100 Women We Love, Queer Women We Love, Wonder Women

100 Women We Love 2012

June 15, 2012
“Knowing that my election showed Charlotteans and the world that we are not bound by discrimination wakes me every morning with pride,” proclaims LaWana Mayfield, the City Council representative for District 3 in Charlotte, NC, and the city’s first openly gay elected official. Last November, she trounced her Republican opponent in the council election with 78 percent of the vote, replacing an eight-year incumbent. Now, continuously building on her 15 years of activism, her other leadership posts include the Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee, Mecklenburg County Development Corp. Board, Smart Start Board and the Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund Board of Advisors. Prior to the election, Mayfield took an active role in LGBT activism as the Human Rights Campaign’s Diversity Co-Chair. “I believe that my role, along with growing the City of Charlotte, is to open the door for LGBTQ dialogue and to create pathways to service. I have this amazing opportunity to help direct the growth of the City of Charlotte through my vote,” Mayfield says. “I am right where I am supposed to be, and I love my job!”

Drum roll, please! We’re excited to present this year’s 100 Women We Love—our most diverse group of out entertainers, artists, athletes, activists, business principals and elected officials yet. Each of these women is a superstar in her own right. Their achievements and contributions shape our lives —and elevate us in the eyes of the world . They’re working to raise LGBT awareness, increase our visibility and quicken our progress toward a just society.

We are extremely proud to present the class of 2012. There are no rankings or numbers. They are all leaders.

M.J. Corey
M.J. Corey is a font of literary talent and boundless ambition (a result of her Sarah Lawrence College education, no doubt.) She published her first short story in the edgy literary paper The Brooklyn Rail before she was old enough to legally drink—and once she passed that hurdle, an excerpt from her work-in-progress, Missing Communion, appeared in the countercultural religion magazine Killing the Buddha. She brings her work to the masses at literary events like Queer Memoir and Earshot Reading Series, while contributing to a range of major pubs: Seventeen, Thought Catalog and Make/Shift Magazine, just to name a few. “Nothing feels better than making a piece of art out of the disorganized beauty and terror that life is, seeing a blank page get filled up with words. And getting to share it feels good,” says Corey. One of her latest short stories, “Rebound,” has been adapted into a screenplay for a short film. This fall, Corey will head to Columbia for her MFA. “A wildly underrated perk of making art is the feeling of really personal connection with others that it can evoke,” she adds. “The act of writing is solitary, but once the work is out there, you become connected to everyone.”

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