Letter From Your Editors

Hello to my April flowers!

And speaking of flowers, this month’s prompt was take a photo next to a flower/ something green/something growing, and here we are, clutching on to spring with all our might:

Top: Nicole // Shelli // Dani // Meg // Drew // Vanessa // Rachel
Bottom: Kayla // Ro // Sarah // Stef // Carmen // Laneia // Heather

Well this month just FLEW RIGHT ON BY, didn’t it? I’m sitting here with a blank page trying to look back on it for you, and? It’s a blur. A blur of hard raw emotion in the face of another slew of very public police murders, of the trial of Derek Chauvin, of facing the vulnerability and stress of looking to protect yourself and your loved ones and track down even just one vaccine appointment. Of getting sick form those vaccine appointments (and still being glad you went through it). And precariously, on the flip side of all this, clawing ourselves out of winter — of facing longer days and sunlight and rain that promises us grass and flowers. There’s so much change in the air right now, it overwhelms, and Autostraddle is not immune.

So what’s new at Autostraddle? Well at the start of the month we welcomed a new part-time editor, none other than the brilliant and boundlessly creative Shelli Nicole as our new Culture Editor! Shelli’s been getting into the grooves of our workflow, and having her around on a more regular basis has already been such a bright energy for the entire team. We also have a few other team members picking up editing work for us, and we couldn’t be more ecstatic about what is bubbling behind the scenes and beneath the surface (more on this next moth! Gotta keep you staying tuned, right?). If you’ve seen us on social media, then you know we’ve had so many calls for work lately! We have a new comic artist joining us for some Saturdays this spring; we are getting ready to start a series of trans short fiction and gearing up to celebrate APIA Heritage Month; we’re planning a series for the summer on the practical realities of life after the pandemic for our most vulnerable communities; we put out a call for trans writers to cover the sweeping and horrifying anti-trans bills in this country — and we already have seen some of that work come into reality on our site, What’s Going On with Anti-Trans Legislation Targeting Youth? An Illustrated Breakdown.

We also have two other projects coming that I cannot WAITTT to tell you about — but let me just tell we’re working our ass off on some pretty special treats that I think you’re all going to love and will take our brand into new lives beyond just the front page of our website. Ok enough teasing for the future! We are also all hard at work taking SEO classes (paid for by your monthly subscriptions, thank you A+ members!) and devising new strategies and workflow practices to better re-asses and re-learn how to make our indie website compete in these ever changing internet waters. We’re already starting to see steady and dependable growth in these areas, so we can see that we’re on track! Riese and Sarah and our tech team, Yikes, have have been hard at work devising new site mapping and organizational systems so that we can be better “read” and “understood” by Google. It’s an exciting time, full of experiment, and we are getting leaner and more efficient at every turn.

We are able to do all this work because of you. Thank you for supporting queer independent media and giving us a fighting chance. I promise you that we are making the most of it! And in addition to all of our endless gratitude, here’s some special A+ content we created this month just for you: We answered some of the questions you’ve been asking us, we also got together for two different Advice Boxes, and of course there’s always SLICK — “What Ever Happened To Baby Blue?” by June Amelia Rose, and edited by our very own Rachel Kincaid. A+ Members also sponsored the next edition in our Queer Sex 101 Video Series, Learning All About Sex Toys with Archie Bongiovanni.

It’s officially the weekend as soon as I press publish on this letter. I’m planning on sleeping in tomorrow. I wish you all the same feeling of luxury, wherever you are. ❤️

Love,

Carmen / Rachel / Heather / Laneia / Sarah / Nicole / Riese

Top 10 Most Popular Posts From March 2021

These posts were hella popular last month.

1. Which L Word Character Are You?, by Riese
2. Who’s Your Queer Celebrity Dream Date?, by Carmen
3. The L Word: Generation Q Season 2: Everything We Know About It So Far, by Riese
4. This Is an Essay About Penises, by Drew
5. Autostraddle March Madness: Canon vs. Fanon – Round 2, by Natalie
6. Which Tropey TV Lesbian or Bisexual Death Are You?, by Sally
7. 14 Famous Queer Ladies Who Got Gayer a Little Later in Life, by Riese
8. March 2021: What’s New and Gay and Streaming on HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon?, by Riese
9. What’s Your Attachment Style?, by Ro
10. Ginny & Georgia’s Lesbian Gets Refreshingly Typical Teen Dating Story, by Valerie

