“Periodical” Is a Valuable, Inclusive Documentary About Menstruation

When our Senior Editor Drew asked me if I would review Periodical, MSNBC/Peacock’s new documentary about menstruation and various social/economic/cultural issues surrounding menstruation, I was like “you write one article about harvesting your period blood for witchcraft…” This was a joke, but she affirmed that this was indeed why I was asked. So, you know, as someone who considers themselves to be relatively comfortable with at least the blood aspect of my period, I accepted the task. Before watching the documentary, I was perplexed. What could I possibly have to learn about something that I experience, myself, firsthand, on a monthly basis?

But if this documentary taught me anything, it was that when it came to the physical aspects of my uterus and my menstrual cycle, I only knew like… 50% of what Periodical had to tell me about my own body. Oops!

The documentary weaves together discussions of the physical realities of menstruation and bodies with a group of activists fighting the “tampon tax,” a look at new medical research and tech, glimpses into sexual and menstrual health education, pop culture, historical context, and individual anecdotes. This is done via interviews with health and legal experts, laypeople (and the documentary does include trans and gender expansive people in their interviews), political activists, historians, and celebrities. Along with these interviews there are conversations between people, glimpses into classes, footage of legislative activism, and typical documentary-style animations.

We begin pretty quickly with a discussion of period poverty: the fact that menstrual products — tampons, pads, etc. — cost money and strain already tight or nonexistent budgets. We also meet activists who we’ll follow throughout the documentary who are working to pass legislation banning sales tax on menstrual products. Watching various interviewees share their experiences of receiving less-than-adequate education about their periods growing up hit me hard, bringing up a roiling stew of feelings about the way my mother handled things.

At one point, I was gifted the famous American Girl The Care and Keeping of You. Upon looking this up, I’m realizing I had the original, and that it’s now split into two books, one for “younger girls” and one for “older girls.” Nevertheless, my parents handed me the book and washed their hands of the rest. Between sex ed (called “Project Know” at my school) and The Book, they figured I had what I needed. When I got my first period, much like Stephen King’s Carrie, I was in the gym locker room. Unlike Carrie, I pulled the spare pad the school had gifted each of us out of my locker and went to go use it. Then, I struggled to tell my mom. She’d given me the book and then had never, ever spoken to me further about periods. It would actually be a couple months of secretly stealing her supplies and suffering in silence before I called her while she was at work and pretended that I’d gotten my period for the first time at home. She brought me home a package of pads, told my dad to my embarrassment, and that was it.

But what was there to know? You bleed every month. You plug it up. You take a Midol if you need to. And aside from being absolutely petrified of pregnancy or bleeding through your pants or being caught without supplies, you move on.

However, recently, thanks to none other than the good folks making content over on TikTok, I’ve learned that there might actually be more to it! I’ve started hearing phrases like “luteal phase”… and then this period documentary confirmed for me — there are in fact four phases of the cycle, each with their own names and own unique properties. Who knew? Because I didn’t! Apparently also the window of fertility is relatively small? Y’all. (I am sure those trying to get pregnant know this, but I have yet to find myself in that position.) Even the discussion around PMS was heavily relatable. Who among us who menstruate hasn’t been in the same shoes as the trans guy who told a story about slicing an avocado and bursting into tears when a single slice accidentally fell on the floor? By the time I was a quarter of the way through this documentary, I was fully ready to admit that, yes, indeed, we needed an informational documentary about periods and I am glad this one exists.

As a counterpoint to ignorance, we visit Lakota mother and daughter team Medina Matonis and Ilyana Perez, leaders of the 100 Horses Women’s Society, who discuss “creating historical trauma cycle-breakers” and who host the Isnati Ca Lowanpi Ceremony (Becoming a Woman Ceremony). There are scenes like this throughout the documentary, where we get glimpses into what a society without stigma around menstruation could look like, where we’re given alternative models for the ways that we’ve grown up and been socialized to think of periods.

I’ll admit I’m definitely somewhere in between the people who’ve fully embraced periods and the interviewee who said, of using menstrual cups, “I won’t put a cup inside me because I don’t want to touch my own body.” I’m thinking about her. I hope she’s okay.

From this embrace of acknowledging periods and utilizing traditional plant medicine to manage symptoms, we move forward into a discussion of period pain, followed by three chronic conditions associated with the uterus and menstruation: PCOS, endometriosis, and fibroids. I’m sure that some people reading this, especially on a site like Autostraddle, might be familiar with many of the in’s and out’s of menstrual cycles and the health of reproductive organs. However, I have to admit I went most of my life, up until my 30’s, without learning anything about PCOS, endometriosis, or fibroids. The only way these came into my awareness was through the experiences of people I knew who dealt with these conditions, but they’re alarmingly common! Again, this documentary is about something that over half the population of the planet experiences at some point, so, really, I don’t know why we aren’t all better educated!

Two discussions left me with a desire to conduct further research. First up, we have Megan Rapinoe talking about the work the USWNT did to track their periods and work with their cycles, not against them. As someone who lifts weights, I’d certainly noticed that depending on where I was in my cycle, the weights were moving differently. We’re talking significant differences in terms of what I might be able to bench or squat or what-have-you depending on where I am in the month. But apparently you can eat differently for each phase of the cycle and vary the kinds of exercise you do to best deal with symptoms and maximize your athletic capabilities? Get ready for this to be a new interest of mine. Secondly, the documentary gets into perimenopause… which is the thing before menopause. Again, I’d only heard of this phenomenon relatively recently, but it’s something that I really want to note! Because the symptoms of this pre-menopause time period, from mood swings to sensory overload and more, sound like something I’d want to have a heads up about. You just go through life, and no one hands you the American Them Perimenopause Book, and so if you don’t seek out the information on your own, you won’t know what’s going on.

The documentary culminates with the passing of period tax legislation in the house in Michigan. Thankfully, it notes that political and electoral work like this is just a drop in the menstrual cup (haha) when it comes to reframing the way we as a culture and a country treat menstruation, reproductive health, and women and girls and gender expansive people who get their periods. In terms of drawbacks, it feels like a whirlwind overview, which it is. It’s not a deep dive into any one particular facet, so if you’re curious about anything the documentary touches on, you’ll probably need to do further research on your own. Periodical, also, at times, gets into broad sweeping strokes of simplified history (there’s an animation depicting women going from practicing herbal healing to being burned at the stake, a personal pet peeve of mine) and it also interviews CIA-fave Gloria Steinem without qualifiers. But, overall, if you’re curious, I’d give it a go. Even more so, I think the doc would make a valuable addition to a sex ed curriculum and that it’d be a solid (though, you know, not as fun as other options) pick for movie night with kids who are old enough to get their periods.

At one point, it’s suggested that someone could use period blood as a face mask because of the stem cells it contains. And if you think I’m not trying that… you’re wrong because I’m going to try that.

---

Periodical is now streaming on Peacock. 

Obsessed: Twin Flames Universe, a New Age Cult With a Surprising and Insidious Approach To Turning Gay People Straight

Welcome to OBSESSED, in which I provide you with information and/or a media consumption list that speaks to my primary hobby: doing obsessive amounts of research into a singular topic or story for no reason, usually because I saw a documentary about it. This week I watched the Netflix documentary Escaping Twin Flames, which was an excellent follow-up to the October Prime Video Documentary Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe, about two self-proclaimed spiritual gurus in suburban Michigan who promised their followers that with the right spiritual alignment and self-help therapy and online classes, they would find their soulmates.

---

What is the Twin Flames Universe and Where is Twin Flames located?

The concept of “twin flames” — having a destined, exclusive soulmate — has been around for eons, particularly in spirituality circles, with roots in Hindu teachings. The popular understanding of “twin flames” in American culture seems to have begun with American New Age writer Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her book Soul Mates and Twin Flames: The Spiritual Dimension of Love and Relationships. The concept apparently perhaps reached its online zenith in late 2021, on account of celebrities like Alicia Keys and Megan Fox speaking openly about their own perceived twin flames.

Enter Michigan couple Jeff and Shaleia Divine, creators of the Twin Flames Universe YouTube cult, which promises its followers that abiding TFU principles will absolutely undoubtedly lead to them securing their own harmonious twin flame relationship — entering into a lifetime partnership with their best friend in the entire universe, designed for them by G-d. They feel qualified to lead this group because they found each other and are living in twin flame harmony. Furthermore it appears that Jeff thinks he might be the second coming of Jesus Christ. From their YouTube Channel’s “about” section:

The Twin Flames Universe YouTube Channel represents the collective divine life force that courses through the Twin Flame Ascension School and Life Purpose Class community, as created and loved immensely by our beloved Spiritual Teachers and Twin Flames Jeff and Shaleia…. Some people believe that we must “leave” (a belief of separation from God) in order to experience this NEW EARTH that everyone in the spiritual communities is buzzing about. We, the students of Jeff and Shaleia, believe in Union with God where there is no separation and love is right HERE, NOW.

Jeff and Shaleia of Twin Flames Universe were originally located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a tony suburb of Detroit, but have since moved to Suttons Bay in Northern Michigan.

The Netflix documentary Escaping Twin Flames has been number one since its debut two weeks ago, and a three-part Prime Video documentary, Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe, narrated by journalist Alice Hines, who initially wrote about the group in Vanity Fair, explored the Twin Flames Universe through the stories of its followers and assorted experts. What’s revealed in these documentaries is not only intriguing to me from the perspective of CULTS but also because of the specific methods they used to recruit and then psychologically destroy their LBGTQ+ followers.

Who are Jeff and Shaleia Divine?

Jeff Ayan and Shaleia (real name Megan Plante) are the self-appointed gurus who, since 2018, have been releasing hundreds of YouTube videos on various New Age topics, most of them focused on finding your Twin Flame. “There is nothing outside of you that prevents you from being with your love,” they instruct. “Only you.” Jeff has a business degree from Western Michigan, and prior to Twin Flames was running a “lifestyle design” company in Hawaii.

Like similar cults, such as NXIVM and Teal Swan’s whole deal, Twin Flame Universe has its own psychobabble philosophies about “mood alignment” and “healing modalities” that promise to help participants overcome past trauma. They present a successful romantic match as the ultimate goal and cure-all to one’s emotional problems, and anybody’s failure to secure their match is framed as a result of their own insufficient spiritual work, lack of obedience to Twin Flames principles, or a lack of financial investment in Twin Flames tools. Followers are often pressured to cut off contact with their families, put in volunteer work for Twin Flames, and travel to exclusive, expensive Twin Flames events. The most dedicated followers can advance far enough in their own trainings to become official “coaches” for others.

Their rapidly-growing community has an extremely active Facebook group and regular Google hangouts, so devotees can easily lose their life to Twin Flame activities.

Students are encouraged to fixate on pursuing their Twin Flame regardless of said Twin Flame’s level of interest in them. This often leads to humiliation and frustration at best and restraining orders and stalking charges at worse. Some students even spent time in jail for actions taken in pursuit of their twin flame. Some were encouraged to remain in abusive relationships, or blamed for their twin flame’s mental illnesses.

The Twin Flames community is, therefore, especially attractive to people distraught over unrequited love who find comfort from others experiencing similar emotions and validation from a group philosophy that discounts mutual desire as relevant to destined romance.

How do Jeff and Shaleia Make Money From Twin Flames Universe?

Jeff and Shaleia have gotten very rich from this work and they are proud of that! They flaunt their luxury cars and are very Prosperity Gospel oriented.

Access to exclusive workshops, courses and individual “mind alignment” therapies (all conducted online) cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars. They’ve sold meal plans through a start-up called “Divine Dish,” which promised customers a reignited sex life by reconnecting with their body through lots of carbs and red meat. One participant in the Netflix documentary gained 70 pounds in 9 months on the diet.

They sell books and meditations. They sell videos of events where they and other Twin Flames couples share the stories of their Harmonious Unions. $333 will teach you how to become irresistible to your Twin Flame and a $777 E-Course will enable you to build the life of your dreams. Ascension coaching, which all members are encouraged to seek out, is cited as “between $20-$200 per session.” Followers were encouraged to max out their credit cards, quit their jobs to focus on Twin Flames and required to have regular, expensive, coaching sessions.

While Hines was visiting the couple to do reporting for her story, there were several Twin Flames followers living in the basement undergoing a “spiritual bootcamp” that seemed to consist primarily of doing chores for Jeff and Shaleia.

The (Formerly) Golden Lesbian Couple

The Prime Video documentary spends a lot of time with Catrina and Anne Irwin, two lesbian mothers who’d met and fallen for each other while married to men. Twin Flames affirmed their need to leave their marriages for each other at a time when that reassurance was hard for them to find elsewhere.

Catrina and Anne eventually became Twin Flames coaches, earning $120k combined in one year while also taking on the unpaid, laborious positions of VPs of sales and managing their own small cohort of coaches. But in the third part of the documentary, Anne explains the tension that arose when Jeff began pressuring her to adopt a new identity: specifically, Jeff wanted her to begin identifying as a man. When Anne resisted, Jeff sent texts like: “You guys look dumb as fuck hiding behind the lie still. Take a guy’s name and a guy’s pronoun or I will need to put someone else in charge of sales who does respect my work.”

As any trans person can attest, it’s incredibly psychologically grueling to be told by an authority figure that you are wrong about your own gender, and yet this was an approach Jeff was adopting with gusto and paradoxically aiming it at cisgender followers.

How did they end up in this place?

The Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine

Jeff and Shaleia had always believed that every partnership contained a 100% divine feminine and a 100% divine masculine partner. In the Wondery Podcast “Twin Flames,” Jeff is quoted as saying that while homosexuality isn’t a sin, “homosexuality doesn’t even really exist. If you’re two divine masculine energies having sex, you’re just shaking hands ’cause it’s not your twin flame anyway.” They denied the existence of bisexuality, asexuality and nonbinary identities.

Ascension Coach Angie, who identified as cisgender and bisexual, had to pass this idea on to her students, even though it conflicted with who she knew herself to be. But things got even trickier for Angie when Jeff and Shaleia decided that she was actually a man.

As the group kept growing and evolving and its mostly female membership began waning in enthusiasm due to not successfully pairing with their twin flames, Jeff and Shaleia decided to shift their focus to matchmaking within the Twin Flames universe. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a lot of male members to go around.

Thus, a fix arose: matching previously-thought-to-be straight women with each other. Obviously this was met with some skepticism and resistance, so Jeff and Shaleia came up with a different way to make these love matches work: insisting that one of the two women was actually transgender. This also required convincing previous same-sex couples in their community to fall in line with this new approach.

In Alice Hines’ 2020 Vanity Fair piece, she cites meeting three followers who were medically transitioning at Jeff and Shaleia’s urging who felt great about it. They agreed with Jeff’s assessment of their gender and were grateful for the support in pursuing who they knew themselves to truly be. Hines also met five followers who resisted accepting their new genders and therefore ended up leaving the group. This eventually became the reason for Anne and Catrina’s departure as well.

Arcelia, a trans woman former TFU sales manager who appears in both documentaries, felt embraced when she first joined TFU, early in her transition, but said she eventually felt “love-bombed” into being the LGBT+ poster child for the organization. Once Jeff and Shaleia began telling their followers what genders they were, she left the group. “It is not their fucking place to decide what gender somebody is,” she remembered thinking. “That is something people need to do on their own.”

As Hines writes in Vanity Fair, this circumstance, in which cis people are convinced by authority figures that they are trans, does “feel like bait for the anti-trans lobby.” Arcelia described the situation as what might happen “if excessive liberal progressives got drunk and had a baby with conservative Christians.”

Jules Gill-Peterson, a historian of sexuality and gender, also commented on this phenomenon in the Prime Video documentary, noting that the progressive LGBT-accepting language on the surface of the Twin Flames Universe actually masks a practice that is similar to Conservative Christian ideology. She draws a parallel to conversion therapy — it’s not truly acceptable to be queer in the Twin Flames universe. But instead of going the traditional route of convincing you to change your sexuality, they convince people to change their gender.

What Jeff and Shaleia claim in the FAQ of their website is that they “encourage and invite students to gain clarity on their sexual and gender identity through the students’ own self-discovery and exploration.” They are co-opting progressive values to push forward a conservative agenda, making it difficult to push back on these assertions without feeling like we are fighting ourselves. It’s almost the most clever thing these yahoos have ever come up with.

Cassius Adair, a trans writer and researcher who consulted on the Wondery podcast, spoke to this in a bonus episode: “I want to caution everybody when they hear stories like this — that if there are bad actors who want to control people or coerce people, then gender is one axis on which control or coercion can operate. But that’s not the same as this being a kind of microcosm of how trans communities really function.”

