25 Lesbian Movies on Hulu That You Can Watch Right Now For Fun If You Want

You might be wondering, “What best lesbian movies are on Hulu? I bet some of the best lesbian movies are all over Hulu!” More specifically: “Where can I see two women stare longingly into each other’s eyeballs?????” Well good news! we have you covered.


Our Top 10 Picks For Lesbian, Trans and Queer Women Focused Movies on Hulu:

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

#4 on our list of the Best Queer Movies of 2023

Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall. She is bundled up in warm clothes, leaning against a car, the snowy alps in the distance behind her.

Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning meditation on crime and justice in the snow stars Sandra Hüller as a bisexual German writer living in France who is charged with murder after her husband is found dead, having descended from the top floor of their house into the snow. ” The two-and-a-half hour runtime clips along with the excitement one might expect from the crime genre,” writes Drew. “And yet, the film’s greatest strength is how severely it rebukes that genre and its sibling genre: the courtroom drama.”


Blue Jean (2023)

#17 on our list of the Best Queer Movies of 2023

two lesbians laughing together in a bar

In 1980s Ireland, Jean is a high school PE teacher and netball coach who dodges lesbian rumors at work while enjoying a robust queer community at home and a radical dyke girlfriend, Viv. As homophobic politicians fight to root lesbians out of education altogether, Jean’s worlds begin to collide when she runs into a new student, Lois, at the gay bar. “The triumph ofBlue Jean is that it takes time showing the queer lives at stake,” writes Drew in her review of Blue Jean. “This is not a dour film. It has hot lesbian sex, sweaty snapshots of queer bars, and, ultimately, portrays the power of community. This makes the constricting environment of the school all the more painful.”


Carol (2015)

#5 on The 100 Best Lesbian Movies

screenshot from carol movie

Perhaps you’ve heard of Carol? There is this fancy woman Carol Aird, and she meets a younger woman, Therese, at a department store. She leaves her gloves and then they have lunch. Then they have an entire affair! It takes place in the 1950s.


Crush (2022)

#62 on The 100 Best Lesbian Movies

AJ and Paige looking at each other on the track field

This delightful teen rom-com is a lesbian movie on Hulu full of queer actors playing queer characters. Paige is an aspiring artist who joins the track team to beef up her college resume, hoping to get closer to her eternal crush, Gabby — but ends up finding herself drawn to somebody unexpected! “From the extremely winsome leads to the easy story beats and quick humor, it’s darn cute and wholly queer,” wrote Analyssa in her review. “By about 20 minutes in, I had adapted to all the Gen Z speak and was fully along for the ride.”


How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)

Sasha Lane and Jayme Lawson lean their heads together in an emotional moment.

Drew called this movie, a “critique of non-violence in climate activism, a suggestion that destruction of property in pursuit of sabotage is not only morally justified but morally urgent,” a “radical masterpiece.” Sasha Lane plays Theo, a young woman dying from a rare cancer caused by pollution, and Jaume Lawson plays her Theo’s girlfriend, Alisha.


Sally (2025)

Comes out June 17, 2025

sally ride

The documentary of the first American woman to go to space — remained closeted throughout her life, but gave her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy the go-ahead to attribute herself accurately in her obituary. Tam is the “true star” of this stirring film about Sally’s life and her relationship, wrote Drew, “delightfully blunt, funny and charming, and matter-of-fact.”


Fantatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (2024)

Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara

For over fifteen years, a rogue fan has posed as Tegan Quin, building relationships with other fans and even connecting with Tegan’s real-life friends and associates online, hacking into her computer and quietly terrorizing her life. This is about her mission to find her catfisher, but it’s also about so much more — a specific moment in queer online pop culture history when stars like Tegan & Sara made themselves available to fans who were looking for community and accessibility, and how that vulnerability ended up cutting both ways. Autostraddle readers overlapped a lot with Tegan & Sara fandom, so I was personally just so, so very captivated by it.


Happiest Season (2020)

A screenshot of "Happiest Season" in which Kristen Stewart smiles at Mackenzie Davis. This is a lesbian movie available for streaming on Hulu.

This hit holiday lesbian movie by Hulu is a rom-com co-written and directed by Clea Duvall. It stars the one and only Kristen Stewart as Abby, who’s meeting her girlfriend Harper’s (Mackenzie Davis) family for the first time. But, big surprise! They don’t know that Harper is gay! Also, Aubrey Plaza plays Harper’s ex-girlfriend, Riley.


In the Summers (2024)

two girls in the summer

Queer director Alesandra Lacorazza Samudio’s directorial debut is a semi-autobiographical film about two sisters, girly Eva and tomboy Victoria, who live in California and spend fraught summers with their father in New Mexico. ”The greatest strength of In the Summers are these well-written, realistic, complicated characters and watching how the change — or don’t — and how their relationships change — or don’t — over time,” wrote Drew.


Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019)

#4 on our list of Best Lesbian Movies of All Time

A screenshot of "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" in which one woman holds another woman's face on a beach. This is a lesbian movie available for streaming on Hulu.

“The invention of lesbian cinema is a project as old as cinema itself,” wrote Drew Gregory in her review. “But every once in a while there is a work of art so specific, so complex, so new in its oldness and old in its newness, that it moves the craft, our craft, to another level of seeing.”


Other Lesbian and Queer Films On Hulu:

Adam (2019)

Based on a controversial graphic novel, Rhys Ernst’s Adam follows a teenage boy who spends the summer of 2006 embedded in his older sister’s vibrant queer community under false pretenses. Read this oral history and give it another chance.


The Almond and the Seahorse (2022)

Based on a play, this “stubbornly lifeless” drama finds Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg playing Sarah and Toni, respectively, two women struggling to manage their lives with partners suffering from traumatic brain injuries — Toni’s partner Gwen and Sarah’s husband Joe. Toni and Sarah’s connection eventually grows romantic and sexual as they search for comfort in this cold world.


Anaïs in Love (2022)

“Throughout the film, Anaïs’ interest in the married man pivots to a much greater interest in the man’s wife,” writes Drew of this lesbian film on Hulu about a chaotic thirty-something who finds herself entangled with the wife of a publisher she’s having an affair with. “But it’s not the film’s queerness that separates it from its subgenre — although I’m grateful for the steamy sex scene. What Anaïs in Love does differently is it lets its protagonist get away with everything.”


Bendetta (2021)

Our “sacrilegious lesbian nun movie” is based on the true story of a 17th-century nun who finds herself entangled in a lesbian affair with a novice and has visions that threaten the Church’s very foundation. Drew was underwhelmed, however, by its alleged scandalousness, noting, “Verhoeven’s offering ends up feeling like a relic of a bygone era — one where the only people allowed to film lesbian sex were straight cis dudes ignorant to the most exciting ways we fuck.”


Boys on the Side (1995)

A deeply beloved 90s classic in which Whoopi Goldberg plays a lesbian musician on a post-crime road trip with Mary Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore. The Indigo Girls! Nineties lipstick! Southwestern landscapes! There is so much processing and bonding in this movie, it’s almost like it’ll never end (just like a real lesbian relationship!).


Boy Meets Girl (2014)

“Eric Schaeffer’s romcom is the sweet — and messy — love story we deserve. Michelle Hendley is an absolute star as Ricky Jones, a small town girl with a YouTube following and a desire for love. It takes a dalliance with the engaged Francesca to reveal the love she has for her male best friend — and what a dalliance it is!” writes Drew. “Ricky’s sex scene with Francesca is hot and tender, and while some of us may have been rooting for the two of them to end up together, the whole thing is so sweet you probably won’t mind that she ends up with the friend. And Hendley is just so good — she’s such a pleasure to watch on screen.”


Elena Undone (2010)

As Erin eloquently wrote in her review I Watched Lesbian Classic ‘Elena Undone’ and I’m Sorry What, “rather than grade it to be a “good” or “bad” or “really not very good” or “garbagio” movie, I will simply ask a neutral question, which is: I’m sorry what.” The wife of a pastor embarks on an affair with a writer.


Fire lsland (2022)

This heartwarming film about a group of gay friends looking for love and sex and community on Fire Island isn’t a lesbian movie, but it’s so hilarious and heartwarming and fantastic that any queer person who believes in queer community would enjoy it. Plus,Margaret Cho gives a delightful performance as “career brunch server, age unknown, lesbian scam queen” Erin. “I lovedFire Island because it was real. It’s real to be erased and undesirable in white queer spaces as a fat person of color,” wrote Carmen in her review. “It’s real to be gay and thirst after Christine Baranski or laugh until your sides hurt over Marissa Tomei. It’s real to want to escape for seven days and never once see a straight person.”


Jagged Mind (2023)

“…my favorite works of queer horror aren’t so easily bound by genre descriptions,” wrote Kayla of this time-looping lesbian erotic thriller, “and Jagged Mind views to me much like a haunted house story — without the actual haunted house. The haunted house, instead, is a relationship.”


Loving Annabelle (2006)

This is one of those formative lesbian films that holds a special place in every millennial’s heart, despite its problematic elements. Annabelle is sent to a Catholic girl’s boarding school after being expelled from the two schools before that — and once there, she falls for her teacher, Simone.


Moving On (2023)

Two friends, Claire (Jane Fonda) and Evie (Lily Tomlin), reunite at the funeral of a third friend with whom, in college, they were an inseparable trio. The group drifted apart afterwards — Evie towards living an out gay life and her cello career, Joyce marrying a terrible man, Claire getting re-married, having kids, getting a corgi. Both arrive at the funeral with ulterior motives — Claire, for one, wants to kill Joyce’s husband. “Watching Fonda and Tomlin perform is like watching an Olympic athlete or a world-renowned ballerina,” writes Drew. “They are masters of their craft and it’s awe-inspiring to witness — even if the material doesn’t always live up to their skill.”


A Perfect Ending (2012)

As Nicole Conn movies go, this one is on the more bearable end — a rich, blonde, middle-aged wife in an unhappy marriage confides in her lesbian friends that she’s never had an orgasm and she rarely has sex with her husband, so they hire a high-class escort (Jessica Clark) to show her the ropes of herself.


Prom Dates (2024)

“In Prom Dates, best friends Jess and Hannah (played by Antonia Gentry and Julia Lester respectively) hope to fulfill the pact they made when they were 13 to have the best prom ever. But now, it’s the day before, and both girls find themselves without dates. Determined to get things back on track, Jess and Hannah set out to find new dates, Hannah comes out to Jess as a lesbian, and chaos ensues. Prom Datesis not a bad movie, but it’s also not a good movie.” — Sai, Hulu’s Prom Dates Tries to be Superbad for Queer Girls


Scream (2022)

coming June 8

Scream V introduces us to Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy, the queer niece of Randy Meeks who shares her deceased uncle’s vast knowledge of horror tropes. The story didn’t blow us away, but it is what it is and we appreciate that.


Tell it to The Bees (2018)

This romantic drama film set in the 1950s stars Anna Paquin as Jean, a new doctor in a small town who makes a connection with Lydia (Hollilday Grainger), whose young son bonds with Jean over their shared interest in bee colonies. But Jean and Lydia’s relationship, believe it or not, is a scandal!


Thirteen (2003)

Queer actor Evan Rachel Wood’s iconic coming-of-age movie finds her playing Tracy, a good kid who lives with her mom (Holly Hunter) who is transformed by her friendship with her school’s resident bad girl, Evie (Nikki Reed), a friendship that trips Tracy into a spiral of drugs, sex and self-harm. “Thirteen, for better or worse, belongs in the canon of lesbian cinema,” writes Drew. “Its tale of queer girl coming-of-age goes deeper than a kiss — even a French one.”


Under the Christmas Tree (2021)

Under the Christmas Treeis famously Lifetime’s first-ever lesbian Christmas movie! Elise Bauman is marketing whiz Alma Beltran, who crosses paths with a Christmas Tree Salesperson (?) Charlie while on the hunt for the prefect tree for the Maine Governor’s Holiday Celebration right in Alma’s backyard. What begins with sparring leads to sparking and romance with the help of Ricki Lake, the town’s pâtissière extraordinaire, who is an inspirational figure to all.


Other movies on Hulu with a minimal amount of Lesbian / Bisexual content:

All Fun and Games (2023)

A horror movie about a group of teens in Salem who find a cursed knife from the 17th century that turns children’s games into horrorshows. Laurel Marsden is Sophie, a lesbian on her way to Smith College and the best friend of Billie, one of two protagonists.

Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar (2021)

There’s some homoerotic themes and one ill-conceived threesome, but Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar is a delight despite how mostly straight it is. “It’s nonsensical and preposterous and silly and and senseless,” wrote Heather in her review. “It’s like spending 90 minutes inside a fever dream a Kristin Wiig ’80s sketch character might have if she got high inside some kind of Mars Cheese Castle/Dylan’s Candy Bar co-op. And I loved it.”

Black Swan (2010)

It’s genuinely difficult to decide which of the three categories on this list Black Swan fits into! Anyhow, devoted balerina (Natalie Portman) is consumed by her ambitions and brought to the brink of madness.

Death on the Nile (2022)

This adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic novel finds Hercule Poirot aboard a Karnak traversing the river Nile, attempting to solve some murders! Unlike the original novel, this version features Mrs. Bowers and Marie Van Schuyler as members of a secret lesbian relationship with each other.

The Donor Party (2023)

Fresh out of a messy divorce and unfruitful online dating experiments, recently single Jaclyn has decided to get pregnant and live her dream of being a Mom by any means necessary, enlisting her friends to pull off “the ultimate sperm heist.” Her friend Molly invites “three good prospects” for Jaclyn to seduce to a birthday party for her husband Geoff.According to Movieweb, “naughtiness abounds” when “Amandine (Bria Henderson), a lesbian with eyes on Geoff’s sister, encourages Jaclyn to get down and dirty.”

The Drop (2023)

Set at a lesbian destination wedding, this comedy is focused on a straight couple who arrives and immediately drops a baby.Read Kayla’s review of “The Drop.”

Fresh (2022)

This horror movie finds a girl on an endless bad date with a seemingly perfect man who turns out to be a cannibal. Her bisexual best friend bi best friend Mollie (played by Jojo T. Gibbs of Twenties!) ends up having to save her ass.Read Kayla’s review of Fresh.

Mack & Rita(2022)

A comedy that wastes a lot of talented actors in which twentysomething Mack Martin, who feels like an old lady on the inside, becomes one (Diane Keaton) through an age-regression pod, while visiting Palm Springs with her lesbian best friend Carla (Taylour Paige).

Spencer (2021)

Kristen Stewart has a stunning turn as Princess Diana of Wales in this biopic focused entirely on Diana’s Christmas at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate while rumors of an impending divorce stirred about. Stewart’s Diana is gorgeously nervous, manic, unsettled, haunted. Her royal dresser, Maggie, is a lesbian, Diana’s closest friend and most treasured confidant.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

This biopic telling the story of Billie Holiday is “heavy on trauma and light on queerness,” going so far as to include a kiss between Billie and Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne) in the trailer that was cut from the film! Read our review of The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

Whitney: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (2022)

“Whitney and Robyn moments are sprinkled throughout the film,” writes Amari, “with brief portrayals of Robyn cheering on Whitney’s televised performances from home, acting as her creative director on the sidelines, and begging Whitney to leave Bobby Brown, but they are passing moments — and they certainly do not capture the confirmed emotionally intimate nor romantic elements of their relationship.”


So there you have it, all the lesbian movies on Hulu that we could find! And we searched high and low! Which are you most excited to dust off and revisit, or watch for the first time?

Want more streaming lesbian movies?

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

56 Comments

  1. I’ve seen Anchor and Hope and it is DECIDEDLY mediocre and far too caught up in men and their ability to ruin lesbian domestic bliss (ie The Kids Are Alright vibes). However, it is partially in Spanish which is a fun change, and it has Tonks from Harry Potter as a fit dyke, soooo it’s worth a watch.

  2. I may have screamed a little with joy when I saw the title of this. I’m so excited to watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire! Thank you for letting us know it’s on Hulu now! And for the rest of the list :)

  3. Would love to get a review from the team for Adam, since with what I have read thus far about the movie, I am unsure about giving it any money to find out if it is okay to watch or just flaming BS.

  4. Okay, so I just finished watching Vita & Virginia for the first time. Too funny to see an article about it now!

    • I took it off my list because all the reviews said it was terrible. What was your take?

      • For my part I really liked it. I loved seeing Virginia brought to life, her struggles, her sexuality. And Vita, the original Shane ! And oh my the wardrobe is divine.

        Caveat : now that I’ve seen a few Movies Without Men™ , if I were to see Vita & Virginia again I might find it grating.

  5. Thank you for writing this. Finding good lesbian/queer cinema is so difficult.

    I hate wasting 2 hours just to be mad by the end.

  6. Adam is a Transphobic diaster of a film. It’s offensive that you included it in the list.

    I’m hurt to have to even post this to remind Autostraddle how deeply offensive this film is to so many queer people.

    • I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few questions. I haven’t seen the film but I’ve read some reviews. It doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in but (of the reviews I’ve read) it seems like others have found it problematic but not entirely offensive.

      Have you seen the film and if so would you be willing to share what you found offensive about it? Also, if others enjoyed the film then why should it not be included on the list? Not saying that queer artists can’t make insensitive art but doesn’t having queer talent involved give the film some credibility?

  7. Desert Hearts definitely holds up. I saw it the year it was released, and it shook my world. Still does.

  8. If you like A Simple Favor I cannot recommend enough A Simple Podcast. It’s got three queer hosts and they have an episode where they interview Paul Fieg and one dedicated entirely to the costumes and they even interview Blake motherfucking Lively herself. Do yourself a favor

    • As someone who loves A Simple Favor so much that I “accidentally” bought two copies, thank you so much for that recommendation!

  9. I LOVED Princess Cyd. How cool is that!

    It took me forever to finally decide to watch Booksmart a while back but I’m so glad that i did.

    I might have to resubscribe to HULU…*sigh*

  10. I was able to watch Liz in September. I wanted to like it, but that plot was not for me. Having a bet if she can sleep with the straight girl reminds me of those cis-het movies where guys bet if he can get with a certain girl.

  11. Ummm I’ll take yr word for it that The Girl King is solidly mediocre but those coats are AMAZING! I want onnneeee.

  12. FYI for those lacking a Hulu subscription (or who don’t want to pay for it), check to see if your cell phone or cable provider includes a free subscription. I get a basic (aka with commercials) Hulu subscription included with my Sprint cell phone plan, and my mom gets hers with her Xfinity cable package. Worth a look if you are paying for phone/cable anyway!

  13. I still think Portrait of A Lady on Fire should be number one on this list. What Celine Sciamma does with this film in my mind was Oscar worthy as a director. She so got screwed as did the actresses. So few words but everything throughout the film builds with each look. We know just what the actresses, characters are thinking, feeling with out ever saying as much.
    And at the end when Marianne sees the portrait of Heloise and she is holding the book open to the page that Marianne drew her picture on it lets us know that she still loves her and thinks of her. The last night they were together Heloise tells Marianne I feel regret. Marianne tells Heloise do not feel regret but “remember” That is also I think what the final scene is about when they are both at the opera and the music playing is the one Marianne played for Heloise on the piano. Once again I think Heloise is sad, but remembering.

  14. Thank you so much for this! I’m endlessly frustrated that the LGBTQ category isn’t divided into subsections.

  15. Wait, what’s wrong with Elena Undone?! It is one of my all-time favorite flicks and so you’ve truly piqued my interest by informing us you’d walk out of the room if it was on!

  16. Thanks for the list! Reaching for the Moon looks really good.

    I can’t actually watch Happiest Season anymore because I had first watched it with my ex girlfriend. Now to me it is “Unhappiest Season.” lol

  17. Wait, what’s wrong with Elena Undone?! It is one of my all-time favorite flicks and so you’ve truly piqued my interest by informing us you’d walk out of the room if it was on!

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  19. Such cute ideas! I remember what little nightmares my brother and I were at restaurants. It wasn’t until we discovered paper football when we settled down… sort of.

    Thank you so much for stopping by my blog the other day! That was really sweet of you to do so. I’d love to see the progress you are making on your scoreboard! fin.

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  22. Lesbian movies are such a trip. I am so excited to see these women stare at each other, touch hands, and carry a big rock together.

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  24. Under the Christmas Tree is cute as shit for what it is. A Lifetime film. Just nothing but wholesomeness and a couple I wanted to spend more time with.

    Generally, I think most “lesbian films” are awful in terms of quality and acting(like a majority of this list) but I actually had fun with this one.

  25. I recently watched “Life Partners” with low expectations and was surprised by how much I liked it. I thought it was a very realistic portrayal of how a friendship can be impacted by one of the parties investing a lot of time in a romantic relationship. I recommended it to my straight friend. Wasn’t the biggest fan of their “bitch” and “slut” dynamic but given that it was two white women…..

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  27. It’s so frustrating to me that Elena Undone gets ridiculed yet films like The World To Come are raved about. Elena is my personal favourite and I can admit it isn’t without fault but…SPOILER ALERT

    At least no one dies and there isn’t some really fucked up scene of flashes between passionate love making and death. How was that supposed to be anything other than incredibly depressing and a poor cinematographic choice…

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Michelladonna Does It for the Queens Baddies

photos by Danté

Have you heard about the chonkalicious kitty cat in a Queens bodega? What about the juicy bodega cat in East Harlem? If you have, then you’re probably one of the nearly one million people who follow Shop Cats online. If you’ve ever watched one of Shop Cats’ clips and clocked the host’s lethal, heeled knee-high boot, jorts, and neck tie combo and thought to yourself are they… you know…, you’re not alone. It’s natural to question whether a show about cats hosted by a smokeshow in a slicked-back pony is queer or just very New York, but to that I say — porque no los dos?

Shop Cats host Michelladonna is indeed queer and non-binary as well as an NYC born and raised comedic talent and community organizer. They are quite literally one of the most multi-hyphenated talents I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and sharing a stage with, and I’m on a mission to make sure the world knows they’re a star.

Luckily for me, this is an easy task. Earlier this month, Michelladonna and the Shop Cats team won a Webby Award for Best Social in the “Animals” category. Michelladonna wore a keffiyeh in support of Palestine while delivering an emotional, heartfelt acceptance speech, which I’ll transcribe below:

“Meow, meow, meow — thanks, y’all.”

Michelleadonna and a kitty cat

Michelladonna has always been a multi-hyphenate. When they were a kid, their mom enrolled them in every class you could think of. They went to dance class, took singing and piano lessons, and were in an acting school. If Michelladonna wanted to try ice skating, their mom would sign them up for a semester so they could see how they like it. Now that they’re an adult, Michelladonna can appreciate the sacrifices or, as they describe it — real roll up your sleeves type shit — it took to afford that kind of education and experience.

Their passion for learning and trying new things certainly didn’t change when Michelladonna got to college for freshman year. They were president of the French Club, played on the soccer, volleyball and softball teams, ran track, did improve a few times a week, and had a job.

Michelladonna also runs a community program called I’m Finna Talk, which we discuss below and which helped their mom come around to expansive gender identities and sexualities. Their mom struggled initially with they/them pronouns. When Michelladonna took her to one of their I’m Finna Talk events, which acts as a safe space to a diverse group of people from many different backgrounds, it clicked. Michelladonna and their co-organizer do not make money from I’m Finna Talk events. Everything gets distributed back into the community. Attendees can request binders, packers, boxers, chest tape, and not only gender-affirming products. Attendees can also request astrology events, Cumbia dance workshops, and take-home journals.

In the last week, I have experienced Michelladonna in the following ways: watching Shop Cats in bed with my girlfriend, running into them at a pilot table read, watching them on a comedy show, and laughing at their Instagram stories. Usually when I see someone that many times in such a short amount of time, I’d grow tired of them. Not Michelladonna.

But how come? What’s so special about them? To help you understand, I spoke with Michelladonna about Shop Cats, the community organization they founded, their queerness, and how they manage multiple creative projects at once.


Motti: Say you’re in a room with a top exec and you’re wanting to show off, what’s your elevator pitch for yourself?

Michelladonna: I’ve been trying to figure it out because multi-hyphenate is fun, but it doesn’t tell you half of the things I do.

Motti: It doesn’t tell you the hyphenates.

Michelladonna: I am an actor, a comedian, a community organizer, a writer, a producer, a director, and a DJ. I could do it all. Just tell me what you need.

Motti: DJ? I didn’t know DJ.

Michelladonna: Oh, yeah, but I DJ for fun. Like, that’s not something, like — I do get paid to do it, but I cannot make that another fucking part of my business. I have a party collective and I have a party this Saturday. It’s called Gumdrop Button because I love Shrek, and my DJ name is Fairy Godmotha because I love Shrek.

Michelladonna: I love learning and I love experimenting and I love just trying new things. And I think being in entertainment, I made a choice being in entertainment. I made a choice to do this, and I can do whatever. Genuinely, have fun, baby girl. Because life is short and the world is on fire, so at least let me choose my own joy and my community’s joy. Try to get people paid when I can, and do it for Queens. Do it for the Queens baddies.

[Author’s Note: Michelladonna is first-generation Colombian American and grew up in Queens, New York. My parents are from Queens, so I second this notion, by the way.] 

Michelladonna: A lot of people nowadays I’m talking to are like, “You’re, like, the only native New Yorker that I’ve heard from,” or stuff like that. And I take that very seriously because I’ve watched media for so long that I’m like, where are we? Like, you know? And so, I take that very seriously, and I am really trying to do it for the people. The people’s prince.

Michelleadonna and a kitty cat

Motti: When did you make the decision to get into entertainment?

Michelladonna: Okay, so, oh my God, don’t get scared, but I used to be in finance. I went to Cornell for applied economics and management.

Motti: Wow!

Michelladonna: I graduated in 2020, and my graduation got canceled. The world was on fire. Queens, where I’m from, was the epicenter of coronavirus. I was seeing straight-up body bags coming out of Elmhurst Hospital on the news into trucks. I just remember that image so much, and I was like, “oh, I, me, could die tomorrow.” I could. And if I did that, if I was on that deathbed, would I be happy that I chose to go and do corporate, even for a few years, you know?

I’ve been acting since I was, like, 10, I think. So I’ve been doing this, but when I got to junior year in high school, I was like, “Mommy, I’m going to go to Hollywood. I’m going to go to acting school,” and she was like, “No, you’re not. You’re gonna go learn either business, law, or doctor. And then after you can go and do whatever you want. But at least you’ll have something to fall on.”

And at the time, you know, you’re like, damn, you don’t believe in me. But honestly, I’m so grateful that she did that because I know how to negotiate. I know how to read a contract. I know how to do all these things and advocate for myself without being scared. Because please, I’ve been in scary ass rooms.

