Are You Pumped? Our 14th Birthday A+ Ask-Us-Anything IS NOW

Autostraddle’s turning 14 this week. That’s a lot of years on the internet for an indie queer publication for women and trans people. We’re celebrating this queer space that was built by us, for us, and no one’s gotten rid of us yet!

Today, we’re thanking the readers who’ve kept us here, for everyone who needs us, with an Ask-Us-Anything for our A+ members (pssst that’s YOU)!

Have you ever wondered:

  • How DID Autostraddle get its name?
  • Are any of us single?
  • Who’s a top and who’s a bottom around here?
  • Who’s on board for starting a queer commune in the woods?
  • What’s our go-to for potlucks?
  • Which of us actually believe in astrology?

Get in here, ask away, and let’s celebrate still being here, still being queer, after all these years!

When is the AMA?

TODAY March 7th, 2023 from 8am – 10pm EST / 5am – 7pm PST

But why is the AMA? Because as A+ members, you are the core reason this queer ship is still sailing. A+ members literally fund, just with A+ memberships, half of what we do — and between fundraisers, merch and affiliates, Autostraddle is majority reader-funded. Your support allows us to publish the kinds of articles that matter to our community, vapid celebrity fluff and deep personal essays, queer fashion and style and cultural criticism, and more. We can balance getting clicks with publishing pieces that won’t get as many views, but that really, really matter. AND we can pay queer and trans people to work and write for us. That’s what reader support does for us. That’s what you do for us and this community. So, let’s party in the comments, yeah?

What exactly does this celebration look like? It’s an AMA or, really it’s an Ask Us Anything with 23 whole gays to answer your questions. This is an all out, all day, send-us-your-most-heartfelt-or-most- untethered questions situation. (We might not be able to answer everything, but you can certainly ask.)

Here’s how it works:

Comment below with your questions, your advice needs, your burning desire to share, your quandaries about queer life, the universe, everything.

We, the editors and writers of Autostraddle, reply to your comment with our answers, our advice, our solutions or lack thereof. If you want a specific person to answer your question, include their name in the comment so we can “control F” and find those questions.

So who all’s gay here?

The following people will be around to answer your questions!

Riese Bernard
Carmen Phillips
Nico Hall
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Laneia Jones
Anya Richkind
Heather Hogan
Viv Le
Em Win
shea martin
Niko Stratis
Stef Rubino
Valerie Anne
Sa’iyda Shabazz
Drew Gregory
Shelli Nicole
Nic Sam
Vanessa Friedman
Julie Gentile
Lily Alvarado
Darcy Cooper
A.Tony Jerome
Ashni Mehta
Ro White

Let’s gooo!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
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839 Comments

  1. My wife just texted me a photo of a liquid nitrogen vapor tank containing our donor’s sperm strapped into the front seat of our car. If we were on the L Word, we’d be celebrating “our baby” but sadly “It goes from a canister to a baby in nine months” is pure fiction. I’d be interested in hearing, to the extent people feel comfortable, about the triumphs and challenges of using love and science to make a baby.

    Also, highly recommend listening to this Moth story: https://player.themoth.org/#/?actionType=ADD_AND_PLAY&storyId=22036

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  2. And another question: Can you link the website “Butch Is Not a Dirty Word” in an article? I’d *love* more Butch content on Autostraddle… Butch content is so rare overall. At least it seems that way to me. It would be amazing if more people heard about this resource! I was surprised and delighted when I found it! <3

    https://butchisnotadirtyword.com/

    And do you have website-recommendations regarding butch content that are not Instagram or on other social media?
    Thanks!

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  3. Dear team, how many “You Need Help”-questions do you receive and how do make the choice which ones to reply to? How many of the questions are you able to answer compared to the amount that people send theirs in?

    In a related note:

    It seems to me that there haven’t been many trauma-related questions on the “You Need Help”-column in the past couple of months. My impression is that those articles have decreased. Is it just me or do you agree? And in case you do, is this due to a lack in questions regarding the topic, or a conscious choice by the team?