One section on the Twin Flame website is devoted to successful Twin Flames relationships, where you can read about each couple’s relationship. Despite Jeff and Shaleia’s claim that they are “a safe and tolerant place for all members of the LGBTQ+ community,” all the couples on this page are couples containing one (1) man and one (1) woman. Several are trans.

---

More Reading and the Twin Flames Universe Podcast

The first major Twin Flames expose came from Vice in 2020: This YouTube School Promised True Love. Students Say They Got Exploited Instead.

This is the Reddit Thread mentioned in the Netflix documentary: “Twin Flame” Cyber Cult? Concerned for a loved one.

Alice Hines original Vanity Fair piece: Everywhere I Went, They Went With Me, Because They Were on My Phone, uses many of the same sources an stories as the docuseries, but there’s a lot in here that’s not in the document. One of those stories is that of “Katie,” a former devotee who was encouraged by Jeff and Shaleia to pursue an ex who’d repeatedly denied her advances until she ended up in jail. An interesting tidbit from the podcast about this article was that Jeff and Shaleia were confident the article would be flattering and bring an influx of new students, and were preparing actively for that rush. The Twin Flames Universe Website has its very own “media statement” in which it declares all negative media about their group to be the result of disgruntled and malicious former students unable to overcome their own internal blocks through the program.

In early 2022, Wondery released Twin Flames, a seven-part podcast narrated by our very own Stephanie Beatriz. They speak with several former students, including the story of Angie, a then-straight woman who was matched with another woman as her Twin Flame and then was told she had to embrace her divine masculine, which eventually led to her split from the group.

You can also read the unsuccessful case Jeff and Shaleia filed against former members who talked to Vice reporters and posted negative things about TFU on Reddit. It’s a wild ride!

“Candace Parker: Unapologetic” Shows That Behind Every GOAT Is a Love Story

For nearly all of the greatest moments in Candace Parker’s storied basketball career, her daughter, Lailaa, has been there.

During Parker’s first year in the WNBA, when she collected the Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards — a feat that hasn’t been matched since — Lailaa was there (albeit in utero but still, that counts!). When Parker returned to the court, just 53 days after giving birth, Lailaa was there. And when opportunities arose for Candace Parker to play abroad… either in Yekaterinburg, Russia or Dongguan, China or Istanbul, Turkey… Lailaa was there. She got to witness it all: the championships, the individual accolades, the Olympic gold medals. She had a front row seat to watching her mother become one of the greatest to ever play the game. And when her mother stepped into the fullness of her love for Anya Petrakova by proposing in 2019, Lailaa was there, holding the cake that said, “will you marry us?“

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Candace Parker (@candaceparker)

But Lailaa’s brother, Airr, won’t get to experience any of that. He won’t get to witness the dizzing heights to which his mother has risen. With his mother’s pledge that she won’t return to basketball unless she’s healthy, it’s possible that Airr will grow up without any tangible, first-hand memories of his mother in her element. He won’t get to see her play alongside a new generation of players who were all molded in her image.

With that in mind, it’s helpful to think about Unapologetic, the new ESPN documentary about Candace Parker from Joie Jacoby, as less of your average sports documentary and more of a gift from a mother to her son. It is a tangible way for Airr to learn about his legacy. It is an opportunity for him to one day see the moments and people that shaped his mother into the person that she is. He’d get to see, as Lailaa had, how his family came to be. That the audience gets to witness the usually guarded and stoic Candace Parker be open and vulnerable, isn’t for our benefit, it’s for his.

“For me, I didn’t share for a long time and it wasn’t because I was ashamed. It was because I wanted to keep that personal to me,” Parker admitted during a recent interview. “But it was just a moment where, when [Petrakova] was pregnant with our son, it was like, I don’t want our son to ever think that I don’t love our family and that I’m not proud of our family.”

But while Unapologetic may ultimately be a testament to a mother’s love for her son, the journey it takes the audience on is one worth relishing.

---

It’s easy to take it for granted today, in this new world of young athletes, their NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deals, and women’s college basketball exceeded the reach of the men’s game — but when Candace Parker came onto the scene, the world had never seen anything like her. A female player from Naperville, Illinois, who could dunk a basketball when she was only a sophomore in high school? The broader sports world clamoring to find out where a female recruit would go to college? It was unprecedented.

Unapologetic follows Parker’s journey from Naperville to Knoxville where she played for the legendary Pat Summitt. Parker’s always been candid about the special relationship she had with Pat. Anytime she talks about her, the admiration and love is evident. The documentary is at its most affecting when Parker is able to lean into the emotion of the story and, with Summitt, the emotions are summoned so easily. There’s a mix of pride and profound sadness that flashes across Parker’s face when she recalls that, even while in the throes of early onset dementia, Pat never forgot her name.

"This is for Pat!"
Candace Parker​ dedicates @WNBA​ Finals MVP & @LA_Sparks title victory to her college coach; the late, great Pat Summitt pic.twitter.com/vq58LDzaph

— NBA (@NBA) October 21, 2016

The documentary’s high point, undoubtedly, is the story of Parker finding love with her former UMMC Ekaterinburg teammate, Anya Petrakova. We finally get some insight into the build-up towards her infamous 2021 Instagram post revealing that she was married and expecting a child.

Parker’s journey to making that post wasn’t an easy one. In college, she had a high profile relationship with then-Duke star Shelden Williams and the pair would marry in 2008. They’d divorce eight years later but the expectations of Parker — of who she was, of who she should love — persisted, making it difficult to fully embrace her truth. In Unapologetic, Parker talks about the difficulty of coming out to her family and recalls talking to her brother about Anya without using any identifying pronouns.

I’ve known of Candace Parker since she dunked that basketball in 2001. She’s always seemed otherworldly to me… like, with her talent, she just exists on a different plane than the rest of us. But to hear her talk about her queerness in Unapologetic, to hear her unabashedly fawn over her wife? Candace Parker has never felt more real.

We also get to see the toll that Parker’s on the court greatness has taken on her body. Women’s basketball fans have always been privy to conversations about the price that athletes pay for year-round play — playing in the WNBA from April to October and then spending the rest of the year playing overseas — but rarely have the consequences been shown in such stark terms. Parker recounts eight knee surgeries and a shoulder surgery. One doctor reports that Parker has a tear or fissure in the covering of one of the discs in her back, and another doctor shares that there’s no cartilage left in her knee. I couldn’t help but to recall her pledge to return to basketball only if she could play without pain and wonder, particularly with the foot surgery she had last season, if that’s even possible for her.

But where Unapologetic falters is that it never seems to want to go deep enough. There’s a passing mention of Parker’s divorce from Shelden Williams, but the documentary offers explanation for how the relationship fell apart or what their relationship is like as co-parents. While Parker acknowledges the difficulty of coming out, her parents who, had until that point been fixtures in the documentary, disappear and little is said about them or their reaction. When Parker talks about being left off the Olympic roster in 2016, why does Parker avoid calling out then-coach Geno Auriemma? It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. I can appreciate that Parker didn’t want to “badmouth people,” but those notable omissions make it hard to appreciate the full scope of the trials she’s had to face.

Even within the confines of the narrative Unapologetic creates, there were plenty of opportunities to offer more perspectives, and it never does. How much more enriching would Parker’s stories about Tennessee have been if the documentary had featured Pat Summit’s longtime assistants, Holly Warlick or Mickie DeMoss? Who could’ve spoken with more perspective about Parker’s relationship with Pat than Pat’s son, Tyler?

Where are Parker’s would-be teammates from that 2016 Olympic team to speak out her omission? Where are her teammates (besides Chelsea Gray) from her championship runs with the Los Angeles Sparks and the Chicago Sky? Particularly if the documentary was going to include the outcome of The Athletic‘s 2019 anonymous player poll where Parker was voted “most overrated,” why not bring on the players that know Parker best to counteract that narrative? And, no shade to Ramona Shelbourne or Jemele Hill, but why feature them instead of reporters who have covered women’s college basketball and the WNBA over Parker’s storied career?

I understand that this is Candace Parker: Unapologetic and, at the end of the day, it’s her perspective that’s going to be valued the most. But I think adding more voices and providing more context would’ve enriched the story immensely. It just felt like a missed opportunity.

There’s a moment, late in the documentary, that’s stuck with me: Candace Parker is at an event, celebrating the release of her new shoe for Adidas.

As Parker is autographing her shoe, the fan notices the “For Pat” text on it and inquires who Pat is. After I got over my shock, I was reminded that in order for legacies to persist, people need to share their stories… and Unapologetic is Candace Parker’s story. Maybe it doesn’t document her story as fully as I’d like to see it, but if it creates a space for future players — or even just Airr — to learn about Candace Parker and expand on her legacy? It’ll have been a worthwhile creation.

---

Candace Parker: Unapologetic is now streaming on ESPN+ and wherever you watch ESPN.

I Got High and Watched “Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure”

You all seemed to really like when I got high and watched Elena Undone so I thought I should turn it into a series. Actually I had this idea because I was scrolling through the artist formerly known as HBO Max and under “new” I saw a picture of Ellen Degeneres. Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure, it read, and I decided I had to watch that high.

Also, can I just say that I keep meeting really nice people who love Elena Undone and it’s making me feel like I was too hard on it.

Anyway, if you didn’t know, Ellen Degeneres has come a long way since “The Puppy Episode.” She assimilated her way into daytime TV and then niced too close to the sun. After years of rumors, stories of her workplace abuse were released and Ellen walked away from her show.

I’m fascinated by queer people like Ellen and RuPaul who managed to become a part of mainstream culture despite their identities. Or, rather, became famous because of how they used a persona of their identities. I feel a lot of sympathy! Maybe I shouldn’t! But I find them fascinating and I want to give them a level of understanding even when they sometimes don’t deserve it!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am high. Very high. And I’m only getting higher. And I’m eating ice cream. And I’m about to press play on Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure.

---

Oh my God why is she on an off-center couch looking forlorn in shadowy daylight? Is this The Jinx?

Salted Oreo and ube brownie by the way. The ice cream. Sorry should’ve included that.

Wait. Is she not even going to mention being canceled?? “Next adventure” is just that she’s done hosting her show?

This feels like an episode of Documentary Now.

Portia is talking about needing a birthday gift for Ellen and acting like that was a life or death situation. Lesbians are so beautiful.

They’ve already said “gorilla campus” so many times.

The TV just turned off and then turned back on and it’s October and I’m watching a scary movie (Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure) and it was a lot.

This is the weirdest publicity maneuver I’ve seen in awhile.

Vance Degeneres!!! Her brother!!!

It’s honestly such a bummer that Ellen’s sitcom and standup were so good.

Are they going to tell me what a gorilla campus costs? How big of a gift was this?

They’re showing us a clip of the birthday surprise on the show.

James Corden interview oh my god. His bit is he doesn’t want to be there? I’m not sure it’s a bit.

There is such serious music. I’m sorry but you all need to watch this.

It doesn’t feel like Ellen Degeneres likes that she’s having to do this gorilla sanctuary.

Oh God now we’re doing small penis jokes. I wonder if Ellen and Portia use a strap-on. Sometimes I think about couples and am just like “I wonder how those people have sex.” Not in a horny way just in like a human curiosity way.

This is like a making of documentary, but instead of a movie it’s an organization.

Ellen raised money?????? Wait the gift was you need to raise money?????

Portia has never been more Lindsay Bluth.

Famous people at Ellen’s gorilla fundraiser: Sofia Vergara, Jennifer Aniston, Diane Keaton, Kris Jenner, Bruno Mars, Julia Roberts.

Sofia Vergara’s bit is that she bid 85k on coming to the giveaway show and then didn’t get to go to the show? IS that a bit? All the bits are that people hate Ellen or hate the gorillas and it doesn’t feel like bits.

Ellen raised five million. Why didn’t she spend her own money????? I do not understand money.

Ellen seems to feel so much disdain for having to be with the gorillas.

I love cows.

But I eat cows. :(

I feel bad about that.

The pandemic!! Oh my God. This is like watching The Morning Show.

They kept working through the pandemic? Not Ellen, of course. The local workers building her facility. This is so weird. You all don’t understand how much this feels like a very 2010s take on a superhero movie where it’s a faux sympathetic mockumentary about a super villain.

“The Puppy Episode” really is so great. And then the episode right after! Ugh including clips from the show and Ellen’s standup right after is making me like her again. Why do I find modern Ellen so scary but late 90s/early 00s Ellen so endearing??

Kangaroos are really cute.

I forgot that Ellen used to dress like Shane. Or try to.

There is an orangutan with pants on. This is Nope. Oh wow Ellen said no more animals on shows because it seemed stressful for them!

19 years is so many years to do anything. No wonder she needed a next adventure.

They’re showing behind the scenes stuff to make it look like the working environment on her talk show was nice. Ellen is crying through a speech. This is so weird. You do not understand how weird this is.

Remember when Ellen was like confused by Lucas Hedges’ bisexuality? Or remember when she interviewed Saoirse Ronan! I really latched onto that Saoirse Ronan one. I had a whole kind of obsessive Saoirse Ronan phase around the time of Lady Bird. That was my first year post-transition so I think I had a lot of gender envy? Which is weird because I’m not Irish.

I wonder if this scientist is a lesbian.

Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure is just like a commercial for a nonprofit?

I feel the stress of everyone who works here about Ellen and Portia. Everyone feels so scared of them!

I just hope this is a net good and no one’s homes were ruined so Ellen could have this publicity boost.

This is DEEPLY uncomfortable!

Ellen cries a lot. I do think crying a lot is often a thing manipulative people do. Sorry that’s not fair to water signs. Crying is good. Just sometimes it’s manipulative.

“You have to do what you’d do with a human family. Kill the father. Kill the mother.” A real quote. The person was talking about poachers killing gorillas, so there was context, but I’m still frightened.

Omg?? Ellen’s hero was MURDERED?? Dian Fossey? But also was maybe bad? I need to read this. Oh Gorillas in the Mist! It’s that lady!! Of course this is Ellen’s hero.

Hanging out with Portia and Ellen would be so tense. Just the most anxious third wheeling ever.

“What is it like being thirteen and ten and seeing these people your same age?” Ellen’s nieces are visiting. And they are acting like it’s this eye-opening experience to see that kids in other parts of the world have responsibilities. But there are also kids in the U.S. who aren’t Ellen Degeneres’ nieces who have responsibilities?? This is all so weird.

I think Saving the Gorillas: Ellen’s Next Adventure is more of a drunk watch. Too unsettling for a high watch.

Rich people are so fucking weird. I still can’t get over her doing a fundraiser instead of spending her own five million.

It’s so fun to go from my perception of Ellen as a kid to now. Like in terms of queerness. I didn’t have context for masc lesbians? Our social teachings of butchness are wild.

Her one producer had to be asked to keep his mask on while visiting the gorillas and he’s snarky about it? It’s so the gorillas don’t get sick! God some people are awful.

Ellen just said, “Love is love.”

She’s crying again.

The gorillas are so cool though.

Ellen is talking about her and Portia’s relationships to not having children.

I’m confused what they’re actually doing to save the gorillas. Feels like they just built a fancy facility.

Ellen’s dancing again.

A white lady is talking about colonialism. God I am so curious how people nearby feel about this facility.

Ellen is complaining about having to address the Rwandan prime minister by title??

Why is this all about her retirement!

Rich people are so weird they cant even recognize when they’re being weird.

Stat at the end: “More than 20,000 people have been impacted by (her gorilla campus).” Impacted how, Ellen?? IMPACTED HOW???

LGBTQ+ Documentaries To Watch This Pride Month That Aren’t the Most Obvious Ones

Our Pride theme this year is RAGE PARTY, an explicit acknowledgement of the complexity and expansiveness of Pride as a site of simultaneous recreation and revolution. It’s a time to hold each other close as we fight our oppressors. Rage on! In that spirit, I’ve rounded up some LGBTQ+ documentaries on queer resistance, history, and activism for a simmering Pride night in.

There are a lot of watch lists and documentary recommendations geared toward Pride floating around mainstream media right now, so I’m trying to focus on entries I didn’t see come up as often on those (kinda basic tbh!) lists. As a result, you might have to deviate from some of the more popular streamers like Netflix and Hulu to seek them out, but they’re worth the hunt. Time to sign up for Kanopy! I’ve put the docs in order of year released, and we’ve got films from 1989 to today! Check out over three decades of queer and trans real life stories! The list is, of course, far from exhaustive. So please feel free to shout out your favorites in the comments, even if they’re hard to find!

