. You can currently purchase anniversary cards, birthday cards and more.

If you want to get more hands-on with the designs, Sam Kirk has also designed As Queer As I Wanna Be, a coloring book for queer women of color. This coloring book features 24 illustrations.

Head over to the Provoke Culture website in order to purchase bowties, posters, briefs, t-shirts and even furniture.

Lesbian Film ‘Vamanos’ Asks About Life After Death

By telling the story of a masculine-presenting Latinx lesbian and her lover, Vamanos weaves an intricate tale about sex, gender, mortality and empowerment.

The film follows Hope, a queer Latina woman mourning after the death of her butch girlfriend, Mac. When Hope learns that Mac’s family wants to bury her in a dress, Hope decides to fight against it, knowing that Mac would rather die again than be buried in feminine clothing.

Mac’s conservative family insists on burying Mac in a dress. Hope realizes that the only way to get justice for her girlfriend is to band together with her friends.

The director, Marvin Bryan Lemus, emphasizes that this is a movie about the gay Latinx community created by gay Latinx artists. As such, it’s not a typical queer film. Says Lemus,

It’s not about experimenting with your best friend at boarding school, or crossing the border, or gang violence, or even coming out of the closet. We want to tell a different story.”

The story centers around the idea of visibility. In life, queer people can fight for their rights – but who will fight for them in death? As such, queer erasure is pervasive.

Says Lemus,

It’s about finding the strength and courage to always fight for your identity in the face of discrimination – and not just for yourself, but for the loved ones around you.”

Victoria Ortiz, who plays Mac, is also a masculine-of-center Latinx woman in real life. She says that the film forced her to think critically about how she wanted to be presented in death. Before the film, she’d never really considered it – and neither have many queer people.

With Vamanos, Lemus aims to paint a three-dimensional picture of Latinx queer people. Other projects that do the same include Netflix’s One Day at a Time and web series Brujos.

Watch Vamanos for free on PBS and check out the official website.

Shing Khor’s Resistance Art Will Inspire You To Mobilize

What do you think of when you think “political art”? Do you conjure thoughts of pro-Trump graffiti or anti-Trump caricatures? Do you think about the lettering on protest signs? Do you imagine thumbing through an airport political thriller?

What about a doodle of a person making a cup of tea and watching House of Cards?

Your first thought is probably, “That’s not political.” But for queer people, disabled people, transgender people and people of color, the personal is the political. Creating art about minorities living everyday life is radical precisely because it’s so rare – minority voices are severely underrepresented across all creative fields in the United States. To make art about a minority, even if that person is just clipping their toenails, is radical because it says: Our existence matters.

Artist Shing Tin Khor gained popularity for her autobiographical, slice-of-life comics that discuss everything from masturbation to fear to heartbreak to travel. She told the Huffington Post:

Even if I am just making work about my time spent in national parks, I am pointing out that brown women also hike in national parks, which is a particular narrative that is usually centered on the experiences of white people.”

After the 2016 election, the political dimension of her work has risen to a whole new level. You’ve probably seen her drawing, Resistance Auntie, which recreates the iconic election photo of an elderly Asian woman thrusting her middle fingers in the air. Shing’s drawing went viral, and it inspired a new project: a drawing a day.

So far, she has captured heartbreaking images of children killed by Donald Trump’s Administration; the first drawing was of an eight-year-old Yemeni girl killed in the recent failed raid.

She’s also raised over $2000 for the ACLU with an all-night drawing marathon where she drew over 40 images of the Statue of Liberty.

For a while, Shing struggled – and still struggles – with the question of whether art can have a meaningful activist impact. She considered leaving art in order to become a civil rights lawyer. She briefly considered going to a protest, but her severe anxiety made that difficult. Instead, she draws. And her drawings change lives.

She says:

We need artists. We will always need artists. In trying to prevent our worlds from imploding, we can’t forget to also continue make progress towards the world that we want to live in. For me, that is a universe full of equality and justice, but also beautiful art and good stories that explain the diverse and exciting human narratives that we all embody.”

Let Shing inspire you daily at her official website.

What Is Intersectional Feminism, And Why Is It Crucial?

Feminism has problems.

A lot of problems.

One of the biggest problems is that the broader American feminist movement is largely focused on the problems of privileged cisgender white women.

The problems of queer women, women of color, disabled women, transgender women, women of low socio-economic status, etc. are often brushed under the rug in order to make room for the narratives of “normal” women. Normal, of course, means middle-class and white.

When middle-class white women become the norm, then feminism forces all other women to attempt to assimilate or be left behind.

Of course, if you’re not middle-class and white, then there’s no real way to assimilate, so the best you can do is hope to feed off the breadcrumbs of mainstream feminism.

The solution is intersectional feminism. If you’ve gone to the Women’s March or if you’ve read a single thinkpiece written since the 2016 election, then you’ve probably heard the term thrown around. Since Donald Trump’s misogynistic statements have effectively declared war on women, intersectional feminism is more important than ever.

…But what exactly is it?

If you’re not sure, that’s okay. Consider this guide your 101.

According to USA Today, intersectional feminism is “the understanding of how women’s overlapping identities — including race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation — impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination.”

For example, intersectional feminism recognizes that while a white woman may think primarily of her gender, a woman of color has to think about her gender and her race, and a queer woman of color has to think about her gender, her race and her sexuality. These identities complicate her relationship to womanhood.

