Society + Culture

University of Iowa Brings Groundbreaking Gay Question to College Admissions

The University recently added an optional question on sexual orientation to their undergraduate application, as well as a non-binary gender option.

Straddleverse

The Comment Awards Are Home for the Holidays

Brought to you by Honey Boo Boo, eggnog and appliances that look like sex toys.

Movie Features

Movie Night: My Girl

This week, we are celebrating all things awkward and charming, like middle-aged morticians, make-up artists with drag sensibilities, adolescent tomboys and their wimpy male partners-in-crime, not to mention the overprevalence of denim button-downs in the 1970s.

TV Reviews

Queer Lead Sophia Swanson Makes MTV’s “Underemployed” Worth Watching

MTV’s post-college dramedy “Underemployed” features a lesbian at the center of the action, and she’s pretty fucking cute.

Visual Art

Difficult Love: Watch Zanele Muholi’s Powerful Documentary on the South African LGBTQ Experience

Anyone who is interested in intersectionality, anti-colonialism, and just regular rattling of the cage of mainstream norms, this is for you.

Literature

Things I Read That I Love #54: Everything Is Natural Now

Topics include drinking on YouTube, Kiki Kanniball, the Spur Posse, EuroDisney, natural death, censorship, online universities and so much more!

Food and Drink

Liquor With Holiday Spirit: Homemade Eggnog

Eggnog is my holiday jam. I like all kinds of eggnog. Legit. I’ve never met an eggnog that I didn’t like. So Straddlers, let’s make some nog.

First Person

A Prairie Homo Companion: Snow is a Gender-Neutral Pronoun

I started feeling cold around the time I started feeling self-conscious.

Pop Culture Fix

Brittani’s Video Party: Zeitgeist, Pop Music and Mistletoe

This does include a man being slapped for trying to kiss a woman under a mistletoe and I would love to discuss your reaction to this because I feel as if you will say it’s not an overreaction.

Society + Culture

Bigot Bingo Puts the “Fun” Back in Fundamentally Flawed Argument

Nothing lightens up a white-knuckled homophobic debate like a rousing game of Bingo!

Movie Features

Things to Look at When You’re ‘Not Sober’ or Even When You Are, Whichever, Part 2

We just wanted to make sure you knew about this neat thing over at the New York Times. How is your day?

Christmas Shopping

Holigay 2012 Gift Guide: What’s Cookin’, Good Lookin’

Food-related gifts are especially fun (if you’re into that) because they can be both useful and something your giftee would not buy themselves at the same time.

Literature

Lez Liberty Lit #9: The Golden Age Is Now

In this edition of Lez Liberty Lit: the golden age for writers, nostalgia, literary cartography, bookshelves as diaries,
“I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus” and the end of the world.

Theater

We’re Queering the F*ck Out of Musical Theater, Wanna Help?

There’s a show full of queer women and you could help bring them to the masses! Wouldn’t that be neat?

Breakups

25 Reasons I’m Finally Starting to Enjoy Being Single (Besides Sleeping Around)

18. The only bladder I have to wake up for is my own.

Playlists

XXXMAS: The Playlist

I am a festive machine hellbent on bringing joy to others through forcible consumption of yuletide joy.

Society + Culture

LGBT Retirement Homes Step Up in Response to Homophobia and Mistreatment of LGBT Elders

With support for gay equality at an all-time-high and the focus on an aging generation of baby boomers, our LGBT predecessors are finally getting the much-needed care they deserve.