So yeah, I just decided that if I was to die tomorrow, I want to know that at least I gave it a shot. And here we are, I guess, five years later. But I started comedy three and a half years ago. And even on my toughest day, even on the most stressful day or the slowest day or the most busy day, I am so grateful that I made that decision, because I’m literally living my dream life. And it’s only getting more dreamlike every day. Sometimes I have to pinch myself like, this is reality right now. And it’s like, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Obviously people were like, “Oh, you popped off” or whatever. But like, nah, I’ve been doing it. I’ve been begging y’all to come to my comedy shows for years. I’ve been going to the mics, you know? So it’s like people don’t see all the work, but I definitely feel it.

Motti: I feel like there’s this common misconception with comedians and also artists in general, but mostly comedians where the assumption is you probably didn’t go to college or you dropped out of college.

Michelladonna: Everything connects. I think everything fills you up into the person you are today. And if I hadn’t gone through those experiences, whether they were really good or really fucking tough, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And so I’m really grateful.

Michelleadonna outside a bodega

Motti: What was the conception of Shop Cats? Is that something they found you for? Is this something you pitched? I don’t even know the lore.

Michelladonna: The lore is that they reached out to me for a meeting, they pitched it to me, and I sat there, and I was like, hmm. Okay. And then I gave my vision for the show. When they were telling me about the cats, I was like, but this is a great way to highlight our community, and this is a great way to bring in different languages and different perspectives. Because I am aware of how there is like a New York City kind of influencer kind of — I don’t know if it’s a language or perspective — that’s out there in abundance.

And so, I thought this was a really good opportunity to show another side of the authentic New York experience where — genuinely — I go into places and I demand the cat, and they will respect me because I’m a baddie from Queens. Like, we are speaking the same language, you know? And I thought that was very special, because I have a lot of friends that are born in New York, born and raised, and it’s like, yeah, we don’t see ourselves in the media that much. And if we do, it’s a very specific type of presentation. That’s not wrong, but damn, like, I’m not from the Bronx. No shade to the Bronx. I would never shade the Bronx, oh my God. But, like, people live in Queens. People are Colombian in Queens, and, like, we’re chill.

Eventually I showed my mom the video they first edited as a pilot, and she speaks English, but she was like, “I wish I could show this to my friends, but they don’t speak English.” And so I was like, okay, girl, let me cook. So I went back and I was like, “Can we do subtitles in Spanish? Like, it’s not that hard. It’s really not that hard. It’s gonna take, like, an additional 30 minutes, but compared to the process that it already is, it’s not that hard. It’s worth it.” They were immediately like, “Great idea!”

Motti: Did they find you from posting online?

Michelladonna: Yeah, I hadn’t met any of them in person before that meeting.

Motti: I guess that’s a testament to how social media is a creative’s living portfolio.

Michelladonna: When I book people, I say, “Where’s your Instagram?” Like, that’s just what it is. I know that we can hate it, but either you get bitter or you get better at it. You know what I’m saying?

Motti: I know there’s something that you’re wanting to make sure people are clear on, which is your queerness.

Michelladonna: (singing) Gaaaaaay! I am queer. I’m all over the alphabet. At the end of the day, like the great Keke Palmer once said, “I love whoever loves me.”

Motti: And you have a little she/they going on.

Michelladonna: I do have a little she/they going on!

[Author’s Note: At this time, Michelladonna takes a moment to really think about what they want to say on the topic. You can tell they care about it.] 

Michelladonna: Performance is so interesting on and off stage. But what I’ve been realizing is that being a woman or how I’ve seen the world is a lot of performance as a woman. There are so many things that I’m perceived as — with me not even opening my mouth — based on how people look at me.

Motti: (in trans) Mhmm.

Michelladonna: I realized I do not perform that every day. Even if I’m not performing woman or “she,” sometimes I don’t feel like that. Straight up, sometimes I’m just a dude in the middle. I don’t even know if it’s all the way to “he,” but who gives a fuck? To me, it’s like, dog, I want to dress up how I want. I want to talk how I want. I want to like people how I want. Who has to report to anyone?

Motti: That’s why, even though I’m medically transitioning, I keep a “they” in there. “They” is going to stay there until someone takes it from me. I feel the same way about “dyke” and I feel the same way about being non-binary. I still want the fluidity and the flexibility and the ability to kind of show up however the hell I want.

Michelladonna: I have some Indigenous ancestry in me from Colombia, and I just imagine them not giving a fuck. Two-spirit people were really respected and taken as guides and folks that would have wisdom. So I’m like, dog, if my folks back in the day wouldn’t give a fuck, why would I? I don’t care.

Michelladonna: I think little acts of that type of exploration and rebellion and also kindness can get us farther because now my mom defends LGBT down. Yo, the other day, this lady came at her “Somethin’, somethin’, somethin’, and your daughter’s gay!” My mom was like, “Shut the fuck up. Don’t even play with my daughter. First of all, don’t even play with my LGBTs, all right?” Like, she’s with it.

Motti: Talk to me about I’m Finna Talk.

Michelladonna: I started it when I started comedy. So, I’m Finna Talk and I are pretty much the same age in stand-up and comedy. I was going to open mics in Manhattan… that’s not me. It was a bunch of dudes — white dudes — stroking each other. I was like, y’all don’t even understand what the diva is doing right now. It was really hard to find community in comedy. I thought, “There has to be a way that I can connect with creatives that are queer, people of color, that don’t have all the bread in the world, that don’t want to pay $20 for a ticket to do something… that literally stops me from eating or it stops me from buying a MetroCard.”

So I found a grant. I got money. I had this idea [for the first event]: I want people to walk out with free stuff, plants maybe. It was a writing workshop with Julissa Contreras, shout out Julissa. I was really happy with how it went, and people were asking me “When’s the next one?” If there is demand, I shall supply. That’s how it works. Three and a half years later, in June, we have our four year anniversary.

When I was coming up with the name, it had to be New York, obviously. It was about expressing ourselves because again, it always goes back to the media. What have I seen represented as a queer Latina woman? What has been represented as a queer non-binary Latina person? Not the best stuff, you know? Sometimes it’s very stereotypical and I’m so fucking bored. Boo! They show the same fucking character 10 different ways. How boring is that? That’s why I love Julio Torres.

Motti: I love him.

Michelladonna: I met him yesterday! I was freaking out, and everyone was like, “Girl, just go up to him!” I did, and I was like, “Hola. Because you dream so big, I’m able to dream even bigger.” Like truly, truly, truly. Julio has impacted the way I write and the way I dream so much.

That was why I wanted to bring the “talk” of it all. It’s about writing. It’s about expressing yourself. It’s about putting, in history, what our life is. We should be able to share that. We usually have an open mic at the end of our events, and that’s where, whatever we’ve been journaling about, we talk about. We have poems, singing, whatever it might be. That’s how I’m Finna Talk came to be. It’s my baby. It’s full of passion. It’s full of community.

Motti: Is your short film inspired by that?

Michelladonna: I was inspired by myself doing my own crazy ass fantasy, right? I don’t have to limit myself. I just feel like anything’s possible. Who cares? I’m not gonna let someone else tell me no. If someone wants to, I’ll let them. But I don’t care.

My short film is a gay twist on a bisexual love triangle from what was happening in salsa when salsa was being created in New York City. It’s sparkly and lights and everything. But it’s music too, which is so big. I love salsa. I got my own bell. Do you know what I’m talking about?

[Author’s Note: Michelladonna takes out a Latin percussion salsa handbell and plays it.]

Michelladonna: I’ll put you on, brother. Shit. I just got this jawn in Colombia. Watch out, y’all. I’m playing the bell. My poor roommates.

Follow Shop Cats and their own Instagram to see more of Michelladonna, and if you’re a queer person of color in NYC, you should check out I’m Finna Talk events. Michelladonna’s next comedy show, Lil Sàbado, is on July 19th at Trans Pecos at 6pm.

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:

Motti

Motti (he/they) is a New York born and raised comedian, writer, and content creator. You can find him on Instagram @hotfunnysmartmotti or at a bar show in Brooklyn somewhere.

Reed has written 44 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. Michelladonna, es my queen. I love you, I am witnessing your hard work. Usted es una berraca!

  2. literally my favorite thing is actually getting a little behind on Shop Cats so then i can MARATHON A BUNCH

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Controversial Queer Films Your Group Chat Probably Fought About

If we learned anything from last year’s Emilia Pérez debacle — aka watching the movie Emilia Pérez — what might seem like an abomination against the art of cinema to one queer person, can be a new fave for another. How easy it would be if we all agreed which movies were offensive, which movies were true to our experiences, which movies deserved mainstream success. But also how boring! As long as everyone remains reasonably respectful, a good discourse can bring us together as much as it brings us apart.

Let’s look back on some of the most controversial queer films of the last 30+ years to argue all over again. These are films that were/are controversial within our community — not films where the divide was clear between straights and gays.

Which of these films do you love? Which of these films do you hate? Which of these films did you hate but now you’re willing to give a second shot?


Basic Instinct (1992)

Sharon Stone places a hand on another woman's chest in controversial film Basic Instinct

There have always been people who hate Paul Verhoeven’s work and people who love it. But Basic Instinct had the unfortunate timing of being released in the early 90s when tensions were high in regards to queer representation. While the film was protested at the time of its release, it always had its defenders including the official reviewer for Deneuve Magazine, a group that has grown in the decades since, and includes Margaret Cho and Halina Reijn.


Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)

Jennifer Westfeldt stands with her arms crossed next to Heather Juergensen as Tovah Feldshuh serves food.

A lesbian romcom where the lead ends up with a man? Must be 2001! That was the exhaustion many queer audiences brought to this movie 20+ years ago. But removed from the context of lesbian cinema tropes, this film feels less offensive and more complicated. It might not be a good lesbian romcom, but it’s a great queer one!


The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore laugh next to each other on a couch in The Kids Are All Right

Another film where the controversy revolved around one of its leads hooking up with a man! Many seemed to go to this film hoping to see their own experience of lesbian motherhood reflected on-screen. But Lisa Cholodenko’s work is always going to be more interesting than mere representation. Sometimes lesbians have sex with sperm donor Mark Ruffalo and that is valid.


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander walks through a narrow hallway

The controversy around this one was actually split into three groups: people who loved the movie, people who hated the movie because they preferred the Swedish adaptation, and people who hated the movie because they hated the entire conceit. I’m sympathetic to people who loved Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander and I’m sympathetic to people who don’t want to see this much sexual violence in their bisexual tech girl thrillers. But, personally, I think this is by far the better adaptation and a great film overall.


Blue is Warmest Color (2013)

Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos look at art in a museum in Blue is the Warmest Color

If this list was ranked, this Palme d’or winner would be at the top. Even before we knew about the abusive set environment experienced by the lead actresses, this film was controversial for its so-called male gaze and long sex scenes. It’s always questionable when people flatout say statements like “lesbians don’t have sex like that” but it’s also an understandable reaction when a film garners this much praise from people outside our community. Ultimately, I think the film’s biggest problem is it’s just a kind of basic coming out story. The good news is the film’s director Abdellatif Kechiche isn’t up to much, while the film’s leads are having thriving careers in even better queer cinema.


Rough Night (2017)

Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Jillian Bell, and Scarlett Johansson in Rough Night

This one might be Autostraddle-specific, to be honest. Back in 2017 before I worked here, I watched this movie with a shrug! Solid studio comedy but nothing that would hint at my enthusiasm for Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs’ earlier work on Broad City or later work on Hacks. But the trailer suggested that the film was a farce that treats a male stripper’s death as a punchline — which isn’t actually what happened in the movie at all. This falls into the Blockers/Jennifer’s Body category where the issue was really the marketing.


Adam (2019)

Margaret Qualley and Dana Levinson in Adam

My body has now fully decomposed given how thoroughly I died on this hill. There’s not much else I can say except that you should read the oral history and then give a really great trans film a chance.


Happiest Season (2020)

Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis in Happiest Season.

Given the bonkers behavior of characters in straight Christmas movies, it’s understandable that Clea DuVall and co-writer Mary Holland assumed people would buy into their story of a closeted lesbian bringing her partner home for Christmas. Alas, many people brought far too much personal experience to the film to hold onto any holiday spirit. Words like gaslighting and abuse were thrown around as many people nine months into Covid had no patience for the behavior on-screen. Love it or hate it, everyone seems to agree Aubrey Plaza was the best part.


TÁR (2022)

A shot from below of Cate Blanchett conducting in Tár

An artful portrait of a toxic lesbian or a tiresome projection of faux cancel culture woes? Why can’t it be both? Personally, I agree with most of the issues people have with this movie and I agree with everything said by the people who love it. Sometimes art is imperfect but still worthwhile!


Am I OK? (2022)

Dakota Johnson lies next to Sonoya Mizuno in bed in Am I Ok?

I stand by everything I wrote in my pan of this film, but I will admit I could’ve said it nicer. (What’s the fun in that though…) The part of the ensuing discourse that confused me most was the suggestion that there isn’t a lot of media about lesbians who come out in their 30s or later. Like this movie if you like this movie, but that argument is DEEPLY UNTRUE. Everything from classic films like Desert Hearts to every single TV show that didn’t let its gay character be gay until later seasons had this storyline. In the end, none of the debate mattered because even media as tepid as this got sunk by the industry’s turn away from diversity. HBO Max kept it unreleased for years and by the time it finally did drop last year — probably because they had nothing else for Pride — it landed with a fizzle.


Emilia Pérez (2024)

Zoe Saldaña looks at Karla Sofía Gascón in the back of a car in Emilia Pérez.

The last thing I’ll say about Emilia Pérez — for now — is its journey from festival darling to Oscar frontrunner to disgraced punching bag is proof festivals like Cannes desperately need more diverse critics in attendance. The majority of the cis gay critics at Cannes last year loved this film, a trend that continued among many cis gays upon the film’s release. But even the trans people who loved this film had a different, more valuable perspective, once they were able to see it. While I’m sure the film would’ve still been controversial if more trans voices had been at Cannes, I think the controversy would’ve played out in a more productive, more interesting way. Well, that and if Karla Sofía Gascón had been less awful.

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 720 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. One thing that I find interesting is how many of these movies, were judged and dissected by the community just from trailers or other released information. Both ‘The Kids Are All Right’ and ‘Rough Night’ seemed to me a big suspect based on the trailers or information but once I saw the movies themselves, those concepts were actually not what they seemed at first glance. And then in both cases there was no way to explain this to others without spoiling the movie.

    • yes this!!!! i agree. this happens with books too, where something gets review-bombed before it even comes out, sometimes justified and sometimes not. but i wonder what we lose on the internet from this kind of thing, because logically in most cases, it doesn’t REALLY make sense to confidently judge a work of art based on three minutes of it.

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An Oral History of ‘Adam’ (2019), the Most Controversial Trans Movie of All Time

This oral history of Adam (2019) was originally published in December 2024. It’s being republished now that the film and several other Wolfe Video releases are streaming on Hulu as part of their 2025 Pride package.


Rhys Ernst’s short film She Gone Rogue forever changed my expectations for trans film. With allusions to Maya Deren and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the inclusion of trans icons Flawless Sabrina, Holly Woodlawn, and Vaginal Davis, Rhys’ collaboration with then-partner Zackary Drucker was one of the first works of trans art I saw that really felt like ART — not representation. By the time I sat down to watch Rhys’ feature debut Adam in 2019, I’d seen all of his shorts. To the film world, he was just starting out, but to me he was already a great.

As some of you may know, my reverence for Rhys and his work was not shared by the culture at large that summer. Based on its premise or out-of-context excerpts from the novel by Ariel Schrag, trans people across the internet called for a boycott of Adam. The vast majority of those calling for the boycott hadn’t seen the film, but they deemed “a teen cis boy pretending to be a trans guy in 2006 queer Bushwick” an irredeemable story no matter how it was done. The movie was labeled harmful, offensive, and transphobic. Adam was the only major narrative feature from a trans director released in 2019 and it was buried by our community before most people had the chance to see it for themselves.

It’s been more than five years and a lot has changed in trans culture. Rhys hasn’t made another feature, but a lot of other trans people have. This year alone saw narrative features from Jane Schoenbrun, Sydney Freeland, Theda Hammel, D.W. Waterson, Vera Drew, Noah Schamus, and Alice Maio Mackay. This still-not-enough explosion of trans filmmaking has happened as trans people become a greater target for political scapegoating and legislative persecution. All of this has changed how we talk about our art.

Half a decade later, I think it’s time for us to give Adam a second look — or, for those who boycotted, a first. My relationship to discourse and how I engage with trans art shifted after this film’s release, but I believe Adam is even more interesting as a work of art than a work of controversy. Within its challenging premise, it’s the rare film I’ve seen that captures the transphobia and biphobia that can exist in lesbian spaces — yes, in 2006, but also now. It’s a funny and sweet portrait of a misguided cis boy navigating a queer community that’s plenty flawed itself.

For this oral history, I spoke with Rhys and Ariel, as well as several trans cast members, two of the film’s producers, and former Indiewire critic Jude Dry, to give a complete picture of the intentions behind the book and film, the experience of making the film, and the difficulties born from the backlash. This wasn’t a movie made by cis and straight people about us. It was a movie made by queer and trans people about themselves. Whether you love it or hate it, that makes it worthy of a closer look.


“All of a sudden there were men in this group.”

What was it really like to be a queer in 2006 Bushwick?

Ariel Schrag (screenwriter, author of Adam: A Novel): My particular scene was mostly made up of punky, arty dykes. It was during the era of [feminist genderqueer collective] LTTR — K8 Hardy, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Every Ocean Hughes. It was art-focused dykes. Then slowly it started to include trans men. Some had already transitioned, but many had previously identified as butch lesbians and were now transitioning. There was an interesting thing going on where staunchly lesbian-identified women suddenly found themselves in a relationship with a man.

That changed their understanding of their own identity and it changed the group dynamics which, to be honest, were a little man-hating. You got a bunch of dykes together in a room and there was shit-talking. “Yeah we don’t need men!” But then all of a sudden there were men in this group and that was really interesting and really different. The world of Adam grew out of those shifting dynamics and the shifting demographics happening in this particular social scene.

Rhys Ernst (director): In 2006, I was in my very early 20’s and I was out as trans to a point. I was out to friends and my community but not to my family and not in the workplace. It was just such a different world for trans conversations. It was really taboo to be trans. Full stop. There was nothing in the mainstream other than a negative association and then little pockets underground.

It felt like I couldn’t be out at work even though I was very gender nonconforming. I was freelancing in New York trying to work in film and TV and I would respond to a job listing on craigslist, I’d send in my resume and they’d be like “you sound great.” But then I’d come and meet them in person, and the vibe was very weird. I got shut out of a lot of work opportunities pretty obviously due to the fact that I was androgynous.

But at the same time in the queer world, especially the lesbian/sapphic/etc. world, there was a minor explosion of trans discourse.

Ariel: I went to Columbia like [Adam’s sister] Casey and graduated in 2003. The book takes place in 2006 but to be totally honest I’d say it takes place more in 2003/2004. It was kind of based on that period right after I graduated college and moved to Bushwick and started my real adult life. But I changed it to 2006 because I wanted the characters to watch this specific L Word episode. It sounds crazy to care about a couple years but the way queer culture changes now I think it’s significant. Everything really evolves year by year.

Rhys: There’d been some transmasculine discourses happening on college campuses in the early 2000s but then it really hit a critical mass with Max on The L Word. Suddenly it was this big topic: Would you date a trans guy? What do you think about this? There was a lot of conversation and intrigue and sometimes negative feelings. It was a hot topic.

Ariel: I do take some responsibility for Max. I interviewed to write on The L Word in 2004 or 2005. Most of the writers were older and I was 24, so during my interview process Ilene Chaiken the showrunner was like, what’s it like for young lesbians now? And I was like well what it’s like for young lesbians now is a lot of our group is men. And she was like EXCUSE ME?? And I was like well yeah, and I explained to her what it looked like in my friend group. She was really interested and wanted to explore that on the show.

Originally, I had pitched that Jenny would be dating Moira, a butch lesbian, and then simultaneously start dating a trans man. I thought there could be an interesting relationship between the butch lesbian and the trans man. But instead because it was TV and everything gets streamlined and simplified, the butch lesbian became the trans man. And then, as you know, there were many cringe aspects to how that story was told.

We were working with pretty much nothing coming before us that wasn’t a horrible cliche of trans panic though.

Rhys: Someone recently reminded me of how Sex and the City dealt with trans characters which was not… great. That’s what we had.

Ariel: I think it really was groundbreaking in a lot of ways even with the missteps. I don’t want to disown it. I know it was really important. And I know Daniel Sea who played Max has people still coming up to him to say what he did was really powerful. There are positives too. But obviously there were parts that were very bad.


In a room full of queer and trans actors, director Rhys Ernst looks at a 2006 era tv with the cast.

Rhys Ernst and the cast of Adam watch an episode of The L Word


“It’s written in a limited third.”

The Adam book was published in 2014 and the first wave of controversy arose.

Ariel: There were a lot of different things that inspired Adam, the book. I wanted to capture how lesbian identity was changing, and also the hypocrisy and biphobia and transphobia that I observed lesbians having. This hating on cis men but then fetishizing trans men, this fetishizing trans men but then excluding trans women. I’m always interested in ripping back the surface of the groups I’m in. What are we actually saying here? What does this mean? I wanted to expose what I saw as hypocrisies or just shallowness and self-absorption. But I wanted to do it in a loving way too. What does it mean to struggle with your identity and hold onto something you thought was a core part of your self?

Howard Gertler (producer): I think Ariel brilliantly illuminated queer NYC in 2006, a world that I traveled in. (It was set in the same year a film I’d produced, John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, came out.) That world was the center of the story’s universe, and I love how the best of its values — especially around community, joy, and self-actualization — became aspirational not only for the queer characters, but transformative for this cishet teen.

Dana Aliya Levinson (actor, Hazel): It is very of the time that it’s set. I didn’t transition that far back, but I was aware I was trans during that time. So I was on the message boards and aware of the culture and how trans people were talking about things. I think it did a really good job evoking the early aughts queer and trans New York scene. I was out as queer in the early aughts and living in the city in and around that time, so I knew that world pretty well and thought it captured it quite nicely.

Jude Dry (writer of ‘Adam’ Applies a Trans Lens to a Cis Gaze. Is That Too Complex for Cancel Culture?, former critic for Indiewire, filmmaker): I loved the book. I read it when it came out, because I liked Ariel Schrag as a graphic novelist. I’m not someone who is particularly attuned to controversy — or I wasn’t then — and I actually really liked that it was told through a cis boy’s perspective. As a trans man, I was like, this is cool. When you’re reading a novel, you’re in the POV of the main character and I thought that was actually a really smart way to tell a trans story. And, you know, it’s a fun reversal.

Plus it’s pretty sexy. I was young when the book came out. I was in my early 20’s. And I was like, this is hot. He’s going to sex parties! (laughs) And then I felt a little silly for not being upset about the things other people were upset about. I guess I was just okay with the nuance in the story.

Ariel: I definitely did not anticipate the level of controversy. I think part of that was I started writing it in 2007 so it took seven years from putting down that first sentence to finishing it and it coming out. While I was first writing it, these identities — dyke identity, trans guy identity — they just didn’t feel like something the larger world knew anything about. I thought I was writing primarily an insider book. A book for my friends and for people in the community to poke fun at ourselves.

But I wasn’t thinking about the next generation coming up and the way the culture was changing. That’s what surprised me. I wasn’t expecting a whole new generation of queer and trans people being like, how dare you write this about us? Who are you?

It’s written in a limited third. And it seemed like many people didn’t know what that meant. People thought it was an authorial voice. Because it was written in third person, they thought it was my thoughts. Some people didn’t seem to get that limited third is actually the character’s thoughts.

Rhys: I was in LA working on Transparent and was really ear to the ground about trans stuff because we were trying to keep up with everything trans-related. I remember hearing about this book that had caused a little bit of a stir of controversy and I thought it was really strange because I knew of Ariel. I didn’t know her personally, but she’d been well-loved and revered in the queer and lesbian space. She even gets a shout out in the Le Tigre song “Hot Topic.” And I had read some of her early graphic novels and they were cool. So it was bizarre to me. This book sounded distasteful. Why would this person make the choice to write this weird off-color book? But I didn’t look that closely. I just moved on.

Ariel: There were thoughtful critiques. There were definitely people who read it and had issues with it and I respect that! It’s not for everybody. If someone is offended by it obviously that’s their right and I’m interested in what they have to say. It’s provocative, it’s asking difficult questions, that’s part of it. But I sometimes wonder what would have happened to the book if it had been pre-social media. Because so much of it became people warning others against the book or the whole Goodreads phenomenon. I don’t know how much you follow the shit show that is Goodreads but there are people trying to bomb books they haven’t read. So there was a bit of that.

But when it was just the book, it felt like it was more these critical essays and people really thinking about it. I felt when the book came out it was more positive. It feels like history has been rewritten where now it’s like this universally hated book, but when it came out that just wasn’t my experience. I felt like most of the reviews were really positive and that’s from straight people, cis queer people, and trans people.

James Schamus (producer): I just loved the humanity of it. The idea that this kid had to learn that the “real” world is not a straight one but a fundamentally queer one. And he’s not given a happily-ever-after ending. He may be the center of the novel, but he’s not the protagonist — the community is the protagonist.

Ariel: Another big inspiration for the novel was an idea that was sparked by a cis straight white wealthy male friend of mine who I grew up with. He was the pinnacle of privilege. But I remember him saying to me once, “God you are so lucky. Everywhere you go you get to tap into a scene and just meet people and you have instant friends. It’s so hard for me to meet and connect with people.” I was really struck by that. Like yeah it does rule. Being queer is probably the greatest thing that has happened to me in my life. I felt really sad for him in that moment, this pinnacle of privilege. So I was interested in exploring that. What does it mean to put that character into this world where there’s all this upset about what identity actually means? It felt like a really interesting combination.

Jude: For me, when I’m like ugh I wish I’d been born cis, I’m like… but then I wouldn’t be queer. So, of course, this cis boy wants to hang out with the cool queer kids.


Margaret Qualley, Nicholas Braun, and Chloë Levine stand awkwardly next to each other during a party scene

Margaret Qualley, Nicholas Alexander, and Chloë Levine in Adam


“I was still expecting to pass on the project.”

The script was brought to Rhys in the spring of 2017.

