Category: LGBTQIA

4 Things the Queer Folks in My Life Taught Me About Resisting Toxic Masculinity

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I’m standing outside of a club with friends.

We’re standing in a circle, laughing and chatting and enjoying ourselves. Intermittently, we touch each other’s hair, we put an arm around the other, we kiss each other on the cheek, and we yell above the noise, “I love you so, so much.”

Gender stereotypes and norms might tell you that we’re a group of women.

But we aren’t. We’re a group of queer folks, all with different relationships to masculinity, flaunting a total disregard of gender norms.

When I made the decision to transition – changing my gender presentation and pursuing hormones – I knew that testosterone in particular would come with a host of expectations around performing masculinity.

And as a genderqueer, femme trans boy evaluating my relationship to masculinity, I didn’t know exactly how comfortable I was with that – especially since so many aspects of masculinity can be toxic.

While I would benefit from gaining numerous privileges associated with masculinity, I would also have to contend with the gender norms that harm so many men and masculine-identified people.

But when I fell into a community of queer folks – some transgender, some gender non-conforming, all navigating the expectations of “masc” together – I found a very different kind of masculinity. While they are by no means the norm, what I learned from them was transformative.

This community taught me not only what toxic masculinity demands of men and masculine people, but also the possibilities that exist outside of it.

In the process, I came to realize the kind of masculinity that I could be comfortable inhabiting.

Here are a few of the things that I’ve learned from them.

1. Masculinity Doesn’t Mean Denying Each Other Physical Affection

Men aren’t often seen hugging each other in this society. If they touch each other, even in a platonic way, it’s considered too “gay” or effeminate. As a result, we have men who seldom share physical affection, affirmation, or closeness.

While everyone’s personal boundaries are different, masculine-identified folks are never given the freedom to set their own boundaries. There’s one boundary and one boundary only, and it’s that men shouldn’t share physical closeness. This isn’t just limiting. This can be painful.

What I appreciate so much about the community of queer folks that I’ve fallen into is that we love on each other.

In my community of queers, we greet each other with warm embraces. We lean on each other and hold each other through difficult moments. We aren’t afraid to touch each other and express our affection for each other just because society says that men and masculine-identified folks shouldn’t do so.

Just imagine what friendships between masculine-identified people could look like if we felt encouraged to express our affection for each other in whatever ways felt comfortable for everyone involved.

Imagine the closeness, the reassurance, the comfort, the support, the vulnerability – these are very healthy experiences that are encouraged in female friendships, but never permitted for men and masculine-identified people.

Denying men and masculine-identified people a full spectrum of intimacy with their friends is one of many ways toxic masculinity hurts us. And rediscovering this intimacy with my friends has been profound.

For me, having this kind of consensual physical closeness has been healing. So much of toxic masculinity relies on the idea that men and masculine people must keep others at a distance.

But why should we?

From a simple mental health perspective, I know that this kind of shared affection between friends can help us feel connected to each other and creates a sense of safety within our community.

2. Masculinity Can And Should Involve Emotional Vulnerability

Men shouldn’t cry. Men shouldn’t be emotional. Men should deal with their shit on their own time.

When I began my transition, I was fearful that I would feel pressured not to express myself or my feelings. And in the beginning, this was absolutely true.

If you browse through my Instagram, for example, you’ll see that prior to testosterone, I took many selfies while smiling – but when I started testosterone, I took pictures with more serious and standoffish faces, thinking that they made me “look more masculine.”

I didn’t even notice at first.

This insidious idea that men shouldn’t have emotions had impacted even the ways in which I took photographs of myself. I had internalized this idea that masculinity was about distance and suppressing my emotions – even joyful ones.

Encouraging men to not be emotionally vulnerable is enormously harmful.

Expecting us to push down our feelings can eat us alive, deny us valuable resources and support that we need, and often puts the emotional labor onto other folks of marginalized gender (primarily femmes) who are put into caretaking roles.

I would even venture to say that the epidemic of violence coming from primarily white men in the United States can be connected to the suppression, hostility, and aggression that is expected of them as the only legitimate avenues to asserting their masculinity.

Finding a community of queer folks that are very expressive, share their feelings and their struggles, and support one another through them has been so important in pushing back against toxic masculinity that encourages us to isolate ourselves and lash out.

I feel empowered to be around people who aren’t afraid to show vulnerability and encourage one another to reach out during difficult times.

Their sensitivity, warmth, and compassion fly in the face of everything that hegemonic masculinity has told us to be.

3. Masculinity Isn’t About Rejecting What’s Deemed ‘Feminine’

The first people to comment on my sparkly, beautiful nails were the queer men in my life. Some of them applauded how rad they looked. Some of them remarked on how they, too, needed to get theirs done.

And none of them shamed me or questioned the choice.

I once wrote an entire article about how I was fearful that being on testosterone would take away some of my favorite, more “femme” parts of who I am – and how I was determined to hold onto these things.

Toxic masculinity greatly limits the emotional range that men and masculine people can have, and it also limits our gender expression as well. At the root of this is misogyny, which privileges what we associate with masculinity over what we associate with femininity.

Often times, men and masculine people can fall into the trap of rejecting what is considered “feminine” because they feel it will affirm or legitimize their masculinity in the eyes of other people.

But well into my transition now, I am still rocking the nails, blathering on about my passion for interior design and stylish clothes, singing pop music at the top of my lungs, and crying over romantic comedies.

I don’t reject any stereotypically “feminine” aspect of myself just to cater to patriarchy. I am flipping the bird to a gender binary that says masculinity and femininity are these dual, opposing forces that, upon ever mingling, the universe will implode.

Thankfully, the universe has yet to implode from my queer, femme masculinity.

In reality, they don’t need to be in opposition, nor should one be valued over the other. In fact, femininity, masculinity, and even androgyny can be ingredients to each of our own individual, unique recipes that make up who we are and what we feel empowered by.

Or, you know… we can just ditch the binary thinking altogether and let people live.

I wouldn’t have felt like I could really be myself until I saw other queer men embodying this – a gender fluidity in which the limiting norms and rules of masculinity no longer apply – and embracing their whole selves, femininity unapologetically included.

They have rejected this binary way of thinking, refusing the “either/or” ultimatum of the gender binary (some of them, like me, even identifying as non-binary).

Seeing other men who are unafraid to fuck with gender has made me feel empowered to do the same.

4. Pushing Back Against Toxic Masculinity Means Acknowledging Our Privileges

Often times, women and other gender minorities take on the emotional burden and labor of educating men, in particular, about privilege.

It’s an unfair burden, to be sure, as folks who are on the receiving end of oppression should never be obligated to educate their oppressors, nor should privileged people feel entitled to their labor and energies.

What I’ve found so promising about the community that I’m surrounded by is that the men in my life have taken the initiative not only to have these conversations among themselves, but to act as interrupters and to educate other men and masculine people about their privilege.

One of the most eye-opening parts of transition has been seeing the ways in which I am treated differently as I move through public spaces. And in community with other queer and trans men, this has opened up many conversations about power, privilege, and interruption.

An essential part of dismantling toxic masculinity is men taking ownership over their own education around systemic inequality, and taking on the labor of educating other men about it as well.

It’s also about interrupting the manifestations of patriarchy when we see it. It’s about ensuring that marginalized folks feel safe in our spaces. It’s about being cognizant of the space that we, ourselves, take up. It’s about utilizing our power to amplify the voices of marginalized folks within our community.

It’s about tuning in when marginalized folks take the time to call us in, apologizing when we’ve fucked up, and taking ownership over our position of privilege.

And it’s definitely – definitely – about holding one another to a higher standard, calling in other men and being willing to be called in when mistakes are made. This is especially critical so that this labor is not left to people of marginalized gender who must endure microaggressions and harm to call us in.

When I identified as a cis woman long, long ago, I can remember feeling extraordinarily unsafe in groups of men, to the point where I wouldn’t be in those spaces at all.

Identifying now as a non-binary person with masculine privilege, I want to create the kinds of spaces where gender minorities can choose to be in community with me, knowing that the burden doesn’t rest on them to maintain the safety of our space.

I’m grateful that I exist in community with other folks who feel the same way.

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When I first embarked on my gender transition, I was scared of masculinity. I was scared of all that it had come to represent. I was scared of all of the toxic expectations that would fall on my shoulders.

Unpacking those expectations and doing better as a person of privilege will be an ongoing process for the rest of my life. But I’m grateful to say that in community with other queer and trans men, I’ve found a space to do this processing in a healthy way.

Surrounded by queer men who push back against hegemonic masculinity, I’ve also been able to carve out a new kind of femme masculinity for myself – one that I feel is both healing and empowering, allowing me to be my authentic and most honest self.

Communities like these, however small they may be, give me hope that a new kind of masculinity is possible – one that is nurturing, sensitive, vulnerable, self-aware, and even radical.

Knowing that it’s possible, I am committed to resisting this paradigm until it finally collapses under the weight of itself.

Because when masculinity is toxic – when it actively harms not only those who are marginalized but the oppressors themselves – it can never be sustainable.

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A version of this piece that I wrote originally appeared at Everyday Feminism.

I Thought I Was Ugly. I Didn’t Realize It Was Gender Dysphoria.

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For a long time, I couldn’t place why — I just felt ugly.

And not just in the insecure way, but in the something-is-so-wrong-but-I-can’t-place-what way.

No matter what I did, or how often my friends reassured me, nothing seemed to change the fact that something didn’t feel right when I looked in the mirror. And no one seemed to see it but me.

As someone assumed to be a girl, I figured that hating how I looked was a rite of passage. I could never articulate what I didn’t like, though. It wasn’t my nose, or my lips, or my teeth.

When people asked, I helplessly explained, “I don’t know, I’m just ugly.”

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When I look at old pictures of myself, though, I start to understand. For one, it doesn’t even look like me.

It wasn’t that I was ugly, so much as I didn’t look like myself. But not even knowing what “transgender” meant, I didn’t have a point of reference to understand my feelings at the time.

It wasn’t that I was ugly by some objective measure, or even that someone had told me I was and the comment stayed with me. It was that I was dysphoric — the body I was in didn’t feel like mine, and I could only react to it with discomfort and, at times, disgust.

There’s this narrative around transness, that we all knew immediately that we were meant to transition, meant to live in a different body, that the gender we were assigned is not the gender we actually are. For many of us, however, that’s simply not our story.

For me, none of that occurred to me consciously for a long time. I just knew that I didn’t like how I looked — that I was deeply uncomfortable with myself — and at times I felt that very strongly. It took much longer to understand why.

Transitioning happened for me a little haphazardly, and maybe a little organically, too. I was drawn to short hair, and after cutting it, I felt euphoric in a way I couldn’t deny. I loved androgyny as a style, and after experimenting a little, started to find new ways to express myself. I followed my intuition, not entirely sure where it would lead me, trying not to overthink what it said about me or my gender.

And then I noticed something: The further I moved away from the gendered expectations that came with being perceived as a woman, the happier I felt.

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Ugliness is such a profound, raw, and vulnerable emotional experience for some trans people. For me, it was the driving force in my transition.

“Ugly” was the only word I had to describe my dysphoria, which meant it flew under the radar for a long time.

It didn’t raise any alarms for the people around me. It just confirmed the sexist notion that women are supposed to be insecure, and therefore my discontent was an acceptable, albeit sad experience that came with the territory of my assigned gender.

But something intuitively pushed me forward. Part of that was finally meeting other transgender and non-binary people, who gave me the language I didn’t have, and filled in the gaps of knowledge I desperately needed.

I became acquainted with the feeling of gender euphoria — the sense of affirmation and even joy that comes with being “seen” as the gender you truly identify with. For me, I had waves of euphoria as I started hearing my new name, my new pronouns, and my new reflection staring back at me, being shaped before my eyes by testosterone.

Dysphoria is a complicated experience, and I think it’s very misunderstood, even by some folks in the trans community.

It’s not like I looked down at my body and saw a vision laid before me, immediately understanding that I wasn’t a girl. It was, more often than that, the sense of lingering discomfort, confusion, and profound emotional rejection that unsettled me, often on a deeply unconscious level.

Dysphoria, for me, has always been the battle between my conscious desire to take the easiest and safest route in life — one that cis people repeatedly told me would be living as a cis woman — and my unconscious and, at times, desperate need to transform my body so that I could live authentically and comfortably.

At first, it was easy to reject my dysphoria as feeling “ugly” and nothing more, because it felt safer to consider myself a cisgender person who felt ugly, rather than stepping into my life as a transgender person, considering the many risks and struggles that came with it.

Dysphoria never provided me an answer or a clear path forward, as it sometimes does for other trans people. For me, it created a problem, and it was one that I didn’t initially know how to solve.

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But as it turns out, transition was the right thing for me, even if it took years to understand that.

The profound anxiety that I had when I looked at myself has been replaced with a kind of joy — a joy I’d never had before transition, in which I can see myself and not only do I look good, but it looks right.

My friend Jes Baker, a fat activist and incredible blogger/human, said to me before that a lot of our unhappiness with our bodies happens when we look at the mirror expecting to see someone else (paraphrasing, but you get the idea).

In some cases, coming to terms with our bodies as they are can be our greatest act of self-love. There’s abundant messaging in this world that tells us to reject our bodies, and unlearning that shit takes time. But for others, change is how we make peace with our reflection.

I think it all begins with the question, “Who am I expecting to see looking back at me?”

Every day, I think the person I was waiting for is finally coming back to me. And I can’t even begin to describe how beautiful that feels.

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5 Reasons Why We Need to Stop Saying That ‘Women Are Half the World’s Population’

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Feminists, I have a pet peeve that I really want to talk about. Namely, this business about women being half the population.

Have you heard this before? An activist is explaining why focusing on women’s rights is so necessary, and as they passionately make their case, they tack onto the end of their speech, “After all, women make up half the world’s population!”

And of course, there’s agreement all around – we can’t perpetuate an injustice against half of the world. That simply won’t do!

I’m not a woman, but I understand the impulse to advocate for women by pointing out just how many women there are. No doubt, it’s compelling to talk about the sheer number of people being denied their autonomy and human rights.

The more people suffering, the greater the injustice, right?

Here’s the thing: I don’t see this “women are half the world” thing as being intersectional, nor do I see it as being correct.

And perhaps most importantly, I don’t see it as a step in the right direction: It marginalizes other people in a heck of a lot of ways, trying to uplift women at the expense of others – specifically people of marginalized gender and sex.

Not cool.

When I was a wee baby feminist – name-dropping bell hooks in conversation and proudly displaying my new nose ring – I didn’t realize how ineffective and harmful it was to hinge my arguments about women’s rights on a percentage.

It didn’t occur to me until I began my gender transition, identifying now as genderqueer, that the phrase started to rub me the wrong way – because it erased transgender people like me, for starters.

That’s why I’m writing this article.

If we want to make a case for women’s equality around the world, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t erase or harm people of other genders and identities. We need to be bringing in a more intersectional approach.

It’s time we did away with this talking point once and for all. Because as you’ll see, it’s not doing women – or anyone else, for that matter – any favors.

Here are five things to consider the next time you’re thinking of spouting off the “women are half the world” argument.

1. It’s Ridiculously Cisnormative

Let’s be real: This phrase isn’t logically correct. When we’re saying that women are half the world, what we’re actually saying is that roughly half the world is assigned female at birth.

We aren’t talking about gender (and therefore, women) at all. We’re talking about sex, and assuming that everyone assigned female at birth must identify as a woman.

This is totally cisnormative – reinforcing the assumption that being cisgender is the default, and centering the experiences of cisgender people, effectively erasing transgender people – and makes this phrase really problematic.

Think about it: This “statistic,” focusing on birth assignment, technically includes me – someone who doesn’t identify as a woman, but was assigned female at birth.

And more importantly, it doesn’t include trans women. Since this is a percentage that relies on assignment at birth, we’re inherently excluding transgender women – who have a different birth assignment – in favor of propping up cisgender women.

In doing so, we are replicating the kind of cisnormativity that not only assumes everyone is cisgender, but actually privileges cisgender people over transgender people – with transfeminine people in particular getting the worst of it, as per usual.

Why are cisgender women the only women that count in this statistic?

This phrase ultimately fails us as feminists because when it confuses sex and gender, it’s only really speaking to and about cisgender people. And while trans women may not be a huge percentage of the population, your movement is not for women if it doesn’t explicitly and intentionally include all women.

Which leads me to my next point…

2. It Upholds the Gender Binary and Erases Non-Binary People

Let’s see here. Women are half the world. So men must make up the other half of the world. That’s 100%. So presumably, this includes everyone! Right?

No, it really doesn’t.

Gender exists on a spectrum, and thus, there’s no concrete way to measure just how many genders there really are. What we do know for sure is that there are more than two – but this so-called “statistic” relies on the idea that this isn’t true, and that everyone fits into this binary of men and women.

Anytime we normalize a phrase that says there are only two genders, we’re erasing anyone and everyone who identifies differently.

As non-binary myself, when I hear the saying “women are half the world’s population,” I not only feel erased, but I feel misgendered. The saying upholds a binary that has never quite fit. And I know it’s really talking about sex assignment – so by extension, I’m being labeled a cis woman.

Honestly, when I identified as a cisgender woman, I didn’t notice these issues, and the phrase felt empowering – it felt radical to claim our collective power as women!

But when I started my gender transition, I immediately saw the ways in which it reinforced my own oppression as a non-binary trans person and pushed me further to the margins – just because I didn’t fit the binary, and because I didn’t identify with the gender I was assigned.

Cis privilege can make us oblivious to the harm present in the things we may otherwise find empowering. And that’s why it’s important for cis folks to tune in when transgender and non-binary people are naming their pain.

I’m naming mine now.

There are better ways for women to advocate for their rights – ways that do not further oppress people outside of the gender binary.

3. It Erases Intersex People, Too

Yes, the phrase “women are half the population” focuses on sex. And so what, right? Sex is a 50/50 deal, so it’s not totally inaccurate.

Nope.

This mentality – that we are born female or male and there’s no in-between – is actually the source of a great deal of oppression and pain for intersex people.

The reality is that biological sex also exists on a spectrum. But those who don’t “acceptably” fit the binary we’ve created are violently forced to conform through invasive and non-consensual surgery.

We need to stop buying into this man/woman, male/female binary. Just like it hurts transgender and non-binary people, it harms intersex people, too. It doesn’t allow for any human diversity. And when we create these rigid rules, we’re harming everyone who doesn’t conform.

When we divide the world into halves, what we’re saying is that there are only two ways to be. Two ways to do gender, two ways to do sex.

If this “women are half the world” thing is meant to advocate for gender equality, why is it upholding both the gendered and sex-based oppression of entire marginalized populations?

Intersex folks are some of the most badass people that I know. They may not be half the world, but they count. Their lives are important. Their struggles matter.

And any kind of “empowerment” mantra that further erases them is not pursuing social justice – it is selfishly pursuing its own interests at the expense of others.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in throwing intersex people under the bus under the banner of “women’s rights.”

4. It Assumes That Women Are a Monolith

When I talked to women about this article, a complaint that we talked about most often was that the phrase “women are half the world’s population” was problematic simply because it lumped all women together – as if their issues were universal, and their experiences largely the same.

This is where intersectionality comes into play again.

Even if it were true that half the world identified as women, that doesn’t even scratch the surface when it comes to advocating for their rights.

Factors like race, disability, size, class, sexuality, gender identity, citizenship, nationality, and more all intersect to shape a woman’s experience of power, privilege, and oppression.

While the sentiment behind the phrase is powerful – look how many women there are, you can’t deny our power and our dignity! – it may, in fact, be oversimplified. A universal experience of womanhood, many would argue, just doesn’t exist.

