“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Author Archives: spacedisruptor
Portraits of a Gay Man
“Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.”
― Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
A little Sugar in My Tank: My Black, Queer Agenda
“All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles, and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.”
― Octavia E. Butler
Why I Always Stay Fab
“I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Traslating Blackness Through the Chinese Gaze
“Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.”
Toni Morrison
My Story – A Beijing-Based Queer Woman’s Meditation
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Beyond Drag: Finding My Queer Identity
“Sadly, our culture raises man to be strong and silent. Straight or gay, the pressure is on from the time we’re very young to become our culture’s John Wayne-style of man.” Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage
The Black LGBTQI+ Experience in China – Part 2
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
The Black LGBTQI+ Experience in China
The eyes are one of the most powerful tools a person can have. With one look, one can relay the most intimate message. After connection is made, words cease to exist – Jennifer Salaiz
What Pride Month Means to Me
This summer Mark, a Beijing expat of 4 years (and former team member of Jingkids International, the Beijinger’s sister magazine!), created Beijing Queer Space Takeover, an open and supportive community for LGTBQI+ folks and allies to come together and make connections. Beijing Queer Space Takeover came about as a personal desire of his to take those in the LGBTQI+Continue reading “What Pride Month Means to Me”
Piquing Duck 