An Asian immigrant woman’s experiences in America, for instance, are largely different from a white woman’s. Intersectional feminism does not restrict feminism to exclude her, but expands understandings of gender and culture in order to centralize narratives like hers.

Let’s get a bit more specific.

Traditional feminism focuses on breaking the glass ceiling and closing the 23 cent wage gap that exists between white men and white women.

Intersectional feminism recognizes that the wage gap for black women is 36 cents, and for Latina woman is 46 cents. It also recognizes the importance of raising minimum wage, since 2/3 of minimum wage-earners are women and women of color disproportionately do these jobs.

How about abortion? Juliet Williams, professor of Gender Studies at UCLA, says:

Some intersectional feminists have been critical of framing reproductive justice claims in terms of a feminist demand for ‘choice,’ since choice discourse presumes that all women have the economic means to afford an abortion if they so choose. Moreover, privileging attention to abortion rights over other reproductive justice issues — such as forced sterilization — can be seen to elevate a middle-class white women’ agenda over other issues that are equally if not more important to poor women and women of color.”

Ruth Enid Zambrana, director of the Consortium of Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland puts it well when she says, “There isn’t just one ‘feminism.’ There are ‘feminisms.'”

To learn more about intersectional feminism and how to practice it, visit Everyday Feminism.

Why Don’t Queer People Of Color Feel Safe In Most Queer Spaces?

In an ideal world, queer spaces would be all-inclusive.

In an ideal world, queer spaces would welcome people of all colors, nationalities, physical abilities, socioeconomic statuses and gender identities.

Unfortunately, that’s rarely true. Many queer spaces center to cisgender, white gay men, especially as lesbian bars close at an alarming rate.

Cicely Belle-Blain, a queer black artist from Vancouver, recently wrote about her experiences as a queer person of color in a liberal city. She raised an excellent point: Many queer spaces appropriate other cultures but don’t actually engage with the social and political struggles of that culture.

As the saying goes, everybody wants to “be” black, but nobody wants to be black.

At gay bars, blackness is exotic and cool. Non-black queer people want the aesthetic – the music, the dancing, the slang, the street cred – but they don’t want to critically engage with Black Lives Matter, for example. When the music stops, non-black people stop thinking about color.

Belle-Blain says:

For white people, these parties are not only fun, but also a chance to momentarily experience the coolness of being black without any of the systemic oppression that we face every other day of the year. For people of colour and especially black queer folks, these experiences are violent, harmful and erasing.”

This extends to drag shows as well. Very rarely do drag queens and their audience acknowledge the fact that drag culture started with low-income black and Latinx people.

Even when they’re not consciously appropriating cultures, many gay bars destroy communities of color by participating in gentrification. In Vancouver, white organizers open bars in Chinatown because the housing is so cheap – over time, of course, their presence will push out the current residents.

In New York City, gay bars populate the very-gentrified area of Williamsburg. Now that Williamsburg has been gentrified and housing is expensive, these bars and parties are moving outward to swallow other neighborhoods. For example, Bushwick, once a heavily Latinx area, is now awash with mostly-white gay bars and queer spaces.

So what’s the solution? Don’t get me wrong: Having more gay-friendly spaces, like bars and parties, is important. But all queer should respect the communities and cultures they come in contact with; we should all acknowledge that, as Cicely Belle-Blain says, “queerness doesn’t negate racism or anti-blackness.”

Read an in-depth analysis of racism and the queer community here.

How Queer Muslims From the South Are Taking A Stand

It is not always easy being a gay Muslim.

It’s difficult anywhere in the United States, where Islamophobic attacks have skyrocketed since the 2016 election. After the San Bernadino shooting in California, the rate of hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. shot up from 12.6 per month to 38, and continues to rise.

Worse, it’s especially challenging in the American South, which is (stereotypically) known for its conservatism and xenophobia.

Mona Chalabi started Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Photo Project in order to shed light on the LGBT Muslim experience – proving that not all Muslims are extremists and showing young gay Muslims that they are not alone.

“What is it like to be gay and Muslim in the American South?” Chalabi asked several people. They all gave vastly different accounts.

A woman named Saba is terrified about what the Trump administration will do – with a flick of the pen Trump banned Muslims from seven different countries, and she fears that this is just the beginning.

Saba says,

Our safety, our survival, is routinely threatened in the name of some hypothetical greater safety that does not include us. What they are trying to keep safe is white supremacy.”

And there’s so much more to worry about. On top of immigration laws and Islamophobia, Saba says she has to worry about healthcare repeal, Muslim registries, voter suppression, reproductive rights, deportation and, of course, same-sex marriage.

It was the fear of same-sex marriage repeal that drove a woman named Laila to hurry up and marry her girlfriend before the inauguration. The threat of losing health care and the right to marry made the decision a practical, not a romantic, one, although she is glad they tied the knot.

Laila is an activist who is growing discouraged. After the election, she said that “it seemed like all of the work done to progress this country had come to a standstill.”

Being an organizer is draining work. She spends hours, sometimes days at a time, “going door-to-door, couch-to-couch, talking to working-class people of color about the economic struggles in our community,” which is “amazing” but “exhausting.” She finds it hard not to succumb to the numbness.

But she grins when she says, “We’re fierce as fuck.”

A woman named Sufia is more hopeful. She says, “I absolutely feel that this most recent version of fascism rearing its head is just the dying gasps of white supremacy.”