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    • hi lee! this is such a thoughtful question and i’ve been mulling it over since you submitted it. i’m the editor of the you need help column, so i will try my best to answer your questions.

      1. we get a LOT of questions. probably 2-4 a week? i think that’s a conservative estimate. ok i just looked it up to be certain and we’ve gotten 41 so far this year, and we got 116 last year. we publish one a week, so that’s 52 a year. i guess that means last year we were able to answer just less than 50% of the questions!

      2. how we choose to respond is a multi-layered process, and one that is actually in flux right now. i inherited this column, which has been a cornerstone of autostraddle content since the very beginning, by chance during the pandemic. we were trying to figure out what a community editor’s role could possibly be once so many of the things i had assigned writers to report on couldn’t happen anymore (especially IRL meet ups), and it made sense for me to take on the YNH column because it’s such a community space. i’ve been working to dial in something that feels really good to all of us, and we’re not there yet, but right now the process is that a question comes through to the YNH channel in slack, and if a writer is interested in answering it, they’ll comment and tag me and ask if they can take it on. i usually say yes, we pick a deadline, and then they move forward. occasionally i say no — some questions feel outside the scope of what we are capable of answering, and sometimes it seems like a LW needs someone who shares specific aspects of their identity (like if they’re a POC, or trans, or fat, or disabled, etc) to answer the question and if no one organically volunteers it can be challenging to move forward with the question. it’s harder to ask writers to take on an advice column they didn’t volunteer to answer because it is such an emotionally charged task. does that make sense?

      3. as for the trauma questions, it’s interesting you bring that up, because it dovetails with my answer to #2. i am REALLY into feedback on the YNH column, and a few months ago a reader suggested on a specific YNH (that addressed trauma) that it would have been helpful to have a therapist respond. carmen and i are constantly discussing what is reasonable to ask AS writers to respond to, and the idea of tagging in someone with formal training in giving advice about trauma made a lot of sense to me. i was lucky enough that a sex therapist recently reached out and wanted to write for us, so i am hoping that i’ll have a few therapist-answered columns to run for YNH in the near future! and i’ll be researching other therapists who also write to try to take on non-sex specific questions that i think could benefit from a professional. so i have slowed down on publishing questions that address trauma specifically until i find a system that sets us up to answer them in a way that will help our LWs as much as possible. in general i do try to switch things up a bit — i like to publish a mix of serious and more lighthearted q’s, and i hope that’s still reflected in the column.

      i hope that gives some insight you were looking for! i really love tending to the YNH column and feel grateful every week we publish a new question that y’all trust us with your hearts and your queries.

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      • Hi Vanessa, great thanks for your elaborate reply, I appreciate it! That is good to know. I, too, hope that there will be responses by a therapist in the future – I am looking forward to it! And I find the trauma-related questions especially important. Thanks again!

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  4. Question for all Autostraddle staff but especially those who have worked here for a long time: Is it strange to be so well-known in this community? Does it feel like being a celebrity? I feel like we have somewhat parasocial relationships with some of the Autostraddle writers and I wonder what it feels like from the other side.

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    • I think it’s nice most of the time! I know some people like to be super private or have really firm boundaries in place about it, which is fine! I personally don’t mind people approaching me out in the wild and welcome it! If you see me, say hi! I also don’t mind people being parasocially invested in my personal life, because hey, I write about my personal life v candidly and that comes with the territory!

      People do occasionally make it weird (by not having good boundaries/being inappropriate w me or w my fiancé who isn’t Autostraddle Famous but is a well known writer in her own rite and even more so than I am). But even in those situations, I am usually pretty chill, just stick to my own boundaries, etc. If I wanted to be anonymous, I wouldn’t be a writer for the internet tbh.

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    • Most of my best friends are people I’ve met through Twitter because of my writing or A-Camp because they were my campers or even from the comments of here and all the way back AfterEllen in 2008. I mostly just think of Autostraddle readers as friends I haven’t met yet!

