Happy Sunday friends! I changed my computer’s desktop background this week, and now I get to look at a rotation of pictures of my cats in the most ridiculous poses and honestly, best decision ever. Have you done something cute and nice for yourself in the past week? You should! Also, it feels like we’re all finally toes deep into fall. I haven’t used my AC in over a week, and it’s been a brisk 60º every morning on the first floor of my apartment. I love it. I feel alive. I hope you too feel alive, and if not, this week’s news is gonna perk you right on up!
??Breaking #GayleyKiyoko News??
+ From Special Hayley Kiyoko Correspondent Mey Rude
#GayleyKiyokoWeek ends with the release of Hayley Kiyoko’s new song and video for the decadently gay fall anthem “Feelings.” Kiyoko directed the clip herself, just like for “Sleepover,” and once again she directed herself opposite a beautiful woman. It’s almost like Kiyoko likes girls or something. While she’s singing “sorry that I care, care, it’s really not that fair” she’s dancing and flirting with Desi, played by Alexandra Rodriguez, through the streets at night. It’s a beautiful neon-lit noir lesbian dreamland. Hayley Kiyoko knows that there’s no time to be coy anymore, singing “I over communicate and feel too much, I just complicate it when I say too much, I laugh about it, dream about that casual touch, sex is fire sick and tired of acting all tough. I’m hooked on all these feelings.” Me too, Hayley, me too. This is the earnest full of feelings anthem for every queer out there who follows their heart. It’s a perfect salve for everyone who’s felt like they’ve had to become extra hard and tough since the election. Princess of the Gays Hayley Kiyoko is coming through once more to remind us that being soft and gay and full of feelings is good and strong and right. Thank you Hayley.
Hardworking Ladies
+ The Handyma’am is a new coverall designed for “women who own their work and their style” and I want one for every day of the week! They’ve got a little under a month left to raise the rest of their funds, help them outfit the lady mechanics in your life!
+ REI hosted the first ever LGBTQ Outdoor Summit. Honestly, everything cool happens in the PNW and I’m kinda jealous.
+ Sally Ride is the first lesbian Lego as part of the Women in NASA Lego kit. Nice.
The Women of NASA set was dreamed up by science writer Maia Weinstock, and garnered more than 10,000 votes on the Lego Ideas site, earning it automatic consideration by the company. Along with Ride, it includes tiny representations of NASA astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, and astronaut Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space. (An earlier version of the set also included Katherine Johnson, the black NASA mathematician featured in the 2016 film Hidden Figures, but Lego was unable able to obtain the necessary approvals to turn her into a figurine.)
Queer Culture
+ Lesbian filmmaker Nicole Conn, of Elena Undone and Claire of the Moon fame, will direct a new movie, Nesting Doll. Her feelings? “I always say I’m the luckiest lesbian alive!”
+ The Resilience Anthology is “the largest literary collection of transgender women and AMAB non-binary writers” going to print very soon!
Sunday Services
Encircle LGBTQ Family and Youth Resource Center in downtown Provo, Utah
+ Stephanie Larsen, a straight Mormon mom, opened an LGBT youth center in Provo, Utah.
We believe that if we can help the family work through when their child comes out as gay, lesbian or transgender, then they can become an affirming family and support this child on their journey. We hope that through the process, we will help change our community. We believe better conversations at Encircle lead to better conversations in the home, churches, schools, neighborhoods.
Our church, the Mormon church, is extremely important in Provo and affects everyone’s life. So instead of pushing against the community, we’re trying to bring the community in and trying to work in their values to help them better understand and love LGBTQ people.
You’re Welcome
+ Our favorite Latina actors got together and we’re blessed with this picture forever.
I hope you have crisp air, warm drinks, and cute cuties filling up your time throughout the week. Love you!
I am so looking forward to buying lesbian Lego
Looks like Legos are back on the holiday wishlist! (but let’s be real, were they ever NOT)
And maybe it’s just living in Utah that’s made me bitter about this very specific subject, but I am so fucking tired of Straight Mormon Moms and Their Gay Sons being the entire LDS/LGBT Conversation.
“Veteran lesbian filmmaker, Nicole Conn has announced the cast of her latest endeavor, “Nesting Doll” a story about three broken women whose lives intersect at a lakeside community and who are forever changed through their shared love of a boy with special needs.”
WHAT? HOW? WHY?
Did Nicole Conn sign a deal with the devil promising to produce sketchy 90s-style lesbian film scripts until the end of time? How is this happening in a post-Carol world?
Haha that’s how I date lesbian films as well… pre-Carol and post-Carol.
My eternal thanks to the person who coined the term “handyma’am.” (Cut to me re-watching Charmed and imagining Leo as a lesbian flirting with Piper while she fixes the chandelier.)
That article on reconciling Catholic and queer identities reminded me of some readings I did in a Christian women and spirituality class which BLEW MY DAMN MIND. If y’all want a little light reading this Sunday on feminist spirituality, let me recommend this article by Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders, from the anthology Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development. Caveat: I’m no theological scholar. But here’s a taste:
as someone who has just started an inter-faith seminary program, I really appreciate this article. thanks for sharing!
That’s a pretty amazing article. Articulates better than I ever could thoughts that flit through my head from time to time.
“I always say I’m the luckiest lesbian alive!”
And sometimes that just means shitty luck for the rest of us…
i laughed out loud
ROTFLMAO
Realized today while I was shimming up a window pane with twigs because that’s all I had and the hardware store had just closed that “resilient handyma’am” is my gender identity.
I have stubbornly refused to buy Lego sets because I believe they are extremely overpriced, which meant I never ever got one as a kid and always had to play with my friends’ sets, and even though I always told myself I’d buy one for myself as an adult, I’m still bitter over the loss of Lego enrichment as a child (I blame my total lack of architechtural creativity that causes my anxiety about even attempting to play Minecraft, which is an otherwise amazing-looking game), and so I refuse to participate in such ruthless capitalism/highway robbery that excluded kids like me even though the company will not even slightly feel the impact of me not buying them but it’s the principle of the thing, but by golly I am breaking for the women of NASA set goddamm it.
I have stubbornly refused to buy Lego sets because I believe they are extremely overpriced, which meant I never ever got one as a kid and always had to play with my friends’ sets, and even though I always told myself I’d buy one for myself as an adult, I’m still bitter over the loss of Lego enrichment as a child (of which I blame my total lack of architechtural creativity that causes my anxiety about even attempting to play Minecraft, which is an otherwise amazing-looking game), and so I refuse to participate in such ruthless capitalism/highway robbery that excluded kids like me even though the company will not even slightly feel the impact of me not buying them but it’s the principle of the thing, but by golly I am breaking for the women of NASA set goddamm it.
FEELINGSSSSSS!!! Omg I love her new song and video so much!! Super amazing and omg yes so many feelings and so relatable!! #GayleyKiyokoWeek was the best week on Instagram ever. <3
Also yes for lesbian Lego!!
There's just so much great stuff in Sunday Funday today. <3 <3 <3
Loved the article on reconciling Catholic faith and being part of the LGBT community! I am Catholic, an active one at that, and get so much blow back from BOTH sides for the other that it is tough. Finding a decent community is so key.
For the longest time I was not out at my church, and stayed away from conversations about religious beliefs around my LGBT supportive friends because they couldn’t believe that I loved something so “archaic” among other things.
I went on this retreat and met some really cool people who were actually living the faith and out in their parishes and knew that that was exactly what I needed to do… not to figure out how to walk both sides of a fence, but help show people that there ISN’T a fence.