What Makes the Perfect Gender Surgeon? A Freak

In this difficult time for gender politics, we need to prioritize the most important and valuable discussions in the community. That’s why I keep thinking about a bizarre and barely remembered action movie from 2016. In The Assignment, Michelle Rodriguez plays a (cis male) hit man named Frank Kitchen who is kidnapped and forcibly medically transitioned into a woman as revenge for a hit he carried out against the surgeon’s brother. Dr. Rachel Jane, played by a practically sleepwalking Sigourney Weaver, is a disgraced plastic surgeon running an illegal plastic surgery office where she kidnaps people for medical experimentation and also provides high quality gender affirming surgery to those who can’t afford it. So, you know, a complicated character.

Where some may see a villain inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, I offer another perspective: Sigourney Weaver is the gender surgeon I wish I had. We have lost the political correctness battle, so give me butch Dr. Money. This movie is mostly just a thinly veiled fetish piece, but what trans people know that the writers never could, is that the best surgeons are freaks, perverts, and chasers. In a time where we are gripping onto healthcare by our fingernails, it’s time to admit we don’t need to worry about politeness — we need to worry about results. Sure, Dr. Jane kidnaps people, but she also gave Frank free HRT, new women’ s clothes, and a handbag. Meanwhile, my top surgeon made me buy my own compression garment.

What makes the perfect gender surgeon? Well-meaning queer resource centers may waste your time with suggestions like “vetted lists” or “portfolios” but that’s because they can’t tell you the real answer. The ideal gender surgeon is an off-putting and self-important asshole. Look, I don’t want the results of a clean, ethical medical professional nearly as much as I want the results of someone who’s got a freakish obsession with turning one body part into a different body part. Trans people are all too familiar with medical neglect. We are treated like freaks, medical anomalies, and looked down on for what is perceived as irresponsible and misguided mutilation of our own bodies. So when we want to be cared for, we have to take the extra effort to find someone who will care about our bodies. Someone who will really, really, really care. Like it or not, I’m trusting the guy trolling the ftm tag on Grindr. He’s got a vested interest in making my shit look sexy. I believe any good specialist has got to have some crazy sex stuff going on. There’s a surgeon at NYU Langone who only does breast removal, reduction, reconstruction and augmentation. We don’t think Dr. Boobs is kinda a freak?

Tony Shaloub (yeah, he’s in this too) accuses Sigourney Weaver of doing what she did because she is not having any sex. Of being “the female equivalent of some guy who was impotent”. This infuriates her. She insists that she has had sex whenever and with whomever she wanted for her whole life. In fact, she doesn’t even concern herself with her partner’s pleasure. In the world of this movie, that’s enough to make her a deranged madwoman. But I just see a woman who can’t be bothered with the things that aren’t important to her, like bedside manner, or any part of my body that she isn’t cutting into. And that’s good! I need her to be focused on what counts: playing god with my body. She picks her staff correctly too. Her sexual partner is her surgical assistant who has a vaguely described “exotic taste in prostitutes”. The movie itself is not creative enough to go all in on perversion, but this is a moment where we must read between the lines of the filmmakers’ own small mindedness. It’s like a Magic Eye for the true freaks. If you look in just the right way, hiring “exotic” sex workers will turn into sex swings and needle play right in front of your eyes.

I occasionally do a joke on stage about how when I was shopping around for doctors, I was looking for the Saul Goodman of top surgery. Someone who comes to you through word of mouth from someone in “your situation.” Someone ostentatious and braggadocious who will get results whatever it takes. If I’m getting an appendectomy I want someone calm and collected under pressure. If I wanna unbutton my shirt so low it verges on obscene, I need the guy with spinning rims. It’s my body and I want to look so good it’s criminal. After seeing The Assignment, I can amend this statement a little bit. Dr. Jane is not flashy in the Goodman sense, but she’s got a haughtiness to her that works for me. All competent surgeons have terrible bedside manner, and Dr. Jane is as pedantic and pretentious as they come. She spends her scenes in long monologues and admonishes Tony Shaloub for not recognizing when she is quoting great literary work. Unfortunately the movie can’t uphold the sophistication it intends. She quotes Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, like a shorthand for severe snobbery. In real life she would have strong opinions about Kant or own the complete works of Hunter S. Thompson. But it’s not her fault the writers haven’t read a book since high school. When Dr. Jane calls herself an artist, it’s like music to my ears. The perfect surgeon should be annoyed at the fact that her canvas is even awake at all. I want to be put to sleep and molded into my more perfect self.

Now let’s talk results. Frank recovers pretty much instantaneously with no visible scarring. He unravels his loosely draped bandaging to reveal perfect breasts and an unswollen jaw. He gropes at his new, no-dilator-needed vagina and drops to his knees screaming in despair. How ungrateful. Frankly, the fact that he even could drop to his knees and feel himself up immediately post surgery is an endorsement of the surgeon. With no time to lose, he’s on the path for revenge right away. My surgeon didn’t clear me to kill a man for at least three weeks! Weeks and months of recovery are an understood part of the gender affirming surgery process. It’s actually somewhat of an inhibiting factor given that it puts a hold on the ability to work, be a caretaker, or engage in raucous debauchery. Sigourney Weaver is a shining beacon for those of us who cannot lose even a moment of time shaking ass in the club. Frank wastes his time trying to track down his enemies when he could be at the beach.

You may, at this point, be asking if I am just reading into this character too deeply. Isn’t it obvious that the chaser that wrote this screenplay one-handed was just throwing things at the wall in an effort to write “evil woman who’s kinda lesbian with it who can do all the backstory exposition”? But you’re forgetting the most important part: Dr. Jane’s illegal surgical practice gives care to those who cannot deal with the exorbitant cost or wait times in traditional medical institutions. Sounds like someone has read her queer history! Dr. Jane’s motivation for force-femming this hitman is part revenge and part science. She is engaging in an experiment to prove that changing the body cannot change the essence of the person. In other words, that Frank is still a man because he “believes” himself to be. And because he likes to kill with a gun. Wait, is it woke to give bad people gender dysphoria for science? It’s a bizarre moment of sociological and political clarity thrown as a hail mary in the last third of the film. One could say that it’s problematic to have this sentiment come from the villain even if it’s supported by the narrative, but that’s lending the writers too much credit and implying that this movie is capable of making any salient point at all.

This movie is painted as a tragedy because Frank cannot detransition for some reason. This incredible gift is completely lost on Frank Kitchen because, at the end of the day, he is not transgender. Isn’t that the great irony of both life and this movie? This surgeon is wasted on a man who doesn’t want it. And this premise is wasted on a ‘70s pornographic understanding of transsexuality. But give a force-femme hitman plot to a couple of underemployed trans screenwriters and you might just get a result that could really make waves. (A24, call me!)

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Woodlief McCabe

Woodlief McCabe (he/they) is a transsexual comedian, writer, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. His true loves are straight to DVD horror, practical effects, themes of surveillance, and transgender subtext. He currently works on Going Down with Ella Yurman.

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11 Lesbian Women’s Basketball Couples Pulling the Ultimate Power Play

Well my friends it is almost WNBA All-Star Weekend, when all the stars align and we’re able to see so many of our faves on the court at the same time. I will say that this year’s roster is a bit straighter than I’d like, with only six queer players signed up to compete. But let us never forget that there are 43 current WNBA players and a whole lot of gay former WNBA players and often they date each other, or date other basketball players from all around the world. In fact, let us take a moment to count them out.

This list includes every basketball couple in which:

  • Both have played or are playing basketball at the professional or collegiate level
  • One or both have played or are playing for the WNBA
  • They are still officially confirmed to be together

Currently there are three confirmed couples in which both women are on WNBA teams — Natasha Cloud & Izzy Harrison, Dewanna Bonner & Alyssa Thomas and Dijonai Carrington & Nalyssa Smith. There are heavy rumors and speculation around Gabby Williams and Marine Johannes but neither have officially confirmed so I will let them preserve their peace!

Paige Bueckers (Dallas Wings) & Azzi Fudd (U-Conn)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 16: Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers are seen at 'Good Morning America' on April 16, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by The Hapa Blonde/GC Images)

(Photo by The Hapa Blonde/GC Images)

The two exceptional basketball players have been best friends for years, having met in high school at a USA basketball camp and played together on youth national teams before ending up at U-Conn one year apart. When they look at each other, hearts and stars explode right out of their eyeballs, it’s really something. The fan edits will make you believe in love again. Paige is currently giving it her all for the Dallas Wings while Azzi finishes her last year of school and picks out all of Paige’s shoes.

Nalyssa Smith (Las Vegas Aces) & Dijonai Carrington (Dallas Wings)

UNCASVILLE, CT - JULY 07: Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington and Indiana Fever forward NaLyssa Smith pose for a picture after the WNBA game between Atlanta Dream and Connecticut Sun on July 7, 2024, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT. (Photo by M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Photo by M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Naylssa Smith and Dijonai Carrington have been one of the funnest relationships to witness as a fan. They’ve been dating on-and-off since playing together at Baylor, and participated in one of the W’s most viral lesbian moments in 2023 when Smith, playing for The Fever, helped the Sun’s Carrington up with a little extra linger like you would to someone you’d had sex with. This year, Smith and Carrington had the brief opportunity to play on The Dallas Wings together and be Paige’s gay aunties before Smith was traded to Vegas. But their love lives on!

Alyssa Thomas & Dewanna Bonner, Phoenix Mercury

UNCASVILLE, CT - SEPTEMBER 25: Connecticut Sun forward/guard DeWanna Bonner (24) and Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas (25) arrive to the arena before game 2 of the first round of the WNBA Playoffs between the Indiana Fever and the Connecticut Sun on September 25, 2024, at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT.

(Photo by Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Alyssa Thomas and Dewanna Bonner started dating in 2020, as teammates on the Connecticut Sun — and Thomas proposed during the 2023 All-Star Weekend. Ahead of the 2025 season, Thomas was traded to Phoenix and Bonner to the Indiana Fever — but Bonner left the Fever in June and got picked up straight away by Phoenix. Isn’t that romantic? Also, Bonner has twins with her ex, Candace Dupree, who was also a basketball player.

Natasha Cloud & Isabelle Harrison, New York Liberty

Tasha is an elite defender, an outspoken activist and one of the W’s biggest personalities, and in an interview this year, said that Izzy Harrison radically transformed her life at a time when she was in need of refocusing, and also that Izzy is a ““beautiful straight woman that fell in love with me,” Okay then! They now have the extreme privilege of playing on the same team after both got traded to the Liberty (Cloud from Phoenix, Harrison from a year overseas).

Breanna Stewart (New York Liberty) & Marta Xargay Casademont (Retired WNBA)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 20: Marta Xargay Casademont celebrates with her wife, Breanna Stewart #30 of the New York Liberty, after Game Five of the WNBA Finals against the Minnesota Lynx at Barclays Center on October 20, 2024 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The New York Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime to win the championship. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Stewart’s wife, Marta Xargay Casademont, is a former player for the Phoenix Mercury and the Spanish National Team. They met playing professional women’s basketball in Russia. In 2021, Marta retired from the sport — the same year in which she and Breanna got engaged, got married, and brought their first child, Ruby Mae, into the world. They had their second kid in October 2023.

Courtney Vandersloot (Chicago Sky) & Allie Quigley (Retired WNBA)

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - AUGUST 11: Courtney Vandersloot (L) #22 and Allie Quigley #14 of the Chicago Sky warm up before a game against the Las Vegas Aces at Michelob ULTRA Arena on August 11, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Known as “The Vanderquigs,” Courtney and Allie met in Slovakia at the end of the 2012-2013 Euroleague season, and ended up on the same flight back to the U.S. to prepare for their upcoming season with the Chicago Sky. Eventually their friendship turned romantic. They hold first and second place for many of the franchise’s all-time statistical categories and are the first married couple to win a professional sports championship together. While Courtney still plays for the Sky, Allie hasn’t played since 2022 but officially retired in May of 2025. They welcomed their first daughter in April.

Maddy Westbeld (Chicago Sky) & Olivia Miles (Notre Dame)

Leading college women’s basketball player Olivia Miles and Chicago Sky rookie Maddy Westbeld have been dating since college and co-parent a cat! Miles was widely predicted to be the #2 pick at the 2025 WNBA draft, after a solid career at Notre Dame, but she opted out of the draft, entering the transfer portal and signing with TCU. But next year they will ideally both be playing in the WNBA and I think that will be very fun.

Diana Taurasi and Penny Taylor, Retired WNBA

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - JULY 16: (L-R) Penny Taylor and Diana Taurasi attend the 2025 ESPY Awards at Dolby Theatre on July 16, 2025 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

(Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

Now-retired WNBA legend Diana Taurasi (the league’s all time leading scorer!) married her former teammate Penny Taylor in 2017, after eight years of dating. Taylor had their first son in 2018, and in 2021, her second pregnancy went past its due date and overlapped with The Phoenix Mercury’s WNBA final games. In her post-game interview Taurasi told her wife, “hold it in babe, I’m coming,” and then flew home to Phoenix from Vegas to witness the birth. That’s iconic behavior!

Tierra Ruffin-Pratt and Victoria Vivians, Retired WNBA

Vivians spent six years in the WNBA and now serves as assistant coach for her alma mater, Mississippi State Bulldogs. She got engaged to Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, formerly of the Washington Mystics and the Los Angeles Sparks, in 2021, and they are now married and very cute together!

Candace Parker (Retired WNBA) & Anna Petrakova (Retired Russian Professional Basketball)

Another WNBA GOAT, Candace Parker, delighted us all when she revealed to the world in 2021 that she’d married Anna Petrakova in 2019 and they were henceforth expecting their first child. Parker met Petrakova, retired Olympian and former Russian Premier League player of the year, in 2012 while playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia during the WNBA offseason. They now have three kids — Parker’s daughter Lailaa from a previous marriage and two sons they’ve had together, Airr and Hartt.

Mikaela Dombkins (Retired WNBL) and Leilani Mitchell (Former WNBA, Currently WNBL)

TOWNSVILLE, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 20: Leilani Mitchell of the Flyers celebrates with partner Mikaela Dombkins and son Kash after winning the WNBL Grand Final match between the Southside Flyers and the Townsville Fire at the Townsville Stadium, on December 20, 2020, in Townsville, Australia. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

Mitchell, a dual citizen of the U.S. an Australia, was drafted to the Phoenix Mercury in 2008 and currently plays with the Southside Fliers of the WNBL in Australia. Mikaela Dombkins currently coaches the Bendigo Spirit of the WNBL but also played for eleven seasons. Dombkins gave birth to their sun Kash in 2018, and their daughter Elle in June of 2022.

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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 3343 articles for us.

‘The Old Guard 2’ Is Colossally Dull, Barely Gay

Upon watching its sequel, I suddenly remembered adoring the 2020 action film The Old Guard. I was drawn to its worldbuilding, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s slick action filmmaking, the camaraderie of the immortalized characters, and how gay everyone was, especially Charlize Theron’s Andromache (nickname: Andy) who was in a century-long situationship with Veronica Ngô’s Quỳnh. My fond memories of these characters returned in spades, because they were sorely missed in The Old Guard 2, a colossally dull follow-up that feels like it takes an eternity to watch in and of itself. Not even the additions of Henry Golding and *Fall Out Boy voice* Uma Thurman can save it.

A few months following the events of the first film, Andy (Theron) and her motley crew of immortal mercenaries — Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli), Nile (KiKi Layne) — along with their mortal pal, former CIA agent Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), continue to do their vigilante missions. One of these leads them to Tuah (Golding), a fellow immortal only Andy knew about for some reason. Andy learns through their banished ex-member Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) that her former boo thang Quỳnh (Ngô) has resurfaced. Meanwhile, Nile has a run-in with Discord (Uma Thurman), who informs her she is the first immortal and Nile is the last. After a tense and battle-filled reunion between Andy and Quỳnh, Andy discovers that Discord rescued Quỳnh from the depths of the ocean. She allies herself with Discord and her mission to eradicate mortals from the earth.

Netflix live-action action films have become a mediocre slop machine. Every other action film bears the same ugly orange-yellowish hue in its picturing, and the direction is piss poor, but at least A-list talent gets a nice paycheck for your entertainment — or lack thereof. For a franchise that was a hit during the pandemic, you would think The Old Guard 2 would try even harder to keep its momentum going, proving the first film wasn’t a fluke and quarantine brain didn’t contribute to our liking of it. But alas, this truly had me second-guessing, as every likable trait from the 2020 film is completely absent.

Any fun and interesting progress that co-screenwriter Greg Rucka made in the predecessor has now been stripped down to the most generic traits, as the script from him and Sarah L. Walker comprises just plot devices and joke-telling tools. Besides Andy’s ruthlessness, the film doesn’t put in any effort to effectively re-establish any of its ensemble. The dialogue is so simplistic it reminds me of bad action cartoons from the 1980s made to sell toys.

The story packaged with the follow-up also plays similarly to an episodic season finale. All the hallmarks are there: an unintroduced big bad comes to play, and someone tied to the rugged, badass protagonist returns. Andy and Quỳnh’s romantic relationship is heavily bogged down, if not erased entirely. Their romantic past is technically present but in such a heteronormative sense. Hell, this also applies to Joe and Nicky, who exhibit minimal romantic partnership. In every instance, Old Guard 2 actively attempts to appeal to a broader, *cough* hetero audience, completely disregarding the gay af nature of its predecessor. Despite this being, I don’t know, an R-rated action flick with excessive blood and gore. Why not give two longtime lovers separated for actual centuries a kiss at the very least?!

The direction is equally unremarkable and uninspired in comparison to its predecessor. No disrespect to director Victoria Mahoney, but this entry is in desperate need of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s skillful action direction and stylistic flair. While it is nice to see Charlize wield that big-ass axe and Uma Thurman with a sword, again, it does little to impress. You’ll either wind up wanting to watch better uses of either actress in other fare, whether it be Kill Bill, Fury Road, or even the first Old Guard. Here, every action set piece lacks energy and is otherwise as monotonous as its storytelling.

To put it simply, The Old Guard 2 is everything we thought the first movie would be, only worse. And they couldn’t even bother to leave the gay.

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Rendy Jones

Rendy Jones (they/he) is a film and television journalist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. They are the world's first gwen-z film journalist and owner of self-published independent outlet Rendy Reviews, a member of the Critics' Choice Association, GALECA, and a screenwriter. They have been seen in Vanity Fair, Them, RogerEbert.com, Rolling Stone, and Paste.

Rendy has written 28 articles for us.

No Filter: Meg Stalter Gives Great Gay Press Tour

feature image photo by Raymond Hall / Contributor via Getty Images

Hello and welcome back to No Filter! This is the place where I tell you what our favorite gay celebrities have been up to this week, via Instagram! Let’s rock and roll!

I have not watched Too Much yet, but I probably will because I want good things to keep happening to Meg!

It does also mean that we get Meg’s version of a press tour and tbh it’s working for me!

