GAY TIMES Magazine

20 October 2023

One thing about Julia Fox, she’s instantly quotable: capable of coming up with one-liners that captivate the press and public, particularly in the form of quasi-ironic meme fodder. And now, over a year and a half since she famously remarked that she was working on a “masterpiece” debut book at the Vanity Fair Oscars party, we can hold Fox’s feverish memoir Down The Drain in our desperate, grubby little hands. This issue includes a timeline of queer paparazzi moments which pay homage to Fox’s status as a street style queen, as well as writer and comedian Jordan Firstman’s rundown of his dream dinner party guests. From there, journalist and All The Things She Said author Daisy Jones explores our changing relationship with identity labels, and why there’s no shame in ditching these markers when they stop serving us. Then, coinciding with trans awareness month, Dominic Cadogan explores the rise of free self- defence classes run by trans people, for trans people: a type of mutual aid which has arisen in light of escalating transphobic attacks in the UK. Closing the issue, we look at fluid approaches to family beyond the nuclear model which has been peddled by proponents of so-called ‘traditional values’. Instead of replicating cisnormative frameworks, figures such as Miss Major and Logan Brown reflect on the unique joys and challenges of trans parenthood. Take these pages as a lesson in the symbiotic nature of what service can mean. Not just dedication to a cause but an opportunity to show up for the ideas and the people we care about, and in so doing, show up as our truest selves.