I experienced homophobia within my first two weeks at UCLA — a surprise considering Chancellor Gene Block deemed UCLA no place for discrimination in his new undergraduate student welcome speech.
Hair: Chronicling My Journey to Queer Joy
The hardest part about being a Brown person who was socialized as a girl was enduring the constant jabs about my hair. I hit puberty at 9, which meant that there were years and years of constant insecurity about my hair. It was too much, too messy, and there was always hair in all the wrong places. The hair on my head was beautiful, thick, and long, but the hair on my body was ugly, thick, and wrong. As a Brown person, my facial and body hair were always under scrutiny, especially because my hair grew at faster rates (and was much thicker) than my other peers. I was tormented for my Frida Kahlo-like brows, for my arms that looked like a werewolf’s, for my body not being up to par with white, cishet beauty standards. One time, my aunt cruelly joked that she was going to gift me money for laser hair removal because the hair on my arms was too much for her.
Femininity in the Queer Community: An Analysis of Too Femme To Fit (Winter 2002)
Graphic by Christopher Ikonomou (Xe/He) *This article is a modern analysis of the themes and content of “Too Femme To Fit“ (Winter 2002), the ninth installment of our From The Archive series.* “If your presence disturbs me, I have the responsibility…
Book Review: Keeping You A Secret by Julie Ann Peters
The first time I ever saw Julie Ann Peters’ Keeping You a Secret was at the foot of my mom’s bed, face up and daunting. The image on the cover might have inspired less wariness if my mother hadn’t already informed me of the contents of the book, because I knew the image was not simply indicative of two female characters. It was indicative of two female characters in love.
“Feminicity”
So I had gotten myself a new boyfriend. The perfect scenario all girls dream of: some ridiculously hot guy randomly deciding to commit on the first date. What more could I ask for? Terence was so great, he even liked…
Queer Your Reading List: The Well of Loneliness
Women getting it on. With each other.
Even today, this premise strikes a chord with audiences. Imagine in 1928, when The Well of Loneliness was first published in England and America. Obscenity trials tried to ban the novel. Still the book sold 100,000 copies in its first year on the shelves. The Well was one of the first lesbian novels ever published, written by Radclyffe Hall, an English author and gay lady. The novel tells the story of Stephen Gordon, an English woman living at the turn of the century discovering and coming to terms with her sexuality.
8 Gay Cartoons You Grew Up With (and Always Knew About)
Photo via Pixabay So we had the ladies last week, now it’s the guys’ turn. Call me biased but, while composing the girls’ list was fun from beginning to end, this list made me feel… nostalgic. All these guys mean…
8 Lesbian Cartoons You Grew Up With (But Never Realized)
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like there weren’t very many queer role models when we were growing up–at least, not very many obvious ones. Many of my contemporaries would recall feeling as children that there was no one…
A Skirt Does Not Equal Damsel in Distress
The words “feminism” and “femininity” are only a few letters away from the same. Some people, however, force these two words to live in feuding worlds, as if someone cannot be feminine and a feminist, a person who truly believes in gender equality. This is, first of all, completely untrue, and second of all, the fact that so many people insist that the concepts of femininity and feminism need to be spread apart is actually a lingering sexist view in today’s society.
