Culture - OutWrite Newsmagazine (Winter 2023)

CONTRIBUTORS

Christopher Ikonomou

Zoë Collins

Judah C, Kristin Haegelin

Jackson Harris

Bella Hou

Emma Blakely, Kristin Haegelin, Rainer Lee, Paheli

Zoë Collins, Kelly Doherty, Noel Guzman, Steph Liu, Maddie McEwen, Paheli, Charis Shargel, Mieko Tsurumoto

Emma Blakely, Min Kim, Michel Rose, Maya Parra, JQ Shearin, Bellze T

Christopher Ikonomou, Elliott Couts, Giulianna Vicente, Sarah Belew, Ellie Chun

Cover & Features

Zoë Collins

Min Kim

Christopher Ikonomou

Min Kim, Michel Rose, Gwendolyn Hill, Emma Blakely

Kelly Doherty

Elliott Couts

Letter fromthe Editor

Dear Reader,

OutWrite was founded 44 years ago as an underground beacon for community in a hostile world. We are far from hunky gay daddies taking out ads in our paper and dozens of “Homo Happenings” gracing our pages like we did in the 80s and 90s (unfortunately). We are far from cruising in the third floor Ackerman bathrooms, where queers were desperate to skirt anti-gay sex laws that weren’t repealed until 2003. We are also far from being a publication that excluded transness from its collective identity until the mid-2000s.

is a time capsule through which we can observe the trajectory of queerness. Now we’re the most successful newsmagazine on campus and a trans man leads the charge. Now the beacon boldly beckons to every queer in hopes of rebuilding and reconceptualizing our role in history.

That history necessitates our role as culture makers. We are flawed, but we are also an opportunity to push forward. At a time where our autonomy and mere existence is once again being stifled, we as queer people must remember where we’ve been and what it means to be queer. The Culture issue hopes to honor just a fragment of that identity.

This issue is a glimpse into who we are and how we express ourselves. The lived experiences of our 50+ staff members are small strokes on the canvas of our community, but without them, the painting would be incomplete. We are some of many voices ensuring our culture stays known, and we hope you listen.

Sincerely,

Christopher Ikonomou

ARAKI AND THE APOCALYPSE

Written by Kristin Haegelin Illustrated by Kelly Doherty Layout by Ellie Chun

It’s not every day that your new gay crush climbs through your window, confesses their love, and then promptly explodes in a shower of blood “Alien” style, leaving behind a cockroach-like extraterrestrial. But it happens in Gregg Araki’s surrealist sextravaganza “Nowhere.” With a directing career born out of his desire to see underrepresented, marginalized groups “identify themselves via the cinema machine,” queer, Japanese American director Gregg Araki is no stranger to disrupting the traditional Hollywood narrative. Beyond his transgressive portrayals of queer and marginalized characters, his cinematic worlds are equally distinctive, characterized by the

provocative and obscene, the nihilistic and romantic, and love-it-or-hate-it plotlines. When Araki does engage with tropes, he takes exhausted cliches and revitalizes them in queer and punk spaces, soaking them with shoegaze before lighting them on fire with neon light.

Araki’s work with genre is equally significant. Over the years, his efforts have brought queer characters into genres we never expected to see them in before — everything from the sappy coming-of-age film to the Bonnie-and-Clyde-style road movie. Yet perhaps the most significant feature of his experimentation is Araki’s lifelong relationship with the sci-fi genre. Specifically in the films

“Totally F***ed Up” and “Nowhere” from his “Teenage Apocalypse” trilogy, Araki fashions LA into a dystopian landscape filled with empty parking structures, premonitions of disaster, and the occasional laser-gun-equipped, real-life space alien. Playing with the themes and genre expectations of past sci-fi films, Araki channels the experiences of queer youth living in post-Reagan, post-AIDS America — an experience not unlike living through an apocalypse.