I still can’t quite believe this style of glasses is back in, it does give me seventh grade flashbacks, but you like it I love it!

Nothing better than the post proposal reveal of the work that went into said proposal!

Okay well I approve this message? Just like, in general, this is something I am here to support!

Here is one thing that will always be true about Top Chef: It gets Emmy noms like nobody’s business!

Law and Keke is simply a match made in tea heaven, and I cannot wait to listen to this!

Honestly if I went to a Beyonce concert and met Miss Tina it might actually be a bigger deal than meeting the Queen herself. I mean…it’s Miss Tina!

RED HAIR ON MEG? Love this so much, maybe even TOO much?

Gonna need the details on that lip combo ASAP!

One of my favorite things about Cole is the way they casually say sentences that no person on earth before has uttered. “Feeding cold mashed potatoes to a dying Martha Stewart.” I MEAN WHAT? That is what comedy is!

Tessa posting to grid is always such a joy, and this fit??? Passing away, that’s me!

This rocks because I know my girl is exhausted from doing press for two shows simultaneously, so yes, you will find her on the couch!

You know what Laurie I would! Also this make up is incredible!

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

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1 Comment

  1. Related to celebrity news, Andrea Gibson passed away a couple days ago. The outpouring of love on social media has been beautiful to witness.

    No Filter wouldn’t be the right venue, but I’ve been wondering if anyone from Autostraddle will write about them as I imagine many of us longtime readers would share thoughts in the comments. A previous era of AS would’ve been the first to break the news but I know we now live in an era of many more out queer folks to keep track of. For those who don’t know Andrea Gibson, I recommend reading their poetry if you want to explore new corners of your heart and mind. <3

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I’m Afraid To Move to the City of My Dreams

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.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the first one we see is the one we pick?” my girlfriend quips halfway through a day of near-nonstop apartment tours. My feet, trapped in my Chelsea boots, are angry with me already for a poor footwear choice, my skin clammy from the Chicago heat wave making its way through the fabric. My phone is nearly dead, for the second time today, as we sit in a downtown coffee shop. While my girlfriend holds the charger in place to the rocky socket, I message the landlord of the spot in Andersonville that we’re going to be late.

My girlfriend and I, both as individuals and as a couple, have been talking about Chicago for a long time. I grew up in St. Louis, where I often fantasized about my grownup life there (the closest I got was a small liberal arts college in Peoria), and she almost dropped out of undergrad to pursue improv with Second City. Both of us have had multiple almost-moves, and we play Zillow like it’s Candy Crush. When I moved into her Dallas apartment in January, we knew this commitment to one another meant, long-term, a Chicago move was inevitable, part of a future we wanted to make together. A vague date of “sometime in the fall, or early next year” was what we told people of our move, pushing and pulling the months around each time we answered the question.

In early July, my girlfriend got a job offer for a Chicago-based company that requires her in-office by August 4. Suddenly this amorphous blob of a move materialized, very quickly. End of June, we had a fully furnished apartment and a comfortable space of our own. Now, every room is in disarray, full of bursting boxes, corpses of crafts projects strewn about. Indistinct piles of “Trash,” “Donate,” and “Keep” spill into one another, and our cats are as freaked out as ever. Currently I’m sharing a velvet couch with a CRT TV, a tube of pink tennis balls, and an old camping stove. My cat luxuriates in the topmost corner of her tower, which has found a new home in the middle of what used to be the dining area. Things are changing, without much room to process.

Moving in with a partner is one thing; moving cross-country with that partner is another. My girlfriend has lived in this Dallas apartment since she was 18; as an adult, she has never lived anywhere else. I, on the other hand, have had more than a couple unexpected uproots in just the last year: Losing my corporate publishing job in March (thanks, AI) resulted in me unable to renew the lease on my Austin apartment, so I moved in with my college best friend in Tulsa. I stayed in her spare bedroom for a few months before moving in with my girlfriend in Dallas. Both moves were stressful and full of strange, unknown possibilities. And in both, I shed much of my things, until all I owned was my cat, my clothes, and various trinkets. And while my girlfriend and I live together now, ostensibly I have moved into a space she has spent a decade curating as a Museum of Her — while I’m thankful for her efforts to make it feel like our space, inevitably I have felt like a guest in hers.

I have not had a city, let alone an apartment, I have been able to confidently call home in awhile. Chicago has been a safe haven in my mind, a romantic escape I can imagine myself into for a future of stability and self-confidence. However, now that that move is becoming a reality, I’m swarmed by the bees of doubt. Soon, that place I am able to escape to in my mind’s imagination of the future is going to reveal itself as its own identity, outside of my expectations of it. What if I hate it? What if my body has forgotten how to survive winters? What if the move, and the subsequent new life in a new city, strains my relationship? Without divulging intimate details, my girlfriend and I have already had some uncomfortable talks about our expectations of one another, and what we fear in this change.

It is an extreme privilege to be this in love with someone, and this safe with them, to be able to make such a choice. And it is a privilege to have the financial ability to move cross-country with them. But after a couple of what I would say were the worst years of my life — a couple years of strained romantic and platonic relationships, job loss, creative suck, and personal strife — finding a place and a sense of self to call home is all I want. But in this uprooting from Dallas to Chicago, it terrifies me to imagine. Texas is the first home I have made for myself, and while it hasn’t always been kind to me, it’s what I’ve always known. I survived a pandemic here; I went to grad school here; fell in love, had the worst heartbreak of my life, wrote two chapbooks of poetry, got my Autostraddle gig, learned how to be An Adult, and ultimately came into a version of myself that the girl who moved here from St. Louis could be happy to say she’s become. Chicago is an adventure I’ve longed to embark on for a long time, but Texas is the place that created someone brave enough to embark on that adventure.

I don’t know what’s going to happen when I move. Probably a good balance of amazing, wonderful things and awful, gutting things — because, well, duh. That’s life. But I get to make that life with the woman I love, in a city I have longed for, and regardless of the fear slithering around my chest, I am so grateful that all this stress and anguish will lead to what I have been missing: a home.

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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Gabrielle Grace Hogan

Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry has been published by TriQuarterly, CutBank, Salt Hill, and others, and has been supported by the James A. Michener Fellowship and the Ragdale Foundation. In the past, she has served as Poetry Editor of Bat City Review, and as Co-Founder/Co-Editor of You Flower / You Feast, an anthology of work inspired by Harry Styles. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can find her on Instagram @gabriellegracehogan, her website www.gabriellegracehogan.com, or wandering a gay bar looking lost.

Gabrielle has written 28 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. That is a _lot_ to hold. Thank you for writing so openly and honestly about it!

    I had two leap-of-faith kinds of moves very much like that around than a decade ago—one to NY in 2014 (in the winter, and our moving truck got rear-ended in the ice) and one to Chicago in 2015 (in the summer, and I feel you about this heat wave). Been in Chicago ever since and love it here, but _wow_ was it an ordeal getting from Point A to Point B (to Point C).

    So here’s what I’ll say:
    • Welcome! (preemptively)
    • You’ll turn out OK no matter what happens around you.
    • Feeling at home does in fact count for so, so much.

    Hoping for safe travels and for feelings of peace and comfort along the way.

  2. Want to add another welcome as someone who also grew up in St. Louis, came to Chicago for undergrad, and has now lived her for over two decades!

    I definitely am more on your girlfriend’s side of things as someone who moved this spring for the first time in 13 years, though we only moved 2 blocks away (sadly leaving my beloved fourth floor walk-up apartment for a place that’s more accessible for aging parents). I wish you all of the luck on your move and the aftermath!

    And for what it’s worth, I’ve grown to have a lot of affection for this city, and it definitely contains multitudes. So if you don’t find a good fit/community wherever you land initially, it is probably out there somewhere in the city.

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Kate Hawkins is a city-loving Californian currently residing in New Hampshire with her wife and toddler, where she's currently enjoying sports that require unwieldy pieces of equipment (kayaking! biking! cross country skiing!) and grilling lots of corn. She's stoked to be writing puzzles for Autostraddle and hopes you enjoy solving these gay puzzles!

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A Queer Guide to BDSM Restraints for All Experience Levels

Restraints are one of the original BDSM staples. Bondage is the very first letter of BDSM. Handcuffs and rope are watchwords for kinky bedroom activities in countless depictions. Cuffs, collars, and their softer analogues (chokers!) straddle the line between kink and mainstream fashion. The connection between kink and restraint is downright inescapable.

Which is why I’m gonna take you through the world of kinky restraints from entry-level essentials to things that should only be done in the presence of experts. My hope is to give you a tour of this wonderful world with an emphasis on safety. We’ll get tied up in cuffs, anchors, and chains. We’ll look at the risk profiles of different restraint methods. We’ll even dip into the history of torture to learn historical context behind some of our entertainment.

Ground rules for sexually restraining a partner

I live and fuck by the principle that all activities carry risk. This is important in kink, where an acceptable amount of risk is married to our desire for emotional intensity. If things do go wrong, our preparations and response will speak to whether we can handle the responsibility of BDSM.

Know your partner and discuss risks before starting

Restraint play should only happen between people who trust each other and have discussed their plans in depth. The discussion that happens before a new kind of play is introduced should be separate from sexual activity. It’s especially important to discuss whether the restraints will be escapable or not for the restrained partner. Inescapable restraints drastically increase the risk of play and should be approached carefully. There needs to be room for everyone to give their input.

Understand your restraints

It’s always a good idea for all partners to know how a material feels on the body and how it’ll behave in different circumstances. Hard metal restraints don’t have ‘give’ or flexibility, but are highly predictable. Chains can accommodate accessories and are flexible, but they’re heavy and can snag on hair. Rope made from natural fiber (hemp, cotton, linen) can shrink noticeably if soaked with fluid. This poses a risk of constriction if the restraint is too tight.

Many people have preferences about how we get tied up. My sensory processing issues exclude certain materials (suede, ‘fuzzy’ handcuffs) because they torture me in the bad way. Comfort and ergonomics also apply to the person doing the tie. Is the material easy to manipulate for your experience level? ‘Cause rope is notorious for being sexy in pictures and an absolute ass for novices.

Always watch the circulation

The main bodily risk to restraint play is loss of circulation. The keystone signs of lost circulation are tingling (‘pins and needles’), skin discoloration (white or blue), swelling, bulging veins, and cold skin. For people who are tied up, anything that feels out of the ordinary is worth investigating. If they’re gagged or can’t otherwise communicate, all responsibility falls to the partner in control to check every point of contact between skin and restraint. You can never be too safe and, just like consent, safety is practiced on a moment-to-moment basis.

Loss of circulation can happen quickly and unintentionally. Changing positions? That can put a lot of pressure on a previously comfortable tie. Some knots can inadvertently tighten during play due to movement. I’ve had a simple tie using a scarf pull tighter after being caught on furniture. Controlling partners should regularly feel for a gap between skin and restraints to make sure things aren’t too tight. All of this can be rolled into the scene itself as part of the ‘inspection’ or prevention of escape.

Never bear heavy weight on a single joint

There isn’t a single joint in the body that can safely bear the whole body’s weight. Nobody should ever be suspended from one joint. Advanced activities like full-body suspension always have secondary ties to spread the load out and make up for possible failure points. While some limbs (legs) and joints can bear heavier weights, others should simply be excluded. The neck is never a safe place for load-bearing ties or pressure and people have died as a consequence.

That’s a lot of space dedicated to safety, but that’s because I take a cautious approach to restraints. I don’t consider restraints to be entry-level play unless the restraints are trivially simple to escape. Anything that could restrict someone’s mobility against their will is inherently risky. With safety discussed, I can actually explore what that means for novices and experts alike.

BDSM restraints for newbies

Simple, escapable restraints

Newbie-friendly restraints are characterized by ease of use and ease of escape. Think of the ubiquitous cuffs-with-buckles from any sex retailer or a basic PU leather collar-leash combo. Even though they do restrain, someone who’s tied up can reach over and unbuckle or unclip at will. These are wildly popular in beginner’s BDSM kits or first introductions to kink because they’re so easy to work with and relatively safe.

Image

Caption: There’s perfection in simplicity. My favorite collar and leash set is custom-made leather and bears my name and lines from a favorite poem.

No load-bearing or suspension

At this level of experience, nothing should hold the weight of large parts of the body. Light, simple restraints are mostly used to set the vibe of a scene rather than actually prevent escape. Some cheaply-made cuffs can break if someone is struggling against their tie. Regular cuffs and leashes don’t spread a load over the body’s surface area, so they’re unsafe for advanced play like suspension anyway.

The absence of suspension isn’t a downside. Restraint imposed by power dynamics and a scene’s energy can be far more effective than ties and cuffs. A collar’s symbolism is critically important to many of us because of the emotional weight it carries — not the physical constriction. Simple restraints provide lots of possibilities at a fraction of the cost, risk, and effort. They’re my go-to answer for light kink.

BDSM restraints for intermediate players

Interconnected and inescapable

In my mind, this is where rope gets involved. Rope changes the dynamic of restraint to a skill that needs attention and practice. Self-shibari is a great way to get acquainted with your new materials and interests. I become insatiable when I see evidence of shibari in someone’s dating profile. Rope opens the world of restraints up. It differs from simple restraints by having a much higher skill floor but a limitless ceiling for potential activities. It’s stepping out of the threshold of dabbler to enthusiast.

I believe that beginner play transitions into the intermediate once you start involving inescapable techniques. Inescapable restraints like fingerless mittens and locks are exhilarating because they impose realistic powerlessness. Restraints are now combined with load-bearing aspects like furniture. Arms hoisted onto a headboard or legs spread apart by a bar. The trust required is magnified, as are the potential risks. But the excitement-risk dyad is why many of us practice kink in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with reasonable risks as long as they’re balanced by equally reasonable preparation.

A proper risk profile

Speaking of risk, this is a level of play where there is an inherent chance of something going wrong. A pair of basic cuffs or a loose tie using an item of clothing can go wrong, but it’s often due to malfunctions or accidents. Inherent risk means a persistent and recognizable chance of something going wrong. Placing a submissive partner into a stress position can be enjoyable in short scenes, but prolonged use is quite literally a torture method. A limb tied stiffly for a prolonged period will lead to discomfort and eventual loss of circulation. The idea of playing near these thresholds is to finish the scene smiling before risk catches up.

BDSM restraints for experts

Hanging out with your most trusted friends

Advanced restraint techniques for BDSM are characterized by danger and extraordinary artistry. Showcases like these can be found at events under expert supervision, but some people do practice at home. This is the domain of full-body suspension, intricate load-bearing ties, and specialized equipment. While all kink can involve artistry, I’ve noticed that full-body suspension often has artistic intent from the outset. Sexual activity is often prohibited because it would interfere with the artistic display. A special mention goes to people who combine suspension with temporary piercings (play piercings) in exhibitions that combine endurance with suspension.

The risk profile of advanced restraint isn’t on an entirely different level. One way to look at it is to stop treating it as the presence of risk, but a constant presence of danger. Risk leaves a chance that harm occurs if something goes wrong. Danger means that people are on the edge of harm even when the activity proceeds normally. Equipment failures and accidents can lead to immediate and permanent injury. A tense body falling from a significant height (especially on the head) is life-threatening. A failure in technique when play piercings are involved drastically aggravates an existing wound.

The gravity of advanced activities is such that it’s only appropriate in total confidence and safety. Most of us will never reach the confidence threshold to start and that’s preferable to trying it out unprepared. We can still enjoy these displays via photography or at events, safe in the knowledge there are trained staff available. Better yet, many events will allow novices to be tied up under expert supervision — a rare opportunity to experience their skilled hands personally.

A test of willpower, equipment, and skill

That said, there are people who practice these techniques at home. To do so safely is beyond the scope of my knowledge, which is why this section is more theoretical. This is the domain of people who’ve attended numerous training seminars and demonstrations. If you’re in good company, there’ll be one nearby.

Full-body suspension calls for an array of skills and equipment. Practitioners need a working understanding of anatomy, injury, and first aid. Their wall and ceiling fixtures are permanent and tested. If there’s rope involved, it’s high quality and backed by excellent technique. Other restraints may be custom-fitted and incorporate high-strength materials like steel chain and climbing equipment. When the methods (like strappado) are derived from torture, every bit of preparation is critical.

However, the resulting artistry and exhilaration are astounding. Whether or not the act is even sexual in nature anymore doesn’t detract from the technical skill and trust involved. Advanced restraint is a rarity due to how many things need to go right for it to happen. For some, participation is a lifelong dream, and I envy anyone who gets to experience it for the first time.

From act to art

When I started writing this, I wasn’t expecting it to take such an abstract turn. In hindsight, I think it’s fitting. BDSM isn’t solely about sex. Many participants are asexual or indulge for detailed, non-erotic reasons. That diversity of thought is why the communities of kink and pride are so linked.

Like any act of emotional intensity and trust, BDSM can quickly blend function and artistry in interesting ways. Even though my typical play sits at the lighter end of the scale, I’m always astounded by people who push their skills and bodies to the threshold. Consider this a message: Kink is fundamentally about respecting and learning from each other’s interests as long as they’re practiced safely, even if you never plan to try it out. Nothing expresses this better than the continuum of restraint from newbie to expert.

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Summer Tao

Summer Tao is a South Africa based writer. She has a fondness for queer relationships, sexuality and news. Her love for plush cats, and video games is only exceeded by the joy of being her bright, transgender self

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‘I’m Bisexual but Sex With My Boyfriend Makes Me Wonder if I’m Actually a Lesbian’

Q:

I (29f) identify as a bisexual and have been in a relationship with my boyfriend (28m) for the past year and a half. Before this relationship I had never had sex with a man, I’d only ever been intimate with women. I love my partner but I’m having trouble with our sex life. Sex with women came easily (and honestly so did I), but with my boyfriend it’s different. I still have fun and enjoy when we have sex, it makes me feel closer to him, but I almost never orgasm. I also find myself put off by the thought of performing oral sex on him. I love going down on women, but I’m kinda afraid of giving my partner a blow job. I have no idea how to bring up my feelings with my partner and it’s making me wonder if I align more with lesbianism rather than bisexuality. Help!

A:

Hey there. You’re a year younger than me and are reaching an inflection point I once met.

Well, I and millions of women throughout time and space have met it.

You’re actually starting from a good place in the sexual exploration wheelhouse. You have certainty about your attraction to women, with fluid exchange to verify it. That means I can go off-script from the discussion I’d have with a questioning heterosexual woman.

Gonna be real with you: What I’m hoping to help you establish is whether you’re just a bit sexually incompatible with your boyfriend or with all men. You don’t have a great sample size of men for comparison, so we can only work from thought experiments and fantasy. It’s not concrete like the real thing, but we can still get value out of it.

The figure behind the fantasy

Evidence thus far points to you enjoying sex and romantic relationships. I’m guessing you’ve experienced fantasies about potential relationships and sex. Who we daydream about is highly revealing about ourselves. Although far from reliable, our daydreams are an unfettered examination of our private thoughts and desires. That’s where I’ll start.

