Last week, members were invited to join Kylo Freeman, on Wednesday August 31st for a meet and greet question and answer session on Zoom. Attendees were invited to submit questions ahead of time, and then Kylo and members of the For Them and Autostraddle teams answered them! We also invited questions within the hang, but didn’t receive any. Below is the video recording as well as the transcript. Thank you, always, for being members!

The Video Recording

The Transcript

Nico: Zoom call, okay. Let me just make sure everyone’s in here. Looking good. Hey, everyone! Thank you for coming. Welcome, so my name’s Nico, pronouns they / them. I do membership at Autostraddle, and I’m just going to help with some housekeeping up top. To access the captions, you’re going to want to look for a button that says, “Show.” I think it should say, “Show captions,” down at the bottom, so you’ll want to hit that button in order to see those. If anyone has any trouble with that, can you message in the chat or give me a thumbs up if it’s working good?

I hope everyone can hear me, too. If you want to thumbs up, thank you.

Toula: Yep.

Nico: Okay. Awesome. All right, I’m going to move forward assuming that everyone has a chance to use them, but you can let me know in the chat if you have any trouble. Okay, so second point is once we get started, this call is going to be about an hour and I’m going to be facilitating for time, which might mean giving some timing reminders, and I’ll also be reading the pre-submitted questions. If you have a question that comes up during the talk, you can put it in the chat and I’m going to keep track of those, and then when we have time at the end, we’ll go through those and see what we can answer, and then yeah. I want everyone else to start introducing themselves. Instead of it being chaotic, I’ll just call out your name and then you can introduce yourself. Okay, Motti, do you want to go?

Motti: Yep. Hi, my name is Motti. I am the social and comms lead with For Them. Happy to be here tonight.

Nico: Riese?

Riese: I’m Riese. I’m the co-founder of autostraddle.com and I’m also happy to be here this evening.

Nico: Em?

Em: Hi, I’m Em. I’m CMO at For Them. Also, happy to be here and excited to see a few members’ faces hopefully in the room.

Nico: Carmen?

Carmen: Hello, everyone. My name is Carmen Phillips. My pronouns are she and her. I am the Editor-in-Chief of Autostraddle.com and I’m really glad to be here tonight.

Nico: Toula?

Toula: Hi, my name is Toula. I’m the culture and membership lead here at For Them and yeah, it’s great to be here.

Nico: And Kylo.

Kylo: Hi, everyone, my name’s Kylo Freeman. My pronouns are they / he. I’m the founder and CEO of For Them, and now the CEO of Autostraddle. Very excited to be here. Yeah, excited to meet everybody.

Nico: Amazing.

Kylo: Thanks for the heart.

Nico: Okay. All right, so I’m going to dig into the questions. The first one is… All right, so we got several questions related to this topic, and so when that happens, I sort of condense them, but we received several questions about funding, including VC funding for For Them, how the business model works, what the sustainability plans are for Autostraddle. I’m going to let Kylo speak to all that, how the funding works, how Autostraddle fits into For Them, how membership fits in and what our plans are for the future.

Kylo: Yeah, totally, so VC funding is, I think, scarier than it sounds, right? I understand that it can be pretty damaging for some companies, and it wasn’t a light choice for me to have VC funding for For Them. When we started For Them originally, this was just all about creating safe gender-affirming products, specifically a chest binder, and we needed capital to make this product. I didn’t have any money and we initially funded the company through angel investors. Over time, we’re serving more and more and more of the community, and essentially, we had to make a decision on how we were going to grow this company and make it accessible for as many people as possible, and I made the decision to take VC funding.

An important thing to note first is that we have two VCs. They both have queer and or trans children, and so that’s why they really understand our mission. They understand what we’re doing. They’re not on our board. They are super supportive and they want us to succeed in all of the ways. The way that we use VC funding, I guess, I think this is part of the question, so we traditionally on the For Them side, we sell products. That was what we did to start with, and so obviously we sell those products. That’s how the business is run and that’s how the business is sustained. What’s cool, I guess, about the VC funding is that it makes it possible for us to make those products accessibly priced. It’s sort of subsidized…

Nico: Subsidized, yeah.

