Powerpoint presentation for a Q-Initiatives program: QTPOC

1. Queer and Divergent
WOC Queering Race

2. What Does it Mean to be a Queer POC?

3. Timeline
July
1848
Feminist Movement
Women’s Suffrage
LGBTQ Movement
Started to see gay liberation
movements on campuses
ACT UP, GLF (Gay Liberation
Front)
1970
Daughters of Billitis- First
group in the 50’s to cater
to women coming out
Late 70’s is when LPAC was
created for women as gay began
to only refer to gay men. Included
interests of both women’s rights
and LGBTQ Rights
Late
70’s
Black Lives Matter
Movement
Summer of 2017 Philidelphia’s
Black Lives Matter group added
Black and Brown stripes to the
LGBTQ flag to symbolize the
intersectionality of black/brown
queer folk
2013

4. Who Was Missing? Who Was Left Out?
QWOC
● Exclusion within the queer community as well brought the need for lesbians of color to create their own spaces. The patriarchal
aspects of having gay as the master identity, the sexism within the LGBT community, and the dominance of whiteness forced
lesbians of color in the margins while the mainstream gay agenda was pushed
● Lesbians of color began advocating for multi-issue social justice politics that combated sexism, racism, homophobia, and class
exploitation
○ This was done so that the pressure of making lesbianism (their sexuality) the dominant identity for themselves,
something that was pushed by the lesbian separatist movement, was no longer enforced on them
○ The lesbian seperatist movement pushed so that sexuality was the main focus and that race/class were secondary issues.
This ignored this intersections of queer woc and erased their narratives
○ Lesbian separatism privileged of white, middle class women

5. Framework
● In response to exclusion in the early feminist movement, women of color created a new epistemological framework that
encompassed the intersectional cross sections of race, sex, class, and gender as a form of of resistance
○ In essence woc, and in large part queer woc, created a new framework of thinking that took in the full experiences of a
person and looked at the systems of power and privilege affecting those experiences/identities
○ Used intersectionality to look at where the the various aspects of inequality intersect with one another
● Queer women of color pushed back against the common binaries of power dynamics (straight/queer, woman/man, white/black
etc..) and found themselves diverging away from these singular categories of domination to be able to critique all forms since
their identities are at the crux of so many intersections
○ In particular trans woc push that envelope even more and problematize the rigidness
Of femininity up-held by cis women
Writers who have contributed to this pedagogy are
- Bell Hooks
- “Choosing the margin as a space of radical openness”
- Kimberly Crenshaw
- Audre Lorde
- Patricia Hills Collins , P.H. 2004 . Learning from the outsider within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist
Thought .

6. Present Day
Today
● Identities of queer woc are being heard but are still silenced
○ To be erased is to be seen as threat
○ Queer woc are able to navigate many political spaces which heightens their consciousness of their positionality in the
world
○ This marginality creates a new sphere for queer politics and looks at different modes of resistance through
erasure/invisibility
Examples of Queer WOC resistance
● Queer latina/asian women seen as foreign/other
○ They use their non hegemonic resistances to disrupt both queer and and racial dominant discourses

7. Research
There have recently been more initiatives in research to understand the more complex histories of QWOC. Here are
some excerpt quotes take from a research project that explores the numerous ways queer Latinas and Asian/Pacific
Islander women are marginalized in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement and their
racial/ethnic communities in regards to their intersecting, subordinate identities*.
Being ‘out’ extended beyond assumptions of pride in expressing their sexuality, but also included complex
resistance strategies combatting singular identity politics. The resistance to declare that one is ‘out of the closet’
hinged on an array of political decisions. Jenny discusses the difficulty in privileging her lesbian identity because
of the cost of invisibility to other parts of her political identities as a person of color, immigrant, and working class
person:
Among [white] LGBT folks, they were always like ‘why aren't you wearing rainbows and saying you're a
proud lesbian?’ I am who I am. I fit into so many categories. I don't want to just say one thing about me. It's like
when you say you are gay, it's like everything is gay, and that's all I am to them. I don't want to be seen as just
one thing. (Jenny, genderqueer, mixed race, working class, 25 years old)

8. Research
“Similarly, Marcia voices concern about being accepted in her entirety if she declares herself as out of the closet.
Marcia states, ‘I don't consider myself “in”, but I don't make an announcement that I am gay. Coming out is
complicated. It's so difficult having a triple minority status because getting accepted in all of those ways is very
hard’ (Marcia, lesbian, Latina, working class, 33 years old). Marcia expresses her unease with discussing her
sexuality for fear that other people will not understand her specific intersectional identity. Her lesbian identity is
complicated by her other subordinate statuses in society both as a woman and as a person of color. Despite the
notion that queer people do not come out of the closet for fear of homophobic backlash in communities of color,
Marcia's comments lead us to a much more complicated coming-out process. Marcia's reluctance to disclose her
sexuality stems from the difficulty of being able to discuss the myriad ways she feels marginalized.”

9. Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngYQFuHC0-M&t=308s

10. Questions
● What is like to navigate queer/racial spaces?
● How do you disrupt or find ways to resist?
● Have you found spaces within or outside Loyola to fully dissect the complexities that come with being queer
and a woc?
● How do these identities affect your politics?
● How do we problematize the signularness of the queer identity in LGBTQ spaces?