Category: Gender Heroes


Reina Gosset


A post shared by Reina Gossett (@reinaxgossett) on


Queer and trans activist, filmmaker, and writer Reina Gosset. Reposted from @ReinaxGosset


Posted by on January 26th, 2018 at 10:00 am

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Gender Heroes: Samson


Fedora
Photo by Flickr user Th3 ProphetMan

“I need an undershirt that says ‘HI, I’M GENDERQUEER,’ and any moment I need to, I can tear off my shirt, Superman-style, to let people know.”

by Erica Stratton

For this month’s episode of Gender Heroes I interviewed Samson, who blogs at The Felt Fedora. Samson, who identifies as a genderqueer trans* androgyne, has written many amazing posts about navigating dysphoria and how they want their breasts to be seen as squishy, awesome, comfy elbows, but I was most drawn to their honesty about how they’ve chosen not to be out about their queer identity. In this interview, we talk about hiding in plain sight, “penance” for not being out, and queer hormones.

Genderfork: Many of the people I’ve profiled so far have been very “out”, but for various reasons you’ve chosen not to be. I hoped you could tell me a little bit about what went into that decision.

Samson: Hm, well. A lot of it was a practical decision: I’m a teacher of young children who lives in the South, and “people in general” are not really keen about trans* people teaching their kids. Also, I tend to be a fairly private person, and I’m not “visibly trans*,” per se. I probably read a little funny to other people–I’m AFAB [Assigned Female At Birth], and I don’t read butch, exactly, but probably a sort of “manly woman.” Anyway, being “out” would sort of require me to make a statement about my gender, and I’m not really keen to attract attention/curiosity/misperceptions to myself that way.

Genderfork: So are you out to people in other aspects of your life?

Samson: Oh, definitely to my close friends. They don’t all 100% understand it, but for the most part they’re really great about it.

Genderfork: So your gender presentation is based on how much privacy you need?

Samson: Well, I present largely the way I would like to. It’s just that my gender presentation frequently reads as female to other people. It’s a weird push-pull thing. For other people to read me as trans*, or genderqueer, or queer at all, I have to push my presentation as far toward male as I can–which, some days, is how I happen to get dressed in the mornings. But other days, I feel like wearing more femme things, and without going out of my way to find some gender marker to tweak or change, I just get read as female.

It’s frustrating. I want to wear whatever I want, but I also want people to read me as “queer,” and some days I can’t have both. Some friends at a support group joked that I needed an undershirt that says “HI, I’M GENDERQUEER,” and that at any moment I needed to, I could tear off my shirt, Superman-style, to let people know.

Genderfork: You mentioned in one of your posts that you were on hormones at one point, but decided to stop because looking more “male” was also giving you dysphoria.

Samson: Oh! My hormones are a funny story.

Genderfork: They seem to be very complicated.

Samson: Hee. Yes. I’ve never “been on T.” When left to my own devices, though, my hormones are female-typical, with a heaping spoonful of androgens added in. For years… four years, I think? I was on birth control to keep the androgens down. And I finally sorta rebelled against that, stopped the birth control, got a new doctor, and said I wanted absolutely no more estrogen. He agreed not to treat the hormone imbalance, so now I’m having some changes (facial hair, voice drop) related to having those androgens back in my system.

It’s basically a dream. Like, if I could have any hormones, this is what I’d have.

Genderfork: So your hormones are queer as well as your gender?

Samson: Yes! I am just incredibly super queer all around. :D

Genderfork: Super Queer! *plays superman theme*

Samson: Oh, there’s a comic for this…

Genderfork: You really do need that shirt :P

Samson: I have a barely-controllable urge to run around with my arms stuck out Superman-style now.

Genderfork: So, did you go into teaching knowing you’d have to be stealth about your identity?

Samson: Yeah, I figured. There are no employment protections in my state, so I couldn’t even be out as bi and be sure of keeping my job. There have been some teachers fired in my state possibly for being gay; the school apparently cooked up some other reasons for letting them go. Before, it felt like this mind-crushing dichotomy between my queer (“real”) life and my work life, when I was working at a high school.

Genderfork: What made it less mind-crushing?

Samson: Well, I now teach young[er] children. And while that feels particularly treacherous as far as parents and administrators finding out about my ID and objecting to me working with young children, I feel a little freer. I feel like I have a chance to influence kids toward tolerance while they’re young, and I think that some of them pick up on my queerness. I hope they do. I hope to leverage that–to let them know it’s OK to be different–both by just being there, and by working it into my curriculum.

