Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene: Lesbian Sex Marathons Are Political in 2015 French Film ‘Summertime’

Welcome to Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, a series by Drew Burnett Gregory and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya about queer sex scenes in film. This week, Kayla writes about the 2015 French film Summertime (also known by its French title La Belle Saison), directed by Catherine Corsini. A note from Kayla: After I’d written this piece, while doing research about what Corsini has been up to, I came across information about her most recent film, which was removed from Cannes following harassment allegations against Corsini and sexual misconduct from members of the crew. This feels essential to acknowledge up top.


I had not seen the 2015 French film Summertime until preparing to write this entry for Anatomy of a Queer Sex Scene, and when I sat down to write after, I had the urge to just write a full review of the film, nearly a decade after it came out. That’s not what this column is supposed to be though. It’s about sex. Sex on screen. But my temptation to write about every aspect of the film makes perfect sense, because among the many things Summertime does well (its gorgeous cinematography and lush landscapes; its refusal to water down France’s women’s movement of the 1970s, depicted as explicitly anti-cop; its captivating performances; its commentary on class), is its assertion that sex can touch every part of life, how it often does, especially when you’re someone whose sexual desires are repressed.

So, I will try to write about just the sex. But the sex in Summertime is never just sex.

Delphine is a farm girl in rural France being pressured by her father to marry. But when she isn’t working hard on the farm, she’s busy secretly hooking up with another local girl who eventually dismisses their relationship as something unserious. Delphine does what a lot of dykes would do after this rejection and blows up her life, leaving the farm for Paris where she hopes to start anew. But Summertime isn’t your typical Character Is Running Away From Home Because She Hates It There narrative. Delphine loves farm life and the physical labor it requires. She loves home; it just doesn’t love her back.

See, I’m already having trouble sticking to the sex.

In Paris, Delphine meets Carole, who ushers Delphine into her feminist group. It’s 1971, and Carole and her friends are fighting for women’s liberation from equal pay to reproductive justice. The two become entangled, and suddenly they’re fucking. All. The. Time.

The first sex scene in Summertime comes after Carole tells Delphine she isn’t a lesbian, and Delphine says she isn’t either before pulling Carole into an alleyway where they both instantly start making out. A lot of films would end the moment there, but no, Carole and Delphine — mere minutes after both denying their queerness — end up in bed together. It’s Carole’s first time with a woman, but it isn’t Delphine’s.

Carole and Delphine kissing in Summertime

Delphine on top of Carole in Summertime

Soon thereafter, and despite Carole’s boyfriend, they’re fucking all the time. They have so much sex they need to refuel with cookies, eaten in bed while they both lounge naked. These post-coital sex scenes are every bit as erotic as the actual fucking, perhaps even more so, realistic in the way both bodies are sort of jumbled, limbs akimbo. They’re not perfectly staged but rather mashed together sloppily, in positions that perhaps even look uncomfortable. Their desire for each other overwrites that though, intimacy creating comfort and ease, like they’re finally doing exactly what their bodies want to do. They laugh during sex, too, something I haven’t seen a lot of in lesbian sex scenes, which tend to more often be intense, but Summertime allows for playfulness, for self-discovery that is meaningful, sure, but also not so self-serious.

Delphine and Carole laughing during sex in Summertime

Carole and Delphine naked in Summertime

At one point, Carole smokes a cigarette naked on Delphine’s balcony, liberated and fully in her body. “Down with bourgeoisie society!” she shouts, arching her back against the railing, tits pointing toward Delphine off-screen, likely admiring this display of simultaneous seduction and manifesto from bed, where Carole joins her again. There really is so much fucking in this movie.

Delphine smoking a cigarette in Summertime

Carole smokes a cigarette and shouts down with bourgeoisie society! in Summertime

Things shift when Delphine’s father has a stroke and she’s summoned back to the farm. Carole eventually joins, but here she has to be Delphine’s friend not lover. They still sneak away to have sex in fields or into each other’s separate rooms in the farmhouse when they’re sure Delphine’s mother is asleep. Their sex life moves from cramped Parisian flats to the great outdoors, but while there’s a sense of freedom and expansiveness to their surroundings and the way these scenes are shot, it’s contrasted by their reality, which is that they are not free here, cannot be. Their relationship must be pushed to the places where they cannot be seen. But while the land may be vast in Delphine’s town, it’s also a claustrophobic place where hiding is difficult. They keep being seen or almost seen by watchful eyes. It puts Delphine on edge and drives a wedge between her and Carole, who doesn’t fully understand the new context she finds herself in.

Delphine and Carole naked in a field in Summertime

Delphine and Carole kissing while naked in a field in Summertime

Summertime resists the narrative of a farm girl moving to the city and suddenly learning from enlightened city women who light a path leading away from her past and her roots. By the contrary, Delphine’s lived experiences teach Carole so much more than the women’s group can. It’s fascinating to see Carole’s politics falter once she’s in Delphine’s context. She sees Delphine’s family and home as backwards and wrong when really it’s a place that stands the most to gain from liberation but also where things move differently. Delphine believes in all the same things as Carole, but she also loves her home, loves the farm, even when that comes at the expense of her sexual agency and safety.

Through sex, Delphine ushers Carole into her own queerness. Again, Summertime subverts the expected narrative. The closeted farm girl has way more to teach about queerness and lesbian sex than the slick, vocally feminist city girl.

And perhaps Delphine and Carole have tricked themselves into believing the sex they have creates a bubble around them, strips them of their respective contexts, but the film makes it clear this isn’t so, and they gradually realize it, too, building to the film’s sad but still lovely ending. During sex, Delphine and Carole are always reaching toward one another, arms perpetually entwined around each other’s bodies. But those bodies are never oriented the same way. Their feet always face different directions. Carole and Delphine are indeed running toward different but still intertwined things, their freedom bound but disparate. Delphine wants to find her own freedom without abandoning farm life, and she eventually does. Carole wants to continue her work of getting abortion and contraceptive access to young women in the city, which she eventually does, too. Again, it’s all connected, just different sides of the same fight playing out on deeply personal levels. It’s possible to hold onto someone tight but still diverge.

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 915 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. Great piece! As a francophile, I often prefer French wlw films & books, & luckily there’s a lot of good stuff, esp now. I love this film to pieces..
    But I’m really glad you acknowledged Corsini’s sexual harassment allegations. I think I remember mentioning here before that the actors in La Belle Saison alleged harassment. Need to check..

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Dorothy Allison, Lesbian and Feminist Writer and Activist, Has Died. We Must Keep Learning From Her Life’s Work and ‘Remake the World’

feature image photo by Sophie Bassouls / Contributor via Getty Images

Dorothy Allison died at the age of 75 from cancer earlier this week. The lesbian, feminist writer, and activist from the South helped shape the very core of who I am and taught me the value of living and fighting for a better world despite the temptation to resign myself to sorrow, heartbreak, and hopelessness even though I never knew her personally. Some of my favorite teachers in the world are people I’ve never shared a classroom with, and Allison is undoubtedly one of them.

Allison’s life began in Greenville, South Carolina, where she was “born a bastard” into a poor white family to a teenage mother and an absent father. Early in her childhood, Allison’s mother married Allison’s stepfather, a man who came from a better class position than Allison’s family but who soon found himself poor, out of work, and full of rage for himself, her mother, and, eventually, Allison and her siblings. Her stepfather’s physical and sexual abuse of her and the other members of her family informed much of her early life and some of her most famous works of fiction, so it’s often the focus of most conversations on her and her life. However, even in her embattled and dysfunctional family, Allison experienced a great deal of love, affection, and care from her mother’s extended family, and she often pointed out how abuse was only one part of the larger narrative of life growing up in the impoverished South.

Before Allison became a teenager, she and her family moved to Central Florida where Allison graduated high school and went to Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit scholarship. In college, Allison was involved in anti-Vietnam War organizing and eventually dipped her toes in the burgeoning women’s movement happening in conjunction with anti-war organizing. Although she did do some early work with women’s movement organizers in college, Allison’s lesbianism, her class status, and her status as an incest survivor complicated her position among the other women involved, and she moved away from organizing for a while.

After graduation, Allison spent a few months trying to look for a part time job, but she was also still contending with the weight of her past and poor romantic decisions. She coped by retreating to destructive behaviors. She finally found a clerk job at the Social Security Administration in Tallahassee, and during the initial weeks of her job training, she would return to her motel room at night to write. In her short preface to her 1988 short story collection Trash, Allison writes, “Writing it all down was purging. Putting those stories down on paper took them out of the nightmare realm and made me almost love myself for being able to finally face them. More subtly, it gave me a way to love the people I wrote about—even the ones I had fought with or hated.”

She didn’t return to organizing until she was finally settled in her new job and home in Tallahassee. There, Allison attended what she thought was a magazine organizing meeting for a lesbian publication at the Women’s Center at Florida State University but was actually a “consciousness raising” group for the women’s movement. During the meeting, she felt she finally found a place within the movement and never left. She stayed in Tallahassee until the mid-1970s doing graduate work in anthropology at FSU, volunteer editing the feminist magazine Amazing Grace, and becoming the founding manager at the Herstore Feminist Bookstore.

In the late 1970s, Allison moved to New York City to attend The New School for Social Research to finish her graduate studies, eventually graduating in 1981 with an MA in Urban Anthropology. Throughout this time, Allison kept writing, editing, and publishing in early gay and lesbian journals like Quest, Out/Look, and Connections, and she also co-founded the Lesbian Sex Mafia, a women’s BDSM support and education group, in NYC. Prior to publishing Trash with lesbian press Firebrand Books, Allison published a chapbook of poetry with Long Haul Press called The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison in 1983. The subsequent publication of Trash in 1988 earned Allison two Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association Prize for Lesbian and Gay Writing, fully cementing her place in the queer literary landscape at the time.

More mainstream attention would come to Allison after the publication of her most famous work, Bastard Out of Carolina, in 1991. The book was a fictionalized account of the poverty and abuse Allison suffered as a child in the South that follows the main character Bone as she tries to survive the abuse in her household and eventually finds a semblance of salvation through her lesbian aunt, Raylene. The novel went on to become a bestseller, was a finalist for the National Book Award the following year, and was turned into a feature film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jena Malone in 1996.

In the years immediately following the success of Bastard Out of Carolina, Allison published two works of non-fiction. The first, Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, & Literature — a collection of personal and critical essays examining race- and class-based conflicts Allison experienced within the feminist movement and the lesbian community, her participation in BDSM and her thoughts on pornography, and the enduring impact of Literature on our lives — was published in 1994 and won both a Stonewall Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. The second, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure — a short, lyric memoir that tells the story that inspired Bastard Out of Carolina — was published in 1995 and was a finalist for both a Stonewall Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Allison’s final book, a novel called Cavedweller that tells the story of a mother who abandoned her daughters making her way back to them to reclaim the life she once knew, was published in 1998 and earned Allison her last Lambda Literary Award and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year the following year.

Since the early 2000s, Allison taught writing and Literature courses at various universities, writers residencies, and writing programs. Until her death, she remained in vocal opposition to the lies and injustices queer people, poor people, people of color, and survivors of abuse are often subjected to in our society and used her work to expose difficult truths about the way power and subjugation impact every aspect of our lives, our minds, and our spirits.

Allison’s work came barreling into my life during my second semester in college when my professor assigned Allison’s “Compassion” from her 1988 collection Trash. In the story, three not-quite-estranged but not-quite-amiable sisters take care of their mother as she is suffering from cancer that has spread to her brain and lungs. Each of them are grappling with the immense loss they’re about to experience, the pain and trauma of their collective past, the difficulty of being in the same space together again, and their individual relationships with their abusive stepfather. The sisters try their best to make their mother comfortable in her final days, but they often misstep or disagree or have totally different perceptions of both the past and the present. Despite all of their anger, resentment, and despair, the three of them find a way to truly come together in their mother’s final hours, an act of staggering grace for their mother and for each other that seemed unlikely just a little earlier in the story. I was so struck by the enormity of their love and consideration for each other despite everything that preceded that moment that I couldn’t get the final line of the story — “We held her until she set us free.” — out of my mind for days. I was hooked.

As I made my way through the rest of Trash and eventually to Bastard Out of Carolina, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, Cavedweller, and Skin, I would come to see that radical acts of mercy pervaded Allison’s work, not just through her characters’ fictional actions and recounting the people who impacted her lived experiences but also in the ways she writes about them. When you read her work, you can feel how profoundly she loves so many of these characters and people, and for the ones you know she doesn’t, it isn’t disdain that wafts from the page but empathy and a desire to understand them more deeply. As a survivor of domestic abuse and childhood sexual abuse, Allison experienced some of the most horrific acts of violence in our culture, and in response, she found ways to discuss what happened to her and so many others by illuminating the nuances surrounding those experiences and refusing to reduce them to simple explanations and condemnations. Her work humanizes poor people in the South who live on either side of the victim-perpetrator dichotomy or whose life experiences force them to live on both sides equally. In Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller, and a few of the stories in Trash, for instance, Allison draws direct connections between the pervasiveness of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and abandonment amongst poor white people in the South directly to the oppressive class system these characters are forced to contend with every day. She proves how the stigmatization of her family (and so many others) as poor “white trash” combined with the actual material conditions created by the ruling class, the bourgeois, and stigmatization against marginalized people are the ultimate enemy in the fight for survival faced by so many of us who were born in the margins.

These books came out in the 1980s and 1990s. And in 2024, we’re still not able as a society to talk about poverty and abuse with nearly the same insight, gradation, and compassion contained in just one Allison chapter, short story, or essay.

Through these works and so many others, Allison proves over and over again how our most dominant discourses on class obscure the truth about poverty and the social ills and taboos that often accompany it and detangle it entirely from the crushing brutality of racial capitalism. In her essay “A Question of Class,” she reminds us,

“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal. It is a belief that dominates this culture. It is what makes the poor whites of the South so determinedly racist and the middle class so contemptuous of the poor. It is a myth that allows some to imagine that they build their lives on the ruin of others, a secret core of shame for the middle class, a goad and a spur to the marginal working class, and cause enough for the homeless and poor to feel no constraints on hatred or violence.”

The rage, hatred, and barbarity comes from the top, which means we must fight it not by condescending those who are experiencing the brunt of racial capitalism’s ire but by questioning it, disrupting it, and challenging the narratives it’s trying to sell us all the time. If we don’t do this, we not only ensure the continuation of this oppression, but we will also always be barring ourselves from interacting and engaging with the truth about ourselves and those around us.

Over the course of her career, Allison was often criticized for her frankness on the subjects of her family and her sexual abuse as well as her candor about her sexual relationships with butch lesbians, her proclivity towards BDSM and aggressive sex, and her beliefs in the power women hold over their bodies and the actions they choose to engage in with them, even from the other women she was working with in feminist movement spaces. In response to this, Allison grew more steadfast in her belief that women must not hide themselves away or bury their desires in order to appeal to the values of our repressive heteropatriarchal society. In “Public Silence, Private Terror,” Allison writes,

“Instead of speaking out in favor of sexual diversity, most feminists continue to avoid the discussion. It is too dangerous, too painful, too hopeless, and the Sex Wars are supposed to be over anyways. But when women remain afraid of what might be revealed about our personal fears and desires, it becomes clear the Sex Wars are far from over. When it is easier to dismiss any discussion of sexuality as irrelevant or divisive rather than look at all the different ways we have denied and dismissed each other, the need to break the public silence still exists. We have no choice. We cannot compromise or agree to be circumspect in how we challenge the system of sexual oppression. We dare not willingly deny ourselves, make those bad bargains that can look so good at the moment. […] I know of no other way to do this than to start by saying I will give up nothing. I will give up no one. […] I hope we can all write out our fearful secrets and sign them or not as we choose, to honor our secrets and break the public silence that has maintained so much private terror.”

Her work consistently presents us with an important call to action: stand up against the systems that are keeping us on the margins by creating new meaning for ourselves and for the people who are the most repressed under these systems.

In order to do this, Allison instructs us, we must tell our stories, and we must tell them without sparing anyone the grisly, joyous, and sexually explicit or illicit details because doing that won’t break us or others out of the binds those in power have created for us. She writes in her essay Survival is the Least of My Desires: “As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way. Do not buy into their systems of censorship, imagining that if you drop this character or hide that emotion, you can slide through their blockades. Do not eat your heart out in the hope of pleasing them. The only hope you have, the only hope any of us has is the remade life. It is the only way we will all survive, and trading any of us for some of us is no compromise.”

Through the telling of our actual stories and the sharing of our lives with one another, we can “remake” both ourselves and the world around us and help liberate others who share in or don’t share in our experiences. She continues later in the essay, “I need you to tell the truth, to tell the mean stories, and to sing the song of hope. I need all of us to live forever and to remake the world.”

I need all of us to live forever and to remake the world. I need all of us to live forever and to remake the world. 

Allison passed away this week of all weeks, when so many are scrambling to figure out what to anticipate in the uncertain future we’re facing. I can’t imagine a better set of words to keep close to the vest right now. Allison saw the fractures and fissures of our society so clearly, but she also understood we had all the concrete and glue we needed to fix them within us if we’re willing to learn, relearn, unlearn, and stop running from what we know is true. I hope, in her memory, more of us can finally give it a shot and remake the world.

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?

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Stef Rubino

Stef Rubino is a writer, community organizer, competitive powerlifter, and former educator from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They're currently working on book of essays and preparing for their next powerlifting meet. They’re the fat half of the arts and culture podcast Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, and you can read some of their other writing in Change Wire and in Catapult. You can also find them on Twitter (unfortunately).

Stef has written 112 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. No! I just read Bastard Out Of Carolina, & then Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure. Bastard is an unbelievably good book. The lyricism, the unflinching delineation of the abuse and its effect on Bone, the rounded portrayal of the semi-sympathetic but unbelievably flawed mother, the other members of the family, the humour.. She turned the horrendous things in her life into art, & that requires incredible strength.
    She was working on a novel called She Who since 2007 and poss before. Will we maybe see what she’d written released one day? If she didn’t want that, that should be respected. She spoke in interviews about how the long term effects of the abuse made it hard to write as much as she wanted.
    In a just world, she would’ve been able to wrote many more novels. We must appreciate the writing she did give us.

  2. ah, heartbreaking news. thank you so so much for writing this Stef. someday I hope to own a copy of The Women Who Hate Me, which I borrowed from my university campus’s queer+trans resource and support centre ‘s library many years ago, but which is unfortunately out of print and seemingly not available as an ebook.

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Want To Learn What It’s Like To Be Queer in America? Watch ‘Somebody Somewhere’

Whether it is an election year or not, the South and the Midwest are usually the first places people denigrate when it comes to providing any political analysis of the U.S. To most who are unfamiliar with what it is actually like to live in these regions, they are “backwards,” “hostile,” and generally unwelcoming to new people, new ideas, and progressive movement towards the building of diverse communities that take care of one another. The reality is obviously much more nuanced than that and not easily summarized in a short series of tweets or a two-minute TikTok or Instagram Reel. The reality is the majority of the most radical political ideas and the most radical steps towards coalition and community building come from organizers in the South and the Midwest, even if many in other regions can’t or won’t admit that.

You might be wondering why I’m starting a review of the third and final season of Somebody Somewhere with this reflection. But I think it is important to understanding the quiet and instructional power of Somebody Somewhere and why its existence is a small and significant triumph against the backdrop of the current state of our culture.

If you haven’t been watching the show, its story revolves around the life of Sam (Bridget Everett), the somewhat disconnected nomadic middle-aged sister of an older lesbian, who moves back to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas to take care of that sister as she is dying from cancer. Before moving back, Sam vowed never to return to Manhattan permanently but Sam’s lack of money, the death of her sister and its impact on Sam’s family, especially her younger sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), and her late sister’s community in Manhattan pulls Sam to stay in a way she couldn’t anticipate. In the first two seasons of the show, Sam is trying to figure out exactly what she’s doing in Manhattan and what she’s doing in her life. She meets and eventually becomes good friends with Joel (Jeff Hiller), a gay Christian man who’s heavily involved with both the queer and non-queer communities of Manhattan. Joel sees something in Sam she can’t quite see yet herself — the fact that she’s a smart, interesting person who deserves love and kindness — and doesn’t leave her alone until she agrees to hang out with him. Through Joel, she’s introduced to an equally jovial, loving gang of characters who make up Joel’s friend group: Fred (Murray Hill), a trans scientist, professor, and MC at the local queer community’s weekly gathering Choir Practice; Tiffani (Mercedes White) and Irma (Meighan Gerachis), two lesbians who live and work in Manhattan; and eventually, Susan (Jennifer Mudge), the woman who becomes Fred’s wife, and Brad (Tim Bagley), Joel’s new love interest who becomes Joel’s boyfriend.

Although the first two seasons don’t exactly provide many answers for Sam about who she is and what she’s really doing (or supposed to be doing) in Manhattan, they do serve as the foundation for what comes in the third season. That foundation is built, to put it simply, on the promise of community and what it means to be in the presence of people who love and care about you. Throughout those first two seasons, we watch Sam’s connections to Joel, Tricia, and all of the people around them deepen and expand in ways that are expected and ways that aren’t. Their commitments to one another are tested through familial dramas, disagreements, new romantic relationships (or the lack thereof and the dissolution of long-term relationships they had), job losses and gains, transitions from and to other religious communities, and just the general shifting dynamics in the world of Manhattan. They are forced in a variety of ways to figure out how to be with and take care of each other by working on themselves, healing old wounds, and maturing more than they’ve been able to prior to entering each other’s lives.

Season three finds them all at an interesting intersection. Sam has finally landed a gig she actually enjoys, serving as a bartender at a local dive bar called the Cock N’ Bull. Joel is preparing to sell his house to move in with Brad and is forced to contend with some unfortunate sacrifices he has to make for love. Tricia is newly divorced from her cheating husband and her daughter has recently moved out of her house to attend college. On the heels of some scary medical news, Fred is trying to change his lifestyle and habits with the help of Susan. Tiffani and Irma are dating, but trying to keep it as lowkey as possible. In between, Sam and Tricia are taking care of their parents’ farm after they’ve checked their alcoholic mother (Jane Brody) into an assisted-living facility and their father (the late Mike Hagerty) has retired to Michigan. They’re renting the farm to Iceland (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), a man who seems eerily similar to Sam in terms of his past and his uncertainty about what his future should look like. As it has been, Sam and Joel’s relationship comprises the heart of the show, and in season three, it is shifting again while not exactly being tested in the same way it was in the previous season.

Instead, this season expands on the strengths of the bonds of these characters, pushing them into personal and interpersonal growth that reverberates into everything they do and everything they believe about themselves. During a trip to the Great Plains Expo in Wichita in the fourth episode, Sam and Tricia’s relationship turns a corner that both of them are surprised by. After spending so much time thinking they don’t understand one another and have nothing in common, Tricia’s admissions about her post-divorce life are a breakthrough for Sam as she realizes Tricia isn’t the stuck-up bitch she always prescribed her to be. In the latter half of the season, Joel has a slight breakdown when he realizes he’ll never be a father and he misses the community of the church he attended before getting serious with Brad. As Sam witnesses how shook up Joel is by the changes in his life, she’s forced to step into a supportive and encouraging role. She’s never had to do this for Joel and their friendship is deepened by her ability to rise to the occasion. And I don’t want to spoil anything, but for much of the season, we see Sam struggle with her self-worth and her desire for romantic love. She begins to overcome some of the trauma of her past in response to the potential of finally getting what she wants. The third season is about the risks these characters are able to take knowing they have the safety net of their relationships to each other.

It would be a disservice not to mention the profound chemistry these performers have and have had throughout the three utterly flawless seasons of this show. Of course, Everett’s and Hiller’s scenes together are an absolute joy to watch, but the other performances are equally powerful. The third season provides some moments between Everett and Garrison that are both side-splitting and exceedingly tender. Similarly, as the relationship between Joel and Brad blossoms in its new state, the scenes shared by Hiller and Bagley feel so heavy with real emotionality it is sometimes mind-boggling that this show is purely fiction. And Hill is always there with perfectly compassionate comedic timing that helps propel the rest of the performers he shares scenes with into equally compelling earnestness. You don’t just believe in the performances of these actors, you feel them deeply in every part of your body.

But the real magic of the show relates directly to my initial reflection. Somebody Somewhere is a show about building strong relationships — building an actual, healthy community — in a place where many might think it’s an impossible task to accomplish. We don’t know much about the other people who live in Manhattan or their particular politics but we get the sense that it’s a place where everyone knows everyone else and where people are often working in tandem with the others around them to create a culture where people are safe, welcome, and accepted. The ever-tumultuous politics of the world outside of Somebody Somewhere are not written into the show, and I think that’s for good reason. When you come from or live in a place like Manhattan (or any other smaller town in the South and Midwest), the happenings of your daily life are far more dependent on the relationships you have with the people who live with you and around you than the people who are in your state’s capital or in the White House. Sam, Joel, and the rest of their crew not only recognize this fact but they use it to their advantage: If they’re all they have to survive, then they’d better learn what it means to keep each other alive. They heed this call to action with the kind of genuine passion and patience that is rarely reflected to us in mainstream media.

