i just spent two hours researching every MP in the north east to see if they're trans supportive or not and get exact quotes.
i'm taking a stack of postcards to durham pride tomorrow (specifically the community led alt pride event held separately from the ticketed corporate pride) so that people can write to their MP, either asking them to support their trans constituents or thanking them for already doing so, and i wanted to include every possibility within reason and give people a heads-up on where their MP stands.
i really hope people actually take the time to write so that my time was worth it, i even have cupcakes and stickers as bribes incentives.
Local comics retailer Siena Fallon delves into how comics shaped her LGBTQ identity and how she makes sure others can have the same experience, but with fewer impediments, in Ultimate Comics stores.
I don’t remember the first time I walked into a comic shop. It should have been a monumental moment in my life, considering that I now help run three shops in the Triangle and help put on three comic-book conventions in North Carolina. But the truth is, because I grew up around comics, I failed to file away that memory as important.
My dad devoured comics as a child. Then, like everyone else, he started collecting again in the ‘90s. My childhood was filled with days spent digging through the huge plastic bins tucked away in his closet, reading and rereading every issue he had.
But despite their presence in my life, comics didn’t feel wholly mine. I always tied them to my dad. He was the coolest person I knew, and to me, comics were one of the secrets to becoming just as cool one day. Trips to the comic shop were mainly an excuse for us to connect.
Then junior high hit. I didn’t know it yet, but I was experiencing my first crush on a girl. She was in all my classes, super smart, and I had no idea why, but I desperately wanted to be her friend. When we found out we both liked comics, a friendship was born.
The only problem? She was a DC fan, and I grew up in a strict Marvel-only household. I felt completely out of my depth. I went straight to my public library and borrowed the entirety of their DC graphic novel section. By the time I was through, I had read decades’ worth of Batman continuity, and came to two realizations: I loved comics, and I might be sort of gay.
I was fourteen and terrified. So I did what any nerdy teenager facing an Identity Crisis would do: I turned back to the library. I researched queerness like I could understand everything if I just read enough. Comics had been part of the initial revelation, so I tried to make them part of the solution to my newfound questions. Unsurprisingly, the library’s queer graphic novel selection was pretty sparse, consisting solely of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. It was time to journey back to the comic shop.
There were two local comic shops in my area. The first could best be described as the tomb of a very specific kind of hoarder. Comics littered every inch of the store, with no organization system known to man. There was no indie section, no one to ask for help.
The only thing I remember about the second shop was how uninterested the staff was in helping a teen with a bunch of questions. I asked for Brian K. Vaughan’s hit series Runaways, which featured a lesbian superhero, and they scoffed. It turned out comic shops were not the Meccas of cool that I thought they were, so I stayed away.
Then, in college, I found Chapel Hill Comics. The whole shop was an indie section. I practically lived there freshman year, spending my days wandering the stacks and talking comics with the staff. I hung around so much they eventually offered me a job. That was where I discovered Love and Rockets, Dykes to Watch Out For, Marvel’s Young Avengers, and other works that transformed my understanding of queerness. I came out, got a girlfriend, and above all kept reading comics.
After the unfortunate closing of Chapel Hill Comics, Alan Gill, the owner of Ultimate Comics, hired me to work at his shops, and I haven’t looked back. As operations manager, I help manage all our locations throughout the Triangle, and spend my days doing my favorite thing: talking comics. My goal has always been to make the shops the antithesis of the shops of my childhood. That means making them as inclusive as possible and working to carry a breadth of titles and genres.
Comics and queerness have always been intertwined in my life. I never want a kid looking for themselves in comics to come up empty handed, the way I had. At Ultimate Comics Cary, I’ve started building an LGBTQ section with a focus on a diverse selection for all age groups. Here’s what I’ve learned in five years as a retailer curating queer comics:
Having LGBTQ identified staff is probably the best and simplest way to have a great LGBTQ section. Queer staff members will be passionate about developing the section and will have suggestions on what to include. They’ll also be there to put the books in the hands of customers. Had any of those shops I visited as a kid had any queer staff, I know that I would have realized how important comics were to me at a much younger age.
