Strange Fruit

Coming out isn't what it used to be. These days, even the most sheltered people generally have at least some basic understanding of what it means to be gay. But for people living in certain communities, in certain countries, and with certain identities, coming out can still be dangerous - or even life-threatening. And, of course, no one just comes out once. In many ways, we're all coming out all the time. October 11 was National Coming Out Day, so in this week's episode, we talk about what it means to be out - for queer folks, trans folks, and especially people of color. Our guest is Aaron Weathers, who was on our very first episode in 2012, when we talked about coming out to our mamas.

A man who makes a living performing in drag is probably pretty woke about trans issues, right? Sadly, it ain't necessarily so.  Former RuPaul's Drag Race contestant Willam Belli recently made some transphobic remarks on her YouTube show "Suck Less." "Just because someone says they’re a boy doesn’t make them a boy," Belii says on the show. "Just because you cut your t****** off and take testosterone, that doesn't change your chromosomes." Fans and critics were predictably upset by this seeming dismissal of the right and ability to self-identify. But it's not the first time we've seen transphobia in drag spaces. Lashes, lipstick, and platform heels can make it easy to forget many drag queens are still cisgender white men on the inside.  It brings to mind the times we've seen white drag queens using racist humor as part of their comedy routines (remember Shirley Q. Liquor?).

Have you ever joked with a little boy about whether he has a girlfriend? Did your birds-and-bees talk include the words, "a mommy and a daddy?" The way we talk to kids can reinforce gender binaries, stereotypes, and heteronormativity. And of course, "having the talk" means something else entirely for black parents. That's why journalist Jenn Jackson calls parenting as a black queer person an inherently political act. She joins us this week to talk about how she teaches her kids to think critically about social norms, gender performance, and the expectations people have of them based on their gender and race.

It's been in the headlines and all over social media. But we wanted to find out how the repeal of DACA would affect our friends and neighbors here in Louisville. Two activists from Mijente Louisville, a grassroots Latinx organization, join us on this week's show. We talk about the sanctuary movement, and what it would look like if Louisville were declared a sanctuary city.

Yasss, kween! Werq. Slay. What do these phrases have in common? They come from the gay black community — specifically drag and the house ball scene — and have since been co-opted by mainstream culture, with little credit to their originators. Jefferey Spivey writes the blog "Uptown Bourgeois," and recently wrote a piece about this phenomenon for the LGBTQ website SOULE, In it, he calls out Elle magazine for publishing a photo gallery from this year's Latex Ball without including any of the performers' names (just captions like "Sickening," and "You betta work.") Spivey joins us this week to talk about appropriation and erasure.

If you grew up with network TV like we did (or basic cable, if you were lucky), you might find the current media landscape overwhelming — not just what shows to watch, but what platforms to access. The multiple ways it's now possible to consume and produce entertainment has made the industry more accessible to creators working outside the traditional network system, and a happy byproduct is more people of color, queer people, and trans people telling their own stories. That's what you'll find on Open TV,  a Chicago-based platform for queer and intersectional television. This week we meet Open TV founder Dr. Aymar Jean Christian, who's also an assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University. Christian started the platform as a research project two years ago and joins us to talk about how they focus on centering marginalized artists, and some of the original work they've produced so far.

This week we speak with Vashti DuBois, Executive Director and Founder of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia. DuBois says she was inspired to create a physical space celebrating "the ordinary extraordinary colored girl" because black girls and women have been contributing to the world in a powerful way but getting no recognition. "I use colored because I really think of how the world takes its Crayola crayon to the black girl and colors her whatever they want her to be," DuBois says. "Color her promiscuous, color her too angry, color her too assertive. And many of us will take that same crayon and color each other, because that's what we've been taught to do." She joins us to talk about what kinds of objects and experiences she seeks to share, and her own most transformative moment in the process of bringing the museum to life.

