Evan Rachel Wood Allegedly Newly Single, Definitely Still Bisexual
According to something called The Blast, everybody’s favorite bisexual dreamboat superhero Evan Rachel Wood has reportedly split from her fiancé and bandmate, musician Zach Villa. The story was picked up by People and appears to be gaining traction, despite no official confirmation from publicists and/or any actual participants in the aforementioned relationship. According to sources, the split took place roughly a month ago. Wood is currently filming Season 2 of the HBO series Westworld, while Villa appears to be working with a new band in Los Angeles.
The world of Vapid Fluff moves fast, and it’s tricky to stay ahead of stories like these. We would not have given this report a second thought if we had not noticed several weeks ago that Evan had unfollowed Zach on Instagram and Twitter, and seemed to have deleted photos of the two of them together from her feed. I flip through celebrity Instagram accounts every single week as part of my job so I mean, I’m just saying.
I brought receipts.
Villa and Wood met in 2015 when they were both participating in a John Hughes-themed cabaret; their band Rebel and a Basketcase is named after the Breakfast Club characters they played (respectively). They went public with their engagement this past January. Wood was previously ever-so-briefly linked to Kate Moennig, and before that she was married to Jamie Bell, with whom she shares a 4-year-old son.
A neat thing about being a bisexual (and a famous bisexual in particular) is that when you end a relationship, you have to explain all over again that you’re still bisexual. It was Wood’s 30th birthday yesterday, and she happened to innocently tweet, “all the single ladies!” for all the single ladies out there, as one does. While many single ladies certainly appreciated the romantic gesture, she was also met with this:
https://twitter.com/gringa2504/status/905902637140377600
https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood/status/905913004021096448
Evan Rachel Wood has been an outspoken advocate for the bisexual community since coming out in 2011. In an eloquent video posted during Pride 2016, she detailed her struggle coming to terms with her sexuality and offered solidarity to others.
In November of 2016, she gave an interview to Rolling Stone in which she openly discussed her history of sexual assault and discussed how being so open about her orientation had affected her life. “It was always talked about like a phase or something stupid, or something you were doing for attention… You know, bisexuality is worthy of eye rolls. And I didn’t realize how damaging that was until I tried to have healthy relationships as an adult and realized that there was still all this shame and conditioning and stigma around my sexuality that was really affecting the way I related to people. I think I was taken advantage of because someone knew there was something about me that they could exploit.”
Earlier this year, she gave an impassioned speech at an HRC gala in her home state of North Carolina, detailing once again the journey she’d taken to understand and accept her queerness. She has often mentioned her keen awareness of her position as a role model for young girls, and it’s been refreshing to see such a successful actress providing thoughtful, much-needed visibility. Despite existing in a world that appears determined to pigeonhole human beings as either gay or straight based on the gender of their most recent partner(s), Wood patiently explains the concept of bisexuality to anonymous eggs on Twitter with astonishing regularity.
How Stiletto Nails Helped Me Embrace My Queer High Femme Identity
Photo courtesy of Alysse Dalessandro
Growing up Italian American, I learned the markers of femininity from an early age; teased hair, long nails, and red lips all contributed to my idea of womanhood. I’ve seen my mother without makeup only a handful of times, but growing up, I didn’t have the time, patience or desire to follow suit.
By sixth grade, when my friends were all shopping at Limited Too, I was a size 16; I dreamed of taking style cues from Fran Drescher on The Nanny, of dedicating a whole section of my closet to cheetah print, but my options were far more matronly. The message from society and my classmates was very clear: plus-size people aren’t supposed to dress the way I wanted to. That’s when I realized that thrifting, shopping in the men’s section, and making my own clothing and jewelry were the only ways I’d ever achieve my ideal look — and that I could prove the skeptics wrong.
Photo courtesy of Alysse Dalessandro, by Benjamin A. Pete
My own brand, Ready to Stare, was born of the idea that fashion shouldn’t be reserved for those who also subscribed to traditional beauty and gender norms. If your comfort level with yourself challenges this notion, people will stare at you, and RtS allowed me to combat the patriarchal gaze in the only way I knew at that time: staring back. Although I was too scared to be fully myself at the time, my models and support system were largely queer. Fashion was my focus and my freedom, but for years, beauty remained an afterthought.
Eventually, though, I began gravitating toward the high femme aesthetics of my youth. I didn’t want to spend hours on my hair and makeup everyday, but even after mastering the five-minute face, I felt something missing from my look; I still wasn’t totally comfortable with how I presented to others. Then a friend introduced me to Chicago-based nail artist Spifster Sutton, and my world changed.
Photo courtesy of Alysse Dalessandro, nails by Spifster Sutton
Leaning over my friend’s desk to get a closer look at fingernails painted like strawberries, I was in awe of Spifster’s artistry; I knew not only that I needed to adorn my own nails, but that I wanted to be Spifster’s friend, too. I got my first real taste of nail art at an event she threw, and a full set of her designs later that year with my friend and fellow nail art fan Matt who, in his short shorts, platform shoes, and furs, was unapologetically gaudy; it put me at ease to be there with a friend who was more comfortable in his queer identity than I was at the time.
I was 25 when I first got acrylic nails, and when I had my first real crush on a woman. She was healing from her past relationship and I was still working through my own trauma, and it didn’t feel like we as a couple were going anywhere. I tried to convince myself the crush was fleeting — just as I’d toyed with the idea of having acrylics short-term, before realizing how integral they felt to showing the world who I was. My mom visited that summer, and I came out to her kind of by accident; she asked what was upsetting me, and I decided to finally be honest — with her and with myself.
Photo courtesy of Alysse Dalessandro, nails by Autumn Towns
It’s hard to blend in when your nails are long, extra pointy, and covered in rhinestones. I recently went on a date with another femme woman who told me, “You have straight girl nails!” I couldn’t help but laugh; I guess it was confirmation of what I suspected other queer women thought when they saw my hands. I’m conscious that this aesthetic choice contributes to the erasure of my queerness, and yet — four years later — my nails are one of the things that make me feel most authentically myself. They represent an important departure from following other people’s rules, and instead learning to listen to my own voice. I still struggle at times with my own internalized biphobia and guilt about taking up space as a generally straight-“passing” person, but attending Pride this year helped me realize passing isn’t entirely a privilege. As I walked to the bus after the parade, rainbow flag in my long pink claws, a car approached; its driver, a man, began honking, pointing, and yelling, “I want you!” I wish I could say I turned and flipped him the bird, nails sparkling in the sun, but I didn’t.
Nail art was the extra push I needed to fully embrace the high femme aesthetic I so desired. I still do my five-minute face most days, but even with no makeup on, my nails communicate an important message I never knew I had the right to be able to say: I’m here, and I’m in control of my identity. Having “straight girl nails” doesn’t make me straight; I can have long nails and be queer, too.
Photo courtesy of Alysse Dalessandro
Drawn to Comics: “Legend of Korra: Turf Wars” Answers Your Korrasami Prayers by Being Really Gay
by rory midhani
A lot of us have been looking forward to the Legend of Korra comics we were told about shortly after the show ended. We were told that they’d be written by one of the creators of the show and that excitingly, these comics would explore Korra and Asami’s relationship and show more explicitly that they are gay for each other. That’s exactly what Legend of Korra: Turf Wars Part One does. Not only that, but it picks up literally right where the series ended and in the exact voice of the show. This makes sense as it’s written by Michael Dante DiMartino, one of the co-creators and writers of Legend of Korra. The art — by Asian-American artist Irene Koh, with colors by Vivian Ng — is perfectly dynamic for a comic based on a cartoon, and while it’s definitely in Koh’s style, it retains all the stunning visual style of the show. If you liked the show, you’re going to like this comic.
This book is just straighforwardly gay. Like, capital G Gay. If you were looking for nuance or subtext, this comic is not for you. Literally the first 21 pages are just Korra and Asami being gay and talking about their relationship. Nothing else happens. There’s a bit more plot for the rest of the book, but even mixed in with that are more pages and panels where they’re just doing nothing but talking about being gay or actually being gay. It’s called Legend of Korra: Turf Wars but it might as well be called Legend of Korra: Talking About Gay Stuff.
We pick up as Korra and Asami are enjoying a gaycation in the Spirit World. They kiss, they tell each other when they first realized they were gay for each other, they encounter some spirits. It’s actually really nice to see some drama-free and mostly uneventful interactions between a gay couple, something we so rarely get. When they decide to leave they Spirit World, they also decide to start telling people that they’re a couple. Sometimes this goes better than other times, but we don’t see any straight up homophobia in this book, whichI really like.
Also, don’t worry, there’s plenty of action and bending and intrigue. Apart from the whole gay thing, there’s trouble brewing when a developer wants to build an amusement park around one of the portals to the Spirit World that will actually take tourists on trips there. The Mayor of Republic City has been completely ineffectual and claims that the city’s coffers are empty. As if these political problems weren’t enough, there’s a new gang leader, Tokuga, who starts causing problems not just for Korra, but for the entire city.
It’s really interesting to see how queerness is seen in the world of Avatar. We learn that the Air Benders have always been openly welcome to same-sex relationships, that the Earth Kingdom is perhaps the slowest to adapt to modern sensibilities and other interesting information about the world that we previously didn’t know. Plus, Turf Wars confirms the long-held fan theory that Avatar Kyoshi was bisexual, as well as having another character from the show talk about their queerness. Yeah, this book makes pretty much everyone gay. But joking aside, it is really cool that we learn about other queer people in this universe, as we get to see that it’s a common thing. Korra and Asami aren’t alone, they have a history and a community and that’s both great for representation and accurate to real life.
In part, this seems like the clearest possible answer Michael Dante DiMartino could give to those of us who questioned whether the closing scenes in the animated series Legend of Korra was enough to count as textual queer representation that would help both queer youth see themselves and would be seen by non-queer people who aren’t looking for queer content and possibly putting it in places where it doesn’t actually exist. Here we spend pages, entire scenes, being clear and explicit that they are a couple, that they are in love, that they are gay. It’s really terrific. I’d like to send a huge, huge, huge thank you to DiMartino for this. This is exactly what queer fans have been begging for and wanting from so many different shows for so many years. And now we finally get it.
New Releases (August 2)
BTVS Season 11 Vol 1 Spread of Evil TP
X-Files Origins II Dog Days of Summer #2
All-New All-Different Avengers Vol 1 HC
Barbie Vol 2 Big Dreams Best Friends GN
Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.
If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com.
Gina Rodriguez Is “More Bisexual Than Jane,” Which is Potentially Something Or Not, Regardless I Love Her
Gina Rodriguez, star of Jane the Virgin and leading lady of my heart, is on the cover of BUST magazine this month talking about so many things including but not limited to three concepts near and dear to our collective hearts: feminism, masturbation and bisexuality.
Gina Rodriguez in BUST magazine, Aug/Sept 2017
For example, does Gina Rodriguez relate to her character Jane on Jane the Virgin, who, like Jane, grew up in a Catholic household and felt pressured to conform to her culture’s standards of sexual purity? Yes she does! Rodriguez tells BUST how her upbringing made her feel guilty for masturbating:
“In all honesty, I used to feel guilty for masturbating. Oh my god, this extreme guilt! And that lasted way too long. Or maybe I masturbated too much! It’s OK to look back in retrospect and be like, it wasn’t good that I felt bad about touching myself.”
In other aspects, Rodriguez says Jane and her are different — like how Rodriguez thinks she’s closer to being bisexual than Jane is (!!!):
For her part, Rodriguez says, “Jane with Michael was everything to me, and I really can’t imagine Jane being with anyone else.” But she’s on board with the fans who ship her with Jane’s frenemy (and Rafael’s ex-wife) Petra, with the couple name “Jetra.” Rodriguez says she sees that fantasy pairing online “so often,” adding, “and so many fans ask me if Jane is bisexual. Jane is the furthest from bisexual — maybe Gina’s a little closer than Jane is! — but I love that they want that. And I’m all about ‘Jetra.’I love ‘Jetra.'”
She goes on to say she would want to play out bisexual actress Stephanie Beatriz‘s fictional girlfriend on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
“I want to play her love interest so bad,” says Rodriguez. “I really hope they make that happen.”
Listen, I’ve been in love with Gina Rodriguez ever since she won a Golden Globe for Best Comedy Actress in 2015 for her role on Jane the Virgin, the second Latina ever to win in this category since the awards began in 1944. Her hella inspirational acceptance speech made me cry and moved her to the top of my fave celebrities list which is composed of only her. I’ve been following her career ever since and she hasn’t disappointed me. Aside from being gorgeous and a super talented actress, she’s an amazing advocate for Latinxs in Hollywood and media and a proud feminist. As far as I can tell from my scientific analysis of her Snapchat and Instagram stories, she’s also super down-to-earth and someone who’d probably be down to share a bag of Hot Cheetos with me any day of the week.
Despite these strong feelings I’ve long harbored for Gina Rodriguez and although my gaydar is super on point when it comes to people I’ve met in real life, it has failed to ping for Gina.
Screenshots from Gina Rodriguez’s Snapchat because same.
However, over the last year, Gina has really been making a strong case that she is probably, possibly, maybe or definitely not entirely all-the-way heterosexual!
Last year, it was announced Rodriguez was going to play a lesbian paramedic in Annihilation, a new sci-fi film written and directed by Ex Machina‘s Alex Garland. Rodriguez went all in for that role and got an extra gay undercut which she brazenly showed off on the cover of Latina‘s October 2016 issue.
But the most promising piece of evidence was Rodriguez’s answer to a fan’s question asking if she identified as straight. Her response:
https://twitter.com/HereIsGina/status/745335294573051904
Like many actresses before her, Rodriguez said she doesn’t feel a need to define her sexuality. “I love hearts,” she said, which is probably the gayest thing anyone has said.
Rodriguez is currently dating Joe LoCicero, whom she met on the set of Jane the Virgin. As much as I’d selfishly like to see Rodriguez with a pretty lady by her side, they’re very cute together and it seems they’re really into each other.
In conclusion, Rodriguez is already a smoking hot trailblazer in Hollywood, forging a path for Latinxs on screen and inspiring others along the way. Regardless of what her orientation is or turns out to be, she’s also a consistent supporter of LGBT issues. I can’t wait for her to be in even more blockbusters and see her win more TV awards. I will take any excuse I can to write about Gina Rodriguez. And now that she’s confessed to the world she’s probably more bisexual than Jane, my love can truly only grow from here.
VIDEO! Getting In Bed with Kate Leth: Bisexuality II
It was soooooooo fucking rad to have Kate Leth get into bed with me this week, to talk to us all about bisexuality!!! We will likely have several installments on the topic, and this marked our second (following our first with the brilliant Mey Rude)!
We talked about being in a “hetero” relationship, not feeling queer enough, bisexuality as ITS VERY OWN IDENTITY NOT A MIX OF OTHERS, the recent controversy around bringing straight, cis partners to pride celebrations, and kittens (unrelated, but always necessary).
SPEAKING OF KITTENS: Join me on Thursday, July 27 for an episode where we will talk all about kittens and cats and floofs and meows. Official theme is Yes, Cats. Boom.
Getting In Bed with Kristin: Bisexuality II with Kate Leth | July 17, 2017 from autostraddle on Vimeo.
Y’All Need Help #6: You Can Still Trust Yourself
Before we get started, I want to point out that Y’All Need Help was conceived as an either bi-weekly or monthly advice column and, I believe, was cruising along quite nicely, doing its very best. The last installment came out on September 13, 2016, which means the next one should’ve come out mid-November. Ahem. It’s taken me eight months to summon the whatever-it-is I need to write this advice column. That is a long time. If I’d asked you for advice re: “How do I get back into the swing of things when it feels like the world is exploding every 20 mins/however frequently I check Twitter?” what would you have said? Just curious!
Hi! I am 28 years old and about a year and a half ago I realized that I am not straight. I am so embarrassed that it took me so long to figure it out. The main reason is that six years ago I met a guy and fell in love, and during the first couple of years I didn’t even want to think about being with anyone else. I was so happy and so so sure that I wanted to grow old with him. Now we are married and have a child. Generally, things are good between us, but my identity crisis has been hard on our relationship. I have been so scared and sad, and he has been trying to support me while going through a lot of emotions himself.
I identify as bisexual/queer but haven’t told anyone except my partner. He wants to be supportive, but I can tell he is ambivalent. Part of the reason why I haven’t told anyone else – except dropping a few hints – is that I am not sure how he would feel. Another reason is that I am not completely sure about my label. I have been wrong my entire life. What if I am still wrong and I end up identifying as a lesbian? Is there any way a relationship can survive this? Should I just leave now before I hurt him even more? How do I embrace my new identity and convince people that I am not just making this up?
Hey great job learning a new thing about yourself! I’m sure that wasn’t an easy, chill realization to come to, so take some time to be grateful for these new pieces of your puzzle. Now where do those pieces fit? Good question. You get to decide!
Wrestling with if I didn’t know this huge thing about myself, how can I trust that I really know anything about myself? is HARD. It’s a total mindfuck. The thing to remember is that you were telling the truth about yourself this whole time, based on the information available to you. It’s valid to be annoyed or even super pissed off that some crucial info was somehow just out of your grasp for so long (and it’s probably useful and necessary to investigate why, and take some time with that), but the truth is that we make all our decisions based on the information we have at that exact moment. That’s what you did. You weren’t wrong your entire life. Every day that you identified as a straight woman, you were going off of exactly what you knew about yourself. It was true! It was all true and honest. You can still trust yourself.
Lots of things can and will be hard about your relationship with your husband (or anyone), but yes, there are ways it can survive. Actually, plenty of bisexual/queer women — women who’ve known they were bi forever or had no idea or just kinda thought maybe they were — marry men! Some lesbians marry men! Some straight women marry men and then realize they’re actually lesbians and stay married to that man anyway! Relationships change and grow and survive so many things, including gathering new information about your identities. I left my husband after realizing I was gay because, first and foremost, I wasn’t happy in that relationship. We’d been together for nearly nine years and I’d never been able to come up with a concrete reason why I was so unhappy, so I’d stayed and stayed, because why not? Then I saw an episode of The L Word and subsequently received my own queer puzzle pieces, which quickly became the concrete reason I’d been holding out for. But listen, if you don’t want to leave him, don’t! Follow your big ol’ thumping heart. Be honest about what you both want and what you’re willing to do to get it, and that’ll require some communication. Ask him how he’d feel about you coming out to more people, and then figure out if that even sways your decision one way or another. For the record, you do have the right to come out to whomever you damn well please, because we’re all just doing our best in this world and sometimes that means telling people you’re bisexual!
And another thing! You might identify as a lesbian one day down the road, but also it’s just as likely that you won’t. You might wake up at 50 years old, married to the same man and just hoping there’s coffee, or maybe you won’t. The important thing is that today, right now, you’re honoring your own truth.
Trust yourself, and be kind and gentle with that internal monologue. That’s one of the best ways to embrace your queerness. Read about other queer people throughout history and learn from them. Investigate your politics and see if they still line up with the You you know now. As far as convincing other people of anything, let that worry fly away from you like so many pigeons in a park. You weren’t delivered into this universe to convince anyone of anything. All you have to do is live up to your own high standards and love your babies. And label yourself however you fucking want, because it’s true.
I’m currently facing the possible (probable) end of my first serious relationship with another woman. All train wrecks aside, one particular issue has come to my attention. I U-Hauled with this girl hard core starting day one for reasons that all felt right. Now I’m regretting it, as the relationship quickly became codependent and after only a year I’m exhausted and I want out. Trying to change the terms of this relationship to take some of the codependency out of it may lead to its demise. So my question is, how do I get to experience all those exciting feelings of wanting to run away with someone and be wrapped in a love burrito without doing it to such an extent that it leads to codependency and resentment?
Oh this is an easy one! The quickest and dirtiest advice I’ve ever had the pleasure of giving: You just do. You just learn a lesson and you don’t make the same mistake again. I’m sorry about the train wrecks and the exhaustion, but it’s great that you’re taking steps to make the relationship a healthier one for both of you, however that ends up.
Now you just needlepoint an elaborate wall hanging that says No U-Hauls, No Problems. Let every potential partner know that you are super into your independence but are still excited about the love burritos. Set boundaries and keep them (until you don’t, and then learn from those times, too). You’ve been given a wonderful gift: the gift of hindsight. Use it for good and use it often!
After many years of failing to deal with my mental health problems I finally started seeing a therapist a few months ago! I spent weeks finding one that looked perfect and despite having a shitty experience with counselling in the past I was excited to start owning my shit. Except…I’m not finding it that useful. We mostly just end up talking about the internet. And it’s so expensive! Having to borrow money off my girlfriend to make rent every month is making my mental health worse than before I started! I want to quit, but I’ve already tried medication and exercise and everything else the internet recommends and I don’t know what else I can do. I need help!
First of all congratufuckinglations on taking these steps for your mental health! It’s not easy to get to where you are right now and I’m impressed and excited for you and your goals. I say this as a woman who’s put off making an appointment with a therapist for months — I even have her cell number and she is so nice, and so accommodating, and yet! So anyway NICE WORK, seriously.
Having said all that, you should look for a different therapist! Finding a therapist you click with — meaning you actually feel like your time together is useful and building onto itself in a productive way — isn’t easy, and can take several tries. You’re only around most other healthcare professionals for what? About 10 minutes per visit, maybe less? So maybe you don’t care if you click with your pediatrist or your ear nose and throat specialist, but a therapist is staring you right in the eyes for the better part of an hour, and it’s all supposed to mean something, and there’s so much to say and hear. And you’re paying them! It’s a lot to put on any relationship, really.
Go ahead and admit that this therapist simply isn’t right for you, and get to work finding another person who might work better. It will suck and be exhausting and annoying, but you must. Keep trying until you find someone who fits your needs.
Y’all Need Help is a now-biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.
Boob(s On Your) Tube: “Stitchers” Continues the Bisexual Revolution
What’s that you spy with your greedy little TV eyes? Why, yes! Yes, it is! An installment of Boob(s On Your) Tube, the gay TV column that gets killed and revived more often than a white man on a sci-fi TV show! There are so many reasons this column is hard to keep up with, including the fact that almost all the queer characters are on binge-able streaming shows these days. But with the help of some of Autostraddle’s best and most dedicated TV writers I’m determined to make this damn thing work!
In case you’ve missed it this summer, I recapped the deeply disappointing end of Pretty Little Liars. Valerie Anne continues to brilliantly recap Wynonna Earp and Orphan Black. Our team joined together to slog through season five of Orange Is the New Black. Faith even recapped every single episode of Sense8 (and will be doing the two-hour series finale, too!). We’ve also done standalone reviews of almost too many things to count: Claws, Brown Girls, Queen Sugar, Naomi Watts’ new show, Danger and Eggs, Master of None, Anne of Green Gables, 13 Reasons Why, Loud House, Dear White People, and the Handmaid’s Tale.
Riese is almost done writing a review of the first season of Hulu’s Harlots and Faith is working on a review for the first season of GLOW.
Boob(s On Your) Tube hasn’t been regular, but we’ve been working hard to bring you the best and most fun and most activist-minded TV coverage on the great wide internet!
The most thrilling thing I want to tell you about is that two Boob(s On Your) Tube regulars have joined our TV writing team! If you’ve ever read this column, you know that Pecola and CP have always provided funny, sharp commentary about all of our favorite shows, and now they’re doing it professionally. I have known Pecola on the internet for years and years. Her wisdom has shown me the light in a dozen different ways since my earliest days at AfterEllen and it is an absolute honor to be working alongside her. I’ve only started to know CP and already she has infused my life with such a warmth with her open-hearted criticism I feel like I am stating to enjoy television again. CP is Carmen Phillips. Pecola is Natalie. My heart is very happy writing this paragraph.
So other than all that, below is what we haven’t talked about yet this summer on teevee.
Stitchers
Written by Valerie Anne
Have you been watching Stitchers? I’ve been watching Stitchers. I’ll confess I started watching Stitchers because Allison Scagliotti was in it and I live in a pretty constant state of missing Warehouse 13, and you know what, that turned out to be a perfectly valid reason to watch this show. Her character, Camille, provides a similar snarky energy as Claudia did, but now with more maturity and confidence.
In the first season, there was a line that piqued my interest during a conversation between Camille and her then-boyfriend about her not mentioning a guy she dated. She shrugs it off, saying it didn’t matter much, they didn’t even date that long; as if to prove the point, she mentions that she dated his sister longer.
It was a well-placed line, that honestly even if they never followed up on it, didn’t feel manipulative or too much like a punchline. It was more to show that Camille is who she is, no apologies, and she has depths we don’t quite know about yet. But, we’re in luck, because not only are they following up with it, they’re doing it in style.
This season on Stitchers, there’s a new Medical Examiner in town, who happens to also be a DJ and also into Camille and also a very attractive woman. Her name is Amanda and she’s played by Anna Akana and I love her.
The first time they kissed was a lustful response to some capital ‘e’ Emotions Camille was feeling and for a minute I worried the ME was just an outlet for distraction, but in a following episode, we see the two of them sitting on the couch, SINGING TO EACH OTHER. Camille plays the guitar and sings for Amanda, admitting she doesn’t usually do that for anyone. The two of them share cute kisses on the couch, and later even rip each other’s clothes off as they tumble down the hallway in the middle of a everyone-is-having-sex montage.
In this week’s episode, Camille is still playing coy with her coworkers, admitting she’s seeing someone new (describing their night together as a “hard R” as opposed to Kirsten’s PG night), but it isn’t until about halfway through the episode when she gives up the gig and decides she can’t contain how giddy her new gal makes her. She even goes on a double-date with her ex-boyfriend/coworker and his new girlfriend who happens to also be Camille’s roommate’s estranged half-sister (it’s…complicated).
On that date, Camille’s ex pulls Amanda aside to warn her not to hurt Camille, but Amanda doesn’t bat a perfect eyelash before threatening him nine ways to Sunday if he doesn’t cut that out right now. Amanda can fend for herself, is what I’m saying. Camille and Amanda are part of the crux of the episode, which I won’t spoil for you, but I will say that the conversation they have at the end of the episode gives me more hope than I originally anticipated having for this queer little relationship.
What I’m saying is, it seems like they’re taking this storyline seriously and the bisexual revolution continues apace.
Younger
Last summer I was convinced that me and my friend Nic were literally the only two people on earth watching Younger, but when the fifth season premiered last week it trended on Twitter (my favorite irony since Younger is aimed at 30-somethings who, according to the show itself, are irredeemably bamboozled by the World Wide Web) and then this week it trended again. In fact, the season five premiere was the highest-rated episode of the show to date. Which is good! Because I want more! It’s so ridiculous but also very fun and so far this season, the best it’s ever been.
One reason for that is Liza’s relationship with Kelsey, which has kind of become the emotional anchor of the entire show. At the end of season four, Liza came out to Kelsey as not-a-millennial. She also broke up with Josh. So now Josh and Kelsey are both mourning Liza, but the relationship where all the pathos is aimed is the one between two women. Liza kicks off “Post Truth” — an episode where Kristin Chenoweth plays “a one-woman reality-distortion field,” so Kellyanne Conway, basically — by telling Kelsey that the most important people in her life are her daughter, Maggie, and Kelsey. She tries to explain, tries to talk it out, tries to force Kelsey to listen, but Kelsey feels deeply betrayed and can’t let it go. She helps Liza walk back a blackmailed story about her real age from an Entertainment Weekly writer, but she insists it’s for the business, not because she loves Liza.
When they’re not making sad moon-eyes at each other, they’re bickering like ex-girlfriends: “You really have no idea what a meme is; I can’t believe I’ve been so blind!”
Maggie tries to help Liza navigate her breakup with Josh and her friend-breakup with Kelsey. First up: A new route to the L train. “Never face a painful situation when you can just skulk around it,” Maggie insists. But! In a welcome change of pace, Liza’s drama doesn’t push out the chance for Maggie to have her own storyline. When a barista compliments Maggie’s art and then gives her five free coffee card punches — “fifth one’s free!” — Maggie assumes she’s being hit on with euphemisms and symbolism. The barista’s name is Montana and Maggie invites her over to “look at some art” by which she means “scissor” but by which Montana actually means “look at some art.” They laugh when Maggie makes a move and Montana insists she’s straight. “It’s fine; some of my best friends are straight,” Maggie insists.
They’re for absolute sure going to fall in love.
The Bold Type
I was just going to toss a blurb in here about The Bold Type when I heard there was a lesbian subplot in the pilot episode, and also the main character is played by Katie “Karma Ashcroft” Stevens, but then I watched the pilot episode this afternoon and have decided it deserves a full review. I’ve been really down on Freeform because I can’t help but blame it for part of Pretty Little Liars‘ dive-bomb into heteronormative oblivion, but when I step back and examine the information inside my noggin, I’m looking at The Fosters, Stitchers, and now The Bold Type and realizing Freeform is still the queerest non-streaming TV network around and I’m just going to have to exercise my Paige McCullers-style garbage can vendetta elsewhere.
Here’s what I’ll say about The Bold Type: It’s on the nose with its Feminism 101, but the overtness is welcome. This show is aimed at teens and young college students. There is a queer subplot in the pilot, one that involves a lesbian Muslim photographer and potentially a romantic connection with one of the main characters. And it focuses on lots of different kinds of female relationships, including a refreshing one between a badass lady editor in chief and Karma Ashcroft. Maybe you could watch it this weekend and we can talk about it on Monday?
Coming Soon
Natalie’s going to share some thoughts with us about the final episodes of Laverne Cox’s Doubt and get us caught up with Claws, Carmen’s going to keep us in the loop on Queen Sugar, The Fosters is returning, and so is Game of Thrones. Yara Greyjoy’s making out with some woman who’s not Daenerys in the trailer.
“Claws” Features a Butch Lesbian, a Bisexual Crime Boss and a Chance to Stop Talking About “Breaking Bad”
About 45 minutes into the debut episode of Claws — TNT’s woman-led summertime nail salon/organized crime dramedy — Desna Simms (Niecy Nash) finally has a moment to herself. The manicurist, who has seemed impenetrable up until now, sits quietly on the toilet in her outdated bathroom, the emotions playing out on her face.
The new year had begun filled with such promise. Her loyal friend, Polly (Carrie Preston), has been released from prison and returned to her rightful place at the Nail Artisan of Manatee County salon. Desna fulfilled her commitment to her boyfriend, Roller Husser (Jack Kesy), to launder money for his pill mill operation for a year, and she awaited the bonus he’d promised. The bonus would be enough to cover the deposit on her dream nail salon in upscale Sarasota. A better life for her and her autistic brother (Harold Perrineau) finally seemed within reach.
Sunshine state of mind.
And then, the rug gets pulled out from under her.
Polly’s prison sentence has left her penniless, after she was forced to pay restitution for her crimes. Roller’s boss/uncle, affectionately known as Uncle Daddy (Dean Norris), had made her no promises, so instead of a $20,000 bonus, Desna’s thank you for a year of service was just “three funky thousand dollars.” Her only recourse is to stick with Uncle Daddy and the Dixie Mafia until they open more clinics. Whenever Desna does get her money, it’ll be too late to secure her dream salon whose deposit is due in a few days.
She’s forced to take on a greater role in the existing clinic — acting as muscle in the face of a threat from some Russians — while Roller takes all the credit. While she gets shortchanged, he gets lavished, earning the keys to a luxurious beachfront estate, one almost identical to one she and her brother imagined for themselves. And, if that wasn’t enough, the former stripper Desna just hired to work at the salon is sleeping with her boyfriend.
The weight of it all is just too much for Desna and, in the quiet solitude of her bathroom, she breaks down. When her brother interrupts, shrieking that “it’s raining in the house again,” her anger boils over, “Can I just get two seconds to myself, Dean?!”
It’s a compelling scene — one that fans of Nash have been waiting for years to see. The perpetualy effervescent actress has been a fixture in Hollywood since the late ’90s but throughout her career, she’s been pigeonholed as a comedic actress. And while she’s exceptionally good at that — she stole the show on Getting On and was the highlight of Scream Queens — fans have been clamoring to see her try her hand at the dramatic. Nash excels here.
Nash’s performance is buttressed by an incredible supporting cast.
This show features more artistic shots of manicures than the #NailArt tag on Instagram.
As Polly, Carrie Preston looks like the unassuming suburban mom who organizes the school bake sale on behalf of the PTA, but the monitor that’s attached to her left ankle betrays a different story. Claws employs storytelling similar to Orange is the New Black to give us insight into Polly’s backstory, but with one big difference: Polly isn’t a reliable narrator.
In the opening episode, she explains her absence from the salon by telling the new girl that she’d been on vacation in the South of France, at the personal invitation of novelist Judy Krantz. By the second episode, Polly tells a captive audience of teens, sans accent, that she was once the head of a modeling agency that was a front for an upscale prostitution ring. As she files the nails of a bridal party in the third episode, she recalls her first marriage, at age 14, to the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army. None of it is true, of course, but one thing is clear: whoever the real Polly is, Polly does not want to be her.
Three episodes into Claws and we’re only scratching the surface of Jennifer (Jenn Lyon), Desna’s best friend and trusted right hand. The one-time party girl and recovering addict has transformed into a caring wife — her husband is Roller’s older brother, Bryce — and mother to two. She’s fiercely loyal to her friends and family, ready to pounce on any perceived threat. But, already, as her involvement with the clinic deepens, Jen’s tenuous grasp on her sobriety is starting to slip.
“Do you think we’re gonna be stuck in Husser-ville forever?” Jen asks.
“I know we won’t,” Desna answers firmly, willing herself and Jen to believe it.
“That family is like quicksand,” Jenn replies, without acknowledging that the family she fears is her own. “The more you struggle, the more they just suck you in.”
Quiet Anne is a soft butch babe.
Judy Reyes’ physical transformation into Quiet Ann, the butch lesbian that handles pedicures and security at the salon, is a sight to behold. Even for fans of Reyes’ previous roles on Scrubs and Devious Maids, she is barely recognizable as Ann. There is, admittedly, some disappointment that Ann’s not played by someone who presents more masculine-of-center, given the dearth of roles available to those women, but, thus far, I’m impressed with her portrayal.
Ann remains an enigma through three episodes. Thus far, we know that her backstory includes a stint in prison and, more surprisingly, a six-year stint as the wife of a male Yale linguistics professor. Remarkably, though, even in the absence of dialogue, Ann manages to charm and captivate, perhaps too much for the married client with whom Ann spends New Year’s’ Eve who now stalks her across Manatee County.
And then there’s the stripper, Virginia (Karrueche Tran), who’s managed to snake her way into Desna’s salon and, ultimately, into her boyfriend’s bed. She’s still a relative unknown in the salon but her ambition earns her some respect from Desna initially. “She kind of reminds me of me,” the salon owner admits. What eventually drives a wedge between Virginia and Desna isn’t her affair with Roller, it’s that she outed Polly’s probationary status. It’s clear that the thing that Desna values most is loyalty. Virginia has shown none of it, so Jen tosses her out of the salon, literally.
Virginia earns her way back into Desna’s good graces in a major way and is ultimately welcomed back into the salon. After a lifetime of not being able to count on anyone but herself, she struggles to trust Desna and the members of her crew, but you can tell that Virginia wants nothing more than to belong.
If this show decided to take the stories of these women — these flawed and ambitious women in the service industry, portrayed by these actresses — and just tell them, it would be a show worth watching. But, far too often, Claws doesn’t do that, as if these nuance portrayals of these flawed women couldn’t sustain a show. More often than I’d like, the show bends towards the garish and cliche for reasons surpassing understanding.
On some level, I get it: this is Florida and if ever there was a place that lent itself to garish and cliche, it’s Florida. And perhaps this story is only possible in Florida, where non-existent regulations (yay, small government!) allowed pain clinics to become pill mills, handing out oxycodone to addicts like candy. But, at some point, it just becomes a distraction.
Spencer’s TWIN was A? COME ON.
No one embodies that garishness better than Uncle Daddy who we first meet on New Year’s Eve in the back of his strip club, She She’s (no, really, that’s the name of the club). Draped in gold chains and rosaries, he snorts coke and slurps oysters, as he and Roller celebrate the financial success of their pill mill. The shifts between that Uncle Daddy, who’s almost a parody of every mob boss you’ve ever seen, and the moments when we’re supposed to take him seriously as a threat to Desna, are so jarring that it takes you completely out of the story.
There could be an interesting story to tell with Uncle Daddy — a devoutly Catholic, bisexual crime boss in an organization called the Dixie Mafia is probably the most complicated narrative for a male villain since Omar Little ran the streets of Baltimore on The Wire — but Claws uses Daddy’s sexuality for cheap laughs. Given that the creator and head writer of Claws, Eliot Laurence, was once a writer and executive producer for The Big Gay Sketch Show, I expected better.
Part of me thinks that Laurence saw similarities between the premise of Claws and the premise of Breaking Bad — that is, a protagonist that gets involved with the drug trade in order to support their family — and sought to distinguish one from the other. So Claws ends up with a second line of twerking strippers as part of a character’s funeral procession and Quiet Ann chasing bare-assed addicts around a parking lot, as a way to prove that Claws is a different show. It’s all completely unnecessary. Breaking Bad is not Breaking Bad if Walter White isn’t a white man cloaked in respectability. You share that narrative through the eyes of a struggling black woman, a recent parolee, a recovering addict, a lesbian and a former sex worker, and the story changes completely.
Still, at its heart, Claws is a show about five compelling women — Desna, Polly, Jen, Quiet Ann and Virginia — and how they navigate a world in which they aren’t really meant to succeed. It’s a show that pays tribute to sisterhood and how it can thrive under the harshest of circumstances. The show errs in its audacious moments, which seem crass for the sake of being crass — but there’s enough relatable material on Claws to make enduring those moments worthwhile.
Claws airs Sunday nights at 9PM on TNT.
Naomi Watts’ New Netflix Show Is Hella Bananas and Extremely Gay
This review contains mild spoilers.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A handsome, successful straight white man swaggers onto your TV in a pilot episode and spends the next five years systematically destroying everything he ever claimed to love. Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter White, Dexter Morgan, Nick Brody, Hank Moody, Gregory House. These are the men around whom prestige television — and prestige television criticism — was built. White guys writing about white guys. So it’s no surprise that Naomi Watts’ new Netflix series, Gypsy (more on that name in a minute), has bored mainstream male TV writers out of their minds. Watts’ WASPy Upper East Side therapist, Jean Holloway, is a paint-by-numbers antihero.
What sets Jean apart from the Dick Whitmans of the world are the facts that she’s: a) a woman, who b) dismantles her life, piece-by-piece, because of her attraction to another woman. And the show’s queerness doesn’t end there. Like all antiheroes, Jean’s obsession makes her more and more unlikable as the series progresses, but Jean’s young daughter, Dolly, begins exploring her queerness in such an authentic and endearing way she ultimately emerges as the most heroic and relatable character on the show. It’s a striking juxtaposition.
It all starts when Jean pops into her local coffee shop/bar for a decaf Americano one morning on her way to work. She makes up a fake name for herself as a lady barista catches her eye. “Diane,” she lies, easy as breathing. Sidney Pierce is the lady barista. She’s beautiful, she’s British, and she wears just enough extra eyeliner to let you know she’s a musician. Jean is so intrigued that she stops by again after a day of dealing with therapy patients and orders a chardonnay. Sidney gives her bourbon instead. They flirt a little, some gentle teasing; they promise to remember each other’s names. Jean covertly stuffs a flyer for Sidney’s band into her pocket as she’s leaving the Rabbit Hole to pick up her daughter from school. (Yes, the Rabbit Hole. Yes, it’s underground. So yes, Jean literally keeps going up and down the rabbit hole to visit Sidney. This show does not pass up one single opportunity for a heavy-handed metaphor.)
Jean’s interest in Sidney goes from piqued to peaked when she sees Sidney perform. They share a couple of drinks afterward and the first of half a dozen almost-kisses. “I can’t explain it but there’s something about you that reminds me of me,” is what Sidney says the first time their lips get close enough to touch. They’re even wearing the same perfume.
In between emotional foreplay with Sidney, Jean counsels her patients, the most troubled of whom is a guy named Sam whose girlfriend broke up with him eight months ago and he’s still not over it. “She made things exciting,” he explains. “Whatever you were doing, she made you feel like you were part of the best thing in the world. I never was adventurous, but she made me feel like I was.”
Sam’s ex-girlfriend is obviously Sidney.
What follows is ten episodes of two dynamic, manipulative, gorgeous, narcissistic women who’ve never had trouble negotiating power in their relationships with men trying to outmaneuver each other at every turn. Lying. Dancing. Drinking. Promising. Touching. Yelling. Soothing. Withholding. Lying. Lying. Lying. It’s sometimes clunky and often weird but almost always sexy.
And then there’s Dolly, Jean’s daughter. Dolly likes dinosaurs, video games, action figures, remote control trucks, and most especially Star Wars. Dolly gets frustrated when she can’t hang out with the boys, but she’s also very bonded with her best friend, Sadie. She tells Sadie she loves her, and Sadie hugs and kisses her on the cheek when she leaves school every day. Dolly wears button-ups, ties, and backwards baseball caps. When Jean tries to tell Dolly her long hair is beautiful, Dolly says, “I don’t want it to look beautiful. Do you think G.I. Joe has beautiful hair? No.” And then she gives herself a haircut before her birthday party, explaining, “I wanted to feel like me.”
The writers never make it clear if Dolly is a blossoming little tender butch lesbian who prefers a more masculine gender presentation, or if Dolly is experiencing gender dysphoria and is actually a trans boy. What they do make clear, however, is that Dolly is always right, and the adults — including her mother — who are uncomfortable with her preferences and decisions are always wrong.
So. About that show name. Creator and showrunner Lisa Rubin, who had a knack for writing “good sex scenes” and “flawed women grappling with issues like control, obsession, identity, and sexuality” as a grad student in Columbia University’s film program, conceived the idea for this show when she heard the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name playing in a coffee shop where she was writing. Like so much of the dialogue and nearly all the visual metaphors that comprise Rubin’s fictional world, Fleetwood Mac’s immortal lyrics are just so very right on the nose. Stevie Nicks is putting her mattress on the floor to pretend she’s living in simpler times when she wasn’t so anchored to the world and boxed in by her success; Jean Holloway is masturbating to fantasies of her patient’s ex-girlfriend on her husband’s side of the bed while he is at work.
That the name of the show is based on a song doesn’t make it any less of a slur. It’s a word steeped in oppression and persecution. It’s terrible. It’s a terrible name. However, it does force a complicated conversation about queer cultural criticism. More and more lately, it seems like one side of the world is made up of straight white guys who still, even after watching the 2016 presidential election, don’t see the difference between the way women and men move through the world (thus the difference and significance of a woman inhabiting a archetype historically portrayed by a man), and the other side of the world is made up of socially conscious activists and minorities who have become increasingly unlikely to publicly engage with art that has been deemed problematic in any way. And once a -phobia or an -ism or a type of erasure has been assigned to a TV show or a book or a movie, any website or magazine that chooses to critique it is tagged as unethical.
A lot of important conversations are being lost in that ever-widening chasm. Essential stuff happens in the mental wrestling match between idealism and pragmatism and I think it’s a real shame that queer women are, in many ways, erasing ourselves from conversations about us by refusing to participate in them.
There have been a handful of women antiheroes on TV over the last few years, but what sets Naomi Watts’ new show apart is the way it centers on three different queer experiences.
It’s not prestige drama, but it’s way too well acted and well filmed to be disregarded. It’s not good, but it’s fun. It’s not going to push the LGBTQ rights conversation forward, but it’s also careful not to suggest that queerness causes Jean and Sidney’s worst behaviors. It focuses on the toxic impulses of two women, but it saves its most scathing critique for good old “nice guys.” Jean is an antihero archetype, but she’s not Don Draper. This isn’t Mad Men. This isn’t about men at all.
Cara Delevingne Is Cool About Her Sexual Fluidity, Also The Haircut Is Unrelated
Cara Delevingne has long been known not just for her modeling, acting and activism, but for her give-no-fucks attitude. In the August 2017 issue of Glamour, she pulls no punches; her conversation with fellow model/activist Adwoa Aboah is irreverant and refreshing. She’s happy to talk about her recent acting – “I always say, modeling is something I do, whereas acting feels more like what I [am],” particularly regarding her imminent release, the sci-fi thriller Valerian. She tells Adwoa that she chose the role because she appreciated how her character Laureline isn’t a typical action film damsel in distress; she and her partner Valerian are equals. “Laureline did the job as [well] as Valerian,” she explains. “He’s not saving her. They save each other, which is beautiful.”
Delevingne has run into a lot of the problems many models who cross over into acting face, particularly an inability to be taken seriously. During a press tour for her film Paper Towns, she was notoriously asked by a couple of condescending interviewers on Good Morning Sacramento if she’d bothered to read the book the film was based on. Since then, she’s actually written a novel. Delevingne seems to thrive on being underestimated, yet never finds herself quite able to accept compliments on her work. “I think each of us has to look at the root of the issue as to why we cannot feel good about ourselves often enough to celebrate ourselves. It’s larger than what’s happening in the moment of receiving a compliment. Everyone has to figure out why they don’t agree with what’s being said. It’s a self-confidence thing,” she tells Adwoa.
The conversation turns to Delevingne’s openness about her fluid sexuality; she has openly dated problematic actress Michelle Rodriguez and musical angel St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark). Adwoa offers that during Fashion Week, she noticed that many young women were dating other women, and expressed frustration that although these women were hesitant to label their sexuality, others would do it for them – “Oh, she’s a lesbian now.” This attitude is irritatingly all too familiar for many bisexual, pansexual and otherwise affiliated human beings on this planet.
While Cara says she’s glad to see sexuality becoming a topic younger people are more comfortable considering and discussing openly, she also struggles to have her personal orientation accurately represented or understood – even by her friends.
“Once I spoke about my sexual fluidity, people were like, ‘So you’re gay,'” she explains. “And I’m like, ‘No, I’m not gay…’ A lot of the friends I have who are straight have such an old way of thinking. It’s, ‘so you’re just gay, right?’ [They] don’t understand it. [If] I’m like, ‘Oh, I really like this guy,’ [they’re like], ‘But you’re gay.’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re so annoying!’ …Someone is in a relationship with a girl one minute, or a boy is in a relationship with a boy, I don’t want them to be pigeonholed. Imagine if I got married to a man. Would people be like — ‘she lied to us!’ It’s like, no.”
We here at Autostraddle’s Vapid Fluff HQ would suggest that Cara make some new friends.
Later, Adwoa asks Delevingne if her newly shaved head is related to her upcoming film project, tearjerker Life In A Year. “Yes,” she replies. “No, I did it because I’m gay. [Laughs] I didn’t. I’m not gay. I am. I’m not. I’m fluid! I like fluid.”
In conclusion, rumor has it that fluids are healthy.
8 Books That Feature Bisexual Women (And Don’t Focus On Their Sex Lives)
This month at Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian we’re going to tackle something I haven’t focused on yet: bisexual women. A while ago I was tweeting about making a big list of bisexual books, and Mischa replied: “I honestly would like any kind of list, they’re a little hard to find.” Mischa further specified that it seems easier to find bi characters in YA and they’re not into erotica so they would like books that are neither.
This request gets at a few crucial issues for bi folks. There is a trend in media to have bisexual-behaving characters “reject labels” and refuse to talk about identity. Young adult literature focuses on adolescence, where identity formation is at the forefront, so it makes sense that YA is doing better than books for other ages at making bi characters explicit. But where are the grown-up bisexuals?
The other issue is the association of bisexuals with promiscuity and hypersexuality. Obviously erotica and porn by, for, and about bisexual women is rad. But the stereotype of bi women as hypersexual means it can be hard to find portrayals of bisexual women outside of sexual situations. I’m thinking especially of bi women like Twitter user Feline_fraulein who replied to my crowd-sourcing books for this article with: “I really needed to read these comments because I couldn’t think of a 1 & nearly started crying. Representation is so important.”
So with those two issues in mind, here are eight books about adult bisexual ladies going about their full, complex lives. There are definitely some sexy times to look forward to but sex isn’t the focus of the narrative. Other than that, I’ve chosen a variety of genres, including literary, historical, and paranormal fiction.
For Sizakele by Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene
Taylor is a bisexual Nigerian college student studying in the United States, passionate about social justice and activism, although sometimes it feels like she needs more hours in the day, especially to fit in time with her girlfriend Lee, an African American basketball and piano playing stud. Lee has a lot of her own stuff going on: baggage from family trauma related to her sexuality and gender expression that sometimes spills out into abusive behavior with Taylor. (Some of this abuse is biphobic, but Taylor’s spirited, smart rebuttal is heartening). Into this complicated situation comes Sy, a Cameroonian photographer who has a lot in common with Taylor: shared language, food, and beauty traditions as well as diasporic longing. Their close friendship begins to edge towards romantic love, described beautifully in Etaghene’s lush but precise language. You can look forward to a happy but believably untidy ending.
Vow of Celibacy by Erin Judge
Bisexual comedian and writer Erin Judge totally hits it out of the park with this funny, sexy, fat- and bi-positive debut novel. Our heroine Natalie has recently taken a vow of celibacy after a series of dating disasters and emotional roller coasters throughout her twenties. Her plan is to shift through her past and figure out what she’s doing wrong in the dating department and how that might be related to her bisexuality. She also needs to make some changes in her thwarted career as fashion stylist and her complicated relationship with her body, plus help her BFF decide if she should reveal her true identity as the person behind a super popular blog. Vow of Celibacy would be great for fans of the chick lit genre who wish it was more queer and not fatphobic.
Corona by Bushra Rehman
Corona is a series of short stories about the same character Razia Mirza, a Pakistani American woman from a neighborhood called Corona in Queens, NY. The first stories center on Razia’s experiences in Corona’s tight Muslim community, whereas later the book follows Razia after her rebellion leads to her excommunication and she hits the road to explore the rest of America. Some stories focus on a doomed affair with Ravi, a charismatic guy who’s heading back to his home country of India soon, while others are about hitchhiking with her girlfriend and pranking the creepy older straight guys who pick them up. The snippets of Razia’s life are immediate and intense, with a great sense of place, whether it’s the smell of sweaty desi dance parties or the sound of old bread trucks driving down Corona streets. Rehman’s writing is often poetic and frequently very funny.
The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North
A uniquely structured novel, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is centered on one enigmatic woman and told only from the point of view of the important people in her life, never giving her her own voice. North does a beautiful job drawing each character and conveying their distinctive voices. As each character — her (ex)-girlfriend, brother, husband, old college crush, and others — gives their version of Sophie, the charismatic, visionary artist at the heart of the story slowly begins to take shape. You learn that Sophie isn’t an ordinary filmmaker: she takes the stories of people she meets and turns them into movies. But her ruthless dedication to creating the best work of art leads, again and again, to a startling disregard for the loved ones who are the subjects of her films, until her betrayal hits a final high point. Take care of yourself while reading this book, as it contains scenes of sexual assault and suicide.
Black Girl in Paris by Shay Youngblood
Eden is a 26-year-old black woman from Alabama and an aspiring writer who decides to take an after-college trip to Paris to retrace the footsteps of her literary heroes like James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and Langston Hughes. With only $200 in her pocket, Eden sets off and falls into various menial jobs, like posing nude for artists. She moves on to petty theft with the help of her friend / lover Luce who also shows her the hidden pleasures of Paris. Other fascinating secondary characters include Eden’s androgynous kind-of-boyfriend, Ving, and his friend Olu-Christophe, an undocumented Haitian person. While she’s connecting with fellow ex-pats and working, Eden doesn’t have as much time for writing as she’d hoped, although exploring Paris’s seedy underbelly provides inspiration. Youngblood avoids a strict linear narrative where Eden figures everything out, instead giving us a whimsical, improvisational jazz-like novel full of musings on art, race, love, and sex.
Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff
The association of adolescence with werewolfism makes sense, what with teens going through all those body changes, new urges, and getting hair in new places, but Catherine Lundoff has turned this link on its head by creating a novel where menopause turns people into werewolves. That’s right, Silver Moon is about menopausal women werewolves. The main character is Becca Thornton, a divorced woman who’s only dated men up until middle age. She has just come out as bisexual, prompted by a crush on her next-door neighbor Erin. After discovering she’s a werewolf, Becca realizes she’s not the only one in her situation and joins up as the newest member of a local pack. Happily, she’s not the only queer lady. But her new nights spent howling at the moon and protecting her home are just the beginning as her pack realizes a group of werewolf hunters are in town and they have their eyes set on Becca.
Give It To Me by Ana Castillo
Palma Piedras is a recently divorced 43-year-old Chicana. Assessing her life now that she’s left her husband, Palma starts off by reconnecting with her younger cousin, falling back into their on-again, off-again sexual relationship. This is the beginning of what could be called a bisexual romp, as Palma moves around the US and from partner to partner. But underneath what might seem light-hearted or escapist is Palma’s real desperation, as she fruitlessly searches for belonging. The novel really resists the typical linear narrative of a character learning, growing, and changing. It’s not so much that Palma has lost her way and needs to get back on track. It’s more that in her early forties she has never found her way. Give It To Me could be a miserable book, especially as it also investigates racism and sexual assault. But Castillo’s dark, biting sense of humor throughout really changes the tone and adds crucial relief, managing to make a novel that is heart-breaking, sexy, and hilarious at the same time.
Hild by Nicola Griffith
This epic historical novel set in seventh-century Britain is a fictionalized account of St Hild of Whitby, a Catholic Saint and the king’s youngest niece — and in Nicola Griffith’s version, bisexual. Hild starts in Hild’s pagan childhood being raised by her politically ambitious mother. Hild is a curious, smart child with powers of observation and prophesy so strong that she becomes the king’s seer, a position of privilege but also danger: if she leads the king astray, it could be fatal not only to herself but her family and all those important to her. Griffith has crafted a leisurely paced novel with supremely detailed world building, bringing early medieval Britain alive, including political strife and intrigue, the sexuality norms of the time, and richly characterized medieval women. The novel ends as Hild approaches age 19, but don’t worry! Griffith is apparently planning a trilogy, although no release date for a sequel has been announced yet.
