As a bisexual trans guy who really wants to be a dad and who has a really great dad myself, I have a lot of opinions about hot fathers. We’ve seen the lists of Pixar Dads We Want to Suck and Fuck (I’m looking at you, dad from Inside Out!) but I’m here to tell you about real, human fathers that I have deemed safe to thirst over this Father’s Day.
You’ll notice there are many men-who-are-famously-dads missing from this list, because this is not a list of famous men who are dads. No, this is a list of certifiably hot men who love being fathers and have respectable politics. They’re also men who I may look to for inspiration one day, if and when I become a father. They’re not perfect by any means, but they reflect a lot of the values and physical attributes that I like to see in a father.
If I have not listed your favorite hot dad, please, by all means, add them to the comment section and make sure to link their Instagram (for research).
Frank co-hosts the Basement Yard podcast with Joe Santigato, which has become one of my favorite “boy discoveries” in transition. Best friends since grade school, both of these guys are great examples of healthy masculinity and are truly so funny. But Frank is a father of three and, as it appears to me, is a kick ass dad. He’s also a huge Wife Guy! And hot!
Forget about his talent on the court and how sexy he is — Dwyane Wade is an exemplary father to his trans daughter, Zaya Wade. He has not only been incredibly vocal about his support of trans kids, but he has also put his money where his mouth is with the organization he founded with Zaya, Translatable.
Jason Ritter, or perhaps more commonly known to this audience as Melanie Lynskey’s husband, is a silly, goofy father with a heart of gold. He’s a sober king who loves to have fun and isn’t afraid to look the fool. Plus, that mustache!!!
To be fair, all of the Wayans men are FINE, but I have to give a special shoutout to Marlon, who has a lesbian sister and trans kid. He’s incredibly supportive of both family members and the community at large. Sure, he sometimes takes it a tiny bit too far, but he’s a comedian, so it’s to be expected.
I’m going to go ahead and say it: I love Dave Bautista. I have never watched WWE, but I can respect what a legend he was in that sport. What I’m more interested in is Bautista’s venture into comedic acting and, more specifically, how great he is at it! Bautista is a stand up guy and father to three, and you can tell he’s got his shit together — perhaps because he was raised by a lesbian. And, ahem, muscles?!
Listen, we can all have our opinions about parenting-influencers and child-naming conventions, but two things are for certain: Jesse Sullivan loves the shit out of his kids, and he is insanely hot.
HEAR ME OUT, PEOPLE! When I think of Mike Birbiglia, I think of Dad Energy. He’s soft yet cool and is just one of those guys who you really want to like you. His kid inspires a lot of his comedy, but not in a “I hate my nagging wife and annoying kids” kind of way.
Bruce, The Boss, the guy every member of your family has a crush on, not only including but especially your father, has only made himself even more hot by beefing with Trump while performing in Berlin. I’ve always been a Springsteen fan, ever since my dad would take me to his concerts where he’d put me on his shoulders. I figured it was a New York/New Jersey thing. But as I get older and as I gain more gay and transmasc friends, I’ve learned Springsteen is for everyone! Plus, he’s very transparent about his own challenging relationship with his father and how therapy helped him prepare himself for fatherhood. That’s hot!
Idris Elba is who my mom wishes my father was (just kidding!). I know none of us need any more reason or permission to thirst over Idris Elba, but he is yet another celebrity who speaks very openly and honestly about his relationship with his father and with his children.
The man wears a wrist full of friendship bracelets his daughter made, for Christ’s sake. He is so dad-coded that during his acceptance speech for best supporting actor at this year’s Oscars, he asked his wife to have more kids. Sure, some people thought this was a weird move and wouldn’t want it to happen to them, but if his wife isn’t offended, then neither am I.
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Motti (he/they) is a New York born and raised comedian, writer, and content creator. You can find him on Instagram @hotfunnysmartmotti or at a bar show in Brooklyn somewhere.
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Welcome to the third recap of the second season of And Just Like That…, a spin-off of erstwhile ’90s/’00s comedy Sex and the City, a show about a sexually adventurous PR agent who cured a cold with Fanta and cough syrup over ice. This week’s episode was the season’s most coherent thus far, stocked with fish-out-of-water hijinks including the always-delightful occasion of Carrie Bradshaw attempting life outside of the Manhattan city limits. Everybody’s struggling with big mid-life issues: showing up authentically in their relationships, balancing career and family, negotiating unexpected professional pivots, and figuring out what to do when your husband pees his pants at the club.
We open in Carrie’s mansion, where Carrie delights her literary agent by revealing she’s working on a new book, then disappoints her agent by revealing that although it is fiction — it is not romantasy. Also Carrie’s been invited to speak at SXSW in Austin, also to Google in Palo Alto and also on a panel about memoirs in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Carrie jumps at the chance to visit Virginia because that’s where Aidan lives. I hope her panel is at Colonial Willamsburg because she has the PERFECT hat for that occasion.
We then transition to the soft hard launch of Anthony’s Sexual Bakery, Hot Rolls Hot Boys Hot Fellas Hot Toddies (something like that), the concept bakery absolutely nobody asked for. If you’ve ever turned down a nine AM croissant because it wasn’t handed to you by a man in a skin-tight, low cut denim onesie with a prominent penis bulge, let me know in the comments!
So you just stick your whole finger right in his butthole?
Carrie needs a pal to accompany her to Virginia, lest her boyfriend think she’s going there to spend time with him, a truly absurd thing for a girlfriend to want to do with her boyfriend! These are the kinds of games we played with boys in the early 2000s when we were in our twenties, how is Carrie still doing this in 2025? Are straight women okay?
Everybody’s too busy to meet Virginia for an on-brand reason: Miranda has a leadership training, Charlotte’s attending an Artsy McArt Art Show of Artsy Art and Seema is too posh to even go to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Aidan’s wife calls Carrie with a really embarrassing request and unfortunately it’s not for Carrie to find a tampon that got lost inside her — it’s for Carrie to possibly shake down her New York City pharma connections to procure a bottle of 30mg Adderall XR for Wyatt because the Nationwide Adderall Shortage has dried out Virginia’s local supply. This is like the most realistic storyline they’ve had so far.
You know, I was thinking about what you asked me before — about doing a threesome with me and Aidan just for the plot?
You were?
Luckily, LTW and the Hot Moms have arrived at Hot Fellas Bread-n-Bagels and you bet your ass these entrepreneurial mothers have the hookup. Despite a shortage that surely is impacting their own children as well, Charlotte’s able to score a dime bag of Addies immediately so Wyatt will be able to focus more intently on why his Dad is being so weird. Women can do anything they put their minds to!!!
Lisa Todd Wexley’s co-producer Grace, who has worked tirelessly for LTW and her ten-part docuseries for eight years — despite its original projection of being a one-year project — has been invited to work on Steve McQueen’s next documentary! This is great news for Grace but ultimately it’s terrible news for LTW, ’cause Stevie needs Grace immediately.
Oh my god there is a haunted poster for She-La behind me isn’t there
LTW is devastated and angry about Grace leaving her for Steve McQueen. Later at home she decides to mash some potatoes about it and talk to her husband Herbert.
It’s all right, you wanna fight. You’ve got a hunger. I was just like you when I was younger — head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr?
Dying is easy, young man! Living is harder!
Herbert reminds her how patient Grace has been for the past eight (8) years and made space for LTW to have babies. Much like Charlotte in this episode (you’ll see), LTW’s struggling to accept that there might be aspects of her professional life compromised by her family life. I think the mashed potatoes are going to turn out really good though.
Although Miranda has refused to accompany Carrie to Old Dominion, she will be cat-sitting Carrie’s marvelous tiny beast, Shoe, because that’s what lesbians do, they hang out with cats. (Not me personally because I am allergic, but speaking generally.) It will be a big week for Shoe because Carrie purchased Shoe a gorgeous playgym. It will also be a big week for Aidan because Carrie is continuing to add additional elements to her story of why she, Aidan’s girlfriend, needs to have lunch with Aidan, her boyfriend: she’s gonna give him a key to the house they own together! Romance.
This feels so much larger than the Rabbit, don’t you think?
ALSO it’s gonna be a big week for Miranda ’cause she asked Joy from the BBC out for drinks, under the guise of needing advice for future on-camera invitations.
Carrie: Do you really have to play those games? Miranda: I don’t know, maybe I should just hop on a plane and surprise her with a key to a house she’s already been in twice? Carrie: It’s his house, and can I please get a cease and desist on the Aidan wisecracks?
Miranda settles out of court. I remain unsettled!
At the Art McArt Gala, Charlotte’s young, cool Gen Z employees are hungover from raving and selling art all night at the club. Meanwhile boring old Charlotte, noted Wife & Mother, missed out on all the networking opportunities because she was at home roasting chickens for her family.
At the klerb, we’re all fam
That’s so interesting!
Later that evening over a dinner she has prepared, Charlotte tells her family — and also Anthony and Giuseppe — that her inability to keep up with Gen Z, due to the invisible and visible labor she is obligated to perform for them, is preventing her from going dancing all night with her co-workers, which is where all the big art deals are taking place.
Be honest Mom these are Trader Joe’s bagged Haricots Verts and you didn’t *need* to leave work at 5 to put them in the microwave
Harry agrees that he, too, is lacking the level of cool he needs to exude in order to keep up with the Jaydens at his law firm. Charlotte suggests they reinvent themselves and try going out to party. In other news, Anthony says Guiseppe is neglecting Hot Buns Hot Ones by focusing on his poetry instead of trying to sell sourdough rolls with his Kielbalsa if you know what I mean. Also Rock is dressed like a little sailor and it’s adorable:
Charlotte every day you dress like you’re about to board the Good Ship Lollipop, of course you must have known your child would do the same one day
Harry doesn’t have cool enough clothes to go party so Carrie gamely takes him to the shoppes to acquire some hot fashions.
🎶 I’m dudin’ up my shirt front Puttin’ in the shirt studs Polishin’ my nails 🎶
Charlotte your husband is singing Fred Astaire at Standard & Strange again can you please come pick him up
Seema’s shoved forcefully into a Career Crossroads this episode when her boss Elliot reveals that not only is he somehow 90 years old, but he’s retiring and has sold his company shares to a guy named Ryan.
C’MON TOSS AN OLD MAN A JUNIOR MINT
Elliot’s disrespect of Seema’s excellence is uncalled for, and further salt is poured onto the wound when Ryan arrives with a little hate and a bottle of champagne. Sima decides to take all of her vacation time ASAP to reflect on her life and her choices and her future. Her first step will be to visit WIlliamsburg, Virginia, with her dearest friend Carrie Bradshaw, so she pulls up to Carrie’s brownstone just in time to meet Adam Gardens, the Garden Guy.
May I interest you in a bed of plants? They are poisonous.
Get in the car, little boy, I’m in the mood for a little arsenic
There’s a little promising banter between Adam Gardens and Seema that hopefully will evolve into hot sex for Seema in the future.
Somehow Seema and Carrie are flying coach to Williamsburg. The plane experience is disappointing to Seema because even though there’s an empty seat in between them — the height of luxury if you ask me — the flight attendant won’t get her a tequila until she’s at cruising altitude.
“Why does no gay man ever give me what I want?” asks Sima. This is how I feel about the gay man who is the executive producer of this show.
I downloaded six episodes from the third season of The West Wing before we took off, you in?
Later that evening, Seema and Carrie have dinner in Williamsburg. Seema says she’s considering striking out on her own and starting her own firm, The Patel Group. The restaurant owner stops by to thank Carrie for being such an incredible panelist and Seema asks for recommendations from the menu and then he realizes they have the wrong menus because the restaurant used to have Hearty Southern Fare like fried chicken but now it has sweet potato reductions.
Here at Colonial Williamsburg we invite you to visit the farming plot near the windmill where farmers are growing large-scale plots for our authentic colonial dishes
I LOVE WINDMILLS
Once again Seema wonders why gay men won’t give her what she wants while I wonder how on earth they are distributing inaccurate menus to guests??!?! This would never happen at The Olive Garden. Later that same evening, Carrie’s timidly interacting with Aidan about their evening plans while Sima has been out in the streets doing the lords work, acquiring a delicious dish for them both:
There’s one straight man who always gives me exactly what I want and his name is Colonel Sanders
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Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Thrilled that Seema is going to fuck Trey Atwood !! And that Miranda called out Carrie even if she immediately apologized.
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Lily with the Haricots Verts, Miranda with the rabbit – the captions are once again perfect. This recap was an even better delight than the episode
My remaining question is how Carrie got through tsa with that giant sandwich bag in her bra
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legit every move she made with the adderall was more alarming and befuddling than the last, from not putting it into a medicine bottle (as seema suggested) to begin with, to slipping it out of her bra and into her purse post-TSA, while on the plane (she did tell seems to “shied her” but not until mid-movement), to every additional minute that passed in which it was in her possession and i kept thinking it was chekov’s gun and i was just already annoyed at how it might go off. but it didn’t! so that i suppose is a small blessing
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BIG shoutout to Trader Joe’s bagged Haricots Verts
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“Lesbianism Is Healing” t-shirt, size L, add to cart.
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I’m a bit worried for Miranda, that hand-on-chest thing is such a fuckboi move
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not worried because if the writers didn’t realize how che came off, they surely think hand-on-chest is INCREDIBLY romantic
They’re on your side! And they can’t WAIT to tell you what happened!!
Q
Hi! Long time reader, first time writer here. I’m a 28 year old trans guy relatively new in my transition. I have a lovely, supportive group of friends who adore me and have made this transition easier on me. But sometimes… I think they may be inadvertently showing poor allyship when they aren’t intending to. Let me explain. We’re all a part of a larger community with some straight and cis people of all different ages and backgrounds. We’ve been a part of this community since before my transition, so a lot of the people we interact with knew me by a different name and pronouns previously. Now, if any of these people outside of my close friend group deadname me or use the wrong pronouns, my friends happily correct them. Here’s the catch – they then tell me about it. To me, this is not information I need to have. I’m aware that people will misgender me and I’ve accepted that, but I deal with it enough in front of my own face that I don’t need to also know when it’s happening behind my back. I get their intentions behind letting me know, whether it’s to affirm their allyship or keep me in the know, but I just don’t think I need to hear it. What’s the best way to go about letting them know they can keep it to themselves while also showing my appreciation for their allyship? I don’t want it to feel like I’m punishing them.
A
Valerie Anne: I think this solution is the most straightforward but also probably the most nerve-wracking: tell them plainly. I think the best way to do this and avoid feeling like you’re “punishing” them is to make the reason more about you than them. I think it can be as simple as, “Hey thank you for correcting people when they misgender me, I really appreciate it, but I actually would prefer it if you didn’t tell me about every time it happened.” You can even say what you said here, that you encounter it enough face-to-face and would rather not know about the times it happens behind your back. If they’re a true friend and ally (which it sounds like they are!!) they will understand and adapt. Even though it would be nice if they understood how this feels performative and that the reason they’re telling you is for the pat on the back and it doesn’t actually serve you at all, people can get defensive so I understand your desire to keep it more about you and your feelings than risking making them feel attacked, even though it would be perfectly reasonable if you did want to explain that. And depending on how the conversation goes, and how willing you think they would be to hear that, maybe it could go there! But I do think just asking plainly is your best bet here either way.
Summer: If your friends are good and trustworthy, this is the kind of thing you can just mention the next time they tell you a story about someone misgendering you. Something simple and polite like, “Thanks a lot for doing that for me. I don’t know if I need to hear every single instance because it can be a little stressful in the middle of the transition stuff to hear about others misgendering me. But I appreciate what you’re doing a lot.”
Compliment sandwich it. Put the bad news in between two slices of good news. If they’re on your team, they’ll understand. If they can’t handle a simple interaction like that without an emotional incident, then you’ve got another problem on your ass. Good friends take feedback and are willing to do the small things that make each other feel good.
Nico: I don’t know if they’re telling you in person or over text, but either way, I would just write a stock little script for yourself now so that you can use it later. Create the compliment sandwich, be frank about how you don’t want to hear about being misgendered but appreciate their correcting folks, and then just have that on-hand, and immediately whip it out when a friend does this again. Dealing with it as it comes up is probably preferable to preempting it, which is a little more discomfort for you, but if you feel the need to say this now or ahead of time, that is also a valid choice – it just may result in you feeling like you need to do a little more emotional labor than probably feels fair if your friends get upset.
In which we validate the hell out of your super rational fear of traveling internationally in These Trying Times.
Q
My family has been planning this cruise trip for about a year, but I’m trans and I have started feeling really worried about going. I have a thick skin, I’m not worried about getting misgendered, I can handle that. But I got my new passport last week and yes it does say my gender assigned at birth (male) now. I feel really scared about getting on and off a boat in multiple different countries. Sometimes I feel scared I’ll end up somehow not allowed back into this country, even though I know that is irrational. But I’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long. I love my family. I don’t want to miss the trip. But it feels insane to ask my family to cancel or reschedule it to be a different trip. Or to go on the trip but not get off the boat when we stop in other countries, which is always an option. I haven’t talked to my parents yet, but I talked to one of my sisters and she said I shouldn’t worry because she and the rest of my family has my back and will protect me and stick up for me. Am I being a baby to still be worried?
A
Summer: You’re not a baby for being worried about personal security in multiple different countries. Cruise ship stops aren’t always the most trans-friendly places and having valid paperwork is fundamentally valuable to travel as a trans person.
That said, you must voice your concerns to your family. If this is a jointly planned cruise between family members with even decent relations, they should be willing to hear you out. This isn’t a minor logistical hiccup or a matter of itinerary. You’re concerned about personal security in a sociopolitical era that is profoundly hostile to us trans peeps. This administration’s track record of handling citizens overseas, much less trans citizens has been disastrous. You cannot presume that the US embassy or something will have your back if there’s a problem. Your family may have your back morally, but if things get physical or start involving state actors, you will be stranded. This is a critical issue that bears serious discussion. The fact that your sister thinks that ‘sticking up’ for you will be adequate protection against foreign law enforcement is evidence of how little you’re being understood.
Nico: I’m with Summer here. If you’re dealing with a government and things go awry, “sticking up for you” or “having your back” is not going to cut it. You’re not being a baby, but your trip is also not necessarily out the window. I recommend that you:
Get an itinerary of all the countries the cruise will be stopping at together,
Research the policies each of these countries has regarding trans people visiting, people with US passports visiting, and also looking for recent personal experiences from other trans people who’ve traveled to these countries,
Talk to your family and have a serious discussion where you outline your concerns in which you can bring specific concerns about specific countries up, and that you
Call the cruise line and speaking to a representative about their policies regarding trans passengers and international borders, the kinds of support they can offer at port stops (if any), and what you can expect from the crew while on board and traveling with them.
You might find out that things should be fine, or you might find out that there are certain ports where you will want to stay on the boat, or that you don’t feel comfortable going. Overall, I do think your family should be taking your concerns more seriously, and I hope that they’ll hear you out.
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Did it keep me from texting my ex at 8 p.m.? Surprisingly, yes.
Did it also make me spiral into a series of questionable behaviors that raised more than a few eyebrows in the group chat? Also yes.
Coping is a full-time job. Sometimes it looks like healthy journaling, and sometimes it looks like standing in front of the fridge for the 19th time in a single night, grabbing an icy Sprite with that satisfying bubble sting in the back of your throat, pretending it’ll fix the ache. Other times it’s just…eating everything in sight because you’re smack dab in your binge-eating era and grief is loud and hungry.
This essay is not about the right way to cope. It’s about the ways we do cope — the ways that may make our friends pause mid-text like, uh… you good?
Let’s get into it.
The Hyperfixation Hole
You’ve never knitted before in your life. But now? Now you own six skeins of ethically sourced yarn and follow three crafting influencers. You binge-watch Japanese craft videos at 2 a.m, and you have a whole Notes app tab labeled “sock patterns.”
The hyperfixation hobby hole starts small — maybe it’s puzzles, maybe it’s nail art, maybe you suddenly care deeply about urban foraging — but soon you’re up all night learning how to pickle radishes, how to ferment your own kimchi or wallpaper your bathroom. It’s not hurting anyone, but your friends are definitely confused when your entire personality becomes “beekeeping queer with boundary issues” overnight.