The 1993 drama “Totally F***ed Up” has a pretty straightforward premise, focusing on the everyday struggles of six queer teens (four gay men and a lesbian couple) living on the outskirts of a heteronormative society. One of the film’s distinguishing features is its structure; within the first couple of minutes, a flickering, blue text flashes onto the screen and introduces the story as a collection of “fifteen random celluloid fragments.” Indeed, “fragments” is the perfect word to use here with Araki collecting and collaging snippets of old news footage throughout.

The film opens with an image of a cityscape overlaid by wisps of swirling smoke. Next, it cuts to a newspaper article with the headline “Suicide Rate High Among Gay Teens,” reporting on two 15-year-old boys from Wiscon-

sin who found out their families were moving apart and entered a suicide pact together. These images sink past the audience’s eyes and settle into a collective subconscious, only to resurface 45 minutes later when Andy brings up the story while on a date with his boyfriend, Ian. By occasionally referencing the oppression the queer community experiences in and beyond the bounds of LA, Araki instills a sense of existential fear within his cast and his own viewers.

Beyond Araki’s distinctive editing style, his depiction of LA is uniquely alien and devastatingly lonely. Scenes mostly take place at night and under the cover of highway overpasses and parking garages (this choice could be attributed to the director’s cinematic vision, or maybe out of the mere convenience of not having to obtain location permits). As a result of this decision, his characters’ world is often deserted and submerged in twilight. Araki’s characters wonder aloud at the bleak state of their surroundings, remarking that it’s like someone “dropped a nuclear bomb and nobody noticed” and calling LA the “alienation capital of the world.” Even when they run into other people on the street, the circumstances are bizarre. At one point, Andy and Ian have their meet-cute as a woman in a nightgown and hair rollers screams at the top of her lungs nearby. Later on, when Andy seeks

out Ian’s company at his apartment complex, he sees a girl dragging a barely clothed man down a flight of stairs. He doesn’t ask any questions. In fact, he barely registers the pair, as if this surreal darkness was meant to be ignored.

To understand the numbness plaguing Andy and his friends in “Totally F***ed Up,” it is essential to examine the social and political changes that preceded the film’s release. By 1993, the queer community had already witnessed the decade-long progression of the AIDS epidemic, its devastating casualties, and the Reagan administration’s apathetic response to what they called “gay plague.” In a 2015 interview with Araki, he spoke about the emotional impact of the AIDS crisis on his generation, stating “as a young person in your twenties

way through the film, directly voiced by the character Michele. When asked about her thoughts on AIDS, she angrily declares, “It’s like a government-sponsored genocide! Biological warfare. I mean, think about it, a deadly virus that’s spread only through premarital sex and needle drugs? It’s like a born-again Nazi republican wet dream come true.” With a completely justified distrust for the US government and a constant risk of contracting a sickness with no cure, the nihilism of Araki’s young characters comes into focus. Andy, Tommy, Michele, Patricia, Steven, and Deric’s cynical outlook on the present and future undoubtedly shifts their belief in romance, family life, and a just society. Araki externalizes their emotional despair in his cinematography, presenting the audience with a

out teenagers on their way to a big party. They go about their usual routine: having sex (lots of it), skipping class, and playing their version of kick the can — except that LA is currently experiencing its first alien invasion. Yes, that’s right.

Amidst polka-dotted bathrooms and oddly decorated bedroom sets, a comically campy lizard creature is abducting boys and vaporizing valley girls with a laser gun. Unfortunately, Dark, an unwilling member of a throuple with his girlfriend Mel and her girlfriend Lucifer, is the only person who can see it.

While this film may not be Araki’s best, “Nowhere” has its tender

to wait before that person shows up?”

Over the course of his monologue, the comic alien invasion metamorphosizes into something much more: an allegory for the queer community’s loss as a whole. Time is running out for these characters, but no one is looking out for them and no one seems to notice when they are gone. In the blink of an eye, Dark loses someone and simultaneously learns to carry on. There is no time to grieve; people can only try to survive.

In conclusion, Araki takes the sci fi genre in his hands and molds it into something queer. Disaster footage and depictions of post-apocalyptic LA accurately capture a generation’s

Min Kim they/them

“Trends never really do dictate whether you’re dressing fashionably or not.”

