Gender/Racial Realness: Theorizing the Gender System in Ballroom Culture

Focusing on the ballroom scene made famous through transgender Jenny Livingston's documentary Paris Is Burning, the author demonstrates the epistemological creativity of poor Black queer communities in Detroit, Michigan. Black queer members of the ballroom community use performance to unmark themselves as gender and sexual nonconforming subjects, a necessary strategy to avoid discrimination and violence in the urban space. Part of a special journal issue on race and transgender studies. Adapted from the source document.