Nico Lang

"The Drop" dance party raising funds for "What's the T?" remount

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 29, 2013

Mar. 29, 2013

 

Last summer’s “Where’s the T?” was an event. It’s rare in the Chicago queer community that everyone is talking about one thing (if so, it’s often in a bad way), but the play was that kind of phenomenon. It brought us together, for a brief yet beatific moment. It was like going to church.

For those who didn’t catch one of its many sold-out shows, “What’s the T?” was a play developed to highlight the intersections of racism, classism and sexism in Boystown -- through the lens of youth experiences. The play followed a youth who was kicked out of his house for being trans and came to Boystown for the resources and solace it promised, finding the neighborhood as prone to oppression and gentrification as it is to providing respite.

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You can support equality without being into marriage

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 27, 2013

Mar. 27, 2013

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that intelligence is the “ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

I thought of Fitzgerald today as SCOTUS deliberated on Prop 8 and God was flooded with prayers from queer people to strike Scalia dead and friends flooded my Facebook feed with equal signs to show their support for marriage equality. It should have been an easy decision, right? I click a button, make a red mathematical mark my profile pic and then go back to watching Bob’s Burgers instead of being productive.

But I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I support marriage equality, but my support deserves more explanation than a simple photograph can explain, and I saw a number of fights break out on Facebook as people struggled to articulate their mixed emotions on marriage to friends and family. Our politics are complicated. A picture might speak a thousand words, but in this case, those would be the wrong ones. These are my thousand words.

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We need to give up transphobia

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 27, 2013

Mar. 27, 2013

Trigger warning: Transphobia. A lot of transphobia.

A month ago, my friend Todd Clayton came out as a recovering transphobe in an incisive essay for the Huffington Post entitled “The Queer Community Has to Stop Being Transphobic.” In the piece, Clayton details his own journey on transphobia and inclusion, how a Lana Wachowski speech opened his eyes to the quiet bigotry in his own life. He hadn’t openly attacked trans people or worked against their freedoms.

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Heterophobia is not real

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 25, 2013

Mar. 25, 2013

 

 

Quiz question!

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We need to talk about Steubenville

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 21, 2013

Mar. 21, 2013

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post and the article linked in it will contain graphic details of the Steubenville rape case and may be triggering to victims of sexual assault.

Six years ago, I was raped.

I’ve never been able to call it that or say the word out loud, not even once. I’ve used other words to describe it, like “molestation” and “sexual assault,” words that don’t invalidate the experience but make it easier for me to talk about.

I came out about it over a year ago in an article for In Our Words and never using the word rape. When I talked about the experience with a friend who hadn’t read the piece, I referred to it simply as “assault.” She misunderstood and thought I’d been the victim of street abuse, a mugging or other forcible attack. I didn’t know how to tell her that her assumption was incorrect. I didn’t know how to just say it.

Even after coming out as a survivor of sexual assault, I’ve struggled with how to deal with my abuse.

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UIC hosts open forum on transgender health

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 18, 2013

Mar. 18, 2013

This month marked a historic first for the trans* community. March boasted the inaugural National Month of Action for Transgender Healthcare, a campaign co-sponsored by groups as diverse as Pride at Work, the Transgender Law Center, Basic Rights Oregon and the National Center for Transgender Equality. Our first “Trans* Month of Action” has seen events in San Francisco, Oregon and now Chicago, as trans* community organizer Rebecca Kling has worked with Erica Mott, Paul Escriva, Dion Walton and Hale Thompson to bring conversations on LGBT community health to the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Held at the UIC Division of Community Health Sciences, the Open Forum on “Health, Healthcare and the Trans* Community” focuses on two central questions: “What issues do trans people face in navigating their health care?

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What's the holdup on gay marriage in Springfield?

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 18, 2013

Mar. 18, 2013

Five years from now, Illinois’ campaign for marriage equality is going to make for a great docudrama on HBO -- or a soap opera.

Last week, queer and allied Illinoisians flocked to Springfield, awaiting a full House vote on equality legislation. As of March 15, the Windy City Times stated that the vote could “come any day,” which was the same thing that onlookers had been saying all week. Although Rahm Emanuel warned that the “clock is ticking” on equality legislation, the bill stalled as advocates struggled to rally the votes necessary to pass the bill.

The House needs 60 votes to pass the euphemistically titled “Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act” onto Gov. Pat Quinn, who has sworn to sign it. Chicago Magazine counted 43 affirmative “yes” votes, as well as another 20 “toss ups.”

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The Vatican's gay problem

By: Nico Lang | Mar. 15, 2013

Mar. 15, 2013

The crowning of a new Pope is meant to signal a new era in the papacy, a tuft of white smoke announcing to the world that change is coming. After weeks of contestation about the new face of the Catholic church, a new leaf was what the church desperately needed. However, Wednesday’s coronation appears to be more of the same from the notoriously arthritic Vatican.

To the Vatican’s credit, Francis is a first for the Catholic church in a couple ways, both of them mostly symbolic. Francis is the first Latin American and Spanish-speaking Pope, and the first to hail outside of Europe in more than a millenium.

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