James: A few days after getting the boot from Focus [Features where James was CEO from 2002-2013] I went to a cocktail party and bumped into my old friend Howard Gertler. He mentioned he had optioned the book, and I told him that EVERYONE in my household — me, my kids, my spouse — had all read and really loved it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing post-Focus, but nine months later, with some modest financing in hand and a new small production company, I called Howard to see what was up with the project and we took it from there.

Rhys: I’d just directed the season finale of Transparent season four and I went to my parents’ house on vacation to sort of regroup and chill out after that production. I wasn’t planning on working right away, but then I got this cold email from the producers of Adam that I’d been recommended as a potential director for this project. That book Ariel did that sounded weird and controversial? Oh God. I was nervous about how to respond. But these producers had excellent reputations. James Schamus is an iconic creative producer and I knew Howard Gertler had produced John Cameron Mitchell’s films and just a lot of really eclectic, queer work. So I was taking this seriously, but I was still expecting to pass on the project.

I read the script all at once. I kind of devoured it. It was really fun, juicy, and scandalous. A wild ride. I was blown away! It was doing this crazy magic trick because it sets itself up as one thing and then does this interesting trans-affirmational journey instead. It takes a cishet person on and by extension a cishet audience on, but it also includes all these insider jokes and wry observations for queer and trans people. By the time I closed the script, I was totally in. It surprised me. I thought it was going to be like American Pie at the expense of trans people. And instead it was doing this really deft thing that was so pro-trans.

It also described these spaces that I had literally been in after moving from Astoria to Bushwick around 2006. I went to The Hole, which is a bar depicted in the film, every Friday night. It was the coolest place I could ever imagine. It was iconic for me. It was my Pyramid Club. It was so exciting and elicit and weird and cool. It was this place that exists in this liminal space in mind still to this day and it amazed me that the script depicted that bar on the night I used to go to and my old neighborhood and all these spaces. And the conversation we were having! These were the people I was friends with — well, not Adam — but the world he enters into was my friend group at that time. How could something so specific to my experience come to me that I didn’t generate? It was really uncanny and irresistible.

Howard: James, Joe Pirro, and I were looking for everything we found in Rhys! Someone familiar with the world of the film, who’d already done their own deep thinking about identity and art, and who would present Ariel’s story in a new way to a wide audience.

James: Someone who would let the humor emerge organically and who wouldn’t simply play the situations “for laughs.”

Rhys: After I read the script, I got back to the producers. Then they brought me out to New York to have an in-person sit down to figure out if I was really the person to do this. And on the flight there, I read the book.

I knew it was a different animal from the script and that Ariel had worked to shape things based on the feedback she had received. She had already reinvented and restaged the work as a script, so I knew in going back to the book it wouldn’t really matter if it had anything I wasn’t crazy about. But if I saw any cool details I liked for the film, I could take them. And as long as we were all on the same page, the film really should be its own thing. That’s the beauty of adaptation.

Ariel: It was now a collaboration with the producers and when Rhys came on with him. To me they’re the same story, but the movie has softened the edges. And a big part of that was a hope that by making the changes the movie could be more embraced.

Rhys: Ariel was trying to utilize an unreliable narrator with Adam to show his ignorance. That was the point. But then the book would get criticism when people would take paragraphs or pages out of context and say, “Look how offensive this is.” But it’s Adam’s perspective. When you read it in context, you see that he’s ignorant and has to evolve. If a character is at their most enlightened, there’s nowhere to go in the story. So I thought those were ridiculous criticisms.

But the book was different from the script, most notably the ending. The epilogue from the book wasn’t in it at all. The script was more focused and for me it worked better.

Ariel: Would it have been possible to pull off the controversial sex scene on film? I don’t know. I can’t say. I definitely think it would have been harder because you’re not inside Adam’s head and not given as much room to explain things. But I don’t want to say it couldn’t have worked because I don’t know. The producers, Rhys, and I all made the decision to give this movie the best chance it could have while staying true to the core story. So we removed certain elements that were particularly contentious.

Rhys: I gave script notes to the producers and Ariel. It wasn’t a lot of stuff, but I think it worked to make it even more from a trans perspective. It was also about making Adam so unwitting that this truly feels like an accident. Clearing out any ambiguity that this is premeditated because I think that’s the way this thought experiment works best.

Ariel: To me, the biggest difference at the end — other than the removal of the epilogue — is the way you have Ethan call Adam out in this way that explains why what he did was wrong. I know one of the criticisms of the book was that Adam wasn’t punished enough, but, in my mind, it was obvious that what he did was wrong and he knew that it was wrong. But I understand wanting to make it clear to everyone, so now there’s this scene where Ethan says that in a very simplified way.

Howard: The film is such a unique blending of their sensibilities. Rhys’ previous work includes a mix of non-fiction and scripted — the non-fiction work, for example, had already prepared him for working with performers with less professional acting experience. And his visual sense has this combination of both rigor and dreaminess that accented Ariel’s tart writing so perfectly to bring us deeper into the hearts of the characters.

Rhys: After that first meeting, I had a good feeling about the producers and I ended up having a great experience with them the whole time. That was the beginning of a really great collaboration and friendship with them. Ariel was there for part of it too and we got to meet, but there was also a passing of the baton that the producers made clear. Now the baby gets handed to Rhys.


Rhys talks to Dana with his arms crossed, Dana wears army gear

Dana Aliya Levinson and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam


“The whole cast is all shining stars.”

Casting started as Rhys and the producers tried to begin production in 2017 before the leaves fell off the trees.

Rhys: Casting the role of Adam was really tough. It was one of the biggest challenges of the project. I looked at hundreds of casting tapes and there were some people I recognized and lots of people I didn’t. It had to be someone over 18 but who could play younger because there are sex scenes. Eventually, I landed on Nicholas Alexander who was sort of under the radar and living in Florida. He’d done some TV work and some other smaller films, but was mostly a newcomer. He was really, really special and had that thing.

Margaret Qualley I cast early on, before Nick, because she’d been floated and there was no question she would be perfect for Casey. I was already a fan of hers. Once we had those two, I was like, okay we can get this done this summer. I relocated to New York from LA. I brought my cat and my partner and everything. And once I was in New York, we hit the ground running and put together the rest of the cast.

Bobbi Salvör Menuez (actor, Gillian): I had met Rhys working on Transparent some years prior and I respected his work. I sent in a tape and then we met for coffee a month or so later when Rhys had offered me the role. We had a chat about it. The script has a lot of complex content so I was curious to discuss it with him. And I just left that conversation feeling really confident in Rhys’ vision and excited to support him in that vision.

And I was excited to see a trans director given the opportunity to tell a complicated story that included characters with imperfect morals and imperfect choices. I was like, oh wow they’re letting a trans person tell a complex story? That’s really cool. (laughs)

Dana: The audition process was pretty short for me. I submitted through open call channels and got an appointment, had my first audition, and then it was two or three weeks later I had a call back. The original audition was just with casting and then for the callback Rhys was in the room. I did the two audition scenes a couple times and then I was put on hold for the role literally the next day. Maybe three or four days after that I found out I’d booked it.

Rhys: Leo Sheng, who plays the roommate character Ethan, was actually one of the last actors I cast, because I was having trouble finding the right person. There were some people I was thinking about and talking to, but I just wasn’t quite there.

I was referred by some friends to Leo’s Instagram. He hadn’t acted before, but he’d done some activism and influencer stuff so he had a bit of a social media following.

Leo Sheng (actor, Ethan): I’d been primarily using social media for transition-related documentation and I’d grown a bit of following through just the culture of queer social media.

I had to turn off notifications and fix my priority settings after being part of The Happy Hippie Foundation’s trans pride campaign. I was getting a lot of messages and it was beautiful but I was really overwhelmed. So I was checking my requests one day and I saw this interesting message about casting for a film. Because of the permissions, it was a couple weeks old, so I thought maybe I missed my chance. But I still responded.

Rhys: He sent in an audition where he was reading with one of his parents. I couldn’t quite get a feel but I could tell there was a spark there. We brought him out in person and we worked together and that confirmed I could get this performance out of him. He just had this shining light. He brought this grace and sincerity to the character.

Leo: I remember getting the sides, auditioning, doing a callback, and flying to New York to meet with Rhys. And then as I was boarding the flight to go home, Howard Gertler called and asked if I wanted to join the film. Most of this was in the span of like 48 hours. I didn’t have an agent or a manager or a lawyer. I didn’t know what was happening but I decided to go with it.

Rhys: The cast was all so lovely and sweet. I could go on and on. I mean, Bobbi, Dana, Chloe, the whole cast is all shining stars and lovely people. Some of the cast was brand new. We had a lot of trans actors who came out of New York theatre but who maybe hadn’t had a lot of on-screen experience and then some people who were quite experienced. It was this really cool, fun, supportive atmosphere among them all.


Nicholas Alexander sits awkwardly talking to Leo Sheng in Adam

Nicholas Alexander and Leo Sheng in Adam


“I was surrounded by trans people.”

How did the production’s treatment of trans people compare to other movies and TV shows?

Rhys: Since the Transparent days, and even before on the short films I was making, I was trying to come up with ways to innovate and foster inclusive sets and trans-positive sets. How do we build this? And for me it always had to be a mix of cishet and trans and queer people. It had to always be a mix. I don’t see myself living in a bubble. I want to reach outside into the greater world and bring these worlds together and that’s part of the work. What I’ve learned over time is there’s no way to do that perfectly. Kind of the same way there are no safe spaces, just safer spaces. I think about that a lot now in regards to sets. You can try to create a safer set but you can’t account for everything because it exists in the world. You can’t prevent the world from being the way it is. There’s sexism in the world and racism in the world and ableism and transphobia. That’s not to say you can’t take a lot of steps, but you can’t prevent certain things from happening sometimes because people are people.

On the production of Adam, we took a lot of steps that I had been a part of developing during Transparent. First of all, we were really careful with hiring and tried to employ queer and trans people when possible. We hired the heads of department with a lot of care. There were a lot of women and people of color and queer people who were a part of the crew. There were some trans people, but if you go looking for trans crew, it’s tough. Trans people are a small part of the population period, so it was hard to have a crew with trans people all the way through. But we did our best. And I was interested in it being diverse in all directions, not purely just queer and trans. That was really important to me.

And then all the department heads hired everyone else with a lot of care as well. There were definitely no assholes on-set. People knew what they were getting into and that this was a queer and trans positive journey that we were all going on. There were a lot of really good, warm, lovely people. And there was a lot of excitement and love for what we were doing. People felt like they were working on something special.

Bobbi: I had a great time on-set. There was a lot of amazing cast. I really loved working with Leo Sheng. It was his first time working on a feature. I also met Jari Jones and Mj Rodriguez. There was just a lot of amazing trans and queer talent who I met on that set who I’m still friends with. I remember talking to someone who was a singer about being on T and this was before I’d ever been on T. It was a big gay cute vibe generally.

I remember seeing Mj do her scene and being like oh my god you’re literally a star. That was the day we were shooting at Trans Camp and a lot of the actors we had come in for that were people who I was already in community with and friends with which was really fun. And then everyone I met was really special. It was funny because we started that day doing a pronoun circle and then we filmed a scene with the characters doing a pronoun circle.

Dana: I had a great experience. It was my first professional film gig and so I didn’t have much else to compare it to. But I’m very grateful it was my first professional film gig because I was surrounded by trans people. There wasn’t any of that minority stress of like, will I have to educate people on what being trans means? Am I going to have to play dramaturg and actor? Am I going to be the only trans person on set? We had tons of trans people on set, among the actors, among the crew, obviously Rhys directing, so it made the process much easier because I could just focus on acting. I could just focus on the role instead of concerning myself with the social politics of being trans on a film set.

Leo: It was my first experience acting in front of a camera. I remember just being in awe. A bit of a deer in the headlights, because I just wasn’t sure what to do and I was afraid of doing the wrong thing.

But my first wardrobe fitting was so much fun. I felt so cool and I loved the jacket Ethan wears. And his sneakers. Everybody was so nice. Throughout the shoot, everyone was really patient with me. Patient with basic technical things like hitting my mark, certain movements, being careful not to bump into certain things. All things I’m sure people who are more experienced have intuition to do, but I was brand new. Rhys was so patient and so understanding and so gentle. He was a very gentle director. There was no shaming, no that was wrong. It was always just, let’s try that again, let’s have fun with it. That took a lot of the pressure off of me.

Rhys: I tend to run a really nice set. Maybe “nice” is too light of a word. Positive, loving, not stressful, no shouting. I like to create an environment that people feel good in, so that was definitely happening. And there was a lot of excitement from our cast and crew.

Bobbi: I really like Rhys’ approach to directing. He knows what he wants but he also listens to his actors and is sensitive to the nuance of the scenes.

Leo: I would love to work with Rhys again someday. And Howard and James the producers were great. I really did feel seen. They were treating me like an actor and treating me like somebody who deserved to be there. And that was really big as somebody who, again, had never done anything like that. I was afraid to ask questions, but they were like come to set, come watch, come see what’s happening. Personally, I felt really safe there, in that environment.

Rhys: With everyone’s start paperwork, they were given a short dossier on trans-related best practices on-set and what to expect and how to refer to people and how to be sensitive and respectful. That’s not normal. Those things don’t go out on most sets. We’d do things like pronoun circles especially during big scenes where there were newcomers and more extras. During the morning safety meeting, we’d go around and say our pronouns and talk about why that was important. We would try to bring people into what we were doing and why and make it clear we wanted everyone to be a part of it. We had to all sit together at the table and get the cishet teamster to be able to talk to the nonbinary person who has never been on a movie before. That’s important. We want to foster these conversations and build community. And demystify and de-stigmatize.

Bobbi: The more the people at the top — directors, showrunners, etc. — who either are queer and trans or have trans literacy the better. Ideally both because, believe it or not, cis queer people don’t always have good trans literacy. And then making it a priority to share with crew at all levels.

But there’s also the factor that’s financial capacity to support that effort. I’ve worked on projects where everything is supposed to be really queer and lala but I can just feel because of financial limitations there is someone who is working on the crew for the day who doesn’t know who you are and is just there to do their job. And mistakes happen.

Rhys: On Transparent we had more money and more resources to do additional trainings. That was a TV show put on by Amazon. We had a lot more money and money equals time equals resources. On Adam, we had a pretty small budget. It was a true indie. There was a lot less buffer time. You can’t bring people on early for trainings. So that was part of what led to a couple of bumps. To be honest, I only really know of one bump that I can verify.

There was an extra who was misgendered by somebody in the costume department. We were shocked and horrified to hear that had happened, because we’d been doing all this work to prevent it. So how could it happen? It was really frustrating and upsetting to learn. The producers and I talked to the wardrobe department and talked to the ADs to try to get to the bottom of it. We learned there was a day-player in the wardrobe department — which means someone who came on just for that day, someone who floats in to help when extra help is needed — and they didn’t get the sort of cultural update as thoroughly as everybody else had. And they also might not have been chosen with as much care. They were just somebody to help dress extras for that one day and they used a different pronoun for someone who used they/them. It wasn’t malicious, but it was a fuck up.

Bobbi: Being misgendered sucks. I’m familiar. But compared to other productions this was so much better. I’ve definitely been misgendered on projects since being out as trans. Even when I’ve been lead talent. It just happens. Everyone is just doing the best they can.

Jude: It’s hard. There are so many people around. Any time as a trans person you go into a place where there are strangers, not everyone is going to be completely informed on how to talk to you. Even on a trans film set. They had a monumental task to make sure no one on the crew ever misgendered someone. That’s a gargantuan task that they seemed to mostly pull off. It’s hard. You don’t know these people. It’s nearly impossible to know every extra’s pronouns and how they identify while also trying to actually make a movie.

Rhys: I hate that it happened, but I also know that even trans people might sometimes accidentally use the wrong pronoun for another person. It’s not always ill-intended. Generally, it’s not. I wish there were different words for an accidental misgendering vs. an intentional misgendering. Because those are so different. I’m not trying to make excuses. It shouldn’t have happened. But maybe it would happen on an all trans set too, and what do you do about that?

Bobbi: I know this background actor was also upset they didn’t get to read the whole script. And as someone who has worked in the industry for a long time I’ve literally had roles where I have a character name and a whole speaking role and I still never get to see the full script. (laughs) That’s standard and, from my perspective, reasonable.

It’s rare to be on a set where people’s complexity in their gender is being honored at all times. But it does happen and it is possible and when it happens it’s really cool and special. And my experience on the set of Adam was that. Of course, that wasn’t the case for everybody.

Rhys: It was just so weird because my job on Transparent was to create and foster trans-inclusive sets. So then when I’m working on a smaller production with less resources, there’s a mistake that happens and it becomes part of this huge backlash. It was frustrating, because I was really working hard to prevent this kind of thing. But I learned that you can’t. You can’t prevent it all.


Rhys directs a scene in Adam standing next to Mj Rodriguez

Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam


“I decided that I needed to get out in front of this.”

While still in post-production, the first negative responses to the movie began.

Rhys (on Medium, June 5, 2018): Because of the long history of harmful and outright false depictions of trans lives, our community is rightfully distrustful of material that might add to this negative legacy. However, I believe in the power of trans art and storytelling, even when it is challenging or uncomfortable. Creating trans art often requires difficult conversations, and I strive to show up, be present and responsible to this dialogue.

Howard: I wasn’t familiar with the extent of the backlash to the book until after we’d shot the film.

James: The trans folks I knew really liked and recommended the book.

Rhys: A small publication put out an article saying this movie was secretly the most transphobic thing ever. It was half-formed but it started to catch on because of the headline. This was in 2018 when we were still in post-production. So I decided that I needed to get out in front of this and introduce myself to audiences who might not know who I am. I wanted to build a little bit of trust, because I had built a certain amount of trust with a certain audience but it was quite small in comparison to the social avalanche that happened. I realized a lot of people didn’t know of me and my work and it didn’t matter all the work I’d done beforehand. So it was preventive. To try and prevent the dam from breaking.

Howard: Once I learned of the backlash to the book, we knew there would probably be a backlash to the film. Rhys wrote a beautiful piece on Medium to provide more context, and we posted a statement as a team shortly before the film’s release.

James: Strangely, one of the things I most treasure about the Adam experience was working with Rhys, Joe, and Howard through the very difficult period in post-production when a flurry of online invective started surfacing against the film — a film, of course, which no one had as yet seen.

One reason was watching Rhys so humanely and thoughtfully make the effort to, as we say, make space for people’s negativity, which we always reminded ourselves was coming from a place of actual vulnerability and pain. We realized we had to focus on the work and be patient with people, which is not as easy as it sounds. So patient, in fact, that I ended up, in a very painful call, having to tell the programmers at Toronto [International Film Festival], who loved the film passionately, that we were going to rescind our submission because we really felt we needed to give Rhys the time and space to think about how to engage and present the work.

The kind of abstract rage some people were (at least in my mind) wrongheadedly directing at, well, the idea of the film, was coming from a place that needed to be recognized as real; we couldn’t honestly share that recognition if we were simply putting ourselves and Rhys into both a defensive crouch and an offensive “crisis management” PR position. The extra months gave Rhys the time to put his thoughts together, and for us to quietly pre-screen the film for people whose critical and political acumen and opinions we valued and who, through their own responses, gave us and Rhys the affirmation that, yes, Rhys was right to have taken the risk to make the film, and that we knew we would be forever grateful he did so. I thus have the pleasure of being able to be proud both of the film, but also, by association, of Rhys’ very loving embrace even of those who, at least before the film actually premiered, had it out for his work.

Rhys: I mean, I’d been working towards a career in directing for a long time. I started making short films in undergrad in the early 2000s and my first significant effort played in a lot of film festivals. After undergrad, when I moved to New York, I knew I couldn’t work as a director right away. You have to pay your dues and cut your teeth so I worked on sets and tried to learn as much as I could wearing all these different hats. I did sound department and camera department and editing and PA’ing. But that was all in the interest of gaining more skills so I could ultimately be a better director.

When I decided to leave New York, I went to grad school at CalArts. I did a three year MFA with a focus on directing and narrative construction and working with actors. And I left school with a short at Sundance. Then at Sundance, I met Joey Soloway, and that’s how I got scooped into Transparent. It was never the plan to be a producer. That was a weird and unexpected left field thing.

Transparent ended up being a really amazing education for me as a producer, but I was really trying to keep my eye on the prize of moving toward directing. There had been a conversation of me directing some episodes since season one but it kept getting postponed. It took longer than it should have in my opinion, but then it finally happened and I was like, yes, I’m going in the right direction. I’d just signed with an agency and I was feeling on an upswing. That’s when Adam came to me. I was ready to go.

But the people upset about the movie hadn’t seen my films. They didn’t know my work. If they knew my name it was only from Transparent, and they probably didn’t even know that.


Rhys looks at the camera next to Shawn Peters

Rhys Ernst and cinematographer Shawn Peters on the set of Adam


“Trans stuff is a risk. Period.”

The movie went to Sundance in January of 2019 — with an additional out trans cast member.

Bobbi: It’s a special movie for me because it’s the first thing where I’m credited under my new name. And I’m so grateful this was the project that was coming out around the time I was transitioning.

Before filming, I had privately identified that I was nonbinary, and I had a lot of questions about what that would mean for me. I was in an interior, private place. I had very few close friends who were connected to that reality for me. I still had long hair and was outwardly presenting in a way that wouldn’t read as trans to most people. Rhys didn’t even know this about me when we were filming.

But by the time it was getting submitted to festivals, we had enough social overlap that he had heard from mutual friends. At some point when they were in post-production, Rhys checked in with me and asked about the name credit. And I was like oh my God I do secretly have a new name. Having a trans director who has amazing trans literacy, I felt very held through the whole thing. After filming, I was looking inward and felt like I needed to take a break from auditioning and from modeling. I needed to take a break from things that required my visibility. I communicated this to my team and they were really supportive. And it was around that time the film got into Sundance.

Rhys and I went on a walk when I was visiting LA. He was like: Do whatever you need to do, it’s no problem, but I’ll be really sad if you don’t keep acting. I think you’re a talented, special person. And also if you decide that you want to come to Sundance, me and my producers are here to support you in whatever way you need.

I made the decision that I did want to do that and then they set up meetings for me with people at GLAAD who did media training about how to navigate this. I was having a really hard time changing my handle on Instagram because I was verified and it took someone at GLAAD emailing Instagram a hundred times. It took months.

They were just there for me. I’d been to Sundance before so it wasn’t totally unknown territory. But it was just nice. Getting dinner with Leo after a day of doing press and being with Rhys. I don’t know. It just felt like oh okay I can do this. I felt really supported. And a lot of talent flew out for it who were really excited about the project.

Rhys: The premiere of the film at Sundance was truly incredible. I was really nervous! I didn’t know how it would be received. Is it funny? Is it too spicy? Will people like it? Will they take away the message I’m trying to tell? And it was above and beyond my expectations. It played through the roof. There were some parts where people laughed so hard in the right way at the right time, to an extent that shocked me actually. We were on cloud nine. We had six screenings at Sundance and every one was that. Every single screening. People were like oh my God your film is getting so much buzz, it might win the audience award. It was that kind of vibe. Unfortunately, we didn’t win the audience award. But I think we were close! That was the word on the street at least. And that tells you about the reaction.

Howard: Screening the film at Sundance was a dream. Rhys, Ariel, the actors and crew put their hearts and souls into making the film, and the audiences were so receptive, the Q&As enlightening. It felt like it was reaching both queer and cishet audiences.

Rhys: Our premiere was full of queer and trans people. I knew a lot of them or knew of them. It was totally packed at the Library Theater in Park City. I saw this one person who used to be a pretty big film programmer at different queer film festivals and they couldn’t believe what we pulled off with this movie. They were speechless. It was crazy. It was incredible. We felt like we caught lightning. And people got what it was trying to say. Completely unambiguously. There wasn’t even a shred of pushback or negative feedback at all. Like zero. Zero. And that included reviewers — straight and queer. That was the story out of Sundance. It was amazing.

James: Playability with an audience is only one factor, and Adam hit the market just at the beginning of the end of the big streamers’ paying reasonable licensing fees to independent distributors — Sundance became what it still mainly is, an all-or-nearly-nothing roulette wheel.

Rhys: Some of the bigger distributors were nervous about the potential blowback even though nothing had happened after that initial article. But they were doing their due diligence and had googled. They got cold feet. So we ended up with a small distributor, but it wasn’t because anything had happened. It was more speculative. Trans stuff is a risk. Period.

James: I think the sale of the film was most probably hurt by the online venom.

Howard: No distributors would ever vocalize to us that they were hesitant to support this kind of trans project — but selling queer films is always a challenge. We were so glad that Wolfe picked it up and gave us a theatrical release.

Bobbi: I went from that Sundance to within a month landing two new projects after thinking my career would be over because I was trans. One of those roles was on Euphoria.

Rhys has such a paternal energy toward me. I cannot imagine a better director to be at a festival with when publicly coming out.


Bobbi Salvor Menuez, Chloe Levine, Rhys Ernst, Leo Sheng and Nicholas Alexander attend 2019 Sundance Film Festival - "Adam" Premiere at Library Center Theater

Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Chloë Levine, Rhys Ernst, Leo Sheng, and Nicholas Alexander at Sundance (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)


“It just felt like anger directed at the wrong people.”

Between Outfest in late July 2019 and the movie’s release in mid-August, the controversy reached its peak.

Rhys: To be honest, I don’t think the Medium article was that widely read. When people are angry online they don’t actually care. They just don’t care to read any further. Even if it’s like, “hey there’s this thing that contradicts what you thought were facts.” They don’t care.

Dana: It wasn’t surprising, because we knew that the book was controversial. But it was frustrating. Some of the things that were considered problematic about the book weren’t even in the film. Ariel knew what the criticisms were. And while she wasn’t going to address every criticism, because one was literally the premise of the book, she changed the big things around consent. So it was a little frustrating, because it was like can you just wait until you actually see the movie before assuming it’s going to be terrible?

Bobbi: I felt really confident in the decisions that Rhys made as a director. There were really graceful, dynamic choices to show characters who are making fucked up choices in a way that wasn’t condoning that behavior. I didn’t feel like the film condoned any of the problematic behavior that happened in it. At all. It was actually very directly called out time and time again in the film itself.

It’s such an interesting dynamic script in what it does with this story. I remember in Q&As highlighting the fact that it was mistaken identity of the genre thinking it’s a romcom when actually the more important relationship is the friendship between this cis guy and this trans guy. That’s the real love story in that movie which to me is so interesting and dynamic. I’d never seen that.

Ariel: We’d go to these screenings where it would play really well, we’d have a great Q&A after and a really interesting conversation, and then we’d go home and go online and it would be totally different. It was a bit confusing.