So I’ve got simple questions for you to answer internally:

  • When you fantasize about fictitious relationships, what gender is your partner(s)?
  • When you fantasize about fictitious relationships, what’s the gender breakdown between people you know and those who are unattainable (celebrity/fictional)?

These questions probe at what’s on your mind when nobody’s looking. They hypothesize about a world where you have free reign to live out your desires. Who would you choose or be chosen by if there were no boundaries, judgement or logistics standing in your way?

Once you have your answer, you’ll have to ask yourself the uncomfortable follow-up questions. I don’t have to list them because they branch out in every possible direction.

An example: Many of my romantic fantasies are limerant and feature an idealized rescuer figure. My fantastical partners are always women who inject comfort and care into my life. They improve on the stability and resilience I’ve already built by giving me a place to finally rest my head. They’re level-headed, non-judgemental, and soft people who adore me for who I am.

It’s no accident that my fantasy relationship figure represents everything I was deprived of during my upbringing.

Your conclusions might be different. All I’m saying is to look at who you dream about and see how those figures reflect a vision or vacuum in your life.

What’s with the D?

The sexual element of your experience is interesting. I go on and on about oral sex on this site, but everyone is different. Your description of a boyfriend who rarely brings you to an orgasm  you actually want will draw some eye rolls from our readership. As does any talk about not enjoying oral sex on men while wanting to dine at a woman-led restaurant.

Another reflective exercise we can try involves ascertaining whether you have a strong genital preference. You know, whether you’re icked out by penises or the people attached to them. This is one of the times I love being trans. We’re the wrench jammed in the workings of impolite heteronormative society.

I’ll open by saying that I think it’s completely fine to have a genital preference in dating. Allowing people into our lives intimately usually calls for a tighter standard of comfort than regular socializing. Liking some genitals or bodily configurations more than others is always worth examining, but not always prejudicial.

The thought experiment?

Again, you’ll start in the safe fantasy world you have in your mind. You’re in that world and I’m not — I don’t squat in people’s innermost thoughts and fears unless they’re Republican.

Picture a hot man with a vulva. A quintessential societal understanding of a ‘trans man’ enhanced by your personal idea of attractiveness. No complexities or judgement. It’s your brain, nobody can kick the door down if you think something ‘problematic’. Once the thought is established, you’ll have to ask yourself if you find him sexually attractive.

  • Does your personal taste see a vulva on an otherwise attractive man as an improvement?
  • You don’t enjoy giving oral sex to a man, but would you be more interested if he dispensed with a penis and had a vulva and vagina?
  • We know this person is attractive, but are you attracted to him?

If sterilizing people down to their body parts for personal interest feels a bit icky, that’s good. It means you know that objectification is impolite and you believe that people deserve agency. But this isn’t a whole person. It’s an object of mental experimentation.

The next one is the presentation-inverted variant.

First, picture a hot woman with a penis. The social understanding of a ‘trans woman’ with your idea of attractiveness layered onto it. Then we ask the same battery of questions in inverse.

  • Does your personal taste see a penis on an otherwise attractive woman as a demotion?
  • You enjoy giving oral sex to women, but would you be less interested if she had a penis?
  • We both know this person is attractive, but are you attracted to her?

Same story. Make a note of your answers and see if any of them elicit a ‘hmmm’ or ‘goddammit!‘ reaction. Those are two of the main reactions therapists look for when they do thought experiments like this. They’re signs of meaningful reflection. I’m no therapist, but I know the drill.

Next steps

There’s a real chance you’ll know some of your answers before you’ve even answered these questions. That’s also a part of the reflective process. I just think this kind of structured — even slightly discomforting — thought experiment has a place in your scenario. It places you into a comfort zone while progressively nudging you out of it.

I can’t answer any of this for you. All I know is that when I was reading, my two main thoughts were, is she just a bad fit for this guy and is the penis throwing off her whole vibe? My questions to you are a foundation for answering or excluding those questions before you move onward.

And there are so many places you could go from here. For one, reading Reddit’s infamous lesbian masterdoc was an enlightening experience for me. Enlightening, but highly disconcerting. It’s a document compiled by queer women (mostly lesbians) about shared experiences that helped them realize they had a very strong attraction to women. It has its flaws and valid criticisms, but I think many of those criticisms stem from people taking it as self-help rather than as a thought experiment. I sometimes fall back on Natalie Wynn’s Shame since it addresses her experiences with compulsory heterosexuality quite eloquently.

The bottom line is that this line of questioning you have is the start of a journey. It may actually end up in a big circle and you come out with the certainty that you’re bisexual with some fresh caveats. You probably know this, but bisexuality isn’t a fixed position. Most bisexuals don’t even have equal attraction to their favorite poles of the sexual spectrum. I can’t possibly see myself forming a long-term relationship with a man, but I’m bisexual. My personal bi pride flag has a big pink and purple section with a really thin blue section. I’m bisexual-but-men-are-on-thin-ice.

Who knows what you’ll be? Maybe you’re a lesbian and these thoughts are the first realization. Maybe you’re pansexual and this boyfriend’s just not a good fit. Neither of us knows, but you deserve to find out.

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

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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Summer Tao

Summer Tao is a South Africa based writer. She has a fondness for queer relationships, sexuality and news. Her love for plush cats, and video games is only exceeded by the joy of being her bright, transgender self

Summer has written 84 articles for us.

5 Comments

  1. There is also the possibility of split attraction, where OP could be biromantic but homosexual.

  2. Not sure about the fantasies. Many people fantasize about things that are wildly different from what they enjoy in real life.
    But yeah, would they enjoy sex more if their current male partner had a vagina? That could be an interesting, though not really helpful question.
    Another thing that they could think about is smell, do they enjoy the smell of their current partner, or men 8n general, vs female partners.

  3. Gonna reiterate a couple of points from Summer and Claire cos they are really important:

    Genital preference is a completely valid thing and not at all transphobic.

    Split attraction is definitely a thing and something worth exploring.

    I often joke that I’m the quintessential example of sexuality not being a choice, because I am definitely bisexual and am also instinctually misandrist (probably due to trauma) to the point where I have trouble forming any kind of relationships with men, especially cishet ones. No matter what my rational mind tells me, my lizard brain hisses “boys are icky, throw stones at them.” But that does not mean I don’t still find them sexually attractive in theory and in my head. Again, it’s probably hard to have sex with a man if being in their presence automatically puts you into fight or flight.

    But I digress: while perhaps being romantically, platonically, or even physically attracted to men there is something missing. This might not necessarily mean you are not bisexual, you could be biromantic, have a genital preference, or just enjoy giving and receiving different kinds of sexual activities. I had a girlfriend who hated giving and receiving oral sex, and even in the lesbian community there are those who only give or only receive. Whatever the reason for your dislike of certain activities, please remember that they are all valid! You should not feel pressured into doing something you don’t enjoy even if it’s simply because you don’t enjoy it.

    That brings us to your relationship with your boyfriend, but this is also valid for any possible future partner as well. There are all kinds of relationships, and they all take different forms with varying degrees of romantic/sexual/platonic. After some soul searching you have to decide whether you yourself feel fulfilled in the relationship, whether there is any change you could see in the current relationship that could make you more fulfilled and happy, and then discuss with your partner these things and what they would require to be fulfilled and happy. Communication and compromise. This could be keeping your romantic relationship but having your sexual needs met by other parties, polyamory, or even just being friends if it comes to it. Or you might feel it best to just make a clean break of things, it’s up to you. Just remember that these things will also be important with future relationships, that no one person needs to provide you with everything you want in a relationship, and labels like lesbian or bisexual or heteroromantic are useful descriptors not straightjackets for your life and lifestyle. People are messy things and tend not to fit into neat categories and that’s okay!

  4. Just a general note to say that I appreciate you, Summer! Your responses to asks are always so thoughtful, comprehensive, and kind.

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All Aboard, Gays! Gabby Windey Will Host a Reality Dating Show Set on a Yacht

Gabby Windey on a boat

Disney/Andrea Miconi

Hulu’s ‘Love Overboard’ To Be Hosted by Queer ‘Traitors’ Winner Gabby Windey

Queer reality star, podcast host, and former ‘Traitors’ champ Gabby Windey is going to host a new reality show called Love Overboard. (Formerly called Overboard for Love; maybe they were waiting to secure the rights for the Gladys Knight & The Pips song but either way Love Overboard is a MUCH better title.) The show will take place on a yacht, because why not I guess, and will be produced by Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper’s company Unwell Productions.

We don’t have a lot of information about this particular dating show at the moment, so it’s unclear whether there will be a queer element to the actual competition. All we know is the show’s description: “As the journey unfolds, romance ignites; alliances form; and hearts are shattered. In the end, only one couple will reign supreme. Who will rise to the top, and who will be left stranded?”

I personally wouldn’t have used so many semi-colons but that’s just me. The description is a little confusing because the contestants are “sexy singles” looking for love, but then also it seems like “only one couple” will be the winners. So it’s not set up like The Bachelor, and because of the elimination aspect it seems like it might not be like Love Is Blind or Are You the One? either. So maybe it’s more like Love Island and pairs get eliminated? Dropped off at random ports??

Or maybe it’s actually secretly a survival show and the real challenge is to escape the yacht experience without getting norovirus.

Here’s hoping that a queer host in Gabby Windey (who is married to writer/comedian/Hacks guest star Robby Hoffman) means there will be some queer people in the mix of this new show.

All Aboard for More Queer News

+ Here are some very fun facts about Poker Face‘s trans star Patti Harrison (but beware, there are spoilers for the Season 2 finale within!!)

+ Dreamers, the first feature directed by producer Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor has been acquired for distribution and is about “roommates” whose relationship grows into “something deeper” which, as you and I both know, is code for something gay

+ The miniseries Hell Motel has lesbians at its center if you, like me, are always on the hunt for more queer horror stories

+ Kim Carnes also didn’t seem to like JoJo Siwa’s cover of Betty Davis eyes, so I’m not alone

+ Check out this vibey vintage movie poster for upcoming queer Margaret Qualley/Aubrey Plaza film Honey, Don’t! on which Aubrey Plaza looks EXTRA gay

+ Murderbot and its gaggle of queers were renewed for a second season

+ Parvati Shallow dressed in drag as Boston Rob to lip-sync with drag queen Jan Sport to sing an apt song: “Shallow” from A Star Is Born

+ Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale loves writing songs for her non-binary partner

+ The documentary I ME US tells the stories of the trans community in Cumbria, England

+ Demi Lovato is teasing potential new music that will apparently be “more honest than ever” which I am very much ready for

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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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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2 Comments

  1. “Or maybe it’s actually secretly a survival show and the real challenge is to escape the yacht experience without getting norovirus.”

    This made me giggle snort at work.

    I’m excited that Murderbot was renewed – I ended up really enjoying season one, despite the uneven start. I didn’t like it as well as the books – I’ve mostly accepted that the show is its own thing and it’s OK that they had to make changes to bring it on screen. And it was a lot of fun to watch.

    But I don’t think I’m going to stop being annoyed about Skarsgard anytime soon. His portrayal of SecUnit looks too human and reads way, way too masculine, imo. I really liked that the books made it clear that SecUnit isn’t gendered and isn’t human and I think the show is weaker for not doing that. That said, I’m super looking forward to how they portray ART (the transport ship that SecUnit boards at the end of season 1).

  2. i don’t like rich entertainers anymore-what’s “gaggy” about Gabby Windey-a model cheerleader who went gay a married a misogynist masc lesbian who is also rich and famous

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Rosie O’Donnell In Blazers, 1992 – 1999

As you may know, a blazer is how power lesbians and power-lesbian-adjacent humans radiate their power. Lesbians have been blazing trails in the fashion fields of blazers since the beginning of time, as established in the scholarly work 12 Monumental Moments In Lesbian Blazer-Wearing History (Bernard, 2013), which studied prominent blazers as worn by blazer hotshots including Melissa Etheridge, kd Lang and the author. The limited sample size analyzed for that study did not offer the author a chance to zoom in on the specific blazer history of a single subject, but luckily for us all (and for academia) that time has now arrived. The single subject we will be approaching in this work is the one and only Rosie O’Donnell, star of The Flintstones.

The ’90s have been established as a key moment when lesbian fashion and fashion-fashion collided spectacularly. While it remains true that every blazer is a little bit gay (Honey Boo Boo, 2012), the oversized-blazer trend of the ’90s was slightly more gay than the aggressively shoulder-padded blazers of the ’80s and the cropped, boxy, and often very shiny blazers of the ’00s.

I have been a consistent appreciator of Rosie O’Donnell‘s since the ’90s and have always found her to be warm, smart and funny in person. She has also consistently been a target of lesbophobia, most recently from the actual president of the united states. In the early 2020s, I was delighted to witness a cross-generational resurgence in Rosie O’Donnell celebration as the world flocked to her very popular TikTok account and enjoyed her guest spot on The L Word: Generation Q. This past year, she moved to Ireland to escape the Trump administration and has been spotted on Hacks and And Just Like That….

Rosie is an interesting subject for fashion analysis because she very much prefers casual-wear whenever possible and once wrote in Elle Magazine, “the truth is, I have no fashion sense—never did.” Unfortunately, when you are famous you have to pick a look and wear nice clothing to events. Fortunately for a lesbian, you could usually just throw on an enormous blazer. Let us begin with this paper I am submitting for peer review.

this post was originally published in 2021 and has been updated for 2025.

March 1992. Celebrity Ski Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell during 1992 VH1's Celebrity Ski in Squaw Valley, California, United States. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)

Rosie O’Donnell during 1992 VH1’s Celebrity Ski in Squaw Valley, California, United States. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)

Ah, to be a guest at VH1’s 1992 “Celebrity Ski” event in Squaw Valley, California, which apparently involved relaxing days on the slopes with other celebrities and evenings in what looks like a hotel conference room where the audience was treated to the sweet sweet sounds of Kenny G and Smokey Robinson. Also in attendance was our very own Rosie O’Donnell, who had been working at VH1 since becoming a VJ in 1988 and then hosting a comedy show called “Stand Up Spotlight.” This blazer tells you everything you need to know but are not yet able to say: “I am gay and I am prepared for long Canadian winters.”

June 1992: Completely Innocent Blazer Ensemble

Rosie O'Donnell (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Rosie O’Donnell (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

For the premiere of A League Of Their Own, Rosie chose a traditional look that my Social Studies teacher would’ve definitely worn to an evening event in the school auditorium, but Rosie pulls it off with absolute panache. Somehow white blazers seem less gay than other types of blazers, but still this outfit subtly suggests “this was a compromise between a dress and what I actually wanted to wear.” She repeated the unassuming ensemble for the 1993 premiere of Sleepless in Seattle.

June 1992: A League Of Her Own Blazer

Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell (Photo by Kevin Mazur Archive/WireImage)

This oversized black blazer with gold embroidered fleur-de-lis was undoubtedly one of Rosie O’Donnell’s most beloved blazers of the ’90s, and she wore it to several events, including the after-party of the premiere of A League of Their Own with new bestie Madonna. This blazer says “I may be a lesbian who isn’t allowed to come out yet, but I am also a Catholic Saint of France and Madonna is holding my hand.”

August 1992: Wild Animal Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Rosie O’Donnell (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

This Blazer was a Choice, this overall presentation was a Look, and she wore it to host the 1992 Emmys. Recently The Hollywood Reporter did a piece lamenting a time “before an army of Hollywood designers glammed up TV’s Big Night” when “talent was eager to show off individual flair” and Rosie’s velvet pants, leopard-print blazer and matching cap were a prominent feature of the piece celebrating celeb’s “wackier takes on fashion.”

On the other side of the coin, Entertainment Weekly slandered this blazer by referring to it as “leopard print PJs” in which Rosie “looked like she’d rolled out of bed and onto the red carpet.” Homophobia at its finest. I would excuse this judgement had it been made in 1992, but it was unfortunately made in 2012, at which point Rosie was already out and therefore protected by the Lesbians Can Wear PJs as Pants Rule.

October 1992: Politically Active Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell during "A River Runs Through It" Los Angeles Premiere at Academy Theater in Beverly Hills, California, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Rosie O’Donnell during “A River Runs Through It” Los Angeles Premiere at Academy Theater in Beverly Hills, California, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

You’re interested in rocking the vote in the direction of the Clinton/Gore ticket and you’ve been invited to the Los Angeles premiere of the Brad Pitt film “A River Runs Through It.” What do you do? You simply put on a blazer and a Clinton-Gore hat for a Tomboy Look that absolutely Works for me. This shiny black blazer is too long in the arms but that’s okay, you do not fear a cuff. Yes you are wearing khakis and a t-shirt and a literal baseball cap to a movie premiere. But it’s okay, it was a casual movie premiere: Jodi Foster was swallowed by a sweater and a man on her way to the theater, Melissa Etheridge did a Canadian tuxedo and Catherine Keener only wore half a shirt. What we were all doing that year was our best.

August 1993. Swallow Me Blazer

165644 05: Comedienne Rosie O''Donnell attends the Cirque Du Soleil August 1, 1993 in Chicago, IL. The acclaimed circus show has forged an alliance against AIDS with Elizabeth Taylor and will donate the proceeds from tonight's performance to the Howard Brown Health Center and Chicago House. (Photo by Barry King/Liaison)

Comedienne Rosie O”Donnell attends the Cirque Du Soleil August 1, 1993 in Chicago, IL. The acclaimed circus show has forged an alliance against AIDS with Elizabeth Taylor and will donate the proceeds from tonight’s performance to the Howard Brown Health Center and Chicago House. (Photo by Barry King/Liaison)

Did anyone iron this camel-colored linen blazer? Probably not, but that’s okay, because I believe that is what we call “rumpled” and it reflects a casual lesbian lifestyle in which one cannot be fussed with such things.

March 1994: Duster-Blazer-Gown

Nick Park Holding His Oscar with Presenter Rosie O'Donnell

Nick Park Holding His Oscar with Presenter Rosie O’Donnell (Photo by © Steve Starr/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

This blazer says “I am the real deal from head to toe and although this bra is sucking my ribcage out of my torso, my boobs look amazing.”

June 1994: All That Glitters Is Not Gold Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell and Bebe Neuwirth during 48th Annual Tony Awards

Rosie O’Donnell and Bebe Neuwirth during 48th Annual Tony Awards at Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

This is probably the most heterosexual blazer in the series. Although it is glittery, that does not automatically make it queer. This is your Very Hot Divorced Aunt showing up to your wedding in a Long Island Sheraton wearing jewelry she bought on her good-for-nothing ex’s credit card after learning he’d been cheating on her. She looks like a million bucks!

September 1995: Is It Okay to Look Gay at a Gay Movie Premiere Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell during "To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" New York Premiere at Ziegfeld Theater in New York City, New York, United States

Rosie O’Donnell during “To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” New York Premiere at Ziegfeld Theater in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

We were mixing a lot of neutrals and doing a lot of shopping at The Gap in 1995 and furthermore it was a wild time for hats. Rosie’s vibe is often along the lines of “okay fine I’ll dress up for this,” and I relate to that vibe and probably wore this same outfit when I went to see Too Wong Fu Thanks For Everything Julie Newmar.

