The Stranger's 2024 Queer Issue

The first time I imagined the future, I was a seven-year-old boy sitting on an airplane, thumbing through the pages of a kid’s science magazine. Inside, the writers offered a glimpse of what life would be like when I was 40. Their world had flying cars, medicines that healed wounds instantaneously, robots, and, inexplicably, bodysuits. No futuristic vision is complete without rubbery, skin-tight clothing. I totally believed them, but now, 11 years away from my 40th birthday, I’m seriously doubting much of that vision will come true.

But that’s fine. The writers didn’t say “being gay would be cooler now” or “new generations are living gayer lives” or “The L Word will return,” either. As I turned out to be a woman who writes about gay people for an alt-weekly, I’ll take this alternative.

Gay and trans people talk about the future a lot, but they talk about the more immediate future with great concern. Why wouldn’t they? Authoritarian-minded freaks are introducing anti-LGBTQ bills in every legislature in every state in this country. They’re crusading against drag and trans rights and probably coming for marriage. The Supreme Court doesn’t exactly fill me with hope. The election looks bad. It bums me out.

But queer people didn’t get where we are today because people were cool about us. When the first Seattle Pride parade marched 50 years ago, the cops were still raiding bars. (Though if the events in January told us anything, it’s that old habits are hard to break.) AIDS would’ve killed even more people if activists hadn’t come up with safer sex practices and bullied the government into caring. I do not believe the arc of history bends toward justice, but I do think we’ve won too much ground in the American court of public opinion to live in the shadows ever again. However hard the reactionary far-right tries, they’ve lost. Their efforts will

only create temporary setbacks.

So when I imagine the future at 29, it looks pretty good and very gay. (Too bad about flying cars though, which probably won’t happen—and that’s probably for the best.)

Given Seattle Pride’s 50th anniversary, in our first print Queer Issue since COVID-19, The Stranger decided to focus on that future rather than dwell on our past.

Adam Willems explores the future of Seattle’s drag scene with local queens Betty Wetter, Lavish The’Jewel, and This Girl. Musician SassyBlack writes about finding her superpowers in her own Black, queer intergalactic universe. Nathalie Graham picks up pom-poms and learns to fly with Cheer Seattle. Lindsay Anderson profiles Charlie’s Queer Bookstore, a shop that almost exclusively stocks books by and about queer people. Rich Smith asks queer luminaries to divine the future of Capitol Hill. He also writes about Dave Upthegrove’s campaign to become the first gay state executive, while Hannah Krieg reveals the limitations of representation in her piece on the gays who have slayed us and the gays who have betrayed us.

Also, a trans tech worker, a trans bodybuilder, a trans comedian, a trans writer, and a trans musician tell their past selves how much better the future is. Ky Schevers comes clean about misrepresenting himself when The Stranger interviewed him for 2017’s “The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren’t.” And I wrote about what’s next for Denny Blaine, the future of HIV medication, and protections for trans athletes in Washington.

Plus, check out our calendar for all the gay shit happening this month.

Happy Pride! Don’t let the fuckers get you down!

Vivian McCall, Staff Writer and a Queer Issue Editor

Editorial

EDITOR

Rich Smith

ARTS EDITOR

Megan Seling

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Charles Mudede

STAFF WRITERS

Hannah Krieg, Ashley Nerbovig, Vivian McCall

Calendar

MANAGING EDITOR

Janey Wong

FOOD & DRINK CALENDAR EDITOR

Julianne Bell

MUSIC CALENDAR EDITOR

Audrey Vann

ARTS CALENDAR EDITOR

Lindsay Costello

DATA MANAGER

Shannon Lubetich

Art & Production

ART DIRECTOR

Corianton Hale

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

Anthony Keo

PRODUCTION

David Caplan, Feedback Graphics

Advertising

REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR

James Deeley

SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER

Evanne Hall

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Ben Demar, Katie Phoenix

COVER ARTWORK

Lara Kaminoff www.larakaminoff.com

Events & Media

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Tracey Cataldo

MARKETING & PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR

Caroline Dodge

DIRECTOR OF VIDEO PRODUCTION

Shane Wahlund PODCASTS

Nancy Hartunian

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

Christian Parroco

PRODUCTION & MARKETING COORDINATOR

Ta y Marler

Technology & Development

VP OF PRODUCT

Anthony Hecht

LEAD DEVELOPERS

Michael Crowl, Nick Nelson

TECH SUPPORT SPECIALIST Grant Hendrix

Bold Type Tickets

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS MANAGER Kevin Shurtlu

CLIENT SOLUTIONS MANAGER

Diana Schwartz

PROJECT MANAGEMENT, CLIENT & CUSTOMER

SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVE

Campy Draper

CUSTOMER SOLUTIONS REPRESENTATIVE

Katya Schexnaydrew

Circulation

CIRCULATION MANAGER Kevin Shurtlu

Business

PRESIDENT Robert Crocker

Can Seattle Drag Afford to Stay Weird? Rising Costs, and Fewer Beginner-Friendly Venues, Are Sanitizing Seattle’s Drag Scene

BY ADAM WILLEMS

In the fall of 2022, Seattle drag queen and then-newcomer This Girl encountered a dancing dialectic in the Kremwerk basement. Rowan Ruthless was doing a comedic Fergie cosplay number as part of a Black Eyed Peas-themed drag night, using a water bottle to simulate wetting her pants.

Reading Ruthless’s faux pee against the grain, This Girl interpreted her seasoned colleague’s urine-forward number as a lesson in artistry and economics.

“That shit’s so funny,” This Girl said. “But also Rowan is simultaneously the most beautiful, glorious supermodel of Seattle… [and] someone who deeply understands the balance between that classic, messy, grimy Seattle drag and also glamor.”

Ruthless’s piss bit offered This Girl more than just an intermission from Seattle drag’s recent “showgirl, showgirl, showgirl everywhere” homogenization: It also showed her that artistic versatility and professional success go hand in hand.

“That’s maybe where some of the wires get crossed,” This Girl said. “I think for all of the glamor that you see now, a good majority of those girls started off doing weird, dirty, messy stuff in the bottom of the Kremwerk basement.”

That is, prominent Seattle drag queens whose glamorous standard This Girl and other up-and-coming artists strove to attain— often at great economic cost—were successful because they had local practice weaving grime and glamor together, not because they

pulled off Drag Race-esque allure alone. It’s easy to judge up-and-comers for crossing their wires and pursuing the markers of seasoned drag queens’ success, skimming over their iconoclastic paths to more regular gigs and incomes; but entry- and mid-level queens are confronting a different financial and artistic landscape than their predecessors did. The same macroeconomic forces causing housing and other costs to skyrocket are driving drag artists to make tough choices about the balance between business and art and between making steadier money through tried-and-true looks or hustling to stand out. The dwindling number of beginner-friendly venues, in addition to disadvantageous financial agreements with many venue owners and

Drag Race -informed viewer tastes, has imposed a higher barrier to entry for drag performers as well as a longer path to (often paltry) profitability. Artistic experimentation feels riskier when rent’s rising.

Tacoma-based drag and burlesque performer Lavish The’Jewel first began doing drag in the Seattle area seven years ago, getting her start at beginner-friendly venues like WERKshop Wednesdays, the precursor to Kremwerk’s Studio Saturdays. While The’Jewel has established her presence in Seattle and refined her craft over time, she’s also seen many alternative and entry-level spaces lose their edge or fold altogether. Some establishments, like R Place, are

OLIVIA ZAKES GREEN

Betty Wetter performing her Taylor Swift-inspired show The Errors Tour at Clock-Out Lounge in May.

gone, period; others have changed their drag programming to match general consumer tastes instead of nurturing an ecosystem of drag performers.

In The’Jewel’s eyes, the growing popularity of drag through Ru Paul’s Drag Race carries artistic and economic consequences. Audiences now expect drag artists to sport more upscale looks like the ones they see on TV, she said; performers often choose between “buying a wig or paying rent” in pursuit of embodying that perceived standard, which flattens the kind of drag Seattleites encounter across the city.

“It sucks because as inspiring as drag can be, those kind of off-kilter shows… inspire me to not be afraid to do something stupid or weird or silly,” The’Jewel said. “It kind of gives you a different view of what drag is, because it really is everything.”

This Girl asserts that Seattle-based drag star Bosco’s 2022 appearance on—and podium finish in—Ru Paul’s Drag Race had an especial effect on the local scene and unintentionally homogenized much of it.

“I say this entirely with love for Bosco, but I love to say that we’re living in a postBosco-on-Drag-Race world,” This Girl said. “When I first started [doing drag in 2021], it felt acceptable to be buying Leg Avenue lingerie and Amazon bodysuits and call it a day, and… almost instantly [after Bosco’s Drag Race appearance]… the city had a completely new standard.”

That new standard encouraged This Girl to spend “a heinous” amount of money in that first “post-Bosco year” trying to match that new standard. Thanks to her faux-Fergie lesson at Kremwek, in addition to the input of drag-mentor friends and a more disciplined approach to her money and time, she’s since learned to be more economical with how she constructs her looks, including by sewing many of her own clothes.

Beau Degas, a drag artist who performs at Clock-Out Lounge’s Tush and Queer/Bar’s Bang the Gong and who’s known for her campy and comedic numbers, first performed

in public in January 2018 at a now-defunct show called Fresh (alongside Bosco, whose team didn’t respond to The Stranger’s request for comment). She thinks that, without spaces for new performers to break in and “make a name for [themselves],” it will be very hard for up-and-coming performers to get booked more often the way she has, or to make any viable income from this work.

Degas also criticized the homogenization of Seattle drag, typified by “a different person with the same look doing the same schtick.”

But she acknowledged that she accepts some gigs for monetary gain, not because they’re spaces that will “push me artistically,” though she makes a point to take gigs that make her feel like an “artist first,” rather than “just a performer.”

“In 2021, it felt acceptable to be buying Leg Avenue lingerie and Amazon bodysuits and call it a day, and almost instantly, the city had a completely new standard.”

Complementing drag work with a career as a cook lets Degas balance money, identity, and art. Lavish The’Jewel (aesthetician) and This Girl (social worker) do too. Degas said “drag isn’t for everybody” as a profession— whether full- or part-time—and it requires passion and hard work, especially since performers often confront a two-year financial deficit while they hustle to land regular gigs. “I feel like the main thing is that you just need to be the right person,” she said.

Through her role on the permanent cast of Clock-Out Lounge’s Tush in Beacon Hill,

Beau Degas has taken advantage of the program as a monthly, two-night destination for artistic experimentation and as a reliable income stream. “We’ve created this space where people expect a certain level of creativity, innovation, or artistic sense, and the venue pays us really well,” she said.

Tush was founded in 2018 by Betty Wetter in collaboration with Clock-Out Lounge owner Jodi Ecklund. Unlike many other owners, who stipulate a minimum number of show attendees or else force performers to pay for lost revenue, Ecklund and the Clock-Out Lounge offer performers fair pay and collaborate with Wetter to monetize the event sustainably. Ecklund encouraged Wetter and the cast to increase ticket prices by $5 this past year, for example, to ensure that the show’s performers could meet Seattle’s rising cost of living.

To Wetter, although performers shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket or rely solely on a venue’s owner, “a show really is as good as the love that the owner puts into it.” Tush’s function as a sandbox has let the cast develop a local reputation and land other gigs. Wetter, who emcees Tush shows, now works full-time as a drag artist, doing everything from hosting drag bingo and fundraisers to officiating weddings.

Ecklund, meanwhile, said she is “grateful that Tush is able to remain a viable show for both parties,” especially as venues operate on “razor-thin margins” due to rising costs. She said she believes that artists should be able to make a living making their art and, as a queer-identifying person, sees developing community as “the heartbeat of everything I do.”

This Girl likened finding a supportive commercial space like Clock-Out Lounge to striking gold. Some interviewees also

recognized Queer/Bar for its artist-friendly efforts. When performers can focus on their acts rather than pushing tickets, their performances tend to be of higher quality and can attract a more sustained following organically. “Can we ever readily count on businesses or capital to make sure we have a space to create art?” This Girl hedged. “Of course not.”

The’Jewel similarly asserted that more owners should pay more since they often make money “hand over fist” without paying performers what they’re worth; she also noted that Seattle’s drag scene will remain on its homogenizing path as long as discrimination and gatekeeping prevent racial and gender diversity in its greenrooms.

Yet Betty Wetter contended that it’s “past time for performers to be asking for what they’re worth,” and to be more disciplined about refusing exploitative rates and conditions. “You’re kind of appeasing [owners and managers by] saying, ‘I’ll take this amount of money,’ when in all honesty, they can pay you more [and] they do have the money,” she said.

Wetter knows spaces like Tush are rare sources of artistic and economic vibrancy, even if they shouldn’t be. “It’s so valuable to me and I am eternally grateful and I’m also always so scared it’s just gonna disappear one day,” she said.

Leaning into the weird has helped Tush stay viable despite the lingering threat of its impermanence, she concluded.

“We’re all swimming in this pool, and you pull your head above the water, and you look around and see there’s like so many people out sunbathing and living a different life than you are in the pool,” Wetter waxed. “It comes back to leaning into what you’re good at, because there are people who want to follow that. There are people who want to see that.” ■

Lavish The’Jewel

A drag performance at Queer/Bar

STEPHEN ANSUN

SUZI PRATT

BEN LINDBLOOM

Letters to Our Younger Trans Selves

What We Wish We Knew

EDITED BY VIVIAN Mc CALL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY XAVIER SCHIPANI

Alot of weirdos want cis people to believe that trans people hate our bodies, which would be laughable if their narrative were not so damn dangerous. Saying we hate our bodies is a lot like claiming your uncle hates the muscle car he endlessly tinkers with. He loves that thing, even when it gives him trouble, or when it’s up on cinder blocks in the yard. Trans people, like everyone else, have a complicated relationship with their bodies. There’s just more to navigate.

Given all this negativity, The Stranger wanted to focus on what trans people love about their bodies. We wondered what wisdom they’d share with their younger selves if given the chance.

The five trans people we posed this question to–an electrical engineer, a writer, a powerlifter, a comedian, and a multidisciplinary artist–sent us five moving letters concerning the body, the spirit, and what joy awaited them in their futures.

IGinger Chien

know you. You pass your loneliest, quietest days in silence. You walk the same sidewalks and pass through the same doors as others, but you feel invisible behind a façade built for their comfort. You are the mute ghost begging to be seen, who is unable to reach out for fear of being vaporized.

You spent the nights of your childhood meditating and praying for a different body only to wake in the same one the next morning. You’ve

yearned for an explanation, a mere word to describe this alienation from the body. Yet none appeared, and the mirror continued to torment you and violate you. On some days, you wanted to shed the burden of playing pretend and to instead live your destiny. You wanted to be free. To simply be. It was never about obtaining the approval of the attractive crowd. You only sought peace in the indescribable wrongness.

