#sassafrass lowrey

[gatheringbones]

sassafrass lowrey, from made real, from trans/love: radical sex, love & relationships beyond the gender binary, edited by morty diamond, 2011

[readingteabooks]

Lost Boi by Sassafrass Lowrey

4/5 Stars

As a queer Peter Pan stan I am legally obligated to read all queer Peter Pan books (eventually). Here’s another one checked off the list, and that I’m happy I learned about.

Lost Boi is a queer, punk, leather retelling of Peter Pan. And I’m giving it 4 stars largely because it is just Not For Me. It reimagines the Lost Boys as a gang of homeless queer youths led by the iconic Pan. Narrated by Pan’s best boi Tootles, the story follows Wendi and Pan’s relationship from the moment Pan first sees her at an open mic night, through its ups and downs, until the inevitable goodbye, hitting all the beats of the original story.

While there is little explicit content, BDSM and leather culture is the backbone of this story, so I would not recommend it for people squicked by that. I would also advise content warnings for drug use, dubious consent, and questionable age differences. Lowrey’s Pan is coercive and dark, but not intentionally malicious. 

That said, there is something painfully realistic about this imagining of the world. The Lost Bois ran away from unaccepting homes and were made to feel unwelcome at shelters. An all too common real world occurrence that leads to queer kids living in squats like this book’s Neverland and putting themselves in unsafe situations in order to feel like they belong. And perhaps because they feel like it's the only life available to them. The mermaids and pirates are likewise realistic depictions of different circles of queer society. Lowrey also did a great job of integrating the characters and events of Peter Pan into a real-world setting in a way that did not feel forced - thanks largely to use of slang. 

So while Lost Boi is not for me, I know it is for someone, and I’m glad that it exists for them.

[lids-flutter-open]

Roving Pack by sassafrass lowrey is good

[farhanwhy2k]

Why Queers Love The World Of Disney

Why Queers Love The World Of Disney

[ad_1]

by Sassafrass Lowrey

When you enter the gates of Magic Kingdom, you pass under a sign that says “Here You Leave Today And Enter The World Of Yesterday, Tomorrow And Fantasy.”

No one does immersive world building as well as Disney, and when I’m at Disneyland I feel accepted and safe in ways I don’t usually experience out in the world. Disney is a special place for my partner and I; a…

[bookriot]

[ixlander]

[Image Description:] At 17, I began pushing the boundaries of gender, building a community of freaks and outlaws. In order to be queer I had to walk away from family and home. I quickly discovered that there was nothing more radical than love, and learned that holding a lover’s hand in public was nothing short of revolutionary. Now, my gender transgression is no longer culturally recognizable, and I miss visibility. I still long for the way revolution was written across my body, the way my flesh was referenced by the world. I miss the recognition of revolution that took place every time I held hir hand. The world sees me and thinks I am nothing more than a straight woman, doesn’t see the journey of gender, the effects of hormones still coursing below the surface. When they see hir, they see a straight man, never a butch. Our identities are too complex to be understood in passing glances. The way we live in our bodies rewrites the pages of history: the stories of our people explain that femmes are made visible when standing next to butches. Our gender transgressions position us outside of that narrative, rendering us invisible to even our own. Hir hand across my flesh brings me home, healing the wounds inflicted by newfound invisibility. Our love is revolutionary, even when others can’t see it. Each time ze touches me, hir hands bring more of the pieces of my life together. In hir embrace I have been made real. Through sex I’ve learned to stop fearing my imperfect body, by fucking I’ve learned to stay in myself, to resist disassociation. It is through touch that I learned to let go, to trust. For trans and genderqueer people, our bodies become our battlegrounds, our private revolutions; our genitals, our war zones. We spend so much time seeking survival in our own skin, defending our bodies and ourselves, that when we find a moment of peace it is hard to surrender to that pleasure. As gender warriors we must spend our days being strong, showing any vulnerability is seen as incomprehensible. Our minds, so indoctrinated by narrow definitions of sex, we come to think it’s an act which could never include us but as a fag I watched my hands resuscitate boys. Touching elastic and plastic, brining life to manmade objects, I pulled close their bodies and together we birthed new continents, redrew the maps. Topography shifted under our fingers. We altered the course and struck down borders. Through their eyes I’ve seen Eden. I’ve witnessed creation, seen self-hatred drown in pleasure, and gazed on as dysphoria dissipated under the realization that body need not be the flesh they were born with, that body need not be made of skin at all. I’ve never seen anything more real than the look in my partner’s eyes with my mouth around hir silicone cock. Our sex transcends the limits of the flesh. We’re doing nothing less than fucking ourselves real. We’ve created lives and bodies that high school health class curriculums could never cover. In my world, sex defies the laws of physics and constructs new realities. Sex is magic as it liberates and resists being boxed in. As trans people I believe there are few things we can do more liberating than defy the societal norms that frame us as asexual, unlovable beings. We’re making families that defy definition, we’re fucking with constructed bodies, and we’re taking ownership over our flesh. [End ID]

sassafrass lowrey, from made real, from trans/love: radical sex, love & relationships beyond the gender binary, edited by morty diamond, 2011