September 1995: Mama’s Silk Pajamas Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell during 47th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California, United State

Rosie O’Donnell during 47th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

The tint of her sunglasses matches the tint of her suit! Tonight we celebrate her first-ever Primetime Emmy Award nomination, for her self-titled HBO comedy special! She accessorized with a small Poloroid picture of her recently adopted son.

June 1996: The Custom Blazer

Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell on her show in New York City.

Talk show host Rosie O’Donnell on her show in New York City. 6/21/1996 Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

Rosie’s daytime talk show launched in 1996, and she often spoke on her show of how hard it was to find clothes she liked in her size. Within a few months the show assigned her a personal designer, Dale Richards. who aimed to “make O’Donnell look like a typical career woman.” Richards told WWD that there was a dearth of structured options out there for women over a size 14 and “to carry a TV show, you shouldn’t have soft swing coat things, especially with her personality.”  So Richards designed her suits, each inspired by specific suits from labels like Chanel, Escada and Gucci; and worked with a tailor to create the final, entirely hand-tailored and highly-detailed looks. She looked fucking fantastic every day.

September 1996: Cruising Blazer

Tom Cruise and Rosie O'Donnell

Tom Cruise and Rosie O’Donnell during 11th Annual American Cinematheque Moving Picture Ball Honoring Tom Cruise at Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, United States. (Photo by Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

When Rosie O’Donnell came out in 2002, many people were surprised due to her oft-stated infatuation with erstwhile Scientologist Tom Cruise. She specified: “I said I wanted him to mow my lawn and bring me a lemonade, I never said I wanted to blow him.”

December 1996: Bette Porter Power Collar

Actresses Rita Moreno, Mary Tyler Moore and comedian Rosie O''Donnell sit together at the New York Women in Film and Television luncheon at the New York Hilton

Actresses Rita Moreno, Mary Tyler Moore and comedian Rosie O”Donnell sit together at the New York Women in Film and Television luncheon at the New York Hilton and Towers December 17, 1996 in New York City. The NYWIFT celebrated their eighteenth year by presenting the 1996 MUSE award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement at their annual gala luncheon. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Liaison)

She came, she saw, she SPLAYED THE COLLAR.

March 1997: Ecru Blazer With Collar Detailing and Emmy Accents

New York City 24th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards Rosie O' Donnell

3/21/97 New York City 24th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards Rosie O’ Donnell CR: RON GALELLA at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

The gayest thing about this blazer is that Rosie O”Donnell cried in public while wearing it, as she accepted the Emmy for Best Daytime Talk Show Host. Crying in public is queer.

May 1998: Shiny Pastel Pinstripe Blazer

Rosie O’Donnell and Oprah Winfrey (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

This glimmering cotton-candy-pink ensemble complimented the gold in Rosie’s first Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host, for which she tied with Oprah Winfrey. It was a big year for satin and shimmering concepts in general and we all coped with that in our own ways.

April 1998: K’s Choice Blazer

Rosie O'Donnell in tuxedo

Rosie O’ Donnell during The 11th Annual Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards at UCLA Pauley Pavilion in Westwood, California, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

To host the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, Rosie wore an oversized button-up shirt and Adidas track pants. But this promotional photograph obscures this eventual choice, outfitting Rosie O’Donnell in her Katherine Hepburn Best. Rosie opened the awards by announcing, “Welcome to the 11th annual Kids Choice Awards, the time when Hollywood’s biggest stars put away the tuxedos and makeup and put on the sneakers and slime because this is the big night where KIDS RULE!!!!!!!!!!!” (WILD APPLAUSE) (ROSIE SCREAMS) (THE CHILDREN SCREAM LOUDER)

December 1998: Blue Velvet Blazer

Rosie in a velvet blazer and a loudspeaker

Rosie O’Donnell’s “For All Kids Foundation” Awards Gala. (photo by Diane Freed)

Richards liked to dress Rosie “mainly in velvet, with full-legged pants paired with shells and shirts” for “evening-wear.” The thing about a velvet blazer is that it has a vaguely magical vibe, and is somehow both fancy and nap-appropriate. Also spotted at this event: Mary Tyler Moore wearing a silver spacesuit and Barbara Walters carting her Rosie doll. Also Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates were there? 1998!

July 1999: Blazer With Baby

Rosie O'Donnell, Julie Andrews, and guest during Summer Gala Benefit Bash for the Bay Street Theatre

Rosie O’Donnell, Julie Andrews, and guest during Summer Gala Benefit Bash for the Bay Street Theatre – July 10, 1999 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York, United States. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Whereas Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, is consistently pictured in a red robe with a blue mantle in all iterations of the “Madonna With Child” art motif, here we see a variation on that theme. Rather than colors intended to signify the earth and an empress-like divinity, we see an unassuming sand-colored pantsuit intended to signify an easy fashion choice for an evening theater benefit in lush Sag Harbor, New York. However, consistent with later depictions of the Madonna with Child, this photograph does “express a more tender, intimate moment between a mother and her child [and Julie Andrews].” There is no better place to end this case study than right here, as we see all forces collide into one divine, transcendent moment, inspiring all of us to live as if we, too, were surrounded by angels, saints and lesbians [in Blazers].

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 3343 articles for us.

19 Comments

  1. the actual sigh of relief i sighed when i came to her custom talk show blazer

    CUSTOM BLAZERS FOR EVERYONE

    • Yes! This piece reminded me that I want a velvet blazer for winter holiday parties where I want to look dressed up but still be warm and comfortable.

    • Boy isn’t it?! This article is an absolute treasure trove, Riese. Well done! 👏🏼🤩

      • thank you both! it is a treasure trove of ’90s imagery i am like a kid on christmas morning

Comments are closed.

Why Are Straight Christian Modesty Influencers Claiming “Tomboy Femme” Like It’s a New Fashion Trend?

The tomboy femme is a relatively new addition to the queer woman’s arsenal of labels and identities, dating back to the late aughts and embodied recently by Billie Eilish’s oversized fits paired with femme nails and the chaotic mixing of masculine and feminine styles in sapphic hit Bottoms (2023). As quickly as the tomboy femme has risen to the heights of wlw stardom, however, she’s also grabbed the attention of an unexpected internet subculture: Christian influencers. These days, you might be as likely to see a queer woman showing you how to dress ‘tomboy femme’ as a straight woman. In greater numbers, Christian women have taken to Instagram and TikTok to complain that their cargo-wearing religious modesty gets them mistaken for lesbians.

A 2024 asos piece discussing the “Tiktok-trending Tomboy Femme aesthetic” describes it as “elevating sporty cuts with subtle feminine details” and cites Bella Hadid and Kylie Jenner as Tomboy Femme icons. It’s one of many articles that erases the tomboy femme aesthetics’ roots in lesbian and sapphic communities. For queer women, “tomboy femme” was never a fashion trend so much as it was a label that described the way they already dressed and presented themselves, but just hadn’t picked a word for.

It’s surprising, in the endless culture wars, to see so many Christian women lamenting being read as queer because of their “tomboy femme” style, reflecting shifting ideas around modesty, and laying bare how easy it is to ahistorically appropriate queer culture for content. As masculine dress for women becomes normalised, we’ve forgotten how recently it was still unacceptable for women to wear pants and how queer-coded dressing like a ‘tomboy’ used to be, and for some, still is.

But, is any of this harmful? Should we shrug off straight women’s adoption of “tomboy femme”? Is it a problem that modesty influencers rarely consider the queer activist histories that enable them to dress in a way that definitely would have gotten them labelled a dyke not long ago?

What is a tomboy femme? 

The tomboy femme combines two older lesbian and bisexual identities: the tomboy and the femme.

Tomboys have their vague origins in the 19th century — girls like Jo March, pushing back against Victorian social norms, preferring sports and trucks and climbing trees over playing house with baby dolls.

By the early twentieth century, the tomboy was sometimes seen as a threateningly queer type of girl, who might (if her tomboyishness stuck around into her teenage years) turn out to be a very abnormal type of woman — a lesbian. Throughout the last century, fears that tomboys would become queer adult women were widely held, though not always accurate, and, in the face of a world that preferred pretty little girls turning into heterosexual wives, sapphic communities frequently reclaimed the term “tomboy” for their own purposes. What exactly a tomboy is outside of homophobic fear-mongering in twentieth-century parenting manuals varies: a tomboy is often synonymous with baby butches and chapstick lesbians, not quite masculine enough to be a butch or a stud, but far from a femme.

The femme, unlike the tomboy, has its origins specifically within the butch/femme dynamics of working-class lesbians in the 1940s. Since the 1990s, the term has been used to more generally describe any and all feminine people, interchangeably with ‘fem’, “femme” arose as a queer identifier for women who were the feminine counterpart to the masculine butch, an erotic identity as much about feminine gender expression as desiring masculine-presenting women. There are many variations on the femme, what you could call the multigendered femme spectrum, from the hyperfemininity of the high femme right down to the tomboy femme herself.

A tomboy femme might also be a ‘futch’, a ‘butchy femme’ or a ‘soft butch’ judging by the aesthetic similarities of people who use these self-identifiers, but, noticeably, these identities and gender expressions haven’t taken off quite as much outside of queer communities. This is likely because whilst ‘butch’ has kept its explicitly queer connotations, femme, so linguistically similar to feminine, has lost much of its queer charge, a less threatening term for a straight woman or even a closeted queer woman to use without explicitly signalling queerness.

The combined term “tomboy femme” began appearing online in the late 2000s and early 2010s and slowly but surely made itself a visible feature of online lesbian subcultures. The earliest online usage of the term was the 2009-founded tumblr “tomboyfemme”, in which the founder described the term to represent “where I sit at the centre of a continuum — compared to most female-bodied queers, I’m femme as hell, but in a group of heterosexual women, I’m immediately called a tomboy.”

A 2012 Autostraddle article titled “Femmes: Beyond Lipstick (and Heels and Dresses)” was the first to take the term out of tumblr into the wilds, and it was appearing in headlines by 2013. That same year, DapperQ introduced “Tomboy Femme Fridays” to celebrate that moment in style history. By 2014, it was frequently used on Autostraddle, even becoming a wildly popular t-shirt (since widely copied). In 2016, an Autostraddle survey that included a multiple-choice question about gender presentation, Tomboy Femme was the most popular selection, with 30% of readers opting for it. It seemed to be a term that filled an identity gap for a big chunk of the queer population who hadn’t felt represented before. A deeply 2010s Buzzfeed article describes Tomboy Femmes as “t-shirt and lipstick. sneakers and lingerie. often seen wearing glasses and still kicking your ass at sports.”

Whilst the glasses and sports have seemingly lost any tomboy femme connotations in the 2020s, ‘t-shirts and lipstick’ is as good as any summary of this sapphic subtype. Androgynous fashion and masculine styling have long been a part of sapphic communities and queer self-expression, and the tomboy femme is a label that has long been embraced by a wide range of queer people. Despite this, the most visible representations of the tomboy femme have been white skinny women – some the earliest internet examples include Linda Evangelista and Jodie Foster – and this, combined with the femme’s less overt queer meaning, offers an unthreatening queering of conventional expectations about how women should dress. Popular tomboy femme trends like the oversized shirt and baggy pant combo draw directly from Black culture and artists like Missy Elliot and Aaliyah. Repackaged for Instagram and TikTok, these aesthetics rarely acknowledge those who pioneered them.

So what’s modest about dressing like a lesbian?

The creators of non-queer tomboy femme content tend to fall into two categories: fashion influencers who have picked up on the trend and create content on how to dress like one; and Christian influencers who ‘push back’ on the comments that tell them they’re dressed like a lesbian.

On the whole, fashion influencers tend to be queer-affirming, if unaware of the term’s gay roots, responding politely to commenters’ questions about their sexuality.

Meanwhile, the recent ‘when you wanna be a modest Christian girl but you get mistaken for a lesbian’ trend on the Christian side of TikTok is often served with comments of how insulting such an accusation is. One creator posted a video of herself in dungarees and a backwards cap with the caption: ‘I’m glad I was able to be a tomboy without someone telling me I was confused’. More than a few discuss how they used to be tomboys before they found God. Many suggest that it used to be okay to dress more masculine without being seen as queer when they were young, and that they wish they weren’t perceived as queer now they dress masculine in their adulthood.

It took a long while for it to be acceptable for women to wear “masculine” fashion, but Evangelical and conservative Christian communities have taken even longer. In the Mormon Church, Sister missionaries only got the go-ahead to wear trousers in 2019. Headlines on Christian blogs ask whether women should wear leggings, when it’s acceptable to wear pants and how to make sure your tomboy daughter doesn’t confuse herself for a boy.

Up to the 1960s, American Christian dress codes for women emphasised simple, feminine clothing with minimal accessories — if you were lucky, your slightly-more liberal church might deem it acceptable to occasionally wear pants. This expectation changed dramatically into hyper-feminine camp with the rise of televangelism and an influx of female preachers like Tammy Faye in the 1970s. You can see echoes of Faye’s exaggerated makeup and glamour on right-wing women like Majorie Taylor Greene and Kellyanne Conway, who love their bleached-blonde locks. But, while Faye never would’ve been caught dead in pants, Taylor Greene occasionally dons a pair of dark wash jeans, perhaps in an attempt to flash some down-to-earth country girl credentials.

Since the 2000s, evangelical preaching trends in the US have favoured a more casual, down-with-the-kids approach, a new strategy to attract younger congregations. Female preachers like Beth Moore started to dress down their evangelicalism, favoring jeans and simplicity in hopes of making Christianity seem more appealing or even cool to millennials and Gen-Z. Whilst trad wives and rightwing pundits show that hyper-femininity is still valued amongst Christians, a more casual aesthetic that draws on modern fashion is a useful way to make Christianity seem less demanding.

As traditional preachers gave way to online personalities in the 2010s, Christian influencers shifted their beliefs about modesty to appeal to as many women as possible. Modesty in online Christian circles is less about adhering to doctrine than it is making modern fashions suit their beliefs. So, whilst content creators like Girl Defined say girls can wear jeans and be modest, they also say that this has to be done the right way, meaning no low-cut jeans or extra-tight jeggings.

Debates about how women should dress among Christian online communities generally fall into one of two camps: women should dress to please their husbands (the “trad-wife” variety of modesty) or women should dress in a way that desexualizes them completely — the tomboy approach. Both of these approaches are equally invested in the male gaze, centering men as the sartorial priority while appealing to a kind of return-to-the-land back-in-the-good-old-days fantasy of working the field and bearing children.

The difference between a modest woman and a tomboy femme seems to be less about how they look than the reasons why they adopt more masculine styles and how that style is read by the world. Christian tomboy femme influencers want tomboy femme style, on their bodies, to represent modest heterosexuality. But that same style on a queer body — chosen for comfort, personal affirmation or community affiliation — can be demonized as a gender betrayal or sexual deviancy. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance around a movement that reframes lesbian fashion as “conservative.”

Whilst we could celebrate how far feminism and queer liberation has come that restrictive dress codes prohibiting women from wearing pants to work and school are (mostly) a thing of the (very recent) past, in the world of tradwives and transphobic politics, it increasingly feels like our wardrobes are being policed more than ever.

Gender Policing Is Unfortunately Currently In Style

The upsurge in online content in which anti-queer people ahistorically appropriate queer style is poorly timed when, more and more, the butches, studs, trans men and women, enbies, and other gender non-conforming people in our lives suffer at the hands of regressive beliefs about how men and women should look.  Recently, queer couple were asked to ‘prove’ their sex in order to use the women’s toilets at a Boston Hotel — an incident that happens all over this country, every day, but just rarely makes the news.

Last summer’s Olympics was plagued by comments about whether female athletes were ‘really’ women due to their athletic prowess, demonstrating how challenging it can be to be a gender non-conforming woman – whether this means being queer, or simply being more muscular and less white than the idealised conservative women is expected to be.

Many of the Christian influencers who use language like “tomboy femme” are homophobic and use lesbian and queer hashtags to ragebait the queer community. One of the many trending posts about being confused for a lesbian was created by a woman who attends Morningstar Ministries,which has a very clear stance on homosexuality : ‘homosexuality is a genuine threat to the very foundations of our social order’. Another user of the same trend has multiple anti-abortion, transphobic and anti-feminists posts. The comments under these posts complain that in the ‘good old days’ women could be tomboys and dress like a tomboy femme without being perceived as queer: but I am very (not) sorry to inform them that this has literally never been the case.

Masculine-presenting straight women have the best of both worlds: they get to present to the world how they want and keep all the privileges of heterosexuality. It can feel a little unfair that many of the self-described tomboy femmes of Instagram and TikTok get to claim cool lesbian style points with the caveat: ’but I’m straight’. Sure, being perceived as queer in public and online can be challenging and lead to homophobic harassment, but imagine how much harder it is to actually be queer.

The language around modesty and masculinity often implies two things: that to present as feminine is only about catering for the male gaze, ignoring femme histories and the possibility of a femininity without patriarchy; and that female masculinity has nothing to do with queerness, erasing legacies of queer gender nonconformity. Even when seeming to celebrate gender nonconformity in their tomboy femme eras, many Christian influencers continue to uphold the gender binary and all the problems that come with it.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with straight women dressing in conventionally masculine fashions. Everyone can and should disrupt the gender binary and experiment with their gender expression. But when straight people use queer language and styles whilst also opposing queerness, influencers don’t think about how their ability to dress how they choose is a privilege won through the tireless activism of queer and feminist gender rebels. Especially when looking at the women who use lesbianism as a tool for content creation whilst being openly homophobic, it’s clear that, maybe, just maybe, we need to make sure we remind everyone that the tomboys, the femmes, and the tomboy femmes started out as girl kissers.

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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Atlanta Tsiaoukkas

Atlanta Tsiaoukkas is a UK-based writer and researcher currently working towards a PhD on queer Victorian schoolgirls and their homoerotic friendships. She enjoys writing about sapphic pop culture trends, weird girl literature and pretentious films for publications including Polyester and OddCritic. You can follow her work on Instagram @aatlanta_aa.

Atlanta has written 1 article for us.

6 Comments

  1. Love an in depth fashion article like this! Thank you for writing, would love to read more!

  2. Wow, unreal levels of egregious to appropriate the aesthetic, even down to retaining its label, and then be affronted when people mistake you for belonging to the group who originated it.

    Love your analysis, but do you have links to more examples? So wild to learn this is a thing and I would like to understand the extent of it (not on tiktok myself). The first link under ‘So what’s modest about dressing like a lesbian?’ read as parody to me and is indeed from a very queer account. The second one is for sure homo- and transphobic, but has age-old messaging about tomboy kids (that it’s just a phase they should be allowed to grow out of) rather than being tied to ‘tomboy femme’ as a modest trend for adults. Unless I’m mistaken, that’s the extent of the links to specific videos. In no way denying such posts exist, just genuinely intrigued to see them (but not enough to sign up for and learn how to navigate tiktok!)