Genderfork: So you went into this thinking, “I really like doing this, and I am going to do it even with the risks?”

Samson: Oh yeah. For a long time I thought teaching any younger than college level would be impossible. It was a book that changed my mind, actually: One Teacher in Ten, full of stories from gay and lesbian educators. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows–a lot of tough stories, but all very uplifting. That convinced me I could do it. So it was staying up late in my dorm room, reading this book I’d checked out from the library, that made me reconsider my whole future. And I’m so, so glad I did.

Oh! Also. Having friends at work that I trust enough to be out to has made a HUGE difference. I have two good friends who know most to all of my identity, and it’s made me feel like that part of myself–my queer self–resides and is acknowledged in my workplace too.

Genderfork: It’s starting to sound more like you’re hiding in plain sight than being totally stealth about it.

Samson: Yeah, that’s how I feel too. There are moments when I am stealth, I think… the other day some of my coworkers were trying to set me up with a straight guy. And it was like… there were so many ways in which that wasn’t going to work out! But I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything, nor could I really think of how to phrase it. But really, if I don’t want to talk about my private life, my coworkers don’t really pry. And the kids–I mean, there’s so much you don’t talk about with the kids anyway! They’re so young and developmentally self-centered that I don’t get many questions from them.

Genderfork: So, in a weird way, the same environment that keeps you from being really “out” is also what helps you to stay under the radar?

Samson: Yes! Exactly. It’s so weird.

…I do feel guilty about not being out, though.

Genderfork: It seems odd that you feel guilty about a decision that you seem to have made very deliberately.

Samson: Well, sometimes it feels like a deliberate act of cowardice.

Genderfork: That’s a pretty strong word, cowardice. You seem to be as out as you can be, under the circumstances.

Samson: I blogged about this once… not everyone has to be wildly and loudly out and proud and in-your-face to make a difference. But sometimes I feel like I’m just making excuses. Or that I could be pushing it more than I am. I don’t feel like that as often anymore.

Genderfork: What helped you to feel more at peace with it?

Samson: I think especially because I don’t feel like I’m hiding anymore, per se, but rather hiding in plain sight. I’m not deliberately misleading anyone. And I’m being very actively out in other parts of my life. I guess it kind of makes me feel like I’m making up for it!

Genderfork: I almost feel like you’re talking about a sin. “I’m not out, but I can do penance!”

Samson: Haha! Yes, that’s actually kind of an apt way to put it. I mean, there are lots of people, online and elsewhere, who clamor about how you have no excuses not to be out. …nobody’s said it to my face, but I read it a lot. So they kinda “get to me” in that they get under my skin a bit. Enough that I’m treating it like I’m doing penance for a sin.

I think I might also feel differently about it if I weren’t non-binary. Sometimes I know I don’t have the words to be out among my school coworkers. Like, if I could say I were a trans* man? They’d probably have some frame of reference for that. But to say I’m genderqueer, or an androgyne, or non-binary-aligned trans*? Most of them would have no clue what I meant, and I’d have to do the whole trans* 101 right there.

Genderfork: And the androgyne 101 and the non-binary-aligned 101…

Samson: YES.

I did an interview recently for a trans research study and the researcher was asking about ID documents (Using/traveling with documents whose gender markers didn’t necessarily match my gender or presentation). And I was thinking, “Well, what the hell would they say to be correct? ‘M’ and ‘F’ are equally wrong”. I feel like he didn’t get what he was looking for, from me… I got my picture retaken to look more androgynous, my license picture, that is.. but I’ve never tried changing my marker, or had people question it.

If I could change it to Q, I would! Or N/A! Because honestly why does it matter?

Genderfork: ‘Cuz society! or patriarchy! Or something.

Samson: Eeeexactly.


Posted by on February 7th, 2012 at 08:00 am

Gender Heroes | 9 comments »

Gender Heroes: Majestic Legay


Majestic Legay, a fat light-skinned person with a mohawk in fantastic makeup, wearing a black button-down shirt and a bow tie under a black leather vest.

Glittery Teen Werewolf Made With 100% Fatty Goodness

by Erica Stratton

This month’s episode of Gender Heroes shines the spotlight on Majestic Legay, co-creator of Glitter Politic. When not collecting Body Love Letters, Legay promotes an obese lifestyle, practices gay witchcraft, wears amazing jackets and cultivates zir mustache.

