Results for: meet up
-
What Being a Child of the AIDS Epidemic Taught Me About Coronavirus
All we have is each other. And we are the only ones we know, if we believe in the myth of ourselves enough to create truth, who will save us.
-
My Parents Made Me Gay
Being focused on women never seemed remarkable to me. I grew up in a household with my mom, my younger sister, and my dad, so even if we were just being fair, 75% of our time was focused on women. And we were not fair.
-
Uncovering My Secret Queer Family History
Both Marge and Madeline chose to find family within each other, and from there I understood, as I heard these stories from Marge after my grandmother had died, and then from my mother after Marge had gone, that such a thing could be done.
-
“Sex Education” Taught Me How to Masturbate
“I wanted to be single so I could explore my sexuality. Instead I was exploring other people’s.”
-
You’re Just You: An Accidental Love Letter to Los Angeles
“Towards the end of the night you fall and tear the skin on your knee. But you pop back up and keep skating. You’re relieved. Now that you’ve fallen once you know you’ll be okay.”
-
Prone to Wander
“Selfishly, I’m worried about what will happen if I say out loud that I’m uncomfortable with all this God, if I let my brain run its anxious course. If my atheist, queer, bipolar self comes to choir with me in all its unkempt glory, will I lose my safest place?”
-
“Transparent” Changed Me (And TV) Forever
“Do you have something to tell us?” my mom joked. It was a joke, because of course I didn’t. “No,” I said with a laugh. And I thought I was telling the truth.
-
Fleabag’s First Season Captures the Trauma of Being a Woman
“When it first came out I loved the show for its humor, for its raw portrayal of depression and grief, and because, like any rational person, I’m deeply in love with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But it wasn’t until about a year into my transition that the show started consuming my thoughts.”
-
How I Claimed Being Thirsty as a Personal Lifestyle and Learned to Live My Dreams
The more I allowed myself to want, the more I realized I wanted. The more I leaned in to my desires, the clearer they became.
-
A Birthday Party No One Else Was Invited To
The first time someone described Casey as having “stalkerish” tendencies, I defended her. For the most part though, I didn’t talk about it.
-
15 Crushes and the Art They Gave to Me
Listening to a song your crush recommends is a low-stakes window into their identity. It’s a way to get closer to someone, away from them. And isn’t that what a crush is all about? A solitary experience that has everything to do with the other person and at the same time nothing at all?
-
The Life We Never Knew Would Find Us: Navigating Loss as an Interfaith Queer Couple
“We’re in Lancaster County at Erin’s family’s house, surrounded by plastic Bible quiz trophies adorned with gold crosses and family portraits taken at national parks. My bewildered partner comes to me, face slack, and tells me I need to call my mother.”
-
How My Badass Butch Skyrim Character Saved My Life
In the mirror, I saw a scrawny, hollow-eyed girl dressed in ill-fitting boys’ clothes, a parody of a parody of masculinity. But in the screen, I saw myself made strong, confident, fearless, perfect.
-
20 of the Best Personal Essays on Autostraddle in 2018
We published so much good work this year, and here is a fraction of it we think you will particularly enjoy reading back through!
-
Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be (Lesbian) Cowboys
“I wanted her to smile at me that way. I wanted her to say my name. This turned out to be easy.”
-
Butch Slut
In the pool hall, my sweetheart and a close friend tease me one night: “unimpressive,” “pure luck,” “you aren’t that good.” They were trying to get my ire up so that an hour later when I told them to stare into each other’s eyes as I fucked my sweetheart’s body, I would mean it with a snarky competitive vengeance, I would mean it with power and control, I would be pushed to take what I want.
-
The Implication of a Bag
“I was unwilling to buy a binder. It seemed like a declaration, the kind I was nowhere near ready to make yet. But for that winter, I had the bag.”
-
Take Me Home
“She asks me how it went, I say it went bad. I don’t say much more because she hates hearing about my family like they hate hearing about her. It goes better when I keep it to myself.”
-
Brown, Queer, Sad, Strange, and a Skilled Practitioner of Each
I found a different self slowly, learned to exist as if with many different goggles on at once. Always speaking from my mother’s kitchen in the Silicon Valley and, at the same time, my grandmother’s crowded living room in Punjab. In these years, I would feel the sharpness of many kinds of difference, marginalization. But when I looked down at myself for signs of why I felt so other, all I would find was the color of my hands.
-
Desert Heartbreaker
“I always went the extra mile for you and did so gladly because I loved being around you. You never returned these more concrete gestures, which should’ve been the first sign that things were not reciprocal between us, but I was oblivious and idealistic. I genuinely believed I had found love.”