And when we advocate for gender justice, the conversation needs nuance and intention so that those most marginalized are empowered.

Motherhood, for example, is often assumed to be a universal desire among women – but we actually know that many women choose not to have children, cannot have children, or do not consider parenting to be a significant part of their identity.

Menstruation is often held up as a rite of passage for women, and yet transgender women do not have this experience, numerous transgender men and non-binary people do, and plenty of cisgender women do not have a menstrual cycle (or have an atypical cycle) for various reasons.

You could easily argue that women are more diverse than they are similar – but that doesn’t mean they can’t unite to fight patriarchy together.

Womanhood – and a/gender as a whole – is so much more than a singular identity that everyone understands and relates to in the same way. Different aspects of our identities will shape how we move through the world as a/gendered people.

One shared category is not a guarantee that our experiences are uniform or even similar, and awareness of these differences is important.

When we talk about advocating for women (or any marginalized group), we definitely have to acknowledge everyone’s unique situations – because if the movement isn’t intersectional, it’s bullshit.

And if the language we use to uplift women isn’t intersectional, I suspect it’s bullshit, too.

5. Because Equality Shouldn’t Be a Numbers Game in the First Place

Here’s one of the reasons I hate this phrase the most: The dignity, autonomy, and rights of a marginalized group should have nothing to do with how large or how small that group is.

Social justice is not a popularity contest, and shouldn’t be treated like one.

Women don’t deserve their rights because they are a large percentage of the population. They deserve their rights because they are human beings. Full stop.

As far as transgender people go, I recognize that we make up a much smaller percentage of the population. I recognize that there are many people in this country that have never met someone like me. I recognize that my own parents still struggle to understand me. I recognize that when I move through the world, I am an oddity to most.

I am not half of the world’s population. In many places, I am barely a small sliver of a big pie. But that doesn’t make me less worthy or less entitled to my rights. That doesn’t make me less important. That doesn’t make my struggle less real.

I really despise the underlying message of “women are half the population” because it implicitly communicates to me that because my community isn’t as large, the fight for transgender rights is somehow less of a priority or less significant.

Every marginalized community is important, no matter how many people occupy those spaces.

And I think if we are using language that suggests otherwise, we need to reevaluate our concepts of “justice” and our own sense of entitlement. We can do better than this. And we need to.

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Here’s the thing: It’s important that when we build our movements, we create language that reflects our values. And if you take anything away from this article, it’s that we must be intentional about our words – because our words mean something.

As genderqueer, people like me are not “half” of this world. But I’d like to think that, however small a percentage we occupy, our experiences are still important.

So many women in my life are my fiercest advocates, and I try to show up just the same – when our movements work together, I know that we’re stronger.

But our language has to reflect this kind of commitment to each other, to being anti-oppression across the board.

If we want to tackle systemic oppression, we can’t uphold one kind of harm while trying to address another.

That’s why I think examining our language is so important – it says something about who we are and what justice means to us. And in my opinion, “women are half the world’s population” reflects a kind of movement that I don’t think feminists want to be a part of.

We can do better than a lousy 50/50 percentage that lacks nuance. We can do better than a so-called “statistic” that erases people of marginalized gender and sex. And we can definitely do better than a phrase that upholds oppressive binaries.

It not only hurts women, but it hurts people of many genders – and this kind of harm is not what feminism is about.

If we’re going to make a case for women’s rights, let’s start with dignity. Not with erasure.

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This piece that I wrote originally appeared at Everyday Feminism.

ETA: I no longer identify as a trans guy — this piece was mistakenly published by an editor before the correction was made.

As Let’s Queer Things Up! Turns 3, I’ve Got Big, Gay Plans

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Back in the summer of 2014, I was packing up my entire life to move across the country to the sunny and oh-so-gay San Francisco Bay Area.

Back then, I was practically a baby queer, feeling both terrified and excited for the next chapter of my life. Having just recently come out of the closet as transgender, and having struggled for many years with anxiety and depression, the idea of just being able to hit the “reset” button on my life was appealing.

So as I left (almost) everything I knew back in Michigan, I did three things: I changed my name. I said goodbye to my therapist (she wouldn’t go to California with me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). And I started a blog.

Since then, I’ve grappled with trauma, sobriety, mental illness, gender dysphoria, suicidality, transition, and two psychiatric hospitalizations. I’ve also found my own path in recovery and resistance. This blog has been a living diary of the person I’ve become through those experiences — and a place where queer people with similar struggles can see themselves reflected back.

Three years later, it has grown to be a thriving online community and an important resource for queer/trans and disabled people. It’s a space for complicated and honest storytelling, with the hopes that folks like me — queer, non-binary, crazy, tender — can feel connected to someone like them, no matter what part of the world they’re in.

As I’ve talked about before, being a super anxious, queer teenager meant that my first experiences of real community came in the form of blogs and online forums. The resources and support that I found in these spaces became my lifeline, carrying me through as I held on for dear life.

But I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a crazy, queer adult that survived. And that’s what I think makes this blog so special — stories of resilience from people like me are seldom given a platform, especially one that doesn’t attempt to pigeonhole them or diminish their voice. It’s incredible, too, to watch other folks in the community connect to that voice, and feel empowered to reclaim their own.

Readers, I want to do more of this.

When I created this blog, my only plan was to write. But as it’s grown, I’ve started to wonder how I could commit more time and more energy to do this thing that I love. I didn’t want blogging to be my back-burner hobby. I wanted to create more resources for folks in my community and share my experiences in a meaningful way.

At first, I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that I was allowed to ask for compensation for my labor. So many marginalized folks throw ourselves into content creation because we love the hell out of this work, and then burn out quickly because we didn’t think to ask for support.

But then… capitalism/life.

I squirmed at the idea of monetizing any aspect of my blog, thinking it would be selfish of me, or feeling weirdly like I didn’t deserve that.

And then I almost lost my apartment multiple times. I accumulated medical debt like it was going out of style after I was hospitalized twice from severe depressive episodes. I hung on by a thread, bouncing from contract job to contract job, trying to keep my head above water.

And I realized that if I kept undervaluing my work, I was going to undervalue myself into a complete financial crisis.

Meanwhile, a lot of people said that blogs were now obsolete money pits. That’s not something I was willing to accept, though. When I was first struggling with mental illness, as well as when I came out as queer and trans, other bloggers helped me carve out a safe space for myself.

I saw myself in their experiences. How could that ever be obsolete?

I want to believe that I can be a blogger AND not have to emotionally drain myself with unpaid labor to do it. That’s why, looking ahead for LQTU, I want to start thinking of creative ways to make this platform really work for everyone.

