PORTRAITS

  • (Saskia) Max(well) Keller writes about classical music and queerness.

    Keller’s work has appeared in Out, Out Traveler, the Provincetown Independent, Provincetown Arts, Early Music America, and Parterre Box. Currently New York City-based, they write the substack Poison Put to Sound and are working on a collection of essays about turning into a cello.

    Raised on Cape Cod, Keller attended the Nauset public school system before going on to Harvard, where they studied music and art history. They were awarded a Frank Knox Fellowship to study musicology at the University of Edinburgh, where they wrote their master’s dissertation on the cello endpin.

    From 2021 to 2022, Keller was the Independent’s arts editor, winning a first-place award for the arts section from the New England Newspaper and Press Association. Their proudest achievement, however, is getting a driver’s license at the age of 24.

    “I was always taught that a good writer takes a complex topic and reduces it to its most essential elements. Working at the Independent, I’ve learned that a good editor takes that and reduces it even more. For me, the hallmark of good writing is clarity and conciseness.

    Maybe that’s why I’ve always found issues of identity to be challenging. While we try to reduce it to terms, or honor it with pronouns, identity is unavoidably messy and emotionally complicated.”

    – “Self-Editing,” Provincetown Independent

  • Tania Jazz Mont

    Tania Jazz Mont on Instagram

    “I have been rolling my eyes at the dominant cultural landscape my entire life. I have felt excluded, dismissed, and confused. No more! Today I am proudly Latinx and queer. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of my culture, orientation, or gender, but I do so anyway because today I am prideful. My mere existence is a fuck you to anyone feeling uncomfortable over me or my Latinx and/or LGBTQIA+ community. I identify as non-binary, which includes gender fluidity, basically, I fuck with gender, and have been doing so my whole life. And although I fall in love with the person, not the gender, I am mostly attracted to women, and I have caught the perfect one, my muse and beautiful wife, Andrea. Please join me and enjoy my playful imagery, regardless of medium, I actively queer my Americana, which comes in a variety of shades and colors.”

    Mont received their MFA from CGU ‘11. Their artworks celebrate the underdog. Mont’s absurdist environments allow for challenging stereotypes and creating counter-histories. Mont is currently a professor at MVC, MSJC, and SBVC. When Tania is not creating, they enjoy spending time with their wife, son, cat, and pig.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Gender binary | A system in which gender is constructed into two strict categories of male or female. Gender identity is expected to align with the sex assigned at birth and gender expressions and roles fit traditional expectations.

Transgender | An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.

Transitioning | A series of processes that some transgender people may undergo in order to live more fully as their true gender. This typically includes social transition, such as changing name and pronouns, medical transition, which may include hormone therapy or gender affirming surgeries, and legal transition, which may include changing legal name and sex on government identity documents. Transgender people may choose to undergo some, all or none of these processes.

Deadnaming | is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name. Deadnaming may be unintentional, or a deliberate attempt to deny, mock or invalidate a person's gender identity.

Gender Identity | One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Gender Dysphoria | Clinically significant distress caused when a person's assigned birth gender is not the same as the one with which they identify.

Agender | (adj.) is not having a gender or a “lack of” a gender. Agender people see themselves as neither a man nor a woman, or both. They're gender-neutral and often are described as genderfree or genderless.

Non-binary | is used to describe people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of gender binary.

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Portraits of Autism