Kylo: Subsidized, thanks. Yes. The price of the products, right? For example, our binder, it’s fully recycled. It’s made here in New York. It’s made very ethically across the board. That is really expensive, and so really to sustain this business just by getting folks to buy those products, it would be $120 per unit-ish, and with the VC funding, we’re able to get it down to about 60, so that’s sort of an advantage from our side. From the Autostraddle side, we’re in a similar position, right? So you all pay a subscription membership to get access to content. Your membership fees go directly into the queer writers’ hands, and then you get to support them and keep writing, and so the flywheel goes, and it’s the same here, except that the VC funding means that we can grow a little bit quicker.

We can make sure that we pay our freelancers a little bit more, and you don’t have to go out to the community to raise money, and fundraise, and have donations, so maybe does that answer the question? I’m wondering. What else? If anyone else has any of the questions on that, I’m happy to answer. I guess the TLBR is that the VC funding helps the company grow, but it doesn’t sustain it, and we always funnel all of our profits back into the business to do product development, to pay our staff, and the same thing will happen with Autostraddle.

Nico: And I think Riese, if you can speak to what you were saying before about how that sort ties into how Autostraddle’s been run in the past.

Riese: So when Autostraddle started, I’m not the only owner of the company. There’s a few others who put a little bit of money in. I think someone put in $20,000 and that was what Laneia and I subsisted on for an entire year, but that owner and the other two, they didn’t put money in thinking they were going to make a big profit off of Autostraddle, and at the end of the year, it’s not like we distributed profits. We put all of it back into the company. If it seemed like we’re going to have profits, we would be like: “Okay, what amazing projects can we fund for our freelancers that they’ve always wanted to do? Who needs a new computer? Whose computer is broken? Let’s put this money back into the business. Let’s move it forward.”

I think that For Them has a very similar approach to their business where it’s like profit is not the point. The point is making the company better, making the working conditions better and making salaries and rates better, and doing more things, trying different products, trying different events.

Nico: Cool, and just to clarify, can you all speak to where member dollars are going?

Kylo: Yeah, I mean the same place that they’ve always gone, I think, on both sides of the coin. I mean, Riese, maybe you can speak to that, but they go to the writers, right? For the purpose of this call, they go directly to the writers and that doesn’t change. The more members we have, the more writers we can hire, and so it goes. From our side of the coin, how we’ve always worked is that every member dollar goes right back into product development. It goes right back into serving the customers in the way that they’re asking to be served. Yeah. I mean, that sounds simple, but that’s really… Have I missed anything Riese?

Riese: No, no. It helps pay for our salaries and for our writers. Yeah, that’s where it goes, people. We don’t buy a lot of things, just people.

Nico: That actually works well in terms of the next question because, again, we received several questions asking basically the same thing, but these questions were asking, “Will additional writers and editors be hired and will previous writers who left and the subject editors be rehired, if they’re willing?” I don’t know, Carmen, if you want to start us off here.

Carmen: I want to be really clear that anyone who left, they always have an option of coming back if they’re interested. That is something we’re always open to discussing. We even went as there were writers who did leave over the summer who even in the time of they leaving had said, “I’m leaving for now, but I am curious to see what Autostraddle’s new management will look like, and depending on how that looks, I might be interested in coming back,” and people who shared that message with me, I always took note of it and I said, “Autostraddle is a moving home.” We’ve had writers who have left who’ve come back. We’ve had writers, people in leadership positions who left and then came back to edit portfolios for us.

I think Yvonne Marquez was an editor for us for a long time and left; came back, edited a special edition for us for Hispanic History Month, left again. And it is always going to be at least my goal as long as I’m Editor-in-Chief here to make sure that Autostraddle is a home that you can come back to, so that is definitely something that we’re excited about should that opportunity arise, and then the other thing I wanted to say, which is I guess answering the second part of the question first, going backwards, is are we interested in hiring additional writers and editors?

I can tell you that we’re already kind of making some plans about what kind of writers we’re really excited to reach out to in the near future. I think I have to imagine that question came out of concern for seeing so much of the posts being written by the senior staff, and I know so many of our members are always hoping that we’re able to find a work-life balance, so I’m going to be able to say that we are also very invested in that, that Kylo’s really invested in that. I think almost one of day-one questions that Kylo asked me was, “So what are our plans in terms of hiring? Who’s really exciting? Who’s really great? Who’s out there that you would love to be able to reach out to? How can I help make that happen?” And so that’s something that Kylo and I are already building plans around.

