Questions from the A+ Inbox were taking up such an enormous portion of the A+ Insider that we started dedicating an entire post to them instead! This A+ feature now exchanges bi-monthly with our column, Into the A+ Advice Box. We think this will be a lot of fun for the whole family. We’ve included as many questions as we can. We love you and your hair looks fantastic today!

A Fundraiser You Say!?

Q: I am so behind on so many things, including rest I need to get to not be so damned behind, but I am READY FOR THE FUNDRAISER! you are more ready than you know!!!! You have done so many of the damn things. Thank you Kamala and Carmen for leading. Thank you to everyone who made their hiring processes possible!!!

Kamala: I’m impressed that you’re READY for anything in 2020, that seems like a huge accomplishment that should land you a trophy or a ribbon or something — maybe it at least earned you some merch from our store? In any case, thank YOU for being someone who is interested in mine and Carmen’s leadership and for supporting us, we REALLY need that and it makes every day better to wake up to!

Carmen: I don’t even know what to say!!! THIS MESSAGE MEANS A LOT TO ME!! I’m bleary eyed and exhausted and filling this out at 1:30AM because that’s the only time I have left in my day. So yeah… this good faith gesture means the world. Thank you.

Nicole Oh MY Goodness!!! You are so kind and reading this as we were getting started on this fundraiser was such a lift. Thank you and thank you so much to everyone who’s given and signed up to be a member. You’re the reason we’re here.

Q: My nail fail bit the dust this week, so I am SO STOKED to see the You Do You nail file in the fundraiser shop!! THANK You! I was glad to donate anyways but nail file is just the cherry on top 🍒

Sarah: Okay, that’s really exciting because these nail files have been looking for a good home and are so excited to meet your nails!

Q: I had never used Crowdcast to join an event before, but I really like it! I understand it probably doesn’t have as many features as like Instagram or something, but I really love it as an audience member— it’s easier to use and a cleaner layout. I hope it works for you too on the backend and that there can be more live stream AS events hosted there!

Nicole: I’m glad you like it! The only thing we had an issue with was that it deleted our recording of the town hall after 23 minutes. Eep! We’re still going to post a transcription of what we have and links to the articles referenced during the event for you all…coming soon!

Q: merch ideas: visor that says “who’s all gay here” or “dana fairbanks memorial tennis tournament”. bandanas so readers can be like “yes I’m flagging my love for queer media!” gender traitor sweatpants.

Sarah: Interesting that you say bandanna… 😜 Also I love all these ideas. Keep them coming! Did you know we once had a pin pack slated to be produced that was Dead L Word Character Pins? Dana, Mr. Piddles and Jenny! RIP.

thank you dani janae for your mango essays. savoring them on a saturday morning. so so wonderful – thank you!!!

MERCH, BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL CONCERNS

Q: Has Autostraddle ever thought about hosting a Discord?

Heather: How do non-D&D Discords even work?! Do you still roll a D20 for various activities and charisma checks and things???

Q: There was a Q about stock photos and nicole asked if autostraddle should make a stock photo library of queer people doing normal things and the answer us YES please do this i would use the shit out of it, it is one of the most annoying things about my job, the intense heterosexuality and whiteness of stock photos, gays are only ever wrapped in rainbow flags on a beach. I would pay for this!!!!!!!

Sarah: We’re already seeing this happening in a couple of places — The Gender Spectrum Collection by Broadly and Queer in Tech Gallery by Mapbox. The best news is they’re both free with credit, because of course gay people want to share resources! I suspect many more photo projects like this will continue to happen in the future, and I look forward to every single beautiful one.

In the meantime, please browse our prolific content on making fun of stock photography — we definitely agree that they leave a LOT to be desired.

Riese: Also we shot some at A-Camp once and they were very cute! Twice, maybe? We’ve used em all over the site over the years. The only problem was that like, our only set was our original A-Camp site.

Q: With the major caveats that we have no idea what the world / pandemic will look like in a year; that everyone’s health and safety are of utmost importance; and that advocating for racial justice both in the US generally and on Autostraddle / at camp specifically is a top priority…I was wondering if there had been any conversations about the possibility of some version of a-camp 2021? I know even before the pandemic, this was a year to recalibrate and address issues of racial justice and accessibility, and def understand if these conversations have taken a back seat to addressing Black Lives Matter and police brutality and negotiating the pandemic, but also have been really feeling the draw of some sort of community-building event when it’s safer?

