Meet Billy, 26, born and raised in southeastern San Diego. Billy's pronouns are he/him and he works as a sexual fetish performance artist. As a transgender person, Billy feels there isn't a space that accepts both parts of himself yet. While one space may be open to his queerness, it usually isn’t inclusive to his Blackness and vice versa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Billy acknowledges that creating and curating safe spaces isn’t easy, especially in San Diego. 

 

“It’s a tough position to be in,” he said. "It’s going to take time to do that, to make sure we’re safe. Physically, it just doesn’t exist at the moment. Right now, I don’t know any space where Black queer folks can just be. I think it’s definitely being worked on. But even when we are having these conversations of 'where could we go?'  It’s like, OK, we could create a space in Hillcrest but then we’d have to assimilate to the White gays and we don’t want to do that. So then we’re like OK, let’s put it in the hood. But can we keep Black trans women safe in the hood? No. Realistically, as much as we wish we could say yes, we cant.”

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He gives a big thumbs up to those doing the work and creating the spaces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Billy goes deeper into the intersectionality of race, sex and gender. He highlights why being queer doesn't equate to the discrimination of being Black while leaving a message to others of the LGBTQIA community. 

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