Rhys: Outfest was a weird weekend for me. The backlash tipped over irrevocably on my doorstep within the 24 hour span of getting an award at this LGBT film festival. The cognitive dissonance of those different experiences was so bizarre. There was one conversation that was happening online among people who almost entirely hadn’t seen the movie and another conversation that was happening at film festivals and with critics and with engaged viewers who had actually watched the film. They were completely different conversations. And there was no way to reconcile those two separate worlds.

Howard: What really stung were attacks from folks who hadn’t seen the film. But I also recognized that we were and are living in a time of pain for the queer community, for our trans friends and family in particular, and finding healing for that pain is more important to me than wincing at being review-bombed on Letterboxd.

Leo: I was not a stranger to online social media community discourse. And I felt really torn because I felt at the time — and I still sort of think this — that if I hadn’t been a part of the project, if I didn’t know what I knew, I probably would have felt the same way.

When you hear it summarized in a particular way, it’s like oh my goodness what is happening? But because I was up close and got to hear the process, I felt more trust. I knew it wasn’t going to be this throwaway thing where yeah a trans director was hired, but he didn’t care because xyz. No, he cared a lot. It’s hard because I think everyone’s feelings were real and everyone’s feelings were valid. Because if you weren’t there at the time period, in the community, the idea of going back to 2006 and watching that feels not fun.

There were real people involved on both sides. There were real people who were upset by the film or their perception of the film. And there were real people who were involved in the making of it. I felt very sad. And I felt like as a trans person in the film, I was getting more of the backlash than some of the cis actors. I tried to engage a little bit in conversation. Sometimes it went well. Sometimes it did not go well and I was like maybe I shouldn’t say anything at all. I saw the things that were being said to Rhys and that was really hard to witness.

Rhys: Honestly, it was heartbreaking. On one hand, I had a great experience with the film at screenings and with viewers in person. That was overwhelmingly positive. So I had this great ride with the movie in a sense. And I’m really proud of the movie and the experiences I had as a result and the people I met. I really like the movie. I really worked hard on it, you know? And I really believe in the ideas that the movie is trying to communicate in terms of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and having empathy. That’s what the fucking movie is about. It’s a trans-affirming movie.

But it was also heartbreaking at the same time. It’s very frustrating to be misunderstood, to try saying that being trans is good and other people are like, this is transphobic this is transphobic this is harmful. That’s an incredibly frustrating experience.

To have an internet pile on is a pretty terrible experience that I think most people are even scared to imagine. It was a bad experience. I think it made me stronger, but I did have to go to therapy as a result. That was important to let go of a lot of it. But I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy. It was terrible.

Bobbi: The film includes complicated stuff, so I was disappointed but not surprised by the internet takedown. It felt like this familiar situation of queer in-fighting. Being in queer community a lot of us have experiences of trauma, have experiences of trauma around our gender — or I can just speak personally — I have trauma around my gender. Sometimes I might not feel so generous about something. And, of course, it’s going to be someone within reach who it’s going to be easiest to take down. I think that’s very prevalent in queer community and it makes me feel sad.

Jude: Rhys directing a feature in 2019 was huge. Silas Howard had done A Kid Like Jake in 2018, but that film isn’t really about the kid, it’s about the parents. This is a much queerer film. Then there was Sydney Freeland who made Drunktown’s Finest in 2014. But I remember making a list of trans directors and it was so hard to find them pre-Isabel Sandoval.

The trans movies that were getting made were still things like The Assignment with Michelle Rodriguez. They were terrible. Then you’d see Laverne Cox in something here and there but that usually wouldn’t be very good either.

We were coming off Tangerine which was a fun, hopeful moment. But [cishet director] Sean Baker is still in the conversation while [trans actress] Mya Taylor hasn’t had the career she deserves.

Ariel: It felt like a lot of the people commenting online, especially because they hadn’t read the book or seen the movie, were using this as an opportunity to platform their views on trans representation in general. They were like, here’s a chance to say what I want to say about this topic. It had nothing to do with art. It was a political statement. Which I think is unfortunate, because art certainly is political, but it’s not political in that way. We weren’t creating a social justice manifesto. And people seemed to be treating it that way. In a lot of ways, I don’t think Adam was really given a chance to be engaged with as art. And that makes me sad. I wrote it to ask questions, not to provide answers.

Leo: I think about Disclosure when Jen Richards says it wouldn’t be so problematic if we had more stories out there. As a community we want so badly to be seen well, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for experimenting and exploring stories that are complicated. It’s a really hard line to balance. So I felt very torn. Because I did feel for the people who were scared this would set our stories and our voice back. But I also was like — the transphobia was the point. The point is that this is reflective of the real community in the 2000s that was transphobic! I understand not wanting to see that. But I didn’t feel like it was very fair for the real people involved in the movie.

Jude: There was a sense that this is it. This was our one trans film for the year. And it’s good for trans people to want more, to expect more, to expect better from media, but it just felt like anger directed at the wrong people.

Rhys: If we had a larger distributor, the kind of blowback might have looked pretty different. It’s quite common for there to be rumblings of controversy around a lot of projects and bigger distributors have dedicated PR departments to manage it. Controversies go away all the time.

And while it was awesome to do a theatrical release — it was a lifelong dream of mine, to have the film on the marquee at IFC Center, it was awesome — because it was limited access, it let the rumor mill spin and spin. Then the message became don’t watch this movie, it’s harmful, and that makes it impossible to check if it’s actually harmful or not.

Dana: I was grateful that when the movie came out, there actually was a lot of positivity around it from the queer community and from the trans community. I feel like in the end a lot of people did see it and did form their own opinions. And that’s not to say it’s above criticism! But in the end it felt like the backlash was just a very loud minority of people, rather than feeling like this onslaught majority opinion.

Bobbi: I was really heartwarmed by so many trans friends who came and saw the movie and felt pissed because the people taking it down on the internet largely hadn’t watched it. They weren’t taking into account the ways the film is a departure from the book — if they had even read the book. It was very get mad about a headline.

Rhys: I really think, as trans people, we need to be much more careful about eating our own. We need to stop terrorizing people within our own community without true interrogation into what the issues truly are. It was a classic bad faith reading. It was what Eve Sedgewick would call “a paranoid reading.” And actually the backlash was what ended up being harmful! It made it harder to get certain trans things financed and distributed. We didn’t have a lot of examples of successful trans films out there.

Bobbi: The thing that sucks about it in my opinion is it affected a movie that could have, in theory, shoulda, woulda, coulda, had a different kind of trajectory with more support. When a complex film by a trans person is supported, it supports the future of trans filmmaking, because that’s what executives care about. How did the movie do? How did it do financially? Rhys is such a talented director and should have already made other features since then. There should be big A-list people who are so excited to work with him. That’s the part that makes me be like… guys, can we not do that?

Rhys: It definitely limited the trajectory of the movie. I think if there hadn’t been this kind of backlash the movie could’ve had a very different life. I’m sure it would’ve had a different life. There’s no question. It would’ve been seen more broadly and I think it would’ve opened more doors for me. The fact that my first feature didn’t go the distance in terms of success or whatever, yeah, it was a setback.


Rhys talks with his hands standing next to Margaret Qualley in orange light

Margaret Qualley and Rhys Ernst on the set of Adam


“So much has changed in five years.”

How would Adam be received if it came out today?

Rhys: After the backlash and during the pandemic, I thought a lot about whether I would shy away from something perceived as controversial in the future. Would I change course around a work like this? And, honestly, the decision I came to was no. I will continue to go toward the thing I’m compelled by, to the interesting stories I feel need to be told, even if they might be perceived to be controversial. In fact, it made me feel even more of a conviction in what I’m doing.

Jude: What should we want from queer media? That’s the question we spend our careers as critics exploring. And everyone is going to have a different answer. Personally, I want big swings with trans people at the helm.

Leo: So much has changed in five years, in our community, politically, social media-wise. I think the discourse would look different now, but the same passion and same feelings would be there. I just think it would take a different form.

Ariel: If it came out now, it would be easier to see it as a period piece about a specific time. 2014 was only seven years after the time it was about, and 2019 was only thirteen years. It was pretty recent. Even though a lot of people knew it was set in 2006, it wasn’t far away enough for people to remove it from the present. And maybe now in 2024, you can really see that was a very different time. These identities were just coming into visibility, and people were more widely claiming them for the first time. It was just a completely different environment.

Bobbi: If it came out now, I think the people taking it down would just be transphobic people. And then maybe the queers would band together to defend it. At the time, fewer people were obsessed with being transphobic in the public eye. I mean, even J.K. Rowling was less annoying back then. Now there’s this emboldened transphobic contingency on the internet. Shit is weird in a different way now.

Jude: My sense is there has been a pivot among young people. I think people observed over-reactions like this one and now think, it’s just one film. If you want a different kind of trans film, go see a different one. There are more options now, so I think there’s less pressure.

Dana: I remember speaking with someone on the production team who said every minority group in media has to go through the sinner phase then the saint phase and then, finally, they’re allowed to be represented dimensionally.

One of the things I was super excited about in playing Hazel was I felt like she was pushing back. She was a kind of trans character we just weren’t seeing on-screen at the time. And I feel like in the past five years, that’s started to change. Queer audiences started to see themselves more and therefore became less guarded in the representation they wanted. People are less focused on what cis and straight people might think and more interested in seeing themselves as fully dimensional humans on-screen.

Rhys: My sense is that queer audiences are more adventurous now. I think there’s a fatigue with purely affirmational, light, pandering, vanilla work. People are excited about things that are transgressive. I’m noticing that with much younger people. They’re interested in transgression. The pendulum swings back and forth. Now would have been a better time for Adam to come out.

Leo: It’s still around. It’s still streaming. I’m so curious how people watching it for the first time now will feel.


Adam is streaming on Hulu. It currently has a 2.4 on Letterboxd.

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 720 articles for us.

13 Comments

  1. wow — i hadn’t even heard of this movie but this conversation was so interesting, because it reminded me of so many conversations we have in queer community about the standards we hold each other to, and how we end up shooting ourselves in the foot a lot of the time.

    this is so thought provoking. thank you drew for putting this together, this is the type of challenging community stuff i love to mull over.

  2. soooo much juicy context and conversation in here, it’ll be so interesting to rewatch the movie through this lens!

  3. I loved reading this! So glad to see it here. I’m really struck by the sense of time – 2003-2006ish, 2014, 2019, 2024 – and how different the internet and queer community stuff has been at each time. There’s a way this feels like a history of intra-queer community trans politics and the internet of the past 20 years. 

    I never saw the movie, but I read the book after it came out and loved it. I was both surprised by the controversy (the book was so clever and good and clearly not at all what it was accused of being?) and not surprised (I have existed on the internet). 

    I may be misremembering it because it’s been 10 years, but the scene I remember most is when one white cis character is like ‘oh my partner is trans’ (subtext: aren’t I progressive and cool) and then the other white cis character is like ‘my partner is trans AND a person of color’ (subtext: I am more progressive and cooler than you). I laughed out loud because that was just so real in navigating a certain kind of mostly white class privileged queer space in college where marginalized identities (your own, your partners) were like special trading cards to mark coolness. The whole book felt like a delightful, loving mockery of a certain kind of queer community engaging in dehumanizing identity politics all of which felt so familiar to me. Then the backlash being queer community engaging in a type of defensive, dehumanizing identity politics felt very Maddie from Euphoria: “Is this fucking play about us?”

    • “The whole book felt like a delightful, loving mockery of a certain kind of queer community engaging in dehumanizing identity politics all of which felt so familiar to me. ”

      Yes! This was the impression I remember having of the book as well. There were parts that were cringe but the cringe was self-reflective.

  4. I liked Adam, in part because it did capture a queer social community that felt familiar to me, and because the cast was so full of queer and trans actors including some i literally know and love. I honestly don’t think I would’ve watched it if you hadn’t asked me to watch it 500 times and then informed me immediately when it was available on Hulu but I was glad I did. And now I am glad I read this piece!

    I am always so interested in these types of conversations, where we really dig into what we owe each other as queer artists, the tendency we have to hold each other to intense standards while often giving cishet people a pass for the art they make about us (and the workplaces they control). i think a lot about the art about queer people that’s often celebrated by straight audiences and thus funded and awarded regardless of how queer people feel about it, whereas art made by us for us ends up living or dying by its ability to attract that specific niche audience, and for everything around the project to be flawless. these are all constantly evolving ideas and i appreciate this chance to focus on them.

    There are so many good quotes in this that I want to copy-paste to my soul… and “every minority group in media has to go through the sinner phase then the saint phase and then, finally, they’re allowed to be represented dimensionally” is an interesting concept i will hold close forever.

  5. What a wonderful piece, Drew. So great to hear all these voices and such deep reflection. I loved the film at the time so much (and still do). I’m so grateful for ambitious and creative filmmaking like this. And yeah, it was especially terrible all the pile-ons and review bombing by people who hadn’t seen it. Of course it reflects that all cinematically underrepresented people are so accustomed to films doing such a shit job at portraying our lives that it’s understandable to have a knee-jerk instinct at another film that sounds problematic. But yeah it was so unfortunate.

    One of the things that made me most angry was that it also meant there were a lot of LGBTQ film festivals that didn’t play it (presumably fearful that folks would put them in the crosshairs for platforming it). Platforming, as you point out Drew, the only major narrative feature of the year by a trans filmmaker (that literally premiered at Sundance!).

    Excited for a new round of people to see it and can’t wait to skim through all the new REAL reviews of it on Letterboxd.

  6. This piece is so well-put together, and I always enjoy hearing from people who worked hard and poured their love and passion into their projects! You’ve convinced me to give this a watch, thank you!

  7. This piece does nothing to change the lesbophobic and misogynistic gaze of Adam? It just defends it by saying that its phobias call out biphobia, or whatever—it’s rapey toward lesbians, and it disrespects gay autonomy.

  8. Now AS is deleting comments calling out the assault and lesbophobia in this film? Beyond the pale.

Comments are closed.

I Don’t Think You’re Stupid. I Just Think I Know More About Movies

Out the Movies is a bi-weekly newsletter about queer film for AF+ subscribers written by Drew Burnett Gregory.


I love music, but I don’t know much about it. Perhaps that’s an odd thing to say about something that’s so important to me, something I experience daily, and yet it’s true. When it comes to music, I like what I like and I don’t have the knowledge to know much beyond that.

I have friends who know about music — whether as a career or a hobby — and I look to them for recommendations. I also enjoy reading essays from music critics or watching a TikTok where someone breaks down a Sondheim composition. I don’t have a deep understanding of music and I don’t have a broad awareness of the latest releases, but when in-depth thought on the art form finds me I feel stimulated and challenged. I love to listen to someone who knows more than me break down why a song I love works so well, or, even, why an artist I don’t like is so beloved by others.

My lack of knowledge about music theory and music culture doesn’t mean my opinions are wrong. “We Found Love” by Rihanna, “disco tits” by Tove Lo, and “Twisted” from the Twister soundtrack really might be the best songs of all time. But I also present these opinions with an acknowledgment that the people in my life who really know music might present a wider breadth in their music taste and a better explanation for that taste.

When I make a playlist, I’m often driven by narrative — classic writer — and by the end the tracklist is about a third songs introduced to me by my friend Laura, a third songs I learned about online, and a third songs I heard in movies and TV shows, two art forms far more familiar to me.

As someone who knows a lot about film, I’m baffled by the way expertise is reviled by many. I love the Letterboxd interviews where they ask cast and crew for their four favorite films, because I’ve always found it revealing to know what art fellow artists look to for inspiration. But I’ll never understand the frequent responses to these videos, responses from people who theoretically care about movies if they follow Letterboxd on social media, or at least cared to sit through a full video that came across their feed. When people choose four very recognizable films, especially when those films were made for children, they’re praised for being real. When people choose four films that might be more obscure, even if obscure means Sight & Sound top 100 instead of IMDb top 100, they’re accused of pretension, of posturing a taste that must be inauthentic. The people answering this question have dedicated their lives to film — why wouldn’t their selections be more obscure than the average person?

There seems to be a defensiveness to these comments. It’s as if a person selecting movies you haven’t seen — or, God forbid, haven’t even heard about — is akin to calling you stupid. It’s seen as a personal attack rather than what it should be: an opportunity. The way I really began to learn about film was from Martin Scorsese’s documentaries on American and Italian cinema. His enthusiasm for this work was infectious and I felt a deep desire to see the films for myself. I had seen very few of these films, and I hadn’t even heard about most, but that was a good thing. There were suddenly all of these worlds waiting for me to explore.

When it comes to film the more I know, the less I know. Every door I open leads to a room with three more doors. Because of my job, I watch about 500 films each year. And yet, even with so much of my life dedicated to the medium, there’s so much great cinema I haven’t seen and so much I’ll never see.

While it’s true that I have seen more movies than most people I know, this expertise provides me context not infallibility. My opinions are not more right than those of a casual viewer. I just might be able to articulate them better and they might be shaped by the other work I’ve seen. There are times when a new movie doesn’t work for me, because I’ve seen its inspirations and feel like those earlier films are better. If I express that opinion, it’s not to say someone who did connect with the new film is wrong. We just had different experiences of a work of art based on our tastes, our personal experiences, and, yes, our knowledgebase. All I ever want is for people to connect with art and then seek out even more. It doesn’t make me sad when people love different movies — it only makes me sad when people say there are no good movies out there for them to love.

Do I think certain movies are made with more attention to craft while others are made more for the desire of profit? Yes. Does the influence of capitalism, weakening attention spans, and anti-intelluctualism on cinema frustrate me? Absolutely. But nothing saddens me more than a lack of curiosity. That’s true in terms of people dismissing work they deem too artsy or obscure. And it’s true in terms of people dismissing the opinions of those who know less than them.

I will admit I have a tendency to state my opinions as facts. It’s a habit that has gotten me in trouble over the years. But I do so with the hope that people will state their own opinions with as much confidence. It’s less that I think my beliefs are facts and more that I’m so enthusiastic about the work I love — and even the work I hate! the art form itself! — that I say these beliefs with a lot of force.

My primary goal at Autostraddle has always been to share the work I love with more people. My secondary goal has been to push queer cinema beyond the limits of our current culture. When I give a bad review that’s all I’m doing. I’m not saying that anyone who connects with the film is wrong or bad or stupid. In fact, there’s actually something so comforting about how even two so-called experts can have drastically different experiences of a movie. Even when I’m writing about copaganda or transphobic tropes, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having a positive emotional or intellectual experience of that work. I’m just encouraging people to go beyond that initial experience and to understand how it might fit into a larger framework.

I love being wrong. I love being right. I love knowing that, like most things, those words are rarely a binary, especially when it comes to art. All I want is for us to keep talking, keep watching, keep remaining open to new beliefs, new thoughts, and new discoveries.

To quote Stevie Nicks in “Twisted” aka one of the objective three greatest songs of all time: You think you hear demons/I think we are the demons/In this place where the images are born. We all experience the world differently and we all experience cinema differently. Let’s stay curious about the world. Let’s stay curious about that difference.

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 720 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. Not to get all parasocial with it but damn Drew I feel like we are kindred spirits right now. First of all: omg I don’t know anything about music either!! I’m very impressed with people who do, but alas, I am not one of them. And thank you for unabashedly being a fucking expert on something and not respecting the fact that some people want that to be dumbed down to appeal to The Average Person whoever the fuck that is. I also love that you state your opinions as facts and I think the line between those two is blurrier than most people are aware, even in the sciences, and especially in the humanities, and even more especially in the field of art criticism, which you work in. I am not very well-versed in film but every single film that I’ve watched thanks to your reviews has made a lasting impression. Please keep on being an unashamed intellectual with a massive brain full of knowledge, we need you!!!!

  2. A friend once described watching my husband and I enthusiastically debate something random as “strong opinions loosely held,” and I feel like something similar applies here. There’s a joy in sharing strong opinions about work of art and other random topics and wanting to hear the same from other people, whether they agree or disagree. (Which is very different from topics where my opinions are very firmly held.)

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‘So Gay For You’ Is Everything I Hoped It Would Be and More

I received an ARC of So Gay For You in March, about a month into my paternity leave. I wasn’t planning to read it right away. I knew it was a book I’d be writing about for work, and therefore it’d make more sense to wait to read it until I was back at work, closer to the book’s release date, because I had promised myself, after all, that I wasn’t going to do work on leave.

But there it sat, on the dining room table — the book jacket with its stylized photo of Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig in denim, their jean jackets buttoned to one another’s, their bodies angled outwards with the posture and facial expressions of precocious child detectives — and its scrawled promise of “Friendship, Found Family, and the Show That Started It All.”

Maybe I could just take a small little peek?

Twenty-four hours later, I’d devoured the entire thing, reading a lot of it out loud to my newborn. I’m sure he had a great time and hopefully will remember Mia Kirshner’s breakfast order.

But, you see — my inability to put it down speaks to a truth So Gay For You illustrates beautifully: sometimes, the work is the joy. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like work at all. Sometimes it feels like a blessing. “We couldn’t believe we got to keep doing it all,” Kate writes of her time spent in Vancouver, filming The L Word. “Living this utopian life for six months at a time, away from everyday stresses. I likened it to prolonged vacation because it rarely felt like work. There were moments where it was possible to think the good times were never going to end.”

“Every day on the first season of The L Word was a pot of honey,” Leisha writes. “I couldn’t believe I was a working actress on such a special show…. we had a shared goal, a collective mission, and that was to do right by the characters we had the honor of playing.”

So Gay For You excels in so many ways — as a loving portrait of queer community, as a roaming time capsule of queer pop culture, as a platonic love story, as a behind-the-scenes almanac to a groundbreaking show and as a juicy celebrity memoir. It’s a thoroughly entertaining read, conversational and introspective, full of pain and joy and wit and insider info.

But its most resonant achievement for me is its tribute to a workplace that actively fostered queer and female voices and stories, how those spaces can be crucibles of inspiration and, almost inevitably, disappointment. Between charming anecdotes of cast hijinks and collaborative character-building, both women chart their own long, winding roads of self-discovery and artistic purpose, much of it intertwined with creating a show that profoundly impacted so many of us — and them, too.

My unhinged, scholarly relationship to The L Word and Autostraddle’s L Word origins are well documented. I began recapping the original series in 2006, incorporating quotes and photos of my friends from our watch parties. In an era of minimal queer representation in the media, and with most of the queer writers and bloggers I followed writing anonymously behind pen names and gravatars, I wanted to make the most of the privilege we had to be visible. My friends became “characters” in my blog and recaps, their faces recognizable to readers, who told me my work offered a window into a more accessible, less economically advantaged “real life” L Word, with all of its talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking and Uh Huh Her concerts. It didn’t matter that the show was bad a lot of the time, what mattered was that it gave online communities a reference point to start from to build connections with each other. My readership grew and eventually I parlayed the blogging and the recapping — including those friends I featured and met along the way  — into launching Autostraddle, itself. Later, I’d recap Generation Q, and launch To L and Back, a podcast that recapped the original series and the reboot. Did I feel like this book was written for me specifically? I did. But if you’re reading this, it was likely written for you, too.

The memoir’s early chapters, detailing Kate and Leisha’s formative years, are filled with familiar queer markers: the sartorial relief of Reality Bites-era androgynous grunge, Jo from The Facts of Life as a gateway, copying haircuts from girls in Gap ads, and the magnetic pull of New York City — that mythical, gritty land where you could really find yourself and your people. Iconic ‘90s moments abound — we breeze through Leisha’s freewheeling twenties in New York: working at a bakery, living across from the Chelsea Hotel, playing with The Murmurs, and roller-skating to the Cowboy Hall of Fame for discounted lunches with her girlfriend. We follow Kate getting high and dancing at the Limelight, doing summer stock theatre, and navigating the modeling world as “waify heroin chic” waned. Leisha is scouted for All Over Me, Kate does a gender-bending stint on the short-lived WB drama Young Americans, Leisha dates kd lang and plays Lilith Fair.

Leisha’s awareness of her sexuality bloomed earlier and more definitively than Kate’s; and while both are searching for something as they yearn towards adulthood, Leisha is headstrong and confident, while Kate is more uncertain and eager for guidance. But there’s a hunger that unites them, even before they knew the other existed — a hunger that prepares them and sets them on a path to meet each other, and become best friends forever.

Their candor about their romantic relationships and personal lives in general is remarkable. Prior to launching their podcast, both were relatively restrained when it came to discussing their personal lives with the press, Kate particularly. She writes about her understandable frustration with the press’ early focus on her sexuality when she wasn’t ready to talk about it. She writes about everything she had going on personally when the show first debuted and, with it, pressure to come out. Eventually, she chose not to officially “come out,” but just to “be out.” In these pages, she’s able to speak entirely for herself on her own terms, and does.

Their time on The L Word, much like our experience watching it, was a tapestry of romantic, artistic, and personal triumphs and tragedies. They loved it and each other. They felt heard and valued, like real collaborators, and invigorated by the seclusion of their annual Vancouver filming cocoon, where they built a vibrant social universe for themselves with the cast. They were frustrated and flabbergasted by Dana’s death, by Season Six, and, many years later, by Generation Q in general. Because it’s that intense love, that belief in the potential of the work and the awareness of how good it can be, that we are most primed for heartbreak when it lets us down, or when new leadership can’t capture the spirit of the original product.

What lingers is how unfortunately rare that experience is. In today’s television industry of rapid-fire cancellations and a seeming new standard that 8 episodes constitutes an entire season of television, with years passing between seasons, with renewals or cancelations coming months after a season airs — will we ever see another L Word? (The ruthless cancellation of A League Of Their Own suggests “no.”) How often do queer actors have the opportunity to enjoy sets and crews and teams like the one Kate and Leisha found, year after year? As the show ends, Kate begins a run on Three Rivers, playing a straight character, an event which required flying in a special wigmaker from France to heterosexualize her hair. “Was I feeling under-the-surface homophobia or was I just horribly miscast?” she wonders.

But what we do have, after this oft-medicore show brought them together and all of us together, is the work we keep on doing. For me it’s this website, and all the collaborations it has spawned. For Kate and Leisha, it’s their podcast. It’s this book.

so gay for you book cover

For the record, when it came time to sit down and write about the book (yesterday) I decided to do a little flip-through just to refresh my memory. 24 hours later I’d read the entire thing all over again. Maybe you will, too.


So Gay For You is out now from St. Martin’s Press. You can read an exclusive excerpt from the book right here on our website.

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 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. loved this review! i also read the book in a day, it was so good. it went much deeper than i thought it would! loved the marja shade too lol. i didn’t ever want it to be over so now i am reading reviews to fill the void.

