Who among us is willing to do this work of protecting and embracing those communities who have long since been showing us how the gender binary is flawed, how all such binaries are flawed—work that might begin with acknowledgement of our own complicity in erasure or neglect of certain histories?
So what I’m wondering is how we can live in a culture that loves and openly steals from their world, and yet remains a hostile environment for black and Latino queers. I’m wondering how many trans black women were killed last year by people who have, in some way, benefited from queer culture? Why are we still not living in a world where black queers everywhere have equal access to health care, education and all the necessary tools required to bring a permanent end to AIDS? I’m wondering what would happen if we loved black queers as much we love/steal from black queer culture?
We are 25 years on from the release of Paris Is Burning and while HIV acquisition has been stemmed across much of the LGBT community, in America 43 per cent of new HIV infections in the queer community are black gay men specifically. In this fact alone, it is clear the stranglehold of oppression around the Paris Is Burning cast did not wither when they went to their graves but still holds power in the communities from which they came. —Shon Faye, Looking at Paris Is Burning 25 Years After Its Release
Is there anything more American than stealing from a culture and then leaving them to die—or violently killing them with your bare hands?
QueerAnarchism 