Chosen Kin: Making Our Loyalties
Chosen Kin: Making Our Loyalties
Miss Major, Mai’a Williams and Claricia Revlon engage in an exploratory conversation ranging over questions of revolutionary motherhood and queer kinship.
ReadHow can we envision and create communities anew, based on principles of love that knows the circumstantial power of sacrifice but is also resolute in its resistance to oppression…that respects individual autonomy whilst seeking to meet fuller collective needs? What can larger revolutionary movements learn from practices of motherhood? How do communities formed under the duress of violent othering and the joy of solidarity – such as ballroom culture, black diasporas, trans support and advocacy groups, zapatistas – reform bonds of kinship?
Mai’a Williams is a US based writer, poet and mother who has long term involvement in international solidarity movements, community organising and revolutionary journalism in Ecuador, Venezuela, Egypt, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Chiapas, Mexico. She initiated the Outlaw Midwives movement and has written extensively on revolutionary motherhood.
Miss Major is a renowned trans elder from the US, famous for her community organising; marked by her key role in the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, participation in the stonewall riots, defiance of the prison industrial complex and standing up for sex workers. “That’s how it started. Since no one was going to do it for us, we had to do it for ourselves.”
Claricia Revlon is a performance artist, producer, and community organiser. They have a background facilitating within LGBTQ+ arts and youth projects, and are founding director of ID.Y CIC, a queer trans black and people of colour-focussed artist support cohort. They are co-founder, mother and lead organiser of Vogue Scotland platform initially founded by Mother Kehlani 007 (then Revlon) in 2016 supporting and connecting QTIPOC, trans and queer individuals with the underground ballroom community.