Eight Important Excerpts From Editorial Conversations

Heather:

i didn’t see just jared mention the matching tattoos??
Carmen: So are they.. back together? Where they together before? I can’t remember
Heather: i guess we have to wait and see what transpires re: a new sex bench
Carolyn: maybe to mark the new stage of the relationship they’ll do a st andrew’s cross this time instead
Stef: Are they going to do a dance for Macaulay Culkin again
Rachel: Has anyone tried the sex bench? i kind of want a review of it
Carolyn: * rifles through personal sex bench history *
Rachel: 8 Other, Better Sex Benches Cara Could Buy
Carolyn: 6 Padded Cages that Will Make Cara’s Sex Bench Look Like a One-Hit Wonder
Rachel: Who’s the Cara Delevigne and Who’s the Sex Bench in Your Relationship?
Carolyn: How Well Do You Really Know Your Sex Bench? Take This Quiz to Find Out

Drew: At the end of the day it is weirder for me that I started watching Ted Lasso last night than any of the actually weird queer movies I’ve watched over the past several months lmaoooo
Heather: lolololll i love ted lasso
Drew: I started it because the person I’m dating-not-dating told me to but then it ended up reminding me of my dad and now I’m having FEELINGS !!
My dad is Ted
That is my dad
Heather: oh god! that’s how i feel about ted danson! which made the good place very hard for me! ted danson has even the exact same mannerisms as my dad!
woof yes
Drew: Mini series pitch: stuff that reminds us of our dads

Heather: that tweet that was going around like two weeks ago about who would you cast your parents in a movie about your life fucked me up
i was like oh god it really is ted danson and jennifer beals
Drew: hahahaaaha Mine would be Paul Rudd and Jennifer Connelly
Heather: oh wow damn
do your parents read your work, drew?
Drew: My dad reads almost everything
My mom doesn’t
My dad has started asking me to give a warning if it’s too sexual but otherwise really wants to read it all
Which is very nice!
My mom thinks it’s all too sexual lmao

Laneia: hello everybean i just wanted to let you know that today’s newsletter will include a MARRIAGE PROPOSAL from a reader to her gf who have a weekly tradition of reading the “how people found autostraddle this week” aloud to each other since the very first week of the newsletter, which is 136 weeks
Dani Janae: A PROPOSAL!!!!
Omg I’m so excited
Nicole: 😭
Heather: OH MY GOSH
Shelli Nicole: OH MY !!!!
Rachel: 🤣
Tracy: Wow
Vanessa: I LOVE WHEN PEOPLE USE AS TO PROPOSE
remember that proposal essay a few years ago
goddess bless the gays
Meg: omgggg 😭
Heather: remember when someone proposed in grease bats!
Rachel: top 10 ways people have proposed on autostraddle.com 💕
Heather: i bet stacy would pay one hundred dollars to write a post to propose i put that thing back where it came from or so help me, wherein that thing is the kitchen scissors

Heather: and i’d be like “joke’s on you, babe, i turned that thing into 10,000 views by headlining it “this autostraddle reader proposes scissoring to her wife!” and you could have bought like a dozen scissors for one hundred dollars.”
KaeLyn: omfg heather

Drew:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zoë Kravitz (@zoeisabellakravitz)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Drew: I need someone to be checking Slack at 11:55p EST on Saturday asdfghjkl;
Valerie: Drew I’m sorry I’m late — but just came here to make sure someone had started sounding the alarms

Rachel: hallo @channel! i am here with some fun, sexy, FRESH solicitations for content, very dewy and natural, like drew barrymore’s makeup line. We’d love to publish your thoughts on how you’re approaching dating and relationships for this next period of time in which vaccines are rolling out and cautions around the pandemic can start to play a different role, from both single people & partnered. 💜
Vanessa: I love this new format idea Rachel! Excited to contribute and read everyone else’s contributions.
Ro: I love this!
Carmen: fyi “licking strangers faces” was the #1 thing I viscerally thought of when I got my first shot last week, and I never said it out loud, so I would like to know how Rachel is reading my mind

Natalie: Some tea from the rumor mill: [Redacted WNBA Player #1] used to date [Redacted #2] but [#1] was also seeing…well.. pretty much everybody else in the league. The cheating played out all over social media and [#2] was definitely in her feelings.
Heather: !!!!!!
Carmen: Natalie the depth of your knowledge for wnba gossip will never not astound me
Heather: Me too! I LOVE IT
Shelli: Wow who knew that i would love WNBA dating drama! also I do vote that we do a Stylish WNBA ranking because i love eye candy especially when its over 6 feet tall and has dreads
Heather: Shelli i’m excited to tag-team on a “which wnba player is your spouse” quiz with you when the season starts this summer 🤣
Shelli: YES BECAUSE I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHO TO BEGIN PURSUING
I am too fine to be out here and not involved in wnba drama
Heather: i agree
and i am just writing that down as the excerpt for your quiz
Shelli: please be prepared for your speech at my wedding — the 2nd wedding not the 1st one though
Heather: i was born ready for this speech