“[Fashion] enables me to put into concrete terms an idea or some theme or some image that I have in my head”

Marigold

Willi Ninja Chavela Vargas

Stormé DeLaverie Ernestine Eckstein

Jackie Shane

Ifti Nasim

Your Love

Memories

by Mieko Tsurumoto

Amelio Robles Avila

Lorraine Hansberry

Gladys Bentley

Marsha P. Johnson

Sylvia Rivera

Audre Lorde

Lives On

CREATION AND

Written by Emma Blakely * Illustrated by Noel Guzman

In the era before the internet, queer communities were localized, each one unique to its geographic area. When the AIDS pandemic spread throughout the world, killing an estimated 1 in 15 gay men in America by 1995, it not only came with a horrific loss of life, but also decimated communities and networks of queer people across the

country.

As queer artists and activists fell victim to AIDS, their creative projects and progress in furthering queer rights were lost. Some examples of these queer culture-makers that died from AIDS include Freddie Mercury, lead vocalist of Queen, and Keith Haring, a painter known for his colorful, cartoonish

Layout by ElliotT Couts

style that decorated many subways in New York City. Many of the founders of “punking” — a high-energy dance style that originated in the underground queer community in Los Angeles — were also killed during the AIDS pandemic, resulting in the style fading out of the mainstream until it was reformed in the early 2000s as “whacking.”

Oxford Dictionary (oed.com)

cul · ture /ˈkəlCHər/v

Culture is intrinsically attached to community: a culture is defined by a community of people who share an identity with each other, such as nationality or queerness, and is built out of the active contact and collaboration of these people with each other. When the AIDS pandemic decimated queer communities in America, much queer culture went with them.

Now, some aspects of queer art are seeing a resurgence, only in a different medium: the Internet. Rather than the localized cultures and communities, queer people now are reaching out across borders of all kinds to find each other, creating a network that spans across the globe. This new form of queer networking has huge benefits: closeted kids can engage in queer culture and

meet queer people more safely than in-person activities allow; queer people in different geographical regions can learn about each others’ existence and cultures, and queer art and media is more accessible than ever.

More nontraditional media, like fanfiction or digital art, have become especially popular among queer audiences. Since there is no barrier to whose art is seen in digital formats or social media, unlike with physical art galleries or book publication, anybody can create art and garner an audience. The accessibility of creating also means that creative experimentation is less risky for creators, as they will not be denied access to a platform if their content performs poorly. This means that online queer media has the potential to be more diverse than ever, and a

broad range of queer artists have gained broader visibility through online platforms. Much of queer community being online and through social media also has a darker side. Social media is ultimately designed to capture your attention for the sake of advertising. As a result, app developers design algorithms to push content that maximizes user engagement over everything. This creates problems like echo chambers — environments in which already-held beliefs are amplified and reinforced — and the censorship and erasure of marginalized content creators, especially Black and Indigenous people. So, what do algorithms mean for queer culture and community? Ultimately, popular (and likely more normative) queer content will continue to succeed while others fall behind. The emphasis on one kind of content palatable to a cisgender, straight audience means a lack of diversity online, directly counteracting the accessibility that digital media promises. When trying to create culture that lasts, a diverse, complex phenomenon, algorithms cannot define to success.

How can we turn the Internet into a force for good? On social media, engagement is measured quantitatively, i.e. watch time, likes, comments, shares. These metrics can be used to our advantage with devotion and commitment. Seeking out, watching, and engaging with content from lesser-known queer creators with a more marginalized lived experience uplifts a more diverse range of voices online. Although we can choose to be more inclusive and productive in our online engagement, I would argue that online media is still not an all-encompassing substitute for face-toface interaction. Call me a Boomer, but humans are social creatures. We are not designed to exist solely with the limited communication the Internet provides. Textbased communication cuts out nonverbal cues, which are vital to understanding and connecting with someone, and makes it difficult to have nuanced conversations.

