pride month
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It's All Love: Sorry, Met Gala, the Love Ball Is the Invite We Really Want to Score
The category is: LOVE. There’s camp, and then there’s camp, honey—and, as evidenced by this year’s Met Gala, not everyone gets it. But as Lena Waithe pointed out that night, the LGBTQ community has always gotten it—in fact, she maintains that black drag queens and the ballroom culture they and their brown counterparts birthed is…
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Pose Stars Reflect on the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion
“Stonewall reminds us that it’s about the people” – Billy Porter text Despite what various companies try to tell (or sell) you during June, Pride month is about acknowledging and celebrating the legacy of the LGBTQIA+ community. Despite the current commercialization of Pride, all hope is not lost. In fact, in recent years, the black…
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We Dream a World: Black & Queer in Milwaukee
On any given day, my partner, Lynnae* and I will be driving, engaged in our usual griping at the utterly reckless ways some Milwaukee drivers shit on safety laws while behind the wheel. It’s become a game of sorts; I’m usually the one who points out the utter disregard for red lights and how cars…
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Like a Mother: Poet Staceyann Chin Chronicles Her Queer and Challenging Path to Parenthood in Motherstruck!
The first time I heard Staceyann Chin perform, it was (at the risk of dating myself) during the early aughts Broadway run of Def Poetry Jam, where the poet and activist joined a diverse crew of talents onstage at New York City’s Longacre Theatre for nearly 200 performances, before the show closed in 2003. Even…
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Over the Rainbow: This Pride Month, Kehlani and Rico Nasty Debut Gender and Sex-Positive Clothing Collections
This is what we call “music with a message.” For Pride Month 2019, two of the music industry’s buzzier talents decided to say it with their chests: love is love, and gender is…whatever you want it to be. Hip-hop and R&B entertainers Kehlani and Rico Nasty each debuted clothing collections this week, and both are…
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Your Ignorance Is Showing If You Believe in a 'Gay Agenda'
Same-gender-loving men have been accused of trying to ruin the black family, and that’s a black-ass lie. Men who are part of the LGBTQ+ community are concerned with having the right to merely exist and to be treated as equals. As for an agenda? We do not, nor have we ever, had the time to…
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Nigel Shelby’s Mother Says the School System Failed Her Child
Nigel Shelby, the 15-year-old who died by suicide in Alabama after allegedly being bullied for living his truth, was taken from us too soon. Nigel will never know love, heartbreak, or one day meet his chosen family who would affirm him and make him feel like he had a place in this world. Nigel’s death…
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You Are Not Entitled To Know Someone’s Sexuality
Before I did a remix album and solidified myself as being well-versed in the tops on the charts, I used to be a confused little boy who would try and convince himself that he liked women. Society told me that I was supposed to be straight, so that’s what I attempted to do. Needless to…
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With 37 Covers, New York Magazine Celebrates the Timeless, Transformative World of Drag
If you weren’t already aware, here’s some tea worth spilling: Pop culture owes a great debt to drag culture. From our slang to the now-ubiquitous “full-face beat” of beauty influencer culture, drag queens have long been trailblazers in a realm few are brave enough to don six-inch heels and tread. But this week, New York…
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I Kept Hearing My Masculinity Was Under Attack by 'The Gay Agenda,' So I Went to Pride to Test This Theory
On June 11, 2016, Omar Mateen—armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle, a 9mm Glock and an insatiable disregard for human life—destroyed 49 innocent lives while causing irreparable harm and suffering to 53 others. The attack has lived on in infamy as the Orlando Nightclub Shooting, site of the deadliest act of violence carried out against…