B. Cole created a word - an acronym, actually:

“Masculine of center (MOC) is a term that recognizes the breadth and depth of identity for lesbian/queer womyn who tilt toward the masculine side of the gender scale and includes a wide range of identities such as butch, stud, aggressive/AG, macha, dom, etc.” (sic) (B. Cole, 2008)

MOC is starting to catch on – it inherently liberates those that it describes. Before I’d heard of Cole, I heard the term she coined. As a gender fluid femme, I appreciate how “MOC” counteracts gender policing within queer communicates.

“I’ve always been MOC,” Cole told me during her interview. “I’ve always been a gentleman.”

Cole embodies an unassuming graciousness that is akin to kindness rather than courtesy. On some level, this way of being can transcend gender. Being around her made me remember how I would like to live this way all the time. In small ways, I dabble in it. For example, I like to hold doors for people. Older men sometimes seem confused by the gesture, but it just feels like the right thing to do. Cole’s expansiveness of spirit seems natural and all pervasive.

She was raised by both of her parents in her early years. Her mother started Habitat for Humanity in San Francisco and Oakland.

“I’m bi-racial. My mom is six nations (Native American) and my dad is black," she says. "When I started kindergarten in New Hampshire, they had a school-wide assembly to explain who I was. I was the first black kid there. I got beat up a lot on the way home from kindergarten. It was an incredibly racially polarizing place to grow up. Eventually we moved to Oakland. I went to Thornhill Elementary School. What does it mean to be in the hills? What does it mean to be multicultural and multi-modal? I see everything in the grey, the complex spaces in which reality lives.

“When I was in my 20's coming out – my community was mad diverse and came from lots of different perspectives," she continues. "Growing up in Oakland embeds that in you as a deep value. That has lots of influence on my own lens and has strengthened my ability to be a bridge builder.”

Her accomplishments are dazzling. She is a researcher, a policy advocate and an organizational development consultant. She attended Mills College and London School of Economics. She is co-author of "Through the Lens of Culture: Building Capacity for Social Change and Sustainable Communities." She also is a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, a Coro Fellow, recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and the Spirit of Delores Huerta Award.

In 2003, Cole and her wife started Chocolate Baby Designs - the first butch clothing line. She is project director for the Brown Boi Project - a community of masculine of center womyn, men, two-spirit people, trans men and allies working toward racial and gender justice.

“When I won the Truman Scholarship, it was like being ushered into an experience that I had never known. Most of us don’t even know it exists," Cole says. "At that time, I was both in awe and in rage about how inaccessible those spaces are. I got selected out of my class to go to work in the White House as the scholar in residence, to do the leadership development programming for the foundation. It was 2000, Bush had just rolled into town. It was deep. It was an important time of recognizing this privilege. That’s part of what Brown Boi Project is about - there is privilege out there, and it matters how you steward it, who you give access to. It matters that you’re working on constantly deconstructing it and making it more accessible.”

Even more remarkable than her curriculum vitae though, is the way that she doesn’t let her ego get in the way of the work. She was hesitant about agreeing to an interview because she wanted the emphasis to be on the Brown Bois. After lunching with her, I’m convinced that a profile of Cole is a profile of the organization she founded. She is one with her work.

Though Brown Boi Project brings together five day cohorts of MOC women and men, it also teaches accountability for the privilege of masculinity and seeks to “improve the lives of feminine identified people.”

In addition to processing issues of race and gender, the cohorts also teach communications, personal finance, fundraising, self-care and bodywork.

“What does it mean to be a whole and healthy and complete person? If we are broken as individuals, we won’t be able to do the work that’s necessary in our communities,” Cole says. “The challenge is in the void. There are resources available for folks who are already leaders within a movement of social change. How do we deepen the capacity of that movement overall? The Brown Boi Project is about building social capital.”

Acca Warren, a participant in the project who is now working with Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance, a national collective of social justice trainers, volunteered this: “Brown Boi Project is a space that is graciously held by folks that are fierce and in struggle. One of the many amazing things I took and continue to take from it is that there are so many folks dedicated to transforming masculinity into something that is healing and I will dare say loving. Cuz (sic) i'm proud to be a brown boi like that. We don't have to be isolated anymore.”

The inclusion of straight men is one factor that differentiates Brown Boi Project from other models of queer empowerment.

“In looking at straight men and MOC women, I saw a profound dissonance – there’s a shared life journey in terms of statistics around incarceration, education and lack of access, so there are all of these opportunities to learn and grow from each other," Cole says. "And yet, there is virtually no conversation or dialogue happening.

“I had to work a lot harder to recruit straight men. What’s made it possible to bring straight brothers into the fold is a real commitment to doing organizational development. We have to walk the talk. Our strategy is to bring in leaders that are positioned to work with young men and give them language.

"One of our participants was a young leader who works with Cease Fire out of Chicago. He was able to take what he learned back into his work with young men, and an increasing number of MOC women, who are being impacted by the gangs on the rise. A lot of straight men that come into this project have had the least opportunity to think about gender, to realize how it really traps them and keeps them from being their full and complete selves.”

Cole is courageous in a way that is unusual. She reminds me that as humans, we don’t have to allow our oppressions or our privileges to debilitate us or keep us from right action. If we stand in our true power, we can maneuver these circumstances in a way that creates a softer, sweeter reality.

“Doing this work is not about being in solidarity with other people,” Cole says. “That’s a big part of it, but a larger part is that this is how the world should be. We are actually living in ways that aren’t healthy and aren’t authentic. We need this work as much as anybody that we would do the work in solidarity with.”