In Somebody Somewhere, we witness in each and every episode a community of people breaking through the isolation and loneliness of our treacherous and predatory racial capitalist society. They create spaces for themselves and build coalitions of people who will fight for and with them. And most importantly, this is all happening in the kind of place, a small town, people don’t know about but are happy to write off any chance they get. Even if it is a little fantastical or a little too optimistic in its worldview, the stories presented to us in Somebody Somewhere are more necessary than ever because the show dares to challenge what we understand about these places and about the people who live there. This third and final season makes this especially clear.

Sure, Somebody Somewhere might not change the world, but if there’s a piece of media I wish people had the critical literacy to truly understand and learn from, it’s this one.


Somebody Somewhere airs on Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO and streams on Max.

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?

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Stef Rubino

Stef Rubino is a writer, community organizer, competitive powerlifter, and former educator from Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They're currently working on book of essays and preparing for their next powerlifting meet. They’re the fat half of the arts and culture podcast Fat Guy, Jacked Guy, and you can read some of their other writing in Change Wire and in Catapult. You can also find them on Twitter (unfortunately).

Stef has written 112 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. This is third hand information bc I read it in a comment in another review for this show, but Murray Hill was on a podcast and explained that pretty much the whole cast has known each other for over a decade at this point. Even though they are playing fictional characters, their genuine love for each other completely shines through.

    I might be misremembering, but didn’t Sam move to help her sister with cancer? So she had already been back about a year before the show starts. At least that’s what I thought, I could totally be wrong!

    • Thank you! Yes, she did move back to take care of her as she’s dying! I had a bad memory moment there.

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How Can I Convince My Girlfriend To Accept Her Shot at Financial Freedom?

I Want My Girlfriend To Accept My Parents' Financial Gift as a Gift, Not A Loan
Q
Hi, looking for help with a problem that is at the intersection of love and money. I (30F) grew up with a lot of class privilege — my family has a vacation home, I went to private school, never wanted for anything. My girlfriend of 3 yrs (27F) who I want to marry one day did not, her parents were often unemployed and experienced housing insecurity, would have the lights shut off, moved around a lot, and they were also emotionally abusive. She paid for school in loans. Never learned any financial literacy or responsibility at home. Her job now pays about 60k a year (I make 3x that), and she has around 100k in debt between school loans and credit cards. She has ...

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I Watched 47 Hear Me Out Cake Videos and This Is What I Learned About Straight People

It’s been a long time since I’ve been invested in the comings and goings of the heterosexual population. But if there are two things I love it’s 1) people talking about who they want to fuck and 2) dessert. That’s why I couldn’t help but keep watching when TikTok showed me a Hear Me Out Cake video. First of all, the cake looked good. Second of all, why were these coworkers gathering to discuss how much they want to fuck Spirit, the stallion of the Cimarron? If your FYP has not turned into my FYP over the past month, let me catch you up.  A Hear Me Out Cake is a cake where people stick in little pictures of the people (or characters) who they want to fuck. It seemed like a fun game among friends and a revealing experiment among couples, but then it the trend moved into offices and even one family with young kids. (The family video was quickly taken down.)
@danielle.guizio

we got some real rizzlers #hearmeout #hearmeoutcake #hearmeouttrend #worklife #officelife #corporatelife #officehumor #happyhalloween #cake #rizz

♬ original sound – Guizio
Something that became apparent very quickly was almost every “hear me out” put forward by straight people was a cartoon character. And not just cartoon characters of people, but primarily cartoon characters of animals and creatures. I get it. To publicly call a real person a “hear me out” is kind of mean whereas I’m sure Mike Wazowski will take it just fine. Or maybe it’s just easier for people to discuss their sexuality when there’s the level of remove allowed by a cartoon.
@meghanandjack

Meghan had a few… concerning ones…😂😅 #meghanandjack

♬ original sound – 🌻Meg and Jack🌻
Whether or not the people in these videos realized, the choices were always revealing. Cartoons are so heightened, it was like getting a window into the most distilled version of the trait they’re seeking. Dangerous or mommy or masculine or snarky or mysterious or, I don’t know, strong haunches. Every once in awhile, someone would make a non-animated pick. But usually it made me wish they hadn’t: two Johnny Depp characters, BJ Novak, Ghostface from Scream?? With that taste, maybe stick with the shark from Finding Nemo.
@kiwiandco_

Hear us out🤷‍♀️ #hearmeout #hearmeoutcake #officehumour

♬ BIRDS OF A FEATHER sped up – Lilly 🎃
What I found interesting was how many straight people selected cartoons that were children. Pointing out heterosexual hypocrisy is a waste of time, but it’s kind of wild to fear-monger about predatory queers only to realize straight women are still day-dreaming about 13 year old cartoon boys or the littlest rascal.
@ilovelinen

Just another day at the office… Confessing our weirdest crushes on a cake 🍰👀who wins the most unhinged reward 🏆!?#OfficeConfessions #HearMeOutCake #CrushCake

♬ original sound – I Love Linen
My favorite videos were the couples. Some of them, anyway. When people selected characters like their partners, it was sweet. When they didn’t, it was funny. If it takes a cake to discuss desire with your partner, bake away!
@jay.and.chan

brb, teaching jayden all Boyz N Motion choreo #hearmeout #hearmeoutcake #husbandwife #couple #trend #trending #relationship #marriage #jayandchan #arkansas #married #fyp #fypage #lol #couplehumor

♬ original sound – Jay & Chan
Talking about desire is a good thing! I’m not sure why this trend has caught on in work places, but, ultimately, I’ve decided straight people Hear Me Out Cakes are a good thing. (Other than the blonde women thirsting over children…) While most queer couples I know — monogamous or not — are very open about attraction and crushes, I understand this can be a taboo for straight people. So it’s good for people to have an outlet to do that in a fictional space! And for the single people, maybe this exercise allowed them to realize what they’re looking for in future partners. Even if that is someone with the energy of a bee voiced by Jerry Seinfeld.
@hunterfancompany

The office “hear me out” cake. Some solid choices were made. #hearmeout #work #worklife #worklifebalance #job #joblife

♬ original sound – Hunter Fan Company
For the sake of fairness, I will end this investigation by naming my own Hear Me Outs: Edith Wharton and Janice the Muppet from The Muppets.
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Drew Burnett Gregory

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.

Drew Burnett has written 612 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. F that I’ll shame anyone who’s attracted to Jerry Seinfeld fucking straight women are weird we need to straight shame them also open couples not real ones

    • Well, you see, it’s not exactly Jerry Seinfeld, it’s an animated bee named Barry B. Benson.

  2. I clearly associate with some deranged people. I feel like Sarah Kerrigan from Starcraft is the most basic “Here Me Out”, along with the Xenomorph Queen from Alien.

  3. people openly talk with coworkers about who they want to fuck? and it’s mostly cartoon characters and shitty dudes? these are the same people who voted on Tuesday aren’t they?

  4. I only worked in an office for 18 months, but I really do not miss the bizarre faux-camaraderie friendly-but-professional-but-slightly-competitive relationship dynamics that necessarily have to evolve after spending 8 hours doing things you don’t like in a room full of people you’d otherwise never spend time with.

    Office work is a very weird social situation to me, and I’m not surprised it often results in these weird little rituals.

Comments are closed.

Here’s How We Can Help Each Other in Trump’s America (and Beyond)

Feature image by Maskot via Getty Images

It’s November 7th, and you’re staring down another Trump presidency, one where he and his shit-goblin bros are likely to have even more of an ability to fuck us over. I have two things to say: 1) Don’t panic. Truly. It’s not that there’s no reason to panic — but rather that there are so many reasons to hold it together. 2) Voting and presidential elections are just one small blip in a life where the real political action occurs every day, in how we live our lives and interact with each other moment to moment.

We don’t have a lot of control over what elites do, but we have a ton of control over what we do ourselves each day. That’s where our power lies, and so, I present to you without any authority except that I felt like writing this, a definitely incomplete list of things you can do post-election. These are things to care for yourself, to feel better, to look out for others, to continue to fight against fascism and for a better world for everyone — and to use the next two months to get ready for the next year and the next four years. There will be losses, but there will also be wins. Above all, there needs to be action.

Self and Friend Care

This is basic, but a good place to start. Read on for more community-building suggestions in other sections.

  • Check on your friends — not just yesterday and today, but periodically. See how people are doing.
  • Ask for the support that you need. It might not always be available, but you’re not going to get your needs met if you never vocalize them.
  • Continue to cultivate queer joy, whatever that means to you. Do drag, break out your pride gear, have a get together with your gay friends in public, watch your favorite queer show or re-read your favorite queer book. This is really so uniquely to you, but the important thing is to remember you’re just as much you as you were a few days ago and no one can take that from inside you.
  • Take care of your body. When we’re upset we can forget that we need water and nutrients and sleep, but guess what you still do and you’ll feel a lot better if you’re not neglecting yourself. You can even decide to do more for your body.
  • Give animals and kiddos in your life extra care, love, and fun. This is just fundamentally nice and rewarding in and of itself, so why not?
  • Get outside and into nature if possible. It’s healing — for real.
  • Clean your space and do your chores if you’re able. Prepare for when you might not have the time or energy later.

Deepen Your Community Involvement and Organizing (Or Get Started)

I had someone ask me how they can tap into our local community yesterday. They told me they were asking because they genuinely didn’t know, which is delightfully honest. So let’s begin at the most basic starting square.

  • Gather with your friends IRL if you are able to or gather remotely. This is basic community-building! You’ve gotten started.
  • Ask your friends what they do, where they volunteer or organize, and if it sounds good and they’re down, see if you can go with them.
  • Don’t have friends or don’t have friends who do these things? (No judgment!) Pick one thing and start going regularly. Just be honest about being new, listen, learn, be nice and talk to people. An incomplete but starter list of options is below.
  • Match the activity to your abilities, interests and risk tolerance – if extensive physical activity will deplete you, then there are in fact phone/computer-based ways to plug in. If you hate cooking but are good at taking notes, maybe it’s better for you to plug into court watch than it is for you to commit to cooking community meals. Do you find yourself hanging out with the kids at family functions over the adults? Maybe you can help provide volunteer childcare at community meetings so parents can more fully participate.

Now, you might have to organize something yourself, depending on where you live. The things that use your skills or that your community needs might not yet exist. Recently, I met the singular person who started an LGBTQ center in a small town. Once it was started, people gathered around them, but sometimes it takes one or two people deciding that your area needs a thing and just making it happen. Sure, you’ll make mistakes. People will get mad at you if you stick your neck out and do literally anything. But nothing actually worth doing happens without facing down obstacles.

Types of Community Involvement and Organizing

This is a wholly incomplete list, but it’s just to get you started. Any of these types of organizing can be things that you and friends start in your area if they do not exist where you are (you might not have a local community fridge, for example), or that might have existing groups working on them already that you can talk to (there is a community fridge already so maybe you want to see if the people who stock and maintain it need help or donations). You get it!

A strong note up front. The most important thing is consistency and reliability. If you say you’re going to show up, then you need to show up. Saying you will do something and then backing out is worse than never signing up in the first place because it makes a hole. So, please be honest and realistic with yourself and others about what you can and cannot do.

  • Gather People Together Socially or Go To Social Gatherings: Whether you’re just getting your friends together for coffee or doing something a bit more organized like holding a sober space for people to just be, this is where it starts, right? This is the stuff of life, the way that people meet each other, and how we can refill our own and others’ cups. It’s also how we strengthen the network and community of people we can reach out to in hard times and for organizing.
  • Have a Meeting: Are there people you already organize with or friends who you might want to organize with? Get together and talk about what’s next and how you’re going to respond and what you’re going to build.
  • Get to Know Your Neighbors. Literally. Do you know their names? Do they know you? Your physical neighbors are the people who will be closest to you, and you to them, in the event of an emergency or anything else happening on your street. If you can build up rapport and friendship with them, then even better! Now you have friends who live near you!
  • Food / Meals / Grocery Distro / Biologically Life-Sustaining Stuff and Mutual Aid: Whether you’re stocking a community fridge, cooking with Food Not Bombs, or collecting donations and supplies to distribute to unhoused people — keeping people fed and supplied with hygiene basics is key to our collective survival. Also food is a basic human right.
  • Non-Food Mutual Aid: People need help cleaning, moving, navigating state benefit systems, obtaining free homegoods or other items, paying rent, and more. You can help organize digitally so people can connect and help each other, or you can join an existing mutual aid group and offer your help or skills when and how you can! You can organize a “free store” with friends — it doesn’t have to be permanent, and can be a popup. You can organize a queer clothing exchange or participate in one. It’s getting to be the time of coat drives and gathering donated winter supplies, so if you see a need going unfilled, don’t be afraid to find a way to help meet it. Unhoused people need supplies and support when facing eviction from camps. You don’t have to do everything or anything big. Even the smallest stuff helps.
  • Harm-Reduction and Birth Control Access: You can help distribute harm reduction supplies like fentanyl test strips or birth control supplies like Plan B, condoms, and pregnancy tests. There are groups that already distribute these for free that you could potentially volunteer and table for, or you could start one. If you have clinics in your area that offer abortion services, you can volunteer as a patient escort. You can help fundraise for abortion funds.
  • LGBTQ and Trans-Specific Mutual Aid: Whether we’re talking about mental health support groups, sobriety support, help with obtaining gender-affirming care, legal support, or survival support (like food, clothing, housing), you can tap into helping your local queer and trans community. This might be something small if you live in a more rural area, or there could be a number of orgs and events and groups if you live in a city, but, especially, young trans and queer people need the support of older queer adults right now.
  • Court, Jail, and Legal Support and Bail Funds: Protesters and activists continue to face repression by the state and local institutions (like academic ones), and also people just living their everyday lives face unjust persecution at the hands of the justice system each and every day. You can join or start a local Court Watch (Fiona Apple famously started court watching and I love that) and also help pack the courts when activists have court dates. You can volunteer with a local bail fund (because bail typically needs to be paid in-person, it is helpful if you can be someone who does this), help drive people to court dates, or help people raise funds for bail or defense. You can participate in or organize letter writing nights for people in your community who are in prison or jail, or find a queer incarcerated penpal through Black and Pink. You can also consider joining your local National Lawyers Guild chapter and volunteering (you don’t need to be a legal worker to volunteer). As we all know, immigrants are going to face severe dangers from this administration, so consider volunteering with or finding ways to support local orgs that provide legal services to migrants.
  • Keep Spaces Running. You can also help staff a volunteer-run community space. This is all going to be very hyper-local, but maybe you have a local collectively run anarchist bookstore, or maybe there is a brick and mortar free store, or a drop-in free clothing exchange for queer people — and you just need to show up and keep it open so that other people can come in.
  • Find ways to welcome new people. If you are someone who is already organizing in your area, consider how you can open up opportunities to welcome more people into the work that you’re doing, if that’s safe. How can people find you or get in touch? Are people on point to respond to volunteer inquiries or to answer questions? Consider meeting with other groups to talk about what you’re each doing and working toward right now so that people can be more connected and in the know, and less isolated.
  • Protest! This could be a whole article in and of itself, but you, yes, you, have a right to both attend and organize protests.

Assess Your Personal Security Practices

Don’t panic! But also, be safe. Let’s talk about security culture.

If you’re engaging in any kind of activism, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the basics of security culture. Essentially, security culture boils down to how and with whom you share information or engage in discussions or planning in order to keep yourself and your fellow organizers safe. There’s more to it than that, but there are multiple guides around that get into how to practice security culture, and they’re lengthy, so I’m linking them.

Following the basic tenets of security culture, it’s time to assess and improve your digital security. You can do this from the comfort of your couch with a cat or dog cuddling you, even while crying, so it’s a cool thing to look into right about now.

  1. First and fucking foremost friends, this means not saying shit in group chats or chats or on social media that is explicitly or implicitly violent towards the future administration or others. I know we all have feelings, but you really, truly don’t want to be sitting in a courtroom listening to FBI Special Agent Fuckface reading back the flippant thing you sent to the group Snap, okay? This really goes back to security culture, but remember that even private social media is essentially public.
  2. Now that that’s over, you can also look into securing your laptop, tablet, phone, what-have-you with a VPN, at least one browser that does not track your searches or browsing (like Tor), and strong passwords. I swear if your password is still like the name of your favorite character followed by “1234” I am going to lose it. You need long and different passwords for each thing. Store them securely.
  3. Secure your phone. Do not use face or fingerprint or whatever else they’ve come up with for your lock screen. Have a passcode only and make it as long as you can, ideally at least 8 characters. Did you know cops are allowed to physically hold your finger on your phone to unlock it? Yeah. But also, there are a lot more protections when it comes to forcing you to give up a passcode, and hopefully you get to talk to your lawyer before anything like that happens. Do not have previews of messages or notifications on your lock screen. Also, there’s a secret way to track your phone’s location via an “Advertising ID” that you should turn off.
  4. Download Signal for messaging. It’s an app that encrypts messages and a lot of people use it and so should you. A note that while Signal messages are end-to-end encrypted to the point where staff cannot access your messages and therefore cannot furnish them for a subpoena, someone who has access to your phone or device with signal on it can definitely still read your past messages. Luckily, Signal has a feature where you can set messages to disappear after a period of time.
  5. You can also use services like Delete Me to wipe your data from the internet.

If this sounds like you’re preparing for high levels of surveillance, it’s because you are. You should assume monitoring and surveillance, especially because with each and every day, technology advances and it gets easier for cops, corporations, and the state to invade our privacy and monitor our digital activities.

Do Some Disaster Preparedness

Community is KEY to weathering both metaphorical and physical storms. But also, with the knowledge that climate change-fueled disaster could continue to occur at higher and higher rates and that our future administration is not likely to do much for any of us in the event of an emergency, a basic level of individual preparedness is a good idea and is something you can just kind of lowkey work on over the next few months. Yes, “preppers” and hardcore “survivalists” tend to be conservatives fantasizing about surviving the end of the world alone. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about making sure you have what you need to make it for a couple of weeks without easy access to water, electricity, heat, or the ability to travel. This is also not just about you. If you have a basic ability to take care of yourself during a “natural” disaster, then you are also taking pressure off relief efforts and freeing yourself up to be a community member who can help others. You might even have something that really helps someone else! Here are some very basic things you can do/can work on having on hand:

Things to have:

    • A written/printed/otherwise physical list of important phone numbers because we all know we aren’t memorizing numbers these days. This list can also include important addresses and any other important info you might need to reference (like key medical info someone may need for you or your family). Store it in a plastic baggie in an accessible place (like clipped to your fridge).
    • 2-3 weeks worth of shelf stable food. This is canned and dried stuff. Try to have a balance of foods you will actually want to eat (so not just beans lol). Make sure you have a couple can openers.
    • Emergency water and water containers. Use up and refresh your supply once a year. If you live in a house or other situation where it’s possible, work on a way where you can collect rain water or runoff — that can be useful not for drinking, but stuff like flushing toilets. Bonus points if you work on having ways to purify water, but a general note that flood water is nasty and basically cannot be easily purified to a point where it’s drinkable unless you have a pretty serious filter.
    • A big ol’ rechargeable battery and keep it charged. The one I have can be solar-charged and it’s SO useful when the power cuts out and oops I did not in fact charge my cell phone that day.
    • A good first aid kit. Make sure you have your emergency medicines like epi pens and inhalers stocked.
    • Some kind of knife and ability to cut stuff. You can also add a hand saw to this.
    • Do you have a fire extinguisher??? You should.
    • Do you still have N-95 masks in your house? You ought to. You can get some at just about any hardware store.
    • An old-school, battery-powered radio so you can listen to emergency messaging.
    • If you have a car, try to always have at least half a tank of gas. This just means stopping for gas more often. It doesn’t cost anymore to do, but it does mean you can drive a decent distance without access to gas near you if necessary. Also, make sure you keep some water, an emergency blanket, a PHYSICAL LOCAL MAP, and a shovel (if it snows where you live), in your car. You can also add a few energy bars and a first aid kit if you’re feeling flush. I also tend to keep work gloves in my car in case I need to Do A Thing, and they’ve been more useful than you would think.

Things to do:

  • Check in with your family, friends, neighbors, emergency contacts, what-have-you ahead of time about a disaster plan.
  • Take a wilderness first aid class. (I still need to do this.) The difference between wilderness vs normal first aid is your assumption about access to medical treatment. With wilderness first aid, you’re assuming you may have to wait hours or days for professional medical treatment, and so you’re treating wounds, injuries, breaks and sprains accordingly. Learn how to treat different kinds of wounds and injuries! A puncture wound is treated differently than a cut, and so on.
  • Right there with wilderness first aid — attend a Stop the Bleed training. These are primarily oriented around treating gunshot wounds, but to be not alarmist — there are other situations (car accident, bad fall, etc.) that can lead to an injury where a person is at risk of severe blood loss. Learning to stop a person from bleeding out could save someone’s life.
  • If you use GPS a lot to navigate and (like you don’t memorize phone numbers) don’t hold a lot of map stuff in your head, memorize some key evacuation routes for yourself, both walkable and drive-able.

Study Your History

Study queer movements of the past. Look at how organizers and protesters got their communities involved. Look to the Lesbian Avengers, Act Up, Combahee River Collective, The Transexual Menace. Our community has been through hard times and we can learn from how the activists of the past resisted and cared for each other through them.

Make Your Own Fun, Create, Do What Makes You You

The world does in fact need your art, and your smile, and your joy. You do not just have to doggedly move through life working, eating, sleeping, organizing, and doing nothing else. Take some time to be silly. Draw, write, dance, lip sync, rock climb, do scary makeup — live in spite of it all. Remember to gather with friends and loved ones as the days grow darker. Have a party. Don’t let despair take your light.

If I’ve done what I set out to do, maybe you felt somewhat adrift but now you’ve got some forward momentum. NEAT! Do you see the people around you, in-person, online who are also bummed? Those are your allies. You’re not alone, not at all. And all in all, what these election results mean to me is that we’re about to be very, very busy. We have just a few short months to get ready for the start of four years and beyond. There’s a lot of work to be done. We can do it together.

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Nico

Nico Hall is a Team Writer for Autostraddle (formerly Autostraddle's A+ and Fundraising Director and For Them's Membership and Editorial Ops person.) They write nonfiction both creative — and the more straightforward variety, too, as well as fiction. They are currently at work on a secret longform project. Nico is also haunted. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram. Here's their website, too.

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2 Comments

  1. I’ve been seeing a lot of these kinds of lists, and it’s depressing how many of them involve engaging with your local, physical community. Not because that’s a bad thing–it is, indeed, probably one of the best things you can do–but because I have the misfortune to live in Phoenix, a city seemingly specifically designed to make building community and solidarity as difficult as possible.

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BREAKING: Extremely Hot and Talented WNBA Star Courtney Williams Is Engaged!

It is a dark time in this country of ours but today Minnesota Lynx star Courtney Williams, who is both extremely hot and extremely good and has a really cute Dad who comes to all of her games, got engaged to her girlfriend, real estate agent Shya. In an instagram post announcing the engagement, Courtney declared: Wowwwww 🥹 it’s a forever thing now 🔒🫶🏽 My fiancé yaaa hearrr meeee.

It appears Williams pulled off her proposal with pre-meditated panache, bringing her blindfolded girlfriend into some sort of grassy staging area where giant letters adorned with lightbulbs spelled out WILL YOU MARRY ME. In the corner it’s easy to spot a man playing a saxophone, probably something extremely romantic like “Umbrella.”

Congratulations immediately poured in on her announcement post from fellow WNBA queers like Syd Colson, Natasha Cloud and Dewanna Bonner.

The pair have been dating since 2022. In May, Shya celebrated Courtney’s 30th birthday on instagram, saying “the last two years with you have been amazing and I’m so honored to experience you… There’s no other person I would choose to do this with and I’m so happy that person is you. So many more years to come and so many more candles to blow out and I only want to do it with you.”

Williams was a key member of the Minnesota Lynx’s team this year as they battled for the WNBA championship, most notably pulling off a game-cinching 4-point play in Game One with only 5.5 seconds left in regulation play. That move sent the game into overtime, earning the Lynx their first victory of the series. I think about that play not infrequently!

Her journey as a WNBA player has been a wild ride. She was the eighth overall pick by the Phoenix Mercury in the 2016 WNBA draft, but was then traded to the Sun in June 2016 after only appearing in a handful of games for the Mercury. She played with the Sun for three seasons, including their 2019 trip to the WNBA Finals. Next up was a trade to the Atlanta Dream in February of 2020. She was released from her Dream contract in October 2021, returned to the Sun in 2022, hopped to the Chicago Sky in 2023 until finally, in January of 2024, landing with the Lynx as point guard.

Williams will also be part of the inaugural crew in the new Unrivaled league and probably Shya will be there with Courtney’s Dad cheering her on and that will be super cute I think.

Congratulations to Courtney and Shya!

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 08: Courtney Williams #10 of the Minnesota Lynx celebrates against the Connecticut Sun in the first quarter of Game Five of the Semi-Finals during the WNBA Playoffs at Target Center on October 08, 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Lynx defeated the Sun 88-77. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

(Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

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Riese

Riese is the 41-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 and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

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1 Comment

  1. We love to see a hot stud winning
    If it wasn’t for the refs she would’ve won a chip but a wedding ring is better than no ring

Comments are closed.

