• ELIXHER
• On March 29, 2013

Empowering All Women: The #girlslikeus Hashtag Turns a Year Old

Happy birthday, #girlslikeus! May you trend for many more. It’s been a year since Janet Mock, an outspoken writer and activist for transgender woman of color, first gave birth to #girlslikeus on Twitter, taking to the popular social networking site with the intention of building a community for women like her. The hashtag has gone from alerting people to the injustices and tragedies that often mar the lives of trans women, to a space for shouting out the good and advocating for change, both in the “outside” world and the world within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning community, or LGBTQ community.

More over at Loop 21.

6 Things That Happened While Y’all Were Preoccupied With Gay Marriage

Over the last couple of days, many people around the country have been caught-up in the whole same-sex marriage drama that’s currently taking place in the Supreme Court. As someone who doesn’t personally or politically feel connected to so-called ‘marriage equality’ and, frankly, can’t fathom so much time and energy and money being poured into getting one more privilege for one group of people- especially since the people within that group who will benefit the most are mostly very privileged already-at the expense of countless other really important and much more urgent issues facing the queer community and our society as a whole (bullying and suicides of queer and queer-perceived youth, violence against transgender people, invisibilization of disabled queers and queers of color and disabled queers of color, mass incarceration, etc.), I’m just going to save myself a headache and skip the part where I argue for a more inclusive and intersectional movement and instead let y’all know what you may have missed while you were busy being obsessed with single-issue gay politics.

Continue reading on Black Girl Dangerous.

KOKUMO: Transgender Recording Artist and Activist Talks About Her New EP and What Empowerment for T.G.I. People of Color Means

Speaking with Chicago-based transgender activist and recording artist Kokumo, I feel as if I’m truly speaking to one who is anointed, one who has a strong sense of purpose and vision, one who has a profound consciousness around spirituality and history.

Read KOKUMO’s interview with Larvene Cox on the Huffington Post.

Editor’s Note: KOKUMO will be featured in ELIXHER Magazine’s spring issue, where she talks in depth about her EP.

From the Margins to the Mainstream: In Defense of Henry Enuta & Other Intersex People Around the Globe

On March 26th, 2013 in Sapele, the Delta State of Nigeria, Pastor Henry Enuta was physically stripped and humiliated in public because he is an intersex person. According to news reports, he was almost killed by a lynch mob before being taken into custody by police. Most of the headlines covering this story grossly refer to Mr. Enuta as a “hermaphrodite” because he has genitals that are characteristically male and female. To sensationalize this story and humiliate Mr. Enuta even more, media outlets have published pictures of him bare chested and with torn clothes, holding onto his dignity while passers-by capture pictures of him with their mobile phones.

Details at the Crunk Feminist Collective.