Let’s make something that’s good for both of us.

Here’s what isn’t changing at LQTU: My core values. Meaning, I’m still a crazy queer feminist that’s a total nerd for nuanced, complex conversations around queerness and mental health. While this is my personal blog for my feelings and thoughts, I still remain committed to creating a community that challenges all of us (yes, including me).

But resource-creating and curating takes labor. Labor, I’ve realized, that really needs to be supported. So as of today, I’ve finalized my new Patreon campaign (with new goals, new rewards), where you can regularly support this blog and get cool incentives for doing so.

Here are the rewards (aka, the fun stuff):

  • $1 per month: Access to secret, Patrons-only blog entries. You might be thinking, “Why even charge a dollar? It’s just a dollar.” Yes, it’s only a dollar — but if lots of people buy in, it makes a huge difference.
  • $3 per month: A follow on Twitter! If you want to be Twitter friends AND support my work, this is the option for you.
  • $5 per month: Access to my Patrons-only vlogs/videos. Every month, I’ll post a new video where I talk about the topics that you’re interested in. I’ve been told I’m fun to watch on camera. (…NO, not like that.)
  • $8 per month: Q&A Club, which means you get to choose the topics that I talk about in those videos. No matter how outlandish they are.
  • $15 per month: A letter! From me! I’ll write you a letter on adorable stationery.

I love these rewards because it offers me a new way to connect with the community here AND get some support to keep on creating.

There’s also some bigger prizes, if you’re into it.

I wanted to create some incentives that help support other folks in the work that they’re doing as well. So I’ve included some new reward tiers that allow me to fund this platform while also boosting yours.

Check out these cool collaborative things we can do:

  • I’ll workshop your writing: Imagine that, every month, you send along an article or blog you’re writing. In return, I send you thorough and awesome feedback (and you know it’ll be good, I’m an experienced editor). For $20 dollars per month, for as many months as you decide, I’ll workshop a piece of your writing each month.
  • I’ll plug your project, product, or page: Every week, I publish a column called Crazy Talk, a mental health advice column. And I figure, why not support your work with a mention every week? If you’ve got a rad thing I might like, $25 dollars per month gets you a dedicated space to plug your work, and gives you access to our audience of over 26,000 readers.
  • I’ll mentor you: If you’re trying to break into feminist media and/or publishing, why not let me mentor you? Every month, we’ll hop on Skype and talk personal brand, pitching, and goals. $65 dollars per month, for as long as you decide.
  • You can sponsor a post: I’m open to sponsorship, either blog posts here or posts on social media. Contact me if we might be able to work together!

These rewards are all outlined on Patreon. Check it out!

So what happens now?

More content, for one. I’m shifting into high gear, eventually working up to publishing three blogs per week, including my new column, Crazy Talk.

And with enough Patrons, we’ll be launching a YouTube channel together and, hopefully (!!) I’ll host a monthly livestream/show where we discuss queer mental health together.

That’s the dream, anyway.

I’m passionate about the tender power of an honest, queer blog. And if I can get some additional support, I’ll be in a better position to fund all the projects I’m interested in doing.

But it takes a whole team to make it happen.

That’s why this cute, nifty link will now be at the bottom of every article:

PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING AS LITTLE AS $1 PER MONTH TO MY PATREON CAMPAIGN TO HELP FUND MORE FREE RESOURCES LIKE THESE, AND ACCESS EXCLUSIVE CONTENT WHEN YOU DO!

My awesome partner, Ray, will now be helping me manage the increase in content, new projects, and social media management that makes this blog run smoothly. My cat, Pancake, will be providing additional emotional support.

And with your donations, I’m bringing on a curator for our Facebook community to diversify the content on our feed, and hopefully a moderator to keep the space free of trolls.

It’s important to me to be a good neighbor, too.

This is why I’m in the process of creating partnerships with different pages, activists, blogs, and platforms to boost the signal on work that I think is important, regardless of their follower count or what they’re able to offer “in return.” This is why you might have noticed over on Facebook some of the same pages and names popping up.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, be sure to reach out and let me know!

I’m also committed to donating a portion of my Patreon funds to other content creators in the community, as I’ve done from the very beginning. For every $100 dollars earned from this campaign, at least 10% is reinvested into platforms led by queer & trans people of color.

If my work has been valuable to you, please consider supporting me!

My ultimate goal is to be able to make this work more sustainable for me, while also building more community and connection in the process. I think Patreon is opening the door for a more thoughtful way to crowdfund, one that can support me while also offering something to you in return.

This blog will continue to have great content that anyone can access. The difference is that it’ll be backed by some rad folks in the community, backing me as I create those resources.

And I’m excited to see what’s next! Whether you’ve got a dollar a month or just a comment to cheer me on, please know that having you in my corner means a lot. Thanks for sticking with me.

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Queer People Deserve Nuanced, Dynamic Conversations About Our Bodies

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It is undeniable that how we experience our bodies is often impacted by the identities we hold. I’ve known this deeply as a transgender, queer, and mentally ill person, trying to navigate self-love and body acceptance in a world that routinely denies my humanity and my worth. Our bodies are, perhaps, the most politically-charged battleground that we know; how we honor, protect, touch, and understand them often collides with the de/valuing of those same bodies in the culture at large.

Having conversations that acknowledge this complexity is a rare thing. Queerness, by its very nature, complicates the way that we move through the world — and by extension, the relationship we forge to our bodies and to each other. It’s worth talking about, and yet we are only beginning to collectively unravel this dialogue.

I’ve never known a queer person who hasn’t had some kind of complicated relationship to their body. Dive deep, and you’ll find there’s an abundance of perspectives and experiences. It’s normative ideas about what queerness “looks” like; the privileging of some bodies over others; the ways in which embodied violence intersects with different oppressions; the ways that our aesthetic and expression codes our gender, sexuality, and community ties; the notion of who is most and least desirable; the suggestion that only binary experiences exist; and the erasure or inescapable visibility of our queerness depending on how we present.

It’s all this… and it’s so much more.

If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. We could talk about this for days and still only scratch the surface.

So when we consider mainstream ideas of “self-love” and “body love,” it becomes apparent that what queer people need from this conversation is real nuance. It is impossible for queer folks to have these conversations without some kind of acknowledgment about the unique ways we connect with and disconnect from our bodies — especially when we consider our bodies a site of struggle, trauma, and even violence.

EveryoneSquare

When Elizabeth Cooper invited me to be a part of the Queer Body Love Speaker Series this year, all of these messy, half-formed thoughts really came to the surface for me. We need spaces like these, and we need vulnerable, dynamic, layered conversations from a multitude of perspectives.

We deserve unique resources that help us untangle the messy profoundness of our queer bodies, at every intersection they live in. We need to move beyond Lisa Frank bopo and stretch mark selfies, and sink our teeth into the very real work of queer liberation, beginning with our bodies and extending to one another.

I’m so excited to be able to share the Queer Body Love Speaker Series with my readers. It’s a series of video interviews with queer activists, leaders, and artists that expands the conversation of “body love.” It’s such a rare, accessible (the whole thing is transcribed AND captioned!), and wonderful resource for queer folks and those that love them. It’s been inspiring to watch this unfold as both a viewer and a participant, two years in a row now. It’s easily one of my favorite projects I’ve ever had the honor to be a part of.

This year’s question is one that I’ve grappled with a lot since beginning this work: How do we love ourselves, our bodies, and each other in the face of oppression? 

Elizabeth invites you (and I do, too!) to explore this question with our amazing crew of queer speakers. She writes:

Personal and spiritual development in the Western world often tries to forget that we are humans living in bodies in society. And… we are humans living in bodies in relationship to other people. Our cultures and the systems we live in affect how we see ourselves and literally how we feel in our bodies.

It makes sense if you’re struggling with really experiencing your own, embodied sense of self worth. Most mainstream cultures teach us to de-value our authentic selves.

And there is another way.

Choosing self-love isn’t an individualistic endeavor. We need each other. We need to hear and know that we are not alone in the struggle to love ourselves. We need possibility models, hope, inspiration and practical ideas and tools to support us in really committing to self-love.

That’s why I’m so excited to share these amazing interviews with you. It’s time to explore what it really means to take pride in all parts of ourselves. It’s time for us to learn from each other how we CAN love our ourselves and each other in the face of oppression — and through it, to the other side.

You are so worthy. Let us show you how you too can believe that.

This is a resource that creates real opportunities for self-insight, healing, and community-building. If you’re interested in learning more, I encourage you to check out the website here and sign the heck up! Not only did Elizabeth interview me and some incredibly rad activists, but my cat, Pancake, makes a guest appearance as well… so it’s obviously worth it.

Sign up for the Queer Body Love Speaker Series by clicking here. (It’s free!)

See you there!

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PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING AS LITTLE AS $1 PER MONTH TO MY PATREON CAMPAIGN TO HELP FUND MORE FREE RESOURCES LIKE THESE, AND ACCESS EXCLUSIVE CONTENT WHEN YOU DO!

 

Cis ‘Allies,’ You Probably Think This Work is About You

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by cis “allies” that if I don’t directly appeal to them in the most generous terms possible, I can’t expect their support. And as far as I can tell, this is a pretty explicit way of saying, “I will not affirm the humanity of transgender people unless their movement caters to me.”

I mean, at least you’re being honest so I know upfront that I can’t count on you.

A lot of fake allies came out in full force when I wrote an article in late March, really unpacking different trans-antagonistic microaggressions (in plain terms, acts that hurt trans people in subtle but important ways). I put an incredible amount of labor into that work, trying to hold space for cis folks’ emotional realities while also being firm about what is and isn’t acceptable when interacting with folks from my community.

“Oftentimes, as we try to support the people we love, we can make mistakes – and that’s a normal and expected part of the process,” I explained. “The best way to make it right is to learn a little more, do some self-reflection, and not just apologize, but commit to changing our behaviors.”

Wow, I’m so mean… (sigh)

I offered a piece that I believed could bridge gaps in understanding for cis folks, particularly loved ones, who were struggling with their own emotions around transition. I put an incredible amount of intention behind every word that I wrote. And I wrote from the place of someone who has firsthand experience trying to hold space for my family, my friends, and my own pain all at once.

I’ve often said that when I write these rare pieces that are designed to reach folks of privilege, I’m (in some ways) giving them my heart. And a few months out now, and thousands of responses later, I find myself questioning why I did that in the first place.

Cis folks, I’ve been told over and over again that I’m not patient enough, nice enough, generous enough. That if I’d just be a little more understanding and a little less hostile, you’d come through.

(And this is a familiar refrain for folks who are marginalized. This isn’t new. “Allies” love to hold their support hostage, making it as conditional as possible so that they feel justified in doing nothing. I see white queer folks in my own community doing this right now. White folks who are looking at Black folks protesting at Pride for the right to exist, telling them they’re too angry, too disruptive. As if the comfort and feelings of white people somehow matters more than Black lives.)

Allies, most having never shown up for these communities beyond a filter on their profile pictures, love to tell folks that their tactics are wrong. As if marginalized folks haven’t lived in these bodies and persisted through these struggles their entire lives. As if allies are somehow better positioned to determine how communities should advocate and care for one another.

“Allies” like these think that they know better and that they’re owed the emotional labor and warmth of marginalized people at all times… otherwise we’re not worth the time of day.

Cis people, you’re breaking my heart. But that’s what I get for putting it on loan, right?

In fact, some of you find it more offensive that I’m calling you “cisgender” than you are with the rampant amount of violence waged against trans women of color. You’re outraged by a label, a category that does nothing to endanger or disempower you — one that names the safety that you possess in this world because of your identity, and asks for you to acknowledge it.

A simple acknowledgment. And you accuse us of asking for too much, of being too much.

But this was never about me. I’ve held your hand. I’ve held this space for you on more than one occasion, applauding your good intentions and giving you the benefit of the doubt. This was never about what I did and didn’t say, how I did or didn’t say it — I know this because I’ve coated it in honey for you and you still said it was bitter.

When it comes to privilege, it’s almost always about comfort. Your comfort. And until you’re willing to sit with that discomfort, my approach and my labor are irrelevant at best. I could hand it to you made-to-order, to every specification, and it still wouldn’t be enough. If you’re not ready to be made uncomfortable, not just once but many times over, you were never going to be my “ally” in the first place.

And to be clear, I’m not here to make you feel comfortable.

My work, first and foremost, has been giving folks in my community resources to help them survive — whether it’s a tool to start a conversation, or the affirmation they need to feel a little more whole in a world determined to irreparably fracture them. Even when I’m taking the time to teach cis folks, I’m doing it because I want trans people to live in a world where we don’t need to have these conversations anymore.

You emailed, and you tweeted, and you commented, determined to make it about you and what I apparently owed you. You told me that I was unkind, and that I’d never get allies if I didn’t cater to you.

That article had sugar on top and ice cream in the middle, and you said it had a bad aftertaste.

Instead of sitting with those feelings, wondering how you could process in a way that would translate to meaningful action, you rejected everything out of hand. You unloaded your feelings and fragility onto me, demanding that I take it all back. You lashed out, as if to say, “If I have to feel uncomfortable for even a minute, I’m not interested in the pain and fear that you experience every minute of every day.”

