#queer race

[commiepinkofag]

shh… drag race is on…

[notadrag-notaqueen]

There is by now a well documented history of racism in the lesbian and gay movement in the United States, a racism that has inevitably accompanied these problematic liberal conceptions of subjectivity and the single-issue homogenizations implied in such terms as "the gay community"that these conceptions have generated. This fantasized gay community is ritually invoked by the institutions of the state as they attempt to enforce the regime of compulsory heterosexuality, and by right-wing religious organizations and political interests who construct the state as kowtowing to the homosexual lobby. But those assimilationist lesbians and gay men who seek access to these institutions invoke this fantasy gay community as insistently. Thus when wealthy lesbians and gay men are featured on the cover of Newsweek or in television interviews, or when polls "prove" that lesbians and gay men are more prosperous than their heterosexual counterparts, the media is praised for the positive depiction of "our community" by the elite group of lesbians and gay men who are criminally ignorant of (or systematically ignoring) homeless queers, and jobless queers. Those who think of their own identity as singular, those who are unable to imagine multiple subjectivities in others, and those who experience only one site of oppression against themselves, tend to universalize their limited understanding by colonizing other subjects. since most institutionalized lesbian and gay organizations in this country are controlled and dominated by middle-class gay white men, these organizations inevitably have infused the category "gay" with a middle-class white male content.

Ian Barnard

[thegoddessjoint]

Stud

So I found out some queer kinfolk but NOT skinfolk have been using the word STUD to describe themselves.

To be frank with all, I don't like it.

It's intriguing how the descriptor -Femme is universal without defining race. But many words for masculine women do display race and maybe even geographical location. Culture. For example, AG (short for Aggressive) is commonly used to describe queer masculine women of color in New York City. As a DC baby born and bred, I've grown up believing a Stud to be a queer masculine woman of color, period. When I think of a Stud, a Butch does not come to mind.  

These meanings and differences are important. It lets me know who I am speaking with, who I am connecting with, where they are coming from, and if we come from similarity. Stud is black gay culture.  It's different from mainstream culture in the same way as black families; it is my heart, it is my home.

Like most things in black culture, Stud is nuanced. It's true definition cannot be told, only experienced. Many queer masculine women of color choose not to define themselves with Stud because it is a way of being that is not to their tastes. It's unique. It's unwritten.

When someone is a Stud, you just know. It's in the way she moves. It's in her gaze, it's in her breath, it's in her touch, it's in her mind. The mind of a black woman, which one cannot just invade and claim a piece of.  

Stud is ours.