Only Palestine Can Save America From Fascism

feature image photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images 

In 2018, the founder and publisher of the Arkansas Times, Alan Leveritt, received an ultimatum in his inbox from one of his paper’s longtime advertisers. It stated that, in order for his paper to continue receiving ad dollars from them, he would have to certify in writing that his company would not engage in any boycott of Israel now or in the future.

This baffled Leveritt. Soon after receiving this note, he sued the state of Arkansas, arguing that requiring him to certify he wasn’t boycotting Israel violated his First Amendment rights. Initially, in 2021, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Leveritt, finding that a boycott of Israel was constitutionally protected speech. However, in 2022, the full Eighth Circuit reversed this decision, ruling that Arkansas’s anti-BDS law did not violate the First Amendment because it regulated economic activity rather than speech. Despite the ACLU’s efforts, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in February 2023, leaving the Eighth Circuit’s ruling in place.

As of 2022 in the United States—a country where a single boycott against British imperial taxes ignited the American Revolution, later celebrated as a principled act of protest—thirty-five states have enacted laws that penalize or restrict state contracts with those who boycott Israel, similar to the law in Arkansas.

I wrote the above sentence in 2022, after learning of Leveritt’s failed attempt to sue Arkansas. At the time, I was desperate to prove a point to a class full of apathetic liberal arts students. I needed to prove that fascism was not just on the rise, and it wasn’t just an orange blob of a presidential candidate we needed to be worried about.

Fascism was here, ripe and ready, growing steadily but profoundly in our own backyard.

Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) is a nonviolent, Palestinian-led movement created in 2005 that calls for countries, companies, universities, and all other institutions to oppose Israeli occupation through boycott, divestment, and sanctions. In so doing, BDS hopes to hold the Israeli government accountable for its human rights violations. I need to be repetitive for a moment and highlight a fact I’ve already stated, because I don’t want your eyes to gloss over a significant detail: The BDS movement was created in 2005, almost 20 years ago.

For well over 13 months, my social media feed has been drowning me with photos of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people in Gaza, broader Palestine, and now Lebanon. I hesitate to use the word drowning, because I am a Palestinian alive and safe in the comfort of my apartment in America, holding an American passport. But the consistency for which the live-streamed, horrific genocide has flowed from my distant homeland into every single person’s pocket, if they wish to see it, feels like a kind of drowning, suffocating in its clarity.

After a year of watching prestigious and elite private or public American organizations fire their employees who sign petitions honoring Palestinian human rights or universities authorizing police force to storm college campuses and dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments, it feels ridiculous to have to bring up this same point — that fascism is here, that our rights as American citizens to speak freely, to protest freely, to boycott freely (which is considered a constitutionally protected form of free speech and expression under the First Amendment) is under threat and has been under threat.

But bring it up I must.

Systems of control, censorship, and dehumanization employed against Palestinians echo disturbingly within American policies and university campuses, where students advocating for Palestine are censored in direct contradiction to democratic principles like free speech and the right to dissent.

I want to be very clear: I am not and have never been in support of a Donald Trump presidency, a reality I am now forced to process and mourn once again. But I also don’t believe he and his followers are the only ones to blame for the growing fascist movement in our country. We didn’t wake up on Wednesday and suddenly find ourselves barreling toward fascism. Regardless of which party holds office, our political leaders have been violating and will continue to violate their sworn oaths by failing to uphold the constitutionally protected right to free speech. And as much as we’d love to believe this rise in fascism has to do with one party or particularly racist, sexist, or bad-apple candidates, the defining factor of free speech for both Democrats and Republicans has been agreed upon in one particular issue: The Palestine Exception, which refers to the unique and deliberate silencing of Palestinian advocacy, where the right to support Palestinian rights is restricted in a way unmatched by any other international issue.

In 2015, Tennessee was one of the first states to formally condemn the BDS movement, legalizing their condemnation by passing SJR-170. Like other states that have since followed, Tennessee’s law requires that anyone who enters into a contract with a state agency must certify that they are not involved in any anti-Israel boycott. Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee signed into law that all state contracts must include “a written certification that the company is not currently engaged in, and will not for the duration of the contract engage in a boycott of Israel.” Within this law, ‘Israel’ includes not only the State of Israel but also the Israeli-controlled territories, Gaza, and their settlements in the West Bank.

In June 2016, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that required state agencies to divest from organizations and companies that participate in any form of boycotts of Israel. During a speech at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, Cuomo described the BDS movement as an ‘economic attack’ on Israel and that “if you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”

In 2021, after the ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s decided to stop selling products in the occupied West Bank territories, the state of New York divested from Ben and Jerry’s parent company, Unilever. Shortly after, New Jersey followed New York’s lead and divested $182 million dollars worth of Unilever PLC stocks and bonds.

But perhaps these examples don’t feel serious enough, don’t demonstrate the extent to which our government has been silencing any condemnation of Israel long before chanting free, free Palestine became acceptable parlance. These laws haven’t just impacted large corporations. In Kansas, the state refused to allow one of their employed teachers to participate in their teacher-training program because she wouldn’t sign an anti-Israel boycott form. Arizona refused to pay a lawyer for his work on behalf of incarcerated people because he declined to sign a form certifying that he would not participate in a boycott of Israel or Israeli settlements. In Texas, an independent speech pathologist lost her contract with a local school district because she also refused to sign such an agreement. Artists asked to give lectures at the University of Houston have also been required to sign such forms — or lose their contracts. In fact, the University of Houston has gone as far as to require all of their contractors and employees to sign their Anti-BDS waiver.

Even Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas were required to sign away their right to boycott Israel before receiving their disaster aid. What did their disaster aid have to do with Israel? It’s not clear, but it proves just how broad these laws extend, often for irrelevant reasons. Although these individuals were not specifically refusing to sign such agreements because they were outspoken for Palestine, necessarily, it’s essential to note what these laws surreptitiously do in the reverse: undermine and endanger anyone who not only might speak out against an ethnostate, such as Israel, but any future aligning and voicing support for Palestinian human rights under occupation. This is very calculated. Tell someone that it’s illegal to protest Israel enough times, and perhaps we will stop asking why and follow orders. These anti-BDS laws are uniquely tailored to Israel and don’t extend to other U.S. allies, such as those in NATO.

This kind of monitoring of behavior and speech is not new in America’s history. Programs like COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), operated by the FBI, were used to monitor and undermine anti-war groups, civil rights organizations, and left-leaning activists. COINTELPRO was officially terminated in 1971 after its existence was publicly exposed, leading to widespread condemnation and legal reforms. However, its legacy had a lasting impact on activism in the U.S., creating an environment of distrust between activist groups and law enforcement. This systematic targeting of activists for their political beliefs is a hallmark of authoritarian, if not fascist, tactics.

Just as COINTELPRO sought to undermine movements for civil rights by labeling them as threats, anti-BDS laws attempt to paint solidarity with Palestine as a form of dangerous dissent that must be controlled. While COINTELPRO targeted the Black liberation, civil rights, and anti-war movements, they had a singular aim: silence dissent and restrict political activism. Those aims are the same for anti-BDS laws: limit specific forms of political expression and advocacy that challenge established policies or state-aligned interests.

The Palestine Exception is a reinvention, a repackaging of COINTELPRO, and it’s happening on the state level under the guise of anti-BDS laws which have now insidiously informed informal American workplace protocols and college campuses. David Velasco, the editor-in-chief of Artforum was dismissed after publishing an open letter from artists calling for a ceasefire and “Palestinian liberation.” His firing led to resignations from other editors in protest. Steve Bell, a long-standing cartoonist for The Guardian had his contract terminated after the newspaper declined to publish one of his cartoons, which was interpreted as critical of Israel. But it’s not just single, high-profile individuals who are meeting their fate in terms of speaking out for Palestine’s liberation. Google terminated over 50 workers following protests against its provision of technology to the Israeli government amid the Gaza conflict.

Suppress dissent, reinforce ideological uniformity, or support a dominant national narrative — that’s what we are seeing over and over again with these chilling actions. And these actions of suppression whether covertly done or not, are, of course, not new to the history of authoritarian or nationalist regimes. The most obvious historical example is South Africa, which for decades suppressed and barred Black people, people of color, and Indian South Africans from holding positions of influence and voting. Those who protested, like Steve Biko, faced imprisonment, violence, and, in many cases, death. This institutionalized racism aimed to enforce racial hierarchies and prevent challenges to the state’s authority.

I don’t believe it is dramatic to make connections between the way in which our American government is silencing certain voices and how that specific silencing could lead to further authoritarian actions. If the two candidates who were just running for the seat of arguably the most powerful position in the world agree that America will and must continue to financially enable and support Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover in the United Nations, what makes you think these candidates aren’t similar in their beliefs about anything else?

America’s fight against fascism cannot succeed without confronting the Palestine Exception. Unless we face this head-on, our democratic values will continue to erode. This silencing is strategically bolstered by equating Zionism with Judaism, deflecting legitimate critique of an ideology. You cannot in good faith compare a 100-year-old Zionist land grab ideology with a 3,000-year-old religion.

Recognizing Palestine’s role in exposing these repressive mechanisms is essential to preserving democracy. It is the last barrier against a future where erasing facts and silencing history distort our understanding of truth. In actively erasing Palestine’s narrative, those seeking to rewrite history are also working to engineer a more authoritarian future.

If Israel is shielded from criticism, it sets a dangerous precedent that other governments may also claim immunity from critique, eroding the principles of accountability and transparency that are essential to democracy. It would mean that politicians who critique their own countries, a freedom in the United States that Jamaal Bowman and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have taken advantage of when they point toward racist policies like the filibuster, the electoral college, or gerrymandering as sources for continued systematic oppression, should perhaps be censored because of the very nature of their critique. It suggests that those studying Canada’s actions when building a pipeline that disrupts one of their Indigenous communities should also be silenced. It would mean that when Russia annexes more and more Ukrainian land, making refugees of their neighbors and bombing one village after the next, Russia’s actions are also irrefutable.

If the very nature of governing bodies today is not to be reconsidered and challenged, whether that be reflecting on their colonizing history or recent actions, then the possibility of countries righting their own wrongs could also vanish as no nation would be held accountable. Germany could stop paying their continued reparations to Holocaust survivors which, in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, now includes the 8,500 Ukrainian Holocaust survivors currently suffering through Russia’s attacks. Those who openly spoke out against Germany and Hitler before and during WWII may never have been heard, may have been censored, and thus could have created a reality where Germany, a nation whose history has been deeply analyzed and critiqued, never needed to condemn and remedy their actions.

Solidarity with Palestine isn’t just a gesture of justice far from home; it’s a stand for the democratic ideals we claim to hold dear.

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?

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Elena Dudum

Elena Dudum is a Palestinian-Syrian writer whose work explores the boundaries of generational trauma and what it means to have an identity shaped by political narratives. As a grandchild of Palestinian refugees, her working memoir hopes to untangle the notion of “homeland” and how one can connect to this amorphous idea in the diaspora. Her personal essays on Palestine have been published in The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, Bon Appétit, and Cosmopolitan Magazine among others.

Elena has written 1 article for us.

14 Comments

  1. ok but can hamas release the hostages and end the war? can hezbollah stop attacking druze israeli children with rockets in the north? can iran stop sending bombs and letting their women show their hair? women life freedom. end islamic autocracy and free palestine and all my muslim brothers and sisters from the pain of living under regimes that sacrifice us for their political goal to erase israel. ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ

    • Yes! I’m really torn on signing up for A+ bc Autostraddle is one of the few queer female magazine out there & it’s meant a lot to me & many others. But I can’t support the blind, unqualified demonisation of all Zionists & unqualified support for Palestine without teasing out the nuances of the situation. I also can’t support the assertion that lesbians can be attracted to people with penises. Autostraddle need to rethink bc they’re losing a lot of former readers due to this stuff.

      • Maybe you personally can’t be attracted to a person with a penis if you identify as a lesbian. My BJ days are long gone, but there certainly are people with penises who are very attractive. But there definitely are people who identify as lesbians who can be. Are you saying that if a lesbian dates a trans woman they would have to have bottom surgery for their lesbian partner to be attracted to them? This site is also for non binary and genderqueer people and bisexual women who *gasp* might like the D, or just don’t care what junk someone they’re attracted to has in their pants.

        • Yes, I am saying that. Penises are male genitalia. Vaginas are female genitalia. If a woman wants to sleep with someone with a penis, she’s not a lesbian, because lesbians are not attracted to male genitalia. If a trans woman were post op, that’s different. Sexual orientation is based on the physical, not on how somebody mentally identifies, but on their physical body, specifically their genitalia. Autostraddle can and should support trans people, without denying biological reality.

          • That’s a pretty narrow view of sexuality. I see that works for you, but not for everyone who considers themselves a lesbian. Maybe you can’t believe it, but doesn’t mean it’s not true.

          • you all respond to my comment but completely back track into your own navel gazing about righteous gender feelings.

            can anyone at this website understand what it is like to live as a woman who has lived under autocratic regimes? i mean real ones-like the ones in Iran or Somalia or Afghanistan. You have NO idea what it’s like and you can quabble over who hates israel more or who accepts trans the best and you know what our sisters and mothers and friends are still being abused and systematically held in gender apartheid-the real kind-the kind the western mind cannot fathom. the western palestinian and privileged arab stance on what the middle east is like is hilarious. I am Muslim but I have SURVIVED things you will NEVER experience as a woman in europe or america. You cannot fathom-and it is all mostly state sanctioned. My life in America is my golden ticket and my relatives and other close friends are not as lucky. My best allies in the fight against extreme Islam ruining our religion and culture are Israelis, Druze, Bahai, other LGBTQ Arabs from Arab Countries. Nobody on this website that i love would have the stamina or fortitude to last one week in my home country. I worry for Americans well being- but any time the PLO is glorified as some queer social movement is horrifying to me as a lesbian muslim woman who fought by might to exist under the wedge of extremist Islam. Please open your mind and understand what we go through. Bless your lives of photoshoots, PhDs, struggle sessions, recipe blogs, breakups, depression and ennui, bless the roads not littered with explosives, bless your imperfect friends and families that do not honor kill you for being gay, bless the problematic pop culture, and silly silly republicans who cannot hold a candle to any Islamist regime I have lived under. Bless your innocence and teenage like angst at a world you truly do not understand ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ

      • Pretty sure Autostraddle has been pro trans for the 15 years I’ve been reading it. And pointing out Israel has killed 40 times more people in this war than the other side is not a lack of nuance.

        • Aafreen, I’m really sorry for detracting from your comment. I think it is v dangerous that Autostraddle can no longer define the word woman, & says that lesbians can be attracted to bio males w male genitalia, but it wasn’t the place to discuss that and detract from your comment.

          Nobody here has experienced anything like you have- we all have problems, but nothing comparable at all. And yes, the Republicans are v flawed, definitely NOT on the same scale as all-powerful dictators in Islamist regimes. People seem to have lose sense of proportion and not realise their lives are far better in the scheme of the world than they could be. And the idealising of the PLO is very worrying. I’ve seen feminists on Twitter mourning the death of the Hamas leader. It’s insane. It’s like the way Ho Chi Minh was idealised during Vietnam.
          You sound incredibly brave, and we need to hear from more people like you.

    • No that isn’t a lack of nuance, of course not. I should have been clearer : what I meant by ‘unqualified support for Palestine’ was the downplaying of Hamas’ atrocities in the article about rape in the war, and the recommending of things like Kehlani’s Next 2 U video without acknowledging that to many Jews, ‘intifada’ signifies acts of terror. And more generally, the refusal to acknowledge that, although Netanyahu’s government have behaved with horrendously to the Palestinians, some form of military aggression (definitely not the current method) needs to be deployed to get rid of Hamas. I share this site’s horror at the treatment of Gazan civilians, but the atrocities of Hamas have barely been covered. The hostages, most of whom are still being held captive, have barely been mentioned. That’s what I mean by a lack of nuance. Of course Hamas is not the same as the Palestinian state, but Autostraddle has only covered the Israeli atrocities. Their coverage has been unbalanced. & their refusal to consider moderate Zionist perspectives is too extreme.

  2. Thank you for writing this piece Elena. Thank you to Autostraddle for being in afraid to include pro-Palestine voices. This is the reason I read Autostraddle.

Comments are closed.

With ‘High Art’ Finally Restored, Lisa Cholodenko Is Looking to the Past and the Future

Seventeen years before Carol whisked Therese away on a cinematic trip across country, High Art featured its own photography-centered lesbian age gap on the road. I’ve always seen these films as companion pieces — not just due to plot details, but because of their shared perspective on being young and gay.

With High Art finally restored and beginning its re-release, I got to ask writer/director Lisa Cholodenko if Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt was a direct inspiration for her film as well. The answer? Nope! It’s just a deeply entrenched lesbian desire to be or be with a photographer/go on a road trip with an older woman.

I got to ask Lisa a lot of other questions too. We covered her career from film school to her recent television work, discussed the casting process for High Art, dove into why it took so long to make The Kids Are All Right, and so much more! While you wait for the High Art restoration to come to your city, I hope you enjoy our conversation.


Drew: I like to start my interviews from the beginning. Where did you grow up and how did you come to filmmaking?

Lisa: I grew up in LA, specifically the San Fernando Valley, but I didn’t become interested in film until my mid-20’s. I landed a job at the American Film Institute through a friend. I worked in the conservatory and I was exposed to lectures and students and I got to see what that was like. I decided to try to make my own films so I went up to Stanford and did a summer program where I made a little documentary. From there I got very excited to find my own voice.

While I was applying to graduate film schools, I had a mini career in editing rooms and was an assistant editor for a couple of years on films like Boyz n the Hood and Used People. Then I moved to New York and I started an MFA program at Columbia. It was a very exciting time for queer cinema. I was inspired by Todd Haynes and a producer named James Schamus and so many others. Everyone was making independent and independent films — independent vision films. It was a lovely, golden age and it was short-lived.

Drew: (laughs)

Lisa: I saw people coming out of Columbia or NYU who were actually getting distribution and having a viable start. People like Karyn Kusama, who is still a friend, who made Girlfight. I had taken out quite a bit of a loan to go to Columbia so I wrote High Art while I was a student to get going. I had an interesting mentor in Miloš Forman who gave me a lot of good tips on how to make that film. And I met Jeff Levy-Hinte, now Jeff Kusama-Hinte, and he decided to partner with me to produce it. We got it made when I hadn’t yet graduated. And then I had this great magic moment. It got into Sundance, I won a screenplay award there, it went to Cannes at Director’s Fortnight, it was bought for distribution, and I began a career.

Drew: I want to go back a little bit because I love your short Dinner Party which you made during school. It’s so truly gay. And it’s interesting you bring up Todd Haynes and that moment of queer cinema, because it really does feel like a queer artist making work with none of the baggage people even have now of explaining oneself and one’s community. At the time, were you thinking explicitly about creating queer cinema or was that just reflective of your life?

Lisa: I didn’t have an agenda. But my interior heart process was A) I don’t care, and B) All the more powerful if I’m saying something in a non-overtly politicized way, that’s just a good story, and it’s representing the people I hang with and the lives we’re living. My place in this was to be the truest I could be to myself and hope that would connect to other people.

Drew: So then what was the inspiration for High Art?

Lisa: It was during that golden age of independent cinema when there was the aesthetic of heroin chic. There were photographers like David Armstrong and Nan Goldin and people who came out of what is called the Boston School who were photographing their friends. Then there was the Bowery and this world of sex and drugs. It was overtly shown and aestheticized. In a great way! I loved it. I was awed that this was the vogue happening in fashion and being used to sell clothes. I was interested in how off color that was to me, how bizarre that was, and loving those photographers and feeling like this is what I’m submerged in.

I happened to know either personally or adjacently people who were snorting heroin and making art. It was just kind of what was happening. And I thought they were cool! So there was a romance to it, but I knew there was also a nihilism to it. All these things converged and I was like that’s my point of view and then I folded in my own ambition through the lens of that young woman character.

Drew: Can you talk about the casting process? Especially for Ally Sheedy, Radha Mitchell, and Patricia Clarkson?

Lisa: I had a producer named Dolly Hall who made The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love and All Over Me. She was making these lesbian films and she had a relationship with a casting director named Kerry Barden who donated his time and talent to us. The first person we cast was Radha Mitchell. She was still in Australia and had done very little but she had been in an independent film that had come out around that time. He showed me a tape and she was so expressive. Her eyes looked great. There was something credible there — I believed her.

Then I got a letter from Ally Sheedy saying that she’d been given the script and loved it and wanted to know if I’d see her if she flew herself out to audition for me. It wasn’t the obvious choice. It seemed kind of bizarre to me but it also seemed bizarre not to say yes.

Drew: Yeah!

Lisa: So she flew out and she was extremely thin at the time and just fully identified with all of it. Her mom is queer and she had had her own run in with drugs. I could tell she fully got it. She was able to fully embody that character.

I read Radha with Ally and they seemed to have a nice chemistry that was right for the movie. And then Patricia Clarkson came in because we were having a hard time casting that character. A lot of amazing people auditioned, but something wasn’t right and I couldn’t quite pull the trigger. So we had an emergency casting session when the movie was already up and running and about to start shooting. Patti Clarkson came in and auditioned with Ally. She brought this humor and irony to it that she plucked out of the writing. I remember laughing and thinking oh my god this was what the film needed. It’s heavy. It needed something wry in it or it might have been sort of a dirge. She brought a weird levity to it. She’s a great actor.

Drew: Yeah she’s amazing. I worked on a movie she was in and we were shooting in this random lesbian couple’s house outside of Cincinnati. They had a High Art poster in their living room and Patti signed it.

Lisa: Oh my God! That’s funny.

Drew: It was a fun little moment for those lesbians. And also for me to witness.

Lisa: She is a gem. It was a complete treat for me to find somebody like that. That was a blessed moment.

Drew: You mentioned that the movie went to Sundance and to Cannes and the response was very good. Was there a difference between how film culture at large received it and how queer audiences received it?

Lisa: The vibe was really good overall. And a few things filtered into that. First of all, the amazing Ally Sheedy performance. People seeing her anew, seeing her in a film as edgy and radical as ours. She won the National Society of Film Critics Award which is kind of a big deal. Or, at least, it was to me.

Drew: It’s a big deal.

Lisa: I didn’t know she won it. I was on a train to Philadelphia and I opened up The New York Times to the entertainment section and her photograph was on the front page. It wasn’t a blockbuster film and was never intended to be, so I was amazed by the attention that it got. I think it broke the paradigm of what people expected from a lesbian film by having a narrative that wasn’t primarily about queerness. I mean, it was and it wasn’t.

Drew: You mentioned this was in a moment of excitement, but that it was short-lived. What was your experience between the success of High Art and making Laurel Canyon and Cavedweller? There were a lot of women and queer directors at the time who didn’t really get a chance to make more than one film or maybe two. Was it challenging to get to those next projects?

Lisa: Well, I was just finishing graduate school. So it felt like a new day for me, because I had to learn to be a professional filmmaker. I was in a cocoon when I made High Art.

I did some episodic TV. I did an episode of Homicide and I did an episode of Six Feet Under. But yeah it was a little bit confusing. I wanted to parlay this early success into something that was a viable career. So I did those episodes, I did that Showtime movie Cavedweller which to me wasn’t my favorite but at least I got to make another film. And then I felt like Laurel Canyon was an interesting endeavor because it had a bisexual character but wasn’t entirely queer. I was interested in seeing how that would feel and if it could still have a queer sensibility. It’s interesting. A lot of straight women really like that film. I’m sure other people do too, but it definitely appealed to a certain kind of straight woman.

Then I got pregnant. I wrote The Kids Are All Right, partially because I got pregnant and had a kid. The guy who I wrote it with, Stuart Blumberg, had written Hollywood films and had a more commercial sensibility, so his contribution to the marriage between us was making it more commercial. I’d done stuff that was art house, but this was an attempt to see if we could do something that might be seen by a wider audience. I’m proud of that.

Drew: Did you feel like during those years you were able to make the projects that you wanted to make and keep working? Were you able to parlay the success of High Art or did you feel pushback as a woman or a queer person?

Lisa: It did take a long time to make The Kids Are All Right. I came out to LA. I started a life. I got involved with somebody who I was with for many years. I’m not anymore. We bought a house. I was doing things for money. And then bless her, she said you have to write your own thing. It’s time. Get downstairs and do it. Then I met Stuart and we wrote it. But it took a good four years of writing to get it right. There was another cast attached, but then I did get pregnant and had a kid and when I came back it felt like it needed a different cast. Not because they original cast wasn’t great. My sensibility was just a little different.

Then we took it around. And I thought well I’ve made all this work and people have seen my movies and they know I’m competent to pull this off. Also I thought the script was super tight. But they weren’t sure they wanted to invest in it. That was a hard moment for me. They would point to things in the script — many of which were true. It did take us a long time to work through a couple things, mostly dealing with the Mark Ruffalo character, so in retrospect I understand that. But it was difficult. Like Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are attached… you still don’t want to make it? They wanted to know who it was for.

But how the film turned out was a great antidote for how rigorous it was to get it made.

