Meredith Talusan is Senior Editor for them. and an award-winning journalist and author. They have written features, essays, and opinion pieces for many publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, VICE, Matter, Backchannel, The Nation, Mic, BuzzFeed News, and The American Prospect. She received 2017 GLAAD Media and Deadline Awards, and has contributed to several books, including Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America.
In the midst of an administration that stands against so much of what LGBTQ+ folks believe in, the regular presence of excellent queer writing from the internet filled me — and I hope other queer people — with quenching doses of hope in 2017. One of the wonderful things about the internet is how increasingly accessible great writing has become, so you don’t need to try to thumb through files or root through bookshelves to be inspired. Here are some of my favorites.
Decolonizing My Desire, VICE
Jeremy O. Harris
It’s rare for essays to punch the brain, heart, and gut all at the same time. Yet Harris’s evocative writing coupled with a pressing political subject that preoccupies so many queer people of color leaves us with an essay that exemplifies the best of internet writing, speaking to the moment yet sure to stand the test of time, seemingly about a single topic yet cuts to the very core of what it means to be queer and POC. Published in January, “Decolonizing My Desire,” became my touchstone for the rest of the year.
Objectivity Is Dead, and I’m Okay With It, Medium
Lewis Wallace
In this must-read blog post for all journalists, Wallace argues that especially in the age of Trump, the model of journalistic objectivity is outdated, and is a particular hardship for reporters who belong to marginalized groups. “The idea that I don’t have a right to exist is not an opinion, it is a falsehood,” Wallace writes as he illustrates how as a transgender man, he shouldn’t be forced to report on views that invalidate his existence for the sake of a journalistic principle. Wallace was subsequently fired from his reporting job at the national radio show Marketplace because producers claimed that he violated their policies by stating his opinions publicly, manifesting the very burden Wallace describes in his post.
Hunger Inside My Queer Body, Catapult
Genevieve Hudson
In a series of short vignettes that gain an accumulated, gut-wrenching momentum, Hudson undoes the assumption that queerness makes one exempt from the societal pressure to be thin, as she discusses her ritual of habitually listing everything she’s eaten to herself before she eats something else. But while straight cis women often feel that pressure as a submission to the male gaze, Hudson sees her own struggle with her size as a reflection of societal expectation that in order to be androgynous, a person needs to be thin and curveless, as if an androgynous identity can only belong to one particular body type.