Legay lives in a shared house in Vancouver with fellow Glitter Politic founder Ashley Aron and Smith, who started Queer, Fat, Hungry. Legay calls this twist of life-imitates-Internet-awesomeness “gay fate!”

Genderfork: How would you describe your gender identity now? What’s your preferred pronoun (if any)?

Legay: If I had to choose an identity category I would say I am a non-binary trans (or genderqueer) femme. I usually use ‘they’ pronouns with people I am close with, but I am pretty serious lately about going by any pronoun. I am starting to gravitate towards that because I am feeling really complicated about all pronouns and they aren’t central to the way I understand my gender right now.

To be honest, the most accurate description of my gender for me at this moment would be that I am a sex crazed teenager who peacocks as a daddy. Everything about my gender seems performative and is constantly shifting and that feels like a funny and accurate way for me to describe this particular moment.  My lover once said to me “if prince and a tough but tender cowboy made love and gave birth to a baby wolf and the afterbirth was glitter, that would be you I think” which made a lot of sense to me. I’m not trying to be pretentious, I just have a non-binary experience of my gender and sometimes talking about it in terms of baby wolves and glitter and vintage glamour and leather daddies makes way more sense to me than things like pronouns.

Genderfork: One of the first critiques that were leveled at Genderfork was about the lack of body diversity (See “Why don’t I see more [insert group here] represented on your site?” in our FAQ). After looking for photos of androgynous fashionistas for three years, I think there is also a problem with the common perception of what body type is “androgynous”: skinny, hipless, and boobless. How can we smash this idea to smithereens?

Legay: I think we need to remember that the very notion of “visibility” is very, very loaded. We need to ask ourselves, “who is visible and why?” and “is visibility always a good thing? Is it always a choice?”. Visibility is often really about who has privilege in certain spaces and is often raced, classed, and gendered in complicated ways. For example, white, thin, “androgynous” queers dominate queer fashion blogs and websites while those who are more feminine, have different bodies, who aren’t white are often vastly undervalued and underrepresented. I am doing some writing on queer visibility in November and I hope to be able to better articulate this critique then. I think we can smash this idea to smithereens by recognizing that visibility is constructed in a way that makes certain people and bodies totally invisible. I don’t think people have to “look” androgynous to have complicated experiences of their genders. I’ve identified as trans for a really long time, but that’s not always how people saw me (I was often read as a cis femme). Visibility fails me and many of the people I love whose bodies and aesthetics don’t fit into the narrow confines of the dominant ways we see “queer”.

Genderfork: What message are you sending with your fashion?

Legay: I construct my visibility on my own terms but I acknowledge that I have no control over the ways that other people see or interpret that. I once said to my friend “I want people to see me and feel uncomfortable. Like they are simultaneously disturbed and really turned on“. This reminds me of an article that Dean Spade wrote on resistant aesthetics called Dress to Kill, Fight to Win. In it he says, “I want to be disturbed by what you’re wearing, I want to be shocked and undone and delighted by what you’re doing and how you’re living. And I don’t want anyone to be afraid to put on their look, their body, their clothes anymore. Resistance is what is sexy, its what looks good and is hard to look at and what sometimes requires explanation.”

I suppose that part of what I am trying to do is redefine people’s understanding of beauty with a forceful aesthetic that leaves people with no other choice than to notice that beauty, gender and desire are much more complex than mainstream media says they are.

On a less intense note, right now my style is teen werewolf because it’s fall and I am growing out my moustache. This means a lot of black clothes and glitter and trying to reclaim nailpolish.

Genderfork: Where do you get your clothes? It’s already difficult to find decent plus size fashion, and finding decent queer fashion just seems to add an additional level of frustration for a lot of people. (In other words: OMG, that purple rain jacket! *swoons* Where can I get one???)

Legay: I’ve been going to thrift stores since I was a tween. I get most of my accessories, t-shirts, button ups, jackets and sweaters from thrift stores. I pride myself in being able to work a thrift store like a boss and I love to shop for my clothes there as much as possible. That being said, PANTS ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. Finding pants as someone with big hips is really, really hard. I actually don’t really fit into boy pants, because I have a super wide waist. I usually always wear jeggings and women’s pants and usually get mine from Old Navy or Torrid. Finding decent fashion can be really time consuming and annoying. I would say, go to the thrift store, have patience and try everything on (because then you will find things like cropped satin purple jackets that make it all worth it!).

Genderfork: Any resources/style guides/fellow androgynous radfatties that you’d like to recommend?

A Dark Congregation (GQ Fat Latina Swag)
Callout Queen (Blogging for Brown Gurls)
Deli Sub the Femme Cub (Deliciously Subversive)
Dressupbox (Trans Queer of Color)
Fat Genderqueers
Fuck Yeah Chubby Butches!
Fancy and Dandy Fatties
Glitter Geek (Queer Geeky Glamdrogynous Korean Flowerboy Adoptee Fat Crip Artist)
Hickies ‘n’ Hotpants
Many Bothans (webmaster for Glitter Politic)
Pens and Paper ( Queer. Fat. Trans-masculine Bigender Boi.)
Queer Co.
Queer, Fat, Hungry (Queering Eating)
Trans (Fat)shion!

Genderfork: And… what are you thinking about gender right now?

Legay: I feel like there is a lot of misogyny in queer spaces (misogyny = the hatred of the feminine), and I have a lot of internalized misogyny I am dealing with right now. I feel like masculinity is often at odds with femininity and constructing my masculinity in a way that is not predicated on the hatred of the feminine but actually embraces and celebrates it is very important to me. Right now I am trying to explore masculinity while thinking about misogyny and transmisogyny a lot. My understanding of how misogyny feels personally is shifting with my gender presentation, and I don’t ever want to forget that as a femme I am committed to making misogyny visible in all of its forms so that I can resist it for myself and also be in solidarity with other femmes and feminine folks.

On a less serious note, my gender idols right now are Elvis and Prince because they both have a very meticulous masculinity and wore fancy makeup. Embracing blush and mascara like it’s going out of style is really important to me all of the time and you can often find me drinking coffee and contemplating the merits of different shades of blush.


Posted by on December 1st, 2011 at 04:00 pm

Gender Heroes | 7 comments »

Gender Heroes: Interview With Jiz Lee


Jiz Lee

Jiz Lee, photographed by Shilo McCabe

 

On this episode of Gender Heroes, we’re interviewing Jiz Lee! Lee is a genderqueer porn star who strives to educate people about their sexuality and creates stunning images of androgynous beauty. They are the founder of Karma Pervs (NSFW), a “philanthropic porn experiment” that raises money for a different charity each month. Lee has also modeled for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, recreating such characters as Spider Jerusalem and a pro-sex worker take on Jack the Ripper.

 

Genderfork: How would you describe your gender identity?

Jiz Lee: Genderqueer! In general, I prefer neutrality in my presentation (including the neutral pronouns “they/them”). My father describes my expression as gender-neutral and I would agree with him on this. However, I also feel that my gender is fluid and can sometimes be expressed through extravagance. The times when I am most aware of my gender is when it is queered. Furthermore, because I am a performer, there are multiple levels to my gender expression. In fact I am sometimes more genderqueer in the adult work that I do, whereas my day-to-day life is more causal and gender-neutral.

Genderfork: Did you “always know” your gender or was it a process?

Jiz Lee: I don’t think I can ever know my gender. I think it’s a process that is either continuously performed (usually subconsciously) or re-presented through media element, such as documented images, video, or written stories. I think that “knowing my gender” or being “aware” of my gender is a process that sometimes correlates to how I identify and sometimes strikes discordance. “I” may know that I am genderqueer; however, how I am perceived by others influences my gender performance whether I want it to or not.

Genderfork: Have you ever felt pressure to change your gender presentation? How did you deal with it?

Jiz Lee: Feeling pressure to be more cisgender is something that happens daily. In terms of the adult work I do, I see this pressure in the way performers are portrayed. For example, mainstream media likes to accentuate cisgender behavior and appearance. Indie media can be somewhat more lenient, although it is also subject to such pressures — or pressures to play up queer signifiers within gender. Here the differences in gender and sexuality bounce off notions of what it means to “look” [like] a sexuality.

As a performer it’s up to me to decide how far I allow any pressure to influence my decisions, and I think this is what most defines my work. For example, one very common cultural gender signifier is body hair. I enjoy the flexibility of doing what I like with my hair, whether it’s hair on the face, chest, crotch, armpits, legs, etc… It can be shaved, waxed, lasered, trimmed, sculpted, dyed, bleached, natural, etc… Regardless of what I decide to do with my hair, what matters to me is that the choice is my own to make, and that the reasons I make this choice are not prescribed by external pressures related to ideal beauty standards, especially if they involve shame. It’s important to me that if my hair is accentuated, even for the play of it being “dirty” or “extreme” that I own the pleasure of that enactment. That’s where some porn can be empowering while another can be objectifying. The difference is context.