Drew: You’ve worked a lot in TV since then. Olive Kitteridge is one of my favorite limited series ever. I think it’s so, so good. And it’s not hard to understand why so many filmmakers turned to TV in the 2010s because it’s where a lot of the most interesting stories were happening. Do you feel like that bubble has burst? Are you feeling called back to features?

Lisa: I’m kind of an opportunist, so I go where the material feels good and calls to me. I think of Olive Kitteridge as a high point of my career. I’m really proud of it. It was hard to make and I feel like I gave everything to it.

When I decided to do that, Todd Haynes had just done Mildred Pierce. We have the same casting director so we’re sort of in the same soup. And I felt like wow that’s so avant-garde. He went from these independent queer films to that. I thought that was really cool and that I could do it too. Todd gave me a hall pass to dabble.

I just thought of HBO as prestige TV. I didn’t think it was the dawning of this crazy streaming world. So to me it stood apart and then it got folded into all of this work that five years later was everywhere. I’m glad I got in at that point, because I was allowed to make that as a four hour film. I know they’re still doing that sometimes, but the quality isn’t as great across the board now as it was in the early days.

Drew: Absolutely. I don’t think that’s controversial to say. (laughs)

Lisa: I mean, I’m not saying there aren’t still great things. It’s just harder to find them in this world of so many things.

Drew: How are you feeling right now? Obviously, the industry is in a weird place in general, and for queer media specifically. There’s this naive part of me that wants to think well someone with your resume can still get the work you want made. But maybe that’s not the case?

Lisa: I think it really depends on what it is. More so than ever, it matters who is attached, how tight is the script, how easy is it to understand and sell. A lot of people in the mix need to be able to visualize it. Maybe if I was someone like Scorsese, I could walk in and just say I want to make this. But I’m not. I’m me. I don’t have that card. So I feel like I have to be very clear and intentional about what I want to do and what I want to say and what I want to make. And that forces me to open up my palate. Maybe something isn’t queer, but I still find it interesting and I feel like I can infuse whatever sensibility I have into it. Is that always a little disappointing to me? Do I wish I could always lean into my queerness? Yeah. Because that’s what I understand and that’s what I’m often most interested in seeing.

There are projects I have that are definitely queer — including one I’ve been working on for a long time — and then there are others that are just queer-adjacent. I feel like it always has to be a story that can stand on its own. We’ve seen enough of the tropes. And God bless them. I was grateful to see them when I was younger. But I don’t personally want to make them.

Drew: What was it like revisiting High Art during the process of this restoration and re-release?

Lisa: At first, it felt a little like opening a journal from 27 years ago. Like woah I was that person. It was so in my face. It was so stark. I felt very exposed. And obviously it was a first film and we didn’t really have money, so I see the craft and the crudeness. But then I also see magic.

There were two days. First there was the color and then second was the sound. And I think once we hit the second day and I could get over the shock and awe of seeing, I was able to just settle into it. I was like wow this is really moving and these performances are really good. Ally Sheedy really pulled it out!

I could stand back and see what was impactful about it and I appreciated that that’s what I wanted to show then. That’s what made sense to me at the time.


The restoration of High Art will be showing in more cities soon before its online release.

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?

Join AF+!

Drew Burnett Gregory

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.

Drew Burnett has written 612 articles for us.

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For Many Queer People, Cutting Off Family Is Hard but Vital

I originally wrote this piece in July 2024 after a lot of conversations with my wife, who is estranged from most of her family including her parents and brother, about how hard it can be for queer and trans people to take that plunge and set hard, lasting boundaries with people they may love but cannot continue to have in their lives. I imagine many more queer and trans people are thinking of taking that plunge given this week’s election results.

Holidays that traditionally center family gatherings and meals are fast approaching — from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah to Christmas — and many queer and trans people will have to decide whether to break bread with loved ones who voted for Trump. Many do not get a choice, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ youth who live at home and risk violence or getting kicked out if they were to speak up.

If you do have a choice, if you are scared to cut ties or begin the process of cutting ties (which often takes a long time, as some of the stories below demonstrate), then hopefully these accounts from a range of queer and trans folks on the other side of estrangement can help you feel less alone. They will show you there are many ways to set boundaries and that estrangement can look like a lot of things — from no contact to limited contact and things in between. You do not have to settle for the family you’ve been given. Chosen family won’t just make you feel loved but can also be crucial for your personal mental health and the fight for liberation.


My wife, novelist Kristen Arnett, hasn’t had any real contact with her parents for about eight years, a situation that involved a long period of strain before shifting into what she describes as their current state of “total estrangement.” When we got married in February, her parents weren’t there; we hadn’t invited them.

Like so many queer adults, Kristen had been forced into a place where she had to choose her own mental health over maintaining contact with her family. Because of our wedding and the questions we got about her family’s absence leading up to it, I’ve been thinking a lot about parental estrangement lately — the stigma around it, how it feels, how we can care for each other in light of it, and how so many queer people reach that breaking point. So I spoke to Kristen and six other  LGBTQ+ humans who, like my wife, are also estranged from their families, and while there were recurring themes and feelings, it’s clear estrangement can look like a lot of different things for queer and trans folks. But for all of them, the choice to cut off contact was ultimately the best for their well being and mental health, despite being extremely difficult because of the ways we’ve been told repeatedly that family is the most important bond in life.


For Kristen, there’d been tension in her relationship with her parents her entire life. She grew up in central Florida in an Evangelical Southern Baptist community that exerted total control over her actions: what books she could read, what music she could listen to, how she spent her time. Their family was also extremely conflict avoidant, never wanting to dig into anything hard or complicated.  It was not exactly an environment in which Kristen’s queerness could flourish.

She didn’t come out of the closet so much as she accidentally fell out of it — while under anesthesia for a tooth surgery in their late twenties. “When I came out of my anesthesia, I was coming out to my mom,” she says. “That’s the only way that my mind would let me do it: because I didn’t know it was happening.”

My own family knows about Kristen’s situation, and yet some relatives still asked if their parents would be invited to the wedding. It was a well meaning question with no judgment attached, but I was surprised and could feel myself slipping into defensiveness, advocating for my partner. Even without judgment, I still felt there were certain assumptions being made. To us, it didn’t make sense to invite people to the wedding who we don’t have a relationship with. But there’s a pervasive societal pressure on people to “mend fences” or otherwise “make compromises” with family, especially when it comes to big life events like weddings.

It was this same philosophy that pressed Kristen, prior to cutting her parents off, to make concessions like attending Christmas Eve service with her parents. She was expected to show up to family events, “and kind of sit in a corner and not talk about anything.” At their family’s mandatory Sunday lunches, Kristen stayed silent while her family spoke freely.

“At those lunches, I’d get done with them and I’d have these depression spirals or be sitting there and just feel like I was losing it, because they’d be talking about all kinds of stuff, like ‘It’s really important we don’t let trans people into bathrooms’ or it’d be like, ‘Oh, we need to make sure that the state of marriage stays same,’” Kristen says. It didn’t feel like a compromise when she was the only one who had to give something up to be there.

“It doesn’t actually mean compromise,” Kristen says. “It means me not rocking the boat, and that’s not compromise.”

Indeed, “making compromises” often amounts to queer people having to make all the sacrifices while their family members continue to speak and behave however they want to. This disparity wore away at Kristen until she stopped attending Sunday lunches altogether.

“And then I realized the more I wasn’t going, the better I felt mentally,” Kristen says. “And I was like ‘well, this isn’t right. I shouldn’t feel better not seeing my family.’ But I truly did.” She felt relieved.

That sense of relief then showed them that perhaps going “no contact” was the right path after all. Taking things further than just skipping out on Sunday lunches came with its own challenges though, especially because she lived in the same town as them at the time. Her parents would sometimes stop at her house unannounced, and she would pretend like she wasn’t home. “Which is such a weird thing to have to do with your family,” they say, “hiding from a person coming by trying to sell you something.”

And in a way, her parents were trying to sell her something. They were trying, again, to sell her this false idea of family and love. Kristen says the mentality of her parents was very much “we love each other, so we can love each other despite,” language Kristen describes as very loaded and also counterintuitive even to the Southern Baptist values her parents supposedly ascribe to. She was told so often that love is a verb, an action. “If you’re going to argue that this kind of level of compromise is love because we love each other, I’m like, you’re not showing me what love is,” she says.


My friend T Clark hasn’t spoken to their dad in six years. Even though they rarely spoke leading up to that, it was after T reached out to him about transphobic jokes he made on Facebook that things took a more severe turn. After that, their dad called them on their birthday. “In that phone call, I told him I was hurt and more or less came out to him,” T says. “And he said, ‘I don’t think that was reason enough not to talk to me.’ And that’s the last time we spoke.”

T is actually open to hearing from their dad, but they don’t expect it. In 2019, they tried friending him on Facebook after he apparently blocked them, but he didn’t accept. They don’t know for sure if it was intentional, but that’s been the only real instance of attempted contact in the past six years. “He could easily find me if he wanted to,” T says. They say the thought of actively engaging feels exhausting, so they’re just waiting to see if he’ll initiate.

My friend Kim Selling’s story reveals how estrangement can shift, intersect, and twist into a complicated matrix. Kim hasn’t spoken to their brother since 2010 because he physically abused them when they were kids and has an abuse history with other family members. Their mom subsequently disowned Kim for cutting out their brother and then started speaking to them again in mid-2011 after Kim’s grandmother died. She then denied ever disowning Kim. This past January, Kim stopped speaking with their father because he gave their phone number and address to their brother and told him Kim wanted a relationship with him again, which was untrue.

“It’s maddening to have my boundaries fucked with,” Kim says, adding that they know a lot of other friends who are estranged from family who have similarly had their contact information given out without consent.

Kim says queerness isn’t a direct reason for the estrangement, but it’s wrapped up in it. “It’s a part of a larger trend in which my experiences are devalued or go unacknowledged or are completely denied because I am the only fat person, the only nonbinary person, the only queer femme of my family,” Kim says. While they have other out family members now, they were the first and only out person in their family for a long time. Like many of the people I talked to, including my wife, they were raised in a religious environment. In their case, it was evangelical Presbyterian, and they say the homophobia and transphobia in their family was “incredibly thick and ever-present” when they were growing up. Their mom refers to Kim’s sexuality as their “activism,” and their dad pretends he’s always been supportive despite having drunkenly criticized them throughout high school. For Kim, so many parts of their identity are wrapped up in their familial dynamics.

Another person I spoke with, Kelso, says she hasn’t had contact with her father for the last 10 years. “When I first tried coming out when I was 8, he physically abused me,” she says. “I quickly learned not to trust anyone with my sexuality.” But it became so stressful to hide it that she tried coming out again after high school. At this point, her parents were divorced, and she was no longer bound by a custody agreement to visit her Dad  on weekends. At first, she tried to manage and preserve the relationship by setting boundaries like not allowing him to ask about her love life. It didn’t really work though, because having to hide she was a lesbian in order to keep her parents in her life was becoming increasingly difficult. Later, in her twenties, there were periods of time when her father would try and reach out, always when she wasn’t actively dating a woman. But even then, as soon as she would let him in a bit, his homophobia would come out, even resulting in him calling her slurs.

Kelso apologizes as she’s telling me about all of this, saying that she doesn’t want to be defined by it or seen as a stereotypical punchline of life as a lesbian woman with a homophobic parent. Kim and others echo Kelso’s sentiment that there can be a lot of guilt attached to estrangement.

“There’s a wild amount of guilt and shame that weighs down a decision like that, to cut out a family member or to separate yourself,” Kim says. “But what matters most is my safety and privacy and security, and that’s worth so much more than placating an abuser. And yes it took me too fucking long to get to that, but now that I do? Bitch, I’m never going back.”

Feelings of guilt and shame about familial estrangement can complicate the coming out process. Amy used to be incredibly close with her maternal grandparents, spending summers with them in Arizona until they moved closer to her family in California, at which point she started seeing them at least weekly until she came out at 30. She came out to them over email, and it took them four weeks to even respond. She talks with her grandmother only occasionally now and only at a surface-level. Her grandfather, who was the first person to encourage her to be a writer and who was her first experience of “chosen” family (he was her mother’s stepdad), hasn’t spoken with her in nine years. “I’ve tried to make peace with the fact that it’s likely he will die without us ever connecting,” she says. It’s their religious beliefs that keep them from accepting her. “This has been one of the hardest parts about coming out,” Amy says. “My joy and freedom led to such loss.”

“It’s essential, as a queer, to recognize that your family has no actual power over who you are,” Kim says. “You only have to trust yourself and know that you can figure your shit out on your own; they have no bearing over how you form and maintain and celebrate your identities. Once I was able to figure that out, my world became a lot more oyster-shaped.”


What does going “no contact” really mean? From the conversations I had, it’s clear that it’s not as straightforward as literally never hearing from another person or never speaking to them. It’s more of a way to describe a firm boundary in which one tries to limit contact as much as humanly possible. You can’t ultimately control another person’s actions. “No contact” can be scary for people considering estrangement, because it sounds so absolute, but it doesn’t have to be a fixed or permanent state of affairs. The rules around contact can change, depending on your situation and your capacity.

It can be exhausting to constantly have to reevaluate these relationships, but sometimes reaching out can provide some clarity, even if that clarity isn’t even close to closure or doesn’t  change anything. “I think it’s best to reach out if you’re wondering, if you have any desire to reconnect, or perhaps miss the familial connection,” says Eggy, a queer person in Florida who doesn’t speak to their mom’s widower and his kids, despite them only living 20 minutes apart. Their mom’s death complicates this estrangement from their stepfather, who Eggy describes as “Trumpy” with homophobic and racist tendencies. Eggy reached out around Thanksgiving once because it was one of their mother’s favorite holidays, saying something genuine about how sad it was that they weren’t still connected, since their mother would have wanted them to be. All they got in response to their vulnerable confession was a simple “happy Thanksgiving.” They haven’t reached out since. But still, the moment gave them some clarity. “The response for me helped solidify that it’s not a connection that serves anymore,” Eggy says.

“I have a tendency to romanticize connections I’ve lost, familial, platonic, romantic,” Eggy adds. “And I find it helps me to stop living in them if I just act on the urge to reach out. It certainly helped settle the ideas I had of reconnecting with them and allowed me to move on more fully when I thought I already had.”

But it’s also completely understandable to not want to reach out and not want to hear from someone at all. In addition to unannounced house visits after the period of time when she stopped showing up for Sunday lunch, Kristen’s parents tried all sorts of ways to get in touch with them. Her mother would text; she had a fraught email exchange with her father.

“In theory, that sounds nice, they want to reach out, but it’s not that,” Kristen says. “It felt like they were trying to persuade me to go back to doing the same thing that I was doing previously, and I was like, I can’t be put into this situation again.”

The reach-outs often felt like they were more for her parents’ benefit than hers, especially since her parents like to pretend the chosen estrangement isn’t actually happening. Recently, Kristen got a text from her grandma: Her uncle had messaged after seeing Father’s Day pictures on Kristen’s parents’ social media and had assumed the pictures meant Kristen was back in touch with the family, which excited him. Her grandma had to explain to him that no, those photos were actually from 10, maybe 15 years ago. Always embodying that classic pattern of avoidance, her parents just don’t acknowledge the estrangement, much like they didn’t acknowledge her queerness even after she was out.

Kristen says she’s “no contact” or “total estrangement,” but short of a hard block, it’s hard to enforce a “no contact” boundary when you can only control your side of the equation. She receives texts less frequently from her mother than she used to, and she hasn’t received a text from her dad in a year. Every couple months, her mom texts. “It’s almost like finding a little crack to squeeze into,” Kristen says.


Queer historical fantasy author Sarah Wallace is estranged from their father, an Episcopalian priest. They used to be close with their dad when their parents went through a divorce, but when he remarried their freshman year of high school, their relationship became strained. They fought all throughout Sarah’s time in high school, and when Sarah told their dad they were going to spend the summer with their mother, he told them to pack up their room. They weren’t welcome to make his house their home if they chose to spend extended time with their mom. Despite multiple invitations from Sarah to visit them in college, their dad never came.

Sarah says they’ve realized their dad’s love is extremely conditional — worsened because they remain unclear about what the conditions even are. Their dad replies to their emails with a litany of personal insults and sometimes sends these derisive emails unprompted. Like others I talked to, Sarah spent a long time feeling guilty for the “failed” relationship. “But a couple of years ago, I realized that I haven’t felt emotionally safe with him since he got remarried,” they say. “And it occurred to me that I don’t owe him my time or my self when he hasn’t created a safe environment for me.”

While some of the folks I talked to arrived at estrangement as either a direct or indirect result of coming out, Sarah’s situation is a bit different: Their father doesn’t even know they’re queer. They’ve hid all Facebook updates from him and avoided conversations about the books they write and publish, which are all very queer. Sarah characterizes their relationship as “no contact” but says they do respond when he reaches out, always telling him they’re too busy to actually meet up. “I don’t have the energy or the interest to pretend I’m someone else when I’m around him,” they say. “And I don’t feel up to coming out.”

Here, the decision not to come out becomes another way to enforce healthy boundaries with family members. I also spoke with some queer people whose familial estrangement didn’t necessarily begin because of their queerness. South Florida-based queer photographer Stephanie Huber, whose parents had her when they were very young, says she’s estranged from most of her family because she was born into a home full of physical, emotional, and substance abuse as well as generational trauma. She got out as soon as she could and never looked back, and she was raised primarily by her paternal grandparents. Her father was emotionally abusive and in and out of jail for domestic violence and DUI charges throughout her life.

Stephanie has considered working on her relationship with her mother, who she is occasionally in text message contact with, but it’s been close to a decade since she’s heard from her father. He tried to contact her throughout her twenties. Even though she had firm boundaries in place, much like Kim’s situation with their father giving their number to their brother, other family members disrespected those boundaries and gave her phone number to her father every time she changed it. She has since stopped speaking to those family members, too.

The last time Stephanie spoke to her father, she told him that she knew he was young when she was born and that while she forgave him for the abuse, she lacked positive memories of him that might inspire her to pursue a relationship now. “He showed me I was right to do so by responding that I would rot in hell for not respecting my father, and that ‘everyone’ thought I was bitch,” Stephanie says. He also said she was brainwashed and re-writing her own childhood memories to make him the villain.

Unfortunately, family members will often resort to this tactic of accusing someone of “misremembering” or “misconstruing” the reality of their upbringing. As Kim puts it: “My identities prevent me from being seen as a reliable narrator of my experiences to my family.”

In 2022, my wife wrote an  op-ed for Time magazine called “I Know What It’s Like to Be a Florida Teen Who Can’t Say Gay. I Was One.” While her parents might not always catch the essays she has published on indie queer websites or in literary magazines, Time is an especially large and mainstream platform. It would be harder for them to ignore this one, and in fact, Kristen received one of those now-rare texts from her mother about it. At first, her mother just wanted to tell her she was proud of her being in Time. She clearly didn’t want to acknowledge that the piece was about how difficult Kristen’s life had been growing up closeted and gay in the home environment created by their parents.

“I was not in a space to receive that,” Kristen says. It was terrible timing; she was forced to process her mother’s words while stuck in an airport after a long trip. Suddenly, she found herself pulled into back-and-forth text conversation with her mom for the first time since the estrangement began. “It was basically me losing my shit over text message with my mother,” they say. “I was basically like, ‘how dare you message me about this when so much of this is about you?’” She was met with her mother negating the narrative of the piece, telling her the things she experienced didn’t happen.

It was six years after her decision to no longer speak with them, and all over again, Kristen was reminded why engaging with her parents was unhealthy for her. She felt manic and wild. “I went to an airport bathroom and cried, and I was like, I don’t need to be feeling like this.”

“If this is what interactions are going to be like, then I definitely had made the right choice,” Kristen continues. “I do feel like my mental health is better when I’m not in dialogue with my family, particularly my parents.”


Early on in our relationship, Kristen told me I’d likely never meet her parents. It didn’t make me sad, especially because I already knew about her history in past relationships where the alternative — her parents dismissing or outright ignoring her partner — was worse. It also  wasn’t the first time someone I loved dearly had a complicated or nonexistent relationship with their parents (in fact, most close friendships I’ve had have been with people who fall somewhere on the parental estrangement spectrum). Because of the shame and guilt that can be attached to estrangement, I wanted to give complete, total, unconditional support.

In 2023, Kristen did reach out to her parents to ask them to meet up, completely on her own terms, an important distinction from the times it was her parents who were the ones to chisel cracks into the foundation of her “no contact” policy. It was shortly before our engagement. Kristen felt she needed to practice what she preaches about engaging in conflict rather than avoiding it like her parents always default to. She picked the location, a restaurant in our neighborhood, one she could easily walk home from if she needed to get out quickly.

The impetus for the meeting wasn’t to magically fix things, and Kristen knew it likely wouldn’t result in an actual change to the boundaries or their relationship. She went in very firmly, not aggressive, but the most direct she’d ever been with them. “I was like, here’s ways that you’ve made me feel, and here’s ways that my life is, and here’s what I need from you if you ever want to have a relationship in the future.”

She says the dinner went “well,” emphasis on the quotes. It wasn’t a disaster. It didn’t result in her feeling manic or crying in the bathroom. But her parents continued to be so conflict avoidant that they just sort of nodded and said yes, without really engaging and without really committing to any kind of change. After the dinner, she’d get a few texts, but it was never about anything meaningful. She realized they didn’t really understand. She has no interest in resuming contact until they are ready to address what she’s told them about how their political beliefs and past behaviors impact her life and her loved ones.

So the estrangement continues, and I continue to have zero interaction with her parents. We met once,  in passing at a family function, but it was incredibly brief and inconsequential. Kristen’s feelings about how I fit into this, again, reaffirm her commitment to her hard boundaries with them.

“I would never want to bring them into your life and have that be something that you have to deal with and something where you’re not being respected,” Kristen tells me. “And if I can’t count on my own partner being respected, that’s just not something I want to ever have to deal with. There’s things where it’s like I know that they want things to be a kind of way they want to have Christmas again or things like that. And I’m like, how could I ever bring my partner into this space?”


As for advice they’d give other people struggling with estrangement or considering estrangement, many people cited therapy as crucial to their journeys. Amy says therapy helped reorient her away from “fixing” the problem and instead toward accepting what it is and dealing with it. She also says writing helps, along with having a supportive partner. She allows for duality, as she puts it. “It’s good and it’s sad,” she says.

Kim adds that in addition to therapy, seeking out people with similar or linked identities to their own has helped.

Beyond therapy, folks also talked about their conscious efforts to unlearn what they’ve been taught about family, about love. “I’ve found family in many other, more fruitful ways by letting go of the idea that family can only exist in the traditional, hierarchical sense,” Eggy says. “Yesterday was two years since my mom passed, and the family that was there for me was the family I chose and built, and it felt more whole and meaningful than I think given family couldn’t ever made me feel.”

Kim similarly says while they thought they never gave a shit about family because of the treatment they received and continue to receive from their immediate family members, they had the realization that they’ve always received support from their grandparents, who treated them with compassion. “Engaging with my cultural heritage through my grandparents, and learning how to exist in the world from them helped me have an anchor that bypassed my nuclear family, and also provided a stepping stone to forming relationships outside my home,” Kim says.

“I think it’s hard with family because we’re told all the time that family is special and more important than other relationships,” Sarah agrees. “But the older I get, the more I assess all of my relationships more equally. It helps me to determine that if I wouldn’t accept a certain kind of treatment from a friend, there’s no good reason to accept it from a family member.”

Even though Kristen knows this is what’s best for their mental health and doesn’t want to return to that headspace she was in at the airport after the Time piece, she of course wishes things weren’t this way. There’s a difference between what you want to happen and what’s best for you, a tension that can make it so hard for people to pull the trigger on “no contact” or other hard boundaries with family. “It’s better for me mental health wise, but it sucks,” Kristen says.

“It’s hard, and it’s something that will be hard for the rest of my life,” Kristen adds. “But I would choose this again in a second versus the way it was before. Because this is still hard, but it’s hard in a way that’s respecting myself and respecting relationships I have.”

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?

Join AF+!
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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 915 articles for us.

7 Comments

  1. I am estranged from my father so I read this with interest. Sometimes I forget that I haven’t spoken to him in years and years and that I never will again, and then it’s like…jesus…what the fuck. I hate that it’s so common and so necessary.

  2. Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences. Going to think about this for a long time: “Here, the decision not to come out becomes another way to enforce healthy boundaries with family members.”

  3. I was estranged from my mother for 3ish years for reasons totally unrelated to my queerness (never ended up telling her), but got back in contact when she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and oh boy, if you thought people were judgemental of going no contact, wait until you tell them you wish you’d stayed away until they died.

    I was worried I might regret it if I didn’t, but it just reinforced that all the reasons I had for staying away were right. Weirdly though, it helped; I can rest easy now knowing I wasn’t the one in the wrong, I wasn’t imagining it or making it seem worse than it was.

  4. Thanks for writing about the guilt associated with estrangement and the ways people make you think you “made it all up.” All the various queer experiences autostraddle writes about are super important and make me feel less alone.

  5. Thanks for writing this piece. I’ve been back and forth between “no-contact” and “actively engaged” with my family over the past 7 years since I came out as trans, and currently more in the latter phase. I feel a little crazy sometimes for wanting to have a relationship with them, but it’s hard to tell sometimes if I just want a relationship with them or if I just want parents who actually care about me and I’m projecting my needs onto my existing parents’ hostility.