Don’t get me wrong, online friendships are just as real as those you conduct in person, and they can be a saving grace for queer kids and adults in hostile environments. But without the community that comes with face-toface contact, culture cannot be created in a long-lasting meaningful way.

The Internet should be a gateway to more holistic, meaningful engagement within our own localized communities. More content on the Internet should be created with the intention of helping people find queer events, spaces, artists, and people around them and developing a community from the people we meet in real life. (You can follow us on Instagram where we do just that.)

When whacking was developed in the early 2000s, it was revived because of conscious, intentional efforts to do. Its resurgence originated in New York City, but now gains more popularity across America as people discover and attempt to revamp the style. For example, Whacking Los Angeles is a community organization that seeks to preserve the

v x

The nature of queerness is to exist across all borders; anyone can be queer, no matter their race, nationality, ability, or religious beliefs. Everyone’s queer experience is unique.

dance style. Similarly, queer culture must be created and rediscovered in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis through the active effort of local communities with a passion for it. The nature of queerness is to exist across all borders; anyone can be queer, no matter their race, nationality, ability, or religious beliefs. Everyone’s queer experience is unique. This means that the Internet can be a wonderful place for discovering queer people of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds, but it also means that one’s individual community will always be where they can make an impact and our most meaningful connections. This is where culture is born and created.

Michel Rose he/they

“I can be a trans man but still embrace femininity and gender nonconformity, and those two things can coexist.”

“I know who I am and I know what I like, and that’s what I should do.”

BY CHARIS SHARGEL

Birds of a Feather

Written and Illustrated by Paheli

Layout by Giulianna Vicente

It started with a Facebook message between two bubbly freshmen-to-be: two California-born Indian girls bonding over Bollywood and books. One message led to another, and we decided to submit a roommate request form to live together in the dorms. It was our first time living away from the home-cooked food of our Indian families. Our shared heritage was what gave us a pocket of familiarity within unfamiliarity.

Although it was our similarities that brought us together, the more we got to know each other, the more apparent our differences became. I admired the ease and confidence coating her words as she conversed with her parents on the phone in fluent Hindi, while mine was choppy and broken. She seamlessly fit in with the other Indian students in college while I left their parties to hide in the library — a misdemeanor for which she gave me the silent treatment for a week. Our friendship quickly transitioned from tentative pleasantries into comfortable teasing usually

reserved for family members. She forced me into the only kurtis I owned to drag me to parties, and disrupted my studies and sleep by blasting “Balam Pichkari.” But my annoyance was a small price to pay for what she brought to my first-year college experience — color, music, heritage, and sisterhood. We spent our weekends scouting out local Indian restaurants and temples, shopping for spices as we attempted to cook palak paneer in the dorm kitchen commons, and we spent our nights hoarding snacks in our flimsy bunk beds discussing our boy crushes — hers real and mine made up. She came to visit me almost ten years later, in her final year of medical school as I’m in my final year of grad school, excitedly gushing

comfortable rhythm of living together. During the day, I went to school and work while she worked from home, and during the evenings, we feasted on Indian food, mango popsicles, and wine bottles, chatting away about life as if we had never lived in separate cities. Her ears were open as she beckoned forth my story: “How did you know? When did you know?” She marveled as my revelations spilled out,

shocked that she’d been blind to my budding feelings, not for the boy I’d pretended to like, but for our mutual friend, a girl.

As we reminisced about our college days with a trip to campus and to Little India, indulging in chaat, paan, beauty treatments, and window-shopping for jewelry, and while we drove back home listening to Bollywood remixes for the wedding, I couldn’t stop mourning an alternate universe: one where I, too, had pursued an Indian boy and had a five-day wedding lined up after graduation, fulfilling the image of the family I’d dreamt of as a little girl.

I moved on to imagining another alternate universe where I hadn’t been so scared to admit to myself that I’d had feelings for another woman or to my first college friend and connection to my heritage. A universe where I truly believed that being myself wouldn’t shatter the illusion that I was a good student, a good daughter, and a good Indian girl. A universe where I’d never restricted myself to that illusion in the first place — where I’d taken advantage

of college to explore my sexuality rather than hiding behind books and academic validation.