Bonus points if you tried to turn it into a small business before the grief wore off.
The Body Rebellion Phase
This isn’t a glow-up. This is a meltdown in skinny jeans.
Maybe it’s a new septum ring or chopping off all your hair or bleaching it platinum blonde despite your curls pleading for mercy. You might find yourself impulse-buying latex or developing an entire aesthetic based on a minor celebrity who just got canceled (it happens) or tattooing a phrase in Swahili across your ribs that means “I’m still here.”
It’s not about vanity — it’s about control. It’s your body, and after loss or heartbreak or betrayal, sometimes reclaiming it means pushing it to extremes. It’s survival. It’s screaming ownership over a body that’s been to hell and back.
From the outside, your friends are texting: “You okay? Need to talk?”
From the inside? You feel alive again. Even if only for a moment.
The Detachment Disguise
“I’m fine. Really. So fine.”
Unbothered. Completely emotionally disengaged. You’re not sad — you’re thriving! Cue 17 mirror selfies, all from the exact same angle, smiling through the detachment like it’s a cute new aesthetic.
The detachment disguise is one of the more insidious coping mechanisms. You might tell yourself you’re just “focusing on yourself,” but deep down, you know it’s numbness wearing lip gloss.
This is the ghost phase — dropping out of group chats, cancelling plans, and rebranding yourself as the “no drama, no feelings” friend.
To your friends, you look strong. To you? It feels hollow. But the thought of opening up makes your throat close. So you keep smiling for the Stories, pretending your heart isn’t quietly splintering.
The Eat Pray Love Escape Plan
This one’s for the dramatic queers. You know who you are!
You sell your furniture on Facebook Marketplace, book a one-way ticket, and next thing you know you’re sending selfies from a village in Italy or a cafe in Cape Town, captioning it with, “Healing looks like this ❤️✨”
And hey — it might! But you didn’t tell anyone you left. You ghosted your whole life. The relationship, the job, the city, the run-down apartment, even the parts of yourself you no longer recognized.
To the friends you ghosted, though? It stings. It feels like being left behind, abandonment. This phase can look freeing, but it often leaves people around you confused and worried, unsure if you’re actually okay or just performing freedom with a sunset backdrop.
The Hoe Phase
A classic. A messy one. Arguably, a necessary one.
After a long stint as someone’s steady partner, you bust out the dating apps like it’s a competitive sport. You’re texting five people, juggling three group chats, and suddenly experimenting with orgies or becoming a third.
Maybe you’re poly now. Or maybe you’re just wildly avoidant.
Your friends? They’re alarmed — not because you’re exploring your sexuality, but because you’re disappearing into rapid-fire hookups. You’re not texting back. You’re not grounded. You’re not present. You’re saying “I’m just having fun,” but the burnout is visible in your eyes.
This phase isn’t inherently bad. But it can be a neon sign blinking “I’m hurting” in bedazzled letters. And sometimes your people see it before you do.
The Notes App Book You Lock in a Digital Time Capsule
One thing I did for sure the last time I was hurt? I wrote an entire book. It started as stray lines in the Pages app on my iPhone — raw, unedited feelings with no real goal. Not quite a journal, not quite poetry. Just truth.
Eventually, it became 200 pages of frozen time. Some entries were longform essays, some were four-line stabs of pain. I didn’t mean to write a book. I just needed somewhere to bleed that wasn’t a text message, whatsApp status, or a Twitter thread.
And heres the thing, its never quite finished. I run to those pages and bleed all over them at every inconvenience.
So, Why Does Any of This Matter?
Because coping — however wild, messy, or eyebrow-raising — is about survival.
But we don’t survive in vacuums.
Whether it’s ghosting your group chat, crying into the arms of someone you met two hours ago, or disappearing to Thailand without notice, our ways of coping echo out into the lives of the people who love us. Our friends. Our siblings-in-queerness. The ones who do text back even when we don’t.
And sometimes they can’t pull us out of the rabbit holes we dive into. Sometimes we don’t even want them to. But what’s worth reflecting on is this: Coping isn’t just about getting through something hard. It’s about who we are on the other side. And what damage — or distance — we create along the way.
Sometimes, those people can’t pull us out of the rabbit holes we dive into. Sometimes, we don’t want them to.
But it’s worth reflecting on this: Coping isn’t just about making it through the dark. It’s about who we become on the other side.
And what damage — or distance — we leave behind along the way.
There’s no shame in coping. None.
But there is radical power in recognizing how our survival tactics affect others — in choosing to let someone witness the mess, instead of hiding it behind a septum ring, a plane ticket, or a phone full of unreturned texts.
I still do all of the above.
I just try to name it now.
Sometimes out loud. Sometimes just to myself.
Sometimes in the group chat, where someone finally texts: “Okay… but are you okay?”
And this time, I say: “Not really. But thanks for asking.”
Autostraddle’s Pride 2025 theme is DEVIANT BEHAVIOR. Read more, and be deviant!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Carlo Kui is an award-winning Kenyan poet, writer, seasoned Public Relations professional and Psychologist in training. With three self-published books and a decade-long journey in the literary world, her work fearlessly explores themes of love, identity, and empowerment. Carlo’s bold, evocative voice and dynamic stage performances have earned her recognition for her unique, dionysiac style.
A feminist and advocate for body positivity, gender equality, and mental health, Carlo intertwines her passion for human rights with the joys and challenges of motherhood. Her writing inspires readers to embrace their authenticity and live boldly.
Thank you for this! My sister passed in September, and I think about coping mechanisms a lot (and talk through them with my therapist lol). I really appreciate the framing of the transformative process of it all!
Finally, my time has come. A Friday the 13th……..IN PRIDE MONTH. It’s Friday the 13th but GAY. FriGAY the Squirteenth!!!!!!!!
Do I rewrite this intro and republish this list I first wrote three years ago every single Friday the 13th? Yes, yes I do. It is like a compulsion. I don’t care if three people read it every time. I do this for ME.
From the same twisted mind that brought you The 30 Gayest Things About the Supposedly Straight Rom-Com 13 Going On 30 comes a new unwell list. I present: the 13 gayest things about the original Friday the 13th from 1980. Have additional things you’d like to add? That’s great. I probably won’t add them into the piece because I like having exactly 13 gay things, but do throw them in the comments!
This post was originally written in May 2022 and basically gets updated every time there is a Friday the 13th.
I guess there are like “spoilers” in here for the films Friday the 13th and Scream, two movies that have been out for decades, so it seems a little silly to be telling you that, but I don’t want anyone yelling at me on this fine Friday.
Wearing the same polo, long shorts, and wide belt as your crush? I know it’s these teen counselors’ “uniform” or whatever, but that’s Dyke Culture, baby.
3. Having a conversation with a dog
I am 100% convinced this flannel-wearing cook died before we could find out about her butch girlfriend who she co-parents a Mastiff with.
4. This outfit
Tell me that’s not an outfit a specific type of lesbian would have worn at a club in 2003. TELL ME.
5. Alice doing some lite construction with that haircut in that outfit
The fact that she outright rejects this man right after doing a roof repair? Gay.
6. Marcie telling her crush about a dream she had (also Kevin Bacon’s entire look here)
Gays love to talk about their dreams. I always do say that the best form of foreplay is telling someone about the violent recurring nightmare you have. I’m glad to see that represented here.
7. The bisexual chair sitting Alice is doing here
Self-explanatory. Also, all three people in this image are lesbians.
8. Brenda suggesting they play “Strip Monopoly”
This one’s obvious, but Brenda is just so jazzed at the opportunity to see both Bill and Alice naked!!!! Also, there’s something fittingly bisexual about this striped sweater. Also turning a game about capitalism into a game about being horny for your friends? Iconic. And gay.
9. Marcie being a secret plumber????
Okay, I don’t think fixing a faulty faucet makes her a full-on plumber, but the women in this movie are very capable!!!! The fact that the last thing Marcie does before dying is fix a sink??? This one goes out to the DIY/handy gays! Also, moments before this, she did a Katherine Hepburn impression to herself in the mirror, which doesn’t NOT seem gay.
10. Brenda saying “just when it was getting interesting” to Alice re:Strip Monopoly…
Alice had JUST been about to take her top off when Brenda remembered she left the windows open in her cabin and had to cut Strip Monopoly short. But before she goes, she delivers this line DIRECTLY at Alice in a very seductive voice while putting on a raincoat over her bra and underwear? Why doesn’t she put her other clothes back on before leaving???? Also, there’s a dream costume party I wanna throw one year for Halloween where people have to dress up as minor/side characters who die in horror films. No one’s allowed to be final girls, just dead girls. And I wanna be Brenda and just wear a bright green raincoat over my underwear, because it’s a great look!!!!!!!
11. Mrs. Voorhees’ entire vibe
Ok, yes, sure, she’s like famously sex negative. But the cableknit sweater? The drama? The PERFORMANCE she gives Alice? Mrs. Voorhees is the most Mommi slasher killer there has ever been.
12. Getting slapped around by an older woman
I mean, sorry Alice and reader, but I had to say it. Some people dream of this. Also, re:the above screenshot, why is this little head nod that Mrs. Voorhees does when Alice is throwing random objects at her so funny AND hot? Mrs. Voorhees has swagger??? Also also, I want to take this time to recognize Mrs. Voorhees’ absolutely next-level upper arm strength????? When she punctured an arrow through a mattress AND an entire throat during the Kevin Bacon kill???? WHAT
13. Emotionally processing in the middle of a lake
Sure, Alice is more so passing out from exhaustion in the middle of the lake after just having decapitated an old woman who was trying to kill her to avenge her dead son, BUT! The facts that she can repair roofs and appreciate a good little paddle out in a canoe at the end of the day absolutely confirm my belief that Alice is an outdoorsy, handy gay who knows her way around a tool belt and a hiking trail. Ask her for summit recs, because she’s got em.
I do love that the way I selected these screenshots basically makes the movie look like a cute indie film about a bunch of camp counselors doing shenanigans and not a blood-filled slasher movie. Love to recontextualize.
A bonus 14th gay moment in Friday the 13th is the final jumpscare. I can’t explain it, but jumpscares are queer. And I refuse to screenshot this one, because I believe it to be the most effective jumpscare of all time, and even though I’ve seen it a million times and KNOW it’s coming, my heart skips a beat every time, and even just seeing the image here would affect my already caffeine-impacted pulse. If I had been alive in 1980 to see this movie, I would have…died in the theater during the jumpscare? Like, I’m absolutely sure I would have left my body.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
1) Wow I never realized how darn capable all of those counselors are. 2) My girlfriend almost has that same cable knit sweater. Very pleased by this post. Love this.
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omg i have wanted a Mrs. Voorhees sweater for FOREVER
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That being single shit didn’t last long lol
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I love this, more horror movie stuff always and I would also love your corresponding thoughts on Scream 2
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Kayla, as someone who just watched this film for the first time very recently, I had those EXACT thoughts about Alice. I kept checking the year to remind myself it came out in the 80s and probably wasn’t going to provide bisexual representation of any sort. She was just SO capable!!!
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That is an absolutely incredible party idea and you should do it
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This is the most ridiculous article I’ve ever seen! Thankfully I stopped reading pretty quickly!
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Oh no the femme dies
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Another year another reminder of glory! Also any reminder of archery? innately gay
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happy friday the 13th to all who celebrate
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wish we were celebrating togetherrrrrr
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I am one of the three every time and I hope in the elapsed year you’ve had your Not-the-Final-Girls costume party!
In this moment, when visibility for trans people in the media is urgent, vital, confusing, and precarious, composer and sound artist Taul Katz offers something rare: a sonic landscape to hold all of it — beauty, grief, resilience, and shimmering possibility. Katz has just released their debut album Just Kids OST, a luminous, delicate, and immersive collection of music originally composed for Just Kids, a new documentary that centers the stories of three trans kids and their families living in states where gender-affirming care is banned. The score, released in tandem with the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is more than an accompaniment; it is a deeply felt act of witnessing.
In this trans artist 4 trans artist interview, I speak with Taul Katz about their process, their collaboration with the filmmakers, and the emotional and technical work of composing sound for image. We also talk about what it means to listen — really listen — to the truths trans kids share with us, to truths our communities share with us, and how sound might offer us a pathway to imagine more expansive futures.
Taul Katz // photo by Ryley Paskal
LM: My heart expands and aches when I think about trans kids and teens in America today. Somehow, your music captures all of it — the ache of the present and the shimmering outlines of a future still being dreamed up. Can you talk about your approach to composing the music for this project? What guided you as you created sound?
TK: I write from a really emotional place. I need to fully step into the world of whatever I’m working on — to sit with the feeling of it, let it settle in my body, and create from there.
The music is pretty minimal and ambient — it uses processed textures, modular synths, saxophone, harp, and field recordings — but it’s all about feeling.
I wasn’t trying to dramatize the film or guide the emotion too heavily. It was more about holding space — for what the families in the film are going through, and for the broader reality of being trans right now. I wanted it to feel like something you could rest inside of, even if it’s not always comfortable. I tried to make room for complexity, for contradiction, and for care.
Gianna Toboni, Jacqueline Toboni, Samantha Wender and the entire team behind Just Kids did an incredible job making the film feel emotionally whole. It doesn’t lean too heavily into a despairing narrative, even though the subject matter is deeply painful. What’s happening in the U.S. right now — especially under the guise of “protecting children” — is terrifying. But it’s a tricky line to walk: How do you make a film that shows how absurd and dangerous this moment is without turning it into trauma porn? It’s easy to fall into that trap, especially with trans stories. I think it’s essential to hold space for trans joy alongside the pain.
Amen.
When the narrative only focuses on suffering, it reveals something about how people view our community, as if we only exist in relation to harm. That kind of storytelling flattens us. Trans people are complex, joyful, contradictory, funny, angry, ordinary. We deserve to be seen in all of our dimensions — not just the ones that make for a tragic headline.
Dimensional is actually a word that comes to mind when I listen to the album. You weave together so many subtle layers into each track, which creates a really nuanced emotional experience for the listener. Is this something specific to this album or is that approach threaded throughout your work?
I always make music in layers. I’m always thinking about the idea of becoming — not in a linear, before-and-after way, but in the sense that we’re constantly shifting. So in one sense, the dimensionality you’re picking up on is always present in my work. But for this film specifically, I wanted the score to capture these feelings of becoming and transformation that are so fundamental to our adolescent years, and even more so for trans kids. It’s not about resolution or arrival; it’s about staying with the tension, the uncertainty, and the softness that lives inside of hard things.
I love that. I am so fascinated by the work of creating sound. It’s both immaterial and deeply physical. It’s also so personal, which is why I am taken by artists like you who are able to create such a specific feeling and create meaning for people without relying on lyrics or any other more overt modes of storytelling. How do you cultivate and nurture your creativity?
I’m someone who is really involved with my people. I care deeply, I stay in close connection, and I have a freakishly large social battery. I love being in dialogue and sitting with emotion together. That kind of exchange has always been part of how I move through the world and how I make work. But for a long time, I felt conflicted about that, especially as a composer. There’s a strong narrative about what a “serious” creative process is supposed to look like — total isolation, shutting everything and everyone out, disappearing into the work. And I really internalized that. I spent years feeling like I wasn’t doing it right because I wasn’t locking myself in a room and cutting myself off.
But being queer, community isn’t just a preference — it’s a lifeline. So much of how we process and survive is through reflection, care, and conversation. I started realizing that these connections don’t take away from my work and my creativity — they actually shape it. That said, I also really value and need time alone. I need space to let things settle, to metabolize what’s come up, and to write from that quieter place. It’s just that my solitude isn’t separate from my community — it exists in rhythm with it. I finally let go of this rigid idea of what my process should look like and allowed it to reflect how I actually live and create.
That’s beautiful. I think maturing as an artist is, in part, about observing, accepting, and nurturing our unique process of making. Speaking of maturity — the kids in the film hold so many nuggets of wisdom. Did you learn anything from the trans kids featured in the film? I imagine you spent so many hours with them through watching all the footage over and over…
Yes, absolutely. Sitting with the footage — over and over, for hours — taught me a lot. I feel genuinely grateful to have gotten to know everyone in that way. One of the biggest things I took from it was how important it is to stay soft and open, even in the face of everything happening right now.
Anger is necessary — and I think it’s important to let yourself feel it — but it can also start to calcify into something that narrows how you see the world. That kind of rigidity makes it hard to connect, to feel, to respond with care. Staying soft isn’t the opposite of resistance — it’s a part of it.
The kids reminded me of the kind of artist I want to be — someone who doesn’t have to harden or flatten in order to be understood. Being with their voices and expressions for so long moved me deeply. It shaped not just the score, but also how I think about care and resistance.
Taul Katz is a composer and sound designer based between New York and Paris. Their debut album, Just Kids OST is a sonic journey that balances subtlety with a kind of cosmic beauty, offering a profound sense of care and reverence for the trans community.
JUST KIDS is a new documentary film from director Gianna Toboni, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Lío Mehiel is an actor, artist, and filmmaker. Lío made their feature film debut starring in Sundance 2023’s Mutt. Their critically acclaimed performance earned them the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award in Acting, making them the first trans actor to ever win the award. They returned to Sundance 2024 with In the Summers, which took home the Grand Jury Prize. Next up, Lío can be seen in After the Hunt directed by Luca Guadagnino and Perfect starring Julia Fox. The short film Entre Amigxs co-directed by Lío can be seen on NOWNESS. (Photo by Soni Broman.)
When I arrive at a Bedstuy cocktail bar a few minutes late, comedians Carly Kane and Maddie Silverstein already have mocktails in front of them, so I grab a non-alcoholic beer from the bar and join them at a coveted table where Carly is wrapping up a story about an ex. I urge her not to stop on my account, so she doesn’t. She provides all the details for Maddie and me to weigh in on until she finally feels affirmed in how she handled the situation. Next up is Maddie, who has an ongoing arrangement with a long-distance ex, and needs a quick survey on whatever’s going on with them.
The table turns to me, the only one left who has not divulged some exciting information about an ex. I’m boring and have been in a relationship for two years with no Ex Drama to report. But I remember I recently caught up with an ex over brunch and actually do have some fairly enticing updates from that. So, I offer that up to the eager lesbians sitting in front of me, and they kindly accept.
Here’s the thing. Before I finish my story, both Carly and Maddie already know it. They just don’t know that I was the other half of that equation. They heard it from the other side.
Don’t you just love how small the queer comedy scene is in NYC? It’s great! Everyone is hooking up and dating — even the ones who swear they do not date other comics — and the ones who aren’t are for sure crushing in silence. Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me, and I wondered: Have Carly and Maddie ever kissed?
Read my interview with Carly and Maddie, who are hosting an all-queer comedy, drag, and burlesque show Will They Kiss? in Brooklyn on June 21, to find out.
Maddie: I’m quoted in Autostraddle already as a power bottom, so…
Motti: Wait, really? For what?
Maddie: They did an article about power bottoms in 2022, and I just submitted my little quote.
Motti: How would you define a power bottom?
Maddie: Well, that’s what the whole thing was about.
Carly: Yeah, I want you [Maddie] to define a power bottom.
Maddie: I feel like it’s like, I feel like I’m getting railed a lot, but it’s also like I’m in charge, kind of.
Carly: Are you a switch though?
Maddie: Like yeah, I’m not a Pillow Princess.
Carly: No, I know that.
Motti: I need someone to define that for me, too, because you’re literally laying there and not doing anything? I feel like that takes away from how good verbal cues are in sex?
Maddie: I have no idea. I mean, I think it’s all open to interpretation. But I think like…
Motti: So you’re doing things but you’re not doing THE THING?
Maddie: I’m doing things sometimes. But you just take charge when you’re on the bottom.
Carly: Are you like a brat? I feel like you’re like bratty.
Maddie: I’m not a brat. I don’t know what I am. At the time, the article was just exploring, I feel like “bottom” can have a negative connotation within, especially I feel like, the lesbian community. Everyone’s like, “you better be vers or grow up.”