    It’s sad to me how common this sort of estrangement is in our community, but I feel a little less alone reading about all these other people’s experiences.

  6. I’m like Kayla in this situation. My spouse has a really strained relationship with her parents specifically because she is gay. I entered our relationship thinking of course I’d let her take the lead, make all the decisions, it’s *her* family… 7 years later, and she’s been avidly pursuing a relationship with her parents after about 3 years of no contact. Their mom keeps saying she has zero interest in ever meeting me, and my wife is fine with that tradeoff… but I’m not. My boundary is it’s both of us or neither of us. So now the tension is between my spouse and I, not us and the parents. Allegiances are tricky monsters. We’re probably going to separate. This stuff cuts so deep into relationships with the family, but also directly into the romantic relationships.

  7. Thank you for this… as someone who has been estranged from part of their family for years with varying degrees of guilt, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone.

Comments are closed.

Bigoted Demagogue Donald Trump Re-Elected as U.S. President

“How do queer and trans people survive the current apocalypse? The truth is, we will do it the way we always have. The truth is also that we will lose people along the way, as we sadly always have. Yet the knowledge of how to be with unbearable tragedy while continuing to celebrate the fact of our existence and possibility of hope is something that is deeply woven into the strands of our cultural memory.”

-Kai Cheng Thom, How to Survive the Apocalypse (Again)

Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. Again. His vision for America — a bastion of white supremacy, intolerant to difference, embodying bigotry and hatred — has shown itself to be, once again, the country’s most popular and strongly embraced vision. Voters delighted in his authoritarianism, his worship of dictators, his disgust towards trans people and immigrants and people of color and women. Voters endorsed his plan for mass deportation, for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, for giving immunity to police officers, for stripping reproductive rights from those who require them, for putting our public health in the hands of an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Voters said “yes” to a man who has pledged to refuse refugees with a version of the “Muslim ban” that also seeks to weed out people from “terror-infested areas like the Gaza strip.” They aligned themselves with the same president preferred by Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu. Once again, we saw Black people organizing and voting overwhelmingly in support of the better candidate and we saw that candidate lose. Across the internet, so many Black women are mourning not only this ongoing effort but also, again, an eminently qualified, forward-thinking, Black woman losing to an disgusting and completely unqualified white man.

It is a disgraceful day in America.

WEST PALM BEACH,FL - NOVEMBER 5: Supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump cheer as results are announced during an election night watch party at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, FL, on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

(Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)


I keep coming back to this: of course the U.S. elected a serial rapist who says rapey, misogynistic, racist things all the time again. His supporters are not just okay with that, they are validated by that. It is relatable. The majority of white cis men in this country, with their own personal history of rapey language or behavior, can relate to Trump’s experiences.It is validating for them to see a man who’s done similar things win the White House, be celebrated, be popular. It is validating for them to see someone so racist and so impulsive and so self-centered assume power because they, too, are selfish and impulsive and say racist and misogynistic and transphobic things all the time and they too don’t want to ‘get shit’ for it. They too want to be pardoned for their own, untried crimes, and the women who love them want that, too. He was not elected despite all that, he was elected because of all that.

“America’s values have always included exceptionalism, exploitation, domination, theft, and violence,” wrote writer and activist Raquel Willis on X. “Trump, too, is America. Quite possibly the most America. And we must accept that.”

“Living in the South gives you a strange sense of the country, the deeper rot beneath the surface,” writes Danté Stewart. “The parasitic nature of our choices. The destruction that damns us. And the rot is this; we live in a country of bullies — American bullies. Bullies who can only feel powerful when someone is less than them, who can only feel free when another person is bound.”

Where the fuck do we go from here? How did we get here, again? And how can we take care of each other? I love what Thom writes about surviving the apocalypse because it acknowledges that for most of our history, as a queer community, we have existed in stark opposition to the state. The idea of a presidential candidate supporting LGBTQ+ rights was a pipe dream even for most of my lifetime, the most activists could hope for was convincing this or that administration to do more about people dying en masse due to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

There will be a lot of anger, including righteous, important and productive anger at the Democratic Party in general. But it’ll also be tempting to turn on each other. It’s easy to jump first towards those that are closest to us because those are the only targets in a shooting range. To direct anger at people who couldn’t convince their Fox News brainwashed siblings to vote for Harris. To direct anger this or that celebrity for not saying what we wanted them to say. To direct anger at people who voted third party because of Harris’s endorsement of the genocide in Gaza.

Regardless of our personal feelings about any of those things, how can we still show up for each other, now? Because we all will need each other, now. By “we all” I mean people who believe in equality and kindness and want this country to move forward and not backwards. People who think everybody deserves health care and food and a safe place to live. That’s a big group and it encompasses a wide variety of perspectives that won’t always or ever align with each other, but we have a lot to learn from each other.

We also need to be clear-eyed that the current world, the one we’re all living in right now under the Biden administration, is already falling short for so many marginalized people and they are exhausted. Trump’s plans are worse for everyone, on every level — for the economy, for human rights, for international relations, for healthcare. Trump’s plans put all of us in danger, but the degree of that danger varies. Those of us with more privilege have to step up for those with less.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN - NOVEMBER 05: Supporters listen to Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump during his last campaign rally at Van Andel Arena on November 05, 2024 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Trump campaigned for re-election in the battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania before arriving for his last rally minutes after midnight in Michigan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A few other things happened last night in the realm of LGBTQ+ rights. Missouri became the first state since the fall of Roe v Wade to overturn a near-total abortion ban, and abortion rights advocates also saw victories in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, New York and Maryland.

California voters approved Proposition 3, which repealed Proposition 8, guaranteeing the right for same-sex and interracial couples to marry. Colorado voters passed Amendment J, which repealed a ban on same-sex marriage. These are important measures, decisions worth celebrating. The majority of Hawaiians voted in favor of the Remove Legislature Authority to Limit Marriage to Opposite-Sex Couples Amendment.

I do hear a lot of cis queer people talking about friends and family who voted for Trump as voting against their marriage rights as gay people. Listen, Trump has gay donors who want to keep their marriages and their children. I absolutely could be wrong, but I don’t think repealing same-sex marriage will be a top priority. That said, I’d definitely recommend preparing yourself personally for that possibility.

However, his administration does hope to eliminate and reject anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people as quickly as possible. Most of all, they are planning to make life as unlivable as possible for trans people, particularly trans youth. They are planning to do that immediately.

Republicans bet big on transphobia this election cycle and they won. Their anti-trans messaging succeeded not just with other Republicans but with moderates and Democrats as well. Right-wingers are teaming up with TERFs, with the “get the T out of LGBT” groups. Support trans individuals and artists and creatives and businesses and social justice organizations. Dispel misinformation about trans people with your family and your neighbors. Not just the Trump voters — all of them.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. Hold each other accountable for the ways we have hurt each other. Forgive each other. As Thom writes, “Our greatest power to resist oppression and death comes from our connections with one another, our ability to create community structures through which we can give and receive care, make art, share pleasure and raise our collective voices.”

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Riese

Riese is the 41-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 and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3262 articles for us.

14 Comments

  1. i was waiting for something like this. so thank you. i feel numb, frustrated, hurt, angry and furious. i wanted better for all of us. i kept my toddler home from day care today, i just wanna hang on to her. thank you for always being there.

  2. I finally decided (admitted to myself?) that I want to use they/them pronouns last night – so of course this happened this morning. But I refuse to let the assholes win. I will keep fighting, even though everything feels so overwhelming, depressing, and scary right now. Thank you for writing this article and for reminding us that our community is here – and that we need to support each other right now. For anyone out there who is scared, please stay hopeful <3

  3. my latin family completely are in love with the man. it’s hard to reckon with but they still love me. they all work in factories in LA and come from a rough background. my aunt is butch old school riding motorcycling butch -works as a cook in the back of a boyle heights restaurant and she and her wife love “meester troomp”. it’s kinda crazy. i’m out in florida with my gf so am away -i listen to what they say but have my own views.

    • UK here watching in sympathy & anger. I was chatting to an older Venezuelan lesbian on Reddit. She & her wife were voting Trump. They didn’t think Kamala could handle economy or immigration, & they were convinced Trump wouldn’t harm gay rights bc he didn’t last time. Hmm.. Seemed utterly blasé about Project 2025. Otoh other people were terrified Trump was going to bring in concentration camps & lock up gay people. Surely that’s unlikely? Otoh if he changes the rules, is there a chance he could stay in power longer? Please no..

  4. I felt so hopeful about Harris in the beginning. Just to see her watered down by an unimaginative democratic establishment who thought getting in bed with the Cheneys was a better move then her offering us something NEW. Even though that is all true- i still voted for her without any hesitation. I thought others would do. It seemed obvious to m e, I have to admit that Im surprised by the results. I was living in a bubble all along. THanks for keeping this space here for us.

  5. thank you. I think Kamala would have been a good president. she would be good as any other and better than trump. i’m old, been around the block a few times, i can’t ever expect the president to support everything i do, but kamala came closest. her position on gaza: i don’t understand it and i don’t support it. yet i was excited to see her be president, for my nieces to see that. i sure am sad. this racist sexist place. i don’t know how many elections we will have left.

  6. I’m not American but I was keeping hope for this election, because it meant so much more than just who becomes president of a country. It would be a sign of the times, a mark of progression, a reminder of the best in people. My heart breaks for everyone decent who voted for “the right things”, who now have to suffer, all because some people (it sucks to see a majority here) genuinely think this option is better (and the amount of insufferable ignorance has been staggering). I am so sorry.

  7. Tired of hearing “people of color”. Latinos and Asians have supported Trump and right-wing politics over and over again. Some of them see themselves as closer to white and will do anything to enable the very same people who will turn around and throw them under the bus. Same with the assimilationist LGBT who cry about trans people making “us look bad” to their rich white friends and family.

    Trump winning again is not surprising because he is the representation of the United States and the fears and chauvinism of the much of the middle class. All I ask is when he gets down to doing the bidding of “neoreactionaries” that for once let it rain on all of them not just the marginalized. Tired of these clowns supporting the worst this country has to offer and then getting rewarded for it while friends, family, neighbors, and even complete strangers get screwed over. Let them go through what the UK supporters of Brexit did. Let them feel the anxiety of the French middle class that supported Macron and Le Pen. Only when there is a real worker’s party in this country and a push to abolish capitalism will there be an end to politics as usual. Stay safe out there and fuck all these disgusting pigs and those who apologize and collaborate with them.

  8. Black men, Latinos, women, men, Asians, all voted for him. He will give Netanyahu the green light to flatten Gaza, Putin the go ahead to take Ukraine and start moving through other countries, and Xi to take back Taiwan. They won’t just overturn gay marriage, but they will label all LGBTQ people as obscene so we’re all forced in the closet to live because THEY cannot control their sexual thoughts about us. But forget about all of that, there will be price increases from tariffs, mass deportations and no one to work those jobs, unless that’s why they rolled back child labor laws in many states. It’s a white man’s world, all the real suckers and losers helped them get there.

  9. I for one am just happy for the 3rd party and abstaining voters who will rest easy on the laurels of their unshakable principles

  10. I’m ruminating about how little I care about having a “strong border” or reducing the number of people immigrating to this country. I’m not friends with anybody who cares about this issue. It is so frustrating to see Trump getting so many people riled up about what is a total non issue. People come here because there are jobs here for them and they aren;t safe where they are. we should be treating them better not worse. I can’t think of a single problem being caused by having a “weak border.” He is so good at getting everybody riled up over things that don’t mater.

  11. I really understand the urge to smash the entire system. I don’t know anyone under the age of 60 who’s happy with the way things are right now. It’s clear things have to change, and quickly.

    But I don’t think this is a good change for America, and I’m resentful that a few million people in a regional area of a different country have so much influence over the direction the rest of the world will go in. If Americans want to fuck their own country up that’s one thing, but America is so influential that their decisions are going to affect my life too.

    I’ve lost my last hope that anything will be done about climate change.

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Despite Majority Support, Abortion Rights Failed in Florida Due to a Stupid Rule — That’s Bad for Everyone

feature image photo by OCTAVIO JONES / Contributor via Getty Images

Last night, Floridians voted on Amendment 4, which would have enshrined abortion access in the state’s constitution. The ballot proposal would have allowed abortions up to around 24 weeks of pregnancy rather than the current dangerous ban which prohibits abortions after just six weeks. After months of “yes on 4” organizing, the amendment “won” 57.06% of the vote but still will not pass. Why? Because of a shit ass amendment passed in 2006 that requires a 60% voter approval rate for any amendments to Florida’s constitution.

The 60% rule — which itself did not meet its own asinine requirements and actually only passed by 57.78% in 2006 — makes it incredibly hard to amend the Florida constitution and created a challenging threshold for the fight for abortion rights in the state. A majority win (and solid majority at that!) did not matter in the end.

And this is bad not only for people in Florida but for people outside of it, too. The six-week ban has had devastating effects that radiate beyond the state, as Florida was long a rare refuge in the deep South for people seeking abortions. The Supreme Court of Florida ruled its previous abortion ban unconstitutional in 1972 — a full year before Roe v. Wade passed. Abortion remained constitutionally protected in Florida until Ron DeSantis started ruining everything down here, including signing a bill banning most abortions after 15 weeks in April 2022. Then, in May 2024, DeSantis signed into law an even more restrictive measure that effectively bans all abortions in the state after six weeks. Because the majority-approved Amendment 4 from last night does not meet the 60% threshold, that six-week ban remains the law of the land.

Already last night, I started seeing on social media the same language about Florida that emerges every election cycle that characterizes the state as the “problem” with this country, as an outlier. This completely ignores so much history and context, including that Florida’s elections have been heavily impacted by the fact that DeSantis basically turned this state into a playground for the wealthy and conservative during the beginning of the pandemic. Actually, you know what, my friend and Florida brother Stef Rubino said it best last night, so let me just quote them. In response to someone tweeting out that stupid gif of Bugs Bunny sawing off the state, they wrote: “Y’all are doing this shit again as if this state hasn’t become the trash receptacle for YOUR state’s unwanted fascistic LOSER, scumbag, bottom-feeders because the fascist governor told them to come here to be ‘free’??? I swear to god, y’all will do anything except tell the truth.”

Elsewhere in the country, abortion rights measures failed in Nebraska and South Dakota where existing bans will remain. But seven states voted in favor of abortion access, including a critical win in Missouri, where voters successfully undid the state’s abortion ban which prohibited all abortion access with no exceptions for rape or incest. Per the new amendment passed last night, abortion will be legalized up to the point of fetal viability (that 24ish weeks point, which the Florida amendment also sought to enshrine). So that’s a major reversal of previously what was one of the first and most restrictive state abortion bans passed after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Measures to protect abortion also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, and Montana. Nebraska had a dueling pair of measures on the ballot: Voters supported a measure that keeps a 12-week abortion ban in place, and a competing measure that would expand access to viability was struck down. It would have had to not just win a majority vote to pass but receive more “for” votes than the competing measure. In Nevada, steps were taken toward constitutionally protecting abortion access with a successful ballot measure that would enshrine abortion access up to fetal viability in the state…but they will have to vote in favor of it again in 2026 for it to actually pass.

In Nebraska, Nevada, and Florida, we see how legislative loopholes make it even harder to undo bans and constitutionally protect abortion access. Allow me to take this one step further. You can point to any of the bad outcomes of last night — and there are many beyond the big obvious one — and find underlying policies and systems that bolstered those outcomes. From Florida’s 60% rule to rampant voter suppression in Georgia and elsewhere to the electoral fucking college, so much of this supposedly democratic process is rigged and designed to serve those already in power. These systems do not serve queer and trans people, poor and working class people, Black and Indigenous people, immigrants, people who can get pregnant, anyone at the margins of hegemonic society. They do not serve you. The ruling class has gotten better and better at creating and bolstering systems and loopholes and labyrinths of legislation that make it harder and harder to fight anything, to change anything. I’m hoping the Amendment 4 outcome in Florida leads to a concerted effort to remove the 60% rule, which will of course need a 60% approval rate itself. The whole system needs to be dismantled.

The 60% rule might sound like small potatoes compared to the larger fight; if you’re outside of the state, perhaps you think it doesn’t impact you. But if the 60% rule is what ultimately let the pro-life losers win despite not having the support of the majority of voters in the state, then what’s to stop other states from creating similar loopholes? Right now, 38 states require only a simple majority vote on amendments, while 11 states require a supermajority vote or other threshold beyond a straightforward majority. The 60% rule in Florida is just one example of how broken the system is, but sometimes we have to look at these zoomed-in contexts in order to better understand and organized against the more macro issues. And no matter where you live, abortion bans in one state have calamitous effects for entire regions.

The majority of Florida voters wanted to protect the right to abortion and end the six-week ban — which also harms people with pregnancy complications who need to terminate pregnancies for a whole slew of medical reasons — but now Floridians are trapped. To the north, there are six-week bans in Georgia and South Carolina and a 12-week ban in North Carolina. Above the panhandle and moving west are some of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, including Alabama which bans abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. One look at a map of abortion access by state shows just how dangerous it is to get pregnant in a huge portion of the country. If the 60% rule didn’t exist, Florida could have become a refuge in this region like it had been historically before 2022. But one rule from 2006 just solidified how locked down this entire region is in terms of access to safe, legal abortions.


If you have the means to give $$$ directly to the communities most impacted by this news, consider giving to the Florida Access Network, which is a queer statewide abortion funding organization, giving to multiple Florida abortion funds at once, or giving to S.W.A.N. of Central Florida, which  provides clinic escorts every single day in central Florida and is doing so much vital organizing work in this part of the state.

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?

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 915 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. Dear Autostraddle, will you write about Trump winning the election again? I am devastated, scared and angry and I hope this website will provide a platform to mourn and rage together.
    Also, thank you for this article <3

  2. i hate it when people write off florida. i don’t live there anymore but i did for a long time because my parents retired there and my mother was sick (now she’s dead). does that mean i don’t deserve rights? i hate it here. thank you kayla as always for your wisdom and words. and stef i cosign!

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‘Time Cut’ Is a Silly Slasher with a Sapphic Subplot

Netflix’s new movie Time Cut has familiar faces, a slasher mystery, humor, time travel, sisterly bonding, enough early 2000s nostalgia to fill a shopping mall, and, the reason I’m here to talk to you today, lesbians!

“Time travel slasher comedy?” I hear you asking. “Didn’t I see that movie last year?” Well, friends, remember how in 2011 the movies Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached came out in the same year, and were basically the same movie but one had Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis and the other had Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman? That’s basically what happened here with Time Cut and last year’s time travel slasher, Totally Killer. But where in Totally Killer, the main character went back to the 80s (a perfectly respectable decade for time travel) to try to catch the person who slew her mother’s friends, in Time Cut, the main character travels to 2003, because apparently that was 20 entire years ago. (Rude.) And while the elevator pitches for these movies are very similar, the actual plot and how things play out is a bit different. (And technically, this movie was made first, even though it was released second.)

In Time Cut, Lucy Field (Madison Bailey, Outer Banks) is feeling haunted by a sister she never met, a sister who was taken out in a murder spree in 2003, two years before she was born. Lucy was born as a sort of…replacement kid, and she feels that deeply. Her parents are (understandably) traumatized, distant, and overprotective, to the point where they can’t even be happy for her when she gets into a NASA internship program, because that would mean she had to leave their small town for Washington DC. On the anniversary of her sister’s death, she goes with her parents to the barn where her sister was killed, and stumbles across a time travel machine that zips her back to 2003, only a few days before the murders began.

While she’s in the past, Lucy meets her sister Summer (Antonia Gentry, Ginny & Georgia), and Summer’s friends, including fellow science nerd Quinn (Griffin Gluck, Cruel Summer), and Summer’s best friend Emmy (Megan Best, The Watchful Eye.) While she’s learning about early aughts fashion and what teenagers even did at the mall, Lucy has to decide how much she’s willing to interfere: Does she risk causing a time rift and save Summer’s friends? Does she risk blipping herself out of existence by saving Lucy herself? There’s a lot at stake and she doesn’t know how to handle it, but one thing she does know is that she’s enjoying seeing a brighter, untraumatized version of her parents, and finally meeting the sister who previously only existed to her in pictures on the wall and a preserved but empty bedroom down the hall.

I won’t go over what she decides and how it all goes, but I will tell you this: there’s a sweet sapphic subplot! (I will warn you here about incoming spoilers. The reveal of who is queer is presented as a twist, and while I’m sure it will surprise many straight viewers, I have a feeling sleuthy queers watching will pick up on it; we tend to be on the lookout for these things.)

In the first version of the slasher’s spree that we see, Summer is dragged to a dance by a boy with floppy 2003 hair, her on-again, off-again boyfriend Ethan (Samuel Braun, The Way Home). He tries to cheer her up and dance but all she can think about is how much she misses Emmy, who was killed the night before. Not a clue on its own; anyone would be too upset to party the day after their best friend was killed, but two other teens were also killed the day before, and she doesn’t mention them, just Emmy. There’s also a note that Summer finds in the present-day that is signed by “E” that she immediately assumes was written by Ethan, whereas I personally had already forgotten Ethan’s name and assumed the note was written by Emmy, I just didn’t know what it meant yet. And then, the moment I knew my hunch was correct, when Summer asks Lucy about her future, and Lucy isn’t ready to tell her that she’s dead in her timeline, so she lies and makes up a story about her cool job and awesome husband, and Summer flinches. It takes Lucy a little longer to clock Summer’s feelings for Emmy, but in true Gen Z fashion, she doesn’t blink an eye about it, and accepts her sister with open arms in a very sweet conversation.

Now, listen, this movie is not going to go down in history as a Great Slasher Film. Nor is it going to go down in history for its queer representation. Lucy literally tells Summer that “it gets better” at one point. But it was a cute, campy time (one of the main character’s names is Summer Field, you know it’s not taking itself too seriously), and it was really nice to see a queer couple again in the horror-comedy genre. And while Emmy hardly gets any screentime, it’s no small thing to have Lucy be a queer Black main character played by a queer actress. In fact, both Madison Bailey and Antonia Gentry are queer in real life, which makes this film even gayer than the maintext. (Bailey came out as pansexual years ago, but since I don’t watch her hit show Outer Banks, I was out of the loop until I saw this interview where she mentioned that her girlfriend, Mariah Linney, pays for her Netflix subscription.)

Time Cut isn’t about the queer couple, it’s about the two sisters, so the queer storyline didn’t HAVE to be there, which is what makes it special. There’s something subtly satisfying about the fact that the timeline where Summer comes out and gets the girl ends significantly better than the timeline where she stays in the closet and tries to keep dating a stupid boy. It also is very 2003, for a teen girl’s Big Secret to be that they have feelings for their female best friend. It fit right in with the see-through landline phone, crop tops, and inflatable furniture.

Overall the movie was a cute, fun time that coordinates perfectly with its fellow horror comedies, with less gore and genuine scares than Bodies Bodies Bodies, but more gays and heart than its fraternal twin, Totally Killer. I hope horror writers continue to tuck queer stories into their movies, because it makes me 300% more likely to watch and enjoy every time.


Time Cut is now streaming on Netflix.

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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 602 articles for us.

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Annie Baker’s ‘Janet Planet’ Captures the Beautiful Hell of Queer Childhood

This review of Janet Planet was originally published in June 2024 and is being republished to coincide with its streaming release.


Childhood is a time of extremes. One moment no one at sleepaway camp likes you. The next, you’ve made a friend. You’re in a state of constant discovery, torn between the joy of curiosity and the burden of reality. Childhood was hell and I hated every minute of it. Except, of course, I didn’t.

When we first meet Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), the ten year old protagonist of Annie Baker’s debut feature Janet Planet, she is threatening to kill herself. Or, at least, she’s saying that so her mom (Julianne Nicholson) will pick her up from camp. The next day she’ll realize this call was premature — alas her mom has already received her money back. The adult world doesn’t have time for the whims of children. It didn’t in the 90s when Lacy is growing up; it doesn’t now.

Lacy is a dramatic, intense child, but she expresses her feelings quietly. She’s not a force, but a presence. She is only inconvenient in her refusals — to stay, to go, to sleep apart from her mom. She’s queer in that she asks if it’s okay for her to someday fall in love with a woman and queer in the sense that she’s simply different. Her rich interior life and private play are more advanced than her social skills.

It’s fitting that Baker and her DP Maria von Hausswolff have found a visual style to match Lacy’s quiet intensity. Shots are held to an extended meditative length, but they’re almost exclusively close ups and wides. There are no mediums in Lacy’s world. The peaceful exterior of the beautiful 16mm photography is betrayed by this constant oscillating between removal and obsessive attention.

While this may be Baker’s first feature, it’s no surprise that her grasp on cinema is already so developed. After all, she won a Pulitzer for a play about a movie theatre filled with many cinematic references. A vocal cinephile, it’s easy to feel the influence on Baker from films like L’enfance nue and Fanny and Alexander — and, less obviously, the rhythms and seductions of filmmakers ranging from Chantal Akerman to Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

And yet Baker’s cinematic style feels wholly her own. It shares DNA with the precise cadence of her plays as much as these cinematic reference points. I was hardly the only one to think her playwriting would translate well to film, but it’s still thrilling to finally see that manifest so fully.

