Black Spaces/White Spaces: Black Lives,Leisure, and Life Politics

Racial neutrality does not exist within digital and virtual spaces. Our racialized identities are imported into these spaces, as are the ideologies of our respective societies. This reality begs the question, how do Black people situate themselves in digital White leisure spaces, especially when these spaces maintain and replicate off-line spaces of racial discrimination and overt racism? This article presents a background on Black Internet users and highlights how Black people have used digital spaces to counter and disrupt messages that perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes and social inequalities. Examples are offered to support this claim. This article underlines how behaviors of Black people in digital spaces can demonstrate the presence of Black leisure and highlight the realities of Black life. Finally, critical technocultural discourse analysis will be introduced as a technique for advancing this discussion within the context of race and leisure.     

En/Activist Drag: Kings Reflect on Queerness,Queens, and Questionable Masculinities

ABSTRACT

In recent years, media attention to drag performers has increased transforming the once-hidden leisure activity of gay men and lesbians into a publicly recognized phenomenon. Many of these representations of drag have fallen short in offering reflective illustrations of the connections among gender identity, performance, misogyny, patriarchy, and activism. In response, we find ourselves studying the gendered life experiences of drag kings to illuminate the variety of experiences that shape their gendered lives. We specifically look to our re-storied, visual, composite narratives of eight kings' experiences to show how drag functions as a context where social-political-capitalist transformation can be enacted.