“Telling Our Own Stories”: A Conversation with Writers Melissa Li and Kit Yan

Abstract

Voices of heterosexual white women have proliferated through the viral circulation of #MeToo. Notwithstanding the importance of highlighting misogyny and sexual violence within industries that frequently capitalize on women’s performing bodies, the movement has sometimes obscured queer, kink, trans, and other articulations of desire that fall outside of heteronormativity. What possibilities for political collaboration lie outside of affinity with #MeToo? Who might be excluded from such a collective enunciation and what might such alternative relationalities teach us? These questions form the background of the following discussion with Melissa Li and Kit Yan, collaborative artists whose work models a queer and trans praxis that might help reshape our understandings of desire and collectivity in the current moment.