Motti: Booo! That’s so annoying.
Carly: [unprompted] I’ll go on record and say I’m a switch.
Maddie: But I’m like, no, I’m like doing stuff, but I may be laying down for a lot of it.
Motti: There’s a lot you can do while laying down.
Maddie: There’s so much you can do while laying down.
Carly: Speaking of laying down, that’s what we do at our show. Kind of.
Motti: Before you tell me about the show, tell me how you two met.
Carly: We met in Chicago comedy actually, years and years and years ago.
Maddie: It was a fall day in Chicago, evening rather. No, I moved to LA and I would come home and do shows in Chicago. We were both on Ladylike together.
Carly: Yeah, we were on a storytelling show together in 2017.
Maddie: Carly was a big hotshot in Chicago. She was. I mean, always a hotshot, but I don’t know, you were running a famous mic in Chicago, and we just liked each other and we started following each other on Instagram.
Carly: Yeah, just always stayed friends. Anytime that Maddie was in Chicago, we would hang out–
Maddie: –in a comedy way.
Carly: In a comedy way, where it feels like we’d be friends if we lived in the same place.
Maddie: Then, when I moved to LA, we were each other’s reply guys, for sure.
Carly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the tension actually has been building up until this moment of the show.
Motti: Were you both out queer people back in 2017?
Carly and Maddie: Noooo, no.
Carly: Wow, that’s good… Yeah, this is fun.
Maddie: We were both bi at the same time, too.
Motti: You progressed together.
Carly: We kind of progressed together.
Maddie: No, I was very closeted in 2017.
Carly: Me too.
Motti: Yeah, same.
Carly: I think I had just broken up with my boyfriend, and I was like, “I’m gay.” It was right around the time I think I came out.
Maddie: And then Carly moved to LA in 2020?
Carly: Mm, 2021.
Maddie: Okay, 2021. And we were both really excited that we were going to live in the same city. We started going on hikes. And then shortly after my first lesbian breakup I was like, “I’m moving to New York.”
Motti: You couldn’t be in the same city?
Maddie: No, actually she lived in New York. Which I think gave her quite a fright. She doesn’t live here anymore. Drove her out of the city, just like I always do. But then, in 2022, Carly was going to move to New York. I remember where you told me, right on Metropolitan Avenue at that weird taco place. And yeah, I don’t know, we were really excited. We just started hanging out for the first time, I feel like, for real.
Carly: We both love performing and love stand-up, and I think also — I don’t want to speak for [Maddie] — but there is something fun about taking stand-up and then adding more to it. One thing I love about Maddie as a performer is you see Maddie and you’re like “oh this hot put-together girl who’s kind of like intimidating,” and then and then she’ll just play the craziest characters on stage and is so goofy and it’s in such opposition of what I think what, at least my first impression, of you would be. And that was so fun for me to be like oh my god I think we both also have this goofy side where I want to be more playful on stage but I don’t know how, and so we both — it was sort of a fever dream — we were like “oh let’s do it.”
Maddie: My friends owned a boxing gym at the time, and I feel like anytime I walk into someplace interesting with Carly she’s like “this could be a venue.” I always just see her eyes kind of darting around, and I’m like, “I know she’s thinking it.” She was like, “it’d be so sick if we did a stand-up show at the boxing gym.” And I was like, man.
And what if we wrestled each other?
Carly: We’ve had a really slow-burn friendship, and we’ve always wanted to do something together, and this just ended up being the thing that we did.
Motti: Talk me through the actual structure of the show. What percentage of it is you guys wrestling in these muscle suits, and how much of it is stand-up?
Maddie: [thinking] Yeah, so, kind of a lot of it is us wrestling. We wanted to be like WWE, very bad WWE. That’s why we call it “wrestling-themed.”
Carly: We hosted as characters up top.
Motti: What are their names?
Maddie: Last year, we were Big Dad–
Carly: I was Kane the Pain.
Maddie: You were Kane the Pain, and I was Big Daddy Maddie, but this year we’re introducing new characters.
Carly: I’m Blonde Rumble.
Maddie: And I’m Strapping Young Lad.
Motti: Are you going to wear a strap? Oh, well, no, because you’re a power bottom.
Carly: [wide-eyed] You shooooould!
Maddie: Guys, you can strap if you’re a power bottom.
Carly: You should whip out a strap at some point. We’re really going all out this year, I will say. We also had our friends at the boxing gym help us choreograph and learn some simple moves. So, in between each performer, we would have a little bit of a script and a story throughline of two enemies that secretly fall in love.
Maddie: Yeah, I think that I fucked your mom and your sister. Is that right? Or you fucked my mom and my sister?
Or maybe both.
Carly: We were both fucking each other’s family members.
Maddie: We started with a script and went into round one of the fight, which I think I won. Next there was standup comedy. Then we came out for round two, and Carly — or Kane the Pain — won that one. Round three, after the burlesque performance, you realize our ref started trying to fight us, and then we ended up pairing up, and we were like, “whoa, we actually make a pretty great team!” and there’s sexual tension throughout the whole thing, I would say, but here’s where it became clear. And then the ref held up a sign that said “KISS!” and we kind of fought it, but we ended up kissing and a little bumping on stage. And then it ended with a drag performance.
People said that the show felt too short. Some people said it was the best night of their lives. My best friend cried. It was so fun.
Carly: It really was a special. You know when you run a show and you’re like, “oh this was special and felt good.” Not that they all don’t, but you know what I’m saying? It was really weird and fun.
Carly and Maddie absolutely gay kissed in front of me in that Bed Stuy cocktail bar. And if you want to see Carly and Maddie kiss, you can go to their show Will They Kiss? where there will be a pre-show arm wrestling contest, gay wrestling, stand-up comedy from queer comedians, burlesque dancing, and drag performances. And to make it even more delicious, the event’s ring girl is none other than lesbian Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model Lauren Chan.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Motti (he/they) is a New York born and raised comedian, writer, and content creator. You can find him on Instagram @hotfunnysmartmotti or at a bar show in Brooklyn somewhere.
This is my wildest attempt to make those degrees pay for themselves, but here we go.
Kink aficionados are familiar with consensually imposed order and direction in our relationships. Collars, cuffs, and other restraints are heavily associated with BDSM for a reason. They’re visible symbols of kink. However, all the kinksters I’ve met consider the mental aspect of BDSM far more important than the physical. It’s mostly attitude, intention, and consensus that makes kink flow.
One of my favorite sexual experiences had me instructing my submissive partner to hold her hands above her head with wrists overlapped. As though her wrists were bound. And to not deviate while I worked on the rest of her. No physical restraint necessary. It was smoking hot because she complied fully and was functionally restrained by imagination.
Clicker training is like that. It keys into the mental side of kink using benign tools. I’ll explain.
Good girl! [click click]
Clicker training is a positive reinforcement training approach based on operant conditioning. Operant conditioning posits that consequences can be applied to behaviors to strengthen desirable ones and remove undesirable ones. These consequences can be reinforcement (encouragement) or punishment (discouragement). They’re further broken down into positive and negative as seen from the trainee’s perspective.
I won’t make fellow psych graduates in the readership relive their undergrad horrors by elaborating on B.F. Skinner and the positive/negative punishment/reinforcement matrix. What matters is that clicker training is a robust method with a groundwork in accepted theory. Its popularity in animal training is driven by the positive reinforcement orientation. It relies on encouragement, affirmation, and enjoyment. It can be accomplished without punishment or deprivation.
The main vehicle for this method is the clicker, a small noisemaker that clicks when a button is pressed. During training, ‘good’ behavior is rewarded with the trainer’s affirmation and a few clicks. Think pets, treats, and a positive tone of voice alongside the clicking. This connects the trainee’s good feeling of receiving affirmation to the sound of a clicker held by a trainer. This process is called bridging. ‘Bad’ or undesirable behavior can simply be ignored or gently discouraged. Over time, trainees tend to seek out affirmation and gravitate toward good behavior, thus reinforcing it.
In animal training, clickers can be paired with hand signals or click patterns to indicate particular commands. Advanced activities can be blended together to ‘shape’ precise behaviors or guide an animal to a goal. Clicker training is most popular with housepets like cats and dogs, but its use extends to chickens, goats, and… submissives.
The human element
Clicker training goes great with kink. Most of us have greater intellect and empathy than farm animals. We’re pliable enough to accept training, smart enough to enjoy it, and resilient enough to overcome it. Petplay might be the obvious fit here, but it can slot into any power dynamic. So let’s talk pragmatics.
Informed consent is critical when applying any form of conditioning to a partner. Conditioning a partner sexually without informed consent is abusive. Doing it outside of sex is manipulative at the best of times. This applies to any person in the dynamic.
Discuss the method and training goals with all partners involved.
Give people the time they need to research and consider the decision.
Discuss the possibility of de-conditioning trained behavior if training is suspended or the dynamic ends.
Apply consent checks and aftercare as normal.
After establishing informed consent, the trainer will need tools. Animal training clickers are available cheaply in pet stores and online. Get one. You’ll also need sources of positive reinforcement. Treats or bits of snacks are traditional, but be aware that involving food in sex invites physical andemotional complications. You can instead use enjoyable touch as reinforcement. Some people respond to pats or kisses. Masochistic partners might enjoy pain as a source of enjoyment. “Good girl!” followed by a backhanded, degrading compliment would melt me.
Verbal affirmation always works and can be applied liberally. The tools you choose should fit your needs and relationship dynamic.
The actual training is straightforward. If the trainee in your dynamic behaves with their regular intellect, the rules for training look like this:
Begin your dynamic activities as normal, but have your clicker and positive reinforcement available.
Whenever they express desirable behavior, immediately click and provide positive reinforcement.
This builds and strengthens the relationship between good behavior, good feelings, and the click.
When they drift toward undesirable behavior, simply don’t click or offer positive reinforcement.
Once they’re comfortable, you can increase training complexity:
Guide them with a trail of clicks and reinforcement toward desirable behavior (sex toys, body parts, positions, etc.).
Use click patterns, hand signals, and verbal commands to teach specific behaviors or ‘tricks’.
Add distractions to make it harder (and more fun) for your partner to pay attention. Media, pleasure, and pain come to my mind.
Things to remember
We’re far more complex than other animals. Although we can be conditioned, it’s only enjoyable when we are into it. Informed consent is paramount. Clicker training is like hypnosis: It shouldn’t be used on a resistant partner and will probably fail.
Standard clicker training relies on positivity and enjoyment. You should only implement pain or ‘punishment’ if your dynamic benefits from it.
Conditioning can always be broken and is easier for us to break because we’re reflective, intelligent beings.
You can modify the clicker training routine to fit your dynamic and needs. I’ve given pointers below.
Making and breaking it
My approach to kink has always been to make it mine. Kink should be customizable to fit our individual needs and this is no different. I’m going to use this section to discuss ways to customize clicker training for your dynamic and how to end it when the time comes.
Replace the clicker with another audio cue. Bells, muted whistles, verbal clicks, verbal statements, or recorded audio can all work. If it’s short and usable with one hand, it’s doable.
Use it to enhance other play. Guide a blindfolded partner with clicks or pair with impact play to add a new dimension to old kinks.
Adjust the training approach to your dynamic. Petplay can match it to real animal training methods. A brat/tamer dynamic can benefit from feisty disobedience. Humiliation and degradation-oriented relationships (my preferred kind) might like the tinge of embarrassment and dehumanization it brings.
Flip the script and have a submissive partner who tops from the bottom doing the training. This also works for people who dominate from the bottom.
I wouldn’t be respecting the complexities of human clicker training if I didn’t discuss breaking the conditioning. In its original theory, the loss of trained behaviors is called extinction. Extinction can happen passively, but you can also wield it to fulfil self-improvement goals. A few things come to my mind when I think about breaking this kind of conditioning.
Break the core connection between the clicker and positive reinforcement. Click the clicker outside of sexual contexts with no meaning. Remove all positive reinforcement when clicking so it becomes a detached sound.
Give the clicker to the trainee to remove its power from the trainer.
Formally end the training dynamic in a discussion and draw a boundary.
Symbolically dispose of the clicker and stop using the training in play.
If the dynamic ends, the clicker can take on a negative symbolism and everyone involved might just want to leave it behind. That’ll mess up the training.
Oh, good girl! [click click]
My favorite kind of writing is really fun and leaves me wondering how I convinced someone to pay me for it. This is that kind of writing. The idea originated from a meme about trans girls and their petplay kinks. It got out of hand, but I think the underlying idea is sound. I think that BDSM should be explorative and fun, so why not bring this dimension into it? If everyone’s consenting and into it, I don’t see an issue. As always, I’m just covering the basics to an interesting corner of kink, and it’s up to you to decide if this is your thing. I already know I’m into it.
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Summer Tao is a South Africa based writer. She has a fondness for queer relationships, sexuality and news. Her love for plush cats, and video games is only exceeded by the joy of being her bright, transgender self
Voice memos, FaceTime, short videos, live photos, nudes, role-playing, classic texting — sexting can look like a lot of different things. I’m always interested in hearing about people’s relationships, philosophies about, and strategies for sexting, which are all as varied as how people think and feel about sex itself. Do you sext before or after you’ve hooked up with someone new? Does your top/bottom/switch dynamic look the same over sexting as it does during sex? Do you get visual? Aural? We consider these questions and more below!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
i used to find sexting sort of embarrassing, but my current girlfriend really showed me how fun it can be. it’s a great way to dip your toes into something new, we do it a lot while i travel for work, which i do a lot. great tips all around!
Lol drew gonna break up with her gf to date a writer bruh
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Ok question though, logistically and app-wise, WHERE are y’all sexting? On regular old texts? Whatsapp? Via instagram? Snapchat? Where are we sending these nudes into cyberspace? Do you delete them afterwards? Am I being overly paranoid?
The first two episodes of Bravo’s Next Gen NYC are now available to stream on Peacock, and instead of a typical Bravo Dyke review, I decided to tap in Drew Burnett Gregory, who does not really watch reality television, to write a dual conversational review with me! Here’s what we thought about the show, which according to Bravo “follows a tangled web of friends raised in the spotlight — or at least close enough for good lighting — as they stumble into adulthood one brunch, breakup and spontaneous decision at a time.”
Drew: My first question: Do Bravo camera crews have to just spend their evenings hanging out at the club with these people?
Kayla: YES they do. But something that is not super typical is how many times we saw crew in shots here, especially for this early on in the series. But also this show wouldn’t really work without breaking the fourth wall, so I am glad they’re doing so and often.
Drew: I really liked the moment when Brooks predicted how they were going to edit his interview. I’m sure other adult Housewives are seasoned by this point, but there’s a different quality to a group of people who grew up being filmed.
Kayla: Yeah it is both alarming and fascinating to consider these four young adults — Riley, Brooks, Ariana, and Gia — have been filmed for soooooo much of their lives. The girls especially. Brooks came into it in his late teens. But the girls have been filmed their ENTIRE LIVES.
Drew: I do think if you were on reality TV as a child you’ve earned the right to live in a 12k a month Alphabet City apartment. This is where my radical politic finds its limit.
Kayla: Right, it’s like, how much can I really FEEL for these extreme versions of nepo babies/inheritors of extreme generational wealth? And yet, something about them growing up on reality TV does make me feel for them!!!! That’s fucked UP and they didn’t CHOOSE IT!
And…boy do I feel for Ariana about her MOTHER STEALING MONEY FROM HER. I went into this show with relatively low expectations, but I sat the fuck UP when she started talking about that. I was like ohhhhhhhh this is REAL LIFE SHIT. And I don’t think you even really need any of the backstory about her family to pick up what’s going on there.
Drew: Yeah, okay, should we give some context? You’re a Bravo expert, meanwhile I’ve only watched two episodes with my sister a decade ago and like four episodes with you in the past year. I’m only here today because of my identities: trans and went to NYU.
Kayla: Yeah so this show was definitely marketed originally as being about the offspring of Real Housewives, and I thought there couldn’t possibly be enough juice to that premise alone. Then I learned more about the series, that in fact it’s more about a whole friend group of rich kids in New York, most of whom went to NYU, and only four of them are Real Housewives babies. The rest have rich/famous parents in some way (except maybe Georgia, Emira, and OnlyFans boy lol is his name Dylan?). So it’s more about like…Gen Z and generational wealth. Which also shouldn’t really have juice to it, but I think it has some juice! Lol
And then also, yeah, for the first time ever, there’s a trans main cast member on a Bravo show. Emira! She doesn’t really have much of a storyline yet, but her relationship seems very cute.
Drew: I was surprised by how casual they let her transness be. Maybe it’ll come up more later, but they’re not forcing it in a way I appreciate.
Kayla: I agree! But also not like ERASING it entirely — like at one point one of her videos that they had on screen had a reference to misgendering in the overlaid text. It really does feel so against the grain from how trans people have historically been treated by reality television. She gets to just be trans, without transness being “her storyline.”
Drew: Yes exactly! I kept forgetting that the impetus for me watching was the first trans Bravo main cast member and was just like “NYU alum clocking in for duty.”
Kayla: No to be fair your cis coworker (me) asked you to watch the show with me thinking it would be interesting to have a non-Bravo point of view about the first trans Bravo main cast member and then EGG ON MY FACE because it turns out your way more relevant expertise is “went to NYU.”
Drew: Trans people contain multitudes! And one of my worst tudes is having lived in Alphabet City from 2013-2015.
Kayla: LOL
Drew: I paid $800 a month to share a two bedroom with three people but…
Kayla: How accurate is the “went to NYU” of it all? Did you interact with people like this at NYU? Was the going out culture like this? Please tell me you knew a Georgia, because there’s something about Georgia where I’m like oh that’s a real type.
Drew: Look, I WISH I had been better at hanging with these kinds of people at NYU. I would probably be much more successful. I think coming from an upper middle class suburb where the wealth worship was what I was trying to escape, the idea of even wealthier people with the same aesthetics really turned me off. So I feel like these people hovered around me, but I didn’t spend a lot of time with them. Like I met my first girlfriend in our scholarship seminar, my best friend in the film department was someone from Minnesota who by year two was more interested in poetry. I’ve never been good at social climbing despite being so close to the mountains so to speak.
But imagine hanging out with a group of people where the only one who has seen When Harry Met Sally doesn’t wash her hands! I didn’t want that. Though I will say, yes, Georgia is a very familiar type, probably the type I was around most of this cast, and I’m sorry but I’m Team Riley in hand wash gate.
Kayla: I am ALSO Team Riley, especially since I sense Georgia getting into racist microaggression territory. Like she tries to say Riley was “scary” about it, and then the footage re-rolls and it’s literally just Riley being kind of sarcastic and funny about it?!
I think it is very bold in a society ravaged by superviruses to take that hard of a stance on not washing your hands. I am not even all that grossed out by germs at all. So the fact that EYE was appalled by how much she was doubling down on it? It made sense when she was clearly wasted the first time it came up…but after that? I think Georgia is in for a rude awakening when she watches herself back. And I know she’s trying to be funny, but “my body my choice” was not landing lol
Drew: I was already against her because people should wash their hands, but then yeah calling Riley scary really removed any goodwill I had toward her as the group underdog.
And also yeah weren’t these people like formed amid Covid? I keep wanting to call them kids but I get they’re like 22-25. But that means peak adolescence in Covid!!!
Kayla: IN NEW YORK! Georgia is a native New Yorker! She should be traumatized by germs/viruses lol
I am interested in the dichotomies in the cast of like: native/transplant and then especially generational wealth/self made.
Drew: Yes for sure. I wanted to root for Georgia for growing up “between poor and middle class” before she lost me. Now I’m just rooting for Dylan and his OnlyFans career. And his… “it’s just skin” in response to how dicks taste
Kayla: He really cracked me up a few times. Charlie meanwhile is trying so HARD to be the villain that it isn’t working. It’s too obvious!
Drew: He doesn’t have his heart in it. You know Werner Herzog’s ecstatic truth? Like in documentary when something is staged but it reaches a deeper truth. I felt like Charlie’s performance was an ecstatic lie.
Kayla: Someone who WANTS to be a fuckboy that badly is not a fuckboy.
