Roller derby. Your college’s LGBTQ+ group. Roller derby! Forums for niche fandoms. Lex. Roller Derby. Climate justice protests. Academic conferences. Autostraddle Meet-Ups. Roller derby? OK Cupid. A-Camp. ROLLER DERBY. These are the places where you queer weirdos have met others like you, experienced the power of attraction and pursued relationships in which you remain to this very day! On the 2022 Autostraddle Reader Survey, we asked where you’d met your very special someone(s), offering a multiple choice array as well as a comment box.
From the multiple choice, the top answers were as follows: 29% met through a dating app, 21.5% through school, 21% through friends, 13% through work, 11% online (not through a dating app) and 7% at a bar or party. Over 700 of you also hit up the comment box to tell us exactly how you met — because you picked “other” or just wanted to get a little more specific. A solid third of these answers were people wanting to specify the dating app or website they used but the rest contained far more detail, which I am sharing with you now here, today, some ripped out of context, because sharing is caring. Specifically: I will be sharing some of the very gay ways your soul found another and united.
1. Pottery sale
2. Farming conference
3. “online through witchcraft”
4. Ladies Rock Camp
5. Talking about gay mad scientists from a children’s cartoon on twitter
6. We fell in love while sitting a housemate’s toads
7. Studying Wildlife Ecology in college
8. In the comment section of a fanfic they wrote about trauma and community and healing :-)
9. Bering and Wells fandom
10. We met in 1995. I was in grad school and had a job at the campus women’s center. I helped her hang an art show. We later hung out at a feminist science fiction convention. We’ve been together ever since.
11. We’re both librarians who met through a mutual friend (also a librarian)
12. We met on an AOL Teen message board when we were lonely teenagers 20+ years ago
13. I was sitting on an LGB panel in my now-wife’s class on the psychology of oppression (it was the 90s)
14. Sweat lodge – we had both worked with this particular medicine man in different states and she just happened to be in town and come to ceremony that weekend
15. I play DnD and she’s my dungeon master’s wife!
16. Working at the same summer camp. We were randomly paired to be counselors together and we immediately both wanted to find out if the other was gay. Here we are, several years and two cats later.
17. The Rose, a women’s-only transitional housing apartment building
18. A dyke meet up / conversation salon in the 1990’s!!
19. Band camp in high school
20. She saw my bio on the website for the volunteer board at the local LGBTQ Center and stopped by my public job but I wasn’t there. Then we emailed and arranged to meet ‘for a tour of the LGBTQ Center’ which went well and was followed immediately by a coffee date. And The Rest Is History.
21. Feminist young adult fiction forum in the mid-2000s
22. Buffy The Vampire Slayer Faith/Buffy shipping site in the early noughties
23. Search & Rescue Volunteer Organization
24. Infectious diseases summer school
25. Archaeological excavation
26. We both followed Heather Hogan and the #gaysharks crew on twitter
27. We both play roller derby and were introduced by my ex at a party at her house 😂
28. Lesbian book club that was organized locally and advertised on the Unofficial Autostraddle facebook group
29. Board game night at a comic shop
30. At a queue to Pink concert 9 years ago. She was watching hockey on a tablet, her country’s team was playing against mine. Didn’t think I’ll see her again after the concert, but she had other plans.
31. We were both at 2 protests in a row in a small town where I knew most other people there and got to talking and decided to get coffee!
32. Two Rabbis made the connection (a double-Rabbi shidduch, if anyone reading this understands the phrase ☺️)
33. Our union — we were both on the bargaining team
34. Smut Slam event at the Edinburgh Fringe organised by Cameryn Moore. They told a story about knife play, I asked them out afterwards.