  4. i really appreciate your deep dive! do want to add, though – tomboyism actually has a pretty well-documented history, one that has a lot to do with racism and eugenics in a us american context (the basic idea being that encouraging young middle-class white girls to be physically stronger would make for more and healthier white babies), which i do think is important to mention. a good starting point for this can be found here – https://keywords.nyupress.org/childrens-literature/essay/tomboy/

  5. How did we get so lost the early aughts quiz: lesbian or german lady? turned into lesbian or christian influenzer? I think this is where i officially step out of this timeline–

  6. I don’t like to be the commenter that blames homophobes on self-hating closet gays…but I really do think a lot of the subtext of young women from homophobic environments embracing styles that deter male attention is that many of them are (repressed) gay!

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Meet All 43 Gay WNBA Players of the 2025 Season

Which WNBA players are gay and how many of them are gay? Well, when Autostraddle published our very first list of out gay WNBA players several years back, it held merely 15 names. Last season, that number had climbed to 38, although two of the players on last year’s list ended up getting waived from their teams shortly into the season, leaving us with 36. But this year, despite losing a lot of last year’s roster, we continue to win with even more gay players!

Atlanta Dream Gay Players

Brittney Griner

COLLEGE PARK, GEORGIA - MAY 10: Brittney Griner #42 of the Atlanta Dream reacts after hitting a three-point basket against the Indiana Fever during the first quarter of a preseason game at Gateway Center Arena on May 10, 2025 in College Park, Georgia. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The legendary Brittney Griner and her wife, Cherelle, welcomed a baby boy just before the Olympics last year. Griner became the first out gay college player drafted to the WNBA when she went first to the Phoenix Mercury in 2013, and was traded to the Dream ahead of the 2025 season. follow bg on instagram

Jordin Canada

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 24: Jordin Canada #3 of the Atlanta Dream dribbles during the second half against the New York Liberty in Game Two of Round One of the WNBA Playoffs at Barclays Center on September 24, 2024 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The Liberty won 91-82. Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
(Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

In addition to an already prolific seven-year career in the WNBA, Canada is a musician. follow jordin canada on instagram

Chicago Sky Gay Players

Courtney Vandersloot

CHICAGO, IL - MAY 06: Courtney Vandersloot #22 of the Chicago Sky brings the ball up court during the first half against the Minnesota Lynx on May 6, 2025 at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

In December 2018, Vandersloot married her then-teammate Allie Quigley, who left the Sky in 2022. They welcomed a baby girl to their family this April. follow courtney vandersloot on instagram

Maddy Westbeld

(Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)

Westbeld is new to the W after being selected 16th overall by the Sky out of Notre Dame in the 2025 WNBA draft. She’s dating her Notre Dame teammate Olivia Miles. follow her on instagram

Connecticut Sun Gay Players

Saniya Rivers

(Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images)

The 8th annual draft in this year’s class, Rivers comes off some peak performing at South Carolina and NC State. Since joining the Sun, her friendship and TikTok streams with Marina Mabrey have been very popular!

Dallas Wings Gay Players

Arike Ogunbowale

(Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images)

Ogunbowale got engaged to her fiance, influencer Lala Ronay, last May. follow arike ogunbowale on instagram

Paige Bueckers

(Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images)

Beloved rookie and #1 draft pick Page Bueckers is dating her U-Conn teammate, Azzi Fudd.

Dijonai Carrington

ARLINGTON, TEXAS - MAY 10: DiJonai Carrington #21 of the Dallas Wings controls the ball during the second half of a preseason game against the Toyota Antelopes at College Park Center on May 10, 2025 in Arlington, Texas.
(Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images)

Dijonai Carrington, traded to the Wings from the Sun prior to this season, is dating her now-teammate, Nalyssa Smith. Their relationship has been a non-stop delight for the women’s basketball community. follow dijonai carrington on instagram

Tyasha Harris

(Photo by Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Harris’s girlfriend, Autumn Jones, is already sporting memorable courtside looks and facial expressions. Harris was drafted by the Wings in 2020, but played a season at the Sun and one in China before returning to the Wings this year. follow tyasha harris on instagram

Golden State Valkyries Gay Players

Kate Martin

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 6: Kate Martin #20 of the Golden State Valkyries dribbles against Azura Stevens #23 of the Los Angeles Sparks during a game at Chase Center on May 6, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Supriya Limaye/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
(Photo by Supriya Limaye/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

Kate, who was drafted to the Aces out of college and traded to the Valkyries this year, came out by going public with her relationship to Claire Gransee, with whom Martin attended college. follow kate martin on instagram

Cecelia Zandalasini

ANKARA, TURKEY - DECEMBER 07, 2024: Cecilia Zandalasini, #24 of Galatasaray Cagdas Faktoring Istanbul in action during the ING Bank Women's Basketball Super League (KBSL)
(Altan Gocher / GocherImagery/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

The Italian player spent a season with the Minnesota Lynx in 2018 and again in 2024, but was picked up by the Lynx in the expansion draft. She has a hot Italian girlfriend, Sara Barbieri. follow cecelia on instagram

Tiffany Hayes

(Photo by Supriya Limaye/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

Tip started in the WNBA in 2012 with Atlanta and most recently was playing for the Aces. She became an Azerbaijani citizen in 2015 and has competed as a member of their national basketball team and in the Olympics. follow tip hayes on insta

Indiana Fever Gay Players

Natasha Howard

IOWA CITY, IOWA- MAY 4: Forward Natasha Howard #6 of the Indiana Fever brings the ball down the court during the first half against the Brazil National Team, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on March 4, 2025 in Iowa City, Iowa.
(Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

Howard was drafted to the Fever in 2014, but didn’t stay there — after playing with the Wings for her last two seasons, she came to the Fever as a free agent ahead of the 2025 season. Her wedding to hair salon entrepreneur Jac’Eil Duckworth Howard was featured on the eleventh season of Basketball Wives. follow natasha howard on instagram

Sydney Colson

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is sydney-colson-GettyImages-2214030537.jpg IOWA CITY, IOWA- MAY 4: Guard Sydney Colson #51 of the Indiana Fever brings the ball down the court during the first half against the Brazil National Team, at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on March 4, 2025 in Iowa City, Iowa.
(Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

Sydney Colson is the face of the WNBA, the star of the Syd & TP Show, a fashion icon and truly the most entertaining human being in the league. She comes to the Fever this year from the Aces. follow syd colson on instagram

Las Vegas Aces Gay Players

Crystal Bradford

SOUTH BEND, INDIANA - MAY 02: Crystal Bradford #8 of the Las Vegas Aces reacts with Jackie Young #0 of the Las Vegas Aces against the Dallas Wings during the preseason game at Purcell Pavilion on May 02, 2025 in South Bend, Indiana.
(Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

Crystal wrote an essay for The Player’s Tribune in 2023 that included a story of coming out to her mother in high school. After one season with the Sparks in 2015, she didn’t play in the W again until a 2021 run with the Atlanta Dream. After sitting out one game for a suspension over a 2021 fight in Atlanta, she’ll be on the court with the Aces this season. follow crystal bradford on instagram

Nalyssa Smith

(Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images)

Smith previously played for the Fever and now is playing alongside her girlfriend, Dijonai Carrington. They’ve had an on-and-off relationship since attending college together at Baylor. follow nalyssa smith on instagram

Chelsea Gray

(Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

Gray is a legend, sporting two Olympic gold medals, three WNBA Championships and one Unrivaled championship. Chelsea and her wife, Tipsea Gray, had a baby in February of 2024. follow chelsea gray on instagram

Jewell Loyd

HENDERSON, NEVADA - APRIL 27: Jewell Loyd #24 of the Las Vegas Aces practices during the team's first day of training camp at Las Vegas Aces Headquarters on April 27, 2025 in Henderson, Nevada.
(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The Las Vegas Aces picked up one of the league’s top talents after she asked to be traded from the Seattle Storm, where she’d been playing since 2015. Her girlfriend, Téa Adams, is a point guard for the Estonia Women’s National Basketball Team. (They haven’t posted together recently but I think they’re still together??) follow jewell loyd on instagram

Kierstan Bell

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - SEPTEMBER 19: Kierstan Bell #1 of the Las Vegas Aces drives against the Dallas Wings in the second quarter at Michelob ULTRA Arena on September 19, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada
(Photo by Louis Grasse/Getty Images)

Bell has been with the Aces since the 2022, when she was drafted by them 11th overall. follow kierstan bell on instagram

Los Angeles Sparks Gay Players

Emma Cannon

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 06: Emma Cannon #32 of the Los Angeles Sparks shoots over Laeticia Amihere #3 of the Golden State Valkyries in the second half of a WNBA basket ball game at Chase Center on May 06, 2025 in San Francisco, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement.
(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Cannon debuted in the WNBA in 2017, and has played internationally and for four different WNBA teams before signing with the Sparks for 2025. She and her wife, Tia Cannon, had their first child in 2022, and welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, to their family in April. follow emma cannon on instagram

Julie Allemand

(Photo by Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images)

Belgian baller Julie Allemand was picked up by the Indiana Fever in the 2016 draft, but she spent the next three years playing in Europe before returning to the Fever in 2020, but sat out the subsequent year for her mental health. She joined the Sky for 2022, but opted out in 2023 to focus on the Belgian national team — she was the only out lesbian on their 2024 Olympics squad. In 2024, she was traded to the Los Angeles Sparks, but was injured shortly thereafter. This will be her first season actually playing for the Sparks, and her second in the WNBA. follow julie allemand on instagram

Minnesota Lynx Gay Players

Courtney Williams

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - MAY 06: Courtney Williams #10 of the Minnesota Lynx dribbles the ball against the Chicago Sky during the second half of a preseason game at Wintrust Arena on May 06, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Daniel Bartel/Getty Images)
(Photo by Daniel Bartel/Getty Images)

Top WNBA Hottie Courtney Williams, who began her WNBA career in 2016 and was a key player for the Lynx as they battled for a championship last year, got engaged to her girlfriend, real estate agent Shya, last November, and we were all pretty excited about it— but it does seem they have since broken up. She is a co-star of everybody’s favorite WNBA streamers, the #studbudz. follow courtney williams on instagram

Kayla McBride

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 08: Kayla McBride #21 of the Minnesota Lynx celebrates her basket against the Connecticut Sun in the first quarter of Game Five of the Semi-Finals during the WNBA Playoffs at Target Center on October 08, 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)

McBride, who’s been playing in the W since 2014 and with the Lynx since 2021, recently wrote a piece for The Player’s Tribune about her mental health journey. follow kayla mcbride on instagram

Natisha Hiedeman

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - MAY 06: Natisha Hiedeman #2 of the Minnesota Lynx shoots the ball against the Chicago Sky during the second half of a preseason game at Wintrust Arena on May 06, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois
(Photo by Daniel Bartel/Getty Images)

Tisha and her former Connecticut Sun teammate, Jasmine Thomas, got engaged in 2021 and had a wedding website set up for 2023, but they haven’t posted pictures together in quite some time. This is Tisha’s second year with the Lynx after five in Connecticut and she does the #studbudz show with Courtney Williams. follow tisha hiedeman on instagram

New York Liberty Gay Players

Breanna Stewart

EUGENE, OREGON - MAY 12: Breanna Stewart #30 of the New York Liberty reacts after the preseason win over the Toyota Antelopes at Matthew Knight Arena on May 12, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon.
(Photo by Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)

Stewart’s wife, Marta Xargay Casademont, is a former player for the Phoenix Mercury and the Spanish National Team. They have two children together. follow breanna stewart on Instagram

Isabelle Harrison

(Photo by Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)

Two WNBA couples traded their way into playing on the same team (literally and figuratively) this season, one of them is Harrison and girlfriend Tasha Cloud. Cloud has described herself as dating an “beautiful straight woman that fell in love with me,” which is interesting! follow isabelle harrison on instagram

Jaylyn Sherrod

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - MAY 22: Jaylyn Sherrod #0 of the New York Liberty looks on against the Chicago Sky during the second half at Wintrust Arena on May 22, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.
(Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

After not getting drafted in 2024, Sherrod signed a training camp contract with the New York Liberty —her standout performance, then bounced around on tiny contracts with the Sky and the LIberty before signing an end-of-season contract with the Liberty in August of 2024. Now, she’s on the roster for 2025. follow her on instagram.

Jonquel Jones

EUGENE, OREGON - MAY 12: Jonquel Jones #35 of the New York Liberty reacts during the first half of the WNBA preseason game against the Toyota Antelopes at Matthew Knight Arena on May 12, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon.
(Photo by Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)

Our King, 2024 WNBA Championship MVP Jonquel Jones, has been engaged to her fiancee, nail tech Nesha Keeshone, since 2023. follow jonquel jones on instagram

Marine Johannes

(Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

This French basketball player, nicknamed “Wizard” for her skills with the ball, is rumored to be engaged to Gabby Williams. follow her on instagram.

Leonie Fiebich

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

This German basketball player was initially drafted to the Sparks in 2020, but didn’t actually play in the W until singing a rookie scale contract with the New York Liberty in 2024, turning out a spectacular rookie season. follow her on instagram.

Natasha Cloud

EUGENE, OREGON - MAY 12: Natasha Cloud #9 of the New York Liberty looks to pass the ball during the first half of the WNBA preseason game against the Toyota Antelopes at Matthew Knight Arena on May 12, 2025 in Eugene, Oregon.
(Photo by Ali Gradischer/Getty Images)

Natasha Cloud is, as aforementioned, dating Izzy Harrison, who she says radically transformed her life at a time when she was in need of refocusing. Cloud began her WNBA career in 2015 and is a new addition to the Liberty’s roster. follow her on instagram

Phoenix Mercury Gay Players

DeWanna Bonner

(Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images)

Bonner is in one of the W’s most high-profile couples — she is engaged to Alyssa Thomas, with whom she played on The Connecticut Sun until they were both traded this year — but Bonner left the Indiana Fever pretty early into the season and was traded to Mercury, and thus reunited with Thomas. follow dewanna bonner on instagram

Alyssa Thomas

PHOENIX, ARIZONA - MAY 11: Alyssa Thomas #25 of the Phoenix Mercury dribbles the ball while Veronica Burton #22 of the Golden State Valkyries attempts to block her during the second quarter at PHX Arena on May 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona
(Photo by Aryanna Frank/Getty Images)

Alyssa Thomas is one of the WNBA’s top players and is engaged to DeWanna Bonner, her former teammate at the Connecticut Sun. follow alyssa thomas on instagram

Kahleah Copper

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - MAY 06: Kahleak Copper #2 of the Phoenix Mercury looks on in the third quarter of a preseason game against the Las Vegas Aces at Michelob ULTRA Arena on May 06, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada
(Photo by Louis Grasse/Getty Images)

Copper, the Mercury’s top scorer, got engaged to her girlfriend, Swedish National Team baller Binta Drammeh, in 2023, but haven’t posted much about the relationship since then! Unfortunately she underwent a left knee arthroscopy last week that has sidelined her for the first 4-6 weeks of the season. follow kahleah on instagram

Natasha Mack

PHOENIX, ARIZONA - MAY 11: Natasha Mack#10 of the Phoenix Mercury looks to pass the ball during the first quarter against the Golden State Valkyries at PHX Arena on May 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona.

(Photo by Aryanna Frank/Getty Images)

Mack was drafted to the Sky in 2021, played in Poland for two years, and then joined the Mercury in 2024. Her girlfriend, Leecy, is a middle school teacher! follow natasha mack on instagram

Sami Whitcomb

PHOENIX, ARIZONA - MAY 11: Sami Whitcomb #33 of the Phoenix Mercury looks up to the scoreboard during the second quarter against the Golden State Valkyries at PHX Arena on May 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona.
(Photo by Aryanna Frank/Getty Images)

Whitcomb’s career has been long and international, including 8 years in the WNBA. This is her first season with the Mercury. She and her wife, Kate Malpass, have two small kiddos. follow sami whitcomb on instagram

Sevgi Uzun

PHOENIX, ARIZONA - MAY 11: Sevgi Uzun #10 of the Phoenix Mercury dribbles the ball during the second quarter against the Golden State Valkyries at PHX Arena on May 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona.
(Photo by Aryanna Frank/Getty Images)

The Turkish basketball player played her first season with the WNBA last year in Dallas and, I believe, is married to athlete digital creator Selin Uzun. follow sevgi on instagram

Seattle Storm Gay Players

Erica Wheeler

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - MAY 04: Erica Wheeler #17 of Seattle Storm advances the ball d3q of a preseason WNBA game at Climate Pledge Arena on May 04, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)
(Photo by Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)

Erica Wheeler is engaged to her girlfriend, Danielle Edwards. She went undrafted out of Rutgers in 2015 and is now a two-time WNBA All-Star. She signed with the Storm after playing for the Fever last year. follow erica wheeler on instagram

Gabby Williams

ARLINGTON, TEXAS - MAY 19: Gabby Williams #5 of the Seattle Storm shoots the ball against the Dallas Wings during the second half at College Park Center on May 19, 2025 in Arlington, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement.
(Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

Another UConn graduate, Williams has played throughout Europe, on the French National Team at the Olympics in 2020 and 2024.

Washington Mystics Gay Players

Brittney Sykes

NDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA - MAY 3: Brittney Sykes #20 of the Washington Mystics dribbles past Kelsey Mitchell #0 of the Indiana Fever during the first half at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on May 3, 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana. N
(Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images)

Sykes’ girlfriend, Morghan Medlock, is a chef with courtside style so good it was featured in Vogue magazine last year — she often coordinates her outfits to match Sykes’ chosen color palette of the day. follow brittney sykes on instagram

Emily Engstler

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 16: Emily Engstler #21 of the Washington Mystics runs onto the court during player introductions before the game against the Atlanta Dream at Carefirst Arena on May 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Mystics defeated the Drea 94-90. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
(Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)

This is Emily’s second year at Washington. follow emily engstler on instagram

Stefanie Dolson

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 19: Stefanie Dolson #31 of the Washington Mystics celebrates during the game against the Indiana Fever at Capital One Arena on September 19, 2024 in Washington, DC
(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

Stef Dolson, who won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with her 3×3 team, recently celebrated her two year anniversary with her girlfriend Kristen Podlovits, who works as an Account Manager for Membership Services for the New York Liberty. follow stef dolson on instagram

Sug Sutton

(Photo by Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Sug has been with the Mystics since 2024, after originally being drafted there in 2020, getting waived in 2021, playing overseas, and then playing with the Mercury in 2023. follow sug sutton on instagram

Which WNBA Team Has the Most Gay Players?

The New York Liberty tops out at seven gay players in 2025, although those numbers were helped by Jonquel Jones single-handedly confirming a bunch of queer Liberty players on their team who reporters had previously been unable to nail down. I think she’s setting a strong example and everybody should step forward and confirm who is gay or not!

