Read this Village Voice cover story this morning and got my life + became a fan. Specifically here:

“Quattlebaum says he hates … the field of queer studies along with it. ‘I have a lot of problems with the academic queer community because it’s a community that exists completely removed from reality,’ he says. ‘Those kids who are selling their bodies on the West Side Highway, on Christopher Street, they don’t even know what the fuck queer theory is.’”

Hence our need to be rooted in grassroots, in the streets, in solidarity with those who are “marginalized.” I’m done with folks and organizations speaking our names and bodies in theory, in death, in stats. Yet ignoring the same folks they discuss in theory without ever knowing us, without ever trying to engage, without ever “outreaching,” without ever lending the stage and resources to us. 

As a trans woman of color - no matter what space I enter - I have one stilletoed foot on the street. Always.

I’m tired of being erased from history, pretending that trans women and people of brown/black/red/yellow/etc skins do not matter, don’t have brains and stories and substance and identities and loves and lives that should be elevated. 

This erasure is violent and dangerous and needs to change. We as a LGBTQIA community can not let this just go on. We can’t take crumbs and say, “Well they covered us, right? Look they have Santiago Cortes in the piece + he mentions a drag queen in his Ivy League essays!” No, we must say:

“Cover us in all our glorious intersections and diversities or LEAVE US ALONE. We’ll tell our own stories.”

Taking the stage at the GLAAD Media Awards in New York.

1500 people in the audience, two trans sisters in solidarity on stage. This was the moment that validated all the good and bad decisions I made in my short life. Laverne Cox is a woman I’m proud to call a friend and sister.