Genderfork: How does your work challenge people’s views on gender? What kind of responses have you had?

Jiz Lee: My work challenges people’s views on gender because I bring my sexuality genuinely to the shoot. I feel confident in my body and its presentation, and performing in adult work has actually helped me to explore and accept my body. For example, when I was younger I identified as transgender, and, though I was sexually confident, I was hesitant in how my body might be displayed or read by others when it was naked because of the feminine aspects. However, my belief that our gender is not solely based on how we appear lead me to overcome this negative body image.

I don’t think a trans body necessarily HAS to be one that involves hormones, surgery, or positioning (aka binding/padded bras, etc). Bodies certainly CAN, of course. However, ultimately it’s how the person feels about their body and how they choose to express it. So for me, allowing my body to be as it was felt like the best way I could portray my gender.

The responses I have [had] vary. I have received responses from genderqueer, trans, fluid, and variant people who are extremely appreciative and supportive of my work. It validates their own experiences and desires, and that in turn informs my own exploration in pornography. On the other hand, I also receive responses from fans and peers who do not read me as androgynous or gender queer [and] who see me as cisgender. It happens several times a day, from, “Hey Girl!” or “You’re the most beautiful woman!” or “Do you do scenes with men?” People see me as they will, often conflating my perceived sex with assumed gender and sexuality. I don’t believe they do this to insult or offend me; they don’t know what genderqueer means, or they don’t know that I identify as such. They may not know about my “they/them” preferred pronouns, or if they do, they may not understand it. I’m a patient person, and [I will] softly inform them of my own preferred expression, which usually helps them better understand gender. These kinds of interactions are why I blog (NSFW) and have accounts on social networks (NSFW). If I don’t affirm my gender and sexual orientation, I can’t expect that others will do it for me.

Genderfork: And… what are you thinking about gender right now?

Jiz Lee: Sometimes I feel very heavy from gender discrimination and how it extends to human rights violations. When news of gay teen suicides sparked the nation, we read about them bullied by peers for being effeminate, sissies, [or] for not fitting what society says is masculine. When we often see or experience hatred many times insecurity around gender plays a part of it, whether it’s masculinity, femininity or ambiguity. I try to keep in mind that gender is something we can USE, it’s a part of us. It’s there in how we talk, type, walk, work, and even breathe. It’s complex, and though struggles around gender can be overwhelming, it’s not gender itself that we have to fight against, but simply the limitations of what it can be. Gender is something we can embrace and celebrate. And the more we celebrate and share — thank you Genderfork! — our gender as a valid and loved part of who we are, the more we allow others to do the same.


Posted by on June 22nd, 2011 at 08:00 am

Gender Heroes | 7 comments »

Gender Heroes: Claude Cahun (1894-1954)



Claude Cahun, originally uploaded by Peglessness.

Gender Alchymist

by Erica Stratton

While researching a book on Surrealism, a man named François Leperlier came across a remarkable series of self-portraits created by an artist he had never heard of before: Claude Cahun. The name sounded masculine—some early biographers even used male pronouns—but she was female-bodied. In these pictures, Cahun showed a remarkable ability for gender transformation. She holds mysterious props that turn her into a magician, a doll, or an impenetrably masked androgyny. With her hooked nose and a shaved head, it seems she could photograph herself as male, female, or any shade in between.

Though Leperlier rediscovered Cahun in the 1980s—30 years after her death—it wasn’t until the early ’90s that her photos were shown at several international art shows celebrating Surrealism. As scholars delved into Cahun’s work, their perception of her identity seemed to shift with each summation. She collaborated with many of the Surrealists, but didn’t join the movement as one of them; her work is said to be marginalized because she was a woman, but her writing hints that she may not have thought of herself as female. Modern archivists have held her work up as an example of a transperson, an androgyny, a lesbian, queer, and even a transhumanist. She wrote in her autobiography, Disavowals, “Shuffle the cards. Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”

Cahun was based in Paris throughout most of her career. She wrote and created photographs with her partner, Marcel Moore, until the 1930s, when they retired from the Parisian art world and moved to Jersey Island. They named the house they lived in La Ferme Sans Nom, “the Farm Without a Name,” and lived there until the 1940s. Then, Nazis occupied the island. Cahun and her partner were arrested for putting fliers protesting the occupation under the windshields of Nazi vehicles and inside of newspapers for sale, and leaving cartons full of them in alleyways. They were imprisoned and threatened with execution, but released shortly thereafter.