The Phoenix Mercury was the WNBA team with the most gay players in 2024 (six) and despite losing several of them —Brittney Griner to the Dream, Natasha Cloud to the Liberty and Diana Taurasi to retirement —Phoenix managed to recruit new homosexuals to fill their spots, and thus comes in at 2nd place this year with 6.

The Connecticut Sun managed to break the mold this year, after losing three lesbians including power couple Alyssa Thomas and Dewanna Bonner, they are attempting to compete in the league with just one (1) lesbian on their team.

What Percentage of the WNBA Is Gay?

27% of the WNBA is gay. As of right now, there are 41 out gay players in the WNBA for the 2025 season. Last year we had 36 gay players (because two were waived shortly into the season) — but we also had a smaller league last year, which gave us a solid 25% of WNBA players clocking in as gay or lesbians, with similar levels the year prior.

But now, with the addition of the Golden State Valkyries, we’ve got 153 players on rosters for the 2025 season, but with 41 out players, we are at 27%.

Seven of last year’s gay players aren’t on any rosters this year. The league’s all-time highest scorer, Diana Taurasi, retired, as did Layshia Clarendon, the league’s first out non-binary athlete. The Atlanta Dream’s Aerial Powers and the Seattle Storm’s Victoria Vivians are now free agents. #1 Shorty Crystal Dangerfield was waived by the Atlanta Dream 15 games into the 2024 season, and played a 7-day hardship contract with the Los Angeles Sparks but didn’t land on any 2025 rosters. Dyaisha Fair, drafted to the Aces for her rookie season, was waived the day after her league debut last May and then left the country. Jordan Horston suffered an ACL injury during the 2025 Athletes Unlimited Pro basketball season and it was confirmed in April that she’d miss the 2025 season.

Which New Gay Players Are in the WNBA This Year?

Sadly not Shyanne Sellers, who was drafted to the Valkyries, then waived, then picked up by the Dream, and then waived again. Czech lesbian Elissa Cunane also was signed to a training camp contract with the Valkyries but didn’t make the final roster. But we also added three new lesbians — Belgian player Julie Allemand came back from her injury to play for the Sparks and Italian baller Cecelia Zandalasini joined the Valkyries and Crystal Bradford signed with the Aces. Stay tuned for anybody else coming out because we deserve a little joy in this world and that joy exists on the court of a women’s basketball game. I promise.

Where Can I Get a Gay 4 WNBA Hat?

At the For Them Store!

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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 3343 articles for us.

17 Comments

  1. i have so been looking forward to the return of wnba writing on autostraddle! all the coverage has been great and i will be copping a gay 4 wnba hat asap

    also i have spent a considerable amount of time googling “is kayla mcbride gay” and “kayla mcbride girlfriend” and “kayla mcbride boyfriend?????” but i wasn’t able to find an answer so i really appreciate finally getting some clarity on this important topic!

  2. Excuse meeeee you forgot Chennedy Carter in the in memorium section! Hopefully she gets picked back up next season, just a delightful chaos monster

  3. CT Sun has no out players but we all have eyes lmao! I’d say a minimum of 3, shocked to find out from this article that none of them are out but again, dyke recognize dyke

  5. Thank you for the confirmation of Kmac’s queerness!! Next up to investigate please– Paige Bueckers?? I thought she was queer??

    • wellllll, paige is not out, so we are respectfully awaiting more information from the source on that front!

  8. lynx fan checking in🤓 anyone catch alanna smith’s t-shirt before yesterday’s game with a unicorn that says “totally straight” in rainbow font ?? i love it here

  9. Why not include gay WNBA head coaches with their teams?
    Becky Hammon – Aces
    Stephanie White – Fever
    Curt Miller – Sparks
    Cheryl Reeves – Lynx

  10. Dijonai Carrington is now dating her former teammate NaLyssa Smith and vice-versa, with Smith traded to the Aces. I see you’ve added Paige Bueckers, who made that decision? I love you for it.

    You can also add JJ Quinerly who plays on the Dallas Wings.

Comments are closed.

Rosie O’Donnell Still Lives Rent Free in Donald Trump’s Collapsing Brain

Donald Trump has been obsessed with noted lesbian icon Rosie O’Donnell for nearly two decades, and regardless of his specific occupation at any given point time, he finds a way to work Rosie O’Donnell into the conversation. During his Apprentice days, he wanted to tell her “you’re fired.” Now, as president, he wants to kick her out of the country. There is nothing that can stop Donald Trump from coming up with reasons to talk about Rosie O’Donnell!!

This past week, seemingly in response to her post mourning the deaths of flood victims in Texas and criticizing his decision to gut environmental agencies that forecast national disasters, he has escalated his attacks to… threaten revoking her citizenship? This is not something Trump is actually legally able to do, although he sure has been doing things I didn’t think were legally possible for months now.

Amid a tidal wave of MAGA backlash over not following through on promises related to the Jeffery Epstein case, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social:

“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

In response, O’Donnell wrote, in an instagram caption beneath a picture of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, a really marvelous little poem that I would like stitched into a pillow:

hey donald –you’re rattled again? 
18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. you call me a threat to humanity –
but I’m everything you fear:
a loud woman
a queer woman
a mother who tells the truth
an american who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze you build walls –
I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists you crave loyalty –
I teach my children to question power you sell fear on golf courses –
I make art about surviving trauma you lie, you steal, you degrade –
I nurture, I create, I persist you are everything that is wrong with america –
and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it you want to revoke my citizenship?
go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan i’m not yours to silence
i never was 🇮🇪 rosie O’Donnell, whose father’s family is Irish, moved to Ireland before inaguration. “I knew after reading Project 2025 that if Trump got in, it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” she told CNN. “I have no regrets. Not a day has gone by that I thought it was the wrong decision. I was welcomed with open arms.”

Trump also took a shot at O’Donnell earlier this year when Taoiseach Micheál Martin traveled to the white house for a meeting about tariffs which went entirely off the rails. Once more, Trump found a way to work Rosie into the conversation, inspiring the Fox Five to speculate that she moved to Ireland from the US because “nobody likes her” and “because of the potatoes.”

Sunday morning in fair Ireland, Rosie appeared on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday with Miriam, sharing that when she was first shown Trump’s post on Truth Social, she didn’t think it was real: “It had a red check instead of a blue check so I thought it was a fake account. I said, ‘oh that’s kind of funny, but it’s fake,'” but after being told it was, in fact, a real thing the President of the United States wrote on his social media account, she published her response.

Fox News pundits have echoed Trump’s position, acknowledging he can’t actually revoke her citizenship while also celebrating the hypothetical possibility of losing O’Donnell to Ireland permanently, celebrated by Fox News as a way to make the USA “healthier, better looking and less insane.” 

Rosie told RTE: “I am very proud to be opposed to every single thing he says and does and represents.”

What Is Donald Trump’s History With Rosie O’Donnell?

In 2006, Rosie O’Donnell made fun of Donald Trump on The View. She called him a “snake oil salesman” and “not a self-made man.”

Ripping on Donald Trump was a common pastime in the New York City press, but he lost his mind after Rosie’s comments. He threatened to sue and take “lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie.” He told Entertainment Tonight that she “talks like a truck driver,” has a “fat ugly face” and furthermore “is a very unattractive person inside and out.” That message also included a threat to send his friends over to “save” her then-girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter, asking, “why would [Kelli] stay with Rosie if she had another choice?”

Especially in 2006, that kind of rhetoric was hardly unpopular. Trump’s criticisms caught fire because O’Donnell embodied a female masculinity and dykey attitude long derided in American culture. She didn’t fit into Trump’s ideas of how women should look or behave, and no amount of wealth or fame compensated for her existence at the intersection of so many identities seen as disposable at the time.

The entire country seemed to turn on her in the early aughts when she came out and got a gay haircut, but despite living through that special moment in time, O’Donnell told People Magazine in 2014 that the feud with Trump was “the most bullying I ever experienced in my life, including as a child. It was national, and it was sanctioned societally. Whether I deserved it is up to your own interpretation.”

I wrote about Rosie’s history with Trump in 2015, when he dragged her into the discourse again during a presidential debate with this winning exchange:

Megyn Kelly: “You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals’—”
Donald Trump (interrupting): “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
(Wild laughter and applause from the audience.)
– The GOP Presidential Debate, 9:15 PM, August 6th, 2015

15 minutes later, O’Donnell tweeted, “try explaining that 2 ur kids.” When Trump was elected, she told W Magazine that she went into shock “to think that the man who had abused me so viciously and with impunity for over a decade was now running the country.”

Why Rosie Thinks Donald Trump Is Obsessed With Her

When asked on Sunday why she thinks Trump is so obsessed with her, O’Donnell floated a theory: “I think it’s because we grew up in the same area… I think I remind him of all the kids at school who never liked him. I’m a tough New York tomboy girl — and I think his crap never flew with me or New Yorkers.”

Over the past few years, Rosie’s presence on TikTok has earned her a new generation of fans and followers and re-engaged those of us who’ve been following her since the ’90s and through her blogging era. She’s in a unique financial position that enables her to do things like leave the country to protect her kid, and take strong political stances without worrying about the impact on her career.

It’s been inspiring to see, finally, people standing up for her, to see the slew of “Rosie was right” clips on my feed. Even Ellen DeGeneres chimed in to applaud Rosie, which was surprising on several levels to the entire community.

In that 2017 W Magazine story I mentioned earlier, she pointed out what I did in 2015 — that she never had much support back then. “For reasons I can’t really still figure out, he was allowed with impunity to brutally assault me and my character for a decade. No one—not the National Organization For Women, not Gloria Steinem, no one—stood up and said, “What the hell are you doing?” It was laughed about.”

O’Donnell has often written and spoken about her intense emotional reaction to the news and current events, this unstoppable empathy and desire to fix the world. Now, at a time when so few seem willing to speak up against Trump — when corporations and doctors and schools and government agencies are just falling in line with his increasingly fascist policies —we do still have Rosie O’Donnell! I don’t always agree with her, but more often than not, we’re all kinda obsessed with her, too.

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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 3343 articles for us.

3 Comments

  1. I must have missed this in the endless madness but he brought Rosie O’Donnell up to the Taoiseach??? The actual Taoiseach?? I am staring directly into the camera. Rosie O’Donnell 4evA

  2. As a lifelong Rosie Stan, be assured that she’s very welcome in Ireland. Her views about the megalomaniac dictator are shared by many of us on this side of the ocean.

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Cowboy Clairvoyant: A Queer Tarot Reading for Those Considering Breaking Up

Cowboy Clairvoyant is a members-only newsletter and series by Autumn Fourkiller featuring dream interpretation, tarot answers, and more ventures into the Beyond. Today, Cowboy Clairvoyant interprets two dreams and also provides a short guide to pulling three tarot cards for yourself.

Dear Dreamers,

Last night, while I was packing for a nearly two week trip to Portland, the electricity flickered and, though I held my breath, the power went out. It was raining, hard, and the swampy nature of an Oklahoma July was palpable in minutes, sans air-conditioning. I packed a little more as best I could in the dim, gray light, but eventually gave up and stripped most of my clothes off and read in bed, the covers tossed aside. I alternated between The Dry Season by Melissa Febos and Florida by Lauren Groff. I texted Stef to complain. I thought, dramatically, about the last time I had lived without air conditioning, in the blue house in the woods, and all the memories there I wish I could destroy, could strip clean from my skull and scour.

Eventually, contacts still in, I drifted into an uneasy rest, wherein I had three dreams, each, in some way, involving the Ozarks, the place that I sprung from, so long ago now. In one, I was with my mother’s sole sibling, at a high-glassed building filled with people recognizable and odd to me. In another, a lonely bar near the Baron Fork Creek, where I shifted through the minds and eyes of all the patrons, both myself and not myself at the same time. In the last, I was saying, aux arcs, land of the arches, to someone who wanted to know, smiling through a sheen of blood on my teeth, a handful of symbols in my palm to interpret.

When I woke, heart-pounding, to the lights and surge of power flicking back on at the hour of three in the morning, I realized it was cooler than I thought it might be. I went through the house and turned off the lights I kept forgetting weren’t working. I stripped down the rest of the way and, closing my eyes, fell into a balmy, if short, sleep.

All this to say: Sometimes dreams tell you something you do not already know. And sometimes, well sometimes, they just remind you of who, and what, you are.

Sending you your own reminders,
Cowboy

Queer Dream Interpretation

a dream door into an image from Wicked of Ariana and Cynthia

For some reason, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are in my small town and need to borrow some of my clothes. They come to my apartment, and we look through my closets for something suitable. I think that the brown tweedy suit that I wear for conferences and interviews might look best, if it fits. The shoes may prove trickier. I am not sure what brings them to this small town, of all places, nor why they do not have other clothes with them or go to one of the admittedly few clothing stores in town. The dream ends before anyone tries on clothes or picks out an outfit.
– Sophia 

Dear Sophia,

Thank you for the gift of your dream. And what a dream it is! In the spirit of honesty, I’m not exactly what you would call a fan of Wicked, though neither am I a hater. That said, I know you are, so it’s pretty fun that these two cast members appeared to you, though there is, not to me, any larger significance in them aside from their celebrity.

This can be tricky, I know, but to you, and anyone who has a celebrity dream, often what we’re looking for in their symbolism is what they mean to you, not so much what they are trying to convey to you. In Ariana and Cynthia, we can see there is something in you that wants to impress, even if you feel like you have a meager offering.

In your note to me, you said that you wouldn’t be in your town, or visit it, if it were not for your job, which is something I can very much understand, but what this dream is telling you is that there is no reason to feel inferior to others because of where you have sprung from, nor where you are currently settled. It may feel suffocating, but you, there, are a redeeming facet of its nature. You have more to give, and more worth, than you think you do.

Though no one tries on clothes or picks out an outfit, you still retain your power there, as curator, especially in your own life.

See you on the other side,
CC

Ask the Tarot: Should I Break Up With My Partner?

the death tarot card

Before we begin this week’s thematic reading, I would like to say that I have answered the above question: “Should I break up with my partner?” quite a few times for quite a few separate private clients. Something has been in the air recently!

I am not, in general, a mystic who just says yes with no caveats. That said, if you’re asking the question, not just to yourself but to another person, it is one that deserves to be deeply considered. Instead of giving you, dear seeker, a straight yes or no, this reading is instead designed to lead you deeper into clarity about the decision. Breaking up is hard to do, yes, but not impossible.

Card One: THE STAR 

I know what you’re thinking. The Star, she stands for hope, for rejuvenation. And yes, she does, but she also seeks to remind you that all you need (which is not to say community isn’t important), is already inside of you. Interrogate your impulses here. Why, exactly, are you in a relationship? Is it because you fear being alone? Or is it because you and your partner bring something to each other’s lives, something that you would not have without each other?

If it’s fear, follow it down, and seek the source.

Card Two: DEATH 

Death, one of the most feared cards in all decks, and yet also the most misunderstood. When a reader draws a series of death cards for me, only then do I really begin to trust them. That said, death, in this case, is not actual death, but instead the death of a cycle, of a path. In your relationship, as you question it, where are the sore spots? Are they patchable? Are they rotten? Do you and your partner follow the same cycle, over and over again, with no way out?

It can be scary to start a new life, or to go down a new path, but this does not mean it isn’t worth it.

However, if none of this rings true, do not kill something that could live on just because it’s easier. Instead, think about those parts of yourself, those emotional sinkholes, that you could do without.

In other words, start to dissect those impulses.

Card Three: STRENGTH 

You want a strong, enduring relationship, who wouldn’t? This card tells us that this is possible, that not only can something bloom, but something can bloom with you, not just with a partner. It’s going to be a tough road, don’t get me wrong, but if you cast aside these petty arguments, these trivialities, you will have the strength to endure it, alone or with a partner.

Ask yourself: Are you stronger together? Or are you stronger single? Where, exactly, does your strength lie? Where does your partner’s strength lie?

In the end, you must rely on your own strength of knowledge of yourself, the final question being: What is it, exactly, that you want?

Submit your dreams and tarot questions for Cowboy Clairvoyant!

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Autumn Fourkiller

Autumn Fourkiller is a writer and mystic from the “Early Death Capital of the World.” She is currently at work on a novel about Indigeneity, the Olympics, and climate change. A 2022 Ann Friedman Weekly Fellow, her work can be found in Atlas Obscura, Majuscule, Longreads, and elsewhere. You can follow her newsletter, Dream Interpretation for Dummies, on Substack.

Autumn has written 19 articles for us.

‘King of Drag’ Teaches Drag History In Its Best Episode Yet

Since the premiere of King of Drag, I’ve been writing about it as a drag king riff on RuPaul’s Drag Race. But this week the nascent series did something that other show never has: It actually engaged with queer history. While Drag Race has RuPaul crediting the concept of “reading” to the documentary Paris Is Burning rather than the community it imperfectly captured, this episode of King of Drag goes deep. And with that depth, establishes itself with a unique and refreshing voice.

The overarching theme this week is high school. When Perka walks on the redesigned set he says it’s triggering. This is also how I feel around anything high school related. But if there was one thing I liked about high school it was the learning! And the episode goes beyond the school aesthetic for a drag king history quiz weenie challenge hosted by drag king Mo B. Dick. The kings are split into two teams: Homework Hunks with Henlo, Mo, and Charles and Schoolboy Crush with Big D, Dick, and Perka.

Q:What male impersonator in 17th century France lit a convent on fire?
A: Mademoiselle de Maupin

Q: Drag king history begins with male impersonation in China. Who was the noteable empress during that era?
A: Empress Wu Zetian

Q: In North America who was the first known Indigenous male impersonator?
A: Gowongo Mohawk

Q: Which drag king created and taught the very first drag king workshop and what year were they born?
A: Diane Torr, 1948

Q: What drag king ran for mayor in New York City? Name the year and how many votes they got.
A: Murray Hill, 1997, 341 votes

Both teams do really well, but Homework Hunks wins by one point and goes to the lightning round. Then it gets down to Mo and Charles. And Charles wins!

Carmen Carrera shows up to introduce the beefy challenge and everyone’s reactions are GOLD. Mo is sooo bashful, Dick says hubba hubba, Perka says he thought fear week was last week because his fear is tall beautiful glamazons. Obsessed with the masc4femme version of the queens on Drag Race lusting after the pit crew. Horny but make it respectful.

Carmen asks Murray to prom because the beefy challenge this week is prom outfits! Each king has to dress up in a prom look with the theme Nautical Nights and then give a speech about why they should be prom king.

Last week, I struggled a bit with the heaviness of the episode, but this week felt perfectly balanced. Henlo talks about loving the Philly drag scene, Mo talks about high school dysphoria, and Big D talks about feeling accepted by the other kings even though he doesn’t come from the nightlife scene. (They all shout “one of us!” which is from Tod Browning’s Freaks in case you wanted some more history.) Dick then talks about growing up Southern Baptist and says The L Word saved his life. He also shares that since getting sober he’s reconnected with his estranged mom and she even attended a drag opera he co-produced. Mo also talks about family estrangement, saying that he’s come out to his mom repeatedly over the last decade and she just doesn’t see him.