Riese: I miss community and camp too and I feel you! I really miss the A-Camp Family Band and your faces. I wish I had a better answer for you than this, but the pandemic has really made it impossible to plan events right now. :-/ Most companies have put off in-person events until mid-summer 2021 and we do camp in May or June.

Unfortunately A-Camp has consistently excelled at a number of behaviors unsuited for the present moment: packing large groups of people into tiny spaces, gathering people from all over the world to converge — after traveling long distances on planes and trains and automobiles with many strangers— into the same indoor space, sleeping in cabins with 18-20 other human beings for 4-7 days, etc. Piling all of these humans onto busses, into cafeterias, etc. Everybody sweats and sings and screams and laughs all over each other’s bodies. Some people even kiss!!! In 2019, a stomach virus was going around within the staff that was sidelining 2-5 staff members a day who were supposed to be leading activities, providing support, playing drums, etc. — and these were staff who were sleeping in rooms with usually just 1-3 other people. Every A-Camp is followed by what is called “the A-Camp plague,” referring to an illness of vague definition that is spread handsomely amongst everybody. Significantly reducing the size of our camper population would decrease our expenses somewhat, but not enough to avoid raising prices on those who do come. (The small camp we had in Wisconsin that one time in the fall was a test run of the site, we knew we wouldn’t make money off it.) This is especially tough with the economy in free-fall.

The process of planning camp — especially at the intensity required now to really revamp how camp is held, led and constructed — also involves a lot of travel and in-person conversations. Sites and transportation companies aren’t sure when or how to begin booking major events again, if they survive the pandemic in the first place.

We’re also committed to making camp as affordable as possible as well as being accessible to disabled and immunocompromised campers and staff — and to have a robust and diverse staff able to offer a cornucopia of programming and to feel fairly compensated for their work. Doing that is tough in the best of conditions.

We’re holding on for dear life at Autostraddle, but I think like a lot of small businesses, The Excitant Group LLC is in a precarious spot where we can’t afford to lose any money on anything. RIght now that means we don’t have money to invest in camp until we know for sure when and how it is happening, and we can’t afford to put down deposits or accept them or hold planning meetings or hire staff without that certainty.

Q: I don’t know how you go about getting affiliates or what, but I think it would be cool as heck if you got one with Lucy and Yak. They make the best pants and the best dungarees, including rainbow ones for pride, and work really hard to be sustainable and pay their workers a fair wage. Anyway, if you don’t know about them and are looking for a pair of cute and comfy dungarees, cannot recommend them enough.

Sarah: Okay, WOW this is a really cute brand! Thank you for telling me about it. I absolutely NEED this backpack. They currently do not offer an affiliate program, unfortunately. But now you’ve created an issue where I need to spend money here!

Q: Hi lovelies! Just wanted to say how much I would love to have likes back in the chat. It’s really made me less interested in using the chat because the only way to agree with someone would be everyone writing “I agree” and that can be a mess to read. I just looked at Heather’s great statement in the Batwoman article about the comments and I think the “bad actors” could benefit from seeing how many likes a comment like that gets versus theirs. I know that’s a backend technical thing and may require developer support you don’t have, but just wanted to let you know. Thanks! <3

Heather: Thank you for wanting to like my comment! I was dang serious about that! I’m not sure about the like button, though — I can’t even figure out what a TikTok actually is.

Q: Can you say more about commenting and if or how it helps? Like, does it help boost the popularity of an article, or bring more clicks to the site? Sometimes I don’t comment even when I want to bc I think it doesn’t matter, but I will make it a point to comment more if it somehow helps Autostraddle overall!

Riese: It matters because it makes us (writers) feel like our lives have meaning and purpose and provides a soft balm to our precarious egos. Writers are flattered and excited to get comments! Also people often see a lot of comments happened on a thing and are like hmm that looks well-loved, lemme hop in on that! So yes, there’s a point!

Q: Have you disabled the emailing the articles to people option?

Sarah: Not intentionally, no! I’ve let our developers know and we’ll get that fixed up for you. Thanks for the heads up.

Q: Are there any trends you’ve noticed in Autostraddle commenting over the years? Are people commenting more/less during the pandemic? Are there certain articles that tend to get more comments? I’m interested in AS comment culture and its evolution through the life of the website, and would totally read a deep dive on this!

