We are super proud to introduce our latest WussyTV Youtube series — “The Trans Agenda” hosted by Iv Fischer!
Every week, Iv will be bringing y’all more content, interviews, news break downs, etc focused on the trans experience. For the first video, Iv discusses the the meaning of the word ‘transgender’ and how the world at large tries to define trans identities.
Hit that Like, Subscribe, and Share button and stay tuned for more!
Blazer: Balmain, Jewelry: Versace, Shoes: Privileged, Bag: Prada
Fame and Fab are not unordinary terms that follow the queens around after being a contestant on the Emmy award-winning show, RuPaul's Drag Race — an experience that will catapult most queens to their ultimate fantasy! The part of the story that we don’t hear is the reality behind these queens’ fantasy life on the drag runway, the appearance circuit that follows, and how they maintain any sort of personal life outside of their queen persona. This stark reality leads most of us to ponder: is fame truly that fab?
Gia Gunn isn't any exception, and as one of the only transgender competitors to compete on RuPaul's Drag Race; Gia is truly living her fantasy, always! She is certainly the total package, and has a long list of aspirations, activism goals, and future entrepreneurship she is ready to tackle.
We had the opportunity to sit down with Gia to discuss exactly what we should expect to see in the future, her personal role model, and how she plans to be a role model for others in the transgender community.
Blazer: Balmain, Jewelry: Versace
Welcome Gia, it is such an honor and pleasure to have you with us today! Congratulations on being nominated for your second bid for the crown on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 4! If there was anything about this season you could have changed, what would it be?
Thank you!! It was such an amazing opportunity to get to be back on Drag Race and in front of all the lovely fans and viewers of the show! If there was anything I could have changed about the season is really just my expectations of the competition. I went into Drag Race more to be a representation for the trans community, which is a demographic that is underrepresented in the world! I went into the show hoping to have more of a conversation about Trans issues, and less of season 6 highlights. Overall, just having different expectations of what the competition is.
You said you don’t regret much because we should be focused on where we are going, so what does your past say about your future and coming to the realization that you are a woman?
It is no secret that I have had a long journey to realizing that I was a woman and understanding what it means to be a woman; but really I think there is a lot that goes into gender and what it actually means to be a man, woman, cis gender, transgender, etc. I think as a society we have a long way to go in highlighting what this actually means and getting the voice out. Society pushes us into the corner and wants us to pick a side, whether it be man or woman, gay or straight, etc. I think one thing that stands out is when I was a drag queen since drag queens are seen as gay man. I think that I was cornered into being a gay man even though I knew in my heart that I am Transgender and a woman. I think in the past I felt like I couldn’t be a woman or what was expected of me. I am able to be here today and say, “No, I am a woman and not a drag queen!”
Jewelry: Gia & Stylists Own
What would Gia today say to the Gia of the past?
My main advice to myself of the past would be to not be scared of who you are or what you are and just be it!
Who is the role model you feel had the greatest effect on you and your journey?
Throughout my journey there haven’t been very many visible role models for the Transgender community—which made it very hard to be able to understand what a role model is or should be. If I had to think of a role model when I was 21 and starting out as a drag queen, I found Gigi Gorgeous on YouTube and she is openly Trans and she was so inspiring to me. In my life currently, I would say the greatest role model for me as a Transgender woman is author, Janet Mock. She has had such an effect and has inspired me so much in my journey to becoming who I am today!
Suit: Hugo Boss
Jumpsuit: Roland Mouret via Saks Fifth Ave
What is the ultimate fantasy for Gia Gunn?
I think the ultimate fantasy for Gia Gunn is being placed in places and spaces where Gia can be 110% herself! Drag has been such a large part of my life and I actually am in the process of not having to rely solely on drag and gay spaces. I don’t think Drag Race has provided a platform for myself and my sisters to be able to stay in the clubs forever, performing and running from here to there chasing after money! Ultimately, I am looking forward to getting closer to accomplishing my goals and life purpose. With that clarity, no pun intended, I’m looking forward to transitioning in all areas of my life as well!
Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What are you doing? And who are you with?
Gia Gunn in 10 years has invested all of her hard-earned pennies and dollar tips into a bigger business! I see myself being an entrepreneur in some way. I’m already an empire of my own, and I am just looking to turn that into something... I am looking to employ other people, help other people get into the industry. I definitely see myself investing a healthy lifestyle type of brand that can not only represent what I stand for, but be able to continue my legacy and what I built for myself. As of now, I have my following and my brand and all of the necessities that any business needs. My biggest goal this year is to save more money and be able to invest and not have to make an appearance to have a business! Every day I am getting closer to accomplishing my goals of becoming a full business and it would be a dream to be able to help employ other trans individuals and people of all backgrounds.
Brandon—Jacket: TopMan, Jeans: John Varvatos, Shoes: Calvin Klein
Gia—Jacket: Fendi, Shirt: Tommy Hilfiger, Pants: Express, Shoes: Christian Louboutin
If there was any misconception or stereotype about the Trans community that you could change or take away, what would it be?
I think the biggest stereotype or misconception about the Transgender community would be just the lack of education of people understanding gender identity vs. sexual orientation. I think for a lot of people when they view gender identity they actually are thinking of sexual orientation. I think what people need to understand is who you are as a person and who you go to sleep with are two different things... People see trans individuals as a fetish or as a sexual object because it always circles back to sexuality. My sexual orientation has nothing to do with my gender. I think that there aren’t many transgender individuals speaking about this and I really want to talk about this because it will make it more comfortable for people to date transgender individuals. That is the biggest stereotype that gender identity and sexual preference are the same thing, but in fact they are entirely different!
Well Gia, it certainly has been great to speak with you and inspiring to hear all about your journey, dedication to your craft, activism goals, and becoming all that you were meant to be! I wish you all of the luck in your upcoming projects and look forward to seeing more of Gia Gunn!
Thank you!
—
Executive Producers:
Brandon Taylor @btaylor_yogifit
Matthew Mills @mcubedstills
Art Direction:
Michelle Locke @crack.the.fire
Models:
Gia Gunn @gia_gunn
Brandon Taylor @btaylor_yogifit
Photographer:
Matthew Mills @mcubedstills
Photo Assistant:
Sydney Poland @sydneypoland
Wardrobe Stylist:
Jesse Abudayyeh @jesse.abudayyeh
Brandon’s hair & makeup:
Margarita Claros @miss.barberella
Gia’s hair:
Valentino Leyva @hair_by_valentino
The roller coaster ride that has been my breast augmentation surgery experience has all but thrown me off the deep end. I have been eager, then scared. Then disillusioned, yet hopeful. I have scoured YouTube, watching marathons of boob job related content, in an effort to ease my mind. I have filled my Fashion Nova and Dolls Kill carts to the brim with cute bras and other adornments to compliment my new boobies, then deleted them all the next day out of fear of being overexcited.
I have dreamt of my new body. I could just see my new boobs. From the way they would fall on my chest and compliment my figure, to how they would look, feel, and smell more me. I was nervous to experience the intense pain and hurting I would have to go through to achieve my goal. I was even more ready to bask in the newfound confidence they would bring. I allowed my enthusiasm to become muddled with lingering fears of medical malpractice, breast implant illness, and any other trepidation my anxiety would mix into a stress cocktail. However, when it came down to the final minutes before my anesthesiologist put me under, and I was sandwiched between the weight of my past and the excitement of what the future would bring, I was elated. I was ready to take on whatever physical pain would be waiting for me on the other side of that ten-minute nap.
I have spent the past three years learning my body and its limits. Passing an estrogen-filled needle through my skin every week, and nursing the growing pains of my second puberty back to health, seemed to prepare me for my life post-gender affirming surgery. I was sure of myself before going under the knife, but knew what I needed to do to unify my self-image and personality with my appearance. Breast augmentation was the only option for me. I could not imagine my future without reaching this milestone in my transition. However, the love for myself that I have developed over the years has dwindled in the past week. I can only describe this experience as the longest seven days of my life.
My post-surgical body has betrayed me in ways that I have not experienced since early middle school, when the other girls in my class were changing in ways completely different than me. I was taller, broader, more muscular. Less happy. More masculinized.
Now, as my chest muscles swell, and jolt, and try to work through the trauma of getting cut into, I am working through similar insecurities. I yelped in the initial shock of removing my surgical bandages and seeing what looked like football pads coming out of my chest. My boobs were aliens invading my body. I was ready to submit my tape to Botched. This shift in my self-image incited a stint of depression and dysphoria. My boobs were supposed to bring me more confidence and reassurance, but they were doing the opposite.