All of the other installments of the column have featured books with bisexual women characters, but for more bi lady adults in particular, have a look at The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj from the column on sci-fi (more than one South Asian bi character!) and My Education by Susan Choi from the list of lesbian romance audiobooks, which features a very sexy but doomed romance between two bi women. And for more bisexual books, do not miss the majestic Bisexual Books tumblr.
No Filter: Stephanie Beatriz And Gaby Dunn Begin The Gathering Of The Bisexuals
Hello and welcome back to No Filter, our stroll down memory lane if memory lane consisted entirely of the instagram feeds of famous queer celebrities. Earlier, my colleague Erin wondered if straight women are OK, and recently confirmed that they are not. This week, I’d like to follow up and also see if famous women are OK?
Let us know, ladies.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVCgZuxh_4h/
If nothing else, these guys are totally OK – rich, famous, crazy in love and very, very OK. It’s alright, guys, we get it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVRMR4ngGCO/
If you ever need someone to help you win a competitive erotic fan fiction contest, apparently El Sanchez is your dude.
No, you’ve watched this video of Samira and Lea doing the Cupid Shuffle six thousand times.
Very Famous Millennial Gaby Dunn spent her pride celebrating with Noted Bisexual Stephanie Beatriz and this is the kind of content I’m always searching for. Bless you both.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVNIW3SjcnX/
Sara Ramirez’s entire feed is HERE IS A BEAUTIFUL GRINNING SELFIE OF ME DOING AMAZING QUEER SHIT and I am on board.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVNTz2LDKER/
[ Fill in your own A League Of Their Own joke ]
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVSpDX5B-5v/
Speaking of A League Of Their Own, a lot of people have been getting on me about ignoring Soko in this column lately and I promise I will never fail you like that again.
Ruin me, Ari Fitz.
Look what I found in my phone…! pic.twitter.com/mU7Al8n5Qo
— Holland Taylor (@HollandTaylor) June 12, 2017
THEIR LOVE IS ALL THAT SUSTAINS ME. Riese would like to make you aware of the double lesbian points because of Jenna Lyons in the background.
These two have no intentions of calming down any time soon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVLV8oflQlc/
Evan Rachel Wood’s household chores probably all end this way.
Join us next week, when Evan Rachel Wood dusts her cabinets and we all end up in friggin’ Narnia.
You Need Help: Do I Really Have to Go to My Biphobic Brother-in-Law’s Wedding?
Q: Two years ago I came out as bisexual to my husband’s three siblings. My husband had always known I dated women before him, and I felt it was time I wanted to share a piece of who I was with his siblings as they all voiced support of LGBTQ people. One of them took it well and showed support, one was completely ambivalent, and one brother went off on me. He called my mother-in-law, whom I did not plan to be out to anytime soon, and the whole family spent the night on the phone having secret conversations about me. My mother-in-law encouraged my husband to divorce me and try for full custody as I was “not right in the head.” After a few weeks, we came to an understanding. My mother-in-law felt sorry, but she also never wanted to speak of the episode or my bisexuality again. Our relationship continues to be awkward. My brother-in-law is not sorry to this day. He says if I didn’t want everyone to know, I should never have told him; he also blamed me, saying bisexuality was confusing and if I didn’t want him to out me and encourage my husband to leave, I should have better explained it. His other two siblings completely understood. My husband told him that what he did was wrong, but he would not accept it. He continues to bring up my coming out with my husband telling him I ruined their brotherly relationship.
My brother-in-law’s wedding is coming up in a few months. He is inviting me to the wedding out of obligation as my husband and daughter are both in the wedding, but I’d rather he didn’t. Is there any case where it would be okay not to attend? I know it may cause more family problems which I don’t want, but I also don’t know how to face him.
A: Wow, well this guy is a real asshole, huh? I want nothing more than to key his car, drink all the beer in his fridge, and start a group chat with all his exes to plot revenge.
The short answer to your question is, while I am definitely not an etiquette expert, I don’t think you have to go to this dude’s wedding. You said yourself that he only invited you out of obligation; do your really want to travel however far and make conversation with boring people while wearing uncomfortable shoes for some jerk who doesn’t even want you there? Think about how many straight people have skipped their queer friends’ and family’s beautiful weddings and family milestones out of bigotry — think about how self-righteous they feel about doing that! People are out here totally comfortable skipping weddings out of abstract homophobia, and here you are having experienced actual concrete harm from these people; I think it’s more than reasonable to not go.
It’s possible it may ’cause more family problems;’ I get that that’s a real concern. But all the ‘family problems’ so far have been out of your control and against your will — it’s neither fair nor realistic for you to feel like you can or should control how his family is feeling. It also, I would argue, isn’t your job! “Facing him” shouldn’t be on you! Here is where we segue into the longer advice that you may not actually be asking for.
You mentioned that your husband talked to his brother and let him know that what he did was wildly inappropriate, which is great! And it seems like based on the context when you mentioned him knowing you’re bi, he’s been supportive with that too (I hope). These things are solid starts, but to be honest, in terms of how a partner could be supporting you in the midst of a family situation that’s been seriously harmful to you, I think it’s more than fair for him to be doing a lot more. In general, if one person in a partnership has an identity or experience that’s marginalized within the other partner’s family, I think it’s the person’s job whose family it is to work on that and make it safe for their partner to be there — or, if that isn’t possible, to do the work of telling that family why you won’t be spending time with them. This is the work people do both as partners and as allies in general, you know?
It’s great that your husband talked to his brother about what already happened, but at the end of the day, it’s already happened — even if his brother DID accept it, that doesn’t fix things going forward. Can your husband also talk to his brother, his mom, and any other family members who participated in this clusterfuck to set explicit expectations about how they should be treating you from now on, and explaining why and educating them when necessary? Can he sit his brother down and explain not only how he fucked up, but what the consequences are going to be, why he can expect not to see you at the wedding, and what he would need to do to make amends if he wants that to change? To the extent that any of that does cause backlash, can he take on the task of dealing with it and protect and support you through it as much as possible?
I realize it’s possible that the idea of talking about this so directly, or even having your husband do it, is maybe uncomfortable or not what you want. Maybe you just want this all to go away, or to feel like it did at least as much as possible for right now. If that’s where you’re at, that’s where you’re at! But even if what you decide you want to go with is telling your brother-in-law that you have food poisoning and that’s why you’re not there, I still think that ball is squarely in your husband’s court. If that’s not something you feel comfortable with asking of him, that might be something to think about! I feel strongly that bi people dating not-bi people have the right to ask more of our partners than just “being okay with” us, you know? We deserve proactive, concrete support! What would enthusiastic, unconditional support of you look like in this situation? Just something to think about!
In the meantime, I’ll be thinking of you and hoping that your brother-in-law gets salmonella from the fish at his wedding for exactly the length of his honeymoon but that everyone else is totally fine!
Alia Shawkat is Bisexual: “Arrested Development” Star Casually Comes Out
Feature image via Shutterstock
All I’ve ever wanted is for Alia Shawkat to come out as queer and for someone to ask anyone in a serious interview if Portia de Rossi made them gay, and today I got both of those wishes! Out interviewed Shawkat about her new film, Paint it Black, which apparently has some super weird queer overtones, and since they were talking about queerness anyway Shawkat just went right ahead and came out. She says she was a tomboy growing up and her mom asked her if she was into girls or boys and she just didn’t know yet. But hey: “Now I consider myself bisexual, and I think balancing my male and female energies has been a big part of me growing as an actor.”
This is my favorite question, though.
Did working with Portia de Rossi on Arrested Development help shape your identity?
Portia started dating Ellen DeGeneres during the show’s first three seasons, and I’d met her previous girlfriend, but I think my influences are more from growing up in Los Angeles and being exposed to lots of gay artists.
But that doesn’t mean Arrested Development didn’t shape her queer career! This new movie she’s in, Paint It Black, is about the wackadoodle relationship Shawkat gets into with her dead mother’s boyfriend. The film is Amber Tamblyn’s directorial debut, and Tamblyn met Shawkat through her husband, David “Tobias Funke” Cross. I’m only telling you this so I can relay the anecdote Tamblyn gave Refinery 29 about casting Shawkat in the Paint It Black.
“I went to a Korean spa in Los Angeles, and I saw her there, butt naked, and I was butt naked, and she was like, ‘Hey, I read the script [you sent me]!’ And I was like, ‘Hey, let’s have a general meeting together, naked, in a hot tub. So it was kind of love after that point.”
Stars! They’re just like us!
Paint It Black brings the number of Shawkat’s queer roles to six. She played Ilana Glazer’s doppelganger lover on Broad City. She played gender-flipped Alexander Hamilton on Drunk History. She played gay in Clea DuVall’s The Intervention. She played gay in May in the Summer. And she was obviously in love with Ellen Page’s character in Whip It.
It’s always very heartening when celebrities come out. Visibility is endlessly important.
Bisexual Adventist and Former Pastor Alicia Johnston Contemplates Ministry After Coming Out
Alicia Johnston knew what she was doing when she informed Seventh-day Adventist leadership in Arizona about her bisexuality; she knew she would lose leadership of her congregation.
Still, she made the choice to pursue an authentic life grounded in theology that identified her as a child of God. Now, Johnston hopes that coming out and accepting the consequences will help other queer Christians in denominations with conservative theologies about LGBTQ people.
“I thought, if I’m going to blow up my life I’m at least going to use that as an opportunity to give hope to people and help them see that they’re not alone, and hopefully also let it be a wake up call to people in the church that this is a big deal and they have to stop ignoring us,” Johnston said in an interview with Autostraddle.
Johnston grew up in the Adventist church, and she loves the church’s values and traditions, such as a commitment to the environment and weekly observance of the sabbath. She attended Adventist schools for most of her life (Adventists are known for having high-quality educational institutions) and eventually went to seminary. It was a tough road as a woman pursuing pastoral ministry in the denomination, so she was overjoyed to receive a call to Foothills Community Church, a small church near Phoenix Arizona — and near her family. At one time, she thought she would live out her career in ministry serving that congregation. It was “a dream come true kind of church,” she said.
At the same time, she was living in conflict. She had always known she was not straight but had long decided she would live her life as if she were heterosexual and never pursue dating or relationships with women. After last summer’s shooting at Pulse Nightclub, a switch flipped.
“it was the first time I realized I was part of the LGBT community, because the way that LGBT people were responding is the way I felt. It felt like something happening to my community.”
She took to intensive study of theology to learn about understandings and viewpoints in favor of affirmation and welcome as well as condemnation and exclusion. She found herself living in constant tension that made her feel she wasn’t living with integrity. After a lifetime of certainty that the Bible provided a clear case against same-sex marriage and relationships, she was shocked to find things weren’t so simple. Eventually, she embraced an affirming theology and began to understand what that would mean for her. After much prayer and conversations with friends and family, she decided to come out.
