selected writings.
Tight Coils: Black Transfemininity, Transhegemony, and Identity Formation in The U.S. South
“Often without question, we are tasked with understanding gender as inherently predicated on the assumption of whiteness and understanding that Black trans women and other transfeminine people belong at the bottom of a silent “hierarchy” of sorts. How then do Southern Black transfeminine people form their genders under such tightly coiled restraints? To elucidate these questions’ answers, I interviewed 5 Southern Black trans women and/or Southern Black transfeminine people to discuss the issues facing those that find themselves often spoken about but rarely spoken to.”
This was submitted as a graduate thesis to Georgia State University on May 4, 2023. As a result, Vic was awarded a Master of Arts degree from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at GSU. Vic also presented the preliminary research related to this thesis at both the 2022 Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking conference at Goucher College as well as the 2023 Queer Studies Conference at The University of North Carolina, Asheville.
Androgynous Athena and the Power of Masculine Identity
“…The argument has previously been made that because Athena does not access femininity in the traditional Greco-Roman sense, she is masculine de facto. By contrast, I assert that Athena operates in a way that is androgynous. By this, I assert also that Athena is not able to access the status of a male deity, as manhood in The Oresteia is only granted to those deemed biologically male. Her androgyny results from her overt rejections of the feminine and her intentional embrace of the masculine.”
Presented at both the 26th Annual Women’s Studies Student Research Symposium at The University of Georgia (March 2019) as well as The Spring Annual Research Conference (SpARC) at Agnes Scott College (April 2019)
Zaya Wade, Radical Acceptance, and Reimaginings of The Black Family
“…many Black people discourage fellow Black people from exhibiting any signs of deviance that would further alienate them from the white, cisgender, and heterosexual norm. But what would it look like if this fear was completely absent from our community? How would Black community manifest if Black people in general centered the ideas of unconditional support and radical acceptance of our LGBTQ+ and otherwise queer Black siblings? …I wish to explore a world in which more Black people take after the Wade family, a world in which Black people focalize acceptance of Blackness queerness to a radical degree.”
*This paper was written prior to Zaya Wade coming out in February 2020. In the previous version of this paper, Zaya’s deadname is used. I have adjusted the child’s name according, as well as replacing every instance of “son” with “child.”