I think that pretty much answers, at least from my perspective, the question as asked. Is there anything else, Nico, that I didn’t hit?

Nico: I think you answered it, yeah.

Carmen: Okay, great.

Nico: Okay, and then getting into some more verbatim questions, “Will pay for freelance writers be increased to industry standard?”

Kylo: Well, I guess I can take this. I’ve spoken to as many writers and editors as I can. I’m going to keep doing that. I’m trying to learn as much as possible, get as much feedback as possible. I can say across the board we will be increasing the freelancer pay. I’m not sure what to yet. I need Carmen to sit down and think about that. I want to make sure that it’s sustainable and that we grow over time. I think that the way that I feel about it is that as we continue to grow, we just continue to increase that pay. I want people to be really, really excited and supported working with Autostraddle, and writing for Autostraddle, so yeah, certainly we’re going to up it. We’re going to increase it. Hey, Carmen.

Carmen: Yeah, I just wanted to jump in. I know you have more to say, but I wanted to just jump in and reiterate also that is aligned with kind of how we’ve always done things every year that, at least I’ve been at Autostraddle, and that includes as a writer. That’s before I was an editor here. Every year, except for one year, we increased pay, and the only year we had to keep pay steady was the first year of the pandemic. Every year, with the exception of that, we have found a way to increase pay [rates for writers] even if we did not have increased revenue, even if it meant rearranging, even if that meant readjusting kind of an already set budget to make, sorry, my family, the phrase is, “Make $1.15 cents.”

We always were able to find a way to make that happen, and so I just wanted to give a little historical notion that that’s definitely aligned with again, what we’ve already been doing here and what we believe in.

Kylo: I agree, and I mean I was pretty much done. I was going to add to it something around that, which is that may be clear, too, the team, you’ve all done such amazing job with such limited resources for such a long time. I think that this is why this sort of merging of these two teams is great because it’s a shared resource and a shared space for us to be able to do even more with what we have, but I know that. I know that you’ve been pushing and pushing and giving as much as possible. I think we’re lucky now that at this point we can increase it even more.

Nico: Thank you. All right. Next question. How will you create an equitable work environment?

Kylo: Well, all my team’s here so they can support me on this, I hope, but the For Them environment, I mean this is something that’s really important to me. I’ve worked in lots of environments that weren’t so great, especially bigger companies on the corporate side, and so I got this really unique opportunity where I could mold my own space for folks that looks a little bit different, so I’m pretty confident in saying that, “We do have an equitable environment.” All of our full-time staff, of course, will have salary, benefits, equity, everyone has equity in the business, and so all the wonderful Autostraddle folks will also have equity in the business, which I’m really excited about.

So yeah, we’ll just continue what we’re doing, but we maintain a diverse team. I get lots of collaboration from the team. I think that that’s how you keep it equitable, too, just listening and making sure that everybody’s happy, upwards and downwards feedback, which we do from everyone across the board, but yeah. I don’t know if you have anything to add to that, Carmen.

Carmen: No, I don’t at this moment. I think one of the things that I know for me as editor-in-chief, when I look at how we’re going to be able to build not just within our full-time staff. Obviously, we care about that work environment deeply, but with our writers, one of the things that I always really pay close attention to and I instruct all the other editors to pay really close attention to is when we are looking at a writer’s piece, are we looking at… we don’t want to just check a box. I think one of the things that’s really important to Autostraddle and has been really key to me is that we know that a piece is not just about a traffic number that it can hit. That’s obviously an important part of it. This is a website, but we are also really interested in is it serving a story that the writer really wanted to tell?

