You Can't Ban Queer Joy

of LGBTQ Pride Month. Now, if you've been listening to wok at for the past couple of years, then you know that I take Pride very very seriously and I try to use the month to showcase performers, entertainers, academics, authors, activists, all who are members of the LGBTQ community, as well as bring you conversations and the issues that are most

impacting the community. This Pride, however, has me filled with a mix of emotions, which is what brings me to the title of this month and the theme for this month on WOKF, which is you can't ban queer Joy. You cannot ban queer joy. And why did we choose

to run with this? Because what we are witnessing happen across this country is a wave of hate that I don't think that we have seen since the beginning of Pride celebrations, which began as a riot at Stonewall in the nineteen sixties, led by black, trans women and queer people who had had enough of being bullied and beaten by police on a regular basis, and on that night

they fought back. One year on this show, we did Pride as a Riot as a reminder of the founding of Pride that we have seen in many ways become commercialized and corporatized over the past several decades. Why because before the entirety of the Budweiser and the Target debacle, we saw corporations decide that they're gonna rainbow things up for the month of June, they'll ignore you for the

rest of the year. And as a black queer woman, I can tell you they basically have done to Pride what they do to Black History Month, which is, oh, let us go all in for these you know, thirty

days or twenty eight days or what have you. And then we're not actually conscious about how we create products, how we create real inclusion and belonging in our marketing right in both our internal and external work that we're doing with these companies, and as we are seeing folks, you know, Target succumb to the whims and grievances of white cis hetero fucking homophobes and transphobes in this country, as we're seeing Budweiser do the same and lose money

because you know, their aggressive, toxic white cis quote unquote masculine men have decided that you know, what gets in the way of their masculinity, and apparently the ability to drink a beer is knowing that queer people too drink that same fucking American beer. It's so sick and twisted.

What's happening, you know, I likened it the other day to this like whole rampage around Target, right as me walking in as a person who eats meat and says, oh my god, they're selling vegan meat here, They're selling vegan baked goods here, and just going in and tossing over the fucking kitchen area of Target because I'm a meat eater and now I feel infringed upon. That's how

fucking stupid these people sound. That's how fucking dumb. You don't like the pride shit at Target, don't fucking buy it, right, It's the same thing that I said, you know, a couple of weeks ago on Twitter. You don't like the books that are in certain libraries, don't check them out. You don't like the books that are being read in a school that you don't even have children that are

attending in Like, look the other fucking way. This is a country with lots of different people who look differently, pray differently, love differently, and think differently. That is supposed to be the beauty and foundation of a democracy. You wanna go live right in a theocrisy, then go someplace

fucking else. But what you're not gonna do is that you're not gonna continue to try and decimate our feeling of self work right, You're not gonna continue to decimate our feeling of pride, of what it means to live authentically in our skin and show up in our day to day lives. So for the month of June and from here until the end of fucking time, you're not gonna ban queer joy. You're not gonna ban but black joy. Because we have a right to exist, and not just

in the small, narrow, pale, miserable little bubble that white cis. Hetero, racist, homophobic, transphobic pieces of trash want to exist. And yes I will call names because if you don't like somebody, here's an idea. Don't fuck with them, right, don't go to the Drag Bengos show, don't go to the library at drag story time. But you don't get to create the reality for the rest of us. And this is why I gotta tell you, folks that this Pride season is

so fucking important. You know, there was a time where I think that I had gotten complacent myself because I have lived only only lived in blue states and cities for most of my life. Even growing up out East on Long Island. It was not quote unquote Maga country and Trump country when I grew up. It was democratic right the entire time, working class and middle class Americans right of all different persuasions. That's who the fuck lived

out East on Long Island. Yes, we're there are incidences of race and racism, absolutely, because we live in America that is a racist country, that fucking you know, white supremacy flows through the Fawcetts. At that same time, you could ask me, did you ever feel unsafe growing up? No? I did not. Did ever feel racism, yeah, up, so fucking lutely, But did I feel unsafe? Did I feel unwanted? No?

It hasn't been folks, until the last seven years that when I go out east on Long Island and I see these fucking tattered Trump flags flying everywhere, that I'm like, oh, I had no idea that the neighbor two doors down was a racist. I had no idea right that the neighborhood that I frequently walked in and played in as a kid was filled with a bunch of homophobes in Transphil.

