Sex work has always been relevant to queer and trans communities, both as a livelihood option and as an issue that critically informs the space between social and political margins, and the centralities of queer and trans communities. The vital set of issues raised by the intersections of sex worker and queer populations has not … Read more
We’re talking access to meaningful and fairly compensated work, quality education and healthcare, substantive participation in the political process, quality access to mobility … “Je me plains au monde:” “I stand in complaint before the world.” That’s my Left. I stand in complaint on all of these issues.—Achebe Powell We’re all this wild bundle and … Read more
Jay Toole, director of the Shelter Project at Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ), hero in the queer community, and legend in the NYC homeless shelter system, knows more about queer homelessness than anyone else in the city, and probably the country. Of medium height and build; hair sheared short to reveal the shape of her … Read more
Introduction: A Story It was summertime and we were having a get-together with my father’s family out in back of my grandfather’s farmhouse in southern Maryland. I was very young and sitting on my uncle’s lap and enjoying all of the activity, especially the male attention I was getting from my uncles. I coyly asked … Read more
Albelda, Randy, M.V. Lee Badgett, Alyssa Schneebaum, and Gary J. Gates. Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community. The Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles, 2009. “Statement: For All The Ways They Say We Are, No One Is Illegal” (PDF). The Audre Lorde Project, 2006. Blum, Ricky, Joseph DeFilippis, and Barbara … Read more
“Just because there’s this umbrella, LGBT, we’re all grouped together.But guess what? Someone poked a hole in the umbrella and the girls are still getting wet.”—Miss Major I first met Miss Major socially in 2005 at the apartment of a mutual friend in the Bay Area; her then boyfriend, 30 years her junior, was at … Read more
A few weeks after September 11, 2001, I went with my ex-lover to register as domestic partners with the city of New York. We had never registered our relationship with any state agency during the 17 years that we had actually been partners. But we changed our minds nearly a year after we broke up, … Read more
This article is adapted from a keynote speech delivered at the national conference of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women in January 2007. Longing is a powerful feeling. It aches. It pangs. It rolls. It roils. It changes us. This longing is where I want to start because all of us have felt longing for … Read more
Some of the most confrontational contemporary disability politics seem closely related to a range of queer activisms from the past few decades. Of course, many self-identified “crips”—a term increasingly embraced across the spectrum of disability, not solely by those with mobility impairments—also identify as queer. Many others would insist that the defiant reclaiming and reinvention … Read more
Enhancing the Lives of LGBTQ Older Adults in the Twenty-First Century Who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning elders? And why does it matter? The questions of people who make up the aging demographic in this country, and who will define the contours, identities, and needs of elders in the twenty-first century, are still … Read more
