Indholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2021 i The Advocate

WHEN I CAME out in 1986, there was a pernicious myth that lesbians and gay men simply did not get along, that we had nothing in common and sometimes even hated each other. I was a baby lesbian prone to belting Evita’s “High Flying Adored” with the gay men in the theater department of the college I attended. Some of my earliest memories of being queer are of me dancing with my old friend Jeff, arms over our heads and sweating in shared rapture, to Erasure’s “Sometimes” at the old Backstreet bar’s Sunday beer bash in Hartford, Conn. Personally, I couldn’t square the myth that I wasn’t supposed to innately love the hell out of my gay brothers. But on a larger, more insidious scale, that old narrative served to…

As so many have, Renee Gagnon took her first hit of weed when she was a teen. She had just moved to Canada’s British Columbia province, an area famous for its cultivation of the plant. She was a fan but never thought she’d get involved in marijuana professionally and instead “got sucked into the internet and dot-coms and built a whole bunch of start-ups,” says Gagnon. But she did learn about hydroponics on the side as a hobby during that time. In 2001 Canada legalized medical marijuana, but it wasn’t until 2012, when the country started to change its regulations from a home-grown personal-use model to a commercial-grower model, that Gagnon joined the ranks of cannabis professionals. “I’d been waiting my whole damn life for a legal opportunity to participate,…

AS SOMEONE WHO cut his queer teeth in the early 2000s era of Will & Grace, I was unfortunately subjected to the nauseating stereotype of the girl and her best gay friend. I have always been quite repulsed by the notion that gay men were some sort of accessory for a Carrie or Samantha to conveniently use as a plus-one or to pick out clothing, but not important enough to warrant title credits. So I typically avoided any woman too eager to befriend me as if she were adding me to her collection. To me, friendships are based on mutual respect, and any person who tokenized me due to my sexuality was swiftly removed from my circle. So that is why my best friend, who happens to be a woman,…

ANNIE SEGARRA Annie Segarra, who uses the online moniker of Annie Elainey (@annieelainey), is an artist, YouTuber, and activist for LGBTQ+ and disability rights. Segarra, who describes herself as “a chronically ill, disabled, queer, Latinx, woman of color,” advocates for accessibility, body positivity, racial equality, and media representation for marginalized communities. Segarra, who uses she/her and they/them pronouns, says, “I’m genderfluid, also identifying as a nonbinary woman, and feel a strong connection to womanhood for a variety of reasons, such as how I was socialized and how I am generally perceived and treated as a woman in our patriarchal society. As someone with a fluid gender identity who feels connected to womanhood and is attracted to women as well, I feel emotionally overwhelmed and in awe of women — the…

In 2020, when much of the world was shuttered, Javicia Leslie became a superhero. In July, she landed the lead, Ryan Wilder, in the CW’s Batwoman. As a Black bisexual woman portraying the queer Batwoman, she became a first for visibility on several fronts and a hero to those who saw themselves in her identities’ intersections. As an artist (she’s also a director) with a platform, she embraces the fact that living authentically inspires people across a wide spectrum. Being a “first” of any kind is often fraught with pressure. But Leslie, whose work includes BET’s delicious crime series The Family Business and the romantic comedy Always a Bridesmaid, is focused on her new job while remaining aware that what she’s doing is meaningful to the fans. “As far as…

Rap legend Da Brat says that coming out as gay has “been a weight lifted” and she couldn’t be happier to be public about her relationship with Jesseca Dupart, CEO of Kaleidoscope Hair Products. When it came time to share the news with the world, the women would tease about who was going to post about the relationship on social media first. “We were at my mom’s house and we were joking about it,” Dupart recounts. “She was like, ‘I’m going to post it first,’ I was like, ‘No, I’m going to post it first!’ I wound up doing it first and was like, ‘Oh, bitch, we just went public.’” Since the announcement in March of last year, the two have been busy living their best lives, or at least…

Cheyne Gallarde, a multifaceted artist born and raised in Hawaii, was an award-winning fashion photographer before he became an illustrationist. His nostalgic work reimagines superheroes and villains, celebrating the sentimental look and grit of vintage comics while putting a modern twist on it (with drag queens and other queer people as the modern-day superheroes the world needs). Recently, Gallarde won a Pele Award for his MTV Video Music Awards illustrations and was a contributing artist in the Pow! Wow! Hawaii Festival. His 38-foot-tall mural located behind Ward Theatres is a dedication to the fabulous mahu (third-gender people) of Hawaii. In 2019, he won a National Advertising Award for his illustrations of LGBTQ+ icons for Logo, and in 2020, his cover art for Tom & Lorenzo’s Legendary Children: The First Decade…