She wrote a letter to her congregation’s leadership and to the conference (the Adventist governing body that includes her former church) explaining two things: One, that through study and prayer she had embraced a theology that affirms and includes LGBT people, and two, she herself was bisexual. Given the gravity of the decision and what it would mean for her career, she decided to also come out publicly and created a video which she publicly shared that describes her journey and her decision to come out.
For her, coming out isn’t particularly about being able to act on her attraction to women (when the conference asked if she was involved with anyone she answered no). It’s about living as her authentic self and being in solidarity and relationship with other LGBTQ Christians. She was tired of hiding under a heterosexual privilege that didn’t belong to her and, as she put it: “You can’t say ‘this part of how I love is good and this part of how I love is bad’ because it doesn’t work like that.”
To her surprise, she received a lot of positive responses from her congregation and even from the conference, who affirmed her as a “gifted theologian and pastor.” Of course, they still asked her to resign, citing church doctrine.
“While the Seventh-day Adventist Church deeply believes it’s our responsibility to minister to all people, we also have a mandate to adhere to all Bible teachings,” the conference said. “Fundamental Belief #23 states: ‘Marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in loving companionship.'”
Of course, some really nasty online articles from Adventist writers which I won’t link to here describe Johnston’s work as that of the anti-Christ. But Johnston is far from discouraged. Instead, she believes now is the time in her life that she can begin her authentic journey as a minister with integrity. Her goal, she said, is to provide ministry to LGBTQ Christians, especially other Adventists, and to people who might be good allies if they only had the knowledge to embrace affirming theology.
“There are 17 million adventists in the world now, and how many of them are queer? If I have the opportunity to speak to them when no one else is going to, I have to take that opportunity,” Johnston told me.
Although she can no longer serve in the role of pastor, Johnston is still a minister. Life is pretty up in the air, but she’s making connections with other bisexuals and with LGBT Adventists, including through Kinship International, which has been working on behalf of LGBT Adventists for 40 years. She’ll never be employed by the church again, but she is willing to work from the outside in.
“God is love, and this is a beautiful gift. Queer perspectives on faith and on relationships, sexuality and gender is something the church desperately needs. For non-affirming churches, they’re making love and relationships all about gender and people’s roles, when they are supposed to be about commitment and sacrifice and uniting your life with someone else’s. The church needs queer people to remind them what marriage is. This has clarified my ministry, it has clarified my understanding of who God is and what God is trying to accomplish in the world, in the church, in marriage. It’s clarified my life and my ministry, even if it’s made some other things less clear.”
Somebody please write “The church needs queer people to remind them what marriage is” in the sky with a jet plane. You can follow Alicia Johnston’s work through her website.
Poly Pocket: Figuring Out Where To Start
When there aren’t any models for how you want to move through the world, it’s harder to move through the world. There’s no one right way to do ethical non-monogamy, just as there’s no one right way to do ethical monogamy, and no way is better or worse than any other, just better or worse for those involved. Poly Pocket looks at all the ways queer people do polyamory: what it looks like, how we think about it, how it functions (or doesn’t), how it feels, because when you don’t have models you have to create your own.
Danielle Dorsey is a 31-year old pansexual non-monogamous Black woman living in Los Angeles. She is currently single and works as a freelance writer and editor. Check out her website at Danielledorky.com.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Carolyn: When did you start to think about exploring polyamory?
Danielle: I would say I was first introduced to it about five years ago when I entered the kink community, but identified as monogamous until my last relationship. We started out just going to play parties and playing mostly as a unit but that eventually evolved into an open relationship. After we broke up, I decided that I wanted to explore polyamory and ethical non-monogamy in my next partnership. So far I haven’t really had a chance to act on it.
Right now, my poly life probably looks fairly boring, as I’m mostly just talking with friends who are poly and reading as much as possible so that I can figure out how I want to implement it in my next relationship. I’m recently single so I’m also figuring out how to broach that topic as I put myself out there and begin to date.
Carolyn: When you meet people, how do you position conversations about poly or what kind of relationships you’re interested in? And how are you trying to position your break up?
Danielle: I haven’t quite figured out how to do it with people I meet organically while I’m out and about. I guess I probably have some misplaced bi guilt that I’m still working through that makes me feel like I’m being greedy or slutty by wanting to explore polyamory. Online dating is a bit easier because I can size a person up beforehand. I’m pretty upfront about all of that in my profile so I tend to attract like-minded people. I find that when I connect with other poly people, it’s all really easy to talk about, including my break up.
“I have always been very independent so my attitude towards relationships tends to be very relaxed — if it happens, it happens.”
Carolyn: How would you characterize your attitude toward relationships generally?
Danielle: I have always been very independent so my attitude towards relationships tends to be very relaxed — if it happens, it happens. I don’t want to force anything. I enjoy meeting new people and I still try to be friends even if we don’t click romantically.
Carolyn: In light of that independence and openness, and in your experience in your past relationship and research and talking to friends etc about poly, what elements of poly do you find most compelling? What elements do you find less compelling?
Danielle: I used to think that my partner’s interest in someone else reflected upon me and our relationship. I feel like I’ve become more confident since letting go of that belief and not allowing other people to determine how I feel about myself.
I also think that when practiced in a healthy way poly forces you to be really honest with yourself and communicate more openly.
I don’t like how some people use polyamory to pressure their partners into unhealthy situations. I had a friend who was exploring poly in a new relationship, and one of her boyfriend’s other partners showed up at her house in the middle of the night raising hell. They had no idea about each other but he made her feel like that was part of what she signed up for. I feel like stuff like that gives polyamory a bad name.
I guess I just feel a pull to explore it further than I have in my past relationships. Polyamory sort of feels like a path I’ve been on for a while but certain beliefs or pressures made me resist it before. I feel ready now, whereas before I felt like monogamy was the more secure option or meant that my partner cared more, etc. I’ve let go of all that and am ready to give it an honest shot.
Carolyn: Has the way you approach relationships influenced by your childhood family or any other early models?
Danielle: Definitely. I was raised in a fairly conservative household and my parents divorced when I was young. I feel so lucky to have been raised by my mom. She did so much & made it look so easy! I think that’s part of why I’m so independent and have never felt like I needed to be in a relationship to be happy or complete. I do still struggle with how I will “come out” to my parents in that regard. I don’t think they’d understand polyamory at all.
Carolyn: Other than your parents, how out about it are you?
Danielle: Very. I’ve always been very open about that kind of stuff with my friends. I have a friend who, like me, has not yet practiced poly but is drawn to the lifestyle. She’s also single so we are on a similar page and look to each other for support.
And I’m just starting to get more active on Fetlife and look for related munches. Luckily I already have a lot of friends who identify as poly or nonmonogamous that I can look to for guidance and advice.
“Polyamory sort of feels like a path I’ve been on for a while but certain beliefs or pressures made me resist it before. I feel ready now.”
Carolyn: Where do poly and kink fit together for you? Where do they depart?
Danielle: In terms of Fetlife, I just recently became active after a couple year hiatus. I haven’t ventured out to any events yet. For me, since kink is an expectation for me in my sexual relationships, they’re pretty linked, and I think because it’s already sort of an underground, tightknit community, poly fits into that pretty naturally.
My last relationship was open in that we were both fine with the other pursuing casual connections, but never really went beyond that. We played together with other singles quite a bit, but kink didn’t enter the picture too much because we never really had deeper discussions about limits, safe words, etc. In the future I just want to be more open to both of us exploring connections of all types.
To clarify, we didn’t have those deeper discussions with the people we’d bring in, so didn’t feel comfortable getting too kinky with them. I feel like that requires a certain level of trust that we never reached with casual partners.
Carolyn: As you start to explore it, where does poly intersect with other elements of your identity?
Danielle: To be honest, since I’ve yet to fully put it into practice, I can’t say that it functions as more than a preference, currently. I have never been in love or in a committed relationship with more than one person at a time, so I can’t yet say for sure whether I’m naturally oriented that way.
But I am independent, very open minded, and always wanting to explore new things.
Carolyn: What do you want your future to look like? What vision are you working towards or hoping for?
Danielle: I want to have a relationship where we respect and honor each others’ needs and communicate about them honestly. I want to have the freedom to explore the different facets of my identity with support from my partner and provide the same for them. Right now I’m just looking for new connections with interesting people and seeing where that leads.
You Need Help: My Mom Supports My Bisexuality, but Not My Butchness
Q: Hi! I’m 16 and about a year ago came out as bisexual. My parents are fine with it, my issue is that I also identify as gender nonconforming/butch. I have attempted to explain this to my mom, but I don’t know how to make her understand that a woman doesn’t have to be feminine and can be masculine, and I can’t keep struggling to feel comfortable with most women’s clothing. If at all possible I would greatly appreciate if part of your answer is directed towards parents like my mom. Thanks for your help!
A: This world and all of its complicated, hidden structures of oppression, am I right??!
I came out as bisexual when I was seventeen and my mom was so not okay with any of it. Her issues were rooted primarily in religion, but she also had extremely narrow views of what the life (and appearance) of girls and boys should look like; she had been taught, as nearly all of us are, that women and men were to look and behave in particular ways that were markedly distinct from each other. Not only did she believe these to be foundational truths, but she had been surrounded by them for so long that it was impossible for her to see any of them as nuanced or complicated… even when speaking to her own daughter, whose very existence complicated them!
Before I talk to your mom, I want to talk to you just for a moment. I want to tell you that you should be proud of yourself for knowing who you are, knowing what makes you comfortable, and being strong enough in that knowledge to speak about it with your family. Those might seem like small things, or get clouded in the conflict you’re experiencing with your mom, but they are really big, really powerful pieces of who you are. Not everyone finds those truths about themselves by age 16, and many who do are still not confident enough to say, “This is what I need.” You have a powerful fight in your bones, and I can guarantee that that fight is going to inform so much of the years that lie ahead for you. So, in short: fuck yeah.
Now, for your mom:
Dear Mom of An Awesome 16-Year-Old,
Hi! My name is Kristin. I am 36 years old, and almost twenty years ago I came out to my mom as bisexual. My mom loves me more fiercely than I can even begin to fathom (although I think you know exactly how she feels), and she struggled for many years with certain parts of my identity. I challenged my mom. She challenged me. We are both different people today because of how our love for each other pushed us to understand things about the world that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see.
I know you didn’t ask for my résumé, but I have also spent the past ten years of my life working with young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people and their families through my work over at Everyone Is Gay and My Kid Is Gay, and I also co-authored the book This is A Book for Parents of Gay Kids (which has an extensive chapter on gender and expression!). As you might imagine, my personal experiences with my own identity and my family inspired this work to begin in the first place. Life is a crazy, complicated, beautiful thing.
Now, I don’t know you or your child very well, but I do know that you are both struggling to understand each other. You accept that your child is bisexual, which is amazing and will allow them to explore their sexuality in ways that I wasn’t able to in those early years. My mom was devastated when I came out as bisexual, and so I spent many years fighting her so hard on “who I was” that I didn’t have much time left to actually explore those feelings for myself.