For her, being a Muslim is more political than it is religious. She finds her spirituality in the earth, and credits Islam for helping her do the internal work necessary to deal with the evils of the world. She hopes to “develop the spiritual strength to be emotionally and spiritually ready to show up against oppression, fascism, racism and to move this outward into my work in solidarity with the health of our planet, and the creatures on it.”

For more of the Queer Muslim Photo Project’s incredible work, check out the rest of the photos.

New Queer Arts Festival Breaks All the Rules

Queer people make the best art.

That’s just a fact. Queer people are creative, bold, original and provocative.

A new festival called OUTsider is highlighting the fierceness of queer artists. Over the course of one jaw-dropping week in Austin, Texas, this festival will host countless LGBT films, plays, performance pieces, dance shows, music, poems and art exhibits.

Why? The festival organizers are tired of LGBT artists being overlooked despite creating amazing work. So this new festival focuses on “provocative, overlooked and out-of-the-box” art that defies the boundaries of commercialism.

This exciting new festival hopes to “unite queer artists, audiences and scholars from around the globe to exchange ideas, ignite conversations, transcend boundaries and experience new pleasures through artistic discovery.” It’s a festival unlike any other in the world.

It started in December of 2013, when a close-knit ragtag squad of queer artists was hanging out one day; the conversation drifted into discussions about the festival scene in Austin, Texas. “Queer culture in Austin was at a creative zenith,” says one of the festival’s founders. However, this scene lacked one thing: a queer space that encouraged, even pushed, queer artists to challenge the boundaries of art.

Three years and a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign later, OUTsider is here.

OUTsider breaks the traditional one-medium festival model through a transmedia experience that bridges disciplines and activates the power and brilliance of collective LGBTQ+ creation and community.

OUTsider rejects the common separation of artistic practice and appreciation through an intertwined festival and conference that encourages generative interactions between artists, scholars and the general public.”

So what shows do you have to look forward to during the festival?

This year’s line-up includes:

  • A unicorn fashion show
  • A panel on art activism
  • Wild witchcraft
  • Solo mime performances
  • Many plays, including “Hansel and Gretel Queered”
  • A book and art bizarre
  • And more queerness than you could imagine.

The conference begins on February 15, so pick up your tickets today!

5 Lesbians You’ll Meet On Tinder

When you open Tinder, you never know what you’re going to get. You might find your soul mate, you might find a serial killer. The hot girl with the colored braids might turn out to be a catfish with a dark past. Every swipe is a risk – no, an adventure.

And who are you likely to meet on this adventure?

TYPE: The Taste-Tester

The Taste-Tester is a lesbian. Probably. She’s not sure yet. Maybe she’s bisexual? She’s only dated guys, but she thinks girls are cute, so would you like to try it out?

How to spot one: She sounds nervous, and makes a point of stating that this is her first time. “I’ve never done this before” is code for “I might suddenly leave, decide I’m straight and break your heart.” Proceed with caution.

Great for: anyone who doesn’t mind showing a baby gay the ropes.

Bad for: anyone who drives a U-Haul to first dates.

TYPE: The Unicorn Hunters

The only thing better than sex with a stranger is sex with two strangers.

The Unicorn Hunters are a fun-loving heterosexual couple looking for a “unicorn” – a bisexual woman who will have a threesome and then leave without expecting any emotional attachments. Basically, a free human sex toy.

How to spot them: The first profile picture is of a beautiful girl – which is why you swiped right – but subsequent photos feature a mildly attractive guy with his arm around this girl. They’ll probably start their Tinder conversation with “threesome? ;)”

Great for: anyone looking to experiment with no strings attached.

Bad for: anyone with personal space issues.

TYPE: Waldo

The Waldo is that girl. Wait, no, that girl. No, that one. Her profile picture is her surrounded by a bunch of hot girls, so it’s impossible to tell which one she is – you swipe right in the hopes of winning the lottery, only to find out that she wasn’t the one you hoped she was.

How to spot one: Her pictures are large groups. If there is a solo pic, she’s probably silhouetted against a sunset under the pretense of looking “artistic.”

Great for: anyone who believes beauty is more than skin-deep.

Bad for: anyone hoping to find a hot girlfriend to show off in front of their ex.

TYPE: The Salesman

The Salesman thinks that you should follow her on Instagram, check out her website, purchase a few products and tell all your friends. After all, the most effective form of advertisement is a free dating app, right?

How to spot one: One of her profile pictures is of a product. Her bio lists her full contact details, including her LinkedIn and her speaking fee.

Great for: anyone looking to purchase haircare products from a stranger.

Bad for: anyone who doesn’t want to hand over their money to a stranger.

TYPE: The Man

The Man knows you’re a lesbian, but you’re just a lesbian because you haven’t slept with him yet. Besides, everyone knows that lesbian really means “bisexual” and bisexual really means “I’ll sleep with everything.”

How to spot one: Sometimes these accounts are just men who put “Female” in their facebook profile so that they can access the Women for Women Tinder section. Sometimes these men are catfishing you behind pictures of cute girls they culled from Google Images. If the conversation starts with “so are you into men?” or an eggplant emoji, think carefully about your next move.

Great for: straight women.

Bad for: lesbians.