I had no idea, right. And so what Donald Trump and magaism has done is give permission for people to put their hoods on right, fly their fucking racist flags, beat their yes, and I ask those people, right, how is your life better over the last seven years? I'm just curious what Donald Trump and magadon has actually done to better the lives of their most loyal, fucking rabid followers. Are you richer? Right? Like? Were you able to buy

a home off of your hate? Are you happier? Because what's wild is that these people seem more miserable than fucking ever because guess what, holding and spewing so much hate and toxicity and taking that QAnon and fox in every day all day, all it does is corrode your insides. They'll learn that later on, right, because to be actually conscious to the ways in which you are holding such horrible negativity that your glory in life right now is to ensure that other people suffer more. It's just it

is a wild, wild place to exist. And you see the thing that I understand and what I have understood to be true about the LGBTQ plus community in this country and around the world. And why you have groups of people that are so full of hate and you know so much so that they will act violently towards

the queer community. Is this? The queer community is bold, exists outside of the box, decided right when folks came out that we're not going to follow the prescribed fucking rules that we don't even know who created them or why outside of your ability to control. You see the reason why cis hetero, anti trans and anti queer folks act the way that they fucking do is out of

pure fucking fear. What does it mean? What does their life mean when they've followed the rules and suppressed their own feelings and their own desires, and now here you come as a mirror into who they could have been

if they had courage enough. That's what that is about, because it takes a whole hell of a lot more bravery and courage to show up as your true fucking self than it does to go along with the fucking pack, to step out and say this is who I am, and have the audacity to demand that those around you treat you with the dignity and respect that you deserve, even if you don't fall into their uniform idea of what it means to be a man or a woman who made up the rules, And why the fuck does

everybody have to look and act and be and love and pray and exist in the same fucking way. The last time I checked, we're not robots yet. The last time I checked, Elon Musk didn't implant us all with neuralink. The last I checked. That the God that these people say that they worship also gave free will, the will to live and be and exist as free as you want to be, And that is what these people fear.

They're banning books right, changing curriculum, because the power that we have is in our ability to think and live free, to challenge the systems they can't stand. Generation zenare trying to rob them of their autonomy, of their ability to think and exist because they have the tools in their pockets and they're not afraid to ask the questions that these motherfuckers don't have the answers to. So instead of actually having to answer to this rising and growing constituency,

they say, we're gonna shut them down. We're gonna take away their access to education, We're gonna take away critical thought. We're gonna make them turn on each other and hate each other so much so we can usher in this straw man. Queer liberation is about the pushback against that fucking heteronormative lie, gender fucking bias. Why does a woman have to look and act a certain way? Why does a man have to look and act a certain way?

The queer community pushes back against those quote unquote stereotypical norms, and they make everyone else around them start to question the why why have we been going along with this? Why have we accepted this as the way? Why can't close just be closed? Why can't toys just be toys? Why do things need to be pink or blue? Who said we need both the blend of masculine and femininity, We need right to recreate this idea of humanness? What it means to value people outside of the is that

you can put them in. Why do you need to quote unquote understand me in order to respect my humanity. I'm not asking for your tolerance. I'm not even asking for your understanding. I'm asking for you to get the fuck out of our way, to honestly live and let live. So part of me is always going to be about the fight, is always going to be about literally raging

against the machine. The other part of me, though, is steeped in the fucking joy of the thing, because there is nothing that these people hate more, These fucking narrow minded, conservative, bigoted people hate more than queer joy, than black then bipoc joy, then people being proud of who they are, how they look, who they love, how they pray, and embodying it to the fullest extent. You can throw as much hate and as much lies at me as possible, but you are not going to steal my humanity, not

my dignity. So what I ask for all of you, whether or not you are queer, in this month of June, is to find a way to support LGBTQ youth who are truly struggling during this time. Because the Republican Party is trying to paint a future that they don't see themselves in. So, whether it is that you look at an organization like Family Quality, you look at an organization like Glisten p HRC, your local organizations that are queer focused.

If you have the resources, donate, if you have the time, volunteer. I just saw today that my own Brooklyn Public Library is going to provide library cards to teens outside of Brooklyn who can actually check out e books. Right So, for that kid that is living in Florida that can't access the books that they want from the library and it's too expensive to be buying them and shipping them to their home, they can now check out e books

from the Brooklyn Library. Help those kids find a way, help them make a way out of nowhere, Help them understand that not all cis hetero people hate them. What we need to do this month and every single month is about building community to combat the hate that is raining down on this country. The LGBTQ community deserves more. Queer youth deserve more than what is happening, and we can all do better to make sure that queer joy is not banned. So find a way to excise your

power and take up space this fucking month. If you are queer, if you live at the intersection of marginalized communities, take up fucking space. And for those that are allies, do your best to find ways to support, to donate, to volunteer, to let queer youth know, and queer people in your own community know they are not fighting this fire alone, that you are there with them, because you know that queer people are often the canaries in the coal mine, as was said to me recently, first they

go after them, then they go after everybody else. Don't let that be the case. Not this month of June, and not any fucking month. Now is the time to get off of the sidelines and to put yourself, your life, and your future on the line for our democracy, for all communities that are under attack. I look forward to this month of June on wokf with each and every single one of you. That is it for me today, dear friends, on as always, power to the people and

to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. H