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    • it isn’t strange, no! like kayla said, i put my life out there on the internet and being known is part of that, i think parasocial relationships are a compliment, honestly. i appreciate when people see me in the world and say nice things to me, it makes me feel cool and important, even if i probably seem awkward in the moment, that’s just my charming personality at work! it’s also just neat to meet people in person, even if just for a moment. usually people are really respectful about it as well. i feel badly that i can’t necessarily respond to everybody who reaches out to me in every online capacity, but it means a lot to get those messages regardless.

      when i started all this, a lot of it was intentionally designed to create parasocial relationships — to give people the sense of like-minded queer community that they might lack or wish they had more of in their 3-D lives, so that was always something we were prepared for.

      that said i definitely don’t feel like a celebrity! maybe cuz i live in LA and have a lot of friends who are famous on tiktok or youtube or whathaveyou and wow they get recognized a lot, it keeps me humble lol.

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    • yeah, i think it’s something you expect when you write about your life on the internet. people know about my partner or my kiddo because they’ve read things that i’ve chosen to share about them here or other places i’ve written. i am certainly not as well known as other writers on AS, but if even one person recognized me because of the writing i’ve done here, my life would certainly feel complete. i love the community created here, even if it’s only parasocially

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    • haha ok well i guess i’ll be the odd one out here and say yeah, it can be kind of weird! i don’t dislike it and i don’t regret being open about my personal life on the internet, but of course it’s strange when people think they know you very well as soon as they meet you?

      like kayla said, i do actually really like meeting people who have read my work out in the world, and if people say hi or that they like my writing or want to chat, that feels really good. i think all writers like to hear people enjoy their writing, so that rules.

      i also like when people email me and let me know how my writing has impacted them — one AS reader let me know they read from my work at their wedding, and i legit cried when i received that email and it felt so special to me.

      sometimes it’s weird, though. when i was single and dating i felt like sometimes people thought they knew me already because of my writing and that was weird because the me on the page isn’t ME, do you know what i mean? especially when i was writing a lot of dating and sex content, sometimes people sent me inappropriate messages on IG (like unsolicited nudes, or requests to set them up with “hot butches in portland, because you’re so good at flirting and i’m not” (????????)) and that made me feel shitty, like i wasn’t being seen as a writer but just… i don’t know, like a projection? and once someone got mad at me for not making time to be their friend, because i was working an event for autostraddle and they’d said hi but they felt like i blew them off. they wrote me a long IG message about it and i felt terrible because i hadn’t thought i’d blown them off but i also didn’t really know what they wanted from me. we were strangers.

      that said… i obviously enjoy writing about my life on the internet, otherwise i wouldn’t write about my life on the internet. and i have made so many connections over the years that are very special to me, and i love when people interact with my writing, and my fiancée teases me that i’m a celesbian because someone once recognized me at a brandi carlile concert and tbh i liked that so… i dunno. i feel like i sound like an ungrateful jerk in this answer, especially because apparently all my coworkers are totally okay with this (lol), and i don’t want to sound like i’m NOT… but the truth is i am a recovering people pleaser and sometimes it feels as though people i don’t know have expectations of me that i’m unaware of because of this specific work i do, and that is… strange. it just is.

      on the other hand i’m going to pitch an article tomorrow about cute things my gf has said to the baby chicks we brought home last week, and the editors *may* let me write it like the time they let me write about random stuff i’d eaten for lunch from my gf’s fridge when i worked from home at her house before we moved in together, and i do understand that it’s a privilege to just be able to like… write about my life for a large audience. and i’m grateful. i talk about this a lot in therapy, and like riese said, i don’t even feel *that* well known. probably best that i’ll never be a legit celeb. to conclude, i do love all of you! i’m just trying to be more intentional about my boundaries in my 30s.