The Hottest New Lesbian Writer Is from Greenland

Greenland isn’t known for its risqué lesbian fiction. The tiny island doesn’t have many writers, and the few they do have aren’t writing Fifty Shades of Grey. Greenland’s fiction tends toward the conservative.

And by conservative, I mean “we have magnificent nature and we all live in huts and all we do is go hunting,” as one Greenlander put it.

That’s what makes Niviaq Korneliussen so groundbreaking – and so infuriating – to many people.

Instead of seal-hunting, Korneliussen writes about lesbians. Instead of huts, she writes about queer sex.

Her debut novel, Homo Sapienne, is an unorthodox stream-of-consciousness that flows between five queer Greenlandic protagonists navigating their sexuality via alcohol and one-night stands.

The cover, featuring an almost-naked woman eating a banana, is borderline erotic. The language flows from Greenlandic to Danish to English, with text messages and social media posts woven in like patches on torn jeans. The result is a tattered but comforting story about sex and sexuality.

Korneliussen is Greenland’s most widely-read living novelist. In a small community of fifty thousand people, this means that she’s sold about two thousand copies. Still, that’s an enormous achievement for a community that imports far more books than it exports.

Korneliussen, a former punk who now wears square-framed glasses and has a German shepherd, always knew that she wanted to be a writer. But unlike in the US and Europe, MFA programs don’t exist in Greenland, and the market for books written in Greenlandic is minuscule. However, after winning a contest for a short story called San Francisco, Korneliussen achieved international acclaim and was approached to write a book. It was a dream come true.

An art foundation gave her a three-month grant to write her novel. She procrastinated for two months, wrote the book in one, and became a bestselling author overnight.

Korneliussen’s next book tackles the concept of “home.” She’s spent more than one month working on it, but it’s still a work in progress. How do you break ground after a groundbreaking book?

Learn more about Korneliussen in the New Yorker. Homo Sapienne is still being translated into English, so keep up with its progress here.

Australia’s Queer Indigenous Community Is Speaking Out

The indigenous queer community is loud, powerful and strong.

Rather, communities. Just as there is more than one way to be queer, there are many ways to be indigenous.

For example, in North America, queer indigenous people are rapping and making art. But their experiences are different from queer people in South America and queer people in the Pacific.

Twenty-two queer indigenous people from Australia have released a new book called Colouring the Rainbow – Blak Queer and Trans Perspectives: Life Stories and Essays by First Nations People of Australia. But this book isn’t just for queer indigenous people or even for Australians – everyone can learn about queer identities, queer histories and the legacy of colonialism from their stories.

The editor, Dino Hodge, created the book in order to combat the painfully homogenous, painfully white queer narratives being told in Australia.

It’s hard to deny that in the United States and abroad, certain queer voices have more value than others. Gay, cisgender white males are the face of the LGBT movement. That’s why Will and Grace featured an upper-class white male and not, say, a queer disabled indigenous woman or a two-spirit person of low socioeconomic status. Those members of the LGBT community are pushed to the back.

In Australia, the story is similar. Indigenous people are struggling to gain acceptance in the country despite the fact that they’ve lived there for centuries, and they have had their queer histories erased. They are not allowed to be the face of the gay rights movement despite the fact that their cultures practiced homosexuality centuries before the Western world decided it was acceptable.

For centuries, many First Nation Australian communities saw homosexuality as natural. When western colonists arrived to Christianize the continent, they wiped out all traces of these practices and told the First Nations people that homosexuality was a sin. Ironically, today the descendants of these colonists call the First Nations people backward for having conservative views on homosexuality.

This book works to decolonize readers’ minds and reveal the richness of Australia’s queer indigenous community. Finally, they have a voice. The book’s writers discuss homophobia and transphobia that they have faced, racism that they have struggled against and decolonization that they have to practice daily.

Pick up your copy here.

Would You Date a Woman Twice Your Age?

Love knows no age limit.

Maybe you and your girlfriend are young and in love. Maybe you and your polyamorous partners are all pushing sixty. Maybe you’re one of the growing number of lesbians entering into “cougar” relationships.

If you’ve ever watched Cougar Town or heard someone marvel at an older woman dating a younger man, then you know that a cougar is a woman who partners with someone ten years her junior.

This isn’t a typical sugar daddy/sugar mama situation – the younger partner doesn’t expect gifts, and the older partner is genuinely looking for love. In other words, these relationships are exactly like any other relationship, except that one partner is a more mature.

The new website Lesbian Cougar Dating caters to lesbians looking for a May-December romance. This site is for older women who “enjoy being in the company of lesbian cubs who are willing to experiment and let go,” and for younger women who are “attracted to lesbian cougar women who are poised, experienced, independent and assertive.”

There is a glamor to dating an older woman. She ostensibly has her life together. She knows what she wants. She’s sexually experienced. And she’s way past drama. While young adult relationships are often rocked by the uncertainties of entry-level employment, school, economic instability and identity crises, relationships with older women feel more stable.The downside? People may question your relationship and assume the cougar is your sugar mama.

The downside? People may question your relationship and assume the cougar is your sugar mama.

So how do you get started? It’s free to set up a profile, although you do have to apply – the site describes itself as an “exclusive community” on the forefront of “this new lesbian dating phenomenon, where fantasy can become reality.”

There is an emphasis on fantasy. This website envisions a world in which “the taboo of age-gap romance does not exist.” A world where people are free to love without judgment.