Then one day you’ll show your face to the sun. You’ll find your name, your voice, a home. You’ll forge beauty, hope, bravery, and kindness in fiery self-hatred, and you’ll extinguish the flames in the roaring, wild river that is you. The

universe will welcome you. It will call you by your name. The sky itself will embrace your glow. In time, you’ll learn this journey never ends.

With each step toward embodiment, you will chart the course of your wending voyage with direction and purpose. Living your truth will bring clarity, and you will be guided by the simple directive of authenticity and kindness in this random, fearful, and angry world. I know you tolerate your body, and you hold the heartless roll of the dice responsible for this in contempt. But you will accept the complexity of your paradoxical vessel. Your body–our body–gives you breath and the opportunity to experience the world.

You’ll also accept that you did the best you could with what you knew and with what your moment in time made possible. When you worry that you decided on transition too late, a gentle elder will say that you’re just in time. Fear will become a companion, its secret, clever voice telling you exactly where to discover newness.

You’ll be surprised to learn that people respect your tenacity. Few will remark upon it, but a stranger that watched you from afar will tell you how you’ve inspired them to reach for their stars.

I can tell you what I’ve learned. Abiding by the rules of others is folly. You won’t find perfection in the standards of others. You are perfect, perfectly human, beautifully and uniquely imperfect. The world hid your true purpose: To seek joy.

Find peace. Accept yourself and unravel the magic you’ll use to make this world more compassionate. Your rare perspective on the human condition is not a curse. It is a gift.

Ginger Chien is an electrical engineer, inventor, open-mic storyteller, and a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging speaker who lives in Redmond. She currently works as a device architect at AT&T and plays keys in an ’80s cover band called The Nasty Habits.

Ari Drennen

You came home today doubled over with the kind of side stitch you solve by heading straight for your couch and cracking a beer. “I just need a few minutes,” you told your girlfriend, “and then I’ll get dinner started.” You picked up a PlayStation controller and left your body and your apartment and your boring job. Hours passed.

Last time you asked a doctor for help, he’d told you to Google prebiotic foods, took a seat in front of the door to the tiny exam room, and asked why you were wearing nail polish. When you got back on the subject of your health, he said that your latest blood work indicated issues with your liver. “How much,” he asked, “have you been drinking?”

You quit the company softball team when you could no longer tolerate your teammates’ exasperation when another fly ball bounced from your mitt. You gave yoga a try before writing off your body as miserably inflexible. Your girlfriend keeps coming up with reasons to eat takeout at the office. Drinking, that’s how you pass the valley between work and sleep.

You live in your head and your computer and, once a year, on your balcony as you

sweat over the alley above a Whole Foods dumpster while the Pride parade beats down the street on the other side of the LaTrobe apartment building. You will live here, in your body, in a house in the trees between the mountain and the Sound.

Someday you’ll wake up in silk, blonde strays and mascara stains on your pillow, raindrops and cedar needles out your window, gold and diamond sparkle on your finger. Your partner is there. “Good morning, pretty lady,” are her first words to you. You’ll bring her coffee with a little oat milk, and then roll out your yoga mat.

The reason you cannot touch your toes with your back and legs straight is that your hamstrings are too tight; to do it right, you’ll need to bend your knees and practice every day. You won’t mind, you’ll get there eventually. Everything is connected and the pain will get so much worse before it gets better. You’ll know that the reason you could never catch a fly ball is that you were somewhere else. You’ll know that you were here.

Ari Drennen is a trans writer, poet, and content creator who works as the LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters.

Angel Flores

Hey, baby. I didn’t want to write your full name. You’ve always hated your middle name. So feminine. You’re afraid of being associated with anything so womanly, I know. You still hope nothing will break that masculine shell, the one you’re probably hardening at the gym as I write this in an attempt to reach the “perfect ‘male’ physique.”

You won’t–at least, not in the way you think. I remember how you felt waking up so incomplete in the morning. You stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom, searching every inch of our body, cataloging every out-of-place piece, scrutinizing our outline. At night, with the lights off you’d catch only a shadowy reflection, and the eternal question echoed through your mind. Why does nothing feel right?

Baby, as hard as you try, masculinity is not and will never be the answer to your query. Deep down, you know that. Be honest with me. You love the sensation of long hair brushing your shoulders, the hem of a shirt dangling at your midriff, and the shortness of shorts just short enough. You wonder why you feel so queer and why you never act on the feeling. Those poor boys–as much as they loved your presence, they never had a chance. And as much guilt as you’ve swallowed about the disconnection from your

girlfriends, they never had a chance, either. You’ll all laugh about it later, trust me.

Everything will change when you meet that trans girl at the thrift shop, the tall one with the pretty dress and the cute voice. You’ll panic, and confusion will surge through your body. She’s gorgeous, you’ll think. You will be jealous. That’s okay. Turns out, you’ll be gorgeous, too. You’ll love when clothes hug your curves like that, when pants sit just right on your hips and someone cute can’t help but grab them.

When you learn to smile that huge, crazy, disarming smile again, the one that makes people feel safe, it’ll be bigger than ever because you’ll be happier than ever. You’ll be happier because you feel whole for the first time. You’ll find yourself. Not because of your career, your relationship, or the gym. The endless hours you’re spending torturing yourself there are a waste. You’re working for a body you don’t want. And the reason you hated your middle name? It hinted at who you were the entire time: Angel Joy Flores, the woman you never believed you could be and the person you never knew needed to exist. I love you. Be kind to yourself.

Angel Joy Flores is a Seattle powerlifter, content creator, and streamer who you may recognize from Season 6 of Netflix’s Queer Eye

Howie Echo-Hawk

Gratitude for another sunset. For a beating heart. For an aching soul. For a tender wound. For a peaceful sleep. For a tearful smile. For another sunset. For another sunset.

The reassuring sound of the two black and brown (respectively) trannies (homophobically) so lovely you cannot possibly imagine it, who let you sleep in their drag room after the best show you have ever seen in your life.

Gratitude for years ahead of new and exciting tranny behavior, dirtier and more divine than before, to a fat ass and a mayonnaise (respectfully) diet.

Gratitude for new nieces, sisters, lovers, best friends, heartbreaks, lost loves, life partners, joy partners, grief partners, alive and in love together.

Gratitude for love, for you, for me, for grief, for the painful joyful gift of remembering, remembering we are who we are.

Gratitude for something that no one can take from us, for some truth–bigger, deeper, more expansive, true.

Gratitude for what has always been and always will be, for hot stupid tranny bitches.

Keep growing, keep becoming, keep finding, keep transitioning.

Mind, body, soul, become yourself.

I love you, bright and shining evening star.

Howie Echo-Hawk is the evening star, founder of Indigenize Productions and the Indigiqueer party, evil stepmother, aunt, best friend, sister, lover, and world’s best kisser.

Build your knowledge and advance social and environmental justice by completing your bachelor’s, pursuing a certificate, or earning a master’s or doctoral degree from a university that nurtures inclusive communities of learners, inspiring diversity of thought and action.

Antioch University offers programs in person in the heart of Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood and entirely online.

Explore how Antiochians are sowing the seeds of futures where diversity of gender and sexuality is affirmed and normalized.

Clyde Petersen

One day you’ll go to the cineplex at the mall and purchase two tickets to Love Lies Bleeding from a teenager who smells like weed and is half-heartedly counting cups at concessions. While buying tickets, you’ll feel the sting of something old and recognizable, but it will pass quickly, replaced by excitement. You’ll sit in the dark theater full of queers, gripping the hand of your lover, rapt, collectively holding a breath during sex scenes and spontaneously uttering an undiscovered-until-now sound when Kristen Stewart whispers to Katy O’Brian, “I want to stretch you.”

When the film ends you will be high on the power of queer sex and the notion that killing a man who has harmed the one you love is perfectly acceptable, because at some point in this life you learned that love and violence and sex all live in the same body, and that I would kill for you is just Queer for I love you with a passion deeper than any words can ever possibly express

But as you leave the theater, you will feel that sting again. And you will think back to every moment in your entire life when you felt queer shame and the fear of your own queer body. And your palms will get sweaty and the sky will go dark. And suddenly, it’s 1995 in your teenage bedroom. Bong hits and too much incense to cover up the smell of weed. Peavey Stratocaster in your hands, mindlessly running scales. On the TV, hurled chairs, insults, “security!” The Jerry Springer Show. Between Brawlin’ Broads or Who’s the Daddy?—but not that kind of daddy—you see transgender people, but they won’t be called

that. The word they will be called will try to be reclaimed but eventually abandoned, too heavy with violence and hate.

You’ll scan the TV for words to name your feelings. The Why do I feel so alone? The Nothing, growing inside you. You’ll find words that get close but never feel quite right. They will sound like lies in your mouth and you’ll fall silent, undefined. Unspeakable.

But soon, soon you’ll be 16, and you’ll get your gay eyebrow pierced on Broadway. You’ll skip class, rip bong hits and practice the guitar solos to “Black Hole Sun” and “Comfortably Numb,” and you’ll start to know yourself a little better. You’ll find the queer weirdos at the all-ages shows and you’ll become possessed by rock and roll. Your clothes will smell like smoke and sweat after a Sleater-Kinney concert at RKCNDY, and you will silently swear to yourself that you are never washing this hoodie and you will remember this night forever And that excitement, that is the feeling to cling to. Because over and over, the thing you’ll find is that trans is less of a word to be placed on a body and more of a feeling to dwell within. To be other. To have potential. To recreate yourself daily, despite this world’s protestation.

Clyde Petersen is a Seattle-based artist, filmmaker, former Stranger Genius Award winner and a musician who fronts the band Your Heart Breaks. This piece is part of a larger exhibition at J. Rinehart Gallery on display from June 29 to July 24.

As Sidney Adjetey laid on an exam table at Harborview Medical Center with his T-shirt hiked up, research clinician Phoebe Bryson-Cahn examined injection sites on either side of his belly button. In April, University of Washington researchers at the UW Positive Research clinic injected Adjetey with about a teaspoon of a new and experimental long-acting HIV treatment as part of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. They’re monitoring him to learn how long this medication lasts in his body and whether it could effectively suppress the HIV if the virus had been present.

The Future of HIV Treatment Is Injectable

Promising Drugs Could Expand Treatment–If We Get Out of Our Own Way

BY VIVIAN MCCALL

Adjetey doesn’t have HIV, nor do any of the 12 participants in Phase I of this proofof-concept clinical drug trial. At this early stage, researchers are evaluating dosing and safety because the drug has never been used on humans before. They’ll determine efficacy in Phase II, but that could be years away.

Injectables are a thrilling trend in the field of HIV, with drugs such as Lenacapavir and Cabenuva already available on the market. Unfortunately, the rollout has been slower than physicians hoped, and barriers like the expense of these drugs keep them out of reach for many.

This new shot combines three commonly used oral medications into one lipid-bonded nanoparticle the researchers call a “nanolozenge.” A shot of the nanolozenges could theoretically keep HIV in check for a month or longer, replacing 30 to 90 daily pills.

Dr. Rodney Ho, the principal UW researcher who developed the drug and co-founded UW’s Targeted, Long-acting and Combination

Antiretroviral Therapy Program, called it an “impossible marriage” of fat- and water-soluble drugs that took years to figure out.

with their shape, though, because they don’t just dissolve. Instead, they journey through the lymphatic system like a city bus, stopping at nodes to drop off a specific concentration of antiretroviral drugs.

This approach targets the virus far more efficiently than daily pills, which bathe our GI tract in medication and contribute to wear and tear. Scientists have successfully developed nanoparticle drugs to treat illnesses such as leukemia, but this experiment represents a new strategy for treating HIV.

What we can’t seem to figure out is the human element: poverty, homelessness, individual behavior…

Named for its oblong shape and diminutive size (roughly a million times smaller than a chicken egg), the lozenges are injected beneath the skin into a fatty area like the belly. Then they travel to the lymph nodes via the bloodstream. The lozenge analogy ends

The study’s leader, Dr. Rachel Bender Ignacio, said the researchers aim to formulate and bring to market a similar drug with three other compounds–tenofovir disoproxil, lamivudine, and dolutegravir, aka TLD, the most common frontline treatment of HIV in the world. She said that an injectable version of this drug cocktail could change the lives of the 19 million people already on TLD worldwide, which works out to almost half the number of people with HIV on Earth.

Though we may see cheaper drugs in the near future there are a number of good reasons to create alternatives to pills. Some people with HIV struggle to get pills and to take the ones they’ve got. Unstable housing

situations or addiction can stymie access, and some people may be too sick to swallow. Some agricultural and migrant workers can’t access a continuous stream of medication, and pharmacies may have trouble stocking them. A daily pill can be a painful reminder that you have HIV, and traveling with pills is a hassle, comes with stigma, and can be dangerous. Also, pill fatigue is real, and some people just forget.

Over time, skipping daily meds can be fatal. In February, study participant Adjetey’s half-sister in Ghana died from a bout of typhoid fever related to her HIV infection. Not taking viral suppressant medication weakened her immune system, and the fever killed her in two days. They weren’t close, but participating in the study gives him the opportunity to honor her memory, he said.

Even if UW’s new approach works, Dr. Bender Ignacio said the fight against HIV/ AIDS will never end. Viruses mutate, and HIV is particularly “leaky,” many times craftier and mutable than the flu or COVID-19. That said, from a biomedical standpoint doctors can easily treat HIV with current tools. Patients take two or three pills to prevent “breakthroughs.”

Think of a medieval city with multiple defensive walls. If one falls, more remain. The walls are sturdy and in many ways sufficient.

What we can’t seem to figure out is the human element: poverty, homelessness, individual behavior, geographical barriers, our convoluted medical system, etc. A miracle in the lab won’t undo systemic problems. Nine

million of the 39 million people with HIV are not virologically suppressed. In the US, a third of people with HIV don’t have the medications they need, and they are often our society’s most vulnerable people.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, who teaches medicine at University of California - San Francisco and who directs San Francisco’s “Ward 86” HIV clinic, said HIV treatment reached a point of stagnation six years ago after the advent of Biktarvy, a complete, once daily HIV regimen that included an integrase-inhibitor, which targets an enzyme HIV uses to replicate. It should be easy to take one pill, but it isn’t for everyone, and that’s why long-acting treatments are all clinicians like Dr. Gandhi can talk about now.

She works with HIV-positive people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. When Cabenuva first entered the market, clinicians hesitated to prescribe it to patients who took pills inconsistently. Doctors worried these patients would miss injection appointments and expose the HIV virus in their bodies to trailing levels of the medication, pushing the virus toward drug-resistant mutations.

But Dr. Gandhi’s patients showed up, and experiencing viral suppression for the first time motivated them to return. The clinic did not have to chase people down like they thought they might. Dr. Gandhi explained that because people with the highest viral loads are more likely to transmit HIV, treating them with the best drugs we have available should be a priority if we hope to end the epidemic. Now 290 people, or 10% of her clinic, are on long-acting medications.