35. An online text based X-Men RPG
36. Xena Fan Fiction Writer’s Fan Group. Merwolf, specifically.
37. Sailor Moon chat on AIM in 1999
38. Discussing gay fanfiction about the members of Fall Out Boy
39. Queer contra dancing in Chicago
40. Unofficial Hannah Hart fan meet-up
41. We both worked at the same very small vet clinic
42. We met at a party in my first year of grad school, and she offered me chickpeas she roasted herself
43. L Word quiz night: she hosted it, I won it.
44. Feminist Choir
45. I was the back of a pantomime horse and she was the front!
46. They directed the queer sapphic ballet in which I was one of the dancers
47. On a Scottish island at an outdoor education centre
48. Working at the farmers market & a coworker introduced us because we had “similar style” but the similarity was just that we both dress gay
49. Health food store take-out counter
50. I was a rope bunny at a Sexpo and I was cold so I asked them for a hug
51. Trans hormone clinic lol
52. My wife is a personal trainer. She was training the president of the college where I taught. The president, a closeted woman, thought all lesbians should know each other. So she walked her into my office. And, va-va-va-voom.
53. In the Peace Corps (but also, decolonize aid)
54. Organizing for Climate justice!
55. Working on abortion decriminalisation
56. A Zoom workshop for the group Showing Up for Racial Justice
57. She was a regular customer at the bookshop I managed. After many months of flirting she (finally!) leaned across the counter and asked if I ever got a coffee break.
58. We actually both went solo to the Gentleman Jack party autostraddle threw three years ago which would have been such a good meet cute, we even ordered the same drink! Sadly, we did notice each other there and matched on Hinge like three weeks later instead.
59. A class about sociology and cats
60. We went to Mormon church together when we were kids
61. Nolose conference in the early 2000s! Fat dyke 4 fat dyke!
62. 2019 Women’s World Cup Semi-Final in Lyon
63. Quaker meeting
64. We met at a mutual friend’s wedding and she lured me into a conversation by loudly talking about the Kristen Stewart Lizzie Borden movie during the cocktail hour.
65. Queer Soul Night, in line for the bathroom!
66. Community softball team
67. Volunteering at a folk festival
68. We were bunk mates at the OG A-camp. I looked up when I entered the cabin and locked eyes with her in her denim overalls and cute-as-heck smile. At the end of the weekend, I slipped her my number on the back of a library index card that was used for Slam Poetry inspiration. We kept in touch and eventually got married- she carries that index card in her wallet to this day.
69. She wrote fan fiction and I corrected her grammar. Where’s THAT movie? Grammar weirdos are sexy, damn it!
🥰
OMFG, the stereotypes are true. All true. Each and every one of them are absolutely true.
Love this so much. May I humbly add ours: at a stitch n’ bitch in the mid aughts.
heehee, my partner is the one who roasted the chickpeas <3 honoured we're part of the top gayest ways to meet
omg I met my current partner at a MUNA concert! we were just talking about meet cutes and some of these are pretty fuckin adorable
I desperately need to know more about the couple who met at ID summer school.
Also I think I would like to sign up for a class about sociology of cats
This is so gay and I love it so much! Also I clearly need to start doing more activities so this can happen to me.
truly blown away by the volume of activities being practiced by our community
Cannot wait to refer this gay gay list to people who are trying to meet other people in YNH!
I can’t believe no one said rugby! I thought that’s where all the gays met pre dating apps
So many activities I want to know more about/participate in! 🤩 Cats & Sociology class, queer contra dancing, farming conference, smut slam, feminist choir….
#42-48 are a real winning streak.
This was delightful. It was sweet to read so many where couples met in the 90s! Also, so many fandom/fan fic connections.
My wife and I met on an Idina Menzel fan messageboard in the early ‘00s. I feel like that’s pretty gay.
I met my wife at a swing dance in Moscow, ID. I asked her to dance, she said yes, I complimented her on her turtleneck, that started a whole conversation about how turtlenecks are underrated, and ten years later, here we are.
These are so sweet! I love seeing all the 90s couples (like me!).
Incredible
Whoa, it’s like… if this were an article asking “how did you meet,” and these folks answered “this is how,” then every single one of them would win a comment award.
WELL DONE EVERYONE
I made the list! I’m in such good company!
Oh lord, in a *crowded* field, it’s no 30. no 30 is undoubtedly the gayest thing, among a whole load of EXTREMELY gay things.
As someone who met my partners via fandom/fanfiction, and who knows multiple other queer couples who met that way, I am extremely pleased by how many people also said fandom/fanfiction.