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I Built a Lesbian Sex Robot

I have no flaws, and am basically a perfect human being. If I did have a weakness, though, it would be my propensity to buy ridiculous shit I don’t need off the internet. Whether it’s a bootleg Sonic the Hedgehog x Obama pin badge or a 1997 book on exercising with your cat, if it’s silly, completely unnecessary and has free shipping, I’m probably going to end up ordering it. And that’s exactly how I ended up buying a robot arm.

“I’ve just bought a robot arm,” I told my girlfriend, shortly after entering my credit card details and hitting ‘BUY NOW’.

This was, admittedly, the kind of thing I said quite a lot. There was already a storage box full of half-assed electronics projects stuffed under our bed, which might explain why she wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I was about the whole idea.

“Oh. Do you have to build it yourself?”
“Yes! It’s going to be fun!”
“What are you going to do with it once you’ve built it?”
“It was half price!”
“Great, but that doesn’t-”
“Half price!”

I didn’t have a good answer for her then. To be honest, I rarely have a good answer for her. Luckily, this time, inspiration would be just around the corner.

I’m a web developer by trade, which meant that when I asked for a day off work to go to a sex tech conference, I could somewhat reasonably claim it was job-related. Run by the ever-wonderful Hacksmiths at Goldsmiths University, the event was fun, welcoming and somewhere around the end of the first talk, as Dr Kate Devlin went over some of the recent developments in sex robot technology, the gears in my brain started to spin.

It might not have been delivered yet, but I was soon going to be the proud owner of a partial robot, at least. And it was obvious that sex robots could use a bit of disruption. Despite the incredible potential for innovative, inclusive design, pretty much every sex robot on the market right now could be described as a glorified blow-up sex doll, built by and for straight, cis men looking for penetrative sex — with a robot. Even the very few companies marketing robots for women mould them in stereotypically male bodies and promote them on the strength of their bionic penises.

It seemed to me that an opportunity was being missed. Once you’re able to free yourself from the idea that sex can only equal a penis entering a vagina, a whole wide world of robotic fun awaits. And who has more experience overthrowing that idea than queer women? We have all kinds of bodies and all kinds of experience having sexy fun in all kinds of ways. The world is waiting for a robot that isn’t constrained by heteronormative ideas of what sex is or can be. Why couldn’t I be the the one to build it? Well, perhaps my total lack of any qualifications or experience whatsoever would be a reason why, but I’ve never let that stop me before. My mind was made up. I was going to build a lesbian sex robot.

Now, I wasn’t ambitious enough to think that I, or anyone else for that matter, would actually be having sex with my robot. I wouldn’t trust anything I’d built to be left unsupervised for more than 20 seconds, let alone go near anybody’s private parts. Even worse, for all my lofty goals of moving away from envisioning sex as sticking a thing in a hole, with the parts I had available that was pretty much all I could aim for. But as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a sex robot, and if I could make a decent enough prototype, maybe someone who’d actually touched a soldering iron within the last decade would be able to take up the cause.

I’m not particularly good at visualising stuff, by which I mean I have multiple cognitive disorders affecting my ability to visualise stuff. However, I knew good preparation would be key if this project was going to be a success, and I was sure to spend the time I had to kill before my robot arrived drawing detailed plans.

Of course, when the kit to build my robot arrived, it was going to be missing a key component – the sexy bit. I was going to have to source that myself. Luckily, I work in Soho, the glorious, seedy sex capital of the U.K… circa 1976, before it was gentrified to hell and back. Nonetheless, I set aside an evening after work to hunt through the few surviving sex shops and find something suitable. Unfortunately, I failed to find anything that didn’t cost a week’s wages, wasn’t Fifty Shades of Gray themed and didn’t look like it belonged in a low budget body horror film. Eventually I gave up, grabbed a gourmet grilled cheese for dinner and ordered a dildo online.

I shelled out for express shipping, and after a few days of feverish anticipation, I had everything ready. I had my robot. I had my sex. All I had to do was put it all together.

Things started out poorly. A few of the robot’s parts had been damaged in transit and I had to request a replacement. By the time they arrived, I’d realised that the kit’s instructions had a few oversights, such as ‘diagrams’ or ‘any explanation as to what you were actually doing’. I managed to muddle through regardless, until a much bigger problem started to become obvious. Or, more accurately, a small problem was becoming obvious.

I’d fallen prey to the same mistake as countless impulse sex toy buyers online over the years – I hadn’t checked the dimensions.

My poor miniature robot arm was going to be dwarfed by the dildo it was meant to be controlling. Sure, a size difference can be sexy, but how was this even going to work? Was it even going to be able to lift the dildo? It would be like trying to work with a butt plug over twice your height – which, in fairness, the French have already tried.

I couldn’t answer any of these questions. I had no idea what I was doing. Nevertheless, I persisted.

With the initial wobbles out the way, the rest of the build went surprisingly well. I only had a few mystery screws left over, and the robot was looking great.

After a bit of fiddling with the motors, I could even get it successfully picking up some small household objects.

I couldn’t bask in my success for too long, though. With everything more or less working, it was time for this robot to hit the big leagues. That’s right – it was finally dildo time. I’d lowered my initial ambitions somewhat by this point; I was happy to call the project a success if I just managed to move the dildo.

Reader, that did not happen.

It did not happen at all.

It was a disaster. The dildo barely moved a millimetre – if anything, it moved the robot. Even worse, the strain of trying to move such a heavy object kept blowing out the robot’s motors and causing it to shut down. I thought about trying again with a smaller sex toy, but I was already close to pushing the poor bot to breaking point.

I racked my brains for a way to salvage this mess. Eventually, I turned to my artistic skills, hoping that a sexier design might make up for the robot’s lack of practical features.

It was no use. My lesbian sex robot dream was over almost as soon as it had begun.

Honestly, though, I can’t say I’m too disappointed. Sure, nobody would be having sex with my robot anytime soon, but that leaves it in good company; some of the most famous sex robots in the world exist only as trade fair demos, so it’s not like anybody is having sex with them either. And in 2018, building a sex robot actually seems pretty passé when it comes to DIY sex tech. Why stick to robots when you could build a videogame that syncs to your vibrator or 3D print a dildo to your exact specifications? With a little imagination and persistence, the world can be your sexy oyster.

But if anyone has any ideas as to what else I could do with a semi-functioning miniature robot arm, could you let me know?

The Intensely Detailed Janelle Monáe and Tessa Thompson Timeline You’ve Been Waiting For

This post has been updated throughout with new events. Last update: 6/29/2018.

For months, there’s been growing speculation about whether musician/actress/ArchAndroid Janelle Monáe and the rising feminist Hollywood star Tessa Thompson are in a romantic relationship.

Those rumors intensified this month when Janelle accompanied Tessa on the red carpet for the premiere of her new film Annihilation and then Tessa was featured as a love interest in the trailer for Janelle’s new audio-visual album Dirty Computer. THEN ON THURSDAY Janelle dropped a new music video, the already-iconic bisexual anthem “Make Me Feel,” which is burning down the gay internet, and TESSA SHOWED UP ONCE AGAIN! This time dancing with Janelle, feeding her a lollipop, and variety of other decidedly super gay activities.

We’ve decided it’s time to really dig into the issue on the tip of all of our tongues: Are these two dating or not?

Neither woman has issued an official statement to confirm or deny the gossip buzzing around them. But there is a preponderance of evidence! In fact, when presented with this complete dossier, our Vapid Fluff Editor and body language expert Stef Schwartz gave the following very official commentary: “Even if these two are best friends who are just messing with people — they definitely boned. At least twice.”

Here is the evidence, in obsessive and well-sourced detail. Get ready! This is gonna be a deep dive.

Pre-2015: The Tessa and Janelle Story Begins

Between 2010 and 2015 Janelle Monáe is a rising pop star who pings for a lot of people as family, but chooses not to talk about her sexuality in public. Still, she’s out there in the world busy writing songs about being in “queer love” with a “robot named Mary.”

Tessa Thompson first entered the pop culture mainstream as a series regular on the second season of the short-lived but excellent, Veronica Mars and playing The Chief’s niece who’s dying from cancer in the season two finale of Grey’s Anatomy, both in 2006. Fast forward a few years and in 2014 Tessa’s career gets a big kickstart with her star turn in the indie satire Dear White People — produced by everyone’s favorite celebrity girlfriend Lena Waithe and out gay writer/director/producer Justin Simien.

2015: I Bet You Didn’t Know Janelle and Tessa Went Back This Far

We officially start our timeline in the Spring of 2015, where there was a lot of hot action bubbling and gay love in the air.

First, Janelle Monáe releases her new music video for my favorite dance around barefoot in the kitchen single, “Yoga,” on April 13th 2015. And who is that featured as a background dancer? Why, it’s NONE OTHER THAN TESSA THOMPSON!


But wait, things aren’t as simple as they appear! You see, at the same time as this video release, Janelle is rumored to be dating Rapper/DJ MC Lyte. Which we covered for you way back when. Supposedly, the two had been an intimate item since BET’s annual Black Girls Rock concert & award show earlier that same year. At the time this felt MAJOR.

However, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m thinking that relationship was not long for this world. Because on May 30th 2015, Janelle Monáe performed at the MOCA charity gala in Los Angeles and guess who was with her — in a matching black & white outfit, no less — our girl Tessa Thompson.

November 7th 2015 rolls around, and Janelle Monáe receives the “Equality Award” at the 18th Annual Women’s Event hosted by the Center in New York (NYC’s LGBT Community Center). The award is meant to honor Monáe for her contributions to feminism and women’s equality, as well as thank her for being an LGBT “ally.” I’ll give you one guess who presented her with the award. Just kidding! You don’t need the guess. The answer is Tessa Thompson.

Later that same month, November 20th 2015, Tessa is busy with her own career. She’s at the premiere of Creed, the sequel to the Rocky franchise starring Michael B. Jordan that’s about to launch her career into a new stratosphere. That’s ok though, because her girlfriend Janelle Monáe found time to surprise her on the red carpet! How romantic!

And there’s more! That December black celebrity gossip site The YBF reported that Janelle swept Tessa Thompson and a group of their closest friends on a gal pal “Girl’s Trip” to Mexico so they could celebrate the success of Creed. Total heterosexual behavior.

2016: In Which Janelle and Tessa Handle Business

Lovelies, the trail goes somewhat cold in 2016 as Tessa goes on location for most of the year, filming not one but TWO blockbusters —  Thor: Raganok, where she plays the bisexual badass Valkyrie, and Annihilation, the sci-fi thriller co-starring Gina Rodriguez (forever known to me known as Gina Rodriguez Maybe Bisexual, and one of the reoccurring guest stars in the ongoing romantic saga of #Janessa, and yes hashtag Janessa is a thing, thanks Twitter) and Natalie Portman.

I’m pretty sure that Janelle was also busy filming Hidden Figures at this time, but I couldn’t find any source material to prove it?

Anyway, Tessa’s friendship with Gina Rodriguez Maybe Bisexual gave us such perfect moments as this:

Photos courtesy of Gina Rodriguez on Snap Chat

2017: Tessa and Janelle, Back and Better Than Ever

The ongoing Janessa beat blazes hot again right again right at the start of the year! On February 25th 2017 black legend Alfre Woodard brought together black actresses from across Hollywood for her annual Oscars Week “Sistah’s Soiree” at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. According to InStyle the event celebrates “current [black women Oscar] contenders, past nominees, and those who, in a perfect world, should have been” as they share insights together and have a heart-to-heart bonding session about navigating the industry as black women. Tessa Thompson can be seen in the official “Class Photo” in the back row:

But do you know who was there at the same time, at the same hotel, and NOT photographed? Our favorite Android:

On September 16, 2017 Tessa and Janelle are pretty cuddled up at the annual Equality California Awards (EQCA’s), which honor those who work to help create a more equal, just, and fun world for the LGBT community. It’s hard to get a photo alone of them thanks to rock royalty and one of my earliest crushes Zoe Kravitz, who will now be known as “BFF Zoe Kravitz” for the purposes of this investigative report. Much like Gina Rodriguez Maybe Bisexual, BFF Zoe Kravitz will play a reoccurring role in the love story of our two ladybirds.

Also, Sharon Stone was there. That’s not relevant, I just thought y’all would like to know.

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A post shared by Sharon Stone (@sharonstone)

The next day, September 17th 2017, the two were seen cuddled up at the HBO Emmys After-Party.

Not unrelated, earlier that same night Janelle tweeted out this adorable rainbow emoji in celebration of gay classic San Junipero’s “Best Writing” Emmy win:

Recently a member of the Janessa Army on Twitter suggested that Janelle consider remaking the episode starring Tessa Thompson, which as we all know, she just did:

https://twitter.com/jamKartel/status/966040994604085253

On October 8th 2017 Issa Rae threw a last-minute casual “Lemon Pepper Kickback” House Party for the working black actors in Atlanta. Guests included: the casts of Insecure, Atlanta, the upcoming film The Hate You Give, and musicians from Janelle’s Wondaland Studios. Guests also include: Tessa Thompson.

Here’s the thing: It’s possible that Tessa just happened to be in ATL filming her parts of Avengers: Infinity Wars. But if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s most likely she was there because she was at Janelle’s house and they were home together sharing an organic green juice when Issa’s text came through.

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A post shared by Yvonne Orji (@yvonneorji)

Also, if you ever wanted see Issa Rae take a bottle of champagne straight to the head, I’ve got you covered.

Get it, girl.

2018: Zero F*cks Given

We have made it! 2018! Only two months in and we have more Tessa and Janelle material than any of the previous years! How did we get to be so lucky? Wow, what a time to be alive.

On January 28th 2018, Janelle gave a “Time’s Up” speech on The Grammys stage about sexual harassment, assault, and gender inequality in the music industry. Tessa played the super supportive girlfriend gave her gal pal lots of love with a total Tweet storm, of which I’m presenting the best one for you here:

On January 30th 2018 Tessa and Janelle had a date night went to the Black Panther premiere. While there are no photos of them together on the purple carpet, lots of photos inside the event show that they were as close as ever celebrating #BlackExcellence with the cast.

Then, THE CASE CRACKED WIDE OPEN!!! In the middle of the night on February 5th 2018, Janelle and Tessa had the cutest night in and live-streamed it for all of their followers! Autostraddle Staff Writer and techno-computer maven Raquel tells me that this event originally happened on Instagram Live (you guys, I’m terrible at social media things).

https://twitter.com/hayejunt/status/960413498730827776

Look at all those sweet, casual, knowing, gentle touches! Look at them, I say!!! (This is a good time to shout out @hayejunt on Twitter, who has singlehandedly contributed more to the tracking of #Janessa than probably any other fan on record. Salute!)

Also, if you look closely at the comments floating across the screen, you will see none other than BFF Zoe Kravitz make a reappearance among the masses showing their love!! “Janellllleee and Tesssssaaa for Eva.” She’s truly the greatest wingman. You can hear Janelle calls her “Zo Zo”, which is absolutely the best.

February 13th, 2018. The Annihilation premiere. Janelle is photographed WITH TESSA ON THE ACTUAL RED CARPET!! The paparazzi captioned their photos as “gal pals.” Seriously, if these photos don’t make you a Janessa True Believer, I’m not sure what will:

Tessa— That Hand Placement. I see you.

Vapid Fluff Editor Stef: “I just want to be able to look at Janelle like that”

Also, we are once again presented with Gina Rodriguez Maybe Bisexual, who tweeted this very dreamy, super romantic photo and caption that I still think fondly about:

https://twitter.com/HereIsGina/status/963813044865257475

A few days later, February 16th 2018, Janelle Monáe released the trailer for her first full length album in five years, Dirty Computer. The album comes out April 27th, but Tessa Thompson stole my heart starting now. There’s lots of short clips of the couple throughout, but I think this the one that made us collectively forget how to breathe:

On February 20th 2018, Janelle modeled her best dapper butch babe in a Jordan Peele-directed cover spread for W Magazine.

Tessa Approves. (Though lets all be honest here, Janelle Monáe in those suspenders and that suit was worth at least THREE FIRE EMOJIS. Tessa, don’t make me doubt your tastes!)

And this brings us to February 22nd 2018, when Janelle Monáe released her first two singles off of Dirty Computer. Both singles are great, and if you haven’t heard “Django Jane” you absolutely should, but it’s the Prince inspired “Make Me Feel” video that sent our gossip world ablaze!

In it Janelle dances with both Tessa Thompson and a male love interest in a nightclub that’s decorated in lights of the bi pride flag, sings between the legs of female dancers clad in rainbow colored tights, and wears see-through pants! DID I MENTION THAT TESSA IS THE STAR??? Of course I did.

It’s as close to any statement about Janelle’s sexuality that I’ve ever seen (self edit 4/26/18- That’s not true anymore!!), and it’s a marvelous work of art. We are still talking about it! We may never stop talking about it.

Oscar Week 2018 arrives with many gifts for us! On March 1st 2018, Essence magazine hosts their annual “Black Women in Hollywood” award luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. Janelle Monáe is on hand to present love of her life Tessa Thompson’s with the magazine’s honor.

Later that week, on March 3rd 2018 Tessa attends Janelle’s “Fem the Future” Oscar brunch. The event brought together working women actors, directors, musicians, and activists to discuss Hollywood’s current political climate and gender inequality.

As the frost of winter turns to budding dew of spring, the intense twitter interactions between Tessa and Janelle become too numerous to quickly keep track of. Then on April 10th 2018 Monáe releases another single from Dirty Computer. “Pynk” is a “feminist love letter to springtime, being femme, black and brown women’s bodies, and vaginas — all divorced from the male gaze,”.

Tessa’s all over this video, too. Most notably, her face spends significant time sandwiched between Janelle’s thighs while the singer dons vagina shaped pink pants and sings “Pink is the truth you can’t hide”.

Later in the video, Tessa appears among a row of dancing butts! What I’m saying is, this video is my happy place.

On April 26th 2018, the eve of Dirty Computer‘s official release, WE ARRIVE AT A GAME CHANGING MOMENT!!!! After years of not talking publicly about her sexuality, Janelle Monáe comes out in Rolling Stone as a queer, bisexual, pansexual “free-ass motherfucker”. The interview is brave, vulnerable, and thoughtful. It’s everything we could ask for our android.

Stop the presses! Just when we thought we had reached our highest point, on June 29th 2018 Tessa Thompson came out, too!!! Not only that, she also had some pretty amazing words to share about her relationship with Janelle and our collective glee over it: “We love each other deeply. We’re so close, we vibrate on the same frequency. If people want to speculate about what we are, that’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”

Call the ambulance! I think my heart just stopped due of this high-key level of cute.

Where will our journey take us from here? Who knows! But I have sworn myself to this beat. If we haven’t seen Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monáe kiss on camera by the end of the year, I’m throwing myself into the sun.

Happy 20Gayteen everyone!

Why I Got Off the Pacific Crest Trail After 454 Miles Instead of Walking All the Way to Canada

I’ve told a lot of stories about why I stopped hiking the Pacific Crest Trail at the 454 mile mark last summer, though I intended to hike the whole thing, all 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada. They’re all versions of the truth. I missed my girlfriend, it’s true. I hurt my knee, yes, also true. I missed my community and my friends and my life in Portland, yes yes yes, true true true. Oh, and I was scared of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the historic snowfall of 2017, not at all convinced I could do that portion of the trail alone in a safe way. Yes, also true. The Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 was no joke, and those who hiked continuous footpaths (or not-continuous footpaths!) through one of the most popular long distance trails in the United States of America last year deserve praise and recognition.

Most days, I am still sad I was not one of them.

But I decided to stop hiking just shy of 500 miles in, and while all of the very truthful realities I just listed played a part in my decision to quit, the real truth is harder to admit. I’m scared to say it out loud, embarrassed I let it get to me, unsure I want to make myself a spokeswoman for this particular issue. And yet, every time I do speak this truth, other hikers come forward and say, “I felt that way too.” They sigh in relief that someone is naming this problem. And so I’m finally writing this essay, the one I’ve been trying to articulate for almost eight months, the one I have been putting off for just as long. I want other hikers to see these words when they research the PCT and try to decide if it’s the right choice for them to hike this trail. I want to say this clearly, because it has been so hard to admit and has made me feel ashamed and sad about things that are not my fault.

I stopped hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 because of toxic masculinity and bro culture in the hiking community. It exists, it’s shitty, and it fucked me up.

The first time I heard about the Pacific Crest Trail was when I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. At the time I was living in Brooklyn, and I wouldn’t have called myself outdoorsy, let alone a hiker. I love Strayed’s work and am moved by almost everything she’s ever written, but at the time I didn’t feel called to hike the PCT myself. Rather, I took her advice in Tiny Beautiful Things as a hint to get out of New York City, break up with my girlfriend, and prove to myself I could exist as a human untethered to a computer screen. So in a way, it was Cheryl Strayed who set me on the path of eventually hiking the PCT… it just wasn’t a terribly straightforward line. Bigger influences would appear in my life when I left Brooklyn, and eventually it would be a different woman and a different memoir that set me on my first steps on trail. But I don’t owe Strayed nothing, and the irony of the way she and her story have been treated by the long distance hiking community is not lost on me as I think about my own experiences on trail.

People in the long distance hiking community love to talk shit about Cheryl Strayed.

If you mention Strayed to a specific kind of hiker on the PCT, he’ll be sure to let you know that she didn’t even hike the whole trail, what a liar, and she’s had sex, so you know she’s a slut, and it’s totally her fault that the PCT is overcrowded now, it’s so annoying that all these dumb girls who have no idea what they’re doing saw Wild one time and thought they could do a long trail. You’ll find hikers talking this way on message boards and Facebook groups, which I expected because the internet can be a trash heap, but you’ll find them talking this way on the physical trail too, which I guess I did not.

If you’re a woman, a queer person, a person of color, a fat person, or anyone who falls outside a very narrow set of parameters, you may find yourself discouraged by the online hiking community and the casual sexism, racism, fatphobia, transphobia, and all around shittiness that runs rampant there. I suppose like any community that isn’t explicitly focused on lifting marginalized folks up (and even those communities have flaws, obviously), one shouldn’t dare to have high expectations of the long distance hiking community, especially not on forums on the internet where anonymity and boredom can draw out the ugliness of humanity.

But I actually did have high expectations for the long distance hiking community, at the very least off the internet and on trail, because everyone I met who was involved in long distance hiking told me that the community is incredible. I spoke with multiple women who waxed poetic about their “trail families” and focused only on the positive aspects of trail life. I attended official community events (yes, the long distance hiking world has official events!) where experts gave talks about how to be respectful visitors in trail towns, how to eat healthier foods on trail, what to do in case of an emergency – essentially, presentations about how to be better hikers and better people. The illusion that the hiking community is a safe space for everyone is strong, in part because as far as I can tell, most people involved either don’t realize that it isn’t, or they don’t feel comfortable admitting otherwise. The same women who initially had assured me I would fall in love with my “trail fam” on the PCT messaged me privately when I got off the trail – they felt bad that they hadn’t warned me about the realities of being a woman on the trail. And in retrospect, though the official events worked so hard to focus on the positives of the community and help make us better, the words “misogyny,” “sexual harassment,” and “racism” never once made an appearance on the agendas.

And therein lies the problem, the one I’m not sure how to tackle because it feels huge and inevitable and I feel dumb and naive for not anticipating it, or not anticipating how disheartening and ultimately soul crushing it could be: the long distance hiking community is not a particularly welcoming and special safe space for anyone who is not white, male, able-bodied, straight, cis, and competitive. But those dudes will tell you that it is, and they don’t want to talk about why it might not feel that way for everyone.

Before I continue, a caveat, partially because I feel anxious about backlash when I say things like this and partially because it is true and I don’t want to be misunderstood: Saying that the long distance hiking community (and the outdoor recreational community in general, if I’m being honest!) has a lot of work to do does not mean that every individual in the community is terrible. Saying that I don’t necessarily think the long distance hiking community is a safe space for folks from marginalized communities does not mean that many women, many queer and trans people, many people of color, and many fat humans haven’t had fantastic times on trail and interacting with other hikers. Wanting a community to do and be better does not mean every aspect of it sucks.

But I still stand behind my original point: the long distance hiking community has a toxic masculinity problem, and the bro culture that runs rampant on the trail is hurting all of us.

I told you that a woman and her memoir set me on my trajectory to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. That woman is Carrot Quinn, and her memoir, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart, ripped mine wide open. I met Carrot by chance, after I left New York, took a road trip across the United States, accidentally ended up in Oregon, and decided to stay. I was living on a lesbian land project and trying to rebuild my life after a terrible breakup and community fallout. I’d just left Brooklyn eight months earlier. No one I knew on the East Coast hiked long distances. I didn’t really know that you could.

It was October 2014 and Carrot was fresh off her second Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike and the Lowest to Highest Route, a short but difficult route that requires maps and navigation skills and scrambling and food caches (all things one does not really need to do on the PCT). We met at a queer gathering and she told me about both hikes. I was wearing a snapback that had the words TAKE A HIKE emblazoned on the front and she complimented my hat. I was embarrassed when I found out she was a “real hiker” but she never made me feel bad about it. Over time, she convinced me I could be a real hiker, too.

I remember marveling over Carrot’s grit, bravery, and sense of adventure on that autumn evening in 2014, thinking to myself, oh my god, this woman is incredible. And then, quickly, before I had the chance to squash the idea with self-doubt or fear, my brain jumped ahead and whispered a tiny thought into my subconscious: I want to prove to myself that I can be that incredible.

I drove home that night, found Carrot on Facebook, sent her a friend request, found her blog, proceeded to read almost the entire thing in one evening (she blogs prolifically, doing daily posts for every day she has ever been on trail, and her words are sharp and vibrant and really make you feel like you’re right there with her), sent her a message telling her I thought she was amazing and wanted to be her friend, and the rest is fucking history. I was on track to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in a couple of years.

I’m kidding, sort of, about how quickly I made the decision, but not really. When we see representations of ourselves in the world, whether the experiences be small or large, incredible or mundane, fun or difficult or both, it makes us feel as though we can do those things, too.

Knowing that Carrot had hiked the PCT made me feel like I could do it, too. Why not?

I prepared meticulously for my hike. I researched gear, connected with other hikers, bought the “PCT Bible,” and trained as much as I could. As a fat former indoor kid with no backpacking experience, I knew I was at a slight disadvantage, but I also knew plenty of humans had hiked the PCT with similar lack of experience and had been successful in their hikes. I am a careful, thorough, detail-oriented Capricorn, and I did everything in my power to make myself ready to thru-hike the PCT, an adventure that would arguably be the toughest physical and mental challenge I had taken on to date.

One thing I did not do to prepare was spend too much time chatting with other hikers online. I’d heard from more than one woman that the Facebook groups for the PCT were hotbeds for misogyny, mansplaining, and casual cruelty. I joined the PCT Class of 2017 group but quickly saw exactly what everyone had warned me about – for every single helpful comment thread, there were multiple depressing threads. I decided early on that I wouldn’t sink any of my energy into that group, and I didn’t even explore the Reddit forums ’cause I imagined it would be more of the same, or perhaps worse. There was a “Women of the PCT” Facebook group that was a friendlier place than the main group, and I spent some time there, asking occasional questions and offering what little knowledge I had as a beginner thru-hiker. But I was disappointed in that group, too; a woman of color started a group specifically for POC hikers and posted about it in the women’s forum to advertise to potential members, and more than one white woman commented disrespectfully, wondering why those hikers wanted to “further separate themselves.” These comments showed up in a women’s hiking group, one that was separate from the main hiking group for obvious reasons. Casual misogyny is not the only problem on the trail.

And yet, in spite of these negative online experiences, I felt hopeful for the interactions I’d experience on trail. Everyone spoke so highly about the people you meet while hiking! I’ve had such positive experiences with close-knit queer communities! I was excited to meet people outside of my queer bubble of Portland, OR, and ready to leave the negativity of online anonymity with my laptop in the city while I bounded into the backcountry for six months.

When my start date rolled around on April 20, I felt ready.

The first few days were euphoric, though physically painful. I started my hike with a group of other first time long distance hikers I felt comfortable with, I acquired a trail name I loved on the very first day (Scissors – ‘cause I’m gay), and I walked 42 miles in four days. My feet were a mess – even after all my hours of careful research and training hikes, I’d picked the wrong shoes and paid the price in terrible infected blisters – and my body was sore, but my endorphins were throwing a non-stop dance party in my brain. I took a rest day in Mt. Laguna, the tiny trail town at the 42 mile mark, to fix my feet and buy new shoes. I was ready to do this thing 63 more times! I was on track to Canada!

But the rest day I took in Mt. Laguna separated me from the folks I’d been getting comfortable with, and once I wasn’t in my cozy group I was blind-sided by the trail culture. I’d heard tales of generosity and openness, of respect for nature and LNT (Leave No Trace) principles, of a sense of camaraderie I stupidly assumed would feel similar to the way I feel in queer community. That is part of what I want to emphasize: I did not make up the idea of a welcoming and safe trail community out of thin air. Most hikers speak openly and extensively about how wonderful the “trail community” is, how they found their family while long distance hiking, how hikers are the best people, the ones in this world who truly “get it.” But I experienced something different.

This is how it goes: I’m huffing and puffing my way up a steep incline. We’re gaining almost 3,000 feet of elevation in just 4 miles, the next water source is (probably, hopefully) one mile away, and my pack weighs 30 pounds, heavy with food I’ve packed out of town. I’ve hiked a couple of miles so far and plan to hike ten more before I set up camp to go to sleep. Other hikers keep passing me; some have smaller packs, some have larger packs. I stop to take a sip from my water bottle and a tall man approaches me, bounding up the trail effortlessly. He pauses to take a break too. “What day did you start hiking?” he asks me. Everyone always asks this question. What it really means: how fast or how slow are you traveling? Did I start before you and now we’re in the same place? Am I better than you are? Maybe he’ll ask some other questions, seemingly innocuous but designed to make one feel less than. “How many miles are you doing today?” “What time did you wake up?” “Are you walking all the way to Canada or are you just a section hiker?” These questions are baked into long distance hiking culture. No one questions why they’re asked or what they mean. Folks just wanna know, so they can put themselves on a roster and decide where they belong when it comes to being a “successful” hiker.

Sometimes it goes like this: I stop at a water source and I ask a man I’ve been leapfrogging with all day if he can scoot over so I can also have a place to sit in the shade. There isn’t a lot of shade, but enough that I can sit too. He rolls his eyes and I, stupidly, make a joke about feminism and equality on the trail. He immediately snaps that the pay gap isn’t real (what?) and then goes on a rant about feminists ruining everything. We somehow veer into the murky waters of capitalism vs. socialism and then he proudly tells me he’s glad he’s no longer at his desk job because a guy like him doesn’t belong behind a desk. “I should be out here, raping and pillaging the land!” I open and close my mouth but nothing comes out. By now several other folks have shown up – men and women – and they all hear his fucked up announcement, but no one challenges him.