The director of King County’s sexual health clinic Dr. Matthew Golden, said their unpublished randomized control trial also showed that injectables worked better than pills for patients facing homelessness, poverty, and drug-addiction. Golden said that incentives for study participants likely helped, and if we were smart, our public health system would offer benefits for regular treatment, too.

If UW’s drug ever hits the market, that goal could be even easier to achieve. UW’s shot has the potential to be cheaper and more widely available than any injectable we have now. If or when that happens depends on what researchers find in the lab and whether funders come along, cash in hand. Science is expensive. ■

Injectables to save the day! Eventually. Maybe.

CODY SHIPMAN

What’s Next for Denny Blaine? Maybe New

Rules, but Certainly Fewer Thorns

BY VIVIAN Mc CALL

Basil Mayhan stands at Denny Blaine Park before a tangle of Himalayan blackberries. The blackberries like to grow along the shore of Lake Washington and intermingle with native wild roses, but they’ve got to go. So does the English holly and the English ivy scaling a nearby fence bordering the park. Mayhan calls this trio the “Axis powers” as he rips a handful of leaves from the fence, executing a plan approved by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department to replace the park’s invasive species with native plants. Besides, “It’s stupid to have a spiny plant around naked people,” he said.

Mayhan instructs the ten or so volunteers carrying dirt-covered shovels and loppers not to harm the native roses, which may be replanted elsewhere.

It’s a bright, breezy day–cold enough for the pants and long sleeves needed for crawling into the spiny brush, but warm enough that people are lounging near the water.

That’s how queer people claimed it in the first place.

The summer that seemed like it may never come for Denny Blaine Park was nearly here.

The trouble started in November when the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation announced its plan to build a privately funded, nature-themed children’s “play area” at the historically queer nude beach. The department said the neighborhood didn’t have a playground within walking distance of the park, and their plan would fix that.

People went ballistic. The day news broke, thousands signed petitions demanding the City kill this plan. Activists formed Save Denny Blaine, a loose coalition of queers and naturists. Emails flooded the inboxes of public officials, and the City would decide to call the whole thing off in December after activists packed the MLK Fame Community Center with signs, slogans, and nearly 400 bodies telling the City to keep its hands–and its playgrounds–off the beach.

Absolutely nothing about the reaction was surprising.

Denny Blaine has been a gay, nude hangout for at least 40 years. It was once commonly referred to as a Dykekiki for the topless lesbians. The beach is packed during summer, and people say it’s one of the last authentically queer places left in Seattle where you can go without spending money. Like most gay beaches in the country, it’s not the crown jewel of the waterfront.

Aspen Coyle, who was hacking at a blackberry plant during our interview, remembers the first time she came to Denny Blaine, newly out as trans and six months on estrogen. She was freaked out until she heard a group of trans girls chatting about chess. They invited her to a group chat where she met her closest friends. She sees Denny Blaine as the genuine trans spot in a city that’s becoming more trans as people stream in from states where they’re no longer welcome or legally safe. (The person next to us chimes in and says, “Don’t forget about Kremwerk.”)

During public discussions about the proposed playground, queers felt the City’s plan amounted to an eviction notice with a sick twist. We’re living through a far-right crusade against transgender rights and an escalating moral panic about queer people “grooming” kids by merely existing. Building a children’s play area at Denny Blaine at this moment seemed like a trap and an attempt to subvert Seattle’s permissive nudity laws, which have allowed us to trounce around naked since 1990.

After the loud December meeting, Parks decided to sit down for several stakeholder meetings with both sides of the struggle. The Seattle Parks Foundation-affiliated Friends of Denny Blaine took one side, and neighbors who lived next to the park took the other. They hashed out a solution to divide the park into two zones: a naked one down by

the beach and a clothed one past the small parking lot. Both sides hated the plan for different reasons.

The park users thought it gave neighbors undue power when the law says nudity is okay.

The neighbors, who started a group called Denny Blaine Park for All and hired Lee Keller of The Keller Group to handle public relations, said in a statement that, in this “wait and see” period, they support guidelines that address the Park’s “serious problems” and enforce existing laws and policies so it can be a respectful place for “everyone” to enjoy.

Keller said neighbors are concerned about drug use, public indecency, garbage, traffic, and more, and they are urging the City to address those concerns. She added that their concerns do not lie with the LGBTQ community.

“Our concerns, however, ARE about lewd harassing behavior and open sex — behavior that overflows into the park and onto neighborhood streets,” she said. “... Sadly, as it stands now, the park is a public nuisance.”

At a May meeting, Parks employee Justin Hellier said neither neighbors or activists supported public sex (which is not legal anyway), but they disagreed on how often it happened. Coyle said the occasional leering creep is there to harass queer park-goers. Friends of Denny Blaine is currently seeking a City grant to fund an anti-masturbation campaign.

Parks had initially planned to present the proposed guidelines to its board on May 23,

but they rescheduled the meeting for June 13. (Public comment closes tomorrow if you’re cracking open this newsprint on June 5).

At press time, it is unclear which version of the policy the board will get, but I saw evidence that at least one part of the department’s plan is advisable: an idea to install a sign informing visitors that Denny Blaine is clothing-optional.

Such a sign could be useful. In May, I witnessed one man ask his dog if he saw the puppy by the stairs. Then he looked up to see a bunch of naked bathers. He froze, turned around, and said aloud, “That was not the beach we thought it was.”

The dust is still settling on the debate, but a couple things are clear: Parks lost major trust with the community over this fiasco, and the City gave credence to the belief that poor Seattleites have less say than rich ones like Stuart Sloan, the 80-yearold businessman and philanthropist who KUOW identified as the mystery donor last month. Keller also represented Sloan and told the public radio station that he was not the only person willing to pay for the playground, and that the playground had been the City’s idea, not his.

KUOW also reported that before any plan had gone public, Sloan had texted Mayor Bruce Harrell’s private cell phone to complain about Denny Blaine. A few months later, Parks employees and Harrell’s staff met with Sloan.

Harrell maintained he didn’t know the donor’s identity, even after The Stranger asked about the two in-person meetings we discovered. The two men first met to discuss the issue in November of 2022, and later on December 9, 2023, the day after the City nixed the playground plan. In the first meeting, they apparently discussed trash and safety. In the second meeting, the Mayor wanted to personally update Sloan on “progress being made on these issues” after all the media attention. You can’t buy a public park, but you can try.

As I left the beach that day in May, a volunteer yelled with excitement. They held a tuberous nexus of roots that Mayhan called “the heart” of the blackberry bramble. Removing it is the only way to stop the plant from spreading; it’d grow back otherwise. The volunteer threw it on a growing pile, nicknaming it “Mr. Potato Head.” They cheered. ■

LARA KAMINOFF

Out of This World Forming the SassyBlack Universe

BY CATHERINE “SASSYBLACK” HARRIS-WHITE

When I moved to Seattle from the Big Island, Hawaii, in 1997, I was 10 years old and expecting to go to school and live a life not unlike Lisa Turtle’s in Saved by the Bell. I thought I would be a cool kid. I didn’t even realize Seattle was a real place until I moved here, I thought it was just a made-up city used as a backdrop for Sleepless in Seattle. The unknown made me feel limitless.

But whoa, I was way off.

On the first day of school, I was clowned by everyone after they assumed I was a substitute teacher. Didn’t help that I was dressed like a 40-year-old and already fully developed. I stood out in all the wrong ways and wanted to flee back to homeschool.

Weird to say, but the bullying was a godsend—I worried less about being the next Lisa Turtle and instead focused my energy elsewhere, on music, theater, and writing. I would write songs and poems and make up characters with all these different personality traits. And it got me on stage at a young age. I won my first prize for a poem about Martin Luther King Jr. at age 12 and was in the ensemble every summer for a performance piece called The MAAFA Suite (later Sankofa Theatre) at the Moore.

Kids stayed cruel—I felt like I was an oddity with my afro, low alto/tenor voice, and unique style of clothes—but their cruelty fueled my creativity. I would write in my journal about my future as a famous singer and actor and practice my signature regularly. It wasn’t long ’til I found my first little crew of weirdos who were into a lot of the same things I was. They staged annual Shakespeare in the Park performances and hung on Broadway on Capitol Hill. I was around 12 years old and I remember how exciting it was to see adults (though mostly white) out and proud. In these small circles, I discovered my attraction to not only boys but girls, too. It’s where I learned the term bisexual and I was too excited to proclaim it. Although it felt freeing, I still longed to make these realizations alongside Black kids.

By high school, I had drifted from my little friend group. I was their only Black friend and they didn’t understand when I called them out on the racist things they would say in passing about me or other Black kids. Around the age of 15, I got into activism with the Quaker organization American Service Friends Committee. Not only was it ethnically diverse, but

it was also LGBTQIA+ friendly. From 15 to 19 years old, I organized, marched, and protested as part of Youth Undoing Institutionalized Racism and Queer Youth Rights. It was wonderful to have found another safe space, but it came with its own issues. Seattle felt progressive, but I saw how much it took as a young person to make positive change in a city that was more interested in commercial growth. The form of activism I was pursuing took a lot of my energy, and at the end of my senior year of high school, I was at a crossroads: Activism or artistry? I decided to do both, but my way.

While attending Cornish College of the Arts, I still dealt with people’s ignorance about my sexuality and my Blackness, but I was keeping myself occupied with my creative pursuits. I was still acting, was in a couple of bands, and, in my senior year, formed my psychedelic, space rap jazz group THEESatisfaction with my partner at the time. We made our debut at my senior recital, and it was then that I found some of my closest friends who understood me and all my complexities.

My music career took off—THEESatisfaction played countless shows at venues like Neumo’s, the Crocodile, and Nectar, and toured North America, Europe, and China. We opened up for Erykah Badu, Big Freedia, Little Dragon, and Black Star and we signed to Sub Pop in 2011. I was in a whole new world. I knew Seattle wasn’t

ready for something as experimental as two women in a relationship, rapping and singing together about being Black, being queer, and dealing with oppressive systems at large, but hell, we did it anyway. And we felt some pushback. Some people loved us but often assumed we were sisters, and some of the people who knew we were a couple hated that and tried to keep us from opportunities or mispronounce our names when we hit the stage. And after a while, there was also internal conflict.

It was quite painful when the group officially ended in 2016. I knew it was time to do what I had journaled about as a child and launch a solo career. It was time to introduce the world to SassyBlack, the High Priestess of Psychedelic Soul & Hologram Funk.

I knew Seattle wasn’t ready for two women in a relationship rapping and singing together about being Black and queer, but hell, we did it anyway.

SassyBlack was born in 2013. I deemed myself SassyBlack because the name was relatable, catchy, and raw. I could be my fullest self with this name, which became a double-edged sword, but one I wasn’t afraid to parry with. At first, it was new and rough, but I loved it because it was all me. It wasn’t until my second EP, Personal Sunlight, came out in 2015 that it really hit me. I felt a wave of energy like nothing I’d ever felt. Each project that followed spoke to my Blackness, queerness, womaness, and otherness. And with this new stage name came a flood of new ideas. I felt renewed. I returned to writing short stories and creating characters like

I did as a kid, but this time it was based on my life and my travels. Especially the lessons I learned—some the hard way. SassyBlack became the first character I would bring to life, making way for Emerald Jett.

Emerald Jett’s story started as a theme song and was inspired by shows like Living Single Broad City Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Flight of the Conchords. She was a weirdo Black girl like me but with powers. I wanted to flesh out her musical world but never had the time. In 2019, everything changed. I was in a car accident and suffered from intense neck, shoulder, and back pain, making it impossible to go on my tour for my third album, Ancient Mahogany Gold. I was devastated. I didn’t know then, but that would be my last chance at touring for years to come.

During lockdown, I got an email from the 5th Avenue Theater about an opportunity to compose for a one-woman show. There it was again, storytelling calling me in a new format. I took the gig and asked to be on the list for more opportunities like that.

A few months later, I heard they were accepting submissions for First Draft, a musical development program that supports new plays from marginalized communities. Emerald Jett’s time had come. I knew for sure her story would be a quirky musical about someone who needed a change as desperately as I did with a sci-fi funk twist. I was accepted into the program and received guidance, funding, and script readings with a cast. It was life-changing.

I’m hosting my first public Seattle reading of Emerald Jett on August 9 at the Northwest Film Forum as part of my 10 Years of SassyBlack celebration. Producing a musical is expensive, so I’m creating new ways to bring it to life while I continue to revise the script and fundraise.

These past 10 years have been a huge shift in the way that I work, create, love, and live. Growing out of my overly excited, fastpaced self into a more aware, focused, and well-positioned artist has been exhausting. I’m still feeling the growing pains, and I don’t think those feelings will ever go away if I do it right. Through writing and composing projects like Emerald Jett, I can get to the core of my feelings and be more present. I learned to cherish my uniqueness and use it as a superpower. The things that made me an outsider also shaped my artistry and gave me the courage to be SassyBlack and, more importantly, myself. ■

JORDANKAY

The Books of Love

Charlie’s Queer Books Is a Welcoming Space for Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Lit Nerds

BY LINDSEY ANDERSON

When Charlie’s Queer Books opened its bright pink doors for the first time in November 2023, the Fremont shop, which exclusively sells books by and about LGBTQ+ people, almost instantly became a staple in Seattle’s queer community and beyond. The shop, founded by Charlie Hunts, is just one of less than a dozen exclusively LGBTQ+ bookstores currently operating in the US.

Hunts first came up with the idea for an all-LGBTQ+ bookstore 12 years ago after a devastating injury left him bedridden for a year and unable to return to his previous job with Harley-Davidson. He found solace in literature. “I fell in love with books and decided to return to school,” he said. “I got my degree in English and later got my MBA.”

Hunts started working in print and marketing and began collecting every LGBTQ+ book that crossed his desk. As a trans man himself, he was especially interested in books that centered on trans characters. “I was building my collection amid all these anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills, as well as the combo of all the book bans,” he recalled. “I felt like this was something I could contribute, so I decided to test the waters.”

The first iteration of Charlie’s Queer Books hit the streets of Seattle last summer as a mobile store, a flashy, disco-tiled book cart that Hunts pushed around town. Hunts took the cart to Pride in the Park, Pridefest, and even wheeled it down the streets in the Seattle Pride Parade. Seattle’s many book-obsessed queers could not get enough. “There was such an outpouring of support and enthusiasm behind it that we decided to open up a brickand-mortar in Fremont,” Hunts said.

“There aren’t many third places for queer people that aren’t around alcohol,” Hunts added. “This bookstore can serve as that third place if you just want a space to hang out during the day if you don’t drink, if you are under 21, or if you just like going to sleep early.”