In addition to identifying as bisexual, your child also identifies as gender non conforming/butch — and based on their question to us, it seems like this is the part that you are having a hard time accepting or understanding. You might have already been familiar with these terms before your child came out, or they might be brand new to you (I know that as a kid who grew up in the 90s, I didn’t have any experience with gender nonconforming, nonbinary, or even transgender identities until recent years), but whichever way you slice it, you are struggling to feel at peace with a part of your child’s identity, and a part of the way that they wish to express themselves.
It is beyond okay to have questions, and it is also very normal to feel that gut-pulling, automatic response of “NO” in the wake of learning something new, and something that might also be very foreign. We have all spent the better part of our lives learning from movies, TV shows, magazines, and even our own families that women are “supposed” to dress and act in particular ways, and that gender is only ever one of two things: “boy” or “girl.” The idea of “what a woman should be/do” has, of course, changed drastically through generations of people… and my hope is that we keep collectively getting closer to a place where being a woman doesn’t mean you “should” have to be or do anything at all, and being a person doesn’t mean that you must fit into only one of two, gendered boxes.
Throwing all of those larger, societal things aside for a moment, you also became the parent to a beautiful kid 16 years ago and have undoubtedly been imagining their future to look and feel a particular way. Once that picture is thrown into question, so many parents (my mom included) feel lost, confused, and overwhelmed. Your child, though, is sharing something incredibly important about themselves with you, which is because of how much they love you and want to remain connected to you. This means that it is up to you to work to form that new picture of their life — and this time with their input.
The first step in all of this is learning more about the terms that your child is using, and questioning your own hesitations around the way they want to dress or identify. A great place to start learning is over on My Kid Is Gay, where we have entire sections dedicated toward gender identity and gender expression, as well as a collected list of defined terminology!
There are endless reasons why, even after learning more about these terms and identities, you might still struggle with how your child identifies or dresses. It could be that those feelings are rooted in what society often tells us is true about gender (which you can start to unpack a bit in this video); maybe, as we talked about, you are sad to lose that original picture you once had; it’s possible that you wonder if your child is “sure enough” to make these kinds of declarations (you can read more about that here); it could be that you are concerned about their safety in a world that is less accepting of those who don’t conform to societal expectations. It might even be that you are accepting of your child’s sexuality, but feel overwhelmed with the idea that others might visibly read your child as gay.
You have a journey to go on — your very own coming-out process, in fact. You are the mom of a bisexual, gender nonconforming teenager, and it is okay to stumble a bit on that journey. It is critical, however, to allow your child the space to express themselves the way that they are most comfortable — even if you aren’t yet at a place where it makes you comfortable. Take a moment to imagine a world in which you had to dress in clothing every day that made you feel like you were not yourself, and apply that to feeling to better understand what your child is seeking. Let them know that you love them, and that even though you have questions and feelings that might overwhelm you, you are committed to making sure that you both keep talking, and keep getting closer to each other.
All my love,
Kristin
Shannon Purser Is Bisexual: Stranger Things’ Star Is Her Own Justice for Barb
Last week Shannon Purser said that getting comfortable with your sexuality is hard, but then hey guess what? She came out as bisexual last night! In a statement on Twitter, the Stranger Things breakout superstar said:
I don’t normally do this, but I figure now is just as good a time as any to get personal. I’ve only just recently come out as bisexual to my family and friends. It’s something I am still processing and trying to understand and I don’t like talking about it too much. I’m very new to the LGBT community.
The rest of her statement is a crash course in being a queer person on the internet, by which I mean: soothing angry shippers/wranglin’ gay bees. Something about Betty and Veronica and queerbaiting and it doesn’t matter.
Here’s what matters: Shannon Purser is a deeply devoted Christian who has openly struggled with being bisexual and coming out. It doesn’t take a creative reading between the lines of her tweets to see that. We joke around here all the time that everyone is gay and of course 20 percent of Millennials now identify as LGBTQ, but there’s a serious and almost shocking cultural shift behind that statistic. Evangelical Christianity has always disapproved of gay stuff, but in the mid-’90s the Republican Party came together with folks like Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson to specifically go after gay people. Falwell and Dobson wanted to the political power to legislate their puritanical views and the GOP was happy to reap the votes from the scapegoating. Gay people have been the Religious Right’s favorite target for decades.
We’re only just starting to know the adults who grew up with Glee and Modern Family and Pretty Little Liars, the adults who ingested a persistent pop culture message that baby you were born this way (and that’s better than okay!). Shannon Purser was one of those kids! She’s only 19 years old! And now she’s out!
One of the things Purser has been tweeting about a lot lately is suicide prevention, and warning her followers to stay away from specific shows if they have struggled with suicidal thoughts. I think the coolest thing you could do today is give her a consensual internet hug.
And hey, Shannon Purser, if you’re reading this (or if you’re a Christian struggling with your sexuality and reading this), here’s a thing I wrote about how the Bible doesn’t actually condemn gay people. I broke it down by all the clobber passages Conservatives use to try to shame us. You might also enjoy Audrey’s piece on how breaking bread with queer Christians helped her rediscover radical love, or her piece on the LGBTQ-friendly Our Bible App, or our roundtable on how our Christian writers make their faith tangible.
Welcome to the family, Shannon. We’re glad you’re here/we’ll never stop seeking #JusticeForBarb.
Maybe Paris Jackson Is Bisexual Perhaps, Who’s To Say
Multiple sources in the reputable field of celebrity journalism have recently reported that 19-year-old model/actress Paris Jackson has been spotted seeking the favors of young women on exclusive celebrity dating app Raya. Jackson is best known for being the only daughter of Michael Jackson, though she has recently made a guest appearance on the truly bananas television program Star (starring known heterosexual Queen Latifah) and signed a modeling contract with IMG.
This reporter has personally been asking questions about Paris Jackson ever since she took a girl named Melissa Lauren to prom last year, though more recently she had been dating some dude with a Pantera tattoo featuring a prominent Confederate flag. In January, she told Rolling Stone about the “open-minded household” her father raised her in, describing a crush she’d had on a female celebrity when she was eight. “Instead of yelling at me, like most homophobic parents, he was making fun of me, like, ‘Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend.'”
Omfg!!!! @ParisJackson you are a beautiful creature pic.twitter.com/h2wWLeBTlm
— T🥁mmy L33 (@MrTommyLand) April 11, 2016
According to an anonymous source who spoke exclusively to Radar Online, “Paris has made no secret of having crushes on girls in the past and wants to keep her options open… She’s not interested in making a big statement about her sexuality. She thinks it’s unnecessary in 2017, but she’s having fun chatting to sexy women online.” Aren’t we all?
More recently, Paris has been spotted hanging out with potential lesbian and carbonated vanquisher of police brutality Kendall Jenner, whose mother Kris has apparently been managing Jackson. She also attended the GLAAD awards wearing a Yanina gown featuring a rainbow peacock pattern.
What are we to take from this sudden barrage of information? Paris is currently the only one of her siblings to have sought a career in the public eye, and it does sound like someone with a lot of influence behind the scenes in Hollywood is determined to make Paris Jackson into a household name. However, if Paris is looking for a girlfriend, we recommend she look no further than fellow Hollywood starlet Bella Thorne.
Also, dear reader, if you don’t believe I’ve been speculating about Paris Jackson for at least a year, I brought receipts:
Mildly Thirsty Bella Thorne Wants A Girlfriend, Like Ideally Kristen Stewart (Get In Line, Kiddo)
feature and other photos by Mona Kuhn for Harper’s Bazaar
You know that thing where you’re a Disney star and you’re beloved across the globe, while your very curated public persona is incredibly squeaky clean and wholesome… until you turn about 18 and suddenly emphatically demand that the world recognizes you as a free-spirited, sexual being? Yeah, cool, me neither.
In this month’s Harper’s Bazaar, former Disney star Bella Thorne poses provocatively in a Marilyn Monroe-style photo shoot. Fittingly, she also engages her interviewer in a discussion about the pitfalls of fame, particularly for someone so young dealing with the social media-saturated 24-hour news cycle. Bella explains how during her tenure on the hugely popular Disney show Shake It Up, she was forced to dress in a more feminine fashion and even speak in a higher tone of voice in order to appear demure and non-threatening to the show’s young audience.
Since being released from her Disney contract, Thorne has worked hard to rebrand herself in a more raw, grown-up and honest way, releasing her debut album and speaking openly about her struggles with dyslexia and depression. She describes experiencing enormous relief as she found herself able to dress like a tomboy if she wanted, get a tattoo, have her septum pierced – normal things a young woman exploring her own identity might do. Thorne came out as bisexual on Twitter late last summer, and since then the 19-year-old has been the subject of great fascination among the entire Autostraddle Vapid Fluff department (I am the entire Autostraddle Vapid Fluff department). She explains to interviewer Olivia Fleming that although she feels obligated to use her very public platform to speak out about personal issues, she also struggles to maintain a sense of privacy in her life and relationships.
“It’s hard every time I step out of the house,” she explains. “I have to worry about someone photographing my acne and how’s it going to look and if someone’s going to write about me having bad skin because ‘she was partying’ or ‘out too late the night before.’ That part sucks for sure.” Thorne notes that the paparazzi have made dating especially stressful – “Even if I’m not dating somebody, even if we’re just seen hanging out, he must be my boyfriend and we’re moving in and holy shit we’re getting married! I want to go ice skating and I want to ride dirt bikes or do something dope as a date, but I can’t… because if I step outside, he’s my boyfriend all of a sudden. So it’s like, Oh fuck, well, we can only go to your house or mine, we can’t leave the house.”
While Bella’s announcement of her bisexuality was met with overwhelming support from her fans, she has yet to date a girl – though she does clarify that she’s “done other stuff.” She’d like to, but has found flirting with women confusing. “I can’t tell if a girl is hitting on me or she just wants to be friends. And I don’t want to flirt with a girl if she thinks I’m just being her friend. What if I kiss a girl and she’s like Oh, I’m just your friend dude, I can’t believe you just crossed that boundary. I’m confused on what they want from me.” Girl, same.
Since breaking up with Teen Wolf’s Tyler Posey last November, Thorne has been single. In her own words, “I’m single as fuck. I could not be more single. This is the longest I’ve ever been super single.” She clarifies later that she loves being in a stable, committed relationship, and that she finds her single status frustrating. If you are a girl who would like to date Bella Thorne, she’s just letting you know, she’s available.
Later, Thorne admits that if she had to choose a girl to date, she’d prefer to begin with the Real Life Shane of Los Feliz, Kristen Stewart. “She’s so hot,” Bella gushes. “She seems like the raddest chick… I’d be so down.”
A cursory glance through Autostraddle’s significant coverage of Kristen’s seemingly deliberate attempts to date every single famous queer woman in Hollywood reveals that all Bella Thorne may need to do in order to make her dreams come true is wait like, six months. That said, Bella Thorne, we applaud your bravery and wish you success in every sense of the word.