Category: Uncategorized
-
That time Tyra Banks did a (figurative) hate crime.
As some of you may remember (but hopefully most of you have forgotten or never knew), Tyra Banks — the former model, the creator and host of America’s Next Top Model — used to have a talk show. The Tyra Banks Show (also known as The Tyra Showor simply Tyra) was, in many ways, typical afternoon talk show fare; but it…
-
It’s not just comphet.
In her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich outlined a theory of “compulsory heterosexuality” — often shortened to “comphet” — arguing that, in effect, many people cannot understand their own queerness due to the ways that society trains all of us to see heterosexuality as normal, to understand it as a default…
-
You have the right to live your life.
Earlier this week, after reading one of my newsletters, my friend Erika Moen (the stunning talent behind sex ed comic Oh Joy Sex Toy and many wonderful autobiographical comics and books, also check out her new Patreon) reached out to me with an anecdote about something that happened to her a few years back at a comics convention:…
-
Where’s your bisexuality at?
Over the summer, my alma mater* sent out an email celebrating the university’s role in a bunch of queer shit (it was June). Included in this missive to alums was a link to a Columbia Magazine article from 2016, documenting the history of the Columbia Queer Alliance — a group which, I was excited to learn, was actually…
-
The formerly bi.
As a bisexual woman of a certain age — and one who went to high school in Buffalo, no less — I have something of a loyalty to Ani DiFranco. Yes, I know she’s problematic, yes, I know about the plantation, and I make no excuses for any of her bad decisions (or lackluster apologies).…
-
The bisexual threat to the family.
We’ve officially reached that time of the year known as The Holidays™️, aka a time when, for better or for worse, we’re constantly talking about family. I don’t really feel like talking about the ways bi people are or aren’t accepted by their families (though we can definitely address that another day); the thing that’s…
-
What binds us in the end.
Not long after the Club Q shooting, as the details began to come out, I saw someone make an offhand comment after learning that the gun man had been subdued by an unarmed patron. It wasn’t a good guy with a gun who’d stop shooters, the person quipped, but rather a good gay with no gun. It…
-
When there is nothing you can say.
I know exactly where I was when a shooter entered Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others. I was in the second bedroom of my Lower East Side apartment, a room that had been outfitted into a combo office for me and care and feeding room for my cat. I was curled…
-
I forgot to get a girlfriend before the end of the world.
As you may (or, if you’re a sane person with a rich social life, may not) be aware, Twitter is apparently in its death throes: the bulk of the engineering team has quit, crucial departments are utterly unstaffed, everyone’s just holding their breath until one major (or minor) earthquake leaves the whole house in rubble.…
-
Bisexual feeeeeeelings.
For many years, I liked to think of myself as a Ming vase wrapped in an elephant hide. Yes, I knew that at my core there was a delicate, fragile heart, but throughout my teens and twenties I had worked hard to encase that part of me in a tough, impenetrable exterior. Abuse me, neglect…