Riese: We used to get like a bajillion comments on everything! Sometimes even a thousand. It was rare for any post to have less than ten comments on it. The only posts that have really consistently captured that level of engagement over the past few years are L Word Gen Q recaps, which surprised us all, truly!

There’s a few things driving this shift: for a while, it was that a lot of our most passionate commenters were part of an Unofficial A-Camp Social Group on facebook where they had immediate access to a large swath of the community. Also as queer ppl made new friends both through meet-ups and Camp and through the world at large shifting and growing and making more space for gay people to exist openly, they relied less on AS for that hit of community discourse. Commenting in general used to be more popular than it is now— and lots of publications decided it was more trouble than it was worth and shut down their comment sections. We had a whole week in 2015 dedicated to trying to make people comment more!

On the technical side of things, commenting has become less popular as more and more readerships have shifted their platform to mobile. It’s just not as easy to comment on mobile I guess, or to sign in if you forgot your password.

Q: Hi, on the reader survey, I wrote a comment about the chrome browser extension Vimium not opening links on the home page. I didn’t expect any changes (y’all already do so much, and y’all were fending off all the white supremacist DDOS attacks!), but I’ve noticed it works now! I don’t know if it was my comment that kicked anything off, but I’m impressed and so thankful some changes were made under the hood. Y’all are the best server wizards I could ever aspire to be.

Carmen: I don’t know for sure that this was because of your comment either, but I love that it COULD HAVE BEEN, so I have decided to accept this as my personal truth of what happened.

SO EXCITED TO WATCH ALL OVER ME!!!! DREW THANKS 4 THESE RECS!

ALL-CONSUMING NEEDS TO SHARE

Q: Just wanted to say I was very excited to see Autostraddle mentioned in the blurb for Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery when I checked it out from overdrive yesterday!!!
(I read it in almost one sitting and it was better than the first one! I loved it.)

Sarah: Thank you for reading! I’ll pass this message on directly to our client Tin House, who has been advertising the book with us for the last month!

Q: I finally watched The Babysitter’s Club! Thank you so much for talking about it until I did — it was so good!!!! So good I can’t even describe it.

Heather: Yes, yes, yes! Didn’t it strike such a great balance between nostalgia and modern activism? Talking about the BSC with Carmen, Valerie, and Meg Jones Wall has been the highlight of the past few months of TV for me! And Kipo. And Owl House.

Carmen: Sarah is also a huge fan of the BSC, too! It really is just… soo good. (I watched it twice! shhh!)

Q: Hey ! Have you heard of “She Rises” by Kate Worsley ? It was published in 2013. I picked it up for the promise of a historical novel about sea-faring and dairymaids in 1700s England (well-written escapism) and was completely surprised to find the story turn VERY lesbian, VERY trans, VERY queer as it went ! Featuring a love story between women, cross-dressing, gender change, butch trans men (yes!)… at the very heart of the story, it’s the main storyline really. It’s incredible ! It’s also very well written and is much more realistic about what it would be like to live in that epoch (smells, sounds, bodies, food, morals…) than most historical fiction. HIGHLY recommend !

Rachel: I hadn’t! I obviously want to read it immediately. I’ve noticed a theme of… seafaring? I guess we can say? recently in some queer fiction and am very into it , would love to see more!

Q: So stoked about the WNBA coverage!! Keep it up!

Heather: Yes, yes, yes! Can you even believe we get to watch every single WNBA game this season if we want? Whole weekend days with THREE WNBA games on TV? And a weekly column here on Autostraddle dot com. If I told 16-year-old me about this, she wouldn’t even believe it.

Q: A few links:

Watch EVERY WNBA game for a one-time payment of $16.99 (all games can be played later, great for folx like me with kiddos’ schedules to contest with). The league is playing 3 games per day for 7 weeks, so that’s a lot of basketball for much lower one-time cost than monthly YouTube TV or Hulu+ Live.

The WNBPA Collection

The WNBA Player Association’s online store — a ton of great shirts, including ones created in partnership with Breonna Taylor’s family. In a league that is comprised of 80% black women, this merch shop is a great way for fans (especially white ones) to financially support the players’ union directly.

Heather: Yes, yes, yes! Stacy and I have each spent over $200 in this store this season! I also ordered one of those orange WNBA hoodies and I hope it gets here before it gets cold!