Knowing what I know now, it has been rewarding to see the progress I have made. I am getting used to them more and more everyday. Those post-surgical blues are slowly, but surely, subsiding. As my anatomy continues to welcome its new neighbors, and soften around the silicone, I am falling back in love with my body. I smile brighter. I fit into my clothes more comfortably. In the words of our Lord and Savior Beyoncé, “I’m feeling myself.” I am beautiful, confident, and happy. I am getting back to who I was before surgery, with a better outlook on life and an enthusiasm for what else is to come in the future.
In the hundreds of post op YouTube videos I watched, none of them warned of the emotional turmoil. None of them talked about the short period of unhappiness that was to follow. I expected to be in pain, but not “oh my god what have I done to myself” pain! So, in case you don’t hear it from anyone else: be sure to prep yourself in all aspects. Gender-affirming surgeries come with the best and worst feelings about your body, which can mess with your mental health. Along with the ice packs and body pillows, have a supportive group of people around you to help get through the tough times. And don’t worry if things still look crazy days or weeks after surgery. Follow the doctor’s orders. Focus on healing. Lean in to the emotions. Welcome the eagerness, along with the frustration. Things get better in time, and that’s what a transition is all about.
—
Ivana Fischer is the Culture Editor of WUSSY and a film and media enthusiast who specializes in cultural studies. You can find her across all socials @iv.fischer
UGH. She’s so beautiful.
But can we all agree—no one expects A’Keria to win?
First off, that Brooke Lynn Hytes vs. Yvie Oddly lip sync rocked the stadium, and we are all expecting it to come down to those two. Also, Silky is a force of nature who squeaked by for so long that some people are convinced her staying power means the rigor morris has set in and she’s already been set up to win the crown.
But A’Keria? Her run on the show hasn’t had the dramatic impact of the other three, and while her performance has been impressive, I wouldn’t say it makes a strong case for the crown. No, if she’s going to win, A’Keria’s biggest advantage is going to be the format.
WELL...HER 2ND BIGGEST ADVANTAGE
But let’s back it up.
A’Keria Chanel Davenport popped into the workroom looking like she came straight off the set of Real Dragwives of Dallas. She looked put together and pretty, but as happens with many pageant queens on the show, my brain relegated her to the backburner.
Pageant aesthetics are, by design, somewhat generic and don’t typically reveal much about the person behind the look. And true to form, with 15 queens running around, I kept losing track of who she was.
ME TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH HOW MANY DAVENPORTS THERE ARE THIS SEASON. (THREE)
She first raised my eyebrow with her shockingly beautiful fringe look, and like many of her looks, it’s one she made herself. But it wasn’t true love until Yanis Marshall was drilling Miss Ra’jah about her “danse experiance” in episode 4. We immediately cut to A’Keria’s confessional where she is channeling The Color Purple in a quiet prayer for Yanis’s survival. It was so funny and so accurate with such good delivery. Even with Vanjie’s adorable foolishness, A’Keria still had the best commentary moments all season
And that’s the aspect of RuPaul’s Drag Race where A’Keria thrives - in the more lowkey moments. Of course her “Twerking is a Blessing” schtick is hilarious and her gowns are beautiful (if not sometimes boring), but I think her real power is a shady combo of Charisma and Nerve - because A’Keria is the best shit stirrer the show’s had in a while. Somehow she’s the quickest to reach for the spoon, usually announcing to the room that she’s about to stir the pot, yet she never seems to suffer any repercussions. The karma just lands somewhere else. Even at that reunion when they all tried to pin her down about fucking with Plastique’s head, homegurl managed to avoid blame and repeat herself until basically Ru and the audience got lost in the fog and just wanted to move on. That’s some genius level deflection.
THESE AREN’T THE DROIDS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR, CHRISTINE.
Which is to say that A’Keria Chanel Davenport is a true pageant thoroughbred and has used her experience well and to her advantage. She’s an expert at the mental side of competition and has smartly played to her strengths all season. Problem is, the fans don’t care much for traditional pageant styles, especially not in their winners (or their All Stars, Latrice). Drag Race is shifting away from that incarnation of drag to the point that I doubt a conventional pageant queen would a shot in hell of ever taking that crown.
That’s why the Lip Sync for the Crown is such an interesting gimmick - it’s the great equalizer. Now we have a selection process where it doesn’t matter how you got to the top or if you “deserve” to win. Instead the winner is decided on how well you deliver two high pressure stage performances. Sasha Velour’s inaugural win proved the finale is an even playing field. Any queen in the top 4 has every chance to win, and whichever queen can outperform the others truly does deserve to win. And A’Keria’s pageant experience under that kind of pressure could well be the advantage snatches her that crown.
Social media spheres across the Internet have been hit with a cowboy craze over the past several months. Thanks to the introduction of musicians like Lil Nas X, Solange, and Kacey Musgraves, more people are embracing their love of country music. There is even a heightened inclusivity of non-white fans in response to the genre’s emerging diversity. Black country singers have made their stamp on the industry with the production of their dance-worthy bops and Western-chic garb. Photos of celebs like Rihanna and Mariah Carey in their timeless countrified looks have begun to resurface. Cardi B donned a sickening cowgirl get-up in the “Thotiana” remix video. And how could anyone forget Beyoncé’s iconic production of “Lemonade,” which was peppered with representative imagery of her Alabamian and New Orleanian roots? Now more than ever, Black artists are getting the recognition they deserve. They are elevating the essence of the genre through their lyrical prowess and fashion-forward ensembles, one pair of fringe chaps at a time.
Though country music and cowboy life has been viewed as a “White” thing, fans of all races are relishing in the newfound success of their favorite Black performers. This John Wayne mythology, that seems to only recognize the more melanin-challenged listeners of the genre, has been reclaimed by Black musicians from Mary J. Blige to Lizzo. Celebs are sporting their denim jeans and cowboy hats in celebration of the Internet’s favorite theme right now: the Yeehaw Agenda.
Coined by Twitter user Bri Malandro, the Yeehaw Agenda raises awareness of Black country life through a communal celebration of queer excellence. The rural aesthetic that has been surprisingly embraced by millions on Instagram and Twitter has helped to diversify the image of what it means to be a country music fan. Of course, there exists the more noteworthy examples of country-fied pop culture like Lady Gaga’s “Joanne” and Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons.” However, underground artists and overnight sensations are the ones helping to give voice to underrepresented rustic queers.
The meme song heard around the world, “Old Town Road,” two-stepped onto the scene in a rush of meme-ery and excitement. With a tinge of humor, this successful anthem has joined the long roster of creative Black country music. Even more than that, it has fallen in line with many other exemplary pieces of clever, yet fun songs produced within a genre that is stereotypically whitewashed. The culture of Black pioneers within this atmosphere of rural living and idyllic imagery has helped to challenge history’s notion of equating country with whiteness. In fact, many of the characteristics, messages, and nuances of country are rooted in Black culture.
This era of popular culture also highlights the intersection between the Black and queer communities in terms of history and aesthetics. Influenced by the nature of Black culture, some common themes of country music are freedom, overcoming hardships, and social commentary. These topics are equally as present within the queer community through conversations about life, familial relations, and more. Modernized by today’s clever Black youth, the country aesthetic does not only feature the refreshing addition of rap and hip-hop beats; its image emphasizes queer fashion influences from Destiny’s Child to Kelela. I mean honestly, who knew brown skin looked so good in glitterific assless chaps?
The Yeehaw agenda has allowed for the appreciation of diverse groups of Black people by playing on a spectrum of femininity versus masculinity. It adopts a sort of kitsch-y, nonchalant attitude towards the way a cowboy “should” look, dress, and act. Poking fun at restrictive gender norms that have been around since before Black cowboys were excluded from the rodeo in the 1800s, the movement helps to carve out a place for today’s outcasts. The gays just can’t get enough of Megan Thee Stallion’s corseted cowgirl fantasy!
We are in a time of queer embodiment of popular culture, which helps to bring visibility towards these groups. Encouraging marginalized groups to partake in the fun, and the history of what is happening now, can only open doors for them to explore other facets of artistic expression.
—
Ivana Fischer is the Culture Editor of WUSSY and a film and media enthusiast who specializes in cultural studies. You can find her across all socials @iv.fischer
WUSSY is now accepting entries for a VERY special edition of our regular print Rag!
