It’s that time again, kittens. Time to make yourself a cup of tea, snuggle up with your laptop, and prepare to witness the beauty that is our Autostraddle community existing out in the wild. This year we celebrated our Second Annual International Autostraddle Meet-Up Week from October 25 – November 3 and I’m pleased to report that just like last year it was a rousing success.
Last year we hosted Meet-Up Week as a way to say thank you for helping us reach our IndieGoGo fundraising goal (and then some!) but we got so many emails requesting a repeat performance this year that we decided to make it an annual thing. Like so many cool things we are able to do offline and in person, we relied almost entirely on readers to host events in their locations, and you all came through so impressively! Allow me to take this moment to say thank you, thank you, thank you. We do these things because we love you, but also because you make it so easy. You all are the reason we keep striving to create tangible communities worldwide, and you are the reason we continue to grow and flourish both online and in the real world. When I say I love you, I mean it. When I say thank you, I mean that, too.
This year you guys hosted meet-ups in SO MANY PLACES: Beijing, New York, Amsterdam, Idaho, Australia, France, Alaska, Cambodia, California, Singapore, Vancouver, Toronto, Phoenix, Albany, and Florida, just to name a few. (And yes, I realize some of those are countries and some are states and some are cities but I am just trying to emphasize how many different places we exist in, and also I’m not that great with geography so please cut me some slack.) Some of you had so much fun you forgot to take pictures, which is totally okay, but some of you took really cute pictures and that’s what we’re gonna look at now!
Let’s pretend that we’re all sitting by a warm fire paging through a giant queer family scrapbook, because that’s what this feels like to me. Cheers, queers. Y’all are so damn beautiful.
Note: We did not include individual photo credits on images unless the photographer specifically requested it. If your photos are up here and you would like credit, please send an email to vanessa [at] autostraddle [dot] com and we’ll make it happen. Thanks!