He thinks he’s making good TV by fucking with Brooks and it’s really just pathetic. I will say I’m obsessed with the throwback nature of Brooks being a little helpless gay boy surrounded by an army of powerful femmes who would KILL for him. That’s some mid-aughts middle school social dynamics right there!
Drew: I also love the idea of having a Bravo show about a generation where half the people are openly conflict avoidant.
Kayla: Which is rooted in their TRAUMA from their parents being Housewives!!
Drew: I thought it was just a Gen Z thing, but wow you’re right.
Kayla: Were you familiar with Gia’s childhood song prior to this via TikTok — which btw was about her parents’ marriage being broken…the fact that it became a meme and she was so young in it really tells you everything you need to know about how she has been impacted psychologically by reality TV.
Drew: I knew the meme but had NO IDEA it was from Housewives. I gasped lol
Like revealing that back in the day Brooks bit Charlie’s finger.
Kayla: He really was more or less outed on Real Housewives.
Drew: Did I hear right that Brooks called himself an activist?
Kayla: Oh lord, did he lol I missed that. But delusion/exaggeration does run in the Marks family.
Drew: I did find it so funny how so few of them have jobs so they all need to exaggerate their titles.
Charlie being a crypto trader…
Kayla: Ariana saying she has an “online job.”
Drew: Me too Ariana me too
Kayla: Kind of obsessed with her boyfriend’s money being in CHICKEN
Drew: Lol YES
He was like my dad started this chicken restaurant. A new take on the nepo baby.
Kayla: Also she is smart to not let that man pay her rent for her! It’s clear she has seen the dangers of like over-relying on a man financially, via her mother.
Drew: As a Housewives fan, how did you feel about the ways the moms were incorporated?
Kayla: STRAP IN, LONG ANSWER INCOMING:
Ariana/Kim: Obsessed with Ariana immediately calling out her mom for stealing her money. That was juicy and real. I have friends who were former child actors who had the same thing happen to them. And then the fact that her mom is STILL contacting her for money! But then Ariana had this real empathy for her? Idk, it all felt messy and real in a way I appreciated. That’s a reality star in the making right there. You gotta air your dirty laundry!
Brooks/Meredith: This feels super insular/Housewivesy, but I’ve been so exhausted by Meredith lately on her show that I didn’t really need/want her here. She’s a weird one because she was my favorite when Real Housewives of Salt Lake City started, and she lost that title QUICKLY. If so much of Brooks’ arc on this show is supposed to be climbing out from her shadow, let’s see that! Less time with mom and more time with your girl friends…who are clearly standins for your mom LMAO I think he NEEDS a powerful femme force telling him what to do/solving his problems for him.
Gia/Teresa: Real Housewives of New Jersey is one of my RH blindspots, but I’ve seen/heard enough to know the basics, especially about Teresa since she has been around since the beginning. I love Gia’s commitment to living in Jersey and traveling in for the show/to socialize. Also I’ve heard from a lot of RHONJ viewers that there’s a real reverse-parenting situation happening with these two where Gia is way more of the parent and has been since a young age. Interested to see how that might play out here.
Riley/Kandi: I really appreciated how supportive Kandi was of Riley meeting up with Ariana. Kim ALSO stole money from Kandi via the song they made together, but it was forever ago, and I thought it was just nice and refreshing to hear Kandi be like yeah none of that is your business and actually just go forth and form your own relationship. I’ve been in situations where my relationships were impacted by drama between our mothers, so this actually really affected me in an unexpected way! And then Kandi sending Riley the photo of her and Ariana as kids was soooo sweet. I love Kandi, always have. And Riley is such a mini me for her. Her delivery of “I don’t even know what that show is” re:When Harry Met Sally was Kandi’s exact cadence lol.
Drew: Love this context. And interesting to hear that about Brooks and Meredith because the thing that blew me away was Brooks being like “oh yeah me and my mom are friends with her and her mom” and I was like wow the concept of having friends with your mom.
Kayla: Yeah I mean I do think he considers his mom one of his best friends, and that is always an alarming quality for me personally lol. But he also clearly wants a life outside her! She was REALLY in his corner when he was outed on Real Housewives.
Drew: Well that’s nice
Kayla: And viewers were REALLY mean about him in the first season of her show. I think they thought he was fair game since he was like 19?
Drew: I felt bad judging these people because they’re so young and they’re at least in their 20s!
As someone of queer boy with horrible male friends making comments about my sister experience, I just cannot imagine being like hey mom this is what my buddy said about my sister/your daughter.
Kayla: I do hate the extremely Reality TV thing of like “we’re going to retell the same story over and over and over and over again” and that’s honestly my main complaint about these first two episodes. We talked about/recapped the Charlie text TOO much. It’s part of the formula for sure, and at least it did eventually lead to that incredible line from Ariana’s boyfriend about Charlie’s corduroy pants:
Immediately entering the lexicon.
But yeah I would have liked to spend more time getting to know Emira a bit more. Or Ava. I was interested in some of Ava’s stuff with her father! I’m so appalled by parents who put their kid between them in their marriage/divorce — seems like she has been dealing with THAT her whole life!
Drew: Ava and Emira are the only two actually doing something (plus Dylan)!
Kayla: I feel for Ava because I hate when people treat modeling like it’s not real work, when it’s super hard work! She doesn’t have health insurance! lol
Drew: I really liked the scene with them camping aka having a picnic in Central Park. When Emira was talking about how Charlie and Ava are friends who would be good together I was like oh man does Georgia have a movie rec for you!
Kayla: Georgia was really trying to make When Harry Met Sally happen for her fellow Gen Z-ers
“Who’s Ben Affleck?” also really got me.
Drew: The producer chiming in after that killed me.
Kayla: Do you think you’ll watch more? I know reality TV isn’t your thing.
Drew: I do not think I’ll watch more, but if we were hanging out and you put it on, I’d be like omg my old friends!
Kayla: In many ways, a perfect way to watch reality television
Drew: This is how I feel whenever people from the new NY cast pop up after watching two episodes with you. Oh yeah we go way back.
Kayla: At least that has TWO lesbians in it (three if you count Mel, and we should all count Mel).
Drew: Zero people from The Valley left an impression though sad to say
If they’ve been popping up, I have not noticed.
Kayla: That’s very fair. I think that show was also hard for you in terms of being a little too familiar with those types of people in that area
Drew: Lol yes.
And speaking of familiar I’m also IN NEW YORK so theoretically I could see the Next Gen people around. Just last week I was in the West Village and on my walk from Stonewall to Cubby I was like……. when did the West Village become all straight people in their twenties
Kayla: I did genuinely love watching them walk 20 minutes from a bar to a club in Brooklyn
Drew: The most relatable moment of the show so far.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.
Earlier this week, my now ex and I sat down on our blue velvet couch and joined our Zoom session with our couples therapist. She joined two minutes late and brightly asked how things were going, presumably expecting we’d done last week’s homework, that things were on the upswing. Instead, we delivered the news that we’d broken up, that our six years together were over, that we were slowly uncoupling. She was surprised to hear. I was, too.
Our six years together spanned three apartments. We moved farther and farther south in Brooklyn as the years passed, making sure to maintain proximity to our favorite restaurants and all our friends. We spent a sweaty summer evening at the Brooklyn courthouse filing for domestic partnership along the way. We talked about marriage, about children, as though they were guaranteed. I had emailed a possible wedding venue to get an estimate. We had a future. We had a plan.
I tried, for three years, to grow cherry tomatoes in our last apartment. I was unsuccessful every year.
We broke up on a Wednesday at 10 p.m. Any other Wednesday, and we might have been watching a show, taking a bath together, or sitting at our desks in the office we shared, furiously typing away at our respective crafts (both of us writers, but in very different ways). This Wednesday was like most others, except it lasted a lot longer than every other Wednesday. Breakup Wednesday lasted an eternity. We were up until three, processing, grieving, holding hands. In true queer fashion, we’ve done so much of that since.
I know that breaking up is famously hard. That this grief, which right now feels insurmountable, will eventually pass and make room for the “better things” everyone claims are coming. It helps that we’re sad together. It helps that we’re not ending on terrible terms. It helps that I have people in my corner — friends, family, loved ones — who have shown me so much love and care in the past few days since. I feel so held by my community. But at the same time, I’m losing a good chunk of it. I’ll never get a red envelope for Lunar New Year from my ex’s mom again, nor will I see their family friends at Christmas. I’m sure I’ll run into their friends at gay things in the city, but it’ll be awkward at best.
my ex’s parents are incredibly thoughtful people, and sent us red envelopes every year for lunar new year !! this is the first one i ever got
It’s not lost on me that I’m older than my mom was when she had me. I’m 29, young by Brooklyn standards, ancient elsewhere. My grandmother apparently started menopause in her mid-thirties, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about that clock. I know there are so many ways to have children, and that I might not even want children when the time comes. I met the first baby in the friend group today. She’s my college roommate’s daughter. She’s three-months-old and perfect. She gurgles and giggles and has tiny baby toes. I want that for myself someday.
one of the last things we did together was snag these liberty library cards
My ex’s reasons for ending the relationship all make sense. We’ve always been like oil and water, and I struggled to love them the way they wanted to be loved. I wish I had listened more, I wish that I could have given them what they needed. In the aftermath of our breakup, I feel like we’re seeing each other clearly for the first time. I just wish I could have seen them sooner.
one of the strangest (and coolest) new york things we ever did together was glamping on governors island
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Ashni is a writer, comedian, and farmer's market enthusiast. When they're not writing, they can be found soaking up the sun, trying to make a container garden happen, or reading queer YA.
hate breakups, love breakup essays. and this was a gorgeous one. <3 <3 <3 <3
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this essay ended sooner than i was ready for it too, i had my screen zoomed in close so the text was large and the pictures even larger — when the end came, i was surprised and had to zoom out to get my bearings to realize yes, it had indeed ended… Much like breakups, perhaps.
I resonate deeply with your sentiment of seeing clearly for the first time in the aftermath of the breakup, an intense zoomed-in view during the relationship, and then a harsh, disoriented zooming out… For me, when I was suddenly broken up with years ago, I felt like the clouds immediately parted and I was able to not just see clearly but also realize for the first time how clouded my vision had been, I was able to realize how so much of my actions and motivations during the relationship were rooted in my trauma responses, and I was unable to love my then-partner the way they wanted to be loved.
I feel you ashni. you are not alone, and your article asserts your knowledge of that, having your friends, family, and loved ones in your corner, and you have more people than you even know in your corner, too :)
i’m wishing you and your ex so much gentleness, time, support, and healing during the collective and individual uncoupling process and beyond it.
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This was so beautiful to read, and it resonated so much. Currently going through a breakup with my wife after 15 years, and the grief is real. Sending hugs from across the internet.
feature image photo by The Washington Post / Contributor via Getty Images
Welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I tell you what our favorite queer celebrities are up to! How do I come about this arcane knowledge? Well, Instagram, of course! Let’s rock and roll!
Will Primavera Sound become a festival we all know soon? Feels like it just might…
It does seem like DC Pride was lit this weekend! Between Doechii and Cynthia, the girls were OUTSIDE!
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 8: Doechii performs during the WorldPride Closing Concerts on June 8, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
As a person who is WELL on the record about celebrties not needing their own podcasts, I am simply going to have to eat a HEAPING serving of humble pie, because I might actually need to listen to this one episode. It’s Meg’s fault! I want her takes on SATC!
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
When 23-year-old Dew Siratan Sittitanyawat reached the third round of her application to become a diplomat in Thailand, she was faced with a decision: attend her in-person interview as herself or cut her hair last minute.
“This interview is almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was debating with myself whether I should just forsake my own identity a little bit when going into the interview round by cutting my hair, pretending to be a boy for just a few days,” Sittitanyawat tells me. “It was a major decision for me, because this would be the first time the executives would see me for who I am, the real me.”
In Thailand, the application process to become a government official is rigorous. It consists of multiple exams, essays, and finally, an intensive interview. Sittitanyawat had dreamed of earning the prestigious position of diplomat, and she had already made it through the competitive first two rounds. The first round has 5,000 applicants, and by the final round, 25 candidates remain.
“Even the night before the interview, I still think that I could run to a salon to get my haircut in time,” she adds. “But it was at that moment I realized…the other candidates were just preparing for useful things, like how they would do their speech, how they would present their policy, and their visions. And it’s just so sad to me that I have to be thinking about whether to cut my hair. So that is when I just decided, okay, if they’re not gonna accept me for who I am, then maybe I don’t wanna work with them, too. And I decided to go in as is, everything, long hair, makeup, and just be myself.”
In her interview, she was asked if she thinks Thailand is ready for a transgender diplomat. “I said yes, absolutely,” Sittitanyawat recounts.
Years later, Sittitanyawat is the first openly transgender diplomat in Thailand. She is a third secretary in the Thailand Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Office of Policy and Planning.
Dew Siratan Sittitanyawat on her first day of work as a diplomat
In Thailand, queer people have media visibility but not accompanying legal protection. “Our anti-discrimination laws are still not that comprehensive and could very much be upgraded….This is something we need to work on,” Sittitanyawat says. “Social acceptance can be conditional. People may love the idea of queerness, but not always support queerness in… leadership or in their family.”
Thailand’s current laws only account for men and women, and do not recognize nonbinary or gender nonconforming people. Technically, for roles like government jobs, employees are still required to dress according to their gender assigned at birth. Even if it is not always enforced, there are no legal protections for LGBTQ+ people in this capacity.
By holding a prestigious government job, Sittitanyawat hopes to shape LGBTQ+ friendly policies as well as show transgender women can succeed in leadership positions.
Sittitanyawat at her desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
“Most of the time, being trans or LGBTQ in Thailand is always associated with being funny,” she says. “It has become a belief that the people in the LGBTQ community could not do anything other than an entertainment job… You won’t see many trans women in another industry.” Sittitanyawat hopes to demonstrate that LGBTQ people can succeed as lawyers, doctors, or diplomats, just as much as they can succeed as performers.
Sittitanyawat’s identity plays a key role in how she sees the world and how she shapes her policy work. “Being a trans woman gave me a deep sense of empathy and awareness of how identity can impact access, opportunity, and representation, especially in a system that hasn’t made space for people like us,” she says. “And that is why I approached my work, both in life and as a diplomat, not just only through policy and protocol, but also through a lens of visibility. Just simply being me matters. Being visibly trans in a conservative space like the government can be isolating sometimes, but it also pushed me to live with more compassion.”
“My identity doesn’t limit me,” she adds. “It grounds me in a purpose bigger than myself. My presence alone is already almost like a political act.”
Sittitanyawat’s success in her role is seen as a milestone and a sign of positive change. After Sittitanyawat joined the Thai government, she inspired many of her coworkers to come out after years of being closeted.
Sittitanyawat at the 2022 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Thailand
Sittitanyawat has worked on many projects through her role as a diplomat. One highlight was the APEC, or Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. In 2022, Thailand hosted the APEC, which brought leaders from 21 countries Asia-Pacific region together to discuss trade, the economy, and working together. Sittitanyawat was the Media Liaison Officer for Canada, so she coordinated all of the Canadian press during the event.
“The thing that I have the most impact on is essentially shaping the perception of trans women, of what we can and cannot do,” she says. “I’ve gotten messages saying, ‘thank you for being a trailblazer. Now I know I can aspire to be like you, too. Now I know that my opportunities are not limited to just being an entertainer or closeted.”
Just a few months ago, Thailand legalized same sex marriage. Sittitanyawat sees this as a very positive sign for Thailand. After years of campaigning and many revisions of the bill, LGBTQ+ people can now marry with the same rights as cisgender and straight couples. Thailand is the first country in Southeast Asia to pass a bill like this. Sittitanyawat hopes that Thailand will become increasingly recognized as a queer friendly country.
The current political climate around LGBTQ+ rights in Thailand and internationally is a “mix of hope and heartbreak,” for Sittitanyawat. In Thailand, there is “positive momentum,” but “progress is still slow.”
“Some countries are passing groundbreaking policies, while others are rolling back protections.” The United States used to be seen by many globally as the standard for LGBTQ+ rights and protections, Sittitanyawat says, but now “people seem to be clicking the undo button.” Sittitanyawat feels the importance of advocating for inclusive policy at home and abroad even more now.
“I believe diplomacy has a role to play in pushing global norms forward, and I hope to be a part of a wave that shows that queer inclusion isn’t just a Western import of political trends,” Sittitanyawat says. “It should be a universal human right.”
Sittitanyawat is hopeful about the future. To LGBTQ+ youth, Sittitanyawat says: “You are not alone. It might feel like the world wasn’t built for you, and in many ways, it really wasn’t. Like, girl, who are we kidding? Right? But your identity is not something that you have to hide or minimize. It’s actually a core part of your strength.”
“My advice would be, find your support system and don’t rush your journey,” she adds. “Coming out, growing into yourself, finding your voice, all these things take time, and it can be at your own pace. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you have to choose between being successful or being authentic. You can be both. And I like to think that I’m the proof of that. Every time you speak up, every time you show up, you are already creating a space, not just for yourself, but for the next person who needs to know what’s possible.”
Currently, Sittitanyawat is pursuing a master’s degree in strategic communication at Columbia University. When Sittitanyawat returns to Thailand, she hopes to continue growing as a diplomat and as an advocate.
“I see my career as a bridge between communities, between tradition and progress, between policy and the people,” she says. “We need a more diverse voice at the table, not just as tokens, but as leaders as well. So my goal is to help create a world where queer trans Southeast Asian women in government aren’t seen as remarkable. It will be something really, really normal. That’s the future I want to build.”
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Audrey Black is an NYC-based writer and comedian. Originally from Dallas, Texas, she now resides in Brooklyn. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Defining “pop music” is hard enough, let alone “gay pop” — but what we know for sure is that gay pop musicians have existed and have been defining culture for many, many years. Beyond the concept of pop music simply being music that is popular, we narrowed our definition to match its current application — music that’s a bit more commercial and broadly accessible with a dance-able rhythm and familiar structure.
So you won’t see on this list artists who felt like rock musicians first and foremost (e.g., Bikini Kill, Joan Jett) or the massive crew of queer musicians who have dominated folk and its many iterations for so long (e.g., Brandi Carlile, Melissa Etheridge). But you will find, we think, a pretty broad range of musicians who dabble in multiple genres while also aiming for that “pop” space, and doing so in a way that feels distinctly queer or gay.
This list is hardly comprehensive and isn’t trying to be — there are so many more musicians who fit into the “gay pop” category than we listed here. But we hoped to create a good sampler platter representing some of the many.This post was originally written in 2024 and has been lightly updated in 2025.
Lady Gaga
It’d be impossible to understate out bisexual musician and actor Lady Gaga‘s impact on culture and pop music, or the impact she’s made as an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Every Gaga performance and high-camp costume was iconic. Her male alter-ego Jo Calederone was absurdly hot. Her music video for “Telephone” opened with Gaga making out with butch Canadian performance artist Heather Cassils and ended with her holding hands with Beyonce and driving into the sunset. “Born This Way” doesn’t even matter —it’s “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face” and “Alejandro” and “Bad Romance” and “You and I” and “Paparazzi.” Lady Gaga is a queen of gay pop.
Hayley Kiyoko
(Photo by Miikka Skaffari/WireImage,)
On the cover of Nylon Magazine’s first-ever Pride Issue, Hayley Kiyoko was described as an unprecedented force in the gay pop scene, a lesbian teen heartthrob unafraid to court a passionate, starving queer fan base who crowned her Lesbian Jesus. She was the first lesbian pop star signed to a major label to make multiple music videos in which she kisses girls. It’s incredible how recent Kiyoko, who’s also an actor, dancer and writer, changed the game. In recent years, she’s published a book, Girls Like Girls,a reference to her supergay track “Girls Like Girls.” Her second book, Where There’s Room For Us, will debut this fall.
Troye Sivan
Australian actor and noted “twink icon” Troye Sivan came out on YouTube at the age of 18, after which point he, according to a New Yorker profile, “began to shed his plucky YouTube persona and to adopt the ultra-styled glamour of a pop star.” The profile noted that despite the rich legacy of LGBT musicians, Sivan was trying to do something new, becoming “a gay pop idol in the mold of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, forged on social media and marketed to a mass audience primed by Lady Gaga’s anthem of acceptance, “Born This Way.”” He makes extremely gay music videos, most recently the delightful “One of Your Girls.”