It’s also important to remember that the LGBTQ community is not a monolith where one representation fits all. The queer community is made up of a wide array of people with different sexualities and gender identities, not to mention races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. When ordering for the stores, I try to make sure my selection is reflective of such a diverse community.
This means carrying books that feature diverse protagonists. It also means carrying comics that can be read by customers of all ages. Being a young queer kid can be a tough, alienating experience. Seeing people similar to you in stories can make a world of difference. The one title I managed to find at my public library, Fun Home, is an amazing graphic novel, but it wasn’t the book I needed at fourteen. Those were Lumberjanes and Young Avengers, comics I wasn’t able to get my hands on until college.
In truth, there isn’t necessarily a science in curating LGBTQ comics. The secret to success is caring enough to make the effort. It doesn’t hurt that we’re in a golden age of LGBTQ comics. There is finally a wide range of diverse stories being told. Jeremy Whitley, a comics writer and Durham native, is one example of a creator whose work is featured prominently in our LGBTQ section. His young-adult friendly titles Raven: The Pirate Princess and Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp both feature queer themes and diverse casts and are well-loved by the younger readers in our shops.
Comics are, at their simplest form, a storytelling medium. But to me, they’re much more than that. They’ve been vital in understanding who I am as a person, and without them, it’s unlikely I would have come to terms with my queer identity the way I have. At Ultimate Comics, I work to make sure all our stores can serve as a haven for anyone who walks through the doors, especially the queer kids who come in looking to find the stories that will help them better understand their own.
This story was adapted from an article in Selling Comics, a publication for retailers by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights censorship in comics.
had a pretty surprising but really nice interaction at work tonight, a 50-something year old guy who always comes in and just has one pint and usually barely talks was in an unusually chatty mood, and we ended up discussing upcoming things that will benefit from the nice weather, and i mentioned durham pride and he immediately perked up and went "it's HORRID what the council did! i'm so glad the miners raised money for it!" (a slight simplification but yeah) and then went on very well articulately about how important it might be to young queer people who feel alone to see they're not and how durham council members should feel ashamed of themselves to not want to foster a sense of belonging. go off icon!!! just a nice reminder that there are allies everywhere 🥰
in frustrating but unfortunately unsurprising news, Durham's new Reform county council made it just 102 days before pulling their funding and support for Durham Pride.
Reform leaders have cut council funding for County Durham’s Pride event.
you see the photo this article used with the headline? you see those signs in the right top corner, trans rights are human rights, bigotry will not save you, trans rights mother fucker? that's me and my friends. this feels very personal.
i kind of expected this at some point, after they took down the pride flag on their building just days before Pride 2025. aside from the obvious homophobia and transphobia, this is also just a really dumb move when it comes to tourism. you know, that thing that helps the local economy? tourists come to durham pride, and in general, most tourists want to visit cities that feel welcoming and kind, something the north is supposed to be known for. trying to kill a celebration of community doesn't really fit with that image.
Darren Grimes, the traitorous little coward, had this to say:
oh honey, the homophobes aren't going to spare you just because you threw the rest of us under the bus.
the "billboard for gender ideology and political activism" and "political street theatre" he's referring to is probably this:
because basically all the rest of the parade was smiling apolitical cis people. this was honestly a pretty tiny section of the parade, we got a lot of dirty looks, and then we skipped the ticketed corporate event to have a picnic in a park. i hardly think that's a big deal, but hey, if he's so wound up by it, that's probably a good sign that we did something right. i wonder if he'll let me use his quotes on my CV...
anyway, Durham Pride 2026 will probably still be going ahead, thanks to our old pals:
solidarity forever!! come along if you can, the tickets are flexible and all fairly cheap:
Durham Pride, in partnership with the Durham Miners Association and the TUC, will present a screening of ‘Pride’, a decisive moment of solid
i hope Darren Grimes knows and dreads that after the next county council election, he and his bigoted mates will all be gone, but we'll still be here.
