Butchness, Bodies, and Politics

BATON ROUGE, La. — Dec. 27th, 2025

If you had to narrow the particularities of my gender identity down to one single word it would— without any doubts— be “Butch." A strong word “Butch" is. She carries strength and poise, sharpness and love, power and care. To be Butch is to contain a type of strength and a type of masculinity that is sharply contrary to the false bravado that is put on in the so-called “manosphere" but also to reject some of the queer softness that one may see as performed more frequently in the contemporary Queer discourse (particularly in largely online circles). Beyond the ideas and flowery language, however, one should examine what butchness means in the current political space. What does a Butch’s body mean in this space? How does she speak? How does she move? How does she flow? 

The Students, UNITED!!

NEW ORLEANS, La. — Nov. 11th, 2025

When we talk about the American Nation as the union of all of those oppressed in this country, it may seem easy to write it off as an abstract concept wrapped in hollow theory. However, it is of paramount importance to note that when we are discussing the Nation we are discussing her not as some chimera that has no bearing on reality, but as the demonstrated reality of the United States of America. And nowhere is our Nation more present than on a university's campus. Here at Loyola University New Orleans— or quite frankly at any university— we are constantly presented with new people, ideas, opportunities, and identities that may have been unseen or heard of elsewhere. It is not mistake that reactionary forces in the United States must make a public spectacle of ridiculing "campus radicals" and the new identities that students adopt prior to their ascent into the so-called "real" world. It is on the university campus, that we see the closest thing to a present-day socialism, for the new union of the American Dream is present right here on St. Charles Street in New Orleans. 

The American Dream | From: "The Little Teal Book"

Chapter XV from The Little Teal Book

What comes to mind when we picture the American Dream? For the general American, it may look like the archetypical sitcom family life with a husband, wife, two children, cars, and a dog all living in a template home in suburbia. Such was the vision of America that was sold to the white middle class of the 1950s (and those to whom such was an aspiration). We must, however, deconstruct our thoughts of what an American Dream ought to look like in our new state. We are no longer operating with the individualist, libertarian mindset that led to large, isolated neighborhoods, nor are we enslaved by the automobile-centric mindset that leads to the so-called “white picket fence” version of this American dream. Let us then redefine the American dream—not as a goal for an individual person to aspire to, but as the ability of the American nation to provide the means for any person to build a life for the good of themselves, their family, and their wider community. An American Dream for the American Nation is that dream of each person being provided with the tools for success and liberty that all people ought to be afforded.