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    • Now I’m not nearly as well-known as some of my fellow writers but since I write about TV and frequent TV-themed events (like NYCC and other cons), I do sometimes run into people who are familiar with my work. 99.9% of the time it’s very, very nice when I introduce myself to someone new and they go “wait like Valerie Anne from Autostraddle? I read your recaps!” and we have a fun laugh about it and move on. Or if I’m at a convention and someone recognizes me and pops by for a quick hello, I love that. 0.01% of the time people I’ve never met will invite me out to dinner or something and if I politely decline, they act like I’ve offended them, like we had these plans for years and I ghosted them, like we were best buds and I am letting them down, when the truth is we had never met before. It’s very odd. But luckily very rare! Most often it’s just nice people being nice; most of my best friends I’ve ever made I’ve made from the internet so it always feels natural to me. And when someone compliments my writing, it fills me with a very particular kind of joy; plus it means I know we already have something in common, whether it’s the show I wrote about or our sense of humor. So it’s usually the start of fun conversations!

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    • Everyone wrote such beautiful and detailed answers, but I just wanted to say that I find immense peace in knowing that we all know each other in our internet ways (and even though no one has ever approached me in public, it would be very cool if someone did!) and that also I have people know know me offline. And at least for me, those two worlds rarely overlap — so that’s made it easy to navigate and not at all weird feeling.

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    • Comin in late to this but I find that personally, writing is one of the primary ways I get to know others and am known. Like, in person friends and my partner and others learn things about me through my writing that they do not know…even from spending lots of time with me. So, writing feels like one slice of how I am a social human participating in community with others.

      I’ve only had one person come up to me in Pittsburgh but it was a DELIGHT and if you see me, I’d love to say hi! I def have resting bitch face but don’t let it deter you. 💗💗💗

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  5. Hello, I am a trans woman who primarily presents as butch. Sometimes, however, it makes me feel bad, like I’m trying to retain my masculinity, even though I feel like a woman. It’s especially bad when it comes to getting my hair cut. I prefer shorter hair since it’s easier to manage, but to me it always looks too masculine. Has anyone else here dealt with similar issues?

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    • Hi Emma! It took me a minute to find this piece, but I’ve always thought it was super well-written and it seems relevant to the topic, is by a butch trans woman. I mean, masculinity and womanhood is a huge topic right? They aren’t mutually exclusive at all, nor are they correlative. There are high femme nonbinary people, femme trans men, butch cis women, and so on, which obviously you know I am just saying as a lead up I think. In terms of feeling bad, when I feel bad about the way I look or am perceived, I just try to hold it in my mind that that’s intentional (“it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” type thing) — it keeps me in my place if I feel bad for doing anything but, right?

      As far as haircuts go, idk if you have sought out stylists who particularly work on queer women, but I feel like there are some subtle differences sometimes with butch women’s haircuts and men’s haircuts. And sometimes not! but! I feel like the best stylists can work with you and give it a little something. Short hair is So Hard. I feel like it can take forever to find someone who will get it right and to find a style that works for what you’re trying to achieve. Personally, I tend to rarely switch it up because some short styles I really like on me and some I LOATHE ON ME, and wow it is a fine line. But, yes, tl;dr, I recommend maybe really trying to source a super good fit of a stylist and then to work with them to try and get as close to what you want as is possible <3 Sending you so much love!

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  6. ok, i may be double-dipping bc i also sent this question to Casey. Butttttt . . . .what are yalls fave books or blogs or podcasts on: the process of intellectual work, and building a scholarly life/career, and that are aware of discrimination and structural barriers to doing that but not focused on those? with an emphasis on inspiration and one’s own intellectual process & development? for someone who faces plenty of structural barriers & is all too aware of what they are, and all too busy dealing with them for herself & others, but who wants to see cherishing & keeping that intellectual/creative spark burning within her reflected back? reflected back by ppl who understand the challenges, but who are mostly reflecting the spark & the drive & the ups & downs of the intellectual life & process? bonus bonus for any science/math/engineering, but other fields are good TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. (Black Women Writers At Work is on the list already, ty Carmen! you mentioning it above resurfaced this question for me)

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    • Thanks for this question. I don’t have any particular go-to intellectual podcasts that fuel me, but I do have scholars who do this and so the thing that I like to do is just hit up Apple Podcasts or Spotify and search my favorite thinkers’ names. For instance, I do this a lot with people like Tressie McMillian-Cottom, Cathy Cohen, or Bettina Love. Like I’m bad a commitment to the institution of a podcast, but I’m hella ride-or-die for the people who inspire me.