---

Tongues Untied (1989)

An experimental documentary that centers Black gay men, Tongues Untied uses poetry, performance, music, spoken word, art, and narrative to unspool Black gay life and challenge homophobia and racism. It’s an excellent starting point for this list and is available on Kanopy.

---

Last Call at Maud’s (1993)

Later in this list, you’ll find a shoutout to the more recent docuseries, The Lesbian Bar Project. But if you want to deep dive dyke bar documentaries, start here with 1993’s Last Call at Maud‘s, which touches on lesbian culture and spaces from the 1940s to 1990s, centered on the iconic defunct lesbian bar Maud’s in San Francisco. It’s available for rent or purchase on Prime Video.

---

Bloodsisters (1995)

Yes kink at Pride, and yes to this 1995 leatherdyke documentary that plunges into the lesbian BDSM scene in San Francisco in the 90s. For Autostraddle, Daemonum X wrote of the documentary, which is available to stream on Kanopy:

“Leatherdyke is a sexuality, and those of us who identify with it are automatically associated with perversion. When you’re turned on by filth, blood, and pain, no matter how hard you try you simply cannot bring it back from the margins. You cannot make dyke SM sexuality respectable in the eyes of society, and for many of us that’s even part of the appeal. The risks and the stigmatization of waving your freak flag have only moderately improved in the last twenty-five years. The watered down, mainstream ideas of kink have only moved the needle so far. Leatherdyke sexuality carries an inherent politic of anti-respectability and for that it has always been ahead of its time.”

---

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2003)

This documentary would make an excellent companion to the primer on queer labor activism: Gay at Work: Queer People and the Labor Movement, written by Daven McQueen for Rage Party. It’s available on Kanopy and additional apps.

---

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005)

Three years before Stonewall, trans folks and drag queens fought back against police violence at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. It’s considered one of the first documented instances of large scale queer resistance to police harassment in U.S. history. It’s available on Kanopy.

---

T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s (2011)

The iconic queer author Jewelle Gomez narrates this exploration of Black queerness in the 1920s blues boom, exploring the lived experiences of icons like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, and Ethel Waters. It’s available on Kanopy.

---

United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012)

“United in Anger isn’t just a film, it’s a teaching tool for future activists,” Gabby wrote for Autostraddle in a review of the Sarah Schulman-produced documentary about ACT UP that utilizes footage compiled by the ACT UP Oral History Project. Pair it with a copy of Let the Record Show. It’s available on Kanopy.

---

Call Me Kuchu (2012)

This documentary focuses on queer life in Uganda, including the effects of violent church-backed homophobic legislation in the country. It covers the 2011 murder of activist David Kato and its aftermath. It’s available on Kanopy.

---

Kiki (2016)

Regarded as an unofficial “sequel” to Paris Is Burning by critics, Kiki similarly follows ballroom and drag culture in NYC, focusing on LGBTQ youth of color. It shows the various intersecting conflicts trans youth of color face as well as immense trans joy and community, making it a perfect fit for Rage Party. It’s available to stream on Kanopy.

---

Check It (2016)

This documentary follows the Check-It, a street gang formed by ninth graders in Washington D.C. in 2009 that consists of trans and queer Black teens who have been rejected by their families, subjected to homophobia, transphobia, racism, and pushed into extreme poverty and homelessness. It’s available to stream on several different apps.

---

Dykes, Camera, Action (2018)

For my queer cinephiles! This documentary explores lesbian cinema, featuring filmmakers like Barbara Hammer, Vicky Du, Cheryl Dunye, Desiree Akhavan, and many more! Queer resistance and queer art go hand in hand, so dive on into this exploration of queerness on screen. It’s available on Peacock.

---

I Hate New York (2018)

This documentary follows the lives and work of activists and artists Amanda Lepore, Sophia Lamar, Chloe Dzubilo and T De Long, and it’s title is a tongue-in-cheek critique of the ways the powers at be have sought to erase trans life and spaces from New York City, including efforts like the shutting down of Cats II and Sally’s Hideaway in Times Square in the 90s. It’s available to stream on Tubi.

---

Changing the Game (2019)

Following three trans teen athletes as they compete in their respective sports and confront transphobia and other obstacles, Changing the Game feels like an urgent documentary as youth athletics continue to be a staging ground for rampantly transphobic legislation throughout the country. It’s available on Hulu.

---

Sylvia Rivera: She Was More Than Stonewall (2019)

This full documentary is available on YouTube via CT Trans History and Archives.

---

Always Amber (2020)

This coming-of-age documentary follows genderqueer teen Amber and a group of trans teens in a way that gives them a lot of agency and room for exploration of their own identities. Drew Burnett Gregory wrote of it: “This documentary is about a person and it’s about a generation and it’s about a future that is yet to exist. It’s a political declaration that all people regardless of age should get to determine how they present and how they’re addressed and who they are.” It’s available to rent or purchase on Prime Video in the UK and Apple TV.

---

Your Mother’s Comfort (2020)

Trans activist, politician, and leader Indianara Siqueira fights to save the LGBTQ+ homeless shelter for trans sex workers she started in this international documentary set against the backdrop of the election of a far right president in Brazil. The film is available to stream on the apps Hoopla and Revry.

---

My Name Is Pauli Murray (2021)

This documentary about an important Black queer and trans elder who has so often been erased by dominant history narratives is a necessary deep dive on their many contributions to Black liberation and civil rights. It’s also not without its problems, explored with nuance by Autostraddle Editor-in-Chief Carmen Phillips in her review, which notes Pauli is misgendered throughout parts of the film, something that’s grappled with and pushed back against by some of the trans folks interviewed in it. If you’re going to watch, I highly recommend reading Carmen’s review as a companion piece to understand some of these flaws. It’s available on Prime Video.

---

Rebel Dykes (2021)

Set in 1980s London, Rebel Dykes is immersed in a specific punk lesbian scene and explores the intersections of politics, sex and the erotic, activism, art, and music. It’s available to watch in the UK through the BFI’s website.

---

The Lesbian Bar Project (2022)

The Lesbian Bar Project is an ongoing campaign to champion the few surviving lesbian bars throughout the U.S., and part of that campaign included a short documentary as well as a three-part docuseries. The three-part docuseries is available to stream for free on the Roku channel and is worth checking out if you too are invested in the decline of the dyke bar, a topic we cover here at Autostraddle in myriad ways.

---

The Stroll (2023)

Made by trans directors Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, The Stroll centers Black trans sex workers in NYC’s Meatpacking District, exploring the neighborhood’s history of violent policing, gentrification, community care, and queer and trans resilience. It’s available to stream on Max, starting June 21.

Zackary Drucker on “Queenmaker,” Reality TV, and the Challenges of Being a Trans Documentarian

feature image photo by David M. Benett / Contributor via Getty Images

“Oh hi there. I’m Zackary Drucker. I’d like to communicate to you some of my experiences being a real-life, full-time, continuous, self-actualized… person.”

Delve into Zackary Drucker’s extensive body of video art, performance art, and documentary, and you will find the shimmering soul of a singular artist. The pieces may vary in topic and presentation, but they all belong to the same ever-evolving voice.

Whether painted gold while unmummified or — quoted above — introducing a drag performance with the combined cadence of old Hollywood glamor and new Hollywood realtor, Zackary has long been interested in the parody of wealth. To be a woman is, after all, one of the most expensive things a person can do. Our society values a femininity only money can buy — especially if that femininity happens to be attached to a transsexual.

Zackary’s four-part HBO Max doc The Lady and the Dale focused on a trans entrepreneur’s pursuit of the American dream. Now she’s back with a new film, Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl, that focuses on a very different trans woman and a very different American dream.

Queenmaker tells an Edith Wharton tale set in the other turn of the century. It’s the early aughts, and New York high society is the latest trend. By starting broad before narrowing in on its unlikely protagonist, Queenmaker is a dreamy, sticky, and thoughtful look at a culture of wealth and misogyny that was enviable until it wasn’t.

I talked to Zackary about finding the film in the edit, the ethical challenges of being a trans documentarian, and the female musicians who inspired her youth.

---

Drew: I want to start by talking about how you first became aware of Morgan and this story.

Zackary: This story came to me. I was finishing The Lady and the Dale in December of 2020 and MRC, the studio behind the film, reached out. They had heard the pitch and were looking for directors. And they came to me because of my personal connection to the material, having been in New York at the time as a young person. I had never heard of Morgan. But Morgan is going to be a big surprise to everyone. Certainly in the story itself, she kind of comes out of left field and steals the film.

Drew: It’s clear from some of the interviews that not all of your subjects knew where the film was going. When you’re approaching an interview how much do you let people in on the overall premise?

Zackary: Well, the premise was evolving. Truly. I knew that Morgan existed, I knew that she was the writer behind one the blogs, but the proportion of the film focusing on Morgan shifted. We had the backdrop: New York, the aughts, Tinsley, Olivia, Kelly Cutrone, the iconoclasts of that era. Morgan was just one part we were playing with.

The untold story behind the film is that we reached out to a lot of socialites and heiresses and other people and they just had no interest in talking to me. (Laughs) It was not an easy yes for a lot of people. They have more to lose than they have to gain putting their stories out there. And they were certainly skeptical that I was a woman named Zackary and that I was a trans person. If we had procured more of those interviews, the proportion of the film may have changed. But Morgan was always there and always game and open-hearted and willing to unpack what that time meant to her. As the door was slammed in my face over and over again by these other people, I was like helloooo this is the story, this is a microcosm of the American dream. Or the myth of the American dream.

Drew: So when you said you were hired because of your personal connection, did you mean your personal connection to this era in New York rather than a trans personal connection?

Zackary: It was probably both. As a filmmaker, it was clear we had an A story and a B story. And this is often the quandary as a storyteller. How do you structure? How do you weave? And ultimately, I think we wove the story really well. All the seeds that are planted in act one have something to do with a later piece in the story. We want the investment to pay off. And Tinsley and Morgan were the investment that paid off. It’s because they were both so willing to interrogate their own histories and go there with me. They could be seen in more complex ways than they had been, and have more control in the ways they’re represented.

Drew: I’m interested in the way Morgan’s transness is a reveal. Was that something that was found in the edit?

Zackary: Yes, it was. There were so many different versions. There were more versions of this film than any other project I’ve worked on. We continued to retool it over and over again. In radical ways. We tried every version.

Drew: What were the discussions around those versions?

Zackary: Do you start with the reveal? Or do you wait? Do you hold it? There was a real process of figuring that out. And we really sat with versions of the film for a long time until we realized that maybe we should try it this other way. It was a storied edit. (laughs) Of all the things I’ve worked on, this one was… storied. That’s the word for it. We were working on it for MRC, and then Hulu came in and there were more cooks in the kitchen. They had their own ideas about what would make the best story. And I was thrilled by that, because my goal is to reach different audiences every time. I want to get our stories out there. We all have to do this simultaneously for the rest of our lives, so I think about it practically. Hulu is a different audience. Hulu is an audience that watches reality television. So we were guided by the executives on how to reach that audience. How do you create a secret piece of trans activism in a story that’s extremely mainstream? (laughs)

Drew: It’s interesting, because it feels like a desire of “the suits” to have a trans reveal, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like any of the story’s integrity or Morgan’s humanity is sacrificed in service of that. It’s well-balanced. But I can definitely see an audience going into it and being totally surprised. As a trans person, I had an idea. I think the narration is a nice touch, because I heard a trans voice and had a guess where it was going to go.

Zackary: There’s a spectrum of legibility. And ultimately, I am always trying to speak to you, to my enabling audience, to the people who have the most advanced level of understanding. And, besides, the more specific you are, the more universal it becomes. I also want to create something that has enough layers in meaning that people can watch it again and get new things out of it.

Drew: Were there versions where you covered more of Morgan’s transition? Because that was something that was really interesting to me. You portray her life pre-transition and you portray her life now but you don’t get into the transition story.

Zackary: We did. We definitely did. There was a version that started with her transition. The version that we sat with the longest was beautiful steadicam footage of her checking into a doctor’s office to have a gender related surgery. It wasn’t about the surgery she was having, it was just her name and all the questions she was asked and her answering in really direct ways. It told you everything. It told you her name is Morgan Olivia Rose, that her legal name is James Kurisunkal, that she was a writer in New York. She tells this version of her story, and that was how we started. We said this is a trans person, this is who is at the center of the film, and then she drifts off into general anesthesia and it kind of brings you into the story. That was one version.

There’s a challenge as a storyteller. In the real world, if someone changes their name and their pronouns, you just refer to them always as that. But how do you tell something chronologically and still respect someone’s identity? There are nuances with Morgan’s story because many of the people who are referring to her are not in her life and don’t know that she’s trans. You have people still referring back and as a documentarian you’re not going to interject and correct them. It’s a very interesting position to be in as a trans creator with these stories that have not been told yet, figuring out how you do this in a way that doesn’t exploit or sensationalize somebody’s transness, but is still something everybody can understand.

Drew: Speaking of ethical dilemmas in documentary, I want to talk about the moment when you appear on camera to talk to Morgan. Obviously, as a filmmaker, a moment that raw is gold. But, after the fact, do you show a moment like that to Morgan and ask for explicit permission to include it? Or once the camera is rolling does everything feel like fair game?

Zackary: That’s something else that was in other versions of the film — conspiratorial conversations between Morgan and I about what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. There’s a version where we included some of our Zoom conversations where we’re collaborating. Because, for me, it’s always a collaboration with my subjects and my editor. There wasn’t anything on camera that we hadn’t already talked about.

That moment where I step in reveals how the toxicity of that misogynistic culture manifested internally for Morgan. You realize the self-talk that she learned from worshiping that culture had a deteriorating effect on herself. It’s very palpable in the women who I talked to. Even Tinsley would surprise me with things she would say, self-hating things. And I was just like, wow, that’s how you see yourself? It’s surprising sometimes. Like she’s the most beautiful woman with everything she ever wanted and still has a very pejorative way of seeing herself.

Drew: Do you watch reality TV? Is reality TV something you participate in as a viewer?

Zackary: No.

Drew: (laughs)

Zackary: (laughs) There are reality shows that I have watched and loved. I loved Small Town Security. But ultimately no. Because I’ve been a subject in reality shows, and I know how produced they are. There are writers on reality shows! They write the story and then you’re just a pawn in the story. Reality shows are very produced. They’re also listening to everything you say even when there’s not a camera on you and you’re just having an aside with somebody. They’re listening and taking notes and then a producer is reading it.

Drew: Do you think of it as like bad documentary filmmaking or do you see it as a whole separate genre?

Zackary: I have so much respect for the crews behind reality television. They work around the clock. They’re non-unionized labor, so there’s no limit to what they are asked to do. They are the hardest hustlers I have ever known in production. I want to say that. Production assistants, crews, anyone who works on a reality show is hardcore in a way that makes documentary look high-falutin. But it’s all a spectrum. Compared to scripted, documentary is very scrappy and very DIY. So I don’t want to reinforce the way I delineate between reality and doc. It’s just that one is usually much more manipulated and produced.

Drew: How do you feel your early experimental work influences your current documentary work?

Zackary: I approach all these works as an artist and a storyteller. I think as a young artist, I just never thought that I could exist in a mainstream area of culture. But I was like, okay, there are weirdos in the art world and that’s a place where I can get a job.

Drew: (laughs)

Zackary: You know?

Drew: Yeah.

Zackary: Then Transparent changed that. It was really the first show where somebody was like, let’s invite trans folks into this process as more than a consultant who comes on-set for a day, talks to an actor for a day, and then shows up for the premiere. That was the standard before. I’ve lived in LA for 18 years. There was no respect for us. Trans people were always associated with the underground world.

I think Queenmaker more than anything encapsulates my touch as an artist. Especially in the reenactments we do with Morgan. This is my third collaboration with Awesome + Modest, artist friends of mine. They always create a world that’s amazing but we really went ham on this. We were like let’s be weird, let’s make this look like early internet art from Paper Rad, this art collective out of Rhode Island in the aughts that were like so hot, or Assume Vivid Astrofocus, this other collective of artists that were creating interesting work. So all of that comes into play in creating a visual world.

I also never want to do the same thing twice. I think focusing the camera on me and my relationships as a young person was a really helpful way to construct an identity. And now I’ve expanded the view.

Drew: When you were a teenager, who were your models of femininity? Who did you look to the way Morgan looked to this New York elite?

Zackary: Truly, it was musicians. It was Ani DiFranco, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos. It was much more…

Drew: Lilith Fair.

Zackary: Oh yeah. I went to the first Lilith Fair. I was more counter-culture. By the time I moved to New York and was witnessing that culture of white, wealthy women, it was not my thing. I was not interested. I had a very critical understanding of class and equity. I was in college! I was steeped in theory.

