Queerness

This imagined town in North Carolina, where all of Kenan’s stories take place, is home to preachers, farmers, Black and white people, the rich and poor. In this town lives a queer Black boy, Horace Cross, whose life is being shrunk by the social boundaries delimiting his desire, the same machinations of shame and disregard that turn many young Black queer people into ghosts of themselves.

What is gayness if it isn’t visible via purchases? What is safety if it isn’t sanctioned by the consumer state? Without Target gay gear, many celebrants would be left indistinguishable from the average heterosexual white dude.

When my uncle Claude eventually passes away, he'll leave behind an estate of remarkable wealth. He's the only one of my father's siblings that was able to retire before becoming eligible for AARP citizenship. It's remarkable for me to think that for most of my life I've known my uncle as a shady real estate investor rather than the cheerful supervisor at the Palo Alto Main Post Office.

In Leash transgressive sex functions less as a subject, or site of guaranteed liberation, and more as a framework to explore how power moves through us, trapping us even as it promises to liberate us. In the age of pink-washed internet activism, DeLynn’s writing is a prescient reminder that any radical transformation of our sex lives, much less society, will never be painless.

If we stop to examine our family tree, it becomes obvious that Lil Nas X is the fulfillment of Little Richard’s dreams. In a world where neoliberal gayness has taught us that the best we can hope for is Lady Gaga belting out the national anthem while deportations mount, Lil Nas X charitably tossed us a Zyrtec.

"A queer Black future is a future that allows me to envision a better reality for Black people everywhere…it is also a future that reckons with all the violence and retaliation that we will experience to get to that future. I also think that the future is now"

Do catcalls produce gender? Is skateboarding a gender? Arielle Burgdorf explores skateboarding, catcalls, masculinity, femininity, and the gender constellation.

Sex in the time of coronavirus: A gay man reflects on the dangers of touch past and the dangers of touch present.

féi hernandez writes poetry con y del corazón. Their new collection, Hood Criatura, tells emotionally intimate stories crafted in imagistic Spanglish.

It will entail secret rooms, padlocked trunks, maternal brutishness, and leather cuffs about the wrists and ankles. It will be psychotic. It is called love. A survey of films where women curiously love other women in lieu of their own mothers.

Sometimes, it sucks to be a body. Other times, it’s fun. Lingerie is one of those gifts that makes being a body fun. Putting it on is to swaddle yourself in ribbons, bows and straps that speak on your behalf. They assert, “Bitch, I’M the gift, a gift to MYSALF.”

A Conversation with Writer, Musician, Dancer, Filmmaker, Performance Artist and Legend Brontez Purnell: "My dad would always try to make me go fishing and there was a time a couple of years ago where I really wrestled with the idea of writing the erotic adventures of Huckleberry Finn... Scott O’Hara clued into my writing when I was younger. There's a picture of him where he has this huge hard-on and a skateboard or whatever. I read his memoir when I was 18 or 19 and the writing was like, “And then he separated my glistening cheeks and I achieved nine orgasms.”