Here’s my challenge to Out magazine for their next year’s OUT100: skip the coasts and concentrate on the south and the heartland. I have no argument that all the fabulous fabulousness coming out of New York and L.A. is important and life affirming for queers, but I also know that work being done, by, say, Southerners on New Ground in Atlanta, is just as important and life changing for queers and for everybody, actually. I would like to see features on rural queers, southern queers, Midwestern queers, queers in all the many, many U.S. places that are not New York or L.A. – I am so grateful and interested in their amazing queer lives and work. And if you just have to mention ol’ New York, stick to people of color.
So Ericka Hart wasn’t featured in this year’s OUT100, but she is mentioned by fashion designer, Becca McCharen-Tran, who worked with her in a recent fashion show. My ears perked up when Tran says, “I have learned so much about how to be a better white ally and how to leverage my privilege from watching her Instagram stories and hearing more of her perspective as a queer black femme.” I immediately stopped reading the magazine and looked up Ericka.
From her website:
Ericka Hart (pronouns: she/they) is a Black Queer Femme activist, writer, highly acclaimed speaker and award winning sexuality educator with a Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality from Widener University. Ericka’s work broke ground when she went topless showing her double mastectomy scars at Afropunk Fest 2016. Since then, she has spoken at colleges and universities across the country, been featured in countless digital and print publications including Essence, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Refinery 29, and has a running PSA on Viceland. Ericka’s voice is rooted in leading edge thought around human sexual expression as inextricable to overall human health and its intersections with race, gender, chronic illness and disability. Both radical and relatable, she continues to push well beyond the threshold of sex positivity. Ericka is currently an adjunct at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and calls Brooklyn, her partner and several plants (one of which is named Whitney Houston) home.
Deep gratitude to Ericka for her fierce Black Queer Femme generosity, brilliance, courage, and super-sexy body love.
http://www.ihartericka.com/#press
Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme story! New Femme Friday feature for fall 2018: Books from which queer femmes can draw inspiration. What are your trusted sources of light and love? Please share!
At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)
The Total Femme 