Also.Also.Also: It’s Been Almost 24 Hours, and I Still Can’t Stop Thinking about AOC

When I sat down at my computer this morning, the sun was up. It went down three hours ago, but I’m! Still! Here!

Hahahahahahaaaa. Life. What can you do.


Queer as in F*ck You

“A year and a half later, Thora and I were crowding around the desktop monitor at the hotel boutique we worked at. She’d gotten me the job a few months prior—a godsend to be able to work somewhere looking how I wanted and under my own name after my previous part-time job, where I’d pretended to be a man long after he stopped existing. Our sisterhood was bonded through many shared experiences in those early years, one of them being the release of Sophie’s “It’s Okay to Cry.” The video, which broke with the artist’s tradition of pitching up her voice and singing through cisgender stand-ins, served as either an unspoken coming out video or a sardonic performance of emotional authenticity. “I think it’s kind of ridiculous that you need to do a video that’s a close-up crying in the rain for people to know that you’re a real person,” Sophie later told Thora in a 2018 Lenny interview published a month after the release of Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, her only full-length album. Regardless, it felt real for us—she felt real for us, or perhaps, as Courtney Love once sang, so real she was beyond fake.”

Sophie Made You Feel by Harron Walker for Jezebel. RIP.

Longtime LGBTQ Activist Carmen Vazquez Dies at 72. The Puerto Rican social justice trailblazer died from complications due to Covid-19.

Second Grade Girl Expelled From Christian School Over Girl Crush, Mom Says. Ok but get ready to have your heart broken: “The 8-year-old Oklahoma student questioned whether God still loved her after the incident, her mom told NBC News.”

How Transphobia Became Rife in the Gender-Based Violence Sector. Gal-dem’s deep dive into the violence against women sector reveals a dark underbelly of transphobia, perpetuated by powerful feminists.


Saw This, Thought of You

3 Black Fashion Historians On Black Culture’s Most Influential Fashion Moments. I will never forget Lil Kim’s titty sticker as long as I live. Real formative moment for me as a tween.

Sending so much love to Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual and fuck Marilyn Manson: Evan Rachel Wood and Others Make Allegations of Abuse Against Marilyn Manson

Recommended today by Himani: White Ladies — Curl Up in Your “the Future Is Female” Sweatshirt and Read This Instead

Corky Lee’s Photographs Helped Generations of Asian-Americans See Themselves. Click through for some stunning art that is simultaneously also… our humanity. May he rest.


And now a special edition for all you sports fans out there, written by Natalie

Saw This, Thought of You: Sportsball Edition

+ After weeks of rumors and negotiations, WNBA teams started finalizing deals with free agents around the league this week. Here’s a look at the player movement we’ve seen, through Day 2 of the Free Agency:

+ Not everyone’s on the move, though. Here’s a list of players who are staying with their current franchises: Sue Bird (SEA), Nia Coffey (PHX), Allisha Gray (DAL), Dearica Hamby (LVA), Brionna Jones (CON), Nneka Ogwumike (LAS), Epiphanny Prince (SEA), LaToya Sanders (WAS), Brittney Sykes (LAS), Diana Taurasi (PHX), Alyssa Thomas (CON) and Jasmine Thomas (CON).

+ WNBAPA Vice President and New York Liberty guard Layshia Clarendon hosted a conversation with the ACLU’s Chase Strangio on anti-trans legislation that’s proliferating around the country.

+ The USWNT has announced its roster for the upcoming SheBelieves Cup. Two notable omissions? Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger.


Political Snacks

OK this is just cool — in 2019, Nevada got the United States’ first majority-woman legislature, and when the session began this year on Monday, nearly 60% of its 63 members were women.For the first time there, or in any statehouse in America, women will have majorities in both chambers.

It’s almost 24 hours later, and I still haven’t stopped thinking about this. Just playing in my head on a loop. (Trigger Warning for the Video: it briefly discusses past sexual assault, all around PTSD and trauma. I don’t often give trigger warnings, so please seriously heed my advice.)

In Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Survivors Found a Voice: ‘I Felt With Her the Deeply Vulnerable Pain of Telling Someone’

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. The trans online communities which I am part of did make a handful of mentions about Sophie, but it was mostly along the lines of “I’d never heard of her before” (I admit to not having heard of her either) or “we lost Sophie but gained Abigail.” Meanwhile a very large chunk of the conversation is about about Abigail Thorn coming out, which isn’t getting any mention elsewhere that I’ve seen. Though to be fair, it’s not like she’s a well-known celebrity or anything. Just something I felt like noting.

  2. The loss of Sophie is devastating, she was a true visionary of electronic and pop music and as well as the loss of her life the world is losing her incredible creativity and ability to imagine sounds and worlds that didn’t exist before.

    I don’t often listen to her music but I’ve still found myself heartbroken, and across all of the musicians and music journalists I follow everyone is devastated

  3. The transphobia in gender-based violence sector article had my blood boiling. And then this morning listening to the confirmation hearing of Dr. Miguel Cardona I had to hear rand Paul talking transphobic nonsense over and over about school sports. It was nice to hear Dr. Cardona firmly express commitment to the rights of trans students and athletes. But it was so frustrating to hear the senator repeatedly misgender trans girls and spew the same hate and use the same argument about denying the rights of trans folks in the name of protecting 5’2” white girls that came up in the article.

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