These days, sometimes all I can do is change my sheets.Īt times, I feel moved by people thanking me for the work I do. Back then, I thought I would come out of the closet, become an activist and change the world. Five years later, it seems like the same cause that I fought so hard for served me divorce papers every year, and their rationale for calling it quits was always that I’ve changed.Īnd that’s not completely untrue. When I first entered the advocacy space at 19, I joked that I was married to the cause. When I assert my boundaries as an organizer, it confuses people, because we have been told by society that we must always be self-sacrificing. I often find myself frustrated because I am not allowed to have an “off” button.
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Other times, people look to me and other femmes to teach them how to be inclusive, how to be an ally or how to understand queer terms and phrases. Sometimes, it’s because I am open and willing to engage. There have been very few times when I was able to navigate spaces without engaging in any community work. While recognition is an important step, Black and Brown queer femmes in your community today should be appreciated, valued, uplifted and supported in spaces as well. Reinventing the flag felt necessary, and it especially pulled on our heartstrings that year, as we were knee-deep in the pandemic and news outlets were offering little or no coverage of the alarmingly high rate of trans and gender-nonconforming people who were murdered in 2020. The flag’s intention was not just to recognize the diversity in our community, but also to pay homage to those Black and Brown femmes who led resistance movements. In 2020, there was a widespread circulation of images of the Progress Pride flag that artist Daniel Quasar developed in 2018. It’s clear there should be a change in the way we acknowledge queer femmes in this space, but acknowledgement without action and accountability is a dead-end street. Over time, organizers and community members have found ways to uplift the femmes from the past who played important roles in equality movements.
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Marsha Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy were all prominent activists whose protests, riots and advocacy work, during and after the Stonewall Riots, led to the creation of many LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and organizations that still exist today. But they haven’t been publicly recognized as such in mainstream queer media, and they certainly haven’t been supported or uplifted like they deserve.
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Throughout history, Black and brown queer femmes have been the backbone of LGBTQ+ equality movements.
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The feelings I have about this aren’t new. While being loved and cared for is important, it’s also important to understand that centering someone’s identity around what they do for others can be complicated. I was more so drained from the broken record that plays in both my relationships and my community organizing work: that I was created to do everything for everyone at all times. I wasn’t necessarily offended that people have perceived me as someone who can take care of others and take care of them well. The sentiment seemed harmless, but being Black, queer and femme means you battle the “angry Black woman” trope by day and the “mammy” caricature by night, with little or no space to exist outside of these roles.
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Instead, I poured myself more wine and drank as if it weren’t a weekday. I glanced up from where I was sitting and debated whether I was going to end the night in a slew of tipsy text-message exchanges reminding all my past lovers and friends that I’m nonbinary.