Janelle Monáe
(Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage)
Obviously, Janelle Monaé is a titan. An icon. A GOAT. Pick an euphemism for “the best to ever do it” when talking about queer music, and they will still be at the top of that list. But what is perhaps most striking about Monáe is not just their feats, but the way they did it. Janelle Monáe has always been beloved by queer fans who saw themselves in their music, but they did not start their career as an out artist. They took time letting us in, feeling safe and secure enough to share their truth with us — first coming out as pansexual in 2018, then nonbinary in 2022, and in 2023 penning love letters to polyamory on their Age of Pleasure album. Sharing the intimacy of coming into yourself with a legion of queer fans and fandroids is vulnerable, tough work. It makes Monáe stand out in any room. (-Carmen Phillips)
He was a gender-bending bisexual legend. From Ziggy Stardust to “Modern Love,” he changed music forever — and inspired generations of queer people to experiment with their sexuality and gender. (-Drew Burnett Gregory)
Tegan & Sara
via LiveNation
It was difficult to have a feeling — genuinely, any feeling at all — in the 2000s or 2010s without knowing the perfect Tegan & Sara lyric to match that feeling. The Canadian twins were beloved by queer women and eventually successfully broke into the mainstream, singing the theme song to the Lego movie and penning hits like “Boyfriend” and “Closer.” Now they’re still touring and making music but more than that — they’ve published two memoirs, turned their lives into a TV show and continue doing advocacy work for the LGBTQ+ community through the Tegan & Sara Foundation. In 2024, they released the extraordinary documentary Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara.
Christine and the Queens
Ben Houdijk / Shutterstock.com
Pansexual and genderqueer French singer-songwriter Christine and the Queens, who also goes just by Chris, makes very fun and often experimental art pop. He has put out four studio albums and a whopping 11 EPs. (-Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya)
Elton John
(Photo by David Redfern/Redferns)
Elton John is a pioneer in the gay pop conversation — a Legend who came out as bisexual in 1976 and then as gay in 1992. From his wild costumes to his timeless hits tohis trailblazing advocacy, John is one of the greatest live performers and most successful musicians of all time.
Cardi B
Ringo Chiu / Shutterstock.com
It’s hard to write about Cardi B without also writing about her “work wife” Megan thee Stallion. Cardi’s flow by itself is legendary by itself, and she rightfully would have a spot on this list on the strength of her bars alone, but together Cardi and Meg rap about pussy like Picasso painting his next great work of art. That’s not being grandiose for the sake of simile, like Picasso working through his various periods, Meg and Cardi have found a new way to twist and turn each of their lyrics, no two ever alike, in love letters to women’s sex and empowerment. They are never at their best and most comfortable (or gayest) than when they’re rapping together. “W.A.P.” was an anthem, but it was really “Bongos” — which features both bisexual rappers mimicking scissoring in the music video, with the song’s cover art decked out in bi pride colors —that etched their music in the queer pantheon forever. (-CP)
Megan Thee Stallion
Photo by Momodu Mansaray/WireImage
As already mentioned, Megan thee Stallion shines at her gayest when creating with Cardi B. But she also stands firmly on her own. Meg’s created something of a side quest to her press tours out of making as many other queer rappers and singers blush in her presence as possible. She plays the game a little like Pokemon, trying to catch them all. The most recent to fall was none other than Renée Rapp, who in January of this year proclaimed on her Instagram to be one of Megan thee Stallion’s lesbian bodyguards. And while surely Meg can protect herself if needed, seeing the head coach bisexual hotties get her well deserved flowers never gets old.(-CP)
Ricky Martin
“King of Latin Pop” Ricky Martin first emerged as a standout heartthrob of the oft-shifting Puerto Rican boy band Menudo before launching a solo career in the ’90s, while also working as an actor. But it was “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” from Martin’s first English album, Ricky Martin (1999) that made him a household name worldwide and catapulted him into superstardom. He came out in March 2010, an event cited by Billboard’s Lucas Villa as a game-changer for the industry: “With Martin’s announcement, gay artists, who had long kept their sexual identities a secret, finally had a beacon of hope.”
Rina Sawayama
(Photo by Simone Joyner/Getty Images)
This British-Japanese R&B pop singer —also a model and actor —came out in a 2018 interview with Broadly, saying: “I’ve always written song about girls. I don’ think I’ve ever mentioned a guy in my songs.” She’s an outspoken political advocate whose critically acclaimed music blends genre and defies expectation.
070 Shake
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)
Rapper and singer 070 Shake blends genres that encompass alternative hip-hop, pop rap, and psychedelic music. Shake first hit the Billboard Hot 100 as a featured artist on the song “Escapism” by Raye, which went viral on Tiktok. She released her third studio album in 2024 and is dating actress Lily Rose-Depp.
Amaarae
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)
One of the biggest and most explosive talents of the last few years, the Ghanian-American singer-songwriter’s music fuses pop, R&B, afrobeats andalté.
Kate Nash
(Photo by Lorne Thomson/Redferns)
This English singer-songwriter has five studio albums and a lot of hits under her belt and is known for her specific blend of pop, alternative and rock music, and for her feminist political activism. She describes her sexuality as fluid and uses her platform to advocate against trans-exclusionary ideologies, as in her recent single, “Germ,” which is targeted at TERFs: ““Girl listen up / You’re not radical / Exclusionary, regressive, misogynist / Germ! Germ / Nah you’re not rad at all.”
Kehlani
It’s hard to find words to describe Kehlani that don’t end in “heartthrob.” Maybe that makes sense, the lesbian R&B star has turned their concerts into welcome spaces of queer thirst.Their duets with everyone from Teyana Taylor to their ex Victoria Monét are so hot they could melt paint off of walls. And Kehlani’s quieter ballads, like 2022’s “Altar” have become mainstays for the gays who prefer their soundtracks to go with ritual moon baths and candle lightings. In a fun plot twist, they’ve also become a mainstay sidelines at women’s basketball games nationwide, including headlining 2023’s WNBA All-Star game halftime show. Whatever the mood, Kehlani is ready and waiting. And yes that can be read in more ways than one, see the above mentioned “heartthrob”. (-CP)
Lauren Jauregui
A former member of the girl group Fifth Harmony, Lauren Jauregui really leaned into her queer identity when pursuing her fantastic solo career. She has identified as bisexual and sexually fluid, and she is a politically outspoken artist known for participating in protests and speaking out against genocide, war, and xenophobia. In a genre not always known for taking strong political stands, she really stands out as a pop artist and activist. (-KKU)
Sylvester
A flamboyant and androgynous musician who worked across disco, R&B and soul, Sylvester had a distinctive falsetto voice and launched his career with avant-garde drag troupe The Cockettes, his song “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” is a core queer anthem.
Adam Lambert
Dziurek / Shutterstock.com
Nobody remembers Kris Allen, who somehow beat Lambert for the American Idol crown in 2009. Lambert came out on the cover of Rolling Stone that year, and faced intense homophobia while launching his career and refusing to censor gay sexuality. Truly, no other male artist has garnered more space on this lesbian website than Lambert. In addition to his solo work, he’s been performing as the lead singer of Queen since 2011.
Kesha
Since breaking onto the pop scene with her bisexual party girl persona, Kesha has evolved into a powerhouse vocalist and songwriter as likely to deliver an anthemic ballad about surviving abuse as she is a killer dance song. Even as she’s matured — and dropped the $ from her name — she’s never stopped having fun with her music getting more explicitly queer in songs like “Kinky.” (-DBG)
Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury of Queen, 1982 Tour at the Various Locations in Oakland, California (Photo by Steve Jennings/WireImage)
The frontman of Queen is considered one of the greatest singers of all time, and his death from AIDS shook the gay community to its core. “His distinctive baritone voice, his ability to extend his three-octave vocal range with a variety of vibrato and distortion techniques, his strutting, seductive showmanship and his ability to connect with his audience made him one of the most thrilling rock performers of all time,” writes the Legacy Project Chicago.
Doechii
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
All Disney kids grow up to be gay, we don’t make the rules. But still, even by those standards, there was no preparing for the way that Dove Cameron took every ounce of the venom that once upon a time made her kid’s icon in Disney’s Descendents series (where she played the daughter of Maleficent) and flip it into such piercing queer seduction in 2022’s “Boyfriend.”
“I can be a better boyfriend than him,” Dove croons, her voice graveling. “I can do the shit that he never did… I can be such a gentleman.” Who knew that they were teaching game like that at the Mickey Mouse Club? (-CP)
Lisa M
Known as the first female rapper to debut in Latin America, Puerto Rican singer/songwriter, dancer, producer and DJ Lisa M came out as a lesbian in 2010. Famous worldwide, her music fuses genres including pop, merengue, rap and reggaetón.
boygenius
(Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
We weren’t sure about including boygenius on this list — their music isn’t really “pop” but as the Gay Pop conversation has continued this week, they do keep coming up, and so here we are. “Love is a worship, and being let into that love boygenius has for each other makes it feel so much easier to access that love in one’s own life,” wrote Gabrielle Grace Hogan of the deeply adored trio of Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker. “I wish all queers a friendship like boygenius sings about.” Shortly after announcing a hiatus from their collaborative work, boygenius absolutely dominated the 2023 Grammys.
Be Steadwell
Steadwell is known for a genre of music they literally call “queer pop” and my lord, the things Be Steadwell can do with their voice and a loop pedal! Their shows are intimate and sexy, their music is catchy and often genuinely funny, and consistently so true to the queer experience. In 2023, they joined the cast ofOctavia E. Butler’s Parable of The Sower the Opera. In 2025, she released her first novel, Chocolate Chip City.
girl in red
(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella)
Declared “one of the most astute and exciting singer-songwriters working in the world of guitar music” by The New York Times and a “queer icon” by Paper, the Norweigan alt-pop singer-songwriter broke out with her very gay single “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” in 2018. Her music resonates with deeply emotional queer women all over the world, and likely did so when she was tapped to open for Taylor Swift on multiple legs of the blockbuster Eras Tour.
Miley Cyrus
This might be recency bias talking, but is it possible that after a nearly 20 year career in the industry (of which she’s been out as queer for more than a decade), that Miley Cyrus’ duet “II Most Wanted” off of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is somehow her gayest song?
Of course, Miley Cyrus has the ability to turn every song’s queerness up three notches just by the strength of her mere presence, so take this observation with a heavy grain of salt, but it is hard not to notice that a current Top 10 single on the Billboard charts (as of this writing), has Miley Cyrus promising to be Bey’s “backseat baby, drivin’ you crazy anytime you’d like” in a Thelma & Louise-style ballad. Whew. You know? (-CP)
George Michael
Another giant of the ’80s and ’90s, English singer-songwriter, producer and philanthropist George Michael is on every greatest music-related list ever, first getting famous with Wham! before going solo with his massively successful debut, Faith. Freedom! 90 was first read as a coming out anthem (Michael didn’t actually come out for another ten years) but now it’s just an essential gay anthem.
Sia
Australian bisexual musician Sia is known for her wigs, her many solo albums, her weird music videos, her costumes, and the song “Breathe Me” that played in the finale of Six Feet Under, which made us all cry. Sia’s a prolific soungwriter, penning many hits for other artists. She’s won a multitude of Grammys, (many for “Chandelier.”) She dated JD Samson for several years and has been out as queer since 2008.
RuPaul
(Photo by Porter Gifford/Liaison)
What is gay pop if it is not RuPaul’s 1993 classic “Supermodel”? Ru turned the “sashay shante” of its chorus into an empire that has lasted the next 30 years, and is still going! For better or for worse, it’s hard to imagine the fabric of queer culture without Ru’s thumbprints on it, and it can be hard to remember from our perch in 2024 — but that reign started with Ru’s music, first and foremost.(-CP)
There are probably a thousand reasons why Lil Nas X would be at the top of anyone’s “queer pop icon” list. Despite what many casual fans might believe, he’s not the first-ever gay rapper — but he’s certainly the most famous. There will always be one moment that stands out, cementing Lil Nas X as a legend of our time: While performing his gay anthem “(Montero) Call Me By Your Name” at the 2021 BET Awards, Lil Nas X closes the song by pulling a dancer close for a make out onstage at a historically homophobic network. It was a first for BET, and a welcome return home for many Black queer fans watching at home. (-CP)
Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry founded pioneering new wave band Blondie in 1974, an outfit whose hits have lasted forever in the gay club rotationon, most notably “Heart of Glass” and “One Way or Another.” Stef described Harry, who came out as bisexual in 2014, as “the quintessential frontwoman – a platinum-blonde ice queen with a punk rock snarl.” Even at the age of 78, Harry continues to collaborate, perform and write.
St Vincent
Annie Clark — who goes by the stage name St. Vincent — is often at the center of the sapphic celeb gossip rumor mill, having been in some high profile relationships through the years (Carrie Brownstein, Cara Delevigne, Kristen Stewart, to name a few), but don’t let any of this distract from the fact that she’s an incredible multigenre musician who has evolved through the years in exciting ways. In addition to her own hits, she’s also a prolific songwriter for other pop acts and co-wrote Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer.” She’s a rock pop living legend, and every album she puts out feels like it’s doing something new. (-KKU)
Victoria Monét
(Photo by Michael Buckner/Billboard via Getty Images)
The reigning It Girl of R&B is here, queer, and never afraid to let you know it. It’s easy to make jokes that Victoria Monét’s viral off-stage and behind-the-scenes moments drove her ex-Kehlani to famously “hate the club,” but the real reason she’s a titan of gay pop is that no one’s writing catchy hooks about queer sex like Monét.
Whether it’s encouraging Kehlani to keep her nails short on “Touch Me (Remix)” or reminding a lover to get her strap and “look me in my eyes, so you can see how I react” on “Girls Need Love (Girls Mix),” Victoria Monét’s pen is mighty. Before her Grammy win for Best New Artist in 2024, Monét told Variety that she knows she has a privilege to be open about her bisexuality in a way that Whitney Houston couldn’t, and watching her success already — it’s not hard to imagine Whitney smiling back at her. (-CP)
Demi Lovato
Having sold over 24 million records in the U.S., Demi Lovato has been a massive star since she was a child, and her “Cool for the Summer” is an absolute requirement for any queer pop playlist. She’s opened up to fans in documentaries about her mental health struggles and did a guest spot on Glee as Santana’s brief girlfriend, Dani. Lovato’s been openly queer since 2020, while also coming out as non-binary and gender fluid.
Billie Eilish
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
At the age of 23, baby genius Billie Eilish is the youngest artist in Grammy history to win all four general field artists and the youngest two-time Oscar winner. She came out as queer in 2023 and was already a style icon to gender agnostics everywhere. Last summer, Kayla declared her Billie’s very queer song LUNCH the song of the summer. Her music is raw and honest and dark and moody and it’s wild to think that she’s only just begun.
Ashnikko
Ben Houdijk / Shutterstock.com
Pansexual and genderfliud new artist Ashnikko has collaborated with other queer musicians like Ethel Cain. They’re dating indie pop artist Arlo Parks. (-KKU)
A multi-genre artist whose music fits an expansive and distinctly queer approach to pop, Ocean has two Grammys under his belt (with six additional nominations) and several other accolades, including a GLAAD Media Award for his truly groundbreaking debut studio album Channel Orange, which came out in 2012. Ocean came out on Tumblr the same year. (-KKU)
Boy George
English singer, songwriter, writer, reality TV personality, DJ and actor Boy George was the lead singer of iconic and massively successful New Romantic pop band Culture Club, which peaked in the 80s, as well as a prolific solo artist. His androgyny inspired questions about his sexuality, and he told Joan Rivers in 1983 that he dated both men and women, before revealing in his 1995 autobiography that he was gay and had secretly dated Culture Club dummer Jon Moss.
Arlo Parks
Ben Houdijk / Shutterstock.com
Singer-songwriter Arlo Parks is bisexual, and her 2021 debut studio album Collapsed in Sunbeams hit number three on the UK Albums Chart and won Best Pop Record at the Libera Awards the following year. She’s in a relationship with fellow artist Ashnikko. (-KKU)
Betty Who
lev radin / Shutterstock.com
Multi-instrumentalist Betty Who has identified as queer and bisexual and is married to photographer Zak Cassar. She released her debut single “Somebody Loves You” independently in 2012, and after the success of her also independently released first EP The Movement, she signed with RCA Records in 2013. She put out four studio albums between 2014 and 2022, and she made her Broadway debut in Hadestown in 2023. (-KKU)
King Princess
Tony Norkus / Shutterstock
Nonbinary lesbian King Princess‘s debut single, “1950,” was a self-described tribute to Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, the LGBT community and queer love, and her album Cheap Queen is a certified lesbian breakup album. In a 2020 profile in The New York Times,journalist Lizzie Goodman described their music as “guitar-driven torch songs with lyrics sharpened by what sounds like a thousand years of love gone wrong.”
Rita Ora
Tom Rose / Shutterstock.com
Admittedly, when Rita Ora first released 2018’s “Girls,” its reception in queer women’s communities was a bit lukewarm, and that’s putting it kindly. The ordeal that surrounded it ended with Rita Ora publicly confirming her bisexuality, but also a tumultuous coming out can be a very gay experience (even if it’s one none of us should have to have). Surviving those fires makes a very strong argument for Ora’s titan status. (-CP)
MUNA
(Photo by Simone Joyner/Getty Images)
The band MUNA comprises three queer performers: Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson, who is nonbinary. Their songs often incorporate queerness, and their single “Silk Chiffon” featuring Phoebe Bridgers was basically the gay song of the summer when it came out, accompanied by a But I’m a Cheerleader-themed music video. (-KKU)
G Flip
IOIO IMAGES / Shutterstock.com
Known in particular for their drumming (and off stage for being married to Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause), nonbinary Australian indie pop singer-songwriter G Flip bounced onto the scene with their debut studio album About Us in 2019. They’re definitely an up-and-comer on the indie Australian scene, winning Breakthrough Independent Artist of the Year at the Australian Independent Record Labels Association Awards in 2019. (-KKU)
Ice Spice
Franklin Sheard Jr / Shutterstock.com
Ice Spice’s “Bikini Bottom” was arguably 2023’s most infectious, inescapable Gen Z bop and when the closing lines of the second verse makes mention of Ice Spice’s bisexuality, it raised few eyebrows — a welcome turn of events from even just a few years ago, when an up-and-coming rapper who’s been on the cover of The Cut proclaiming their bisexuality would have been headline news. Instead, as Ice Spice told Lyrics Genius, “they need to know, we’re here, we’re queer, period.” PERIOD, OK!? (-CP)
Tove Lo
(Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Two words: disco tits. I challenge you to name a more infectious queer pop song. It encapsulates what makes Tove Lo’s music so great in general. Whether singing a heartbreak ballad or a party anthem, there’s always a propulsive beat and unforgettable hook.(-DBG)
Fletcher
(Photo by Josh Brasted/WireImage)
She’s a talented singer-songwriter, sure, but she’s also notable for the absolute truckload of sapphic drama that swirls around Fletcher‘s every movement and release — it was impossible to ignore the buzz around “Becky’s So Hot,” an ode to the hotness of her ex’s current girlfriend, which she performed on The L Word: Generation Q. In 2025, she shifted direction with the release of “Boy,” a sad song about kissing a boy.
Erasure
Tony Norkus / Shutterstock.com
The duo, whose work “combines synth-pop, disco,cabaret,light operaand a bit of English choirboy sound” has been topping the charts since the mid 80s, with over 200 songs written and 28 million albums sold. Andy Bell faced a lot of homophobia when he came out in the late 80s, and with songs like “A Little Respect,” they advocated for LGBTQ+ rights.
Sam Smith
Geoffrey Clowes / Shutterstock.com
British artist Sam Smith is a vocal powerhouse and the first openly non-binary musician to release a song that hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy Award. After breaking through with their heart-wrenching single “Stay With Me” in 2014, they released two more studio albums before re-emerging in 2023 with a new, delightfully queer look and the incredibly hot, Grammy-Award-winning single “Unholy” with Kim Petras.