Q: Hey babes

Where’s the Friday night bantz? I am an occasional positive support-giver and general lurker on the Friday thread, but I’m drunk and lockdown is hard and we’ve gone back into more lockdown and all my family who are not affected are all “just stay in your house” and I wondered if AS folk in other countries who are in similar positions would be able to give me advice, support, I don’t know, but something better than “suck it up”.

Also they are knocking out all the BAME people on Canadian drag race, why am I watching this shit?

Carmen: : Sadly I haven’t watched Canadian Drag Race! But I did watch this season of the US-based Drag Race: All-Stars and moved Shea Couleé to the background of my laptop! I won’t tell you to “suck it up” — quarantine is hard! — but I’m sending you so much love and solidarity.

Started watching TV’s Hannibal and would like to start a petition to rename it “Killing Eve For Men,” what do you think?

Rachel: Oh wow, I definitely see your point! I love the idea of Gillian Anderson bridging these communities in this context

Q: This is cute! Fansubber army bringing queer movies into China.

Heather: Gay people really are the most amazing, resourceful human beings! I remember in like 2011 watching this queer German dramdedy called Hand auf Herz on YouTube because FANS WERE SUBTITLING IT! I loved that dang show and I love fandom.

Q: Thanks to YouTube, I just rewatched the music video for Wilson Phillips “Hold On”, and I think we could all use a ranking of Chynna Phillips’ outfits by lesbianism.

Heather: Riese! Someone’s calling you!

I am reminded that I learned what ACAB meant on this very website, in 2017, from a Grease Bats comic. Thanks Archie!

HAVE YOU WRITTEN ABOUT THIS / I NEED INFORMATION / ARTICLE IDEAS

Q: I would like to know everyone on the team’s favorite color.

Sarah: It changes year to year, but right now I’ve been pretty steadily into lavender + lilac.

Rachel: A fun fact about me is I hate picking favorites or ranking anything, but I will say that I feel v connected to deep red/crimson/burgundy! Also really like deep green/mustard colors.

Nicole: It looks like this team might be a little averse to answering this but turquoise and black have ranked pretty highly for a long time for me.

Q: My partner is nonbinary and I’m on the hunt for songs/poems to listen to/read while thinking about how cute they are. Any suggestions?? Thanks!

Carmen: Well first of all, congrats on having a cute boo that you want to fantasize about! Second, have you tried Mal Blum’s “Pity Boy”? It might suit your needs! The video is super cute. And aw heck, here’s our complete Mal Blum archives.

Q: Do you have any articles/resources on how to dress more “dykey” as a trans woman? It seems like most trans fashion guides out there are for a more older/conservatively dressed audience, and on the flip side, a lot of brands/articles for queer women don’t really cover problems like dressing around narrow hips and broad shoulders.

Carmen: We do have some past resources that I’m going to link here, but also I want to let you know that I loved this suggestion (thank you!) and wrote it in my notebook for things I’d like for us to publish this fall. OK! Until then, check out these past links:

• You Need Help: Dressing Like a Grown Ass Trans Woman
• Some Quite Perfect Swimsuits for Trans Women

Q: Hey y’all, just wondering if you’ve published any articles on where to buy clothes if you’re a trans woman? I’m specifically looking for plus size women’s jeans that aren’t curvy in the hips and butt, and has legs that are long enough for someone who’s 5’11”, but any advice on places to get clothes that are more geared towards trans bodies is helpful!

Carmen: Check out my EXACT ANSWER up above! This applies to you, too! 😘

Q: How do you responsibly recycle or get rid of a vibrator/sex toy? Are they… donatable? Have two that have barely been used (they are like new! just wasn’t into them), tried to return them to the company and they refunded me but said to keep them, great, but now what? Can I send it to someone?

Rachel Great q! It is often possible to sterilize a used toy such that it could be used by someone else (who’s informed of its genesis and is making a decision about its used status knowingly!). Pure silicone, stainless steel or glass toys can be sterilized in boiling water; toys that can’t be boiled but are water-safe can be sterilized in a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts water and then cleaned thoroughly. (Toys made of wood or leather, other organic materials etc, can’t be fully sterilized.) The question of how to find someplace/someone to recycle to is another issue; sharing used toys isn’t necessarily encouraged, even if it can be done safely with effort, and so companies aren’t going to take returns on them, and places that take other used items for resale won’t either. Your best bet would be to make your offer to other individual queer folks on something like a Queer Exchange page or Lex (again, clearly disclosing their used status!), or if you ever get an invite to like a sex toy swap party.

Q: Yooo, will there ever be a return of the Find Your Fit column, or something similar? Just realized that my masc of center summer wardrobe is schlubby and sad (and maybe I need help narrowing down to a specific aesthetic overall tbh).

Kamala: I definitely came to the same conclusion a couple weeks ago. It’s probably not unrelated to the fact that I don’t really have anywhere to wear my truly sharp and popping party threads, and am sick of even the cute stuff I have to wear around my house. Anyway, I too need some sexy masc quarantine looks, so while I cannot promise Find Your Fit, exactly as it was, it’s on my radar of things to get on the site.

Q: Just wanted to say thank you for diligently working to convince me, someone who is not typically a YA fan, to watch the She-Ra reboot. My crops are flourishing and I’ve convinced at least six other people to watch it now too. Feeling very seen by this show!!

Sarah: I also need to thank Heather for this! Thank you Heather!

Heather: IT IS MY PLEASURE! Everyone who watches She-Ra through until the end is so happy and that makes me so happy! I honestly still can’t believe that final season happened. Like. I’ve been waiting my entire life to see that!

Q: Okay, so this is a bit of a weird question but I’ve been trying to submit my poetry to various queer publications and I’m worried that some of the lesbian-focused ones might be terf-y just out of an abundance of caution. Are there any lit mags like that I should avoid? Alternatively do y’all have any favorites I might not have checked or heard of? I want my poems to find good queer homes!

Rachel: Great work trying to be responsible with your creative labor! I’m not remembering any particularly TERFy ones off the top of my head; some examples would help, but I’m not sure! I’m familiar with Nepantla, Gertrude Press, Plenitude, and here are a couple more via the last!

Q:Do you guys know which brands of reusable pads are actually good and from ethical companies? I want to change over, but with the rise of fashionable eco-capitalism it’s hard to tell what’s actually good! Ideally it’d be UK based as that’s where i am?

Sarah: No joke, Glad Rags Pads based in Portland, OR is a great choice for several reasons — they definitely walk the walk, and I know this because I live here and have personally visited their small vintage house turned office they work out of. They donate all their excess and upcycle it to create new objects! They’re also an affiliate! If you click the link above you’ll be kicking back some of your purchase to us! I would also recommend their cups if that’s your thing. If you find regular menstrual cups kind of large/intense you should try their XO Flo Mini. Okay, that’s it. Happy shopping!

Q: Do y’all have a favorite daily news round-up? Anxiety scrolling Twitter for news is eating into my work day, ha.

Kamala: I think it depends on the kind of news you’re looking for! I have the general ones, like the LA and New York Times, and I really like Patrisse Cullors’ Daily Digest on Instagram.

Carmen: AHEM! May I also humbly suggest Autostraddle’s own Also.Also.Also (on Tuesdays and Thursdays), Pop Culture Fix (on Mondays and Wednesdays), Extra!Extra! (the best news analysis in the game! On Fridays!), and Sunday Funday (self-explanatory)

Q: I am loving the Top 10 Lesbian/Queer Movies and TV shows; any plans to do similar lists for queer books??

Heather: Okay I’ll start!
#1. The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon
#2 The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
#3 The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin
#4 The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
#5. Ash, Malinda Lo
#6 Batwoman: Elegy, J.H. Williams and Greg Rucka
#7 Of Fire and Stars, Audrey Coulthurst
#8 Red, White & Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston
#9 The first season of Tremontaine, Ellen Kushner, Malinda Lo & Co.
#10. Fried Green Tomatoes, Fannie Flagg

Riese: We did do a big Top 100 from reader input a while back also, but yes, this is a thing to consider!

Q: Are any of you watching The Owl House? It’s a new-ish show by Dana Terrace who’s bi(!!!!) and worked on Gravity Falls and both the trailer for the second half of the season and the most recent episode strongly hint that the lead and her frienemy turned friend might end up as more than friends!

Heather: Me and Valerie watch! I’m writing about it tomorrow!

Q: I would really love an autostraddle post about the USAPL and powerlifting and trans athletes and fear her fight her etc… it would be so good. Someone could write this. Queer! Sports!

Kamala: dear sportsfan, I know that you’re not alone in loving sports and wanting to read about them on Autostraddle, but your fellow AS sportsfans are a little few and far between over here, so honestly, it’s probably not gonna happen on the regular at this moment in time — though I do love this highly practical suggestion: someone could write this. I’m gonna mull that one over and think about how that might work.

In the meantime, the sports we ARE covering is the WNBA, which I realize is a far cry from powerlifting, but for a bunch of theater-inclined art dykes, it does feel like a step in the direction of sports, what do you think?

Carmen: I am personally obsessed with our WNBA column, for whatever it is worth. I’d love to keep building out our sports coverage (the USAPL in particular is one of my dreams!), but we have to build out a steady audience for it first.

Q: Hi! You all are so great. Thanks for existing.

I’m not sure if this is an ask for advice or hot tip for a new roundtable topic, or maybe both. Could you do a roundtable on what love in an LTR feels like? How/if romantic love changes in an LTR? What it means if love changes over the course of time from that “i’m so obsessed with you” to more of a “we’re romantic companions” love that is, for lack of a better word, sometimes boring? For more context, this is based on the most recent roundtable and i wrote a longer comment about it here: https://develop.autostraddle.com/our-deepest-darkest-relationship-fears-nbd/#comment-940421

IDK, maybe i’m the only queer wondering about this, but most of what i find online on this topic is from a cishet perspective and i feel like there is something unique about queer love that makes me think cishet romantic advice doesn’t really fit 100% of the time.

Heather: Yes, we should definitely do a roundtable about this. In our reader survey, people said they wanted more LTR content; this would be a good jumping-off point!

Q: Dearest AS, I love reading the sex toy recommendation posts that also come along with codes for discounts. But they’re only ever eligible within the States. I was wondering if it’s within the realms of possibility to partner with a company that would offer a discount that applies to Europe (specifically Sweden or the UK for my own selfish reasons) or other continents (for others pleasure!)?

sincerely, a dyke with a low bank account and a high sex drive ❤️

Sarah: Where do you normally shop? Rachel and I just put together a kickass pitch deck together for sex toy companies and we’d love to know who to shoot pitches to. Send me links in my inbox! sarah [at] autostraddle [dot] com

Q: Question — I’ve been enjoying “Love on the Spectrum” so far (the first episode has a very cute queer date at a sunflower farm at the end!), but am unsure about the makers’ intentions/experience/own diagnosis (or lack thereof) regarding the autism spectrum. Anyone at autostraddle know if this is a show that activists on the spectrum are behind or against? I imagine it’s similar to Paris is Burning — helpful to get representation on the map, but probably won’t hold up in the future if it’s not made by people who are themselves part of the community. I’d love to know your thoughts!

Heather: I found this essay on SpectrumNews (not the cable company!) really enlightening on the subjects the show tackles.

Q: Hello, glorious gays. Post idea/question: have you done any “intro to gardening” before? With so many queer growing their own veggies for the first time, and so many other queers (*cough*) who kill succulents but who have big dreams of eating tomatoes picked straight from the vine they lovingly tended themselves, might be some real content there.

Riese: I really thought that we would have lots on this topic and it feels like we have? But I couldn’t find exactly what you were looking for so maybe the editors will want to create that for you. Here is what I did uncover:

Container Gardening
How to Easily Grow Your Own Onions and Other Root Vegetables
Ask the Plant Doctor
This is How We Do It: Drying and Preserving Herbs
DIY Liquid Garden Fertilizer
The Queer Gardener’s Alamanc: Winter
The Queer Gardener’s Alamanc: What You Need to Do as Spring Turns Into Summer

Nicole: I would also love this!

Thank you for bringing me excellent sports links Natalie

MISC

Q: I dreamed that Jeanna Kadlec moved into the apartment building across from mine 😂 I yelled to her from my balcony: “welcome to the neighborhood! I really like your writing on the Internet!” and then a man from the apartment below her window popped his head out to try and talk to her and we both went back inside.

Heather: Jeanna turning around and walking inside the second a man tries to talk to her is the most Jeanna move I can think of. (I told Jeanna about your dream and she said your subconscious opinion of her is correct.

Q: Would love to know if any autostraddle staff are on tiktok!

Heather: Valerie Anne TikToks! (She told me to say she dabbles in TikTok.)

