Archiving as Resistance: Documenting QTBIPOC Life

Scissors is excited to partner with the Ginger Arts Center to host our Archiving as Resistance workshop. If you weren't able to make it to the first iteration, please join us for this event!

Event Description: Lesbians represent one of the smallest demographics within the broader LGBTQ+ community—and within that already narrow scope, BIPOC and trans lesbians occupy an even more underrepresented space. Despite our outsized cultural contributions—our art, our protest, our writing, our music—our lives are often overlooked, obscured, or deliberately erased from dominant narratives.

In the face of rising fascism, targeted violence, and resurgent homophobia, the act of documentation becomes not only necessary but urgent. We are living in a moment marked by deliberate erasure: shadow bans across digital platforms, censorship embedded in institutional funding structures, and the systematic dismantling of our historical visibility. Against this backdrop, archiving becomes a radical gesture—a way of asserting our presence, our complexity, and our truths.

In response, Scissors is called to host a free, community-centered workshop designed to help BIPOC dykes map their archiving toolbox. We will discuss, journal, and brainstorm the starting points and next steps for creating a personal archive.

To archive is to resist. To document is to assert: we were here, we are queer, and we will continue.

Please note: Scissors creates events by and for QTBIPOC dykes. If you do not identity as such, we invite you to support Scissors in other ways such as subscribing to our Patreon or Substack