Are you a queer-identified activist, writer or visual artist?
Showcase your work in the pages of WUSSY!
We are looking for written and visual work based in advocacy, politics, and radical activism. Unlike our previous editions, this will be in a stylized B&W zine format.
Works of non-fiction, short fiction, photo essays, satire, opinion pieces, illustrations, nudies, comics, interviews, original and thoughtful pieces about the queer experience.
All work must not have been published anywhere else online, social media, or in print.
All written submissions should be submitted as a PDF. Preferred word counts range from 500-1,500 words depending on the piece. Please label your piece “firstnamelastname_title” with title and author included inside the document.
All visual submissions should be submitted as high resolution, 300 dpi JPEGs. You may send up to 10 images from the same body of work. All files should be labeled “last name_first name” and put into a labeled zip folder.
All submissions are due by Friday, June 14 at Midnight.
Email submit@wussymag.com with any questions.
The Biqtch is back!
We had the pleasure of catching up with two problematic favs to discuss everything from boyfriend dick to the return of the Boulet Brother’s Dragula.
Check out the very special edition of WUSSY Talk with Meatball and Biqtch Puddin below!
At the conclusion of my first year teaching at a small college in Southwest Virginia, a Black queer friend invited me to come visit him an hour away in Lexington, Virginia. As a white, queer, non-binary person, I was still getting my Southern bearings. So was he. We had both grown up in coastal, metropolitan communities. On the drive into town, I passed a strip mall called Stonewall Square and witnessed signs for Stonewall Jackson Hospital. In town, my friend walked me down to a small cemetery when I found myself face to face with Stonewall Jackson’s actual grave. Then he explained to me an interesting ritual: visitors often leave lemons on the ground around the Stonewall tomb. Apparently the general was a big fan of sucking on them in battle, or so the story goes. Some local residents recently left lemons inked with the letters “BLM”—meaning Black Lives Matter—which caused quite a stir.
If you want to know what Stonewall means in the South, some fifty years after an uprising in New York City at a similarly-named bar helped launch the modern LGBTQ movement, you can learn a lot by poking around, as we did, at the intersections of two Stonewalls: the Confederate one and the queer one. For the past four years I have led a team of volunteers in Southwest Virginia interviewing LGBTQ residents, recording their oral histories, collecting archival documents, and leading walking tours and public programs interpreting the region’s LGBTQ history. What I have learned is that the legacies of the first Stonewall—the general—are just as relevant today as the legacies of the second one.
My friend was then helping to organize what would be, if they could pull it off, the first-ever Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Lexington’s history. They had received threats from white supremacists who planned to disrupt the parade in the name of Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday in Virginia that honors two of the most famous Confederate generals. The threats of violence were so loud in the weeks leading up to the march that the New York Times even wrote about it. (This was still six months prior to the violence in Charlottesville.) Members of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project traveled to Lexington and marched with signs that stated “Black Lives Matter” and “Queers Against White Supremacy.”
After the MLK march, which was successful, I began to think more around these intersecting histories: LGBTQ history on one hand, and histories of white supremacy on the other, and also about my potential complicity, as a white queer person, in perpetuating racism within LGBTQ narratives. Several decades ago the historian James T. Sears wrote a book about the so-called “Stonewall South.” He meant the Stonewall-era (1970s) South. But I wondered: is not the LGBTQ South also always the other Stonewall’s South—a place where legacies of slavery and racism run deep and continue to influence LGBTQ lives?
In 1971, less than two years after New York’s Stonewall event, a group of gay men and women founded the Gay Alliance of the Roanoke Valley, the first Gay Liberation organization in our region. It was the same year that Roanoke’s schools finally integrated under court order. White gay men and lesbians, in their oral histories, recount the extreme paucity of African Americans who were involved in the gay movement at the time, whether it was the 1970s-era Gay Lib groups, or the 1980s-era lesbian feminist organization in our region. Black gay men tell different stories of that time: about crossing the bridge at night that connected the historically Black, segregated Gainsboro neighborhood to downtown Roanoke in order to meet up with white gay men for fellowship and sex. But not every bar downtown was so welcoming to Black men. One gay man told us that he preferred hanging out in other spaces, such as the dive bars where Black trans sex workers and their white johns were a regular clientele. White and Black LGBTQ folks experienced different geographies of belonging in the Stonewall South.
Indeed, the most visible Black LGBTQ people in Southwest Virginia in the 1970s and 1980s worked on the stage as drag queens and in the streets as sex workers. Several Black trans sex workers recalled conflicts with Roanoke’s police department, and horrifying experiences with the region’s criminal justice system. Yet if you read the gay newsletters in our archive from the 1970s and 1980s, trans sex workers are never mentioned in those pages. The Stonewall South was not monolithic: it was Black on one side, white on the other; gay and lesbian here, trans folks over there.
Black queer scholars such as Shaka McGlotten, Charles Nero, and E. Patrick Johnson have shown how the racism of heterosexual society is mirrored, rather than disrupted, in queer spaces. Gay neighborhoods, or gayborhoods, developed as places where white gay men could accumulate wealth and status while simultaneously policing and evicting queer and trans people of color from the same real estate. Roanoke’s “gay ghetto,” in fact, developed in the all-white segregated Old Southwest neighborhood in the 1970s.
Stonewall Jackson fought to maintain a white supremacist society. The legacy of the second Stonewall—the gay uprising—is, in surprising ways, not very different: white gay men and lesbians fought for the supposedly universal concepts of gay liberation, or later, equality, and yet the racial legacies of Southern white supremacy were never fully engaged with or dismantled. It should be noted that in other parts of the South, Black LGBTQ people did organize themselves, and today, efforts such as Southerners on New Ground (SONG) and the Campaign for Southern Equality are purposefully centering queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) at the forefront of regional LGBTQ activism.
Moreover, we are just now beginning to tell our stories. The first-ever Queer History South conference was held in Birmingham, Alabama earlier this year. The Invisible Histories Project, which organized that conference, recently won a major grant to expand their work into Mississippi and West Georgia. These efforts do not, however, rival the deeply entrenched United Daughters of the Confederacy or the Sons of Confederate Veterans. We can only hope that, over time, Virginians will come to know the second Stonewall as well as they know the first.
One more thing about Stonewall Jackson. He lost an arm in battle, and apparently his severed arm has its own grave. You can go visit the arm, and some of the most hardcore Confederate worshippers do just that. As a trans person with friends who have severed their own bodily appendages or are taking hormones to alter our corporeal forms, I am fascinated by this worship of General Stonewall’s trans arm. I might have to go there someday, compare body parts, and leave a “BLM” lemon in my wake. Then we must get back to work: cleaning up our own house, challenging the white supremacy in LGBTQ organizations and queer spaces, and remembering that Stonewall was not just a riot but also a general, and we live with both legacies to this day.
—
Gregory Samantha Rosenthal is Assistant Professor of Public History at Roanoke College and co-founder of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project. Explore more of their work atgregoryrosenthal.com.
WUSSY is proud to present The Trans Agenda. Every week, Culture Editor Iv Fischer breaks down topics that are important to the transgender community via wussyTV on Youtube!
This week, Iv breaks down the history of Trans women doing drag and shout outs some great Atlanta trans drag performers!
Hit that Like, Subscribe, and Share button and stay tuned for more.
It’s June. You’re queer. You know what that means! Pride month?! Heck no, we’ve moved on to Pride Year. That means June signifies just one terrible thing to us: FATHER’S DAY! If you’re anything like me, Father’s Day is a holiday that dredges up a lot of complicated feelings. But that’s no reason to fall into despair like you did at Christmas… and Thanksgiving… and Halloween, New Year’s Eve, Election Day, and Purim!
Oh sure, all of your friends have successfully compensated for a strained relationship with their birth father by getting into a Dom/sub thing with a 50-year-old silver fox while you’re sitting at home looking at pictures of Soldier: 76 and thinking what if? But just because there’s not a daddy deep in your guts doesn’t mean there isn’t a daddy deep in your heart. That’s right, the daddy of your dreams… has been you all along!
Daddy isn’t a complicated psychosexual relationship that subverts traditional intergenerational male relationships; daddy is a state of mind. So reset that state of mind! Maybe you want to take yourself to a baseball game and treat yourself to a nice long chili dog. Or maybe you wanna get more literal, remove a few ribs, and just suck your own dick? That’s fine! Daddies do what daddies want, even if that means erotic ostectomy!