Perka talks about being inspired to do drag after seeing a performance at Piedmont Pride. (He also shares that he asked the only other lesbian to prom his senior year and she said no, and as someone with my own prauma I will not get into here this made me laugh.) He says he found a community that doesn’t judge him for his sexuality, only his astrology, and then he asks everyone to share their sun sign. I don’t know if it’s the editing or what but we’re robbed of answers! All we get is Mo is a Gemini (hot), Henlo is an Aquarius, and Dick’s ex is a Gemini.

As they finish up in the man cave, Big D says he cares too much about his art to fully listen to last week’s critiques. He likes messy drag and he’s never going to betray personality for perfection.

The judges this week are Tenderoni, Sasha, Carmen, Jackie Beat, and — speaking of The L Word universe — Brian Michael Smith! Something I haven’t commented upon is Murray’s notable absence from the judging panel. It’s a choice I actually really like, because it completely changes the dynamic and allows him to play more of a mentor figure for the kings rather than a critic.

Perka starts off in a colorful mermaid suit that is very prom, very on theme, and very gay. He then gives a speech that’s sweet and full of puns and it ends with him whipping out his fish stick fish dick and putting tartar sauce on it.

Dick as a vampire squid slides around the stage and says he can’t show his last tentacle on TV. It’s fun!

Henlo’s outfit is really cool with ship hair art and coral ears and a really unique white suit. His speech is less character, more sincere than the other kings but it works.

Charles is in a white suit as a pirate and has a sign on his head that says The Black Spot. He has a green tongue and black tears, but the sign doesn’t actually assist in saying what the black spot is. I think he could’ve lost the sign and just better incorporated an explanation into his speech.

Big D comes out with a huge pipe and introduces himself as Captain AFAB. The outfit is simple but the speech is so funny and committed to character and it really makes him stand out.

Molasses closes out looking so hot as a leather daddy and he gives his speech with the ball gag still in. It is not very prom and not very nautical, but it is, once again, very hot.

During the judging, Mo explains that he wasn’t hot in high school, so looking as hot as possible is what inspired the look. Again, this is something that needed to be sold more in the speech.

Despite Big D’s defiance about changing his drag, he’s actually praised for paying more attention to detail than previous weeks. And the judges agree the speech connected the look to the prom part of the theme.

Perka is praised for everything BUT the fish stick gag and it maybe seemed a little clunky in presentation, but it worked for me! Perka had my favorite look and one of my favorite speeches so I’m not going to begrudge an extra swing that maybe didn’t totally land.

No one is safe this week, but it’s clear Big D and Henlo are the tops. Carmen says it’s a case of character vs. craftsmanship. Henlo wins! I’m not sure I agreed with this choice, but I definitely understood it — especially since a mishap last week prevented him from being praised for his equally impressive craftsmanship in the fear challenge.

The final thrust is between Charles and Mo. This might be controversial, but I agree! While Mo is the standout of the season, his work wasn’t on theme and didn’t land this week. Also this gives us a chance to see him do more as these two are tasked with making cheers. Charles’ cheer is fun, but Mo elevates the prompt doing it his own masc way. The judges unanimously decide to save Mo and he hugs Charles as Charles cries.

This was such a great episode that balanced real conversations brought up by high school trauma with a lot of humor. And just a lot of really good drag!

Showbiz! Here are some random thoughts:

+ Learn more drag king history at dragkinghistory.com.

+ Just a reminder that you can watch the best and hottest Drag Race lip sync featuring Carmen Carrera whenever you want.

+ Obsessed with Molasses being horny for Big D in the fake muscle suit.

+ Sasha is such a great judge and such a great judge for this show. I just needed to say that again.

+ King I’m rooting for: Mo and Perka

+ King I’m horniest for: Mo, specifically being bashful around Carmen Carrera

+ King I want to win at least one beefy challenge before the end: Big D

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Drew Burnett Gregory

Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. Her writing can also be found at Letterboxd Journal, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Into, Refinery29, and them. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Instagram.

Drew has written 744 articles for us.

2 Comments

    • Yes! This was such a great episode, and I learned so much drag king history! You’re absolutely right that it felt like the most balanced of all the episodes so far. Molasses removing his ball gag to say “Vote for me, I’m hot!” was hilarious (even though it was absolutely correct that he was in the bottom).

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Quiz: Which Lesbian Pasta Shape Are You?

You could spend today making a special Sunday Sauce for a large pot of pasta — or you could spend today taking this personality quiz and finding other ways to procrastinate from the grind of adult responsibilities. Doesn’t the latter sound a lot more fun! But lo, I have made myself hungry by merely typing the words Sunday Sauce, and now you must all come on this culinary journey with me of answering a bunch of pasta-themed questions in order to find out what lesbian pasta shape you are. Ready? Let’s eat take a quiz.

Which Lesbian Pasta Shape Are You?

Pick a pasta sauce:(Required)
Pick an herb:(Required)
What mac and cheese style sounds like your vibe?(Required)
Who would you most like to split a bowl of pasta with right now?(Required)
What’s the sexiest pasta shape?(Required)
What’s the most underrated pasta shape?(Required)
Pick a ravioli filling:(Required)
Pick a chain restaurant known for pasta:(Required)
Pick a non-Italian noodle dish:(Required)
Pick a film in which pasta appears:(Required)
Okay I can’t think of any more pasta questions, so how about: What sounds like a fun Sunday activity to you?(Required)
You’re going on a long road trip. What item is most essential to bring along with you?(Required)

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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 1057 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. I am campanelle! I’ve actually never had this pasta shape so now I have a quest for next grocery run! It’d be super cute if it’d come with a recipe the shape was a great fit for

  4. my partner got cavatappi but i think im more cavatappi (constantly spiraling vibes).
    they asked “why isnt vibrator on the list?!” re: road trip.
    they think the sexiest pasta shape is “the one that looks like a conch shell.” (aka vag)

  5. thoughts i never thought i would have “Rigatoni? No that’s not sexy, it looks like a long tube. oh it actually is kinda sexy…” “Trofie’s kinda hot too…. looks like people intertwined…” “omg tortellini!” i felt so shy looking at tortellini.
    I chose toretellini but would have chosen them all. Am i now a #pastapervert?

    oh im cavatappi, so this quiz is accurate. but im spiraling not in a gay group chat (dont have that) but in my home with my partner, who says “you’re cavatappi too?! how are we both cavatappi?! we cant both be cavatappi! i’m a tappie! youre a bottomie!” so that’s that.

  6. Farfalle! I don’t think I have worn a literal bow tie but I’ve always thought that bow tie pasta is super cute.

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Satanic Slasher Series ‘Hell Motel’ Has Lesbians and Blood Sacrifice if You’re Into That Sort of Thing

Sometimes your younger girlfriend convinces you to purchase a haunted hotel where, thirty years before, a bunch of people were brutally murdered as part of some classic 1990s blood sacrifice ritual that would have the satanic panic crowd frothing at the mouth. And sometimes she convinces you it’s a great business idea, actually, to reopen the roadside motel as a curio museum and immersive experience for the true crime obsessives. And hey, how about whipping up some viral marketing campaigns by inviting a bunch of influencers and low-level celebrities in the true crime space to an exclusive opening weekend event where you lowkey torment them for social media content?

At least, this is what occurs leading up to the events of the new straightforwardly titled Shudder original slash series Hell Motel. Brynn Godenir and Michelle Nolden play Ruby and Portia, two opposites-attract-style queer women (Ruby wears blue lipstick and all black witchy clothes, leans goth with a passion for the macabre; Portia is an older blonde mommi in cream turtlenecks and sensible slacks) who are partners in life and in business, co-owners of the titular motel from hell. We don’t know much about their backstories other than the fact that Ruby wanted to buy the motel and Portia did not, thought she’s eventually convinced by Ruby and their realtor (delightfully played by Canadian drag queen Icesis Couture). When history starts repeating itself and a masked killer called Baphomet brutalizes the special guests invited to the hotel for its grand opening, it becomes clear Portia kind of had a point.

The lesbian characters Ruby and Portia in Hell Motel

My friends and I recently posited a theory that some shows are “fever shows” — not shows that feel like a fever dream but rather shows that would perhaps be best enjoyed with a fever, which somehow feels distinct from a show best enjoyed high. Hell Motel is a perfect example of a fever show. It’d be best watched when feeling slightly outside of reality and your corporeal form.

Slasher tropes are fulfilled satisfyingly, and Hell Motel sprinkles in some specificity that keeps it from being pure pastiche, but the script is often ludicrous, and the women are written bizarrely. Hell Motel also falls into the strange trap of some lower-budget horror fare where it wants to be both horny and Puritanical about sex all at once.  The show itself is often suggestive and takes stabs at incorporating the erotic but ultimately feels weirdly sexless. Perhaps the most convincing erotic element of the show is the killer couple who are horny for satan. Good for them, keeping the romance alive through ritualistic blood sacrifice. (Sadly, this is not the lesbian couple.)

One of the special guests to the hotel is a woman who has made a name for herself by sleeping with serial killers. She’s portrayed as damaged, dangerous, delusional, a man eater and a slut. Some flashbacks are intended to flesh her out but don’t really add much more to the show’s flat portrayal of her. Sexuality in Hell Motel feels dampened. It’s like the show wants to be horny but also is too scared of over-sexualizing the characters.

I don’t need too much depth to the characters in a slasher, but it’s like Hell Motel mistakes thick exposition for character depth. I don’t need their backstories so much as I need them to have clear and discernible motivations. We get some of that in the series’ second episode, one of its strongest, as it leans into the disturbing idea that anyone immersed in true crime has the potential to become violent. When Hell Motel wanders into commentary on true crime culture in general, it’s at its most cogent and compelling. But it often feels just like that: aimless wandering down the dim corridors of a hotel, neglecting to pry the doors most calling to be opened.

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Related:

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 1057 articles for us.

AF+ Crossword Has a Few Tricks Up Its Sleeve

and

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Darby Ratliff

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

Darby has written 60 articles for us.

Rachel

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

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1 Comment

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Will Everyone Always Seem Second-Best to My Ex?

Are you allowed to miss your ex while dating new people?

Q

“Allowed” isn’t quite the right word, but you get the gist. It’s been almost 10 months since my ex broke up with me suddenly. The relationship itself was beautiful and kind and pure. We dated for two years and had plans for many more.

When they ended the relationship, I was left with very little closure and a mind spiraling trying to figure out what happened. I’m learning to accept that I’ll never get that closure, as horrendously painful as that is.

As awful as this heartbreak has been, that relationship checked all of my boxes. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I’ve gone back in my mind so many times to try to figure out why the universe has decided this relationship wasn’t right for me, but I always come up empty. I miss them in every way, and as much as they’ve hurt me deeply, I still love them deeply.

We’ve been no contact for about eight months. I’ve stopped holding my breath hoping they will reach out to me, but I still think about them and miss them every single day.

In the meantime, I’m doing my best to move on with my life. I’ve been doing lots of therapy and hobbies and I’ve also been dating. I’ve met some interesting people, but no one that gave me the same feelings I had when I first started dating my ex.

I recently started seeing someone who comes close though. I like them a lot, and I can see this developing really well. A big part of me was hoping that getting truly excited about someone new would help me disconnect from this unrequited love for my ex, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve been enjoying this new person and I’ve been open with them about how I’ve been grieving my last relationship. The thing I feel awful about admitting out loud though is that I still wish I could be doing all of these things with my ex instead. I’m worried that anyone I date for the rest of my life will be second-best to my ex, and that feels so unfair to my future partner(s).

A

Eva: Healing is not linear. We cannot control the feelings that heartbreak brings us. What we can control is our actions that stem from our feelings. That said, if you really feel that your past heartbreak is hindering your current relationship, I would take some time to yourself. As someone who has dated multiple people who were still deep in the grieving stages of past breakups, it’s a rough position to be in. I ended up leaving those relationships because I could only take so much. These aforementioned exes compared me to their past partners on multiple occasions and were quite depressed from various instances involving their past partners. As much as they tried to reassure me that all was well, I went with my gut and walked away. I bring this up in case you find yourself doing similar things. This is not to deter you from continuing to pursue a relationship with this new person. You very well may heal sooner than you think. I just implore to be self-aware and to really ask yourself where you’re at in your healing journey.

Despite my own past traumas of exes who were not over their exes, I do not necessarily fault them for being where they were. It is what it is. Life is messy, and our feelings are even messier. We never know where we are emotionally until we’re in a situation that challenges us. I encourage you to keep asking yourself the hard questions. One of those is, why are you holding onto this person who left you? I have found myself yearning after someone who does not want me on many occasions. I once was so caught up on someone that I jeopardized several facets of my life. The day I let them go was one of the most difficult moments of my life, but it was so worth it. I realized that no one who really cares about me would put me in a position to hurt as badly as I did, especially not without an honest conversation. I hope that you come to the same conclusion.

If you find that you don’t have the space in your heart to fully pursue this new relationship because nothing and no one compares to your ex, then let this new person go. However, if you can get to the other side of this heartbreak–without using this new person as an avenue to healing–then you’ve unlocked something special within yourself. And that’s better than any relationship. You know what that is? Growth.

Summer: Short answer: yes. Long answer: yeeeeeeeeeees.

There is no cut-off time for relationship grief. Everyone has to work at their own pace and just because you’re grieving for a past love doesn’t make you an inherently bad person for stepping back into the pool. What matters here is how you choose to work through your grief and how you involve new partners for it.

To me, you’ve checked basically all the boxes for reasonable behavior. You’ve given it time and therapy. There’s no contact between you and the source of those strong feelings. You’re rebuilding your life (which includes dating again). And you’ve informed your new partner about your feelings and they should have a place to make their informed decision. I don’t see anything wrong with your approach and need to try dating again. And just between you, me, and the entire AS+ readership: You’re doing this in a much more mature and stable way than I did.

Laneia: Your grief belongs to you, and you’ll hold it and process it and learn from it for years and years to come, because it really fucking mattered! Your love mattered, and so the loss of it matters. What you’ve done in the wake of this breakup — how you’ve made space for it, how you haven’t let it lead the way, how you’ve reached out for support — that’s what I hope you’re most proud of: the trying, that effort. You can miss them and still believe in today, and tomorrow, and even yesterday tbh. You can keep wanting what you had with them, and it doesn’t need to be a slight to whomever comes next. It’s just more information about what you now know you need in a relationship.

You set that bar, not them. Be so easy on yourself.

Should you shave my genitals for someone else?

Q

I’m a bisexual woman who has dated a variety of men and women and nonbinary people. I just started more seriously dating a guy, who asked me if it would be okay for me to shave my genitals because that’s what he prefers. This has never been asked of me before by anyone. I don’t really know what to think of it. I’m not against doing it, but is that a weird thing to ask? I wonder if I feel weird about it just because it’s a guy asking. 

A

Valerie: I personally think it’s extremely weird to ask someone to change part of their physical appearance when their opinion was not asked in the first place. Like if you had asked if he wanted you to shave and he said yes, that would be different…but declaring it his preference when you hadn’t mentioned it? Very odd behavior. Also I think there’s a difference between requesting a trim if it’s getting in the way of…activities…vs asking you to shave it completely. Honestly I think that would be a red flag to me from anyone; like WHY is that your preference? Is it a texture/sensory issue situation, or is it an aesthetic preference? Because if it’s the second thing…I have concerns, frankly. 

Sa’iyda: It’s a weird thing to ask, regardless of gender. Like Valerie said, if you had brought it up, I could understand offering up his preference. But to just ask unsolicited? Weird behavior. I went fully bare down there for years for my own reasons, but that was MY preference. Only you can decide how much or little hair you have down there. If you want to go bare, go for it. If you want a vajungle, then he better learn how to navigate it. Just make sure YOU feel comfortable with the choice. 

Summer: Ooooh. This one’s complex. I don’t think it’s inherently a ‘weird’ thing to ask, because intentions and approach can re-contexualize anything to be great or awful. However, there’s a long, problematic history of men making aesthetic demands of women to suit men’s interests. Society itself is organized this way. You see it in office dress codes,  homes, parenting… everywhere. A person who is emotionally aware of their partner’s would only make such a request if they understood the potential gravity of what they’re asking and are completely fine with their partner asserting their bodily agency.

I don’t think it’s weird that he asked. But what you need to answer for yourself are some underlying questions that relate to aspects of a happy and healthy relationship. Like reciprocity. Would he be open to you asking for him to make a change primarily to please you? Intent. Why does he want this change from you? Is it practical (sensory issues, skin reaction to hair) or rooted in emotional and social interests? Approach. Did he approach the topic sensitively with a willingness to take ‘no’ for an answer, or is it a flat expectation? I could go on, but I’m sure my fellow AS authors will have plenty of opinions too. Especially if they have a sterner ‘don’t do it’ approach, which I also understand.

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28 Best LGBT TV Shows on Peacock

Ahh, Peacock — the last in a long line of streaming services to appear and make us all wonder, “do we need this?” Well, you should know that surprisingly enough, Peacock’s slate of original content is extremely lesbian-inclusive — Peacock has queer characters in nearly all of its original and co-produced TV shows and movies. However, these shows rarely get a second or third season pickup. Sad! Anyhow, let’s dig into the best Peacock shows with lesbian, bisexual or queer women characters or trans people!

Queer as Folk 

Peacock Drama, 2022

Char and Ruthie waslking together looking a little annoyed

Unlike the deeply white, cis and able-bodied original characters, all of the new QAF’s mains are people of color or trans or disabled or all of the above, including Char, a non-binary Black masculine-presenting person and their partner, Ruthie, a trans woman who’d grown up with the series’ star, gay party boy Brodie. Queer as Folk gave us groundbreaking and incredibly hot sex, a Craft-inspired drag show, a sex party catered towards people with disabilities and a joyful portrait of chosen family coming together in the face of shared trauma. Stream Queer As Folk.

Bel-Air

Peacock Drama, 2020—

ashley banks in a sweater vest sitting here in a cahir

This re-imagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a drama was Peacock’s biggest initial investment, and it’s delivered some mixed results while also leaning hard on the charisma of its lead. But we love it! The new Ashley Banks, a pre-teen when the show begins, has a gradual discovery of her queerness that begins in Season One, and it’s really cute! Stream Bel-Air.

We Are Lady Parts

Peacock Comedy, 2020-

WE ARE LADY PARTS -- Season: 1 -- Pictured: (l-r) Lucie Shorthouse as Momtaz, Faith Omole as Bisma, Anjana Vasan as Amina, Juliette Motamed as Ayesha, Sarah Kameela Impey as Saira --

(Photo by: Laura Radford/Peacock)

“The storylines of We Are Lady Parts echo stories that we’ve told about ourselves. They fill an often undervalued aspect of representation: offering a reminder that inside each of us, is all of us.” writes Natalie of this critically acclaimed series that finds geeky biochemical engineering Ph.D. student Amina Hussein as the unlikely lead guitarist of Lady Parts, an all-female Muslim punk band. Ayesha is a queer Muslim woman and the band’s drummer. One could argue that We Are Lady Parts is the best bit of Peacock original programming with a queer woman character. Stream We Are Lady Parts.