During her career, Claude Cahun was better known for her writings than her photographs, which were never shown during her lifetime. Happily, Disaovowals and another book, Heroines, have been translated from French into English, but the bulk of her written work still remains uncollected.

 1931

I Extend My Arms, uploaded by angeloplessas

Claude Cahun 1920

Claude Cahun 1920 uploaded by Peglessness

Claude Cahun 1912

Claude Cahun 1912 uploaded by Peglessness


Posted by on September 10th, 2010 at 04:00 pm

Gender Heroes | 14 comments »

Gender Heroes: Romaine Brooks (1874-1970)



Romaine_Brooks_-_Self-Portrait_1923, originally uploaded by odetojune.

Painter of Femmedrogyny

by Erica Stratton

Romaine Brooks lived a kind of queer artists’ fairy tale. She grew up in unbelievable hardship–born out of wedlock to a distant mother and caretaker to a brother whose mental illness caused him to scream and see visions. She had to fight to get a small scholarship to study music and art in England, where she was so poor she took a job singing in a cabaret.

Then, when Brooks was 28, her mother died and left her the entire family fortune. With this new-found freedom, Brooks cut her hair short and donned men’s clothing for a walking tour of England. Though it was to become a fashionable norm for women many years later, few women wore pants at this time, and her own androgynous style foreshadowed her later works.

For the rest of her life, Romaine Brooks created paintings of the intellectual women who surrounded her. She became well-known for her Self-Portrait (pictured above), Peter, A Young English Girl, and many other portraits of androgynous figures whose gaze or gender challenge the viewer’s assumptions. Many of them are pictured alone, in gloomy landscapes contrasting sharply with the pinks and reds of flesh or clothing details. Brooks favored a subdued palette of blacks and grays for most of her career. Once, when some art critics came to visit, she showed them her day’s work, which was entirely made up of little squares of cardboard covered in shades of grey. Because her wealth freed her from having to worry about selling her work, she often painted portraits that made cutting parodies of her subject, mocking their style or social status.

Brooks lived most of her life with her companion Natalie Clifford Barney, a polyamorous lesbian novelist. They met at the beginning of World War II and continued the relationship for 50 years. Brooks died at 95.


Posted by on June 25th, 2010 at 04:00 pm

Gender Heroes | 6 comments »

Gender Heroes: Justin Bond


Hey Everyone!  I’m excited to present you with Gender Heroes — a new series produced by our fabulous volunteer, Erica, whom you know from her compelling photo curation work.  She’ll be sharing photos and brief overviews of her heroes in the gender variance spotlight, kicking it off with the inimitable Justin Bond.  Enjoy!  ~Sarah Dopp, founder of Genderfork

IMG_7845, originally uploaded by russturk2002.

Radical Faerie in Suits and High Heels

by Erica Stratton

Queer performer Justin Bond was born in Hagerstown, MD — proof that not all gender heroes start off in the big city. In the 1990s, he teamed up with piano player Kenny Mellman to create the duo Kiki & Herb, where Bond played a has-been chanteuse who always had faux diamond tears in her eyes. Kiki’s vocal prowess allowed her to sing both extremely well and extremely badly, sometimes during the course of the same song.

Justin Bond uses male pronouns, but he’s been photographed as a man, a woman, an androgyne, a forest nymph, and jamming with Rufus Wainwright and Yoko Ono. He and Tilda Swinton are BFFs.

In 2008, Bond killed off Kiki. But even when you’ve taken the alcoholic chanteuse out of the performer, you can’t take the queer activism out of his performance. Bond has written a scathing reaction to legislation banning gay marriage, played the Mistress of the Sex Not Bombs Room in the movie Shortbus, and a letter to his 16-year-old queer self.

Bond blogs at Justin Bond Is Living and tweets at mxjustinVbond.

Edit: At the time this bio was written, Bond was using male pronouns, but is now using the pronoun ‘v’.


Posted by on May 7th, 2010 at 04:00 pm

Gender Heroes | 7 comments »

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