Skip to main content

LGBTQIA+

Modern queer artists are helping to express the challenges and experiences of being queer in the United States. Two such artists are Max Binder and Mo Crist, whose performance of their work "Real Boy/Real Girl" speaks to the experiences and feelings of trans men and women, touching on expectations of gender and how they are often forced onto young trans, non-binary, and queer people. 


Kay Ulanday Barrett's "song for the kicked out" is another powerful piece about the queer experience:  

the streets are not paved with gold, they lied
I got a rough throat, i got a rough life
the streets are not paved with gold, they lied
I got too much queer in me to live their way tonight.  
 
she found me waist up in you
she had found me mouthful, drinkin’ you 

mama said that I was the devil, made this journey here a waste,
made too American and too unruly
couldn’t I just wear dresses, make money, and behave?  
 
mama said leave this house, her spirit broken by ache
all my belongings freckled the streets 
I slept outside, spirit stayin’ up, my journey isn’t self-made

I say all you laughin’ & jukin’ in the alleys
I say all you sleepin’ to roaches cries
I say all you couch surfin’ until the next night
I say all you kissin’ despite the fists and the fights 

together we are a prayer, a chant, a song, no matter what
together we are an anthem despite their cis hetero fuss
together we are stronger than the world’s unsaids
together we are as mighty as our ancestors up from the dead  

we are bigger than the skylines that hold us
we are bigger than the sirens that stab our hearts
we are bigger than the talk of boystown progress & bars
we are bigger than bleeding our blood to the stars 

together we are a prayer, no matter what
together we are an anthem despite their cis hetero fuss
together we are stronger than the world’s unsaids
together we are as mighty as our ancestors up from the dead

Finally, queer musical artist Semler produces music that speaks to the experience of growing up as an LGBTQIA+ person in the culture of U.S. Southern Evangelicism. Their music speaks to a generation of young people who grew up hearing that homosexuals had no place in Christianity, and "Jesus from Texas" in particular has become a sort of anthem for queer Christians and former Evangelicals.


My best friend found God so we lost touch
I hope she finds love and peace
And if her kid comes out I hope that she calls me
I guess a savior beats a friend who thinks you're good enough

References

Barrett, Kay Ulanday. "song for the kicked out." KayBarrett.com, November 12, 2012. https://www.kaybarrett.net/song-for-the-kicked-out/

Binder, Max, and Mo Crist. "Real Boy/Real Girl." YouTube.com, July 21, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK3qJ65WIwc

Semler. "Jesus from Texas." YouTube.com, June 7, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK22n2Vr7Jo

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Bluest Eye and Reading Primers

  Mike, Pam, Penny, and Father In The Bluest Eye , Toni Morrison explores the dynamic between white standards of beauty, womanhood, home life, and family and the realities of her characters. She uses the classic Dick and Jane primers as a visual of those white standards: two heterosexual, middle-class parents and three very blonde children who are always clean and well-dressed. This family experiences only minor interpersonal conflicts, and the children have lives that are defined by safety and playtime. The mother stays at home and cares for the children, while the father works outside the home and returns at dinnertime and on weekends. These children do not know hunger, or cold, or pain, or fear. Morrison contrasts this with the lives of her characters, who view these storybooks as “how life is supposed to be” even though their experiences are nothing like those of Dick, Jane, and Baby. So many young children of color learned to read with Dick and Jane primers, but these books d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reclaiming the F-Word (The Body: Creativity, Control, and Power)

“Militant. Radical. Man-hating.” ( Bennet, 2014 ) Is this what feminism means in our culture? In Brancaccio, Mehta, and Menendez’s article, “ Most Millennials Believe in Gender Equity, but Avoid the ‘Feminist’ Label ” the authors discuss how many young people shy away from describing themselves as feminists. My classmates and I felt that this was partly due to negative connotations surrounding the word, and presented ideas for how to overcome this stigma and how to reframe the feminist label as a positive one. One of the suggestions was that we must use the media to begin to take control of the narrative surrounding feminism. As I read further about this issue, I realized that is already happening in U.S. culture. Jason LaVeris—FilmMagic/Getty Images Beyonce is an example of how feminism is being redefined for the younger generations. She was the focus of another article that we read in this module (LaVoulle and Ellison’s “The Bad Bitch Barbie Craze and Beyonce” in Taboo , Fall 2017), ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The (Re)Productive Body/Self, Motherhood, and the Family

Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) Images of women in television have changed to reflect cultural expectations of modern women, but these changes have often been met with controversy. In the 1960s, TV mothers were housewives and had sometimes given up careers to take on the expected societal role of full-time homemaker and mother. For example, The Dick Van Dyke Show 's Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) gave up her career as a dancer to become a homemaker and, eventually, a mother, while her husband Rob continued to build his pre-marriage career. She was always stylish and exemplified the motherly ideal of the 60s. Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) It was not until the 1980s that we began to see working mothers on television. Elyse Keaton (Meredith Baxter) was an architect and mother on Family Ties, and Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) was an attorney on The Cosby Show . These families depicted two working, middle- or upper-middle-class heterosexual parents, and Elyse and Claire were m...
Post a Comment
Read more