The Autostraddle Yearbook: A Decade Of Gay Work

I’ve been here for so long! I was here before we even existed! I was the Music Editor when we first launched. I quit for a couple of years because I was in the midst of a years-long sexual identity crisis and I wasn’t sure this was a place where I could really feel my specific queer community, but I’ve found it, helped build it, and have never once regretted returning. Every time we hold an A-Camp I am SHOCKED by how many people come to this weird world we built! Every time someone signs up for A+ I am blown away. I’m amazed any time someone I’m talking to has heard of Autostraddle, even though like, of course they have. We’ve come a long way.

There is nothing I do all year that’s more gratifying than A-Camp, or playing in the Family Band. It’s something that evolved so naturally, and I get to live out my dream of being the Donnas playing the prom at the end of the movie Jawbreaker.

Stef Schwartz

After getting to know the Autostraddle community mostly online, meeting so many members of the team for the first A-Camp in 2012 was a really incredible experience. Hanging out with Carmen Rios, feminist powerhouse extraordinaire, to organize an activism panel was basically the best. Another highlight was aggressively representing monogamous relationships on the lesbian sex panel. I wrote being a part of the Autostraddle online community and the first two A-Camps in a book chapter, “The Revolutionary Possibilities of Online Trans and Queer Communities” in 2016.

Working as a Contributing Editor as a part of the Autostraddle team gave me the courage to approach human rights activist, and founding member of the Furies Collective, Charlotte Bunch for an interview. Bunch’s activism continues to inspire me in the work I do today.

Jamie Hagen

I was a contributing editor for Autostraddle in 2012, which, lucky for me, was the year that people were creating Tumblrs dedicated to the simple lovely idea of butches doing things. Inspired by the legendary “Butches and Babies,” I created a list of my other favorites—butches baking, smiling, holding pets—alongside a staff-generated list of butch Tumblrs we wanted someone to make, which included truly brilliant things like “Butches Leaning On Things” and “Butches Driving.” We were doing really important work.

Gabrielle Korn

this is a way to title a post

• This Is a Period Playlist
• This Is a Canada Day Post
  
• This Is A Melissa Harris-Perry Appreciation Post
  
• This is a Kristen Stewart Jodie Foster Feelings Atrium Post
  
• This Is a Homoerotic Kristen Stewart Post
  
• This Is A Mister Rogers Post
  
• This Is A Rick Mercer Appreciation Post
  
• This Is A Bubbline Appreciation Post and Gallery
  
• Did You Ever Catch Them All? This Is a 90’s Pokémon Nostalgia-fest
  
• This Is a Dead Mom Essay
  

Early on in my Autostraddle days (I started in Spring 2012), I decided that Crystal was super cool and I wanted to be friends with her. If you’ve ever met Crystal, she is really REALLY shy and a tough nut to crack friendship-wise, so I decided that if we co-wrote music reviews together, that would surely make her want to be my friend. Looking back, I don’t know why I thought co-writing an article would cement our friendship? I really like music and reading music reviews, but do I know how to intelligently talk about music? NOPE. Autostraddle was a much more Wild West/Why Not?/Let’s Try It situation back then. Anyway, somehow I weaseled my way into co-writing a Kaki King review. But then we really did enjoy co-writing that and started reviewing music more. This led to our infamous Bad Review of Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob (sorry, world!) but it also let me review Mal Blum early on, which is awesome! And, for the record, Crystal is my Actual Friend now and I read a poem at her wedding, so I regret nothing.

Also, thank goodness we stopped those reply-all staff emails.

Sarah Hansen