Drag Queen Hot Sauce

I am not a huge fan of hot sauce. Hell I'm not even a small fan of it. But I know there are thousands who do like it and if you do, I think this queen's sauce is worth checking out.

The first time I met Shaquanda, the drag persona of Andre Springer, was during Queer Soup Night, a party highlighting LGBTQ+ chefs while raising money for community organizations. She was hosting a queer chili cook off, sauntering through the crowd providing cheeky commentary while encouraging attendees to make donations, and of course, sample the chili. She greeted me with the warmest embrace, pressing my face into her colorful hair wrap and dangling gold earrings. After chatting with her for several months via Instagram, it was a delight to feel her radiant energy in real life.

Shaquanda's Hot Pepper Sauce was launched in 2014 when Springer debuted his hot sauce at Bushwig, a drag and music festival hosted in Brooklyn, New York. Springer wanted to add another dimension to his drag, and introducing hot sauce would take his performances from eyes to mouth. Springer enlisted the help of his friend (and current business partner) Dominic Mondavi to create custom bottle labels adorned with Shaquanda's face and cheeky, queer-centric catchphrases. He filled each one up with his signature hot sauce blend and attended the event in full Shaquanda drag, complete with a colorful bandana and linen apron — a look inspired by his Barbadian grandmother and the many characters he grew up with in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His signature sauce, made with fresh chiles and a slew of aromatics, filled audience members' mouths with flavor as lively as Shaquanda herself. The performance was a success, and from that initial debut, Shaquanda's Hot Pepper Sauce took off.

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Elections and Movies Help Ban Conversion Therapy

This shouldn't even be a thing, but it is, unfortunately. I'm glad that more states are providing the means to protect its LGBT populous.

NEW YORK (AP) — Activists urging more states to ban gay conversion therapy for minors are expecting major gains in 2019, thanks to midterm election results and the buzz generated by two well-reviewed films.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have already enacted laws prohibiting licensed therapists from trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation. Leaders of a national campaign to ban the practice are hopeful that at least four more states — Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts and New York — will join the ranks in the upcoming legislative sessions.

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Anatomy Does Not Determine Gender, Experts Say

An important read.

Defining gender as a condition determined strictly by a person’s genitals is based on a notion that doctors and scientists abandoned long ago as oversimplified and often medically meaningless.

Researchers who have studied gender issues and provided health care to people who do not fit the typical M/F pigeonholes said that the Trump administration’s latest plan to define gender goes beyond the limits of scientific knowledge.

“The idea that a person’s sex is determined by their anatomy at birth is not true, and we’ve known that it’s not true for decades,” said Dr. Joshua D. Safer, an endocrinologist and executive director of the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. He is also president of the United States Professional Association of Transgender Health.

But exactly what does determine gender identity — a person’s powerful, core knowledge of who they are — is not so clear.

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