But the universe I remain tethered to is here, where I’m experiencing new feelings ten years too late and unlearning the constructed timelines, expectations, and comparisons. I’m torn between a slight resentment for the unfairness of it all — how heteronormativity seems so linear and easy, pure and idealistic, so unlike my experience of queerness — chaotic, messy, and at odds with my culture. At the same time, I acknowledge that the life of a “good Indian daughter” is not for me, even if it is for my friend. We are

alike in many ways — our culture, background, values, and perspectives. At the same time, we are as different as night and day. I was never meant to access what she has, and that doesn’t have to feel like a tragedy. Perhaps my purpose in life is to show others that there is something beyond that vision — not worse, not better, but just different.

It means more to me than she’ll ever know that she never flinched at my story. Even though I feel different, my experiences are different, and my life will inevitably be different, she never treated me any differently than she always had: as a roommate, as a friend, and as a sister.

“It all ties back to that idea of, ‘how do I want to represent myself? Is this true to the identity I feel?’”

Gwendolyn Hill she/her

“If you get to a point where you can accurately dress and express yourself the same way you’re feeling in that moment, that’s the ultimate achievement.”

Portraits of the House

by Steph Liu

Thanks to “A History of Ballroom: Documenting the Era of Ballroom (1972-1990)”

From left to right: Angie Xtravaganza, Erskine Christian, Paris Dupree, Crystal LaBeija, Dorian Corey

Queering Masculinity in “Stone Butch Blues”

Written by Rainer Lee

Photographed by Maddie McEwen Layout by Sarah Belew

Content warning: homophobia, transphobia, mentions of sexual assault

Leslie Feinberg’s historical novel

“Stone Butch Blues” voices the experiences of many butch and transmasculine individuals. In a transformative exploration of queer recognition and the way it damns and redeems us, the novel unearths critical queer history and underlines the importance of

intersectional solidarity.

Courage, loneliness, and understanding echo through the story of the butch protagonist, Jess Goldberg.

The novel begins with Jess’ disconnect from other feminists, including other lesbians. Despite butch and femme lesbians’ willingness to join the 1970s women’s liberation movement, second-wave feminists largely rejected their collaboration.1 They accused butches of abandoning femininity and wanting to be men, and femmes of sleeping with the enemy and contributing to their own oppression via their hyperfeminine gender presentation.

Therewerepeoplewhoweredifferentlikemeinside.Wecould allseeourreflectionsinthefacesofthosewhosatinthiscircle.Ilooked around.Itwashardtosaywhowasawoman,whowasaman.Theirfaces radiatedadifferentkindofbeautythanI’dgrownupseeingcelebratedon totelevisionorinmagazines.It’sabeautyoneisn’tbornwith,butmustfight constructatgreatsacrifice.Ifeltproudtositamongthem.Iwasproudtobeoneofthem.

–LeslieFeinberg,“StoneButchBlues”

1 Elinor Burkett, “Women’s Rights Movement,” Encyclopædia Britannica, last modified December 2, 2022, www.britannica.com/event/womens-movement.

Today, butches and femmes receive similar criticisms from the online queer community. Some see the butchfemme dynamic as a regressive adherence to the gender binary, and butches as proponents of toxic masculinity. However, this outlook ignores the rich history of butch-femme bar culture and the nuances of queer masculinity and femininity.

In actuality, butch-femme bar culture arose out of necessity. In the 1960s, law enforcement practices such as the informal three-article rule still existed and terrorized queer people’s existences. Visibly queer people suffered from recurrent street violence.2 Queer bars represented a rare space for queer people to gather, and even then the police regularly raided the bars and beat and raped their patrons.

Furthermore, butch-femme bar culture has historical roots in the working class. Butches were often factory workers, and femmes were often sex workers. Both butches and femmes faced physical and sexual violence due to their gender nonconformity and their unsafe working conditions, respectively. As a result, butch-femme partnerships were commonly rooted in shared trauma and survival tactics.