The site is relatively new so the community is not overwhelming. Instead of being inundated with potential matches like Tinder, you’ll choose from a carefully curated selection of women both mature and young.

Your next dating adventure starts here.

HYM and Kalypxo Make Queer, Feminist Rap

We take female and gay rapper to the next level.”

That’s the description of the hot new music video Who Dat? from queer rap duo HYM and Kalypxo, who are self-described “young ambitious humyns intent on changing the music industry.”

HYM is unabashedly queer and gender non-conforming, while Kalypxo is a fierce feminist full of self-assurance. Together they make queer, alt-punk rap that challenges gender norms, heterosexuality and everything you thought you knew about hip-hop.

Kalypxo takes her name from Calypso of Homer’s The Odyssey. In The Odyssey, Calypso is a nymph who dwells on the island of Ogygia and falls in love with hero Odysseus. Calypso held Odysseus captive for years until Zeus eventually intervened. According to Posture Mag, this story represents the inextricability of pain and pleasure.

These two themes are vital to Kalypxo’s work, which addresses love, power and the struggles of being a black woman today.

HYM’s name comes from the genderqueer Powerpuff Girls villain who wore stilettos and make-up. While Powerpuff Girls has been called a sucker punch to transgender women, HYM has found empowerment through the androgynous character. HYM replaced the “I” in “him” with a “Y” in order to give the name “a more feminine feel.”‘

Kalypxo and HYM teamed up in order to challenge the largely masculine, largely heterosexual, largely cisgender hip-hop industry. HYM says,

It’s time for the industry to have more openly gay people and more women in the spotlight. I feel like it’s time to understand that ‘gay rappers’ and ‘female rappers’ are just rappers.”

Together, they aim to bring complex lyricism back to music and revive the feel of the old school ’80s and ’90s music. They spend hours poring over each lyric and every detail of their music videos. Says HYM,

We dissect everything. We want to evolve and create.”

For queer-positive, gender-bending hip hop, check out the official Who Dat video.

‘True Love’ Web Series Shows What It’s Like to Be Queer in Homophobic South

It’s hard being gay in the American South. Unless you live in Charlotte or Atlanta, walking down the street holding hands with a same-sex partner could get you shot. Then again, people in big cities are not always safe, as illustrated by the devastating Pulse nightclub attack on the liberal southern city of Orlando, Florida in 2016.

Being gay in the South is hard enough. Being gay in working-class pockets of the rural south is a death wish. The vast majority of the working-class South voted for Trump, and the entire blue-collar region isn’t known for its liberalism as much as it’s known for its KKK rallies.

Dazed Digital‘s True Love web series follows stories of unlikely, sometimes unlucky, queer lovers around the country. The series debuts with the story of Sarah and Bri, a “young lesbian couple from Nashville, Tennessee, who are at odds not just with lingering family disapproval, but wider society.”

The series follows Sarah and Bri’s first meeting, discusses their burgeoning sexuality and documents the mixed reactions from their conservative community. Sarah’s family was relatively accepting; she came out to her father via letter at fifteen. Bri’s family was much more upset.

In order to be together, Sarah and Bri contacted each other via secret phones, watched each other through binoculars when physically separated, snuck around behind Bri’s parents’ backs, and stood up to their homophobic community.

When Bri’s family caught Sarah and Bri in the middle of a romantic encounter, they called the police and demanded that Sarah be arrested for statutory rape. Her parents claimed that the age difference between the two girls meant that Sarah raped her. Luckily, Sarah got off safely – barely.

She says,

We beat the law by ten days. If would have went to jail if I had been any older the day her mother called the police on me.”

The show’s producer, Elise Tyler, says that the show goes beyond pointing the finger at poor communities and calling them homophobic. The show aims to show that poor American communities are a victim of larger American society.

She says,

There is a war on poor people in this country, and it is frightening. It is not something we addressed directly, but I think the air of each episode alludes to the struggles so many Americans currently face.”

Watch the first episode here.

Finally, You Can Purchase The Gay Agenda

Ask any Trump supporter: The Gay Agenda is ruining America. And heterosexual marriage. And religion. And the economy. The gays just want to take their big gay Gay Agenda and destroy the entire world.

Now you can purchase your very own Gay Agenda!

This planner is more than just clever wordplay. It’s the perfect place to track all of your Take Over the World meetings with your evil gay friends.

This planner has been in the works for quite some time but is finally ready for release. The cover is gorgeous and sleek, and the interior is breathtaking – instead of plain dated pages, the planner contains a “beautiful presentation of people, events and ideas that we find appropriate for the first-ever, official Gay Agenda.”

The agenda contains vocabulary words that you should know, such as intersectionality, as well as important queer ideas for you to consider and LGBT historical figures for you to learn about. Current events, such as the state of marriage equality and gay rights in the western world, “will be mapped out in ways that motivate a critical mass towards a society with equal rights for all.

Nothing less. And perhaps a whole lot more.”

When you crack open this book, you’ll find 26 original and highly detailed ink drawings of LGBT figures and allies, as well as a short biography about why they’re important and what you can learn from them. These are the People Pages.

The people pages feature everyone from classical figures such as James Baldwin and Oscar Wilde, to contemporary icons such as Ellen DeGeneres and Janet Mock. You probably haven’t heard of some of these people despite the important work that they have done for the queer community – the Gay Agenda is the perfect, effortless way to learn.

