If you thought there wasn’t room for one more controversy to sweep Toronto, well, you were wrong. This officially marks the first time ever we haven’t wanted to move to Canada. Also: Judith Butler turns down an award, bisexuality gets surveyed, gay marriage in NY and the lives of gay youths.

I did make out with my ex in the house here and there but the family was French and basically encouraged it and gave me wine every night.

The Village Voice has an intriguing cover for their Queer Issue — we outline some of our more major confusions on the issue. Also, Chicago loves Nat Garcia and so do we, Lady Gaga fashion update, Gawker is there for those straight people trying to make it through Pride, one brave girl blogger takes on Seventeen Magazine, and one writer discusses how she manages marriage while bisexual.

It seems contradictory to say I learned how to view my body as my own by sharing it with strangers and friends, but it is a truth that I revel in. What I love and learn about these encounters are the parameters of my body, its strengths, and boundaries, what pleases it.

Lesbians, this has not been our week. The Real L Word premiered, and we hated it. Nicki Minaj redacted her bisexuality, Miley Cyrus keeps on fake-lesbian kissing everyone and I had to do research on Danielle Staub. At least Anna Paquin said some reassuring things about her sexuality, otherwise we’d just shut this place down.

I’m not even sure I believe in love at first sight but every time I watch “Imagine Me & You” — I really, really want to.

Over 15,000 people turned up for the Brooklyn Liberation Action for Black Trans Lives this past weekend and these are the best photographs I have ever seen.

I would spend many hours trying to diagnose the emptiness Amanda left in her wake. I had lost something, but didn’t know what. Surely there’s a queer space on the page for stories that lack a middle?

“This show gives me permission to be the person I am and the artist I want to become.”

“Bad sex education for queer kids it’s so violent and erasing and makes kids in rural places feel even more isolated.”

One patient in the study “Observation of Trends in Manic-Depressive Psychosis” by O. Spurgeon English recounted that living with bipolar disorder “is like opening all my pores on a cold day and subjecting myself to catastrophe.”
I too have felt like a catastrophe of a person, a catastrophe of a star, a catastrophe of emotions.

The very same free speech arguments that lawyers used to attempt to defend sex shops and strip clubs in the late 1990’s are being used to defend against SESTA/FOSTA now — and the fallout is largely the same: erasure of so-called “deviance” for the sake of respectability and supposed “safety.”

There is plenty to celebrate. And there is plenty of work to be done.

Inspired by their vulnerability and the powerful throwback energy of high-school-age Sara and Tegan, we’ve cracked open our own high school diaries to show you our deepest, darkest, gayest secrets and send a little love and perspective back through time on who we’ve been. 

I’ve been looking for myself in mainstream fashion shows for 30 years, and the very first thing Rihanna did in her moment was say, “I got you sis.”

“Sometimes I just want to light an entire pack of cigarettes, put them in my mouth and run around naked.”

I could carry that heavy canoe further than any of the other teenage girls on my trip. I could carry that canoe, because that meant I didn’t have to carry my grief and my mom had to carry her own weight, because I wasn’t home.

Alex and Kelly help James with his PTSD while Lena confides in Kara and Dreamer is an inspiration to us all.

Riese and Kayla talk about that Season Two finale, pros/cons re: Discovery in general, our hopes for the future, Tig Notaro in space, Three Hot Mommies and more pressing Star Trek processing.

“I’m calling it Carbmas now.”