Artists, Writers, Filmmakers Share their Stories
Marilyn Minter · Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy · Dean Spade · Laura Eason · Intan Paramaditha · Tey Meadow · Sara Ahmed · Ellen Rapoport · Dian Hanson · Kate Mueth on the importance of agency, owning the narrative, and the joy of creation.
Conversation with DEAN SPADE about How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together
This book has a lot of the wisdom of things that feminists and queers have learned in the community about sexuality, but the book is really for anybody who is political, even those just starting out and beginning to realize that there is something wrong with the systems they live under. I want to be in movements. Our movements are made of relationships. So, if you're just getting into our movements, or if you've been here for years and have been watching the ways we hurt each other and fall apart relationally, this book is about identifying these common patterns.
This book has a lot of the wisdom of things that feminists and queers have learned in the community about sexuality, but the book is really for anybody who is political, even those just starting out and beginning to realize that there is something wrong with the systems they live under. I want to be in movements. Our movements are made of relationships. So, if you're just getting into our movements, or if you've been here for years and have been watching the ways we hurt each other and fall apart relationally, this book is about identifying these common patterns.
Organizer · Speaker · Professor at Seattle University's School of Law
Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.
Organizer · Speaker · Professor at Seattle University's School of Law
Author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
Mutual Aid, Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
I want to see movements that embolden our tactics. Like people blocking oil pipelines all over the world. That's what's required now. Asking endlessly from the dominant system to treat us fairly doesn't work. And this frustrating kind of endless appeal and hoping maybe we can get it to work this time doesn't work. And the clock is ticking, especially on ecological collapse. We need to save each other's lives and act.
Writer, Public Speaker, Facilitator · Founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing
So much of the travel industry was built on the idea of colonialism which really makes us all inherit this idea that whatever we need in life is going to come from seeking it elsewhere and grabbing it from somewhere else, I think looking at that, really deeply thinking about what is lost from that mindset and the harm that is caused by it has been something I've been trying to do over the last few years. And a lot of that has to do with land trauma, right? Like really acknowledging where our settlement of land comes from and how we can heal that in the ways that we travel.
Writer, Public Speaker, Facilitator · Founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing
So much of the travel industry was built on the idea of colonialism which really makes us all inherit this idea that whatever we need in life is going to come from seeking it elsewhere and grabbing it from somewhere else, I think looking at that, really deeply thinking about what is lost from that mindset and the harm that is caused by it has been something I've been trying to do over the last few years. And a lot of that has to do with land trauma, right? Like really acknowledging where our settlement of land comes from and how we can heal that in the ways that we travel.
Author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Co-editor of Other Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology
So while there is no kind of one size fits all story, there are plenty of times when...kind of like clusters of activity. And some kids don't come out as trans. They come out as wanting to begin a process of exploration around gender, wanting to sort of bend things a little bit or begin to present themselves in slightly different ways without a concrete cross-identification.
Author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Co-editor of Other Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology
So while there is no kind of one size fits all story, there are plenty of times when...kind of like clusters of activity. And some kids don't come out as trans. They come out as wanting to begin a process of exploration around gender, wanting to sort of bend things a little bit or begin to present themselves in slightly different ways without a concrete cross-identification.
Creator, Executive Producer & Showrunner of Minx
starring Ophelia Lovibond & Jake Johnson
What drew me to the time period of the 70s was the real story of these magazines Playgirl, Viva, Foxy Lady, all the magazines that existed in this period. So it was a natural outgrowth of trying to tell a story that was inspired by, to some extent, real-life events. When I started developing Minx, what struck me about the 70s, in particular, is just how similar it was to our time. It seems like the magazines were covering all the same issues that we're now talking about. Obviously, we all saw with the leaked decision in Roe vs. Wade just how close we are to that time period and how far we haven't come.
Creator, Executive Producer & Showrunner of Minx
starring Ophelia Lovibond & Jake Johnson
What drew me to the time period of the 70s was the real story of these magazines Playgirl, Viva, Foxy Lady, all the magazines that existed in this period. So it was a natural outgrowth of trying to tell a story that was inspired by, to some extent, real-life events. When I started developing Minx, what struck me about the 70s, in particular, is just how similar it was to our time. It seems like the magazines were covering all the same issues that we're now talking about. Obviously, we all saw with the leaked decision in Roe vs. Wade just how close we are to that time period and how far we haven't come.
YA Writer & Poet
Author of Pillow Thoughts & I Hope You Stay
I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.