Clario
Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella
Clario began posting her music online at the age of 13, and the now-26 year old earned her first Grammy nomination for her 2024 album, Charm. “Being queer is a huge part of who I am. I felt so free once I understood that I love anybody and everybody. I’ll kiss anyone,” Clario told Seventeen Magazine this year.
Zolita
Photo by Taylor Hill/Getty Images for Boston Calling
In 2015, Zolita went viral for her music video for single “Explosion.” Her music has been super queer from the beginning of her career, and in 2017 she literally put out an EP called Sappho. Her first studio album came out in 2020, followed by a second in 2024. Her queerleader-themed music video for “Somebody I Fucked Once” stars Shannon Beveridge. (-KKU)
Big Freedia
When Big Freedia comes in, so does the bass! And if Big Freedia has the mic, she will conduct that dance floor as if it’s her orchestra. In addition to bringing New Orleans bounce music to the mainstream, Big Freedia is the most prominent gender fluid, nonbinary voice in hip hop. It’s hard to imagine a queer party without her, because what would be a court without its queen? (-CP)
Dusty Springfield
Incredible vocalist Dusty Springfield was “many things: a British Invasion pioneer, a blue-eyed soul luminary, a camp icon and not least the first U.K. pop star to come out as bisexual.” She became a wildly successful solo artist in the 60s and collaborated with the Pet Shop Boys throughout the 80s.
Tunde Olaniran
Photo by Scott Legato/Getty Images
Tunde Olaniran proves that pop stars don’t have to choose between songs that get people on the dance floor and songs with overt political messaging. Nobody sounds like Olaniran. They’re a totally unique artist whose work has only grown more playful and more powerful over the years.(-DBG)
Scissor Sisters
Scissor Sisters In Concert At The Roundhouse In London, Britain – 23 Oct 2012, The Scissor Sisters – Jake Shears, Ana Matronic (Photo by Brian Rasic/Getty Images)
Unclear which is more iconic — the song “Take Your Mama Out Tonight” or their band name (even gayer: their original name, “Dead Lesbian and the Fibrillating Scissor Sisters”). The Scissor Sisters came up in the gay nightlife scene with a style that incorporates pop rock, glam rock, electroclash and nu-disco. After the success of “Let’s Have a Kiki” in 2012, the band went on an infinite hiatus and Jake Shears went on to star in drag musical Kinky Boots.
Kim Petras
James Jeffrey Taylor / Shutterstock.com
Dance pop girly Kim Petras became the first openly trans solo artist to hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 charts with her single collaboration with Sam Smith “Unholy” in 2022. She also became the first out trans artist to win a Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (also for “Unholy”). (-KKU)
Vivek Shraya
(Photo by Arnold Jerocki/WireImage)
Her show based on her life may be called How to Fail as a Popstar, but as far as we’re concerned Vivek Shraya has succeeded. A multi-talented multi-hyphenate, Shraya can write a killer hook as well as she can write a killer novel. Her latest album, Baby, You’re Projecting, feels like the purest example of her pop talent and signals much more to come. (-DBG)
Julia Nunes
credit: Chase Burnett
After getting her start as a young artist on YouTube with a ukulele, Julia Nunes evolved into her own specific brand of indie and acoustic pop, and the only album more stunning than Some Feelings (with its absolutely delightfully queer bop “Makeout”) was its follow-up, UGHWOW.
Wafia
Since Autostraddle interviewed her in 2019, Wafia has continued to release perfect pop song after perfect pop song. Her EP Good Things is the best example of this with songs like “Flowers and Superpowers” and “Hurricane.” (-DBG)
Halsey
(Photo by Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com)
Bisexual artist Halsey has spoken openly about sexuality, gender, as well as mental health, including their bipolar diagnosis. She collaborated with fellow bisexual pop icon Lauren Jauregui on the fantastically queer single “Strangers.” They have won a GLAAD Media Award as well as three Billboard Music Awards and many other accolades.
JoJo Siwa
(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
We will forgive JoJo for telling a reporter that she told her management she wanted to invent a new style of music called “gay pop” and instead note that she is part of a larger legacy and an ongoing cultural tradition. The music video for her single “Karma” is a wild glittery journey with a catchy hook and lots of girls making out on an ocean liner.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Great article! Sad to see Peach PRC omitted though :(
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Ethel Cain!
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Carly Rae Jepsen!!
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sadly it would seem that she is not queer
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Great list! Some other queer pop artists to love and support: Xana, Arlo Parks, Beth McCathy
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Great additions! (Arlo Parks is already on the list!)
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Young Miko!!! 🎀✨🎀✨🎀
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GEORGE MICHAEL???
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YAY for these folks!! Also want to mention RINA SAWAYAMA! Covering intergenerational trauma, being queer in a religious household, racism, late stage capitalism, therapy, and more, she’s a queer POWERHOUSE.
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Love this list! Just a heads-up, the picture of ‘Freddy Mercury’ here is not actually Queen, but a Czech cover band, Queenie! Would be nice to see an image of the real Freddy instead :)
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oop we will fix!
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I love this so much.
I’d def add Peaches tho!!
Also this might be a big ask buuuut: can we have a playlist with one or a few songs from each artist????? I’d love that so much.
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I do think we could do this Rebecca yes!
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No Beth Ditto
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Great list! Though I’d personally remove Sia because, even though she’s part of the community, she’s also super ableist (I’m referring to what happened with her 2021 movie “music”)
I genuinely thought that she’d been “canceled” after that lol…
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Have y’all listened to The Last Dinner Party?! So queer! So good! And will soon likely be so well known, so get on it if you want the cred of hearing them first.
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Also legend Lesley Gore, who was a lesbian and came out later in life.
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I’m pretty sure Sophie b Hawkins was the first woman to sing a female pronoun in a top 40 song. Glaring omission.
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Also Jill sobules I kissed a girl…
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Great list! But it’s Clairo, not Clario!
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I appreciate the gender inclusive and genre-bending queer scope of this list!
If you’re aiming to up that 65 to 100, here are some other queer pop(ish) artists I’d encourage everyone to check out and support (I’m not entirely clear on how you’re defining pop .. some of the performers on your list I wouldn’t consider as such, and some of the recs below may fall more into the indie / rock category, but labels are made to be porous, right?):
-Mogli (queer German pop-singer songwriter who self-produces and releases all her music)
-Omar Rudberg (queer Swedish pop singer, whose song “Girlfriend” is a mirror-image version Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend,” lol)
-Sufjan Stevens (queer indie pop / rock singer-songwriter)
-TORRES (lesbian indie-rock/pop singer-songwriter)
-The Last Dinner Party (queer British indie rock band, sapphic focus with one member who is nonbinary)
-each member of the boygenius triumvirate, especially Lucy Dacus’ 2025 album (Forever is a Feeling), much of which is a love note to Julien Baker, their friendship, and eventual romance, as well as a very sweet sapphic friendship song for Phoebe Bridgers (“Modigliani”)
The summer of 2024 was heralded across the board as a Sapphic Pop Renaissance. Chappell Roan was at the forefront of that, but she wasn’t alone up there, as we all were deeply and respectfully enjoying Billie Eilish’s “LUNCH,” Megan Thee Stallion’s “Like a Freak,” and Kehlani’s “After Hours.” “Summer of 2024 is undoubtedly a summer for the girls, and for queer pop-loving women, we have certainly been fed,” wrote Niya Doyle in ‘Every Contender For the Song of the Summer Is Queer. “And summer’s just begun.”
The summer of 2025 has begun on a more ominous note, when it comes to the queer women of pop. Following a whirlwind of drama surrounding JoJo Siwa monkeying around with reality TV star Chris Hughes on Celebrity Big Brother UK despite having a girlfriend and then breaking up with that girlfriend and then dating Chris Hughes, Fletcher returned to the world after an apparent healing journey with “Boy,” a single off her upcoming album, Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me? In this scenario, “really knowing” Fletcher means knowing that she kissed a boy and feels, seemingly, pretty sad about it? I’m scared to think of what you’ll think of me, I had no choice, she sings. I closed my eyes and leaned in, I kissed a boy.
“Being bisexual should be celebrated, so why does Fletcher seem so down?” Mey Rude asks in Out Magazine, adding that the song “evokes sympathy, not celebration… what exactly is Fletcher mourning? Is she grieving her loss of community or status? She is still just as queer as she ever was, and in the vast majority of the world, being with a man only raises her status.”
Fletcher’s desire to date people of all genders aligns her with the biggest chunk of the LGBTQ+ community — 57% of adults who identify as LGBTQ+ identify as bisexual, according to a 2024 Gallup Poll. In theory, this was an opportunity for her to connect with a new group of fans within her overall base. But that’s not what happened.
Prior to this point, all of Fletcher’s music has been focused on her relationships with women, although she didn’t identify as a lesbian — she declared herself queer and open to relationships with people of any gender in 2021. Her fanbase apparently connected with her music because of its focus on lesbian relationships. Thus, the release of “Boy,” which confirmed rumors that have been swirling for some time now about Fletcher having a boyfriend, was met with some blowback. Some are offended that Fletcher released the song during Pride Month with a Pride tie-in. Some have accused her of deviously building and profiting off a lesbian fanbase only to strategically betray them at a divisive political moment — which feels unlikely, even if only because building a lesbian fanbase is rarely a smart financial move.
The objection to Fletcher’s framing of her new relationship, via this song specifically, is the piece of this that makes sense to me. Her first instagram post about the track declared her new song “the sound of my exhale,” suggesting this new era is more grounded than her previous work, and a similar sentiment exists in her Rolling Stone interview (more on that in a minute). She also literally erased the entirety of her instagram feed prior to one week ago, which reads as a symbolic erasure of her sapphic past. The song itself uses queer tropes to frame a famously conventional relationship choice (having a boyfriend) as a mournful confession of a shameful secret, a love she wanted to resist, but couldn’t. Everything about it just feels… annoying. Legal, but annoying!
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Fletcher said she became known for “this chaos and this toxicity and bitterness and sapphic drama,” but began an intense healing journey following her 2023 diagnosis of Lyme disease which allowed her to pause: “I started having so many questions about my career and my purpose. I think through allowing myself to ask those deeper questions about this fixed dream I thought I would always be chasing, my heart opened in a way I wasn’t expecting, and I fell in love with a boy.”
Obviously we all know that the act of falling in love with a boy doesn’t make Fletcher, or her music, any less queer. Truly, is anything queerer than Fletcher writing a dramatic song about her boyfriend and launching it in a way that inspires the community to have the same fight about representation we’ve had every quarter for the last quarter-century?
Fletcher emphasized to Rolling Stone she still identifies as queer: “I’m a queer woman. I’ve always been queer. I will always be queer. My identity is not shifting and it’s not changing. My community is not changing.”
The more frustrating response to Fletcher’s big reveal are people claiming her recent failure to speak to the lesbian experience for this one song specifically leaves us in a veritable desert of songs to listen to, that this wouldn’t hit so hard if there were more queer musicians out there. But there are! There are many other queer women and non-binary artists who are centering queer people in their music and/or lives, like Chappell Roan, Hayley Kiyoko, Tegan & Sara, Kehlani, Brandi Carlile, Doechii, Joy Oladokun, Reneé Rapp, Zolita, G-Flip, St. Vincent, girl in red, Brittany Howard, King Princess, Lucy Dacus, Gigi Perez, Janelle Monae, I could go on forever. There is so much lesbian music out there, even in the most mainstream genre of all, pop. There are thousands of queer artists out there singing about the sapphic experience — but most of us probably haven’t heard of them, let alone heard their music. That’s the fault of the late capitalist catastrophe of the “music industry,” not Fletcher herself.
Would it be more exciting for me personally if Billie Eilish had been captured making out with a girl on a balcony in Venice, Italy rather than with her rumored new boyfriend Nat Wolff? Absolutely! Was JoJo Siwa only interesting to me at all because of the relationship between her weird brand and level of mainstream fame and absolute diehard devotion to lesbianism? Yes! Do I even care who Fletcher’s boyfriend is? I do not!
But there are so many other out LGBTQ+ celebrities in visible lesbian relationships right now, too. We’re living in a world where there are two couples in the WNBA who, through a variety of offseason trades, have managed to find themselves playing on the same team. Where boygenius’s Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus fell in love. Where Lesbian Jesus Hayley Kiyoko has been dating former Bachelor contestant Becca Tilley for seven years. Where former Bachelorette Gabby Windey married nerdy ponytailed comic Robby Hoffman. Where Niecy Nash married Jessica Betts who wrote the “stud anthem of summer” with Da Brat, who just managed, at the age of 49 and with the assistance of IVF, to have a baby with her wife, Jessica Harris-Dupart.
When it feels like we’re going backwards politically and culturally as LGBTQ+ people, it can be really disturbing to see things like, as I’ve written already, the response to JoJo Siwa dating Chris Hughes from her apparently new Big Brother UK fanbase — they call her “Joelle” and express their affection for her embrace of her “softer, feminine side,” declaring her relationship with Chris “the happiest she’s ever looked.” JoJo has changed how she identifies from “lesbian” to “queer,” and said she’s into people of all genders. Some of her new fans are treating her like she changed from “lesbian” to “straight.” Some of Fletcher’s fans seem to be doing the same. That’s not on JoJo or Fletcher.
Still, there is this idea that when people like JoJo or Fletcher date men, that somehow this gives ammunition to men who believe lesbians are just straight girls who haven’t met the right man yet, or to families who think their daughters will grow out of their lesbian phase, or religious figures who think conversion therapy works. But the minute those homophobes have us blaming and fighting with each other, instead of against them, they have won.
It can be heartbreaking when your favorite musical artist takes their work in a personal or creative direction that no longer connects with you, but why is that heartbreak so often expressed as vitriol?
But I don’t know. Maybe this was inevitable all along. What begins in chaos ends in chaos, I think, is the saying.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
yes i totally agree! i’ve been trying to figure where tf i stand in this mess and both sides have such good points! like i love her but also WHY?! but also her dating a man shouldn’t be a reason for anyone to hate her.
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I’m already sick of the discourse.
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I really don’t think the bisexuality or male partner is the problem with this. I think it’s well known that the queer, poly Janelle Monae’s longest term partner is a man, her contributions to 2020s queer pop are better than 99% of what’s out there, and I think it really does help that it feels genuine. I suspect that if Fletcher’s career had involved being openly bisexual and writing music that honestly reflected her sexuality, then she would not have written a song about being terrified of the impending heterophobia of her fans.
I just wish, when people were writing their defenses of Fletcher’s right to date men, that they would acknowledge the cultural context that is the long history of lesbian sexuality and sexual desire being reduced to a spectacle for male consumption. People love to say fetishization isn’t as bad as violence so it’s not a big deal really, but I think it suffocates lesbian love by invalidating, belittling, trivializing our full-bodied desire for other women into nothing more than a sex thing, and not even one for our pleasure or our partner’s pleasure, but for some real or hypothetical man, and that sucks and it feels bad. Thus, when it comes to art about female same-sex desire (and especially when that art is very sexual and graphic ala the opening lines of LUNCH or Fletcher’s music videos), the artist’s relationship to that kind of sexuality greatly informs how much I appreciate it. It just does not feel as good to enjoy lesbian art made by men or made by women who are pandering to a straight/male audience. (And yeah, sexy stuff is sexier when coming from women who mostly date women; and yeah, sexy stuff feels more objectifying when coming from women who exclusively date men.)
This is all to say: this song, combined with the rumors about her being in serious relationships with a couple of different men for a long time now, and the interviews where she said she feels more genuine now, and the album title that strongly suggests her public persona is fake, suggest that Fletcher was leaning into a very marketable Sexy Lesbian persona that misrepresented how serious her interest in women was, and this is what the fans are feeling hurt by. I think it’s really hard to say that a queer woman’s actions were homophobic or misogynist without getting a lot of pushback (because how could a QUEER PERSON ever be HOMOPHOBIC? etc), and comments like “what will we listen to now?!” and “this is giving ammunition to homophobes” are just women are groping around to find a way to vocalize feeling misled without being told that they aren’t allowed to feel unhappy about it.
Don’t get me wrong: if women are kissing in your music video, I WILL be watching it over and over and over and over even if I’m not the target audience because that is unfortunately who I am. But it sucks to live a life where so much art that’s about you is not for you or by you and, in fact, is kinda ideologically dedicated to invalidating your entire lifestyle sometimes.
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This is a very excellent addition. It’s so weird and frankly comes across as homophobic that Fletcher preemptively played the victim for… autonomously doing exactly what society expects of women to do by dating a man. The “oh woe is me” routine is just weird and unnecessary. And I say this as someone who never listened to her work, I had no investment, but if you’re going to play the victim for being straight passing, people are going to criticize that angle.
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To my understanding Fletcher was predominantly dating women for a decade. She was also never out as a lesbian, she was out as queer and said she was open to all genders but had found herself more drawn to women. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that she was exaggerating her feelings for women. Obviously, I don’t know her, maybe I’m wrong, but I think jumping so quickly to assuming that she must’ve been faking *is* coming from a place of biphobia.
I understand your feelings around lesbian sexuality being fetishised for and by men, but to imply that just because Fletcher can also experience attraction to men means that her portrayals of female same sex desire must be pandering to male audiences is an incredibly biphobic take. It’s assuming that bi women are incapable of engaging in and expressing their desire for other women without centering/catering to men, which is just…plain misogynistic. Women are not defined by their relationship to men.
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I (a bisexual, fwiw) disagree with the claim that this was a quick jump, or a biphobic one, for the reasons I laid out in my post: this is a conclusion that I reached based on the combined effect of a whole bunch of different elements of the whole spectacle. I specifically and elaborately specified how I don’t think that being bisexual automatically makes portrayals of female same sex desire inherently a man-pandering exercise. However, I think it’s also verging on gaslighting to say that nobody ever portrays female same-sex desire for man-pandering reasons and we are never allowed to reach that conclusion, even in the presence of an abundance of evidence, and then I went on to provide a whole bunch of reasons why this particular case gave a lot of us the ick, haha.
I think it’s misogynistic to deny and negate women expressing their discomfort with objectifying portrayals of women, and it’s extremely frustrating when people use “women can’t be misogynistic” as a gotcha against me personally having a comfort level that differs from theirs.
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I don’t think you did really specifically and elaborately articulate that (I assume you mean the initial paragraph mentioning Janelle Monae). I also notice that you mentioned that it would’ve been okay had Fletcher always been ‘openly bisexual’, but the reality is that for some people sexuality is fluid and changes throughout their lives. She may well have felt mostly gay (again, she never identified as a lesbian) and then that changed. People shouldn’t be punished for that.
I do understand that you came to that conclusion as a result of a number of things – I still ultimately think it’s an assumption without evidence. Like, yeah, you could be right, but there’s no proof, and I think it’s best to give people the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to risking denying their lived experiences. I’d rather give Fletcher the benefit of the doubt and find out I was wrong than say ‘oh she must’ve been faking it all along!’ when actually that wasn’t the case at all and therefore she’s having people deny and distrust her own experience of her sexuality.
I never said that nobody ever portrays female same sex desire for man-pandering reasons – of course they do! I said that it’s biphobic and misogynistic to assume that a bi woman is incapable of portraying female same sex desire without pandering to men in some way. Not that you can never reach that conclusion. You said, ‘when it comes to art about female same-sex desire (and especially when that art is very sexual and graphic ala the opening lines of LUNCH or Fletcher’s music videos), the artist’s relationship to that kind of sexuality greatly informs how much I appreciate it. It just does not feel as good to enjoy lesbian art made by men or made by women who are pandering to a straight/male audience.’ Based on everything else you said in your comment, the implication there seemed to be that because Fletcher is now dating a man, that must mean her art is pandering to a straight/male audience. How do you know what Fletcher’s ‘relationship to that sexuality’ is?