I know what you’re thinking: the world is dying, I’m earning minimum wage, and I share an apartment with four roommates. How can I tap into that daddy energy when—at best—I have stepchild energy? Bother it until you father it! Ask yourself WWDD--what would Daddy do?--and then go ahead and do it:
Struggle to connect to a Bluetooth speaker and then just put on a playlist of early 90s dance hits that no one wants to hear. Post something on Facebook that’s either very supportive of or vaguely racist towards a minority group, but no one can tell because your syntax is so uneven! Wear a Nasty Pig branded T-shirt to a nice restaurant and then snap at the waiter to get their attention. See? Before you know it, you won’t need a daddy; you’ll be the daddy. And hey, you look great in that Nasty Pig shirt! Have you been working out? I can tell and good for you! You’re valid, even if you hadn’t been exercising but also maybe add in some squats? You don’t want to neglect your legs!
Lots of great people throughout history accomplished so much despite never having had a daddy. Picasso… is currently the only one I can think but I’m sure there are more. Can you imagine how bland the art world would be if Picasso hadn’t invented cubism because daddy wasn’t there to tell him he was a good boy for putting two eyes on the same side of a face? Picasso didn’t need a daddy to gently put a finger in his mouth whenever he started criticizing himself! Picasso channeled his inner daddy, put his own finger in his mouth and worked through his panic attacks on his own, daddy be damned! So the next time you’re at the Reina Sofía staring at Guernica, just remember that a true do-it-yourself daddy did that!
Move over, the concept of self care; it’s daddy time! Daddy’s always make time to take care of themselves and their boys. In this case, you’re both! Treat yourself like you’re a daddy getting worshipped by his boy. Or pamper yourself like a daddy would pamper the boy you consider yourself to be despite the fact that you’re a 33-year-old with chronic kidney stones and $10,000 in credit card debt! You want that nice bourbon-scented beard oil? Buy it for yourself! You’re a daddy and you deserve it! Want to treat your own hole the way a rough-n-tumble daddy would? Go for it! You don’t need a cheesy uncut daddy dick as long as you’ve got a suction cup dildo, a shower wall, and some nutritional yeast for flavor!
So this Father’s Day, don’t fall into a circlejerk of self-loathing just because you haven’t fallen into a circlejerk of older men circlejerking onto your face. The real cum you needed was inside you all along, and if you want to jerk off onto a face, try starting with the man in the mirror. As a queer person, you’re allowed to pick and choose whatever identity you want… and that includes daddy! As long as you’re not thinking of becoming, like, an actual father and adopting a whole brood of children or something.
Real family? No thanks, even we have to draw the line somewhere!
At its best, Neflix staple Black Mirror has used its takes on technology to address complex social concerns of the day. It has warned us of the dangers of intentional xenophobic bias in the military in “Men Against Fire,” the inherent lies of upward mobility within the class struggle in “Nosedive,” and the impending disaster of the 2016 election in “The Waldo Moment.”
In this sense, Season 5’s “Striking Vipers” misses the mark so hard that it hits the transphobic bullseye. Netflix summarizes: “When old college friends Danny and Karl reconnect in a VR version of their favorite video game, the late-night sessions yield and unexpected discovery.” The video game is Street Fighter-esque, and the unexpected discovery is so obvious, it’s hardly a spoiler—they fuck.
The tryst starts as a makeout session after an intense first battle in the virtual world while Karl, who up to this point is presented as a straight black male, is playing as a blond, Asian female character and Danny, also presented as a straight black male, is playing as an Asian male with a quaffed fauxhawk. As quickly as it starts though, both men frantically escape from the game world, shocked by their own behaviors. They proceed to act despondent for a few minutes of montage, then of course reunite in the VR world to get it on.
At this point, the story is doing a lot of interesting and unique things. Centering two black men as the lead characters so that you can explore the levels of intimacy afforded when societal pressure is taken out of the equation? That’s fascinating and typically only seen on the gay indie circuit. Using technology, reality simulators and online interactivity are currently powerful tools for exploration of sexuality and gender. There’s even the aspect of both men choosing to play as another race to be explored and analyzed. To see an episode of Black Mirror dissect cis hetero masculinity, trans dysphoria, racial dynamics and the removal of all of those boundaries would truly be groundbreaking television.
Yeah. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
This potential is ruined as the episode wants to tell another straight man’s story. It’s only utilizing queer identities for scandalous details, so the narrative quickly shifts and puts Danny and his wife at its center. Then we go on another 40 minutes examining their marriage and the dilemma Danny’s infidelity creates. Karl’s experience of being a woman and having sex with a man is given about 30 seconds of coverage during which he mostly describes it as “crazy” and “different” and big orgasms. And that’s it. Never is the possibility of trans identity discussed. Never is their intimacy discussed beyond “we aren’t gay, right?” Instead Karl’s experiences are reduced to the level of a fetish and positioned alongside bestiality for laughs.
Which, considering how disappointing the rest of Season 5 is, maybe “I fucked a polar bear!” is the low hanging fruit Black Mirror is aiming for, alongside “Hey it’s Miley Cyrus!” and “Facebook sucks!” Maybe it’s the Netflix equivalent of the genderswap snapchat feature - imagination fun time for all the cis straights without the icky politics to spoil the fun. Maybe incel gamers are overdue for some representation and should be shown the future they want to live in. “Traps are gay unless you’re making your bro nut as Chun Li!” Or “Finish Him on your tits, no homo!”
Even without the transphobia via erasure, the story’s thesis is dishonest and painful. If we take the story at face value and pretend there’s no romantic/sexual bond between them, Karl is reduced to being a sex addict chasing a transmisogynistic fetish-high, so he agrees to a closeted 1-night-a-year relationship with Danny who likes to to fuck blond Asian girls on the side. Erased is any meaning behind the tenderness and emotional sensitivity between the two men. It’s really a shame considering the fascinating concept and story that still needs telling. It’s a double slap in the face that the episode comes out during Pride Month with its transphobic, no homo, keep-it-in-the-closet themes.
It’s Pride month, meaning that anyone who mislabels me as straight during June is homophobic. That said, this is the first of Junes that I’ve felt truly comfortable in my queerness, even though I’ve technically been an “outish” bisexual for two years. Growing up queer, no matter if you have a supportive family, friends to talk to, or fellow queers to march with, can be isolating. I know I’m preaching to the choir on this one. Just hear me out.
Something we can all relate to in the queer community is not being represented authentically in the media until very recently. While we have the internet now, with all it’s gag-worthy content, and shows like Pose and RuPaul’s Drag Race are mainstream and beloved by gays and straights alike, it hasn’t always been this easy. Those who came before us clung to their scratched up DVD copies of The L Word or Queer As Folk, or desperately hoped that Stanford Blatch would get something compelling to say on SATC other than asides assuring the audience that he was doing the token gay thing effortlessly.
What I always hoped for were characters I could relate to that were female, powerful, and confused about their own sexuality regardless. There is something so emphatically human about flawed characters, struggling against themselves and society simultaneously, because they remind us of ourselves--especially as queer people.
While waiting for the perfect she-protagonist to meet this description, in stepped the brilliant and assuredly chaotic mind of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Waller-Bridge has so far written two of the best TV shows to follow female leads, Killing Eve and Fleabag. Not only do these series put their female characters unabashedly at the forefront, but these women are dynamic, dark, problematic enough to be outcasted, and holy shit, are they queer.
Waller-Bridge adapted Killing Eve from Luke Jennings’ series of novels entitled Villanelle. The show -- and if you haven’t watched it yet, my face is giving you one of the harshest “how dare you” squints that I am capable of -- not only reinvisioned the spy genre comprised of women, women, and more women, but also added an overtly queer angle for its main characters’ conflict.
Eve Polastri, played by the intoxicatingly perfect Sandra Oh, an MI6 agent racked with boredom on the job and at home, becomes obsessed with a hired assassin and definite psychopath, Villanelle, played by the equally incredible Jodie Comer, that she is supposed to be investigating. And investigate she does, as she goes deeper into the spiral of numbness and violence that is Villanelle’s psyche, Eve finds herself not only drawn in intellectually, but sexually, too.
