Also.Also.Also: Is Anything Gayer Than a Mullet?

The official at home 🍌🍌🍌 count is: Banana Bread (3), Banana Bread Blondies (1), Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins (1). In case you were wondering, this is also how I’m keeping track of how many weeks I’ve been inside! 3+1+1 = 5 weeks, will this ever be over?

Anyway, this week I used Smitten Kitchen’s new banana bread recipe and ok, I realize this is going to sound absolutely impossible, but if you can somehow convince yourself not to eat all the banana bread before DAY 3, Deb is absolutely correct — the results on the third day are BEYOND delicious. You won’t believe it.

I know it’s hard, but if you’re able, you absolutely must stay inside. And if you’re a worker who doesn’t have the privilege of “sheltering at home,” let me just say: Thank You. Everyone stay safe. If you’re here and reading this, I love you.


Queer as in F*ck You

Despite the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Government Is Still Targeting L.G.B.T.Q. Rights

Nearly a Decade After the Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ LGBTQ Military Veterans Are Receiving More Support. Slowly.

From K.D. to Kristen: Ranking the Best Queer Mullets in Pop Culture

LGBTQ Orgs Say They’re in Deep Fundraising Trouble Because of Coronavirus (Speaking of which, have you heard about the Autostraddle Fundraiser? 💜)

The Real Reason People Are Hoarding Toilet Paper and Guns by the always great Debbie Millman

Eight out of the 10 Most-Banned Books Are Challenged for Their LGBTQ Content

“When I came out as trans, my sexuality didn’t matter to the people around me. My friends and family were adjusting – or failing to adjust – to the reality that I was a woman. Whether I wanted to keep dating women seemed inconsequential to them. But it mattered to me.” EXCUSE ME! We already know that Drew Gregory is talented, but damn she put her foot in this essay for Cosmopolitian UK!

NYC Pride Has Officially Been Canceled


Saw This, Thought of You

Today marks the 20th Anniversary of one of my Top Five favorite movies, Love & Basketball. To celebrate, here’s an oral history of the film that changed the game. Go ahead and pair that with Why We Keep Returning to ‘Love and Basketball’ 20 Years Later by Jordan Ligons for The Ringer.

Lizzo, Whitney Houston, and the Curious Case of “Racial Transcendence”

Hunched Over Your Computer All Day? These Stretches Are For You

Would You Choose to Come Back From Space Right Now? Yeah, obviously not.

The Coronavirus Crisis Is Hastening the Collapse of Local Newspapers. Here’s Why It Matters.

Doctors and nurses and orderlies, truck drivers and grocery workers and transportation workers, nursing home aides and sanitation workers and EMTs—they are all, along with so many others, heroes. Stipulated. There is no amount of honking, singing, or clapping that can adequately express our gratitude for these people, across so many professions, who suit up every day, imperiling their own lives and the lives and health of their loved ones, to make sure that the needs of the rest of us can be met…. [but] under that cloak of national reverence and well-intentioned hero worship, political and systemic failures are never corrected in ways that might prevent other ordinary Americans from ever having to commit such acts of “heroism” in the future.

Damn this is so good, if you read one thing this evening let it be this: America’s Heroism Trap


Political Snacks

How Far-Right Media Is Weaponizing Coronavirus by Rebecca Traister for The Cut.

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen is Autostraddle's Editor-in-Chief and a Black Puerto Rican femme/inist writer. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. There were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. You can find her on twitter, @carmencitaloves.

Carmen has written 700 articles for us.

7 Comments

    • They are super similar!! The biggest differences for me is that the new recipe is so big it almost (but never quite) overflows the bread pan, which makes for this larger than life dome — it makes each piece almost the size of a piece of sandwich bread, which is delightful.

      I also like that this recipe uses baking powder to go along with baking soda, it does a really delightful thing to the “crumb” so it’s still dense… but also somehow plush?

      The new recipe doesn’t have bourbon, but if that’s your thing you can always add it in anyway. I added nuts to mine.

      It was good on day 2, and on day 3 I literally said out loud: “I want to bathe in this banana bread”… so there’s that, lol.

      But on a base level, they are similar! You can definitely tell she used the Jacked Up Banana Bread as the foundation of this one.

  1. Damn that Slate piece hit home. As one of those “heroes” (I drive for medical transport) I can assure you I’m no angel. I’m having my hours cut and being forced to clock out between passengers to help my company’s bottom line as doctors switch to telehealth appointments and my rides get canceled, and my boss just implies that I’m lucky to have a job at all right now.

    And it’s true. When I took this job I never signed on to risk my life; I’m not an EMT. I’m okay financially for the next month because of the stimulus check, but if this keeps up much longer I’m gonna have to beg for more hours—more exposure, more risk—just to pay my rent.

    I don’t see myself as a hero, just another victim of the crazy capitalism train.

    • I work as an interviewer inside several prisons and we’re considered essential. It’s scary & I can’t see my coworkers’ faces because we have to stay masked & it nearly brings me to tears. Like you, I didn’t sign up for the public to give us more support & encouragement than our own administrative supervisors. We are terrified & we’re just trying to get by without getting sick.

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