Hunts’ shop is a brightly colored bibliophile’s paradise. His wife, Madeline Burchard, documents the kaleidoscope of queer books on their official Instagram account: @charliesqueerbooks. The exterior looks like a playful children’s drawing of a house with whimsical colors and mismatched window trim. The interior boasts a vibrant palette of pinks and blues, lots of natural light, and happy banners that say things like “You belong here” and “Being gay is so fun” hanging on the walls. Books are assorted by genre and age demographic and categorized with little flags so readers know exactly what identities are featured—it feels welcoming and magical. There is truly something for everyone, from the cozy children’s reading corner to the wall of LGBTQ+ stickers to the non-book gift section, complete with totes, T-shirts, socks, and accessories. Charlie’s also hosts events including

cookie decorating, shitty craft nights, bisexual comedy showcases, drag performances, and release parties with visiting authors. Local author Ray Stoeve participated in their first in-person book launch at Charlie’s in May. After walking into the store, they were amazed by the queer utopia tucked inside the little pink shop.

“Charlie, Madeline, and their booksellers created such a welcoming space for everyone to come together and celebrate The Summer Love Strategy ,” Stoeve said. “Supporting queer spaces is important to me, so I knew as soon as Charlie’s found a physical location that I wanted to have my launch there. Being able to launch my book in a queer-centered space made me feel seen and connected to our community.”

Pride Month will be Charlie’s busiest month yet. Every day in June brings a new LGBTQ+ event and Hunts is most excited about the Queer Book Fair on June 15. “We’re trying to help people chase that Scholastic Book Fair high,” he said with a smile. The event will include local vendors, authors, workshops, and all the fun trinkets kids could only get at a 2000’s Scholastic Book Fair.

Still, Hunts is also keenly aware of the danger that comes with increasing the store’s visibility. He knew there was a risk in opening a queer bookstore, especially in a year where national book bans, particularly those that center on LGBTQ+ topics, are becoming more common. In April, Axios reported that book bans have increased 65% compared to 2023 and, of the more

than 4,200 books targeted, the majority “continue to be those centered on LGBTQ experiences and people of color.” Due to safety concerns, Hunts invested in specially coated glass windows and high-tech security cameras. He was also intentional about the events he scheduled during the shop’s early days.

“That was on purpose—to let ourselves get our first six months under us before we started doing things like drag story time or putting ourselves out there, just so we could get our footing first,” Hunts explained. “Even though we’re in a state like Washington, not all of Washington is Seattle. Even in Seattle, we’ve certainly had our issues. When we were looking at different locations, we were told explicitly not to be in Green Lake by people who live there.”

As he prepares for the store’s first drag queen story hour with delicious local legend Glam Chowder, Hunts is looking into the best ways to ensure safety for everyone involved. Recently, he spoke with the organizers of Drag Queen Story Hour, a 501c3 nonprofit that organizes family-friendly events around the world. “[They] said that this year, in their official events alone, they have seen one bomb threat a week at bookstores,” said Hunts. “Their threats are all the same. They’re in a template. They changed the bookstore and its owner. It’s emailed directly to the cops. We don’t even get a say in whether we respond or not. It’s very organized.”

Hunts says he’s not afraid. He finds security in his community. “I’m a trans man. I was scared for a long time because I only got stories of Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena, who were killed for their queerness,” he said. “Growing up in Arizona, I didn’t get to see stories that were about queer joy, queer love, or other ways of being a trans person in the world.” Seeing people like him get to be the hero in their story has given Hunts strength, and with each book, he’s passing that strength on to the rest of the community.

“We’ve had people brought to tears in our kids’ nook because they wish they had those stories when they were kids, or they find them just so healing,” he said. “People thank us every day for existing. That’s bittersweet. It’s the reason we exist. It’s the reason we do the work. It also shows what we’re up against in this moment.”

For Hunts, the risk is worth the reward. “What folks have to deal with is so much more than what we have to deal with at the store,” he said. “My concern is only to keep our customers safe. Beyond that, [the pushback] just makes me want to do it even more. We have to be here.”

Visit Charlie’s Queer Books at 465 N 26th St in Fremont Wed–Sat 11 am–7 pm and Sun 11 am–5 pm. See their full list of pride events at charliesqueerbooks.com. ■

Charlie Hunt and Madeline Burchard at Fremont’s (very delightful!) Charlie’s Queer Books. BROOKE FITTS

Martin Wong.

on canvas.

Martin Wong Foundation.

Dave Upthegrove Wants to Save the Trees

. . . And Become Washington State’s First Gay Executive While He’s at It

BY RICH SMITH

After speaking on behalf of south King County residents for the better part of 22 years as a State Representative and as a King County Council Member, Dave Upthegrove now wants to speak on behalf of the trees as Washington’s next Public Lands Commissioner.

The position would put him in charge of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which oversees the state’s seven million acres of “forest, range, commercial, agricultural, conservation, and aquatic lands,” according to its website. Despite high concentrations of lumberjacks and firefighters around the agency, if elected he’d somehow become the first gay person to run it. In doing so, he’d also become our first openly gay statewide officeholder. That’s progress, baby! That ceiling, however, will be a tough one for him to crack. Though at this point in the culture wars he fears his King County roots will hurt him at the ballot box more than his status as an LGBTQ leader, Upthegrove faces stiff competition in the upcoming August primary, including a timber industry willing to pay to put a chainsaw in office. But as a career environmental and queer activist, Upthegrove is no stranger to long, hard roads.

You Can’t Run for Office Upthegrove came out publicly in 2001, the year he first ran for office. With a gesture and a plural pronoun, he slipped the admission into a speech he delivered as part of an appointment process to represent the 33rd Legislative District in Olympia. “Those of us who are gay and lesbian,” he said, pointing to himself, pretending as if everyone knew. And that was that.

When his mentor learned the news, he said, “I love you, Dave, but it’s too bad because now you can’t run for office.”

At that time, the thought of an out, gay legislator deep in the heart of south King County was unheard of, Upthegrove said in a phone interview with The Stranger. Nevertheless, he won the appointment and became the state’s first out LGBTQ legislator to hold office outside of Seattle.

Though he helped pass marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws, when reflecting on his proudest accomplishments for the community, he feels his visibility as a gay person in the world represents some of his “most impactful work.”

He said he always outs himself in front of church crowds and groups of young people, even if he’s not in the room to speak on LGBTQ issues, because he knows there will be one or two closeted kids sitting in the audience. As a closeted kid who grew up in a morass of anti-LGBTQ hate, he knows firsthand how empowering such role models can be. As the state’s first openly gay executive,

He said he would have “no objection” to making all of the trees gay.

he’d hope to emulate Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s style as a policy wonk who uses his bully pulpit to fight bigotry. “My focus is going to be on trees and geoducks and agriculture, but I’ll be out and visible to try to break down stereotypes, and I’ll speak up when there’s injustice,” he said.

That passion for justice drove his early career, he said, and it still drives him today. And it’s that same sense of justice that drives his thinking on the environment.

Portrait of the Politician as a Young Environmentalist

Though he became an LGBTQ leader when he entered office, the environmental movement is what led him into politics in the first place. His love affair with the outdoors started at a young age. He said he spent his summers teaching environmental science to kids out on the Hood Canal, and he spent a couple summers leading week-long tracks through the North Cascades.

The political bug bit him at the University of Colorado, where he became an environmental activist and earned a degree in environmental science before later picking up a graduate certificate in energy policy at the University of Idaho.

He couldn’t find a job right out of college, so he worked for the forest service before

landing a gig as a committee clerk in Olympia. In that role, he fell in love with the Legislature, and he ended up bopping around as an aide with enviro-focused politicians for years until deciding to run for office himself.

In Olympia, he worked with Governor Christine Gregoire to create the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency designed to protect and restore the Sound. He later chaired the House Environment Committee for years, helping to guide through the House legislation that shut down the state’s last polluting coal plant.

In his off hours, over beers he helped organize a blue-green alliance, building a coalition that ended up wielding some factional power in Olympia on behalf of labor and environmental activists. He also helped pass and fund legislation requiring the state to test soils around schools, day cares, and playgrounds for high levels of contaminated dirt.

Saving Our Older Forests

If the voters will it, he vows to take the passion for environmental justice that he fostered in the Legislature with him into the Department of Natural Resources, where he’ll essentially serve as the state’s landlord.

On “day one” of his tenure he’d sign an order to save “mature legacy forests” from the buzzsaw. Those forests aren’t technically old growth but they’re close. Unlike a tree farm,

Upthegrove said, they “naturally regenerate, they’re diverse, and they support a lot of biodiversity.” The trees aren’t just pleasant to be around, either. Though they only make up 3% of our state-owned timberlands, they have “an outsized impact on carbon storage,” he said.

To make up for any loss in state revenues and jobs, Upthegrove plans to use existing state funding streams to acquire replacement timberlands from private owners, on whose land 70% of the state’s forestry takes place.

Detractors worry such a move would cut into school funding, since the state directs to K-12 construction the proceeds of timber sales on some public land, but Upthegrove argues that all of the money generated from those sorts of sales accounts for about “1.5% of the state’s share of new school construction.”

“So obviously we need to fully fund our schools, but the pathway is not through DNR, and [Superintendent of Public Education] Chris Reykdal has gone on the record saying he doesn’t even need it,” he added.

He also wants the agency to take into account carbon storage and sequestration goals “in a meaningful way” as part of the new sustainable harvest calculation the agency will soon need to adopt. “When we engage in a timber sale right now, there’s no carbon accounting,” he said.

When it comes to addressing the wildfires that choke summer skies on a regular basis, Upthegrove endeavors to more or less carry on and attempt to improve upon the legacy of outgoing Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz.

Whereas Franz focused on upgrading the state’s response to fires and spearheading the creation of the Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration, and Community Resilience account, he wants to focus on prevention and on finding a stable source of funding for that account.

Upthegrove isn’t the only candidate in this race with ideas about trees, but he is the only one with endorsements from Washington Conservation Action and the Sierra Club, two heavyweights in the enviro fundraising and organizing worlds. So far, he’s also raised the most money, with north of $370,000.

Former Republican Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler trails closely behind him. Other Democrats in the race include state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege and Makah Indian Tribal Council Member / member of the DNR executive team Patrick DePoe, who Lands Commissioner Franz endorsed. Big and smaller timber have thrown money at both Herrera Beutler and Van De Wege. Lots of DePoe’s money comes from the tribes. With a couple other Democratic politicians in the race, the primary election results in this contest are far from certain. He’ll need all the help that he can get from the gays and the greens. ■

GENNA MARTIN

The Gays Who Slayed and the Gays Who Betrayed

Not Every Queer Politician Is an “Ally”

BY HANNAH KRIEG ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAX KO

The Stranger will go on the record saying we love gay people. We love being gay people, being friends with gay people, dating gay people, and, heck, we even love electing gay people! But none of that stops us from critiquing Seattle’s first lesbian Mayor for tear-gassing the gayborhood during Pride Month, and we certainly don’t want to see the likes of former Mayor Ed Murray creeping back into the halls of power.

times betray, and–when you take off your rainbow-tinted glasses–sometimes they wind up somewhere in the gray. Let’s take a quick little look-see at some primary examples.

SLAY :)

Let’s start with the positive–it is Pride Month, after all.

Every single member of the current Washington State Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus has slayed a time or two, and every year they all spearhead and/or support bills to improve and protect our civil rights. Yes, even Sen. Jamie Pedersen *grumble grumble*. But some slays have been more major than others. Wayyyyy back in 2011, Pedersen passed a bill legalizing and regulating surrogacy, opening up opportunities for queer people looking to become parents. He also carried the gay marriage bill for years before its passage. More recently, he helped repeal antiquated “lewd conduct” rules to free the nip-

ple near booze in gay clubs and in strip clubs. Sen. Claire Wilson championed the Comprehensive Sex Ed bill in 2019 and sponsored legislation to establish the Washington State LGBTQ Commission, ensuring that queer people have a seat at every table. That same year, Sen. Marko Liias passed a bill codifying a bunch of best practices related to student records, privacy, and restroom access for trans kids. Last year, Liias also staunchly supported and defended legislation to pro-

In 2024, Sen. Emily Randall a bill to ensure that religious hospital mergers and acquisitions do not restrict access to reproductive and gender-affirming care. Beyond more obvious wins for the girls, the gays, and the theys, some legislators also understand that queer and trans people suffer under wealth inequality. Rep. Laurie Jinkins sponsored a capital gains tax every year from 2012 until it finally passed. Rep. Nicole Macri fights hard against the landlord lobby to protect renters from gouging.

And Rep. Beth Doglio state house has to approve a really neat bill to give striking workers unem ployment insurance benefits.

GRAY :/

But representation is not a magic pill to get all the poli cies that queer people want, partially because queer people are not a monolith of blue-haired baristas like the internet would have you believe.

Sometimes LGBTQ pol iticians feel the pressure to conform to the moderate status quo because they face more scrutiny than straight peers. And some times, politicians of all sex ualities just suck.

Queer communities de manded that the State Legis lature pass rent control this ses

sion, but Sen. Pedersen decided to ride the fence instead of taking a strong stand with the pro gressive, working-class gays. When cops put gay nightlife under attack because of prud ish laws around nudity and alcohol, Jinkins, the first les bian Speaker of the House, didn’t do much speaking to the press! Citing her pub lic health background, she reportedly objected to the bill due to concerns over the expansion of alcohol licenses. She eventually voted the right way, but queer people, strippers, and queer strippers de served a stronger advo cate in Jinkins.

Some have betrayed the gays in more sub tle ways. For example, Liias floated a bad car tabs “fix” in 2020 that would have slashed more than a $1 billion in tran sit funding. LGBTQ+ people need reliable public transit! They can’t drive! Or at least I am a queer person who can’t. Luckily for us all, the proposal never landed.

BETRAY >:(

Of course, those weak moments from the caucus sorta pale in comparison to the shit gay Republicans and mayors have gotten up to.

When he was in the State Legislature, Republican James West, who chaired committees and served for a year as Senate Majority Leader, voted against gay rights bills and supported anti-gay bills. He later became Mayor of Spokane, but he lost the gig over a gay sex scandal in 2006. Bruh.

On the other side of the mountains, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan totally eroded public trust by allegedly dropping her phone into a tidepool, destroying text messages that could have revealed critical information about her horrendous handling of the CHOP in 2020. But she’s somehow less disgraceful than Murray, who left his position as Mayor in 2017 after being outed as an alleged child sex abuser, allegations he denies.