Drew: (laughs)

Zackary: You know what I mean? I was like, what are these people participating in?

“Judy Blume Forever” Documentary Made Me Cry Big Nostalgia Tears

When I was in high school, we lived within walking distance of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. If I wasn’t at home or school, I was likely at the library, scouring the shelves for books I hadn’t yet read. YA as a genre wasn’t quite as robust back in the early aughts as it is now; there weren’t as many options, so I burned through them pretty quickly. One day, I took out a book that would change the way I thought of books: Forever by Judy Blume. I knew Judy Blume; she had written some books I loved in elementary school. This book was different though. It felt real in a way I didn’t know possible.

Judy Blume and her legacy are the subject of a new documentary, Judy Blume Forever on Prime Video. I cannot not articulate how excited I was when I found out about this documentary. The first time I watched the trailer, I got all teary eyed. It should be hard to encapsulate one woman in 90 minutes, but it was truly so unbelievably good. Not only does it capture Judy Blume the woman, but it does an excellent job of capturing the impact she’s had on children’s literature over the last 50 years.

I got invited to an early screening of the film, and I have never been more excited. By the end of the opening sequence, I had tears in my eyes. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, but my emotional reactions to Judy Blume Forever go beyond basic nostalgia. I don’t think I knew how much her books meant to me until I watched this film. Authors don’t often get this kind of recognition, even though their work touches so many lives. It’s amazing to see Judy get the recognition she deserves while she’s still here to receive it. While Judy is the focus of the film, she isn’t the only person they talk to. Actors like Molly Ringwald and Lena Dunham are featured, as well as authors like Jacquline Woodson, Alex Gino, Mary HK Choi, and Jason Reynolds. People close to her, including childhood friends, her children, and her husband are also featured. Everyone in the film talks about her and her work with such reverence: It’s clear how many lives she’s touched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neWsO1Rk_q0

The documentary tells her life story in a linear fashion and shows how it impacted her work. Growing up in the 1940s and 50s, she was a curious child, much like the children she writes about. She didn’t set out to be a writer, but storytelling was something she enjoyed, and after becoming a mother, she thought she’d give it a try. It didn’t happen right away, and she faced a lot of rejections before having her work published. Her breakout book Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret was her third book, and it didn’t just change her life; it changed children’s literature. (The film adaptation, which Blume says is even better than the book, comes out this week.)

In the film, Blume reads excerpts from many of her books, accompanied by beautiful animations full of floral aesthetics. During the Margaret segment, there are floating tampons and maxi pads instead of flowers, which I thought was a total hoot. She reveals how those books paralleled what was happening in her life at the time. Margaret contained elements of Blume as a child. Fudge, the star of a series of books, was largely based on her son Larry, and later, her grandson. Forever was written after her daughter asked for a book where teens had sex and the girl didn’t die or face dire circumstances after. Deenie became known for a few sentences where the character reveals she masturbates, even though that’s not what the book is ultimately about.

One of the best (and most emotional) parts of Judy Blume Forever comes when we learn about two women who started writing to Judy as children. They forged special relationships with her over the years, writing and telling her things they couldn’t tell anyone else. Lorrie, a Korean American woman, revealed that she treated her letters to Blume as her diary, which led to them forming a close friendship. The other woman, Karen, wrote to Blume after reading the novel Tiger Eyes. The books deals with the death of a close family member, and Karen felt connected to the story after losing her brother to suicide. She and Blume maintained a relationship over the last 30+ years.

All of the letters children have written to Judy Blume live at Yale, where Blume donated her manuscripts and correspondence for preservation. I was weeping as she read different letters she’s received over the years. Even though they didn’t know Blume, she was the most trusted adult in their lives. And she still is. The filmmakers went to a school and talked to children now about the part Judy Blume’s books play in their lives. They might not know how to use a rotary phone, but it doesn’t matter to them. They can still see themselves in Margaret or Deenie or Blubber which focuses on bullying. It makes you see just how apt the title of the film is.

Judy Blume has left an indelible mark on my life as both a reader and a writer. Her books were SO REAL. That’s the thing I always remember most about them. She wrote in a way that made me feel seen as a kid. She just got it when I thought no one else could. Even though I had never been in a relationship when I read Forever, it’s exactly what I would have wanted my first relationship to be. There are few authors who can grow with their audience like Judy Blume does. I loved her at eight, and I loved her again at 15. Heck, I still love her at 37. When I saw her standing just a few feet away from me, I started to cry all over again. And I cried just as much the second time I watched the film!

The latter third of Judy Blume Forever focuses on a subject that is incredibly important to Judy: book banning. Shortly after Reagan took office in 1980, the U.S. saw the rise of the Christian right and the moral majority. Judy Blume’s books were some of the first and most swiftly contested and banned books for children. Why? Because they dealt with things that white Christian parents didn’t want their children thinking about. When Blume’s books began constantly being contested and banned, she became an activist to fight against the censorship of books, especially those meant for children. There is a great clip in the documentary of her on the show Crossfire debating with Pat Buchanan about her book Deenie. “Are you obsessed with masturbation?” she asks him, totally exasperated with his baseless arguments.

Anyone who has been paying attention in the last few years knows that book banning has only gotten worse since Judy Blume’s books started getting banned 40 years ago. Her books still remain on those lists, but many of the most contested and banned books are those written by marginalized writers. Books that focus on race and LGBTQ+ characters are constantly coming under fire. Book bans that target LGBTQ+ content are hurting youth. Some of the writers featured in the documentary, including Woodson, Reynolds, and Cecily von Ziegesar, are authors of frequently banned books. Their commentary is invaluable in these moments to illustrate how little has changed. It was very smart of the filmmakers to make those connections — it would have been easy to keep the focus solely on Judy Blume and her work. But then you wouldn’t have a complete picture.

After the screening of the film, I was lucky enough to attend a talk with Judy Blume and the film’s directors. Judy admitted she was reluctant to participate in the documentary, and it took time for her to come around. She watched it with a certain level of detachment from the versions of herself portrayed, but it was clear that the whole thing still made her emotional. When asked what part of the film really got to her, she admitted that one of Jason Reynolds’ quotes really got her in the heart:

“Judy didn’t set out to make her books timeless; she made them timely, and that’s what makes them timeless.”

I couldn’t agree more.

“Call Me Miss Cleo” and the Queer Legacy of TV’s Most (In)Famous Psychic

As a Black millennial of a certain age, when I hear Miss Cleo’s name, it evokes a very specific nostalgia that immediately calls to mind the image of a seemingly larger than life Black woman in a grainy infomercial with a too-outrageous-to-be-real Jamaican accent. “CYAL ME NOW FUH YUH FREE READING!” To many, she was a punchline. I mean heck, the first thing I did when I realized HBO Max did a documentary on her was to recall the many parodies that she inspired. Featuring commentary from Raven-Symoné, comedian Debra Wilson, and several of Cleo’s closest friends, Call Me Miss Cleo walks us through Miss Cleo’s rise to fame, fall from grace, and eventual embrace of her truest self.

I pressed play expecting that familiar dopamine hit that only nostalgia can deliver, and maybe even some tea about the Psychic Readers Network scandal I knew only vague details about. What I did not anticipate was to be taken on an emotional journey to learn about a Black queer woman who was taken advantage of by the machine that made her a household name; a woman who barely got to live as authentically herself; the woman her friends simply knew as “Cleo”.

Now, if you’ve come to this review with no knowledge of Miss Cleo, let me give you a brief idea of what it was like to watch television in the late 90s. Not only did we have commercials, but we also had infomercials that advertised a variety of products we could call and purchase. Hotlines were a specific kind of infomercial where we could call a 1-800 (or 900) number to get information; the Psychic Readers Network (PRN) was one such hotline. You’d call them up, and get pay-by-the-minute psychic reading. Miss Cleo was a self-proclaimed trained priestess with many ways of divining information. But to the mainstream world, she was a TV tarot card reader and psychic advisor with a bombastic personality.

What made Miss Cleo so popular was 1) the casual and open way she spoke to those who called the hotline; she was like your best friend who told you what you needed to hear even if you didn’t want to hear it; and 2) the accent. Call Me Miss Cleo spends a fair amount of time dissecting her accent, theorizing on why she affected it and why it made her seem more trustworthy, and revealing the ways that PRN capitalized on it.

I remember when the scandal about Miss Cleo being a fraud started to come out, and the way it colored my perception of who she was. What I didn’t know at the time, was that that reaction was exactly what those in charge at PRN wanted. They wanted us, the public, to question the morality of this woman rather than look into their corrupt practices. The documentary shines a bright light on how those in power at the network focused on the mystery of Miss Cleo and her heritage in order to paint her as untrustworthy.

I won’t go into all the details of the Psychic Readers Network or the lawsuits or the questionable decisions Cleo made early in her career. You can watch the documentary if that’s what you’re interested in. To me, the most important part, and my favorite part, of Call Me Miss Cleo is its focus on who Cleo was. Not the paperwork that said where she was born or that determined her heritage — but the fact that every single person who speaks about Cleo, speaks about her heart. Her friends and family (almost exclusively of the chosen variety) speak about her kindness. They speak about Cleo the character and Cleo the person; where one ended and the other began.

From what she shared with her inner circle, we know she was adopted by a Jamaican family and had 8 or 9 adopted brothers. She often felt awkward about being different and taller than her peers; she was smart and loved learning, but as she got older and started her career, the white folks who signed her checks tried to minimize her education in favor of their bottom line. As a child, Cleo experienced abuse that led to her creating alternate personas as a way of coping with that trauma. In fact, the Miss Cleo character was one that she created when she was writing plays in Seattle in the early 90s.

Those who knew her best, speak of the way she lit up a room just by walking into it. They speak of the lightness Cleo exuded toward the end of her too short life. And through interviews from a separate documentary that Cleo was a part of, we get to hear, in her own words, what it was like for her to embrace her queerness and find community when she was at her lowest. When the PRN lawsuits were settled, Cleo essentially went into hiding. But she soon found a queer coffee shop in Florida that felt like home. She felt purpose in advocating for this community; she understood what it was like to be cast aside and judged. When she came out in 2006, it was like she was free. There’s so much mystery surrounding Miss Cleo’s childhood and upbringing, and I imagine a lot of that was Cleo’s doing as a way to protect herself. But living what ended up being the last 10 years of her life as an out queer Black woman was Cleo at her most authentic. She didn’t have to hide anymore.

Her former partners describe her as a compassionate and deeply feeling person who loved so fiercely. I learned a lot about Youree Dell Cleomili Harris while watching Call Me Miss Cleo; she isn’t the villain that those in charge of the media narrative wanted us to believe. At her core, Cleo wanted to help people; and in spite of the controversies, the jokes, and the accent, she made people feel good. I hope that fact doesn’t get lost in Cleo’s legacy.

HBO Max Abortion Documentary “The Janes” Reminds Us Revolution Is Possible Wherever We Are

Although there are many people doing important work out in their communities, few really know what it means to put everything on the line to do that work. Meaningful political organization happens in a variety of ways, but oftentimes, the work that makes a true, material difference in our communities has to be stealthily concealed because it’s been deemed “criminal” by the apparatuses of the ruling class. Since safety for the people who undertake these great responsibilities is an issue, it’s rare that we get a close look at what these organizations have done and even rarer that we hear it directly from the people involved.

In the new HBO Max documentary The Janes, directors Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes document the almost four years of action on the part of The Jane Collective, a group of women in Chicago who came together to provide safe abortion access to women who needed it. In 1965, eight years before the Supreme Court codified abortion rights into law through Roe v. Wade, Heather Booth, with some assistance of the medical arm of the Black Panther Party, began organizing safe abortions for women she knew. At the time, only way to obtain an abortion that wasn’t deemed a medical necessity was through Chicago’s organized crime syndicates, which was both extremely costly and extremely dangerous. Booth found a doctor willing to perform the abortions for $500, and as word of the work she was doing spread, more and more women began coming to her for help. A few years later, in 1968, Booth began going to meetings held by anti-war and civil rights activists to recruit more women to help her.

By the end of that year, she had recruited 10 women and an abortionist named Mike to help her create the Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation, codenamed “Jane” for short because it was a plain enough name that the women who were calling could use when they called. Once enough people were involved, the Janes put a structure in place that not only helped provide safe abortions to women who needed it, but also allowed the Janes to provide before and after care to these women and ensured that women could pay what they were able whether that was $5 or $700. Over the following four years, the Janes learned from Mike how to perform abortions themselves and were able to provide over 11,000 abortions to mostly low-income white, Black, and Latina women in the Chicago area. Throughout the time they worked to provide these services, the women of the Janes also had to work to ensure they weren’t caught and that the women who were coming to them weren’t detected either. So, their work became even more layered and more hazardous than just connecting women to a doctor willing to perform the procedure.

The documentary itself is much less flashy than a lot of the documentaries and docuseries we see coming from various distributors. It doesn’t rely on sharp edits or graphics to help tell the story. It gives a chronological account of the Janes’ actions interspersed with archival footage of protests that happened in Chicago, speeches from political figures, and of the septic abortion wards of Chicago hospitals where many women who underwent unsafe abortion procedures ended up. Where the real power of the documentary lies is in the interviews it features with some of the women who were involved with the organization and who helped make this safe abortion access possible and available to the women of Chicago.

Through their testimony, we get an entirely compelling account of what it was like to live and work through this, what it truly means to risk your life and your well-being for people you don’t even know. A Jane named Jody explains, “As far as society was concerned, we were scumbags. We were doing something bad. But we didn’t feel that way. We felt that we were doing the right thing. Not only was there the need but there was a philosophical obligation on our part, on somebody’s part, to disrespect a law that disrespected women.” To the Janes, it wasn’t a question of “Should we do this?” but “How do we do this?” and instead of trying to simply spread awareness or wait around for other alternatives, they just took matters into their own hands and did the work that was necessary.

Like many organizations before and after them, the women of the Janes didn’t let the possible repercussions stop them from taking action and seeking justice in the way they felt was right. Throughout the documentary, the common refrain in all of their testimonies is very basically that it didn’t matter what was at stake, they were tired of women putting their lives at risk to do something that all women should have the right to do. And, as one of the Janes named Laura points out, they learned what it means to truly be in community with the people around them: “This work taught me that I was a responsible person and that I could take responsibility, not only in my own life but for other people’s lives.” Together with the women they served, they were bound by both the illegality and righteousness of this act. They created a community that was able to take care of itself.

Obviously, as abortion rights are once again being limited and close to being taken away from the people who need them, the release of this documentary seems more critical than ever. But for me, the testimonies of the Janes and the standard they set through their organization is and will always be an important example of what it truly means to take care of your community in the face of oppression. Despite the lies we’re told about voting and calling our representatives, the truth is that we, the people outside of the ruling class, hold very little power when it comes to legislation. That means that when legislation fails us — which it invariably will until we collectively make a decision to ensure it won’t anymore — we are going to have to find ways to help each other keep living with everything we need to survive regardless of what the government says.

Accounts like The Janes are not just a good reminder of what is possible through collective action, but a good lesson in just how to make it happen. It’s proof that when a specific problem seems wholly insurmountable, we can come together to make sure we do overcome it, even if we have to do it in secret and in complete opposition to the forces who govern us.

“Changing the Game” Review: With Anti-Trans Bills Rising, Listen to the Many Realities of Trans Athletes

I can’t help it. Whenever I watch a documentary about trans people, no matter how many trans people were involved in making it, there’s one question on my mind while I’m watching: Who is this movie for?

When it comes to Changing the Game, which came to Hulu after a couple of years showing it at festivals, Alex Schmider, a producer of the documentary and the Directory of Transgender Representation at GLAAD, told Variety they made it “for everyone”: “We made it for those of us who are part of the trans community, and those of us who are less familiar with the trans community, and anyone who believes that love can win and does win regardless of what that looks like.”

That message, along with Changing the Game, arrives at a time when around 150 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year, with around half focusing on trans athletes specifically. Some mandate that trans athletes must compete as the gender assigned to them at birth, while others outright criminalize trans girls and women for participating in girls’ and women’s sports. One signed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis on the very first day of Pride Month bans trans girls and women from competing in sports according to their gender identity. The aim in all is the same: to ban trans people, usually trans women and girls, from playing organized sports with cis people because it’s “unfair.”

Changing the Game centers wrestler Mack Beggs, skier Sarah Rose Huckman and runner Andraya Yearwood, all in high school at the time of filming, as they compete in their respective school-sponsored sports. We hear from their supportive (a reality not offered to many) family members and coaches and friends, but mostly we hear from them. It’s a pleasure to watch a film that doesn’t take two minutes offering a psychiatric definition of gender dysphoria, for example, and simply lets those experiencing it talk about it.

That said, this movie is especially difficult to watch at times. Name a prominent anti-trans voice, and chances are, they’ll make an appearance at some point. Soundbites from anti-trans media personalities, close-ups of angry fans at Beggs’ and Yearwood’s events and even interviews with a few of them are peppered throughout. It sometimes feels like a free platform for hateful people to have their words heard by the exact audience they want to hear them: trans people.

Despite the inclusion of those negative voices, though, it’s not a “both sides” story at all. A few bigots get their opinions spotlighted for a moment, sure, but at the end of the day, that’s the reality of being an out trans kid in sports. Not reflecting that reality and presenting this only as a “trans people are people too!” feel-good rainbow rigamarole would do all of them a major disservice.

“Our goal was always to return these young people’s stories to them,” Schmider said. “So really, what we wanted to do was give them their stories back and allow people to be able to see them as the kids that they are.”

For one thing, Beggs spends most of the film competing against girls instead of boys, as Texas law says that students must compete in sports based on the gender on their birth certificate. When Beggs says he thinks people hate him before beginning his second state title run, it’s not out of place. It’s a reflection of his life, a life whose ups and downs are as varied as anyone’s, but uniquely his.

Meanwhile, Huckman balances her inspiring advocacy to get an anti-discrimination bill passed with her fear of being fired from her job for being trans, not to mention her conscious reluctance to give an all-out effort when she skis. If she wins a race, she says, people might think she has a physical advantage, so she tries to avoid it. Yearwood, while having terrible words thrown at her during her meets (especially when she wins), befriends another trans runner, Terry Miller, who says she came out because she was inspired by Yearwood’s openness.

There’s all-out bigotry, and there’s all-out triumph. Changing the Game does well to offer both in a way that hits all the right notes. Like I said, it’s not all good or all bad. The agenda here isn’t to say that trans people are all inspiring at all times, nor is it to say that trans people are miserable, and cis people should feel bad for us at all times. Everyone’s lives come with ups and downs. These are just the ones specific to these trans kids, the most striking (and the most relevant to this story) of which has to do with them being trans. In a pretty radical way, Changing the Game is for everyone, but it’s especially for trans people seeking validation for their life experiences.

I’m over a decade out of high school, where I competed in girls’ sports. While this film didn’t spotlight anyone exactly like me (also keeping in mind that nonbinary athletes face their own unique challenges), I still felt it all. In the film, each athlete describes how they deal with gender dysphoria, and that’s something I deal with, too. The idea of returning to sports, even recreationally, terrifies me. It’s less that I fear being intentionally excluded by others and more that the potential for being misgendered, especially in a sex-segregated league, means there’s not quite a place for me. Playing in a women’s league, for example, means existing under the label of “women’s,” and being referred to as the collective “ladies” on the field, even though it’s an identity I’m trying to leave behind. It’s the “it’s not you, it’s me” of trans sports participation. Huckman echoes this feeling near the end of the movie, as she says that trans kids largely aren’t playing sports. The weight of a binary, gender essentialist, genitals-obsessed society is often too heavy to test.

At the end of April, a federal judge threw out a case against Yearwood and Miller that tested Connecticut’s policy to allow students to compete as the gender with which they identify. The plaintiffs, who were mainly white and all cisgender, alleged that Yearwood and Miller, who are Black, had an unfair advantage when they competed against them. (Spoiler: They didn’t. Two of the plaintiffs even went on to run track in college, while Yearwood and Miller did not.) It’s far from the only legal action of its kind, with several dozen states introducing bills in 2021 that would effectively ban trans kids from competing in sports; it’s also not the first action to be thrown out or die during the legislative process.

While these bills run rampant, Changing the Game makes it abundantly clear that trans athletes aren’t going anywhere either. “The main thing I want in my life is to be accepted as just me,” Huckman says. “I deserve equal rights and to be a part of everyone else’s normal lives.”

As the nondiscrimination bill that she helped form passed in the New Hampshire state legislature, that message couldn’t have been stronger.

What Will I Become? Tackling Trans Masculinities and Nuances of Misogyny

by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos

It is Trans Week of Visibility, a week set aside by our community to celebrate showing up in the world fully as ourselves. Trans Week of Visibility is both a time to take joy in our loud and unapologetic existence in the public eye, and a time to recognize the ways in which we are still overwhelmingly unseen. This invisibility makes trans people – especially those who identify with transmasculinity or trans boyhood – even more vulnerable.

The loss of trans lives to violence is an epidemic that has been acknowledged in queer spaces for years, but is just beginning to be discussed widely. While the community is still reckoning with the loss of a generation of elders to intimate partner violence, hate crimes, HIV/AIDS, and non-lethal violence like conversion therapy and locked closet doors, the frame of this conversation has not yet widened to include the loss of trans lives by suicide and lack of hope. In reality, death is a spectrum. We can experience it at any time, any age, even as both continue to pass. It can take the form of lying to ourselves, depression, and the world turning off our lights.

In the case of trans murders, the epidemic can be enumerated, the loss of life calculated, and the responsibility attributed more or less neatly to a bad actor in a transphobic and femme-phobic world. In the case of trans suicide, responsibility rests on our transphobic and misogynostic institutions and culture, as well as institutions that failed to represent, intervene on the behalf of, and support the healing of trans folks. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, over 50% of teenage trans boys have attempted suicide, the highest proportion of any community under the queer umbrella. WHAT WILL I BECOME? is a documentary in pre-production making visible why this is.

Most often, the conversation ends at the lack of trans masculine visibility in television or how trans men feel safer walking at night after medically transitioning. The conversation usually ends by lumping the experiences, desires, and histories of trans men with cis men – shortening the possibilities of who one is and what one will become. This lack of nuance brings us back to this statistic: over 50% cutting their becomings short while identifying with masculinity. We, as the trans co-directors of WHAT WILL I BECOME?, want to elevate questions and resources through film, and reckon with the unique misogyny trans people identifying with masculinity face.

WHAT WILL I BECOME? also recognizes the ways in which visibility is fraught and sometimes difficult to achieve; disappearance can happen in many forms. Some participants in the film have spoken of their desire to remain unseen, even to those who could offer them support. A lack of community, a fear of stigma or inadequate care, and the taboo around masculine people expressing vulnerability or any ounce of femininity leads people under the transmasculine umbrella to recede from others’ view, even when they want to be expansive. And, in representing young trans ancestors who have passed, the film must confront their physical invisibility as well their presence in the spaces they leave behind. To show this dynamic, the film uses the power of negative space in its visual language, as well as the life of personal objects and personal places, even without a visible human presence. The interviews in WHAT WILL I BECOME? also allow the subjects to decide their level of visibility. In recognition of vocal and physical dysphoria, the sensitivity of the subjects of suicidal ideation and grief, and the locations of some interviewees in communities that can be unsafe for trans folks, contributions take different forms. Some are audio-only, some are purely text-based, and some are based on a resonant object or art piece that the subject wanted to show the creative team. In the absence of footage of a participant’s face, the film will use stop-motion animation, as well as illustration and animation by creators trans and/or directly impacted by suicide.

We have found through early interviews, as well as our lived experiences, that the ability to imagine our becoming or a future is limited by the lack of alternative masculinities offered or made visible. Masculinity in Western cultures is remarkably rigid: it is limited by the gender binary, it must be patriarchal and domineering, and it must be constantly performed or else lost. To be believed as their gender, transmasculine people need to constantly perform masculinity, which means denying the feminine or fluid parts of themselves. Traits that support community and joy, such as nurturing, emotionally intimate friendships, eye contact, creativity in expression and presentation, and accepting support from community, are coded as feminine. Consequently, already-vulnerable trans boys are forced to eschew these parts of themselves to be taken seriously. And because Western binary masculinity is so inextricably tied to patriarchy and dominance over women, trans boys – many of whom have survived sexual, emotional, and/or physical abuse under patriarchy and from cis men – are expected to perpetuate gendered harm and reinforce this construction of manhood. Our society has not imagined a version of manhood without this violence, nor a version of softness without the label of womanhood, which leaves many young trans men without a stable vision of a future they feel is worth living for. This is true even when seeking help. In an early interview with the staff at Trans Lifeline, we were told that most trans masculine hotline callers assume that the person supporting them on the other line could not also be trans masculine.

All the while, many trans men fall into invisibility because of the “lone wolf” mentality that’s prized under patriarchal masculinities. Sisterhood, which offers visibility, intimacy, play, and community, is no longer available to them. Meanwhile, brotherhood often has frat-like, even sinister, connotations. They cannot claim access to mental health support or survivor support, without being labeled simply as “traumatized women who couldn’t make the cut.” There is an immediate danger to being perceived as a “failed woman” for all trans people who do not fit standards of beauty or heteronormativity.

When thinking about visibility, we need to think about what has been made invisible in a society in which masculinity is considered neutral. A world where a blue button down shirt is considered safe, but anyone who has survived assault knows that isn’t necessarily true. Masculinity is precarious, it demands to be proved again and again. It can be taken at the sight of a ponytail or a soft flick of the hands. Yet, it frames itself as safe under the patriarchy. Anyone who falls short of its rules is gendered as a woman, leading to misogyny and homophobia experienced by both trans feminine and trans masculine people. Ultimately, because trans people and anybody ever perceived as women are not believed as authors of our own selfhood or our own stories, we are both misrepresented and misunderstood as we try to imagine and create our own futures.

How do we honor hope in our own becomings? How do we heal a society that tells a boy he’s not trans because he wants to paint his nails like he used to? How do we heal a society that tells a boy he’s a traumatized woman because of what he survived? Sometimes visibility begins by believing what somebody tells you about their own lives, by holding space, by loving. We have to talk about visibility – because the alternative is people shrinking themselves or disappearing altogether in the belief that makes life “better” or “easier” for everyone around them. As filmmakers working with these themes, it is also our responsibility to elevate trans joy and alternatives to what has been previously offered. Through our production, we will be giving gender-expansive and trauma informed packers. We will elevate older members of the trans community in acknowledgment that we can and do get older – live long lives. We are honoring a trans community living amongst the feet of the Rocky Mountains and the ways they construct new masculinities through time shared together in nature. We are honoring visibility in constructing a creative team of predominantly LGBTQIA2S+ people, with Kylar Broadus, Founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, and Carl Siciliano, Founder of the Ali Forney Center, as our Executive Producers, and bearing this film will be a gift to our past selves who didn’t see a way forward.

Today and for the years to come, trans people will continue to have their rights questioned, stripped – in the military, in healthcare, in the workplace, we see it now with nearly a hundred hateful bills around the United States against trans people in this year alone. There is a simultaneous celebration and danger to growing visibility and coming out at younger ages than before. As a community, we abstractly have similar needs and challenges, but the particulars between different trans identities matter and they require attention, respect, and visibility. As co-directors of WHAT WILL I BECOME? we want to share the stories of what’s helping, what’s hurting, and where we can go from here as trans people navigating our masculinity. We call to honor nuanced narratives of trans people who both live and die quietly.

***WHAT WILL I BECOME? is an independent, community-led filmmaking endeavor, we’re currently fundraising for production and we’d deeply appreciate your support. We have registered with Fractured Atlas as our rad, pro-artist Fiscal Sponsor and house additional fundraising from individual donations, which are tax deductible: linked here. You may also continue to learn about us and our process at @whatwillibecome_doc on Instagram.

***Artwork by Daniel Lobb and Sage Clemmons

WHAT WILL I BECOME? is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of WHAT WILL I BECOME? must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

---

“Visible: Out on Television” Is a Must-See Docuseries on the History of LGBTQ Representation on TV

Apple TV+’s new five-part documentary series, Visible: Out on Television, is, well, everything. It’s a comprehensive look at the totality of LGBTQ+ representation on TV; an examination of modern gay and trans history; a love letter to the art and power of storytelling; and a showcase of all-star narrators — Rachel Maddow, Janet Mock, Ellen DeGeneres, Margaret Cho, Asia Kate Dillon, Lena Waithe, Billy Porter, Wanda Sykes, Wilson Cruz, and even Miss Major Griffin-Gracy — who are as passionate about queer TV as the fans who take to Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr on a daily basis to talk about the shows and characters that resonate in their bones. It’s gripping and touching and funny and heartwarming, but most impressively, it’s unrelenting.

You know that’s going to be the case when the first episode kicks off with the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which marked the first time the word “homosexual” was said aloud on television, and which kicked off the Lavender Scare that ripped through Hollywood as quickly as it did through the United States government. And the investigation into the political and cultural symbiosis that exists as a result of what’s on our screens doesn’t stop there. To get to the place where Janet Mock can say that shows like Pose gave many Black trans women the ability to see that they could be the centers of their own universe for the first time, it’s essential to understand how TV’s refusal to grapple with the Stonewall Riots or the AIDS epidemic with any sense of integrity fueled backlash to the LGBTQ rights movements and contributed to the deaths of countless gay and trans people. Miss Major says, matter-of-factly, “We were fighting for our lives.”

The scrutiny around harm doesn’t rest on previous decades. Transparent creator Jill Soloway is as quick to take pride in the positive legacy of the series as they are to call casting Jeffrey Tambor “a mistake” and draw their own line from cis men playing trans women on-screen to real-life anti-trans legislation at the state and national level.

The analysis is sharp, but it’s not often rooted in judgment. Visible‘s creators, Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave (alongside executive producers Sykes and Cruz), don’t sidestep their critique of even lesser known stumbles in LGBTQ storytelling, but they seem committed to contextualizing every flashpoint. In fact, the flashpoints are kind of the point. Visible is endlessly curious about how various moments of queer representation become catalysts for huge shifts in societal attitudes, for better or for worse. The series is also quick to point out that being invisible is not an option, and that blunders are an essential part of moving the conversation forward.

The mediums of representation in Visible are as varied as the narrators. There’s primetime broadcast TV, of course, but there’s also daytime TV, reality TV, news, talkshows, made-for-TV movies, and even beloved subtextually gay series like Golden Girls and Xena: Warrior Princess.

The highlight of the series, for me, was the fact that the last two episodes couldn’t keep up with the landslide of LGBTQ TV we’ve experienced since the late 2000s. While the first three episodes (“The Dark Ages,” “Television as a Tool” and “The Epidemic”) are focused, deliberate, and admirably exhaustive, the last two (“Breakthroughs” and “The New Guard”) can’t contain the multitude of characters that have spun out over the last decade. A little Ellen here, a little Will & Grace there, a dash of Glee, a spoonful of Pose, and then a cacophony of Sense 8 and My So Called Life and Queer as Folk and Arthur and Oprah and The L Word and Billions and on and on and on. Streaming TV and traditional TV. Procedurals and comedies. Dramas and animated series. Sci-fi and soaps. Visible can’t keep up, and there’s something fitting and beautiful about that. Though Billy Porter, especially, is quick to point out that most of the huge changes we’ve seen in TV over the years have benefited cis white gay men, both on-screen and IRL.

When people tell me what my own TV writing has meant to them over the last many years, they don’t usually talk about specific pieces or topics; they talk about how my writing made them feel less alone in their soul-deep need for and love of stories. If you’re one of those people, this documentary is for you. “Television helps us make sense of who we are,” Margaret Cho explains. “Television shows us we’re part of the larger culture,” Rachel Maddow echos. It’s the same thing Jonathan Gottschall wrote in The Storytelling Animal, his seminal book on the power of narrative: “When you sell a man a book, you don’t just sell him 12 ounces of paper and glue and ink — you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships by the sea at night — there’s all heaven and earth in a story.”

15 LGBT Documentaries on Kanopy, Free Streaming Film Goldmine

As Al(aina) explained in their listing of some of the great queer films on Kanopy, Kanopy is for some reason one of the best-kept secrets in streaming. It has SO many rare, older, or otherwise hard-to-find films that you might think you’d need access to a university library to see, all in the privacy of your own home! Although it has lots of fun surprises, from recent films you saw in theaters (so much A24!) to niche archival footage from decades ago, one area it really shines is in your favorite genre and mine, DOCUMENTARIES. It has a vast and ever-changing LGBT Stories section within its documentaries genre (separate from its LGBT Cinema section, also robust and rewarding!), so much so that you could watch all of these 15 films that speak to queer womens’ lives or experience in some way and still have so much more to watch. You don’t need to pay a subscription fee for Kanopy, just use a library login! Not all libraries have Kanopy access, but if yours does, you are hot to trot, my friend. Much like the subjects of the documentary about same-sex ballroom dancing, Hot to Trot, discussed below! Just a little LGBT documentary humor for you.

Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart

This documentary sheds valuable light on all aspects of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, including the daunting challenge of securing investment and a venue for this production about a working class Black family, the casting process, artistic debates and finally its public reception. …Additionally the film reveals how central feminism was to her ideas and boldly acknowledges (using her diary entries) her same gender relationships and private lesbian identity before the appearance of the gay rights movement.

Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker

During the repressive 1950s, Dr. Evelyn Hooker undertook groundbreaking research that led to a radical discovery: homosexuals were not, by definition, “sick.” Dr. Hooker’s finding sent shock waves through the psychiatric community and culminated in a major victory for gay rights – in 1974 the weight of her studies, along with gay activism, forced the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its official manual of mental disorders.

Startling archival footage of the medical procedure used to “cure” homosexuality, images from the underground gay world of the McCarthy era and home movies of literary icon Christopher Isherwood bring to life history which we must never forget. Dr. Hooker’s insights into gay marriage and the gay community (a term she coined), and the filmmakers’ winning approach make this documentary education at its most exciting and enjoyable. This Academy Award nominated film is narrated by Patrick Stewart.

Eileen Myles: An Interview

American writer, artist, performer Eileen Myles (b.1949) discusses the various philosophies that motivate her work, including the language of film, embodied performance, and the alienation evoked by bodily vulgarity. Myles links her wide range of artistic and literary practice with notions of abstraction, improvisation, and the mythology of gender, which she explores in relation to her own identity as a working, middle-class lesbian woman. She reflects on the significance of geographical locations, both New York City and San Diego, on her art, and shares how her past struggles with addiction have shaped her life and practice.

The Aggressives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkr7vUQTAys

A favorite of the film festival circuit, THE AGGRESSIVES is an insightful look at the little explored, yet highly dramatic subculture of lesbian butches as well as their “femme” counterparts who toe the line between gender definitions. This fascinating documentary features intimate and revealing interviews with six subjects.

Agnes Martin, Before the Grid

Agnes Martin is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Before she died in 2004 at the age of ninety-two, her paintings sold for millions of dollars and were displayed in the world’s greatest museums. Through interviews with friends, lovers and classmates who knew her well, insight is gained into Agnes Martin’s personality and the development of her creative process before she became known for her grid paintings.

Hot to Trot: The World of Same-Sex Ballroom Dance

The music… the spectacle… the costumes…the grace. Ballroom dance is enjoying a renaissance here in America, as well as abroad. Set in the swinging world of same-sex competitive ballroom dancing, this entertaining documentary goes inside that little-known world, following four men and women on and off the dance floor over four years. Not only an immersive character study, HOT TO TROT is also an idiosyncratic attack on bigotry against LGBTQ people.

Fish Out of Water

Inspired by the experience of coming out as a lesbian to her sorority sisters during her senior year at Vanderbilt, filmmaker Ky Dickens explores the Biblical passages used to condemn homosexuality in this informative yet entertaining documentary. Interweaving whimsical animation with enlightening interviews from both within the lesbian and gay community and as well with theologians from across the country, Fish Out of Water breaks down seven key passages from the Old and New Testaments – from Adam and Eve to Sodom and Gomorrah and the Purity Codes – while confronting the debate over translation and historical context that affect today’s interpretations of the Bible. Fish Out of Water is essential viewing for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of this contentious issue, or who is engaged in our national dialogue about faith, homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Visible Silence: The Unspoken Lives of Thai Tomboys, Ladies and Lesbians

A rare glimpse into the unspoken lives of Thai toms, dees and lesbians striving for recognition, authenticity, and acceptance in a traditional Buddhist society. It is an intimate story of self and family, love and sexuality, and self-determination where conformity is prized. VISIBLE SILENCE highlights the experience of masculine women (toms) who visibly transgress gender norms, yet are bound to remain silent about who they really are. It gives voice to their unspoken truths.

Krudas

Krudas explores the lives and work of a Cuban lesbian couple who are hip hop singers and performers. The duo Krudas addresses issues such as women’s liberation, lesbian rights, female solidarity and racism. Their work is deeply engaged with feminism and strong ties to their African roots. Their songs represent an effort to upset semantics and syntax. Krudas conceive language itself as the root of female exclusion and thus summons men to engage in dialogue refusing to engage in any hierarchical structures.

A Union in Wait

Ryan Butler’s A Union In Wait takes a very personal look at Wake Forest Baptist Church members Susan Parker and Wendy Scotts, and the controversy that would make their private life anything but private. In 1997, the couple decided they wanted to have a union ceremony in Wake Forest University’s Wait Chapel, but the university told them no. Susan Parker, Wendy Scott, their church, and many others joined together to fight the school’s decision in what would become a controversy that divided a community in North Carolina and made national headlines.

Choosing Children: Launching the Lesbian Baby Boom

Hailed as a pioneering achievement when it was first released in 1984, Choosing Children dramatically challenged the assumption that being lesbian means you can’t be a mom. Six lesbian-headed families make decisions about how to become pregnant, navigate the process of adoption, whether to involve men in parenting, and address reactions from relatives, doctors and schoolmates. In so doing, they helped redefine what “family” means and opened the door for everyone to consider parenting, regardless of sexual orientation.

The Revival: Black Lesbian Poets and Feminist Thinkers

This documentary chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood – one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.

The Same Difference

A compelling documentary about lesbians who discriminate against other lesbians based on gender roles. Director Nneka Onuorah takes an in-depth look at the internalized hetero-normative gender roles that have become all too familiar within the African American lesbian and bisexual community. This film features many queer celebrities, including actress Felicia “Snoop” Pearson from the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire, and Lea DeLaria from Orange Is the New Black, living daily with opinions about how identity should be portrayed. Onuorah’s engaging documentary shines a light on the relationships and experiences within the queer black female community, intersecting race, gender and sexuality.

The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen

Award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Abod provides a window into the life of Angela Bowen, a woman who grew up in inner city Boston during the Jim Crow era and went on to become a classical ballerina, legendary dance teacher, black lesbian feminist activist organizer, writer and professor. For six decades Bowen has influenced and inspired untold numbers, speaking out as strongly for the Arts, and Black and Women’s Rights as she has for LGBT Rights. Candid, compelling, and inspiring, PASSIONATE PURSUITS depicts Bowen’s life across the decades, with archival footage, timeless musical selections, photographs and interviews.

Regarding Susan Sontag

This is also on Al’s original list, but how can you leave it off! You can’t.

From her early infatuation with books to her first experience in a gay bar; from her early marriage to her 15-year relationship with legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz, REGARDING SUSAN SONTAG is a fascinating look at a towering cultural critic and writer whose works on photography, war, illness, and terrorism continue to resonate today.

13 Queer Films From Kanopy You Can Stream With Your Library Card For Free

Have you heard? Having fun isn’t hard if you’ve got a library card! Your local library is one of the best free resources in your neighborhood. Need to learn how to file taxes? Library. Need a biography on Frida Kahlo? Library. Want to listen to The Argonauts as an audiobook? Library. But what about niche queer film? Kanopy is a database with tons of films, documentaries, and even television shows. Chances are, if you have a library card, you can access Kanopy. And my friend, once you learn about all Kanopy has to offer, you’ll never want to leave! Here are thirteen of the best of Kanopy’s queer film selections. Enjoy!

---

Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman is the first feature film to be directed by an out black lesbian, which is reason enough to give it a shot. But beyond that, it’s a warm and sexy film that explores several lesbian relationships while peeling back some of the layers of how we think about race.

Director: Cheryl Dunye
Watch if you’re into: Mockumentaries, Classic Lesbian Film, Film of Color

Almost Adults

A low-budget but mostly cute lesbian rom-com featuring the stars of the beloved webseries Carmilla. // Read our review.

Director: Sarah Rotella
Watch if you’re into: Comedies, Rom Coms, Coming of Age Stories

Out in the Night

In August of 2006, seven black lesbians from New Jersey were hanging out in the West Village of New York City when they were harassed and violently threatened by a man on the street. When they defended themselves, they were arrested and charged with attempted murder and gang assault. They became known as the New Jersey Four. // Read our review.

Director: Blair Doroshwalther
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Criminal (in)Justice, Film of Color

T’aint Nobody’s Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s

Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters — T’ain’t Nobody’s Business examines Blues history through a lavender lens.

Director: Robert Philipson
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, History, Music, Film of Color

The Year We Thought About Love: Behind the Scenes of Queer Youth Theater

The Year We Thought About Love is a 2015 feature-length documentary about the Boston-based POC LGBTQ theater group, True Colors: OUT Youth Theater.

Director: Ellen Brodsky
Watch if you’re into: Rom Coms, Coming of Age Stories, Documentaries, Performance, Youth

Balcony

Balcony is a brutal, heart-breaking short film about a white British teen who develops romantic feelings for a Muslim immigrant. Things end badly.

Director: Toby Fell-Holden
Watch if you’re into: Drama, Short Film, Coming of Age Stories

The New Black

The New Black is a documentary that explores the ways the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights movement, especially in light of marriage equality.

Director: Yoruba Richen
Watch if you’re into: Documentary, Film of Color

Regarding Susan Sontag

Regarding Susan Sontag is a Tribeca Film Festival Award-winning documentary about Susan Sontag’s life and work and legacy. // Read our review.

Director: Nancy D. Kates
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Literature, History

Intersexion

Intersexion is a 2012 documentary about intersex people that was researched and presented by New Zealand activist Mani Mitchell.

Director: Grant Lahood
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Gender, Instersex Issues

Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four

Southwest of Salem tells the story of four Latina lesbians who were found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit and how the legal and criminal justice systems failed them as queer women of color. // Read our review.

Director: Deborah Esquenazi
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Criminal (in)Justice, Film of Color

Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger

This is a documentary based on artist/theorist/activist Kate Bornstein’s trailblazing memoir of the same name.

Director: Sam Feder
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Gender, Trans Topics, Performance

Growing Up Trans

Growing Up Trans was originally part of Frontline’s First Person series; it explores the struggles and choices trans kids work through when they come out and decide to transition.

Director: Miri Navasky, Karen O’Connor
Watch if you’re into: Documentaries, Trans Topics, Youth

Framing Lesbian Fashion

This 1992 documentary looks at the evolution of lesbian fashion and identity, exploring butch/femme aesthetics, flannel, androgyny, and more.

Director: Karen Everett
Watch if you’re into: Fashion, History, Documentaries, Butches, Leather

“Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats” Is About the Price of Following Your Dreams and Also Circus Cats

The grand finale of every Acrocats show is a performance by the Rock Cats, an all-cat rock band. Yes, that’s right: an all-cat rock band. Not people in cat costumes, but actual warm-blooded living furry kitty cat musicians. There’s a cat haphazardly strumming an electric guitar, another one playfully wailing on snare drums, and the star of the show (R.I.P. Tuna) nonchalantly tapping at a cowbell. I know because I saw them perform live in 2013, in a cozy community black box theatre in Rochester, NY. I was so moved that I proclaimed it the best live show I’d ever been to ever on Instagram. It was life-affirming!

I remember seeing their “tour bus” in the parking lot after the show and wondering, “How does one become a circus cat trainer and how does one get a private tour of the cat bus?” Director and filmmaker, Jacob Feiring, had the same reaction when he stumbled upon an Acro-Cats show in his city. He set out on a five-year journey, following Chicago-based Samantha Martin and her cast of adopted cats around the country with a camera.

Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats, Feiring’s first feature-length film, is the answer to my questions and a lot more. It’s an unflinchingly earnest documentary about a woman who could easily be portrayed as a circus performer herself — funny, eccentric, a parody of herself in leopard print gloves and sparkly cat ears. Feiring took a more sincere route and this documentary delivered so much more because of it. Yes, there are plenty of clips of cats doing amazing and not-so-amazing tricks and sometimes refusing to cooperate. It’s fun. I laughed. The heart of the film, though, was the intimate making of the cat circus in all its gritty glory — or more truthfully, the making of Samantha Martin.

As Martin says to the camera in one of the final scenes, bedazzled black cat ears perched on her head: “The show is about my life and what my life is with these cats… I’m the only one that can do the show — no one else. Because it’s my story.”

If I know anything about the Autostraddle community, it’s that we have a higher-than-average number of cat fanciers. Some (“normal,” boring) people might find Martin’s devotion to her cats odd and certainly, when she created the Acrocats show in 2005, cats had yet to take over the internet. Queers, however, were devoted cat lovers way ahead of the trend. There’s something about choosing the companionship of a cat that feels inherently queer and I think that’s why Martin’s decision to quit her day job to tour 200 days per year with a bus full of cats sounds, honestly, amazing.

Chasing your dreams is always a double-edged sword, though, and Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats makes it clear just how UNglamorous the cat show life is. Martin is often on the edge of poverty, sleeping on the bus, putting everything she has quite literally into her cats and their show. At one point, she says that they need to make $3000/week just to break even. She dreams about “making it” and not struggling to make ends meet. She also loves her cats fiercely, and believes in the show.

Martin’s devotion to her cats goes beyond a trainer-animal relationship. When not on the road, the cats live in her home as companions. Her love for her cats comes through in the show itself, during which she talks about the enrichment benefits of cat training and promotes shelter adoption. It comes through in the gentle way she handles the cats, who sometimes choose to perform and sometimes choose to wander into the audience seeking ear-scritches.

It’s all very charming and funny and proves that cats best react to positive reinforcement. When a circus cat actually does push the grocery cart or complete the obstacle course or leap through the hoop or play the drums, the crowd erupts in a frenzy of joyous applause. It’s 100% clear the cats actually want to do the tricks.

That’s what hits most about the film, for me, as an avid animal lover and a big dreamer. So few of us choose the life path where we want to do the tricks, where we leap through the hoop because we want to. It’s a luxury most can’t afford and, especially if you can’t afford it, it’s a path that involves discomfort and exhaustion and living with uncertainty. This very website was founded on that type of follow-your-arrow passion, not without hardship and deeply personal sacrifice. It’s the leap we all dream about: What if I quit my job and followed my bliss? What if I quit my job and traveled the country in a bus full of circus cats?

For a documentary about a circus cat show, the film is so much more about the human relationships that shape Martin and about the choices she makes for her love of her Acrocats. It’s about staring down rock bottom and finding your way back up. It’s about human flaws and the way our animals love us despite all the ways we’re messed up. It’s about human and feline potential and how us strays and weirdos put the glitter eyeshadow on because we know we’re actually superstars in waiting. It’s about claiming the autonomy to choose to leap through the hoop instead of being forced through by someone else’s normative narrative.

As Martin notes in the film, cats are “a good investment right now,” with cat cafes opening in the U.S., cat videos taking over the internet, and the crazy cat lady trope evolving to be a millennial badge of pride.

The film, in many ways, couldn’t have come at a better time to immortalize Samantha and her loving legacy. Samantha Martin was diagnosed with Stage III colorectal cancer and also broke her foot earlier this year. The Acrocats and the Rock Cats show is currently on hiatus as she takes time to seek treatment and heal. You can support The Acro-cat Mom’s Cancer Fund at GoFundMe to help Samantha take care of herself and her cattery during her treatment and recovery or donate items from the Acrocats wish list.

Follow Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblrand Instagram and check the film website for more film news!

Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats is currently playing the film festival circuit and you can find them at the San Francisco Documentary Festival May 31 – June 14. See the website for more details and ticket info as it becomes available. Upcoming screenings will be announced on the Samantha’s Amazing Acrocats website.

https://vimeo.com/241417923

“We Exist: Beyond the Binary” Is a Sincere, Open Documentary About Gender

“What if the world told you that you do not exist?”

We Exist: Beyond the Binary is a documentary about gender that spends a little under an hour trying to answer this question. Written and narrated by filmmaker, activist and writer Lauren Lubin, it uses home videos, artistic recreations, and interviews to tell their story. It features interviews with agender writer, speaker and advocate Tyler Ford; speaker, personality and LGBTQ activist Kristin Russo (you know her from her series, Getting In Bed With Kristin!); and Dr. Charles Garramone and Dr. Anthony Vavasis, as the documentary examines misconceptions about gender — especially ones that demand only male and female exist.

You know when you’ve heard your best friend tell a story, even though you’ve only heard it once, you’re buzzing with energy to share it with others? Lubin’s documentary feels like that. We follow them as they go back through parts of their childhood and teen years, finally being able to tell the story of their gender identity as they’ve fit together the pieces they couldn’t comprehend growing up. Lubin is gender neutral, and after a near-death experience, sets out on creating their own definition in a way that feels true to them. Through snapshots from clips of Lauren’s home videos from youth to young adulthood, Lubin weaves together the story of learning to give language to their gender (including but not limited to: gender expression through clothing, basketball and researching body dysphoria) and the steps they’ve taken forward to being more present in that identity.

