INTO’s Closure Reflects the Brutality of The Media Industry Towards Queer and Trans Writers of Color
Those who are harmed the most by Grindr's decision to shut down INTO magazine are queer and trans Black writers.
On Tuesday morning Grindr closed down its LGBTQ+ publication, INTO after laying off the magazine’s entire editorial and social media staff, leaving full-time employees without jobs while dozens of freelancers and columnists lost their primary source of income. The layoffs come months after the magazine broke the story that Grindr’s CEO and President Scott Chen had posted that “marriage is between a man and a woman” on his personal Facebook page. According to Out magazine, the decision to close down the publication wasn’t made in retaliation to those reports but rather because the “company will be focusing its efforts on video.” Late last year, ahead of a sale to Bustle Digital Group, millennial news site Mic laid off most of their staff and according to a report by The New York Times, sources said that the venture capitalist-backed publication had relied too heavily on their relationship with Facebook and its algorithm. The efforts of their talented newsroom didn’t pay off for the writers and editors who were only given a month’s severance and health insurance benefits, but it did pay off for the founders, former Goldman Sachs banker, Chris Altchek and co-founder Jake Horowitz, who raised $59.5 million in funds and sold to Bustle for $5 million. While we expect magazines which represent the voices of the marginalized to be spaces where we can thrive, develop our voices and skills, and carve out a platform to not only be represented, heard and celebrated, the companies that own them view their staffs as entirely disposable which means those who are harmed the most by these closures are queer and trans people of color.SUPPORT WEAR YOUR VOICE: DONATE HERE
N.K. Jemisin’s Third Hugo Win Should End the White Boy Era Of Sci-Fi
The gatekeepers of publishing keep marginalized people from getting their work out there. Jemisin is proof that this practice needs to end.
N.K. Jemisin just won her third Hugo award in a row accomplishing something that no other author in history has done. This wasn't a fluke, this wasn't a one off, Jemisin is proving that the stories Black women have to tell aren't just for other Black women. They're creative, powerful, and worth your time and money. Science fiction and fantasy have been genres dominated by white boys since time immemorial. Why? Not sure, since people from all across the spectrum have been creating spectacular work in the genre. Jemisin has come out to stop this erasure of diverse voices by taking home the Hugo Award not once, not twice, but three times in a row — a feat that has never been done before, not even by the most famous and prolific white boys. Jemisin has won the last three years since 2016, each year for a book in her Broken Earth trilogy, the first of which is being developed into a series for TNT. This accomplishment is amazing but also shows that Black women have been creating powerful and memorable works that deserve a space in larger, more mainstream arenas, something Jemisin highlighted in her acceptance speech on Sunday: “This is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers: every single mediocre, insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honor, and that when they win it’s meritocracy, but when we win it’s identity politics,” she said. “I get to smile at those people and lift a massive shining rocket-shaped finger in their direction.” Maybe this doesn't seem important if you think that science fiction and fantasy is just entertainment, but it's not. It is, at its heart a political and revolutionary genre. Sure there are aliens and ray guns but the work has always been about the human experience, our fears, our hopes. The problem is that the majority of the work that is considered classic, that gets notice and notoriety has been focused on the fears and hopes of white men, leaving out the entire spectrum of culture and reality that anyone else has to offer.SUPPORT WEAR YOUR VOICE: JOIN US ON PATREON
Roxane Gay’s Snub from the “Black Panther” Preview Speaks Volumes
The labor of black women is still being usurped without proper credit, and certainly without any reward.
The “Black Panther” movie is slated to be the biggest thing in Black America since Barack Obama’s first inauguration. Never before have there been so much blackness in a blockbuster film, a major comic universe film no less. The preview this week is getting rave reviews. Ryan Coogler and Marvel have a hit on their hands. Which makes it baffling as to why a black woman who was pivotal to introducing the world to the story world beyond the main character was not invited to the preview of the movie. Actually, it’s not baffling. The act is disappointing. It is just more proof of how the labor of black women is valued much more than the woman herself. https://twitter.com/rgay/status/958183880950923265 https://twitter.com/BonjourEve/status/958216064009166848 Roxane Gay wrote the "Black Panther" spin-off, “World of Wakanda”, a series about the army which backs Black Panther and secures the nation he governs. Gay turned the series into the first black female LGBT comic, complete with a romance amongst the characters. She did so without compromising the group’s bad-ass quotient, making the action-packed comic a huge breakthrough for intersectionality in the MCU. Marvel cut the comic mid-2017, citing low sales. This is despite the growing interest in the Black Panther film that will release in less than a year and a lackadaisical advertising budget for the comic from its onset. The comic debuted with more than 57,000 copies sold but was down to around 14,000 six months later in April of 2017. Instead of letting the franchise ride on the growing interest in the upcoming film, Marvel pulled the book. Gay’s skilled writing had made its mark, however. Her books took readers into the world of the all-women army, Dora Milaje, and their skilled security of the nation that the Black Panther originated from. Her comics opened the franchise to BIPOC in ways that the Black Panther comics never could — centering black women in the protector roles we often end up shouldering in the real world. It was also a story that showcased a same-sex romance in a militaristic setting without being too “preachy” about the social implications — something Marvel comics is still notorious for. Their superheroes are well-known for tackling social problems but in the manner of the after school specials that the networks peddled in the 80s.Related: BLACK WOMEN AREN’T BOYCOTTING “BLACK PANTHER” BECAUSE OF MICHAEL B. JORDAN’S ALLEGED GIRLFRIEND
Mirroring Society, White Anxiety Reigns Supreme Within The Literary World
Why is it so important to so many white artists that they maintain the right to be offensive to people disempowered relative to them?
By Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Novelist and commentator Kaitlyn Greenidge made a powerful argument in the New York Times last year that we don’t have to write what we know, but we do have to accept that if we are going to write what we don’t know, rather than have a temper tantrum when we receive criticism, we need to listen and then try to write better. Nothing reveals white anxiety more than someone complaining that they don’t feel free to upset people of color, and fearful rants against people of color in academic and literary contexts such as Francine Prose’s recent New York Review of Books anti-sensitivity screed are tiring and sad. They are a painful reminder that straight white cis voices continue to reign supreme in the literary discourse and that this dominance functions to silence marginalized people in multiple ways. The political priorities of straight white cis people are elevated above everyone else’s and questions of style and taste are addressed almost entirely in the context of how the conversation makes straight, white cis people feel. I know the easiest retort is that this is about freedom of speech. Yet as a staunch believer in the First Amendment (which we must constantly remind people is only about government censorship), I’m far less concerned about the imaginary legal issues here than about the very real impact of protecting writing that is racist in its mediocrity. Why is it so important to so many white artists that they maintain the right to be offensive to people disempowered relative to them? In the Trump era, what does it mean for literary leaders to worry about protecting these rights? As a queer Black femme and Editor in Chief of a literary publication with a mostly queer/trans person of color staff, The Offing, I struggled in the days after Trump became President-elect to put forward a professional face to the staff, even though I had spent most of election day in tears. I had not been excited about Hillary Clinton, yet the first round of tears came at 6:30 AM -- I had not been confident she had the election in the bag against an opponent far more terrifying yet bizarrely more savvy. Should we close shop, I asked? Resoundingly our editors said no. Publications that fearlessly seek out the best writing by marginalized writers and established writers trying their hand in new forms were needed in that moment more than ever. It was essential that our platform not disappear but rather continue and flourish.Related: BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION BROUGHT OUT MY MOST MAGICAL SELF