YA Writer & Poet
Author of Pillow Thoughts & I Hope You Stay
I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.
Black Feminist Historian · Founder of the Transformative Black Feminisms Initiative at Ohio State University
Author of America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women & The Struggle for Justice
We have to be unwavering in our commitment to principles of justice and freedom and be harbingers of hope. So for me, this is a lifelong thing, and I think of it as ancestor work that I one day will be somebody's ancestor, and I want them to be proud of the work that we did to give them a world that’s a little better of an inheritance than the world that I was born into. And I think that is how we mark progress in more nuanced ways, in more honest ways. It doesn't need to be a straight line towards freedom, more of a journey with wins and losses, setbacks and victories.
Black Feminist Historian · Founder of the Transformative Black Feminisms Initiative at Ohio State University
Author of America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women & The Struggle for Justice
We have to be unwavering in our commitment to principles of justice and freedom and be harbingers of hope. So for me, this is a lifelong thing, and I think of it as ancestor work that I one day will be somebody's ancestor, and I want them to be proud of the work that we did to give them a world that’s a little better of an inheritance than the world that I was born into. And I think that is how we mark progress in more nuanced ways, in more honest ways. It doesn't need to be a straight line towards freedom, more of a journey with wins and losses, setbacks and victories.
Lambda Literary Award Winning Author of In the Dream House & Her Body and Other Parties
I would say that I write liminal fantasy. I write surrealist work and literary fiction. I write horror. Horror is probably the genre that speaks to me the most. I feel horror is the genre that I feel the most affinity towards. For me, that is the sweet spot where the beautiful and the grotesque meet each other. It's very interesting to me, and I think encouraging people to look at certain ideas that are horrifying, making them beautiful and interesting, that intersection of beauty and pain, humor and darkness, it’s the most interesting place.
Lambda Literary Award Winning Author of In the Dream House & Her Body and Other Parties
I would say that I write liminal fantasy. I write surrealist work and literary fiction. I write horror. Horror is probably the genre that speaks to me the most. I feel horror is the genre that I feel the most affinity towards. For me, that is the sweet spot where the beautiful and the grotesque meet each other. It's very interesting to me, and I think encouraging people to look at certain ideas that are horrifying, making them beautiful and interesting, that intersection of beauty and pain, humor and darkness, it’s the most interesting place.
Global Sustainability Advisor · Co-Author of The Sustainability Puzzle: How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity and Social Transformation Can Improve Health, Wealth and Wellbeing for All
What is societal progress? I think the last 70 years, clearly, in the post World War II period, we have been thinking of economic growth and have been equating that with societal progress. To an extent of course that's right. To an extent, we need this economic growth to lift people out of poverty. We’ve kind of lost the reasoning. We have been following only this economic growth paradigm measured by the GDP, the Gross domestic product and we have forgotten that it measures many things, but it doesn't actually measure progress. It doesn't measure how healthy people are, how educated they are, how clean the environment is, how safe it is, how secure it is. It’s something where we really need to do a lot to transform those mindsets and in the end to understand that sustainability is about making their lives better and not worse.
Global Sustainability Advisor · Co-Author of The Sustainability Puzzle: How Systems Thinking, Climate Action, Circularity and Social Transformation Can Improve Health, Wealth and Wellbeing for All
What is societal progress? I think the last 70 years, clearly, in the post World War II period, we have been thinking of economic growth and have been equating that with societal progress. To an extent of course that's right. To an extent, we need this economic growth to lift people out of poverty. We’ve kind of lost the reasoning. We have been following only this economic growth paradigm measured by the GDP, the Gross domestic product and we have forgotten that it measures many things, but it doesn't actually measure progress. It doesn't measure how healthy people are, how educated they are, how clean the environment is, how safe it is, how secure it is. It’s something where we really need to do a lot to transform those mindsets and in the end to understand that sustainability is about making their lives better and not worse.
Author of Doing the Right Thing: How to End Systemic Racism in Faculty Hiring
Executive Director of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity, & Justice & Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions
We all have things to learn when it comes to these diversity-related issues or issues of identity. We have so much to learn. Just because, let's say, you’re a person of color, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to be accepting of transgender individuals. You might have some real hangups. Or you could be transgender and have some hangups around people of color, all around the spectrum. You can be a woman who doesn't support women. You can be a woman who doesn't support women trans-women. There are all of these kinds of things that I think we have to be open to, and we have to be open to learning and also open to making mistakes because sometimes people are going to make mistakes around these issues.
