Feature image by Eddie Mulholland – WPA Pool/Getty Images

I feel like the intro’s to these link roundups lately have been a running diary about my mental health? Which was not on purpose, but to keep the theme alive I did have an hour long panic attack this morning. But I’m feeling much calmer now! And I promise next week we’ll go back to talking about what I’m eating for dinner or whatever.

Queer as in F*ck You

8 Hour Meetings and Shouting Matches: School Boards Are Making LGBTQ+ Students’ Lives Hell. From the editor, Matthew Rodriguez: an “incisive look into the politiciziation of school boards, which have gone from bureaucratic budget-balancing bodies to ideological arenas.”

Staying with that same back to school energy, “Don’t Say Gay” Bill and The Fight to Preserve LGBTQ+ History (related: Miami-Dade School Board Votes Against Recognizing LGBTQ History Month)

Meet the Real-World Rude Lesbian Swordfighter Behind Gideon the Ninth

Saw This, Thought of You

Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch. “She ruled for seven decades, unshakably committed to the rituals of her role amid epic social and economic change and family scandal.” I am American, and I feel ill equipped to weigh in on the 70 year rule of Queen Elizabeth II, the role of the modern monarchy, and the legacy of the Royal Family, all of it, in front of the thousands of readers who will see this. So, I am purposefully in this moment staying in my lane during what’s truly a once in our lifetime changing of the guard. I am also sure there will be an infinite number of pieces that we’ll be able to link to and learn from in the days and weeks to come, questions to be asked, histories to be re-evaluated.

What I do feel confident about is this one piece of a very large pie, so I am including it here:

And also, you’re going to be hearing a lot about Operation London Bridge: Britain Has an Intricate Plan That Maps Out the 10 Days After Queen Elizabeth’s Death

I’m someone who’s always had a lot of long-distance, text based friendships, way before there was pandemic surge of the “almighty group chat,” so this article mostly confused me? But for the rest of you, Would You Exit The Group Text?

A Swimming Cap Made for Black Hair Gets Official Approval After Previous Olympic Ban, as a Black girl for whom swimming is a mental health life line, this means a lot to meeeeeeee.

Everyone Should Wear Absolutely Huge Sunglasses. I emphatically agree, and also wrote about this back in May: “I describe this aesthetic as ‘rich white republican grandma on her fifth martini, sitting in the backyard her family’s estate in Connecticut and watching her grandson Chip play polo.’”

In Defense Of Black Women (Like Me) Who Can’t Dance. Speak on it!!

Political Snacks

If I had to see this headline, then so do you. Ted Cruz Says Workers Forced to Pay for Degrees in Queer Pet Literature.

And One More Thing…

This clip led to a very excited 5-10 minutes in the Autostraddle office as we furiously debated whether or not Susan Sarandon came out last night on The Tonight Show.

https://twitter.com/tinapkennard/status/1567790107150753793

(We’ve landed on she’s making a joke about her cats. But in 2017 she sure did tell an interviewer “My sexual orientation is up for grabs, I guess you could say” and we wrote about it.)