If you're straight, you're probably not used to being denied access to things based solely on your sexual orientation — unlike LGBTQ people, who have been historically excluded from housing, jobs, and clubs because of their identities. But a new opinion piece in The Advocate says there are spaces that straight people just don't belong. Specifically, in the back rooms or "play spaces" of gay bars — which are often places where typical social rules about sex are relaxed, if not absent. Columnist Alex Chevez describes the need for such segregated spaces, calling them, "[C]ultural zones for certain demographics that are intentionally exclusionary — not out of hate, fear, or prejudice, but because everyone deserves space, and you must respect it." In his Advocate piece, he tells the story of one such space in a bar he frequents. A few months ago, a straight woman wandered into the space. Someone touched her, she complained, and now that play space has been converted to a well-lit smoking lounge. Alex joins us this week to talk about the importance of spaces that cater just to men who are seeking sexual contact with other men, and why women and straight men should honor that distinction. "This isn’t because misogyny is not a huge problem in the gay community — it is," he says. But he says straight women can find bars to welcome them "literally anywhere else in the world. Wherever you go, you can be assured that there will be straight people there."

You may have seen Brian Michael Smith on "Girls," "Law and Order," "Blue Bloods," or other television shows and commercials, playing cisgender men. Now he appears on the OWN Network's "Queen Sugar," playing a transgender cop — and earlier this summer, Brian came out as trans himself. He joins us this week to talk about visibility and representation, and his first day on the set. "Honestly, it was like going to black heaven," he says. "It was a dream come true in so many ways." Later in the show, we meet Lori Selke, an activist and journalist who was recently profiled in The Advocate. From the outside her family looks pretty typical: a woman, a man, and a couple adorable kids. But actually, Lori's butch, her husband Gus is a self-described dandy, and they're both queer and polyamorous. You might think of it as a different kind of passing, but Lori just says her family is "queerer than we look." [Brian Michael Smith photo by Ben Enser]

The Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee is a living piece of civil rights history. It functioned as a folk school from the 1930s through '60s, hosting Rosa Parks, Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis, and other activists and icons. Now in its 85th year, the Highlander continues to be a space where movement leaders come together to teach and to learn. Executive Directors Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele join us this week to talk about the center's legacy, and its future. We also check in a little closer to home with Dominique Barber, who's organizing the Louisville Black LGBT Pride Festival, coming up on August 27th. [Photo: highlandercenter.org]

President Trump's tweets about the armed forces this week brought the stories of transgender service members into the spotlight. This week on Strange Fruit, we learn about documentary film series that tells stories specifically from the lives of trans people of color. André Perez, the filmmaker at the helm of "America in Transition," joins us to tell us more about the project and why it's important to bring these stories into the light. Learn more about the project at americaintransition.org.

Tony Award-winning actor, signer, and songwriter Idina Menzel originated the role of Maureen Johnson in the Broadway and film versions of "Rent," kicking off a celebrated career and solidifying her place as an LGBTQ icon. She spoke to Jaison Gardner and Kaila Story, hosts of WFPL's Strange Fruit podcast, in anticipation of her appearance in Louisville next month. Menzel will perform at the Louisville Palace on August 6th. Check out the Strange Fruit Facebook page for a chance to win tickets to the show and a meet & greet with the artistl.

The race for mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida is getting ugly — thanks in part to racist rhetoric like this from a candidate named Paul Congemi: "Your people already got your reparations. Your reparations came in the form of a man named Barack Obama. My advice to you, if you don’t like it here in America, planes leave every hour from Tampa airport. Go back to Africa. Go back to Africa. Go back!” That's right. A political candidate at a public appearance in 2017... is telling black people to go back to Africa. We talk about this and other stories in the news this week, in an all-Juicy-Fruit news roundup!

There's no shortage of profiles and think pieces putting a human face on the Opioid crisis. Coverage focuses on addicts' struggling families and childhood traumas, framing addiction as an illness you suffer from — not a crime you perpetrate. Much of this media attention is centered on white drug users and their families. When the drug crisis was largely in black communities, drug use was linked to depravity and a proclivity for crime. The response was a "war" on drugs that focused on punishment, not treatment. This week we reflect on how race and racism play into the way we talk about addiction and drug use.

Scroll through any gay dating app and you'll come across the words. "No fats, no femmes." It says a lot about which kinds of bodies are seen as desirable and which are not. Especially in gay black spaces, where a simple "preference" is often anything but simple. Artist Jamal Lewis is making a documentary exploring this phenomenon. We speak to him this week about his own dating experiences, and the politics of desirability.