It can be like this, too: A sweet athletic blonde woman takes a liking to me and slows down her pace so we can hike together for a few hours. She admits she knows the trail is a boys club, but she’s used to it because she teaches snowboarding in the winter and that’s a boys club, too. She tells me she kinda likes being in the club, so she makes herself one of the boys. “It’s dumb how competitive everyone is about mileage,” she says, and I’m about to agree but then she continues, “I mean really, we should be most impressed with people like you! It’s amazing that you’re out here doing this!” I think she thinks she is being nice so I don’t say, “Wow, thanks for thinking it is so amazing that a fat slow lesbian could be hiking this trail with you and all these dumb bros!” It’s hot and I’m tired and fuck, I liked this woman, so I just say, “Thank you.”

It happens in so many ways. Almost every man I encounter wants to mansplain some aspect of my gear to me. Men make disgusting objectifying comments about women on trail, calling girls hot or ugly or fuckable or whatever makes them feel powerful in that moment, I guess. One man who I think is my friend hurts my feelings and when I try to communicate with him in the adult way I’ve been taught, by telling him he has hurt me and asking him to please not repeat his behavior, he mocks me and encourages others to join him until I cry. He avoids me after that. I meet so many men who tell me, blissfully, that for the first time in their lives they finally feel completely understood. I am dumbfounded. They finally feel understood? Finally? But…where on this Earth do they not feel understood? What the fuck?

The incidents are often so “minor.” I know when I list them here the folks who don’t want to admit this is a problem will find ways to discredit my experiences, call me crazy and oversensitive, insist that I’m the problem, I’m an anomaly, this has nothing to do with their precious community and everything to do with me. I know what it’s like, to feel protective of a community that means everything to you, to want to claim that the space where you finally feel understood is perfect. But listen, we live in a racist homophobic transphobic fatphobic classist fucked up patriarchal society. To think we can run away to the woods – a place that is touted as “America’s Playground” but in actuality is only accessible to those with the right color skin, the right amount of money, the right physical shape – and somehow escape the oppressions that are wound tightly into the fabric of American life and have a utopian community where everyone feels safe is ignorant at best, toxic at worst. Most of the language we use to describe our “playground,” which truthfully is stolen land from Native American tribes, is racist: talking about “bagging peaks” or “conquering mountains” is as much part of the problem as anything else. It’s not about just one bad man or a couple of jerks, it’s about the entire culture. We all have work to do.

Hikers are familiar with this concept; the only way to walk to Canada is to put one foot in front of the other. The only way to do this work is to do it.

When I got off the trail last year I was profoundly disappointed. I had worked so hard and it was embarrassing to have to call it quits. It has been really hard to let go of the shame and sense of failure I experienced when I came home. I’d written about hiking the PCT on this website, people were following my blog posts. Many assumed I’d quit because of a knee injury I’d written about, and while I said that was part of it, I wasn’t giving away any of the other parts yet. I wasn’t even sure how to articulate them at first.

“I just feel like I failed,” I said to my girlfriend one night, trying to explain why I was so sad.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” she said. “You didn’t fail the PCT; the trail failed you.”

Now, eight months later, I’ve finally accepted that at least as a partial truth. I’m trying to move past the part of the grieving process where I feel sad and bad and mad that I did not complete the trail the way I intended to and am instead focusing on what I can do to make the long distance hiking community a safer place for women, queers, people of color, and fat folks. Initially I was terrified to talk about the stuff that drove me off the trail – no one else seemed to mention how terrible it feels to be physically exhausted every day and still have to muster the emotional strength to either take on or avoid aggressive, demeaning, oppressive behaviors – and it felt intimidating and vulnerable to name the problems so bluntly.

But, like I said, any time I brought this up in conversation with fellow hikers, their reactions validated my experiences and strengthened my resolve that we must talk about this. When I published an essay in SHAPE magazine about being the fat girl on the trail, I didn’t outright name toxic masculinity as my biggest problem on trail, but folks who knew what to look for saw marks of it all over my narrative. I received many private messages from hikers thanking me for speaking out and indicating they had read between the lines and they, too, had negative experiences with the bro culture of the trail. So I went on my friend Lacy’s podcast, Flex Your Heart Radio, and finally got brave enough to speak bluntly about why I didn’t finish my hike. I used some of the specific examples I’ve outlined here to counter the romanticized myth that I think many people buy into when they think about hiking a long trail. Then I presented at Queer Adventure Storytelling, a local event in Portland, OR, and instead of telling a traditional adventure tale, I named my speech “Talking About Toxic Masculinity And Bro Culture On The Pacific Crest Trail, With Pretty Pictures To Focus On If My Words Are Too Much Of A Bummer!”

The West Coast is beautiful, y’all, and hiking in the backcountry is a very special way to experience it. But hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 was not enjoyable for me because of the shitty culture on trail. I know, I know: I could just get over it. There are other less populated trails to hike, or I could make sure to recruit queer friends to hike with me next time so I don’t feel so alone (physically and in my ideologies), or I could just give up on thru-hiking. But I’m not the only “me” out there. While I experienced negative effects of bro culture, sexism, and fatphobia directly, I know that objectively, going on a long hike is easier for me as a white person, as a cis person, as a person from a financially secure family than it is for folks who do not have those privileges. Thru-hiking is empowering in so many other ways, and this bullshit oppressive behavior that is passively accepted makes thru-hiking something that is uncomfortable for so many humans who try it. I don’t want any other folks to have to give up on a big dream – everyone on the trail should be able to feel like they’ve never been so understood in their whole lives.

I knew it was over for me, really over, a couple of miles before the spot that I actually got off trail. It was Day 40 and I woke up early to beat the morning heat. I was approaching a popular “trail angel” house – a trail angel is someone who helps hikers just for the sake of it, just to be kind – and I should have been excited. I’d been looking forward to this piece of my journey; I wanted to meet and thank the trail angels for their generosity. Their existence on trail was part of the mythology around “the kind of people you’ll meet in the thru-hiking community” and if I’m being honest, I still desperately wanted to believe that narrative, even as forty days on trail had disproved it for me.

But I felt clammy and anxious thinking about the other hikers I might encounter when I arrived. At least a few of the men who’d made unkind or thoughtless comments to me would probably be there. A lot of hikers would be there, and I was starting to feel skeptical about meeting new people in large groups, rather than excited and hopeful, as I’d felt at the beginning of my journey.

That morning the air was not yet stifling hot and the trail was gentle, mostly flat. I was alone for most of the ten miles I had to hike to reach the trail angel’s house, surrounded by impressive rock faces and interesting plants. I stopped as often as I pleased; I had plenty of water and knew I’d be able to fill up my bottles soon, so I could drink as much as I wanted, a rare gift in the desert. I even had a fresh apple to snack on. I should have felt pure joy. Instead, two miles before I reached my destination for the day, I reached for my phone to take a photo of a particularly beautiful plant and noticed I had service. Before I could think about it too hard, I was opening the Google Chrome app, and then I was typing in letters, L-A-X and P-D-X, and then I had looked up plane tickets. Home. Back to my girlfriend, to my community, to my life where I felt more understood than I ever had on trail. I didn’t want it to be true, but I knew for sure in that moment: my Pacific Crest Trail adventure was over.

Once I made the decision, which I’d been agonizing over for about 20 days if I’m being truthful, everything happened very quickly. I called a close friend who lives in LA and explained my situation; she immediately agreed to come get me and assured me I could stay at her place as long as I needed. I bought my plane ticket for two days later, called my girlfriend and my mom to let them know what was happening, and within 48 hours I was on a plane back to Portland. It was bizarre to see my dirty smelly pack, which had accompanied me for 454 miles on the trail, in the overhead compartment next to clean and shiny carry-on cases. It seemed to protest: this is not where I belong.

I still miss the trail all the time, but I do not miss the long distance hiking community and the behavior I contended with during my hike. I have some friends who had to get off the trail this year – for a variety of reasons including injuries and running out of money – who plan to return next year, to try again. I envy them, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to the Pacific Crest Trail until there’s a deliberate shift in community values and attitudes. This makes me sad and frustrated, but I’ve been trying to move forward and be grateful for the time on trail I did have, and hope that as more people speak up, things will change.

When I think about the PCT now, I like to remember my favorite day, instead of all the bullshit that accompanied my hike.

It was hot, because it’s always hot in May in Southern California, but there was a significant amount of tree cover and I wasn’t sweating too badly, all things considered. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed until I’d finally done it — I reached the top of Mt. Baden-Powell! At 9,407 feet, it was the highest mountain I’d ever summited. It was late in the day so I was all alone on trail; I’d been aiming for a campsite many miles ahead of the mountaintop but suddenly I realized I was tired, the sunset was breathtaking, and I’d been offered the gift of solitude. I decided to say thank you to the universe and make the most of it – the PCT is such a busy trail that being truly alone is rare, so I was extra grateful. I pitched my tent easily and made a hot dinner. I’d packed a fresh avocado out of town and it was such a luxury, cutting chunks of it into my dehydrated chili with my tiny knife. I sat on a log stump and ate my decadent meal as the sky changed color a million times over and then was dark and cold so I clambered into my tent and curled into my pink sleeping bag.

I was warm, and I was full, and I was proud of myself, and I was alone — and happy. I was happy.

In 2017, Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters Did Pretty OK, and That’s a Pretty Big Deal

Although most Quality of Life indicators for LGBTQ people and civilization in general nose-dived this year, one thing got notably better: television for queer women.

Granted, the bar was low.

For decades, we settled for relative invisibility, unsatisfying subtext and brief storylines buried within otherwise deficient programs, but that had started changing, along with the culture at large — and then 2016 happened. In 2015 and 2016, hoards of bisexual and lesbian characters were seemingly invented just to get murdered, like our own private Westworld (but with a lot more queers than actual Westworld), and several queer fan favorites met their untimely deaths. But “Bury Your Gays” was never the problem so much as a symptom of the disease; a virus that evolved from decades of tragic, small, desexualized, evil or sidelined queer characters into a new dawn where finally we were allowed to exist, as long as we didn’t take up too much space or live for too long.

More Shows, More Lesbians and Bisexuals

The most surprising aspect of putting together the list of 193 Dead Lesbian or Bisexual Characters last year wasn’t, actually, the death count. It was being made aware that we weren’t, as we’d thought, aware of every show featuring lesbian/bi characters out there. We didn’t know they’d lived, let alone died!

Peak TV was in full swing, and we were benefiting. There were 455 scripted original shows released in the US in 2016, a steady climb from 182 in 2009. In their 2010/2011 report, GLAAD found 53 LGBT characters on scripted cable shows, and only 34% were women. In 2017/2018, that number had increased to 173 (49% women), plus 70 more on streaming networks (66% women).

The growth of cable, streaming and on-demand technology has eased our ability to access a vast programming roster often more accountable to its audience than advertisers. Whereas in 2010, it was revolutionary for Pretty Little Liars‘ lesbian character to make it through an entire season without returning to heterosexuality, by 2016, we were confident enough to criticize its employment of damaging trans tropes and the diminishing screen time offered to Emily’s romances. Quantity wasn’t enough anymore. We wanted quality, and we wanted it now… and in 2017, we started getting it.

But before we get into that, let’s go back in time a little bit.

The Torrid Herstory of Lesbian & Bisexual Women On TV

While gay men certainly aren’t winning television, they’ve always been more represented than gay women, often accounting for 65%-75% of LGBT characters.

Throughout the ’90s and early ’00s, women-loving-women were rare, precious, elusive creatures: a little Ellen or Nancy here, some gay-but-not-too-gay doctor or lawyer there. From the mid-’00s through the early ’10s, we generally found lesbian and bisexual characters in one of seven places:

1. Secondary or sweeps week storylines on a teen primetime soap (The OC, 90210, Once and Again, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Gossip Girl)

2. Regular or recurring spots on a network ensemble program with minimal screen time devoted to girl-on-girl romance (ER, Bones, House, Rookie Blue, The Good Wife) (The Wire is a rare premium cable drama that fits into this category.)

3. Recurring or guest roles on a prestige drama (Mad Men, Six Feet Under, Heroes, Deadwood, Rome, Boardwalk Empire)

4. Queer-targeted series like The L Word (2004-2009), Lip Service (2010-2012), South of Nowhere (2005-2008), Dante’s Cove (2004-2007), Queer as Folk (2000-2005), Exes and Ohs (2007 & 2011).

5. The latest Degrassi iteration

6. A Ryan Murphy project

7. Diamonds in the mainstream rough, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood or Skins.

When we lost a Category 4 Show — and we lost ’em all by 2012 — the number of lesbian and bisexual characters on TV would come tumbling down. (Faking It is a rare example of a more recent Category 4-ish show, which lasted three short seasons.) Ilene Chaiken told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year that after The L Word went off the air in 2009, “I think a lot of people thought, ‘Okay, the baton is passed now, and there will be lots of shows that portray lesbian life.’ There’s really nothing.”

Things began shifting in the early ’10s following the success of a few stand-out programs with front-and-center lesbians and bisexual women like Glee, Skins, The Fosters, Lost Girl and Pretty Little Liars. Glee, particularly, challenged the commonly accepted practice of tightly curtailing the queers-per-show quota. Sadly, it’s likely that 2010’s stream of press-garnering gay teen suicides played a role, too — we needed our stories in order to live and we needed happy endings to believe that things could really get better, and many media-makers answered that call, some better than others. In 2013 on Grey’s Anatomy, Callie and Arizona did the unthinkable by having multi-season lesbian relationship on network TV.

Groups like One Million Moms, The Parents Television Council and the Florida Family Association, who regularly rallied against LGBTQ inclusion and pressured advertisers to drop support, faded into the political background, drowned out by our increasing Civil Rights and the ever-more-powerful media representation advocacy organization GLAAD. Teen-oriented networks like The CW, ABC Family and MTV learned they could safely produce this content and easily earn massive free buzz from social media platforms, GLAAD, and websites like ours.

How we watch television has also changed how television gets made — whereas an ’80s sitcom scored big if it could entertain an entire family at 8 PM on a Tuesday, shows these days can thrive by attracting significant numbers of solo laptop viewers. Syndication contracts, which provided lengthy profit streams, favored backstory-lite formats like sitcoms and procedurals. Now, shows can earn a solid shot at an afterlife with a plot so compelling you’re likely to Netflix-binge 15 nail-biting episodes at once.

Although high-concept television has flourished in this new era, it rarely featured queer women. Prestige TV has always privileged male-centric shows generally, and male antiheros specifically (e.g., The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men). On this track, the shift began in 2013. That’s when Orange is the New Black, a series with a racially diverse cast that showcased more queer love stories than straight ones and centered a bisexual protagonist, topped every “Best Of” list and demolished expectations on social media. Just as The L Word’s rise was enabled by the growth of online communities like fansites and AfterEllen, OITNB hit the market just as wealthy companies like HuffPo and Buzzfeed launched LGBTQ verticals, which quickly filled with OITNB-adjacent content. Transparent, in 2014, sealed the deal OITNB started — a trans woman lead presiding over an entirely queer ensemble put Amazon Prime on the map, racked up Emmys, and challenged previous conceptions of what was considered “too niche” to get made.

But in 2016, GLAAD’s annual report revealed that lesbian representation had gone down for the first time since 2004, and “while bisexual women are getting a small boost in visibility, it’s often coming at the cost of damaging cliche.” Our Senior Editor Heather Hogan called 2016 “the most frustrating year ever for queer women who love television,” even compared to years when we had “hardly any TV representation at all.” Every year for the last ten, we’d seen more and better portrayals of queer women on television, but “Lexa’s death, and the landslide of lesbian/bi deaths that came after it, were crushing because they shook the hope out of us.”

What Got Better For Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters in 2017

I’ve spent the year building a database of every lesbian, gay and bisexual teevee character ever on English-language programming accessible on U.S platforms, and the past two months looking at 2017 specifically, finding 116 total shows with LBQ regular/recurring characters, compared to 80 in 2016. (From here on, I’ll abbreviate “Regular or Recurring Characters” as “R/Rs.”) 39 new shows in 2017 had lesbian and bisexual R/Rs, and five returning shows that previously lacked lesbian and bisexual R/Rs, added them; compared to 16 new shows and five returning in 2016.

Those 116 shows accounted for 105 lesbian and 99 non-monosexual R/R characters. These shows also featured 10 trans women (straight or queer) and non-binary R/Rs. (Four shows that included non-binary characters or straight trans characters but no lesbian/bisexual cis or trans female characters were not part of the database count, but they are discussed in the trans section later in this post.)

I personally watched 51 of these shows, and other team members bring the “Autostraddle saw this show” count to 83. For the rest, I relied on recaps and reviews from other sites, YouTube clips, wikipedia, show-specific wikis, and databases (specifically this one and this one).

Then, we made you this infographic:

infographic by sarah sarwar

The movement that started when Lexa died put LGBTQ women in the spotlight. So far this year, we’ve lost less than a dozen R/Rs to stray bullets and wayward stabbings, and of those, only two were potential 2018 regulars, as the majority occurred on anthology series. In 2016, LGBTQ viewers pointed out a persistent unconscious bias and also made it known that queer fandom is absolutely nuts about our teevee, we’re tired of being exploited and we’re happy to give praise where praise is due. Did showrunners choose to let queer characters live? Maybe shitty shows stopped inventing new queers just to kill them. Maybe good shows began negotiating potential lesbian/bisexual deaths with the same careful consideration they do straight ones. Whatever the reason, it feels like we’re finally getting somewhere.

Because moreso than a lack of death, 2017 gave us a tiny burst of life — myriad disappointments, to be sure, but small steps in the right direction too.

Also, everyone is gay and so every television show should be about us, the end.

Lesbian and Bisexual TV In 2017: Highlights

2017 opened with the charming, surprisingly captivating multi-cam sitcom remake of Norman Lear’s 1975 feminist show One Day at a Time, re-packaged as a story of a Latinx family with 14-year-old Elena struggling to come out to herself and her family (who tried brushing up on lesbian lingo by checking out Autostraddle.com). The LGBT history mini-series, When We Rise, debuted in February, and although its mediocrity excludes it from “Golden Age” territory, it’s very existence was an important milestone.

The second season of UK TV series Humans hit the states in February, opening its first episode with the beginnings of a lesbian love story between a synth, Niska, and a German lesbian, Astrid, that wove its tender way through the show’s action-packed narrative. One of the year’s most buzzy and critically acclaimed series, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, debuted in late April, with lesbian characters played by Samira Wiley and Alexis Bledel. Two artsy, high-brow dramas with all-female production teams — Hulu’s Harlots and OWN’s Queen Sugar — also showcased queer women’s stories in revolutionary ways.

Although Denise’s screen time was mininmal in Master of None‘s second season, the “Thanksgiving” episode, which followed Denise through several generations of Thanksgiving as she came into her own as a Black lesbian, made up for all that in a perfect hour of television that made Waithe the first Black woman to win an Emmy for Comedy Writing.

Mid-summer, Jill Soloway’s esoteric performance-art-inspired I Love Dick came to Amazon Prime with a Latinx butch heartthrob, Devon, played by Roberta Colindrez, set at an artist’s retreat in the hazy Texas desert. The second season of Tig Notaro’s One Mississippi is perhaps one of lesbian television’s most impeccable works of art, as it deftly navigated rough topics like sexual abuse with delightfully dark humor and a truly beating heart. Transparent’s fourth season bounced back from a lackluster third, with Sarah and her ex-husband entering a poly relationship and Ali beginning to come into her own as non-binary.

Freeform found a summer sleeper hit with The Bold Type, a refreshing dramedy centered on three best friends working at the same magazine, including Kat, a Black social media director who realizes she might like ladies when she falls for Muslim photographer Adena. Kat and Adena were one of only four R/R QTPOC couples featured this year.

We closed out the year with several unexpected gifts on network television: Sara Ramirez landing a regular role on mainstream cable as a dapper butch government advisor on Madam Secretary, Stephanie Beatriz’s Rosa Diaz coming out as bisexual on Brooklyn 99, Chris Alonso coming out bisexual on S.W.A.T., Luisa returning to regular appearances on Jane the Virgin, bisexual Toni Topaz joining Riverdale, Simone Davis getting gayer by the minute on Star, Nicole coming out as a lesbian on Fresh Off The Boat and, after several lifetimes of brutal queerbaiting, two women finally kissing with tongue on Once Upon a Time.

Over on Hulu, Marvel’s Runaways brought us lesbian Karolina coming to grips with her superpowers and feelings for her friend Nico. On premium cable, Audience Network debuted lesbian and bisexual characters in two new shows, Loudermilk and Mr. Mercedes. On Showtime, Shameless brought on a new lesbian of color.

Meanwhile, Danger & Eggs, Steven Universe, Big Mouth and Loud House produced important all-ages content with queer protagonists.

Lesbian and bisexual characters had guest or R/R roles on many programs dominating year-end “Best Of” lists, including American Gods, Halt & Catch Fire, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Deuce, Better Things, Veep, Mindhunter, Mr. Mercedes, One Day at a Time and The Handmaid’s Tale. We also got an Asian lesbian on the obnoxiously problematic teen sensation 13 Reasons Why, which was terrible but also a prime example of the year’s most buzzed-about programs seeming to come up lesbians this year.

There was also some intense lesbianism/etc on entertaining programs that may not attract wild critical acclaim but are wildly endearing nonetheless: Supergirl (although Maggie Sawyer’s departure was one of the year’s toughest storms to weather), Wynonna Earp, Younger, Degrassi: Next Class, Grey’s Anatomy, Into the Badlands, Killjoys, Saving Hope, The Fosters and The Shannara Chronicles.

“At first, I thought I had imagined them, or maybe even willed them into existence,” wrote Caroline Framke at Vox. “In 2017, the year after I came out as ‘not straight,’ television suddenly seemed to be teeming with compassionate, realistically messy coming-out stories — many of them anchored by women.” A lot of this is owed to women behind the camera, too: One Day At a Time and Fresh Off the Boat have queer women of color in the writing room, and actress Stephanie Beatriz worked with Brooklyn 99 writers to tell her coming out story authentically.

What Didn’t Get Better For Lesbian & Bisexual TV Characters in 2017

Despite centering their seasons on lesbian relationships, neither American Horror Story: Cult or Season Two of The Girlfriend Experience delivered solid stories. We were also unimpressed with lesbian and bisexual representation on shows including Top of the Lake, Famous In Love, Orange is the New Black, Claws, Dark Matter, She’s Gotta Have It and Dear White People. Because Autostraddle has already devoted countless hours to criticizing various elements of queer-inclusive television shows this year and this article is already quite long, I won’t rehash all of it here.

Instead, I’d like to talk about an area of unacceptable persistent failure and the primary problem currently facing queer TV: a severe lack of diversity.

Gender Identity

Butches, Please?

The sidelining of gender non-conforming lesbian and bisexual characters gets more absurd every damn year.

Butches are most likely to appear in prison or somehow involved in crime or criminal justice. Lucy is a convicted rapist. Franky, Silent Ann and Big Boo are all convicted criminals. Jukebox is a (now-killed) corrupt cop. Mary Agnes and Stef are both gun-toting law enforcers, albeit in very different scenarios. Ally kills humans with knives and Lena works for a Hollywood “fixer” who’s often helping criminals get away with it.

This year’s biggest gains for masculine-of-center representation were a black masculine-of-center lesbian winning an Emmy for a black lesbian story, Kat Sandoval and her pocket square on Madam Secretary (remarkable for reasons including how rarely we see a not-skinny butch in a suit on any kind of screen), Devon in I Love Dick (my favorite character of 2017) and Tig Notaro’s One Missisisippi, starring and written by a masculine-of-center lesbian. Those were four incredible portrayals, but 16 masculine-of-center R/R characters (two of whom died, and some of whom are really only television-butch) out of 204 is ridiculous.

Furthermore, Seeso’s shuttering this year has left hilarious wives Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher’s second season of “Take My Wife” in limbo, which says a lot about where television’s comfort with gender non-conformity begins and ends.

Transgender Representation: Better Still Isn’t Good

A few steps forward and a few steps back: this year offered three non-binary characters (up from zero in 2016), including thoughtful season-long gender journeys for Yael on Degrassi and Ali on Transparent. The animated program Steven Universe also has a non-binary character, Stevonnie.

Trans representation gets a little better every year, but the bar is so low there that it’s practically an underground tunnel, and we’re still lacking lesbian, bisexual and queer trans women. Moira Pfefferman began dating men in Transparent‘s Season Four, but does seem to still identify as queer. We’re hoping they’ll recast Moira with a trans actress for Season Five, now that Jeffrey Tambor has been outed as a sexual predator, rather than kill her off or exile her geographically.

Laverne Cox’s Sophia Burset, who had a diminished role in the past two seasons of Orange is the New Black, is queer, but her sexuality is rarely addressed. Nomi Marks, the transgender hacker from Sense8 played by Jamie Clayton, has a girlfriend and an inspirational arc — but Sense8 was cancelled this summer. “In some instances,” GLAAD wrote of trans characters in their 2017-2018 report, “it appears that the show’s creators haven’t given much thought to the fact that trans people also have sexual orientations.”

Straight trans women aren’t exactly thriving either. Four shows with trans characters — Doubt, Daytime Divas, Gypsy and Lopez — were cancelled. Maxine may not return to Wentworth. Although sources strongly suggest Cotton is returning to Star, they did leave possibly-murdered in the season finale. On the upside, the always-incredible Davina from Transparent broke ground this year with a full-frontal.

Danger & Eggs was created by a trans woman with multiple side trans characters and trans actresses — but its future is unclear. (Take My Wife‘s second season, also in limbo, promised trans-inclusiveness.)

Trans men remain woefully underrepresented in media. Elliot Fletcher plays a gay trans guy on Shameless and a straight trans guy on The Fosters, and apparently The Orville has a regular trans male alien character. There is speculation about Frankie, Sam’s daughter, on Better Things, as well as the child in the now-cancelled Gypsy. “I didn’t know they existed,” trans male actor Ian Harvie told Screencrush this year about trans men, “and I didn’t know I existed as a result of it.”

Racial Diversity

As Carmen Phillips wrote in our Favorite / Least Favorite Characters of 2017 roundtable, “representation for queer women of color was plentiful this year, but uneven in execution.”

It felt like a big year, between The Bold Type and the “Thanksgiving” Emmy win and Queen Sugar and The Handmaid’s Tale and Rosa Diaz — but the big picture isn’t great.

GLAAD reported that broadcast scripted programming for the 2017-2018 season is “finally making serious strides towards more racially diverse representations” but “GLAAD would like to see that racial diversity also represented in the increased inclusion of LGBTQ characters who are also people of color.” They found the number of QTPOC characters decreasing on broadcast, to 36%, and increasing on cable, to 35%, with streaming lagging behind at 23%. GLAAD was looking at a different data set than us — all characters (not just women), only U.S. primetime shows, and the 2017/2018 season rather than all shows that aired in 2017. But our numbers were similar: 70% of the R/R characters we counted were white.

Comparing the population to its accordant representation isn’t a great standard — I’d argue when it comes to sexual as well racial minorities, we need extra representation, not just proportional representation. Still, it’s worth noting the extreme discrepancy for Latinx people — 18% of the population, yet only 4.8% of LGBT female characters! The small, sliver of a silver lining is that those nine Latinx characters were some of the year’s best characters, period.

GLAAD reported a sharp dip in API LGBT characters, from 13% in 2016-2017 to “a meager 4% this year.” Our number was slightly higher, but still dismal. There’s a quality/quantity issue and the only API character on network television, bisexual CeCe from New Girl, had zero lesbian romantic arcs. Other interesting numbers: of 12 shows with API characters, 33% were Canadian and 42% were sci-fi/supernatural. Just two of the 12 identified as lesbians, and none of the 12 had a present or past relationship with an API female. In fact, from a cursory look at the data, no API character in our database of 303 shows has ever dated another API woman. (I’ll talk more about this in an upcoming piece on race in lesbian TV relationships.)

19% of this year’s characters were Black, which is fine but not great — especially when you take a closer look.

Although Nova and Annalise remain beloved bisexual characters, and don’t need to date women to prove their bisexuality, it’s still worth noting that neither had a romantic storyline with a woman in 2017. Nor did Empire‘s Tiana, on a show which previously imprisoned one Black butch lesbian and killed a Black bisexual woman. Nor did Suzanne or Sophia on Orange is the New Black, which killed a Black lesbian last year and has tortured the aforementioned for many moons now. Cancellations buried Survivor’s Remorse‘s M-Chuck (before she ever got a big romantic storyline), Rosewood‘s Tara, Sense8‘s Amanita, APB’s Tasha, Dark Matter‘s Ayisha and Doubt’s Cameron Worth. We were immediately drawn to Moira (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Kat (The Bold Type), but both shows fell into the trap of having characters of color in very race-relevant environments where their race was somehow never mentioned. Two shows that addressed race directly with majority-black casts, Dear White People and She’s Gotta Have It, endorsed problematic tropes about queer women (click those links for more on how).

Another interesting phenomenon: Fresh Off The Boat, American Horror Story: Cult and Transparent all included Black guest characters as love interests for white regular/recurring characters, but zero Black recurring/regular queer characters.

I’ll conclude with this quote from Brittani Nichols (a gender-nonconforming Black lesbian actress and writer who was part of that Take My Wife Season Two I keep bringing up) from her piece I Demand To Be Sexualized: “I rarely see anyone that looks like me in movies/web series/TV. To the point that the most glaring examples of people that look like me ARE ACTUALLY ME .”

The Future of Lesbian & Bisexual Characters on TV

If we’re able to stave off nuclear war, there’s a lot to look forward to. Thirteen new shows for 2017 have promised LGBTQ female characters, including the hotly-anticipated Black Lightning, with a Black lesbian regular and a bisexual Asian-Amazon recurring character.

Starz is vying for Best Network of 2018: they’re developing P-Town, a drama about the opoid crisis with a “hard-partying” Federal Fishery Service Agent lesbian lead character as well as Vida, focusing on two Mexican-American sisters in Los Angeles and promising representation of “all genders and sexualities,” including at least one queer female lead. Sweetbitter has cast its lesbian bartender, American Gods will add Native American bisexual character Sam Black Crow in Season Two, and The Counterpart debuts its masculine-of-center lesbian later this month.

Ryan Murphy’s Pose, which promises 50+ LGBT characters and is centered on four trans woman of color, begins filming this month.

The Heathers reboot, on the Paramount Network, will introduce an amab genderqueer character and a black lesbian.

The Dime, centered on a lesbian cop, has been given a script commitment from Fox. Marvel’s New Warriors, with “confidently out lesbian” character, is being shopped around after Freeform’s pass.

Of course the biggest news of the year is that Showtime is developing, bless our collective souls, an L Word reboot. Autostraddle’s roots are in L Word fandom, and although this isn’t a great time to be alive, it is a great time to be a living television writer for lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer women.

The television industry has a major opportunity right now. Scores of cis white men are getting fired for abusing power and (surprise!) also women. It’s time to promote, hire, and elevate women, queer people, trans people and people of color.  It’s time to tell new stories, and getting LGBTQ folks behind the camera is a great way to get more in front of it, too. Time’s up. We’re ready, and we’ve got so much left to talk about.

