Hello tiny dancers! How are you? I hope your week has been weird and good in the perfect way. I’m doing pretty well. I was just talking to my mom and I told her that I’m having a really great semester and I realized that I meant it! I’m working hard, but doing things that feel important and challenging and interesting, and I hardly ever pay attention to the drama on Twitter. Life is good, ya’ll. I hope the same is true for you. Here’s some news to help your day get better!
All the News From A to Z
+ On the Vietnam version of The Bachelor (a show notorious for being loved by lesbians and queer folks), one contestant professed her love for another contestant!!! I love this story so much!
“I went into this competition to find love and I’ve found that love for myself, but it isn’t with you. It’s with someone else,” Minh Thu told Quoc Trung, the bachelor. She then ran towards another contestant who already received a rose, Truc Nhu and said, “Come home with me.”
Nhu gave back her rose and the two exited the rose ceremony.
But in another plot twist, according to Next Shark, “Truc Nhu ended up deciding to stay in the show after Quoc Trung had a heart-to-heart with her.”
Smillie’s banner inspired by a photograph of the Christopher Street Liberation Day March in 1973. (Photo via WBUR 90.9)
+ Donna Gottschalk captured lesbians on film in the 1970s.
+ Christine and the Queens talks about loving sex and horny pop.
+ New York City and Washington, D.C. are joining in with the growing number of places working to allow people to have non-binary ID markers!
+ The New York Yankees announce they’ll be providing 5 LGBT scholarships for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
+ Colorado is the first U.S. State to issue an intersex birth certificate.
What a week! I hope your week was as great as the news, and I hope you have the week you want and the week you need next week! See you so soon.
that bachelor story is a wild ride!
Also, has anyone seen First Contact, the show on APTN? Not sure if you can watch it outside of Canada (we can stream it on the APTN website), but it follows six “typical” (white & ignorant) Canadians as they travel through different Indigenous communities throughout the country over the course of 28 days. One of the contestants is Ashley, a gay personal trainer and one of those “bad stuff happened to me and I got over it, why can’t they” types at the start of the show.
I found the show really useful as someone who already felt like I knew enough. I can’t recommend it highly enough to others who feel like they are already “woke” and that they are better than those who aren’t and so they don’t need to watch it. Lots of really useful modeling for what allies can do and say to people who haven’t had the right conversations yet to bring them over. My girlfriend described it as “a thoughtful answer to a stupid question.” That said, I also recommend reading one of the many articles written by Indigenous activists reminding us all that it sucks to expect Indigenous people to have to bare everything like they do in this show in order to earn empathy from settlers (which is kind of like why allies should all be watching it so that we can learn from the incredible patience of the hosts on the show and alleviate their burden by getting off our high horses and taking on this patient work).
Happy that you are having a great semester