It’s never a question that Villanelle is queer, as in season one, we meet several of her past conquests (most of whom are women). However, it is seemingly a departure for Eve, who is linked up with her mustached English husband through all of this. Although the idea of sex lingers above them for all of season one, it’s inextricably linked with violence, morality, and, of course, the question of Eve’s sexuality. This awakening in Eve makes her more bold, elusive, even dangerous. The portrait of a baby queer coming to grips.
Although Waller-Bridge wasn’t the head writer for season two of Killing Eve, the queer storyline continued with Eve and Villanelle moving towards not just consummation, but a truly romantic end. One especially compelling scene that would be a shame not to mention as evidence, is the two characters meeting in season two after Eve stabbed Villanelle at the end of season one. Eve opens up about her true feelings -- and not just to satisfy the narcissistic tendencies of the psychopath in front of her, but because so much of it is truth.
Eve treads lightly while Villanelle entices her with gifts that double as weapons, mind games that they both live for, and exhilaration borne from violence. Each time that Eve tries to convince herself that Villanelle is just a psychopath, she’s drawn in further, she’s even more obsessed. That is one intense first same-sex crush.
Where Killing Eve’s queer storyline is blatant and at the forefront, Fleabag approaches subtly. To preface, if you haven’t watched Fleabag, I’m not bothering to give you the “howdareyou” that can only come out as one word, but I am contemplating leaving the room in silence so you can think about what you’ve done.
With its second season just having premiered in the U.S., Fleabag stands as one of the joys to have graced us with its darkly comic, horrifically familiar and familial take on social norms, sex, and loneliness. The second season is the series’ final, and explores Fleabag apart from her best friend’s death and family ostracization, but as a woman who is deeply lonely and misunderstood.
Where we see Fleabag using her sexuality as a means of connection in season one, season two has her exploring how she relates outside of it, especially in a world that avoids relating to her. Though she spends most of the second season rebuilding her relationship with her hilariously manic sister, her bakery, and chasing after the holy grail of unattainable -- a priest -- she also explores the other side of her sexuality, which includes women.
The most noteworthy example is Fleabag’s interaction with a colleague of her sister’s, Belinda Fries, played by the unceasingly exceptional Kristin Scott Thomas. It remains as one of the sweetest and most anti-climactic interaction between two queer characters. As Belinda sips on her martini, Fleabag openly and nervously flirts with her, looks at her longly, and has all the subtle tells of a baby queer peeking out from the cocoon.
These two shows are milestones for women in television. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, if you ask any lesbian, is an icon. My baby bi heart just about exploded from the sheer force of shared experience. These shows open up a dialogue for those who know they are “different” in that wildly vague gay way we use it, and gives us the opportunity to relate.
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Dakota is a poet, journalist, and right in the damn center of the Kinsey scale. Follow her on Twitter: @Likethestates.
Few Hollywood directors have the ability to bring together so many high profile stars for one project, and it looks like Ryan Murphy is at it again.
This time Murphy’s landed Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Ariana Grande, Awkwafina, and Keegan Michael Key for his film adaptation of the musical The Prom. Andrew Rannells and James Corden are also attached to star, with Murphy on board to direct and executive produce the film and soundtrack. The project is part of Murphy’s 5-year deal with Netflix, with several shows and documentaries already in the works.
The Prom originally debuted in Atlanta, Georgia in 2016 before its official Broadway opening in 2018. It was nominated for six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Book.
According to Deadline, the film is set for a Fall 2020 release — just in time for awards season. The film will have a short run in theaters before heading exclusively to Netflix.
Everyone knows that Pride is the time when we all come together to purchase Taylor Swift’s new single on iTunes to show support for all the allies who made gay rights possible.
After all, Pride is our one big chance to show straight people that we’re just like them: boring! But how can we make them feel comfortable when there’s a bunch of leather enthusiasts running around with their asses out? Reigning in our identity is crucial to keeping the support of fairweather heterosexuals who barely tolerate us... and isn’t that the point of Pride? So chuck those gimp masks and puppy tails and try out one of these family friendly kinks that won’t offend anybody!
Vore™️ presented by Totino’s Pizza Rolls
Vore, a kink that involves being eaten by a dominant partner, has no place at a festival with such upstanding vendors as the mortgage company that bankrupted your parents or the pharmaceutical company that keeps raising the price of your insulin. But what if—instead of eating a horny submissive—you ate a delicious oven-fresh Totino’s Pizza Roll? That’s where Vore™️ presented by Totino’s Pizza Rolls comes in! Why get hard over the taste of human bones crunching between your molars when you could not get horny over the mouthwatering taste of Totino’s Pizza Rolls? Perfect for kinky moms on the go and the whole family!
Peggling
Oh sure, there are some people who enjoy pegging, the activity where a woman puts on a strap on and inserts it into their partner’s anus. But if there’s one thing everyone enjoys, it’s Peggling: playing the masterpiece PopCap game Peggle (2007) and its sequel Peggle 2 (2013). The melodic bouncing of the metal ball as it eliminates glowing pegs from the board is sure to make even the most casual of gaymers squart their shorts. Lots of people go to Pride to find a unicorn for a threesome, but the only unicorn you need is Bjorn the Peggle Master as he guides you to victory. Besides, with Apple deciding what is and isn’t appropriate for you to look at on your phone, this is the kinkiest thing you’re going to find on the App Store.
BTSM - Blues Traveler Sadomasochism
It doesn’t matter how you play, as long as you play with intention! So leave the whips and chains at home and torment your sub with the collected discography of 90s harmonica rock group Blues Traveler. Your sub won’t be able to get the Run-Around on you once this family friend kink gets its Hooks in him. The only poppers your boy needs is lead singer John Popper and his vibrato tenor! After a few hours of that, he’ll be ready to suck it in, suck it in, suck it in like he’s Rin Tin TIn AND Anne Boleyn. Who needs a beating? With the Blues Traveler discography, you’ll have all the hits you could ever want.
Capitalist bootlicking
Pride is no place to grovel at the feet of a femdom when you could be groveling at the feet of a handful of billionaires who think you’re lower than the lowest toilet sub. Capitalism is a machine and what could be hotter than getting your body and life ground up by its many, many gears? Ruin Pride for everyone by getting in a fight with someone who says corporations don’t belong there. Let them know that voting with your dollar matters and that if they worked as hard as you do, then maybe Jeff Bezos will pay them what they’re worth! Congratulations: you oppressed a poor person and yourself at the same time! Kinky!
Adulting Baby
Nobody wants to see an adult hiding their erection in a big diaper. But you know what we do want to see? A full grown adult patting themselves on the back for performing the basic functions of society like paying a bill or changing a tire. Oh, you’re adulting? That’s so sexy… and funny! There’s no reason to let a play partner infantilize you when you’re so good at doing it yourself! You did the bare minimum to stay alive? Make sure you take a selfie and tag it #adulting! Yep, still funny! This is the kind of joke—and kink—you can ride well into your late thirties. And, unlike you, it won’t get old!
Just Not Going
Turns out lots of people get off from being denied so why not deny yourself the exquisite pleasure of going to Pride by... just not going to Pride? While everyone else is having an amazing time spending $13 on an Absolut vodka Equali-tini, you’re at home suffering. Heck, maybe people will think you don’t support the Bank of America Pride Parade and wouldn’t that just be so humiliating? Plus, if you’re just at home, you can indulge in any crazy kink you want, such as expressing yourself authentically, making a political statement about sexual freedom, or just shitting in your fursuit. It’s like gay people love to say: I don’t care what someone does behind closed doors, as long as it’s out of view of our extremely fragile allies whose support is based entirely on conformity!
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So there you have it! New and unfulfilling ways to show that you, as a queer person, are basically just the same as everyone else and not special in any way! Some people are saying cleaning up Pride only makes it more palatable to people on the right and to that I say “so?!” With hate crimes on the rise, isn’t it important to make our sexuality more palatable to the far right? If there’s one thing I know about history, it’s that the best way to appease Nazis is to cede ground to them!
We’d like to know more! Please tweet whichever fundamental aspects of yourself you’d like to shove back in a closet to @vicepresidentpence.
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Julian Modugno is a writer and humorist based out of Chicago, IL. He hates everything you love and won't be happy until it's destroyed and you're left with nothing. You can follow him on instagram @historysgreatestmonster.
Via @JacobTobia on Instagram
After completing undergrad, getting a master’s degree and falling explicitly out of love with academia, I never really wanted to write anything about a book ever again. Then, I found Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story. Jacob Tobia has become one of the more visible non-binary folks on the scene these days, and after their appearance on The Daily Show, a couple of memes, and one random video from Them, I was happy to hit the follow button and order the book.