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How Queer and Trans Women Are Healing Each Other After Hurricane Harvey

Friends and fans call lesbian freestyle poet Tiffany Scales the “Wordmatician” for how she manipulates words like a mathematician manipulates numbers and formulas. I watched her perform at a black box theater in downtown Houston a few weeks after Hurricane Harvey devastated the city and displaced thousands of Texans, including Scales. She had lost everything in her apartment. Like many LGBT Houstonians, Scales has been forced to find innovative ways to heal and recover after Hurricane Harvey. Her chosen way is this — her art.

“What art does for me in this space,” she begins, pausing, searching, then finally settling on: “This is why I get out of bed.”

As we chat backstage after the performance, Scales hugs friends as they approach and calls them baby and darling. An attendee tells Scales her performance was beautiful and says he’ll add her on Facebook.

“I don’t think there’s a prescription that could be sufficient to the healing than art does,” she adds.

Scales is part of The T.R.U.T.H. Project, an organization dedicated to empowering and educating LGBTQ communities of color and their allies through performance art. I met her after “Strength: After the Rain,” a spoken word, dance, visual art and music show benefiting T.R.U.T.H. Project Members impacted by Hurricane Harvey. T.R.U.T.H. CEO Kevin Anderson hoped the show would “begin healing” for the artists and community both.

The T.R.U.T.H Project artist lineup. Photo by Yvonne Marquez

The T.R.U.T.H. Project lineup consisted of all artists of color and almost all Houston natives. They included dancers Lathasia Collins, Loren Holmes, Damion Sam and Cedric Hicks; Mexican-American poet Cristina Martinez and award-winning poet Marie Brown; singer Rechatter Brady and artist Abiola Wabara who painted live on the stage during the show. The black box theater at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center was an intimate setting for the almost 70 people (mostly people of color) who attended the show.

The Weather Channel called Hurricane Harvey a “truly historic hurricane.” It dumped record-breaking rainfall in Southeast Texas, making landfall on Aug. 25 as a Category 4 storm near Rockport, Texas, and eventually weakening into a tropical storm that circled over Southeastern Texas until Aug. 30. 19 trillion gallons of water fell along the Gulf Coast, enough to cover the entire states of Alaska, California and Texas with an inch of water.

“Meteorologically, southeast Texas, at the time, was pretty much a giant stop sign,” Jonathan Belles, a meteorologist with Weather.com told the Houston Chronicle. “There were two high pressure systems that wouldn’t let Harvey move in any direction. So for three or four days, Harvey pretty much sat there and dumped rain.” What made Harvey a unique storm was that it was stalled out with part of its body hanging out on the coast and the other part on land, which meant it “acted like a conveyer bell pulling water out,” Bernhard Rappenglueck, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Houston told the Houston Chronicle.

The Houston area specifically saw upwards of 50 inches of rainfall, reaching Houston’s annual rain average of 49.77 inches in just a few days. Thousands were forced to evacuate, and many were rescued by the Texas National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, Houston Police, Harris County Sheriff’s Department, and even private citizens on boats. AccuWeather estimates that Harvey caused $190 billion in damages including disruptions to businesses, increased rates of unemployment, damage to infrastructure, crop losses, property damage and higher fuel prices.

Scales has lived in Houston for 21 years and has witnessed two of the Gulf Coast’s worst hurricanes — Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans a few weeks earlier, anxiety over Rita, potentially a Category 5 hurricane, inspired Houston-area residents to evacuate en masse, thus causing the city’s worst-ever traffic jam. Scales sat on Highway 290 for eight hours before giving up and returning home to wait out the storm instead. Hurricane Rita eventually made landfall as a Category 3 and was responsible for $12 billion in total damages. Hurricane Ike was a Category 2, the third-costliest Atlantic hurricane ever, with a $37.6 billion price tag. Scales’ apartment at the time suffered water damages and she lost electricity for three weeks. Still, these experiences made her skeptical of evacuation and preparation measures recommended before Harvey.

Scales’ mother urged her to wait out the storm at her home in Sienna Plantation, a subdivision in Missouri City, southwest of Houston. Scales only packed a couple days worth of clothes thinking she’d be back soon. She ended up staying at her Mom’s for nearly a week, sleeping and waiting for the rain to stop and the floodwaters to recede.

On Thursday morning the roads cleared, and she returned to her job as a customer pickup coordinator at FedEx, planning to check on her one-bedroom apartment in Webster on her lunch break.

Tiffany Scales performing at “Strength After the Rain.” Photograph by Dalton DeHart.

When she did, she was met with a bleak and confusing scene. The curbs were littered with soggy couches, playpens, cribs, dressers and coffee tables, but there wasn’t any water in sight. While pulling into her designated parking spot in front of her unit, she noticed her windows were open and worried she’d been robbed. Later, she’d learn they’d been opened by apartment management without her permission, supposedly to prevent the smell of mildew.

Her first step into her first floor apartment was into a puddle of water. Everything was wet: furniture, photos, poems, journals, her shoes. The water lines on her walls marked the flood waters at a foot and a half.

Soon enough, the dehumidifiers provided by the apartment management to dry out her house would flood her house again — her apartment sink was too shallow for the water the dehumidifier’s hose was picking up. Despite her home being waterlogged, contaminated by the floodwaters, smelling like mold, and filled with dirt, she couldn’t completely clean it up until after her Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, inspection. She didn’t want to risk being denied disaster assistance by making things look better than they were.

FEMA assistance generally helps cover rent for up to two months as well as some home repairs, which depends on exactly how much of your primary living space was damaged. Personal property like eyeglasses and dentures are sometimes covered, too. One person for each household applies online, on the phone or in person at designated recovery centers, supplying information on their household income and insurance information as well as describing the extent of damages. Once you apply, a FEMA inspector makes a visit, gets proof of ownership, and submits their report.

Scales says applying for FEMA assistance was stressful. “It’s so much red tape,” she says. “Some of the questions could be simplified. If you read something the wrong way, you throw your chances out of the window.”

The inspection, when it came two weeks after the storm, offered only bad news. The inspector told Scales to find another place to live because the apartment management could probably only afford “to paint over the mold.” In total, FEMA gave her $500 for immediate necessities. She used the funds to clean up her apartment and throw away debris. Luckily for Scales and other displaced employees, her employer, FedEx, provided them with temporary hotel accommodations. She lived at a La Quinta Inn and Suites for a month before moving into a short-term lease apartment.

For both the performers and the audience, the T.R.U.T.H. Project event was a much-needed space to process the aftermath of the traumatic event together. Unlike past performances, this one wasn’t meticulously planned or even rehearsed, it was meant to be organic and raw — for the emotions of the artists to dictate how the audience experienced the show. Anderson predicted the show would make the audience laugh and cry in equal measure. He was right. At one point he asked the audience to get up from our seats and we had a couple minutes to exchange handshakes or hugs with as many strangers we could. The room instantly brightened with smiling faces and lively chatter.

The stage was also ripe for processing, grieving and coming to terms with the aftermath of a natural disaster. Before the performance began, Anderson pointed out the mental health professional they’d brought in, telling the audience she was available for chats with any individual who needed to step out and talk during the show.

Kayenne Nebula performing and Tiffany Scales holding her 6-month-old goddaughter, Nova.

“What’s important to me with the T.R.U.T.H. project is how [Anderson] always makes sure that mental health is on the frontlines,” Scales said. “There’s always at least someone to talk to [at performances] because we do spark feelings and emotions and memories or things that have not been dealt with — even in ourselves, as the artists.”

Spoken word artist and New Orleans native Kayenne Nebula stepped to the mic in a long flowy dress with a watercolor-like print of an orange flower surrounded by swirling blues and yellows, and two large disc earrings reading “Wisdom is Wealth” on one side with a blue face on the other.

She asked Scales, a trusted friend, to sit beside her while she performed. Nebula recalled how Scales was the first person to encourage Nebula to perform at the T.R.U.T.H. Project and ensured her it was a safe space to share. Nebula wanted to draw strength from Scales in order to share a new piece about Hurricane Katrina. Scales sat in a chair, holding Scales’ 6-month-old goddaughter, Nova.

Nebula snapped the entire room into attention with her booming voice, singing, “Wade in the water, wade in the water…”, before launching into a poem recounting the injustices her community faced after Katrina, which for her included losing two family members. Her story eerily paralleled the experiences of Houstonians after Harvey.

Nebula was crying by the end of her performance, and when she returned to her seat, the other artists crowded around her, enveloping her in a big group hug.

It’s extra challenging for LGBT Houstonians to navigate and recover after a hurricane when organizations and government resources aren’t culturally competent or empathetic to LGBT people and issues, Alex Mackzum, a lesbian grant writer for Houston’s LGBT center, told me. After Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike, the Montrose Center heard of cases where emergency and response services disregarded nontraditional family structures which led to queer families being separated during a rescue. They also heard of cases where queer and trans people were arrested at shelters for using facilities that matched their gender. Some were given clothes that didn’t match their gender identity, leaving them to remain in the dirty, wet clothes they’d came in. In other cases, response services aren’t aware of the medical necessity of HIV regimens or hormone therapy, often difficult to obtain during a natural disaster. Mackzum says that’s why the Montrose Center was quick to set up a LGBT disaster relief fund to allocate resources dedicated to their community’s recovery efforts.

“The center fills the gap between what it is already offered as a resource and the needs of the LGBTQ community because existing organizations and structures were built without consideration for that population.” Mackzum told me.

In the days and weeks following Harvey’s destruction, Montrose Center volunteers and employees got the ball rolling, providing inclusive direct response services to their community. The food pantry fed 257 individuals across 100 different households while case managers hit the phones to check in with their clients.

After the floodwaters receded, the Center had 20 teams of volunteers help clean and clear out community members’ homes — a huge undertaking for anyone or one family to do alone. When a home floods in a warm, humid climate like Houston, water-saturated walls and floors quickly develop mold, a noted health hazard. The water itself is contaminated by sewage and toxins that make people sick. So everything the water touches must go. There are carpets to rip out, sheetrock to remove, damaged furniture to move to the curb, important papers and photos to throw away. Then there’s the FEMA applications, private insurance claims and other disaster aid paperwork — the Center helps clients navigate that overwhelming project, too.

The Montrose Center is now focusing their efforts on long-term recovery. They raised about $750,000 for their disaster relief fund made possible by online donations and private foundations, which Mackzum says will all go toward helping LGBT Houstonians rebuild their homes, pay off insurance deductibles, repair cars and pay moving deposits. Families or individuals can apply for financial assistance for up to $1,000 with an option to apply for a larger sum based on needs. As of Oct. 18, they’ve had 480 online applications for disaster relief.

“We’re still rebuilding, even when we stop receiving news coverage,” Mackzum told me. “What we’re doing here is ensuring the long-term sustainability of a culture, a people, and a city.”

Among the most vulnerable populations affected by the hurricane were undocumented trans and queer people. Without proper identification, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for government assistance allocated for natural disaster victims. For example, FEMA requires a social security number, a checking account and insurance information from applicants, things an undocumented immigrant is unlikely to have, especially if they’re trans. Organización Latina de Trans en Texas (OLTT), a grassroots organization funded by the community and led by undocumented trans Latinas, are plowing forward to survive and taking care of their own after the storm.

Ana Andrea Molina

Ana Andrea Molina, the undocumented trans Latina from Matamoros, Mexico who founded the organization, is a true chingona. (That’s Spanish for “badass.”) She created the organization following an incident at an event put on by a Latino organization that proclaimed it was pro-LGBTQ in January 2015, where attendees denied Molina and her friend’s female identities as well as access to the public women’s restroom.

Molina was livid, and quickly created a Facebook video talking about the incident, which inspired more trans friends to reach out with their own stories of similar experiences.

In March 2015, Molina set up a lunch meeting with a group of friends to discuss the situation and what they could do about it, and invited them to bring at least one or two other trans friends to join in.

Molina expected 15 or so participants. 50 undocumented trans women showed up.

Some had traveled from as far as two hours away, from surrounding areas in College Station and Bryan, Texas. The women described their experiences with discrimination, transphobia and racism. The meetings became monthly.

A year after their first meeting, their socially-organized group became an official nonprofit. They opened a small office in Houston with with two rooms, one for a couple of computers and another one for the receptionist desk. Molina says it was a very small space but the trans woman who came to their meetings didn’t mind. They would crowd in and even make themselves comfortable on the floor because it was the very first space dedicated to trans Latinas in Texas. “A lot of people told me I couldn’t do it,” she tells me in Spanish. Molina says not one single month’s rent was paid for by any other organization or government agency; it was all funded by their own community.

“We paid our own rent, our own bills, and our own activities,” Molina said. “We had our own food sales, monthly loterías, our own fundraisers, and much of this community help came from women who do sex work. How is it that the people who are the most stigmatized and marginalized, that when they organize, they’re the ones who help the most?”

Ana Andrea Molina sorting out cleaning supplies, donations given to the organization.

At the start of 2017, OLTT hit rock bottom. They had $0 in their bank account and were forced to close the small space they’d worked so hard hard to maintain. But in March, Molina had a serendipitous encounter at the Texas capital, where she’d traveled to speak out against anti-immigrant and anti-trans bathroom bills introduced by the Texas legislature. Grey’s Anatomy star and out bisexual actress Sara Ramirez was there for the same reason, and the two women were introduced. Molina didn’t know who Ramirez was, assuming she was just another “privileged, cisgender woman who wanted to take her photo with a poor trans Latina.” Ramirez proved her wrong in the best way possible; after listening to Molina’s story and learning about her organization, Ramirez quietly gave $20,000 to OLTT, enabling them to re-open their office, expand their reach, and open a shelter for trans, queer and intersex people of color who are often turned away from other resources. There was no press fanfare. Ramirez just wanted to help.

Project Casa Ana Andrea began in May of this year, providing a unique space for programming dedicated to undocumented queer and trans people as well as beds for 15-20 people in need. Molina doesn’t receive a salary from the work she does for OLTT. She’s a beneficiary of her own non-profit, living there with five other trans women.

Molina was in San Francisco for a conference before Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast. The day she was supposed to fly back, the airport closed due to the incoming storm. She was stranded in California until the airport reopened days later. Fortunately, Casa Ana Andrea endured minimal loss aside from a leak in the roof that damaged their office computer.

But Molina knew she and the organization members were going to have to work twice as hard as usual to recuperate after a hurricane. Molina explained how Harvey left some of the members homeless. They lost their possessions, their only source of transportation, and two weeks of work. “For many of them, their families depend on them in Central America or Mexico or here,” Molina said.

Anonymous members of OLTT separating donations at Casa Ana Andrea.

She explained that the hurricane had a domino effect on trans sex workers specifically. When male clients who patronize sex workers are also out of work and short on cash, sex workers are more likely to put their safety at risk — doing things like agreeing to sex without a condom — in order to get whatever work they can.

“A trans woman who does this kind of service needs the money so she risks it,” Molina said. “She needs to eat, she needs to live and she doesn’t qualify for a lot of resources that are offered.”

Casa Ana Andrea opened its doors to anybody affected by the storm, regardless of race or status, and distributed, at press time, at least 40 checks of between $100-$150 to members.

“It’s not a lot, but it is really significant,” she said. “Money is what we need. We need it to fix our cars, for gas to get to work and no one wants to help you with that and they want to help you less if you don’t have an ID.”

It’ll be hard for undocumented trans women to heal and recover after the storm, Molina says. What OLTT needs to move forward is resources. They need consultations from criminal and immigration lawyers and health care professionals. They need funds to continue their programming which includes deportation defense, LGBTQ education, assistance with name and gender marker changes, and help navigating the immigration system.

“For poor trans Latinas and black women, it’s difficult to heal a wound,” Molina said. “It’s difficult to get the resources to heal after a disaster, after Harvey. But what we’re going to do because our spirit is really strong, we’re going to let ourselves fall but when we get up, nothing can make us fall again.”

Jess Alvarenga

Queer Salvadoran photographer Jessica Alvarenga is just coming to terms and processing the aftermath of the storm. Her childhood home in the Larkwood subdivision in Southwest Houston was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey’s floods. Brays Bayou, which is located directly behind the home, overflowed, flooding the predominantly Mexican and Central American immigrant neighborhood. Alvarenga lived there with her parents until high school, when neighborhood gang violence drove them out. Still, her extended family maintained and lived in the property, and Alvarenga’s cousin, his partner and their five young sons between the ages of 6-12 lived in the home when Harvey touched down. Alvarenga was planning to move back in on Sept. 1st, but now there’s no place to move back in to. It’s uninhabitable.

Alvarenga is a self-taught documentary photographer and is working on a project called Witness the Isthmus, a series of photographs and oral narratives of Central American immigrants in their homes, places of worship and workplaces in Houston, TX. She hopes to capture a truer narrative of her community to counter anti-immigrant narratives spewed by conservative politicians who depict all Central American immigrants as members of the dangerous MS-13 gang.

“I wanted to shine a different light on Central Americans and show how they’re community members, how they’re showing out for their community and how they’re showing love,” Alvarenga said.

Alvarenga finds her subjects from her own network and community. She used to work at a labor union and kept in touch with several of the janitors she helped organize. She photographed one woman making tamales (which she sells to supplement her income) from start to finish in her home for eight hours, the typical amount of time she spends with her subjects. The woman loved the experience so she recommended Alvarenga to some friends. Alvarenga now has more than enough subjects to photograph.

“I don’t think anyone has ever asked them for their story,” Alvarenga says. “I don’t think anyone’s valued them. I don’t think anyone’s been like, hey you’re beautiful. You’re a work of art. Let me take your picture. I don’t think anyone’s done that, so subconsciously they’re really grateful for that.”

Now in light of Hurricane Harvey, she hopes to capture how Central American immigrants are moving forward after this tragedy.

Alvarenga’s childhood home. Photograph by Jess Alvarenga

She photographed pastor Raul Hidalgo and his congregation at Emmanuel Baptist Church near downtown Houston. They’d converted their church into a temporary resource and donation center, open to everyone affected in the surrounding area. She tells me how appreciative the Central American immigrants she spoke with there were of that support.

“I ask them ‘how are you doing’ and todos me dicen, ‘blessed,’” Alvarenga says. “Everyone feels really grateful, even if they lost their home. They say, ‘I’m blessed. I still have my life, I still have my family.”

Alvarenga now lives with her parents in Cypress, TX. Her cousin and his family are living with Alvarenga’s aunt while they save money to fix the damaged home. For Alvarenga, a way to process the aftermath of the storm was to create new memories for herself and family. She photographed the cleanup of her childhood home. About 15 family, friends, coworkers helped tear up water-saturated floorboards and walls and removed debris and trash. She snapped a photo of her dad standing on top of the dresser Alvarenga had used as a little girl, which was now unusable and part of a pile of debris.

“Not only did we lose objects, we lost memories with the storm,” Alvarenga said.

Alvarenga’s dad on her childhood dresser. Photograph by Jess Alvarenga.

Scales is trying to look at the good things that happen after a storm. She focuses on the love and the giving done by small organizations like her own Toiletries for Families who distributes hygiene items to individuals and families in need. She founded the organization in 2010 after Scales prayed for a purpose in life, starting off with a donation drive at one of her performances and soon surpassing her goal of distributing toiletry kits full of soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant and menstrual products to 12 families of four or more. She didn’t stop there and now her organization has distributed to 21,200 families since 2010. It’s all volunteer run and is supported by donations from the community and grants.

Before Scales left her apartment to wait out the storm, she made sure to put the 100 toiletry kits she had in stock on the top of a shelf. They were safe and dry when she returned.

“When I’m tired, even when I feel like my world has literally fallen apart or evaporated, I know that’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. “The fact that I can go home and all of my hygiene kits are still good, you know it was just like this, keep doing it.”

The Red Cross donated three 53-foot trailers full of hygiene items, baby clothes, baby food and water to her organization that she continues to distribute all over the Gulf Coast with the help of volunteers. Now she’s shipping donations to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Scales calls her organization “her ministry” and says hygiene items can become difficult to obtain when people who can’t afford them but still need to be clean and presentable to hold a minimum wage job.

“We ask God or light or whatever word that isn’t offensive, how could you let this happen if you’re so good?,” she says. “But even in tragedy, after the storm, we have all of these beautiful things.”

Ana Andrea Molina’s quotes were translated from Spanish. 

What You’re Flagging With Your La Croix Flavor

One of the more fascinating developments to come from decades of the queer community being kept in the public closet is the concept of flagging. Employing what is known as The Hanky Code, flagging is a discrete form of communication that uses handkerchiefs to express sexual preferences or interests based on a combination of variables including color, pattern, pocket or body placement, and material. It has most often been associated with gay and bisexual men, though it doesn’t belong to just them, and even though it was most prevalent in the 70s, according to the bear bar I accidentally walked into last week, the tradition seems to be alive and well.

This process of taking something not specifically intended for us and making it our own is a core facet of gay culture. And just as unexpectedly and completely did handkerchiefs get taken over by the queer community, so do others fall. Without warning and often without any real explanation as to why other than “it just is,” seemingly neutral things, people, places, and concepts can become gay culture. And once it’s ours, it’s ours.

Another example of this is our takeover of the refreshing, 100% natural, calorie-free, sugar-free, sodium-free, trending La Croix brand seltzer waters. First it was for Midwestern moms, then it was for social influencers, then it was for everyone, and now it’s ours. La Croix is gay culture. (While we’re on the topic: Staying hydrated? Gay culture. Water? Gay culture in that it is life, which is something we are constantly giving other people. The ocean? Gay.)

And not only has La Croix joined queer ranks, like flagging, its color-coding functions as a language of sorts. Here’s what you’re flagging with your La Croix flavor. (Originals only. Cúrate line is straight culture.)

Pamplemousse

Person who considers liking a specific multi-cam 90s sitcom to be a defining part their personality seeking same.

Lime

Person whose brand has been Daddy for so long they’ve internalized the undertakings of Daddy as turn-ons when if really inspected might reveal a different story looking for Daddy.

Pure

Latex fetish. (Without a flavoring to distract you, this one’s very… dry? Like an astringent for your mouth, except it’s water, and you’ve paid for it. Seems counterintuitive and yet it satiates a need.)

Apricot

Bottom with a good heart low key looking for the desexualization of queer spaces.

Berry

Size queen.

Peach-Pear

Miranda Hobbs in the streets Miranda July in the sheets.

Lemon

S/M top.

Mango

Likes holding queer people accountable for their actions even if that means they’ll be ostracized from a community that is admittedly a necessary resource for them.

Orange

Rick and Morty roleplay.

Cran-Raspberry

Anything goes. (Cran-Raspberry a freeeeeeak.)

Passionfruit

Callout culture fetish.

Coconut

Fisting. (Either you’re a huge proponent or it’s a hard no. There is no middle ground here.)

Tangerine

Cuckolding. Also thought Wonder Woman was just okay and looking for safe space to discuss.

Such Softness in the Harsh World

The second most shocking thing that ever happened to me took place inside an Ikea. Stacy and I had been dating long distance for a year and on one of my trips up to New York City she asked if I’d like to go to Ikea with her, by ferry, which passed right by the Statue of Liberty. A homemaking journey and a tourist adventure wrapped into a single floating package. I said yes, of course. I hate Ikea — it’s a death trap for young couples with big dreams and a limited budget — but it was early days and we lived a thousand miles apart; I would have followed her into the sewer.

Luckily she wasn’t after any furniture, so we breezed past the people measuring bed frames and twirling around in desk chairs and flipping through fake books. She wanted home decoration; textiles; a new duvet. I stood nearby, squashing down pillows and watching them fill back up with air, while she flipped through the giant display on the wall. She asked what I liked and I told her to pick whatever she liked. I was only in her bed a few days every few months. It was really none of my business.

She chose a bright orange and red and pink one, and a dusky blue and black and white one.

“Comforters for any occasion,” I said.

She said, “Here, feel these. Are they soft enough for you?”

I blinked at her. “What?” I said.

She said, “Are they soft enough for you to feel at home in your body in my bed?”

I never talked to anyone about the softness thing — the “sensory processing sensitivity” thing — and certainly not to a girl I really wanted to like me. Not about how anything that wasn’t a t-shirt or a flannel or a fleece made my skin feel like it was covered in ants or wasps or rubbing off my bones, or about how it’d always been that way since I was a little kid, or about how I couldn’t concentrate or sit still or remember my own name if lace or wool or even polyester was touching my skin and so I sneaked my softball jersey to school to change into on test days because it was the softest shirt I owned, or the thing where I did secret laundry at night in high school using double fabric softener to try to make my clothes bearable, and cut the tags out of everything including my pants and sat on the edges of chairs and couches when I was wearing shorts so my bare legs didn’t touch the scratchy material and wore sweatshirts inside out under my coats because the super soft insides always turned to needles after they’d been washed too much, about how I could only give the briefest and loosest hug to anyone wearing anything I couldn’t wear on my own body.

“Anything’s fine,” I said. “Get what you like!”

“Please just lay your cheek on this,” she said. “I want to take care of you.”

She said it like the easiest thing in the world, like she wanted to buy me an ice cream cone or play tic-tac-toe. She’d decoded one of my main weirdnesses that I never mentioned to anyone because I’m a person who doesn’t need to compound my weirdness. She’d brought me across the river in a boat to press my face against something she was going to keep on her bed for the very rare times my face was in her bed. She wanted to take care of me.

I don’t need to be taken care of, is what I almost said because it was a simple fact.

I don’t need help. I have never needed help. I don’t need help lifting anything or carrying it either, I don’t need help reaching stuff on the top shelf, I don’t need help learning new things or going new places or figuring out how anything works. If it’s broken I’ll fix it. If it’s a problem I’ll solve it. When I was five years old and I got off the bus and no one was home to let me inside, I got on my Strawberry Shortcake bicycle to ride it several miles to my great-grandmother’s country store. When I was in middle school at basketball camp and I got moved up to the high school league because I was too tall and I started my period for the first time and my cheap shoes fell apart, I walked to the gas station and bought pads for my pants and duct tape for my sneakers and won the MVP trophy at the end of the week. When I wanted to become a writer even though I had no professional training whatsoever, I quit my job as an accountant and I became a writer. If your ship wrecked on a desert island, I’m the one you’d want to be stranded with. I find a way.

I laid my head on the duvet in her hands. It was very soft. Not as soft as I would have picked out for myself, but softer than anything anyone had ever bought because of me. (A burlap sack was softer than anything anyone had ever bought because of me.) I said, “Thank you for thinking of me.” She said, “I always think of you.”

The most shocking thing that ever happened to me took place on the telephone only a few weeks later. I was back home in Georgia and it was 2:00 am and Stacy was dozing off on the other end of the line. “I want us to be together so long I get to watch your face change,” is what she said.

I laughed. “My face?”

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “I love your face.”

My face was another thing I never talked about. I’d grown up looking just like my dad, everyone said so. My mom said it too, that I looked like him, and that I acted like him in every way. “You’re just like your dad.” Which in most families is probably an affectionate thing to tell a kid, but my mom meant it as the deepest insult. My dad was the one who had to tell her she couldn’t keep writing bad checks, running up the credit card bills, forging his name to legal documents. She called it “her illness” so we all called it “her illness.” I guess that’s what made her lash out at anything and everyone who called her perfection into question. I had a quick mind and sharp tongue and my dad’s nose. I didn’t understand her. And so she told me I was just like him.

I’d read somewhere in my early 20s that if you’re going to develop the same mental illnesses and personality disorders as your parents, you usually do it by the time you’re 25. I don’t know if it’s true, but I clung to it like God’s personal promise. I sat awake in my bed by myself on the eve of my birthday when I was 24 years old and counted down the minutes. Five and I would never raise my hand to anyone and especially not someone I loved, four and I wouldn’t say mean things on purpose to make people cry, three and I would think of others as much as I thought of myself, two and I would never make anyone question their own reality, one and I would always be grateful for everything anyone did for me. Midnight and I was still me. I sobbed into my pillow. When I woke up, the mirror told me my face was turning into hers, but my heart told me I was free.

Except my face isn’t really my mom’s. She has tan, flawless skin; bright green eyes; a mouth made for smiling. My face is her shape but my skin is scarred and lined, a hormonal acne nightmare since I was barely ten. My chin is crooked from one too many baseballs to my teeth. My eyes are her color, but muted, and I can hardly see out of my left one, a truth that betrays me every time I take off my glasses and it lazily looks in toward my nose. My face is a funhouse version of my mom’s.

Stacy messed with everything I thought about my body. She liked it. She wanted to take care of it. She wanted to watch it change.

Her closet filled up with soft things and she kissed my laugh lines as they turned to wrinkles. I know her scars, exactly the way her day went from her posture the second she walks in the door. I know where the invisible border is between her abdomen and her side that separates feeling really nice from feeling unbearably ticklish. I know the meanings of all the shades of all the colors of her eyes and whether or not she’s in the bed beside me when I wake up even if I’m not facing her direction.

I stopped thinking about my weird body as being weird until just this year when a pap smear and mammogram reminded me that my body exists outside of the warm blanket of Stacy’s perception. I’d spent 25 years of my life worrying about the nature/nurture damage to my heart and the way my face was transforming into my mom’s, when I should have been worrying about the gene mutations that caused her breast cancer when she was younger than I am now. Those initial tests concluded that I had an enlarged uterus and focal asymmetry in my right breast, and so I had MRIs, and blood work, and ultrasounds, and outpatient surgeries, and mammograms, and biopsies, and endless consultations to get to the bottom of it.

My breast abnormality isn’t malignant; it just needs to be monitored. My reproductive system is, medically speaking, “a wreck.”

When we found out I need big surgery, and that the big surgery is going to require a major recovery, I called Stacy at work and told it to her matter-of-factly. Then made a list of things to do: stuff to buy and hospital appointments to make and responsibilities to delegate. I checked off everything one by one. Peppermint capsules and chicken broth, blood work and pre-admission, all my writers handed off to different editors. There’s a shovel in the kitty litter that Stacy can use so she doesn’t have to wrestle the 40-pound bags and a jar full of quarters for the laundromat so she doesn’t have to fight the change machine and a new cord management system installed by my bed so I don’t have to bend over. Stacy asked what she could do, how she could help, all she wanted to do was be useful, and I said nothing, nothing, I’ve got everything under control. And so she held me on the nights I was pretending to be able to sleep and whispered “I’ll take care of you” over and over without ever expecting an answer.

The first time she walked into the recovery room after I’d been under general anesthesia she lost the structure in her limbs. Every way she moves is so commanding and purposeful; she looked like a different person when her arms turned to rubber. I was sitting up and drinking apple juice and everything was good. The doctor had already talked to me. Nothing to worry about, everything normal, once I was finished with the graham crackers I could go home, and then onto the next test. I reached for her hand and said I knew it was hard for her to see me like that, with the tubes in my nose and the IV in my arm and my even-paler-than-usual face. She tugged on the neckline of the hospital gown I was wearing. “It’s too stiff,” she said, “We have to get you out of it.”

Years after Stacy’s head found its home in the crook of my shoulder, we bought our first piece of grown-up furniture together at the Brooklyn Flea Market. We shared a lobster roll, three tacos, and a waffle. I drank a beer. Then we saw the table, and it pulled us to it like gravity. Repurposed steel pipe legs and a tabletop made from old barn wood, deep brown with streaks of orange still glowing through. Stacy clutched it with her hand, her face so firm no one came near it until the woman who built it had a free minute to sell it to us. We called it our “darling table” and we followed it with matching chairs, a media console, two big beautiful area rugs. We bought our couch from a furniture gallery in Soho, custom made. It was the same couch we bounced up and down on in the showroom, the same one we imagined afternoons and evenings on, curled up with books and hot toddies, our faces close and dear and slowly changing. That one, but with special softer fabric.