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    • they’re fiction rather than self-help or like a direct answer to your question, but Elif Batuman’s Either/Or and also The Idiot both sort of address the issues of building an intellectual life!

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      • THANK YOU for not shutting up about it! I learned about it from you earlier, but i didn’t know til just it’s republished. i am in line at the library that says hard copies are on order!! also shared w someone who is in line for the e-copy!

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        • Of course!! No problem! And also my apologies, I missed in your original question that you were already accounting for the book — so you didn’t need me to mention it again! That’s just how genuinely jazzed I am about it! Hahaaaa

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          • i get that way about books too! it’s great!!! i’m so excited to read it! it’s also thanks to your dedication to working the Important Books that I read Song in A Weary Throat (you’d linked Dark Testament in a caption of an ALOTO recap image, and I went on a month-long Rev Dr Pauli Murray dive from there) and now I can find a way for just about everyone in my life to have a reason they should read it.

  7. ALSO I know I’m super late, and you may not see this, but if you do, @liliesinthesky-2, I love everything you write & I’m wondering if there’s anything you have in mind that you’d like to write, but don’t have figured out yet, or don’t yet have space/support to write?

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    • Okay I am so so so so grateful for this and I can’t thank you enough!!! It truly means a lot.

      And, ugh, there’s so many ideas in my head. But, I usually need time to flesh it out and think through it. Also, I’m a grad student with a job outside of AS, so it is hard to devote time to getting creative. I make it work the best I can. If the world…wasn’t the way it is, I’d probably spend a lot of my time writing and developing my craft.

      Again, just, AHHHHHH. Thank you thank you thank you <3 <3

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      • re gradschool, sending you all the magic protection sparkle-dust that can travel to strangers on the internet! just know i cherish what you’ve shared here so far & am rooting HARD for your creativity & writing, and your rest, as space for them comes & goes & comes, no rush.

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  8. Dear Heather, will you write/publish personal essays on AS again? Not that you owe us anything about you or your life… Rather that I am incredibly IN LOVE with your writing and your thoughtful, moving, precious and important personal articles!

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    • Lee, this is such a generous thing to say! Thank you! It means the world to me! I hope to be able to write those essays again someday soon. I miss it a lot. A couple of things happened last year, personally and professionally, that hurt me so deeply and every time I’ve sat down to try to write an essay, I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of dread and terror, which has never happened to me in all my years of writing on the internet (15!). My mom also died last year, and while I had been estranged from her for some time, her family tortured me with me own writing about her for a long time after she passed away. I’ve been working through it all with an awesome therapist and I do feel confident that I’ll get my old storytelling love and confidence back. I will be thinking of your kind words as I do. 🧡

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      • Dear Heather, thank you for your kind reply! I am sorry that your mother’s family is so cruel to you. You don’t deserve any of this for speaking your truth. I remember your article “A Sleep to End the Heartache” – it was so very powerful and sad all at once.
        And I was deeply impressed by an A+ advice you gave to a person recently who asked if they had to forgive their father, and how you spoke about your decision regarding your mom there. Since I haven’t been in contact with my family of origin for a long time, all of this hit home and I was deeply grateful to read your response to that reader.
        May you be surrounded by people who can hold space for complicated grief (grieving a person who was very abusive) and by people who are there for you with all of their hearts.
        I wish you healing and I am glad you found this awesome therapist. May the dread and terror you feel decrease steadily. Please take all the time that you need, take care of yourself and allow others to take care of you. Of course I’d love to read personal essays of you again in the future; and if you decided against writing them for any reason, that is a valid choice, too (but I do hope you’ll write them again because you said you missed them).
        To borrow the words by Sharon Salzberg “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

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  10. How have you gone about building community / making queer friends while staying safe enough during the pandemic? I’m trying to build my friendships and make new friends while healing from an abusive relationship. I’ve realized that I have a bunch of social anxiety now from both kinds of isolation and would love to find ways to ease back into being with people while also protecting folks and myself from the plague.

