G > Recent Status Updates

“The immersion in Village life, with the hippies, the gays, the drug dealers […] in Greenwich Village in 1968, I could walk with my freak flag held high and nobody was going to bust me.” (p. 92)

“If you carried enough personal weight and magic, if you were powerful enough, you could be different […] You could be who you were and the rest would just have to stand down and let it be.” (p. 85)

“and the Motown divas, men and women, who know you’ve got to play a little bit of the white man’s/rich man’s game. You have to make thoughtful compromises that don’t sell out your soul, that let you reach just a little bit higher until your moment comes and then /you/ set the rules.” (p. 79)

“His first response was laughter. It was funny. Then, not so funny. Then, he got angry. Then, finally, [my dad] popped his burning question: ‘Bruce, are you queer?’ He wasn’t kidding. He’d have to get over it. But first, it would get a lot nastier.” (p. 50)

“I do know this is what [Elvis] did: lived a life he was driven to live and brought forth the truth that was within him and the possibilities within us. How many of us can say that? That we committed all of our selves to something?” (p. 41)

“Alex [Lee] knew that to help the gurls, you had to hire the gurls and you had to put them in a position whereby they could help themselves and help other gurls too.”

Miss Major on the founding of TIP (Transgender in Prison Committee) later TGIJP

“Some days it may feel like your body belongs to everyone *but* you. Many disability advocates talk about developing actual dissociation skills at the doctor’s office because the objectification can be so traumatizing. And when you do exert control over your own body, you are labeled as difficult, as noncompliant.”
Rebecca Cokley

“I am refusing to tell a story of single-handed success in which I valiantly overcame my disability. I want to tell a story that is more complex and true. It’s a story about how my disability is always present and painful. A story about how my privilege is often the only thing that allows me to succeed in an ableist world. And it is absolutely a story about disabled interdependence.”
A.H. Reaume