I mean, I clearly don’t think women can’t be misogynistic because I said I thought your line of thinking was misogynistic. I don’t mean to deny your discomfort at what you perceive to be objectifying portrayals of women – I think the thing is it’s not always easy to determine what is objectifying, and it feels suspicious to me to only now perceive Fletcher’s portrayals as objectifying because she’s come out as bi instead of gay. I also think that too often people associate ‘I feel uncomfortable with this thing’ to ‘this thing must be morally wrong’, when that’s not necessarily the case. You can feel uncomfortable with her videos, for example, without that meaning that she’s purposefully catering to the male gaze. Again, I don’t know her personally, maybe she was, I just feel like people really aren’t giving her enough grace, and it seems like as soon as a queer woman starts dating a man, people think she can’t possibly separate herself from patriarchal values and the male gaze etc. which is messed up.
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*When I said I “specifically and elaborately” made my point about how this sort of behavior hurts women like me, I meant that I was careful to provide a lot of detail and nuance if you read the whole post and tried in good faith to understand me. I gave the example about Janelle Monae, but I also said that certain trends felt bad, or felt better/worse given certain contexts. I didn’t say that anyone pandering to men was totally faking and lying, or that I’d never ever listen to a song if it didn’t meet my criteria.
*I wrote that Fletcher would not have written this song if she had been more “openly bisexual.” What I mean is that: yes, we can never read minds, but I think all the evidence suggests she had been downplaying her male relationships/keeping them a secret for a while, and that informed the tone of all of this.
*I agree that “people shouldn’t be punished for” any of this at all, which is why I never said anything about punishment in any way.
*Regarding your comments about how it’s biphobic and misogynistic to assume Fletcher’s pandering to men because she’s been dating men only for years now: I think it’s possible for women–straight, gay OR bi–to lean into objectification of women, simply because “Sex Sells,” after all, without it being fake or an act or something they don’t enjoy at all, and I think you can genuinely feel something while also playing up some things and minimizing others in order to benefit from what the majority wants out of you. Once again, I want to remind you that I’m talking about the forest and you’re focusing on the trees: the reason that this particular song gives me this impression is because I think if she were just earnestly describing her desires, she wouldn’t have expressed (across multiple mediums!) how much she’s felt like a fake recently. The context is essential.
*Regarding the quote “I also think that too often people associate ‘I feel uncomfortable with this thing’ to ‘this thing must be morally wrong’, when that’s not necessarily the case:” once again, I was very careful to say “I don’t like this and it’s depressing,” not “it’s morally wrong” or “let’s ship fletcher to jail ASAP.”
*You say it’s suspicious to think her art is objectifying when she’s out as bi, but I did elaborately spell out that the objectifying feeling comes from the contrast between how straight and lesbian relationships are portrayed.
At the end of the day, however, you are free to think my intentions are suspicious as long as I am free to think her intentions are suspicious, so I guess we’re even there. :)
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There is always a suspicion of marketing / rainbow washing (or lesbian washing we should say) when celebrities are involved.
More suspicious when announcements coincide with products to be promoted (a new album/ movie / TV show etc. Do we really need to idealize celebs? We will not miss these two.
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Being openly gay is not something that is encouraged/ would make someone’s career easier so that doesn’t make sense. Dating men doesn’t make you any less queer and people should absolutely not be biphobic. The problem with Fletcher is her acting like her dating a guy will make her life harder etc when most people still prefer women and men to date each other. It is also not their fault that idiots will act like this is “proof” that lesbians can be “turned”.
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I attended a 2 days sold out concert in London last year. Having she being straight I don’t think she would have filled the venue (crowd predominantly FLINTA). If one is a great musician making great music I would tend to agree with you. If you are just pop average singer it is a different matter.
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i don’t really know how fletcher would’ve been received by a straight audience, but i do know it’s really rare for someone singing about gay stuff exclusively to develop the kind of audience that straight pop stars have. chappell roan is such an exception in that regard. there’s a ceiling. it’s definitely not something i can imagine someone really building a career strategy around sapphic songwriting, that would be a pretty big risk. obviously fletcher being conventionally attractive and white and thin helped too. We’re definitely not living in a world where there are so few queer artists that every mediocre one can fill a venue — there are heaps of queer artists out there not filling venues. the bar for entry and success are still pretty high.
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What if the music just isn’t good? How about that?
Also, a female celeb does this every 3 to 5 business days. There are better musicians to listen to regardless of sexual orientation. Let’s all get better taste please.
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this is a valid point yes
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My absolute favorite internet post on this was someone saying something along the lines of ‘the biggest crime of this whole thing is calling a 38yo tax paying man a boy’! (So funny)
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I appreciate this balanced take that helps articulate what this song made me feel.
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thank you — i’m glad it resonated with you ❤️
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THANK YOU for this. everybody talking about this has been so extreme on one side or the other. nuance is so needed!
anybody here been to a fletcher concert? i have never been around so many mean girls since high school!
the vibes at janelle monae concerts, tegan + sara, chappell roan, are unmatched.
the vibes at fletcher concerts? if that is queer community, no thanks!!!!!
i wish i could say i was surprised by the response of her fandom, but that would be a lie.
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That’s interesting about your experience at Fletcher concerts/her fandom. I’m not into her music personally so I’ve not particularly followed her, but I have looked into all this drama, and felt quite despairing at the response, worrying it was reflective of the feelings of the majority of our community. So it’s somewhat reassuring to hear that maybe her fandom is just particularly bad (though I wonder why).
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Glad to hear that someone else had this experience at a Fletcher concert lol. I wasn’t that familiar with her music but went to her concert a couple years ago because Chappell Roan was opening, and the vibes were RANCID and unlike any other queer event I’ve attended. It was as if everyone’s meanest, rudest ex-girlfriend had gathered in one space.
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yes, thank you! it felt to me as if llesbians with the most intense feelings about their exes drifted towards fletcher’s music and then towards her concerts to unleash their toxic emotions. i honestly felt judged just for being fat and taking up space at a fletcher concert, which i’ve never felt at a queer concert before.
it was so unpleasant, my wife and i were like…. NEVER AGAIN.
also jealous you saw chappell all the way back then! can’t believe she was OPENING for fletcher. the tables sure have turned.
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This is why I don’t look to celebrities as justification for my existence. I was gay long before Fletcher existed in the music world and will still be gay long after her relevance expires. I don’t care if someone identifies as a porcupine who likes having their quills sucked. Do I like your music? Your entertainment product? Yes? No? Maybe? Sexuality, gender, and everything around the sun doesn’t matter, as long as I “get” the product.
Celebrities entertain. If they don’t entertain me, it has nothing to do with whether or not they used a subset of the LGBTQ+ community to score likes, and shares, to increase their popularity before they reveal their sad secrets. I don’t like Fletcher’s music, Billie’s or JoJo’s either. Their quest at finding who they are doesn’t affect my stance—wasn’t a fan before and still not a fan now. I’m more of a In This Moment / Nightwish / Halestorm kind of music gal. The harder the better. With that said, all this obsession over who someone gets their jolly’s off with is a bit much. They do them, you do you, I do me, and honestly, if you’re happy, then congrats! Enjoy that happiness for it’s elusive to so many.
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I’m a lesbian. Like, an actual one. I have zero interest in men, and honestly find the idea of having attraction to men…unattractive.
Therefore, I have no interest in Fletcher anymore. If I wanted to listen to a pop star in a hetero relationship who sings about hetero things and males, I’d listen to any of the other [better] singers out there.
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Just this comfortable in your biphobia. OK, Karen.
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Hi! It’s not biphobic to have preferences. Thank you for your name-calling though ❤️
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The biphobia in reaction to this has been ugly and completely uncalled for. There is nothing wrong with being bisexual. This issue is the way she is framing it like it will be harder for her cos she is with a guy but people accusing her of pretending to be gay etc for fame makes no sense. Since when has being anything other than straight helped someone’s career?
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So….you *only* listen to music that you relate to lyrically?
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Sorry I wasn’t clear. I think Fletcher is an average musician. The only reason I listened to her songs is because they were a woman speaking of wlw. Now that her songs going forward will seemingly reflect hetero relationships, I’ll be listening to other artists (who I find to be better) speak on that same subject.
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Okay. I wouldn’t assume her songs will all be about her relationship with a man, though. She said most of the album isn’t about that, and even if she’s in a monog relationship with a guy she could still sing about female exes, for example. (Not that I’m invested in whether you listen to her, I’m not into her music personally, just think it’s important to note that just because a bi woman is dating a man doesn’t mean suddenly her focus is all on men. She’s still attracted to women and still has a history with them so may well still sing about them.)
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I had been blissfully spared of all of this somehow – my only thought is that this read “Conflating “chaos and drama” with “dating women” in a mainstream magazine in the year of our dying lords, 2025, is…. wild?!!” isn’t quite right to me — she didn’t just date women, she had a very very messy breakup (where she lived w/ her ex-girlfriend and made a bunch of sexy music videos together after they broke up, and then made songs directly calling out her ex’s new partner). I feel like that’s the chaos and drama she’s referring to, but I could be wrong!
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oh yeah, definitely it is, 100%
what i meant was more the entire paragraph, where she’s like, i was caught up in all this toxicity and drama, but then i healed, and now that i’m better, my heart was open to this less toxic, less dramatic thing — a man. but your comment and another made me rethink my reaction to that line, and i think i was being too harsh in a way that i wouldn’t want someone to be to me if i was in her shoes, so i did remove it.
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lol I should not have kept reading the comments! I’ll just say, the fact that people are pivoting all the way to ‘fletcher is a fake guy who probably just queerbaited/made sexy lesbian content for attention/the male gaze’ is *fucking insane* and, to be that annoying bitch, it’s biphobic.
no, fletcher’s life will not be meaningfully harder because of this. (also, like, let’s talk class folks – she was always going to be fine anyway.) but it is hard to have a community that you love and are a part of talk shit about you the moment you’re something different than they expected. take it from me, a bi woman who’s gotten to hear people say fun things to me like, “ugh, why don’t they understand that we don’t want bisexuals here??” at queer events when they assumed I was a lesbian.
I’m mostly just mad at fletcher for doing this right as June started so all the other bi women can overhear this influx of criticism when we’re supposed to be building community. this extra makes me want to stay home from any gay things – but hey, the real lesbians probably didn’t want me there anyway. ;)
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i hope you don’t stay home from gay things for pride! i think the real world community, not the Very Online one, is not as hostile as the discourse makes it seem. i literally don’t know any lesbian in real life who doesn’t want bi people in queer spaces. anyone who feels that way is the one who doesn’t belong at pride, not you.
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In my experience, real-world spaces are worse than online ones. I’ve never been to a lesbian/queer women’s space that wasn’t openly hostile to bi women.
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Huh, that hasn’t been my experience. I used to be part of a great in person queer community pretty equally populated by lesbians and bi women/NB folks, and there was no exclusionary behaviour. The right places are out there! I find that more alternative, underground queer spaces tend to be better, and ones that put the emphasis on ‘queer’ as opposed to, say, ‘LGBTQ+’
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I think people are being too harsh on Fletcher. To my understanding she deletes all of her IG posts every time she starts a new album cycle, which is what most pop artists seem to do these days. There’s no reason to think she’s ‘erasing her sapphic past’ when she still very proudly identifies as queer – she’s literally just starting a new album era. As for the song lyrics, they read to me as someone well aware that much of her fanbase values her almost solely based on her perceived lesbian identity, and therefore will not react well to the news of her falling for a man – that’s why she’s scared (and, clearly, justifiably so).
I can understand why that Rolling Stone passage has bothered people, but I can’t imagine she meant ‘dating women was so toxic and now that I’ve done some emotional healing I’ve of course realised the superior option is dating men’. I’d imagine she meant ‘I was caught up in a lot of damaging behaviours, and wanted to focus on emotional healing. It also happened that once I’d done a lot of that healing, I was able to consider a relationship with someone I wouldn’t have considered before,’ and was just a bit careless in the way she articulated it.
I also would push back on the idea that Fletcher is no longer writing about ‘the sapphic experience’ (but it’s okay because others are) – being bisexual is being sapphic, and so any bisexual woman is always writing about the sapphic experience in some way, even if some of the time she’s writing about men. It’s false to think that just because a queer woman is dating a man her queerness is no longer as present, or will no longer inform her song writing. Likewise, just because Fletcher has a boyfriend doesn’t mean she is no longer ‘centering queer people in [her life]’. Queer women dating men are still queer, and can still have queer friends and found family, and be immersed in queer community, culture, activism and politics – I know you’ve said that Fletcher is still just as queer, but some of your other words here undermine that sentiment.
The anger from fans that she released the song during Pride, and the fact that bi artists’ work is often only held up in the community when they’re dating women, sends a pretty clear message that ‘you’re welcome as a bi person in the community only if you behave in such a way that allows us to effectively ignore your bisexuality and read you as gay instead’. (Bisexual people are allowed to…be bisexual…during Pride, or any other queer celebration, folks!)
Your second to last paragraph hits on a really important part of this, I think. It seems like a lot of the hostility towards Jojo and Fletcher is driven by the fear that their actions will give credence to lesbophobes’ belief that all women need is the ‘right man’ etc. Unfortunately, this is of course true. But that’s not Jojo’s and Fletcher’s fault or responsibility. When we turn on our community members for reasons like this, we are punishing them for other people’s bigotry, and doing nothing to actually combat the bigotry itself.
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“When we turn on our community members for reasons like this, we are punishing them for other people’s bigotry, and doing nothing to actually combat the bigotry itself.”
yes, exactly this. pretending that bisexual people don’t exist is not an even vaguely reliable or effective way to respond to or undermine anti-gay sentiment.
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Yes, and it’s something I’ve noticed happens a lot in marginalised communities – this policing of other community members’ behaviour and punishing of community members, lest they do something to give bigots’ ammunition, instead of focusing the criticism squarely at the bigots themselves.
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yep 100%
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Respectfully, I want to push back on that assertion that love between a man and a woman is “the sapphic experience” just because it involves a woman who also has sapphic inclinations. Sapphic is an adjective describing things that concern attraction between women. Bisexual women absolutely have experiences that can be described as sapphic, but their interest in men is not part of that sapphic experience; in the venn diagram of lesbian and bisexual experiences, it would fall outside of the shared region that can be described as sapphic. And I mean, it definitionally is the opposite of sapphic: I would disagree with the claim “buying ice cream is the sapphic experience (when a bi woman does it)” but even that wouldn’t be as drastically wrong as “a woman dating a man is the sapphic experience.” I understand the political motivation behind saying that loving a man (well, a ‘boy’ well over the age of 30 in this case) counts as the sapphic experience in that it’s done in service of highlighting bi/lesbian commonality, but I think that an essential part of highlighting commonality is acknowledging the differences. I also think it’s important to take words in context and good faith and see that Riese was actually trying to inclusively avoid using the word lesbian to describe same-gender love here.
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Honestly I think this is really personal and individual. I’m not saying that love between a man and a (queer) woman is ‘the sapphic experience’, but I am saying that it is part of the sapphic experience for some women. Ie. it is part of some sapphic women’s sexualities, and we can’t really divorce their attraction to men from their attraction to women – they’re always bisexual, not half straight and half queer, or sometimes straight and sometimes queer.
I think the perception is often that when a bi woman is involved with another woman romantically/sexually, she’s doing so in a lesbian way/having a lesbian experience. And when she’s involved with a man in the same way, she’s doing so in a straight way/having a straight experience. Some bi women may feel that is representative of their internal experience, and that’s fine.
For others, it’s not reflective at all – for some, their queerness really heavily informs the way they interact/engage with men. They don’t feel like they’re having the same experience with men that straight women do. It doesn’t feel like a ‘straight experience’ to them. All their sexual experiences feel queer/wholly bisexual in some way. And I can understand how that might be hard for some to understand, but I think the way we experience our sexuality is very complex and nuanced.
To get to the point, I suppose the crux of what I was trying to say is that Fletcher is a queer woman and as such, anything she writes about is informed by that identity. So, maybe ‘such and such is the sapphic experience’ is the wrong way to phrase it, but it’s not a case of anything she writes about other than women is suddenly totally divorced from queer experience, because she’s still queer.
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The thing that I really bothers me about is how she did it. The promos, the interviews, the song itself, which.. I have many issues with, but doing references to I kissed a girl and making it more problematic than the original, that wasn’t on my bingo card.
Being able to complete a whole bingo card with problematic subtext wasn’t on my bingo card. In between the lines is still where some of us live, I still live there and it’s a me problem I know, but I really thought that she was more aware of the lesbian culture than she is. Like how can you know and use so many references and subtext, things that are really precious and important in such a … bitter way.
Maybe it’s because I have experienced Grande Fratello this year, which honestly was one of the worst most triggering experiences with media that I ever had in my life, or that I have been watching Contrapoints’ latest video on repeat, but things around this album cycle screams pipeline to conservatism to me.
I don’t have a problem with her dating a man, in fact, I’m happy for her if she is indeed, feeling happy and healthy and in love. I actually have a lot of sympathy for bi women because it’s trickier to navigate both worlds.
Billie can literally do whatever she wants. She was already an artist that I appreciate a lot for “Listen before I go”, so yeah. That’s pretty rough. I’ve enjoyed her work even before she came out and put out explicitly queer music and “Lunch” is just a delight. I also got why girlies in middle school thought that Fred Durst was hot. I saw Billie and was like.. ok I do get it now.
With Jojo .. I don’t mind it? That whole situation is a mess, but she’s a reality tv child star who’s thing was dancing. That is a wild and really tough thing to be. It’s fine.
Hilariously with St Vincent, I could literally name more of her exes than her song for years because of you, which is very very rare for me. I am calling her out because having a kid after ‘My baby wants a baby’ was a personal attack to me. How dare she have a child with her wife? Doesn’t she know that almost all of my close friends now have children and I am having my feelings about it?
I, truly, hope that I am wrong about my take on the Fletcher thing..But yeah thankfully, we are spoiled with options now when it comes to lesbian music. And if we’re talking about queer music even more options. I found a duo called The Male Gays and their cover had all the queer slurs (that’s the inclusivity I am here for) and the music’s pretty dope but the wildest thing about it is that when I checked their Spotify they were standing at a massive 6 monthly listeners. They have like 17 now.. So I dunno maybe check them out? In the spirit of WLW to MLM solidarity during pride month.
Sex/Life is a series all about the secret sexy business of couples, throuples, exes who still fuck for some reason, LDR darlings, polyculites, and any other kind of amorous grouping your perfect heart can fathom. We send them nosey questions, they record themselves answering them, and we transcribe that conversation for all of us to enjoy. All names have been changed and any identifying details removed.
Noa (32) and Jules (30) are a pair of queer New Yorkers — Noa’s a singing, performing, bike-riding waitress living in Manhattan; Jules is currently a job-searching admin who makes a mean banana bread and has a soft spot for Brooklyn queer rec sports. They’ve been dating for a year and a half, are polyamorous, live separately (by choice, not logistics), and describe their sex life as intense, evolving, and deeply shaped by a top/bottom dynamic.
And this is how they fuck:
What was your sex life like when you first started dating, and how does that differ from now?
Noa: When we first started dating, our sex life was really good. We had great chemistry right away, but I was a little scared to be open about what I wanted.
Jules: I could sense that, but I didn’t know what you were holding back.
Noa: Yeah, I didn’t even know how to bring it up at first. But then I told you — I wanted us to have a Daddy/Baby Girl dynamic. I wanted you to be Daddy.
Jules: And once you said that, everything just made sense. The chemistry we already had suddenly had a shape.
Noa: It unlocked something for me. Like, emotionally and sexually, it gave me permission to fully show up as Baby Girl. I felt safe, I felt turned on, and the sex got way hotter — almost instantly.
Jules: Same for me. I like taking charge sexually — I like initiating, leading, setting the tone. And being called Daddy during sex? Yeah. That works for me.
Noa: And calling you that just drops me into this headspace where I’m totally present. Like, I’m not overthinking anything. I just get to feel and respond.
Jules: It also helped clarify how we wanted to interact physically. Like, I’m the one guiding things a lot of the time — you’re responding, receiving, asking. That rhythm works really well for us.
Noa: And even though I’m mostly in that Baby Girl role, I still feel powerful. It’s not passive. Sometimes I’m telling you what I want or how I want it, and you’re making it happen.