As much as The Stranger would love to see more gay, lesbian, trans, and bisexual women with boyfriends in the halls of power, we understand that we shouldn’t elect just anyone with pronouns in their bio. Some queer people have shit opinions. Some queer people have great opinions. And, of course, no person–much less a politician under the crushing pressure of their donors and the institutions themselves–is perfect. But Rep. Macri comes pretty close. ■

Star Spangled S p ectacular

The Futures of Seattle’s Gayborhood

An Architect, an Urban Planner, a Documentarian, an Academic, and a Business Owner Imagine What Capitol Hill Will Look Like in 50

BY RICH SMITH

Years

Seattle’s gayborhood, located on Capitol Hill spiritually if increasingly less so demographically, certainly isn’t what it used to be in the early 2010s, which wasn’t what it used to be in the early ‘00s, which definitely wasn’t what it used to be in the ‘90s, or the ‘80s, or the ‘70s. And before that, the gayborhood wasn’t even on Capitol Hill! It was in Pioneer Square. And how dare we forget about the lesbians of the University District in the ‘70s–we’d never, and we won’t start now!

The point is that big gay cities like ours change, and so do their gayborhoods. Rather than dwell on its past for the 50th anniversary of Seattle Pride, this year I wanted help envisioning its future. So I asked five bright brains with connections to the neighborhood to look into their crystal balls. Please allow me to introduce them.

Andrew Grant Houston is an architect and

urban designer who runs House Cosmopolitan, an innovative architecture and design firm. Joey Burgess runs many of the Hill’s growing and foundational institutions, including The Cuff Complex, Queer/Bar, Grims, and Elliott Bay Book Company. Among many other things, Cynthia Brothers founded Vanishing Seattle, a media project that documents the city’s fading cultural institutions. Manish Chalana is an associate professor in the University of Washington’s Urban Design and Planning department. Yes Segura founded Smash the Box, an urban planning and design firm.

The Seattle Times reports that the LGBTQ+ population of Seattle is dropping but still pretty strong–do you think Capitol Hill will still be seen as the gayborhood in 2074? If not, where do you think the next one will be?

Andrew Grant Houston: Yes, unless by an act of God we all become rich and join the rest

of the homo homeowners who are building up some cool communities in the South End and White Center. Symbolically, Capitol Hill will always be the gayborhood, but if we want to ensure the neighborhood stays queer in truth and not just in name, then we need to provide more housing options for people in all walks of life—especially those who are a part of our nightlife community. The dual-income dog daddies and the badass enby bartenders both deserve to live here in housing that works for their lifestyles and budgets.

Joey Burgess: I think the Hill will forever be the queer bedrock of Seattle. In a perfect Seattle, though, every neighborhood would have queer bars. Imagine a bunch of queer waterholes becoming as common as your neighborhood corner store–that would be a dreamy future.

Cynthia Brothers: As much as I would love for Capitol Hill to retain a strong, un-

apologetically queer character, based on the way things have been going I think there’s a huge risk that queer residents, businesses, and cultural and subversive spaces could be displaced to cater to more hetero, mainstream, and economically dominant tastes by 50 years or much earlier … unless there’s some political and financial interventions from City leaders to supplement the efforts of the LGBTQ+ community to maintain their presence. Rainbow crosswalks may last 50 years, but if queer culture isn’t embedded in the neighborhood anymore, they’ll be more a memorial than an affirmation.

Manish Chalana: Seattle’s gayborhood has shifted from Pioneer Square to Denny Triangle and then to Capitol Hill, so another move isn’t out of the question. However, Capitol Hill now feels deeply established. While multiple queer districts are likely to emerge (as they already are), Capitol Hill will

ELAINELIN

remain the mothership.

Yes Segura: Give me a second as I scream this into the void: RENT SHOULD NOT BE THIS HIGH! Looking at how America has treated queer landmarks like Stonewall … No, I don’t think Capitol Hill will be the queerborhood then. But, at the same time, I like to think that by then everyone will realize that they are queer.

Do you think the Hill will still serve as the center of the city’s nightlife in 50 years? Which venues, shops, and restaurants do you think will still be around?

AGH: I hope we’re not! Yes, gay clubs play great music, but I’d love to see some more clubs across Seattle because density for housing is great but for dancefloors it is not. As for other spaces, what I hope will be around here again is a big gay coffee shop. Losing both Gaybucks (I know) and Kaladi means we don’t have a larger community gathering space the way we used to.

JB: Out of all the businesses on the Hill ... I hope to see The Wildrose open, alive, and thriving when I’m 91. I hope that my husband and I can take our 54 and 52-year-old daughters to Taco Tuesday and play some Indigo Girls on a vinyl jukebox. Maybe after we can head over to Elliott Bay Books and toast to its 100-year anniversary? Fingers crossed.

CB: I think as long as Capitol Hill continues to attract a mix of younger folks, bars, restaurants, and businesses, then it will be a nightlife “hot spot”—for better or worse. The question is what that nightlife will look like, and who it is for. It’s wild to think that Neumos is one of a very small handful of live music venues left in an area once teeming with clubs and musicians (so I’m guessing Neumos, as a heavy-hitter, will still be around). I’d be happy to see longtime legendary places like Wildrose, Pony, Neighbours, The Eagle, Club Z, Harry’s Bar, The Crescent Lounge, Madison

Pub, The Mercury, City Market, CC’s, Century Ballroom, Trendy Wendy, Elliott Bay, and DeLuxe still around. Plus, it’s heartening to see new clubs like Massive resurface/reclaim space (RIP R Place). Also, more gloryholes, please. A Seattle without gloryholes is certainly not one I want to live in.

MC: Yes, mostly, but other neighborhoods will continue to become “more gay.” West Seattle and White Center will be in full competition by then. I mostly hang out in Diesel and CC’s, so I hope they’ll still be around. But honestly, I bet it’ll be Club Z—that place seems like it could survive Armageddon!

YS: For sure the Hill will be the center of nightlife in 50 years–as long as it continues with the density of its restaurants, bars, and its Arts District. Honestly I would like for all of these places to still be up, though what the neighborhood needs is more local Queer Transgender + BIPOC-owned spaces. PERIOD.

Do you think the housing will be denser, or abandoned, or pretty much look the same as it does now?

AGH: Definitely denser. I expect a highrise tower or two next to the current lightrail station, though hopefully in less monochrome motifs. I’d also love to see a balance of building heights and public space akin to another global gayborhood, Le Marais. There, public cruising–aka walking around at all hours of the day and night–is prioritized over space for cars.

JB: Hopefully much denser, with residential and commercial rent control in place.

CB: I’d guess denser; doesn’t seem like it’s been slowing down in the last 20 years.

MC: Denser, probably; affordable, probably not. Sure, US cities experienced a big population decline once, as they went through deindustrialization and suburbanization.

But my money is safe betting on a city like

Seattle to keep on growing in the long term. And if the city’s growing, then the inner core is growing in all but the weirdest of times. And who knows—by then maybe there’ll even be a second light rail station in Capitol Hill.

YS: How we assess the value of property needs to be dismantled. I’ll leave it at that.

Do you think Pike/Pine will ever become pedestrianized, like a Barcelona-style superblock? Do you think it should be?

AGH: Yes and yes. One motto to keep in mind in Seattle is “never say never:” whether by organizing or a fluke, some changes in the city happen when you least expect. Funnily enough, as part of the comprehensive plan the City has to create a subarea plan for Capitol Hill/First Hill, which will be an opportunity in the next year to push for the superblock to happen.

JB: In a dreamworld this would be heavenly. I believe a new generation of leadership in local politics might be up for this challenge one day in the not-so-distant future.

CB: I can see urban planners here trying to jump on that. Hopefully not implementing them in a way that would exacerbate gentrification and already stark income divides, which is one of the criticisms of superblocks.

MC: Not Barcelona-style superblock morphology per se, but Pike/Pine’s emerging urban form could strive to embrace principles of superblock planning, emphasizing livability shaped not just by density, safety, and walkability, but also by equity and social justice.

YS: We should pedestrianize Pike/Pine, but we should also pedestrianize the same Cap Hill pocket areas that temporarily close off streets for events. For example, On the Block: 2nd Saturdays closes off 11th Avenue and E. Pike Street/E. Pine Street. CLOSE IT OFF. Capitol Hill Pride closes off Broadway from Roy to John. CLOSE IT OFF. There are many more examples in the neighborhood. This outdated mindset that we must have

cars on every street is one that is draconian and degrades society’s health. Other countries have figured it out, why can’t we?

Today I still occasionally see the jester skipping through the streets, the colorful wizard on walks, and Mohammad walking the streets selling his bundle of roses. What sort of characters do you imagine on the streets of Capitol Hill in 2074?

AGH: These three are icons, so it’s hard to guess, but our next characters will also be unique. I could imagine a bear furry that sells smoked salmon, a daylight drag queen doing impromptu numbers on street corners, or someone moonwalking up Broadway in a spacesuit. In short, they’ll be queer and out of this world.

JB: I imagine Bosco will be occasionally spotted in the corridor looking forever young and forever gorgeous, living by the words of Lisle Von Rhuman, “This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

CB: I love the Skipping Jestress and Mohammed! Those sightings make me happy. In 2074 Capitol Hill, there might be some kooky “characters” that are actually AI-generated hologram personas reciting the classifieds of The Stranger issues from the 1990s. But if it was a hologram of Slats, Mama Tits, or Lady Krishna, I could get into it.

MC: Crazy fringe people who dare to explore the urban fabric in front of them instead of keeping their cerebrally implanted iPhone 669s on all of the time. Someone without any tattoos? Community robots in rainbow underwear doubling as traffic police?

YS: I imagine by then we will have flying cars that will help us crusty elder millennials to be out and about. Those free-spirited characters will both be in their flying cars and down on earth being themselves. For real though, where are our flying cars?! ■

Clockwise, starting from the top left: Cynthia Brothers of Vanishing Seattle, UW Associate Professor Manish Chalana, Smash the Box Founder Yes Segura, Business Owner Joey Burgess, and Architect Andrew Grant Houston.

JEFF SCOTT SHAW

JORDAN ROBERT

COURTESY OF JOEY BURGESS

COURTESY OF TUESDAY TAGALA

COURTESY OF MANISH CHALANA

What Do New Title IX Rules Mean for Washington’s Trans Athletes?

State Law Protects Them, but Title IX Protections Would Be Cool

BY VIVIAN MCCALL

In April, the Biden Administration finalized revisions to Title IX regulations, the federal policy protecting students from sex-based discrimination.

The changes should take effect on August 1, and there’s a lot to like about them. The Administration undid Trump-era policies dictating the way K-12 schools, colleges, and universities should respond to sexual crimes, and it also clarified that Title IX protected gay and trans kids from discrimination. Despite the legal gains for queer students, however, trans athletes were not mentioned.

When the administration proposed blocking all-out bans on trans athletes last year, it kind of seemed as if Biden would set a stake in the ground for trans athletes. But, according to sources “familiar with administration planning” who spoke to the Washington Post, such protections are unlikely to materialize before the presidential election.

So, where does that leave trans athletes? US Supreme and Circuit Court decisions have found that Title IX protects trans people–and trans athletes specifically in one recent case from West Virginia–but it’s still an unsettled area of law that allows for restrictions in 25 states. Six Republican Attorneys General who are convinced that Biden’s Title IX changes do allow transgender athletes to compete have sued to maintain their discriminatory status quos. The courts will keep on courting and sort it out in time.

Even in Washington’s bluer pastures, state law does not explicitly address athletic participation, but LGBTQ legal advocates who spoke to The Stranger said a progressive K-12 policy and a state anti-discrimination statute protect them.

In 2008, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), the nonprofit rule-making body for K-12 athletics in Washington, enacted the first sports policy of its kind for trans students. The policy allowed students at every grade level to play on the teams that aligned with their gender identity after their school’s athletic director had deemed them eligible for play. No surgery, no hormones, and no proof were needed.

Aidan Key helped write the WIAA policy in 2008. The founder of the Seattle nonprofit Gender Diversity was one of four transgender people called in to help the association fix the policy it had developed the previous year.

As lawyers from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the ACLU vigorously debated an alternative solution based on body mass index, Key asserted that self-identification needed to be the baseline, and that a review committee could address any exceptional situations as they arose.

Key said he understands why people have questions about trans athletes when we’re so used to dividing sports by gender and for reasons of equity, “but the threat [of trans student athletes] is nonexistent,” he said.

He continued: “Their stats, their scores, and their times for the various competitions and team sports are right there with their peers. I’m up for keeping an eye on things and reflecting on what we’ve put in place, but the notion that is being just stirred so vigorously … it’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors.”

A spokesperson with the WIAA said it does not actively track the specific number of trans athletes competing in Washington schools, but the association is aware that “there are and have been athletes competing.”

Roxana Gomez, youth policy program director at the ACLU of Washington, explained that, in her area of law, few things are as cut and dry as including trans kids in Washington school sports, which surprised her. The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) reinforces the WIAA standard, and if schools want to participate in the league, then they’ve gotta follow the rules.

Now, reader, if you’re currently stewing about the definitive athletic advantage of trans women, then please reduce to a simmer, as science does not support that claim.

A recent cross-section study funded by the International Olympic Committee and published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine found trans athletes were at a disadvantage when compared to cisgender athletes. In 2017, another leading journal published a literature review that found no “direct or consistent research” showing advantage. One 2023 study in Frontiers Exercise Physiology found that hormone therapy “reduced, if not erased” sex differences in transgender patients over time.

Outside of policy at the school level, queer legal advocates said the Washington Law Against Discrimination is on the side of trans athletes.

Denise Diskin, co-executive director of the QLaw Foundation of Washington, said the WLAD does not directly address athletic participation, but it does protect gender identity and expression under the banner of sexual orientation.

“I think Washington law is very clear that forcing trans athletes to play on a team that doesn’t meet their gender identity and expression is unlawful,” she said. “Now, does that mean that every league in Washington is going to follow that rule? No. Because honestly, if people always follow the law, then I would be a flower-arranger instead of a lawyer.”

Diskin said the law is less clear when it comes to member-organizations and pay-topay leagues. Colleges are another concern.

In April, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) voted to ban trans athletes from competing against women, a decision that affects roughly 83,000 athletes at 241 colleges across the country. One of them is the Evergreen State College in Olympia.

A spokesperson for Evergreen said in an email that it is working with the Attorney General’s Office to see if the NAIA ruling conflicted with the state’s anti-discrimination law. (The Attorney General’s office declined to give an official opinion.)

While the NAIA ruling did not impact any current student athletes at Evergreen, the college’s director of athletics, Elizabeth McHugh, said in a statement that the department felt deeply disappointed in the NAIA’s vote and re-

mained committed to advocating for policies that uphold the rights of transgender athletes.

The NAIA ruling has no bearing on big state schools such as the University of Washington and Washington State University, both members of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA). The NCAA has its own problems–and higher stakes. Its decisions affect half-a-million athletes at 1,000 colleges and universities, but only about 40 of them are known to be transgender.

Two years ago, the association swapped its long-standing policy of allowing trans athletes to play for the non-policy of deferring to the international guidelines of each individual sport. For sports without international guidelines, the NCAA looks to the Olympic Committee for rules.

