Hello, beautiful! It’s a SUNSHINE DAY! (DeAnne, are you surprised?)
Here’s the stories we missed while I was working for the weekend.
For The Cause: The Good, the Bad, the Reactionary
+ The ladies of Xelle are raising a red flag for LGBT equality, and it sounds pretty damn good.
+ Really pathetic Internet trolls are upset that professional sports teams were part of #SpiritDay last week and stood united against anti-LGBT bullying. But (surprise!) nobody really cared, and they remained on the right side of history.
+ Montenegro’s first-ever pride parade was met with violence.
+ Sigourney Weaver really, really loves you.
+ Fuck Emily Yoffe. And go go Amanda Hess!
This Week’s Unanimous “Fuck Y’all” Is Directed At PJI
Since the Pacific Justice Institute thinks allowing trans* folks to use their preferred bathrooms is equivalent to “harassment,” they should probably look into learning the definition of harassment. They’re currently organizing with parents in Colorado against a high-school student who has been out as trans* for two years and fears for harassment because she wants to use the girls’ room, because that’s a GREAT USE OF TIME.
Thank Alanis that her mom is speaking out to support her:
My daughter was the one who learned about the Pacific Justice Institute. She saw it online. She was upset. It made her panic. She saw where their story had become international news and she saw what people were saying. It gave her anxiety attacks. She was upset about the whole thing. She kept asking me how people could do that to her. She saw all this negative stuff about her and she can’t understand how they could say those things when they don’t even know who she is as a person. They don’t know what this does to a kid…
What you’re doing isn’t right. You say that you’re a God-loving people but you’ve targeted my daughter – a kid – like this. You shouldn’t do this to any kid. You should be ashamed. You’re wrong for what you’ve done to my daughter.
I’ll Drink to That
Meredith and her kick-ass Autostraddle column were featured in Beer Advocate! Turns out lots of people find women and beer to be an excellent combination.
click to expand!
Oh Na Na, What’s Your Name
Depending on the year you were born and the specific region of the United States in which you were located at that time, I probably already have a good idea. But we can check with Drake just in case, because I hear you’re good with them soft lips. (What the fuck does that even mean?!)
Ramming Gay Marriage Down The Throat of Homophobes Forever
+ Linda Oliver, Mayor of West Union, South Carolina, thinks us queers are “ramming” gay marriage down her throat. There’s an obvious punch line here but I’m way too kind to do that. I’m a journalist. Plus, nobody else likes her anyway so I guess she’ll go and eat worms.
+ Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the good deeds of a rogue county clerk are bringing local lesbians together for life. In matrimony, I mean.
+ Gay couples in Tennessee are gonna FIGHT! FOR THEIR RIGHT! TO A MARRIAGE PAAAAAARTAY.
I’m So Glad I Was A Girl Scout
If Girl Scout cookies are made with lesbianism, then I’m clearly not buying enough. Should we be sacrificing them to Lesbian Jesus at Camp after all? I was just busy eating them in bed while I counted pennies toward my abortion fund piggy bank, but I can be there in five minutes if you need me.
ready for what
Religious Right activists have long campaigned against the Girl Scouts of the USA, and pastors Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner of Generations Radio have now joined in by urging listeners not to purchase Girl Scout cookies.
“Please, I beg of you, do not buy Girl Scout cookies,” Swanson said. “Please, I beg of you, stop buying Girl Scout cookies.”
But if they do, he said, they should “take a big, fat, black magic marker” and “start marking out all of the references to the Girl Scouts of America on all the boxes.” Swanson warned that the “wicked” Girl Scouts are promoting “lesbianism” and abortion, calling the cookies “food offered to idols.”
You Better Werq, Bitch
+ Don’t miss it: Our own Autostraddle writer Vivian Underhill, mastermind behind Queered Science, was featured on Bitch:
“In the early 90s at Princeton, there were only a handful of students who were out as LGB people,” says Dr. Donna Riley, who helped found the first engineering program at a U.S. women’s college (the Picker Engineering Program at Smith) and is openly bisexual. “We were mostly just met with silence. We knew to compartmentalize, and we knew when and where it was safe to be out—and that was definitely not in the engineering building.”
…Many queer women echoed the same sentiment, telling me things like, “I feel SO alone,” and “sometimes it feels like I’m the only one.” A doctoral student who recently received her Ph.D. in anthropology wrote, “I nearly failed grad school because [the] emotional angst was too much.”
+ Elliot Sailers, a former Ford model, is making waves with a gender-bending new ‘do and a mission to make it in mens’ modeling.
Caitlin Oliver Pretty Much Pwned Everyone, And Other Queer Victories
+ Caitlin Oliver of Chicago set a new arcade game world record this week. It’s been reported that, in return, every bro on the globe accepted some ice for their burns.