Jules: Yeah, you’re definitely a power Baby Girl. There’s still a lot of intention and presence in how you show up in that role.
Noa: I think that’s why it works. It’s not about play-acting — it’s just who we are in bed, and giving it a name helped us own it.
You live together — how does that impact your sex life?
Noa: We don’t live together — we’ve only been dating a year and a half. And I know for a lot of lesbians that’s basically a lifetime, but we both really like living alone.
Jules: Yeah, and when our leases were up, it was still too early to move in together. We even considered living across the hall from each other — there was an open apartment right across from you — but even then we were like, “That’s probably too soon.”
Noa: Living separately has been great for our sex life, honestly.
Jules: Totally. We get to yearn for each other. Every time we see each other, it feels fresh and exciting.
Noa: Like a hot, slow burn. I’m never sick of you.
Jules: Distance makes the heart grow fonder.
If you’re parents or caretakers, how has that impacted your sex life?
Noa: We’re not parents, unless you count the four cats — two each.
Jules: And we’re not planning to have kids, which I think will positively impact our sex life forever.
Noa: We’ll be able to have sex forever! Woo-hoo.
Do you have a top/bottom dynamic?
Noa: Yeah, we do. You’re Daddy and I’m Baby Girl.
Jules: I’m usually the top, and you’re usually the bottom.
Noa: That dynamic was something I was more drawn to from the beginning. You didn’t totally know that until I brought it up.
Jules: Yeah, I didn’t realize that’s what you were wanting until you said it. But once we named it, it really clarified how we already were with each other.
Noa: You naturally take the lead. And I naturally like… giving over to that. Being guided, responding to what you’re doing. It’s really satisfying for me.
Jules: I definitely identify as a top-leaning switch. Especially at the beginning of sexual relationships, I tend to top. I usually don’t feel ready to bottom until I feel really safe and comfortable with someone.
Noa: And I’m kind of the opposite. I default to bottoming, but I can top sometimes once I feel secure. But even then, I’m what you’d call a timid top.
Jules: A whispery little top. But yeah — our dynamic works. We fall into it really naturally. And even though we say top/bottom, I think it’s more about the energy. Who’s leading. Who’s holding the space.
Noa: Exactly. Even when I’m bottoming, I can still be a power bottom. I’m often saying what I want, what feels good, and kind of steering things that way.
Jules: And that’s hot. It’s not about who’s doing what physically — it’s about who’s holding which role. I think people misunderstand how layered that can be.
Noa: Yeah. Being Baby Girl doesn’t mean I’m passive. It means I’m giving you control — but with intention. And that dynamic just feels really good between us.
Do you feel like your sex drives are well matched?
Jules: I think they are. Honestly, you might be the first person I’ve dated who has a stronger libido than me.
Noa: Really?
Jules: Yeah. It’s kind of a new dynamic for me, but in a fun way. I feel like I’m keeping up with you.
Noa: That’s so interesting. I didn’t know that! But yeah, my past relationships — especially with men — I never wanted to have sex. It’s wild how much I want to have sex with you.
Jules: We’re definitely well matched in that way.
Noa: We’re super compatible. And that’s so nice.
What are some things you like or don’t like to do during sex?
Noa: I’ve always loved oral, but I’ve realized it’s kind of essential for me. Like, if someone doesn’t enjoy giving oral, it’s probably not going to work.
Jules: You’ve said that before. And it’s not that you want it every time, but you kind of expect it to be part of the experience — like, it’s baseline.
Noa: Totally. I just think it’s hot. And with you specifically, it feels… right. Like our bodies are made for each other.
Jules: It really does feel like that. You say that a lot when I’m going down on you.
Noa: Because it’s true! I’m like, “Oh my god, this is exactly what’s supposed to be happening.”
Jules: That’s so cute. For me, I’m not super into penetration. I’ve enjoyed it in the past, but these days I rarely want it.
Noa: And I do like penetration. I also like butt stuff, but you’re less into that on yourself.
Jules: I don’t hate it — it’s just not something I seek out. And I feel like the older I get, the less interested I am in that kind of sensation.
Noa: Fair. Oh, and biting — someone bit me kind of hard at a party the other day, and I didn’t love that.
Jules: I bite you sometimes, too. Probably too much?
Noa: A little. I don’t mind a soft bite, but I’m not into pain. Like, a light spanking is fun, but anything more than that, and I’m out.
Jules: Same. I’m not a sadist. I don’t want to hurt you — I just want to have fun.
Noa: Same. Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but that kind of play just isn’t for us.
Jules: Also — poop stuff? Hard pass.
Noa: Yeah, no scat play for me. I’m down to try most things once, but not that.
What are some things you’d like to try (or try again)?
Noa: We’ve done some group sex, and that’s been fun. I’d definitely do that again — with you.
Jules: Same. I’d like to explore more rope stuff. Flogging. Shibari.
Noa: You were learning how to tie me up.
Jules: Yeah, and I’d want to get better at it! Someone told us how easy it is to cut off circulation if you tie too tight. That kind of scared me.
Noa: Me too. We should learn more before we do anything serious.
Jules: Definitely. They said to always have scissors nearby in case you need to cut someone out quickly.
Noa: I follow people who do suspension and hang from ceilings — it looks amazing.
Jules: Yeah, but you need a whole setup for that.
Noa: We’d probably need to go to a professional. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I’m intrigued.
Jules: First step: buy rope.
How important are orgasms to your sex life?
Jules: We’re having a lot of orgasms, but they’re not the most important thing for me. I just want us to feel good and be connected.
Noa: Yeah, we orgasm most of the time, but not always. Sometimes I fall asleep before it’s my turn. Like a man.
Jules: Most of the time we both come, but if we don’t, it’s not a big deal.
Noa: We’re good at checking in. If one of us doesn’t finish and wants more, we’ll do more. If not, we’re fine. No one takes it personally.
Jules: No ego bruises here.
What role does masturbation play in your sex life?
Noa: We only recently started masturbating in front of each other. I do it a lot — high sex drive over here.
Jules: I don’t really masturbate often.
Noa: Wild. But you’ve started watching me do it, and that’s fun.
Jules: Yeah, it’s hot. It’s like, why would I do it when you’re right here?
Noa: And when you’re watching, you usually get involved pretty quickly.
Jules: True. I’d be curious to watch you masturbate all the way to completion sometime.
Noa: Like the Tootsie Pop owl: how many licks until…
Jules: Crunch. Exactly! I also don’t really watch porn.
Noa: We’ve never watched it together. That one time we tried, I got too shy.
Jules: Porn just doesn’t do it for me. It feels so fake, it pulls me out of the mood. When I do masturbate, I don’t watch anything. I just… think.
Noa: You’re just using your thoughts?! That’s amazing.
Jules: If I’m masturbating, I’m already turned on. I don’t need extra stimuli.
Tell us about your favorite or most memorable time you’ve had sex together.
Noa: Obviously the group sex was memorable because it was new. But one time we were at your place, and we were super tangled up and close. You were holding my face and said, “I feel so connected to you.” It was beautiful.
Jules: I remember that. It felt out of body — like we were physically together but also spiritually fused.
Noa: It really felt like our bodies were meant to be with each other.
Jules: Not to get too woo, but yeah. We were deeply connected.
Noa: I write about our sex all the time in my five-year journal. Like, “hung out with you — amazing sex.” Sometimes I just write “sex.”
Jules: Those are the mediocre ones?
Noa: Not mediocre — just less memorable. But even our regular sex is so good. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Jules: I do think we have really, really good sex.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
A series that gives readers a backstage pass into the sex lives of queer couples (and throuples, polycules, etc) around the world. To share your own story, email [email protected].
I can already hear the BOOS coming in response to this but I’ve long been one of those people who “didn’t really listen to music.” Not like NEVER it just wasn’t a major interest or hobby of mine for a while. I’m a runner and I used to run without music (i know…FREAK ALERT). But even though I don’t consider myself much of a Music Person, my taste has remained pretty much the same my whole life. Think, early and mid 2000s pop stuff like Hilary Duff, Kelly Clarkson, Avril, youuuuuu get it. I like some new stuff for sure, but it’s all kind of similar to that. I def get down to Chappell, which is probably one of the only artists my girlfriend and I agree on.
My girlfriend makes fun of my taste in music all the time and says I’m stuck in middle school. It started as her just teasing me, and I honestly didn’t mind it, so I didn’t stop it early on, which is maybe my b because now I get really upset and hurt by her frequent comments about what I like to listen to and feel like saying something is almost too late. She likes to tease in general which I’m not super into but can be funny sometimes but the music stuff in particular has really gotten to me. Also doesn’t everyone like the music they liked in middle school lol I swear there are whole studies on this. She’ll often play recent music and ask me if I know who it is when she knows the answer is no. And she has likened it to like being a picky eater which I’m nottttttt. It also makes me feel like I can’t express genuine interest in music she’s listening to, even though in general I am genuinely interested in expanding my music horizons or at LEAST listening to more music in general. Like I run to music now, and that was entirely my choice. But with so much other music stuff I can’t figure out if I’m actually curious and/or interested or if I’m just feeling this weird pressure from her and not wanting to be made fun of anymore.
A:
Oh BOYYYYYYYY do I understand where you’re coming from!!!!! I had an ex who hated some of the music I listened to so much that she essentially wouldn’t let me listen to it around her. Even after I saw a band I love in concert and was riding that high of post-concert re-obsession by listening to their music, I did so when she was out of the room. Once I did so while she was in the shower and as soon as she got out, she switched it off without so much as saying anything. Alrighty then! Not-so-subtle hint taken!
I did often feel insecure about my music tastes and my music blindspots around her, and some of that was my own projection and baggage for sure. But some of it was rooted on palpable judgment on her part. In your case, the judgment seems very overt. While a teasing dynamic works for some relationships, it becomes an issue when one party is not comfortable with it (and it sounds like you’re kind of implying you don’t necessarily love any of the teasing!). Here’s the thing: Even if you WERE okay with the teasing in the beginning of your relationship, if it gets to a point where you no longer are, you have a right to say something and ask for a change. This is applicable for all kinda of behavior in a relationship. Sometimes it’s easier to overlook things that may bother us early on in a relationship thanks to the dopamine and rosy eyes of New Relationship Energy. It’s not too late to bring this up.
I also want you to know that it’s okay if you don’t like music very much. Or to like what you like. Or to be curious in listening to new shit, if that’s what you really want! All of it is okay. I sense a lot of insecurity in your letter, which is not a knock on you. We all experience insecurities! But I think this teasing situation is maybe impacting you on an even deeper level than you realize. I never want you to get to a point where you feel like you need to downplay or hide your preferences, and I fear we’re already treading in that territory.
I regret not saying something when my ex turned off my music that time. Don’t be like me. Advocate for yourself. Asking if you know who a musician is in a condescending way is quite mean! And for what it’s worth, the picky eater comparison doesn’t work in her favor either, because if you were a picky eater, that would totally be your right, too? And not something she would get a free pass on teasing you for?
TLDR: I think your girlfriend is being out of pocket. It’s possible she doesn’t really know that’s how she’s being. There could be context there, like her family could use teasing as a love language. There was definitely familial baggage in my own situation. That doesn’t excuse it, but it does help contextualize it. I’m not demonizing your girlfriend, and you don’t have to either. I think you should just tell her that her words have been hurting you. The sooner you can address this, the sooner y’all can change the dynamic. And I think then you’ll be able to do the personal work to figure out if you do want to broaden your music tastes (by the way — THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR TASTE!!!! THOSE ARE KARAOKE BANGERS FOR A REASON!!!! Actually, maybe it could be healing for you to go to karaoke together and both belt out the songs you love?! Something to consider! Karaoke as couples therapy!) independently of external pressure after that dynamic shifts.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
thank you for sticking up for picky eaters. I get if you’re an adventurous eater, fielding reactions like “ew why would you want to eat that” sucks. but that is because anyone passing judgement on how/when/what/where we eat something as personal as the food we need to eat to stay alive sucks and feels bad, and no one should do it! do you think the food someone else eats is boring or gross or weird or unhealthy? that’s fine but those are 💯 inside thoughts!
aaaand the same goes for music, unless you and the other person enjoy fake-arguing about matters of taste, which can definitely be fun for some people (myself included!)
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Hrrk…. Oh man. This was painful to read. LW, you are FINE and your taste is FINE and I also run without music, I can’t run with music and I salute you! And who the fuck cares!!! I used to make such judgy comments too in my last relationship (about the dumbest shit! Because it is always dumb to say shit like this to your partner) and it was because I was a jerk who felt super insecure in the relationship. Subconsciously, I wanted to put my partner down. This behaviour is completely inexcusable. Like yeah let’s not demonize your girlfriend, like I said, I used to do the same thing myself, but I was 100% in the wrong. She is putting you down. Please stand up for yourself and set a boundary. If it doesn’t feel safe to put down a boundary about this, maybe it is worth considering why you are in a relationship where you are feeling so emotionally unsafe that you can’t set a boundary like that? As the person who made my ex feel that unsafe, all I wanted was for her to tell me to stop and get angry at me. I didn’t want her to accept that I was a jerk! The whole dynamic sucked! You deserve better LW!!!! Do not accept this! “Teasing” is only fun and flirty if both people are into it. Otherwise it’s just saying mean things to your partner. It is understandable that you didn’t say anything before and it is completely okay to bring it up now. I am cheering you on as a fellow person who doesn’t really care about music and mostly listens to the same 5 albums over and over again in a row. YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM!!!!
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If you want to choose violence, you can point out that just because it’s new.. doesn’t mean it’s good.. It might just be new, you know what I mean. Kelly and Avril are pretty Iconic. I’m not including Hillary because she didn’t quite have the reach to Eastern Europe where I am .. but you know.
And yes, people do listen to music from middle school still… A lot of people do that. My dad had a mixtape for the car that was basically the only thing we listened to in the car and find and put the almost all the songs from that unto a Spotify playlist like 20 years later.
And if you want a truly wild way to find “new” music look up radiooooooo. It’s a musical time machine which will play you music from any decade from any country. That a nice little adventure to go on. And you don’t have to do it. It’s just a cool way to do it. NPR’s Tiny Desk as well is a great way to find “new” and diverse music. But you really don’t have to do it, I’m just naming some resources.
Also, it’s her problem if she doesn’t like it. Music can be a thing were you have different taste. You don’t have to enjoy all the same thing and it’s important to know that.
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As someone who enjoys music from Avril, Kelly, and Hillary, I will and do cringe at myself for still having words and tunes memorized after all these years.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
And if I know anything about the universe, it is that people judge one another for silly stuff all the time. I do it and chances are good that you do too, dear reader. Just maybe not about music taste.
Because this person is someone important to you, as you are dating, it’s probably wise to confront them about your feelings about their teasing.
Let that interaction inform you.
You’ve mentioned in your question that they generally like to tease and you’re “into it sometimes ‘because funny’, but not other times like this time”. This mixed response strikes me as confusing. It could possibly be confusing to your partner as well.
Maybe it would be helpful to more clearly communicate your dislike/distaste of being teased by your partner?
I really do not want to be a bummer, but if this habit of teasing is a humor and/or flirting style of your partner, could it be possible that you’re simply not compatible?
Something to consider to shield yourself from further miscommunications and sore feelings.
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I can imagine that having hurt feelings about not prioritizing a music taste past the mid-2000s is generally not a good feeling to have. And yet it is a rather mundane insecurity regarding the field of romantic relationships.
What concerns me is that the question asker is prioritizing asking strangers (more or less) online about a relatively benign situation of typical unpleasant feelings that arise in relationships than discuss these feelings with their partner. (God forbid this question be pitched to Reddit.)
To me this suggests that the question asker is either a highly avoidant person, an insecure person, or someone intimidated by their partner. Maybe all 3!
And while I can’t know for sure if the question asker’s partner is the problem or not, I am feeling increasingly wary of the question asker.
No one is asking for this tip, but here it is.
Pro tip: if you can’t have honest conversations about your entire range of emotions present on your half of a romantic relationship, perhaps you should not be in this relationship.
Because discussing the good the bad and the ugly that you feel is your responsibility.
Expecting partners to be your mind reader is not reasonable. Communicate, even when it is difficult.
The intent of the post doesn’t even seem to be seeking advice. It’s seeking validation for the sore feelings.
Talk to your partner. Share your feelings with them. Stop pulling away from them when you feel bad and reaching for the internet to ice the inflammation.
The Internet isn’t going to solve your problem here.
I can’t talk to your partner for you.
Your friends shouldn’t have that responsibility either.
No one at the Tonys said much of anything in their speeches. They thanked people, of course, and basked in this moment for their careers. One person said happy pride and another gave a nice but vague speech about going beyond the gender binary. Some made allusions to Trump. But overall the show’s politics were stuck with the Hamilton tribute, an enthusiastic liberalism of a decade past.
I don’t know if artists have a responsibility to use an award speech to make a statement. I don’t know if it really does anything. But I do think the arts can be the vanguard for political change and I do think anyone with a platform should at least try to meet their moment.
Last night at the BET Awards while accepting the award for Best Female Hip Hop Artist, Doechii showed how this can be done. After a few thank yous and acknowledgments, she said:
“As much as I’m honored by this award, I do want to address what’s happening right now outside of the building. There are ruthless attacks that are creating chaos and fear in our communities in the name of law and order. Trump is using military forces to stop a protest. And I want y’all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us. What kind of government is that? People are being swept up and torn from their families. And I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people. For Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza. We all deserve to live in hope and not in fear. And I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate and we protest against it. Thank you, BET.”
Considering how hollow it can sometimes feel when artists speak up, this speech from Doechii feels remarkable in its sharpness. She critiqued the Trump administration’s aggression against protesters while drawing a parallel between similar actions of the past — notably his deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles during the 2020 protests as well. Then she re-focused back to the issue that inspired the protest: ICE tearing apart families. Then she connected the topic to broader human rights struggles, calling out by name the attack against trans rights and the genocide in Gaza.
We are past the point for platitudes. In fact, we always have been. Flowery speeches about acceptance are fine, but there’s much more power in the explicit naming of the issues at hand and connecting these issues as one global struggle for human rights.
“Art can change the world” is a purer thought than “celebrity can change the world” but in these moments I’m reminded that sometimes it’s as simple as a beloved person with a stage saying the fucking thing out loud and saying it well. More artists and more celebrities should look to this Doechii speech as a lesson in what it means to actually speak up.
Our collective struggle will not be decided at award shows. But recent history shows us the power of solidarity from a recognizable name. There’s a reason J. Edgar Hoover kept files on so many of our best artists.
Christopher Polk / Contributor
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Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
I don’t have a platform. No one cares about my opinion. I’m not making people think. Why? Not because what I say doesn’t make sense or isn’t impactful and persuasive. It’s because, I’m just me. No one knows me. My voice is there but it’s quiet, even if I raise it. On the other hand, celebrities have platforms, and voices that carry. They can inspire people and make them think. We need more of this or we will look like Hungary by the end of Summer. No one should ever want that.
Thrilled that Seema is going to fuck Trey Atwood !! And that Miranda called out Carrie even if she immediately apologized.
Lily with the Haricots Verts, Miranda with the rabbit – the captions are once again perfect. This recap was an even better delight than the episode
My remaining question is how Carrie got through tsa with that giant sandwich bag in her bra
legit every move she made with the adderall was more alarming and befuddling than the last, from not putting it into a medicine bottle (as seema suggested) to begin with, to slipping it out of her bra and into her purse post-TSA, while on the plane (she did tell seems to “shied her” but not until mid-movement), to every additional minute that passed in which it was in her possession and i kept thinking it was chekov’s gun and i was just already annoyed at how it might go off. but it didn’t! so that i suppose is a small blessing
BIG shoutout to Trader Joe’s bagged Haricots Verts
“Lesbianism Is Healing” t-shirt, size L, add to cart.
I’m a bit worried for Miranda, that hand-on-chest thing is such a fuckboi move
not worried because if the writers didn’t realize how che came off, they surely think hand-on-chest is INCREDIBLY romantic