selected writings.
Masks Up, Mascs Down: Parsing Out the Pathogenic Theory of Gender Ambiguity
“Shortly after the emergence of the 2019 Coronavirus, Arundhati Roy asserted that pandemics operate as portals into new worlds, as gateways from the current world into the next one. This article aims to parse out what world COVID-19 has thrust us into, drawing an analogous relationship between “visibly” transsexual and/or transgender individuals “post” the 2020 COVID-19 breakout to gay men “post” the 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis. This work further argues that there has been no salient “progress” in the West around transgender identity, transsexualism, nonbinarism, or the like, but instead what Foucault refers to as “the solidification and implantation of an entire sexual mosaic”, one rife with connotations similar to disease and pathogen. Further, I assert that reemerging themes of cleanliness and purging of filth, such as those present following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western nations, has coincided purposefully with the attempted social purging of acceptance themes for individuals that do not align with the gender binary.”
Published in Taylor and Francis’ Studies in Gender and Sexuality Volume 26, Issue 4 Special Edition: Cisteria!
Tight Coils: Black Transfemininity, Transhegemony, and Identity Formation in The U.S. South
“Often without question, we are tasked with understanding gender as inherently predicated on the assumption of whiteness and understanding that Black trans women and other transfeminine people belong at the bottom of a silent “hierarchy” of sorts. How then do Southern Black transfeminine people form their genders under such tightly coiled restraints? To elucidate these questions’ answers, I interviewed 5 Southern Black trans women and/or Southern Black transfeminine people to discuss the issues facing those that find themselves often spoken about but rarely spoken to.”
This was submitted as a graduate thesis to Georgia State University on May 4, 2023. As a result, Vic was awarded a Master of Arts degree from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at GSU. Vic also presented the preliminary research related to this thesis at both the 2022 Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking conference at Goucher College as well as the 2023 Queer Studies Conference at The University of North Carolina, Asheville.
Androgynous Athena and the Power of Masculine Identity
“…The argument has previously been made that because Athena does not access femininity in the traditional Greco-Roman sense, she is masculine de facto. By contrast, I assert that Athena operates in a way that is androgynous. By this, I assert also that Athena is not able to access the status of a male deity, as manhood in The Oresteia is only granted to those deemed biologically male. Her androgyny results from her overt rejections of the feminine and her intentional embrace of the masculine.”
Presented at both the 26th Annual Women’s Studies Student Research Symposium at The University of Georgia (March 2019) as well as The Spring Annual Research Conference (SpARC) at Agnes Scott College (April 2019)
Yankees, Go Home: BlaQueer Interrogations of the Legacy of Southern Pride, Decolonization, and Micronationalism
“…Perhaps inherent to my positionality — as a Black scholar who is a descendant of both American chattel slavery and Haitian revolution, as a queer person whose gender and sexuality are both ambiguous, and as a leftist occupying space in a deeply right wing region of the country —I am deeply opposed to both taxonomy and micronationalism…When I say I oppose micronationalism, I am referring to the impulse we have as humans to feel especially beholden to physical spaces designated by colonialism, I would say absurdly. For example, is it not absurd to be proud of being from the Southern U.S. versus any other part of this empire? Where does this instinct and justification come from to derive pride in inhabiting a space that no colonial benefactor should have access to? Like many blips of joy or assuredness we may feel as citizens of this country, these instances too should be interrogated.”
Presented at the 50th Annual WGS South Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (March 2025).
Zaya Wade, Radical Acceptance, and Reimaginings of The Black Family
“…many Black people discourage fellow Black people from exhibiting any signs of deviance that would further alienate them from the white, cisgender, and heterosexual norm. But what would it look like if this fear was completely absent from our community? How would Black community manifest if Black people in general centered the ideas of unconditional support and radical acceptance of our LGBTQ+ and otherwise queer Black siblings? …I wish to explore a world in which more Black people take after the Wade family, a world in which Black people focalize acceptance of Blackness queerness to a radical degree.”
*This paper was written prior to Zaya Wade coming out in February 2020. In the previous version of this paper, Zaya’s deadname is used. I have adjusted the child’s name according, as well as replacing every instance of “son” with “child.”