Covering a lot of ground in a short amount of time, We Exist highlights the differences between sex and gender, explains how gender identity and gender expression overlap but don’t necessarily mean the same thing, and examines the need for community as one explores both/or spaces within “the big cloud of identity.”

Much of the documentary rang true for me, from not knowing the language to describe oneself, to the isolation felt when coming out — but there were a one or two parts where I felt like I couldn’t see myself in the story. During one sequence, I could only think of how many black and brown trans and gender-nonconforming people aren’t afforded many of the opportunities Lubin has to explore their gender. Housing, traveling, and food (check out the #transcrowdfund to support), are several of the things Lubin is secure in, and it gives them the freedom to find themselves in nature, and “leave the world behind them.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of. Lubin acknowledges that their story isn’t the only type there is, that even though they’ve struggled, they know there is privilege in access to the resources to figure out. That acknowledgement makes you want to continue watching even if you feel a bit of disconnect.

But the sincerity and openness in which Lubin creates this piece helps me remember that even if, on the whole, I am thankful to them for sharing their story.

Whether you are knee-deep in gender identity research or have just started learning, this documentary offers something for everybody. You may learn some new things and if you don’t, you get validation that your gender identity, your sexuality, you exist and you’re not alone, which is definitely worth a watch.

You can watch We Exist: Beyond the Binary on Vimeo and Amazon.

15 QTPOC Women’s History Month Films You Should Watch Right Now

March is Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month is a nationally recognized month in the United States to “write women back into history,” according to the National Women’s History Project website. And y’all all know it’s not just white women’s history that’s left out of our high school textbooks. I recently did a poll of a class of undergraduate students and literally, like, five of them had heard of the Stonewall Riots before college or in an educational setting at all. Zero of them knew anything about Marsha P. Johnson or Miss Major or Sylvia Rivera. QTPOC often get written out of the retellings of our own LGBTQ history, even within our own communities.

We deserve better. Everyone should know the stories of the lesbian, bisexual, queer and/or trans women of color who’ve been the backbones of LGBT communities forever and ever. But it’s not always easy or accessible to find those stories. I’ve curated a whole month’s worth of really excellent films to get you started. So make some popcorn and put your learnin’ pants on. Be inspired by the QTPOC who came before us and those making history today in these 15 films.

---

1. Bessie

Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith. Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith. Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith. I’m sorry, have you really not watched this film? Because you need to get on it right now. HBO’s four-Emmy-winning televison biopic about blues singer legend Bessie Smith is gorgeous, moving, and deliciously queer.

In the 1920s and 30s, Harlem was a place where queer people congregated; though most of them were married to men, singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Gladys Bentley were known to take female lovers and flirt openly with women while touring and sometimes performed in men’s clothing. They all wrote songs that explicitly mentioned lesbian love, which was really unheard of outside of the Harlem Renaissance at that time in America. In Bessie Smith’s song “The Boy in the Boat,” she wrote “When you see two women walking hand in hand, just look ’em over and try to understand: They’ll go to those parties, have the lights down low, only those parties where women can go.”

Bessie’s sexuality is just one aspect of this incredible film about her life and rise to fame, but it’s definitely there, not sanitized out by Hollywood, with Mo’nique playing the fiercely queer and loving Ma Rainey and Tika Sumpter playing Bessie’s lover, Lillian Simpson.

How to watch:

Free with Amazon Prime or HBO, $9.99 to buy on Amazon!

---

2. Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria

Screaming Queens is a documentary film by trans activist and scholar Susan Stryker detailing the police riots that happened three years before the Stonewall Riots in San Francisco, led by trans women and drag queens. Queens and trans women would gather at Compton’s, a late-night diner, where they were often harassed by police for violating San Francisco’s anti-crossdressing laws or for doing sex work. One night, when the police were arresting a woman at the diner, she turned and threw her coffee in the officer’s face, sparking a pushback by the queer and trans patrons. It was the first known trans riot and led to the first organized support network for trans people by trans people.

While the filmmaker, Susan Stryker is a white woman, two prominent interviewees in the film who recall the riots are women of color Tamara Ching and Felicia Elizondo. Both Ching and Elizondo lived in the Tenderloin district in the 60’s and continue to speak about the history of trans people and communities as lifelong activists. It’s an important event in our collective history that’s often forgotten and yet more proof that trans women and drag queens of color are the ones who were on the frontline of the gay liberation movement in the 60’s and 70’s.

How to watch:

The film is currently available for free through PBS affiliate KQED, so watch it while you can!

---

3. Kuma Hina: A Place in the Middle

I saw this film at a film festival a few years back and I want to share it with everyone. Unfortunately, most recently, Kumu Hina was cited by the Trump administration as a rationale for the threat to cancel public broadcasting funding. Because that’s the history that’s being made right this moment. Even if it’s being used to stir up hatemongers, though, this movie is truly about love.

Kumu Hina is a māhū (transgender person) who teaches young students about traditional Hawaiian culture through hula. The film follows her for a year through her life and relationships and explores Hawai’i through the lens of gender, class, and ethnic and cultural traditions. One story arc is around a young student who feels called to claim her place as leader of her school’s all-male hula troupe, who is taught and mentored by Kumu Hina.

How to watch:

Available on Netflix, $3.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

4. Paris is Burning

A classic. There’s still a lot of debate over Paris is Burning, but at the end of the day it’s a film that resonates for a lot of QTPOC, particularly Black and Latinx trans women. In fact, it was included in the number one spot in the 15 Best Trans Woman Movies According to Trans Women list Mey curated in 2015.

The film follows powerful trans artists like Rachel Harlow, Octavia St. Laurent, Crystal Labeija, and Venus Xtravaganza over a year in the late 80’s in the ball scene in NYC.

In the 15 Best Trans Movies… article, contributors had this to say about the film:

“I want to recognize the empowerment that, as a transgender woman of color, I experience watching Paris is Burning. This film not only seduced me as a viewer, but empowered me and gave me powerful women to look up to. Dorian Corey, for instance, throughout the movie drops some of the most amazing life knowledge that you wouldn’t be able to get from your own grandmother. Venus Xtravaganza, is unapologetic in her pursuit of a beautiful life. Octavia St. Laurent, is a powerful young black woman who has the skills and ability to chase her dreams regardless of her gender history. These are stories that are epics, in their own right.” – Lexi Adsit

“I can’t help but be overwhelmed with appreciation for the women who stood before me. Rachel Harlow, Octavia St. Laurent, Crystal Labeija, Venus Xtravaganza, the list goes on. I see the strength in them and it gives me the strength to exist unapologetically, to make things better for the next generation of girls.” – Trace Lysette

How to watch:

Available on Netflix!

---

5. KIKI

On the other end of Paris is Burning is KIKI, a documentary set 25 years after Paris about the ball scene and community that continues to thrive in NYC. Kiki is a direct collaboration between Twiggy Pucci Garçon, the founder and gatekeeper for the Haus of Pucci, and Swedish filmmaker Sara Jordenö. It features a score that going to make you want to jump up and dance by ballroom and vogueing producer collective Qween Beat.

The film follows seven participants in Kiki balls over four years, using the kiki balls as a way to explore systemic issues that queer and trans youth of color face today.

How to watch:

Available on Vudu, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, or $6.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

6. Chavela

Chavela Vargas (Isabel Vargas Lizano) was a Costa Rican-Mexican band leader best known for her performances of Mexican rancheras, a typically machismo style of music. She was one of the first Latin American singers to sing in this style directly to women (not changing the pronouns in rancheras songs) and to dress in typically male clothes. She came out officially at the age of 81 in her memoir, Y Si Quieres Saber de Mi Pasado, but she never hid her relationships with women in her life or her songs. Vargas openly loves many women, including artist Frida Kahlo and women’s rights activist Alicia Elena Pérez Duarte y Noroña. In fact, you may remember her from the 2002 film Frida, in which she appeared singing the Mexican fold song “La Llorona.”

Never-before-seen interviews with Chavela Vargas make up most of the film, which came out last year. Vargas died in 2012 in Cuernavaca, Mexico at the age of 93. In Raquel’s review of the film, she wrote:

CHAVELA is a story of a remarkable person told by the people who loved and admired her most. “There isn’t a lesbian in Mexico who doesn’t know Chavela Vargas,” says one of the interviewees in the documentary, “And who doesn’t love her.” She opened doors for art, gender expression, and sexuality in unprecedented ways. The people who followed in her footsteps show a deep gratitude and appreciation.

If you’re unfamiliar with rancheras, you need to see this film. Even if you can’t afford to rent it, you can find many live performances of Chavela Vargas, who performed late into her life, on Youtube. Ranchera songs draw on love and loss and Vargas’ signature drawn-out alto reverb take on the genre will give you goosebumps. (I’m listening to her music right now as I type this.)

How to watch:

Available on Vudu, iTunes, Google Play, or $4.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

7. Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth

Alice Walker, writer and activist and the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple, is the epitome of what it means to live authentically as a feminist activist and an openly bisexual woman. This documentary is really just so well done, covering Walker’s life from her childhood in Georgia, where she confronted violence and racism and poverty, to her coming-of-age during the civil rights movement and her continued activist today.

In the film, Walker says of her detractors, “They had a problem with my intellect and they had a problem with my choice of lovers and they had a problem with my everything. So choose one. Choose all. They just had a problem.” If you didn’t know Walker’s work and legacy before watching this film, you’ll be inspired by it, for sure!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj17Wn2AYlg

How to watch:

The whole film is currently unavailable, but you can watch many free clips on PBS (US only)!

---

8. Pay It No Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson

Cut together from clips of interviews with Marsha P. Johnson and people who knew her, this is a really loving, accessible documentary about the Mayor of Christopher Street. Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson was a Stonewall veteran who is sometimes credited with throwing the shot glass that set the tone of the riots. She and Sylvia Rivera created the organization Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.) which advocated for and cared for trans women (including trans women doing sex work) at a time when no one, including the gay liberation movement, was caring for trans women. She also participated in many direct actions with the Gay Liberation Front and, later, ACT UP. She marched in the first Christopher Street March in 1970, what would become what we know now as a Pride parade. According to the documentary, in 1973, Marsha and Sylvia were told they couldn’t march in the gay pride parade because the participation of drag queens would “[give] them a bad name.” They staged a march defiantly ahead of the parade instead.

If you don’t know Marsha, you need to watch this documentary. If you only know that she was at Stonewall, you also need to watch this documentary. The filmmaker has made it available for free on YouTube, so you really have no excuse not to!

How to watch:

Free on YouTube!

---

9. S.T.A.R. and Lily Hicks Anderson (We’ve Been Around Episodes 1 and 5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dduj7IMKL0

Just click those videos to watch these delightful and heartfelt and empowering episodes of We’ve Been Around, a webseries celebrating and amplifying the stories of trans people in U.S. history. If you have always wondered just how good a production about trans people produced by trans people at all levels could be, check out this series.

S.T.A.R. chronicles Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson’s activist work from the Stonewall Riots to starting Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries to their later work in the 80’s and 90’s.

The episode on Lucy Hicks Anderson tells the story of Hicks, a Black woman who was a successful Prohibition-era entrepreneur and well-connected hostess to elite society. When she was outed as a transgender woman, she became the first person to have to defend her marriage rights in court.

How to watch:

Online, for free, right now!

---

10. Check It

Check It is the only documented LGBT gang in the United States and possibly anywhere in the world, started in 2009 by a group of 9th graders who were tired of being assaulted and bullied. Today, they are a gang in every sense of that word, from the deep sense of family and support to the long rap sheets for assault and armed robbery. This documentary follows members of Check It and show the ways that LGBTQ youth of color are still fighting for their lives and for their futures and taking matters into their own hands.

Some people may feel a way about violence and LGBTQ people turning violence back on those who would perpetrate violence against them. My takeaway was that youth were fighting for survival and for their collective survival, making a choice to transform victimhood into agency, in much the same way as the Stonewall veterans who took a stand in 1969. I think Sylvia and Marsha would have been proud of the way they choose to take care of each other above all else.

How to watch:

Available on Hulu, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu, and $2.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

11. MAJOR!

Miss Major is the nickname for Major Griffin-Gracy, a Black Stonewall veteran, activist, and community elder for trans rights and women of color. This documentary follows her life as a leader in the community and as the executive director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, an organization which aims to free trans people from the prison-industrial complex.

Miss Major’s activist and community work spans decades, from being arrested as a leader in the Stonewall Riots to HIV/AIDS healthcare and direct service advocacy to joining her current organization that fights against the mass incarceration of and police brutality against trans and intersex people of color. Miss Major particularly works with trans women in prison and those who’ve been formerly incarcerated.

In an interview with CBC radio, Miss Major said she hopes the documentary about her life and work will be “a tool to present to young trans women their history… [and] a reminder for herself that young women still need her help.”

How to watch:

Free with Amazon Prime or $2.99 to rent on Amazon, available through OutTV in Africa and Canada and through SBS Australia.

---

12. ALTAR: Cruzando Fronteras, Building Bridges

Filmmaker and professor Paola Zaccaria created ALTAR as a love letter to the work and the activism that Chicano-queer writer and feminist Gloria Anzaldúa began. Four years after Gloria Anzaldúa’s death, the filmmaker and director pulled the film together from the Gloria Anzaldúa Papers and the theory that Anzaldúa put forth in her seminal work Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza.

Anzaldúa developed intersectional theories about marginalized identities, the concept of living in-between, and the literal and figurative mixed cultures that develop along “borders.” Gloria Anzaldúa passed at the age of 61 in 2004 at her home in Santa Cruz, California. She worked as an academic and writer up until her death and a group called the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa (SSGA) was established in 2007 to continue to engage in understanding and studying Anzaldúa’s work.

In today’s world, conversations about the border and what the border represents to Latinx people, to immigrants, to women, is incredibly relevant. Zaccaria has made the film available to watch for free on YouTube.

How to watch:

Free on YouTube!

---

13. Out In The Night

The New Jersey 4 are four lesbian Black women who were all found guilty of second-degree gang assault for defending themselves against a homophobic attack. Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, Venice Brown and Terrain Dandridge are close friend that were walking in Greenwich Village on a summer night in 2006. They were sexually harassed by a man who threatened them with corrective rape and physically attacked them. When the aggressor lunged at them and was choking Renata, Patreese pulled a small knife from her pocket and stabbed him. Everyone walked away from the incident and the officers who responded to the scene said the injuries from the stabbing were minor.

Despite that, the girls were all charged with felonies — gang assault, assault and attempted murder. The media went on a homophobic and racist feeding frenzy, calling the girls a “lesbian she-wolf pack.” Three of the girls took plea deals to avoid even harsher penalties and all served time in prison. Out in the Night sets the record straight and exposes the real story behind the media sensationalism.

This is a difficult but important film to watch, lest we forget the story of the New Jersey 4 and the many other Black and brown lesbians of color who didn’t live to tell their stories or whose stories of persecution in the streets and by the criminal justice system will never be seen on a big screen. It’s not exactly a feel-good film, but the movie effectively cleared their reputations in the media. All four are out as of 2013 and have been able to travel to screenings and communities across the country to talk about their experiences.

How to watch:

Available on Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and $3.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

14. Frida

When Frida came out in 2002, I was shocked to see a film showing an openly bisexual Mexican woman acting… openly bisexual. Watching Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo seduce Ashley Judd’s Tina Modotti was somewhat unprecedented in a Hollywood mainstream biopic. The film doesn’t go too deep into Frida Kahlo’s catalog of female lovers, but what was perhaps unique for 2002 is that the sexuality of the character wasn’t an axis of the narrative. It just was. The film itself is more about Frida and her husband, Diego Rivera, and their political activist and artistic work.

Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is most famous work for her self-portraits that expressed her physical and mental pain and her sexuality. Her many lovers included Josephine Baker, Georgia O’Keeffe, Chavela Vargas and Leon Trotsky. Kahlo was a member and active political supporter of the Mexican Communist Party. Though she was an influential artist, her work is better known today than it was in her time, when her paintings were often overshadowed by her husband’s work. After her death, Kahlo’s artwork was rediscovered by art historians and she is now considered one of the most influential female artists in the world.

This narrative feature film has all that high production value you’d expect from a box office biggie. Salma Hayek is incredible as Frida. Even though the focus of the film is very much on her relationship with Diego Rivera and the filmmakers take a great deal of artistic license, it’s well worth watching.