KIERRA JOHNSON, a Black bisexual woman, became the LGBTQ Task Force’s executive director in January. She previously served two years as deputy executive director and prior to that served on its board of directors. IMANI RUPERT-GORDON, the Black lesbian executive director at NCLR, previously led Affinity Community Services, the nation’s oldest social justice organization serving the needs of Black LGBTQ+ people. Before that she was a senior policy adviser to the Department of Housing and Urban Development during President Barack Obama’s administration. She joined NCLR last year. ALPHONSO DAVID was named president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in 2019, becoming the first person of color to lead the organization. Before that the civil rights lawyer was a member of the New York governor’s cabinet as the state’s first deputy…

“I just want to dance with you,” the character Emma Nolan sings to her girlfriend, Alyssa Greene, in a romantic number in The Prom. It’s a simple love song in a scene that feels as though it were plucked from the heyday of the American musical film. Except, rather than featuring a white heterosexual couple, it centers an interracial teen queer girl couple. What makes the scene and the characters even richer for LGBTQ+ viewers is that both rising star Jo Ellen Pellman, who plays Emma in her first major role; and Ariana DeBose, who plays Alyssa and stars in the upcoming West Side Story, are queer. “I don’t want to start a riot / I don’t want to blaze a trail,” the song begins. Of course, those familiar with…

IT WAS SUPPOSED to be one last goodbye for Eduardo Tirella (right), a onetime performer and popular milliner who hung with Frank Sinatra before becoming a talented decorator, art curator, and in middle age, a promising movie set designer. Tirella, a gay war hero and Italian-American (back when that was still considered “ethnic” in America) was on the cusp of Hollywood success at 42. A good friend of Sharon Tate, Richard Burton, and other actors, Tirella had just spent a decade curating art projects for the many estates of Doris Duke — then the richest woman in America. But, having designed the sets of Elizabeth Taylor’s The Sandpiper and Tate’s Don’t Make Waves, Tirella was moving on. He’d arranged to join his partner, artist Edmund Kara, who sometimes worked alongside…

ACTOR PETER KIM FIRST met playwright Radha Blank around 10 years ago when he was recruited to be a dialect coach for one of her projects. The pair “hit it off right off the bat,” he recalls. Blank developed a creative rapport with him, asking for his opinions. The pair’s “chemistry” in this meeting established a working relationship that led to The 40-Year-Old Version, Netflix’s critically acclaimed comedy from Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Productions. Directed and written by Blank, the film is inspired by her life and the struggles she faced as a Black woman trying to retain her authentic voice in the entertainment industry. Kim was an early player in Version’s journey, which began as an idea for a web series and then developed into a film through a…

Kaleena Zanders Get lost in the raw power, angst, and soul of Kaleena Zanders. The eclectic pop artist channels EDM, blues, punk, rock, and more in her music, with a striking vulnerability. “Growing up, I’ve hidden behind a facade of not being myself, not being openly gay,” she says. “I experienced a lot of despair and hopelessness — very disconnected and feeling trapped inside my head.” Music has become Zanders’s “safe space” to express and let go of her feelings. “I am attempting to be even more honest with my upcoming songs to acknowledge some personal situations and heal from them.” Her latest solo track, “Set Me Off,” is a bluesy fight song, an electric guitar-driven warning not to get on her bad side. The song was “inspired by the…

WHILE LIVING IN quarantine, actress Jasika Nicole (Fringe, The Good Doctor) is finding ways to be happy. “My family has remained healthy throughout this, which honestly is the most stressful to me because they all live in a different state,” she says. “Other than that, I’ve just had a lot of time to be with [my spouse] Claire, which I’ve got to be honest, I’ve been very thankful for that.” Like many people, Nicole and her partner, Claire J. Savage, have had a lot of time to think about who they are when they don’t have to present in front of other people. And they’ve discovered new things, some big and some smaller. For Savage, that meant coming out as nonbinary. For Nicole, it meant discovering a passion for pottery,…