At last weekend’s Pride parade, I was surrounded by generations of love—and reminders that I shouldn’t take it for granted.
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” — Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977
This weekend at the Pride: Durham, NC parade, I wore a sports bra and a tutu. I allowed a stranger in a pickup truck to paint a rainbow on my bare arm. I felt safe.
It should go without saying that a queer Black woman like myself in a city like Durham that has benefited from years of coalition-building work at the intersection of my own identity, and where our district attorney, Satana Deberry, is a proud Black lesbian, would feel safe, especially at a parade celebrating the lives of LGBTQ people. But I have to say it because, just a few years ago, Black queer activist and artist Laila Nur faced harassment and silencing at the Pride parade in Durham. It makes a difference to me that the LGBTQ Center of Durham, founded by Helena Cragg, a Black lesbian with an inclusive vision, is now organizing Pride. And this year, I allowed my whole self to show up, tutu, afro, chucks, and all.
Part of the reason that I felt so safe, so free, so Black, so proud, as I pranced along the parade route, was because I was surrounded by Black feminists, people who have dedicated their lives to the freedom of all people by focusing on Black women as an epicenter of possibility.
The Black Feminist Bookmobile project participated in the parade this year. In my hands, I held booklets that contained the statement quoted above designed by BFB co-founder Courtney Reid-Eaton. I handed them out to people in the crowd. In front of me in a borrowed Mercedes-Benz, behind me dancing in the bed of a pickup, and all alongside me reveling were participants in the Mobile Homecoming, an experiential archive my partner Sangodare and I created to amplify the generations of Queer Black Brilliance. Many of them had come into town for our three-day revival. I was surrounded by generations of love, and people who work every day to make my freedom, safety, and dignity more possible.
And yet.
While fully experiencing my freedom, I also could not take it for granted. As I drove to the parade, I passed a truck waving a Confederate flag. And as we adorned our float, we were asked to wait in the parking lot across the street from Shooters II, which has been publicly protested over allegations that the nightclub has been complicit in sexual assault.
On its marquis was a sign welcoming Duke Lacrosse alumni into town.
I remembered that the first time I marched the streets of Durham was in 2007, as part of the National Day of Truthtelling organized by UBUNTU, a women-of-color-survivor-led coalition to end gendered violence that emerged in response to the Duke Lacrosse scandal and the vilification of a Black N.C. Central student, mother, and sex worker. I stood in the back of (yet another) pickup truck in front of the rental house of the Duke Lacrosse team and read a poem about a world where all of us are safe and honored in our skin. A block later, a multitude of survivors carried colorful adinkra symbols and blared the song “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child as we danced along the wall of East Campus, the same wall where the Pride parade starts and ends.
And twelve years later, the NC NAACP’s failure to address sexual harassment of young Black women working in their organization for years is coming to the forefront in the current campaign for the organization’s president. And there are some who would once again silence and vilify Black women survivors instead of embracing the opportunity to heal and create a better organization and a better world.
I wonder if the freedom of Black women is a threat, not because it oppresses anyone else, but because it challenges all people to be free. Are you afraid of me and other Black feminists who consistently challenge oppression? Or are you afraid of the bravery it would take to live into your own freedom?
So yes. This weekend I was in the streets again, half-naked, with a booklet explaining why Black women in 1977 created an organization and a political framework to address racism, sexism, and homophobia at the same time, surrounded by people who have made the possibility of freedom their daily practice. And my suggestion to every organization, initiative, and political group in Durham — and everywhere else — is this: Believe, support, uplift, and fight for Black women.
But only if you want to be free.
ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS is the author of M Archive: After the End of the World, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.
NEXT WEEK: CHIKA GUJARATHI, a Raleigh-based writer and author of the Hello Namaste! children’s books, whose work can be found on her blog The Antibland Chronicles.
INDY Voices — a rotating column featuring some of the Triangle’s most compelling writers — is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Visit KeepItINDY.com for more information.