While butches are not always women, butchness has never necessitated hating or rejecting womanhood. The butch identity has historically encompassed

aspects of both sexuality and gender, and has always included people who we would describe as nonbinary and/ or transmasculine today. Significantly, for much of Western history, transmasculine people have struggled to secure the language and resources to live authentically. We existed, but we lacked a niche for ourselves. Consequently, we often found community within sapphic circles.

The danger of gender nonconformity in the late twentieth century encouraged some butches to medically transition. Some felt pressured to live as men solely for safety reasons while others, like Jess, transitioned to better express their gender identity. In the novel, Jess dreams of being a man. She starts injecting testosterone and receives top surgery, constructing for herself “the body [she] expected before puberty.” But passing as a man feels difficult and isolating.

Loneliness plagues

Jess as her community fails to under-

2 Hugh Ryan, “How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century,” History, last modified June 28, 2019, www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-three-article-rule.

stand her choice, and the threat of exposure haunts her. She feels as if she is living inauthentically again and realizes her true self occupies an identity that is neither man nor woman.

The dichotomy between the desire to be seen and understood and the fear of rejection — a struggle many queer people will resonate with — underscores much of Jess’ journey. Jess idolizes the genderqueer individuals in her life. She finds beauty in the “shades of gender.” But after being punished for her androgynous gender presentation, accepting her true self terrifies her.

In a society which enforces normative expressions of gender and sexuality, queer recognition becomes a double-edged sword. Jess recognizes her queerness mirrored in other gender nonconforming people, but this recognition proves overwhelming.

The question persists: will I be brave enough to live as myself?

Through the course of the novel, Jess moves through multiple iterations of her queer identity, and at each stage, she grieves the new trials she must face. For instance, some of her fellow butches recoil from her decision to transition. But Jess doesn’t falter. Instead, she asks them, “‘How much of yourself are you willing to give up in order to distance yourself from me?’” The same question applies to us today: what purpose does division serve when we all suffer under the same systems of oppression? We are not each other’s enemy.

Unfortunately, people still accuse butch and/or transmasculine people, especially trans men, of defecting to the enemy’s side. Masculine trans men frequently experience isolation and invisibility because their masculinity leads them to be read as outsiders in their own

community. But these responses to masculine trans men echo second-wave feminists’ reactions to butch lesbians and benefit no one.

Ultimately, Western society suppresses gender nonconformity because it disrupts the idea that the gender binary is biologic and intrinsic. Butch and trans masculinity exposes manhood as a construct, and when manhood is flexible and fabricated, the authority of the patriarchal system crumbles with it. Thus, queer masculinity disempowers the patriarchy; it does not reinforce it.

Queer masculinity, particularly butchness, differs from performances of patriarchal masculinity in its commitment to protecting marginalized groups, living as one’s authentic self, and honoring queer history. It values strength drawn from gentleness and resilience, and like any queer identity, it’s self-defined and varied. Masculine queer people seek to live truthfully just like anyone else.

Feinberg writes poignantly about the undercurrent of shame in the queer community.

So often, fear and shame fuel our community’s conflicts. But in-fighting only prevents us from reaching our political goals. It rids us of the heart of queer ness: our solidarity. At the end of the day, we should be working towards rad ical and intersectional acceptance of and advocacy for every underprivileged group. So many of us are hurting, and our primary goal should be minimizing that hurt and cultivating collective flourishing.

“Stone Butch Blues” dramatically reshaped my perceptions of butch, trans, and queer identity by opening a window into our colorful history. I encourage all of us to explore the experiences of our queer elders before we deny ourselves a deeper understanding of the beautiful spectrum of queerness and pass harmful judgment on others.

A free PDF download of “Stone Butch Blues” is available on hir website: www.lesliefeinberg.net.

Emma Blakely they/she/he

“I think it’s kind of funny looking back that I didn’t realize I was nonbinary sooner because...I found it personally amusing to dress very feminine one day and then more androgynous or masculine the next.”

“Queer doesn’t have one visual definition.”