My big surgery is Monday, October 9. I’ll be away from Autostraddle and the whole internet for several weeks. I thank you in advance for all your warm wishes. 

I Made All My Friends Reenact The Planet From “The L Word” for a Week and Now Everyone Hates Me

Last Thursday, I woke up like I usually do: annoyed. But it wasn’t for my usual reason, that my cat, President Bartlett, caught a case of the zoomies every hour the night before. It was that for some reason I woke up still plagued by the existence of the mid-2000s Showtime original series The L Word. I took it upon myself to do some Big Gay Soul Searching (LOGO this fall) and I realized one of the most annoyingly unrealistic things about the show was everyone’s constant morning presence at The Planet.

We’re talking every morning. Some of them worked in Santa Monica (Shane?) and only popped in for a minute, just long enough to get a shot of espresso and take a few joke-shots at Alice’s sexuality, then get back on the road. (Shane, why?)

To clarify, they willingly drove to The Planet modeled off Urth Caffe in WeHo, which is adjacent/close to actually nothing. So these adults, most of whom had real jobs, went out of their way early af in the morning to maybe see their friends for a second.

Obviously I had some questions. Most re: logistics. Did they all coordinate the night before who would be there? Was there a standing plan to be at The Planet every morning no matter what? Did Kit have a table constantly reserved just in case? Either way this kind of commitment from anyone in LA seemed genuinely insane.

I needed to know how they did it. I needed to see if the “way that we live,” was a way that I could live. So, I decided to force my friends to reenact The Planet as a fun, very normal friendship challenge.

Since The Planet doesn’t actually exist (Sad!), I picked a new LGBTQ coffee shop in Hollywood called Cuties that was equally difficult for the whole group to get to.

My first challenge was actually getting people to show up. I’ve lived in Hollywood long enough to know that the only way to get anyone, even your best friends, to do anything is to pretend it’s a job, so I drafted up a contract and forced my friends to sign!

The contract stated some v basic terms.

I informed the regulars that I would be “sending some informal texts to a handful of other lesbians this week who may appear at will” as guest stars to keep things exciting.

Saturday, September 9

The only email I got back from the group chain:

The guest stars were a bit more responsive, but I could tell everyone was equally excited to be my friend!

And my personal favorite,

Monday: It Begins, or Day 1 of WHY DID I DO THIS?

I actually woke up pretty excited to start testing the limits of my friendships. This was by far my most obnoxious bit since it involved: a) early mornings, and b) driving. BUT, I figured the promise of free coffee for my top three friends each day would be enough to keep people my friends/happy to see me.

Around 7am, the excitement started pouring in!

It’s safe to say day one was kicking off GREAT. However, The Way That We Live is not actually a good way at all, it turns out, until I buy the first three attendees coffee. Then, moods start to rise.

In true L Word fashion, we had a lot to catch up on: one of the girls had just broken up with her girlfriend and joined approx. 1000000 straight dating apps. I had been set up on a quasi-blind date more than a year ago that I had gone on the night before. Quasi-Blind Date also decided she may or may not be popping by Cuties for a surprise visit (attack?) during the week, so tensions were PRESENT. Also Emily started her period.

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Original Moods: 2/10

Moods at Cuties: 10/10

Periods Started: 1/5

The excitement of the newness was enough to liven up the Monday morning. Plus, even though Emily’s uterine walls were joining the party, seeing a bunch of queer people first thing in the morning helped all of us deal with the overwhelming number of men in every public space.

Are we The L Word: Yes.

Tuesday: The First Guest

Everyone showed up within the 8-8:10 time frame I breezily insisted they agree to, and we were off to a great start! We were a little less exhausted, but we had a lot to catch up on from the last 24 hours. We all got our coffees and settled into our new routine, trying to assert our dominance by deciding which characters we were most similar to. One friend continued to insist she was the Shane, though on day one, I accidentally took the title, despite my truest desire to be an Alice/Lara hybrid. But genuinely none of this matters because then A NIGHTMARE IN A VEST WALKED IN and we all started screaming.

Julie appeared as full pilot Shane, including a wig she bought/cut terribly just for this.

She looked so much like Shane that our two token straight women (pictured) were actually giddy.

This helped soften the blow when one of them was #blessed with not one but two tickets from an overzealous parking enforcement officer who eyed up the car harder than Dana ogling literally any woman that walks into the Planet/her general vicinity.

Original Moods: 5/10

Moods at Cuties: 10/10

Periods Started: 2/5

Our first guest star really hyped up the energy even though people were exhausted. Also Julie starting her period made our count hit two for two, which felt pretty appropriate.

Are we The L Word: Shane.

Wednesday: Three Periods

Ok so day three we were FEELING IT. Emily was still reeling from her two ticket Tuesday and everyone was starting to get genuinely upset at me for having to wake up at 7am again.

My period came. At this point, we were all horrified to see what Thursday would bring, since every day was feeling like 127 hours. Wednesday also brought the first person to break the contract. It was Tara, who “had to get her cast off” because she’s “getting married soon” and wasn’t going to “ruin her wedding” for my “stupid bit.” But to her credit, she did FaceTime in, so.

Julie continued her bit of dressing as characters at their best and showed up as a post doubles practice Dana (sans Harrison).
Original Moods: 2/10

Moods at Cuties: 6/10

Periods Started: 3/5

People are starting to hate me but are still happy about the free coffee.

Are we The L Word: Yes, because despite two tickets, three periods, and one cast removal, we all pretty much showed up. And can you even ask anything else anymore?

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Thursday: Help

Day four brought no more periods. Three came in so strong and then zero? Delirious from the lack of sleep and four days of mainlining caffeine through my veins, I started doing my own investigation. Could our alpha period have switched? Is Emily our alpha? Is Ilene?? I began my hunt with as much vigor as Lucy Lawless investigating Jenny’s murder: none.

After asking two people the barest minimum, I learned the series regulars (the people I forced to sign a contract) who hadn’t started their periods all have IUDs and don’t have periods. So. I’m choosing to believe that modern science was the only thing keeping all of our periods from syncing up.

Highlights of the day included: Julie appearing as Jenny after she fucks Marina in that shed(?) and Tim drags her to Vegas to get married in her dirty sex tights.

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Original Moods: 1/10

Moods at Cuties: 6/10

Periods Started: 3/5

Moods were VERY low. A soft Bette in suspenders and Vegas (Tahoe) Jenny were big hits. Then, a special appearance by our friend Brittani Nichols solidified Thursday as the Day Not to Miss. Zero new periods but also Zero new tickets! However I got served whole milk in my latte and I had three sips and I’m still shook. RIP.

Are we The L Word: Yes.

Friday: Kill Me.

Friday morning my cat decided he was done with this. He gave me this look as I left and I considered bailing.

BUT, I didn’t! Honestly, by 8:10, we were so out of it. Especially because, just like on The L Word, most of us continued to hang out at night. We learned that seeing each other every morning and night gives you nothing to talk about six hours later when you see each other again. We all made idle small talk about something. Dreams? Dogs? Nothing? Genuinely only a miracle could save this day. And then it did.

So many guest stars showed up including a dog(!!!), Business Bette, a million months pregnant Tina, that crazy girl Lacey from the pilot (with flyers) and did I mention the dog? My day was made, despite the collective eight hours of sleep I’d gotten through the week.

Julie came in costume again, as another of my least favorites: Lacey. Videos of her 100% accurate portrayal available on request.

Others showed up in costume as well. Including our favorite characters like ‘generic lesbian background actor.’

But seriously so many queer women showed up, it felt like a fever dream.

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Original Moods: 4/10 (mainly because people were so glad it was almost over)

Moods at Cuties: 30/10 (I now see why The L Word brought on so many guest stars through the years)

Periods Started: 80/5 (guessing, but probably correct)

Are we The L Word: Sadly, yes.

Thoughts a week later:

SO, after Friday’s meeting, I checked in with my contractual series regulars to get everyone’s takes on the week. How highly they’d rate it, how likely they’d be into doing it again, and how much they all hated me.

Here are their replies:

+ Honestly, I would def do again. 9/10, losing one point for the fact that you told me not to watch The L Word when I clearly should have watched The L Word.

+ I was thinking we needed to keep it up for AT LEAST one more week.

+ Love you more than ever and I would absolutely do it again.

+ I’d rate it a 9 because waking up never got much easier and I wouldn’t have been able to do it every morning had I not signed a contract. BUT it still gets a high rating because I got to spend every morning with my friends, except for you who I now hate. JK, JK, JK even you. I do not hate you. I think this was one of your best ideas and I’m going to miss doing this every day.

So everyone… didn’t hate me. OR SO I THOUGHT.

BECAUSE come Wednesday, guess what happened?

Two of us showed up! Proving that literally no one actually wants to be accountable for anything in LA. Unless there are Instagram stories, free coffee, signed contracts, etc.,

However, let it be known that two guest stars have sparked a spin-off series. They appear Fridays at Cuties. Be sure to tune in for special appearances by me and other accidental guests.

ALSO the final unexpected side effect of the week is:

LITERALLY ALL OF OUR EXES WATCHED EVERY INSTAGRAM STORY. Even if they don’t officially follow us.

I’m going to bed.

Yours in Very Normal Contractual Friendship Challenges,

steph

See you at Cuties! ;)

Sharon Stone Crossing and Uncrossing Her Legs

The first time I saw Basic Instinct was at a party. Was it New Year’s Eve? Was I 27? I think so. Let’s say the answer is yes. My friends and I had this bit where we’d put dystopian movies from the 80s or “erotic thrillers” from the 90s on in the background when we hung out; we were big on irony. We’d get high and fall asleep on the couch and wake up hazily to Eyes Wide Shut; come back from getting another beer and find someone in latex climbing into a helicopter in Demonlover. It was in this spirit we put on Basic Instinct, a movie I had somehow managed to know nothing about other than the cultural fact of Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs.

The friends I was with that night were all straight, bless their hearts. As the movie progressed, they started to give me the looks you give your girlfriend in the middle of family Christmas dinner. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so embarrassed. And also: you know I’m not like that, right? You know I’m different? We’re still good? They would have turned it off if I had asked; they’re good people. They are different, mostly. I didn’t ask. Instead I watched her zip up her white dress in the mirror; I watched her cross and uncross her legs; I watched her, and my friends watched her, and in the movie we were watching the other characters, men and women, watched her. I hated her so much, and so purely, with such satisfaction. I couldn’t look away.

Basic Instinct came out in 1992, when I was four years old. Catherine Tramell, played by a lithe and leonine Sharon Stone, is a bisexual crime novelist suspected of the murder of her rock star boyfriend. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) wants to prove that she did it, and also fuck her. Does he care more that she’s a murderer or more about fucking her? Does it matter? Isn’t that always the question. The top tags for the movie on IMDB are “manipulation,” “mind game,” “kissing,” “female star appears nude,” and “strong female lead.”

Catherine’s girlfriend is not featured on the VHS packaging or really anywhere except one very posed and very sultry screencap on IMDB. Her name is Roxy, which I felt was about right. Roxy does not survive to see the end of the movie. My friends got high and drank PBRs and put different items in the apartment on the dog’s head like tiny hats. I watched the movie. At some point — I’m not sure whether it was when Catherine and Nick are reflected fucking in Catherine’s ceiling mirror, or when Roxy’s car flips over dramatically in the middle of the night, or when Nick’s brunette love interest is sprinting virtuously down a dark hallway — my friend M turned to me, a little apologetic. “This is like, really bad,” he said, or something like it. I think he meant something like is this bothering you? Are you okay? It did and I wasn’t and also I didn’t want to stop watching; I hated her and I hated me and it felt good to do it. Sharon Stone crossed her legs, reached for an ice pick, nothing but sex and death behind her eyes. And suddenly I could scratch a particular itch that I hadn’t been able to reach any other way, something unhealthy and also soothing in a way I couldn’t articulate.

The thing about Basic Instinct is that it’s very bad. It’s not just bad representation, it’s a stupid movie, as erotic thrillers from 1992 are wont to be. Why does Catherine write under a pen name and then put a 3×5 inch photo of her face on the jacket anyway? Why the intense revulsion at wearing underwear and using ice cube trays? How is it possible to have that many friends who are convicted murderers? Why does a tense conversation between Nick and Gus happen in the middle of a crowded country bar that we never return to and has nothing to do with the rest of the film? It’s so bad in some places it’s funny actually — Nick snarling “it was the fuck of the century” to a bored and amused Catherine after some truly, deeply run-of-the-mill sex is actually incredibly funny. And although it’s one of the worst portrayals of bisexual women imaginable — sociopathic, hypersexual, lying and manipulative — I think I could have found a way to find that funny too if M wasn’t watching me watch it, if I wasn’t in a room full of kind, well-intentioned straight people watching me watch it. I knew my friends didn’t think I was a narcissistic psycho; I knew they weren’t repulsed or horrified by me. But as Catherine and Roxy gyrated bizarrely in a tacky 90s nightclub could feel their secondhand embarrassment for me — something close to pity, letting me feel something close to shame. It was a feeling I hadn’t put a name to yet, and that night I could feel it solidify in my chest with a weight that was somehow comforting.

Before my first time seeing Basic Instinct was my first time at a Midwestern gay bar. Back home, on the East Coast, we didn’t have gay bars per se, or at least not lesbian bars. Gay men had some leather bars and we had Second Saturday at Machine, scheduled dyke nights across the city you had to keep track of on a calendar, and queer karaoke with Jack and Cokes on Thursdays. But in Indiana, paradoxical to my coastal elite experience, you could visit an institution that had obviously been a sports bar in a previous life but was now wholly dedicated to serving weak drinks at small tables inside a dim wood-paneled room with a small stage for drag shows. My memory of it is that first view, dark and cluttered and mostly deserted, as I walked in with the natural foods store employee I was sleeping with. She had beautiful dark hair and liked to tell me about the biodynamic energy in the carrots she sold. I could never be sure whether she was kidding about that or not. I was nervous about being there — I think we both were, and I wonder now if she had never gone to that bar even though she had grown up there, if she needed someone like me to buy her a drink and put a hand on her leg during a drag king performance of “Pony.” I don’t know what either of us needed, honestly.

There was a group of straight people in the bar that night — inasmuch as you can perceive without asking somebody whether they are “straight” or “not” or “at a gay bar to celebrate a birthday because it seems like a novel thing to do,” they were a group of middle-aged straight people at a gay bar for somebody’s birthday, presumably because it was a novel thing to do. We watched them giggle and nudge each other in the ribs, and we drank our overpriced Indiana drinks, and we all listened to the drag queen on stage lip sync “How Many Licks.” I had been to plenty of straight bars with girls before, heard all the things sneering men say when you’re too drunk to remember you shouldn’t kiss her like that while you’re still out in public, the looks straight people give you as she lights your cigarette out on the sidewalk. The straight people had never followed me before, though, to my own space — and this was ostensibly my own space, right? In some way? I was kissing her in the back of the bar, her white white teeth in the dark tasting like vodka cranberry, the drag queen on stage lip syncing designer pussy, my shit come in flavors in the middle of this tired little bar that was like the experience of drinking warm beer underneath a pool table, and she was all I could see in the infantile disco ball light — but not through my own eyes, not really, more theirs.

I don’t know for sure if they were watching us, but I know that we were part of what they came there to watch on a fundamental level — as I have been so often, in my role as a girl kissing a girl in a dark corner of a bar. Set dressing, something titillating for the sake of ambiance. I don’t remember anything about how I felt that night, not really. I don’t remember leaving, not because I was drunk but because I think I floated away quietly at some point that night, flitted off to the wet asphalt of the empty parking lot with my fingers still tangled in my date’s. I had a body worthy of spectacle when it was next to another particular kind of body, as well as shame and hatred but nowhere to rest it, nowhere to put it down, and so instead I disappeared. I felt overexposed, but more than just me — something about the sweet sadness of the rundown bar was special to us queer patrons, or could have been. But seeing it as a straight birthday party it felt tacky, worthy of pity.

We left the bar and later I would leave that girl too, tell her at 4 am I couldn’t stay over because I had somewhere to be in the morning even though it was a Saturday and the lie was obvious. It wasn’t because I minded so much falling asleep next to her but because she lived with her parents and because the idea of them seeing me so clearly in the light of a Saturday morning felt unbearable. I guess I was worried they would see something true, something I was trying to avoid seeing in myself.

I was new to the Midwest then, and I didn’t know how much to worry about being seen, especially with her. I remember walking with an arm around her on a nighttime sidewalk, snowflakes spiraling through the streetlight glow in a way that was somehow particularly Midwestern, and feeling a low note of panic — was this the kind of thing people noticed here? If so, what did they think? She had grown up here and she didn’t seem nervous, so I followed her lead. Later on she held my hand in a bar that had enough people in it to obviously notice us, and also spectacularly bad service. The bartender realized this and, apologetic, slid us two complimentary drinks: white gummi bear shots, sickly sour-sweet. I knew instantly that we had flown under the radar; somehow nothing signaled perceived straightness as much as being offered a gummi bear shot. I felt relieved and insulted at the same time. We both took our shots before we left.

Catherine Tramell is never not being watched. She knows this, and seems to revel in it, even. When she realizes the door is cracked open as she gets dressed she slows down, takes her time, enjoys it. Catherine is, literally and figuratively, the suspect in the interrogation room who knows who’s watching her from behind the one-way mirror. There is an implication, I think, that this is part of what is supposed to be off-putting about her. It is more believable that this woman might have murdered her boyfriend in cold blood because she is the kind of person who, when she feels men’s eyes on her, becomes more comfortable and controlled rather than less. I don’t say this to point out some kind of ironically feminist element, subverting the gaze or whatever you want to call it. It was because of this that I hated her so much, at least in part, not in spite of it. She grins as she crosses and uncrosses her legs in that fucking white dress, smiling wolflike into the interrogation room camera lens that she knows transmits to men who are staring at her. The irony of the fact that, in real life, Sharon Stone didn’t know the cameras could see her exposed genitals in that one famous shot is not lost on me.

Catherine loves being watched which is great because Roxy loves watching! We see Roxy before Catherine; in a weird moment of slippage, the cops first assume she is Catherine, probably because she’s hanging out alone in her house. There are a few moments later in the film where it’s almost possible to mix them up anyway; they’re both blonde in an intensely 90s way and love staring dramatically from across a room. Roxy is always staring, always watching. She watches Nick watching her with Catherine, she watches Catherine dance away from her and into Nick’s arms; according to Catherine, Roxy watches her fuck the parade of annoying dudes she takes to her bedroom with the mirrored ceiling. According to Catherine, Roxy likes this; Roxy does not behave particularly like she does. “She wanted to watch me all the time,” Catherine says. It is not made clear why this would be enjoyable for Roxy specifically, whether it’s something that brings particular pleasure to Catherine either. The movie seems to consider this point so obvious it requires no explanation; who doesn’t want to watch? Eventually Roxy watches Nick from inside her car before trying to run him over and kill him, arguably the most realistic character decision of the film.

The first time I remember being aware of a man watching me, really watching me, I was fifteen. I was taking the commuter rail into Boston’s South Station, slumped sullenly into the squeaky vinyl seat like the teenager I very clearly was. The tall, thin man with the briefcase and suit across the aisle didn’t care; he glanced over at me the whole ride, long wide-open looks that he didn’t bother to make furtive. As I realized this I looked over at him, surprised, and accidentally met his eyes. He didn’t look away. After the train reached the station, he became the first man to follow me in public. “Where are you going?” When I told my mother about it later, and how I had unintentionally made eye contact, she said “You have to be more careful.” I was mad at that, but also, she was right.

For all that we get to watch her every move — through the camera lens, through other characters’ eyes, through the plentiful mirrors scattered throughout the film — so much about Catherine remains unclear, impossible to read. Why did she murder her boyfriend? Why does she get so fixated on Nick, who is obviously and objectively a scary and violent person? What does she want, exactly, that motivates her to become a full-time sex kitten homicidal maniac? Why does she do any of the things she does? What does she do when no one’s looking? What kind of person do the sum of her choices add up to? We’ll never know, because bisexual murder nymphos from 90s erotic thrillers aren’t designed to make sense. They are points so obvious they don’t require explanation. They’re designed to be thrilling, in every sense of the word. What a thrill!

In graduate school I took a class in narratology, the only school of theory I ever really liked, because it was kind of like watching How It’s Made for stories. Or maybe because it was someone finally admitting that stories are, in fact, made; consciously created by real humans who are flawed and have their own stupid preoccupations and were sometimes hungover. Narrative theory says, in part, that narratives have layers to them: the characters interact with each other; the narrator or lens of the story itself communicates with the conceptualized audience, the idea of a consumer; and bracketing all of it, the actual person or persons who made the story are saying something to the actual person or persons who are taking it in. I used to draw diagrams of this in class: neat brackets that read “implied narrator, implied reader,” and so on. There’s Nick looking at Catherine, and Catherine watching him watch her, a room full of male cops watching them watch each other. There’s the camera lens watching both of them, the screen upon which it’s later projected. There’s the glassy-eyed people I imagine were on set and behind the camera in 1992, and me watching from M’s couch with a warm beer in my hand, tired eyes and tangled hair, a few hours away from the ball drop and stoned laughter and falling asleep on an air mattress. I am, in this framework, at the “level of nonfictional communication” as my friends pass me a drink and check how long til midnight and the dog makes a strange high whining noise from the corner.

Of course, this theoretical model can’t account for how messy it really gets. It is successful, maybe, in describing one singular narrative; it doesn’t illustrate how there are dozens of them and they build on one another, layer over and dovetail with and derail each other. How that man followed me off a train one day but how later, a year or so on, I walked back onto the same one with a girl out of the pouring rain, both of us soaked to the skin and shivering all the way home. It doesn’t explain the two drunk men who leaned down to leer one night in the theater district while I was kissing someone — I can’t even remember her name really — on the curb outside the straight bar, how they stared and hissed. The straight people in that Indiana gay bar watching me and my date while I watched the drag queen looking like the Virgin Mary in brown lipliner and pure white spotlight mouthing stop look and listen get back to your position. M watching me watch the TV screen in his Chicago garden apartment while I watched Sharon Stone reach for an ice pick on the floor and pretended this could be fun for me. The way I watched a 100-lb girl I had just met that night drink a bottle of red wine by herself in 20 minutes, and put an arm around her stumbling little body; the way he watched me do it and yelled later I saw you with her, I saw you, like I had loved her rather than just wanted to keep a girl, any girl, from harm. That photo I still have of the first girl I loved tangled in blankets, looking up into the camera lens and at me aiming it like she loved me too, like there was nothing and no one else she wanted to be looking at. The look from across the crowded room, his eyes on mine in the dark when everyone else was watching the stage and how I could hear a pin drop inside my ribcage. How my husband asked once don’t you worry about people seeing you with me and thinking the wrong thing?, how I didn’t know how to say everything they could think is the wrong thing, anything they see they would misunderstand. How the therapist looked at me, sincere and kind, when she said Maybe you’ll just never be able to have healthy relationships with men. You know, because of your father. How I look to myself in the bathroom mirror in the middle of the night, the aggressively yellow cast of the godawful track lighting I hate, how it feels like I’m never alone even then.

Catherine Tramell is never alone, never outside a line of sight. Nick’s view is our view; we only see of her what he looks at. She only exists because she’s looked at, because you can’t be thrilled by something that isn’t in your field of vision. I understand, obviously, that she was never conceived to be a fully realized person or even character, that that was what created such an easy and convenient void for me to place my loathing of her and of me. But I still thought that maybe the problem was her audience; science tells us that when we view something, even as minute as a single atom flung through space, we are in some way affecting it, informing its trajectory. She could be a real person if she could do it in private, without the weight of other people watching. And that by some transitive property I couldn’t understand, I thought this could be true for me too, maybe. I thought that if I could be alone, outside of anyone’s view at all, I would have a chance to finally figure out what I actually meant; that I could relax and just be rather than be constructed. That was my problem: I needed to be viewed less, to be flung through space without witnesses. I wanted freedom from narrative, which requires inherently a narratee.

This summer, I got on a plane with one carry-on and came back to my teenage bedroom in my mother’s house, leaving behind my husband and partner of many years and the life we had cobbled together for ourselves. By the time I did I had already felt like a bad movie character for a long time, and whoever was doing the role was pretty clearly phoning it in. I wanted to be alone; to be somewhere isolated and by myself. My mother’s place is in the kind of area where it’s almost too eerily quiet to fall asleep at night; you can change with the window open because there’s no one around to even see. I thought that by doing this a sense of self would materialize for me; that I had a fully realized character that other people’s ideas of me had just been obscuring. This was a fantasy I had for a long time, maybe longer than even I really know. I was quietly shocked to realize that the self I had hoped was silently developing without my having to tend to it, like a sweet potato left in the back of the pantry, seemed not to be there. It felt like nothing was, really. Sometimes the parts of ourselves we ignore don’t just grow fallow and untamed in our absence; they turn inward, crack concave, become a void. And you just have to sit there in it, waiting for something to materialize, waiting to be able to see yourself in that anemic early morning light for as long as it takes to make out the faint outlines of your self against the dimly lit past.

Straight People Watch: Summer 2K17

To say that straight people are at it again is to assume they’ve at any point not been at it. This is wrong, but understandable. The degree to which straight people are at it is so severe that it builds to the strained hum of white noise. It’s only upon acute highlighting do we really see how persistent their at-itness is and how troubled a people they are.

Keeping up with it all can be a lot, but it feels like a necessary task. That’s why we’ll be keeping up with their goings-on here at Autostraddle. Let’s take a quick peak to see what they’ve been up to as of late.

Is it okay to tell the barista my real name? Can I be in the same aisle as another person at the grocery store? Is it fine if when I’m in traffic and singing along to the radio I glance in another car’s direction? Is it okay to watch gymnastics?

The various ways in which straight women have throughout the ages ruined their “water-lady” as this article so awfully puts it in an attempt to make sex with it more “appealing” to men has always been concerning, but putting glitter in it takes it to a whole new level. It’s true that gay people have a better grasp on glitter but like, straight people know glitter…doesn’t dissolve? And is in fact like small shards of metal? With sharp corners? The phrase “can migrate through the cervix” is never something that we as women, on top of everything, should have to consider when weighing the pros and cons of pleasing our sexual partner. People with vaginas: your vagina is fine as is, unless it’s not, in which case, go to a doctor, and here I’m including the people who’ve decided to engage in this glitter trend and have small lacerations all up inside of it.

Why did this happen, and, no, she didn’t.

Here’s the thing: I did not happen upon this. I knew it existed in my heart and soul before even looking up “gun family car decal” and being presented with many, many options, including this one that was probably so popular it is now out of stock.

The sanctity of marriage, everybody.

For those unwilling to click further into this, grapefruiting is a sexual act where grapefruit rings are used (As a reward? Training device?) during oral sex. Also, this one’s a little what’s wrong with “straight people” if you know what I mean but also: what’s wrong with straight people.

Hello?

SOME STRAIGHT WOMEN PLEASE STOP PUTTING DANGEROUS THINGS IN YOUR VAGINA, BUT ESPECIALLY STOP PUTTING WASPS NESTS IN THEM??? This has been said to “tighten and clean the vagina” when inserted and, thankfully, can be ingested as well to “rejuvenate genitals” after childbirth, because god forbid the mother of your child who’s most likely had to ELONGATE HER VAGINAL OPENING VIA INCISION SO SHE COULD LET YOUR SON BRAYDON ENTER THE WORLD WITHOUT BREAKING HIS COLLARBONE be anything but tight.

Do y’all need a minute? Sure this is a “jokey” take on the notion that women “steal” men from their friends when they get married and I know they’re not “really serious” and I should maybe “take a joke,” but this was born from genuine malice and that dude on the right has for sure said some disparaging things about this woman. Sorry.

There has to be a better way and yet.

Sure.

I don’t know, the option to calm down is available to everyone.

In Their Own Words: LGBTQ Asia Responds to Taiwan’s Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Taiwan’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage in May 2017 commanded international attention, particularly due to its being one of the first Asian countries to do so. As a queer South Asian person who was born and raised in a very homophobic South East Asian country, I had grown up with the constant rhetoric of “LGBTQ is a Western colonial invention” and still have to contend with comments from the leaders of my country claiming that LGBTQ rights are antithetical to Asian cultural norms, and even fear for my livelihood as fellow LGBTQ activists and community members are oppressed, harmed, or even killed.

Taiwan’s ruling made me curious about how the news was being received by LGBTQ people across Asia. Did they too face cultural and institutional oppression against their gender and sexuality, or were their countries more accepting? Would the ruling have any impact on their livelihoods? Is Taiwan an inspiration for their leaders to consider marriage equality or LGBTQ rights overall, or will it not matter as much?

I made a list of countries in the Asian continent and researched and reached out to at least one LGBTQ activist, organization, or community member in each, including posting on region or country-specific social media groups and direct contact. Out of the countries on my list (excluding the Pacific Islands of Oceania and counting Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong as distinct countries), I was able to find at least one contact for 42 of them, and (at the time of writing) received 27 responses from 18 countries, as well as a couple from regional organisations. While there were significant efforts to prioritize female and non-binary interviewees, a considerable number of respondents were male, often owing to the stronger presence of out gay male activists in their local LGBTQ community. Responses came from cis and trans women, cis and trans men, and non-binary people. Some respondents are anonymous or pseudonymous by request.

The responses, while varied and distinct, often carried similar themes. While my respondents were generally supportive and happy about Taiwan’s decision, most did not think that the ruling would be as impactful on their local community as some might guess — citing insularity, lack of media attention, and/or lack of cultural similarity between Taiwan and their home countries. Some respondents felt that the ruling could be used as leverage for their local activism, while others felt that focusing on marriage equality could actually backfire in their efforts to earn the rights of LGBTQ people to exist without fear of persecution or harm. There weren’t necessarily any clear correlations between the legal status of LGBTQ people in their country and the perception of such communities in society: some of the countries with the highest rates of violence against LGBTQ people were countries that decriminalized homosexuality or never had laws against homosexuality in the first place. To be clear, affirmations of a country’s LGBTQ-inclusive legislation in this piece isn’t a referendum on or analysis of the experiences of LGBTQ people as a whole there, or the country’s stance on human rights issues in general. Marriage equality is only one piece of a complex and ever-shifting social and legal reality for LGBTQ people worldwide; to full explore more than that would take much more than one article, and even any discussion of the experiences of LGBTQ people here is necessarily only one portion of a much larger picture.

As one of my respondents, Loretto of Stonewall Japan, warned: “Coming from a Western standpoint we may be tempted to lump Asian countries together, but that would be a mistake.” Even so, it is useful to see how different countries and regions within the continent share concerns and priorities for their local LGBTQ communities and see opportunities for cross-cultural support and understanding.

Central Asia and Eurasia

Most countries in this region, except for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have decriminalized homosexuality; some, such as Armenia, have even signed the 2011 United Nations joint statement on ending acts of violence and related human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. However, homophobia in the region is still extremely strong, with very little protections for LGBTQ people as well as growing intolerance from the Government and wider society.