How to watch:

Available on iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and $2.99 to rent on Amazon.

---

15. Southwest of Salem

From Yvonne’s review and interview with filmmaker and director Deborah Esquenazi:

In 1997 and 1998, in the wake of the height of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, four Latina lesbians from San Antonio, Texas were convicted of aggravated sexual assault of two young girls. Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez were all friends and were between 19 and 21 at the time. The two young girls who accused them of the crime were Elizabeth Ramirez’s 7 and 9-year-old nieces. They alleged their aunt and her friends gang raped them at Ramirez’s apartment when the girls stayed with her for a week in the summer of 1994. The women were baffled about the accusations and maintained their innocence while cooperating with the police and turning down plea bargains. It didn’t matter, they were all convicted. Ramirez, the supposed ringleader, received a 37.5 year sentence and the rest getting 15 years each. Even though there wasn’t any hard evidence against the women, they went to prison in 2000. In addition to homophobia playing a major role in wrongfully convicting the women, investigators believed the women were involved in “Satanic-related sexual abuse” and presented now debunked forensics as major evidence against them.

Filmmaker and director Deborah Esquenazi began researching the case in 2011 and in 2012 began filming the women in prison. Her documentary, Southwest of Salem tells the story of four Latina lesbians who were found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit and how the legal and criminal justice systems failed them as queer women of color. The film follows their journey in prison and their fight to clear their names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7jwawgzUJA

How to watch:

Rent on YouTube for $2.99 or stream for free on Amazon Prime

---

Feel free to add anything I didn’t include in the comments! I’d love to hear about your favorite films celebrating queer, bisexual, lesbian and trans women of color!

“Bad Reputation” Review: Joan Jett’s Sexuality is Everywhere in Her New Documentary

Within a week of moving to New York City in 2014, I’d spotted my first famous person in the concrete wilderness. A petite woman with a heavily-razored bob, colored as black as her leather jacket, walked past me in a hotel lobby, accompanied by a man a few years her senior. The woman was Joan Jett. A few years later, it dawned on me that the man was Kenny Laguna, the unlikely bubblegum pop-turned-punk producer who helped her go solo in the late 1970s. My Manhattan celebrity sightings have been all downhill from there. How do you top Joan Jett? According to Kevin Kerslake’s new documentary Bad Reputation, you don’t; the most you can do is listen up and take notes.

Bad Reputation follows Jett’s life from her first guitar circa 1971 to her belated-as-all-hell induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. As a teen inspired by the likes of David Bowie and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, Jett’s passion led her to pursue a band of her own with the gifted young drummer Sandy West. The smart but sketchy manager Kim Fowley steered the project and the group quickly swelled to tour van capacity with six members: Joan, Sandy, Mickie, Lita, Cherie, and Jackie. The Runaways became the first true girl band of the 1970s, touring internationally, making a dent in the charts, flustering the men who gatekept their industry. By the time the band broke up in 1979, the girls had fame, but no dough to show for it. Victory Tischler-Blue’s 2004 documentary Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways — available to view on YouTube (for now) — gives a great rundown of the Runaways’ sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll heyday and the straight-up shitshow that followed.

Unlike several of her bandmates, Jett’s love of music was enough, inevitably shaking her from a jaded alcohol spiral. With Laguna’s help, she was able to deliver the chart-topping solo album Bad Reputation and figure out how to eke out an autonomous career without being sucked dry by major record labels. With Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, they found a sustainable balance that’s lasted countless hits and nearly four decades. Laguna and Jett grew to be thick-as-thieves. Their bond is underscored in Bad Reputation when he helps Jett duct tape the crotch of her latex pants closed right before a gig.

One of the best things about Bad Reputation is its impressive generational wingspan. There are a number of documentaries out there that uplift their subject at the expense of anyone and everyone who follows, as though cultural impact occurs in a vacuum. This isn’t one of ’em. Jett’s contemporaries like Debbie Harry speak about how groundbreaking her artistry was and continues to be, as do musicians from subsequent generations. Olympia’s golden girl Kathleen Hanna recalls the time Jett randomly phoned her after meeting Bikini Kill’s Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox at a Fugazi concert. Miley Cyrus and Against Me’s Laura Jane Grace, who collaborated on a reprise of Joan Jett & The Blackheart’s “Androgynous,” are just as hyped to talk about the rocker’s influence.

Kristen Stewart, who played Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s intricate Runaways biopic in 2010, remembers Jett helping her get in character:

“In a rehearsal before we actually shot [the song] ‘Cherry Bomb.’ I couldn’t commit to it. I just felt like I was traipsing on something. I’m not good at rehearsal. So she was like, ‘What are you doing, man? C’mon. You know this. You’ve got this.’ And I was like, ‘I know, I know, I know, don’t worry.’ And she was like, ‘COME ON! Pussy to the fucking wood!’ It was funny, because rock ‘n roll’s supposed to be messy and ‘fuck it, nothing matters’ but it’s truly the opposite of that for her. She has a diligent, almost compulsive dedication to it. And that was, KRISTEN! Pussy to the wood.’”

Bad Reputation even allows the villain her say in the form of Nikki Haley, who describes herself as a “big Joan Jett fan.” The U.N. Ambassador quaintly recounts the time she quoted the singer during a speech: Be yourself. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

As the doc insists, Jett’s success, feminist icon status, and — contrary to those legendary lyrics — great reputation can be chalked up to the pre-punk, “anything goes” veneer that covers her white-knuckled willpower. Simply, she made it because she kept showing up, even when it probably would’ve been healthier to stay the hell in bed.

Jett’s sexuality isn’t relegated to its own very special narrative segment, and that’s because it’s everywhere — as it should be for a rock star, and as it should be for all of us. Jett’s brand of queer is as much about Elvis being a pretty boy with swishy hips as it is Miley Cyrus famously trying to bed her, Kristen Stewart portraying her, lyrics that suggest anything but cisheteronormativity. Jett’s anti-war, pro-animal, pro-woman politics follow suit, less a label than they are actions: performing for troops in the Middle East and Bosnia, openly calling for an end to the seal slaughter while continuing to wear her decades-old leather, and fundraising women’s self-defense classes after the singer Mia Zapata’s horrifying murder. Bad Reputation reminds us that people with a knack for keeping their cool during trying times aren’t apathetic. Sometimes, they’re exactly what we — and our headphones — need.

Bad Reputation premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year and will be distributed through BMG later in 2018.

“Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: Lorraine Hansberry” Is the Documentary We All Need and Deserve in 2018

^{Feature image courtesy of Lorraine Hansberry Properties Trust.}

“For some time now—I think since I was a child—I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life,” Lorraine Hansberry wrote in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. That impulse, heightened by the Hansberry family’s harrowing experiences with segregation and discrimination in their native Chicago, drove her to write one of the greatest American theater scripts, A Raisin in the Sun. In a new documentary, airing January 19th on PBS, director Tracy Heather Strain (Race: The Power of an Illusion) picks up what Hansberry put down.

As you might remember from high school English class, Raisin focuses on the Youngers, a family that both resembles Lorraine’s activist/real estate broker kin and their lower-income tenants. When the play’s patriarch passes away, his brood clashes over what to do with his modest life insurance check. Despite having different ideas about how to go about it, each member basically desires the same thing: an easier shot at life in America. Nearly 60 years later, this longing still persists. The first work by a Black woman to be performed on Broadway, Raisin became a commercial and critical success, scooping up the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1959. It would be adapted for film, using the playwright’s script, in 1961. Lorraine, who wrote as though she’d lived multiple lifetimes, was only 28.

Lorraine’s work was so intensely influenced by her life, so it’s a bit strange to admit that we know more about her plays than we do her biography. But make no mistake: Lorraine—“Sweet Lorraine,” as her friend James Baldwin called her in his eulogy—was a literary rockstar; an uncredited beat poet. She chain-smoked too much. She made it rain on grassroots integrationists in the South while giving the Kennedy brothers a tongue-lashing for their failure to protect the region’s African-Americans. She inspired a Nina Simone song. She was clocked by the Feds. She wore pearl earrings. She gave a generation of Black actors the roles that would define their careers. She bedded white people years before miscegenation was legalized. She pissed off American theater. She pissed off American theater critics. She named her home in upstate New York Chitterling Heights. Years before Stonewall, she penned letters of solidarity to the early lesbian publication The Ladder. She had a mean sense of humor that continues to defy the “serious activist” stereotype. She didn’t stop until her body made her stop.

Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: Lorraine Hansberry touches on all of this and more. It’s a first-of-its-kind documentary, connecting the important plays our teachers had us read with the intrepid woman behind them. While there are touches of Lorraine in Raoul Peck’s near-perfect film about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, his documentary concerns itself with the perilous state of race in America first and—by honing in on the author’s murdered friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—brotherhood second.

But Lorraine, who died at 34 from pancreatic cancer that her doctors and loved ones didn’t notify her she had, was also killed by white America. At the time, the medical establishment regularly encouraged husbands, fathers, and male friends to hide potentially lethal diagnoses from female patients. Ironically, Lurleen Wallace, wife of the governor from Alabama who infamously refused desegregation, faced a similar fate.

When viewing Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart at DocNYC this past fall, I was struck by Peck’s failure to consider Hansberry’s life and death worth their time on the screen; instead, she was relegated to the footnotes. After seeing I Am Not Your Negro, some moviegoers questioned why Peck didn’t allude to Baldwin’s queerness. It was an inquiry I didn’t feel was mine to answer. But in thinking about Hansberry now, I find myself asking different versions of the same question. Did Peck view sexuality and gender as distractions from his primary subjects (race and masculine solidarity)? Did he not want to ruffle viewers with homophobic or misogynist leanings? Wouldn’t addressing the systematic paternalism that harmed an exceptional Black woman only enhance the ongoing conversations about race in America? While it won’t kill us to acknowledge multiplicity, it certainly will if we don’t.

Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, fourteen years in the making, is a great example of a work that thoughtfully and creatively layers ideas about gender and sexuality alongside race. In addition to readings from Lorraine’s private journals, the film features a ton of esteemed folks familiar with her, from feminist scholars and theater critics to legendary actors like Sidney Poitier and subversive writers like Ann Bannon; some of whom weren’t afraid to spar with one another’s ideas or Hansberry’s work on-camera. Like Lorraine’s second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart fearlessly and gracefully tackles the mix of identities—femininity and queerness among them—that Peck found too overwhelming.

Like women the world over, Hansberry was deeply influenced by French feminist Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex; Sighted dramatizes her devouring the book, page by page. As a nod to this, Strain cleverly juxtaposes French pop music and archival footage of happy Black couples, crafting a culture clash that hints that all was not well in domestic paradise. The moment echoes Peck’s pairing of happy white family portraits with voiceovers that critique white ignorance. By indulging each and every social complication, Strain doesn’t seem at all worried that a gentle feminist indictment of the midcentury Black family will derail her life’s work.

Lorraine moved to NYC in 1950 and married the Jewish publisher Robert Nemiroff three years later; she was 23. It was a creatively beneficial relationship for both, Robert penning songs and Lorraine toiling over—and sometimes nearly abandoning— what would become her first play, A Raisin in the Sun. Upon coming into some serious cash, Robert was able to bankroll Hansberry’s career, and, posthumously, serve as her literary executor.

While Lorraine’s political alignment with early gay activists is old news, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is the first major effort to confirm and embrace Hansberry’s own orientation. By the time the couple divorced 1962, Lorraine had long been actively and delightfully gay, having published pulp under the pen name Emily Smith and—as the late, great, Edie Windsor divulges in interview—partied on Manhattan’s mafia-owned lesbian bar circuit. This second revelation sent me scampering back to Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement to see if Lorraine’s name or pseudonym was on that “prominent lesbians circa 1960″ towel that Edie eagerly whips out. As far as I can tell, she wasn’t. Apart from her own journals that use acronyms for her queer loves, Hansberry didn’t leave much trace of her romantic past. As the director explained in a Q&A after the film, she was able to locate at least one woman who’d had a relationship with Lorraine, but—wary of either disrupting the writer’s legacy or unethically outing the dead—she backed out of being interviewed at the last moment.

It’s in Sighted’s moments of thoughtful picking and choosing what to include that Strain is her best. She finds a great balance between the humanity and humor that should define how we remember Lorraine. In one of the playwright’s trademark end-of-year lists, dramatized in the film, Lorraine annotates her ‘likes.’ As obsessed with the why and the who of human life as ever, the list includes ‘my homosexuality’ and ‘Eartha Kitt.’ Same girl, same.

If I were to make a belated Hansberry-style end-of-year list for 2017, this doc would definitely be on it.

Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart airs Friday, January 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS, and will be streaming online Saturday on PBS.org.

Demi Lovato’s “Simply Complicated” Is Amazing, Includes That Hotly-Anticipated Sexuality Convo

Former Disney Star and Pop Queen Demi Lovato has long been open and honest with her fans about her life. She’s talked before about struggles with being bullied, mental health, eating disorders and other issues. She’s never shied away from letting her fans into her life in order to connect with them and build meaningful relationships. She takes all of this a step further in her new Youtube documentary “Simply Complicated,” which premiered last night. Through archival footage, behind the scenes shots of Demi working on her new album Tell Me You Love Me and interviews with friends, coworkers and Demi herself, we learn more about the vulnerable pop star than we’ve ever known before, including hearing her talk about dating both men and women. It’s available for free on YouTube!

At the outset of the documentary Demi tells us, “I’ve learned that secrets make you sick. I’m learning how to be a voice and not a victim. I’ve learned that sex is natural. I’ve learned that love is necessary.” We also hear the kind of honesty that we’re going to see throughout the documentary when she opens by saying she’s nervous because “the last time I did an interview this long, I was on cocaine.”

Lovato grew up with an emotionally and mentally abusive father who was an addict, and at a young age she started drinking with her friends in Texas. By 17 she had started using cocaine. All of this got worse as her stardom increased. She talks about how much she struggled with the grueling schedule of a Disney star as a teen girl who hadn’t yet figured out she also had addiction and mental health issues. She details anger issues, depression, constant partying and drug use and the breakdown that lead to her first time in a treatment facility. Getting better was a struggle for her, one that she’s still dealing with, and she doesn’t hide any of that. Demi and her friends talk about how it took years and several trips to rehab and psych wards for her to finally decide she wanted to get better, to stop drinking and using cocaine and Adderall every day. While she’s doing better now and hasn’t used in five years, she discusses her ongoing struggles with eating disorders; she’s in therapy and spends regular time meditating and working out in order to keep her life on track.

In terms of her love life, Demi says that she never loved anyone like she loved long time boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama, but that “there’s just so much of my life I hadn’t explored yet,” when talking about why the two broke up. She’s just turning 25 this yea and has been sober for five of those; she’s never lived on her own before and she’s got a lot of work to do to figure out who she is.

At one point Demi’s assistant relates how at one concert alone, she had set up four possible suitors in the audience for Demi — when they start to try to figure out their names, it becomes clear that Demi has a lot, and I mean a lot, of suitors. Demi’s using the dating app Raya, and says “I am on the dating app with both guys and girls; I’m open to human connection, so whether that’s through a male or female, that doesn’t matter to me.” She loves dating, she loves having casual sex, she loves men and women. She talks at length about how she’s felt discouraged from being open about her sexuality, but she’s proud to be a sexual person and isn’t going to be ashamed of it. There’s no reason to doubt her sexuality or suggest she’s still in the closet when discussing Demi; she’s into girls, she says so explicitly; let’s believe her. Demi Lovato is a queer woman who likes to have fun and likes to have sex. Her singing songs like “Cool For the Summer” isn’t her cashing in on the “trend” of being queer, it’s her celebrating who she is and what she likes to do.

Demi ends the documentary by talking about her connection with her fans and saying it’s the most important part of her career. She wants to build trust with them and be honest with them, and she’s happy that she’s able to do that. Artists that connect to their fans and talk about their struggles and their strength and their identities are important; women like Demi Lovato, Kesha and Hayley Kiyoko are all being radically vulnerable about their personal lives in their work and in interviews. They’re not letting anyone feel alone. Demi wants you to know that if you struggle with substance abuse or body image issues or eating disorders or suicidal thoughts, she’s there with you. She wants you to know that no matter who you love, she’s on your side. She wants you to know that no matter how many people bully you and call you names for being who you are or the way you look or who you sleep with, she understands and she’s been there too. And Demi wants you to know that she’s working on it, and she’s seeing the light at the end of the storm, working every day to be the best version of herself she can be. And she’s letting you know that you can do the same thing.