The arrival of this not-new-but-new-to-film voice wouldn’t be possible without her collaborators. Maria von Hausswolff, especially, deserves another mention. 16mm is my favorite format (for filmmaking? for all artmaking?) and if anyone asks why I could simply point to Janet Planet. The entire props and costume and production design team also deserves celebration for sustaining the many close ups on objects. And the editing by Lucian Johnston creates flow between the contrasted shots resulting in the film’s steady pace.

Then, of course, there are the performers. Zoe Ziegler gives a special performance, containing none of the artifice often found in young actors. And Julianne Nicholson gets the part I’ve been waiting for ever since she out-acted far more famous names in the August: Osage County film adaptation. It’s not a showy role, yet she shows her depth of talent. The supporting cast matches the heights of the leads. Will Patton and Elias Koteas play two very different types of men to perfection and Sophie Okonedo delivers some of this quiet film’s best words.

Janet Planet is a film you sink into. I’ve already seen it twice and feel drawn to see it again. It’s a film that continues to reveal new details on-screen and new details internally as a viewer. Movies often employ cheap nostalgia; this film employs deep nostalgia. You may chuckle recognizing the Clarissa Explains It All theme song, but it’s more likely a glance shared between mother and daughter will be your Proust’s madeleine.

Whether you’re a longtime fan of Annie Baker’s plays, or meeting her work for the first time, Janet Planet is a rapturous cinematic experience. For every queer outsider, for every former child, for every daughter of a mother, for every performer and healer and human, this film is worth your precious time.


Janet Planet is now streaming on Max.

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?

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Drew Burnett Gregory

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.

Drew Burnett has written 612 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. I saw this in theaters a few months ago. It’s an incredible character study and I’m so glad it’s out for wider release on Max.

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60 Best Lesbian Movies on Tubi

Tubi is an upstart whippersnapper in the streaming space, rising in popularity for its free service that offers a massive library of films and television shows available to all of us in exchange for our willingness to watch a few commercials along the way. There are, by my count, at least 200 movies about lesbian, bisexual and queer women and/or trans people on Tubi, and the range of quality amongst those 200 is as vast as all the world’s oceans, from movies that were shot in an abandoned office park for $5 to actual real Hollywood cinema flicks. Here’s our guide to some of what’s best amongst queer and lesbian movies on Tubi.


Chutney Popcorn (1999)

Kayla called Chutney Popcorn “the South Asian Dyke Rom-Com I always wished Bend It Like Beckham had been.” Funny and dykey and warm and centering a compelling group of lesbian friends, Chutney Popcorn is a romance but it’s also about family— the one we’re born with and the ones we choose.

A Woman Like Eve (1979)
In this Dutch drama, a woman on holiday in France with her husband means a young feminist from a commune, falls in love, and leaves her husband —resulting in a child custody battle in her departure’s wake.

But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
Jamie Babbitt’s dark comedy holds up year after year with its satirical take on conversion therapy, starring Natasha Lyonne, Melanie Lynskey, Clea Duvall and RuPaul.

The Truth About Jane (2000)
This TV movie is very much of its time, but features a winning performance by Stockard Channing as Janice, the struggling mother of a gay daughter in high school — and by RuPaul, who plays Jimmy, Janice’s friend who helps her process the news and inch towards acceptance.


Queer Documentaries

Southwest of Salem (2016)

The tragic story of four Latina lesbians wrongfully convicted of the sexual assault of two small children during the 80s and 90s witch-hunt Satanic Panic era — and their fight for freedom.

Read Yvonne Marquez’s review of Southwest of Salem

Before Stonewall (1984) & After Stonewall (1999)
These two films are a great introduction to queer history — told by the people who made it.

Chavela (2017)
The life of boundary-breaking lesbian ranchera singer Chavela Vargas — the first artist in Mexico to openly sing to another woman on stage, one of the first to wear pants pre-1950 — is given a loving tribute in this documentary.

Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement (2009)
This film tells the story of legendary lesbian couple Edie and Thea, from their childhoods to their first meeting in 1963 to Thea’s M.S. diagnosis and their eventual marriage in Toronto in 2007.

Regarding Susan Sontag (2014)
“While it would be easy to create a sterilized portrait of the accomplished intellectual, Kates refrains from doing so. No subject is too delicate: Sontag’s ego, contradictions, futile attempts at becoming a successful novelist, inability to play nice with other feminists, and infamous glass closet are all touched upon during Regarding‘s 90 minutes.” – Sarah Fonseca, “Regarding Susan Sontag”: A Style Guide for the Young, Queer, and Whipsmart

The Aggressives (2005)
This groundbreaking documentary, filmed in New York between 1997 and 2004, cast light on the thriving queer subculture of “Aggressives,” or “AGs,” QPOC who have adopted masculine behaviors and styles, built their own social spaces and are challenging traditional ideas of gender and sexuality.

Wish Me Away (2012)
When Chely Wright came out in 2010, it was a big f*cking deal —country music simply had no space for a lesbian, but she couldn’t keep swallowing her own self forever. Wish Me Away follows her through her childhood through her early success in Nashville and through the painful process of coming out publicly, and dealing with the repercussions.


Lesbian Romance

I Can’t Think Straight (2007)

Tala, the daughter of wealthy Christian Palestinians living in Jordan, is prepping to marry when she meets Leyla, an aspiring writer and British Indian Muslim woman who’s also in a relationship with a man — but the two women hit it off, and what ensues will shake up their lives and their families forever. Erin enjoyed this movie so much she wanted to send its writer/director an Edible Arrangement.

A New York Christmas Wedding (2019)
This wacky trip of a lesbian Christmas movie sees Jenny (Nia Fairweather), nervous about her engagement to her fiancé, David, when a guardian angel Azraael (Cooper Koch) shows up to give her a vision into the future she could’ve lived but did not — in which she ended up with her childhood best friend, Gabrielle (Adriana DeMeo). “Instead of some far-off Snow White Christmas Village, it’s an queer Afro-Latina looking for love in a very not whitewashed New York,” wrote Carmen in her review.

Gray Matters (2006) – Heather Graham is Gray, a quiet, family-oriented girl who has a very intense and co-dependent relationship with her brother — they live together, go to dance classes together, all of it. But that relationship is in trouble when Gray meets Sam, sets Sam up with her brother — and then falls for Sam herself. Hijinks!

Kiss Me/Kiss Myg (2011)
Mia meets Frida at an engagement party for Mia’s father and Frida’s mother and is immediately drawn to Frida, an out lesbian. But their attraction poses a pretty serious problem because Mia is also engaged to be married, to a man (his name is Tim of course).

love, spells and all that (2019)
Reyhan and Eren had a relationship as teenage girls in the small Turkish town where they grew up — Eren the daughter of a powerful politician and Reyhan of one of his workers — but that ended in scandal, and Eren left home for university in Paris. Now it’s 20 years later. Eren is back and wants to pick up where they left off, but Reyhan “can’t simply erase two decades and run away to live a lifestyle of abundance and lesbianism.” Also, she’s wondering if Eren’s only still interested at all because of the eternal love spell Reyhan put on her all those years ago.

Princess Cyd (2017)
Heartwarming and sincere, Princess Cyd is the story of a life-changing summer in which our titular character lives with her estranged writer aunt, falls for a neighborhood boy and also her local barista, Katie. Heather writes: “Princess Cyd is quiet almost to the point of stillness and deeply generous.”

Rafiki (2018)
This “beautiful, colorful celebration of Black queer love” sees two young women in Kenya, Kena and Ziki, falling in love in a country where homosexuality is illegal and so many of their friends and family members aren’t supportive of their relationship. Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu creates art in a style she calls “Afrobubblegum, presenting a ‘fun, fierce and fantastical representation of Africa.”

Signature Move (2017)
Fawzia Mirza’s “late-in-life coming-of-age lucha libre romance” is about a thirtysomethign Pakistani Muslim lesbian in Chicago who’s taking care of with her mother and training to be a wrestler when she meets and falls for a woman who challenges her to embrace her true self..

The Summer of Sangaile (2015)
“Alanté Kavaïté’s coming-of-age queer love story is less about the spectacle of the thing and more about the emotional nuance. It’s dark in places but as light as first love’s wings in others… Summer of Sangaile will compel you to smile really big and shed three knowing, bittersweet tears.”Heather Hogan


Indie Queer Movies

the miseducation of cameron post

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

Desiree Akhvan’s adaptation of emily m. danforth’s stunning coming-of-age novel follows teenage Cameron Post (Chloë Grace Moretz) in the early nineties who’s sent to conversion camp after her boyfriend catches her having sex with her secret girlfriend Coley Taylor, in the backseat of Coley’s car. There she meets Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane), who was raised in a hippie commune, and begins to discover who she really is and who she wants to be.

“This is a quiet movie, Akhavan trusting Ashley Connor’s cinematography, Julian Wass’ score, and her actors’ faces to tell the story. Akhavan never lets the seriousness of the subject matter overwhelm the moments of humor and joy — the suggestion that our best hope for holding onto ourselves is to find community.” – Drew Gregory

A Date For Mad Mary (2016)
After a brief stay in prison, Mad Mary returns to her hometown, where she must push back against her reputation to get a date to her best friend’s wedding. “The film balances its subject matter and its tones due to sharp writing and Kerslake’s truly remarkable performance,” writes Drew. “This is really a gem of a film.”

Adam (2019)
Based on Ariel Schrag’s graphic novel, Adam is the story of an awkward teenage boy who spends his last high school summer in New York with his sister and the queer and trans community she’s surrounded herself with. When those gay friends assume Adam himself is trans, he doesn’t correct them. It’s a self-conscious, humorous snapshot of young queer life in the late ’00s.

BFFs (2014)
Two straight best friends pretend to be a couple to enable them to attend a relationship retreat one of them bought with a now-ex boyfriend. But once there, the lines between friendship and romance blur in a film that’s a funny and lighthearted look at the silly complexities of female friendship.

Boy Meets Girl (2014)
One of the first films to show a trans woman played by a trans actress dating another woman, “Boy Meets Girl” is a lighthearted romance about Ricky, a 21-year-old bisexual Virginia trans woman dreaming of a design career in New York, who makes two surprising connections in one unforgettable summer.

Goldfish Memory (2003)
“Like Love, Actually, but Irish, gay, and riddled with commitment issues this ensemble romantic comedy follows the lives and intersecting relationships of several delightfully messy people. Equally split between gay, lesbian, and straight romances, some storylines work better than others, but all of the actors are charming and the film is smarter about love than most of these kinds of romcoms.”Drew Gregory

Portrait of a Serial Monogamist (2015)
After a formative heartbreak, 40-year-old lesbian Elise has bounced from one serious relationship to another with a perfected exit strategy — but after her most recent breakup, she’s lost her will to continue the cycle, and she’s got lots of queer friends and an overbearing Jewish family eager to weigh in on her problems and choices! Heather writes in her review of Portrait of a Serial Monogamist that it is “incisive and very, very funny.”

Red Doors (2005)
Ed, the father of three daughters in a Chinese-American family living in the New York suburbs, is revisiting his whole family history through VHS tapes — including the story of Julie, the shy middle child who’s life is shaken up when she falls for actress Mia Scarlett.


Hahahahaha Comedies

appropriate behavior movie poster

Appropriate Behavior (2014)

Desiree Akhavan’s debut film, described at the time by Kaelyn as “the movie everyone in the queer lady-loving community and indie film universe is buzzing about.,” is still a gem. It tells the story of a bisexual Brooklynite reeling from a breakup with her girlfriend (Rebecca Henderson) and battling the expectations of her traditional Persian family.


Camp Takota (2014)
This light-hearted comedy with a subtle queer edge stars Grace Helbig as an author with her life in shambles who reuintes with two estranged pals — including lesbian camp counselor played by Hannah Hart — to save the summer camp where they all met.

The Feels (2018)
Andi (Constance Wu) and Lu (Angela Trimbur) corral their friends into California Wine County for a pre-wedding bachelorette party, where Lu makes the drunk confession that she’e never had an orgasm —much to Andi’s surprise, who thought they were having the best sex of their lives. Everybody pitches in to solve this problem, but they’ve got a lot of their own emotional hijinks to tend to along the way. Heather writes: “it’s authentic and it’s tender and while the climax is a little bit rushed — eh hem — it’s a gay happy ending. And that, itself, is still revolutionary.

Life Partners (2014)
Leighton Meester is Sasha, a lesbian who’s entrenched in a deeply co-dependent best friendship with Paige, who is straight — a friendship that’s tested when Paige meets a man (Adam Brody) she actually likes and Sasha hates sharing. B Nichols called Life Partners “a film in which everything that could go usually wrong in a lesbian film inexplicably doesn’t!” Beth Dover and Gabourey Sidibe are delightful as Sasha’s queer friends.

Women Who Kill (2017)
This dry, dark comedy follows exes Morgan (Ingrid Jungermann) and Jean (Ann Carr), locally famous true-crime podcasters in Park Slope who interview female serial killers — but Morgan can’t seem to shut off her suspicion of darkness lurking beneath everything when she starts dating Simone, a mysterious girl she meets at the Park Slope Food Co-Op.

Thrills and Chills

Good Manners (2017)

“Good Manners…is exploring something uniquely queer. Part of the reason it’s such an overwhelming and complex film is because its queerness forces it to embody both the body horror of pregnancy and the fear of parental failure, while also including the distrust of adoption found in something like The Omen and the rejection of an other found in works like Frankenstein and Freaks.”

— Drew Burnett Gregory, via Monsters & Mommis: “Good Manners” Is a Tribute to Queer Motherhood

Bit (2019)
Laurel (Nicole Maines) is just a regular 18-year-old trans girl with protective parents before she gets vampired while spending the summer with her brother in LA, where she has a perfect gay meet-cute with Izzy who of course digs in and turn Laurel into a vampire. “Brad Michael Elmore’sBitisn’t a landmark film about the trans experience,” wrote Drew in her review of Bit. “But God is it fun. And it’s not without meaning.”

Clementine (2019)
This drama about “longing, youth, and slippery notions of truth and lies”. Karen, reeling from her breakup with an older woman, breaks into her ex’s lake house where she meets Lana (Sydney Sweeney), a captivating presence with whom things get very complicated, very quickly.

Jack & Diane (2012)
Charming and naive Diane (Juno Temple) meets tough-skinned Jack (Riley Keough) in New York City. They hook up all night and must grapple with their growing relationship under challenging circumstances — Diane’s moving at the end of the summer, but her feelings for Jack are manifesting themselves in terrifying ways, creating violent changes in her physical body.

Knife + Heart (2018)
While the murders and raunchy smut are the flashier elements of the film that make it easy to pitch to an audience, the core of the story is a sincere meditation on desire. While stopping the killer and uncovering the mystery behind his motives moves the narrative forward, they are peripheral to the actual substance of the film which, in line with filmmaker Yann Gonzalez’s trademark style, weaves romantic queer poems out of queer eroticism and obscenity.” – Chingy Nea via “Knife + Heart” and the Thin Line Between Desire and Destruction

Lyle (2014)
Leah (Gaby Hoffman) and June (Ingrid Jungermann) are mothers grieving the loss of their toddler while planning for a new baby in a psychological thriller Kristin Russo described as “each moment punching your eyeballs in with the sheer force of its beauty.”

The Carmilla Movie (2017)
Beloved actor Elise Bauman co-stars in this film inspired by the web-series of the same name which was adapted from the 1872 graphic novel Carmilla. Five years after vanquishing the apocalypse, Laura (Bauman) and Carmilla (Natasha Negovanlis) and their pals face a new supernatural threat tied to Carmilla’s past. Valerie, a fan of the web series, declared the film “everything we want it to be (and so much more).”

The Retreat (2021)
“The monsters in the film are not mythical — they’re militant homophobic serial killers targeting queer people. And the majority of the film with all its bloody torture and revenge is really well-done. It finds the perfect balance between being properly brutal and satisfyingly cathartic. The film follows some pretty standard beats but it does them well and it’s exciting to get this kind of horror movie with queers at its center.” – Drew Gregory, “The Retreat” Is a New Kind of Lesbian Horror, Full of Catharsis and Dykey Swagger

Wynonna Earp: Vengeance (2024)
In this film based on the original television series, Wynonna Earp returns home “to battle her greatest foe yet: a psychotic seductress hellbent on revenge against her… and everyone she loves.” “We’re so pleased about how seamlessly Vengeance fit into the series,” wrote Nic and Valerie. “Even though it was technically a different format, it really did just feel like a long episode of Earp, like no time had passed at all, and we love to see it.”


Queer Arthouse Movies

House of Hummingbird (2018)

This award-winning South Korean drama, set in 1994, captures the acute misery of being 14 years old, a time when everything seems like the end of the world. Eun-hee is a working class girl with a secret boyfriend, an abusive brother, a Chinese teacher she’s obsessed and a best friend, Yu-ri—a schoolgirl who’s nursing a huge crush on Eun-hee. Drew writes that “this is a movie for all the queers who ate lunch in a teacher’s room and this is a movie for all the queers who wondered if a future was possible and then, one day, stopped wondering and started to believe.”

Daddy Issues (2019)
“A love story between a 19-year-old artist, her Instagram crush, and her Instagram crush’s sugar daddy, Cash’s debut feature is equally sweet and taboo. The artist, Maya (Madison Lawlor), is estranged from her father and stuck at home with her cruel mother and inappropriate stepdad. She dreams of going to art school in Florence but doesn’t have the money. Instead she settles for texting her Florence-based friend about her all-consuming crush on fashion designer/influencer Jasmine Jones (Montana Manning). Fed up and filled with an angsty joie de vivre, Maya follows an insta-tag to a bar and manages to infiltrate Jasmine’s crew. Chaos ensues. Romance ensues.” – Drew, “Daddy Issues” Is a Very Queer Very Good Movie

Petit Mal (2022)
“Petit Mal is about a throuple figuring out how to begin again. It’s not that the film shies away from the specific joys and challenges of a throuple — it’s just done in a way that doesn’t attach value or judgment.” -Drew, “Petit Mal” is a Lesbian Throuple’s Real Life Friction

Salmonberries (1991)
k.d. lang stars as an orphaned Eskimo who passes as male to work at a mine in Alaska. She has a relationship with Roswitha (Rosel Zech), an exiled widowed East German librarian. “It’s a slow and odd film about identity and the past that doesn’t totally work but is endlessly fascinating,” wrote Drew.


Dyke Drama

Professor Marston & The Wonder Women (2017)

This biopic about the creator of Wonder Woman is also, Drew writes, “a story about polyamory, about BDSM, about three individuals fighting to define their own lives and loves. There is power in completely disavowing mainstream forms and there is a different kind of power in mastering them and subverting them from within. Luke Evans and Bella Heathcoate are great as William Marston and the Marstons’ new partner, but Rebecca Hall as Elizabeth Marston truly astounds. The movie doesn’t ignore the complications of their relationship — the external and the internal — but instead allows the relationship and these characters an understanding they were never granted. There’s a reason Wonder Woman is such a popular character: these lives aren’t so rare after all — only on our screens.”

Lizzie (2018)
Inspired by the infamous 1892 murders of the Borden family —for which their daughter Lizzie was the primary suspect —this film sees Kristen Stewart as the new Irish maid who strikes up a relationship with Lizzie as her relationship with her parents begins to fall apart. “Lizzieis brutal, historically attuned, and committed to exploring effeminate trauma and retaliation,” wrote Fonseca in her review.

My Days of Mercy (2017)
Elliot Page is Lucy and Kate Mara is Mercy in this film that mixes politics with passion. Lucy and her sister are anti-death-penalty protestors fighting to get their father, Simon, off death row. At a protest in Illinois, Lucy meerts Mercy, the daughter of a cop with dies to the death penalty case being protested. Despite their potential political tensions, a romance begins to grow.

Take Me For a Ride (2016)
“A simple coming-of-age movie about queer teen love in Ecuador, Take Me For a Ride works because of the precise cinematography and the chemistry between lead actors Samanta Caicedo and Maria Juliana Rangel. The drama remains low-key and the film feels like a personal snapshot.” Drew

The Secrets / Ha Sadot (2007)
This “complicated film about faith and love and commitment to principles all in the face of patriarchy” is the story of two young women studying at Jewish seminary — studious and conservative Noemi and rebellious Michelle. They discover their queerness through their feelings for each other, while both are pushed towards marrying men.

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?

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Riese

Riese is the 41-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 and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3262 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. heads up that tubi is owned by fox news corp as of 2020 so the ad revenue it generates goes to fox & its shareholders

    • Yeah, and? If I lived my life in boycotts and cancels, I’d be sleeping naked on the grass foraging for berries and killing wildlife with a rock I sharpened into a point that I tied onto a stick with vines.

  2. I know Tubi has their “leaving soon” list but does anyone know if that’s a way to find the exact date something leaves, like there is on Netflix and other services?

  3. Flashbacks to living in 2007 and desperately waiting for all of these moderately depressing movies to slowly buffer 27 seconds at a time.

    A lot of terrible-okay movies that have been lost to time (sometimes even AS!)

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LGBTQ+ People Are Under Attack Worldwide — Latoya Nugent and Rainbow Railroad Want To Help

The North American non-profit Rainbow Railroad has helped more than 13,000 LGBTQ+ individuals escape state-sanctioned homophobia and transphobia in their home countries since its founding in 2006. Latoya Nugent was one such refugee. In 2022, Nugent, now the organization’s Head of Engagement, claimed asylum from Jamaica into Canada.

On the heels of Rainbow Railroad’s new campaign, The Time Is Always Now, which launched on November 1, Nugent spoke to Autostraddle about the increase in persecution and displacement for LGBTQ+ people globally, the discriminatory laws passing even in the usual safe havens of the US and Canada, and her own story of rebirth as an openly queer woman.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.


Gabe: So how did you find out about Rainbow Railroad and about gaining asylum?

Latoya: I knew of the organization in a very peripheral way because of the kind of work I was involved in. I was a human rights defender back in Jamaica, and so a part of the work that I would do at the time was actually helping to support folks who were experiencing violence and discrimination in Jamaica who reached out to me for support.

And a part of that support required that there was an organization on the ground that would provide a kind of general context about what was happening in Jamaica and why a particular individual would need to flee. But I didn’t know a lot about the asylum process or anything like that. It wasn’t until after I attended a conference in Barbados in 2022. I was listening to a panel discussion on queer identity and forced displacement and how queer individuals could seek refuge in other countries, including countries like Canada.

There was an individual who worked at the organization at the time who was a part of that panel and also had the experience of displacement because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. It was really a very moving experience for me because I was going through a lot at the time and I wasn’t willing to really talk about it or come to terms with it. And just listening to the experiences that were shared by the panelists, I recognized that there was a safe way out. I decided that I would try to access this pathway not knowing even after listening to that discussion exactly what would be required of me, but deciding that I would make that first step and reach out. It was a very involved and intense, perhaps complex, process, but I’m very happy that I took that decision and I’ve been living in Canada since and I think it’s perhaps the best decision that I’ve made in my adult life.

Gabe: When did you realize that you were queer and that Jamaica was not going to be a safe place for you?

Latoya: That’s a complicated question for me. I realized long ago that Jamaica was not a safe place for me to be as a queer woman, but I was so committed to changing the culture, to changing the laws that criminalized LGBTQ+ people and changing the cultural attitudes of the society towards LGBTQ+ people.

I did not have queer language in my early years because I grew up in a very conservative family, quite religious. I was religious myself when I was younger and I was growing up in a homophobic society, but not having the language of even homophobia. That word was not a part of my vocabulary as a younger person. But I always felt a weight in the company of women, let’s put it that way. And so whatever difference I felt, I found a way to suppress it. It didn’t feel to me as if this is how God wanted me to be.

It wasn’t until I went to university and had the most beautiful experience, which I also had to deny at the time because I was very fearful of what it would cause if people knew how I felt about women. And the reason I say I knew from a very, very long time that Jamaica was not safe for queer people was because during my undergraduate years in Jamaica, as I was pursuing my first degree, I had the most visceral reaction from people who were in my study year, people who were going to the university with me at the same time. There was a suspicion on campus that I was queer-identified or that I was in a relationship with another woman, which was devastating for me because while I was exploring this, I was doing it secretly.

I knew that it was not safe because of the culture, the music, the homophobic slurs that would be heard. The warden who was in charge of student services and development at the time, who had responsibility for the residence where I was living, called me into a meeting and asked me to leave the residence.

There’s a lot of sexual harassment that you experience when people believe that you are a part of the queer community. I was fearful that I was placing myself in danger. That was my thinking at the time that I was the one placing myself in danger because of this identity. And fast forward several years later, having gone through several years of living in Jamaica, navigating homophobia in all its forms, I found advocacy and activism, and found some amount of healing in that kind of work. But then with that came perhaps the highest price that I’ve had to pay since coming to terms with that identity, which was my freedom.

Gabe: Because you were arrested for your activism.

