As we countdown to Pride this year, there’s a lot to celebrate and a lot to rage about. There’s no one decided-upon way to feel about it, and there’s no one right way to celebrate June. Maybe you’re spending the month partying with friends, organizing a protest, taking a trip with your partner, hosting a community event, or staying home alone to reflect and take care of yourself. Pride celebrations can look like whatever feels honest and exciting to you.
For those looking to get out and celebrate with their communities or vacate your city’s local queer joints, you might find yourself running into exes, past lovers, future lovers, or estranged friends who did or do run in the same circles as you. And depending on who you’re bumping into, you may or may not need to give yourself a pep talk beforehand. Or maybe you like to embrace the chaos for all that it is and bask in it.
No matter where you are, who you’re planning on celebrating with, and what you’re planning to do this month, let’s get pumped up for Pride together and everything that could mean. Even if that implies sharing a space with someone from your past or reconnecting with an ex. Enjoy these 100 songs for your Pride month to prepare to run into all your exes or just to have fun with — the choice is yours! I’ve personally had a hell of year so far and we’re only halfway through it, so I’ll be using this playlist as a roadtrip soundtrack for my partner and I while we skip town and celebrate Pride somewhere different this year.
Get angry, get horny, get introspective! Metaphorically, I’m raising a glass to your and yours this Pride month. Here’s six full hours of sounds for setting the Pride mood this year.
Countdown to Pride is an Autostraddle miniseries leading up to Pride 2023. There are nine days until Pride month — are you ready?
how about a countdown to where the money from the fundraiser went, since it clearly wasn’t to essential and beloved editorial staff?
would be nice wouldn’t it?
To be honest, it probably did go to staff and there probably is an explanation coming why they scrapped the three roles.
Think about the timing though: you have to tell the people who were let go first, so they can start looking for a new job right away, and only then will you start communicating about it with the public. Right? And I’m sure a sensitive message like that isn’t just crafted overnight.
“a sensitive message like that isn’t just crafted overnight” – a sensitive message should be ready when it is needed in a situation like this, especially since the last fundraiser was so successful.
Yes, when you have enough staff for PR at all hours. That said, I do also want a timely explanation.
It’s not that I don’t think there is an explanation, but one does need to be given. Like Maria said, having a message prepared ahead of time is generally par for the course, and it doesn’t require 24-hour PR. These comments are on a timed post counting down to a future event. If the decision were made so quickly that there wasn’t time to write a message, I would be skeptical of the soundness of that decision. (I am not by any means suggesting that’s what happened.) A post on the site of a few lines at least acknowledging the situation would mitigate the speculation.
I’ve been reading AS for over a decade and have a lot of trust in this place, but if they can provide “emergency” coverage of pop cultural events, surely they can tell us *something* about this massive shift.
Right, that sounds fair. @ bird
i think we are used to knowing stuff immediately, and caring so much about AS, that makes whatever is going feel urgent to us.
and while this community is a wonderful, loving place, we are diverse and often exacting, which will make the task of publicizing what happened harder.
but, the thing is, this will have been devastating to the managing staff, and that’s on top of how stressful just existing on the planet is right now.
i can understand if their next tasks are handling whatever caused this to happen, and then to address it to current staff. i can’t imagine how to go about writing out all of the above in a way that our community can hear it, so i’ll just be grateful when more information is available.
sending love to Ro, Shelli, and Vanessa. and to everybody.
This is true, but I do feel like a post that’s just like “this happened, which some of you are now aware of. More information to come” is the bare minimum? Posting exactly as if nothing happened feels bad – especially as I just got Ro’s sex and dating newsletter today which says they’ll continue to be paid for that, so it will continue. Which is good! At least they and we still get that. But why is that the first Autostraddle branded communication it’s mentioned in?
for sure speculation will run until information is provided. and while there’s no disagreement with most of the points i’ve seen folks make in comments, i’m sure that whatever’s happening is so much to handle management staff are scrambling and/or struggling.
since i’ve felt the love and dedication on staff’s part, i trust that they wouldn’t hurt anyone if avoidable.
and i want the site to continue, so while i would appreciate knowing what happened, i don’t want to make what’s hard any harder.
i’m guessing that the recent posts are scheduled, and by irregular contributors, so are happening automatically. but also, if they aren’t posting content, they’ll lose engagement which will be bad long term.
hope you are doing ok (despite…), KatieRainyDay.
wait who was laid off?
Also looking forward to an explanation of the loss of Ro, Vanessa, and Shelli from this site. I want my A+ membership to contribute to the important work these writers and editors do, and I’m confused and disappointed that such big cuts happened despite the publicized success of the most recent fundraiser.
can’t believe this post is how i’m finding out shelli, vanessa and ro were let go. they were such tremendous contributors, i cannot wrap my head around this
You can really see the bias on this list. Taylor Swift? That straight and cis as a arrow white lady? I was expect a bit better out of the lesbians here. No Moaning Lisa songs? No Lesbian sound experience?