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Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig Go Deep Into The L Word’s Most Legendary Sex Scenes

So Gay For You follows Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey as they grow from closeted queer kids into LGBTQ+ activists and successful actors and podcasters; delving into their personal lives and taking us behind the scenes of  The L Word and Generation Q.

In this exclusive excerpt from the co-written memoir, Kate and Leisha talk about filming some of the L Word’s most iconic sex scenes.


Kate Moennig

As originally written, in season 3, episode 5, “Lifeline,” Cherie and Shane had a love scene that involved a balcony, a chaise lounge, and acrobatics. To the best of my memory, the stage directions involved Cherie hanging off one end of the chaise, with Shane crawling on top of her from the opposite direction. At some point, they were to contort into pretzel shapes, and the grand finale would have them both in a Cirque du Soleil position for the whole neighborhood to see. If anyone tried this at home, they would be arrested for public indecency, land in urgent care, or both. Thankfully, I never had to plead my case because our director for that episode, Kimberly Peirce, had already flagged it. She didn’t want to change the structure of the characters’ dynamics, she only wanted to make them as realistic as possible. So Kim and Ilene made the executive decision to lose the chaise lounge and use the pool and a strap-on instead.

Now it started with Cherie having to seduce Shane from the front door and lead her all the way into the pool. We would be filming all night on a chilly Friday at a private mansion on Kits Beach, and Kim knew we had to be as uninhibited as possible. She got us a bottle of liquid courage to relax any nerves and to stay warm. Kim and I had a glass and Rosanna may have had two. Love scenes in general always have a level of anticipation prior to filming them, regardless of who they’re with, and this particular one included props, cold water, and wide voyeuristic shots that didn’t hide much.

The whole time Rosanna was leading me to the pool, our objective was guiding each other as gracefully as we could so neither of us would trip or, in Rosanna’s case, fall backward in the dark. We couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves over how unsexy and unromantic it actually was.

When it came to the strap-on, Kim liked the idea of Shane showing up at Cherie’s “packing,” since it would save time and feel uninhibited. My brain immediately went to the logistics: Did she swing by her house first to grab it? Does she keep it in the glove compartment? I’m wearing tight wool pants with no stretch, so how does it fit?

“It doesn’t matter, Kate,” Kim said. “It’s television.”

“Okay, so how does this all work?” Rosanna asked. She hadn’t gotten to this chapter in the lesbian book of life. So, Kim, in her forthright manner, explained strap-on sex to her in detail, like a math tutor explaining long division. I watched Rosanna hang on her every word and nod along to what Kim was saying, while trying to understand. Right on cue, the props department arrived and presented the main attraction on a dessert tray like we were at a French restaurant. It took Rosanna one look for everything to click. By the end of that night Rosanna couldn’t help but say, “Now I get it. I totally get it now!”

I don’t know if that level of rawness would’ve come from anyone other than Kim. It all stemmed from her directness and unabashed honesty. Kim made what could have been a grueling and vulnerable evening into an incredibly comfortable and creative environment. We always said our show had the spirit of an indie film. We would discover things on the day that no one had thought of and live in the moment of what we had to do with the resources we had. Everyone’s objective was to approach the work with honesty and integrity regardless of how outlandish certain scenarios or characters got. Our ideas came out on the fly in the most trustworthy, protective environment.


Leisha Hailey

One of my favorite scenes is when Alice is shack-led in a dungeon by a vampire named Uta Refson (Nosferatu back-ward). Handcuffs and fangs? Fun! You’re seeing me topless and tied to iron rings, but Alice is in on the joke. She knew it was ridiculous but was into it because it was about self-exploration. Alice’s sense of adventure was one of my favorite qualities to delve into. I liked the idea of her dating Uta, though if that relationship had lasted more than one night, Alice would have had a hard time going for strolls on the beach in sunny Los Angeles, just saying.

The sex stakes were never higher than in “Labyrinth,” in season 2, when Dana and Alice finally hook up. Erin and I met with the director Burr Steers multiple times to conceptualize and develop the different scenarios we thought these characters would be in on that long-anticipated evening. Erin and I knew that after all the buildup the release had to be over the top. We decided to reference famous sex scenes from movies like 91⁄2 Weeks to show that gays can do that too. We also decided Dana and Alice would be into role-playing. They were so in love that they yearned to be with each other in every scenario possible. Burr was so sweet and open to all our ideas. We walked around the apartment picking out every spot Dana and Alice could find themselves entangled. Production got the rights to the song “Finally” by CeCe Peniston, so we had the perfect score for this epic score.

Later on, imagine my reaction upon finding out I’d be having sex with Cybill Shepherd. This absolute icon plays Phyllis Kroll, a woman who realizes she has been repressing her sexuality her whole life. Alice becomes her obsession and is basically her gateway drug to a life of freedom. Cybill was excited because in her long, expansive career, she had never done a love scene with a woman. I was happy to be the actress for the job. I’ll never forget the day we shot the scene in bed; she pushed me down and something came over me. I drew my hand back and slapped Cybill Shepherd’s butt so hard she screamed, “What are you doing to me!?” followed by a string of expletives. I stayed connected in the scene but was dying inside. When the cameras cut, we lay there laughing about it.

When it came to sex scenes with Tasha, played by the spellbinding Rose Rollins, the two of us were really interested in exploring her and Alice’s masc/femme dynamic. Working closely with our extraordinary costume designer, Cynthia, we decided Alice would start wearing dresses around Tasha and playing into the stereotypes of hetero women. Tasha leaned into the butch role, riding a motorcycle and becoming an officer in the military. She had a quiet strength that could stop a girl in her tracks. Rose and I would take tropes or scenes we’ve all seen a billion times in the straight world and mimic them. We shot scenes where she picked me up at the waist and I’d straddle her hips before she threw me on a table, or I’d run across the room and jump into her arms when she came home on leave from overseas dressed in uniform. It was our way of subverting expectation, showing that lesbians are different kinds of people with their own relationship dynamics, even in the bedroom.

Tasha and Alice have one sex scene that is so perfectly L Word. They’ve just come back from dinner and are having a fight about the war in Iraq . . . because nothing screams hot girl-on-girl action like a debate about foreign oil.

TASHA: Oh, come on Alice. Stop frontin’, okay? That’s your world. You were right in there with them with all their kneejerk liberal bullshit.
ALICE: Yeah, but, that’s America. That’s supposedly what you’re fighting for, it’s a little thing called “freedom of speech,” remember?

The fight culminates:

TASHA: You know, some of the people are in the military because they want to serve their country. Okay? We believe in what we stand for. I’m sorry if we don’t live our lives wearing trendy fake-ass raggedy T-shirts that scream out bullshit about why we kill people.
ALICE: You think it’s trendy to not want to kill people?
TASHA: The soldiers that I served with don’t want to kill people. Like, what the fuck? You think I want to kill people?
ALICE: Well, why are you there?
TASHA: The question is, “Why the fuck am I here?”
ALICE: Because we want to fuck each other!

And fuck each other they do . . . on the desk, in the bedroom, against a wall. Tasha rides Alice, Alice licks Tasha’s crack, Tasha tastes Alice’s toes. It’s the kind of sex-a-thon that could only be inspired by war foreplay. Ha! Warplay!


From SO GAY FOR YOU: Friendship, Found Family, and the Show that Started it All, by Leisha
Hailey & Kate Moennig. Copyright © 2025 by the authors, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

so gay for you book cover

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Kate & Leisha

Kate has written 1 article for us.

2 Comments

  1. wow, i had no idea that they had so much input in the sex scenes. but that’s so cool. can’t wait for my copy to arrive!

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No Filter: Da Brat and Jessica Betts Release the Stud Anthem of the Summer

feature image photo via Da Brat’s Instagram

Hello and welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I tell you what our favorite queer celebrities are doing on Instagram! Warning: I have been listening to the Death Becomes Her cast recording on repeat for days, and I cannot be held responsible for any references I make!


Theeee stud anthem of the summer methinks?


This is a lawyer from an 80s buddy comedy, I will not be explaining further!


I love Pride Month because people are just like “Hey! Reminder that I am gay!”


Katy PLEASE remove your FOOT FROM MY NECK! I cannot breathe!!!


Awww this is such a TBT to Chappell’s old TikToks, remember that era?? It was like…two years ago?? Insane!


This is easily one of the funniest pull quotes I have ever seen on a magazine and frankly? In this climate? Kinda brave!


STOP LOOK AT THOSE CHUNKY LIL LEGS!


Tig, you might not believe me, but trust me when I tell you this is hot! For some!


This makes me feel both gay and weirdly patriotic in a…well, revolutionary French way, I suppose?


This is how vacation should be! One single task (tan), everything else?? YOLO!


And Kristen is mother!


NEW MUSIC FROM KEHLANI THANK YOU!


Pearl??? Is that you!??


Terrell needs to stop playing with me, I know he gonna fall off that stool 100 times!


And a Keke album! It’s all happening this summer, folks!


I love everything about this Auntie, she was gay ONCE for like ONE MOMENT okay!


It’s giving Marcia Gay Harden in First Wives Club and frankly I don’t know a better compliment!

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Christina Tucker

Christina Tucker is writer and podcaster living in Philadelphia. Find her on Twitter or Instagram!

Christina has written 354 articles for us.

I’m Finally Living the Friend-Filled Summers I Grew Up Watching On-Screen

This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.


There are a lot of things about my adult life that would blow my pre-teen self’s entire mind, but one of the biggest is finally having the kinds of friendships I always admired in the fictional stories I watched and read. I was always especially envious of the way they depicted childhood summers, like in the movie Now & Then, which recently turned 30. In that movie, four best friends live in the same neighborhood, so they spend the summer showing up at each other’s houses, using walkie talkies to invite each other to come outside and play, riding their bikes around together, and going on self-made adventures.

My childhood was…not like that. I didn’t live in a cute suburban neighborhood, I lived on a main street in an urban city where I wasn’t even allowed to walk further than my parents could see from the front porch because it wasn’t safe. We lived on the corner of a dead end (which for some reason was called “The Court,” probably leftover from a former street name), so that’s where my brother and I often played, but there weren’t that many other kids around. For a little while, I was friends with the girl down the end of The Court, but she wasn’t very nice. She was very bossy and tried to make me drink cough syrup for fun, at which point I would pretend I heard my mother shouting for me to come home. And once, when my mother wouldn’t let me outside to play, she flipped my mom off, so I was forbidden to see her anymore. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly living out my Now & Then summer fantasies. I didn’t even know how to ride a bike.

Smash cut to 2025. I still don’t know how to ride a bike, but my summers look a little more like those Now & Then summers than my pre-teen self could have dreamed, especially since I managed to combine it with our lifelong dream of living in New York City. Slowly over the years, every person in one of my friend groups ended up moving to my neighborhood in Queens. All of us are within a 20-minute walk of each other — our own little “gayborhood” — and it’s my favorite thing.

I love getting messages in the group chat about who is working from which coffee shop, who is heading to our favorite queer bookshop, and who randomly ran into each other while doing errands. I love being able to visit my friends and not have to get in a car or take the train. I love getting a text asking if I want to meet up at a nearby restaurant for a beer and being able to just throw on pants and head over to enjoy some outdoor seating, refreshing beverages, and impromptu friendship. Just last week, I was walking back from having backyard beers at one friend’s apartment and ran into another friend at the street fair I had to walk through to get home. And a bunch of us in the neighborhood all play D&D together, which adds to the magic of it all.

My friends and I get to spend the summer showing up at each other’s houses, inviting each other to come outside and play, and going on self-made adventures. Just like I’d always dreamed.

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Valerie Anne

Valerie Anne (she/they) a TV-loving, video-game-playing nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories in all forms. While having a penchant for sci-fi, Valerie will watch anything that promises a good story, and especially if that good story is queer.

Valerie has written 649 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. I love this! <3 I'm happy for you Valerie Anne, and as someone who is slowly building her own local queer microcommunity as an adult, this really resonates.

  2. I love this! So happy for you. I moved a year or so ago to the same neighborhood as a close friend and her husband (we’re two blocks apart now) and it’s so nice to just be able to text and see if anyone wants to go on a walk, or get invited over last minute to watch a movie

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Mini Crossword Watches Too Much TV

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Darby Ratliff

Darby is a queer crossword constructor and graduate student living in St. Louis.

Darby has written 58 articles for us.

Rachel

Rachel is a queer crossword constructor, writer, and bioethicist.

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As Trans People in Dallas, All We Have Are Each Other

Two trans women walk into a Café Brazil in Dallas, Texas.

What sounds like the start to a joke (“they both ask for the estrogen special!”) was instead a lifeline for me one Wednesday afternoon last month. I strolled into the doors of the establishment, scanned the restaurant, and saw my lunch pal sitting at a table inspecting a menu. She was absolutely glowing in a lovely tank top, glistening necklace, and radiant makeup (her eyebrows were on point, as the kids say). Meanwhile, I was adorned in a green dress covered in quasi-floral patterns. Our fashion sensibilities were both rocking that day, despite the circumstances.

The joy reverberating off our Café Brazil table was extraordinary and God knows we needed that joy. Being trans in Texas right now, even in a relatively accepting location like Dallas, is a daily dose of utter madness. How can we possibly survive it?

Well, talking about the chaos certainly helps. In the last month, I’ve had at least three different lunch outings with trans friends, and all of them largely devolved into talking about the hardships of existing as a trans person right now. It seems like every day various Texas government branches propose some new civil rights-suffocating measure targeting trans people. Trying to talk with cis people about this stuff is so challenging, since they’re privileged enough to not directly experience the larger societal context of this mayhem.

There’s also the additional problem of even finding the time to talk about this shit while balancing everyday obligations. Capitalism’s gears never stop grinding. The rent will always be due. You must toil away to get the money necessary to even exist in America. In the middle of those ceaseless obligations, who has time to vent, cry, or angrily yell about all the government and societally sanctioned transphobia? At least in my case, I’m so busy just trying to keep my head above water financially that it can feel extravagant to carve out time complaining about a status quo I can’t immediately alter.

Talking to other trans comrades in a one-on-one setting, I finally feel able to spill my guts about these problems. There is no computer or work consuming my attention. There is only another human being who is also in pain. Now we can talk without having to constantly explain ourselves or deal with cis people saying “actually, it’s not as bad as all that.” Heck, we’re even comfortable enough to make glib jokes about “book burnings” and “internment camps” because, hey, you have to laugh to keep from crying sometimes.

I feel renewed and re-energized when I bask in the light of these other Dallas trans souls. Our wider world includes wretched politicians demonizing trans people to terrify constituents into becoming loyal voters, but this same place also contains these magnificent trans folks who make life worth living.

I know these truths in the deepest parts of my bones. Yet terror and catastrophizing thoughts still grip my mind whenever I’m alone in my apartment with only the latest RFK screed or news about some new transphobic Texas legislation to keep me company. I go from loneliness-induced anguish to Café Brazil joy again and again. It’s like I’m on a rollercoaster swerving from “we’re cooked” to “we’re so back” at 160 miles per hour. Trans life tends to operate in such bifurcated terms. An Uber driver will ask me if “watching trans porn makes me gay” as I’m on my way to a delightful hangout with other trans folks.

Whenever I’m alone, my depressive tendencies grip my brain and suddenly every aspect of my life, trans-related or otherwise, is circling the drain. Will I be able to procure the medicine I need to keep existing? What happens if I get attacked the next time I go out of my house? What if my next Uber ride is the last? Will my fragile finances remain steady? A dab of trans communal euphoria can bring me back from my most anxiety-ridden state…but that also means my darker mental state can return at any time. Witnessing things like data showing Texas as one of the two most dangerous states for trans people to travel through just ratchets up my brain’s disaster-prone impulses.

My darker psychological tendencies are even creeping up as I type all this out. My brain is gripped with fear that this essay just comes off as either bragging (“look at the cool trans friends I have!”) or whining (“waaahh, it’s expensive being an adult, that’s surprising”). My uncertainty and self-doubt is a microcosm of how it feels to exist in Dallas as a trans person right now. It’s maddening. It’s unwinnable. No matter where you go in Dallas, whether it’s a restaurant with a Confederate Flag draped across its wall or a lesbian bar with more grabby cis gay men than trans women, it can feel like there is no salvation. My mind, like this place, can feel inescapably bleak on the worst days.

In the middle of that daily insanity, though, I’ve scribbled down some thoughts I can constantly turn to for temporary comfort. If there’s anything I’ve learned from a life of mental health woes and a little over two years of being out as trans 24/7, it’s that none of us are the only ones going through profound pain. Instead of spiraling into our own woes, we can look to others grappling with the same problems. That includes Dallas, Texas, a place housing many trans women of endlessly varied personalities.

They too know about the madness. It may take on a different form for each of us, but they also know about the insanity of trying to secure basic essential necessities while dealing with ceaseless oppression. Trans stigmatization is all about silencing us and reducing trans folks to societal “aberrations” that need to be wiped out. But we are not anomalies. There is joy in bonding with one another, and looking outward to trans people living around the world and trans people who have existed throughout history.

Listening to my friends, I hear fear, vulnerability, but also anger. Resilience. Determination. Knowing we’re not alone in our distress makes this world seem a bit more bearable because, after all, there’s power in numbers. That doesn’t remove the madness of fulfilling capitalistic obligations while all these social issues transpire. But temporarily, we revel in the joy Greg Abbott and his cronies salivate over wiping out.

Two trans women walk into a Café Brazil in Dallas, Texas, and, for a brief moment, we’re happy.

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Lisa Laman

Lisa Laman is a life-long movie fan, writer, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic located both on the autism spectrum and in Texas. Given that her first word was "Disney", Lisa Laman was "doomed" from the start to be a film geek! In addition to writing feature columns and reviews for Collider, her byline has been seen in outlets like Polygon, The Mary Sue, Fangoria, The Spool, and ScarleTeen. She has also presented original essays related to the world of cinema at multiple academic conferences, been a featured guest on a BBC podcast, and interviewed artists ranging from Anna Kerrigan to Mark Wahlberg. When she isn’t writing, Lisa loves karaoke, chips & queso, and rambling about Carly Rae Jepsen with friends.

Lisa has written 20 articles for us.

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New Miley Cyrus Tracks, Ranked by How Likely You’ll Hear Them at Pride Parties

Miley Cyrus is no stranger to evolution. Since her 2013 album Bangerz finally freed her from the stranglehold of her early Disney image, every subsequent release has been an experimentation in genre and form, often to varying degrees of success. Where Bangerz felt like a raucous celebration of breaking away from the prescribed notions of who people think you are, her other albums — particularly Younger Now, Plastic Hearts, and Endless Summer Vacation — lacked the same raw and rebellious attitude. The songs, for the most part, lacked intensity and excitement, too, which illustrated a problem brewing for a while: Producers and record companies didn’t seem to have any clue what they were supposed to do with Cyrus’s unique (and immense) talent.

Cyrus can sing, of course, but it’s the way she wields the dark-timbred, raspiness of her voice that has always set her apart in the pop landscape, even if some of her music fails to meet the occasion of her pipes. That particular quality comes from Reinke’s edema, a condition that arises from overuse of the vocal cords, which Cyrus has learned to harness into the ultimate musical sleight of hand: You might not be vibing with the song, but you’re always going to stay to hear that voice.

After over a decade of trying to figure out where and how that voice and her incredible dexterity as a performer should be utilized, Cyrus’s new album Something Beautiful finally provides a place for all her skills to be showcased wholly. It also proves a worthy representative of what she’s truly capable of and what shape her career will take in the future. The album was written and composed by Cyrus and a cast of musical powerhouses across almost every genre you can think of, including Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Perfume Genius, etc.), Maxx Morando, Molly Rankin and Alec O’Hanley (Alvvays), Adam Schatz (Landlady), Tobias Jesso Jr., Kenny Segal, Pino Palladino, Brian D’Addario (Lemon Twigs), Cole Haden (Model/Actriz), Danielle Haim, Flea, Andrew Wyatt, Nick Hakim, and Bibi Bourelly. Something Beautiful sees Cyrus playing with genre and form again. Only this time, Cyrus finally decided to risk it all.

And it paid off. This her best work to date and might be the album that finally cements her legacy in the annals of pop super-stardom.

In the press leading up to the album’s release, Cyrus stated several times that along with being her best album yet, Something Beautiful would also be her “gayest.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Cyrus does identify as queer and has consistently shown up for the LGBTQ+ community in various ways through performances and philanthropic efforts like her Happy Hippie Foundation. But I wasn’t convinced she was going to fully lean into writing about queer thoughts or relationships or construct musical narratives that would highlight the joys and challenges of being a queer person. Sadly, I was right about that.

Despite this, Something Beautiful is testament to the power of an artist finally fully coming into her own. And you know what, it actually is her “gayest” album ever…in the sense that queer people are absolutely going to eat this shit up.

With that in mind, I thought we’d have some fun and rank the 10 full-length tracks by how likely they are to be blasted by one of the thousands of gay DJs performing at Pride parties and gay clubs this month and over the rest of the summer.

10. “More to Lose”

It is so interesting how this is one of the most conventional tracks on the album but also one of the best. “More to Lose” is a straight-forward, piano-driven power ballad reminiscent of some of the biggest hits of the 1980s that narrates the grief that comes when a relationship has tragically ended. Not only does it feature some surprising turns in terms of composition (you’ll never expect what they do with the saxophone here), but it puts Cyrus’s vocals to work in a way no other song on the album does. Although it’s a gorgeous track, I think this one is best fit for the comedown at the end of the night.

9. “Something Beautiful”

As the title track on the album, you’d think it would be in the top three but, unfortunately, I don’t think this one will be as easily embraced as others. Wildly operatic in its composition that blends R&B, hard rock, and experimental jazz with bursts of distortion from electric guitars and a saxophone that feels like it could rip right through you, the lyrics of “Something Beautiful” find Cyrus unable to control her desires for the subject of the song. The ferocity of the yearning here does feel pretty queer, but I think you’re more likely to bop to this in the privacy of your car on the way to the club.

8. “Pretend You’re God”

Even though the title speaks to a high level of possibility in the Going Feral department, the song is decidedly less fierce (and less hot) than the name implies. Studded by steady percussion and, at times, grungy and glittering synths, “Pretend You’re God” features some of Cyrus’s most diverse vocal exercises on the album and touches on the need to be taken care of mentally, emotionally, and sexually. For sure one of the sexier tracks on the album, but unlikely we’ll hear it on the dance floor.

7. “Give Me Love”

This is one of the most confounding tracks here, and I think its reception will suffer from the choice of its placement as the closing track. Technically, it doesn’t really say much — instead, it relies on ornamental instrumentation and a dreamy, baroque composition that still makes way for Cyrus’s mezzo to soar through it. You can’t really dance to this track on its own, but I feel like it’s campy enough for someone to get away with playing at the end of their set.

6. “Golden Burning Sun”

This is one of the more conventionally ardent pop tracks on the album, though there are some lush compositional flourishes throughout. I can see it playing on the dance floor during one of the slower moments, but more specifically, I can see the gays latching onto this in a similar way they did Beyonce’s “Halo” — by screaming at the tops of their lungs to each other after a few drinks.

5. “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved” (featuring Naomi Campbell)

Evoking one of Cyrus’s heroes, Madonna, “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved” is a disco-tinged, electronic track with synthy house flourishes that are reminiscent of The Queen of Pop’s late-90s and early-2000s hits. The beat is quicker, more percussive than a lot of the other tracks. It features a back half designed for the dance floor, which certainly adds to its club banger potential. And the theme of the song — sticking up to someone repeatedly taking advantage of you — and Naomi Campbell’s emergence as the voice of reason also help in that arena.

4. “Easy Lover”

The 1970s country-rock, Dusty Springfield-Fleetwood Mac cool of this song, plus Brittany Howard’s signature funk-forward guitar playing, provide a truly fun listening experience and make this track one of the best songs on the album. A song about the addictive quality of a toxic relationship is likely relatable to all kinds of people, but I just feel like queer pop fans are really going to embrace it. Undeniably danceable with lyrics simple enough to remember after a couple of listens, “Easy Lover” would have Song of the Summer potential if people still cared to classify tracks that way.

3. “End of the World”

A horny, 1970s Euro-pop, synth-heavy track about fucking and finding joy in all the little pleasures of being in love despite the horrors in front of us? Yeah, I think a lot of gay clubs — particularly in Florida and California — are going to wear this one out.

2. & 1. “Reborn” & “Walk of Fame” (featuring Brittany Howard)

In the last three days since the album came out, I’ve struggled to figure out which one of these should be first, because they both just feel primed for playing loud in the club and dancing to with complete surrender. These were two of the tracks I was most excited to hear on the album because they sound so hi-NRG — a subgenre of electronic dance music that was popular in gay clubs in the 1980s and 1990s — to me, and I just haven’t heard anyone playing with EDM rip from the hi-NRG playbook like this.

“Reborn” is a sexy, pulsating, melodramatic Euro-disco anthem about falling deeply in love and wanting to keep the feeling alive at any cost. “Walk of Fame” recalls Sylvester, Grace Jones, and some of the most popular mid-80s new wave tracks in its composition. Like its inspiration, it’s not just disco-tinged new wave by way of its fiery synths and pounding drum machines — it has an edge that draws you in and grabs hold of you. And that’s saying nothing of its cunty, screamable lyrics: “I walk the concrete like it’s a stage / Every time I walk, it’s a walk of fame.” You know this one is going to be played out.


Something Beautiful is out now. The Something Beautiful visual album will be released theatrically in select cities on June 12.

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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 149 articles for us.

‘I Don’t Want To Run Into My Ex and Ex-Friend WHO ARE DATING at Pride’

Q:

There’s a pride event in my town that i want to go to but i know my ex is gonna be there, we broke up two years ago. I’ll call her J. We haven’t spoken in a little over a year — I wanted to stay friends, she wasn’t ready for that because she still had feelings for me. Her current girlfriend of a few months, N, is someone she actually knows through me, but me and N had a friendship breakup while I was dating J. (Yes it was hard to swallow when I heard they were dating each other, but it’s fine, and I’m happy that they’re happy.) I’ve heard that N still makes disparaging remarks about me, which is hurtful, as I don’t do the same to them. I know that it’s possible to have a falling out where nobody is a bad person, and I don’t think they are. Anyhow, there’s a pride event next week that I know J and N will be at, and my girlfriend really wants to go to this event, she loves it. I don’t really want to go, because I just feel really weird about possibly running in to them. I know that this is stupid! I just have created this scenario in my head where N has turned J against me, and they sit around and talk about all of my personality flaws. What if I try to talk to them and they are mean to me? I really do miss J as a friend and the thought of that really pains me. My girlfriend is super annoyed that I am even considering not going because of them being there. How do I get out of my head about this and show up with my girlfriend to have a good time?