The NCAA decided to implement the changes slowly, and by next school year the process will be complete. At its end, trans women will be banned from NCAA swimming, diving, water polo, cross country, cycling, and track and field–indoors and out.

Transgender athletes and their allies worry the NCAA could go the way of the NAIA. As the NCAA hosted its annual Inclusion Forum in Indianapolis last month, 400 current and former collegiate athletes, researchers, and civil rights groups sent a letter begging the association to allow trans athletes to play. On the other side, a group of cis woman athletes sued the NCAA, claiming transgender participation actually violated their rights under Title IX. The NCAA said its policy is still under review.

Gee, Joseph, that Title IX update sure would help alleviate all this confusion! ■

A PRIDE WEEK SPECTACLE!

With big wigs, over-the-top looks, and comedic charm, local drag star Anita Spritzer brings her live one woman show to Seattle Opera.

Getting High with Cheer Seattle

A Very Queer Edition of Nathalie Graham’s ‘Play Date’ Column

BY NATHALIE GRAHAM

Sometimes on a Sunday night you find yourself holding a woman up by the soles of her feet.

I gripped Stevie Escobedo, 33, by her white sneaker. Beside me, Anthony Alston, 53, cradled her other shoe. He breathed the counts of the routine we had just rehearsed in pantomime. I couldn’t remember the counts, so I mimicked Alston, keeping one eye on him and the other on Escobedo, who, from my vantage point, was all leg. Her torso and head poked out from above her knee. I’d never seen a person from this perspective. “That’s fun,” I thought. Similarly, no one had ever trusted me with their life like this. And, should they have?

“Six, seven, eight,” Alston called. We raised Escobedo up, then down. My fingers turned white from squeezing her shoe so hard. Any wobble and she’d topple. Somehow, she dismounted in one piece.

Le Carr, 32, who had been spotting from the back as an aptly named “back spot,” turned to me. “Are you ready to get up there?” I shrugged. Why not?

For my latest exploration into Seattle subcultures, I hoisted myself onto the shoulders of Cheer Seattle’s “queerleaders” to figure out what this majority-LGBTQIA nonprofit was all about and to determine the origin of the pep in its step.

In doing so, I met a group of people changing a historically gendered sport by stripping away its more restrictive rules and stereo-

types. What’s left behind is all the elements of cheerleading glossed over in pop-culture: the positivity, the enthusiasm, the teamwork, the trust.

Formed in 2014, Cheer Seattle is part of the 14-team nationwide Pride Cheerleading Association. The group aims to allow LGBTQ+ members and their allies to perform while raising money for good causes and awareness about the queer community.

Cheer Seattle hosts three teams: a stunt team (Sapphire), a dance team (Emerald), and a production team (Diamond), so anyone who’s interested in cheer has a place. They cheer at sporting events, they volunteer at fundraisers and races, and they perform at Pride. This year, Cheer Seattle’s raised funds will go toward The Lavender Rights Project, a Washington-based group focused on Black trans women.

“It [feels] like using my powers for good,” Alston said. “Going to Pride events year after year is one thing, but being in the parade and raising money for a local charity is really inspiring and motivating.”

Alston was one of three people who started Cheer Seattle 10 years ago. The group’s origin, however, starts in San Francisco.

Alston joined Cheer San Francisco, the first of the PCA teams, back in 2001. A gay Seattle transplant adrift in a post-dot-combust and post-9/11-world, he needed community. As a lifelong self-proclaimed band geek marching on football fields next to cheer

squads, he said he’d always harbored a desire to take up a pair of pom-poms of his own.

“I always saw the cheerleaders, and I was like, ‘One day, that would be cool,’” he said. “But I thought I was too old.”

When Cheer San Francisco started recruiting back spots, he joined.

Basket tosses! Basket tosses! Basket tosses!

“Wearing that uniform was awesome,” he said. ‘I’m getting chills just telling you about it because it brings back a flood of memories.”

He led the San Francisco Pride parade for six years, driving his truck equipped with blaring freight train horns and leading 300 cheerleaders from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, all doing stunts along the way.

“Looking down Market Street and everyone is waiting for us to start the parade, the anticipation, the energy, the excitement, and then you’d see basket tosses! Basket tosses! Basket tosses!” He said, gesturing with his hands, his fingernails painted blue and green. “When you’re performing, you’re connecting with your community, you’re connecting with the crowds, you’re hyping them up,

you’re giving them something.”

As he gets older, performing takes more of a toll on his body—“I’ve sacrificed both my biceps to cheer,” he said, yet he still can’t give it up.

“There’s no other high that satisfies me that much,” he said.

When he moved back to Seattle, he knew he needed to start a PCA team. So he did. Now, while performing still gives him that high, he also derives satisfaction from watching people grow because of this thing he started.

“What they were getting out of the experience—people who had never cheered before, who wanted to fly, who wanted to base, who wanted to dance and perform—they got those experiences through Cheer Seattle,” he said. “I’m glad to facilitate that. It’s like a proud papa moment.”

A Gayer High School Do-Over Escobedo recently moved to Seattle from Colorado after realizing she was queer. Determined to explore that, she made the difficult choice to part ways with her then-husband, who is still her best friend, and branch out on her own.

“I was trying to figure out who I am as an adult, as a human,” she said. She found Cheer Seattle last October.

Escobedo cheered in high school, but she hadn’t picked up any pom-poms since. Picking them up again as an adult felt like a high

TENZIN J. ARMENTA

school do-over–except, this time way gayer.

“I definitely feel like I’ve been going through my queer adolescence this whole time,” she said. “I’m reliving high school in such a different space.”

As a late-blooming queer person, she says things like the act of coming into your sexuality during the prime of adulthood can often be difficult and lonely.

“It’s rough just as it was the first time, as it was in high school; the pains, the awkwardness, the discomfort … Even coming onto a cheerleading team and being 33—that’s probably not the most comfortable thing, but the more you can live in that discomfort, the more you’re going to experience life,” she said.

Rediscovering a sport she loved alongside a team full of fellow LGBTQ+ people helped her grow, and now she wants to help Cheer Seattle change and grow, too.

“Everything has been passed down in cheerleading,” she said, speaking of the traditions and the status quo of the sport. “But we’re the queer community, we’re the queer community in Seattle,” she snapped her fingers. “Let’s cunt it up!”

Binary Bustin’ Since the pandemic, Cheer Seattle has gone through some big changes of its own. One big change has been around fliers.

Spencer Watson, 30, came out as gay in Boise, Idaho when he was 12. Right around that time, he joined his first cheerleading team. He was the only boy, but he didn’t care. He fell in love with cheerleading and it changed his life, both personally and geographically.

He left Idaho after senior year to join an all-star cheer team in Kent, Washington.

“The driver [for my move] was Seattle; like, I’m gonna bloom as a big ol’ gay boy here, not in Idaho,” he said.

Throughout his 18 years of performing cheer and his 15 years of coaching it, Watson, now a coach at Cheer Seattle, never flew, the position in cheerleading where you’re tossed in the air like a little sack of potatoes with pointed toes. Despite teaching the skill, Watson never tried it. He wasn’t allowed.

Traditional cheerleading harbors a stereotype where “boys don’t fly,” only women fly. “That’s their role,” Watson said. “It’s this binary gender role that I’m not here for.”

When he first started coaching at Cheer Seattle nine years ago, he tried to change

the flier rules. Even in a progressive, boundary-pushing organization, it took years for the change to catch on universally versus on a case-by-case basis. In the last four years, that’s changed.

“It’s been such an inspiration for all the other members who had wanted to fly but didn’t feel they had not only the gender to fly but the body type to fly,” Watson said. “There are so many other factors that play a role in flying than weight, or, fuck, your gender.”

Tony Thompson, 37, never cheered in his life before joining Cheer Seattle. Now, as a performer, he wants to do it all.

“I’m mainly a backspot, I help lift the flier into the air,” Thompson said. “But, I’m trying to be a triple threat. I also want to be a base, and I also want to fly next season. The fliers get most of the face time, and having a queer male flier out there would be really good. I’m trying to bring more representation into the air.”

He continued: “I’m not trying to throw a Showgirls moment, but I will do a Showgirls moment.”

All body types and all genders can fly at Cheer Seattle. Thompson says that Cheer Seattle is the “most queer-diverse” of the cheerleading teams.

“We push that envelope,” he said.

For the Enbys

Speaking of breaking cheerleading norms, Cheer Seattle recently started offering gender neutral uniform options.

“We try to get away from the binary,” Thompson said. “We can wear whatever we want to wear.” Maybe that’s a skirt, maybe that’s leggings.

It’s one way of dismantling rules around a sport which, for decades, was been built on norms around femininity.

Carr, who I originally met when they taught me how to powerlift, grew up cheerleading at a highly competitive level before an injury ended their cheer career.

“I obviously really value the competition and the sportiness of it, but I also really struggled with a lot of the feelings of belonging, at least when I did it back in Georgia,” Carr said

Carr came out as nonbinary in the years since they last did a back handspring.

Last summer, they found Cheer Seattle after drunkenly googling “queer cheerleading” at Queer/Bar. They sent in an application at 2

am and have been with the squad ever since.

Carr described Cheer Seattle as “a way of cheerleading that has all the positives.”

The team serves as a foil to the stereotypical perception of cheerleading; you know, the mean girls, the cliques, the drama.

“It is absolutely not intimidating and it is not exclusive,” Carr said. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve had 12-plus years of experience or never cheered before in your life.”

They told me this, and then–true to their word–they coaxed me to fly.

On Top of the Pyramid

I gripped Carr’s and Alton’s shoulders. With my arms straight, I leaned all my weight onto their bodies and pulled myself into a ball, my knees level with their ears.

All I could focus on was the thought of causing them pain.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked.

They both told me no, I was fine. Beneath me, their bodies braced. They felt solid. This was why they were called bases.

“Three and four and…” someone–maybe everyone–counted, and I swung my feet into each of their hands. They held me aloft.

“What the hell, what the hell,” I thought. How was I going to stand up?

A different person called: “Keep your arms by your sides and straighten your arms!” As someone most comfortable within the confines of rules and instructions, I obeyed happily.

Then, even though I knew it was com -

ing, I completely forgot the part where Carr and Alston would heft me up while I stood on their hands. Unexpectedly, they propelled me upward so I was towering above the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts’ practice area. My stomach dropped, my heart fluttered, everyone looked up at me while I looked down on them. This was a new perspective, too. I stretched my arms up, keeping my body as straight and grounded as I could.

I stretched my arms out wide, my fists curled loosely like cinnamon rolls, like a cheerleader.

Around me, the rest of the squad practiced legitimate basket tosses, throwing their fliers into the air and catching them.

Despite the new heights, I never worried about falling. The team below me, most of whom I’d just met, would catch me–I was sure of that. The trust required for this sport seemed greater than the athleticism, I thought. And yet, depending on these people felt like second nature.

Gently, the bases lowered me down and eased me into a dismount.

As I stood on the ground, my body vibrated. I simultaneously felt like I’d just walked off a rollercoaster and like I’d just chugged a coffee on an empty stomach. My head swam, my pulse raced. Everyone around me patted me on the back, showering me with compliments. I could see how cheerleading could become an addiction.

“We’ll teach you tumbling next,” Carr said. ■

Cheer Seattle’s volun-cheerleaders spend each year volunteering and cheering to raise funds for LGBTQ+ nonprofits.

Cheer Seattle performing a routine in the opening ceremony for the 2023 Gay Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

TENZIN J. ARMENTA

TENZIN J. ARMENTA

The Reality Behind the Story I Told The Stranger

I Said I Was Detrans, but Really I Was Struggling

BY KY SCHEVERS

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY TERESA GRASSESCHI

Originally published in Reclaiming Trans

Back when I was still a detrans woman, I was interviewed a few times by journalists for articles on detransitioning. An article in The Stranger written by Katie Herzog drew the most attention and the strongest reactions. Many trans people and their allies found the article offensive and transphobic, and they reacted to it in outrage. Many also wrote critical responses.

That Stranger article gives an incomplete impression of who I am in large part because of how I represented who I was when Herzog interviewed me. Now I want to uncover the parts of my life that I kept hidden at the time, and to discuss the deception I was engaging in but unaware of.

In doing so I do not mean to excuse my actions or argue that my lack of awareness made them any less harmful. I believe it’s important for people to know my state of mind; I was more a cult member than a con artist.

In the months before the interview, there were many signs that my detransition wasn’t working out, but I was keeping all of that almost entirely to myself. I’d been living as a detrans woman and using “alternative treatments” to cope with dysphoria for around four years at that point. When I look back on my journals from that time, I find myself talking about how I still had trouble relating to my female body; it still felt weird, and I felt uncomfortable with my breasts and reproductive parts in particular. I could accept that I had those body parts, but it took work to do so, and I didn’t feel especially positive about them or connected to them. I also talked about wanting a cock and how that seemed more appealing than having a cunt. In one journal entry, I wrote that I still wanted a male body on some level and “[i]f I woke up with a

male body, I think I’d be ok with that as long as it wasn’t radically different, just the male version of my current body.”

I wrote about how I still felt like a dude sometimes, like a kind of “female man.” I talked about how I “became a woman” when I detransitioned and about how much work that involved.

I wrote about how I found myself wishing

I didn’t get to believing in transphobic ideology all at once, and I couldn’t disengage from it all at once, either.

that I had gotten more out of detransitioning than I actually did, how I had wanted it to fix more problems in my life.

I talked about how “I made myself into a lesbian feminist,” how I had really wanted learning to accept myself as a woman to heal me and make me whole, and it just hadn’t lived up to my expectations. Some of it helped me heal from past trauma, but not as much I was hoping it would, and I felt let down.

I talked about how hard and stressful it

was to live as a woman. I was beginning to question both my motives for detransitioning and just how much it had helped me.

I wrote about how both my detransition and conversion to radical feminism now looked like they were at least partially a response to conflict and trauma I had experienced in a radical queer collective house I used to live in. I talked about how I had joined the radical feminist community because of how I’d been hurt in the radical queer community. I’d been looking for a better, safer place to belong. That’s not what I’d found, not at all.

My consciousness was fractured into the parts that knew the truth and the parts that still wanted to uphold the ideology I’d bought into.

In fact, I found the same kind of hurtful behavior and abusive people in the radical feminist scene.

I still had a very critical view of transitioning and tended to see trans identity as a response to living in patriarchy, but I was growing increasingly frustrated with the way most radical feminists viewed trans people and transitioning. I was questioning more and developing my own views based on my experiences and research into the history of trans people and medical transition. I was fed up with how cruel many radical feminists were towards trans people, how they talked about transitioned bodies with disgust, and how so many of them treated trans people as if they were freakish and inferior. I was opening up to the idea that for some people being trans was the most authentic way to exist in this present society, and that transitioning actually helped some people, though I still worried a lot about people being pushed to transition or to identify as trans.