+ In Eagle Pass, Texas, Eileen Hernandez (“I am actually a lesbian. I really am.”) and Jennifer Mijares (her straight friend) were elected Homecoming Queen & Queen. I have so many positive emotions about this that it’s actually crazy.
“If one person would try bringing us down, so many others would say no, keep your head up, what you guys are doing is awesome,” Hernandez says. So they kept those heads up and by Friday night, both girls were wearing crowns. “We’re just smiling like crazy,” Hernandez says. “Tears fell down our face.” “We were excited. We won. We won first place,” Mijares says. “And we made a difference,” Hernandez says.
You Should Go (And Give) (Unto Others) (That’s What She Said)
+ If you’re free Monday at 6:30 PM and you live in / around / near New York City, you should probably come on down to the Sallie Bingham Center’s discussion “about the political significance of documenting women’s lives and the importance of informing one’s activism with a historical perspective.” I’m in now way, shape, or form biased due to my own involvement in said discussion, which will also involve Jaclyn Friedman, Ellie Smeal, and Merle Hoffman. But if you like my face, that’s another good reason to show up, too. Whatever brings you to the table.
+ If you’re able to hit up La Casa Azul in Coyoacan before February 2014 you should check out Frida Kahlo’s dress collection. But if not, there’s a gallery for that.
+ I really, really, really want you to support Creeps.
Creeps is a movie that follows the highs and lows of Mona and Freddy, two best friends who decide to quit drinking and doing drugs for a week so they can have great skin for a party. Mona has recently found out that her ex-girlfriend has become a successful artist and is having a big art opening in a weeks’ time. Of course they MUST attend, look fabulous and have the sexiest arm candy in sight. They sadly agree that the only real way to accomplish this is to form a pact: 7 days of sobriety. By the time they make it to the opening, they aren’t speaking, they’ve barely slept, and disaster ensues.
The Weed Fairy Comes In Broad Daylight For No Reason
It wasn’t me. Promise.
All I know is that if these…people hurt my girl scout cookies they better plead the blood of their white Jesus and hope that I don’t find them.
Haha, I’m done for the rest of the night.
Tagalongs are the only exceptable Girl Scout cookie. Fuck them other ones. I swear every time I approach a little girl scout she is out of Tagalongs and I want to burn the world.
“food offered to idols”
the fuckin’ hell they come up with that? food offered to my fat belly for happiness is more like it.
Real talk, there was a period of time in my life where I put that Brady Bunch song on every single playlist and mixtape I made because I thought it was hilarious. Thank you Carmen, is what I am saying.
You’re awesome and that is hilarious.
Fuck Emily Yoffe so much.
Is it sad that I’m relieved when I read that police are protecting LGBTQ* people at a Pride parade in Eastern Europe instead of meeting up the marchers? Thanks a fucking lot, Russia, for setting my bar so low.
*beating up the marchers
Can i just say a couple of things about the Montenegro-Pride situation. While it was met with violence and was heavily protected by the police (as is any other Pride in the region) i think the title should be “Montenegro had its first Pride”. As a person who is living in the region, we are not losing with the violence we are gaining with every Pride.
One of the participants wrote a nice article (for those who can understand the languagehttp://voxfeminae.net/cunterview/politika-drustvo/2358-sudionica-podgorike-povorke-ponosa-hana-sirovica-nitko-nas-nije-kamenovao).
It is basically about how every news report is about the hooligans and not the Pride itself.
“(…) nobody threw rocks at us, we didn’t experience any conflict or were insulted because the hooligans where completely separated from our part of the town. They lit some trash-containers on fire, broke some windows, but after the Pride i didn’t notice any bigger damage. The evacuation of the Pride participants in the police vehicle was a safety procedure that was expected, but the media showed it as a symptom of a bad situation. As a pride participant i am angry that they are insisting on showing this side instead of, for me, more important matter and that is – the meaning of the first successful Pride in Montenegro. (…)
Basic goals of every Pride in region is visibility, and showing the people that we exist around them, but primarily to occupy the space that every other day in the year is not the space we can show ourselves. I am not speaking only about the public space, but also about the literally physical space – the streets. Budva, Beograd, Split even the ten Prides in Zagreb had the same battle – for our space.”
p.s. much sorry bad english :)
Thanks for posting this! It’s really important to get the local perspective on issues like this.
So proud to be a big fat feminist lesbian Girl Scout employee. Fuck you, Religious Right.
I’ve actually received a lot of humorous supportive responses from family and friends since this story broke.
My aunt wants to know how a cookie could possibly be a lesbian, as it is an inanimate object. And if it is, well Cookie Monster must be hella confused!
One of my friends suggested though that it would be awesome if cookies could actually make people lesbians. She said that would get rid of her endless problem of straight crushes. Just feed them a cookie, and BAM! Instant date!