Black Trans Feminism

In Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a nonpredetermined, wayward, and deregulated movement that works toward gender’s destruction; and black feminism as an epistemological method to fracture hegemonic modes of racialized gender. In readings of the essays, interviews, and poems of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, jayy dodd, Venus Di’Khadija Selenite, and Dane Figueroa Edidi, Bey turns black trans feminism away from a politics of gendered embodiment and toward a conception of it as a politics grounded in fugitivity and the subversion of power. Together, blackness and transness actualize themselves as on the run from gender. In this way, Bey presents black trans feminism as a mode of enacting the wholesale dismantling of the world we have been given.

Reproductive Racism in Danielle Evans’s “Harvest:” Black, Chicana, and White Motherhoods in the Context of Reproductive Rights Discourses

The paper explores the short story “Harvest” (2010) by African American writer Danielle Evans and traces the figurations of the racialized aspects of gender in “Harvest” within the theoretical frameworks of Black and Chicana feminisms, motherhood studies, and intersectionality. After situating the Black and Chicana characters’ anxieties around egg donation in the historical context of reproductive rights, economics, and the politicization of Black and Chicana women’s bodies, I discuss how the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and class impact the racialized gender identity of especially the Black protagonist and to a smaller extent that of her Chicana and white friends as well. I argue that the current practices of egg donation depicted in the story are imbricated in the wider system of racial capitalism that values women’s childbearing capacities differentially in terms of their race.

The carceral production of transgender poverty: How racialized gender policing deprives transgender women of housing and safety

Based on interviews and ethnography, this article analyzes how racialized gender policing in public space and service organizations deprives transgender women of survival resources. Although transgender women are disproportionately the targets of enforcement, most studies of the criminalization of homelessness, drug use, sex work and migration exclude their experiences. Studies that do include transgender women often focus narrowly on anti-prostitution laws and enforcement, overlooking other laws and policies that contribute to criminalization and poverty. This article analyzes the confluence between policing of transgender women’s identities and survival strategies in public space and in agencies meant to serve poor people (including shelters, drug treatment facilities and transitional living programs). Laws regulating access to public space combine with rules regulating gender in service organizations to both criminalize and create transgender poverty. More broadly, the carceral production of transgender poverty demonstrates that criminalization is not only a consequence but also a cause of both poverty and inequality.

Circle of Aunties Fostering Co-conspiratorship with Families of mmiwgt2s in the Resistance of Settler Colonial Violence

This paper details the co-research creation project “Circle of Aunties” outlining our processes, contributions and key learnings. The paper will begin by locating the author and the project’s approach and move to detailing our process - exploring the Circle of Aunties toolkit and the coresearch creation process. The paper will then outline the contribution this project makes to educational tools that create awareness around racialized gender-based violence in Canada and its relationship to existing literature regarding co-conspirator work. Co-conspirator/accomplice work are “alternative framework(s)” to allyship which call for “white scholars and activists to act as accomplices, working in solidarity with people of color within social justice and anti-racist movements” (Powell Kelly, 42). This paper explores our process of co-conspiratorship, bringing our project into conversation with contemporary anti-colonial efforts and calling for the prefacing of relationship in anti-colonial projects. Key Words: Co-conspiratorship, Accomplice, MMIWGT2S, Racialized Gendered Violence, Settler Colonial Violence, Settler Colonialism, Curriculum

Circle of Aunties Fostering Co-conspiratorship with Families of mmiwgt2s in the Resistance of Settler Colonial Violence

This paper details the co-research creation project “Circle of Aunties” outlining our processes, contributions and key learnings. The paper will begin by locating the author and the project’s approach and move to detailing our process - exploring the Circle of Aunties toolkit and the coresearch creation process. The paper will then outline the contribution this project makes to educational tools that create awareness around racialized gender-based violence in Canada and its relationship to existing literature regarding co-conspirator work. Co-conspirator/accomplice work are “alternative framework(s)” to allyship which call for “white scholars and activists to act as accomplices, working in solidarity with people of color within social justice and anti-racist movements” (Powell Kelly, 42). This paper explores our process of co-conspiratorship, bringing our project into conversation with contemporary anti-colonial efforts and calling for the prefacing of relationship in anti-colonial projects. Key Words: Co-conspiratorship, Accomplice, MMIWGT2S, Racialized Gendered Violence, Settler Colonial Violence, Settler Colonialism, Curriculum