This thinking marked a big shift for someone who had previously believed that all trans identity was a harmful coping

mechanism, and that transition was inherently harmful, a person who wanted to stop as many people as possible from transitioning and to encourage people to detransition or desist. I didn’t get to believing in transphobic ideology all at once, and I couldn’t disengage from it all at once, either. It was a long process that took years to fully unfold.

At the time, I was conducting research for a book on “female gender dysphoria” that I was planning to write. I wanted to talk about gender dysphoria in female-assigned people as a result of life under patriarchy and discuss the di erent ways people managed this dysphoria.

When I began my research, I saw both medical transition and radical feminism as ways to respond to “female gender dysphoria,” the fi rst being contaminated by false consciousness while the latter got to the true root of the problem.

My views ended up shifting dramatically over the course of my research.

What I learned about the history of trans peoples’ interactions with medical professionals ended up challenging a lot of my beliefs, but initially I twisted what I read to fit my pre-existing theories and eagerly shared my “findings” with others, offering up “proof” to back up the radical feminist interpretation of transmasculinity and transition.

It was hard for me to totally break free from radical feminist ideology, in large part because of the kind of people I was spending most of my time with. During that period of my life, I lived in the East Bay, where I participated in a community of transphobic radical feminist lesbians, a few of whom were also detrans or re-identi-

TERESA GRASSESCHI

fied. I was dating and living with a member of this community.

While hanging out among ourselves, the other younger members of this scene and I would jokingly refer to ourselves and to each other as “TERFs”, reclaiming a word we viewed as a slur. Many of us got a kick out of having a secret life in a subculture outsiders (correctly) viewed as a hate group.

We thought such people were ridiculous and misogynistic for seeing us as hateful, and we frequently mocked them, acting as if they were ignorant, misled and/ or overly sensitive. We would gather at a lesbian-owned coffee shop and complain about how trans activists were a threat to lesbian culture, talk about dangerous and disgusting “autogynephiles” trying to infiltrate “female-only” spaces, and the social forces supposedly pushing lesbians to “dis-identify from femaleness” and identify as trans.

Generally, we were much more sympathetic towards transmasculine people than we were towards transfeminine people. We were especially harsh and hateful towards trans lesbians and other transfeminine people who were attracted to women. We also hung out with older lesbians, who were happy to find younger dykes who shared their particular transphobic interpretation of lesbian feminism. I recall one of these older women talking about how Big Pharma was funding the trans movement and tricking butch dykes, femmy gay men, and other gender nonconforming people into transitioning.

I had made the choice to move to a city with a radical lesbian feminist subculture and attempted to live up to my separatist views and values. I spent years working with other women to build the detransitioned women’s community and had become an influential detrans writer and activist. One of my essays had been published in an anti-trans anthology called Female Erasure , alongside influential transphobic thinkers such as Cathy Brennen, Sheila Jeffreys, Leirre Keith, Jennifer Bilek, and Gallus Mag.

I’d bought into. There was the persona I’d created–that of a detransitioned radical lesbian feminist–and there was a messier reality that I tried to keep hidden, even from myself.

I was a trans person who spent most of my time with lesbians who didn’t believe trans people existed and didn’t want them to exist, who treated trans people as a threat to their own existence.

To participate in this community, I had to deny my own feelings, hide many of my thoughts, and distort much of my reality. I had to pretend that I wasn’t who I was every single day. There was no way to be a part of this group without engaging in constant deception. My social life depended on it. This is who I was, and this is what my life was like when Herzog interviewed me.

On the day of the interview, before my phone call with her, I wrote in my journal:

I want people to know that detransitioning didn’t work for me.

“I have a phone interview with a journalist this afternoon. Should be interesting. Not totally sure I’m the person to do it because I’m having doubts if I really count as a detransitioned woman anymore. I detransitioned, that’s true. Am I sticking with that though? Did I just need to try out living as a woman because I didn’t get the chance to before? I don’t think I need to make anymore changes to my body. I’m also not sure I’d really be happy living full-time as a man. I probably am more in-between than anything but I have a lot of trouble accepting that. I don’t know why I’m like this but I’ve been this way for most of my life now. Able to see myself as a woman or a man. ” I kept these feelings hidden just as I was hiding so much else. I was still very invested in the role I’d performed as a creator and representative of the detransitioned women’s community.

I had plunged into the life I thought I wanted, but it didn’t seem to be working. Nevertheless, I kept my doubts, questions, and disillusionment hidden inside my head and in my journals. In private, I wrote out my criticisms and disillusionment with radical feminism, but among my friends I still voiced the same concerns about trans people, and I still made the same arguments. I went back and forth between acknowledging that my detransition hadn’t really worked and struggling to make it work. I switched back and forth between recognizing that I still found much in common with trans men to writing out all the reasons I couldn’t identify as trans. I tried to treat my dysphoria using the methods I’d promoted for years, doing my best to “accept myself as a woman” because I couldn’t see how I could give it up at this point. My consciousness was fractured into the parts that knew the truth and the parts that still wanted to uphold the ideology

Once the interview actually happened, I found it easy to slip back into the role I’d perfected by that point. I’d given multiple workshops, written hundreds of pages of blog posts, made videos, and talked to numerous people about what it meant to be a detransitioned woman. I had my story down, and I knew which parts to emphasize. I believed in the story I was telling and thought I was doing important work. I spoke not only for myself but for my community. Part of my job was to represent detransitioned women and make our stories visible to others. I had ideas I wanted to communicate, but I was largely focused on talking about my lived experience. I wanted other detransitioned women to know they weren’t alone. I wanted people to see that living as a detransitioned woman was possible, to make us seem like real people, not something theoretical or a scare story. I don’t think all my intentions were bad, and I do think greater visibility would help detrans people.

My intentions, however good, don’t change the fact that my understanding of myself was grounded in transphobic ideology and was a distortion of my own reality. I was telling the story I thought should be my truth, not actually describing my reality. There’s a lot I used

to believe about my own life that I now see as a manifestation of self-hatred, and I worry about the impact my story could’ve had on other people.

In the article for The Stranger, Herzog, for instance, describes me as being merely sympathetic to radical feminism. In reality, I was far more of a radical feminist than I came off in the article, and I think Herzog inaccurately reflects the relationship between the detransitioned women’s community I belonged to and radical feminism. She mentions non-detrans radical feminists trying to use our stories, but she didn’t discuss how many detransitioned women themselves use their experiences to advance transphobic radical feminism. Many detrans women I knew were committed radical feminists who believed all trans identity was rooted in internalized misogyny and trauma. We didn’t like it when other radical feminists objectified us or treated us primarily as a way to win arguments with trans people, but we shared many of their views and political goals.

The story I told to The Stranger was a fabrication, one that I believed in and fought for. It was a story I got trapped in for years, one that swallowed up my actual life. I can’t say it’s entirely false–after all, it includes events from life that did indeed happen, but I don’t believe in this story anymore, and I don’t want it overshadowing my life. It confined and trapped me for years, and I’m concerned about the impact that it had on others.

I’m concerned the story I told could’ve led other trans people to deny or distort themselves. I fear that it encouraged cis people to dismiss trans peoples’ identities or reinforced their transphobia. I was a trans person with a distorted view of myself, magnifying that and projecting it into the larger culture, inflicting my own wounds on other trans people. I am deeply sorry for any suffering I have caused others. I am sorry for participating in transphobic subcultures and engaging in what I now see as noxious and hateful behavior.

The story I told to The Stranger was a fabrication, one that I believed in and fought for.

The way Herzog described my politics and the relationship between the detransitioned women’s community and radical feminism is partially a result of how I represented myself when she interviewed me. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I intentionally moderated my views when talking to most people outside of the radical feminist subculture I belonged to. My views were in the process of changing, and I had gotten a lot more open-minded about transitioning and trans people. At the same time, I was still hanging out with self-identified TERFs, and I held a lot of transphobic beliefs.

I can’t imagine that I was entirely forthright with all my views. I focused largely on promoting the idea that trans identity and transitioning could be a manifestation of trauma, dissociation, and internalized misogyny, and I used my story as a way to demonstrate that. I framed what I was doing as working for detransitioned, re-identified, and dysphoric women instead of against trans people. I didn’t see myself as being dishonest when I hid my more extreme views, I saw myself as being practical. I saw most people as being unready for “the truth,” and there were serious consequences to openly calling into question the entire notion of trans identity, and I wanted to avoid that.

I presented Herzog with a more moderate version of my detrans radical feminist persona, completely omitting my more transphobic views and my connections to anti-trans lesbian feminists as well as my raging dysphoria and my disappointment with womanhood. I slipped into the character I’d perfected and forgot about the feelings and doubts I struggled with. I put the well-being of the detrans women’s community ahead of describing the real details of my life. I didn’t even feel like a woman when I gave that interview, but I felt like I had to be one anyways or I would be letting down my whole community.

I can’t change the past, but I can describe what my life was actually like at the time and make visible the parts I left out or hid. I want people to know that detransitioning didn’t work for me, that it stopped working for me even as I was presenting myself as if it had. I want people to know that I belonged to transphobic communities that encouraged me to deceive myself and others. I want people to know that journalists can be fooled when they hear a story that lines up with what they may be expecting to find. So many people who question trans identities take the stories of detrans people at face value, never considering that there could be more to them than meets the eye.

I’m a trans person who converted to a transphobic ideology, surrounded myself with transphobic people and worked against my own people. I struggle with grief and regret over many of the choices I’ve made.

I commit myself now to be as honest as I can be. I can’t know how my views, feelings, and perspectives will change over time but I can do my best to represent my life and my beliefs as openly and clearly as possible. Writing about that particular time in my past is difficult because I had a lot of contradictory parts and impulses pulling me in different directions. I can remember what it was like, but I worry others will find my descriptions of it confusing. That time in my life was confusing to live through, and it’s surreal to look back on.

I read my old journals and can’t imagine that I shared many of these thoughts and feelings with the lesbians I was friends with. I didn’t even share most of them with my partner at the time. I knew I kept a lot from other people, but it’s intense to realize just how much.

At the same time, it’s a relief to write about this now. Back then, I existed in so many different pieces. I can finally bring all the parts together, connect them to create a more honest description of my past, and make myself whole. ■

ACROSS

1. Continent for Nepal and Taiwan, countries where marriage equality is legal

5. Fashionable, like Billy Porter or Janelle Monáe

9. Wrapped package

13. Had a good cry

14. Pleasant smell

15. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner ___ Oddly

16. Sound bounce-back

17. Surgical beam of light used in some genderaffirming care

18. One of 26.2 in a marathon

19. Bachelors’ encountered on the internet?

22. Raggedy doll

24. “We’re off to ___ the wizard ...”

25. Sudden loud noise

26. One-on-one DragCon VIP experience

30. Eagerly anticipate

31. Give temporarily

32. Canoodling at the cafe, perhaps: Abbr.

35. Siestas

36. Less wet

38. “Making Gay History” author and podcast host Marcus

39. Sports org. for Jan-Michael Gambill and Brian Vahaly: Abbr.

40. Little Red Riding ___

41. Fingerless hand covering for Freddie Mercury

42. Branded electric instrument played by Brandi Carlile or k. d. lang

45. Little

47. One of many in the recent Taylor Swift mega tour

48. Sibilant consonant

49. Off-limits activities for queer icon Rudolph

53. Muffin stuffin’, sometimes

54. Aussie besties

55. Cash dispensers outside the gay club: Abbr.

58. “I identify with this meme 100%”

59. Baking chambers for Kristen Kish and Melissa King

60. Casual get-together

61. Put into words

62. Prepare for a gayby by setting up the nursery, say

63. Lady Gaga song “The ___ of Glory” DOWN

1. Feeling of wonder at seeing your first Pride parade, perhaps

2. “Just a ___!”

3. Hinge or Scruff, for example

4. Soooo many

5. Stretched one’s neck (to check out that bi cutie!)

6. Firefighter’s tool

7. Messaged on WhatsApp

8. One in a rainbow array of ‘80s stuffed animals

9. One always at Equinox

10. Dartmouth and Brown, for two

11. Cut of beef

12. Casual tops

14. 1979 Sigourney Weaver film featuring trans woman character Lambert

20. Exam for future attorneys at Lambda Legal or the Transgender Law Center: Abbr.

21. “Rhinestone Cowboy” singer Campbell

22. Kitchenaid competitor

23. Not yet experienced with

27. “___ better to have loved and lost ...”

28. Astro___ lubricant

29. Name in a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision

32. Publicly fought for justice for the trans community, say 33. Prima donnas 34. Some Taiwanese laptops 36. Out TV news journalist formerly with CNN

Angled pole

38. Alan Cumming’s role on “The Good Wife”

Didn’t let out, as one’s breath 41. Pacific island “where America’s day begins” 42. Stoked, like flames 43. Queen for a day? 44. Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of ___”

45. Company that helps you sleep with a king

46. Florida setting for “The Golden Girls”

49. Baseball stat for Billy Bean and others: Abbr.

50. It throws shade?

51. GPS-suggested ways to go: Abbr.

52. Worry-free feeling, like that of a discriminationfree life

56. Flavor-enhancing additive: Abbr. 57. ___/her pronouns

Gender Queer BY NATE CARDIN

MELANIE GILLMAN

Your Pride Month Itinerary

Where to Dance, Sing, Shop, and Party

for Pride

Festivals

Cutie Fest

June 22–23

Founded by Kaitlin Fritz in 2022, Cutie Fest is an alternative craft market that offers an accessible, inclusive alternative to other similar events, requiring no vendor fee. Since its inception, the festival has also spawned a nonprofit called the Cutie Foundation, which is focused on empowering young artists. In the past, Cutie Fest has taken place at Cal Anderson Park, but excitingly, this iteration will be the first to take place at Bell Street Park in downtown Seattle and to be supported by the Downtown Seattle Association, meaning there will be capacity for food stalls, live music stages, and amenities like bathrooms. It’s been so heartening to see this scrappy grassroots movement grow, and I can’t wait to be there with a fun beverage in hand, ready to throw money at everything from handmade Crocs charms to Shrinky Dink keychains. Prepare to make lots of new queer friends. (Bell Street Park, 340 Bell St, noon–7 pm, free, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

Cuff Complex Pride Fest

June 28–30

Cuff Complex is back with its long-standing pride festival boasting Grammy-nominated synth-pop sensation Hot Chip, renowned electronic music producer Karsten Sollors, legendary drag queen Lady Bunny, London-based collective Horse Meat Disco, self-proclaimed “one-woman funk machine” DJ Holographic, RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni Kornbread, and many more. The three-day affair will kick off with a snazzy Pride edition of Bearracuda on Friday followed by live performances on Saturday and Sunday. (Cuff Complex, 1533 13th Ave, $40–$125, 21+) AUDREY VANN