A:

If it’s any consolation, I’m sure you’re not the only one worried about running into someone at the Pride event! All across the country, on any given day in June, queer folks are worried about running into someone at a Pride event.

I’m trying to inject some humor in your uncomfortable situation, but I’m also genuinely trying to make you feel better. It’s a queer rite of passage to want to avoid someone at the function; I’ve been there. Your situation is a double whammy of not wanting to run into an ex or an ex-friend — the fact that they’re together?! Oh, we have quite the queer drama on our hands.

My gut instinct here is that if you’re feeling anxious enough to write a whole advice letter about the situation, the scenario might indeed be too much for you to handle right now. I wish your girlfriend were being a little more understanding about that, but I do think sometimes people take preoccupation with exes poorly. I think it’s okay that you feel weird and are worried about how they’ll interact with you. I do sincerely doubt they will be mean to you; they should be focused on their own relationship now. It would be so immature and embarrassing for them to try to cut you down in any way at Pride. It would say way more about them than about you! I don’t think they’re sitting around talking about your flaws. I think they could be experiencing just as much anxiety as you about running into you and your new girlfriend tbh! It’s probably not a comfortable situation for anyone involved.

You don’t say what size city you’re in, but I’d honestly hate for anyone to miss a Pride event, especially if they live in a place where queer community is harder to find or there aren’t queer parties all the time. I live in a pretty damn queer city (Orlando), and I’m still SO SAD I missed one of the biggest Pride events here, because there’s something especially meaningful to me about Pride celebrations in places where queer life is being suppressed and attacked. All of this to say: I don’t want you to miss out on something because of other people’s actions and behaviors. I don’t think you should base your decision purely on your girlfriend wanting to go, but do you want to go? Your letter starts with you saying that you do, and then it’s almost like you talk yourself out of it by the end of your letter. I get it; that’s how anxiety works!

If your ex and ex-friend weren’t going to be there, would you be there without question? Don’t let them ruin your time. But also, I think there are some mechanisms you can have in place to better prepare yourself for the possibility of seeing them and how to best handle it. In fact, I think you should talk about these ahead of time with your girlfriend, just to also reiterate to her how stressful this is for you. Maybe have something like a codeword for if you want to easily exit a conversation with N and J, so your girlfriend can extract you the hell out of there. Are you going with a group or additional friends? Task them with running interference or warning you if they see N and J so you’re not blindsided.

That’s something you should keep in mind: You won’t be alone. You’ll be surrounded by a vibrant queer community, presumably many people who you do not have a complicated past with. They’ll just be two people in the crowd, and you don’t owe them your time or energy. If you really want to go (I think you do!), talk to your girlfriend about how you want to go but how you want her to at least be cognizant and supportive of any anxiety you might end up feeling when there. It doesn’t have to ruin either of y’all’s time. If you decide you don’t want to go, I’m sure there are other people your girlfriend can go with. It’s possible you just need more time before you can be around N and J again, and that’s okay.


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

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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 1037 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. This one really stayed with me, and i had to think and go back to my reply several times without quite understanding why. I wrote one answer (1) and then realized (2). So please bear with me.

    1. The Answer is perfectly fine, and probably the way to go within that situation, but.. (see 2. for a perspective shift)

    When i hear something like that I want to ask on a more meta level: why is it that FFF+ constellations seem to create these kinds of situations which are ripe with betrayal and heartbreak. This doesn’t even have to do with sex, it all starts in the schoolyard, with “Best Friends” couples and the type of betrayal that inevitably seems to come with it.
    I did not witness that in MMM+ constellations and i still cannot comprehend fully why that is so.
    It probably has to do with structural differences, where “coupling” 1:1 has a lot less importance for MMM+ groups. Then there is also the “honor” rules like Bros before Hoes (sorry) etc that might prevent specific constellations (like the one discribed in the question).
    I’m not saying it never happens with MMM+, but it’s a lot rarer. Or if someone behaves like that, the other party might beat them up..

    It’s just so sad and disturbing when FFF+ hurt each other in such a way.
    Maybe some trans people who have done a lot of social switching want to chime in…

    2. After thinking more about it: what disturbed me was not just the situation described, but also the Answer.
    The complete normalization if these types of situations. “Everybody” has been in that situation etc. and to just suck it up. The author never once stops to say that this is pretty fcked up behaviour, getting into a relationship with an exes ex, bad mouthing etc. It sounds as if the authour were used to this regularly happening, believes it is normal, and tells the questioning party not to expect anything else. Which accepts a very toxic environment and puts pressure on the questioning party to also normalize it.
    Calling it Queer Drama hides the actual misbehaviour.
    So i have no clue where I’m going with this, but i had to express it.

  2. Go to the pride event. Focus on your current relationship and having a good time with them. Maybe make some new friends for the day.

    I will say sometimes when I know I’m going to be in an uncomfortable situation, where people I don’t really want to see might be at the same event, if I clock them I look through them not at them. Then go on my way. No one deserves to take your energy.

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Dawn Staley’s Memoir Welcomes a New Generation of Women’s Basketball Fans Into Her Greatness

author photo of Dawn Staley by Kareem Black

On the eve of the 2024 NCAA Championship, Dawn Staley arrived at her pre-game press conference eager to talk about her team and the upcoming game. Her South Carolina Gamecocks were on the verge of adding themselves on a short list of legendary programs who capped off undefeated seasons with a championship. Their championship opponent, the Iowa Hawkeyes, had derailed their attempt to accomplish that goal in the previous year. The excitement over this year’s championship was at a fever pitch and the tournament’s ratings reflected that. And yet, instead of being asked about any of that, on the eve of one of the most consequential games in her coaching career, Dawn Staley was asked about her position on the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

Upon hearing the question, Staley paused and took a sip of her water. At that moment, Staley recognized that the question was meant to be a distraction and that it was meant to stir controversy. No one would have begrudged her for avoiding the question and shifting the conversation back to the next day’s game, as Iowa Head Coach Lisa Bluder did when she was asked later. But, Dawn Michelle Staley is Estelle Staley’s daughter and she had always prepared her for times like these.

Staley shares her mother’s advice in her new book, Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned From All Three: “Put down your armor, drop your defenses, embrace the platform that comes with having a spotlight.”

And so she did. Fully embracing the platform that came with having the spotlight that day, Staley offered unapologetic support for trans participation in sports.

“I’m on the opinion of, if you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion,” Staley said. She acknowledged that her affirmation would likely result in backlash against her, even at this pivotal moment, but that she was okay with whatever came. Her mother had taught her “to understand differences and, rather than fear them, to embrace them” and Staley wasn’t going to stop listening to her now.


It’s hard not to feel like you’ve known Dawn Staley for years. Even for newcomers to the game, she is such a ubiquitous presence that she feels accessible. Her embrace of the culture — both in terms of women’s basketball and hip-hop — makes her feel more relatable than other coaches. But what becomes clear, as you dig into Uncommon Favor, is that so much of what we know about Staley is about what she’s done. We know her through her accomplishments. We know less about the behind-the scenes of it all: how she got to where she is and what inspires her choices. Uncommon Favor fills in a lot of the gaps. So much of what I know about her — like her standing up for trans women or handing out pieces of her championship net in 2017 — makes more sense now.

In Uncommon Favor, Staley invites readers into her home in North Philadelphia’s Raymond Rosen Projects and the community that helped raise her. We join young Staley on the sidelines at the Hank Gathers Recreation Center, waiting for the game to move down court so that she could get shots up. We join Staley at home, the youngest of five children, always fighting for her spot. We get to spend Sundays in church with Staley and her mother and watch as the most important relationship in Staley’s life evolves. Every story channels Dawn Staley’s specific brand of authenticity, which, ironically, strikes me as the book’s greatest strength and weakness.

Uncommon Favor doesn’t hide behind the polish of a co-writer or a ghostwriter, as many other coaches, including Pat Summit and Coach K, have. Instead, Staley tells her story in her voice, establishing trust with the reader almost immediately. But being authentically Dawn Staley also means grappling with her tendency towards introversion. She described herself as an “intensely withdrawn” child and even today covets the uncomfortable silence. At times, you can see that introversion reflected in the text. Moments that should be full of feelings — her father’s rejection of her basketball ambitions or her omission from the 1992 Olympic team, for example — were dispatched in an instant. Instead, Staley pivoted back to the way she communicated best: basketball.

“I guess I’ve come to understand the benefit of sharing vulnerability. Not too much. Let’s not get crazy,” Staley writes in Uncommon Favor. “But in some cases, my opening myself up can lead to awareness for others in need.”


Given her success as a coach, it’s easy to let Staley’s current efforts eclipse her past work. Uncommon Favor allows a new generation of women’s basketball fans to gain an appreciation for who Staley was as a player and the path she took to get there. I’m older and grew up on Tobacco Road, so I got a front row seat to see Staley compete in the ACC, but that’s an anomaly among today’s fans. Not enough people have seen her be great as a player: Staley was doing Point Gawd things long, long before fans handed the crown to Chelsea Gray. Folks who’ve come to know Staley through her time at South Carolina or her work with USA basketball don’t know the version of Staley who was a two-time Player of the Year. They don’t know Staley as the only player to ever win Most Outstanding Player while playing for the losing team. Staley has already been inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame as a player.

There’s a generation of fans whose only exposure to Dawn Staley, the player, is from that one episode of Martin (“Bangin’ Hard in the School Yard”) where Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Teresa Edwards, and Rebecca Lobo schooled Martin and his boys on the playground. Perhaps this memoir gives Staley’s fans more insight into the player she was.

But Uncommon Favor isn’t just a memoir about Dawn Staley; it’s a history lesson in the growth of women’s basketball. Simply put, for nearly every pivotal moment for the sport over the last 50 years, Dawn Staley has been there…most times, at the forefront. She’s been part of the game’s evolution from post-Title IX to the NIL era. She’s part of the last generation of players for whom a domestic professional league was not an immediate option and then elevated the American Basketball League (ABL) upon its launch in 1996. She ushered in the golden era of Olympic basketball for Team USA, recapturing gold in 1996 as a player and then continuing the team’s success as coach in 2020.

Decades of underinvestment in women’s basketball means so much of the game’s history has been lost. If you want to have a debate about greatness in the men’s game, across decades, there’s a treasure trove of old articles and highlight reels for you to dig into, but comparable archives just don’t exist for the women’s game. In the absence of those archives, memoirs from greats like Staley help preserve the history of the game. It’s my fervent hope that Staley’s work on Uncommon Favor will push others to chronicle their stories so that we have a barometer by which to measure greatness.


After an early exit from the playoffs in 2021, the MNBA’s Portland Trail Blazers found themselves looking for a new head coach for the first time in 10 years. The franchise tapped the usual sources to fill their vacancy: former players, past and present MNBA assistants and head coaches, and, increasingly, over the last few years: experienced female coaches. Becky Hammon, the then-long tenured San Antonio Spurs assistant, was a fixture in candidate pools across the league. But then Portland did something unexpected: The franchise reached out and sought permission to talk to Dawn Staley about their vacancy. With two strong female candidates among the pool, the Portland opening didn’t feel like lip service; it felt like the best shot yet to see a woman leading a MNBA team.

Staley’s bonafides were undeniable. She’d done it all and, perhaps, a move to the MNBA — an unprecedented one, to be sure — was the next challenge. On the surface, Staley radiated confidence; she knew that her knowledge of the game and her capacity to build relationships with her players were transferable skills that would serve her well in the MNBA. Beneath that bravado rested some uncertainty: Could she leave South Carolina? Could she walk away from the women’s game to which she’d given so much? Despite her uncertainty, she took the meetings and made her best case for why she could succeed at the MNBA level. Ultimately, Portland goes in a different (read: worse) direction, but I think Staley got what she wanted out of the experience.

“The whole time I was speaking with the Trailblazer folks, I jotted copious notes,” Staley admits in Uncommon Favor. “I wanted to be certain that if another female coach was ever in the position to apply for a coaching slot with the NBA, they’d have all the details they’d need to prepare.”

(It’s worth noting that, in the time since the Portland Trail Blazers passed on Staley, she’s won an Olympic gold, two more national championships, and a slew of individual honors; Portland, on the other hand, hasn’t been able to climb above 0.500 in the regular season or make the playoffs.)

Uncommon Favor is the story of Dawn Staley’s rise to greatness, but within that is a lifetime of jotted down notes. To the women who have been underestimated, under-appreciated, disrespected, and undervalued, Staley offers all the details you need to prepare.


Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three by Dawn Staley is out now.

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Natalie

A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.

Natalie has written 427 articles for us.

George A. Romero’s Daughter Is Making a Gay Zombie Movie Inspired by Real-Life Queer Party Drama

As a queer person who loves all kinds of horror movies, perhaps especially post-apocalyptic survival tales, I was thrilled to hear about the upcoming film, Queens of the Dead, which is being described as a “big gay zombie movie.”

If you, too, are a fan of zombie apocalypse movies, you may have heard of George A. Romero, creator of such classics as Night of the Living Dead. This queer spin on the genre has been taken on by his daughter, Tina Romero. Tina (who wrote this movie with Erin Judge) was inspired to create this when one of the co-promoters of Hot Rabbit (an NYC-based queer dance party) broke off to make a rival event, and the original poster asked, “When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” Suddenly Tina knew she could bring her own unique voice to the genre she grew up watching her dad play in. In fact, the movie will use his vocabulary and play by his “rules.”

Queens of the Dead follows Dre (Katy O’Brian), a — you guessed it — party promoter trying to host a queer warehouse rave and drag show when the zombie outbreak starts. She’s joined by a gaggle of gays played by such icons as Margaret Cho, Jack Haven, Dominique Jackson, Nina West, Julie J, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Riki Lindhome and more.

They didn’t have a big budget, and they had to borrow Katy O’Brian from filming Mission: Impossible, but they had that scrappy spirit queer people tend to have and they made it work, and I can’t wait to see how it turned out.

Queens of the Dead premieres on June 7 at the Tribeca Film Festival.


Take a Bite Out of More News

+ Over 100 celebrities signed an open letter to protect federal funding for LGBTQ+ suicide prevention programs like the Trevor Project, including but definitely not limited to: Aly & AJ, Ariana Grande, Bob the Drag Queen, Cara Delevingne, Dua Lipa, FLETCHER, Gabrielle Union-Wade, Jamie Lee Curtis, Josie Totah, King Princess, Margaret Cho, Pedro Pascal, Sabrina Carpenter, Sarah Paulson, and Sophia Bush

+ Rosie O’Donnell played a lesbian nun on And Just Like That

+ Miley Cyrus talked about her career changing, being a real life Hannah Montana, regretting some of her tattoos, not wanting to be a mom, and more in an in-depth interview

+ Stranger Things has dropped a date announcement teaser for its fifth and final season

+ Mini Spice Girls reunion alert! Mel C and Emma joined Mel B for her 50th birthday celebration, decked out in Scary Spice leopard print

+ CW has renewed All American for its eighth and final season

+ Cynthia Erivo talks playing a queer character while she was coming out, advice for queer people in these tumultuous times, and more

+ V. E. Schwab had me at “toxic lesbian vampires

+ Lady Gaga will guest star on the upcoming second season of Wednesday on Netflix, which absolutely tracks, in my opinion

+ Hacks was always supposed to be five seasons, but now that they’re breaking the fifth season…they might need more time to get to their planned ending (and I’m okay with that)

+ Maria Bello filed for divorce from her wife of one year

+ Reneé Rapp tried polyamory once but it wasn’t for her; she’s all about monogamy with Towa Bird

+ Rapp also says her house is basically a “lesbian frat house” and that her and her gaggle of queer friends “have an agreement to help protect the most marginalized and vulnerable among them.

+ Clea Duvall reflects on But I’m a Cheerleader 25 years later

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Valerie Anne

Valerie Anne (she/they) a TV-loving, video-game-playing nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories in all forms. While having a penchant for sci-fi, Valerie will watch anything that promises a good story, and especially if that good story is queer.

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Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for June 2025

In the midst of Riese and I working on this list of upcoming LGBTQ+ books for June 2025, news began circulating that the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers had published a syndicated summer books reading list that was generated by AI. While the list was full of real authors, the books attributed to them were largely made up. Only five in 15 titles were real, the rest were cobbled together imagined descriptions pulled from the dregs of AI slop.

Riese and I spend so many hours on these monthly books previews for Autostraddle. Could AI do it faster? Sure. They could do something faster, but it wouldn’t be the list you see here. AI misses books, labels things gay that aren’t gay, makes some up and could even pull transphobic books if they had the right keywords attached to them. (Out of curiosity, Riese asked Gemini to pull release dates for a list of 2025 LGBTQ+ books she found on Goodreads. It got about half of them wrong.) Regardless of quality or accuracy alone, the list would be soulless. Two real queer humans curate this list for you every month, and we do so with the deep knowledge of the queer publishing landscape and its history. AI only has slop and keywords.

One frustrating response to the AI reading list debacle I saw made fun of the writer behind it for using a cheap trick to complete such an easy task. Writing books previews like this is not easy. Devaluing this work is not the answer. Our LGBTQ-specific lists, which we now do monthly instead of seasonally, require a tremendous amount of work. Riese uses all resources available to her to try to find the titles, authors, and pub dates for upcoming queer books. This requires referencing a compendium of various sources, from Amazon’s “Coming Soon” sub-section to publisher catalogues to PR emails we’ve been sent to lists on other websites like Book Riot, Literary Hub, The Lesbrary, Electric Literature, and LGBTQ Reads. She also pulls the Bookshop.org links for all the titles.

Riese then passes that list off to me, and I essentially check her work, using all the resources available to me to see if anything has been missed. Literally always, I make additions when we get to this point, which is not a knock on Riese’s research abilities, which are pristine. It just really is a two-person job. There are plenty of queer books, especially in the literary fiction realm, that don’t necessarily use words like “queer” or “lesbian” or “gay” in their description copy, so it takes a closer look or personal knowledge of the author to determine that queerness. We are bibliophiles. We recognize the names of queer authors or celebrities, we recognize popular series, we recognize iconography or visual cues invisible to AI.

It’s not just about research, it’s the realities of our lives as queer writers and editors, socializing with and working with other queer writers. We both have so many personal connections with authors that enable us to add more titles to the list that might be more underground. I always add some harder-to-discover poetry collections. I go to dozens of literary events a year, as an attendee and as a panelist myself. My wife is a queer novelist, so between the two of us, we get a constant stream of ARCs sent to our home. AI famously does not have a literary wife.

I then write up descriptions for each book, usually only having been able to actually read a handful of them ahead of time and not wanting to just echo the publisher description word for word. So I’ll pull out the parts of the book’s premise I think will be most interesting to our readers specifically, usually the parts most interesting to me, too.

By this point, I have no idea how many hours Riese and I have put into this — maybe three days, if I had to guess — but after finishing those descriptions, double checking all the pub dates and name spellings, and pulling all the images and writing alt text descriptions for them, the list starts to look like a list. We then work with our coworker Motti to figure out how to best social it. At no point does AI touch the process, because it would suck the life out of it.

The fact that this list is painstakingly researched and written by two queer human readers is part of its value. You can trust us as experts. We’ve seen over and over again how AI is not to be trusted. But you can also see our humanity come through in this list, in our nuances, in the authentic queer perspectives we bring to the titles we choose to champion.

You should also read Maris Kreizman on this issue. She writes:

There are so many factors to consider when putting together a list. I not only want to feature the best books, but I also want diversity of topic, of tone, of author background, of publisher size, of general popularity. I use my expertise to weigh my choices and game them out to create a balanced list that reflects both my personal taste plus the voice of the outlet I’m writing for. I would wager to say that ChatGPT can’t do this, and now it’s just a matter of convincing the world, including media bosses and readers alike, that there is value in what I do.

I couldn’t agree more. June is an especially busy time for queer books, because publishers like to capitalize on Pride month roundups and bookstore display tables. The density of June’s LGBTQ+ book lineup requires even greater attention to the painstaking details, research, and nuances of this work we do, making sure we’re not just championing the titles on every Pride month upcoming book list but also the ones at the margins. We don’t get every queer book coming out on here, and we don’t pretend to, but we do try to offer a wide range of genres, identities, tones, and themes so that there’s a little bit of something for everyone. It’s a labor of love.

And with all that, I’d like to remind you that we can’t do what we do without the support of our members. For AF+ members, Autostraddle x For Them has rolled out some new hats specifically for queer book lovers, include the Read a Fucking Book hat which nods to Autostraddle’s long legacy of covering queer books (before it was cool to do so) and the Banned Books Reader hat, so you can wear your support for banned books on your head and also know you’ve put $$$ into the queer media committed to continuing to cover those banned books. Take a look:


Autostraddle’s Top Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books for June 2025

Atmosphere: A Love Story, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (June 3, Romance, Thriller)

Huge news for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo heads! Taylor Jenkins Reid, who recently came out as bisexual, has penned a thrilling new lesbian love story set in the 1980s and involving a SPACE MISSION. The romance that unfolds is between one woman in space and one on the ground, which as Riese has pointed out is a bizarrely popular setup, as seen on Netflix’s space seriesAwayand in Apple TV’sInvasion. Atmosphere has indeed also already been optioned for film.

Be Gay Do Crime by multiple authors, edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley (June 3, Short Fiction)

I, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, have a short story in this anthology of nasty stories in which gays are behaving very badly. I feel so lucky to share the pages of this book with so many queer geniuses, like Alissa Nutting, Temim Fruchter, Myriam Lacroix, Anna Dorn, Mac Crane, SJ Sindu, Priya Guns, and so many more! You can read Fruchter’s story from the anthology on Autostraddle. And if you want to read more about some of the stories contained within as well as learn those stories’ origins, take a look at the Inside the Anthology piece published by LGBTQ Reads, which includes a description and artist statement about my story “Of Course, A Curse”, about a woman who destroys her girlfriend’s favorite hat after becoming convinced it’s cursed.

The Can-Do Mindset, by Candace Parker (June 3, Memoir)

The one and only WNBA superstar Candace Parker has penned a memoir that doubles as a self-help book hinging on her daily mantra of “Can-Do” (which was also her nickname as a child). In the book, she uses her personal stories both on and off the court to illuminate how this mindset has helped her achieve her purpose.

The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex, by Melissa Febos (June 3, Memoir)

I have been so excited for this book ever since I heard Melissa read from it a couple summers ago. I mean, look, I’m a Febos completist. I read everything she writes, and Abandon Me is one of my favorite books of all time. Well, The Dry Season, which I’ve already had the chance to devour, is a perfect companion to that previous Febos work. It details the author’s one year commitment to herself to remain celibate, an exercise not necessarily in restraint but in self-discovery and excavation. I am sure I will have more to write about this book very soon. For now, you can get a taste in the essay excerpted in the New York Times (which is actually the portion of the book I heard Melissa read from that summer) as well as in the NYT profile of her ahead of the book’s release.

A Language of Limbs, by Dylin Hardcastle (June 3, Literary Fiction)

I’m in the midst of reading this formally inventive novel, which begins with a seismic event in Newcastle, Australia in 1972 when a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor in a forbidden act of queer love. The narrative then splits into two possible stories —one where her family kicks her out of the house and she ends up at a queer communal home in Sydney, and another in which she represses her queerness and feelings for her neighbor friend and makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature. It’s like gay, literary Sliding Doors. And its told in gorgeous, often fragmentary prose.

Songs of No Provenance, by Lydi Conklin (June 3, Literary Fiction)

From the author of the excellent queer story collection Rainbow Rainbow comes their debut novel, which follows indie folk singer Joan Vole as she flees her life in New York after a scandalous performance on stage and ends up teaching at a writing camp for teens in rural Virginia. There, she encounters her toxic relationship to making art, a complicated history with a friend/mentee, and a burgeoning closeness with a nonbinary artist also on the camp staff. Complicated mentorship and artistic turmoil? Yeah, I will be reading this one ASAP. We also recently published a gorgeous essay written by Lydi ahead of the book’s release.

So Gay For You: Friendship, Found Family, and the Show That Started It All, by Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey (June 3, Memoir)

You know ’em, you love ’em, and they’ve written a book for you, homos! This joint memoir tracks the trailblazing success of The L Word and how the show and its fans forever changed the careers and lives of real-life friends Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey. It includes all sorts of never-before-told/seen stories and photos. Between this and the Jennifer Beals L Word photography book, fans of the original series are well fed this year!

Backlight, by Pirkko Saisio, translated by Mia Spangenberg (June 10 Literary Fiction)

This breakout Finnish queer novel has been translated by Mia Spangenberg and tells the story of young Pirkko from teenagehood through her young adult life working at a Swiss orphanage in the summer of 1968. It’s a story about the writing life, language, and suppressed queerness, political and personal narratives all tangled up together.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab (June 10, Historical Fantasy)

A genre-bending work of fantasy and horror, this new title from V.E. Schwab tells three interlocking stories: one of hunger, set in 1532 in Santo Domingo de la Calzada; one of love, set in 1827 in London; and one of rage set in 2019 in Boston. The throughline? Vampires, my dear! The book received a starred Kirkus review, which describes the book as “a beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.”

Girls Girls Girls, by Shoshana von Blanckensee (June 17, Literary Fiction)

In the summer of 1996, best friends and secret girlfriends Hannah and Sam drive across the country from Long Beach, New York to San Francisco to get away from their hometown and out from under the thumb of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they find queer community for the first time and can be out together as a couple. They also start stripping together at The Chez Paree, adding another secret to the list of things Hannah’s keeping from her family.

Terror Counter, by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi (June 24, Poetry)

From a queer Palestinian performance artist comes this debut poetry collection of Palestinian survival, imagination, preservation, and liberation. The collection experiments with various forms, including the invented visual form of the Gazan Tunnel. You can read excerpted poems online.

And now enjoy the rest of our most anticipated LGBTQ books for June 2025!


June 3

Ordinary Love, by Marie Rutkoski (Literary Fiction, Romance)

Emily’s on-paper perfect life —a townhouse on the UES, two kids, and a husband —is of course not perfect at all. Her marriage is in shambles, her relationship with her parents is strained, and she’s still hurt from a long-ago heartbreak that has never really left her. Enter: her ex-girlfriend! Emily’s high school girlfriend Gen is a famous Olympian now with a roster of high profile ex-girlfriends, and her re-entry into Emily’s life of course kicks up the drama of the past while also threatening to upend Emily’s life in the present.

