Throughout the past century, media that portrays and represents queerness and queer relationships have changed for the better. When looking at earlier 20th-century queer works, the tone is rather drab, with an understanding that queerness isn’t allowed to be something that is happy or something that leads to happy ends.
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Do Progressive High Schools Facilitate Queer Joy?
In the fall, I discussed how internalized homophobia produced complicated feelings about my old middle school’s increasingly progressive attitudes towards queer identities and rising numbers of “out” queer students. I unpacked my slight resentment toward those queer students, who seem to have an easier time exploring their queer identities out in the open since they exist in a less oppressive environment.
Letter From The Editor: On Queer Joy (Spring 2022)
Dear Reader, I would first like to introduce myself. My name is Christopher and I am OutWrite Newsmagazine’s resident trans/(gender)queer Marfanoid and now Editor-in-Chief. I am finishing up my third year as a part of the OutWrite family and UCLA community, having grown from a hopeful, L-G-B-T, physically exhausted pure Mathematics major to the proud queercrip and rejected art student studying Communication and Disability Studies, who led two of the biggest disability rights actions in the University of California’s history. It’s been an interesting few years, and our collective isolation has allowed me plenty of time to reflect.
Henry and The Fox
Illustrated by Cole Lopez (They/Them) This comic was originally published in our Winter 2022 Volume 2 print issue “Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden.“
i hate it that you know me
magician you don’t listen
all your tricks have worked on me
I’m in a hundred million pieces and we last spoke in my dreams
please lead me back inside the gardens where our lives and love have peaked
piper&jenny
Jenny and I met in the early days of middle school, when everyone was all acne and gangly legs, and got on like a gasoline-soaked house gets on with a match. Frankly, it was a nightmare for our parents. My mom, who I know had been quietly worrying about my ability to make friends, was suddenly unable to enter a shared space in our house without me bombarding her with requests to go to Jenny’s house, stories of something funny that Jenny had said at school today, of Jenny’s new puppy that she got last week.
Tied Too Tight
Illustrated by Steph Liu (She/Her) This comic was originally published in our Winter 2022 Volume 2 print issue “Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden.“
La Rousse
Illustrated by Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He) This piece was originally published in our Winter 2022 Volume 2 print issue “Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden.“ Since checking into work that morning, Lynn had done little besides load up the popcorn machine…
Fragile Dandelions
Photo by Zoë Collins This piece was originally published in our Winter 2022 Volume 2 print issue “Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden.“ I love you. The first time I said it, my hands shook, my heart beating as fast…
Love Conquers All
Illustrated by Chrys Marr (She/They) This illustration was originally published in our Winter 2022 Volume 2 print issue “Wanting: A Queer Beauty & Burden.“