I’m not going to claim that I’ve never been defensive, uncomfortable, fragile. I’ve encountered my own learning curve around my privileges, particularly around race, class, and education. But I’ve learned (and oh-so-generously spelled out for you in this article about call-outs) that navigating this graciously is part and parcel of being a decent human being.

Cis folks, I’ve never asked you to be perfect. I know better than anyone that when we’re trying to unlearn all this toxic shit, it takes time and intention. Marginalized folks have been saying ad freaking nauseam that showing up for us and doing the work is a process, not a destination or a title that you earn after you collect enough cookies.

(The concept of “ally” itself is dubious at best. Bless Indigenous Action Media for this article about the “ally industrial complex” and being accomplices rather than allies, some further reading if this conversation has miraculously sparked your interest/you haven’t angrily tweeted me already).

But when I hand you my labor and my heart on a silver platter, and your instinct is to withhold your Very Precious Allyship™ (as if trans folks can’t get on without you — talk about self-important), the problem isn’t with me. It’s with you. 

The amount of labor (emotional, intellectual) that goes into directly engaging with attitudes and people that dehumanize us is, in itself, far deeper and more difficult than any momentary discomfort you experience when a trans person asks you to do better.

And your inability to honor that labor tells me that my approach here isn’t the problem. It was never the problem. Your unwillingness to engage in conversations that don’t flatter or comfort you is. And if that’s your idea of allyship, you can keep it. I won’t miss it.

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Let’s Talk About Space, Privilege, and Priorities

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The last few years have been a total whirlwind for me. As Let’s Queer Things Up just celebrated its third birthday (yay!), I’ve been reflecting a lot about the work that I do, the spaces I do that work in, and the intentionality behind what I’m doing. I want to shed a little light on the big picture here, as well as my vision for this platform (and the work I do outside of it) moving forward.

LQTU started as a personal blog. I wanted to carve out a small space for myself to share my experiences as a transgender, non-binary, gay, and mentally ill person. Having grown up in the age of FreeWebs and LiveJournal, my idea for this space was finding validation as a person whose lived experiences were seldom seen or acknowledged, and to find community in that process.

I didn’t expect that the blog would go viral. And I definitely didn’t expect that, to date, we would have a Facebook community of over 22,000 people. I didn’t know I would have the amazing opportunities that I do now, writing for many social justice platforms, being published in books and anthologies, and being able to share my journey with some amazing folks out there.

I didn’t recognize my own power. And most of all, what I didn’t know going into this was the kind of responsibility that would fall on my shoulders when I became so visible in the community and beyond it.

Lately, folks have reached out to challenge me and ask how I’m making use of that responsibility. Particularly, as a person with privileges around race, class, and education (to name a few), folks in the community have rightfully pushed back to ask me what kind of intention I’m putting into what I do. So I want to share some of that intention — especially because when you encounter a piece of mine on the internet, the context around it is not apparent.

It’s also my hope that this inspires my other privileged queer content creators to join me in putting some serious thought into how they take up space. Because if we’re not doing this work mindfully, we have no business doing it.

First off, I want to define my spaces. Let’s Queer Things Up (the website you’re currently perusing!) is still a personal blog. For a short time, we sought out guest contributors to bring in more diverse perspectives — but I quickly decided that I couldn’t justify not paying marginalized contributors for their labor. Social capital rarely translates to financial capital; this left me in a difficult position of not wanting to center my privileges, but also not wanting to speak on behalf of marginalized folks.

This is the predicament, I think, for many marginalized writers. Many of us have privilege in some form or another, and we want to share our experiences, but also don’t want to center our experiences. This is not an easy thing to navigate. Staying in your lane is central to social justice work — and it requires constant self-reflection and unlearning. This is a process that has no finite ending point; it is constant work, and work that I’m still doing.

Which is a big reason why the Facebook community was originally built. It actually has a much farther reach and significantly more engagement than the blog itself (in other words, more folks participate there than on this site), which meant I could boost the signal on important work that other folks in the community are doing. I opened up the Facebook community as a way to challenge my readers to consider perspectives other than my own.

I maintained this blog separately, then, as a space to get to know me and to process my experiences. Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out how to do this responsibly — and I’ve been in dialogue with numerous marginalized bloggers, in conversation about the ethics of blogging in social justice spaces, navigating power, privilege, and space.

Our personal experiences do not exist outside of current systems. So how can we speak for ourselves without reinforcing those existing power dynamics? Is that even possible to do effectively? And how, exactly?

There aren’t easy answers to this. Anyone could look at anything someone writes and ask why they haven’t covered every possible perspective or marginalization. The question then becomes, “How can I write this, for myself and for my community, but still ensure that I’m not erasing other folks and also not speaking over or for them?”

This has been a question I’ve been grappling with throughout my career, especially as I become more and more visible in this work.

Until I feel confident in my answer (who knows when that will be), I’ve pulled back from blogging quite a bit. I personally decided to step back and publish less here, and focus my work on other platforms like Everyday Feminism, The Establishment, and Rewire, where my work was edited by folks who are firmly committed to being as intersectional as possible — and called me on my shit when it didn’t measure up. That has been a learning process far more valuable than what I’ve gained by blogging solo.

If you’re familiar with my work, you’ll notice a big shift in what I’ve written recently as I continue to tangle with these questions.

This piece at The Establishment, for example, exemplifies the direction my writing has ultimately taken — divulging personal experience while also endeavoring to acknowledge how that perspective is situated in larger systems of oppression. I’ve also tried to shift more into a memoir/prose-poetry style at times, like this piece at Unapologetic Feminism, which I believe helps create more defined boundaries about what I can and can’t speak to.

Many of you know this, but I also began working as an editor. My belief was that I could use my expertise to help uplift other marginalized writers, and advocate for opportunities and access. Even in that work, there’s always the question of space. There will always be the question of space.

So in the last year, I have strictly worked with platforms that were founded and run by a QTPoC-majority (Everyday Feminism and RESIST specifically), doing this because I believe that no platform that is centering marginalized folks should have a privileged majority. These platforms had a firm commitment to not diminishing the voices of oppressed folks — and that’s why I specifically sought out work with these folks.

Writers like myself who have visibility are in the unique and difficult position of publicly evolving. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that when I started writing, I didn’t do so with a lot of intention or consideration of the big picture. I think if you find writing online to be easy, you’re probably not putting enough thought behind how you’re doing it.

In the last few months especially, people have asked me about my “big picture” — what it looks like, who I show up for, and how I show up in the world.

