Yasss, kween! Werq. Slay.
What do these words have in common? They come from the gay black community — specifically drag and the house ball scene — and have since been co-opted (often incorrectly) 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 most of the performers' names (just generic captions like, "Sickening," and "You betta work.")
Spivey joins us this week to talk about appropriation and erasure.
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