Mickyel Bradford

Decolonizing Gender: Bringing Empire into the Conversation

National conversations about race & gender often focus on the layered impacts of racism, misogyny, and transphobia. While this is an important discussion, we can also deepen our understanding of how the gender binary operates through white supremacy, and how it is constructed to maintain white cisgender men (and women) at the top of a hierarchy of people. This workshop explores this system through the lens of imperialism in U.S. history, analyzing what imperialism is and how it has evolved over time. We will then consider how it shows up in current LGBTQ organizing models, and what we can do to reduce the harm that white supremacist gender causes us and our communities.

Speakers: Malcolm Shanks, Mickyel Bradford