(Pictured: Isaiah Tanenbaum, Corey Allen, Anna Rahn. Photo by Justin Hoch. From Kevin R. Free’s AM I DEAD? The Untrue Narrative of Anatomical Lewis, The Slave.) “Because the cultural identity formation of most Oceanic people is relational rather than individualistic, it follows that the spaces or vā between and among persons, or between a person and his/her environment, together with the […]
“If there is sin, it lives in the distance between what you say and what you actually do.” In 2010, I heard John O’Neal speak at the TCG Fall Forum on Governance, and like so many people whose lives were touched by him, my life was changed. He went on to talk about his co-founding of the Free Southern Theater, […]
The following remarks were given at the 2018 Fall Forum on Governance: CultureMakers as part of my introduction of the new TCG Circle. This is a cross-post from the TCG Circle. Photo above by Ryan Bourque // Instagram: @BourquePhoto So hi everyone. I’m Gus Schulenburg, director of communications at TCG, and I can’t tell you how good it feels to say, I use she/her pronouns. I use those pronouns because I am an out and proud transgender woman, though I did not expect to be out at this Fall Forum. While my medical transition began earlier this year, I had expected my social transition would happen more slowly. I wanted to give the magic of hormone replacement more time to grow my hair back, more time to shape my body to match my heart, more time to figure out a damn sense of style. I definitely had not planned to come out here at the peak awkwardness of my second puberty. But then, a few weeks ago, the administration proposed government agencies adopt an unchanging, binary definition of gender to be assigned at birth; erasing federal recognition of me and my 1.4 million trans and non-binary siblings. In that moment, I knew I couldn’t be anything but out at this Fall Forum. I can’t be complicit in my own erasure. As Audre Lorde wrote, “What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you […]
(Why am I naming days?) 9/11/14, Day 14,009 (Mercena Day 27): The Book of Long Nights This day is so named in honor of the Caliber Composition Book in which we attempt to record her every poop, pee, fuss, meltdown and blessed moment of sleep. We’ve been keeping it since 8/21/14, when we realized our emotions (and exhaustion) were coloring […]
