After HIV Diagnosis, He Found Strength in Pole Dancing
Advocates wear a lot of hats. This one has a lot of names. As the new president of HIV nonprofit Impulse Group New York City, he’s Dey Armbrister. As a pole dancer with poetic swag, he’s Dey Phoenix. And as a friendly face in the “HIV Stops With Me” public service campaign, he’s simply Dey. (And in case you’re curious, Dey is short for DéShaun.) The multifaceted 31-year-old wasn’t always such an outgoing champion of sexual health, especially during the challenging period in college following his HIV diagnosis. He took his problems to the dance floor, and an activist was born. He also discusses Impulse Group NYC and its latest fundraising project, a gorgeous art book titled Our Light Through Darkness that highlights queer Black and brown communities and that Dey describes as “a visual manifesto to our resistance.” More.
Call FOLX Health's Hotline For Support From LGBTQ Artists
FOLX Health, an LGBTQ+ digital healthcare provider, has launched a new hotline that aims to send “messages of love, hope and encouragement” to the LGBTQ+ community. Taking inspiration from old-school party lines, the “1-888-FOLX-FAM” hotline features encouraging words from a range of activists, artists, and influencers. Among those taking part are model and trans rights activist Laith Ashley, model, activist, and author Munroe Bergdorf, and RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Gigi Goode. MORE
'Gaining': The Fetish That Changes How We Think About The Male Body
‘Gaining’ is the name for a particular fetish in which (predominantly) queer men find sexual gratification in putting on weight or muscle mass, and the people who thrive off witnessing their progress. It’s also, for avid gainer Ben Weil, something that finally brought peace to the war he was waging on his body. More.
Deathbed Confession From The Year 1750 Includes Tale Of Failed Gay Seduction
A British museum recently acquired a 1750 pamphlet detailing the deathbed confession of Thomas Mun, executed for various crimes in that year. Mun speaks candidly about various exploits including an account of a failed gay seduction. Executed for robbing a mail coach, Mun apparently handed the manuscript to his jailer on the morning of his death. More.
Meet Jason June, the Genderqueer Children's Book Author
Jason June recently released his picture book Porcupine Cupid and is set to release teen love book Jay's Gay Agenda this summer. The genderqueer author talks to PEOPLE about the inspiration behind his books and why it's so important to normalize LGBTQ love in youth literature. "I'm in love with love and I always have been," June says. "I love that whole emotion, the idea that two souls can connect so strongly that you have this whole bodily reaction and feel more complete with these people in your lives." More.
Mid-Century LGBTQ People Found Unique Ways To Connect
In Los Angeles from the 1930s to 1950s, science fiction reading groups and occult communities helped pave the way for the LGBTQ equality movement. These groups offered safe places for LGBTQ artists, scientists, publishers, and visionary thinkers who worked together to envision and create a world of their own, free of society’s contempt for the LGBTQ community. More.
It's Time To Take The Penis Off Its Pedestal
A culture of phallus worship has slanted the science in crucial and sometimes unexpected ways. It can taste, smell and sing. It can be a corkscrew, a crowbar or a hypodermic needle. It can stretch up to nine times your body length (if you’re a barnacle); be a detachable tentacle covered in suckers (if you’re an argonaut octopus); or even see, using light-sensing cells that guide it smoothly to its destination (if you’re a Japanese yellow swallowtail butterfly). Or, it can be a limp, fleshy tube, hardly worth writing home about, if you’re a human. Today, as more women and LGBTQ scientists enter the field, we’re finding that vaginas, far from passive tubes for ejaculate, are active organs that sort, store and reject sperm. Kangaroos have three vaginas (two for sperm reception, one for joey ejection); swallowtail butterflies see out of theirs; and duck vaginas spiral and curve in a penis-repelling labyrinth. Even for non-vagina-lovers, these facts help us understand how genitals evolve as a whole. More.
Artist Dylan Mooney Fuses Ancient Storytelling, Queer Culture And Contemporary Illustration
A Queensland artist is forging a unique new art style that blends comic-style characters and contemporary queer culture with ancient Indigenous artefacts and storytelling. Kids would say to Dylan Mooney when he was at high school, "You're too white to be Aboriginal". But at home, there was no doubt about who he was. "My mother would always tell me, 'you're Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and South Sea Islander. You've got three cultures, represent them all'," Mooney said. More.
Microlabels In The LGBTQ Community
Microlabels are not a new concept, but more people are embracing specific labels to better describe their identity and make the community more inclusive. However some in the community believe microlabels are harmful and unnecessary to queer discourse. More.
Addressing The Absence Of Books For And By Black British Queer Photographers
After months of back and forth on Facebook, Ajamu X and I first came digitally face-to-face via an intergenerational panel about sex and cruising in the digital era. There, the Black queer photographer spoke with unbridled passion about pleasure as activism, the potential for our bodies to be spaces of limitless exploration, and the importance of exploring technologies of the self to uncover such possibilities. Ajamu's words then made me think about the body as an archive, of Black gay men's bodies as sites of experience, exploration, fun and history. INTERVIEW HERE.
5 Queer Graphic Novels and Memoirs You Won't Want To Miss
These five books are wildly different in terms of genre and subject matter, but they are all extraordinary in their own way. From a historical, fat-positive sapphic romance to a collection of oral histories of queer and trans organizing to an introspective contemporary about family and parenting, these 2021 queer comics tell a wide and beautiful range of stories. More.
‘Tom of Finland: The Official Life and Work of a Gay Hero’
Sometimes, you can’t worry about other people’s thoughts. You can listen to them but you don’t have to hear them because there are days when making yourself happy supersedes any outside opinion, when you need to pay closer attention to you. As in the new biography “Tom of Finland” by F. Valentine Hooven III, sometimes what makes you joyful today can become a calling. More.
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