Professor Marquis Bey discusses their book, BLACK TRANS FEMINISM in which they argue that how we define, label, and identify ourselves can be a way to embrace freedom and the liberated possible. First looking at how we are captured by systems and stereotypes when we see ourselves as defined by our race, gender, or sexuality, Dr. Bey sees the potential to turn the tables on dominance and violence. By embracing the ambiguities and freedom in “black” or “trans,” individuals break free of male/female or white/black scripts, allowing themselves to encounter the world and other people in different and more embracing ways. To join the three terms together, Black Trans Feminism, is to seek a world where we face the self with the self and interact with each other freed from the prisons of dominant and oppressive definitions. Everything is possible when one refuses to disappear or comply.
Marquis Bey is Professor of Black Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and English, and core faculty in Critical Theory, at Northwestern University. They are the author of The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender, Anarcho-Blackness: Notes toward a Black Anarchism, and Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism.