It’s Sunday Funday! My SoulCycle instructor told us this week that gratitude brings joy and not the other way around and then when I was done crying in the back of my SoulCycle class I drove the Pacific Coast Highway and smoked half a pack of cigarettes because fitness is a spectrum and I contain multitudes. But anyways! Here’s some good gay news to be grateful for while you lay in your bed staring at the ceiling listening to your crying mix!
Election Special
+ Um this very sweet lesbian couple who have been in love for, like, forever want you to vote for Hillary Clinton and if they can’t convince you I don’t know what more I could do, honestly.
“We are in love, and we tell each other that every day,” Gerber said in one ad, as the camera focused in on the couple in their living room. “We have a lot to worry about in this election,” she continued, with a call to defend gay rights and turn out for Hillary Clinton and Democrats.
+ One person running for president has a $500M plan to end anti-LGBT bullying. It isn’t Donald Trump.
+ Barack Obama just endorsed out bisexual Kate Brown and my heart actually exploded.
Eileen Myles and Jill Soloway Made Me Cry
If Thursday hadn’t been a dark day in my young life, I probably would have been at The Hammer watching Eileen Myles and Jill Soloway turn a speaking event into a public, interactive processing of their breakup and how much they meant and still mean in each other’s lives. Luckily there’s video of the whole shebang so you can decide which quotes from them to transform into wedding vows, engravings for your tombstone, and your next tattoo. I call “I thought you were cute but I loved your mind,” though.
Allyship I Can Believe In
Students at the University of Delaware came together to stand in support of trans folks in their community after a hateful speaker who shall not be named appeared on campus.
Literally Even Deodorant Brands Hate Bathroom Bills
Repeat after Secret: THERE. IS. NO. WRONG. WAY. TO. BE. A. WOMAN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjg-ZSk31rw
News You Can Use From Around the World
+ UK’s Labour leader wants kids to learn LGBT history. I vote “yes please.”
+ Taiwan’s pride parade was lit, come thru.
This Will Make You Cry As Well
The Orlando Magic season opener included a tribute to the victims of the Pulse shooting and a declaration that love always wins.
I’m a trans alumnus of the University of Delaware, and I am so, so proud of the way that the student body came together to reject the hateful talk given on Monday. I am also so, so angry that the university has still failed to disavow themselves of a speech that ended with the sentence “Remember, never feel bad for insulting a trans person.”
Are you kidding me?! I’m so sorry that happened at your university :( it’s disgusting how much shit these schools sweep under the rug, and how they are quick to police student protestors but speakers get their “free speech”
I mean it’s a public university, for all I know there were legal reasons that they couldn’t deny the College Republicans’ request to bring Milo to campus. But even accepting that, there’s no reason why the university themselves shouldn’t have disavowed Milo’s words and beliefs. UD saved my life a few years ago when I came out, and I fear they might have just started someone like me down a path that will ultimately end theirs :/
Well, great. Now a deodorant commercial has made me cry.
Me too. I never thought I’d see the day.
There’s a video that autoplayed on my computer – just underneath “and a declaration that love always wins.” at the end of the article. Thought I’d let you know because usually AS doesn’t have that kind of thing! So maybe it wasn’t on purpose?
just wanted to share that apparently, when I was eight, I told my mom I was gay, then wrote a story titled “Me, The Lesbian” and completely forgot about it.
OMG
would absolutely read this personal essay on auto straddle dot com
I love my generation. Millenials get so much hate and yet where would LGBT rights be without us? I wouldn’t want to live in a world unchanged by Millenials.
Oh wow, never thought a deodorant commercial would make me cry.
<3
Woah the Jill Soloway/Eileen Myles breakup news blew my mind. Also the whole video was a super interesting conversation about their gender identities and sexualities and relationship. Thx for sharing this!!
I mentioned this once before here, but I saw Jill accepting an award for Transparent(during a trans beauty pageant), and she referred to her Moppa as non-binary. That’s all well if her moppa is non-binary, but I thought her moppa is a binary trans woman. Does anyone know if her Moppa is non-binary? Or is just saying that, because Eileen and some of her past comments about the trans community?
When Jill Soloway and Eileen Myles talk in the video, about their fantasy manifesto for women they wrote, they were really talking about white men, in terms of the idea of men (just for one minute) to stop being in charge of government and art, as some of their examples. Wish they would have spoken of the difference between white men as privileged and other men, men of color, in art and government, who by and large are not. Yes, they have male privilege. But, even as white queer women, we have got to start seeing the white privilege we have from the moment, we are born. The couples “points” discussion was also interesting. When well liked
couples start building up “points” from friends and others.
Totally agree. I feel like Jill and Eileen’s analysis needs a lot more input from anti-racist critiques and black feminist thought. They say in the video that they used generalization on purpose in the manifesto to be provocative/funny, but I don’t think it came across that way, I think it just seemed, as you said, like white feminism. And yes I agree that white queer people focus so much on their queerness and neglect talking about/addressing their privilege, and that def seems to be happening here. It was frustrating to listen to.
Well to be fair, Jill
mobile posted before I finished. Jill is only seen as white when it benefits white Christian Americans. Jill is Jewish, and she touches on it, at times in her work, but more from a cultural standpoint than intersectional feminist stand point.
Thank you, Al. :)
Lots of Jewish people (Ashkenazi Jews in America) have white privilege and spend their lives passing/living as any other white American person. Speaking for myself, as a white Jewish person, I know that I have to contend with my whiteness and white privilege if I want to be an ally to anti-racist struggles. I have to educate myself and read woman of color/black feminist texts to understand how my whiteness structures my day to day life. Being Jewish does not make me a person of color. A lot of Jews have an “outsider” perspective, because we are not Christians and have different immigration histories and histories of oppression than other white people. But we still have to contend with our whiteness and white privilege. There’s a lot written on how Jews assimilated/became considered white in America in the 20th century. I recommend Michael Rogin’s book “Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot.”
Yes, we have white privilege and that privilege can also be taken away from the majority white population when it suits them. We are frequently racialized by Christians and white supremacists.
As a white Jew, being Jewish does not make me a person of color nor does it prevent me from reaping the benefits of colonialism and white privilege, however my whiteness is made conditional by the white Christian majority and they only accept me as white when they wish to. When they don’t, they racialize us and still commit hate crimes against us.
I’m not Ashkenazi nor am I always seen as white. I get that “ambiguous minority” tag a lot from other white people.
So it’s important to recognize the privilege we have and also how fragile and conditional that privilege is. Ignoring that our whiteness is conditional is ignoring the present and past history of anti-Semitism… and it’s pretending we have advantages that we really don’t. A lot of white Jews, especially northern Jews in large cities may be insulated from these realities.
taken away by* (first sentence correction)
I just cannot get over how adorable the elderly lesbian couple up top is.