Seattle PrideFest

June 29–30

Claiming the title of “largest free pride festival in the country,” Seattle PrideFest takes over Capitol Hill with a street fair and performers on Saturday and organizes a parade on Sunday from Westlake Park to Seattle Center. Our favorite moment is when everyone from the parade inevitably ends up in the International Fountain for a sparkly, wet dance party. The full schedule and music lineup have yet to be released, but we’re expecting a fabulous slate of drag queens and local bands. (Capitol Hill and Seattle Center, noon–8 pm, free, all ages) SHANNON LUBETICH

Queer/Pride Festival 2024

JUNE 28–30

This event is sort of like if Seattle PrideFest got tangled up in Capitol Hill Block Party. Outside of Queer/Bar, gaggles of queer icons will take the outdoor stage with music, drag, and burlesque performances. After last year’s lineup boasted headliners Pabllo Vittar, Trixie Mattel, and Charo, it was hard to imagine what could top (or even match) that holy trinity, but they did it again! Queen of indie sleaze Santigold will headline with queer pop sister duo Tegan and Sara, “sugar trap” rapper Rico Nasty, art pop polymath Perfume Genius, and indie rock band Juliette & the Licks (fronted by none other than Juliette Lewis). Plus, RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Shea Couleé, Alaska Thunderfuck, Detox, Roxxxy Andrews, Lady Camden, and Bosco will goop and gag the crowd alongside local drag talent. (Various locations around Capitol Hill, $59–$299, 21+) AUDREY VANN

Parties & Nightlife

Dance Church Pride 2024 with MUNA

Sun June 9

Hello, fellow fans of the queer indie-pop icons and self-proclaimed “greatest band in the world” MUNA: I “Know a Place” where we can dance our gay hearts out to our favorite sapphic anthems, and that place is Century Ballroom, where the local all-levels movement class Dance Church will host an exuberant party in collaboration with the musical group to celebrate Pride. No, members Katie Gavin, Naomi McPherson, and Josette Maskin won’t be there in person, but you can expect to hear them on the play-

list, and 10% of profits will go to Black and Pink, a national organization fighting for prison abolition and working to liberate the LGBTQIAS2+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by the criminal punishment system. (Century Ballroom, 915 E Pine St, 10 am, $20, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

Queer Prom

Sat June 22

Chances are good that Queer Prom Seattle will be a little cooler than your high school’s shindig. The rainbow-hued hop will return with more DJs, dancing, and sparkly vendors. Once again, the bash will close out with a Queer Court competition hosted by Rebecca Mm Davis and a step-down performance by last year’s King Sherwood Ryder, leading to the crowning of a new Queer Monarch. Think of it like a traditional school prom court of popular kids, but like, less jocks and cheerleaders

and much, much more glitter. (The Crocodile, 2505 First Ave, 7 pm, $35, 21+) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Wildrose Pride 2024

June 28–30

This is your semi-regular reminder that there are only 37 surviving lesbian bars in the United States, so it’s a rare and special thing to be able to join in amongst the pride revelry at the Wildrose, one of the West Coast’s oldest establishments catering to dykes. Their three-day lineup of festivities this year, hosted by the “Chaos Queen” Frizzancis and singer Adra Boo, includes appearances from DJs SailorHank, Summersoft, Chelsea Starr, Mixxtress, Mixx America, Ricki Leigh, and local rockers Thunderpussy. Plus, look forward to a karaoke competition, burlesque seductresses Gritty City Sirens, dark wave band Dark Chisme, and the yacht rock spectacular Ship Show— there’s truly something for everyone. (Wildrose, 1021 E Pike St, $25–$170, 21+) JULIANNE BELL

WEST SMITH

PRIDE

Solid Pink Disco with DJ Trixie Mattel

FRI JUNE 14

On Wednesdays we wear pink… but we also wear pink to Trixie’s disco parties, where Mother herself DJs the house down boots for Pride. Listen, Trix may have grown up using an outhouse, but this performance tilts toward her more glamorous side, and yes, all guests are asked to adhere to a strict pink dress code in honor of the gay world’s It Girl. (Showbox SoDo, 1700 First Ave S, 8 pm, $55-$59.50, 21+) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Kremwerk Pride Weekend 2024

June 27–29

In the agonizing words of Kim Kardashian: I have the best advice for LGBTQ+ folks in Seattle—get your fucking ass up and dance. It seems like nobody wants to dance these days! And where better than at Kremwerk, where the dolls will sweat out their pride across three nights and four dance floors? This year’s musical highlights include B-Complex, Bimbo Hypnosis, Miss Twink USA, Gag Reflex, JENNGREEN, and T.Reverie, along with tons of other local DJs and drag performers. (Kremwerk Complex, 1809 Minor Ave #10, $59.48, 21+) AUDREY VANN

and Heidi N Closet will appear alongside local glamazons like Beau Degas, Monday Mourning, and Lisa Frank fantasy Anita Spritzer at the two-day dragstravaganza, which starts with a bang at the Saturday drag brunch (jams provided by DJ Baby Van Beezly), followed by a dance party ‘til late. On Sunday, shake it off at Heidi’s drag brunch (yes, you should go to brunch twice), where you’ll also spot Moscato Sky and Rowan Ruthless. (Rhein Haus, 912 12th Ave, noon-2 am, $30-$1,000, 21+) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Y2K Pride Party

Sat June 29

Grab your hot pink velour Juicy tracksuit, your Louis Vuitton handbag, your Lancôme Juicy Tubes lip gloss, and your bedazzled Motorola Razr, because the people behind Sapphic Events are hosting this Y2K-themed bash intended for all queer women and sapphics, hosted by Britney-worshipping singer ToX!c. DJs Pretty Please and Baby Van Beezly will keep the 2000s and present-day hits coming all night long, while performers Camila Sky, Novasia, and Velvet Ryder will beguile the crowd. I, for one, hope to see someone recreate Emma Watson’s tongue-out moves from The Bling Ring on the dance floor. (Nectar, 412 N 35th St, 10 pm–1:45 am, $20-$50, 21+) JULIANNE BELL

Sapphic Pride 2024

Sun June 30

Calling all sapphic hotties! After marching in Sunday’s Pride Parade, strut on up to Capitol Hill for the biggest sapphic party of the year. This queer woman- and sapphic-centered bash will keep you occupied with a stacked lineup of performers, live music, dancing, games, and more. Your host ToX!c will welcome drag, dance, and burlesque performers AndrogynAss, Chain-Him Tatum, Chastitty Honeydew, Chyna, and Lina to the mainstage along with DJ sets from Justice Manslayer, Abyss, and Baby Van Beezly. (Neighbours, 1509 Broadway, 4 pm, $16–$50, 21+) AUDREY VANN

Arts & Performance

Seattle Pride at Pioneer Square Art Walk

Pride Weekend at Rhein Haus

June 29–30

RuPaul’s Drag Race stans, you’re bound to hear a few names you recognize at this Pride party for the gods. Iconique show competitors Darienne Lake

Thurs June 6

Head to this month’s Pioneer Square Art Walk to scope Pride in Seattle: 50th Anniversary Art Exhibit, curated by Pride youth interns in collaboration with Seattle Pride and Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center. Here’s the scoop: Works in the special exhibition were created in a “youth public art activation” organized by Coyote Central. The show spotlights queer experiences of local LGBTQIA2S+ youth and draws from the artistic legacies of Black trans women, Black gender-diverse individuals, and queer Indigenous or two-spirit people. Expect creative responses to Seattle’s ballroom scene, Pioneer Square’s history, and the AIDS epidemic, too. (RailSpur, 419 Occidental Ave S, 5–10 pm, free, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO

JON

KINGMON

RHEIN

FOTOS OSCURA

Pride Anthems

Fri June 7

Celebrate the everlasting link between music and activism with a lyrical voyage through the past 50 years of pride anthems. Musical theater legends John Cameron Mitchell, Amy Jo Jackson, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Brian Nash, and Marty Thomas will perform the uplifting tunes of Donna Summer, Queen, George Michael, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, along with other songs that evoke the joy, liberation, and persistence of the queer community. (Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, 8 pm, $35–$90, all ages)

AUDREY VANN

Seattle Pride Parade 2024

SUN JUNE 30

Seattle’s Pride Parade is a little more than a don’t-miss—it’s a gargantuan gathering of more than 250 participating groups, with 300,000 spectators turning up to show off their sparkle. For the 50th anniversary this year, Seattle sports legends and power couple Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe will serve as the parade’s grand marshals as the event commemorates the first Seattle LGBTQIA+ gathering for collective resistance. Celebrations kick off with a preparty at Westlake Park; the parade will start at 11 am at Fourth and Pike, before marching loud and proud past two stages and concluding at Denny Way. Expect DJs, advocacy talks, food trucks, beer gardens, and traffic disruptions if, for some ill-advised reason, you attempt to drive downtown. (Downtown Seattle, Fourth Ave and Pike St, 11 am, free, all ages) SHANNON LUBETICH

Lavender Rights Project Presents The Black Trans Comedy Showcase 2024

Sat June 8

At this Black- and trans-centered comedy showcase, attendees can kiki and clap back with Lavender Rights Project, an organization supporting the Black intersex and gender-diverse community.

Delicious drag dessert TS Madison will host the evening of laughs featuring Black trans comics like “Swiss Army Knife” Mx. Dahlia Belle, multi-hyphenate LA queen Quei Tann, and Alabama-born trailblazer Sunkee Angel. Sit back and enjoy with nibbles and drinks—you might win a raffle prize, too. (SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 805 E Pine, 5–9 pm, $60, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Collide-O-Scope:

Pride Edition

Mon June 10

Collide-O-Scope is the brilliant brain baby of Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson, two local filmmakers and pop culture know-it-alls who cut, clip, and splice their way through hours and hours of music videos,

movies, television shows, old commercials, and other footage to piece together spellbinding video collages. It’s not a slap-dash memeification of vintage clips to get an easy laugh from 13-year-old YouTube addicts, Collide-O-Scope is an art form, a thoughtful and smart curation of strange, hilarious, surprising, and at times even touching moments of our history. (And I’m not just saying all these nice things because Wahlund is The Stranger’s director of video production. I liked Collide-O-Scope long before knowing Wahlund, as it’s been a Seattle staple for more than 12 years!)

For this month’s special Pride Edition, Wahlund and Anderson promise a “celebratory freakout” of remixed queer history and you’d be wise to buy tickets in advance as their shows usually sell out. (Here-After, 2505 First Ave, 8 pm, $15, 21+) MEGAN SELING

EMMA MEAD

NATE GOWDY

Seattle Pride Classic 2024

JUNE 7–9

The Seattle Pride Hockey Association returns with the fourth installment of the country’s most inclusive hockey tournament during Pride Month, offering free entrance to spectators who want to cheer on 20 teams in a draft-style competition across three days. Luke Prokop, the first openly gay player in the NHL, returns to the tournament to meet fans and wrap hockey sticks in pride tape donated by the NHL (which is pretty ironic, given the league’s momentary and very controversial ban on the rainbow-colored adhesive). DJs will be keeping the vibes high during games, the Reign City Riot pep band will make an appearance, and Kraken fans of all ages can register to skate with Buoy on Sunday afternoon. (Kraken Community Iceplex, 10601 Fifth Ave NE, free, all ages) SHANNON LUBETICH

Reality Gays - The “If You Can Dream It” Tour

Thurs June 20

Reality Gays is a reality TV podcast that connects many of my disparate interests: sex positivity, classic literature, queer history, ‘80s country music, and absolute garbage television. No, they don’t cover the polished oeuvre of Bravo—but lowerbudget filth like 90 Day Fiancé, Seeking Sister Wives, Love After Lockup and the god-forsaken, questionably incestuous dating show MILF Manor Hosts Matt Marr (called “Matty”)—a clinically trained therapist, makeup artist, and actor—and Jake Anthony (called “Poodle”)—a music teacher, composer, and life coach—flex their talents in psychology, music, comedy, and cosmetology to dissect trashy television into content that is both hilarious and heartfelt. Just in time for Pride Month, Matty and Poodle will bring the If You Can Dream It tour to Seattle for a live taping of the podcast that is sure to include plenty of improv, risqué costumes, and tragic stories about their Southern upbringings. (Triple Door, 216 Union St, 7:30 pm, $35-$75, all ages) AUDREY VANN

B. LIESSE PHOTO

Trans Pride Seattle 2024

FRI JUNE 28

Celebrate trans joy with an evening of performances, community speakers, a resource fair, and “chill vibes.” The Gender Justice League works to strengthen and connect the two-spirit, trans, and gender diverse (2STGD) community and its allies, a goal highlighted by this all-ages, free, and accessible event (masks are required to make it safe for immunocompromised community members). In a country that’s increasingly passing laws restricting the rights of trans folx, it’s more important than ever to be visible as we come together and celebrate trans lives. ( Volunteer Park Amphitheater, 1400 E Prospect St, 5–10 pm, free, all ages ) SHANNON LUBETICH

Community Events

Capitol Hill Pride

March and Rally

Sat June 22

Cal Anderson is usually full of dogs and their humans, but this fourth Saturday in Pride Month will look

A renewed commitment to welcome all with…

have everyone oohing, aahing, and wagging their tails. Activists and artists are scheduled to take the stage as we celebrate queerness and reflect on the origins of pride at Stonewall. (Cal Anderson Park, 1635 11th Ave, 10 am–10 pm, free, all ages) SHANNON LUBETICH

The Gays Go To Green Lake

Sat June 29

Perhaps you were one of the millions of people who became aware of the Gays Eating Garlic Bread in the Park sensation after a poster advertising it went massively viral on TikTok. The joyful gathering, which bid attendees to “BYOGB,” ended up drawing hordes of friendly carb-seeking queers to Meridian Park in Wallingford. I’m told it won’t happen again until next year, but the same organizers are turning their attention from alliums to aquatics for their next event, aptly titled The Gays Go to Green Lake. All members of the queer+ community are welcome to take a dip—nothing will be provided, so bring your own swimwear, water shoes, sunscreen, towels, and your most flamboyant floaties and get ready to socialize. Seattle freeze? I don’t know her. (East Green Lake Park, 7201 E Green Lake Dr N, 11 am–3 pm, free, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

For 50 years the United Methodist Church made promises it did not keep.

To all who have felt less than welcomed in our churches, we humbly apologize.

This year we’re especially happy to walk in Pride now that the United Methodist Church has cast away its rules which limited LGBTQ+ inclusion and tolerated other excluding policies. We are working to become a church where ALL are welcome.

We celebrate this progress and our renewed commitment to a more perfect love for ALL.

We invite you to join us. Happy Pride!

Please visit our booth at PrideFest for a list of Reconciling United Methodist Churches near you. The Reconciling United Methodist Churches of Western Washington.

ALEX GARLAND

CAPITOL HILL PRIDE