The Agenda also includes the ABCs of the Gay Agenda, which will “highlight events, vocabulary, ideas and concepts we want to explore, celebrate, problematize or debate.”

This exciting new project will fly off the shelves once it’s officially released.

Pick up your own copy at the Kickstarter page.

Sign Up For This New Resource For Lesbian, Bisexual And Trans Artists

If you’re a creative type, then connect with other queer and transgender female artists on the Women Who Draw database.

Women Who Draw is a new platform for women, transgender and gender non-conforming illustrators and cartoonists to network with each other, find jobs with companies and expand their talents worldwide.

When it first launched in December of 2016, the database received so many applications within the first twenty-four hours that it crashed. It now has 700 active members and 300 more on a fast-moving waiting list.

So how does it work? The site connects artists to clients and clients to artists. Female artists add their name and portfolio to the website and can identify themselves by region, religion, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation. This will help clients looking for a specific type of illustrator to find what they need, and this will help artists connect to specialized projects.

Founder Julia Rothman launched the database after realizing that out of 55 illustrated covers of one of her favorite magazines, only four had been drawn by women. This hiring bias is pervasive throughout the illustration industry.

Many corporations complain that they don’t hire women simply because they don’t know any female artists. Thanks to Women Who Draw, now they do.

According to the Huffington Post, Women Who Draw intends to “bring images of women of color and queer women ― made by women of color and queer women ― into mainstream publications that don’t often showcase them.”

Rothman wants to make it as easy as possible for corporations to access diverse, talented populations.

In the future, Rothman wants to broaden the Women Who Draw database to include other creative fields – perhaps filmmaking, music or creative writing. But for now, she’s passionate about helping illustrators and is excited about how much impact the database is already having.

Women Who Draw follows in the footsteps of other diversity databases. Check out LGBTQ Cartoonists of Color and the Queer Cartoonists Database.

Sign up for Women Who Draw here.

‘Brown Girls’ – Hilarious Web Series With Beautiful Lesbians

Broad City made headlines for putting Jewish girls at the forefront.

Girls made headlines for being painfully homogenous.

Now Brown Girls, which is the best of both shows, is making headlines for centering around queer women of color.

This isn’t just another show about 20-somethings in New York City (for one, Brown Girls is set in Chicago). Leila is a young South Asian woman who’s finally allowing herself to explore queerness. Her best friend is a black musician struggling to hold down a relationship.

The show was born out of Fatimah Asghar’s desire to see more people like her on television – not just brown girls, but queer brown girls. A 2016 study proved that only 1/3 of speaking roles go to non-white actors of any minority. Only 1/4 of speaking roles go to women, so the chances of seeing a woman of color in a role are only 8.3%. On top of that, queer characters only appear in TV 2% of the time, so your chances of seeing a queer woman of color are 602 to 1.

Not anymore, thanks to Fatima Asghar and her co-creator Sam Q. Bailey.

Asghar doesn’t make art in order to fill a quota but to create the roles that she would want to play.

I really believe in working towards solidarity between different woman of color. Whenever I am around women of color I feel at home, there’s a certain kind of ease that happens. I want to see woman of color in more complicated roles, exploring our friendships with each other across races, the way that we show up and take care of each other. I want to see a world that looks like mine, and the people who let me know it was okay to be my fullest self.”

The audience for this show definitely exists, so the two creators probably could have taken this idea to high-paying producers. So why the web series format? Why give this art away for free?

Asghar recognizes that although shows like Insecure are bringing women of color to the screen, TV channels remain out of reach for anyone who doesn’t have Cable, own a TV or hold Netflix, Hulu and HBO subscriptions.

She wanted to create a show that could be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. Her art is for everyone.”

The show comes out in early February. Keep up with it at the official website.

‘A Normal Lost Phone’ Does More Harm Than Good For Trans Women

A Normal Lost Phone tries to be a groundbreaking adventure game about transgender identity. Does it succeed, or is it just a voyeuristic invasion of privacy catering to cisgender people?

On the surface, A Normal Lost Phone seems like an incredible, experimental game layered with puzzles and intrigue. As a player, you find a forgotten phone. It’s your responsibility to unlock the phone in order to find its rightful owner and return it.

Record scratch.

Not quite.

Instead of returning the phone, you decide to meddle with it.

This is fine at the beginning of the game, when you’re cracking puzzles in order to unlock innocent information like Wi-Fi passwords and hidden apps. But as the game progresses, the story takes a dark turn. Soon you figure out who the phone belongs to and why they shouldn’t have left it in your greedy little hands.

The problems start when you find a dating app that has two profiles, one male and one female, for a person called Sam. You soon figure out that Sam is a closeted transgender woman who’s not sure whether she should come out to her family and friends.

Her female dating profile is one of the few places where she can be herself. In fact, she has connected with an attractive young man on her dating app. The man wants Sam to send a picture. Seeing that Sam hasn’t sent him a picture yet, you decide to go ahead and send one for her.

Um, excuse me?

The secret to that puzzle is tracking down enough personal information to log into a transgender web forum, find a photo of her on the forum, and send the photo to the stranger. Without Sam’s consent. Why does the game have you do this? Purely because you can.

The game won’t let you continue until you send a photo. However, you don’t have to send a photo of Sam as a woman. You can send a photo of Sam presenting as male, which will reveal to the man on the dating app that Sam is transgender – even if the man already knows, should you be the one snooping through a stranger’s phone and revealing all of this information?