Latoya: And after that arrest [in 2017], everything changed for me. I became very silent. I have sometimes said to folks that there was something about the violence of that arrest that silenced me. And I know that was the intention. As activists sometimes we don’t want to talk about that kind of impact, but that really was the impact it had on me. It silenced me for several years. I began to dislike this kind of work. I didn’t want to do any work with the community at all because I felt as if it cost me my dignity, it cost me my freedom. And it’s almost as if for years I put myself on the frontline and at the end of the day, you are on your own.

The community may want to help you, the community may want to support you, and they try to do that in several ways, but at the end of the day, you really have to fight certain battles on your own. And so I felt that the visibility, the work I was doing with the community, for the community and for myself just came at too high a price which I paid. I really just gave up on life and became very hopeless. I was very depressed. I had stopped living, really.

So when I finally felt brave enough to make that decision in 2022 to relocate with Railroad’s assistance, it felt as if it was the universe’s way of saying to me, you can start life again, and this is how you start life again. Was I expecting any of this? Perhaps not.

I recall when I arrived in Canada, there were a couple of people from the organization who were at the airport waiting. And I did a video just talking about how I was feeling in the moment. There was something so liberatory about that for me because it was the first time in several years that I was willing to publicly talk about anything at all to do with my queer identity or with the work of queer liberation. I didn’t realize it until after I was done doing the interview, just how liberatory it felt. I had stopped believing, I had stopped being hopeful. And so in that moment, it just felt as if I really do have a second chance at life.

Gabe: That’s really beautiful and well put and complicated. Is there also a feeling of, “Okay, I am leaving. I’m doing all this activist work. I can continue this work from Canada,” but also you’re acutely aware that there is a community in Jamaica that is still struggling?

Latoya: So having left Jamaica in the moment when I left, I did not feel guilty for leaving because I felt like I needed to prioritize my wellbeing. Having left and now living here for a little over two years, the guilt is starting to seep in because I was able to escape that.

I was able to escape what I know is the reality on the ground in Jamaica and I think because Jamaica, the government and the private sector, do such a good job of marketing from a tourist perspective, many people are not as aware of the kind of underbelly of homophobia and what it’s doing to an entire community in the country. Because a lot of times when people are either murdered or you’re homeless or jobless or they’re attacked, or queer women are raped and sexually assaulted, a lot of that, unless you are in the civil society kind of activist space, you may not be aware that all of that is happening in Jamaica because the public profile of Jamaica is this tourist Mecca and reggae and all of the cultural pieces that are celebrated globally.

Gabe: What are we in the States not understanding about what’s illegal in Jamaica? What laws are there and how are they influencing daily life?

Latoya: A lot of what is happening culturally is as a result of what is on the books legally. And so legally in Jamaica right now, same sex intimacy is criminalized. You can go to prison for up to 10 years if you are found to be guilty of same sex intimacy. And I’m talking about consensual same sex intimacy. The law does not distinguish that.

Another piece too is the way that marriage is designed in Jamaica prevents many queer and trans people from accessing the same rights as other Jamaicans because some of these rights and privileges that Jamaicans have are tied to or connected to their marital status.

Jamaica is often described as a very conservative society, and that is primarily because of the role that religion has historically played in shaping culture. Religion in Jamaica is a force to be reckoned with.

Although there is technically a separation of church and state in Jamaica, the church is extremely powerful, and is also politically powerful and has significant influence over our political leaders or policy makers and our lawmakers. So if you look at the way rape is defined, for example, it restricts who can be charged for the crime of rape or it restricts what can be categorized as rape. Another critical piece is how it prevents people in same sex relationships from accessing the same kinds of protection that other folks have access to under the Domestic Violence Act.

It is covert, if you will, it’s not as well known or well documented with the exception of cases where people within the community have been murdered, for example, or they have been attacked and it has become very well known in the news. So it creates the impression that there are some isolated events or isolated actions, but that isn’t actually the reality on the ground. There are people who live in fear every single day. There are people who’ve been homeless for a very long time, there are people who are discriminated against at their place of work, and even kids are bullied if they’re perceived to be queer and or trans. It’s more difficult when the state is against you.

And it doesn’t mean that you can’t find ways to survive in Jamaica. I did it for several years. I know many people who tried to find ways to carve out safe spaces and create community for each other. But it’s not sustainable and it’s extremely costly and it’s something you can access almost only from a place of privilege. Many people do not have the financial resources to be able to carve out those safe spaces where they can survive and where they can create community. And when you think of the intersection of poverty, for example, that just doubles and complicates the kind of experience that you would have in a place like Jamaica.

Gabe: Would you say that people shouldn’t go there on vacation?

Latoya: That’s complex. For one, there are many queer people who work in the tourism industry in Jamaica. And the other thing is, there’s a different Jamaica that you experience when you stay at an all inclusive resort. It’s not the “everyday Jamaica.” So there may be incidents of homophobia that you experience as a queer person visiting Jamaica, but it is not as likely if you go to the all-inclusive hotels because the staff there, the policies there, and the principles there are different from what exists in the Jamaican society.

As a matter of fact, it is something that some queer people who have the resources do so, do to escape the everyday homophobia that exists in the country. Some resorts actually almost act as a temporary place of refuge because people are treated a little bit differently at some of these hotels and some of them are even branded as being inclusive of the community. So it’s a complicated question to attempt to answer for those two reasons. One, lots of queer people work in the tourist industry and benefit from equal opportunity employment in the tourism industry. And two, especially as far as the all-inclusive results are concerned, we don’t typically experience the homophobia that exists in the wider society.

Gabe: What is the process of getting asylum for being queer? You mentioned it’s complicated.

Latoya: We provide multiple pathways for people to be able to relocate, including two critical pathways. One is what we call emergency travel support. This is where we assist someone to get to the border of another country and make an asylum claim in that country. And the asylum claim that you make in that country is usually with the intention and with the hope of permanently resettling in that country because it is not safe for you to live in your home country. You’re fleeing persecution from your home country and you are going to the border of another country.

Gabe: Do you have to have something pending against you? Do you have to say, “here’s proof I’m queer, here’s proof of an arrest?”

Latoya: Yes. Either that something happened to you or you are fearful of something happening to you. Or both, but you have to provide evidence to demonstrate why you are in danger and the evidence that you provide is in the form of police reports, hospital reports, letters of support from queer organizations that are familiar with your work, your story, letters of support from family members, a partner if you have a partner. You could also have to document the story of your life to show that because of your sexual orientation and/or your gender identity, you were in danger or you believe that you will be in danger if you continue to live in your home country. And in documenting the story of your life, you are showing through this narrative that it is not safe for you to live in your home country anymore.

You need evidence to back up your claim because the system starts by not believing you. That’s why you need all of this evidence. The system is not taking you at your word. The system requires you to back up, to support, to provide evidentiary support of the claims that you are making. It may sound simple in this conversation we are having, but to actually do all of that takes a considerable amount of time and you have no choice but to place yourself at risk to access that. Because if you think about it, especially for people who are not out, they may have to out themselves in some instances in order to get this proof that the US government needs or they may have to share sometimes very private and intimate experiences as part of proving why they need the US government to support them.

It takes a very long time. The asylum system is backed up. Lots of people are awaiting the opportunity to actually submit the claim. And after you submit your claim, you then have to gather all of this evidence and you have a hearing and there’s a lot of prep that has to go into the hearing because the hearings are intimidating. It feels very lonely and traumatizing because a part of proving why you need refuge in the US, for example, is also reliving and reopening wounds, almost reliving the trauma you’ve experienced in your home country as part of the process of proving to the US government that listen, I cannot live in my home country anymore.

We also have, through a partnership with the US government, a refugee resettlement program where Americans get to volunteer their time and their skill to sponsor a refugee. And because we are participating in this national program, it’s an added opportunity for queer refugees to access a safe resettlement pathway. So when someone goes to the border to make an asylum claim, it’s not always safe whether it’s a land border or they travel by air because you don’t know what will happen at the border.

You can make a claim, but there is no guarantee that this claim will be accepted through the refugee resettlement pathway. Through that partnership that we have with the US government, what happens is that there’s a way for asylum claims to be processed overseas before you actually set foot in the US. It’s also an equally long processing time.

Gabe: On top of the pain of leaving your family, leaving your friends, and that you can’t go back.

Latoya: Yes. The benefit is that when you arrive in the US you will be supported by a group of queer [people] and allies of the queer community. And because it’s a government program, part of what happens is that there is a particular structure that’s placed on ensuring that the core services and support that you need as a refugee will be provided. There is some funding that is provided for these sponsors to enable them to assist the refugees after they relocate, so they’re set up for success. There’s assistance with housing, employment, for those who may need to learn English as a second language or to access other educational opportunities and so on. And just being in queer community, especially for queer refugees, is so important. So there is also that kind of program that’s available for folks. But regardless of the pathway that someone is able to access, they’re all long, they’re all complicated and all very retraumatizing at different stages of the process.

But the other side of it, they feel very hopeful because yes, you almost have to relive this trauma, but it’s creating an opportunity for you to reclaim your life. In the end, the kind of hopelessness that many people may experience in their home country, they find that when they’re able to access a resettlement pathway or a relocation pathway, then they start to feel a little bit more hopeful even despite the difficulty or the complexity that’s embedded in the process

Gabe: It must be healing at a certain point too.

Latoya: Yes.

Gabe: Is this mostly focused on relocating to the US and Canada?

Latoya: Yes and several countries in Europe and a couple countries in South America, but most of the people that we’ve supported over the years have relocated to Canada. And then we have countries in Europe such as Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Gabe: How has it been watching the different anti-trans or anti-queer legislation popping up in places like the US? How does that feel as someone who came to North America as a refugee?

Latoya: So that was something that surprised me because some of what I see happening in certain states in the US, it’s so familiar. After my equality work and all of the activism that has gone into ensuring that the US is an affirming place for queer and trans people, I never imagined that in 2024 we would be seeing that kind of legislation being advanced against the community.

The thing I’m hopeful about though is that the community is pushing back hard. And what that tells me is that across the United States, there is widespread support for the rights of people and that the community and allies of the community are fully activated and pushing back against the hundreds of legislations that keep popping up in different states that are attempting to strip people within the community of their rights.

It does add an interesting tension to our work at Rainbow Railroad because every year we collect a data report about the number of people who reach out to us for help and the countries and regions where they come from. And since 2022, after that Roe v. Wade decision, we’ve noticed that the queer people in the US are increasingly scared of living in certain parts of the US. We started to see a trend emerge where people inside the United States were reaching out to us saying, “I want to move to another part of the US” or “I want to relocate to Canada.” And that wasn’t happening before. So that is a tension that we hold because when we talk with refugees overseas or when we talk with people who are at risk in their home countries, the US and Canada remain two of the top countries where people want to relocate, even though they are aware that there are some parts of Canada where we are seeing this anti-trans rhetoric and movement emerge, and we are seeing it in some states inside the US.

But the thing I realized is that there are far more affirming cities and states in the US. Because of the galvanizing support that we are seeing across the community and the pushback, it still represents a place of hope for many people who are fleeing for their lives. And with the welcome program that we have with the United States where they’re helping to relocate and welcome refugees, we have identified the cities that are affirming for the queer and trans community, and people are thriving in those places. So I think the US is just emerging as this very interesting and complex place for us, but again, feeling very hopeful because of the pushback and the fact that some of these proposed policies and legislations have really died because the community has pushed back like we have.

Gabe: It’s hard because people want to stay too. They say, “Why don’t you just stay and fight?” But it’s just as you said, it’s all so much more complicated than that. And it puts the onus on the individual.

Latoya: Yes, absolutely it does.

Gabe: I was looking over the RR executive summary [for 2023] and the most common places that people relocate from are Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there are just so many places hostile to LGBTQ+ people, and so many people with relocation stories from all over the world. I was wondering what’s the most hopeful story you’ve heard or maybe a story of relocation that is one of your favorites?

Latoya: Oh, that’s a tough one. I probably wouldn’t use the word “favorite.” Perhaps the word is “inspiring.”

I had just started at Rainbow Railroad, and there was this individual who was scheduled to relocate in 2023. I recall being introduced to this person via Zoom. I don’t know what it was, but they felt comfortable enough and safe enough, so I think they spoke for maybe over an hour just sharing what they had experienced and feeling hopeful that their time had come to relocate. And I recall thinking, “I don’t know if I’ve ever met anybody who was as resilient as this person was,” because they have gone through so much physically, mentally, emotionally. I mean, I listened to the telling of their story, and they were telling their story through tears, but with such strength. And I said to myself, “how is it possible that somebody who lived through all of that still finds this strength, still finds the resilience to show up with strangers talking about this, talking about your life experience and doing it in such a hopeful and inspiring way?”

I was so moved. I didn’t speak much, I was just listening, and it was a few weeks perhaps after that that they were scheduled to arrive at the airport. I was there, and I remember giving her the warmest hug because it felt as if I knew this person for a very long time. I knew their struggle. I just wanted to hold them and let them feel that, yes, you are really okay. You’ve gone through all of that. You made it here.

I was just blown away by the way they showed up at the airport. It’s almost as if they were just ready to go again. This is a brand new chance at life. Yes, I’m going to struggle in the first few months or so because relocation is difficult. We know this. But I am ready to go. There was no hesitation, no fear.

And I’ve watched them over the weeks, the months even in their struggles, trying to figure out their credit score, getting worried about that, trying to understand the financial system, trying to live with housemates or roommates and navigating employment and all of that, but just always committed to ensuring that they create the life that they want for themselves here, despite everything that they had gone through and everything that they were living through. Just watching them being able to access the kind of care and support that they need and feeling ever so grateful.

Sometimes it’s difficult for people to feel grateful when everything is not perfect, but every time I’ve had a conversation with them after that, there is so much gratitude, not even just to Rainbow Railroad as an organization, but gratitude to the universe for creating the opportunity for them to be able to live with the dignity that they deserve. And just watching this person who was a stranger to me when they showed up and just seeing how they’ve accessed this opportunity and decided that I am going to make the best of it, and they are making the best of it. And every time they speak, they inspire me, whether they’re speaking through tears or not.

There was something very inspiring for me, having listened to over an hour of this person sharing and then being a part of that journey of watching them leave just from that place where they felt unsafe, abused, discriminated against, and all of that. And now they can live in a country that values their humanity and protects their rights as an LGBTQ person.

Gabe: I mean, they’re a stranger to you, but not a stranger.

Latoya: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe: That’s really beautiful. Is there anything that you would like people to know to support Rainbow Railroad?

Latoya: Oh, yeah. So a few things. I want people to understand that our work is vital. And after we verify a case, you have to identify possibilities so that you can facilitate your travel, and then you have to advocate with governments all around the world to ensure that the right to seek asylum is protected. And more importantly, it is critical that we learn from the experiences of people who we support so that we can ensure that we continuously improve the way that we work. Last year alone, for the first time in our history, we received over 15,000 requests for help.

I’m telling you, some of the narratives that we see come across our website when people submit that request for help, are very, very heartbreaking. And right now, we don’t have the capacity to help everybody who reaches out. That’s part of why we decided that we were going to launch this campaign.

And just a shout out to James Baldwin. There’s a quote, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, where he says, “There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now,” and that’s the title of our campaign.

Last year we were only able to help a little over 7,000 people. The reality is there’s several thousands more out there who need our support. And the way we are able to deliver on this mission is that we have people donating their time and donating funds to ensure that we can do this work.

Because to James Baldwin’s point, the challenge is in the moment. It’s right now. And so the time is always now: to donate, to give, to volunteer, all the ways, and to even amplify our message.

Sometimes sharing the message of our work and talking about our mission is as powerful as donating to the organization because the more people are aware of this vital work, the more we will be able to provide support to our siblings who are in distress.

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?

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Related:

Gabe Dunn

Gabe (he/him) is a queer, trans writer and director whose most recent film GRINDR BABY was selected for Frameline Festival’s 2023 Voices. He is a best-selling author thrice-over, host of the podcasts The Knew Guys, Just Between Us and Bad With Money. As a TV writer, he has sold over a dozen TV shows to networks like FX, Freeform, and Netflix. His young adult sci-fi drama Apocalypse Untreated was released by Audible Originals in 2020. His latest TV project The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams is in development at Universal with Gabe set to write and produce.

Gabe has written 20 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. V inspiring article. I had no idea about this law in Jamaica.
    I’m glad to see a political article. I’ve felt for a while the ratio of TV reviews has been too high in comparison to political stuff & international stuff. I loved the overseas reports & Queer Girl City Guides. Please do more of this!

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‘How Can I Dress Kinky and Androgynous at Play Parties?’

Q:

Hi there!

The context to this question is that my partner and I are both kinky (privately? I guess?), and we’re interested in feeling out the kink scene locally a bit more. Most of these events have a dress code — and that’s fun! I want to dress up. But.. a lot of leather / kink fetishwear aesthetics feel pretty gendered at times (which tbh feels like an issue with lingerie etc more broadly) and it stresses me out! I want to feel hot, not awful / dysphoric / self conscious.

Where can I find the kinky, androgynous fashion inspiration I am yearning for?

A:

Oh hey, lovely kinkster!

It’s so lovely to see someone exploring their kink communities because I have lived in a place without such groups for ages. Please live and enjoy yourself for those of us who can’t (but someday will).

As to kink event dress codes: yes, they can have dress codes, but there’s a lot of ‘it depends’ around these dress codes. Different groups and events will have vastly different ideas on what their dress code constitutes. Dress codes readily reflect the nature of an event. High protocol BDSM is deeply structured and tends to have exacting, formal dress codes. Munches are explicitly public-facing, casual social events, and ‘outside-appropriate’ dress is normally required.

This is a long-winded way for me to say: Your first target may be seeing which events and organizations appeal to you and looking at their online presence for clues about what their dress code actually ‘means’ to them. There’s no universality to kink — that’s why most of us are in it.

Once you’ve scoped out their online presence (if it exists), I’d advise making contact with the group or event’s organizers and asking for guidance. This can assuage some of your concerns about what you can wear and how non-gendered it can be. It’ll also serve as an extremely important litmus test for their suitability to your temperament. A good kink group is accommodating to newcomers, willing to clarify, and ready to inform. Incidentally, those are the same traits we’d want in sexual partners.

As to the question of clothes that don’t hang too fiercely to the gender binary, I have thoughts.

More gender or less gender?

I find that androgynous fashion often flows in two directions: mixing masculine, feminine, and other fashions into a whole, or minimizing gendered features entirely. The first is achieving androgyny through contrast, and the second is achieving androgyny through degenderization (that’s a word, I looked it up!).

Identifying your preferred form of androgynous fashion and exploring ways to work it into kinky fashion is a good starting point. Especially if you can draw a line from kink to your comfortable presentation. It’ll feel more like home than leaving your comfort zone rapidly and accidentally finding something dysphoric.

When I think of generically kinky things that aren’t necessarily gendered, I think of strappy leather and faux leather. Leather aesthetics and BDSM are very close (they’re roommates!), and they can be contextually gendered, but don’t have such a strong gendered fixation. Leather straps and metal furniture are very masculine when worn to accentuate a body’s musculature or form. They can also be coded feminine in certain styles. Think fashionable chokers or a harness peering from underneath a dress.

I can’t recommend strappy leather stuff enough for a non-specifically kinky appearance because it can signal so much. It can signal rippling strength and firmness, daintiness that needs to be restricted. Wear it small as an accessory or commit to a torso-sized harness. Faux leather/pleather is cheap to start with. Vegan leather substitutes are there. Traditionalists (like me) love handmade, genuine leather.

This principle of more gender vs. less gender applies to other articles of clothing too. A feminine body can cut a mean figure in a suit. I think men look great in lace lingerie. Contrast is a keystone of androgynous fashion and pops in kink settings as well because contrast in kink can be used to subvert gender roles and expectations. Truthfully, the question isn’t really about what you should wear (that’s between you and the organisers), but what makes you feel ‘right’.

Exploring form

To me, much of fashion hinges on its ability to shape people’s form. Form is king in androgyny. It builds sharpness and softness alike. Think of the contrast between shoulder pads, cut waistcoats, and long nails versus oversized puffer jackets, baggy jeans, and canvas shoes. Kinky fashion opens up a new avenue of form because there’s an option for nudity (at certain events). More simply, are you bouba or kiki androgynous?

Jackets are a queer fashion staple and are unironically great in kink. Being a top-most item means they can reshape your silhouette based on how they’re cut. They’re practical, too. Use them to conceal kinky accessories or clothing underneath before you want to show it. And you know, they can help you keep warm.

The stuff in the middle is just as important as the outer silhouette. Queer kink is replete with the unbuttoned top (flannel/plain button-down/blouse) that shows some of what’s going on beneath. A partially unbuttoned top is both hot for what it shows and conceals. Whether that person is rocking a soft cotton bralette, leather harness, lingerie bra, or nothing underneath says a lot about their comfortable gender presentation. Consider this look if you’re ever in a rut — it can be tailored for anyone.

Talk, think, explore

I could go on all day, but I want to say that I get what you mean about kink spaces being gendered. The power dynamics and fantasies played out in kink often reflect real-world events. It’s difficult to escape the masculine top, feminine bottom dynamic. Many participants don’t want to escape it. They want to embrace it in a contained and secure way.

Being queer in kinky spaces opens up possibilities and concern in equal measure for how we’ll be met and perceived. And gods help us if we stumble into a hyper-heteronormative swinger group that claims to be ‘all-kink friendly’ but is actually just a cover for middle-aged straight people to fumble with raceplay fantasy and do zero reflection on the implications of their kinks. Speaking from first-hand experience.

I can advise and talk at length about cut, silhouette, and genderbending, but I think that you’re still best-positioned to do the rest yourself. That means scoping out the group(s) you’re interested in and seeing what their ‘vibe’ is. Then making contact with organizers for information and to suss out the ways they engage with queer newcomers. Then taking the info and converting it into something that makes you feel good.

Just remember, there’s no wrong way to be you. And there’s no wrong way to be gay in your favorite statement jacket.

Yeah. I hope this helps.


You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

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?

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Summer Tao

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

Summer has written 53 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. For a somewhat more casual but still kinky vibe, there are a lot of Etsy stores that recreate t shirts from gay/leather bars of the past. Decorhardcore and BrankoBrand are two I found recently. YMMV for an ~event~ but it could be fun for a munch!

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Free Dog Name Ideas That Are Just the Names of Lesbian Movie Characters

Ever since I watched Princess Cyd in 2018 (and then rewatched it the next day with my then partner) I’ve wanted to get a pit bull and name her Princess Cyd. Imagine! Most days she’d be called Cyd. When she’s really good Princess. And when she’s bad Cydney. It’s a perfect dog name, and it would be a great excuse to tell more people to watch Stephen Cone’s lovely film.

Alas, I still do not have Princess Cyd. I grew up with dogs, so I know the responsibility being a proper dog owner entails. Dogs are expensive and they require a stability I don’t have. I’m in a long distance relationship and maybe if I wanted to get a tiny dog, I could plan to travel with them, but a pit bull or even most pit bull mixes would be too challenging to take back and forth between Brooklyn and Toronto.

But I haven’t given up! Someday I’ll have Princess Cyd — after all I moved into an apartment near a dog park like some chidlless 30 year olds move into an area with good elementary schools — and, in the mean time, I’ve come up with this list of other excellent dog names from other queer movies.

  1. Jaguar, for a dog who is bold and would risk anything for someone they love like Maria Schrader in Aimée & Jaguar
  2. Benedetta (Benny for short), for a dog who according to some may not go to heaven like Virginie Efira in Benedetta
  3. PJ and Josie, for a pair of dogs who like to play and fight like Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms
  4. Corky, for a dog with a tough exterior and a tender heart like Gina Gershon in Bound
  5. Graham, for a dog who will love you before you love yourself like Clea DuVall in But I’m a Cheerleader
  6. (Martha) Dobie, for a dog who was named after a Harry Potter character years after that would’ve been cool but now it feels really not cool so you want to change it to Shirley MacLaine’s character in The Children’s Hour
  7. Valentine, for a dog who will follow you around as your little assistant like Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria
  8. Zoinx, for a dog who is an out-of-this-world weirdo like Susan Ziegler in Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
  9. Lucy Diamond, for a dog who is a lovable villain like Jordana Brewster in D.E.B.S.
  10. Zen, for a dog who reminds you to be a free ass motherfucker like Tessa Thompson in Dirty Computer
  11. Ronit, for a dog who likes to slobber like Rachel Weisz in Disobedience
  12. Diggy, for a dog who will stay by your side through any amount of hijinks like Kiersey Clemons in Dope
  13. Sergio, for a dog who will stay in bed with you for days like Laia Costa in Duck Butter
  14. Jobu Tupaki, for a dog who traverses the multiverse like Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All At Once
  15. Queen Anne, for a dog who gets what she wants when she wants it like Olivia Colman in The Favourite
  16. Legs, for a dog who is fiercely loyal and just fierce like Angelina Jolie in Foxfire
  17. Idgie, for a dog who loves pie like Mary Stuart Masterson in Fried Green Tomatoes
  18. Ricki, for a dog who loves turkey time like Jennifer Lopez in Gigli (actually turkey is bad for dogs, but also Ben is bad for Jen so…)
  19. Harper, for a dog who you want to give a second chance — and a third and a fourth — like Mackenzie Davis in Happiest Season
  20. Theodora, for a dog who will cuddle you through life’s scariest moments like Claire Bloom in The Haunting
  21. Paulie, for a dog who loves a little too hard or just really loves birds like Piper Perabo in Lost & Delirious
  22. Dylan, for a dog who loves her mommy like Lil Harlow in Mommy Is Coming
  23. Lady Divine, for a dog who is fun and filthy like Divine in Multiple Maniacs
  24. Nimona, for a dog with spunk who is hard to pin down like Chloë Grace Moretz in Nimona
  25. Diana Nyad, for a dog who really loves to swim like Annette Bening in NYAD
  26. Tory, for a dog who really loves to run like Patrice Donnelly in Personal Best
  27. Sophie, for a dog who will live with you and your soulmate on the French seaside like Lùana Bajrami in Portrait of a Lady on Fire
  28. Cleo, for a dog who is a ride or die like Queen Latifah in Set It Off
  29. Lydia Tàr, for a dog who controls all of your time like Cate Blanchett in TÀR
  30. Suzie, for a dog who is a wild thing like Neve Campbell in Wild Things

Or, you can always honor the memory of an Autostraddle icon, and name your dog Carol. <3

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?

