62 Search results for "cisgender"

The stories of our struggles are not for white people to consume in an effort to ‘do better’
By Arielle Iniko Newton Last weekend, my six roommates and I were interviewing potential roommates to fill an unoccupied room in the social justice-oriented home we share. One of the prospects was a white, cisgender, heterosexual man. Upon interviewing him we quickly learned that he did not possess a commitment to dismantling whiteness that we […]
10 Black AF things to watch/read/listen to before ‘Black Panther’ drops
*A note from our Deputy Editor: The themes at Black Youth Project during the month of February are Black Joy and Black Love. It is also Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. We are interested in publishing works that address these topics, the connections thereof, and the things surrounding them* By Law Ware Marvel’s Black Panther […]
It’s not just straight men: We all have to reckon with internalized femmephobia in the wake of #MeToo
By Maximillian Matthews “Don’t hit me up if you are fem… no soft shit.” “No offense to you but NO FEM, soft, questionable dudes etc. MASC dudes only!!!” “Please be masc. I’m not into feminine dudes at all. Carry your purse to the next dude’s house.” If you’re reading this, it’s too late. We have […]
The Black barbershop is both toxic and intimate for cishet Black men
by Da’Shaun Harrison Disclaimer: this piece was written with the intent to create a productive dialogue around intimacy and attraction. It is not to say that the connection between barber and client is inherently sexual, but rather that the erotic/intimacy/attraction operate on a spectrum.
He’s gotta stop it: A Black, polyamorous femme on the Netflix “She’s Gotta Have It” reboot
by Veronica Morris Moore Spike Lee’s 2017 reboot of “She’s Gotta Have It” is mediocre, and that’s being generous. In the age of Black television like Issa Rae’s Insecure coupled with our collective endeavor to #StayWoke, Spike Lee seemingly understood that he had to “wake up” Nola Darling if the SGHI Netflix series was going […]
How suffocating ideas of masculinity took the precious life of Giovanni Melton
by Maximillian Matthews I wonder when my late father first observed the singularity of my gender performance. Perhaps he saw it when he took me to my first concert during Janet Jackson’s 1993 Janet tour, and noticed how I knew every word she sang on the stage. He may have seen it when he observed […]
Learning to love myself as a Black queer man in a Black Greek Letter Organization
By George M. Johnson There is no such thing as Blackness that doesn’t encompass Queerness, despite the attempts from toxic masculinity and those willing to protect its image at all costs to have you believe otherwise. This cost is paid in the form of transgender people murdered, young boys killed by their fathers over their […]
We need to stop telling Black children to “sit down and shut up”
by Arnetta Randall Recently, I watched a live stream of a conversation between the Former First Lady, Michelle Obama and the First Lady of television, Shonda Rhimes. I found it simply amazing. One of the moments that resonated with me the most was when Michelle spoke about how her parents listened to her as a […]
Netflix’s Marsha P. Johnson film rocked by allegations of uncredited use of Black trans woman’s work
Trans and non-binary people, especially those of color and who identify as Black, increasingly experience societal visibility, respect and fame. People increasingly recognize that every human being does not identify as a cisgender woman or a man and present in traditional ways relative those identities. At the same time that average folks outside of trans […]
Why Black gender conversations will always fail unless we center Black children
“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up […] Each of us must find our work and do it.” — Audre Lorde I am hurting. On Saturday, as I walked through a Black gay club, a guy crossing my path grabbed between my legs. He barely reacted as […]
I Will Tell If You Don’t: HBCUs, Gender, and Sexual Violence
By Tayler J. Mathews Illustration by Jaid Mathews “We pledge ourselves to continue to speak out in defense of one another, in defense of the African American community and against those who are hostile to social justice no matter what color they are. No one will speak for us but ourselves.” —African American Women […]
“Representation matters,” but not more than everything else
I went to film school chasing a dream of telling my story to a world that always seemed not to know what to do with queer Black bois like me. A dream of forcing the world to know. But it was just a dream. At film school, I quickly learned that while you may be […]