I expected to feel some sense of camaraderie, but what I got is a big fat scoop of my own internalized femme-phobia. I saw myself in literally every chapter. Yes, literally. I expected to share childhood awkwardness and experiences of bullying. I grinned that we both are southerners that went to fancy universities, but somewhere between sharing a love of mint chocolate-chip ice cream, governor’s school, straight A’s, theater, buying heels in high school, and that they too had a power queer best friend that lived across the hall named Patrick, it stopped being cute, and I started hating this bitch for stealing my life and publishing it first. Kidding. Kind of.
Tobia talks regularly about their own journey of self-discovery, away from self-hatred, but the thing is: I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself reflected so clearly in a book. I was driven to write about Sissy not because I was so happy to see myself reflected in print but because looking at that glossy, pink, glittery book jacket, I can still find the jaded, angry, self-hating part of myself that cringes at the sight of myself reflected in another femme.
I pay plenty of lip service to the importance of queer representation, but it took the visceral, bitchy reaction to someone reflecting many of my own experiences for me to realize that unlearning patriarchal self-hatred is a constant effort.
I’m a cis-passing, white, privileged person with a stable salary and an altogether pleasant life. I constantly tell myself that I never really struggled. I push myself to be a care-giver because I feel obliged to share the benefits my stability and privilege afford me.
It wasn’t until I read Sissy that I ever really reflected on any part of my youth as traumatic. Seeing the word trauma attached to experiences Tobia and I shared, I heard the surprising voice saying “Oh, that’s not so bad,” “Why are you complaining about that?” “Is that really trauma?” Telling myself to be kinder to someone else forced me to realize how unkind and unfair I have been to myself.
There were plenty of times I put this book down, when I had to walk away from it, but I always came back. I opened my computer and wrote my first 500 words about a book since 2016 because I need to. Everyone needs to know about this book. My parents need to read this book, so I can take another shot at the pronoun talk.
Still, I don’t often use this word because I know it has real meaning for people with serious trauma. Sissy triggered me.
I haven’t ever reckoned with my relationship to church. My family has some aggressive Christians. As soon as I had the choice, I kept as far away as I could from Christianity. When Tobia discusses their faith in the early chapters, I freaked. I popped the book shut and promptly left my apartment to the quickest sex date I could arrange. It was clear that God was speaking through this book, that “the Lord” was giving me an opportunity to finally join “the Church” and “get saved.” This book could be the final push to lead me to religion. Or it could be that I was sort of traumatized by religion when I was young, and I never had to face that history surrounded by my queer-community bubble.
That’s the thing about having representation I’m only just now realizing. Until you actually get it, you never realize how much you were denying yourself, how much serious trauma you accept as mundane.
I want to say I love this book because I feel like that’s what you say about books that strongly affect you. “It’s so good. I love it.” If I’ve learned anything living outside the US, it’s that Americans “love” too much.
I needed this book. Jacob (I hope it’s cool I use your first name. Mx. Tobia ‘cause I’m nasty?), if you ever read this review, thank you. From the core of my thick-skinned, well-managed heart, thank you.
PS: If you’re ever in Berlin, drop me a line.
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Peach Blaus is a sex positive performer and creative that loves long walks, intimate kink, body odor, poetry, open communication, camp, flamboyance, and fisting. She is from Atlanta, but currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
PHOTO: Maria Bruun
Yanni Burton’s newest single “End Up Missing” is an exemplary sonic edifice of heartache, modeled as a musical montage motioning through a relationship’s breakdown. Stepping through processes of complication, verse to verse in remembrance of a rogue romance, “End Up Missing” as a dance track finds itself elegantly complimented in the music video’s wintry desert dreamscape. And despite the clubby assonance of the song, the skin tones and avant movement of the performers carries the song’s entanglement and estrangement beautifully, cinematographically captured by the poetic eye of director James Matthew Daniel.
Along with superb choreography by Cassidy Noblett (who has worked with Beyonce, Gaga, Britney, Katy Perry and on Glee and Lala Land to name a few), Yanni Burton is accompanied by CJ Jensen, Jared Nathan and Vincent Noiseux in the picturesque film echoing both love and loss. “End Up Missing” details the start of the spark to the beginning of the end, open ended and without closure, “that passion and intensity from a new relationship that can hit us over the head out of nowhere, and then, what happens when that starts to die and how we choose to handle that,” the artist explains.
Texturally, “End Up Missing” is an entourage that turns corners through 90’s boy bands to clubby haunted house hallows, a bit of sass to throw hands and dance down in all its crescendoing chaos. It tiptoes the line of giving up or giving in with a fury that juxtaposes in cool claims to drink away ones’ worry. All too familiar with gay bar blues in a touch-and-go climate of whirlwind hook-ups and gallant ghostings, Yanni’s pristine electronic zeal and a tasteful touch of forlorn piano backdrop packages a fresh form of radio-pop narration.
In the case of this particular beau, who grew up in Adelaide, Australia then moved to San Francisco for study, wistful piano shows up frequently in the now New York based singer and musician’s discography. Yanni’s pop tracks are just a part of the artist’s deeper musical inclination. He received his Masters in Orchestral Performance from Julliard, dabbling in Double Bass, and is a Producer and Manager with the Salome Chamber Orchestra, academic training that coos in Yanni’s alternative operations. Countless soul-baring songs, such as 2014’s “Beautiful”, display Yanni’s intimate relationship with piano, his classical practice influencing every aspect of his life. “It’s our job as musicians and artists to take that foundation, play with it, mold it, break it, and shape it into something that’s our own,” Yanni believes, noting the elder genre as a strong origin for many breadths of modern music. “Classical music has also taught me the power of storytelling without words, which I try to incorporate as much as possible when creating the aesthetic and production of my tracks.”
PHOTO: James Matthew Daniel
The number of classically trained individuals that exist in the indie pop community is larger than audiences assume. Though club-friendly chunks and classical compositions seem to have little to do with each other, viewed as separate genres, Yanni knows they are anything but. “I think the two musical practices connect and overlap all the time in my work. As a classical bassist, I had to learn how to emote and tell a story through sounds, as a melody. This really shaped how I approach songwriting and production. The music is just as important as the lyrics and they should compliment each other in order to portray the meaning and mood behind the track,” Yanni illustrates, adding, “My pop practices tend to kiss a classical style in the choice of instruments that I’m drawn to. For example, my earlier work as a pop writer was for an all-string quartet and piano. I may have also been going through a power ballad moment.”
All humor aside, Yanni Burton’s most recent emergence is more explicitly addictive to the ear than ever before and a step in the artist perfecting his abilities to enumerate his storytelling further, whether it be in classical or pop. “As a performer, my goal is to always connect with the audience, give an authentic interpretation of what I’m performing, and to tell a story. It can be easier for my own pop music, as I’m the writer and I know exactly what I’m trying to say, but even with classical music that I haven’t written, I try to find a way to connect to the piece and it often results in the same emotional outlet,” Yanni says. “I really believe all music is fundamentally about storytelling; therefore for me, I get a similar emotional response out of all music. I’m always on the hunt for those shivers that spread down your back, whether it’s from a Mahler Symphony or a drop in an EDM track.”
Follow Yanni Burton on Spotify, Instagram and Facebook for more.
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Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.
@Jasminericenycand, @MartiGCummings, @HollyBoxSprings, and @thebritafilter
In today's world, drag queens are all over the planet spreading their messages of love ... and liberalism.
The genesis of drag is inherently radical. It is an art form created by transgender and nonbinary people with a need to survive in gendered societies. It was popularized in the ballroom culture of New York City, by poor black gay people abandoned by capitalism and neoliberals alike. Drag queens took the streets and fought police during the Stonewall riots.
As the LGBTQ rights movement has been mainstreamed, it has been infused with toxic liberalism, forgetting the unapologetically radical nature of its past. LGBTQ people and culture have risen through the class hierarchies of western society, benefitting from capitalist systems, rather than challenging them. A similar watering-down has happened in the representation of the art of drag since the mainstreaming of Drag Race.
This article focuses on queens from Drag Race because the queens with the most media influence are from that show. This is inherently problematic because many types of drag performers are not allowed to compete on the show, meaning the ‘unpolished,’ genderfluid, radical nature of drag is damn near completely lost in mainstream representation.
