You Can’t Stop the Queer South is Them’s series spotlighting LGBTQ+ voices of resistance and resilience in the American South, created with guest editor adrienne maree brown. In the time since producing these stories, Hurricane Helene has devastated areas across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia, with nearly 200 dead, a million without power, and countless homes destroyed or displaced. We ask readers to support on-the-ground relief efforts however possible. See our Hurricane Helene relief resource guide to learn how you can help.
Sweat was already pouring down my face in my goat milking shed at 9 in the morning on a hot July day in West Virginia when I started getting texts from friends all over the country: Donald Trump had picked Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.
We call JD a grifter in Appalachia, and when his memoir Hillbilly Elegy came out in 2016 most of the region spent well over a year talking about how much the book reinforced tired, false narratives about these mountains as monolithically white, conservative, poor, and “backwards,” further erasing everyone out here who is queer and trans, Black and Brown and Indigenous. As is often the case when Appalachia sounds an alarm, nobody listened at a national level — until it affected them.
When friends in New York City or California texted me about Trump picking Vance, all I could reply with was, “I’m still so sick of talking about him from last time.” When friends from around Central Appalachia messaged me about it, my tone was more despairing: “No one ever listens to us.” I stayed off social media for a couple weeks. I also decided to stop listening to the news in the mornings in the milk shed, and left my phone in the camper, knowing that the calmer I am, the calmer the goats will be. I focused on the sounds of milk hitting the metal pail and the goats chewing grain. I felt their bodies relax on the milk stand next to me as we settled into our morning routine.
In early August, Joe Biden pulled out of the presidential race, and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in, choosing Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Headlines on national news websites started including the word “rural” again, but mostly in the political horse race context of discussing Walz’s possible appeal to voters, and without much focus on our actual lives.
I have no hope for national news coverage of my home anymore. When we do get their attention, every four years for national election season, it seems they’ve decided on the story they plan to tell about us before they even set foot in these mountains. And when our communities are destroyed by catastrophic flooding (again, and again, and again, as they were with Hurricane Helene just this past week) they show up late and leave early. We are left to fend for ourselves, all over again.
But rural queer and trans people have always helped each other survive in these mountains. In mid-August, my friend Sophie Ziegler drove up from their home in Louisiana with the Mapping Trans Joy project - which they co-founded with two other trans Louisianans to gather stories of trans joy amid sweeping attacks on trans people across the country. We traveled across the state to document the first ever Appalachian Trans Music and Arts Festival in Huntington, West Virginia. Organized by the WV Trans Coalition and Huntington Pride, the two-day festival took place in a former textile factory by the railroad tracks which sat empty for years before the local nonprofit Coalfield Development bought the building and brought it back to life. The festival featured a couple dozen trans artists and crafters selling their creations, a poetry workshop, and a Know Your Rights Training. There were Appalachian trans punk bands, a multiracial many-gendered lineup of drag performers, and more. A Palestinian flag hung in one window, and an intersex pride flag in another. Thee Nyshyne, a Black trans performer born and raised in Huntington and the current reigning Miss Huntington Pride, emceed the festival. I drove the two and a half hours home grinning, so inspired by the young trans organizers across this state doing so much to resist anti-trans policies and to foster spaces of connection.
I felt the same way earlier this summer, standing on the side of a two-lane highway with a small crowd, waiting for the Greenbrier Valley Pride Parade to approach. Next to me were queer couples with young kids, trans teenagers in their coolest outfits, and white-haired elders in sun hats. I wasn’t prepared to cry, but maybe I should have been. There is something deeply radical about small-town prides, about publicly claiming our joy and resistance together, out here in places where we’ve long been told we don’t belong — especially in a year when over 600 anti-trans bills have been introduced across the United States, including right here in West Virginia.
Leading the parade was a trans man on stilts, wearing a hot-pink two-piece hoop skirt and a long, braided beard. He was waving a “Dismantle Systemic Patriarchy” flag and shouting “Free Palestine!” and “Happy Pride!” His name is Marcus Fioravante and behind him marched a group of community members carrying beautifully hand-painted signs and large paper-mâché puppets they’d all created together at Gum Store Studios in nearby White Sulphur Springs. “Abortion is Sacred” read one sign. “No Pride in Genocide” read another. The signs kept coming, my cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, and tears welled in my eyes: “Speak Out!” “Act Up” “Pride is a Protest” “COMMUNITY.”
It was over 90 degrees, with at least 90% humidity, but for the next few hours queer and trans folks and our allies from all over southeastern West Virginia gathered in Ronceverte Island Park. Booths handed out free coffee and pepperoni rolls. Drag queens performed in heels in the gravel, and local queer artists sold their wares. All the while, the low cool Greenbrier River passed lazily behind the stage. At some point, I took off my cowboy boots and waded into the river to cool off. I chatted with queer families who did the same: a lesbian couple with a toddler sitting in the shallow water, a queer middle schooler who skipped rocks with me as their mom sat on the boat ramp nearby. Late that evening, I drove the hour home to the steep hillside farm I rent from childhood friends, with the windows of my truck rolled all the way down and country music blaring. Lightning bugs and crickets filled the dark fields and woods beyond my headlights’ path.
They will say what they want about us in the national news. Appalachia will continue to be painted as a monolith of “Trump Country,” a base of racist poor white people who “vote against our own interests” and “get what we deserve” when unfathomable climate crises sweep our region over and over again. But the Appalachia that will remain — no matter who is in office or which national media outlets do or don’t drop in for a quick story — is full of queer and trans folks, of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, of working-class rural people.
All of us are out here pushing, as we always have and always will, for a more expansive and inclusive future in this region, for a future where everyone has everything they need, where we can thrive not just survive. We refuse to throw away our neighbors over national election discourse, because we know that we need each other to survive. We refuse to abandon each other because each new climate crisis reminds us that all we have is each other. We have always been here, loving each other, taking care of each other, resisting, and claiming our joy. And we always will be.
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