Is it reaching readers who maybe aren’t getting a chance to see themselves somewhere else? And for me, part of that is recognizing that the creators of that content, they’re not just like assembly people. We want to be able to treat writers who come into our space with safety. As editors, we want to be able to treat them as whole people. With editors, we want to take seriously their concerns. It’s really vulnerable. It’s incredibly vulnerable to share with yourself online in the way that we ask people to be able to do it. I think even when we’ve been meeting with the For Them team and I’ve been sharing things, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, no. If you work at Autostraddle, it says it on your social media. You can’t avoid it when you go log into Twitter or whatever,” and people were like, “Wow.” It’s very vulnerable. It’s very face-forward.

I take seriously what we ask our editors to be able to do when they do that. I take seriously what we ask our writers to be able to do when we do that, and I want to make sure that we’re able to honor that by, when you’re in our space, you are safe to create. You don’t have to explain. We hear stories from writers about wild things at other publications. You don’t have to explain to us your gender journey here. You don’t have to explain to us what happened in your coming-out story or this trauma of your life. We don’t ask you to pass that on. If that’s what you want to talk about, we will provide you a space to be able to do so. We will guide you.

We will give you space to work through that, but if what you want to talk about is the Simpsons, I don’t know why that’s the example that came to mind, but that’s how I’m going as I go here, then we’re going to make space for that, too, and I think making sure people can laugh and feel good in our space day to day is a key priority for me.

Kylo: And I’m so inspired by that comment and that should stay the same. We keep driving towards that and that’s what I’m really excited about, for sure.

Nico: Awesome. Thank you. Okay, and then sort of like a new kind of topic path, “Please provide details about your app’s privacy policy and where/how user data is stored, what kind of biometric data is collected, and for what purpose.”

Kylo: Yeah, so I have to hold my hands up and apologize for the word “biometric” that was used. We checked the definition of it. And actually, we don’t collect biometric data, so our app originally was just to help folks feel more authentically well and happy, so we track three mood states, three words, which are “confidence,” “euphoria,” and “joy,” so each day you can, if you want, check in and say how joyful you feel, how confident you feel, how euphoric you feel. And then we track that over the week so you can see how your journey is going, whatever that journey may be towards a healthier, happier state.

What else was that? Our privacy policy, we do not sell data at all. Our data is fully encrypted. That was, to be honest, the first… We never planned originally to build an app. That came through community asks around tracking mood related to gender, so as soon as we did that, the very, very first thing we did and what we put all our investment in was security. That was the very first thing. I’m very conscious of that given how sensitive data is, even if we’re not tracking anything “biometric,” but trans and queer folks, we need to make sure that that is our absolute first priority, so yes. Everything is encrypted. I’ve asked our development team. They’re working on a technical summary that we’re going to share in the site, so that’s very clear and we have that there. Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve missed anything there, Nico, but…

Riese: I think just that the gender, that the tracking of the moods is for your own personal self, also. It’s not something that you guys are gathering and building-

Kylo: Yeah, totally.

Riese: … databases of. Yeah. It’s just for your own personal use.

Kylo: Absolutely, and by the way, I should say, “Everything that we build on For Them decide or develop or try with the community, we also always build alongside the community.” So this stuff isn’t just pulled out of my brain, but rather we have a group of queer and / or trans folks that say, “Hey, we’d really like to do this,” and then we try and build alongside them and we collaborate on it. If anything doesn’t work or isn’t serving the community, it’s something that we will just kill, right? Also, we have quite a startup mentality around that. I see myself in a very privileged position to be able to do these things, and so we want to make sure they serve the community in all the ways that they should be, and so we take feedback super regularly on this stuff and that the version of it now that you see has iterated a bunch over time with feedback to get to these exact three mood states.

And by the way, you can with no one else seeing just for yourself, input other words that you choose yourself and track those, so it’s an opt-in personal journey. You can do a bit of journaling in there if you want to just get to a place of wellness.

Nico: And also, Autostraddle does not sell your data to anyone.

Kylo: Yeah.

Riese: I don’t even know how.

Nico: Riese doesn’t even know how. Okay. All right, and so along the same track, “Please clarify if/how merging A+ users’ data into data work and if A+ members can opt out if For Them’s privacy or other policies do not align with their expectations and values.”

Kylo: But if I’m understanding that, there’s no change on the privacy policy front. You’re not selling data. We’re not selling data. It’s the same. Is that what you mean?