The editorial board of the kok.team project, an LGBTQ news and community resource based in Kazakhstan, described some recent government attempts at institutional homophobia: “In 2014 Parliament tried to adopt a discriminative law on protect[ing] children against so-called ‘homosexual propaganda.’ This attempt failed because that year Kazakhstan participated in the competition for the right to hold [the] Winter Olympics. [The] international sports community protested against this law — that’s why our legislators withdrew it.” They also talked about the Members of Parliament of Kazakhstan questioning Kazakhstan Minister of Information Dauren Abayev about the Kazakhstan flag being flown at New York Pride this past June, only to be told that there are no legal measures that can be enacted against the person.

Mamikon Hovsepyan, Executive Director of Pink Armenia, thought it was “interesting” that Armenian media and extremists were “silent on this issue.” “[A] few media outlets wrote about Taiwan but there was no discussion on it,” he explains. While the Armenian Constitution limits marriage to heterosexual couples, the country recognizes all marriages performed abroad, including same-sex marriages. However, attacks against LGBTQ people and community spaces in the country, such as multiple attacks by Neo-Nazis on the lesbian-owned bar DIY Rock Club in 2012, have stirred up heated debates on “LGBTQ rights vs national interests.”

Armine Oganezova, the owner of DIY, an alternative music bar in Yerevan, stands inside what is left of her club after a fire-bomb attack in May 2012. From RadioFreeEurope.

Armine Oganezova, the owner of DIY, an alternative music bar in Yerevan, stands inside what is left of her club after a fire-bomb attack in May 2012. From RadioFreeEurope.

Attempts at same-sex marriage in Armenia and Kazakhstan in the past decade have garnered controversy and awareness about the plight of the local LGBTQ community. In 2006, Harutyun Zhonzhikian, the founder of the Armenian Gay and Lesbian Organization (AGLA), married Misha Meroujan (whom he met through AGLA), both making the trek down from Paris to marry at the Armenian Apostolic Church in Echmiadzin to reflect their still-strong connections to Armenian culture. In 2013 LGBTQ rights activist Vladimir Kornakovsky made headlines by organizing a lesbian wedding in Karaganda, a city in north-eastern Kazakhstan, between Kristina Chernysheva and her partner Karolina. Heartbreakingly, a year later, Chernysheva was found brutally murdered; Karolina has been detained as a suspect.

Kristina and Karolina's wedding in Kazakhstan by Vox Populi

Kristina and Karolina’s wedding in Kazakhstan by Vox Populi

Russia was cited by all respondents as a major influence on the social-political factors affecting their local LGBTQ communities. These countries were formerly part of the Soviet Union and still hold a significant number of Russian migrants.

“For now I think we are not relevant to comment on it [since] Armenia is under the pressure of Russia these years,” said Hovsepyan. “We are too far from equal marriage recognition but let’s keep in touch and probably there will be some development in the nearest future.”

“Kazakh nationalists say it is the Russian influence — Russian colonists brought ‘homosexualism’ [to the] Kazakh steppes in [the] 18th century and before this we had no ‘homosexualists’,” says the kok.team, though a representative of Tajikistan-based organization Equal Opportunities cites Russian influence for the country’s homophobia. “Unfortunately, due to the influence of Russia on the economic, social and political life in the country, the situation of LGBTQ people is not entirely in a good position.” In 2011 Equal Opportunities collaborated on a report on crimes and structural oppression against LGBTQ people in Central Asia with Kyrgyzstan-based organization Labrys and the Sexual Rights Initiative , an international coalition focused on advancing human sexuality rights in the United Nations.

As a result, some in the region don’t even really see themselves as Asian. “We do not have any contacts and ties with the countries of Asia (even there are no flights, connections at different levels, a language barrier, religion, etc),” says Equal Opportunities. “Therefore it is difficult to say, it is possible to affirm that the changes in [other] Asia’s countries cannot affect us in Tajikistan.”

That being said, they still see opportunities for collaboration with others in the continent. “The countries of Asia can share their experience on the development and mobilization of the community, developing health programs, advocacy companies and other activities which can help to unite LGBTQ people here. How to work with governmental organizations, with journalists, etc.” Indeed, kok.team’s earlier recounting of international pressure making a difference on the Government’s attempts to institutionalize homophobia demonstrate the potential power of cross-border cooperation in making a difference for local LGBTQ rights.

Western Asia / Middle East

Coverage of the (truly) horrendous treatment of LGBTQ people in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran tend to build assumptions that the entirety of the region is heavily homophobic, especially due to Islam being the State religion for most of the region. However, laws related to LGBTQ people differ across the board — ranging from highly oppressive regimes to relatively open laws for queer and/or trans people.

Most notable in the region for their laws protecting LGBTQ people is Israel, which does have anti-discrimination laws and does recognize same-sex cohabitation. While Israel does not have civil marriage for couples of any gender, they do recognize marriages held abroad, including same-sex marriages. However, much like in some of the Central Asian states, some in Israel do not really consider itself as part of Asia or Asian culture.

“From my point of view as someone who knows well the political condition in my country, Israel is more positioned as European than Asian, with no relation to the geographical map. The country[‘s] goals are to position Israel as part of the free world,” says Chen Arieli, Chairperson of Israeli National LGBTQ Taskforce The Aguda, who also discusses Israel’s political system highlighting their progressive LGBTQ laws regularly in international media coverage. “It is, of course, complicated with our main Arab-Israeli conflict and the occupation, but the close relationship with the United States and to Europe [has] established Israel much more as a main Western world than anything else.” (A Palestinian LGBTQ organization has been contacted for comment but has yet to respond as of the time this article is written.)

Gay demonstration in Zion Square by Brian Negin

Gay demonstration in Zion Square by Brian Negin

In the rest of the Middle East, some are hopeful about Taiwan’s ruling. “Taiwan’s ruling in our favor is a huge step in the right direction and we can only dream of such a reality in the Arab world, even though we know there will always be obstacles from our wider community,” says an anonymous queer woman based in Bahrain. While Bahrain decriminalized homosexuality in 1976, LGBTQ Bahranians are still subject to immense demonisation and state-sponsored violence. “An Asian country embracing same-sex marriage gives us a great deal of hope and much needed encouragement to continue the struggle for our basic rights, not just to exist without persecution but to also marry and build families with our loved ones, instead of hiding in fear.”

Others are less optimistic. “I don’t think the ruling in Taiwan will have a tangible effect on the Middle East. I think we have a long way to go […] Changes need to be from the inside,” says Dana, a trans woman based in Jordan. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in Jordan since 1951 and gender transition was made legal in 2014.

Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh by Arash Ashoorinia

Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh by Arash Ashoorinia

Iranian gender and sexuality rights activist and academic Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh, who has written about bisexual erasure in the Iranian LGBTQ rights movement and who was arrested in 2007 during a protest in support of women’s rights activists on trial, brings up institutionalized homophobia as a core part of their country’s media and political landscape. “I do not have any hope that the formal law and regulations in Iran regarding LGBT rights and even women’s rights can change soon because they are an important aspect of the official ideology of the Government especially in defining this ideology in contrast with the Western modern human rights discourse. However, the Government may stop [the] execution of some discriminatory law for a while, due to internal or international political reasons.” While homosexuality carries the death penalty in Iran, gender transition is legally recognized if accompanied by medical intervention.

Jordanian Queer Muslima, a liberation theology research scholar focusing on gender, racial, and sexual liberation within Islam, questions same-sex marriage as a priority in LGBTQ liberation, even as she is happy for those celebrating the right to marry. “In my opinion, sexual liberation cannot be detangled from racial, colonialist, classist, ableist, gendered, religious liberation. I believe a focus on rulings such as these pinkwashes a movement that seeks holistic liberation in these intersecting fields of oppression.” Citing the various structural oppressions faced by LGBTQ people such as hunger, homelessness, and misogynoir, she asks: “Who decided that equal marriage was the direst demand? Did this decision come from all peoples of the community or just those privileged few? If we truly seek communal liberation, then it is imperative to speak directly to the community — not over it.”

Peyghambarzadeh discusses the priorities of Iran’s LGBTQ community: “Of course, Iran’s LGBT communities are very diverse with different priorities, but in my opinion, decriminalization of same sex sexual conduct and stopping the hate speech against LGBT community can be a priority for different groups because they play a key role in reproducing the LGBTphobic culture.”

“Today Islamic scholars, jurists, leaders, and members of communities are working in many ways to legally, academically, and socially carve a space for LGBTQIA+ peoples. We speak against the dominant discourse that says ‘Islam is heterosexual’ through work in grassroots organizations, social organizing, academia, public protest and living.”

While many may be tempted to cite Islam as the main reason for the Middle East’s institutionalized homophobia, Jordanian Queer Muslima pushes hard against this argument. She argues that before Victorian-era colonization, “Islamic discourse spoke to communities that were gendered and sexually fluid,” citing examples of Caliphates with openly gay children, poems written about bisexual men by female writers, and Islamic jurisprudence handling issues related to their queer children. “Today Islamic scholars, jurists, leaders, and members of communities are working in many ways to legally, academically, and socially carve a space for LGBTQIA+ peoples. We speak against the dominant discourse that says ‘Islam is heterosexual’ through work in grassroots organizations, social organizing, academia, public protest and living.”

Could international solidarity help LGBTQ communities in the Middle East? Peyghambarzadeh seems to think so. “Iranians have more cultural exchanges with majority Muslim countries especially the Middle Eastern ones, and their LGBT friendly media products can reduce LGBTQphobia amongst Iranians.” Jordanian Queer Muslima, however, is more cautious. “Direct and open solidarity now may be counterproductive. Openly LGBTQIA+ people are targeted by community and state alike, but simultaneously our country is homoerotic from some buried identity that has persisted since physical presence of the colonialists.” She brings up Jordanians’ affectionate gestures, such as holding hands and kissing cheeks, which are common between straight-identifying men and women that are “very very comfortable with the same sex but will never allow space for openly homosexual peoples.”

Acknowledging the work of Jordanian LGBTQ people in securing their rights, Jordanian Queer Muslima states: “What we need is the international community to support us in whichever way we deem fit. We know our immediate needs and it might now necessarily be marriage equality and that’s OK.” However, she thinks that solidarity and cooperation should be virtual, never physical, out of concerns for dangers and safety. For her, being able to find community through Tumblr helped her find her community, sparked her interest in Islamic liberatory theologies, and helped her understand that she wasn’t alone. However, she also notes that for others, the needs might be greater: “The realities of a refugee woman, a street child and a Bedouin village girl can never be the same and will not have the same needs.”

Next: South Asia and Southeast Asia

75 Lesbian Ken Dolls, Ranked By Lesbianism

If you’ve been hanging out on the internet lately, you’ve probably seen it: a creepy group photograph of all your ex-girlfriends, in doll form. It’s the New Ken Dolls, a Mattel roll-out that starts now and keeps on going indefinitely (many of the new Kens won’t be available ’til Spring 2018, EXACTLY LIKE YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND)!

While it’s true that the New Kens are definitely lesbians, it’s also true that the Old Kens were lesbians. So, today I set out to definitively account for at least a solid chunk of the various lesbian Ken (short for “Kendall”) dolls that have come out since the beginning of Barbie-Time.

I was blessed to have the input of my team of queers here at Autostraddle.com, who shared their feelings on various Ken Dolls using our group chat on Slack.

Let’s begin!

75. My First Ken

Cameron: Figure skates with her partner Marcia on the weekends, practices for the winter pageant
Dufrau: It’s Brigitte Nielsen

74. All-American Ken

Dufrau: this color scheme is a nontraditional expression of All American.
Riese: traffic signs are apparently
patriotic
also reeboks
Jenna: i’m pretty into those reeboks actually
but i have questions about her jeans
are they like half-overalls somehow?
Dufrau: ohhhh thats the all-american part
theres a flag on the rolled down piece
Jenna: right but like, what if you roll it up
Dufrau: you never roll it up if you are all american
Jenna: oh right, my mistake

73. Animal Lovin’ Ken

Cameron: she’s a virgo, has exclusively lisa frank stationery. so a lot of it.

72. Route 66 Ken

“Art is so cool. I’m really into computer graphics. This university has great classes. Got my laptop with me wherever I go. Check out the design on my screen. Can’t wait to meet Barbie after class and show her what our newest project is.”
– The Box For This Doll

71. Rappin’ Rockin’ Ken

Jenna: yikes
Riese: yeah
Dufrau: oh no

Riese:

Dufrau: Everybody besides Ken here is Saved By the Bell, but Ken has not been saved at all

70. Totally Hair Ken

Molly: She looks like Bette Porter took her out to an opera one time in the 1990s

69. Concert Date Ken

Did you live in the suburbs in 2002 and listen to a lot of Newfound Glory? Congratulations, this is your ex-girlfriend. She’s got everything for a perfect date, including bleached tips!

68. Ken Sporty Fashionista

Dufrau: i just really don’t like this one

67. Moda Jeans Ken

Cameron: I think I saw her at the big gay block party ohio straddlers hosted last year
Molly: I like this Canadian Tuxedo
Dufrau: she looks like she would be a good baker. that’s just a feeling i get. good cookies and lots of em.
Cameron: She’d def welcome you to the neighborhood with a jell-o creation. maybe a casserole.

66. Pop Life Ken

Stef: this ken plays rhythm guitar in like maximo park, she isn’t the cute one in the band but she makes it work

65. Naf Naf Ken


Mey: I’m not sure what’s going on here
Cameron: what the heck is a nafnaf
Dufrau: i don’t know but i think this ken was probably in Go Fish

64. Great Shape Ken

Says she got her outfit at Goodwill, actually got it at Urban Outfitters

63. Ocean Friends Ken

Stef: stop it

62. Ken Model 15

Dufrau: She looks like somebody Jenny Schecter would have dated for an episode or two
Mey: I’d date her

61. Fashion Fever Ken

Cameron: are his jeans backwards
Dufrau: i probably wore this exact thing in high school tbh

60. Gianfranco Ken

Dufrau: she looks kind of mean and i like it.
and kind of elderly which is probably the real reason i like her.

59. Harley Davidson Ken

An obvious homage to Dykes on Bikes

58. Sporty Fashionista Ken

Stef: this ken’s dad is going to call back to speak to your manager and you are gonna be SO FIRED

57. Dance Magic Ken

Cameron: you’ll never outdress her. everyone stop trying.
Jenna: i would go with her to a fun 80s queer prom

56. Beach Time Ken

Beach Time Ken has had a really intense summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

55. Sun Sensation Ken

Stef: girl that mesh top
ken is a go-go dancer at hot rabbit but doesn’t like to talk about it
Jenna: sun sensation ken has definitely been awake for at least 36 hrs and she’s just running on cocaine and glitter

54. Doctor Ken

Even your grandmother who was only so-so about you dating women loves Dr. Ken. Like your whole family is so obsessed with Dr. Ken that they don’t even care that she’s not Jewish and they’re like, hang on to this one, don’t fuck it up! And you’re like YEAH I KNOW as if having a perfect girlfriend isn’t stressful enough already

53. Western Stampin’ Ken

Cameron: I’ve seen western stamping ken at like every drag king show i’ve ever been to.
Mey: Western ken is the rodeo queen (a real thing) at a gay rodeo
Molly: Western Ken looks like they just had a weird feeling when their friend touched their new belt buckle

52. Cheerleader Ken

Dufrau: She could be the director of a utopian society
Riese: or the director of a dystopian society
Cameron: That girl in middle school who could never have a social life because of ballet class? look at her now. She has an accent for some reason.

51. United Colors of Benneton Ken

Ken has a house in Saratoga mostly decorated with stuff she picked up in New Mexico when she lived there for a minute back in the ’80s. She’s very sweet and inquisitive and she has two large dogs she loves to pieces but you know what now that you mention it, she never really liked camping as much as the other girls did. Another love would be women’s music, of course.

50. Photo Student Ken / Photographer Ken & Her Golden Retriever

At first she gave it a whirl because why not, she’s pretty good at Instagram?

Look at her now!

Her hair is so long and her dog has a fanny pack!

49. Art Director Ken

“You are cordially invited to the world premiere of Modern Circle Production Company’s newest movie, Love in the City of Angels.”
– The back of this doll box

Art Director Ken is an asshole to everybody except you and her entire apartment is white and spotless even though she has a dog. She takes you to cool events. You have a crush on her dog-walker but the dog-walker is apparently straight, which is problematic and offensive.

48. Victory Dance Ken

Valerie: She started an all-female Warblers in protest of the original and they only sing songs made famous by men but they don’t change the pronouns

47. Wedding Day Ken

Ken is so excited that she finally convinced Alan to let her wear a suit instead of a dress to Midge and Alan’s wedding!

46. Earring Magic Ken

Dufrau: She was the bouncer at a Boston dyke night club when i was 22

45. Cool Lookin’ Ken

So truly this is me in 1994 wearing my Dad’s shirt from Structure and you bet your ass I’m wearing full-on boxer shorts underneath those GapKids khakis. I also have a pair of Joe Boxer underpants underneath the boxer shorts because I love layers and large telephones.

44. Skate Date Ken

Molly: DO SKATE DATE’S PANTS ZIP OFF AT THE KNEE
because that’s all lesbians i know

43. All-Star Ken

Mey: This is Claire, Jasika Nicole’s wife

42. Horse Lovin’ Ken

Cameron: She’ll steal your heart and your cattle
Mey: I’d definitely marry her

41. Adventure Ken

Sarah: Adventure Ken is basically exactly what a baby dyke would wear and bring to a lez bar for the first time.
Cameron: Adventure Ken was in Tiger Cruise the DCOM
Mey: Tiger Cruise the September 11 military family one?
Cameron: yeah
idk it was on a big boat

40. In-Line Skating Ken

She goes by her Roller Derby name on Facebook because she doesn’t want her toxic stepfather to find her. She’s a really loyal friend and a downright incredible girlfriend and always puts safety first!

39. Movie Date Ken


Dufrau: ok this one is just me on laundry day

38. Sporty Ken Fashionista

Valerie: What are the 100 poses
That seems like too many poses
Riese: puppy eyes
all the poses are different ways of serving puppy eyes
Valerie: Ohh
Jenna: yeah she’s always the sensitive one when she and her friends pretend to be a boy band
Valerie: Blue steel

37. Stylin’ Stripes Ken (2017)

Cameron: you think she’s gonna tell you about how we live in a post-gender, post-racial society but she surprises you by being super woke & you’re totally disarmed & you kind of hate yourself for it

36. Busy Ken With Holdin’ Hands!

Stef: same
Molly: SHE’S GOT HOLDIN’ HANDS
Stef: you can tell she’s genuine bc she has that sticker on her hip that says GENUINE
Molly: I love the cinch belt
Dufrau: She seems very attentive
Stef: Bringing you sodas
putting on some mood music
even answering your phone
Molly: “hey babe i saw your twitter rants today and picked up some calming lavender bath bombs”
Stef: she can’t be that busy
Molly: i don’t know how she does it
maybe we can have it all

35. Color Blocked Cool Ken (2017)

Cameron: i’d wear that.
Riese: yeah because this doll is you
Cameron: you might be right
Jenna: honestly i’d wear at least 75% of these outfits
Dufrau: yeah this is nice

34. Ken Fashionista Checkered Shirt

Stef: i think Deanne Smith owns this exact outfit
how does her hair even make that shape
Jenna: fucking dapper ken is wearing another outfit of mine what the fuck
step OFF, ken

33. Vintage Ken Doll With Matte Hair

Ken just got to Los Angeles from Missouri and before moving had really only ever hooked up with straight girls (there was like this whole THING in high school). She isn’t looking for a relationship, but she keeps falling in love with incredible women / making out with strangers at The Abbey / not knowing what to do with all these new feelings

32. Fashionista Ken Cutie

Dufrau: She dated two of my best friends sophomore year of college and ive never forgiven her for her behavior
Sarah: Cutie Fashionista Ken is the first time you get a dyke spike after listening to Viz by Le Tigre
Cameron: Cutie Fashionista Ken kept trying to be the Shane of the friend group

31. Sweet Talking Ken

Cameron: The actual Shane of the friend group & everyone’s mad about it
Dufrau: i think sweet talking ken looks like she used to be more buttoned up but then Shane gave her a makeover

30. Glitter Beach Barbie Ken

This is a lesbian who usually dresses on the masc side but always femmes it up for a thematic dance.

29. Tennis Stars Ken

Ken really oversold her experience with tennis on her first date with Barbie, which came back to haunt her five months later when it was time to go play tennis with Barbie’s parents, who were skeptical about Ken since Barbie has blown through so many girlfriends lately. Good news: Ken turned out to be really great at tennis, and you know how it goes: doubles, singles… they’re the champs!

28. Free-Moving Ken 

It’s cool it’s not like they were soulmates! Ken’s fine. Ken’s totally gonna be fine.

27. Red White ‘n Wild Ken

Cameron: based on cynthia nixon’s wife’s tie at the tonys, i think she’d wear that coat
Alaina: rojo caliente the love of my life

26. Hip Hoodie Ken

Jenna: she likes to cuddle
Dufrau: she has a great haircut

25. Camp Ken

This is the blonde version of my ex-girlfriend, Marni, the co-director of A-Camp and an outdoor enthusiast.

24. Video Game Hero Barbie

Dufrau: Guy Fieri?
Mey: No that’s rainbow dash the lesbian pony from my little pony

23. Moschino® Barbie® and Ken®

Look me in the eyes and tell me this is not Nats Getty and Gigi Gorgeous.

22. The New Look Ken

This is what your ex wears when she drives by your house on her way home from work just to see if you’re around

21. Rainbow Prince Ken

Cameron: Well you can’t prove that she WASN’T a unicorn in a past life
Dufrau: She hosts a children’s show but adults watch because she is so soothing

20. Talking Busy Ken

Ken talks! She talks all the time! That’s been a big thing in your relationship, is both of you learning how to overcome your fucked up childhoods and communicate openly about your emotions so things don’t get bottled up. Ken’s having a tougher time accessing her emotions, but she will definitely talk about the things we do! Here’s what Ken will say:

  •  I’ll bring my guitar to the party.
  • Help me pack for my vacation.
  • Have you heard Barbie’s new records?
  • Come on, let’s dance.
  • Hi, this is Ken (as if he was speaking on the phone).
  • Barbie’s a great cook.

19. Beachy Tropical Shirt Ken (2017)

Cameron: this is the outfit my friend wore to her bachelorette party. i’m not joking.
Dufrau: this is when you have a friend who is cuter than you and you’re just like “how the fuck??”

18. Preppy Check Ken (2017)

Jenna: gd i would also wear that one
ugh
Cameron: dressing just patriotically enough not to be called out at the family 4th of july cookout

17. Barbie & Friends

Ken is poly and has “fun” doing “things” with her “friends.” Look how happy she is!

16. Hyped On Stripes Ken (2017)

Cameron: this is just every summer gay.
Dufrau: this is Jenna Lykes except blonde. A COMPLIMENT I PROMISE.

15. Cali Cool Ken (2017)

Cameron: also every summer gay
Jenna: I feel like cali-cool said she would call you back, but she definitely didn’t call you back. And even though you didn’t really WANT her to call you back, it’s the principle of the thing.

14. Checked Style Fashionista Ken (2017)

DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT

13. Classic Cool Ken (2017)


Jenna: oh man, she’s very hot
Dufrau: hot
Jenna: having some feelings about a doll rn
Cameron: she helped me find a book i was looking for a gender studies research paper & suggested something better. i revised my thesis.
then changed my major to joan.

12. Art Director Ken

Art Director Ken #2 is also an asshole but you deal with it ’cause she always gets bottle service for the table and has lots of stories about Closeted Power Lesbian parties in Palm Springs that happened in the late ’80s / early ’90s and she’s your only source regarding the possibility of Jada Pinkett-Smith being bisexual

11. Camo Comeback Ken

Cameron: She lost her snapback on a rollercoaster at Universal Studios.
Will not let you forget it

10. Big Brother Ken

Mey: Big brother ken is def a hot lesbian mom
Jenna: yeah, and she also owns a subaru
Mey: She ignores Sarah Pfefferman at PTA meetings

9. Fashionista Cutie Ken

Jenna: fashionista ken just came out
Dufrau: I think almost everybody has been this ken at some point

8. Cactus Cooler Ken (2017)


This outfit cost $400

7. Mermaid Ken

Mey: Based on the hair and necklace I’d say Mermaid Ken is a lesbian mermaid who is wearing a magical necklace that makes her human but bc magic is tricky, also a dude and she won’t turn into a woman until she kisses a girl or figures out she can just be trans.

6. Chill In Check Ken (2017)

So this is Present-Day Allison from the U.S. National Tour of Fun Home: The Musical.

5. Plaid on Point Ken (2017)

Alaina: This is a peak day two of A-Camp look when everyone wants to show off just how cute and queer they are so they wear their new wildfang button up AND wear hiking boots.

4. Barbie Dreamhouse Ken

Molly: oh god i’m dressed like barbie dreamhouse ken rn

I asked for pictorial proof of this situation, and she delivered:

3. Distressed Denim Ken (2017)

Dufrau: this one is just true. everybody is wearing that exact shirt right now.
Jenna: @dufrau I *am* wearing that shirt and that hair.

Ta-Da:

2. Ken Fashionistas Doll in Black & White (2017)

Like so many of you, I noticed that there is a Ken doll for every single one of my exes (who, let’s be real, might also be your exes). But what I wasn’t prepared for was a Ken doll that looks exactly like my PRESENT girlfriend. Wow! Good job Mattel!

my girlfriend // the doll version of my girlfriend

1. Super Stripes Ken (2017)

Alaina: “Did they consult Brittani Nichols for this doll? Because this doll is Brittani Nichols.”

Brittani Nichols is definitely somebody’s ex-girlfriend, and is also a celesbian icon. Therefore, this doll is the #1 Most Lesbian Doll on the list. Congratulations!

Please show us your Ken pics:  We Are All Lesbian Ken: Send Us Your Photos For A Community Gallery

Why I’m Saying No To Playing (and Attending) NYC Pride™ This Year

Back in 2014, I wrote a piece about my disillusionment with New York City Pride. If you’d like to read it, you can find it here, but the gist of it is that NYC Pride – not the month, but the series of events that have been trademarked by the organization Heritage of Pride as the “official” NYC Pride™ (I’m not joking — although this is so misguided that it could be a parody — they have actually trademarked, and litigated over, the phrase “NYC Pride,”) has become a corporatized, de-politicized, inaccessible and unrepresentative mess of an event and it depresses me so I started going to the beach instead.

Well, I started going to the beach and I started performing at Everyone is Gay’s annual All-Ages Pride Event. The EIG event (full disclosure: organized by my friend Kristin Russo), is a sober space and a welcome alternative to corporate Pride events whose focus on alcohol make them less accessible to young people, even if the events themselves aren’t explicitly 21+. The EIG event is also historically hosted in independent New York City spaces who equally benefit from the partnership, namely: Bluestockings (a feminist bookstore) and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe (a volunteer-staffed bookstore/cafe that funnels 100% of their profits to Housing Works — an organization specifically dedicated to community advocacy and services regarding homelessness and HIV/AIDS).

Despite this party being a grassroots event, its organizers still pass the hat for its performers and, even when the financial benefit is minimal, they make us feel valued. Kristin has reached out to NYC Pride for support many times over the years, proposing ideas for collaboration and asking to be listed in official materials. Each time she has been ignored, turned down, or asked for money. Remember this, I’m going to circle back to it later.

As for the state of the larger, “official” NYC PRIDE, it saddened me, but I resigned myself to it. “They can have their pride and I can have mine,” I thought. It’s a meaningful space for a lot of people, maybe I’m just not one of them anymore. Perhaps I’d just outgrown it. Perhaps Pride just wasn’t meant to represent me any longer. I’d somewhat made my peace with it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when last month I received an email from Heritage of Pride, described in the email as a “non-profit, volunteer run organization,” asking me to perform at their Pridefest event which they noted is attended annually by “upwards of 350,000+ people!”

I was not optimistic, but cautiously considered that this could be a good thing. Maybe they want to represent and make space for people like me after all. Maybe they’re trying to reach out to more trans people and therefore specifically want a queer band, fronted by a non-binary person, on the bill. That’s cool! I’d be psyched to be a part of that.

The email promised “180+ booths and vendors” and a “full day of performances by LGBT performers.” Okay, also very cool!  They call it “a community event.” Still, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it did: “I am hoping to fill the stage with artists who are willing to donate 20 minute sets.”

Perhaps I wouldn’t have thought twice about this were I not aware of NYC Pride’s corporate affiliations, or the fact that requests like this are a common method of exploitation within the music industry. But I am. Asking artists to play for “exposure” — that is, to play for free — is a well-known and nefarious practice. Often, promoters levy events of a large magnitude or a national headliner as justification and claim there is “no budget” for support bands.

Sure, many musicians make exceptions to the “not playing for free” rule: for music industry showcases, for established press/marketing machines like SXSW (which at least gives performers passes to the otherwise very expensive event), for benefit shows, for our friends and personal communities, for our favorite bands in the world, and mostly, before we know any better. Those are the exceptions. Corporate sponsored parties for almost half a million people are not exceptions.

“But Mal!” you say, “It’s a community event! It’s a non-profit with a huge staff of volunteers! It’s for LGBTQ people! Representation!” Okay, then you’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t immediately tell them to f*ck off. Instead, I told them I’d donate my performance, but I’d at least need a small stipend to pay my band. I value my band members and their time and energy. I recognize they are making livings, that they could take other gigs that day and I won’t ask them to play an event for “exposure.” This, I was told, was not in the budget. Nothing was in the budget. “There is no stipend to pay musicians.”

Yet, when I asked if the headliner for the event, famed country singer, and cisgender straight woman, LeAnn Rimes is “donating” her set, I received no response. Because of course she isn’t (although she’s probably one of the few people on a line-up like this who could afford to). Because that would be ludicrous and we all know it. They know they have to pay her. They also have to pay for the stage and the lights and the sound system and security and advertising and every other minute detail that an event of this magnitude requires. In fact, according to their financial records, publicly accessible on guidestar.com, Heritage of Pride paid over $90k just for advertising in 2014, and grossed over $2 million in program revenue, contributions and grants.

When I brought this piece to Autostraddle, they reached out to Heritage of Pride to get more information on their financial situation and their choice not to pay local performers. Many Pride celebrations worldwide have been cancelled due to lack of funding, but 2013/2014 tax records suggest HOP is doing quite well, even turning out an extra $500k-$600k in revenue at year’s end, leading to a $1.2 million surplus at the end of their last publicly available tax form’s year. As a non-profit, its employees are paid reasonable salaries for their positions and experience, and nobody is pocketing the additional revenue. So what’s up?

According to James Fallarino, Media Director of NYC Pride, HOP is directed through their membership to set aside a portion of proceeds for Stonewall 50 / WorldPride 2019 NYC because “as the recent controversy surrounding the cancellation of World OutGames Miami 2017 has shown, careful non-profit financial planning is crucial to international LGBTQ events such as ours.” They also maintain reserve funds to get started on next year’s planning before sponsorship money comes in.

Autostraddle echoed my question about if LeAnn Rimes was being paid for her set and were told that NYC Pride “does not discuss specific agreements that we have in place with our event talent.” Which is essentially just corporate event publicity speak for “yes, obviously,” but let’s break it down further, just so we’re clear:

Reportedly, at least 16 musicians have agreed to “donate” sets to this year’s pridefest celebration. LeAnn Rimes is typically paid $50k-$75k per appearance. Although many musicians accept lower fees for Pride events specifically, the bottom line is that New York City Pride is asking local LGBTQ artists to donate their labor to their massive event, while still presumably paying many thousands of dollars to a straight celebrity to headline it.

Regardless of whatever diplomatic PR response HOP gave to Autostraddle, the issue remains: NYC Pride generates too much revenue to claim they can’t afford a few thousand more for their roster of LGBTQ performers who’d gladly show up for a few hundred bucks or less.

The truth is that when an event like this tells you there is “no budget” to pay the artists, what they are really saying is “we decided to use our budget elsewhere because we know we can get you or someone like you to do this for free.” Which is exploitative, or at least opportunistic. To try to justify it, or frame it in any other context, especially, for example, as a donation to a queer non-profit organization’s community event, is disingenuous.

In my own exchange with HOP, I asked if any corporations sponsored this event and I was told, “there is a corporate presence but no corporate sponsor.” Which is, again, purposefully evasive gibberish, but to be fair, not technically a lie, because according to Heritage of Pride’s website, they don’t have ONE sponsor for this week of events: they have 36. The “presenting sponsor” is T-Mobile. Cool.

When I pushed back, I was told that the stage was an “opportunity for up and coming local, queer talent! […] Most artists who take the stage at Pridefest are HONORED to donate their performance.”

I’m sure that’s true. I would have been one of them at one point in my life. It doesn’t make what they’re doing any less exploitative. It doesn’t mean they’re saving some dollars on the backs of local queer artists any less. Sure, it’s an opportunity. It’s also an opportunity for somebody who doesn’t know any better, or doesn’t believe they deserve fair compensation, to be taken advantage of.

Autostraddle received the same justification when they reached out:

“For many people Indy and Queer artists seeking to perform on the PrideFest stage, that crowd size, and the opportunity to perform at an iconic event like PrideFest in NYC, is more valuable than an appearance fee. We also respect that for some performers, an appearance fee is necessary, and wish them success in securing bookings that work for them.”

Let’s not pretend this is an either/or position for Heritage of Pride. Putting money into the hands of LGBTQ performers should be a goal of any organization specifically dedicated to promoting LGBTQ Pride. A non-profit solely dedicated to promoting LGBTQ+ Pride, let alone one of the few LGBTQ+ non-profits or for-profit companies that are actually succeeding financially, should relish the opportunity to put that money back into their community. It’s absurd that covering travel expenses and paying artists and contributors whatever they can is a priority for Autostraddle/A-Camp and Everyone is Gay — companies that are barely surviving — but not for Heritage of Pride.

What about their claim that exposure is more valuable than actual compensation? Aside from the fact that this is, as previously stated, a point of contention in most music spaces, let alone events that claim to foster community (just google “no, I won’t play for exposure” and you’ll get dozens of articles to sort through), it’s also rarely successful. Sometimes, “exposure gigs” are worth it, but it’s hardly a sure thing that any indie artist would gain new fans at a chaotic and multi-genre event like this.

“I can’t recall one gig where they promised exposure and it was like, ‘Oh god, it worked out’,” Out singer-songwriter Eric Himan, who has played multiple Prides, told The Washington Blade in 2015.

In that same piece, Pittsburgh Pride Producer Gary Van Horn said this about paying Melissa Etheridge, to play their celebration: “There is a thought process out there that they should be doing this for free since it’s a non-profit Pride event, but this is their job. This is how they pay their bills, they go and perform.”

My primary issues with Heritage of Pride’s exposure pitch are as follows:

First, a lack of transparency. If you’re paying Leann Rimes $25k-$75k and asking everybody else to “donate” a set, don’t pitch me like you’re asking everybody to donate.

Second, the incredible disparity between the top and the bottom. One person is presumably being compensated at levels equivalent to what many of us make in an entire year (if we’re lucky: let’s be honest, most of us earn far less than LeAnn Rimes’ appearance fee), while the rest of us are told “we don’t have any money, we can’t afford to pay you.” Then there’s the larger system of oppression and value through which an LGBTQ group that purports to “celebrate” our LGBTQ history is assigning greatest value to a cis white straight person.

Third, the tone of their pitch — the implication that they hold the value, and we are lucky to be solicited. Actually, involving this community DOES benefit Pride, and just because some of us are hungry for representation and affirmation doesn’t mean Pride shouldn’t value us, or act like they’re the ones doing us a favor. Because if all of us walked away from this, what would they have? They would have a LeAnn Rimes concert with a rainbow on it.

Still, I would’ve signed on to be one of the performers at Pridefest back when I knew a little less about the industry. In fact, I have played and and would continue to play at many smaller-budget regional prides for free or cheap.

Technically, PrideFest has billed itself as a non-ticketed, community space, and they want our help to create a free space where the community can gather, right?

Well, let’s revisit the independent youth party thrown annually by “Everyone Is Gay,” which NYC Pride has had zero interest in supporting or acknowledging. This year, NYC Pride has decided to throw its own, very first, NYC Youth Pride, sponsored by Target. Everyone is Gay’s annual event takes place the same time and date every year. I’ll give you one guess as to the exact day and time our gay “corporate-affiliated but not corporate sponsored” overlords decided to throw theirs.

The only option available for EIG to be officially involved in or listed by NYC Pride remains as it has always been: to pay $895 to table at Pride (plus $160 for the tent, table and chairs) or to buy ad space from NYC Pride. Even non-profits are charged $500-$600 to table at Pride.

It is encouraging to see that in spite of essentially co-opting a grassroots youth event, NYC Pride is collaborating with Dapper Q on a fashion show for NYC Youth Pride. Full disclosure, I’m a DapperQ fan, and I’m sure their show will be a really impressive event that will change lives. But again, never get your hopes up that NYC Pride(™) is working on behalf of community values of their own volition. According to Anita of Dapper Q, Heritage of Pride had been unresponsive for years and the organization that finally coordinated this collaboration between DapperQ and NYC Pride was never Heritage of Pride, it was Target:

“Target pulled us in after years of approaching NYC Pride with no answer […] we were unaware that [NYC PRIDE] had scheduled their event to conflict with [Everyone is Gay] […] we are VERY grateful for Target’s support and excited that the youth models will be receiving outfits courtesy of their generosity.”

This is great, truly. I’ll tell you what sucks: it sucks that it takes a corporate partner for Heritage of Pride to pay attention to organizations that have been doing community work for years (kudos to Target for doing more to uplift the community than the NON-PROFIT LGBTQ org, by the way). It sucks that many community members will have to choose between this event and the EIG party. It sucks that NYC Pride has no interest in collaborating with already existing community events and thus pits them against each other.

But back to the original issue at hand, which is one of compensation and ethics. Ultimately, my question is this: is this year’s NYC Pride somehow different than other events seeking to exploit artists by asking them to play for “exposure”? Is this different than the bars and music festivals and promoters that aren’t specifically catering to the queer community that continually solicit us?  To which I would answer: yes, it is different because it is worse.

It is worse because of the extra slap in the face that is the element of guilt laden on the queer person you are reaching out to by insisting that they “donate” their work in service to their community. It is worse because NYC pride continues to pretend this is a LGBTQ+ “community” event while not adequately valuing its LGBTQ+ community members. It is worse because this is the rule, not the exception, with LGBTQ+ pride events.

It is worse because touting the size and the reach of this event (350,000 annually) in order to dangle an exposure carrot, while telling artists there is “no budget” to pay them, communicates that you value everything else about that event before them.

It is worse because it purports to be better. It is worse because I shouldn’t have to choose between being a representative to queer youth at an event for my community and performing for free for an enormous audience, brought in by the enormous advertising budget supplied by the enormous corporations supporting Pride.

LGBTQ+ people are often asked to perform labor for free, and we often do, because it is important and vital community work. But that work should be qualified as volunteer work or a true donation of services that ultimately feeds our community, not as a trade for some elusive non-monetary reward that doesn’t actually exist for an organization with a sizeable and vaguely purposed annual net surplus. If the point of pride events is to benefit the LGBTQ+ community, then what better place for the corporate money to go than into the pockets of queer artists and back into sustaining our community spaces and local organizations throughout the rest of the year?

However, ultimately, this whole situation is completely appropriate and truly epitomizes what NYC Pride has become. What better way to represent the LGBTQ+ community and its struggle than by celebrating a straight celebrity who is cool with us (see: “ally”)  at the expense of local queer artists within the context of a grandiose event sponsored by 36 corporations? Or to edge out a grassroots organization’s Youth Pride event after years of ignoring them or soliciting them for advertising dollars? Heaven help us. I can think of a few better ways, but I guess in the meantime I’ll take my queer ass to the beach for yet another year.

The Everyone is Gay All-Ages Pride Party will take place at the Housing Works Bookstore on 6/24 from 2-4pm, of course, which this year is co-hosted by Kristin and Gabby Rivera, and will feature performances by Be Steadwell, Julia Weldon, and the slam team from Urban Word NYC.

I Watched Lesbian Classic “Claire of the Moon” and Can Somebody Come Help Me Up

I hope everyone’s recovered from our last review of Bar Girls. Not since Better Than Chocolate – a mere four movies ago – have we experienced such a cinematic display of violence and co-dependency. I was worried I might have lost you.

Before starting these reviews I like to do a quick scan of what I’m getting myself into so I know whether or not I can watch it with a friend or if I need to do it by myself because I’ve factored in the amount of time I’ll spend pausing the movie to take desperation jogs around the house. I knew based on your preliminary movie suggestions and cautions that this was not an activity I needed to do for Claire of the Moon. Nicole Conn’s 1992 debut would be a solo experience.

Still, I wanted to know what it was about. In doing so I discovered that Claire of the Moon had more pre-viewing red flags than any movie I’d done in this series. The poster for the movie looked like if a romance novel was a person going through a divorce and engaging in a “me” period. One summary plainly stated, “Female authors gather at a small northern coastal retreat to work on their writing skills.” The most promising viewing option available seemed to be watching the movie on youtube in minute and a half increments. More than one video link titled the movie “Claire the Moon.” Things were not looking great.

Then this is the image that greeted me once the page loaded:

After watching this film, same.

This is a difficult start. We’ve got shots of early 90s interior design fading in and out of a man and a woman having sex on the carpeted floor. Also, the only thing you can hear is very dramatic and very loud piano music. We’re talking soap opera opening credits, “Alexa, volume 11,” kind of stuff.

This is Claire. She looks troubled by the fact that she’s just had sex with someone who wanted to bring the comforter out into the living room to do so. Fair. She looks over her writing retreat acceptance letter once last time before heading out on the road.

Upon arriving at the retreat and entering her assigned cabin, she’s greeted by two women fully in pantsuits in the middle of the day at, again, a cabin. One of them is Noel, or Dr. Benedict. She’ll be Claire’s roommate. For no reason, the screen goes black in the middle of a conversation. Oh, okay, that scene’s over? Got it.

Now we’re at what I think is the writer’s retreat opening night social and everyone is for sure serving in this scene. Two women look as though they’re in the throes of a religious cult gone awry and are trying their best to signal for help through their eyes. There’s a woman bold in blue: Tara O’Hara from the writah’s con-ven-shun in Atlantuh, Georgia. Do you get it. Tara’s accent is high concept. (The concept is “be very off the mark but overcommit.”) Everyone loves Claire’s work and people are throwing around the word “celebrity.” When Noel walks past the group, because she has no intention of being social, Tara calls her, “Benedict, Dr. of Love,” and also, confusingly, a eunuch. Claire’s like, “…I don’t think you’re using that properly,” and Tara’s like, “Aren’t I?” One thing is clear about what we’re supposed to be knowing about Noel: she gay.

Also gay? The retreat director, Maggie. Look at this magnificent homosexual. Her orientation meeting is 95% telling people where the after-hours parties are (her place). After the meeting Claire goes back to her room to rock out to some tunes.

Noel comes in and is like, “Hey, I’m uptight and still in my pantsuit, can you keep it down?” and Claire’s like, “No problem, I’m the relaxed one here.” The next two scenes go the same way, which is Claire is doing something (grinding coffee in the morning, smoking two cigarettes at the same time inside) that bothers Noel. Look at this unlikely duo who keep finding themselves literally in the same position:  

It’s not just Claire’s routines that get to Noel – it seems to annoy Noel that Claire is straight. And if I’m reading this movie correctly, it’s because Noel is a professor who’s written books on lesbian theory and also critiquing the concepts of heterosexuality is her life’s greatest… I wouldn’t say joy, because it doesn’t seem Noel is capable of that sort of emotion, but passion. It’s Noel’s greatest passion.

When Noel isn’t silently judging Claire and Claire isn’t intentionally provoking Noel, they spend their time in agonizing silent theater. Not once has one of them entered a room and casually said “hi” to the other. Instead, it’s things like Claire staring out the window with her back to Noel saying things like, “It’s difficult isn’t it? Sharing paradise with a stranger.”

While Claire goes on a date with a man who’s like, “Ah, yes, astrology,” everyone else is back at the retreat talking about what they’re writing. One woman who claims to be “just a housewife” shares her idea for a book about a planet where men have to give birth in order to be eligible for an alpha society. I’m giving it the green light!!! And now, just as I’d hoped, Tara begins to read her straight erotica in a Southern accent that sounds like it’s gone through Borat’s “my wife” filter.

There’s another run-in between Noel and Claire the next morning when Claire returns from her sexcapade. They agree that they need to figure this whole cohabitation thing out. You do you and I’ll do me, they decide, except what a wacky time they have attempting it! They keep bumping into each other, reaching for the same thing at the same time, and finding each other’s personal items where they shouldn’t be! During this goof-em-up montage there’s one rogue scene where – as we all do standing in the kitchen with our roommate – Claire takes off her shirt. As a dare? It’s unclear.

Later, Claire goes into Noel’s room to “look out the window” where the curtains are drawn. Naturally. Next to her hangs a stunning painting of a naked woman marching. Then, slowly – so slowly that I have time to anticipate what she might be going to do and say “DON’T” out loud – she does this:

Hahahaha, y’all, she didn’t even start by run her fingers along the side of the painting to create the illusion that she was admiring the brushstrokes, she went IMMEDIATELY there. Noel catches her mid-act and says off screen, “She was a client.” Rather than scream, exit via the nearest window, and peel out of the driveway as you would think someone might do after someone else catches them at the exact moment of them HOLDING A PAINTING’S BOOB, Claire turns around to face Noel. This opens up a direct line of communication between the two. Finally! “Why didn’t you just say all I had to do was go in your room and inappropriately touch your painting (that you brought with you to a retreat??)?”

Here’s the brass tacks of it: Claire’s a free spirit who’s looking for a good time wherever she can find it. She’s not homophobic and doesn’t care that Noel’s a lesbian. And Noel? Noel’s gotta be herself no matter what. She’s for sure projecting some of her insecurities onto Claire but doesn’t use those words outright! Success!

To celebrate, they go to the local bar. There, Claire points out Noel’s guarded exterior and usurps the role of love doctor. “All I’m saying is that no one is worth losing your joie de vivre over.”

Now the rest of the girls are here and they start talking dick sizes. Noel’s face is my face when this happens:

The next morning Claire gets another read on Noel. “You hate men.” Noel doesn’t deny this and explains that’s it’s probably a combination of past relationships, genetics, and conditioning. This develops into a conversation about how Noel knew she was gay. Noel tells a very dramatic story about falling in love with a woman who was a client of hers (Noel is also a therapist?) who eventually got married to a man. Now it’s Claire’s turn to get to the source of all her pain – her abusive father.

Then we cut to a wide shot of me on a rock in the middle of the ocean thinking about all of my life’s choices that’ve lead me to watching this movie that is so full of processing and theory that it feels like you’re watching an online female sexuality course for a test.

Now we’re having a conversation about intimacy versus sex. What is this thing where lesbian filmmakers insert a sort of oral history of known conversations into all of their films? “Yes, my friends and I have had that same discussion and seeing that reflected back to me on screen was worth the price of admission alone.” This general conversation becomes a coded one meant to represent Claire and Noel’s reservations about each other. Noel says women who sleep with men will never know real intimacy because they don’t speak the same language. Claire says, “Oh, so real intimacy is only reserved for dykes?” and Noel’s like, “…Mmmyeah.” This prompts Claire to hastily exit the room.

The next morning Noel’s like, “Heyyyy sorry about sort of erasing you as a real person with their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences last night.” Claire accepts Noel’s apology and suggests continuing this never-ending conversation at the bar.

There they dive back in by talking about the “butch/femme thing,” as Claire puts it. Then it’s a discussion about how lesbians really have sex and if lesbians don’t have penis envy why are they so attached to their dildos? HELP ME. For a movie that uses the phrase “joie de vivre”, it sure does a great job at whack-a-mole-ing every peak of sunlight that might attempt to shine through.

Now in a daydream, a distraught Claire enters Noel’s room. They exchange looks and move towards/away from each other like they’re doing the imaginary rope exercise between dancers. Then Claire bows into Noel, which I hope inspired a whole generation of curious “straight” women into thinking that that’s what you have to do before having sex with a lesbian.

Now it’s a group discussion about the rigid boundaries straight women place on themselves. Maggie demonstrates this with a hugging exercise. She has two straight women in the room hug, and when they prove her point by doing so with the chemistry of a child being made to hug their grandmother after being given a disappointing gift, Maggie becomes the “move, I’m gay” meme to show them how you really do it. Look at that thing. That’s a full body embrace if I’ve ever seen one. Everyone in the room starts to argue, but I have no idea about what, and Maggie ends the conversation by saying, “When you eat pussy, you eat pussy.” You have to admit she has a point.

The next day Claire sits in front of the mirror staring at herself for a good two minutes, probably contemplating how exhausting every conversation she’s had in the past 24 hours has been. Then I think she gets turned on by her own reflection because she starts to undo her blouse? About four buttons down, Noel walks in. Once again, instead of bailing on this incredibly embarrassing situation, Claire engages in conversation. Then they have a weird moment where Noel takes Claire’s seat and Clair begins to tousle Noel’s hair while they both watch along in the mirror. Who are they.

Mid hair play it’s revealed that they’re both bored. They decide on an activity that consists of tequila, backgammon, and revealing each other’s fantasies to each other. Honestly? Hot.

We’re first treated to Claire’s fantasy in slow-mo. Her fantasy seems to be to resting her hand on a man’s thigh for a minute and a half in the middle of a empty laser tag room. Now it’s Noel’s turn. “It’s a restaurant. It starts with the eyes. Always the eyes.” Then sex in the bathroom.

It’s a look, I’ll give Noel that.

Okay, one of the straight women at the retreat finds out that her husband is leaving her and so they all decide to get tequila drunk. Finally, a break. Oh, but of course the one scene that might give us some relief has gone on entirely too long and has now doubled back as something you have to force yourself to get through. I’ve watched an entire Celine Dion video in the background and it’s still going.

Now Claire and Noel are back at their place talking about the lesbian vampire allegory. OH MY GOD JUST MAKE OUT AND BE DONE WITH IT.

Now Claire is playing the piano – something that’s transitioned most of the scenes in this movie for some reason, by the way –  to burn off some sexual frustration. Claire is reminded of her piano teacher when Noel insists that her playing is “so her,” because Claire’s teacher used to say, “You must connect keys, Claire. Make the music ‘you’. The notes are your blood. The music is your heart.” Would Claire’s teacher also agree that if god is a DJ and life is the dance floor, love is the rhythm and we are the music?

Then Noel says, “Play ‘Claire de la Lune,'” in the same way that Rose asks Jack to paint her like one of his French girls. This causes Claire to run away and now she’s in the ocean crying?

Then Claire runs around on the beach contemplating bisexuality. Who among us.

Suddenly, Noel appears behind a rock on the beach. They start to sort of cry on each other’s faces before – finally – making out. This was all so worth it.

Now they’re having slow-mo sex back at their place.

I’d like to point out that this sex scene is five minutes before the movie ends, and I think I figured out why. This movie has been so thoroughly committed to showcasing a textbook lesbian experience in addition to every single conversation people have ever had surrounding it, and so of course it had to end this way. Their climax is our climax. We came together.

Goodnight, Pookerdoodle, Katers, Martina, and… Penelope. Now can somebody please come help me up.

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In Conversation With Sarah Schulman: “They’re Being Taught That Control Is Freedom”

Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman’s Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair landed in my mailbox last winter, sent by the publisher, and I promptly shelved it, asserting that the last thing I needed in my life was somebody telling me that any abuse I’d personally experienced in my relationships or community was merely conflict. But Autostraddle readers kept recommending it, so in March, I picked it up. And couldn’t put it down.

Conflict Is Not Abuse is the 18th book published by lesbian activist Sarah Schulman — a novelist, playwright, AIDS historian and, currently, a distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the College of Staten Island. She is the co-founder of MIX: NY LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, the US Coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine, and the Co-Director of the ACT UP Oral History Project, having joined the organization in 1987 and been one of many lesbians who took on political, activist and care-taking work at the height of the AIDS crisis. In 1992, she was one of five co-founders of the legendary direct action organization Lesbian Avengers, responsible for planning the US’s first Dyke March, which took place in Washington DC in April 1993. Her published books include the novels After Delores (1989), Rat Bohemia (1993) and The Cosmopolitans (2016); non-fiction works Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences (2009), The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012) and Israel/Palestine and the Queer International (2012). Her novel People in Trouble (1990) was the uncredited inspiration for the musical RENT, a situation she chronicles in Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (1998). Awards under her belt include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Kessler Prize for Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies, a Stonewall Book Award and multiple Lambda nominations.

Conflict Is Not Abuse is a discussion of how inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability, and she traces this phenomenon as it applies from interpersonal relationships to global politics. For the latter, she looks specifically at HIV criminalization in Canada and the occupation of Palestine. The book opens with the example of the police officers who saw Michael Brown and Eric Garner as “threatening” when they were doing literally nothing, and how any kind of difference, resistance or anxiety can be seen as an attack when it’s not. The book has generated heaps of conversation online and off, is blurbed by bell hooks and Claudia Rankine, is the winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction and a nominee for a Lambda Literary Award.

Of course, it was the interpersonal and local community focused sections at the front that really drew me in, because I am basic like that. Her investigation of shunning and group dynamics, especially within groups heavily populated by those who’ve experienced personal trauma or inherited generational trauma, is particularly interesting from the perspective of a queer community organizer.

I became, quite quickly, obsessed. I sent copies to ten of my friends, and we eagerly texted each other snapshots of our favorite passages. Everybody connected to it (or didn’t) in their own way, based on our relative experiences with shunning, with re-examining the degrees to which we allow past trauma to impair present relationships and interrogating how the overstatement of harm has squashed so much potentially enlightening online discourse and torn so many queer communities apart.

See, since approximately early November, I’ve been questioning everything. How my friends and I treat each other, how my workplace operates, and most of all, how us queer feminist progressives handle ourselves. How do we communicate with each other, with our enemies, and with our potential allies? This has meant confronting material that used to scare me — because it seemed like too much, ’cause I was scared of what it’d make me have to confront within myself and what it would bring into focus about my work. It feels like we’ve hit a wall with callout culture and language policing and problematic-fave-destroying where we’re forced to acknowledge that a lot of how we do things just isn’t working. We’re not achieving consensus or winning politically, either.

Critical response to the book has been overwhelmingly positive or at least invigorated. The main line of criticism that’s come out against this book speaks to my initial reservation: my fear that Schulman would re-frame legitimate abuse as conflict. My read accounted for this discrepancy — I simply assumed experiences that I knew were straightforward abuse were not the types of experiences Schulman was asking us to re-name. But perhaps my own specific background enables this type of comfortable disassociation because the only people who’ve ever denied abuse I’ve experienced have been the me and the abuser — my friends, family and psychiatric professionals have generally been the ones to name it, not the ones to discredit it. (The police didn’t believe me either, but unfortunately that’s exactly what I expected from them, so.) That also has given me room to interrogate my own role in abusive situations without feeling like I have to accept shame or blame, too. Furthermore, the book itself does not seem to speak to abuse within families or parent-child relationships, which I believe exist on a different paradigm altogether.

This interview took place in March, but I’ve been mulling over this introduction ever since, as her ideas have continued percolating. I’ve doubled down on some and reconsidered others. For example, this book and Sarah’s other work and related materials have already profoundly impacted how I approach queer community-building here and at A-Camp. Namely, we’ve committed to deliberately pivoting away from punitive justice towards a more restorative model. We’ve pushed back against demands for further unilaterally-enforced rules and regulations as the best methods of ensuring safe and productive communities, and confronted how we ourselves demand state-level regulations when we should know, by now, to take uneven and biased enforcement into consideration before making such demands. Yes, often predators and abusers are simply that, and must be removed from a group to ensure group health, or required to seek professional psychological help in order to return. But we have an obligation to engage and de-escalate and restore, not to punish, whenever possible — and it’s possible a lot more often than we think. Often we are all clumsy animals, making hurtful mistakes, full of room for improvement. Moving forward in Trump’s America, it’s never been more important that we harness the empathy and understanding I’ve found very unique to queer women’s communities in order to build our own care-taking networks and institutions. We have to figure out how to take care of each other better. Nobody else will.

Engaging with Conflict Is Not Abuse jump-started a kind of re-entry, for me, into the world of ideas and theory, and to remembering the importance of engaging intellectually with broad-level interrogations of how we talk and operate. Even the process of considering and ultimately landing on disagreeing with an idea of Schulman’s strengthened my own understanding of my own convictions. On the internet, there’s not much room for nuance. Within social justice communities, there’s this sense that there are bad guys and good guys, and we’re the good guys, and it’s our job to inform the entirety of “good guys” the Right Way To Think and Act. Reading Schulman and other authors since has been enlightening ’cause there are, even within the queer feminist left, so many different approaches to things, and we should be able to engage with them and consider them and even disagree vehemently about them without resorting to shunning, lashing-out, taking material out of context and wielding it like a weapon, name-calling, massive overstatements of harm and projecting our anger at the world onto each other because well, underneath all that is a lot of love.

If you’ve not read Conflict Is Not Abuse but want some sense of it before reading this interview, I highly recommend reading this transcript of Schulman’s recent conversation with trans writer Morgan M Page on “Queer Suicidality, Conflict and Repair,” in which book-related concepts enter the conversation midway. But do read the book, it changed my life. Also, reading People in Trouble and then Stagestruck and thus finding out the real story behind RENT totally ruined my life, but that’s another article for another day, so.

This interview took place on the phone on March 21, 2017. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Riese: First of all, thanks for talking to me and thank you for this book — and for the six or seven books of yours I’ve now read in total, actually. I’ve bought Conflict Is Not Abuse now for about 15 people I work with, and as a fellow feminist Jewish lesbian writer who works in queer community building, it really articulated and brought into focus a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about for a long time —

Sarah: That’s great!

Riese: I know from reading other interviews that you’ve been surprised that most people wanted to talk about callout culture, which wasn’t your intention when writing the book, so I’m gonna try not to be too predictable in that regard.

One of the things that resonated with me from Conflict Is Not Abuse was your indictment of text-based communication as insufficient for true conflict resolution, which you talk about in terms of text and email. How do you see those kinds of conversations playing out in spaces like Facebook and post comments, and how does performativity fit in when these conversations are happening in public? What do you think the benefits and drawbacks are to having those kinds of conversations on social media?

Sarah: Well, the advantage of Facebook is that there’s a record. So like, if I say “the sky is blue!” and the other person says HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT THE SKY IS GREEN?!!!, I can actually show them that I said it was blue. So that’s a big advantage. But I think that there’s nothing better than actually talking to somebody, getting their affect, being able to go back and forth. It’s just a more sharing experience and it’s deeper and it’s more humanizing.

Riese: Do you think that when someone is having an argument on social media or on a website of some kind that the fact that they’re sort of being observed and watched by other people plays into how they handle conflict?

Sarah: No, weirdly.

Riese: Ha! I totally do, so that’s interesting.

Sarah: I think that people act like they’re not being observed.

Riese: So, you don’t think that people sometimes call people out because they think it makes them look a certain way?

Sarah: That may be… but if the other person was actually right in front of them and there were other people there as well, they might be a little more flexible. As you know, I ground the solution in other people, so that if somebody is escalating when they have an opportunity to make peace, hopefully the other people around them will help them negotiate and let them know that they’re not serving themselves or that they’re causing division. When the other people don’t do that — when they egg them on or they’re standing by passively — I call that “the negative group.” It’s a group that’s constructed through negative bonds.

Riese: What makes you choose sometimes to talk about things on Facebook as opposed to when you’re in front of people? Is it just the convenience?

Sarah: For example, today somebody posted that they were upset that mentors and teachers of theirs were favoring trans men over trans women. So I said, “Why don’t you just contact that person and ask them if you can talk to them?” And they were like, “No no no I could never do that.” I can understand that there’s a frustration that gets expressed by putting something on Facebook, but if it’s a way to avoid the responsibility of actually talking to someone, then it’s not necessarily a positive action.

Riese: I think some would argue that the trans woman in question shouldn’t have to do this work herself — that simply surviving consumes all the emotional energy she has and she might not have it in her to advocate against her own oppression, especially if in the past those conversations have been more disheartening than productive, or if she’s worried that speaking out could negatively impact these relationships she needs in order to progress academically? And obviously also time is a finite resource. How do we decide which of these conflicts are worth the time and emotional energy? Does venting, in and of itself, ever serve a purpose?

Sarah: In this case, the teachers were already supportive of trans men, but over-emphasizing them in relation to trans women, so it seemed to be a question of expanding their understandings. If the authority figure was hostile or negative it might be a different story. Also, the speaker described the people as “mentors” and that implies an intimate and positive relationship. It would be awful to give up on someone that we have shared with and learned from without first trying to speak to them directly.

Riese: Where do you think the instinct comes from to sort of vent instead of address something?

Sarah: Sara Ahmed talks about this in The Promise of Happiness, the one where she comes up with the idea of the feminist killjoy. She talks about how there’s this idea in entitled societies that people have the right to always be comfortable. But that’s actually not a right, because the only way you can always be comfortable is at other people’s expense. And that actually, we have a responsibility to be uncomfortable. The expectation that one should always be comfortable is an expectation of supremacy. It’s unreasonable, and it’s overly entitled.

Sometimes people don’t want to talk to other people because they would be uncomfortable, because they might have to rethink things about themselves or change, but it’s for the general good to rethink things and change. So I think that that’s not an appropriate expectation.

Riese: Do you think that when people are asking for safe space, criticizing its lack, or telling people how to make one, that what they’re getting at is a space that’s 100% comfortable?

Sarah: You’d have to look at the specifics. You can’t really generalize.

Riese: Okay, well, what do you think qualifies as a “safe space”? And is that something that we should really be looking for?

