feature image via Molly Adams for Autostraddle
Hello you are currently reading words typed up by a woman who is merely 66 days away from sitting under a beach umbrella, reading a book while she buries her feet in the sand because that’s an excellent way to exfoliate, and let me tell you something, I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED. I think the last time I went on vacation — the kind where you have literally no obligations and you yourself are the only person in charge of what you’ll do and when you’ll do it — was to Legoland and Sea World in 2005? I don’t count Bonnaroo as a vacation because listen, that’s hard work and there’s a schedule involved and Bonnaroo can sometimes feel like an elaborate four-day punishment for wanting to listen to live music and day drink. I do go home to visit my family once a year, which is similar to a vacation but also decidedly NOT a vacation, and I do sometimes stay in a cabin with my wife’s family [and all of our many, many dogs (there are even more dogs than that)] around the holidays, but again, not quite my idea of a vacation. In order to be properly vacating, I need to see time stretching out before me without a single commitment or requirement, no hype of a national or religious holiday to live up to, no pressure to be a version of myself that doesn’t come naturally. And this doesn’t necessarily have to involve sun and sand and the Gulf of Mexico and oysters, but all the better if it does.
Do you have any idea how much seafood I’m going to eat? How frequently I’m going to reapply sunscreen? How many hours I’ll go without checking my phone? So much, so frequently, so many. I’m tearing up right now.
Queer as in F*ck You
+ Federal Fair Housing Law Protects LGBT Couples, Court Rules for First Time.
+ Punishing a Woman for Kissing Her Girlfriend Is Workplace Discrimination, Court Determines.
+ Court Finally Strikes Last Ban on Gay and Lesbian Foster Parents in the US.
+ Of Course the NCAA Sold Out the Transgender Community.
+ Housing Discrimination Against Transgender People Is Even Worse Than We Thought.
+ Lee Lynch Answers Questions From a Lesbian High School Student.
+ Queer Ancestors: Bequeathing Stories to Fractured Minorities.
+ Support Tabula Idem, a Queer Tarot Comic Anthology!
Welcome to the Hellmouth
Honestly it’s like, what hasn’t happened in this arena in the past seven days, you know?
Doll Parts
+ Pollution Linked to Higher Risk of Breast Cancer in Biggest Study Yet.
+ MTV Scraps Gender-Specific Categories for Movie and TV Awards.
+ How ModCloth Strayed From Its Feminist Beginnings and Ended Up a Walmart Property.
+ Support Beefcake Swimwear! They want to make one-piece unisex swimsuits inspired by 1920’s styles for you and all your friends and they’re really fucking cute!!
Saw This, Thought of You
+ Beyond the Pale (Male): Marvel, Diversity And A Changing Comics Readership. Solid title work there.
+ Carrie Fisher to Appear in ‘Episode IX,’ Says Brother Todd Fisher. Just need a safe space to admit that I still want to cry every time I see a “A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance” protest sign.
My level of enthusiasm for beefcake knows no bounds.
@green (trying to tag Laneia, somebody help me?) I think it’s would be really important to add a link to the news about what’s going on in Chechnya – more than 100 gay men have been rounded up and sent to concentration camps and 3 have already been killed. The authorities are denying it by claiming that no queer people exist in Chechnya and that if they did “their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning” (endorsing honour killings).
Honestly I think that an Autostraddle article about this is needed (I’m happy to pitch/ write it if people are lacking in capacity!) because mainstream news outlets are not covering it despite this being the first instance of gay concentration camps since Hitler.
There are also contact details to a organisation trying to get queer people safely out of Chechnya which need to be shared as widely as possible, esp by Russian speaking people/those who know people in the area. I’ll add them in a reply to this comment.
Links: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/02/chechen-police-rounded-up-100-gay-men-report-russian-newspaper-chechnya
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/10/chechnya-has-opened-concentration-camps-for-gay-men/
Link to donations page for Russian LGBT emergency support program: https://www.lgbtnet.org/en/endonate
The organisation is the Russian LGBT network.
Email: info[at]lgbtnet[dot]org
Phone: 8 800 555 73 74
Website: lgbtnet.org
They’ve asked people to share the contact details, and to let the world know that they are endeavouring to get people out of Chechnya.
Thanks Calista I was just coming in the comments to post the same information. I’m horrified.
Thank you @lorelai! If you have a pitch on this, can you submit it here? https://www.autostraddle.com/submissions/
What’s happening in Russia is horrifying and wrong; but I can’t help but wonder if the world would be as outraged if it were queer women and/or people of color being targeted instead of white men.
I’m not usually one to defend white men, but…if you’re being put in a literal concentration camp, isn’t white male status kind of beside the point?
Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be outraged or that we shouldn’t help. The point I’m trying to make is that white cis gay men will have an easier time fleeing to western Europe or the U.S.A. than, say, a transwomen from the Middle East will.
The Western world already has a bias in favor of “queer women” at the expense of gay men, as any analysis of Western pop culture can verify. If anything, targeting queer women would only heat up the reaction against Russia. At least the reaction wouldn’t be blander than now, considering the West isn’t even doing anything about the matter as it is.
Stop trying to make this about your (non-oppressed) self. Stop trying to make an Oppression Olympics out of this (you’d lose, by the way). You’ll never know how the West would treat queer women in the same situation as those gay men you can’t cease to demonize, because queer women are NEVER impacted by anti-gay crackdowns. Anti-gay executions under ISIS or Iran, the Orlando massacre, Nazi concentration camps, Victorian persecution of queers – all anti-gay violence is aimed overwhelmingly at gay men, never at women. Far from societies having a bias in our favor, and against you, it’s always us who get flogged, gassed, and thrown off a roof – never you.
And trans women are very much an integral part of the societies of the Middle East, by the way. In Iran, which executes gay men, trans women get publicly funded sex reassignment procedures. They don’t need to flee to the West because they aren’t persecuted in the way gay men demonstrably are.
For Autostraddle, a queer female character being killed off from a Netflix series is more newsworthy than 100 gay men being herded inside a torture camp. And these people love to lecture us about “intersectionality”.
Laneia I’m so happy for you and your upcoming vacation and I hope that you two will be very happy together!
Is AAA going to be weekly now, cause I miss my thursday and friday news :(
No, it’s still twice a week!
I need that swimwear, and must save money to get one. I was at the beach over the weekend but didn’t go in the water, mostly because I rather be seen in something more unisex/queer.
My wife and I just got licensed as foster parents in our red state. The worker for one of the kids was here today along with two people she’s training. The worker commented that she likes visiting our house, and she has already brought three other workers. When we were getting licensed we were told that there had been a lesbian couple that had gone through the adoption classes in our area, but not anyone else who was trans*, though there had been a kid a while back who was placed in another state who it sounds like had been trans*. So yes, everyone deserves a family to love them and queer people can be foster and adoptive families.
Congratulations to you and your wife on getting licensed!
eshakti can be an alternative to modcloth. It’s an Indian founded and owned company, don’t know much beyond that. They do size 0-36, and I’m excited about their space-print dresses (among many other).
They also offer all of their clothes in custom sizes – you can send in your measurements.
They seem to be primarily about dresses.
I’m excited to check them out!
Re: swimwear. TomboyX is marketing/selling a version of their tops and boxer/brief shorts as swimwear that is somewhat non-traditional (long shorts, sleeveless tops).