Heather: omg wait! i just realized! this isn’t tv but it’s related to what you just said. i was out of the office last week when oregon basketball player sedona prince came out not only as queer and non-binary, but also! as a person who is 6’7″ with a girlfriend who is 4’9″!

@sedonerrr

Couple’s lifting challenge #lgbt #wlw #lifting

♬ She Make It Clap – Soulja Boy

Riese: heather
i have thought of little else
for two weeks
Heather: i am HAUNTED
Riese: nobody in my group chat still wants to talk to me about it
so thank you for bringing it up
Heather: like i thought mine and stacy’s height difference was the max
Riese: don’t worry i looked into every other height difference in the universe and they win by a landslide
will and jada are twins compared to these guys
Heather: wait what about shaq and that one girl named hoopz
Riese: 7’1 and 5’6
Heather: lol you really did the research
Riese: so that’s how much?
Riese: 1 foot, 7 inches
Heather: still less!
you did an spreadsheet, didn’t you?
Riese: hahaha no i just found an article about couples with height differences and shared all of them with my (again totally uninterested) group chat
i think also the thing is… 4’9
Heather: right! you’re already the shortest person anyone knows! And they’re the tallest! So that’s what they have in common!
Riese: right
Heather: well thank you! I truly wish them all the best!!

@sedonerrr

Reply to @strawberrylaney that 22 inch height difference ain’t got nothing on us #couple @twinkle.t1ts

♬ original sound – Sedona Prince

We Are Re-Organizing All the Tags and Categories on Our Website!

Kayla: tagging in general gets wild like pre-2014 i have noticed hahahaha
Riese: yeah! and that’s funny bc pre-2014 posts probably are obsolete anyhow and there they are loaded with tags
Kayla: it was fun to work backward in time lol. so many hunger games posts! lol
Riese: i feel like that was probably 90% my fault
what’s so weird is that we really covered a LOT of not-gay stutff?
like i remember staying up late to write a review of the Muppets Movie
Kayla: I WAS GONNA SAY lol i saw multiple posts about the Muppets Movie???? lololol
Riese: right??? like what
Kayla: a review of Inception!
Riese: i mean when you go REALLY back in like, television we had an open thread for the …. Lost finale??
oh yeah!!!
also when one (1) lesbian movie came out it was like STOP THE PRESSES
how many posts did we write about Pariah? 75?
Kayla: SO MANY lol
like 2011-2014 was when i was PEAK tumblr kid slash also mostly closeted so it was funny to see these headlines and think about where i personally was at the time lol
then i came out in 2014 and started writing for autostraddle in 2015 lol
Riese: got RIGHT on it
Kayla: i was like well might as well lean all the way in
Riese: it’s weird cuz we were hitting a certain demographic right? like we had some sense of shared … taste, i guess
even though it wasn’t queer
Kayla: oh yeah for sure
it reminded me of tumblr!
Riese: which was basically based on our own taste?
and that’s how you build a personality cult!!!
Kayla: all my closeted queer friends on tumblr were obsessed with twilight, hunger games, even inception. so y’all def had your finger on a specific unified pulse lol
Riese: oh yeah god the twilight coverage
honestly we had great twilight coverage
Kayla: i was cracking up at the twilight coverage
Riese: yeah that’s some like a+++ shit
Kayla: hahahahaha
retro autostraddle
Riese: like we saw it together??
Twilight Eclipse Totally Eclipsed Team Bella’s Hearts: Movie Review
me and laneia and crystal and stef i think
Kayla: HAHAHA REALLY?
i bet that was a TIME
Riese: that was the first time i saw any of them
i was so confused
i was like oh dakota fanning is in this? weird

//

Sarah: i also think we could like, stick the list of shows after the last 12 posts or something
Riese: yeah
that’s a good idea
Sarah: you know like, so that people get the latest but also get distracted if they don’t see what they want
they can be like oh i love blablabla
click on that and find out more
Riese: exactly
Sarah: click click click
Riese: that’s how i operate
Sarah: get those clicks in
Riese: oh i love blalalablabala;
clickclickclick
Sarah: oh i love blalahbalkdlakfj;dlka
wow wowowow internet
Riese:

Sarah: YES!
Riese: BLABALABALABALA
Sarah: THAT’S ME
wheres the woman with her tongue out
in the office
the jim carrey gif is me but more hunchy
Riese: the jim carrey gif is my entire personality

What We’ve Been Reading

Heather: The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner

Riese: We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

Sarah: Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir by Carrie Brownstein

Ro: City Lights Pocket Poet Anthology by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Kayla: The Last Unkillable Thing by Emily Pittinos and Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Meg: Girlhood by Melissa Febos

Vanessa: We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth

Carmen: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Stef: Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origin of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Drew: Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante

Nicole: We Are Watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth, Disability Visability edited by Alice Wong, The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

April 2021 Retro-Reading: A.E. Osworth Edition

In which Riese recommends some posts from the archives for you!!!

This month saw the debut of A.E. Osworth’s first novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright. So you know what that means: it’s time for a look back at some of their many years of incredible work for Autostraddle on topics including but not limited to electoral politics, sex, cocktails, literature and technology.

Am I Bisexual? Is That The Word? (September 2020) – “It’s been a while because I’m not a woman anymore && I’m not sure I ever was && of course I was because if I didn’t have a roadmap for elsewhere, how could I have possibly understood myself to be there?”

Our Luggage: A Non-Binary Ode to The Good Place’s Janet (October 2019) – I often long for characters who fall somewhere outside the gender binary simply because they do. They are gloriously, blessedly human and still defy the contextual categories of the society that has raised them. Such characters are few and far between.

The Top 5 Sheet Masks to Wear After Crying About Your Gender (June 2018) – “I feel like I do almost nothing except cry about my gender. Morning, noon, night, at meals, in the shower, at work, while writing on my book, while playing computer games, while legitimately having unrelated conversations with some very confused cis people: it is my brand new full-time job to cry about my gender.”

Why the Distinction of Online vs. IRL Makes No Sense (Or, Our Reality Is Already Virtual) (December 2016) – (A cool thing about reading Eliza Bright while being very familiar with Austen’s work is how many themes in it remind me of pieces they wrote here in the past, this is one of them!) So why oh why in our common parlance are we still using the term IRL? In the meatspace/cyberspace dichotomy, using “in real life” to describe one side of it implies that the other isn’t reality at all. It’s fake, somehow. But it is real. This is our reality.

Style Thief: How To Dress Like Dr. Jillian Holtzmann (July 2016) – This is just a fun one!!

Playlist: Discovering Your Ex Is A Shitty Person (July 2012) – EVERGREEN

Moving Beyond Lesbian Bed Death and Bridging the Libido Gap (January 2014) – Just truly solid, compassionate, detailed advice for a very common query!

OK BOOMER

Kayla: Losing my mind in general @ the straight men commenting on my BSG article but especially the dude who thinks I’m calling someone a boomer and not, you know REFERRING TO THE CHARACTER NAMED BOOMER
Valerie: omg
no
Riese: HOW DID THE STRAIGHT CIS MEN GET HERE
Kayla: Scream!

Riese: omg
why are people so mad about gay people wanting things to be more gay
i guess his whole family is gay so maybe he’s like ENOUGH
Kayla: Also that’s good Scott…you should indeed not use the “phrase” “dyke”
Riese: but also Boomer lol
Kayla: The boomer this is killing me
Like does he even watch the show?
Also he’s taking offense with HUMAN POTATO????
Riese: “well aren’t you just toxic as shit”
ppl got so mad at me fro calling Finn Hudson a human potato
Kayla: It just so accurately describes a specific type of straight white dude????
Riese: it does we all know what you mean
on this gay website for gay ppl
Kayla: Lmao
SEO was too good on this one
The straights found it
Riese: it must be linked from a fanboy reddit or something
cuz they’re crawling all over
Natalie: Lol
Kayla: The boomer thing is killing me
Riese: omg there’s so many!!! of them!!
everybody is having fun poking back at them tho
nice activity for a thursday evening
“THE SOURCE MATERIAL IS FLAWLESS” is the resounding mood of this
Kayla: Lmaoooo
This happened the one time I wrote about Star Wars also
Having fun trying to decode what this even means

Riese: yeah what?
Kayla:

Heather: “well aren’t you just toxic as shit.”
i am laughing so hard

WELL AREN’T YOU JUST TOXIC AS SHIT

XOXO

Team Autostraddle

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