A Family Matter, by Claire Lynch (Literary Fiction)

A huge family secret lives at the core of this book, which is told across two timelines: 1982 and 2022. In the 1982 timeline, Dawn is a young mother to a daughter who is settling into a life with her husband, when Hazel shows up and changes everything. She then has to fight for her daughter when she’s punished purely for who she loves.

Of Monsters and Mainframes, by Barbara Truelove (Sci-Fi)

This sci-fi/horror novel features monsters…in space! Ever wonder what it would look like if Dracula showed up on a spaceship? Well, here’s your answer! The publisher describes it as “the queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi,” which did indeed pique my interest.

There Are Reasons For This, by Nini Berndt (Literary Fiction)

Atmospheric and strange, this novel follows Lucy as she heads to Denver in search of Helen, the woman loved by her dead brother Mikey. Climate crisis looms over the story, which feels like it’s set in a not so distant future. It’s a weird one, but listen to my wife who blurbed it and described it as a “queer gut punch of a novel.”

Kill Creatures, by Rory Power (Horror)

A dark and twisty thriller, Kill Creatures is about the summer night when Luce, Edie, Jane, and Nan took a boat out for one last river swim. Only Nan returns, the others disappearing forever…until…a year later at the memorial for the missing girls, Luce emerges from the water. This is awfully shocking for Nan…because she killed Luce, right before she killed Edie and Jane. Yikes!

All This Can Be True, by Jen Michalski (Literary Fiction)

Lacie Johnson is planning to divorce her husband and start her life over now that their kids are grown, but that plan is complicated by the fact of her husband ending up in a coma. In the hospital halls, she meets Quinn, who is passing through on her way to a co-op of grief survivors on a remote island after losing her daughter. Quinn is also the former singer of a post-riot grrrl band who left the band over a decade before. And she has a connection to Lacie’s husband Derek that she has to keep secret or else risk her burgeoning connection with Lacie. The novel alternates perspectives.

Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon, by Annie Mare (Romance, Sci-Fi)

Queer love is complicated by temporal paradox in this tale of two women who fall in love….despite existing five months apart.

I Can Fix Her, by Rae Wilde (Horror)

And here we have a book where queer love is complicated by nightmare logic! Johnny runs into her ex Alice one day and is still reeling from the way things ended with Alice ghosting. But she seizes a second chance at romance, which takes a bizarre turn when after a night spent together, they wake up to find the dog has doubled in size. Reality keeps distorting as Johnny contends with whether the two can really change. The world, the narrator, and the time are all unreliable narrators here.

Crueler Mercies, by Maren Chase (Romantasy)

Here’s a high fantasy tale about princess Vita, who witnesses her father execute her mother before she’s forced into an exile where her only friends are crows. (Bird gays, rise!) Eleven years later, she meets lady-in-waiting Soline who introduces her to alchemy and…a little more. Together, the pair band together to take down the patriarchy.

Angel Eye, by Madeleine Nakamura (Romantasy)

This is the second book in the Cursebreakers series. Professor Adrien Desfourneaux is pulled into a dangerous witch hunt when a healer starts murdering hospital patients.

Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness, by Michael Kroskey (Nonfiction)

We’ve got a lot of great queer nonfiction and history books coming out during Pride month, and in this one, a cinema historian takes a deeper look at the queer classics of the Code era in Hollywood and how subversive these films could be. There’s a smart timely connection here, as the publisher’s description notes, the book reminds “in an age of book bans and gag laws, that nothing makes queerness speak louder than its opponents’ bids to silence it.”

Nobody in Particular, by Sophie Gonzales (YA Romance)

A disgraced princess falls for another student at her all-girls school, and the two have to choose between the paths they’ve been working towards and this new path with each other.

A Fellowship of Librarians & Dragons, by J Penner (Fantasy)

This cozy fantasy novel features a gargoyle librarian, a dragon egg, tea magic, and queer romance.

What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution, by John Birdsall (Nonfiction)

Ohhhhh as a queer lover of food and a former food writer myself, I am all in on this one! The book combines criticism and cultural history in its deep exploration of queer food from the early 20th century to post-Stonewall liberation and the AIDS crisis. Lesbian potlucks during the Cold War! Paper chicken shared among gender-nonconforming stars of the Chinese opera in San Francisco! Dinner parties with James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, and Esther Eng! I want to live inside this book.

Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen, by Bonnie Yochelson (Nonfiction)

Queer artist Alice Austen (1866-1952) captured Gilded Age New York through her camera lens, satirizing gender norms through her subversive and cheeky photography. This book looks at her life and the history of American photography through Alice’s photographs and lived experiences as a woman who thwarted all societal expectations.

The Uncertainty Principle, by Joshua Davis & Kal Kini-Davis (YA)

Seventeen-year-old Mia’s parents move her onto an old sailboat after deciding she needs to reset following a meltdown in her school cafeteria. Mia spends her days trying to secretly collect the supplies to build a satellite phone so she can call her best friend. But things are looking up for her socially and romantically when two teens sail into her life, including bold and beautiful Nisha.

The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994, by Thomas Mallon (Nonfiction)

Through journal entries from the 1980s and 1990s, this collection details the literary coming-of-age of Thomas Mallon as he rose from unknown professor to a breakout star in New York’s gay literature scene. The time period was also marked by great tragedy as the AIDS crisis touched every part of that scene, and these diary entries detail all of it: the hookups and the parties but also the politicization of queer life and the personal tragedies.

Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants, by Erik Piepenburg (Nonfiction)

More gay food writing! Let’s go!!!! Here, a New York Times journalist takes you on a delicious culinary tour of the history of gay restaurants and how they have served as community spaces through the years. Restaurants have long served as places for queer people to organize, connect, fall in love, and more. There’s so much scholarship on queer bars, less on the importance of restaurants —from early 20th century cafeterias to new queer culinary hotspots —so this book is a welcome addition.

Pioneer Summer, by Kateryna Sylvanova and Elena Malisova (Romance)

This gay romance book from a Ukrainian-Russian author duo has made international news due to the arrest of current and former employees at one of Russia’s largest publishing houses for distributing LGBTQ+ books. Now one of those books that has sparked so much controversy and was intensely banned overseas is set to debut in the U.S. It’s set in 1986 and follows two teen boys falling in love at a summer camp.

Ready to Score, by Jodie Slaughter (Romance)

Two women are gunning for a coveted head coaching spot in the heated — and male-dominated —world of Texas high school football. An enemies-to-lovers sports romance for those of you who are Gay 4 WNBA.

Fight AIDS! How Activism, Art and Protest Changed the Course of a Deadly Epidemic and Reshaped a Nation, by Michael G Lung (Nonfiction)

There are a lot of history books out there about ACT UP! and the queer liberation organizing around the HIV/AIDS crisis, but this one is specifically for young readers! This would be a perfect Pride gift for a queer youth in your life who is looking to learn more about queer organizing and queer history.

Lady’s Knight, by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (YA Fantasy)

Here’s a queer and feminist reimagining of medieval legend with dragons, castles, and knights, including, you guessed it, a lady knight!

Devils Like Us, by L.T. Thompson (YA Historical Fantasy)

Three queer teens and their found family of queer pilots embark on a magical adventure. I swear there has been a queer pirate book on every one of these lists for the past few months! Great news for fans of Our Flag Means Death.

Tramps Like Us, by Joe Westmoreland (Literary Fiction)

This beloved queer cult classic about a gay man who graduates from his Kansas City high school in 1974 and hitchhikes across the country with Ali, another queer outcast from his hometown. They make their way to New Orleans and eventually to San Francisco in 1979. The re-release comes with a fresh introduction by none other than Eileen Myles.

All Dead Girls Lie, by Piper L. White (YA Thriller)

Set in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, this YA thriller tale follows 16-year-old Quinn, who becomes romantically involved with Gilly, the best friend of a dead girl recently murdered in their town and the daughter of the town sheriff. Quinn starts an investigation of her own when another of Gilly’s friends turns up dead.


June 10

Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success, by Jeff Hiller (Memoir)

Fans of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere will want to get their hands on this funny, sweet, and vulnerable memoir from Jeff Hiller, who played Joel in the series. It details his rollercoaster journey of growing up gay and Lutheran in Texas, working as a social worker for unhoused youth, and grinding his way through the Hollywood machine in pursuit of his dreams.

We Can Never Leave, by H.E. Edgmon (YA Fantasy)

A queer young adult contemporary fantasy, this novel details a world where inhuman creatures wake up with no memory of who they are or where they’re from. A traveling community known as the Caravan offers refuge and family to these wandering creatures, but one morning five teen travelers wake up to discover their community has vanished. You can expect an eerie, uncanny fantasy adventure from this one.

Amelia, if Only, by Becky Albertalli (Romance)

Amelia Applebaum has a slightly obsessive parasocial fascination with chaotic bisexual YouTuber Walter Holland, and she convinces her best friend to join her on a road trip to one of his meet and greets, but along the way she realizes the butterflies she feels might not be for Walter at all.

Palm Meridian, by Grace Flahive (Sci-Fi)

Well, as a queer Floridian, I’m definitely interested in this speculative future-set novel that takes place at a retirement resort for queer women in 2067. Florida is partially underwater, and the residents of this community are partying at the end of the world. One resident, Hannah, receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and quite literally decides to throw an end of life rager. Invited to the festivities is Sophie, Hannah’s ex who she hasn’t spoken with since their bad breakup four decades ago. It’s never too late for a second chance romance though!

Reading, Writing & Queer Survival: Affects, Matterings and Literacies Across Appalachia, by Caleb Pendygraft (Nonfiction)

We’re always here for critical and historical work on queer voices and art from underrepresented areas, like Appalachia! This one comes from the University Press of Kentucky and focuses on literacy studies in the region, challenging and queering our understanding of literacy.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, by Malka Older (Sci-Fi, Mystery)

This is the third book in the cozy space-opera mystery series know as The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, which also includes The Mimicking of Known Successes, which received a glowing review from Autostraddle books critic Casey.

Love, Misha, by Askel Aden (YA Mystery)

Audrey and her nonbinary child Misha head on a road trip meant to bring them closer together, but Audrey is having trouble wrapping her mind around Misha’s gender, and Misha is struggling to really connect with their mother. A wrong turn down a forest road takes them into the Real of Spirits, infinitely complicating their parent/child journey.

A Rare Find, by Joanna Lowell (Historical Romance)

A queer historical romance with an enemies-to-lovers arc, this novel follows an aspiring archeologist teaming up with her childhood nemesis for a treasure hunt. There’s also a long rivalry between their two families, so we’ve got some star-crossed tropes going on, too.

If I Told You, I’d Have To Kiss You, by Mae Marvel (Romance)

Girlfriends Yardley Whitmer and KC “Tabasco” Nolan have no idea they both work for the same spy agency in jobs that have been gradually eroding their relationship. An undercover job gone wrong reveals the truth to them, and then they have to figure out what to do next in this sapphic twist on Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Backhanded Compliments, by Katie Chandler (Romance)

Wow, there really are so many books coming out this month SPECIFICALLY for me, and while I’m not necessarily the biggest romance reader, I AM a queer tennis player, and this is a queer tennis romance!!!

The Next Chapter, by Camille Kellogg (Romance)

Our critic Ashni loved Camille Kellogg’s Just As You Are, and this is the author’s follow-up romance, inspired by Notting Hill and centering a former child actress and a West Village bookseller. Let’s see if it can out-gay when Ashni declared as the “gayest rom-com I’ve ever read.”

It Rhymes With Takei, by George Takei (Memoir)

A follow-up to his first graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, Takei’s latest graphic memoir chronicles his queer journey, including his early gay crushes, a life lived in the closet, and coming out at 68.


June 12

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion, by Kevin Guyan

This book looks at six different systems and how they’ve impacted LGBTQ life and community, including: the recording of hate crimes; dating apps; outness in the film and television industry; borders and LGBTQ asylum seekers; LGBTQ health and fitness activities; and DEI initiatives in the workplace.

Unconventional Love: Anthology on the Expanse of Love, by Effie Joe Stock & Nathaniel Luscombe

This anthology promises a look into the expansive nature of love —what it means to love and what it means to be loved.


June 17

Work Nights, by Erica Peplin (Literary Fiction)

Protagonist Jane works a nine to five office job at NYC’s top newspaper and is captivated by the beautiful intern Madeline, who has never dated a woman but is seduced by Jane, whose artist roommate desperately tries to keep her from going after a potentially straight girl. Jane ends up in a fraught love triangle between Madeline and Addy, who she meets on one of the queer distraction excursions orchestrated by her roommate.

American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives, by Robert W Fieseler (Nonfiction)

A historical look at the Florida government’s attempts to stifle queer and Black public life here, this book uses primary source documents and narrative history to unfurl a political tale of the work spearheaded by the Johns Committee in Florida. It’s essential to learn history in order to better understand what’s happening in the present —not just in Florida but elsewhere, too.

If We Survive This, by Racquel Marie (Horror)

Flora Braddock Paz is half a year into the global outbreak of a rabies virus that turns the infected into zombie-like beings called “rabids.” She and her brother Cain are still alive, but their mom is dead and their dad is missing. They depart their abandoned LA suburb for a secluded cabin in Northern California where they vacationed growing up.

The Tournament, by Rebecca Barrow (YA Fantasy/Thriller)

This queer dark academia thriller sees three girls through their private boarding school’s annual competition of survival skills.

A Date with the Fairy Drag Queen, by Julie Harthill Turner (Literary Fiction)

In the early 1990s, Saskia Nash’s single-parent father moves her from a quaint childhood in Germany to run away to a new life teaching at a Jesuit college on the East Coast. Saskia comes of age with questions about belonging, home, family, sexual identity, and faith. She’s pressured into having an abortion and ends up sent to recover at a hospice for patients dying of AIDS, where she is assigned as a companion to a dying drag queen who she helps prepare for one final stage performance.

The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery, by Clarence A. Haynes (Fantasy)

Gwendolyn Montgomery is New York’s most powerful publicist with a secret mystical past. A violent incident at the Brooklyn Museum brings Fonsi Harewood, a queer Latinx psychic from the South Bronx, back into her life. There’s a love triangle with a ghost, which is my favorite kind of love triangle, personally.

The Mercy Makers, by Tessa Gratton (Romantasy)

This book will serve as the start to a new romantasy trilogy with a bisexual protagonist, high fantasy mythology, and a sharp look at gender and gender roles.

This Princess Kills Monsters, by Ry Herman (Fantasy)

A satire of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale The Twelve Huntsmen, this novel follows a princess as she, well, kills monsters. Melilot evil stepmother is constantly tasking her with dangerous quests, and now she’s being commanded to marry a man she has never met. The book features queer and trans characters and will surely appeal to fans of queer fairytale reimaginings.

Last Dance Before Dawn, by Katharine Schellman (Historical Mystery)

This is the last book in the queer mystery Nightingale series, which is set in 1920s New York and centers Vivian Kelly, who has found her people at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where everyone has a secret.

Holly Jolly July, by Lindsay Maple (romance)

How about a little Christmas in July in June? Mariah and Ellie are the central characters of this opposites attract romance. Ellie is a small-time actress starring in a cozy holiday film, and Mariah is the makeup artist working on set. They each have flings with men who end up cheating on them, so they band together for revenge and end up falling for each other in the process.


June 24

I’ll Be Right Here, by Amy Bloom (Literary Fiction)

This sprawling novel features polyamory and queer love in a story of family, loss, home, friendship, and unconventional relationships that spans nearly a century. It begins at the end of World War II with a young Frenchwoman named Gazala leaving Paris for New York where she becomes close with two sisters and reconnects with her adopted older brother.

A Treachery of Swans, by A.B. Poranek (YA Fantasy)

We have here a queer Swan Lake retelling set in a queernormative world for fans of gothic fairytale thrills injected with lesbian romance.

Incendiant, by Virginia Black (Romantasy)

More vampire-themed romance coming your way this summer! This thriller features war witch Joan, who just wants to settle down with Leigh in a comfortable life, but not everyone is happy with Joan’s solution to the recent vampire crisis in their hometown.


Thank you for reading this list of gay books written by gay humans. Want to shout out something that didn’t make the list? Please do so in the comments! Real, not AI-invented books only, please! 😘

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+!

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, fiction, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the former managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. When she is not writing, editing, or reading, she is probably playing tennis. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 1037 articles for us.

Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

17 Comments

  1. fuck AI and thank you for your humanity. i love these lists!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they wouldn’t be at all the same if it was just regurgitated AI nonsense.

    • we love you!!!!!!!!!!!! this is the whole reason we do this work <3

  2. Thank you for this! And thank you for mentioning the Lesbrary. <3 I put together the most anticipated queer book lists for Book Riot, and I know how much work goes into lists like this. There's a ton of research involved, and the publisher descriptions don't always mention the queer content. A lot of the time, I only recognize a queer book because I know the author has written queer books in the past, and I do a deep dive into early Goodreads reviews to see if this one is, too. Then there's the curation element, making sure the list is diverse in all aspects. No, AI is not a substitute!

    • YES thank YOU for the work that you do. and haha yes wow the number of times I’ve searched “queer” “sapphic” “bisexual” etc in early goodreads reviews for books lol……i also check out what booksellers/librarians are saying!

  3. thank you so much for compiling these lists!!!! i get goodreads emails of new books coming out, but they contain very little queer books, so it’s really amazing getting an entire list dedicated to them each month. the work that you guys put in mean a lot, and i especially love reading the little blurbs that come with each book and finding lesser-known books i would have otherwise not been able to find by myself.

    • thank youuuuu i know sometimes my blurbs are more robust than others — writing like 50+ every time is exhausting haha but i really do try to pull out the details that’ll be most salient to our readers, and when i do happen to know more about the book/author beyond the publisher copy, i go a bit longer

  4. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into these list!

    I’m very excited for Amelia, If Only. I read an ARC of Nobody in Particular and enjoyed it. I also just finished an ARC The Next Chapter and had more mixed feelings about it but it did have an Autostraddle shoutout I really appreciated.

    • omg! i think there was an autostraddle ref in her last book too. SO SWEET

  5. I love this list, cannot wait for Songs of No Provedence, and so so appreciate the work you do!

    • SO excited for that one. def check out Lydi’s essay on the site that we published yesterday, too!

  6. thank you Kayla, Riese (and all the other AS writers) for your integrity, labor, and care.

    I always look forward to these book roundups (they are one of the main things I read AS for) and fill my local library ILL cart with titles I hadn’t yet heard about.

    For Pirkko Saisio – she has two earlier books that have also been translated recently, both of which also explore themes of otherness, queerness, gender and sexuality, politics, etc. in Finland and Europe more broadly.

  7. “AI famously does not have a literary wife.”

    Such an important part of the AI debate no one else is addressing thank you

  8. Language of Limbs has already been released in Australia and I can confirm it is INCREDIBLE- it will make you feel things. Also as someone who has made a career out of Australian gay history I can confirm that the historical research- especially in the Mardi Gras section- is impeccable

  9. Echoing all the love and thanks for the work that goes into your book round-ups!

    I used to read voraciously as a lit student, but chronic fatigue and brain fog put an abrupt stop to that. After half a decade of almost no reading, I made the joyous discovery a few years ago that I can tolerate audiobooks. Since then, so many of my favourite reads have come from AS recommendations. I digest the lists incredibly slowly, but that only increases my appreciation for your thoroughness in compiling them and for the depth and breadth of the queer book world.

    I’m a data nerd so I’m going to start using an ‘Autostraddle’ tag when adding to my TBR on StoryGraph. That way I’ll be able to literally quantify how much you’ve enriched my reading life!

Comments are closed.

All the Time We Had

You always called me angel. At first I didn’t like that. It felt dysphoric, which was confusing, because you were trans yourself, “more” trans than me, having spent years on testosterone, having looked, even before any intervention, more like a guy than I ever could. Sometimes, even now, almost two years since you’ve been gone, I look at pictures on your social media. In your trans adolescence you had short wavy hair, flipped up in sexy cowlicks. You were tall—you were always tall, but when you were skinny it was most striking—your arms wrapped around some hot punk femme, flexing your cactus tattoos.

You had one tattoo I especially loved, that I stared at whenever you weren’t paying attention. I told my girlfriend about it, a much-tattooed motorcycle rider who was the most cautious person I’d ever met. I said, “MC has my favorite tattoo. It’s half fish and half woman.”

And she was like, “You mean a mermaid?”

I hadn’t even realized how foolish I sounded. “The other way around.” That big-lipped, gaping trout head, those stout female thighs.

When my ex-girlfriend, Gabby, called to tell me you’d died, I already knew. She’d texted me saying she had sad news and had to call, and right away I knew it was you, and that you’d done it on purpose. You didn’t take care of yourself. You drank too much and didn’t sleep, you threw yourself at women recklessly—I knew, because I did too.

We had shouting dinners in packs of queers—outrageously delicious because you worked in restaurants all your life and knew what was good—a long, chatty day at the beach in Santa Monica with Gabby and your girlfriend Emily (my old friend), passing between us a bag of soggy fried potatoes, where I hardly wanted to swim, my favorite thing, because I didn’t want to stop talking. We went camping on the shore in Ojai. You said we’d just pull over and sleep in our cars and when we reached the dunes every sign on every beach warned us against this very practice like the whole shore knew you were coming. We groaned and dragged you, but no one was surprised. When I wasn’t on the West Coast you texted out of nowhere, when I hadn’t thought of you in months, “what up bud” or “beautiful angel.” Emily said you loved me. We were going to take a road trip that summer, just us two, but I didn’t take it seriously even though you hounded me. I wish I’d pushed for it, made it work, at least checked my calendar. You were chaotic. You didn’t plan. I knew our road trip wouldn’t happen, despite the dreams you texted—it was meant to start on your cousin’s turmeric farm in North Carolina—and it never did happen. Because you died.

I’m not going to include the most gutting facts of your death in here. You’ll never know, of course, but your funeral—organized and funded by your loyal friends—was the most beautiful event I’ve ever attended. Emily sang for you and cried, there were candles and bare feet in an open barn in the part of Texas where cottonwoods loom, live oaks with their silky moss. Everyone you loved took the stage. People talked about how affectionate and annoying you were, how difficult and charming. A woman from 12 Step said you were hot and cheeky, back when you were young and trying to get sober. She seemed straight, but her crush glowed through. Your younger cousin told us he had no friends as a child, but every year for his birthday you’d buy pizzas and invite a bunch of people, make sure he had a party, and didn’t even tell anyone you’d done it. Never got credit, didn’t care.

I don’t want to make what happened about more than you. Because it’s your life, and being about you is enough. And I don’t have the capacity to talk about what is going on out there right now in the world of trans politics. But I’m rarely angry—usually only sad or anxious—except when I think about how real, living people who I assume have the muscle to love at least one thing in their own lives have purposefully crafted the world this way, decades after knowledge and acceptance should’ve been obvious. And into it came you, with your own pain and the intensity of being trans that even in a vacuum can be unbearable, with your reckless spirit, loving everyone too hard. You should’ve been allowed to be free and hectic and sad, and to live through it. But this world was not hospitable enough to let you survive with what you carried. And so I can’t help but blame it for your death.

My first novel, which I dedicated to you, is about a feral musician who you would’ve definitely seduced, but who also approaches the world similarly to you in some small ways. When younger queers accuse me of writing about messy trans people who do questionable things because that kind of representation is bad for the community, I always think of you. Because you were a scamp, and you were hard, but you were beautiful and perfect, and you deserved to be written about by a hundred queer authors, to live your life and leave its history without a worry about the sanitization of representation. When I asked Emily to write a song in response to the book, she wrote a song that could only be about you, full of pain and longing and forgiveness and understanding. It’s my favorite song I’ve ever heard, and I listen to it all the time. The refrain—“all the time we had was all the time we had”—loops in my head for days. I think of you, but I also think of everyone else I’ve lost and everyone who I still have who one day I won’t. At first I worried it was wrong to write about your death in terms of how it impacted me, but knowing and loving you is tied so deeply to writing sloppy trans freaks. And honestly, you would’ve fucking loved it. And if this essay is messy and abject or amoral, then it is the perfect tribute to you, and all the ways we are alike, the ways I’m proud of and the ways that scare me. Because when you died, I was on the edge of a change in my life, and it was partly losing you, and the certain knowledge I could go the same way, that pushed me out the other side.


Lydi Conklin’s novel Songs of No Provenance comes out June 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:

Lydi Conklin

LYDI CONKLIN is the author of Rainbow Rainbow, which was long-listed for the Story Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Their fiction has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and The Paris Review. They’ve drawn comics for The New Yorker, The Believer, Lenny Letter, and other publications. Songs of No Provenance is their first novel.

Lydi has written 1 article for us.

3 Comments

  1. Lydi, thank you for writing this and sending it my way. Gorgeous, gorgeous essay.

    and HAPPY PUB DAY

Comments are closed.

JoJo Siwa’s Breakup With Kath Ebbs and Her New ‘Big Brother’ Boyfriend Chris Hughes, Explained

“If you had told me that in 2025 we’d be living in a world where the lesbian queen of gay pop herself, JoJo Siwa, would be living in the Big Brother house, questioning her sexuality because of Jesy Nelson’s ex-boyfriend Chris Hughes from Love Island, I would not believe you,” said Max Balegde on TikTok in late April, before eventually noting, “Have we lost the plot? I fear the plot has been lost. JoJo See-Ya to my lesbianism! What’s happening? We’ve lost the plot.”

Whether we’ve lost it or not, one thing is for sure: the plot has been difficult to follow — difficult enough that I’ve received several reader requests to break it all down for you. I initially wrote this post to explain JoJo Siwa’s breakup with Kath Ebbs, her sexuality shift and her time on Celebrity Big Brother UK, but I’m updating this post today, in Pride Month, to expand the tale to include a more recent development — JoJo Siwa does not in fact have a boyfrienda dn

I am now back to expand this tale to also include a more recent development which is that JoJo Siwa does in fact have a boyfriend and his name is Chris Hughes. I didn’t watch Celebrity Big Brother UK but I have seen enough clips and listened to enough podcasts while chopping vegetables and staring into the middle distance to speak on the topic with absolute authority.


JoJo Siwa’s Celebrity Big Brother UK Experience Was Life-Changing and Inspired Much Discourse

JoJo Siwa, erstwhile lesbian and former hair bow enthusiast, spent 20 days inside the Celebrity Big Brother UK house in April, an experience which began with her pushing back really impressively against Mickey Rourke’s  repulsive homophobia. Following Mickey’s exit, the discourse shifted towards a new plotline developing for JoJo: her “soulmate” best friendship with 32-year-old former Love Island contestant Chris Hughes. The pair were together frequently, and often physically affectionate — they apparently shared a bed, did some back scratches and massages, and laid around on top of each other, like sea lions. Although JoJo identified as a lesbian at the time, many speculated that this behavior might violate the terms of Siwa’s relationship with Australian influencer / dj /actor Kath Ebbs.