“It felt like it was time for us to move into that gap we felt in the community.”
At some point in their lives, 30 percent of transgender people will experience homelessness, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. This is a heightened problem for young adults, who might turn eighteen in an economically unstable environment, age out of foster care, or get booted from their homes after coming out to their family.
Regardless of the circumstances, they often have few safe places to turn: 70 percent of the survey’s homeless respondents who had stayed in shelters reported experiencing mistreatment, including harassment, sexual and physical abuse, and ejection.
“Before having a formal name for it, our community has had to take in folks and create family as a way to fill some gaps,” says Helena Cragg, program director of the LGBTQ Center of Durham. She saw sympathetic Facebook threads and watched residents try to make space for homeless queer youth, but she didn’t know whether these makeshift solutions were making an impact. The Center received requests to host young people in need, but it lacked the capacity to take them all in.
“It felt like it was time for us to move into that gap we felt in the community,” Cragg says.
In June, the Center launched the Host Home Program, which seeks to assist individuals between eighteen and twenty-four years old who are suffering from housing instability, with a focus on people who are of color and/or LGBTQ. (The latter constitutes roughly 40 percent of homeless youth nationwide.) The model pairs those with immediate short-term housing needs with vetted hosts.
Durham’s program, which has so far worked with ten young adults and housed six of them, also offers participants job training and access to supportive mental health providers.
Finding the proper match requires flexibility and diligence. To recruit hosts, Cragg and HHP coordinator KC Buchanan have spoken at churches, Durham County Department of Health meetings, and Durham Bulls games on Pride Night. They’ve also advertised at Bull City Roller Derby bouts and begun to discuss partnership opportunities with the League of Upper Extremity Wrestling Women of Durham, a women’s arm-wrestling league that raises funds for organizations supporting the city’s women, femmes, and non-binary residents.
All hosts must go through a background check and a home visit before approval. But the actual process of marching hosts to those in need often starts with a letter written to prospective tenants that outlines the host’s life story. The Center ensures, through preliminary boundary-setting and a two-week trial period, that the host won’t be re-traumatized by hosting someone navigating issues they’ve previously dealt with.
Often, the most effective host is someone who knows the struggles a young person might be facing—and who can appreciate the value of a guiding hand at a precarious point.
“It may be that [if] someone is sober, they’re the perfect host for someone who’s trying to find their way to sobriety,” says Cragg. “It may be that someone who’s done sex work is the only person who isn’t corny enough to have a real conversation with them about that.”
Funding for the program comes from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Division of Mental Health—which makes sense, given that, according to a 2012 survey, half of LGBTQ homeless youth have worse overall physical and mental health than their homeless peers.
All HHP participants regularly interact with therapists, and the program brings in three mental health providers to meet with them at either the Center or their host home.
“We were realizing we couldn’t just send young, vulnerable queer youth of color in particular to any mental health provider, especially knowing the high levels of trauma they were bringing in,” Buchanan says. They stress the importance of finding health professionals who can “mirror” their clients’ realities and understand their stories.
Buchanan mostly interacts with the hosts. Amber Esters, the HHP case manager, works with the young adults directly, driving them to appointments, assisting them with goal plans, making connections with providers, and ensuring that they’re in a good place.
During the program’s pilot phase over the next three years, the aim is to create avenues for volunteers to contribute beyond hosting, from making birthday cakes for the participants to teaching classes to offering workshops for résumés and polishing college applications.
That growth will be crucial as national threats begin to encroach. In May, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would roll back protections for homeless transgender people and allow shelters to deny individuals access on the basis of religious beliefs. (That change is under review.) The HHP provides a counterweight, an effort to break the cycle of those who need assistance but are least likely to seek it.
Of the ten people the Center has worked with thus far, all are queer, half are transgender, and all but one are people of color.
“It is both surprising and not surprising that one hundred percent of the youth have been exactly the two populations that we most want to support,” Cragg says. “But that feels important because there’s so little data about these communities locally. It feels empowering to be able to name something that we’ve known is truly in existence.”
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