Nico: I didn’t write the question, but I-

Kylo: I think that was that person was asking. Yeah, I mean also as a consumer in this life, by the way, not just with this company, you can opt out of anything, so yes. You can opt out, but there’s not really anything to opt out from. We’re not doing anything with your data or selling it.

Nico: Okay, and then there was a question asking why a phone number was something that For Them collect, as well as device information, and then will my payment name be used for data or the name on my profile?

Kylo: I missed that last part, but I think I heard about phone number, so on the For Them side, when we sell products, we give updates on shipping and product development, things like that by text, but all our members and customers opt into that, so we didn’t send that to everybody without an opt-in. What else did I miss there, Nico?

Nico: Well, somebody was asking about looking at device information, which I can just say is something that generally if you go to a website, the website can see what kind of device or phone or PC you are looking at it from. I think that’s sort of, but that is something that we can see. I think it’s also pretty standard.

Riese: Our analytics programs can tell what device you’re using. Yeah.

Nico: Okay, and then there was a question asking why the current positions up on For Them aren’t listing salary ranges.

Kylo: Oh, yeah, I saw this question. We do list our… Yeah, Motti’s nodding. All of our full-time positions have salary ranges included. We’re in New York. I believe that’s by law. Say that again, Em?

Em: I was about to say, “By law it has to be in New York, and the only ones where you might see a job posting that doesn’t have a salary is if it’s a part-time or freelance like project-based gig, in which case it would be we’d talk to each individual contractor about what their hourly or day rate is.”

Nico: So that might be what you’re seeing. Okay. Those are some technical ones. Now, “What does For Them bring to the table to make our beloved”…

Kylo: I missed that end there, Nico. Go again?

Nico: What does For Them bring to the table to make our beloved Autostraddle better?

Kylo: Riese, do you want to answer this?

Riese: Well, I think a lot of resources, a lot of infrastructure. I think already we’re starting to transition our office over, and it’s just really cool to see how you guys have organized everything. We had built everything in a cardboard box just of spreading out, and it’s been really cool to see how you guys organize your office and your workflow. I think especially what Kylo brings is a lot of business acumen and business experience and finance experience that no one on our side has had or none of our full-time team has had, and also, a lot of energy and enthusiasm and youth, I think, and I think resources. I think financial resources where we’d be in a situation where we might need, like we needed $10,000 to do this project or whatever, and the solution to that is that we just can’t do the project, and now I can go to Kylo and be like, “We need $10,000 do this project,” and maybe they’ll say yes.

So it’s access to… Obviously, we still are growing and I think that For Them just has a lot as a team, and a philosophy, and a spirit and also a very concrete access to resources that we haven’t had, and it’s sort of what I’ve been dying to have for Autostraddle for so long. Yeah. Sorry, did I answer that well?

Kylo: You did. You did. I think I agree. If I was to answer, I would say that, “What do we bring to your team?” I think resource and structure. In my mind, same team, same mission, and the biggest thing is doing… For me, I think what makes me most excited and passionate about building for our community is being able to ask folks what they… I just repeat this all the time, but genuinely ask folks what they need, and then being in a position to be able to enact it as a team, and because we get it and we’re queer, and we have resource to do it, and that really excites me about the Autostraddle side.

I said to Riese really early on, “What are the things that you’ve been wanting to do or your members have been asking for that you haven’t been able to do?” And Riese has a list that is very, very long, and I think that’s what we can bring. We can start to tackle that list. We can start to go down it and figure out the new stuff that we can add to the table. I’m pumped.

Riese: Yeah. Em also has a lot of experience with events planning and stuff, which is something we’ve wanted to do. A lot of times over the years, readers have asked for specific products, and we’ve gotten very good at finding places that will print our words on their items, but it’s really exciting to be working with a company that actually knows how to make a product from scratch, and to actually address those desires that our audience has been asking us for, too, and that we’ve been observing these holes in the marketplace over the past 14 years as we’ve written about what’s out there for our community, and they’re also very…

You guys are very nimble in terms of your ability to just sort of start on new projects, get them going, pivot fast, like access new talent or new freelancers or new employees, get stuff moving in a way that I think we haven’t always been that nimble, and so we’re very nimble editorially like that because that’s what we do, but for the rest of it, it’s really cool to work with you guys over the past several months and dreaming about the future, and all the things that we’ve always wanted, and that our readers have always wanted, and that I think we might actually start to be able to really do beyond all the amazing things we have already done, obviously.

