The 250-Year-Old “Fad”: The Public Universal Friend and Gender Nonconformity Then and Now

1776 was a chaotic year: so hectic that barely anyone noticed that a young woman named Jemima Wilkinson lay dying. The person who awoke the next morning bore a different name and a different purpose: The Public Universal Friend was born.

Queer Next Up: Nathanaìl Evan Linardìs

Nathanaìl Evan Linardìs (he/him) is a transgender artist based in Athens, Greece. His work is primarily self-reflective and includes painting, music and poetry.

Is “Nonbinary” Being Turned Into a Third Gender?

Men love sports. Women love makeup. Nonbinary people love mushrooms, frogs, assigned female at birth (AFAB) thin white bodies in masculine clothing, short hair and they/them pronouns. When people don’t know any nonbinary people in real life, they don’t even question the accuracy of these representations; the internet and media decide the image of the nonbinary community.

parajitos

A poem about the way our institutions and some people fail to protect young trans people and profit off their deaths in different ways, while the people who loved them are left to deal with the actual grief. 

UAW Strike at UCLA: In Photos

Academic workers across the University of California have been on strike since last Monday (Nov. 14). Here is their fight so far documented in photos.

Trans Awareness Week 2022: Our Experiences

In honor of Trans Awareness Week, we asked our staff to share their experiences with being a part of the trans/nonbinary community.

Queer Next Up: ggggrimes

ggggrimes (they/he/she) is a Black non-binary artist from the Bronx, NY. Their work portrays queer people of color living beautiful, colorful, and honest lives, with a focus on trans people.

National Center for Transgender Equality Announces Launch Date for 2022 U.S. Trans Survey

The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) recently announced that the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey (also known as the USTS) is set to launch on October 19th.

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.