Also.Also.Also: Lady Gaga Might Be Harley Quinn in “The Joker” Sequel, Give Harley a Girlfriend Already

Feature Photo of Lady Gaga, currently in talks to play Harley Quinn in Todd Phillips’ The Joker sequel, by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

OK listen up! I bought entirely too many strawberries today and I haven’t started googling “strawberry recipes” but if you have any suggestions, please please let me know.


Queer as in F*ck You

“How do you stop transmission of a casually transmitted virus moving among despised populations… without creating stigma and harming public health?” Blaming Gay Men for Monkeypox Will Harm Everyone by Dr. Steven Thrasher for Scientific American

DeSantis Weighs Ordering Child Protective Services on Parents Who Take Kids to Drag Shows

And related!

Here’s the full video:

Sheila Lopez Becomes LGBTQ Advocate in Navajo Community (this hot tip comes to you from Heather’s grandma, who saw it in AARP magazine!)

“’That’s the briefing you would get in Afghanistan or Iraq,’ says Stanley, who served in Afghanistan in 2005. ‘I got it in Missouri.'” “Don’t Go Here. They’ll Kill You.” LGBTQ Troops and Families Face Mounting Discrimination With New Laws

As a Queer Teacher in America, Violence Feels Inescapable

Report Reveals Generational Shift and Sharp Rise in Transgender Young People in the U.S.

They Came Out Slugging: The History of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance

We have quite a few Brittney Griner updates:


Saw This, Thought of You

Lady Gaga in Early Talks to Join Joaquin Phoenix, Todd Phillips in Musical Sequel. All I asked for was that Harley get a girlfriend on the big screen, and this is how they repay me.

Obsessed with this news. Lena Horne Will Be The First Black Woman To Have A Broadway Theater Named In Her Honor

Google Misdirects One in 10 Searches for Abortion to ‘Pregnancy Crisis Centers.’ If you’re unaware of “pregnancy crisis centers” this might seem like a benign headline, but when I tell you that those crisis centers are actually often misnomers run by private orgs to encourage women in crisis to keep and deliver their pregnancies, it’s going to take on a whole new meaning, isn’t it?

Waking Up From the Nap Dress. “How the proudly personally privileged Nell Diamond convinced so many women to wear pajamas in public.”

The Potato Roll Empire Bankrolling a Christian Nationalist. Welcome to BBQ Season!!


Political Snacks

The Racist Roots of Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” Law

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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.

17 Comments

  1. I don’t think there is anyone more evil and vile than Ron the Douche. Although we call him a slightly more x-rated name. He likes Hungarian autocracy. That entire party does. They all sit idly by while they go after marginalized groups thinking it’ll never to them. It will. One day it will. There is no shame. The hypocrisy knows no end. I’m not native to FL. My wife moved us here to be closer to her parents. I hate it. For 18 years I’ve hated living here. If this insanity doesn’t stop, we’re moving to a “hopefully” forever blue state. If that fails, I wfh for a company based in Canada. Why not. It’s so bleak here. I just want to work, live, love, have health care, binge TV, play video games, and give my fur babies the best life. Why is that something others hate? I’m just tired. So tired.

  2. The other day my nephew was watching one of the older Sesame Street episodes where Lena and Kermit are singing together and I freak out for no apparent reason like “Ahh it’s Lena Horne!” He turns and says who? I just gave him this look and was like “you have no culture.”

  3. i get slightly bad vibes from that new york times article about trans youth. it feels concern trolling to me, amping up the fears that the youth now might just be mostly transtrenders, naively bamboozled by social contagion, but taken advantage of by medical systems that want them to transition.

    it really focuses on geographic differences from average population in addition to age ones in ways that i think attempt to give false scientific legitimacy to the idea that a meaningful proportion of trans youth aren’t *really* trans

    admittedly unflattering short pulls that particularly irked:

    “But the numbers, which vary widely from state to state, also raise questions about the role of peer influence”

    and also

    “trans identification in recent years has become political dynamite, driven in part by the rise in minors seeking medical treatments”

    which particularly irks because i think looking at recent history shows that people have been transphobic, tried to exert control over adults through bathroom bills, and have now tactically shifted by focusing their efforts on controlling children in classic moral panic fashion. political figures are making trans youths lives more dangerous and scary to drum up the culture war.

    the author says many things that are also good and true, i just don’t necessarily get the sense those are the things they believe

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