Kylo: I was going to say thank you, Riese, but there’s real synergy there. That question was just what we’re bringing to you, but what you’re bringing to us, and I think that it feels… Maybe people will challenge me, but it feels like a perfect fit. We don’t do editorial. That is not our sweet spot. Your team’s amazing, and I think together what we’re going to be able to have is this really strong company that drives towards the mission in a really big way.

Nico: Awesome. Thank you.

Kylo: I forgot the question immediately, but I think that’s it.

Nico: Okay, so what changes are you most interested in seeing through with Autostraddle?

Kylo: Well stuff off that list, which I think was in real life events, which as Riese mentioned, so not to put For Them on blast here, but we’ve built two companies before this and one of them was an events company, and so we’re really excited about that. More writers, more stories from folks that we haven’t heard from, and just putting that structure in place that I think 14 years of a company that has grown organically with your hard work and you’ve got this huge big company without any of that structure that you were talking about, Riese, that you see in our business.

I think that advantage to that structure is that you can play and move, and create even more, or at least that’s what I believe, and that’s what we try and do on our side, so I’m excited to enact those so that we can do all these really exciting things, and just sort of hold it so we can be sustainable and grow, make everything more accessible. What else was on that list, Riese?

Riese: I can’t give it all away.

Kylo: The in real life events was the biggest-

Riese: The podcast.

Kylo: … ask thing? Yeah, the podcast, absolutely.

Riese: Yeah. I think making the A Plus membership program even better than it is already, and growing that, Nico not having to fundraise. It’s all of these sort of… I think we’ve kicked ass, and Carmen has kicked ass like our editorial team consistently this whole time, and then it’s all the stuff around it that we haven’t really been able to get to that I think I’m pretty excited about.

Kylo: You’ve all been so strapped with time, I think, as well everyone just being in that 20%, 10 to 20% freed up. I think you’d be surprised about what that’s going to do, not just to everyone’s mental health and obviously work-life balance, but to the work and how much we can create.

Riese: Yeah.

Nico: Small follow-up question because you all were talking about events. Will we be bringing back a camp?

Kylo: Toula?

Toula: Yes.

Kylo: Everyone’s very excited about camp. We’ve never done camp. You all have done camp, but I believe that the reviews were positive and everyone’s been asking for camp. I’d love to do camp. Yay.

Nico: Yay. Okay, more events. Camp is a go. All right. We have a question about, “Please share more info about the promised Autostraddle app and what’s going to be on it and how will it look? Will there be articles? Will it be separate or integrated in For Them’s app?”

Kylo: Yes, integrated. It will be integrated with For Them’s app. It will be probably, to be honest, the vast majority of our app will be the content of Autostraddle. It’s getting built in now. We’re designing it. It has puzzles. Spoiler alert, the puzzles are in there already, actually, and the content’s being built in. We’re trying to balance right now, which is maybe you’re interested, maybe not, archive versus new content and how we show that, how we make that most accessible, and so we’re building up where that’s a really fun challenge. I’m really excited about that. Em can give you a… How long, Em, do we think?

Em: Dev roadmaps and timelines will forever be the death of me, but before the end of the year for sure. I’ll say that because I don’t want to promise, but it’s looking really cool. We’re already way deep into the UI designs and how it’ll look and I’m sure that the actual reader experience is going to be much increased. Yeah, I’m very, very excited about it.

Kylo: By the way, maybe this is a weird time to shout this out, but on that note, we love to work with our members on this side, too. I said to product developer, but this is a type of product development. Maybe you can get Nico to ping everybody and if you’re interested, let us know to have a look at this stuff. See if it’s the experience that you are hoping for. Give us feedback. Tell us it’s rubbish, right? We love to hear all that so we can make it better, and we’re doing some underwear testing right now if anyone’s interested in that; queer underwear for the masses.

Nico: I’m excited about queer underwear.

Riese: Yeah. Me, too. It’s my number one interest.