Sarah: It really depends on the situation. I mean, safety from violence, of course, is a completely desirable and necessary thing. But safety from criticism or safety from truth or safety from having to look at yourself? Those are negative desires that I think are detrimental and divisive.

Riese: With Autostraddle, we’ve started to experience this phenomenon where people that we don’t know reach out to us to let us know that someone who writes for us or works for us is a “known abuser” or was allegedly emotionally abusive in a past relationship. They demand that we remove the person from Autostraddle, that we don’t let them write anymore, that we eliminate them from our group, and if we don’t do that they’ll say that we don’t really care about safe spaces or queer community, or that we are complicit in abuse. We’re commanded to enact these extreme punishments against accused people who are being accused, again, by people we don’t know, and ordered that we should do so without interrogating any of their claims. Usually we don’t even know the accused person — like we’ve never met them in person. And it feels like this is part of a larger trend in queer and feminist circles —

Sarah: It’s even larger than that. This is a phenomenon that exists in the intimate as well as in the broader social and even in the geopolitical. It’s like when a government tells people to denounce people who are HIV+ under HIV criminalization or when the Israeli government builds a wall to keep out Palestinians. This wholesale group exclusion of a person based on an accusation that they are somehow dangerous without any opportunity for that person to describe why they think this charge is happening or how they are experiencing it, or for anyone to look at the order of events that produced this accusation or the history of the person accusing — I mean, this is the definition of injustice. I’m amazed at how often I’m asked to hurt people, you know? People are constantly saying, “why are you talking to her, why did you invite him, why are you working with them,” they want people to be hurt. This past fall in Montreal, I co-hosted a community town hall on trans and queer suicidality with Morgan Page, who is a trans woman writer from Montreal. One of the things that kept coming up is that when people are shunned by their cliques and by their families, they feel like killing themselves. [ED NOTE: You can read the transcript of that panel here.]

Riese: Right.

Sarah: It’s the most cruel — it’s so cruel! And it produces no positive outcome. If you think through that action, you end up with what we have now, which is mass incarceration. This idea of removing people instead of trying to resolve conflict.

Riese: One thing that sort of struck me about it when you look at how often people end up being shunned with minimal evidence because they belong to a demographic group that we think “had it coming” all along, which can even be the less oppressed group in certain social justice circles — was thinking about on the flipside, how the mass incarceration of black men has been enabled by things like the Three Strikes rule where judges and juries are often putting someone in jail not because they can prove what they did, or that what they did should be rectified with incarceration, but because a racist jury or judge figures, “well, even if they didn’t do this, they’ll probably do SOMETHING wrong, let’s get them off the streets.” Which is… terrifying.

Sarah: And also first of all did they actually do this specific thing and if they did do it, why? I mean, most crime is caused by poverty, except white-collar crime which is caused by greed. So when someone says so-and-so did something, so if they did do it, what were the actions that led to it? That always has to be understood, and in order for that to be understood, people must communicate.

Riese: How do you think it works within communities? I mean, all of our writers who’ve been accused of abuse have been trans or Black or both, which is unsurprising. I think subconsciously, or not, a lot of people who consider themselves very politically aware still end up feeling more comfortable levying accusations against those with less institutional power.

Sarah: In my book I cite the National Anti-Violence hotline 2013 report where they found that when the police were called for same-sex domestic abuse, over half of the time the police arrested the wrong person. Because when people are the same gender, instead of trying to figure out if it was conflict or abuse, they would arrest the person who was of color, or who was not a mother, or was butch, or was not a citizen, or was HIV-positive. With these stigmas there’s an assumption that a person is dangerous, but actually it’s most likely that that person is endangered.

Riese: When I read that statistic I immediately sent it to my editors and was like, “see, we were right to be wary of acting on those accusations!” The State has this tendency not to believe victims of abuse or assault, and many liberal feminists have decided to remedy this by believing every victim without hearing both sides or asking additional questions, and if we’re not believing these accusations at face value, we’re participating in rape culture. When really the best remedy is to listen to both sides with an open mind, which the State doesn’t do.

Sarah: Right. But of course some people do lie, but there are also other reasons for people to inflate charges and one of the things that I point to is that where we are now is that our entire focus is on figuring out who is the perpetrator so that they can be punished. But if our focus is on trying to understand what happened, which I think is the healthy and appropriate focus, then people would not be encouraged to escalate charges. Right now the standard is that you are only eligible for compassion if you are a pure victim. If you in any way participate in creating a conflict you are no longer eligible for compassion. But every person should be eligible for compassion.

Riese: Yes, exactly — people think they won’t be heard or given compassion unless they can label their experience “abuse,” and they’re not wrong.

Sarah: We’re making it impossible for people to look at their own participation in creating conflict.

Mommi Is the New Daddy

by erin sullivan and kayla upadhyaya

Unless you’ve been fully logged off for the past two years, the term Daddy has at some point made its way into your internet experience. Daddy, we’ve learned, can be for anything. People can be Daddy. Concepts can be Daddy. A large tree you find appealing can be Daddy. Which is why trying to describe exactly what Daddy means becomes complicated. Its definition seems to best reveal itself through context clues, and so maybe it’s easiest to say that Daddy is a feel. And while Daddy has had a solid run, we’re happy to announce Daddy has been temporarily benched.

Introducing: Mommi.

Like Daddy, Mommi has always existed — and exists separately from Mommy and Mami, which are their own things — it’s just finally getting the recognition it deserves. “Oh, perfect, another wildly specific internet thing to not understand.” That’s you staring at your screen right now. But don’t feel overwhelmed. Kayla and I consider ourselves not just Mommi admirers, but Mommi experts, and we’re here to explain it for you in the best way that all ideas get fleshed out: through a series of g-chats.

Mommi Mood Boards

K:

E:

What We Mean When We Say Mommi

*

E: is mommi a state of mind

E: or a state of being

K: state of being

K: lifestyle

E: which consists of

E: luluemon clothing for sure

K: yes luluemon. maxi dresses. impossibly big purses. impossibly big sunglasses.

K: screenshots from every episode of big little lies, the mommiest tv show

E: screenshots of texts ABOUT big little lies

E: is also mommi

K: omg omg

*

E: blazer no shirt… mommi

E: however, take the sleeves off the blazer and it’s no longer mommi

*

K: this rest stop in connecticut is crawlin with mommis

E: connecticut is the one state i’d guess for that

*

E: mommiest l word character

E: helena

K: yes duh helena

K: helena’s thirst for pregnant women is next level

K: helena’s casual headbands are very mommi

E: right helena’s pregnant tina obsession = inception

*

K: is christina aguilera mommi

E: no

K: dang like even 2017 xtina

E: maybe especially not a 2017 xtina

K: my mommi radar is broken

K: xtina on the voice felt very mommi to me

K: lots of white blazers

E: was it w some understated makeup or heavy makeup

K: hmmm probs heavy

K: i see your point

*

E: can we mommi sally yates

K: absolutely

K: love mommi as a verb

K: momming is the new queering

*

K: also there should be an annual mommi convention

K: mommi con

E:: i mean now that mommis know there are others like them

E: they’d be the group to meet and celebrate themselves

K: mommis love to celebrate themselves

*

E: gotta mommi spice girls

K: well posh was def an early mommi influence for me

E: i’m actually going scary

K: INTERESTING

*

K: who was the most mommi person on camp staff

K: oh duh kyle why did I even ask

E: wow embarrassing

K: smh @ myself

*

K: emily robinson of the dixie chicks is mommi

E: I WAS GOING TO SAY

*

E: kylie minogue

K: VM (very mommi)

*

E: here’s something that has been tearing me up: is mary louise parker mommi

K: i think yes

E: i think no???

K: am I conflating her with nancy

E: see nancy was mommi

*

E: who is the official sponsor of mommi

K: white house black market!!!!!!

E: 

E: this might as well be the closing credits of big little lies

*

WHY MOMMI

*

E: how do we present this to the world

E: do we include the pregnancy thing. [look there was a private discussion about pregnant women feel free to @ us we’re down to chat]

E: where are the lines

E: *oprah voice* what is the truth, etc.

K: i’ve been mommi thirsty since day one

E: sljdgkljdfjgdfl

E: KAYLA

K: carla gugino in spy kids was my first mommi

E: can I quote you on that

K: you can absolutely quote me on any and all mommi related matters

K: i hope to be a mommi ambassador

K: spread the good mommi word

K: is it too early to make mommi shirts for camp next year

E: “mommi thirsty since day one” is like A LOT

K: the pregnancy thing is pretty important I feel like

E: are you ready to be this person on the net

K: hahahaha I think I already am this person on twitter dot com

K:

K: mommi today mommi tomorrow mommi forever

E: “planet earth”

E: fuuuuuck

K: lololol

E: if you are down to wear a shirt that says “thirsty for mommis since day one” i will design it and bulk order it your way

K: ldfjgkldsfjgd

K: did I ever tell you about the time my mom’s book club discussed my lesbianism during a book club meeting

E: no omg

K: (the members of my mom’s book club are very mommi)

*

Mommi Logistics

*

K: I told my friend about mommi and she was like “do u mean mami” and I was like NO MOMMI and she was like “….mami”

K: should we change it to mommy or am i overthinking this

E: oh GOD ahahaha

E: look mommy feels likes it’s got one foot in a weird place

E: ok mommy mommi and mami are all pronounced the same, right? so we’re taking a spin on mommy not mami

K: i agree

K: my one friend just didn’t GET it

E: I SEE

E: well y would she, we made it up

K: hahahaha

K: our greatest creation

E: getting entrepreneurial with a friend is pretty mommi

E: we mommi’d ourselves

K: mommiception

*

Mommi Moves

*

E: this is going to be maybe controversial

E: bc rihanna is younger than me

E: but rihanna is mommi

K: omg how old is rihanna

K: she’s so mommi

K: she literally carries a glass of wine everywhere

K: MOMMI MOVE

E: 29

E: glasses inside

E: mommi move

*

Divisive Mommis

K: I JUST REMEMBERED THE ULTIMATE MOMMI

K: http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/a28600/amanda-chantal-bacon-moon-juice-food-diary/

K: THE OWNER OF MOON JUICE

K: that profile of her is ART

E: oh my god i remember that

E: but i’m going to respectfully disagree here

E: can gurus be mommis

E: in my opinion, no

K: omg but like look at her

E: a statement ring cannot fool me

E: gurus smack of self doubt and that is not what makes a mommi

K: ugh that’s tru

K: mommis never doubt

22 Easy Steps to Rethinking Your Whole Relationship Through Late-Night Nudes

Congratulations! You are in possession of a body and a person who thinks that bod is real hot. You also have access to a camera-equipped phone, and maybe a rad sex toy or two. The time has come to merge all those things and send that person some cool and consensual nudes!

Step 1: Set The Scene

Send your pal a series of media featuring your very naked body in very naked positions. Really tell a story! Start with a post-masturbation photo, very modest, featuring a small bit of your chest and the bottom part of your face, to show how red your chest got from touching yourself to the thought of them coming. Maybe follow up with a photo from the moment you were thinking of the way they taste. Or take it to the next level with one of those live photos, angled a short distance from and slightly to the left of your body, shivering to the beat of the Hitachi, squirting just a bit — you know, for showmanship. These messages are your stage!

Step 2: Show Off With A Video

Then, the climax: not you climaxing, but an 18-second video inspired by them and the way their lips part and their body moves against you when you’re fucking them. 18 seconds of the comedown, of you gently touching yourself and licking your fingers in that way you know they like, in the format they like, too — they sent you a video like this a couple of weeks ago.

Step 3: Practice Sexting Aftercare

Cleanse their palette with a full-body shot from above. Experiment with a lot of effort and angling and various body positions. Be sure to make your booty the centerpiece. You want them to spend hours thinking about how much they wish they could have been there with you for this, aching to pull your body close to theirs and feel the way you grind your butt into their groin.

Young woman in bed hugging a pillow

Step 4: Say Goodnight

Text them “going to fall asleep dreaming of fucking you. xoxo” just before falling asleep, possibly still mostly naked and on top of your comforter.

Great work! You did it! You’re so hot and cool!

Step 5: Ready Yourself For Praise

They’re gonna love the work you put into your sexts. They’re going to admire your commitment and very personal touch just for them. Think of how they’ll respond in the morning to tell you that this was the exact wake up call they were hoping for, or how hot you are, or how badly they wish you could be fucking them.

Step 6: Wait

They’re going to text you any minute now. Try not to look at your phone so much. Put it in a drawer, then take it out a few minutes later, in case it doesn’t get a good signal in there. Try not to think about it. Turn it on and off airplane mode. Wonder if it’s broken. Text a friend and frown when the message goes through.

Pop art of woman taking a sip of coffee and looking at a smartphone with an eyebrow raised

Step 7: Wait Longer

Today is a busy day for them. They’ve been moving the stuff of someone they love from one place to another, because that person lives far away and can’t be here to do it with them. You know today is hard, you don’t expect much. Four in the afternoon rolls around and they text you “sorry I haven’t responded! still moving!” That’s okay! No expectations! It’s cool it’s okay everything’s totally okay.

Step 8: Is That Insecurity In My Pocket Or Have You Just Not Texted Me Back Yet

You can feel the insecurity creeping in, but you want them to know you understand they’re having a hard day, and that you appreciate them even making sure to contact you at all to let you know they saw you and they were sorry they couldn’t make the time for you. You want to make that space for them! Who cares that your body is on display, unnoticed.

Pop art of whites of eyes appearing in the hole of an open sewer, but funny

Step 9: Insomnia

Scan through the last couple of days in your texts, wondering if you came on too strong or if they lost interest somewhere along the way. Pick apart every word they said and you said. Stare at the photos you sent them and be mean to yourself. Has your stomach always rolled that way while you fuck yourself? Has that freckle near your butt always been there? How did it get there? Was it cute?

Did they hate it?

Do they hate you?

Step 10: Check Your Phone Again and Again and Again

It’s been over 24 hours. Maybe THIS time you’ll pick up your phone and see their name on the screen, with a few texts to apologize and praise you and make you feel wanted and desirable like they usually would. They don’t owe you that of course. No one owes that to anyone. But generally, if you ask for nudes and receive them, the polite response is to at least take the time to say “U R SO HOT.” Have they eaten a snack? Have they peed? How hard is it to fit typing “U R SO HOT” into their day anyway?!??

Step 11: Tell A Friend

Your friend might yell furiously about your situation over wine. Your friend is right! You still haven’t heard anything about those nudes. Your body is right there in their messages, sitting there, waiting for them, asking for them. They left it there and it’s starting to feel undesirable and weird and invisible and stupid. That they reached out to tell you they’re still moving feels empty now, an excuse you’d use to get out of cleaning the bathroom or going on a tinder date you’re not excited about.

Step 12: Text The Only Thing You Can Think Of

“Can’t believe you’ve slept on these for so long.”

You’ve had two glasses of wine, and you know what? You can’t.

Step 13: Fight!

Your text was… not well received, and you are more upset than you were before. Just a few days ago they told you they didn’t understand why people constantly tell femmes they’re “too much.” Now they’re telling you that you’re expecting too much from them. Your vulnerability and insecurity and discomfort are an inconvenience and taking up more space than they want to give you. They don’t “have the time” for you, don’t have the literal minute it would take to view what you sent them. Your expectation of receiving some human decency, let alone appreciation, in response to requested nudes is unfair.

Step 14: Fall Asleep Angry

Let those tears roll off your nose onto your flannel sheets.

Step 15: Torture Yourself By Remembering A Better Time

Last week you sat at the bar together for six hours, unable to pause conversation long enough to even wait for each other’s bathroom breaks. It felt like you were both on the same page. It felt like you just understood each other. It felt fun and vulnerable and like it could never be enough, let alone too much. You didn’t want to stop talking once the bar closed and you ended up in their bed with the ramen they just made you, and you burrowed into their chest and talked until neither of you could keep your eyes open. They brought you coffee in bed the next morning and joked that you needed to start keeping that thin mint coffee creamer you like at their place. They offered to get some for you the next time they go to the grocery store and you felt so drawn in by their small gesture of adoration. You felt so sure they wanted you around long enough to keep things you like around their place.

Pop art of cupid heart with bandaids on it

Step 16: Let Them Make You Feel Like You Fucked Up

The morning after your wine rage, they tell you they see a dynamic in which you are investing more time and energy into them. They want to be able to feel like things are progressing naturally, because if they feel pressured they’ll pull away, and they don’t want that! They want to have fun with you.

Why can’t you just have fun?

Why can’t you just be fun?

Why are you so much?

Step 17: Let Yourself Believe That You’re The Problem

Now your vulnerability is something you need to fix, because otherwise they’re out. Your insecurities are being read as an exertion of energy they don’t feel like they’re matching, so you need to tone those down, okay?

Silence all your feelings surrounding your discomfort because those feelings are getting in the way of them receiving exactly what they need from you without having to recognize your needs, too. Remember them telling you that they’d never erase how you feel. Remember them telling you you’re too much. Feel tired of being too much.

Pop art of sad robot looking at a smartphone

Step 18: Minimize

Try to be less.

Text novels back and forth, and minimize how you feel throughout despite the fact that a friend is texting you “FUCK THEM. HOW DARE THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR VULNERABILITY ISN’T VALID.” Once again, your friend is right. But you want to resolve this because maybe you are more invested. Or maybe you just think you’re having really incredible sex — some of the best sex you have ever had — and you don’t want to let it go.

Step 19: Try to Accept How Little You Mean To Them

Read your text exchanges like you’re peering over your own shoulder. Watch them continue to put everyone and everything else ahead of you. You knew all along you weren’t a priority. You just didn’t realize how little of a priority you were. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe you did read too much into that night of chatting until the sun started to rise, the first night you spent together without fucking. Maybe you read too much into them making distant plans, talking about summertime and camping trips they wanted to take with you, discussing what your dynamic with each other might look like once their love returns a few months from now. Maybe you saw it as more. Or maybe they made it more, and you followed along in the way your friend warned you that you shouldn’t.

Step 20: (Even More) Self-Doubt

Maybe you body isn’t enough for them.

Maybe you made an idiot of yourself.

Maybe you’re just being a weirdo.

Maybe they’re gaslighting you.

Maybe you hate them.

Maybe you’re falling for them.

Maybe they don’t spend any time thinking about you.

Maybe you’re to blame.

Maybe you’re too much.

Step 21: Or Maybe You Are More Than Enough, And They Just Didn’t Take The Time To See You

They once sat across from you at Florida Room and said, “Can I say something? You’re a really good listener.” Maybe you should’ve been listening better, or you would’ve heard where they decided everything was on their terms and none of it was on yours.

Maybe in the not-so-distant future, you’ll try to make it work for longer than you should, because you aren’t always good at letting people go. Maybe they’ll burn you again. Maybe they’ll make you feel so crazy you end up storming out of their house over seemingly nothing in the middle of the night, cursing the fact that you decided giving it another chance was a wise idea. But you know what! Maybe you learn from this. You’re worth so much more than that. You are so hot, you are so smart, you are so thoughtful, and you deserve to be praised by hot babes. You aren’t too much, you never were. You learn and you grow and you leave that situation for good, feeling sad for the loss of that connection and honestly, for the loss of that great sex you were having, but knowing they were never going to be able to give you what you deserved regardless of the situation.

Step 22: It’s 102 Hours Later

And they still, not once, have acknowledged the series of nudes you sent.

Can’t believe they slept on those.

Pop text that reads "game over"

I Never Meant for My Hair to Be the Way Back to the Lighthouse

just a heads up: this essay includes some discussion of self-harm and attempting suicide

i.

In the beginning, there was my mother’s strong thighs, a wide tooth comb, a paddle brush, and a large tub of Johnson’s UltraSheen. As a little girl, every Sunday night, my sister and I would take turns sitting on my mother’s bed or floor, as she combed through our hair, greased our scalps, and plaited our hair. My sister took pigtails and Mom would swoop my hair up into a ponytail up top and one in the back. It never occurred to me to ask for something different, something more me. I didn’t even know who I was yet, and with everything happening, it didn’t seem to matter anyways.

When I think of my plaits I think of this:

First grade. During mid-morning break, we were walking down the hall to the girls’ bathroom. The stalls were painted a soft green that was illuminated by the wide window on one side of the room high above the stalls. My best friend was standing by the sink. I remembered, suddenly, what you do when you love someone. So, I kissed her on the cheek. Another girl ran to the teacher and told on me. I didn’t know I’d done anything wrong, but I knew when Ms. Mourning called me to talk, that I wasn’t right. I cried so hard at the thought of her telling my grandparents, my parents, anybody, that that’s all I have left of that day. Me, standing in my uniform, with one ponytail, crying my eyes out because the first thing I tried to do with my body (that was already under the control of someone else (maybe more)), I didn’t know what to do with this body and the only thing I understood, that I tried to do, just wasn’t right.

You don’t shake that off easily, if ever.

Whenever friends and family ask me, “Remember when…?” my answer is usually, “No.” Like a broken VHS tape that’s been rewound too many times, I can remember in waves and flashes. I can’t access most of my memories because my brain is trying to protect me. When most of the body is composed of trauma, your memories get locked deep in a closet you never want to open and whenever any of those bastards sneak out, my mind plays whack-a-mole to shove them back in. I try to remember one thing but memories don’t come lonely, they’ve got all kinds of friends attached to them. So while I’m looking for the memory of my first spelling bee, the sting of my worst spanking comes along with it, clutching its ankles. When I don’t know what I’m going to get when I work through that closet, I tend to keep the damn door locked. A few memories that’ve been safe enough through the years are enough to keep a semblance of identity for me.

But when trying to be a whole person, semblance isn’t enough. Ariel Gore writes in The End of Eve, “Trauma[…] by its very definition, can’t be fully experienced in the moment. Due to the suddenness or the enormity of the traumatic event, we just can’t take it in. So we have to go back to it at some point — either literally or symbolically — to integrate whatever happened. We can do that consciously, in some safe way, or we’re destined to revisit the trauma over and over again as the violence of life.” I’ve got to go deeper into the closet and brave what comes out. The important thing is that I need an anchor to do so. That’s what they always tell me in therapy; I’ve got to ground myself.

As I’ve been working through my shit, my greatest anchor has been my hair. Going through each hairstyle has shown me how I’ve gone from basically the black girl version of Cole from The Sixth Sense:

to Alike in the last five minutes of Pariah.

ii.

In third grade, I was in the girls’ bathroom when one of the girls in my class told me my hair was sticking up. I tried to push it back down, but it wouldn’t stay. She cupped water from the sink and poured it over my plaits. The coolness seeped into my scalp as my hair turned sponge. She frowned, “Oh, that’s weird. That usually works for me.” I got braids shortly after.

I played saxophone and drums, but I could barely read the notes on my music stand. I missed cues from the band director because I was too busy focusing on the floor. School wasn’t a problem because all I had to do was look at the paper on my desk. Sure, the teachers talked sometimes, but I didn’t have to look up to listen.

I only pulled my hair back because my mom was tired of not being able to see my face. But when I did, in sixth grade, someone made fun of the cyst on my eye and I came home crying. My mom scheduled a surgery I’d been avoiding since I knew what a scalpel looked like and I cried even more.

The boy apologized and I went into the procedure without anesthesia and cried so hard my sister heard me screaming from the waiting room. But when it was over, there wasn’t really any reason to keep my hair in my face anymore.

iii.

I watched Love and Basketball for the first time and decided this was what I needed. My cousin had left this sports encyclopedia at my grandparents’ house and for years, I went through all the pages trying to imagine myself as those athletes. But no matter how many times I tried to envision myself somewhere different, I always turned back to the beginning: Basketball. I tried out for the team in middle school with no idea how to do a lay-up, what a pick was, or why practices had to be that damn long. But I stayed because, between you and me, I knew that’s where all the lesbians were. No one said it to me, but I knew. Just like I couldn’t envision myself playing anything other than basketball, I couldn’t see any of those women basketball players (Go Mystics!) with men. I tried to get my hair like Monica Wright because in the beginning she looked like I did when I was little:

So, the logical thing middle school me believed was I could take a note from her book and look like her:

I know she’s straight but honestly there should’ve been at least five lesbian remakes with her in the first one, because how in the world do you explain this heterosexually?

Picture of Sanaa Lathan doing heterosexual really unconvincingly
You can’t. That’s that good gay shit.

Monica gave me a model I could follow. As an untreated, unmedicated mentally ill kid, obsession should’ve been my first, last and middle name as well as the name of the street I lived on. I didn’t just love orange juice, I drank it every day three times a day for years until my stomach gave up on me and told me to call it quits. I didn’t watch The Lion King once, I watched it every Saturday morning for years in my Simba chair and came to school spirit day like this:

So I didn’t go into basketball lightly. It’s all I asked for when my birthday and Christmas came around. I’d beg my grandfather to take me to the courts when we visited. I would talk only about basketball day in and day out. My mother and sister couldn’t stand me.

You ain’t never met someone who does the most like me

I figured, you focus on one thing long enough, everything else fades away. I was pretty good at dissociating (still am) but I still knew there were plenty of everything else’s I needed to be the hell away from if I was going to survive. God knows I needed that. So, I kept my hair plaited back and went outside and dribbled and ran laps and practiced defense until they called me to come in cause it was way too dark for me to be out by myself.

iv.

I settled on an all-girls Catholic school for high school because I had fleeting annoying thoughts about girls and I thought immersion therapy would make all that go away. I don’t want to give spoilers but…

I wanted to go to the WNBA, but this dream was crushed when I got to the high school gym. We were supposed to play against freshmen on THE VARSITY TEAM MEANING THEY’VE BEEN SCOUTED SINCE AT LEAST SEVENTH GRADE and I knew my love of basketball wasn’t going to make me Chamique Holdsclaw nor make my legs run any faster so I just walked my tail to the theatre instead. I can’t sing a lick, but I can do almost everything else — or at least pretend to, and isn’t that what theatre is all about? Around this time, I got weave.

I wanted to be someone new, someone different from the geeky girl who daydreamed too much. I figured being me was what got me in trouble in the first place, so I studied my surroundings so I could fit in better. Chameleon this shit. All the girls at school had straight hair, or at least hair that didn’t look like mine. They were also really damn pretty. I couldn’t do much about the latter but I could copy the former. My cousin relaxed and straightened my hair and glued in tracks (I had them sewn in during the summer) taking inspiration from Rihanna during her Umbrella phase and Beyoncé circa the B’Day album.

I think I could’ve blended in all four years except, well, I heard her sing. I thought theatre was a place where you could mask, where you could make a home in something you never could be. I wanted to be straight and sane and the safest kind of black (even if it doesn’t exist) and I thought theatre would let me do that. But it turns out theatre is for unearthing truth, not burying it, and that paired with me and obsession? Shit, buddy, was I ever in trouble.

I started to do theatre really seriously because the girl I had a crush on was in everything and it took a lot of guesswork out of trying to be my own person. I signed up for things I had no business being in. I started off slow with theatrical design and stage craft. Since one theatre class was required, my ass should’ve stopped right there. But I signed up to do sound for the fall musical and then tech for the spring musical. Again the next year. I added Improvisation to my schedule and tried to back out but my counselor wouldn’t let me. After I got comfortable with that, I did shows and went to every musical, if I wasn’t tech-ing and performed in the tech parody of the musical. Then I signed up for Acting, which everyone laughed at. Then Honors Acting and by this time, tech for the last show because even though we’d had a falling out, she said, “But you have to! This is the last show we’ll have together!” So I climbed my ass up to the spot loft even though I’m terrified of heights, and shone a light on her for three months straight. I had no idea what the inside of my chest was doing, but I wanted it to keep happening. Being as close to the stage as I could made that happen. I went to braids,

microbraids,

a brief stint where I wore a wig for dance concerts (we did disco),

and twists.

v.

My granddad died sophomore year. That along with a crush I had no idea what to do with, I turned to self harm. I skipped class cause I couldn’t keep still and I saw him in the hallways and I felt like the walls were closing in on me whenever the clock moved closer to three.

We had a ceremony where everyone had to come back to the school dressed up, with parents in the audience. I wore pants and a white shirt and got crankier the longer I saw everyone. She was in a dress and makeup that made me want to punch walls out of want. The only way I saw out was telling her, so, I texted her because I couldn’t look her in the eye.

She was really good about it. She probably would’ve been great about it. I wouldn’t know because literally as soon as I got we should talk about this in person. text, I ran. I didn’t look back.

I told my mom. I remember crying but I’ve blocked out most of everything else. It wasn’t a story I wanted to keep.

My psychosis got worse. I cut deeper and more often. My moods were out of control, going from dancing on cloud nine to a pocket knife within minutes. Looking through my journals, I talked about suicide a lot.

We had retreats every year as a class, like mini group therapy sessions. They’d each give me enough hope to keep going. Catholics believe that homosexuality is a sin, but suicide is unforgivable. I didn’t really see a way I could move in between those two impossibilities but the retreats gave me belief I could try.

I fought with my friends. I wrote them letters about how much I loved them. I forgot to keep the light off while getting dressed one morning and my mom caught me with scars on my legs. Everyone talked about college and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I wrote her a letter explaining that I wasn’t gay, I was just sad about my granddad and she made me smile. I went to prom with a boy and everyone told me how beautiful I looked.

I lied a lot and hoped I wouldn’t get caught.

vi.

Senior year, I went blonde.

I kept skipping class until I got caught and served Saturday detention. I quit Improv even though people said I was good and I enjoyed doing it. One day, I thought I was getting better; the next I believed I would always be fucked. I drank. I cut. Then, I took a Creative Writing class second semester and didn’t realize until I was halfway through reading my first story that I was coming out.

It went well. Everyone’s notes were helpful and the ground didn’t open up and swallow me whole. I walked to lunch feeling lighter than I’d ever felt. I held my friend’s hand while I told stories during lunch.

A younger girl, a freshman, came up to me and said, Hi, I have a crush on you. I froze. I could feel the entire lunch table staring. I let go of my friend’s hand. The girl ran back to her friends before I could do anything. One of my friends who was in the same writing class as me, pointed across the cafeteria to girls who were laughing. My friends told me to talk to the freshman, to make sure she was alright.

I had Improv next and all I could think as I walked to the classroom above the theatre was Why is everyone telling me to worry about that girl when I feel like shit too? Can’t I take a minute to feel like shit instead of ignoring it and deal with it later (if ever)? Then, guilt would come back and remind me that I wasn’t allowed to feel anything, much less anger. The shitty feelings doubled up on top of the shame I already carried. Walking into the classroom, one of the girls from the cafeteria laughed, You should’ve seen your face! I’m not sure what my face did then, but it must’ve been right because she kept on laughing until I heard myself laughing with her. When I thought of how I stayed quiet instead of going after that girl to see if she was alright, I thought I deserved this much. I went to Improv class and one of the girls from the cafeteria laughed, You should’ve seen your face! I didn’t think I had a choice but to laugh along with her.

Second semester continued to spiral. I stopped talking to my best friend because good things don’t last and I wanted a say in how something ended this time. I failed Calculus because I was too busy cutting in class and ignoring the teacher because she made me mad and grudges are the only thing I can hold too well. My friends started getting college acceptances and I was anxious, thinking I’d get left behind. I went to the first college that said yes.

I went to prom with the same boy.

