Over 100 years before RuPaul was telling us to “sashay away”, William Dorsey Swann, who had been born into slavery in 19th Century America, was making a name for himself as the world’s first self-described “drag queen”.
LGBTQ+ historian Channing Joseph, author of House of Swann, explains how he discovered this forgotten history of one of the earliest efforts at queer resistance and liberation in America.
Just like how you aren’t made to fit clothes, you aren’t made to fit labels; labels are made to fit you. Just like how some people are most comfortable in oversized clothes or fitted clothes, you can be most comfortable using a label in a different way than others do. Because that’s the whole point.
Queer identities are conveyed by labels - these labels don’t determine the very specific way a person experiences their queerness. If we want queer liberation, the labels that express that queerness can’t be restricted. That goes against the whole purpose of liberation.
Don’t let bigotry - from nonqueers or other queers - stop you from being & expressing who you are. Your queerness is beautiful. You deserve to shine.
The trans community is inherently linked with all other oppressed communities. We are interdependent; our oppression and therefore our liberation are inextricably connected.
Without Black, Native, queer, disabled, and all other groups’ liberation, we cannot have trans liberation. If we are not all actively anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-queerphobic, and anti-ableist, we cannot promote the joy and liberation of the trans community.
[ID: Light blue background with blue sparkles on the top and bottom. Black cursive centered reads “trans liberation cannot happen without: Black liberation, native liberation, Queer liberation, Disabled liberation.” The TEP logo is at the bottom.]
the queer community was formed by people who were deemed strange and abnormal in society based on them not conforming to expectations about sexuality & gender. there are no specific boundaries bc this isn’t a club. a cishet guy that likes wearing dresses who fights side by side with us for true liberation, is 100x more queer than a millionaire gay man who’s besties with companies that sell us watered down versions of our own culture for profit during pride while donating to homophobic lawmakers every other month.
i’m gonna say this again because it really pissed some people off: yes, I would rather have a cishet GNC man who stands with queer people, is involved in our spaces and our culture, stands up for us when we are attacked, and is active in furthering queer liberation, than a rich gay man who spits on the lower-class queers who gave him the ability to be out, who sells his soul to corporations who couldn’t give less of a shit about us, just for the wealth and power of capitalism. Fuck that guy. I’m not saying he isn’t gay - he is! Nothing can take that away! But we have the saying “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” for a reason. The family-friendly gay millionaire isn’t my brother. The poor crossdresser who has been a part of this community since it’s inception is. Fuck your bootlicking bullshit.
yes evil gay man & our poor little cishet king
Looks like that saying came about in spring 2007… Pretty sure gay people have been around and had a community for longer than that.
Kind of like Queer people have been the center of the activism and the community for longer than the specific phrase “queer as in fuck you”
No one is saying that gay men are inherently not queer. What is being said here is that queer is a more nebulous and complicated label than just a synonym for LGBT specifically, and that much of its power is rooted in its disruptive and activist nature. That yes, cross dressers and drag queens, regardless of how they define their gender and sexuality, can and always have been part of the queer community- and often far more so than assimilationists who side with conservatives and reactionaries.
Edit: ahahahahaha blatantly trabsphobic posts once I check your page. Dammit, every God damn time it’s a transphobe. Yall are so predictable.
Fascists fetishize “Western” philosophy. Amusingly, Locke literally calls for the brutal destruction of fascists. He’s more radical than anti-fascist activists.
“It being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred…”
CHAP. III. Of the State of War
Second Treatise of Civil Government John Locke (1690)
“Numerous studies have found that the differences between adult men and women are overhyped and largely influenced by the dynamics of biology and culture. Humans are naturenurtural—a fusion of nature and nurture.
For example, many explanations for differences between males and females rest on assumptions about the disparate evolved costs of reproduction between them. But human reproduction is more complex than two individuals having sex, then the female giving birth and taking care of the offspring. While today it is common in many societies for women to raise children on their own or with a male (who often does not contribute equally to child-rearing), this setup developed very recently in human history.
There is massive evidence that the genus Homo (humans) evolved complex cooperative caretaking more than a million years ago, changing the patterns and pressures of our evolution. Such ‘alloparenting’ practices are still widespread among many human groups, in which mothers and fathers, grandparents, other female and male relatives, and boys and girls in the community all help feed, teach, and care for children. This complex overlap in social and reproductive roles is exciting and hopeful. When it comes to raising kids, humans don’t come in two kinds. Rather, we evolved to be a collaborative and creative community.”
We have a bunch of copies of these antifa stickers, plus numerous other designs. If anyone would like to buy a stack of radical slaps send us a DM, or preferably email us at:
also there were folks at queer liberation march today who were at stonewall and i kept thinking how so many absolute gatekeeper clowns on tumblr would build a wall around the community that they wouldn’t even have if not for these queer elders who rioted then and were still marching today but they’d build a wall anyway and shut these queer elders right tf out gleefully. probably condescendingly explaining at them the whole time how queer is a slur and they have no place here.
bonus: half of the people doing it would be white people who, themselves, id with other extremely common slurs for lgbtq people and would feel zero self consciousness or awareness about lecturing black and brown queer people generations older than them about what terminology to use for their own self identity.
but like, totally independent of weirdos on tumblr who think scolding people and obsessively gatekeeping community to make sure nobody is too deviant is Activism, friends, out in the real world, queer people are just existing already, thriving and joyful and rebellious, and reclaim pride’s queer liberation march was full of all the things pride COULD be about if it weren’t about money now. upholding and honoring those who came before us, remembering those we’ve lost, fighting so we don’t have to keep memorializing our dead in perpetuity, bright wild queer joy of all kinds.
there were zero corporate floats though, no bootlicker pride flags, no cops invited to march with rainbow pins on. all prides could be that way if we rejected their corporatization and returned them to the community. and… stopped… gatekeeping who is Respectably Queer and who is embarassing, cringey, “bihet” or whatever genuinely vile things folks come up with next.
im still thinking about this because this is so important to me, and i see so many young queer people on who have expressed so much hurt and fear because their families abuse and reject them, their communities don’t accept them, they’re poor or homeless or maybe still feeling their identities out, or maybe still closeted because it isn’t safe to not be, and uncertain if they’re “allowed” to use certain terms or “allowed” to access certain resources,
and (decades ago) when i was small and feeling things out, im just so, so glad that i found affirming (mostly black) queer spaces that did not gatekeep and let queer kids sort out our identities in safety and community, because my home life was abusive and threatening and if all i had had by way of “community” was people telling me that the only things you’re Allowed To Be are like these four proscribed identities in these extremely specific ways i would absolutely be dead today. i had to sneak and get what i could of those spaces in small drips and drabs where i could snatch them, but it kept me going.
but this march, y'all, the huge banner at the front said queer, said, asexual, said non binary, said gender non conforming, said two spirit…
there were folks there who had been at the first march back when it was a riot down christopher st. folks there who had founded act up. folks there who had been doing this longer than ive been alive, and were there to continue fighting and to continue uplifting our community with pride and with joy and with affirmation.
i hope many young queer kids today saw that, and felt it, and know that they belong here. i hope we keep that going for them.
I feel like we need something bigger than just Pride this year. Pride has become a cliché, it no longer has any effect; it’s part of the annual status quo. We need something that will have the same impact Pride used to have, and we need to use it to fight the anti-queer laws and smear campaigns being imposed throughout the U.S., the UK, and elsewhere.