Nico: All right, thank you. That was a good explanation, so I guess, yeah. The app is being built. It’s looking cool. “What’s next for To L and Back?” There’s an explanation of where this person comes from, which is about last episode of To L and Back: “Will it continue as some kind of movie, TV podcast? What’s happening with it and will past episodes continue to be available?”

Riese: Well, I think the real question is what’s happening with The L Word franchise? Are they going to come back? Is there going to be a New York reboot? I think that’s the word on everyone’s lips is they really want to know what’s going to happen next with that amazing, incredible television empire, but yeah. We have a podcast sort of in development that’s kind of, I guess, a spinoff of To L and Back. Called “I Want My Gay TV,” where we’ll be doing different shows, talking about different shows with different people. It’s in process, but For Them has a podcast network that they’re building, and so we’re going to build our podcast into that, and then everyone can listen to their podcasts while they make dinner.

Nico: So I guess the answer is there are going to be more podcasts.

Riese: Yes, there are going to be more podcasts, and some of them maybe we’ll talk about television, maybe television.

Kylo: Yes. I was going to say. Introducing Motti there.

Riese: If you want to talk about that boy-

Kylo: Go ahead, Motti.

Motti: I am the social and comms lead, but I am also the For Them podcast network producer. I am a producer here in the comedy world in New York and I am a long-time podcast guest, and new podcast producer. I’m also obsessed with gay TV. There be plenty of content around gay TV. I’m a huge L Word fan Yellowjackets fan. I could just go on and on, so if I have any say in it, which I do, there will be discussions about gay TV.

Riese: There you have it.

Nico: Awesome. Okay. I love that. Will the same amount of lesbian content still be available?

Kylo: Yes, yes, yes. That’s it. 100% yes. Yes and more. That’s all I have to say about that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Nico: Hopefully. Okay, so I’m just going to read this whole one.

Kylo: Carmen, do have anything to add to that? Are you going to screaming yes?

Riese: Yeah, Carmen did you want to add anything to that?

Kylo: Do you want to also scream yes or did you want to add something?

Carmen: I have nothing to add. I mean, yeah, I can scream. Yes, yes. I don’t have anything else. Yeah, I don’t. Nothing has ever been told to me that we’d be changing, so I think we’re going to still plan to be the same Autostraddle. That’s my plan moving forward.

Nico: Yes. All right, and then this question is a paragraph of explanation, and then it’s sort of like, “How do you feel about that?” So I’m just going to read it. “Congrats on the super gay combo. I thought a lot about what it means to be drawn into community by marginalization and seeking positive reflection and safety from threats versus community made of church or school where people come together to praise or learn or find salvation. Wait, that’s us, too. That’s our community. Praising, learning, saving each other and ourselves. Thanks all for working tirelessly for us to commune. It’s not exactly a question, but I’d love to hear your thoughts or you relate as you generate so much for community.”

Kylo: Oh, gosh, that’s beautiful.

Nico: It’s really nice.

Kylo: Gosh, where do I start with that? This started with community on the For Them side. Before anything was built, it started with a community of folks talking about what we might make, and the product that came out of it was important, but that community grew and grew and grew, and then got too big for the space that it was in, and we had to sort of move that out. I think that’s the crux of all of this, of everything. I don’t want to speak on behalf of Autostraddle, but that seems to be what Autostraddle has always been and still remains to be. That’s the core of everything, I think. I don’t want to speak on behalf of everyone, but why we’re all here and why we all care so much about it, and we feel so passionately about it. I don’t know. Carmen, please.

Carmen: Yeah, I just wanted to first of all say that this was just such a beautiful question and comment. When we first, Nico gave us a preview so that we could best prepare, and when I first read it really moved me. Yeah, as the person said, “It’s not exactly a question,” but it was something that really struck true to me. I think a lot of these people, I guess they’re probably all A+ members, and a lot of A+ members do know my story, that I am someone who started quite literally in the comments of Autostraddle, quite literally so in the closet, I did not use my name. I went by CP for the first, I don’t know, four years I commented, and so there is nothing that has meant more to me than this Autostraddle community, and that is something I believe. I think that’s one of the first things I told Kylo. That’s something that will always be true about me.