Smiled whenever a phone was pointed at me.

We took graduation pictures and I counted down the day til I could get the fuck out of there.

vii.

By the grace of God, I graduated. My family bundled up all my stuff in cars and trucks and we drove down to North Carolina. My parents, sister, and I had been a couple months before for an orientation and my gut told me this wasn’t right. But I’d ignored it this long, I thought it was best to keep going. I remember sitting in the bathroom with a razor reminding myself, It’s just four more years. You can do four more years. You’ve made it this far, what’s a little more?

But this time, I couldn’t do it. The first night there, the school threw a welcome luau for the freshmen. I stayed in my dorm room, sitting on my bed, IM-ing one of my friends. I was one of the first to go off to school and telling them how anxious and terrified I was, they told me I just needed to get used to it. But I kept imagining my family driving back home, leaving me stranded, without one person who gave a fuck about whether I stayed here or not. This didn’t feel like something I could get used to. In the middle of the night, I texted and called every family member I could, telling them if they didn’t get me right now, I was going to empty out the family-size Advil bottle sitting on my dresser. I don’t remember much after that, except my cousin being the first to answer and someone getting me. Coming back to the hotel room, and my sister pulling back the cover without hesitation telling me, You can always come home. My grandmother, the next day, holding my hand and saying, It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.

We came back. I thought North Carolina was a fluke. I called my second choice and they told me I could still come, that I’d still get scholarship. This time it was just me and my parents. I remember telling my cousin, I’m going to miss you so much. and he told me, Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. I told him I was going to college and he said, Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.

We drove up to New York and I tried to imagine myself in the mountains with the snow and dial-up Internet and groups that already didn’t laugh at my jokes. My dad said, I’m sure going to miss you, kid. I loved going on car rides with you and hanging out. It won’t be the same without you. I didn’t even make it to my dorm room after that. A therapist was called. I cried so hard into the hotel comforter, I thought the mattress would forever be tear stained. We came back home that morning and my cousin jumped down the steps, Hey, Exi! I told you I’d see you! How was college?

I looked for schools, swearing I wouldn’t fall behind my former classmates. I tried online but would give up on the last assignment and stop answering phone calls to sign up for next semester. I was accepted into a school closer to home and had to keep my back turned whenever the metro train approached. After a week, I resigned. I couldn’t stop seeing myself hanging from the ceiling.

My parents let me stay home. My sister went to school and I rode with my dad to take my cousin to and from school. I read a lot online and tried to catch up on everything I missed while closeted (I ended up watching Imagine Me & You a lot) and I stayed in the basement and paced for hours. I wrote plays and essays and poems that weren’t very good. I came out (again) hoping that would solve everything. I got a mohawk. Getting out of bed any day was nothing short of a miracle.

For at least a year, I was season three Quinn Fabray. But after cutting my hair, instead of getting a tattoo and trying to steal my baby back from Rachel’s mom, I talked to hallucinations and made plans to go back to high school and give myself a do-over. I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. Just like Quinn, the cut didn’t save me. It just made me look different — closer to myself, yes, but not all the way there yet.

Though it had been suggested once or twice, this is when I really started therapy. The first person didn’t fit, but I tried to make her. Every week, I’d sit in her rocking chair (the sole reason I gave her the okay) and would talk about my plans to get back into college. I left when my paranoia told me this wasn’t going to work out and I saw how much my parents were paying for me to pretend to get better. The second person, I felt more comfortable around. She was gay, at least. I mostly looked out her top-floor window, the sky was usually so much bluer. A couple of sessions in, she said something about my grandfather. I kept looking out the window. At one point, she brought up abuse. I kept looking out the window, but I wasn’t there anymore.

It was slow and hard work chipping at me to get to any kind of truth. She knew I wrote and told me about this contest one of her friends was hosting. Teens and young adults who would write a piece about growing up that could be included in a book. My submission was a letter to my parents about that day in the cafeteria. I never felt like I could tell them what happened or why it still hurts so much. I hoped this would be some kind of healing. It was accepted and I still felt like shit. There was a reading hosted for all the contributors. I came and thought my sister would only come in but my dad did too. I didn’t want him to hear me talk about being gay again so when the editors asked me to speak, I just smiled and said, No thank you. I got angrier every time they asked and ended up sulking in the corner. One of the publishers asked me about writing a book and gave me her card. I told my mom about what may have happened with my grandfather. I didn’t want to talk anymore in therapy. A couple of weeks later, my therapist and I talked about checking me into the hospital.

After talking with my family and freaking out after reading a book called Suicide Notes, we decided to try outpatient instead. I applied for and got into an intensive outpatient program. From the intake meeting, I felt better. Not cured, but better. The therapist was kind and easier to talk to about the hard stuff. I had orientation and decided if the art therapist could stomach my creepy picture without making me feel like shit, I’d tell the truth, I’d do my best here. When she smiled after my explanation of my piece, it felt like a light went on inside me.

I took the metro to and from the place almost every day. Some days I couldn’t make it myself and my dad would pick me up and we’d get my cousin and they’d distract me for a while. I had group and workout and art and DBT skills and individual sessions and no one yelled at me when I showed up too early, sitting on the three steps that lead to the front door. No one shooed me away when I paced outside the doors during lunch, letting the laughter from the conference room comfort me into knowing they were still there, they hadn’t disappeared yet. No one made me feel the worst kind of invisible, the kind that doesn’t see reason to stick around. They believed me when I didn’t want to even know myself and every day I wrote little notes to remind myself that this was real, that this was happening to me, that I could hold this a little longer.

But they couldn’t stop the mood swings.

iix.

My mom would plait my hair into cornrows every Sunday night and it was something I took comfort in, let me revel in childhood without staying too long for it to become dangerous again. I mostly just kept my sweatshirt hoodie up and let it be.

But one day, I made her upset and she didn’t plait my hair. I remember barely getting any sleep that night. Feeling like I was too small in my skin, too big in the world, too everything and not enough. I played my music really loud as I walked into the group room, upset and trying to hide it. I came in with really tore up looking hair, but I knew I deserved it.

The people in group listened to me mumble about my weekend and I tried to rush the ending on my hair. It was quiet for a moment and then they said very gently: “That must be really tough. I’m so sorry.” I tried to brush it off, it’s not a big deal it’s not like anyone’s looking at me anyway. I tried to make myself smaller, but they wouldn’t let me.

I think I was supposed to feel better but that kind of understanding couldn’t fit in me right just yet. I obsessed over it and I manic-ed and angered at my audacity to feel anything other than thankful and vowed to get my own clippers because family is too much to deal with anyways and I don’t need the world to so easily see that I am unloved and this isn’t something I should have to worry about. I thought about my head and decided to try on the love other people gave me. I asked my dad to take me to the barbershop. I didn’t get clippers. I got a binder instead.

It was another step towards becoming myself. I kept going to therapy and figured out it may not have been my grandfather, it may have been him, it was probably some other people too. My best friend and I made up and try out talking to each other with love because we’re hoping practice makes permanent. I applied for jobs and schools and got frustrated at just the thought of being confined again. A man followed me from the street to the metro and I turned around to come back to the safe place. I hid under chairs in the waiting room and saw my grandfather even though he shouldn’t be breathing. I relapsed and got rejected from jobs and walked the other way when a girl even smiled in my direction. A man on the train told me I looked like I kiss good and held his junk while staring at me. I flashbacked so hard, I don’t remember how I got home. I got my first job and one of the managers harassed me and other workers and nothing could stop him. Another coworker made pedophilic jokes around me. I didn’t see a way out and I cut and cut and prayed and finally, I wrote. After I wrote, I went back to treatment and spoke.

I started to pay for my own treatment. I made plans with my therapists on how to talk to people above the manager and my coworkers. They didn’t like it, but I kept a pocketknife on me and felt safe. The manager was moved to another location. Other coworkers told me stories to remind me I wasn’t alone. Over the summer, I did a paid internship at a nonprofit and learned to manage my anxiety better. I applied for a women and nonbinary people of color writer’s retreat and got in.

I travelled for the first time by myself and stayed in a place I never knew existed. Surrounded by people who had no reason to like, much less trust and love me, created a home for me as soon as I stepped out the car. I told the truth as much as I could and fell in love with so many people in just four days. With my knees knocking and my hands shaking, I performed my poetry and everyone listened to me like church. I was held, in more ways than one. I learned about found family in high school, but that one dissolved as soon as we hit the graduation steps. This family I love (and they still love me) stayed and still stay even years later.

I came back home and relapsed. I came back and tried to build myself again into a person who couldn’t wait to keep living.

Working again, I picked up drinking. Cried because I was out but still didn’t think people I loved still liked me. I cut off my mohawk and got a fade. Volunteered with literary organizations and helped out with an abuse resource blog. I let my hair go back to black. I advised in workshops and worked and felt like it wasn’t enough. I kept showing up to group and individual and tried to sit in the same room with my emotions for hours at a time. I applied for all kinds of residencies and submitted to journals and signed up for all kinds of classes in bursts of manic energy. I cancelled classes and ignored plans and I got into LAMBDA’s Literary Retreat for Emerging Writers.

I spent a week at college with people who made me excited to learn everyday. I didn’t have to censor myself when I talked about whose face I liked best. I looked forward to hanging outside my room and ate healthy and enough. I smoked and flew by myself for the first time. I got drunk the first night. I went to my first gay club. I read my work at West Hollywood Library. I came home feeling touch my head to the floor grateful and super vulnerable and fucking invincible. I wrote this status:

ix.

Things aren’t magically better but they are different. A different I’m learning to love and handle better everyday. Now, I go to the barber shop and after I get my fade, I run my hands through the back of your head and the buzz warms my fingertips. I can look at myself in the mirror longer. My arms and legs aren’t clear but they’re not as blood-drip heavy. I don’t let healing become linear but I haven’t made recovery impossible. I still go to therapy and I talk and I write and I think about endings less. My body feels more home than ever. Hair has memoried me and made me and continues to pull me forward even when I can’t get out.

I never meant for my hair to be the way back to the lighthouse. I never knew that each step in my hair journey would be one of the few things that would anchor my memories, allow me to tell myself in the truest way I can. Hair is extension of myself and so I thought it was just for making my parents, my family, my abusers, my friends, and strangers happy. I thought it would keep me safe. Or at least, invisible. I thought it would be the last thing to help me figure out my identity, that it would just be an afterthought, like I always was. But, it’s become so much more than that. My hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body, to learn to navigate my identity through what I did with my curls, how I kept my kitchen, the color I used to express myself. Now when I need to ground myself, I don’t have to wait for anyone to help me. I don’t need to depend on everyone else. I can just reach up.

16 Lesbian Power Couples From History Who Got Shit Done, Together

Lesbians are well-known for our unique ability to find a girlfriend and then turn that romantic relationship into an all-consuming life partnership — starting businesses, pursuing activism, revolutionizing social services, erecting schools, liberating marginalized groups. This is true today but has also been true since the beginning of time. Back in the day, many women were held back from activism and entrepreneurship by the demands of marriage and motherhood, making some women-loving-women uniquely able to pursue civilization-shifting ventures. (Although many managed to do both!) We’re gonna talk about some of those relationships here today.

For the purposes of this list, I defined “power couple” as a relationship through which both women were able to achieve greater professional, artistic or service-related success because of their relationship with each other. I leaned towards couples that actually made or did things together — whether that be starting a school, hosting a nightclub, creating social services for disadvantaged humans or making films. Also, as usual, the word “lesbian” is used as an adjective to describe a same-sex relationship, not the sexual orientation of the women in the relationship.

Sources include Elisa Rolle’s Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time, Lilian Faderman’s To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America – A History and Christina Anne Wooner’s incredible thesis I stayed up late reading last night, “The Famous Lady Lovers: African American Women and Same-Sex Desire from Reconstruction to World War II.” Most other sources are linked within the post. I found a lot of contradictory information throughout my research so I imagine many of you will have some of your own!

For this installment, I’m focusing on couples who began their courtship prior to 1940. Future installments will obviously be more racially diverse as we move into eras where non-white people had more access to “power” and also more recorded histories.

16 Lesbian Power Couples, 1830s – 1940s

Rebecca Perot and Minister Rebecca Cox Jackson (1830s-1871)

Rebecca Perot, aka Rebecca Jackson (There are no known pictures of Rebecca Cox Jackson) via shaker museum sketchbook

Rebecca Cox Jackson was raised in an African Methodist Episcopal family but, following a spiritual vision that put the voice of the divine within her, she broke off from the patriarchal church to start her own thing. Her success as a preacher led to her divorce, which led to her traveling around Pennsylvania and New England sharing her gifts, eventually falling for the community she found within a woman-led group of Shakers. She became a Shaker minister and met Rebecca Perot, with whom she joined a sect of the Watervliet Shakers. Eventually the two women — whose “mystical visions” had feminist and homoerotic undertones and often featured the other in divine contexts — decided they’d had it with white people and started their own family of black Shakers in Philadelphia, combining black female praying band traditions with Shaker theology. When Jackson died in 1871, Perot re-named herself “Mother Rebecca Jackson Jr” and took over the Philadelphia family.

Sallie Holley and Caroline Putnam (1848 – 1893)

photo via civil war women

Sallie and Caroline met at good ol’ Oberlin College, and the noted “anti-slavery team” became agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society immediately after graduation. They traveled on the abolitionist lecture circuit, often along with the legendary Sojourner Truth. After the Civil War, Sallie stayed up North giving talks, raising money to educate freed slaves in the South, and Putnam went to Virginia to teach freed slaves, eventually starting The Holley School, which became America’s first settlement house. Sallie then joined Caroline in Lottsburg, where they integrated themselves with the community, operated their school year-round and unlike some future suffragettes, were dedicated to enabling, preserving and protecting the right of Black men to vote even when white women could not yet do so. Sallie died in 1893 and Caroline in 1917, at which point the school was deeded to an all-Black board of trustees and continued operating for decades.

Harriet E. Giles and Sophia B. Packard (1855-1891)

Giles met Packard in in the mid-1850s when Giles was a student at the New Salem Academy in New Salem, Massachusetts, and Packard was the preceptor. They hit it off right away, and shortly thereafter shuttled off to Atlanta to start a school for Black women who had been newly released from slavery. Packard was the first president of the school, then known as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and now known as Spelman College, when it opened its doors in 1888. Giles took over after Packard’s death in 1891. The two women are now buried next to each other in Silver Lake Cemetery.

Ellen Gates Starr & Jane Addams (1877-1892)

Ellen Gates Starr met Jane Addams at the Rockford Female Seminary in 1877, and it was through their relationship that Addams got the confidence to embark on the GROUNDBREAKING AND INFLUENTIAL Hull House Project in Chicago. The Hull House was part of a movement to provide social and educational opportunities for working class women, mostly recent immigrants; offering classes in literature and history, hosting public concerts, providing child care and putting on free lectures. The two women taught classes, served as on-call midwives, sheltered victims of domestic violence, and advocated for legislative reforms that are now seen as the first models for “social welfare.” Ellen was far more religious than Jane, which may have played a role in their eventual breakup. Jane subsequently moved right along, in classic lesbian fashion, to Mary Rozet Smith, the daughter of a wealthy Chicago industrialist, who was very helpful to Addams’ various missions through other means.

Edith Anna Somerville & Violet Florence Martin (1887-1915)

Edith, an Irish novelist and her cousin/girlfriend (listen it was a different time), Violet, co-wrote fourteen stories and novels under the name “Martin Ross.” Their most popular titles were The Real Charlotte and The Experiences of Irish R.M.. After Violet’s death, Edith was inconsolable, and decided to keep writing as Martin Ross, convinced the two were communicating through spiritualist séances, which I personally feel is totally legit.

Ethel Mars & Maud Hunt Squire (1894-1954)

image via pinterest

These two American artists met at the Cincinnati Art Academy in the 1890s and stayed together for 60 years, living for patches in France and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Maud was known for her book illustrations and color etchings, Ethel for her painting, color woodblock prints and drawings. They collaborated on projects like illustrating the legendary Child’s Garden of Verses. The couple were regulars at Gertrude Stein’s salon in France (and the subject of her word portrait Miss Furr and Miss Skeene). Also, The New York Times says they “loved to behave outrageously.”

Mabel Reed & Mary Ellicott Arnold (1894-1963)

Mary Ellicott Arnold, via wikipedia

Mabel and Mary were together for around 69 years, having met as children in New Jersey, and went on to be prominent urban organizers, philanthropists and social activists. After five years of middling success farming a 50-acre plot, they put in time at the City and Suburban Homes Company, which provided housing solutions for the working poor. They were then positioned as “field matrons” at the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, where they defied pressure to enforce white cultural values upon the Natives who lived there, and wrote the book In the Land of the Grasshopper Song. Later organizing projects included cooperative cafeterias and apartments in New York, credit unions for lobster fisherman and cooperative housing projects for coal miners, as well as many other housing projects throughout the Northeast. They became widely regarded social activists and organizers, known for their drive to include women in their husband’s housing decisions and unconcerned by critics of their unconventional behavior — wearing divided skirts, riding horses through the backwoods, living in non-white areas, and thwarting conventional Victorian female ideals.

Fannie Johnston & Mattie Edwards Hewitt (1901-1917)

These two photographers met at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Johnston was a pioneer in her field as one of the most successful female photographers in America, snagging cool gigs like shooting Edith Wharton’s Paris-adjacent villa, Booker T Washington’s face and Alice Roosevelt’s wedding. Hewitt was then working as an assistant to her husband, also a photographer, who she officially divorced in 1909. Thus, after eight years of an intense epistolary long-distance love affair with Fannie, Mattie U-Hauled with Fannie in New York, eventually opening an architectural photography studio together. Like so many great power lesbian couples, Mattie’s admiration of Fannie’s work was instrumental in what drew them together. They were commissioned to photograph buildings like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Hotel Manhattan. Then in 1917 they had a huge blowout fight and broke up forever.

Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas (1907-1946)

One of the most revered lesbian couples of all time, Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, playwright and poet with an unconventional style and a Modernist art collector. She met Alice B. Toklas, who would serve as her “confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic and general organizer,” the day Toklas arrived in Paris. Stein fell hard and fast for Toklas, and by 1910 they were hosting a salon in their home on 27 rue de Fleurus that is now known as one of the most influential gathering spots in the history of arts, literature and queerdom. Guests included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Henri Matisse, Ethel Mars, Maud Hunt-Squire, Eleonara Sears, Eva Le Galienne and Francis Cyril Rose. Toklas hosted the wives and the girlfriends and Stein handled the men. The duo hit the big time with the mass market publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933, which led to an extended U.S. lecture tour. Toklas and Stein were together until Stein’s death in 1946.

Frances Witherspoon & Tracy D. Mygatt (1908-1973)

Frances and Tracy both graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1908, and then committed themselves entirely to the causes that mattered to them: world peace, pacifism, women’s rights and civil rights. But pacifism was always their number one passion. During World War I, they advocated for conscientious objectors: Tracy helped organize the Anti-Enlistment League and Frances founded America’s first-ever organization to support the rights of objectors as well as those persecuted for free speech, the Bureau of Legal Advice. The BLA is considered the forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union, which was founded shortly thereafter, and which worked in tandem with the BLA towards common causes. They joined the Socialist Party in New York upon moving there in 1913, and helped organize shelters and food distribution programs in churches for the homeless. They were inseparable for 65 years, even dying within weeks of each other, which everybody knows is the ultimate lesbian love act.

Ethel Collins Dunham & Martha May Eliot (1910-1969)

Martha was a headstrong and stubborn young woman from the jump, refusing to marry and insisting on a life of travel and learning. She met Ethel, who’d felt uninspired by the socialite lifestyle she’d been living, at Bryn Mawr, and the two decided to attend medical school together, become doctors together, and live together forever and ever. AND THEY DID. They got their medical degrees from Johns Hopkins, where they were active in the local suffrage movement, but were then separated by subsequent work placements. Eventually they were reunited at the brand-new department of Pediatrics at the Yale hospital in New Haven. Martha undertook a study of rickets amongst low-income children, which launched her career in community pediatrics and then got her a gig as director of the Child Hygiene Department of the Children’s Bureau, around the same time that Ethel became one of the first female professors at Yale’s School of Medicine. Their ambitions, extensive research accomplishments and subsequent appointments — including President Truman naming Martha chief of the Children’s Bureau and Ethel becoming the first female member of the American Pediatric Society — often meant spending a lot of time apart, but as Faderman wrote in To Believe in Women, “they seem to have believed that their relationship gave them sustenance for the challenges and that their work and their life together were inextricably connected.”

Ethel Williams & Ethel Waters (1910s-1920s)

“The Two Ethels” met at the Alhambra Theater in Harlem — Ethel Waters was a popular blues singer and Ethel Williams was a dancer. They fell in love and summarily merged: Waters got Williams a job working at the cabaret where she worked, they lived together in Harlem and Waters took Williams with her on her first nationwide tour, where Williams would dance to warm up the crowd before Waters’ performances. In the touring revue Oh! Joy! they even did a little bit about being “partners” that winked at queer audience members while refusing mainstream identification. Waters’ managers at Black Swan Records manufactured gossip about Waters, once pushing a piece about how her recording contract stipulated that she couldn’t get married to explain her not having a male partner. Eventually, Ethel Williams left Waters and her job to marry a dancer named Clarence Dotson.

Florence Yoch and Lucile Council (1921-1964)

Considered “two of the finest garden designers and landscape architects in California,” Lucile started out as Florence’s “apprentice” at her firm and then became her “partner,” as you do. They designed estates, parks, movie sets and botanical gardens. Notable works include The Getty House gardens, the film sets for the exterior of “Tara” in Gone With the Wind and the estate of Howard Huntington. Their collected works are documented in the book Landscaping the American dream: the gardens and film sets of Florence Yoch, 1890-1972.

Dorothy Arzner and Marion Morgan (1927-1971)

Arzner was the only successful female film director of Hollywood’s golden age, and she met her beloved Marion on the set of Fashions for Women. Marion Morgan was a vaudeville dancer and choreographer who led her own performance troupe. They began working together on films and in 1930 and commissioned architect W.C. Tanner to build them a Hollywood Hills estate — Florence Yoch designed the gardens. They lived there for 40 years, until Morgan’s death in 1971.

Mabel Hampton and Lilian Foster, 1932-1978

Mabel Hampton, born in 1902, had a tumultuous childhood that took her from North Carolina to New York City to New Jersey and eventually to a job dancing in Coney Island just as the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing. She performed with stars like Moms Mabley and Gladys Bently and lived openly as a lesbian, eventually giving up dancing and becoming a domestic worker — for the family of the now-famous Joan Nestle. She met Lillian Foster in 1932, and they were inseparable until Lilian’s death, living together on 169th street in the Bronx and calling each other husband and wife. They were active in the Gay Rights movement, ran their own laundering business, and worked together to collect and organize a wealth of documents, newspaper clippings, photographs and books, including programs from the opera performances she and Foster loved attending, that would help form the Lesbian Herstory Archives, of which Joan Nestle named Mabel a founding member. Mabel’s oral history was preserved by Joan in the archives.

Ruth Ellis and Ceceline “Babe” Franklin, 1936 – 1971

Ruth C. Ellis met Ceciline “Babe” Franklin in 1936, and then they moved to Detroit and launched Ellis and Franklin Printing, which made Ellis the first woman in the city to own her own printing business. Franklin worked as a chef. They bought a house in 1946 which became known as the “Gay Spot,” a gathering place for the local black gay and lesbian community. It was a welcome refuge for black folks who weren’t given access to the white bar scene. “Gay people didn’t have anyplace else to go,” Ellis said in Family: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian America. “Everybody would bring a bottle. We used to dance a lot. We had a piano in the basement and we’d sing and play. We’d dance and drink and play cards.” They gave lodging to gay black men newly arrived from the south, and helped young folks through college. Since 1999, The Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit has been a place of refuge for homeless LGBTQ youth, so her incredible legacy lives on.

If you know of a lesbian couple who got together before 1940 and did cool shit, tell me about it in the comments!!!

We’ll Have Sex Again, I Promise

On the way into the deli, Stacy reached down to hold my hand and asked if I’d order her sandwich for her. On the way out of the deli, I reached down to hold Stacy’s hand and said, “We’ll have sex again, I promise.” It wasn’t the first time we’ve had either of those conversations. They always give her the wrong mustard and leave the pickles off her sandwich, and I haven’t wanted to have sex since — well, it’s been a while.

The joke was that we had to have sex before the election, because if Donald Trump won, I never wanted to be touched again. It was a joke. A joke. Because obviously Donald Trump was not going to win the election and on the very slim chance he did win (which he wasn’t going to do), it’s not like it would destroy my sex drive. And anyway, Hillary Clinton was going to be president. No doubt about it. A woman in the White House! The lead-up-to-election sex we had was euphoric. We were both giddy with hope because the world was about to be a whole new place where a woman who spent her entire adult life being demonized by the Right could follow the legacy of a black man who spent his entire presidency being demonized by the Right, after campaigning on the most liberal platform in history and embracing every kind of diversity.

I was wrong about what was a joke, and wrong about this also: I did need to be touched after the election.

I needed Stacy to stand beside me and hold my hand while I had another of what was becoming a series of pelvic exams. It was just some pain and symptoms that were supposed to add up to a specific diagnosis, but my uterus was swollen and my doctor needed to look at it again. I needed an abdominal ultrasound. I needed a transvaginal ultrasound. I needed another one. I needed a gynecological specialist. While I was at the imaging center, my doctor figured I should go ahead and get a mammogram. I’m 38. My mom had breast cancer when she was my age. My mammogram was suspicious. I needed a second one. And an ultrasound. A biopsy. An MRI.

My brain is a series of ceaseless numbers: 60 days since Donald Trump took office. Two days until my primary care physician hears back from my insurance. Four days until my biopsy. 24 hours until Congress votes on whether or not I’ll have healthcare next year. One week until my appointment at the imaging center. Ten days until my 30-minute appointment with the head of gynecology at Mt. Sinai. $100 copay. $1,000 deductible. 120 days since we’ve had sex.

The first time Stacy and I had sex it was different. I was afraid and I was shivering. I tried to play it off like I was cold, that my arms were tired. We both knew I was lying. I’d already lived ten lesbian lives by the time Stacy and I met. First love, toxic love, the illicit affair, the convincing myself a straight girl loved me back. I’d done the thing where I had sex with whoever I wanted wherever I wanted. In the park, in the car, on a hike, at the beach, in the dressing room, her house, my house, our friends’ house. Those times, I didn’t care what came after the sex. I didn’t want to go for pancakes, I didn’t want to watch TV, I didn’t want to shower together or take a walk or hang out and go out that night. It was fun. I had fun. (I really did!) I just wanted to go home to my books and my writing and my pets and the quiet.

It drove me crazy how much I cared what Stacy thought. Not just about me, but about TV and movies and music and biographies and fantasy novels and philosophy and queer stuff and politics and religion. And I guess I cared extra hard what she thought about having sex with me too because, for the first time ever, I wanted to ask someone to stay after and talk. She told me about the planets and the stars. I told her about the Oxford comma. Long baths, late nights. We kept talking and having sex until we were waking up and going to sleep doing both of those things in the same city, the same house, the same bed; promising to do them forever.

We used to cry when we talked about sex, one of us at least, every time. Because the way you feel about the sex you’re having and the sex you’re not having is a story you’re telling yourself about yourself and about your relationship and about every comforting and insecure thought you’ve ever had about both of those things. You’re wanted, so you’re beautiful; you’re desired, so you’re worthy. Not just of sex, but of love maybe. Of commitment. She could be having sex with anybody, but she’s having sex with you. She chose you. Or the opposite thing. It’s because you’ve gained weight. It’s because you’ve been depressed. It’s because she’s into something or someone else. There’s something wrong with you, as you always suspected.

But now there is something wrong with me, with my brain. I can’t bounce back from the election. I want to think of it as just politics, but it was more than that to me. It was my life’s purpose facing off against a culture that has destroyed so many of the people and things I have loved. Equality, empathy, and a promise to grapple with our own contributions to the darkness facing off against ingrained prejudice, ignorance, and backwards thinking. A prepared, capable, flawed woman promising to do good facing off against the bigoted bombast of a man promising to do harm.

There’s something wrong with my body, too. No one knows what yet. More probes are needed. More bloodwork. More images. More insurance approval, more appointments, more bills, more tests, more questions.

Stacy slipped her hand under the back of my t-shirt while we were watching basketball this week and gently traced her fingers up my spine. I shivered and let out a little purr that surprised us both. It’s not just the sex. I’m having a hard time being touched at all these days. I keep imagining myself with a robot body and my brain is inside it. I have work left to do, contributions to make to this world, but my body is a constant source of pain and anxiety. I try to forget it exists and just work; when Stacy touches me, I remember. And because she’s Stacy, I remember there’s a heart in there too. Bruised, exhausted, overflowing.

“Have you been thinking about having sex at all lately?”

I dropped my head and started to stutter out something guilty. I can’t think about sex because I can’t think about my breasts because I can’t think about the unidentified mass inside there. I can’t think about sex because I can’t think about my vagina because I can’t think about the pain and the uterus biopsy that’s coming. She kept her one hand under my t-shirt and reached for my chin. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, look at me. You’re okay. We’re okay. There are other ways to be close.”

She’s right. The closest I ever felt to her wasn’t when we were having sex. It was two months ago when she was standing beside me in that doctor’s office while I scooted down into the stirrups and prepared for a test that had sent me spiraling into a panic attack earlier in the week. The doctor tried small talk that was only making me more nervous, so Stacy smiled at me and said, “We rescued and adopted some feral kittens, Dr. Cox. Did Heather tell you?”

The doctor said no, I had not, but she’d love to hear about it.

“Well, they came into our backyard — how long ago, Heather?”

“Two summers,” I said.

“Two summers,” Stacy repeated. “Three black ones and two grey tiger-looking ones.”

“Their mom is a black tuxedo.”

“A black tuxedo. Her name is Bobbi Jean.”

The doctor said, “Just a few more minutes. You’re doing great.”

I was covered in sweat when the test was done, but I hadn’t hyperventilated. I hadn’t panicked. I didn’t realize Stacy had reached for my hand until it was over and she was still holding it. We went to brunch at a diner near the hospital. It looked like a cruise ship inside and Stacy ordered a drink that should have come with an umbrella. I didn’t want to talk and she didn’t try make me. She winked at me. She sipped her weird fruity Carnival cocktail.

We’re always filling in other people’s silences, the gaps in our story, with our own insecurities and hopes and fears and dreams and heartache. With the messages we’ve internalized from TV and movies. With the words we’ve heard from our churches and our politicians. We assign malevolent motive where there’s nothing but love. We castigate ourselves for offenses no one else thinks we committed. We do it with sex most of all.

Stacy has refused to fill in the gaps of our sex life with any story other than the truth: I’m sad and I’m scared.

We’ll survive Donald Trump and be better activists and humans on the other side of it. I’ll finally get a diagnosis with what’s going on with me and begin a course of treatment to fix it. I’ll reach for her hand. She’ll reach for mine. We’ll have sex again.

Stacy will have the Yankee chicken cutlet on a roll, no bacon, light deli mustard instead of honey mustard, add pickles.

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