And I love these questions. I love them because they challenge me to align my actions with my values. I love them because I know it comes from a place of folks believing in my capacity to do shit and do it right. I love these questions because we should be asking everyone with social capital to be thoughtful about how they’re leveraging it, especially if they’re privileged in some way.

More than anything, folks have asked me how I, as a white trans person, am showing up for queer and trans folks of color. I’ve answered these questions privately, sometimes posting on Facebook to address it publicly, but I haven’t written about it here until now — in part because I wanted to have a more cohesive plan moving forward instead of just publishing a list of empty promises, and in part because I was unsure of how to have this conversation in a way that didn’t position me as a Super Duper Great Anti-Racist Ally™.

Someone recently and rightfully pointed out to me that by quietly sharing articles by QTPoC, occasionally posting on the Facebook community about race, calling folks out here and there, and not making my stance crystal clear here on the blog for folks to access, I’ve ended up creating a lot of silence and complacency around this. Folks only see glimpses of what I stand for, rather than knowing without a doubt what I stand for and what actions I’m taking.

Like many white queers, at times I wind up showing up when it’s convenient, rather than really thinking through what I’m doing and making sure it’s an integral and consistent part of the work, instead of something I duck in and out of.

And that’s why I’m opening up this conversation — I want to engage with my readership and my community, and think through the ways in which I can be more intentional about supporting marginalized folks, and especially QTPoC who have done so much to support this work that I do.

Let’s talk about the concrete stuff first.

Right now, I’ve got my sights set on the Facebook community, because it’s by far the most visible. Specifically, I’m putting together a small team to take on a larger role in managing the community.

There’s so much potential to utilize this space to bring greater visibility to shit that really matters, and so I’m inviting folks to shape the community into a more radical reflection that extends beyond my limited perspective. I’m tapping into the funds from my Patreon to start making this happen, to ensure that these folks will receive some kind of compensation, as well as using my own funds to do this.

To be clear, I’m not asking these folks to do the emotional labor of moderating; I’m asking them to curate and share resources that they think are important, as well as finding ways to create better systems of accountability to ensure that I’m prioritizing those most marginalized in my community. I’m creating shared access to an audience that, previously, I was the only one managing. In this way, the space can begin to decenter my perspective and start to broaden the issues that we cover and the voices we amplify.

Additionally, I’m working on putting my support behind specific platforms. This is in the form of donations (in particular, I’ve recently shifted some of my Patreon donations to RaceBaitR and Rest for Resistance, which I highly encourage folks to donate directly to). While I don’t have a lot of financial capital right now, once I secure full-time work, all of my Patreon funds will shift towards supporting other platforms doing this work, particular folks at the intersections of anti-Blackness and queerness.

I’ve also reached out to different organizations and Facebook communities to learn how I can best support them. Right now, my focus is directly promoting their content and converting traffic to them, boosting the signal on this vital work — especially for pages and activists who have a much smaller following than I do.

(If you have suggestions about activists, communities, or online platforms I should be supporting, please tweet me @SamDylanFinch!)

I’ll also keep up with the personal ethics I’ve set for myself. I won’t be speaking on panels that do not have a POC-majority, just as I won’t work for organizations or write for platforms that do not have an explicit (and proven) commitment to those most marginalized. I will explicitly challenge and name organizations and platforms that continue to keep those most marginalized at the bottom rungs of the ladder rather than represented at all levels and in all roles.

I will continue to pass along speaking engagements, writing gigs, and other opportunities that I have to folks who traditionally don’t have access to these things. I will share my professional relationships and expertise to help more and more marginalized writers access better opportunities. And I will only write on topics which I have lived experience of, continuing to be as thoughtful as possible about how I frame those pieces.

And I’ll be listening — with an open inbox and an open mind — to the feedback that I get, recognizing that I will mess up, and that I’m responsible for doing the labor to make it right.

I know a lot of writers who tell me that they didn’t ask to be visible, and therefore they aren’t responsible for how they use that visibility. I disagree with that completely. I realize that navigating this can be messy and difficult, and involves a lot of growing pains, but I think anyone who has access to social capital has an ethical obligation to think critically about how they’re using it.

And in the end, that’s why I’m opening up a dialogue with my readers about this — particularly because from the beginning, I’ve noticed a lot of privileged white queers in my community that put my work on a pedestal, while making no effort to seek out other voices — like queer and trans folks of color, working class queers, undocumented queers, fat queers — because they conflate queerness with whiteness, with economic privilege, with thinness, with a particular privileged and disconnected experience of queerness as if our queerness makes us all the same (intersectionality, anyone?).

I know what that looks like in action, too, because as I’ve navigated these public spaces, I’ve seen myself reinforce that same idea when I’m not being purposeful about how I do the work — that the “queer community” I write to is somehow a reflection of myself, rather than making a sincere effort to expand and diversify perspectives rather than centering my own. I am constantly undoing this assumption as it comes to the surface in my own work.

I know that I have to follow up and do the work now. I’m hoping that this will act as an impetus for other folks, especially white queer content creators like myself, to also step up and be publicly and explicitly accountable for how they inhabit spaces online and who they’re showing up for (and most importantly, who they aren’t).

I know this work is messy, and I know it requires that we not just sit in our discomfort, but fully inhabit it and peel it back layer-by-layer. I know it can reveal some really uncomfortable truths about ourselves — believe me, in my last few years of doing this, I’ve seen some really ugly truths about myself. The unlearning never stops. The work never ends.

But that’s because oppression and injustice doesn’t take a break, either — and you can choose to let it be background noise and tune it out, as so many folks often do, or you can tune in and fully acquaint yourself with it, choosing to do what’s right rather than what’s comfortable. You always have a choice, which is the most empowering and simultaneously horrifying thing about privilege; you have a choice that other marginalized folks never do.

That in mind, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my choices. I want to invite other privileged folks in social justice spaces, especially those with visibility or access to resources, to consider their choices, too. Name your values. Examine your actions. Parse out the discrepancies.

And I want to invite my readership, particularly those furthest at the margins who have the energy and desire to engage, into a larger conversation about the community we’re building together. How can I show up for you? How can I make you feel seen?

Lastly, and most important of all, I want to thank the folks who continue to challenge me to think critically about how I move through the world. That labor is a gift — one that I wasn’t owed — and your belief in me and my capacity to do good and important work is something that I don’t take for granted.

I’m grateful to have the opportunity to take this thing that I’ve built these past few years and use it in just, equitable, and liberating ways. And I’m appreciative of the folks who stand behind me and cheer me on as I do it — but to do this work ethically, I know that my place in this work is not at the forefront.

There’s a place for everyone in this movement. But we have to carefully consider where, exactly, that place is, knowing when to step up and went to step aside. I’m grateful to finally be seen. But not if it obscures everyone else.

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