A screenshot from The Foundation for AIDS Research's "Scenes from Angels in America" fundraiser. Vella Lovell as Harper is superimposed above Andrew Rannells as Prior. The backdrop is a mix of a starry sky over a building and a staircase with candles leading from the bottom of the frame to the top. Lovell wears a black nightie and Rannells wears a turquoise robe and makeup.

Slow Takes: A Tribute to Zoom Theatre

The story of how I joined theatre is like if the Disney Channel was dark and gay.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, a brown lesbian with brown hair and eyes, throughout her twenties

First Person

The Gayest Things I Did in My Twenties

I’m 23, and I’m not sure if I’m on a date (I’m not).

A set of Scrabble tiles spell out GAME ON

First Person

I Beat My Girlfriend at Scrabble and We Never Played Again

Scrabble has always been an exciting way to show that my English degree might have meant something.

A curvy Black woman with long braids pulled back into a pony tail rests her chin on the edge of a white bathtub underneath her hands. She's wearing air pods. A brown, wood wall and a stack of white towels are visible to her left. The bathtub is filled with bubbles.

First Person

When I Stopped Apologizing for My Fatness, I Started to Heal

I had to figure out what it meant to reconnect with a body I’d always been afraid of.

A white, curvy person is lying in bed on beige sheets. Only their toros and thighs are visible. They're wearing a cream-colored crocheted top and cream-colored underwear. Their hands rest on their abdomen. They wear a silver ring on the middle finger of their right hand.

First Person

How Masturbation Helped Me Accept Myself as an Intersex Lesbian

I finally understood that the “normal” I was seeking was mythical and that my body was beautiful and precious the way it was.

An illustrated woman sits at a laptop, and geometric shapes emerge from it

First Person

How Fertility Treatments Got Me Back in Touch With My Queerness

I never imagined I’d have to get an IUI, or that there would be a silver lining.

Repeated three times: An abstract etching print in black ink on white paper. A central, looming abstract figure sits in the upper two-thirds of the paper. It twists with fabric or muscle-like fibers around in an upside-down "U" shape, with several pieces of the main shape curling off to the side and one extending well beneath the shape and hooking to the left like the bottom of a lower-case "G". In the center of the abstract shape is a kind of webbing that unevenly unites the "U" shape. The bottom of the page features a marbling effect that fades in from darker black at the corner to lighter grays in the center, giving the central abstract figure a glowing appearance.

First Person

Pay Attention to the Light Source

When I was 12, men started to ask me for my number at the mall.

Against an orange background, there is a peach with a slit cut down its center, causing the fruit to resemble a vulva.

First Person

Building My Own Masturbation Rituals as a Pleasure Educator

There’s nothing quite as powerful as being in charge of your own pleasure.

An illustrated tree is losing its leaves, which turn into birds as they move away from the tree

First Person Parenting & Family

Things That Have Mothered Me That Are Not My Mothers

I think of all the things that have taught me lessons and made me the woman I am and feel that, even if my mothers didn’t care for me the way I wanted them to, I still came out on the other side, not unscathed, but survived.

A light skinned person holds a trans flag behind them while facing a bright day. The frame captures the their neck down to their waist. They wear a pink shirt and blue shorts, to match the trans flag, which is blue, pink, and white.

First Person

Finding and Losing My Worth as a Trans Woman

Something had to change, because I’d never be free, be myself, if I kept it up. I decided to take the biggest risk yet, and started transitioning again.

A woman with long, brown hair wearing jeans and a beige sweater sits on the edge of a bed with a white bedspread. She rests her chin on her hand. In the background, there are open windows covered by gauzy white curtains.

First Person

How I Manage the Sexual Side Effects of PTSD

My care team couldn’t help me with the sexual side effects of PTSD — I had to figure this one out on my own.

Autostraddle writer Dani Janae wears a blonde bob wig and black cat eye sunglasses and a cheetah print glove

First Person

Names I Have Been Called

There are so many names I have been called that I now have taken on for myself. Call it reclaiming. I’m not sure what it is but it has largely to do with the work I’ve done on accepting my body for what it is, whether I love it or not.

A trail cuts through the Mojave Desert at sunrise. A Joshua Tree is visible on the left and desert shrubs are visible on either side.

First Person

Fault Lines

She was in the middle of a long divorce, and I had pulverized myself to fit into the life of a secret girlfriend.

A ballerina in a wide white tutu on pointe

First Person

Every Young Queer Crush I Had As A Baby Ballerina

There is, apparently, a ballet child to queer adult pipeline, and I want to come out as a person of queer ballet experience.

Two drawn bodies curled next to each other against a black background

First Person

My Jackie: On Yellowjackets and a Missing Friend

We met when I was 16 and she was 17. We weren’t dating, but we might as well have been. I’ve been thinking about her more than usual lately, ever since I found myself obsessed with Yellowjackets.

A sketched white outline of a person has their hands on their chest, and a light glows where their heart should be.

First Person

Grief Exists in Its Own Time Zone

There’s a reason people say things like “grief isn’t linear,” and “you won’t feel this way forever,” and there’s also a reason it feels like you’re hearing those things through a set of ear muffs when you’re in the moment.

Two drawn people in black ink tilt toward each other with sketched flowers in the background

First Person

We Call It Time Travel

To love someone new is to agree to travel somewhere that doesn’t exist yet together.

A white sketched outline of a person hovers over a curved line. On the other side of the curved line is a drawn figure in black ink.

First Person

To Travel, Like Light

So much of my experience of poetry is wrapped up in time.

A white sketched outline of two people are crouched over a soup pot. One is feeding the other.

First Person

Closing the Distance With a Dash of Salt and Cumin

In the middle of a pandemic, 8,000 miles away from Dhaka, Bangladesh, I craved my favorite dish in the world: beef bhuna, a curry made of tender meat and rich, spice-packed gravy.

Outlines of two human figures float in space with squiggle lines between them

First Person

Time Between Us

My partner and I started our relationship at a distance. C was on Eastern Time. I was on Mountain Time.

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