Also.Also.Also: Your Hot Queer Aunts Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman Are Spinning Stevie Nicks Too

Hello! I’m back like an entire world hasn’t imploded since we were all last together on Thursday!! In the last five days, The President got COVID (maybe you’ve heard by now lol) and then that was only the beginning of how shit got weird. I was just saying how every day feels like a month and every hour also feels like a month and that’s how you know it’s 2020.

ANYWAY! We all have each other and I have this sunset that’s making the fall leaves look like shiny wrapped candy (or fire, but I prefer candy. The world is hard enough). Let’s see about these links!


Queer as in F*ck You

“It’s hard, but as trans people, we have got to take back our power by not allowing the administration, other people, or society to determine our station in life… By any means necessary, I’m going to blossom.” — Angelica F*cking Ross!

Get into this!! Angelica Ross on Inclusivity in Hollywood, Getting a Buzz Cut, and Blossoming Into Herself BY CRISSLE OF THE PODCAST, THE READ!!!! So much Black Queer and Trans Brilliance!! And on a Tuesday? My god.

Could the Parents of LGBTQ+ Kids Decide the Presidential Election? Advocates Are Putting Money on It. At 57 million strong, how “Equality voters” could be the difference, especially in battleground swing states. (Or at least, that’s what organizers are hoping.)

RIP Soraya Santiago Solla, Puerto Rican Transgender Trailblazer, Who Left Us at Age 72. Death is always sad, but what a full life! May her spirit be at rest.

Belgium Just Appointed the World’s Most Powerful Trans Politician

Maybe you are tired of hearing me checking in on the love story that is Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman, but LALALALA to me they are perfect and I don’t care!!


Saw This, Thought of You

‘A Battle for the Souls of Black Girls’

Super-Concierge Doctors, High-Design Home Classrooms, and Catered Backyard Dinners: Lifestyles of the Rich and Quarantined. You ever stop your day to read a thing? And also it’s so awful that you can’t turn away? It’s a crash on the side of the highway and you know you shouldn’t gawk but also what’s one last look? This is entirely and completely that experience. Also, eat the rich.

Related, probably: Is Mid-Pandemic Travel Creating a Resurgence of the White Saviour Complex?

Still Related, probably: Twitter Thinks 15-Year-Old Claudia Conway Is the Whistleblower of Our Time

How Out-of-Work Strippers Made Their Show Virtual and Are ‘Taking the Power Back’

Was the Commodification of Breonna Taylor Worth It? Let me save you the time, it wasn’t.


Political Snacks

The Last Stand of the Violent, Pathetic Trump Man

How The Two-Party System Obscures The Complexity Of Black Americans’ Politics. Whatever, I’m a nerd. And this is also for nerds. BUT WOW I LOVED READING THIS!

RBG Is a Complicated Figure for Black Legal Scholars. Listen, I happen to really love RBG. But the indomintable Kimberlé Crenshaw had some points, and those points were heard.

Kayleigh McEnany and the Women Who Do PR for White Supremacy. In full disclosure, I read this before it was announced that Kayleigh McEnany had tested positive for COVID, but also the truth is the truth is the truth.

Yesterday, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito explicitly indicated in a court decision that they want the Court to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the 14th Amendment guarantee to equal protection of the law. ARE YOU PANICKED YET!?!?

But before you get to the five alarm fire, please read this entire Twitter thread by Chase Strangio, one of the brightest queer and trans legal minds of our generation and exactly who I trust to see us through this mess.

The courts will not save us. But maybe, just maybe, we can save ourselves.

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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.

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    • I’m sorry for some reason I thought I responded to you earlier, but I think I forgot to press send. Anyway, it’s fixed. Thanks for pointing out the typo, I appreciate it.

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