Her Story

Independent Drama, 2016

Two women at a table in the sun

Laura Zak’s Allie and Jen Richards’ Violet.

When Her Story debuted in 2016 there was nothing else like it. Starring Jen Richards, Angelica Ross and Laura Zak, this understated webseries follows two trans women dating in Los Angeles, confronting transphobia and a trans misogynistic lesbian culture. “This isn’t just a new frontier, this is a bright and wonderful one. This is the kind of trans TV show that we’ve been waiting for,” wrote Mey. Stream Her Story.

The Real Housewives of New York: Season 14-15

Bravo Reality TV, 2023-

the cast of real houswives of new york in their gowns looking fancy on a roof in ne wyork

Fashion genius Jenna Lyons joins the series for this reboot of the New York franchise, wherein we have the opportunity to relate deeply to the experience of being the only lesbian in a group of straight women who are always yelling at each other about cheese and cell phones and airplane flights. In Season 15, model/ gallerist Racquel Chevremont and her hot girlfriend join the cast and it all gets even gayer.

Saved By The Bell

Peacock Comedy, 2020-2022

two teenagers at a school dance

This underrated gem of a reboot featuring a new, diverse Bayside where the original students are grown up administrators and parents features Alycia Pascual-Peña as Aisha, football team quarterback and budding wrestling champion who comes into her bisexuality. Trans actress Josie Totah plays trans character Lexie, the queen bee of Bayside. Carmen wrote that the reboot “ultimately drives home the importance of trans and queer communities, and our joy, especially for teens.” Stream Saved by the Bell.

The Traitors

Peacock Reality TV Show Competition, 2023-

Gabby sits on a couch between other players wearing red pants, a white button down and a black knit top.

Queer icon Alan Cumming hosts this unscripted competition series described as “a nail-biting psychological adventure in which treachery and deceit are the name of the game” in which 20 contestants compete in a series of challenges to earn a cash prize — but three contestants coined “the traitors” are devising a plan to steal the prize. Amongst these contestants in Season One was Andie Thurmond, a non-binary Director of Music Services from Reno, Nevada! Season Two brought us Peppermint and Survivor-famous Parvati Shallow, and Season Three’s ICONIC AS FUCK season has delivered Bob the Drag Queen, Bachelorette‘s Gabby Windey (in a true star turn), Survivor’s Carolyn  Wiger and Selling Sunset‘s Crishell Stause.

The Top Chef Cinematic Universe

Bravo Reality Competition Show, 2006-

Maria and Kristen awaait word from the judges about their dishes, this week on "Top Chef."

Kristin Kish. Josie Smith-Malave. Melissa King. Joy Crump. Ashley Merriman. Jamie Lauren. Top Chef’s 21st season, which aired this year, invited every possible lesbian world to collide in a Kristen Kish hosted season with lesbian chef Rasika Venkatesa gushing to guest judge Clea Duvall about But I’m a Cheerleader.  Listen: Top Chef is Still the Most Lesbian Reality Show on TV. Shit gets really gay on this show you guys.

Leopard Skin

Peacock Limited Series Drama, 2022

Leopard Skin actors outside walking towards camera

A botched heist is the entry point to a messy, lurid, bizarre and atmospheric journey that never quite manages to make sense, but does include some compelling sexual antics and Carla Gugino as a Mean Queer Psychic Domme. It’s hard to say no to that. I couldn’t tear myself away to be honest. Stream Leopard Skin.

Girls 5Eva 

Peacock Comedy, 2021-2022

GirlsEva gather around the piano and sing

A one-hit-wonder girl group from the 1990s reunites to give their pop star dreams another shot, but this time they’ve gotta balance spouses, kids, jobs, debt, aging parents, and shoulder pain too. Lesbian comic Paula Pell is a freshly divorced lesbian dentist in this delightful comedy that also stars Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps and Renée Elise Goldsberry. But if you wanna watch Season Three, you’ll have to switch to Netflix! Stream Girls 5Eva on Peacock.

One of Us is Lying

Peacock Thriller, 2020-2022

one of us is lying - four teens sitting looking sullen

Based on a buzzy YA thriller, a disparate group of students find themselves under suspicion after online gossip scourge Simon suddenly dies while they’re all in detention. Simon’s best friend, Janae Matthews, is the unlikely outsider who finds her way into this clique, and who comes into her own as queer and non-binary. Stream One of Us Is Lying on Peacock.

New Amsterdam

NBC Drama, 2018-2023

Standing on opposite sides of the pillar near the hospital's coffee shop, Leyla passes over her latest installment to Lauren in a brown paper bag.

As medical dramas go, New Amsterdam doesn’t necessarily have anything extraordinarily new to offer, but it’s got heart and some endearing characters and some progressive ideals about the value of public hospitals and innovative ways to make medical care accessible.  Also: Lauren Bloom as a messy genius bisexual head of the Emergency Medicine ward. Stream New Amsterdam on Peacock.

The Undeclared War

Peacock / Channel 4 Cyber-Thriller, 2022

a girl walking through a river

It’s 2024 and Saara Parvan is a student getting work experience in the malware department of GCHQ in the run-up to the British general election when a security breach on her first day thrusts her into the middle of a data war with Russia with worldwide implications. She has a  romance with an American from the NSA brought in to consult with the case, Kathy Freeman (queer actor Maisie Richardson-Sellers), which is a highlight of this surprisingly compelling thriller. Watch The Undeclared War on Peacock.

Vigil 

Peacock/BBC One Thriller, 2021-2024

Rose Leslie and Suranne Jones on Vigil

A crew member is found dead on the nuclear submarine HMS Vigil and the Scottish police send Detective Amy Silva (Surrane Jones) onto the ship to blend in with the crew on board and investigate, while her girlfriend Kristen Longacre (Rose Leslie) pursues leads on land. You want to see these two women kiss, right? Of course you do! Season Two takes place in a fictional Middle Eastern country following the killing of several soldiers by an errant drone, and also manages to somehow separate Amy and a very pregnant Kristen. Stream Vigil on Peacock.

Brooklyn 99

Fox/NBC Comedy, 2013 – 2021

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE -- "Honeymoon" Episode 601 -- Pictured: Stephanie Beatriz as Rosa Diaz -- (Photo by: Vivian Zink/NBC)

(Photo by: Vivian Zink/NBC)

A comedy packed with talent, set in a New York City police department, following the exploits of Det. Jake Peralta and “his diverse and lovable colleagues.” Most relevant to us here, of course, is Stephanie Beatriz as Rosa Diaz, who comes out as bisexual in Season Five. Watch Brooklyn 99 on Peacock

Poker Face

Peacock Mystery, 2023-

two older women telling a story, animated facial expressions

Poker Face, a “delightfully absurdist Murder Show with the best guest stars,” is not the queerest show on Peacock, although its protagonist Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) isn’t that passionate about being straight, either. It follows the inverted detective story format popularized by Columbo, but Charlie’s not a cop, she’s just a person with a supernatural ability to detect liars. Each week is a new case with a new cast, and the guest stars are just delightful (Cynthia Erivo, Alia Shawkat, Taylor Schilling, Gaby Hoffman, Cherry Jones, Chloe Sevigny, Stephanie Hsu, Clea Duvall, etc). The episode with the most explicitly queer women was a frustrating one in Season One, but Season Two delivered a lot of queerness throughout and its best episode was gay as fuck. Stream Poker Face.

The Girl in the Woods

Peacock Thriller, 2021

three teenagers in the woods with a flashlight, looking scared

The Girl in the Woods mashes together dystopian YA and supernatural-horror tropes in a story about a small town disrupted by monsters and the powerful teen girl who teams up with a couple weirdos to stop them. There’s also a queer love triangle, a queer and messy backstory between our titular girl in the woods and her ex, and grief and trauma and friendship and love, infusing a familiar supernatural story with some freshness. Read more in Kayla Kumari’s The Girl In The Woods” Delivers a Complex, Queer Horror Hero and stream The Girl in The Woods.

Rutherford Falls

Peacock Comedy, 2021 – 2022

a non-binary assistant has a little mike on, standing in the town square with three other adults

Two lifelong friends, Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms) and Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding) find their friendship tested when a conflict begins in their small town over its colonial legacy and the indigenous community native to the area. Non-binary actor Jesse Leigh is non-binary character Bobbie Yang, a high school student and Nathan’s personal assistant. Vulture wrote that the show “skillfully braids discussions of serious sociocultural issues with character-based comedy in ways that seem neither forced nor overly didactic.” Stream Rutherford Falls on Peacock

Intergalactic

Peacock Sci-Fi, 2021

three women in spacey outfits grip each other while exiting an explosion of some kind

It’s 2143. Climate change has destroyed most of the planet and most humans are now living in structured cities controlled by a pseudo-democratic government called the “Commonworld.” Harper (Savannah Steyn) is a “sky cop” who ends up onboard a prison ship during a mutiny when she’s framed for a crime she didn’t commit, and well, things get very wild from there. There’s a bit of a slow-burn queer romance involving a butch lesbian lead character, Verona (Imogen Daines) that has its ups and downs! Stream Intergalactic.

Chucky

SyFy Horror, 2021 –

glen and glenda fighting while a girl in a party dress sits in a chair

A 14-year-old gay teenager purchases an iconic Chucky doll at a garage sale only to find the doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer who is ready to start murdering people in Hackensack, New Jersey. There’s lots of queer stuff in here — Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly) is pansexual and we also get Chucky’s nonbinary child Glen/Glenda, played by nonbinary actor Lachlan Watson. Stream Chucky on Peacock.

Punky Brewster

Peacock Comedy, 2020

two girls in 80s prom outfits smiling

In this reboot, Punky’s a freshly divorced photographer with three kids. Her best friend, Cherie, is a social worker who convinces Punky to foster a kid and now they’ve got four kids and an ex-husband and a dog and most importantly, Cherie is queer now, and her girlfriend is played by our very own deeply deeply beloved queer actress Jasika Nicole. Stream Punky Brewster

Banana

E4 Drama, 2015

all the queer youths of banana

Banana is Russel T. Davies’ sister series to Cucumber, which focused on gay male stories. Banana’s focus is on a broader spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities and youth specifically, some from the periphery of Cucumber and some new folks, too. Leticia Wright plays a young lesbian who falls in love with a straight, white woman who works at her local grocery store. Deeply beloved queer actor T’Nia Miller is Kay and iconic comic/writer/actor Charlie Covell (who also wrote and directed a lot of Banana) is her partner Amy. In episode 4, Trans actor Bethany Black is Helen, besieged by unwanted attention from an ex. Stream Banana on Peacock.

The Best Man: The Final Chapters

Peacock Drama, 2022

THE BEST MAN: THE FINAL CHAPTERS -- “An American Marriage” Episode 106 -- (Pictured: (l-r) Eric Scott Ways as LJ, Morris Chestnut as Lance Sullivan -- (Photo by: Matt Infante/Peacock)

Photo by: Matt Infante/Peacock)

The Best Man: The Final Chapters is an eight-episode conclusion to the beloved Black rom-com film series The Best Man, now expanding into its third decade.  In The Final Chapters we get to know LJ (Eric Scott Ways), the eldest child of football superstar Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut), now in his late teens. Lance always hoped that LJ would follow in his cleats, but the smart, fashion obsessed teen has other plans. They come out as nonbinary and watching the adults of The Best Man crew adjust is a little paint-by-numbers, but it’s also so rare to see a Black family embrace their trans kid on television, which ultimately makes it sweet and worthwhile. — Carmen, Stream The Best Man: The Final Chapters

Those About To Die

Peacock Historical Drama, 2024-

THOSE ABOUT TO DIE -- Episode 110 -- Pictured: (l-r) Kyshan Wilson as Aura, Sara Martins as Cala, Romana Maggiora Vergano as Selena -- (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)

Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock

Set in and around the Colosseum of late Imperial Rome, I found this program nearly impossible to follow, but easy enough to fast-forward through to find some kind of lesbian subplot involving a main character and full frontal nudity that I suspect might have some redeeming moments if I was better at understanding the rest of it. It’s a spectacle; there are lavish period costumes, a stadium packed with CGI people witnessing great beasts of men battling each other for sport (some are about to die, obviously, thus the title), and then there are women who are in these dark rooms and there are markets and maybe brothels? People are trying to negotiate things and also banging. Including women banging each other! The Spectator said of it, “It hurries breathlessly from incident to incident as if terrified that the viewer might find the most blood-spattered, sexually licentious, intrigue-ridden period in the history of the world ever so slightly dull.” But it’s a hit, so! Stream Those About to Die.

Apples Never Fall

Peacock Thriller, 2024

Essie Randles as Brooke Delaney in Apples Never Fall

While it suffers from… pretty bad writing, Apples Never Fall is a Liane Moriarty thriller that might entertain those of us who are pretty easy to please when it comes to that kind of thing. (Me) It tells the story of wealthy West Palm Beach family the Delaneys, headed up by tennis coaches Stan (Sam Neill) and Joy (Annette Benning). Joy and Stan sell their tennis academy and are looking down the gaping maw of retirement when Joy suddenly vanishes, thus leading her four adult children (played by Alison Brie, Jake Lacy, Conor Merrigan-Turner, Essie Randles) to investigate their parents’ allegedly perfect marriage and uncover their family’s darkest secrets. Brooke (Essie Randles) is a queer physical therapist engaged to Gina (Paula Andrea Placido). Stream Apples Never Fall on Peacock.

Couple to Throuple

Peacock Reality TV Show Dating, 2024-

COUPLE TO THROUPLE -- "Commitment" Episode 110 -- Pictured: (l-r) Jonathan, Rehman, Ashmal, Scott Evans, Shamyra Howard, Sean, Darrien, Brittne, Jess, Lauren, Dylan -- (Photo by: Paul Castillero/PEACOCK)

(Photo by: Paul Castillero/PEACOCK)

Four couples explore non-monogamy by spending a month in a tropical resort, meeting and dating potential thirds to bring into their relationship, and then at the end they can decide if they wanna be threes forever or remain a twosome. It wasn’t always the best show when it came to representation, but it had its moments and we’d be remiss to talk about Peacock’s original queer programming without talking about Couple to Throuple. Stream Couple to Throuple on Peacock. 

Twisted Metal

Peacock Sci-Fi, 2023 –

Twisted Metal: Stephanie Beatriz and Chloe Fineman as Quiet and Bloody Mary

In the game Bloody Mary wears a bloody wedding dress, so I like how this tutu outfit pays homage to that.

Based on a video game, bisexual icon Stefanie Beatriz stars as Quiet, a subtly bisexual character in a dystopian landscape where twenty years after electricity went out worldwide, society has been divided into Insiders and Outsiders, serviced by “Milkmen” delivering things from city to city. John Doe (Anthony Mackie) is one of them, and he becomes reluctant partners with Quiet. Although her bisexuality is never super-obvious, there are some minor queer characters and we’re hopeful for more about Quiet’s sexuality in Season Two. Stream Twisted Metal on Peacock.

Other TV shows on Peacock with regular/recurring LGBTQ+ women and trans characters:

  • Ted (2024, Peacock comedy)
  • Departure (2020-2023, Global/Peacock thriller)
  • Bust Down (2022, Peacock comedy)
  • Go On (2012, NBC Comedy)
  • House (2004-2012, Fox Medical Drama)
  • The Irrational (2023 -, NBC Thriller)
  • Chicago Fire (2012-, NBC Drama)
  • Being Human (2011-2014, SyFy/Space Sci-Fi)
  • La Brea  (2021-, NBC Sci-fF)
  • Law & Order: SVU (1999-, NBC Drama)
  • The Purge (2018-2019, USA Horror)
  • Roseanne (1988 – 1997, ABC Comedy)
  • The Vampire Diaries (2009 – 2017, CW Fantasy)
  • The Way Home (2023-, Hallmark Drama)

Because NBC Universal also owns Bravo, there’s a ton of queer-inclusive reality TV show across the service, including The Bad Girls Club, Project Runway, Summer House, Below Deck and its many spinoffs, and the Real Housewives franchise. There are also a few unscripted shows with lesbian hosts (although not all were out to the world or themselves at the time of filming) — If We’re Being Honest With Laverne Cox, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, The Amber Ruffin Show, OMG Fashun With Julia Fox, Siwas Dance Pop Revolution and Unidentified with Demi Lovato.

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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 3343 articles for us.

11 Comments

  1. We Are Lady Parts is so good! Everybody watch it right now! Then watch Polite Society (movie by the same director, also on Peacock- not gay but excellent, kickass, and fun.)

  2. Undeclared war was so good, although some people i’ve talked to didn’t like that you don’t find out what happened to one particular character but personally i think that was kind of the point since they were dealing with shadowy goverment organizations.

    I liked girl in the woods though i think they were setting up for a season two they never got.

    I couldn’t get into the queer as folk reboot. I really wanted to but i really REALLY took issue with how the new parents just…never had to deal with their babies. Like ever. A newborn is all consuming and they had TWO and they still had time for drama.

  4. Savannah Steyn also appears to queer irl, like so many other House of the Dragon alumni. Savannah played young Leana in the first season.

  6. Vampire Academy and Emerald City should have been on the list.
    Unfortunately, both series were canceled even though they had good quality.
    The two series that I was very sad about the cancellation of Peacock were One of Us is Lying and Vampire Academy.
    I hope Vigil, Those About To Die and We Are Lady Parts will not suffer the fate of those two series.
    Also, I wish that from now on, you would also write the status of the series (cancelled, renewed, finished or unknown) because it is very important to know.
    For example, although Teenage Bounty Hunters is a very good series, unfortunately, because it was canceled, the story remained incomplete and ended in the worst possible way. That’s why I usually don’t recommend anyone to watch it. I think watching canceled series is a risk

  7. I don’t know anyone else watching Twisted Metal but it’s a fun stupid delight. Even if you don’t watch the whole thing, look up the final episode of the first season. First few minutes is an awesome action scene set to “The Distance” by Cake.

  8. Undeclared War and Ladyparts are so good! Highly recommend!

    I’ll second what a previous commentor said in that girl in the woods was okay but obviously setting up for a season two they never got.

    And this will probably not be a popular opinion but i did not like the queer as folk reboot at all. The thing that finally made me quit it was that two characters have twin newborns and then…never have to take care of twin newborns. As a parent the lack of effort put into the TWO newborns to take care of storyline was at first annoying and then later just rage inducing.

  9. I absolutely adored Cucumber but didn’t want to sit through Banana after the shocking and horrific twist at the end of Cucumber. But maybe will watch if given some time! Good to know that is expands the universe of the series.

    Would you ever include Kanopy in your “streaming this month on” series? I think it’s the only really free streaming service out there. Woo libraries! There’s so much great queer content on there and I’d love an AS take.

Comments are closed.