Q: Once upon a time I was looking at a crowdfunding pitch for a “stand to pee” device designed by and for trans folks. It did not look like a penis – it was a squishy doodad that you were supposed to be able to wear all day and bike around in it. Now I can’t find it anywhere! Can anyone help!?

Carmen: I also remember this item?? But I googled high and low and couldn’t find it! I am so sorry to have not been more of service, but I hope you find some solace in knowing you are NOT alone in this memory, my friend! And one day we will prevail!

Thank you Jehan for the year of our audre lorde series. it is exactly what i need.

REALLY NICE THINGS YOU TOLD US

Q: Hey y’all, just popping in to say I love you and I’m grateful for the work you do! The depth and breadth is always impressive, but especially now. Also, I’ve shared a few of your articles about defunding and abolishing the police with my parents and I think they’re coming around on it. So that’s a win. Drink some water and roll your shoulders! You’re great!!

Kamala: This is such a great thing to know! Thank you for seeing the many different realms that we’re working hard to be helpful in, that’s beautiful to hear.

Q: Today my straight BFF told me that she needed advice and after googling and only finding dumb non helpful articles, she remembered how much I love Autostraddle, so she looked up what she was needing and ended up reading an article from Molly Priddy about hope and she really loved it 😭 Autostraddle is a community service for so many! Thank you!

Carmen: YAYYYY!!! I love this. I hope you and your straight BFF have many more Autostraddle bonding sessions in your future!

Q: Hey I just wanted to say that, though I’ve been reading AS for the past five or so years, y’all have been a fucking godsend this spring and I am so grateful for the beautiful work that you do. I appreciate everything and am always here for the TV content, but have been especially grateful for the news roundups and the action-oriented racial justice content; the world feels super extra overwhelming right now and you help me find clarity amongst the noise, purposeful action to take, and a sense of community even though I’m alone in my apartment literally 98% of the time these days. I just finished my phd so can finally afford to upgrade my membership and am excited for the privilege of supporting such meaningful work from such wonderful people, from whom I’ve learned so much <3
Also I’m excited for my pin and sticker because I fucking love pins and stickers.

Sarah: 😭 This is so wonderful to read. Thank you for upgrading your membership. I’m excited for you to get your pin and sticker too!!

Nicole: THANK YOU so much for upgrading your membership. You’re a dream!!

Q: I’m a small town queer girl who has struggled with feeling alone and unseen for a long time. Finding autostraddle years ago made me more confident in my sexuality and in who I am and it’s still the place I’ve been coming back whenever I need that. I’ve grown with y’all so much, and lately I’ve been learning so much from you, I just really wanted to say how much I appreciate your existence.

Heather: Hey, that was me too, exactly, eleven years ago! Solidarity, small town queer girl!

Q: Are there any Autostraddle articles on Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)? My partner and I hoping to start trying to get pregnant next summer (!!!) and it’s very exciting but it’s also very confusing – if anyone can pass on articles with more information/accounts of IUI from a queer perspective, I’d be so grateful!

Carmen: I wanted to recommend some reading from our “Baby Making” archives (yes — that’s its real name, and yes, I love it here too) but it looks like most of our insemination specific articles are from 2015? Which leads me to two thoughts: 1. What was happening in 2015 that everyone was getting inseminated all at once? And 2. I imagine that information from five years ago would be woefully out-of-date and I’d love for us to publish some more updated info! Adding it to my list! Thank you for the suggestion.

Q: hello it is time for my yearly-ish gushing message to you all about how it floors me every single year how much this site and community has impacted my life so spectacularly and given me a place of safety, wonder, future, imagination, laughter, good tv, bad tv, activism, and so much more <3 I sincerely love and appreciate you all so so much and that just gets amplified more and more as time goes on. been an avid reader since I was a baby queer at 15 :) much love and gratitude

Riese: THANK YOU I love this annual tradition of yours and I love that you’ve been reading us since you were 15!!! Truly enjoyed this droplet of sunshine in my life.

Q: Thank you, Riese.

Riese: THANK YOU for being part of our community whomever you are i love you!

Q: Y’all are wonderful, thank you for what you do. :)

Carmen: No, YOU are wonderful!

Q: SLICK is so good!! Omg! Brava

Kamala: I’m excited that you’re excited, and maybe even turned on. I have a bunch of new stories that we’ll be posting soon, so get even MORE excited.

Nicole: Excited for what Kamala’s got planned (with S L I C K, with everything for this site!)

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