While Drag Race queens have always used the show as a platform to crusade for social change, the conversation has been reigned in, ‘uncomfortable’ moments have been edited out and weak liberalism has been welcomed with a smile.
Bob the Drag Queen @thatonequeen
Over the years, queens have touched on all sorts of political and social issues including mental illness, bullying, gender identity, body positivity, suicide, poverty, racism and Islamaphobia. All of these issues are important and, when mentioned on the show, have often been discussed with great appreciation and intellect.
Who could forget the season 1 moment when Ongina revealed that she was HIV positive, or on season 6 when Trinity K. Bonet did the same? Who doesn’t tear up when watching Sasha Velour, Valentina and Shea Couleé discuss living with eating disorders on season 9? Who isn’t completely living for the Vixen’s blatant call-out of the white victim narrative on season 10 Untucked?
These are the moments that speak volumes; these are the narratives that viewers need to see represented on TV. While these moments may captivate and educate, they are fleeting in the show and the ‘wokeness’ of some queens seems to only extend so far.
RuPaul has thrown many events in “support of the troops” on the show, often involving the girls performing for service members or in a military-themed challenge. Yet not once has there been a call-out of the military industrial complex or the senseless violence of imperialism and war crimes. We need queens who are willing to go on national television and say “end war profiteering,” not queens who use that platform to perpetuate hollow rhetoric about “fighting for freedom.”
One episode featured Nancy Pelosi as a guest judge and she was met with admiration and showered in smiles and expressions of gratitude. Sorry not sorry, but fucking around with elite capitalists like Nancy Pelosi on national television and suggesting that viewers vote democrat does not queer activism make. It does not bring about any substantial change in the lives and communities of marginalized voters, and it does not touch the souls of those people in the way that hearing the queen’s stories does.
Drag Race needs queens who will stand on stage and ask why 26 percent of Pelosi’s funding comes from PAC contributions, who will ask if she acknowledges the ways in which she benefits from capitalism at the expense of others, who will ask why she has kept progressives in Congress in the dark regarding prescription drug pricing--not queens who will clap simply because she’s an anti-Trump democrat.
Other important moments have been edited out altogether, like on All-Stars 4 when Manilla was told she couldn't wear a tampon dress to celebrate the human body and when Gia and Ru’s conversation about his transphobic stance on trans drag performers didn’t make the edit. It’s fair to wonder how many other political and social statements were cut short to protect Ru’s image and to avoid controversy.
Outside of Drag Race, many queens have been on the frontlines of varying social issues. Courtney Act has used her platform on various shows to educate people about LGBTQ identities. Bob the Drag Queen started her career doing activism in the streets of New York and has since the show discussed racism in the fanbase. Sasha Velour, Violet Chachki and Valentina have all came out as nonbinary since the show and have been educating fans on what nonbinary identities are. Peppermint, Gia Gunn, Stacey Lane Matthews, Sonique and Carmen Carrera have all come out as trans women, advocating for change on the show and in the community.
Still, outside of the show, producers aren’t breathing down a queen’s neck coaxing her to spill tea about her personal life and have uncomfortable conversations regarding social change. Naturally, some girls might step off the soapbox because doing the work of advocacy and activism is exhausting — and that's totally fine.
However, it would seem a lot of queens don’t want to do or say anything politically controversial to preserve their ‘respectable,’ mainstream image. After all, drag is finally being offered a spotlight on mainstream platforms and some queens may feel pressured to ‘act right’ so as not to mess up the sudden success. Still, other queens might refuse to criticize the show or RuPaul directly because they feel indebted to Drag Race.
Yet, virtually every drag queen that has a mainstream platform is from Drag Race, so if none of them will call out antiquated liberalism and problematic practices, then who will?
It seems many Drag Race girls are socially aware, making an effort to learn and teach others and using their voice to spread love. However, many don’t use their voice to speak out on things at all, and others may intentionally avoid specific topics altogether.
Queer people do not need drag queens “speaking up” by supporting presidential candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. We need queens who will call out their problematic positions on criminalizing drug offenders.
We don’t need queens kiki-ing with problematic assholes like Jeffree Star and flaunting designer brands on social media. We need queens who will call out the disgusting nature of extravagant wealth and modern materialism.
We don’t need queens who explode with joy when a police car gets a fucking rainbow on it. We need queens who will point out the racist nature of the police in general and the police protecting Nazi protesters at pride.
We don’t need centrist queens who compromise in the name of “meeting in the middle.” We need leftist queens who bring anti-capitalism to the mainstage in order to radicalize the conversation.
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Luke Gardner is a radical journalist and student who lives in metro Atlanta. To see his work or for contact information click here.
Jawbreaker contained everything a typical teen movie was made of: popular kids, outcasts, sex, romance, drama, comedy and, of course, the quintessential dream of changing ones high school caste via the magic of a makeover and the prom. Jawbreaker also included aspects uncommon for the teen genre: kidnapping, murder, tales of rape and a detective played by the one and only B-movie badass Pam Grier. Director and writer Darren Stein was not even 30 whilst bringing this well-loved film to life in 1999, strengthened by his creative bond and muse-esqe admiration for Rose McGowan. McGowan perfected focal villainess, Courtney, the self-appointed ringleader after accidentally murdering their friend, Liz, who flashbacks with Laura Palmer-like eerie etherealness. Following the natural footsteps of McGowan’s Doom Generation Valley Girl wit, Darren Stein had created a fresh blend of glamour and gore.
Stein’s decision to use a high school setting played out by fashionable 90’s dames was a truly delicious way to alter a horror script. The depraved schemes and murderous secrets were certainly more interesting and inspired through the glossy veneer of female competition and tongue-in-cheek teen talk. Pre-Mean Girls lunch “rules” and social clout a main concern, the threat of ostracization a war within the school hallways, met a truly macabre plot. Stein referred to the film as “candy-coloured goth” in a past interview with McGowan and no description could be more accurate. Even when Stein paid mini homages, like recreating Vylette’s corvette moment as a high school version of IRL LA legend Angelyne, or borrowed bits of dialogue from past films he loved, they were presented in an incredibly effective alternate universe. The mere presence of Queen Bitches and hive mind may still at times be one heel in the mainstream, but underground status or not, Jawbreaker is a bonafide femme fury of a 90’s cult classic.
Stein’s brilliant 2013 film G.B.F. tackled high school again through a more heartfelt story with Stein’s strong tongue-in-cheek and high school sass in tact. Rejoined by Jawbreaker’s semi-heroine Rebecca Gayheart with additions of Natasha Lyonne and newcomer Michael J. Willett, G.B.F. tackled more than the closeted experience during these impressionable and vulnerable academic years. The dynamics of socialitess rivalry and the problematic accessorizing of the “gay best friend” spoke more directly to queer audiences. Saturated feminine visibility and queer visibility have both too often been pushed into B-movie bylines and Stein tends to turn both up to 11, unapologetically. An unspoken stigmatization that cliques and cat fights are only entertaining to the girls and the gay has made many films difficult to receive a direct spotlight or proper funding and due credit in Hollywood. Stein’s depiction of power struggle within Jawbreaker and G.B.F. both entice entertainment but speak to a larger level of wanting love and acceptance, mistakened so frequently through power. The vortex of Jawbreaker’s queer and high femme energy with its horrific plotline may have been deemed too dark for full studio support at its advent, but its massive reign on teen films afterwards is undeniable.
I was heavily influenced by John Waters and his theatrical over-the-top dialogue as well as Rocky Horror and Grease - as musicals, they’re inherently heightened. Then there’s a film like Carrie that’s melodramatic or Rock’n’Roll High School which has a B-movie archness. All these influences were at play when I sat down to write Jawbreaker.
I was also influenced by Heathers, of course, and always appreciated that the writer Daniel Waters really created a new vernacular with that film. I leaned into the stylized dialogue to make it feel beyond a normal high school universe. The phrase “Peachy Keen” literally came out of the mouth of Rizzo in Grease - she’s my favorite high school bad girl. “I made you and I can break you just as easily” was uttered to Rocky by Frankenfurter.
I really wanted Courtney to have a drag queen quality to her. No one like her can actually exist in high school but the terror and awe you can experience from these so called popular girls are very real. It was important to me that Courtney wasn’t just popular in a conventional sense. She was a bad girl. She was into kinky sex. Like a high school dominatrix version of the popular girl. I guess she was my fantasy version of that trope.
