Monday Roundtable: They Would Never Have Guessed
“People are usually surprised to hear things about my past, like how I was a cheerleader, and in a sorority, and a dancer, and in musical theatre.”
Bad Religion
“Here was a community where race apparently didn’t matter, because we were all humans, made in the image of God. Where a pacifist, sensitive, caring Jesus was the primary male role model. I finally felt at home. I was promised complete acceptance and understanding, and all I had to give was… well, everything.”
On Loving My White Mother
In which a debate over body hair pushes a white mother and her brown daughter to the limits of mutual understanding.
Monday Roundtable: Very Superstitious, Writing’s on the Wall
Do you pick up pennies for good luck? Does part of you still think stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back? Did you know that apparently “to kill an albatross is to cause bad luck to the ship and all upon it”? Bummer!
I Hated Country Music Until I Met Lena
“Who was this country-music-loving New Englander? I both hated and loved that she seemed to be playing this garbage as if to impress me.”
How to Dismantle Your Imposter Syndrome One Episode of Murder She Wrote at a Time
Before Angela Lansbury told women they were partly to blame for sexual assault, she helped me with my imposter syndrome.
Judging Tonya
“By the end of the 1994 Winter Olympics, I was 12 years old and quite certain I’d picked the right side.”
The Time I Lesbianfiltrated My Mother’s Straight Book Club
LGBTQ representation in literature is important. Also, chicken picatta is delicious.
Making a Home in the Closet
I was a newly minted queer and everything I knew about queerness was rooted in coming out. I’d heard about the relief that came with coming out from everybody. If TV was to be believed, I would feel free even as my parents stopped looking me in the eye.
Monday Roundtable: What Kind of Bitch Are You?
I can and will figure out a way to do everything by myself to keep from having to be nice to someone I don’t want to be nice to. I don’t want to be nice to a lot of people.
29 Slightly Melodramatic Fears and Insecurities of a Baby Dyke
“There aren’t as many hairy, feminist lesbians as I was led to believe.”
I Met My Sperm Donor’s Mom and It Changed Everything
As the daughter of lesbian mothers, I always knew I had a sperm donor, and that I could meet him when I was 18. I loved my moms; I loved my queer family. Still, I had always wondered what part of me was cut from a different cloth.
The Mammalian Dive Reflex
I changed. But it was a gradual process, in the way a forest becomes stone. Petrified forest of a body.
Sad Enough Songs: On Julien Baker and Depression
Depression is not forever because it always ends, and depression is forever because it always comes back. It won’t work if I only want to stay on the days when my brain breaks through the muck. Turn Out The Lights is a meditation on wanting to stay on the very worst days.
Put Things on Your Head
It’s a weird time of the year for many of us in the Western Hemisphere, especially with the warmer climates we’ve been experiencing later and later in the year for certainly no reason at all. It’s not quite time for a toasty beanie (and I, for one, have gotten pretty sick of only wearing dad […]
With Gratitude and Struggle: Loving Butch/Femme as a Trans Woman
“Butch/Femme is important to me because butches and femmes writing and discussing what it meant to be who we are shaped my understanding of myself and how I can show up in the world.”
Showstopper
He pressed further, asking if I was an actress. I said something along the lines of “I hope so.” He suggested that I meet his brother as well – his producing partner. I remember him suggesting some place quieter, more private.
Monday Roundtable: You and Your Period, Bloody Hell
You shed your uterine lining every few weeks! Or maybe you suppress that shedding and call it day! Either way, we want to talk about how that’s going.
Such Softness in the Harsh World
Stacy asked what she could do, how she could help, all she wanted to do was be useful, and I said nothing, nothing, I’ve got everything under control. And so she held me on the nights I was pretending to be able to sleep and whispered “I’ll take care of you” over and over without ever expecting an answer.
Sharon Stone Crossing and Uncrossing Her Legs
“I watched her zip up her white dress in the mirror; I watched her cross and uncross her legs; I watched her, and my friends watched her, and in the movie we were watching the other characters, men and women, watched her. I hated her so much, and so purely, with such satisfaction. I couldn’t look away.”