Where is Sam through all of this? While you are running her life and outing her to her entire contact list, Sam is conspicuously absent, unable to have a hand in her own destiny. The player, who statistically is likely to be cisgender, has all control over this transgender woman’s life. A Normal Lost Phone claims to “build empathy with characters, allowing them to explore difficult topics,” but renders its main character “absent, unable to consent or comment on your personal invasion. She is an object to be analyzed. She is also a damsel to save and protect.”

Does playing this game make cisgender people more empathetic toward the struggles of transgender people? Maybe. But there’s a fine line between empathy and pity, and teaching cisgender players that they are improving trans lives by invading their privacy and outing them is a step backwards.

You can decide for yourself. Is this game an invasion of privacy or an important political tool?

Be Steadwell Is Your New Musical Crush

Once you’ve heard a Be Steadwell song, all other music will sound empty.

This young queer artist specializes in a blend she calls jazz-acapella-folk pop&soul. What does that mean? Her songs are dense with atmospheric acapella layerings that transport you between worlds. Listening to her music is a full body experience.

Be Steadwell makes music about everything from heartbreak to fear, from Netflix to strip clubs. She gained traction in 2013 with the release of her Queer Pop Mixtape, which introduced her sound to the world. In order to create her unique sonic experience, she layers vocals and beatboxing with a loop-pedal and then sings on top of it. It sounds like she’s backed by an entire band even when she’s the only one on stage. The effect is both haunting and captivating.

Her most recent album, Jaded, touches on the drawbacks of technology. “We get in bed with the device/We fall asleep by the screen light/Netflix is fucking up my sex life,” she sings. Still, she owes much of her success to technology, from the vocal layering that allows her to create a unique sound to YouTube, where she’s found most of her followers.

When she’s not making music, she’s making award-winning films. Her most recent film, Vow of Silence, follows a queer musician:

VOW OF SILENCE – A heartbroken composer takes a vow of silence to win back the heart of her true love.  In her struggle to reconnect with her ex, she meets an outgoing musician.  Utilizing music, magic and silence, Jade finds her voice in the place she least expects it.”

Her next project is a script that explores a small southern town where African slaves drowned and then formed a new community underwater. There’s no word on when this supernatural project will be released, but if it’s anything like her other works, it’s going to leave a chill down your spine. You’ll still be thinking about it years after you watch it.

Check out Jaded: Dark Love Songs here, or learn about her amazing projects here.

Should Netflix Revive “Will and Grace”?

Netflix recently revived 70s sitcom One Day at Time as a queer Latina coming-out story. It revived 90s hits Gilmore Girls and Full House. It’s bringing back Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. And now it’s reviving Will and Grace, the first sitcom to depict gay people as real people.

But should they?

Will and Grace is iconic. Joe Biden cited the show as his reason for beginning to support gay marriage. Will and Grace, the story of a gay man and his female roommate, did the impossible by humanizing gay people. According to The Decider, the result was “as campy, bitchy, and all-around queer as anything that’s ever graced NBC’s airwaves.”

Despite taking place during Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act and Bush’s upholding of that act, the show was never overtly political. However, its very existence was an act of queer resistance.

One Day at a Time was a groundbreaking sitcom because it depicted a divorced, single mother, a concept that is no longer shocking to today’s audiences. However, its revival was successful because it tackled other controversial subjects such as immigration, gentrification and LGBT issues.

On the other hand, Will and Grace is returning with the exact same cast, just twenty years older and far less relevant.

Audiences are bored by gay white men.

Being a gay white man is no longer revolutionary. If it were, then The New Normal and Looking wouldn’t have been axed so quickly.

Queer people today are more interested in intersectionality. LaVerne Cox brought the intersection of race and transgender issues to the forefront of American consciousness.

YouTube has allowed queer people to tell their own stories of intersectionality – webseries allow people to experience being queer and poor, queer and brown, queer and transgender, and almost anything else.

Now that same-sex marriage has been legalized, queer people are focused on workplace discrimination, fair treatment in the military, etc. A cute story about two gay people falling in love is boring, not radical.

In Will and Grace, Will is a privileged white man living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In the ten years since Will and Grace went off the air, you’ve seen his story retold dozens and dozens of times. He comes across as less human and more campy, stiff and out of touch.

Don’t believe me? Check out this cringe-worthy mini-episode of the revived Will and Grace that the cast shot for the election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzae4DKexko

So what’s the solution?

Should networks stop remaking beloved television shows such as One Day at a Time? No.

Should networks stop reviving beloved television shows in order to squeeze the nostalgia dollars out of an aging population? Absolutely.

A Will and Grace remake would be worlds better than a revival. Imagine: Instead of a privileged, milequetoast aging gay man, what if the show followed a queer disabled woman? Or a queer Muslim? Or a homoromantic, asexual person? Any of these stories would be infinitely more interesting.

You can make your own decision about the show in September. Until then, have I mentioned how great One Day at a Time is?

Trump Claims That His Immigration Ban Helps Lesbians. He Is Very, Very Wrong.

It’s difficult to be queer. It’s even more difficult to be queer and Muslim, especially if you’re a person of color. Yet Trump claims that his blanket ban on travelers from Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya and Iran does queer people a favor.

