Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

Exploring M. Lamar’s ‘Negro Gothic Sensibility’

First published on Out.com, May 23, 2014. Read the original with photos and video here.
Before starting a conversation with musician and multimedia artist M. Lamar there are a few things you should read up on: doom metal, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frantz Fanon, Plato, Leontyne Price, bell hooks’ concept of white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, James Brown, James Baldwin, counter tenors, [...]

A Bathroom of One’s Own

First published in VICE, May 3, 2014. Read the original, with photos, here.
Twenty-five years ago today, transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen died of bladder and lung cancer, which she believed was caused by genetics, not the fuck-ton of hormones that rocketed her to stardom as “America’s first transsexual” in the 1950s. In her honor, I made [...]

“Dirty 30”: Talking AIDS To The Basketball Wives Set

First published on The Daily Beast, February 16, 2014. Read the original, with video, here.
The statistics are upsetting and well known. Despite an encouraging recent drop in transmission rates, black women still represent two-thirds of all new HIV infections among women. In fact, they are 20 times more likely to seroconvert than white women—a greater [...]

What Does Trans* Mean, and Where Did It Come From?

First published on Slate, January 10, 2014. Read the original here.
It’s widely accepted that computer-mediated communication—emailing, texting, sexting, commenting, chatting, and so on—has changed the way we speak, even when we’re away from the keyboard. But a new label being embraced online by some transgender people may represent a linguistic first: borrowing from [...]

We Can End AIDS Without a Cure

First published in Slate, November 29, 2013. Read the original here.
This Dec. 1, as we mark yet another World AIDS Day without a cure, a vaccine, or an intelligently interdependent global response to the crisis, I’d like to propose a thought experiment based on a radical—yet commonsense—proposition: We can end AIDS without [...]

The Quest to Build a National LGBT Museum

First published in Slate, October 18, 2013. Read the original here.
Someday, somewhere in Washington, D.C.—perhaps on the National Mall, kitty-corner across Maryland Avenue from the sinuous, sandy-colored Museum of the American Indian, or tucked behind the sprawling complex of the Natural History Museum—there may sit a National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Museum. [...]

« go back — keep looking »