These are all love stories.

Reneice is making us a cake! Then you can make the cake! We can all make the cake!

Even now, almost a decade after The L Word’s final season, with LGBTQ+ representation at unprecedented heights, we still hold Jenny Schecter up as our ultimate villain. Her name is a curse, a swear, a shortcut for derision. She is a model of bad behavior.

“If Rachel Maddow ever hits Dinah Shore karaoke party in a three-quarter-length leather coat and leather pants, it will look like every performance on this live album.”

Some pieces are easier to explain than others.

“I was once a dancer, a synchronized swimmer, I played acrobat on thick, moss covered logs when I was at the lake, catching myself as I stumbled was a game. Now, I struggle to do eyeliner.”

Midwestern lesbian fashion — flannel, Birkenstocks, baseball caps — is ignored at best and looked down upon at worst compared to urban, Shane-esque queer style. What happens when it’s given museum exhibit status?

“My armor was a smile, Santana’s was an insult. And bless her for it.”

“My style icon is Nancy Meyers’ interpretation of a middle-aged white woman after she’s decided to pull herself together sometime in the second act. Wow that is… I feel very called out by own self.”

“My brother would wander toward the TV to watch some movie, and I’d go straight for the computer and open two tabs. In one, YouTube. In the other, fanfiction.net, where I tweaked the character filters so I could read about Santana and Brittany falling in love for the thousandth time.”

When I got diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, I dropped everything and moved to the outskirts of the Everglades to die. Pushing my body to its limits brought a healing that I never could’ve found as a healthy person – to finally belong in my own skin.

Having the blessing – or curse – of lighter skin is a double edged sword. I never gave much thought to the idea that society needs positive cultural images of minorities until I came to embrace my Hispanic heritage and come out of the closet.

“It would have been nice to share my entire truth with her, but because of the Standards of Care, I didn’t; I feared my story would be seen as diverging from the typical trans* narrative too much.”

Okay ladies, let’s stop right here and get our game together.

Unfortunate representation of queer communities may piss us off but it doesn’t mean it won’t help in some wacked out way. Just look at lesbian pulp fiction novels.

“And so while I would have loved to have done what Laura did, to go to New York and try to find myself, I did the more conventional thing, and I think I was not alone in that.”

“…but I also think that part of what our light box project did was to not assume that participation in mainstream culture means that you also have to take the structures of visibility that come with it as a given.”

If you like lesbian history as much as I do, then you’ll love all these books about queer life in various towns, states, cities and countries. Your input is welcome!

From Catherine Opie to Cass Bird to Zanele Muholi, here are ten queer women with vision and talent changing the heteronormative face of contemporary photography.