Trump cited LGBT rights as one of his reasons for the ban. He claimed that people from those seven countries “would oppress members of [marginalized] gender or sexual orientation.”

The assumption is, of course, that all people coming from these countries are Muslim, and that all Muslims are intolerant of LGBT people. He is completely erasing the growing population of Muslims who openly identify as transgender or queer.

The Advocate puts it well:

What happens now to the lesbian asylum seeker in search of a semblance of safety in the U.S.? What happens to the bisexual student who came here on a visa and now does not know if they can return? What happens to the parents of a transgender child, who can no longer come to the U.S. even to visit?”

In short, Donald Trump is not doing us any favors. He’s hurting members of the LGBT community hoping to find freedom in the United States, and he’s tearing apart the families of queer Muslims by barring them from entry.

Trump acts as if all non-Americans are heathens swarming on the United States in order to steal our resources, bomb our cities and impose their beliefs. He ignores the reason why so many people from these countries are traveling to the U.S. – the United States has destroyed many parts of their countries.

The U.N. recently confirmed that in Yemen, U.S. drone strikes have killed more innocent civilians than al Queda has. And the U.S. has been dragging the Iraq War out for nine long years, which makes it the third-longest war in U.S. history after Vietnam and Afghanistan.

What happens when you go to war with a country for a decade? You leave that country in ruins and force the citizens to become refugees – refugees that the U.S. is now denying entry.

So what can you do? Find a protest near you and fight back!

The Queer Muslim Movement Is Growing

In America, Muslims are often depicted as intolerant and bigoted. However, more and more Muslims are openly identifying as queer, and more and more mosques around the country are openly accepting queer people.

All over the United States and Canada, queer imams are reaching out to LGBT Muslims – instead of turning away from the faith, these Muslims are encouraged to reinterpret the Koran.

Unity mosque is one of the most open-minded mosques of its kind. Its pastor, El-Farouk Khaki, is an openly gay imam and human rights lawyer. His weekly services are populated by queer Muslims, many of whom have been cast out from the families and communities for their sexuality and gender identity.

While most religious leaders – Christian, Jewish and Muslim alike – are known for listing strict rules of “Do”s and “Don’t”s that supposedly come from God, Khaki takes a vastly different approach.

He often discusses self-care, which is very important for queer religious people who feel guilty because of their sexuality. He also discusses physical, spiritual and emotional healing.

His main goal is to encourage the members of his congregation to form a spiritual connection with God and find their own spiritual path. It’s not about being a good Muslim according to traditional Koranic interpretations. It’s about being a good Muslim according to one’s heart.

Khaki is unorthodox not only in his mosque’s beliefs but also in his mosque’s practices. He doesn’t want any of his congregants to follow rituals like reciting the Koran or praying five times a day without first investigating why they do them.

Although traditional mosques separate men and women, Khaki prefers that all of his congregants pray in one place as one.

At this mosque, you may find conservatively-dressed women in hijabs. But you may also find women who are tagged with tattoos and who reject head coverings altogether.

As Donald Trump takes office, the work of queer communities like this is becoming even more important. Not only are queer Muslims often ostracized from their families for being queer, but they’re also publically ridiculed or even attacked for being Muslim. Khaki’s mosque is a safe haven.

Learn more about North America’s growing queer Muslim movement here.

‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ Is Groundbreaking Queer TV

Nothing good ever happens in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Countless villains exploit the newly orphaned trio, the Baudelaire children, and wherever the children look, they run into more danger, sadness and tragedy.

Although it’s a children’s book and TV series, the show is incredibly dark. The Advocate said it best when they said, “Evil characters do not always get what they deserve, and neither do the good.”

A Series of Unfortunate Events has no happy endings. None. So don’t get your hopes up.

It does, however, have plenty of queer and gender non-conforming characters. It’s one of the first children’s television shows to do so.

If you thought the casual gay moment in ParaNorman and the oh-so-brief lesbian couple in Finding Dory were cause for applause, then get ready to break into a standing ovation.

Count Olaf, the Drag Queen

Neil Patrick Harris, an openly gay actor, is excellent in the role of Count Olaf. He’s funny, layered and unafraid to wear a dress in order to get his hands on the Baudelaire children. In order to kidnap the children, he dresses in drag. In this universe, it’s completely normal.

Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender

Any old villain can have a henchman. But Count Olaf, the equal-opportunity employer, hires a gender non-conforming henchperson whose gender is deliberately indeterminate. It doesn’t matter what gender the henchperson is as long as that person gets the job done. In one scene, the henchperson says, “It doesn’t matter what gender you are.”

Gay Lumberjacks

Gay couple Sir and Charles operate a lumber mill and take in the Baudelaire children. The pair are introduced as “partners.”

The show’s narrator frequently defines words for the young audience. In the opening scene, the following occurs:

NARRATOR: In fact, ‘partners’ can mean several things. It could mean two people who own a lumber mill together or a cupcakery. And now, with the advent of more progressive cultural mores, not to mention certain high-court rulings, it could also mean –

SIR: I do all the work, he irons my clothes!

CHARLES: I also cook your omelets!

NARRATOR: The definitions are not mutually exclusive.

A Caveat…

Sharp-eyed viewers may point out that all of these queer characters are villains. Yes, that is true. However, in this universe, everyone is a villain. You get used to it.

Grab your girlfriend and catch the first season on Netflix.

To learn more about queer representation in children’s programming, check out this article.