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    • Thanks for asking this question because it’s hard out here trying to make friends. I moved across state lines twice in the pandemic and also just feel awkward making friends as an introverted, nerdy, far, Black queer in the Midwest. What I did was to situate myself in organic community spaces often — like I found a coffee shop and library I really loved and then just kept going back. When I became a regular, I started seeing other regulars and eventually we started chatting and started to build something that was not super awkward. The thing about this method is that it takes time and investment in habit…it also might not be great if you’re still not doing indoor stuff but it worked for me. Hope this helps a bit (even if just letting you know that you’re not alone in this)!

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    • This is a really tricky question and something I’ve been struggling to navigate since I’ve started spending half my time in a city that’s new to me. The fact is I’ve had to loosen up some of my Covid cautions while still being as responsible for myself and others as possible. This means attending more small in-person gatherings, going to restaurants and coffee shops maskless (at places that aren’t crowded), and going to queer events sometimes masked, sometimes not depending on what they are.

      It’s challenging because some of the things I used to do maskless like even going to a movie could lead to more organic social interactions whereas when I’m masked it just doesn’t result in the same casual conversations. I also think people in general have gotten worse at casual conversations since the pandemic.

      What’s worked best for me is meeting people virtually and then meeting in-person. So I’ve been reaching out to Instagram mutuals in my new city and then meeting up with them IRL. I do really miss the random meetings though and I really miss frequenting crowded queer events.

      It’s really challenging right now! Go easy on yourself as you try to make new friends because it is harder now for all of us.

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    • i am not AS staff, but i am a queer who moved to a new city in 2021, and wow it’s hard. i do outside events only, and its very slow going. i have found some potential w location-based online spaces (discord, slack) and then finding ppl there who are down to meet up outdoors, but its’ early days w those connections . . . . . just chiming into say i’m in a similar question boat.

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  11. At work, I’m helping with creating our own AMA with our Pride employee resource group.

    Any tips/resources for making this event that includes all employees a success?

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    • Of course Nico will have way more interesting insight than I on this one, but one thing Nico did for the larger team that I think really helped was give a LOT of reminders when it was / that it was happening! That way, I felt totally prepared for what was coming not only the day of, but the day before, the week before, etcetera. Makes it feel way less daunting to participate in!

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    • I agree with Anya, I think another thing that we try and do is make the event fun for us and our team members! like we do a lot of hyping each other in slack. For us it also helps that it’s our birthday, right? So we have those vibes going both in front and behind the scenes. But I think for any AMA we’ve done (even when it’s not our birthday), it helps that we are also having fun with it.

      Nico also always makes sure there are questions for everyone! So no one feels awkwardly left out, which I think can be a huge help — especially depending on how big/small your team is.

      I’m sure there’s more (I’ll keep thinking!) but those are the first two off the top of my head!

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    • If it includes all employees, does it include straight employees? If yes, I would lay out a code of conduct, or like, some guidelines beforehand (perhaps similar to Autostraddle’s comment policy or our discord code of conduct if you’ve been on one of those) that just lays out expectations. Then, also, for the people answering the AMA, I always emphasize that no one has to answer a question if it makes them uncomfortable. I’m not super sure about what the AMA’s goals are, based on your question and besides general team building, but if it’s at a workplace, you definitely want to prepare the space ahead of time so that the lasting impact is one of good feelings, as opposed to one that potentially creates harm or conflict. I hope that’s not too vague!

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  13. I’m so glad Autostraddle is connecting queer women/trans/nb folx across the country! Thank you for the work you do. I especially love the media/book recommendations and the personal essays.

    I’ve seen some great listings of queer poets too. I just came out with my first full-length book and am wondering the best way to have it considered for your next poetry round-up. Suggestions?

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