Well happy Monday to YOU. You’ll notice this AAA is considerably smaller than usual, and only focuses on queer things and the Saw This, Thought of You section. THAT’S BECAUSE THINGS ARE CHANGING AROUND HERE. I usually spend a couple of hours combing through Feedly for things I think you should read, or things I know you’ve already read but might want to talk about with each other. Then I combine those things with all the things I’ve saved in Pocket from my own personal reading, resulting in one enormous AAA that was kind of demoralizing to put together because of the aforementioned Feedly comb. (If you think the news is depressing now, try reading the headlines for 30 different takes on the same horrible, fucked up story or policy, one after the other, with photos!) All of which is to say, we have this one precious fucking life and I can’t spend another second of mine sifting through some of the worst news stories and takes this world has ever seen, just so we can all rehash the bullshit here, in one of the few safe spaces where we trust that we’re looking out for each other’s best interests.
So in that spirit, I’m cutting the AAA down to Queer as in F*ck You, which is just the queer stuff you might’ve missed or the queer stuff that was amazing, and Saw This, Thought of You, which is just the stuff I’m inexplicably sharing with you just because I fucking feel like it. I’m trusting you to already be keeping up and engaging with the news anyway, and having a record of it here is just unnecessary. (And it’s breaking my brain and deleting all the precious neurotransmitters my Wellbutrin is trying so desperately to keep balanced.) Try this out with me for a few weeks and if we decide it’s not working, we’ll reevaluate, ok? OK GREAT. Look there’s more intro than actual link roundup this time. AMAZING.
I hope your summer is in full swing and you’re using every available free moment to be near water or in the sun or both!!
Queer as in F*ck You
Poll Finds Lesbians Are Only 16% of the LGBTQ Population in America. The sample size here is incredibly small and the results don’t track with the results we’ve found from our own polls here over the years, so these are confusing statistics!
LGBTQ Identity Is Shaped by Language. So What Words Will Describe “Queer” in the Future?
Canada’s Supreme Court Rules LGBT Rights Trump Religious Freedom.
I Convinced Myself I Wasn’t A Lesbian.
The Unspeakable Linguistics of Camp.
Music’s Unsung LGBTQ Heroes. UNSUNG ugh love a good pun. Also! 50 Songs That Define the Last 50 Years of LGBTQ+ Pride. So much music.
Six Tips to Make Your Workplace More Inclusive for Nonbinary Individuals by your very own Archie Bongiovanni!
Saw This, Thought of You
What Teens Really Say About Sex, Drugs And Sadness. Is this true, teens. Talk to me.
Trumpism Finds a Safe Space at Conservative Women’s Conference.
‘Take a Seat, Take a Stand’ Continues the WNBA’s Radical Approach to Activism.
As someone who also struggles with depression, I love the new format and the decision to focus on the good things. I’ve had to dissociate completely from the news ever since the 2016 US election in order to maintain my mental health, and I agree completely that this should be a safer, gayer space!
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Guess who has two thumbs and is taking herself to (and conned three other non-sports-fans into attending) a WNBA game this week? :-D
yessssss
Yay, lesbians!
Also, the WNBA is awesome.
?⛹?♀️ ⛹?♀️ ⛹?♀️ ⛹?♀️ ⛹?♀️ ?
Queer as in F*ck You + Saw This, Thought of You = yes good.
cool cool ?
100% agreed
Can I also quietly say that I love the Doll Parts section? Is that ok? But also obviously, You do you!
(Oh hey, guess who taught me that?? YOU DID!)
i waffled on Doll Parts tbh. let’s see where the breeze takes us!
Like a cool summer wind! ?
Something that noticed that really made me question sample size in the Buzzfeed article was that more women in the 50s and 60s identified as queer (rather than lesbian or bisexual) than women in their 40s. It seemed like it must be some kind of artifact.
it just doesn’t track!
It’s not just the size but mainly the methodology. They didn’t survey random sample of people, people had to visit the website to participate. And it means it was prone to brigading (for example, if someone posted a link on some bisexual forum and no one did the same anywhere else, then automatically one group would very likely be overrepresented).
BTW, I didn’t find any information in both Buzfeed articles if “Gay” category meant exclusively “Gay Men”. In fact, they often used the term “gay people” speaking about that group, which is rather suspicious. After all as for “Bisexual” category, they listed together both men and women. And considering that they allowed such responses as “queer or self-described”, nothing implicates they didn’t allow female participants to pick “gay” as description of their sexuality.
So it’s rather important information that is missing, considering that as from what I’ve noticed a lot of homosexual women in America don’t like the word “lesbian” and prefer to call themselves “gay” instead.
Maybe… but i wouldn’t want to underestimate the Queer Nation founders from the early nineties and all the sex positive queer culture and activism that got a little water-down in the work for acceptance.
I’m not saying the methods are good or bad. I just know some really cool older dykes.
I was intrigued when I saw the phrase “DM culture” until I realized they didn’t mean Dungeon Master.
see if she was your friend she could be into BOTH dm cultures
If it makes you feel any better, Rachel, I didn’t realize it until I read your comment.
Yeah I thought dungeon master culture too. Long debates about the merits of D&D vs. Whitewolf; articles like “‘I wanna d8 you’ and other ways to show respectful interest in your gamers”; measuring your personal worth by the feet of shelf-space you have dedicated to hardcover roleplay books; twenty years later still recounting anecdotes from that one totally awesome gaming night.
I can’t click on the article now. It can’t possibly be as good as I want it to be.
fair.
I am a teen and I can confirm that we are all sad and hopeless !!
MARY ANNE THIS IS TERRIBLE NEWS
Isn’t that just what being a teen is like, though?
Am I remembering it wrong?
Are any queer teens ever not sad and hopeless? It was arguably the worst years of my life.
I am definitely a fan of this new format. Plenty of awful news to take in on every other platform I frequent and when I step outside.
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Count me in as enjoying the new format!
I like the feature image for this article. Also enjoying the new format.
Laneia! I am so happy that you made this decision — for your own emotional well-being (I cannot even imagine what those few hours of hardcore news reading did to you) and also because I really trust your linking and always end up reading (or at least keeping open in a tab for a long time) anything you put here. And it’s true, the news is depressing! I think, even if we’re *not* keeping up on the news, by which I mean, if we’re only seeing the few “major” terrible news stories each day as opposed to the slightly deeper dive that these columns usually offer, I think that’s also ok and we have permission to let that slide, especially on hard days.
Anyway that is all to say that I’m a big fan of the new format!
“always end up reading (or at least keeping open in a tab for a long time)”
So true
Not opposed to the new format. I can’t imagine how much time the old method took you to put together–it took me forever to close out all of the tabs after an Also Also Also. And sometimes it was just too much emotionally to take in.
TBH I miss the old format, but for the purely selfish reason that I deleted my facebook and twitter and have been relying on autostraddle, instagram, and Ann Friedman’s Friday newsletter to fill me in. Not that I can’t take more responsibility for finding that content, but y’all have done a truly stellar job of choosing top quality content. However I think all your reasons for the new format are totally valid. I’ve just grown to count on autostraddle as a news source to some extent, which is my own thing.
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