Horror was definitely in my blood as a kid and an early major influence was The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie. There are definite traces of Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) in Courtney’s seduction of Fern. You’d think she was granting Fern everlasting life by how dramatic her language is in that scene and being popular really is that big of a deal; it’s truly immortality in high school.
It was a hard film to get made. I was introduced to Lisa Tornell and Stacy Kramer, a producing team who were looking for a teen film. Lisa had been a producer on The Craft. We brought it to all the studios and got passes from everyone. It was the home video division of Columbia Tristar that ended up financing it for a fraction of the budget of studio teen films. I would say I was allowed to make the film I wanted to make and the actors and the crew were all on board for my vision. The studio wanted to add in the more cartoony sound design effects in post production to give the film a more tongue-in-cheek quality and make it feel less dark and more fun.
Also, the film originally began with the kidnapping and when we tested it for audiences, it was too violent and jarring for them. So I wrote that voiceover for Fern that opens the film where you see Liz Purr picking up her books and that sets up the clique and establishes the dynamic and the world. It sort of orients the audience before throwing them into this scary kidnapping. The whole film was such a big undertaking but it was so exciting to see it come to life so vividly. I remember watching the footage from the first day or two we shot. It was the wide shot of Fern walking up the path to Liz’s house and her at the doorway taking out her retainer and I could already tell it was something special. It was candy colored and lush and I knew it had exceeded even my expectations.
I think everyone had a really good time making it. Of course the girls set a lot of the tone and it was fun for everyone to see what new outfit they’d come out in everyday. It was a very tight schedule because the budget was so low, so we were definitely on an accelerated schedule to get through it. There was a lot of laughing. We were all so young! But the schedule was so compressed, we were filming at a breakneck pace and there were a lot of extras at the school and the prom so that always complicates things.
I was always looking for ways to shoot scenes in the most efficient manner. Like the shot where the girls are walking through the school and Marcie’s talking about the color of her nails being called “Demented”... That was done in two shots. There was the wide shot of the girls walking and then the close up of Vylette looking back and forth between Courtney and Marcie trying to ingest all these rules. It works well in those two shots but that’s one of the scenes where I can remember how rushed we were.
Certain scenes came together seamlessly like the big stick scene in Courtney’s room. Both Rose and Ethan Erickson who plays Dane were so excited to do that scene so when it came time to film it, we just had to make sure we had enough frozen big sticks. We all wanted to take that scene there and Rose was very game and so was Ethan. I think they know how important that scene was and how subversive it was for a teen film.
We allowed more time to film the prom and the fantasy sequence where Fern becomes Vylette since we knew those were more elaborate design-wise and had more involved camerawork. Marilyn Manson was on set a lot because he and Rose were dating at that time so that was fun. I remember he walked up behind me once when there was a behind-the-scenes crew filming and he put the hood from the hoodie on my head and said ‘Homo-Wan Kenobi.’ Or another time he said to the camera crew ‘I think being in a film by Darren Stein makes me gay.’ Which is really the biggest compliment.
Join WUSSY on Wednesday July 10th for a screening of Jawbreaker at Plaza Theater Atlanta.
Tickets available for purchase here.
PHOTO: Scott Jacobs
Millions of people flocked to New York City to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and celebrate the first World Pride held in America. Bubbles were blown. Bodies were sweating. Drag queens were dancing. Rainbows were waving like an endless flowing river.
And though the event was streamed across multiple platforms, the revolution was not televised.
As the first floats of the World Pride Parade kicked off, the Queer Liberation March was gathering in Bryant Park twenty blocks uptown.
“This March is a collection of fiercely passionate individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds coming together to make space for our people,” one of the organizers tells me. “It’s inspiring and humbling to think about all of the intellect and care and determination it took ancestors like Marsha P. Johnson or Sylvia Rivera to fight for our rights and risk so much for the people around them.”
The Queer Liberation March featured no corporate sponsors and minimal police, but it did feature nearly a thousand of queer bodies rebelling and reveling.
Titans of queer liberation marched with us, from Ann Northrop who organized the parade and was arrested nearly 100 times during ACT UP demonstrations in the 90s, to Rollerena, another activist who used to rollerskate down the streets of the Village in the 70s in full drag to Larry Kramer, who I hope needs no introduction.
Another stark difference: There were no barricades. Anyone could join the masses and march at any point. And as we cried, “Off of the sidewalks and into the streets,” some people did just that, to raucous applause and tender embraces.
Instead of thousands of smiling spectators, the streets were lined with cishet tourists whose amazed faces reminded us that—yes, Virginia—it is still radical to be queer.
The route was chosen carefully, replicating the orginal 1970 Christopher Street Day Gay Liberation March, also known as the first Pride. That route today contains a two Chick-fil-A’s, the Fox News headquarters, and a Trump merchandise store.
We gleefully flipped those establishments the bird.
And though we were united in anger, there was a sense of unbridled, unapologetic joy. It reminded me of the 1970 issue of Get Out! Magazine, which featured an advertisement for the very first Pride March:
“What it will all come to, no one can tell. It is our hope that the day will come when homosexuals will be an integral part of society—being treated as human beings. But this will not come overnight. It can only be the result of a long, hard struggle against bigotry, prejudice, persecution, exploitation—even genocide. The homosexual who wants to live a life of self-fulfillment in our current society has all the cards stacked against them. Gay Liberation is for the homosexual who refuses to accept such a condition. Gay liberation is for the homosexual who stands up and fights back.”
We finally reached the Great Lawn of Central Park and sat in the grass, basking in the sunlight and the speeches of the queer siblings who came before us and continue the fight.
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All photos by Scott Jacobs.
Evan Brechtel is a queer writer living in New York. You can find his body of work at www.evanbrechtel.net. @EvanBrechtel.
PHOTO: Tim Coburn
Billy Winn has been busy this past year. Releasing Dreamland I July 20th nearly a year ago, Winn’s recent release, appropriately titled Dreamland II follows the thematic and resonating heartache from the previous record. With an energetic EDM sound, Winn unveils the video for “Another Broken Heart”, the debut single from Dreamland II, which simmers in sensuality and confusion, a complexity Winn portrays with effortless cool.
“‘Another Broken Heart’ is inspired by a series of events, but there was one in particular where this guy was completely irresistible to me. Our physical attraction was incredibly strong, but we were totally incompatible emotionally,” Winn says, speaking honestly on the volatile irony in magnetism. “It was almost as if we hated each other if we weren’t having sex. The situation continued because of our physical attraction, but became emotionally volatile because neither of us could get what we really wanted.”
The video inspo is pure 80’s homage, Flashdance with specks of Janet Jackon’s “Pleasure Principle” and modern edges brought forth in a Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” studio song belting lineage. Winn decided to return to a pure dance format yet kept with the saturated neon of Dreamland I’s “Seal It with a Kiss”. Using an interpretive approach with accompaniment for a stripped down story, “Another Broken Heart” was originally a mid-tempo composition, which was then transformed by production team, Johnie and Eliot, who experimented with the song’s bones to flip it into an infectiously catchy dance track.
Winn’s rich R&B vocals with his signature electronic essence gives an uplift to many subject matters, but whereas most artists lean towards songs about lovers, either falling in or losing love, and all the sexual desire or relationship betrayals in between, Winn’s range is much more multifaceted. Both Dreamland collections follow Winn throughout the trials and tribulations that have revealed themselves in his life, the storytelling within also including a particularly profound life event: the death of his father.
“My father’s passing came at a weird time in my life. I was in the middle of parting ways with my record label and going through a huge transition personally and professionally. Before taking care of him in his final days, we hadn’t really spoken,” Winn explains. “We were never very close and so once I left home, I focused on building the life I wanted and finding the support system that suited me. I went back with a lot of resentment from when I was a kid, but in the time I spent with him at the end, I was able to let a lot of it go—realizing that they (he, my mother, and my family) just didn’t know better. It was a turning point for me, and helped me to better understand myself. It changed my perspective on life and on the way I approach relationships.”
Winn landed the Billboard 20 Dance chart with his song, “Future X Boyfriend”, propelling this DC-based artist into his career, though felt a lack of control working with certain industry entities. Now he is in a place where he is able to embrace what he loves the most, proudly, without the pretension of others interjecting.
Enjoy Billy Winn’s Dreamland EPs via Spotify.
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Sunni Johnson is the Arts Editor of WUSSY and a writer, zinester, and musician based in Atlanta, GA.