But before we get too deep into that lore, let’s first address another big move Siwa made in the house.


JoJo Siwa Is Dropping The L(esbian) and Going Queer

jojo and danny

On April 15th, early in her run on Celebrity Big Brother, Siwa had expressed that she’s been feeling more fluid about her gender, saying that she often feels like a woman, but also relates a lot to the way her non-binary friends talk about their gender, and is comfortable with any pronouns.

Then, during an April 22 livestream, right in the thick of Lesbian Visibility Week, JoJo Siwa told RuPauls’ Drag Race U.K winner Danny Beard that she felt her sexual orientation was shifting, too. “I think I’ve always told myself I’m a lesbian,” she explained, “But I think being here, I’ve realized, Oh no, I’m not a lesbian. I’m queer. And I think that’s really cool.” Danny affirmed JoJo’s sentiment. JoJo then declared, “I’m switching letters! Fuck the L — I’m going to the Q. That’s what I love about sexuality.”

Many assumed that JoJo’s transition from L to Q was a response to catching feelings for Chris Hughes. Others imagined it was a more inclusive term for JoJo because of Kath’s non-binary identity or even JoJo’s. On the Viall Files podcast in early May, JoJo argued that “queer” is just what feels right to her right now, and that she’s been through a lot of labels, recalling, “I was looking at Danny and Danny and I had loads of conversations about being queer and gender identity and it was beautiful…. Sexuality is fluid. Gender identity is fluid. You can be one thing today and one thing tomorrow. People saying I have never been a lesbian is crazy… why is it not okay to say that I feel more queer now?”

On the Useless Hotline Podcast hosted by aforementioned Max Balegde and someone else, JoJo said: “Sometimes I get a little too much credit for being wiser beyond my years. But there are parts of me that are still 21. I might be really far matured in that I can handle situations because I’ve had to handle them from a young age, but when it comes to stuff like gender identity, when it comes to stuff like sexuality, when it comes to stuff like being in a relationship, when it comes to stuff that just comes from age.”


Why Did JoJo Break Up With Kath After Big Brother?

Jojo Siwa, Kath Ebbs at the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards held at The Beverly Hilton on March 27, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images)

Jojo Siwa, Kath Ebbs at (Photo by Christopher Polk/Variety via Getty Images)

Kath, who’d been dating JoJo since late last year, flew out to the UK for the Big Brother after-party, at which they were promptly broken up with. In a video posted on a social media platform, Kath shared their recollection of said afterparty and the relationship itself. They said they considered JoJo one of the great loves of their life, that the relationship was full of intense intimacy, and that JoJo had expressed a desire to marry them.

But at the afterparty, JoJo told Kath that their feelings had changed and they no longer wanted to be with Kath, leaving Kath feeling numb, in shock, humiliated and embarrassed. “Everything we sort of saw unfold on what I thought was a fake reality show where I didn’t need to worry about the validity of my relationship was in fact laced in a lot of truth,” they said, “Which has been one of the most craziest intense awful horrific experiences I’ve gone through in my adult life.”

JoJo said in several interviews that she realized in the house that she was unhappy in several areas of her life, including her relationship, and that Kath “straight-up asked her” if she was happy at the party and she said no, thus leading to the breakup.

At the end of their video, Kath concluded: “I am proud of myself for how I showed up as the partner and the person that I want to be, a person who is fiercely loyal, and believes people.”


Did JoJo Cheat on Kath in the Big Brother House and Break Up With Them For Chris Hughes?

chris hughes an jojo siwa on the morning show

“There’s so many reasons why my breakup happened,” JoJo said on the Viall Files. “Christopher is not one of them… I did not [cheat on Kath with him], I would not, and I have not.”

On This Morning, the week after Big Brother wrapped, Hughes described their friendship as “just a really strong bond. A strong friendship. You can have a soul mate friendship. I think that’s the thing.”

JoJo echoed, “Look, he’s a great guy, it’s platonic. We have a lot of fun together.” She then added, “I don’t know the future, whatever life does, it will do.”

On the Viall Files, Siwa said that everything that happened with Chris on the show was within the boundaries she’d established with Kath prior to filming, and thus she was not worried that any of it would upset Kath. But as aforementioned, in Kath’s breakup video, they indicated feeling betrayed by JoJo’s in-house behavior.

Siwa also said she’d promised Kath she’d stop talking about them and the breakup publicly — but, that she was willing to share a little more because Kath’s breakup video did not “clear the air” regarding the breakup having nothing to do with Chris (which feels a bit suspect now!), as apparently Siwa had expected it to. Viall unfortunately encouraged Siwa pretty persistently to keep talking about it, and Siwa responded to his prompts, sharing limited details about Kath’s behavior during their breakup conversation. (JoJo often seems to think she’s required to give adults and audiences what she thinks they want from her; giving out more transparency than she owes them, or any of us, and certainly more than is kind to her exes.) Honestly, breakup conversations are traditionally unhinged affairs, especially for the one being dumped. I would probably have to change my name and start a new life on a remote island if anything I ever said in a breakup conversation was aired publicly. One popular clip is Siwa recalling that Kath had requested Siwa fly her back to Australia business class — truly, not an unreasonable ask from a massively wealthy ex who just broke your heart! 

Ultimately, whatever happened between these two will never be understood completely or even partially by the public.

During their time in the house, there was a lot of conversation around how to contextualize JoJo and Chris’ affection and whether or not reactions to it qualified as homophobic or lesbophobic. This conversation was what led me to learn that Hughes was on the third season ever of Love Island and had a fan-fic-inspiring ‘bromance’ with his castmate Kem Cetinay, and then they started a band together called Chris & Kem and their top charting song was called “Little Bit Leave It” and included lines like had a league one chick now my tings prem / and some man gonna creep on the d-low / real talk that’s not me though. So.


JoJo Siwa Felt Like She Could Really Be Herself and Find Clarity In the Big Brother House

jojo siwa in the big brother house

What’s much more interesting to me about this story is not the breakup itself, but how Siwa contextualizes the position of these reality shows in her life. We’re witnessing a new generation of “influencer” kids age into adulthood after growing up publicly on social media while often isolated from the “real world” and unable to access traditional childhood experiences.

Siwa’s relationship to these shows seems not dissimilar to how a theater kid might feel after closing night of the production they loved working on, or how one might recall a meaningful summer camp experience. She broke up with her first girlfriend, Kylie, after her time on Dancing With The Stars, during which she developed an intense bond with her straight dancing partner, Jenna, and then spoke for months afterwards about how much she missed Dancing With The Stars. These experiences transform JoJo in meaningful, life-altering ways — she’s currently enamored with the UK (and fwiw, commenters from the UK, who call her by her real first name, Joelle, are big fans), adopting new vocabulary and beverages into her routines. She watches old videos of Dance Moms in the same way other kids might pull out an old yearbook. It’s an earnest level of affection and nostalgia for these concentrated, intimate social experiences that she likely lacked growing up homeschooled. And despite having plenty of money in the bank and multiple projects underway, she continues signing up for reality TV shows like this one.

She’s said repeatedly that Celebrity Big Brother was basically therapeutic for her. “Being away from everything you know and for me, specifically, being away from the super publicness of my life [was good for me],” she said on the Useless Podcast. “I’ve alway seen what people had to say about me, I’ve always seen the immediate reaction from the world and I’ve always almost felt a pressure, right? Whereas in this house, I knew it was super public, but you’re not super conscious of it at the time, right? And you have 12 people around you and it matters what those twelve people think of you and I don’t know — I guess I just felt really comfortable with Tricia, with Chris obviously, just to have those moments.”

This is fascinating to me. That being recorded isn’t what makes Siwa feel a lack of control or agency over her own life — it’s the feedback, the comments, the response to her content. It was not needing to actively create content, to actively mold her image and present her brand and make decisions about how to execute her projects, that gave her clarity and time to think clearly. The filming itself? Well, that’s just par for the course. That’s a foregone conclusion.

“JoJo felt the most like themselves they’ve ever felt on a TV show that is literally about being watched 24/7,” said Coach Jackie on TikTok. “JoJo felt the most free she’s ever been on a show about surveillance. Sit with that for a moment.”


JoJo Siwa Is Dating Chris Hughes Now

Despite all the protesting during the post-show press tour, as Pride Month inched ever-closer, it became clear that 22-year-old JoJo Siwa and 32-year-old Chris Hughes were somehow, in fact, dating. He took several airplanes to spend her birthday with her, she changed her “Bette Davis Eyes” cover to “Chris Hughes Eyes” (a tough swap, syllable-wise), and photos were snatched of the two of them being extremely physically affectionate.  “It’s not platonic any more, and its been a beautiful development, a beautiful connection, and I’m absolutely head over heels for him and he’s the same way,” JoJo Siwa said somewhere, as reported by E!.

I realized that to me, what was so interesting about JoJo Siwa was how rare it is to see a star that young and that famous and that mainstream have girlfriends and be such a massively unapologetic lesbian, specifically, like to be SO fucking gay that she refused to even dance with a man on Dancing With the Stars. But now I find myself totally uninterested in learning anything more about this relationship with Chris Hughes, for which I am sorry.

That said, obviously there’s nothing wrong with or even unexpected about a 22-year-old (or anyone of any age!) still being in a discovery phase of her sexuality — she doesn’t owe us lesbianism. The whole situation sounds like it was probably a betrayal to Kath Ebbs, but her dating a man isn’t a betrayal to the community.

There is something that feels vaguely homophobic about this new cadre of fans who are so obsessed with her relationship with Chris — it’s a big change from how she’s been received in the past! Comments noting that that this is JoJo’s truly authentic self, that she’s clearly never been this happy before — truly, it’s giving “thank god Cousin JoJo got over her lesbian phase”!

comments being supportive of JoJo Siwa

For her part, Siwa isn’t claiming to have left lesbianism after meeting the right man, she still identifies as queer and says she is attracted to people of all genders. (She does say she’s never been this happy in all her life but she says that about every relationship she’s in.)

Speaking with Billboard Magazine, JoJo explained that she realized she was “in a box” that she hadn’t meant to be in. “I’ve dated beautiful women, I’ve dated beautiful non-binary people, I’ve dated men — I have dated men — but I realized that, that’s just who I am. I realized for myself that I just like the human, and I’ve gotta give it to 17-year-old me for saying she was pansexual because she was.”

She concludes: “You can love whoever you want to love. The whole thing is love is love, love who you wanna love, be with who you want to be with.”

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:

Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

9 Comments

  1. Riese, effusive thanks for this explainer. Fortunately, I got to completely bypass the decision about whether to watch BB because I was on holiday, with a bonus of deleting social media from phone as I had connecting flights in the US. So I was just occasionally seeing weird snippets about her and generally wondering wtf was happening!

    Now I feel fully informed and totally none the wiser, which I think will always be the case when it comes to Jojo Siwa.

    • i did wonder a few times if you were watching and i feel that perhaps there is some distant goddess is looking out for us that you missed it all. bless us all and god bless holiday, connecting flights in the US and jojo siwa

  2. i so appreciate that autostraddle has become the preeminent source for thoughtful jojo siwa analysis! thank you riese

  3. I find some of the discourse a bit biphobic.
    In the sense that Jojo appears to be being criticized not just for (potential) infidelity but for (potentially) realizing that she is attracted to men.

    • (To be clear I meant some of the discourse cited in this article. I was not criticizing this article. This essay is great :) )

  4. I can see why reality shows are working for her: Specifically, it means she gets to settle in one place for a while. And because it officially qualifies as “work” her team can’t say anything to her about it because she’s still creating content for her fans. Travel is great, but travel the way a lot of musicians have to do it isn’t so great – city after city in rapid succession, with little time off from work to actually experience the city, and even then it’s usually a nightclub or something, so it doesn’t confer the same benefits that you or I taking a vacation to a new city would receive. And there’s also value in getting to be in the same place for a little while so you can settle down, process your experiences, and figure out what works for you or not at a more easygoing pace. Constantly being on the go can lead to feeling rather unmoored.

    If she were a little older, the go-to move she would make would be to host her own talk show or lead her own sitcom. That’s what other musicians do when they need to work but don’t want to tour anymore.

    As for Kath Ebbs, eh. They were together for a few months and Siwa was on the show for a good chunk of that. Way too soon to be “partner” this and “partner” that, especially with someone who is freaking 21 years old. There was always an obvious expiration date to this relationship. It’s not fun to be broken up with but Ebbs should’ve seen this coming from day one and approached it as a fun fling rather than something that could be permanent.

    • yeah that’s a really good point about her staying in one place… on the useless podcast she was talking about like being the youngest person to perform a sellout tour in a certain number of countries and i was like wow like that’s a lot! for you to be doing so young. she kept talking also about how her memories from the house ran together because of the monotony of “being in the same place seeing the same people every day.” i know the BB house is specifically designed to feel timeless and like a capsule away from the world but i was like ‘this is interesting bc a lot of people actually are in the same place doing the same things every day as normal life’ but to her that was novelty.

      and with kath… idk! i’ve definitely been in situations where the intensity of the person i was with made me believe Big Life Changing Love was happening even tho i should’ve known better. it’s hard to hear that right there in ur face with someone sweeping you off ur feet and continually remind yourself ‘ok it’s way too soon for us to really feel these things, for them to mean that about me.’ you think ur the exception, the special romance story like the ones in the movies.

  5. I agree the reaction by a certain slice of fandom to Siwa and Hughes dating is gross and annoying.

    But I remind myself that Siwa just turned 22 and we have no reason to think this relationship is going to last any longer than all the previous relationships she’s gushed about, and that certain slice of fandom is going to be very annoyed when the day of the inevitable breakup arrives. And that will be fun to watch!

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Olivia Miles and Chicago Sky Rookie Maddy Westbeld Hard Launch Relationship, Co-Parent a Cat

We love it when the stars of college basketball teams fall in love with each other and, even though one of them goes to the WNBA and one of them stays in college, they stay together and then hard launch their heartwarming relationship on Instagram. For example: This weekend, leading college women’s basketball player Olivia Miles debuted a slideshow on her personal instagram that seemingly was received by the internet as settling things about her relationship with Chicago Sky rookie Maddy Westbeld. The two have been dating since college. Other hints include them showing up in numerous solo pics on each other’s feed taken by the other person, taking beachy vacations to Aruba together and co-parenting a cat named Bean. There are two cute photos of the pair in Saturday’s slideshow — including a mirror selfie where some sort of affection between Miles and Westbeld was lightly obscured by the flash glare.

Kylee Watson, another former Notre Dame teammate, commented on Liv’s instagram post, “AND THE HARD LAUNCHHHH IM IN TEARSSSSSS 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️😭😭😭😭😭😭😭”

Olivia Miles is an extraordinary basketball player and was widely predicted to be the #2 pick at the 2025 WNBA draft, after a solid career at Notre Dame, including this past season when they made it to the Sweet Sixteen of the 2025 NCAA tournament. But Miles surprised everybody by opting out of the draft, entering the transfer portal instead, and ended up signing with TCU — the team that triumphed over Notre Dame in their final NCAA tournament game. 

Maddy Westbeld, meanwhile, also a standout ballplayer, did enter the draft, after using her remaining college eligibility to play a fifth and final season with Notre Dame in 2024-2025. Unfortunately foot surgery left her out until January of this year, and she struggled to reach her previous heights after returning to play, but she got back on her feet and into the Chicago Sky. “It was definitely tough,” Westbeld told CBS Sports, “and it put me in a very challenging situation, one that I had never been in before. But in the same sense, I’ve gained so much resilience and so much character from that situation that I don’t think I could be in a better position, standing where I am standing right now, just from the ability to fight through adversity and fight through tough things.”

Westbeld and her older sister, Kathryn, also attended Notre Dame, and after playing overseas for a few years, joined the Phoenix Mercury roster for 2025.

Maddy Westbeld

Maddy Westbeld playing a pre-season game for the Chicago Sky (Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)

Miles was courtside for the Chicago Sky’s pre-season game against the Minnesota Lynx in early May. On May 23, Westbeld posted an attractive tunnel fit to which Olivia requested, “don’t do this to me.”

Anyhow, look at these gals, they’re perfect:

instagarm post of the two of them together on the bench

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

June 2025: What’s New, Gay and Streaming for Pride on Netflix, Max, Hulu, Peacock, Apple TV, Disney+ and More

Well my friends, it is June, which means it’s time for networks to prove how much they care about us through creating new LGBTQ+ programming, and I don’t mean just creating a “Voices of Pride” section on their primary interface that houses all the LGBTQ+ movies in their catalog as well as television they made and cancelled in the past.

Most importantly is that there will be a new season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love, and that will make everything else okay! Furthermore, I am recapping And Just Like That… so if you enjoy witty captions, be sure to check that out.


Netflix June 2025 LGBTQ TV + Movies

The Ultimatum: Queer Love. (L to R) Mel Vitale, Haley Drexler, Pilar Dizon, AJ Blount, Britney Thompson, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Marita Prodger, Ashley Johnson, Bridget Matloff, Magan Mourad, Dayna Mathews in episode 201 of The Ultimatum: Queer Love. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

Ginny & Georgia // Season Three // June 5
Ginny faces a murder trial in the third season of Ginny & Georgia, which’ll push her daughter Georgia “to the limits.” Her queer friend Max (played by Sara Waisglass) is returning and furthermore, non-binary actor Noah Lamanna plays Tris, a non-binary skateboarder who is very smart.

The Ultimatum: Queer Love // Season Two Premiere // June 25
Somehow, six additional lesbian couples have chosen to take the plunge and participate in Netflix’s absolutely unhinged “experiment” that will enable them to decide if they wanna take their relationship to the next level (get married) or break up forever, based on how they cope with a “trial marriage” with another participating contestant and then with the person they came with.

Olympo // Season One // June 20
This new Netflix series follows a group of elite swimmers as they struggle to reach the top while wearing their swimsuits and being sexy. I fear the homoeroticism clearly on play from some of the male cast members means the women will be straight — this is from the team that brought you Elite, after all — but we’ll keep an eye out.


Hulu’s New Gay Stuff for June 2025

sally ride

Adam (2019) // June 1
Free advice: read this oral history of Adam, the most controversial trans movie ever made, and then watch Adam (2019) on Hulu and see what you think. I, for one, enjoyed it.

Elena Undone (2010) // June 1
As Erin eloquently wrote in her review I Watched Lesbian Classic ‘Elena Undone’ and I’m Sorry What, “rather than grade it to be a “good” or “bad” or “really not very good” or “garbagio” movie, I will simply ask a neutral question, which is: I’m sorry what.”

Loving Annabelle (2006) // June 1
I fear if I ever rewatched this movie — about an affair between a teacher and a student with bold chunky highlights — I would realize that it’s profoubndly fucked up but listen at the time I was all in.

A Perfect Ending (2012) // June 1
As Nicole Conn movies go, this one is on the more bearable end — a rich, blonde, middle-aged wife in an unhappy marriage confides in her lesbian friends that she’s never had an orgasm and she rarely has sex with her husband, so they hire a high-class escort (Jessica Clark) to show her the ropes of herself.

Scream (2022) // June 8
Scream V introduces us to Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy, the queer niece of Randy Meeks who shares her deceased uncle’s vast knowledge of horror tropes. The story didn’t blow us away, but it is what it is and we appreciate that.

Sally (2025) // June 17 
The documentary of the first American woman to go to space — remained closeted throughout her life, but gave her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy the go-ahead to attribute herself accurately in her obituary. Tam is the “true star” of this stirring film about Sally’s life and her relationship, wrote Drew, “delightfully blunt, funny and charming, and matter-of-fact.”

F*ck Marry Kill (2024) // June 27
JayR Tinaco plays Anthony, the nonbinary member of a group of twentysomething friends in Boulder who are trying to get Eva (Lucy Hale) to solve the “Swipe Right Killer” murders.


Peacock’s June 2025 Gay TV and Movies

Milk (2008) // June 1
This biopic telling the story of the legendary gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk has a queer female character, Anne Kronenberg, played by Allison Pill. I saw this film in the theater and cried like a baby.

Pariah (2011) // June 1
“There are no wasted moments,” writes Natalie of her favorite lesbian movie of all time. “No throwaway dialogue, no superfluous shots; everything works in concert to center the story of this black, masculine-of-center teenager. Instead of engaging with the broad platitudes that prevade coming out stories, Pariah breeds commonality and understanding through specificity.”

Jennifer’s Body (2009) // June 1
“This film explores some of my favorite themes all in one glossy, campy, self-aware package,” wrote Erin of this deeply beloved queer horror classic starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. “Misandry, women being extremely gay together, principled revenge, and the triumph of aught culture.”

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) // June 1
“What says “the spirit of Christmas” more than a zombie apocalypse movie musical?? Nothing, that’s what.” writes Valerie. “And that’s exactly what Anna and the Apocalypse is. Starring queer Dickinson actress Ella Hunt, and featuring a prominent lesbian character Steph played by queer actor Sarah Swire, the movie is a bloody romp.”

Next Gen NYC: Season One Premiere (Bravo) // June 4
A gaggle of very priviliged, successful, fashion-adjacent Gen Z girlies and lads, all connected either to each other or to a Real Housewife parent, are the focus of this new Housewives universe spin-off set in New York City. Amongst them is Emilia D’Spain, a Black trans model, beauty director and influencer.

Drive-Away Dolls (2024) // June 12
The “raunchy lesbian caper” from Tricia and Ethan Coen landed triumphantly with our community as a “a queer film that isn’t trying to be everything to everyone.” It follows Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), an uptight lesbian in 1999, and her best friend Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a serial cheater from Texas, who get roped into a caper that sends them in the direction of Florida — Marian to visit some family, Jamie to get away from her abusive cop ex (Beanie Feldstein) — and things take a turn when they discover a mysterious suitcase in their trunk.


Apple TV+ June 2025 Lesbian TV Show

The Buccaneers // Season Two Premiere // June 18
Drew really hated the first season of The Buccaneers, inspired by Edith Wharton and centered on a group of riotous American girls who shake up the 1870s London scene with their arrival, but apparently everybody else liked it enough for it to return for a round two! Queer trans actress Josie Totah continues to play primary sapphic character Mabel Elmsworth, who is definitely making out with Honoria (Mia Threapleton) all over the trailer, so!


HBO Max’s June 2025 New Movie

Enigma (2025) // June 24
Zackary Drucker’s documentary focuses on it girl icons Amanda Lear and April Ashley, women who met as young people at the trans cabaret at Le Carrousel, and rose to visibility around the same time — but  took very different approaches to their trans identities. Ashley, a model who was outed during a messy divorce, became the face of trans people in Europe, whereas singer / model / media personality Lear chose to cut off all her pre-transition friends and deny being trans or ever having known Ashley.


Disney+’s Queer TV Series

Ironheart // Three-Episode Premiere // June 24
Following the events of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Riri Wiliams/Ironheart (Dominique Thorne), the genius inventor and MIT student who built herself a suit of armor rivaling the Iron Man outfit, returns to Chicago, where she discovers secrets that pit technology against magic. There are many rumors in the world that posit Riri, who is bisexual in the comics, will be so in the series. Trans actor Zoe Terakes (Wentworth) and Drag race star Shea Couleé also have undisclosed roles in the series, as does queer actor Regan Aliyah (XO Kitty).


Paramount+

But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) // June 1
Our literal favorite lesbian movie ever follows Megan (Natasha Lyonne), a 17-year-old high school cheerleader sent off to gay conversion camp by her parents, where she does not, in fact, become straight, but she does meet Graham (Clea Duvall), and a bunch of other queer teens struggling to be themselves.

Carol (2015) // June 1
I think we all know Carol at this point

Chasing Amy (1997) // June 1
A romantic comedy that the queer community didn’t love when it came out but have since reconsidered and revisited, Chasing Amy follows a comic artist who falls for a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams) and actually gets her to have feelings for him, too.

Everybody’s Fine (2009) // June 1
A very mid holiday movie in which Drew Barrymore is a bisexual and her girlfriend is played by Kate Moennig so that’s really fun!


Britbox

Mr. Loverman: Limited Series Premiere // June 4 
Based on Bernadine Evaristo’s novel, Mr. Loverman tells the story of Barry Walker, a father, grandfather and prominent member of his community who’s been having a 40-year secret affair with his male best friend. Sharon D Clarke plays his wife, has said of the series, “As a Black lesbian, I’m desperate for this story to be told.”

Outrageous: Limited Series Premiere // June 18
A six-part series about the aristocratic Mitford sisters, famous worldwide for their scandalous and boundary-pushing behavior. Amongst them is Pamela Mitford (Isobel Jesper Jones), a bisexual who married six times and spent twenty years of her life living with Italian horsewoman Guiditta Tommasi.


BET+

House on Fire: Series Premiere // June 5 // BET+
This reality show goes behind the scenes of modern-day Ballroom culture with a focus on the relationships and conflicts amongst the seven members of the House of Mugler.

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+!

Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3326 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. that’s it? that’s all we get?

    smh.

    “happy pride”? more like “happy to take yer money…” >: (

    zero representation with full taxation… WTF >: (

    • When you get token crumbs during your designated token “month”…
      (Mostly “gay” (ie: MEN) representation in the smidge, and just a puff of fairy dust’s worth of tired ass films w/ actual gay women representation (films like carol, which is great, but HAS ALREADY BEEN streaming.. ain’t nothing “new for pride month”…)

      le sigh.

  2. *wishlist:
    female perversions

    boys don’t cry

    love lies bleeding

    stand by me

    bound

    sugar high glitter city

    the incredibly true adventures of two girls in love
    (really cringey crap, but good for da young up n’ cumers)

    tár (with lez sex)

    go fish
    (again, good for da kidz)

    high art

    the color purple (but with more shug)

    bound

    if these walls could talk 2

    transparent (without the transphobe)

    ocean’s 8.. with fucking

    ammonite (well, not exactly.. here’s to wishing for better lez rolz for kate..)

    heavenly creatures (samsies, see above)

    bend over boyfriend

    and there’s more, but i ferget right now.. (help me out? : )

    extra credit:
    hard love: how to fuck in high heels
    lassie come home
    desert hearts 2 except with poc and tranzfolx
    the entire cast of roseanne

    and so on.. : )

    *not an exhaustive list by any means

    ps. “by any means” is trademarked for an upcoming film that i dare anyone reading this to make (and make it inclusive as fuck, please and thank you in advance ; )

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