This community really did help save me at a time in which I really needed help saving, and I just really agree with what this A Plus member said, and I really appreciated it, so thank you.

Nico: I agree. Yeah. Okay. One last question here. I think this is for Kylo. What are you most excited for in your role?

Kylo: Well, this, how amazing it is. I just feel really… I think it’s hard not to be cheesy in these moments, but I just really feel grateful that I can do this. I’ve always felt like that the past three years building this, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. It’s my job to go to work every day, and be gay, and just do things with our community every day. It’s like the dream job, and now with Autostraddle, that dream job is extrapolated to an insane place.” I think what I’m genuinely most excited about is just to see what we can do. I am endlessly optimistic, so as a human I’m quite bouncy, I’m just always bouncing around, being really, really optimistic, and I think I’m just so excited about what… Our team is amazing. The Autostraddle team is amazing, and now we’ve doubled in size and resources, and I’m so excited about what we can do.

So the team and building something, building on top of two things that have already been so great. I don’t know. That’s what I’m so excited about. One plus one equals three. I think that’s everything. I’m happy to answer any questions from anyone that’s here or did anyone ask anything?

Nico: Yeah. I don’t know if anyone has any questions? If there’s anything anyone wants to say. All right. Okay, maybe not.

Em: I was about to say, “Maybe people want to write it even if it’s not unmuting.”

Nico: Yeah, I see something in the chat, which is just, “Thanks for answering the previous question. Thank you for hosting.” Okay. Thank you all coming.

Carmen: This is so rad.

Nico: Thank you for being here. Thank you for asking questions.

Kylo: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you everybody for welcoming me and listening to me. I know this is a big shift or it feels like a big shift. I hope that it’s not a shift at all. The team is still going to be doing their thing, and all I’m going to try and do is support them as much as possible. Yeah, A Camp, excited.

Nico: Motti?

Motti: I have a couple questions. No, I’m just kidding. I do just think it’s important to add that this isn’t the first or the last, or sorry. This isn’t the last time that anybody has an opportunity to ask questions or bring anything to Kylo or the rest of us. Kylo mentioned it briefly before, but they’re obsessed with, “Ask for it and I’ll give it to you,” when it comes to product development, but then, also, when it comes to many other things in running a business, and so just because it’s closing out now, I think the line of communication doesn’t go away after today.

Kylo: Totally.

Nico: For sure.

Kylo: I was going to give everyone my number, but everyone said that was too much, but know that I was ready. I was ready to do it, but my email, maybe.

Nico: Yeah, and obviously, we’re going to keep communicating, as we do.

Carmen: A+ members, I don’t have access to that A+ comment box. Also, a thing that maybe not all A+ members know… Sorry, Nico. I didn’t mean to cut you off. I’m so sorry.

Nico: Oh, that’s okay.

Carmen: They may not all know that that inbox goes to me and you.

Nico: Yeah, it goes to us, but you can also email us.

Carmen: It goes directly. Yeah. You can always email us. You can respond to things. I will be honest that Nico checks all of your messages every time. Sometimes I don’t get a chance to, which is why it goes to two of us, but every message goes to both of us. It goes to both of our inboxes, so whenever you’re writing in, that might also be a fun fact to know if when you’re writing in to flail that there is a person who’s seeing. You’re not flailing to the internet, you’re flailing to a friend who cares.

Nico: Yeah.

Carmen: I generally get excited, you guys.

Nico: A+ priority contact box, help tickets, responses to automated emails…

Carmen: Yeah. Nico gets all of it. I only get the parts that come into the inbox, so I only see it when you’re sending us corrections on articles telling us about spam and flailing about your first date, but Nico gets help tickets. Nico gets all of it, so there’s also that.

Nico: Thank you for being in touch. Thank you for participating in this. Y’all are awesome. I’m not going to keep everyone hanging around on a Zoom at 9:00 PM Eastern, if we’re good, but I really appreciate everyone.

Kylo: Thank you.

Riese: Yeah. Thanks, you guys for coming out.

Carmen: Thank you, team.

Nico: Yeah.

Riese: Thank you.

Em: Nice to meet you.

Nico: Yeah, great.

Riese: All right.

Nico: Bye.

Riese: Good night.

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