Join AF+!
Related:

Drew Burnett Gregory

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.

Drew Burnett has written 612 articles for us.

3 Comments

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‘Agatha All Along’ Considered a Cottagecore Lesbian Backstory for Agatha and Rio

We Could Have Had It All: Agatha/Rio Backstory Was Almost Explored Further

rio and agatha in "agatha all along"

Agatha All Along is over, but, if you’re anything like my friends and I, you cannot stop thinking or talking about it, so I’m here to share you some things we’ve learned about the sinister sapphics of the show, Agatha and Rio, including plans the writers’ had that didn’t come to fruition, and new slang for queer people. (warning: Agatha All Along spoilers ahead.)

While the response to Agatha All Along was largely positive, a lot of queer people just had a tiiiiiny thing they felt was missing: more Agatha and Rio backstory. Creator Jac Schaeffer says in an interview with Variety that there was a version of show that could have included that, but the timing and pacing didn’t end up serving it. She said:

“We talked a lot about their meet cute. We had these really pretty visuals of Agatha killing people and then seeing Rio across the bodies, like that line, ‘They met over corpses.’ I mean, I saw it in my mind. It was really beautiful and also quite funny. And then the room took it in a direction that then they lived together in a cottage, and we talked at length about it, to the point of, ‘Is Rio Nicky’s father?’ We went down those paths, and they were very gratifying to explore.”

I’m sure they would have been gratifying to watch, too; if only we had ONE more episode. I’m personally down for a pre-quel series about Agatha and Rio through time. And I have a feeling Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza would be game as well, which leads me to my next point: new slang. Twitter pulled a clip of Aubrey Plaza saying the reason she joined the MCU, a universe she was previously uninterested in joining, is because she “wanted to work with Kathryn Hahn.” So just as one would say they were a “friend of Dorothy,” they can now say they “want to work with Kathryn Hahn.” Which I personally am very amused by.

About the Agatha/Rio, kiss, Schaeffer said in an interview that it wasn’t fan service, she knew it would be there (pardon the expression) all along:

“We wanted the kiss because we wanted a kiss of death. That’s what I wanted. My hope for it was that it would be sexy and beguiling and violent and toxic, and the only way for it to end is a kiss of death.”

Sasheer Zamata also talks about how her character, Jennifer Kale, is bisexual in the comics, and that there are hints of it here and there in the show.

All in all, this show was a big gay time, and I will probably never get sick of reading about it, and I hope you feel the same. I genuinely hope we get to see more of these queer witches in the future.


There Was More News All Along:

+ Chappell Roan premiered a gay country song for femme tops on SNL

+ Chloë Grace Moretz confirmed that she is gay on Instagram

+ Moretz also confirmed that she’s dating Kate Harrison

+ Elsewhere in the multiverse, Agatha All Along could have had Agatha and Rio as cottagecore lesbians

+ Queer actress Sasha Calle opens up about her work on The Flash, her friendship with Leslie Grace, and her hopes for the future

+ Sex Lives of College Girls released a full trailer (some clips ft. Reneé Rapp)

+ Gen V has added 7 new classmates for their Sophomore Year, including Yellowjackets’ Keeya King (and they’ve finished filming)

+ Selena Gomez would like people to stop commenting on her body, please and thank you

+ Early reviews are saying the Wicked movie is just as magical as we’d hoped

+ MUNA’s Katie Gavin released her debut solo album, “What a Relief”

+ Jasmin Savoy-Brown and Tawny Cypress were jokingly flirty on Instagram and I, for one, am here for it

+ Ethel Cain has dropped the first single from upcoming album, “Perverts”

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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 602 articles for us.

How A 50-Year-Old Lesbian Magazine Is Surviving Despite It All

The magazines have a distinctly old-school feel to them. The paper feels like newsprint; I always expect to come away from reading one with ink on the tips of my fingers. The covers feature artwork — a photograph or a simple design — usually sent in by readers.

Free to lesbians worldwide, each cover reads, but the suggested donation is $7/issue (more if you can, less if you can’t).

The issues include notes from subscribers, most of them enthusiastic in their support of the publication.

“I’m a fairly isolated lesbian, young and poor and Southern – a lesbian connection means everything to me,” wrote a subscriber in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Please, please keep my LC coming – for me, it’s a lifeline that lets me know that there are still others like me out there,” wrote someone in Lake Barrington, Illinois. “By the way, when I die, whatever’s left after my house sells and the bills are paid will come to LC in thanks for everything you’ve done over the years.”

“I’m so grateful there’s something for lesbians and lesbians only,” wrote a subscriber in Piano di Sorrento, Italy. “When I’m able to donate, I’ll be super glad to do so.”

Lesbian Connection turns 50 in 2024, a remarkable feat for a mostly-print magazine in an era of deep difficulties in the publishing industry, changes in the way the queer community talks to and about itself, and the ubiquity of online discussion spaces. It began in a wildly different time from this one: a time when lesbians routinely lost custody of their children, when teachers could be fired for coming out or being outed, when it wasn’t safe to put the name of their publication on the paper it came mailed in.

This is an audacious story about an audacious group of women, but it’s also a story about the ways queer people have sought one another and found one another across time, and the ways that we figure out how to tell our own stories, despite it all.


1983 - Printing LC at our Lesbian Center 1983 ©JEB (Joan E Biren)

1983 ©JEB (Joan E Biren)


On a September day in 1970, Brandeis University student Susan Saxe firebombed a National Guard Armory in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She stole a truck and ammunition. Later, she donned a red wig and a long purple dress, and along with two men, entered the back door of the State Street Bank and Trust Company in nearby Brighton, brandishing a .30-caliber rifle. The thieves fled in a getaway car with bank bags stuffed with cash. Saxe’s roommate, Katherine Ann Power, was stowed not too far away in a second getaway car to better cover their tracks.

The spree, which included one of their associates killing a Boston police officer, landed Saxe and Power on the FBI’s infamous Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, two of only 11 women to occupy that position in American history. The pair went on the lam, and stayed that way for years. For at least some part of their shared time as fugitives, Saxe and Power were lovers. They danced at a gay bar called the Warehouse near Hartford, Connecticut; they went to speculum parties together.

The important thing about Saxe and Power is that they weren’t just bank robbers: They were also militants. The money they robbed was to arm the Black Panthers and sabotage military trains. So when the FBI learned that Saxe and Power had been living in a women’s community in Kentucky, the feds began a campaign of intense investigations into feminist and lesbian communities. To be a lesbian, the logic went, was to be a radical.

(Original Caption) 10/2/1970- Boston, MA- Katherine Ann Power and Susan E. Saxe are shown pictured in wanted poster issued by Boston Police. Both girls are being sought in connection with the murder of Boston Patrolman Walter Schroeder during the hold-up of a bank in Boston's Brighton section 9/23. The two have been the subject of a nation-wide police search. Four others have been arrested in connection with the robbery.

Bettmann via Getty Images

It wasn’t a great time to be asking people to add their names to a list of lesbians. But that’s exactly what Michigan taxi driver Margy Lesher was doing.

Lesher got the idea for Lesbian Connection after taking an epic cross-country road trip with her girlfriend Goldi in a 1969 gold Ford Mustang that barely made it over the Rockies. “A couple of my friends had traveled [a similar route] and they knew people, women, in Atlanta. So that was the first place we stopped,” Lesher told me.

They traveled like that, one place at a time, showing up at the doorsteps of lesbians they only knew through a friend or a friend of a friend.

“Sometimes we would get into town and not know anything or anyone. And one of us would go to the nearest phone booth and try to look up in the phone book any women’s centers or YWCAs or whatever, try to find some woman-oriented thing and call and see if we could find a place to crash.” It was intoxicating to find women like them all over the country, but it was also the seed of an idea. There were lesbian books and lesbian bookstores and lesbian record labels and lesbian musicians all over the country. There was just no good way for lesbians to find out about them.

“If there was no way to get the word out, those things weren’t going to succeed,” she said.

After the six-month road trip, Lesher and Goldi landed back in Michigan along with two kittens, Pip and Squeak, that they’d picked up at a women’s center in Utah. Lesher put the word out, letting everyone know she was starting something new. About a dozen people came to the first meeting.

On the phone with Lesher, now in her 70s, me in Massachusetts and her down in her home in Florida, I pressed for details about that crucial founding meeting. Was there music playing? What were the vibes? Did they have snacks?

Many of those details have been forgotten. The only thing she could say for sure, she said, was that some people were sitting on the floor, because back in those days, her friends had the kind of knees that would tolerate that sort of thing.

Lesbian Connection would mail its introductory letter to about 400 addresses in 1974, with the following explanation of their intentions:

“LESBIAN CONNECTION means communication… we need feedback. … Our purpose is to create a network of communication between lesbians in this country and in Canada; the rest is up to you. We are not yet in sight of a national lesbian community . . . . . but we are on our way.”

the first flyer mailed out to community announcing Lesbian Connection

“Did you ever come into contact with anyone that you thought could be an FBI agent?” I asked, following up on the whole Susan Saxe situation.

Lesher thought about it. She hadn’t. But there was a woman named Dena who volunteered with her at the women’s center who said the FBI went to her apartment to talk to her about her activities with lesbian organizations.

Bank robber Katherine Ann Power would remain on the FBI’s Most Wanted list until 1984; she’d remain on the lam until 1993, when she surrendered to the authorities after living for years under the alias Alice Metzinger. Susan Saxe was arrested in Philadelphia in 1975; at her arraignment, Saxe reportedly promised to “fight on in every way as a lesbian, a feminist and an Amazon.”

Lesher and her allies fought on, too. For many years, they’d do it as volunteers, even paying for the privilege of participating. As caretakers of this new thing, they wanted a name for themselves. They called themselves the Ambitious Amazons.

1985ish - At Michfest in mid-'80s

1985

The most notable thing about LC is that it’s a forum: They print letters, articles, book reviews, obituaries, thank-you notes and responses all sent in by their readers.

“My favorite way of describing Lesbian Connection is that it was an online bulletin board before we ever thought of online bulletin boards,” said Julie Enszer, editor of the lesbian literary magazine Sinister Wisdom. “That was one of the revolutionary values of the 1970s: They wanted to hear women’s voices unadulterated by what they saw as a patriarchal system of editing things.”

LC’s editorial stance – that it prints most anything anyone sends in – came from the group of people who curled up on couches and on the floor at that first meeting back in the 1970s. None of them were writers; what would they put in a magazine? They decided from the onset to be a forum for lesbians to get their own words out there.

It may have been revolutionary in the ‘70s, but today it’s a tricky and apolitical stance to take, one that in a strange way puts the Ambitious Amazons in the same position as the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. How much responsibility should they take for what users submit and what they choose to print?

They got themselves into a bit of a spat recently. The cover of the May/June 2024 edition showcased an image of an old pin that reads, “FEMALE BY BIRTH…LESBIAN BY GRACE AND IF YOU HAPPEN TO SEE GRACE TELL HER I SAY HI.” Some readers canceled their subscription, angered at the transphobia of the message.

In the following issue, Lesbian Connection printed a comment they’d received on Facebook from somebody named Jennifer: “While I understand that some lesbians have strong feelings about trans women and are given a voice inside the magazine, seeing the bigoted phrase ‘Female by Birth’ on the May/June cover really disappointed me. It shows a lack of inclusion of all lesbians, a decision clearly made by the editorial staff, and, thus, representative of LC’s stance. How gross and divisive.”

After Jennifer’s comment, LC published an editor’s note responding to it: “You may be surprised to find out that we do not, as a group, choose what’s on the cover of LC. We don’t all endorse, or sometimes even like, what’s on our covers any more than we agree with everything printed inside.” Somebody had sent the button in as part of a conversation on lesbian visibility; someone on staff remembered it as a joke from back in the day.

Lesher told me something similar over the phone. “Don’t get mad at us and don’t thank us,” she said. “We’re not in charge of what people are saying.”

“If you accept all things that people send in, people are going to send in stuff that is hurtful and painful to people who have additional marginalized identities,” Sinister Wisdom’s Enszer said.

Lesbian connection boxes

Back issues of ‘Lesbian Connection’ in the archives

The elephant in the room, it seems, is the generational divide. I don’t have age demographics for Lesbian Connection’s subscribers, but judging by the people who write in and what they share about themselves, I think it’s fair to say its core audience is Gen X and Baby Boomers, who grew up in a completely different climate around gender and sexuality. They grew up in an era of womyn-with-a-y, goddess-based spirituality, labrys necklaces, women taking drastic action “to separate themselves from men romantically, historically, and politically,” as Lena Wilson put it in Slate. 

“There was gay or straight, and then there were the dreaded bi women, but they just hadn’t decided yet,” subscriber Ann Reppun told me. “Which team do you bat for? Do you sing in our choir? Do you go to our church? Are you a lesbian? Now the continuum has become acceptable.”

Months after the “Female by birth” button was published, a subscriber in Wisconsin followed up. “We are talking about a vintage pin that dates back to around the ‘70s,” they wrote. “I do take offense to labeling our lesbian elders’ pioneering efforts to promote lesbian positivity as ‘gross and divisive’ because you are judging them by our modern language standards.”

Lesbian Connection subscriber Natasha Hope-Johnstone, who is trans, says she doesn’t hold much malice towards what she calls a “transphobia problem” in the magazine. “The flaming bigots I obviously don’t like, and the seemingly lack of an editor to put an end to the endless discussions about trans people seems inviting of bigots,” she said. But, she added, it felt to her like mostly older readers who seemed confused.

Of course, it’s not true that younger queer people are universally more trans-inclusive and older lesbians aren’t: Trans women have always existed in lesbian spaces, and as far back as the 1970s, some cis lesbians fought for their right to be there. But the dominant culture of queer spaces has changed, and plenty of lesbian elders haven’t come along for that ride. Lesbian Connection remains a rare intergenerational queer space where younger lesbians can both learn from their elders and encourage them to do better.

booth at michfest for lesbian connection in 2002

“Lesbian Connection” booth at 2002 Michfest

From the very beginning, the Ambitious Amazons tried to make good on their promise of connecting the lesbian community.

“We are trying to get lesbians in every state (every city?) to be our contacts, to spread the word about this paper as well as to keep us informed of what all is happening in their area,” the Amazons wrote in December, 1974.

People agreed, and they still agree to it today. In 2024, Lesbian Connected published listings for 750 Contact Dykes, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and even sometimes home addresses, in 24 countries and 49 states (all but South Dakota). Any lesbian from anywhere can find safe harbor in Masterton, New Zealand or Jalisco, Mexico or Cooper Landing, Alaska. Not all of the CDs, as they’re called, have volunteered to be hosts, but many of them have. It’s like an informal gay version of CouchSurfing, but it’s more than that. It feels like a clear solution to the problem of Lesher’s road trip, those days of showing up in an unfamiliar city and rifling through a phone book looking for somewhere safe.

They knew that putting your name down on a list of lesbians was a risk, and they tried to make that risk worthwhile. They tried to keep their community safe.

“The FBI has recently questioned some lesbians about their knowledge of women fugitives. Some women who refused to testify before FBI-instigated grand juries are now in jail,” they wrote in May of 1975, around the time of Susan Saxe’s arrest. “We do feel that all of us should be aware of what is happening to lesbians around the country. But as one lesbian pointed out before the Lesbian Cultural Exchange, ‘If even one lesbian does not attend the conference because of fear of FBI investigations, the FBI is winning.’ We cannot begin to fight oppression without being well informed.”

It was the catch-22 of queer publishing: Building a national lesbian community was a risk, but it felt to the Ambitious Amazons like a necessary one. That, at heart, has been the story of queer community-building across time and across cultures, from the Warehouse where Saxe and Power danced the night away to The Stonewall Inn in New York City: We come together however we can, no matter the risk. Finding one another puts us at risk, but it’s only through finding one another that we can keep each other safe.

1987-a - LC's board president Kathy Blake and margy accepting an award for LC at the 1987 National Women's Music Festival

Board President Kathy Blake and Margy Lesher accepting an award for LC at the 1987 National Women’s Music Festival

To call the early years of Lesbian Connection a shoestring operation is an understatement. In their second issue in December of 1974, in an act of fairly radical financial transparency, LC published their very first budget for the upcoming year. Their total budget was $865.80, or about $5,251 today. They said that up to that point, they’d spent about $95 dollars, including $8.10 for a post office box rental, $12.00 for the printing of flyers, and, quaintly, $3 on miscellaneous office supplies.

They saved some money because volunteers brought reams of paper to donate to the cause. With no typewriter of their own, they snuck into various offices at night to type up what people had sent in.

A lesbian printer in Grand Rapids volunteered to print a few issues, and then the Iowa City Women’s Press printed it for some years. It was about eight or 10 hours each way, cardboard boxes full of magazines weighing down a Toyota station wagon that had been donated by two women from Detroit who called themselves the Red Dykes. They held collating parties; they stapled each magazine by hand.

lesbian connection offices

Printing and Collating at the Lesbian Connection Offices // Lesbian Connection Holiday Party

“One of the women who was on the collating crew, she was probably in her seventies, and she got really tired of the stapling,” Lesher said. “So she went out and spent $200 or $300 and bought us an electric stapler.”

Eventually they began to pay a small hourly wage to all staff: $2/hour. In 1994, they bought an old house to use as their office, but until then, the day-to-day work of producing the magazine was done around the dining room table at Lesher’s house, with Amazons taking turns using the computers. (They got their own after advertising a Computer Fund; suggested donation $2.)

Over time, they became more of a traditional employer. They started to offer health care and retirement benefits. But it wasn’t easy.

“Tell me if this is the wrong impression,” I told Lesher on the phone, “But it sounds a little bit like every issue is a victory.”

Lesher agreed. “Every time it goes to the printer, it feels like an accomplishment,” she said.

Sometimes, the Amazons found themselves staring down the end of a fiscal year knowing their income couldn’t cover their expenses. But subscribers came through in the nick of time with donations. As an example, one year there wasn’t going to be enough money for the regular contribution to employees’ retirement funds. They put the word out. A reader sent in a check.

Lisy Harmon, an Ambitious Amazon who has been with the magazine since 2001, said it was that exact kind of contribution that reminded her how much the magazine means to its subscribers.

“This is a place where they can send in their voices to be heard, and find out they’re not alone. There are other women like them,” she said. “They’ve shown many times that they want us to be able to continue to do that.”

1986-2 - LC staple remover

LC’S subscriber numbers are dwindling. They’ve gone down from about 17,000 in 2014 to about 13,000 today. They’re trying to appeal to younger audiences by being more online – there’s a Facebook group, and you can get the publication emailed to you – but judging by the letters from new subscribers, most people are still finding out about it by word of mouth.

For younger subscribers I spoke to, the appeal is less existential and more about curiosity.

“This was my first exposure to people who have changed their name to Moonstar and live on ‘The Land,’ this kind of thing,” said Rebecca Thayer, 30. “It was realizing there was this whole community out there of women’s land, this whole separate area of lesbian spaces that I had not heard of.”

“I’ll be honest that I mostly got a subscription because they include a few pages of Dykes to Watch Out For in each issue, and it was free which for a chronically poor lesbian trying to understand and connect to other lesbians felt like good,” Hope-Johnstone, 30, said. “Though for the first 3 years all I basically did was read the comic parts and skim the rest of the publication.”

Lesbian Connection has outlived countless queer publications. Off our backs; Dyke: A quarterly; Tribad: A Lesbian Separatist Newsjournal. It’s not easy out there for a free queer publication that relies on the generosity of its readers. But in a 2023-2024 fiscal year, Lesbian Connection spent about $602,000 on labor, about $108,000 on printing and postage, and about $28,000 on supplies (a hell of a lot more than that quaint $3 in 1974.) They came away with a total gain of close to $24,000. Their biggest source of income is donations.

Today, Lesbian Connection’s office sits inside an old residential house on a quiet street in Lansing, Michigan. There are two office cats, Izzy and Oliver, the spiritual descendents of the original pair, Pip and Squeak. “They keep the place running,” said Liz Coburn, an Ambitious Amazon. “Any time we feel like we’re taking things a little too seriously, there’s a cat toy that needs to be tossed.”

cat looking for a good pic

Office cat on the hunt for a good pic

In 2011, they expanded further, buying another residential house right across the street from their office. That second building houses an archive of Lesbian Connection issues going back 50 years, and the kind of expansive collection of fiction and nonfiction by and for lesbians that a public library could never carry.

“We hear all the time that libraries are being pressured to not have certain books on their shelves,” Coburn said. “We have books that will be available for our community and we just feel like that’s very important.”

It’s also the archival function of the magazine itself that makes it particularly special. LGBTQ+ archives around the country are overflowing with zines and event posters and protest art and the writings of famous queer people, but they can lack the experiences of the vast majority of us who will never donate our papers to a special collection. By publishing the words of everyday lesbians, LC is preserving stories that might otherwise be lost to history.

In the September/October issue, a septuagenarian in Boston described her “out and proud” “working-class dyke collective” getting in people’s faces back in the 60s and 70s. A 70-year-old reader shared her story of growing up as a tomboy in Dublin, Ireland. A 77-year-old organizer from Benson, Arizona wrote about her house being egged, her children being attacked at school, her tires flattened because of her lobbying for change.

Those stories matter, and they deserve to be preserved.

working on an issue at the table in 1988

Working on an issue at Margy’s dining room, 1988

It’s hard to say quite why Lesbian Connection has survived when so many other queer publications haven’t. Maybe it’s the physical feeling of rough paper in your hands. Maybe it’s that the responses and the responses to the responses come at two-month intervals, drawing out the dopamine hit of good gossip into a delicious slow burn. But the Amazons would say it’s because they’re a forum. As long as lesbians have things to say, they’ll need a place to say it.

Lesbian Connection was founded in a decidedly pre-internet era, when there were no lesbian characters on TV or in the movies, no lesbian stories on library bookshelves, no out queer pop stars on the radio. Finding another lesbian, another queer person, was always a victory. Today, many younger queer people find one another on TikTok and Tumblr and Lex, on subreddits and Discord servers, at Pride marches and queer clothing swaps and book clubs and WNBA watch parties. But many of us remain isolated in small towns and conservative states, in unaccepting church communities, in jobs where it’s safer to keep quiet, in schools that are removing books about us, in countries that criminalize our love.

The Ambitious Amazons point to those places as their reason for continuing on, the reason that 13,000 people still receive the magazine in its unobtrusive manila envelope every other month. The name of the publication is still not printed anywhere on the outside.

“The bottom line is we are still receiving what women want us to print. Lesbians are still writing in, they are still renewing, they’re still signing up,” Harmon said. “I see it carrying on as long as there’s a need for it.”

Susan Saxe’s note, the one where she vowed to fight on as a lesbian and an Amazon, sounds a whole lot like Harmon. “The love I share with my sisters is a far more formidable weapon than the police state can bring against us,” Saxe wrote. “Keep growing. Keep strong, I am a free woman and I can keep strong, Pass the word. I am unafraid.”

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?

Join AF+!

Sydney

Sydney Boles is a candidate for a Masters of Journalism at Medill School of Journalism. She writes about homelessness, housing insecurity and gay stuff. You can follow her on Twitter @sydneyboles.

Sy has written 3 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. Thanks for linking to my article in News is Out, Sydney. This is a great piece. Back in 2003/2004, I used Lesbian Connection to find a place to stay while I was out in Portland teaching at Rock and Roll Camp for Girls. I was kindly taken in by an older lesbian couple for a few days, who didn’t know me at all. They went to bed at 8pm ha but it was an amazing experience. Always grateful for LC.

  2. I love this! I just happened upon Lesbian Connection and received my first issue last week! I have struggled with feeling disconnected from other lesbians and love that it taps me into that community, especially that it contains perspectives from lesbians in older generations than me. Lesbian centric spaces are so important to help preserve our history, I’m so glad that LC has been doing that work for so long!

  3. This was so cool to read, as someone who has been receiving LC for years! The article itself is great but I also LOVED the pictures!

  4. I have been a subscriber of LC for at least 10 years and getting it on the digital version. I might switch back to the hardcopy version so that I have that paper in my hands again because of this article.

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