This is Your Friday Open Thread for June 19, 2020

Hello it’s Friday again!

Make sure you check out the Juneteenth Celebration and Syllabus we published earlier today!

Tell us about your favorite Autostraddle article from this week! (Here are some of mine: Principles of Pride: The Riot Black and Indigenous Trans People Deserve, How to Start a Mutual Aid Fund, 24 Sex Toys for the Horny, Lonely, and Self-Isolating, Queens Center for Gay Seniors Creates Phone Check-In Project, Connecting LGBTQ Elders and Youths During the Pandemic and Beyond, and Juniper Moon Folk Arts: Crafters, Activists, and the Glories of Gas Station Food!)

Tell us how you are! Tell us what you’re up to! Tell us anything at all! That’s what we’re here for, that’s what it’s all about on the Friday Open Thread.

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Vanessa

Vanessa is a writer, a teacher, and the community editor at Autostraddle. Very hot, very fun, very weird. Find her on twitter and instagram.

Vanessa has written 404 articles for us.

41 Comments

  1. I love that AS is publishing so many articles that I have to set aside time on the weekend to catch up. I haven’t gotten to everything yet (and I’m sure the beginning of this week has blended in to the end of last week), but some of my favorites have been the photos from the Brooklyn Black Trans Lives Matter protest, Brittani Nichols’ author’s note, and the No Filter featuring Janet Mock, Janelle Monáe, and Jasika Nicole.

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    • I’m still frustrated by the fact that I cannot risk going to protests in my state. I live in one of the hotspot counties, and so all I can do for now is send some money and feverishly refresh Twitter. We were doing so well with our lockdown but the governor caved to the people who wanted haircuts instead of expanding Medicaid and using our rainy-day fund to help businesses. I finally bought myself some decent masks now that I’ll be asked to go back to the office, but goddamn. I’ve decided in preparation for going back, I’m saving videos of COVID lung transplants and patients being intubated as well as buying some disposable masks to hand to coworkers. I can’t be polite anymore if their behavior is endangering people.

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  2. I’m not sure if there’ll be a “Boobs on Your Tube” article, so I’ll put this here.

    Remember how I said that they might be setting up a Supercorp situation on “Stargirl”? Well, one of the two actresses involved, Yvette Monreal, took over the CW’s official Instagram for “Stargirl”. This is what she posted.

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  4. I successfully made pinto beans sans onion, attempted to make cucumber spear pickles.
    Pretty sure I bungled the salt ice water pretreatment and the cucumbers aren’t going to absorb the lovely pickle juice I made, but I wrote it all down.
    Dill,sage,peppercorns, cumin seed and coriander seed 👌

    Going to make myself brownies with an almond butter drizzle instead of a birthday cake this weekend.

    Oh and I played fetch for an adorably long time at least one day this week.

    Listening to a lot of punk and punk adjacent rock lately.

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  5. Lately I’ve been feeling unproductive with my research so I’ve been trying to find other ways to feel centred this week, and your content has really helped with that!
    Over quarantine I’ve made a routine out of going for walks while listening to To L and Back, which never fails to put a smile on my face :) I love the content that you all have been publishing; a big highlight for this week was the top 200 queer movies list published yesterday! The articles published here me feel very grounded and connected with the broader community and that’s something I’ve needed lately.
    I also watched Disclosure on Netflix earlier today and it was AMAZING, definitely a must-watch for any cinephiles out there!

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  7. I’ve had a weird week. One person keeps liking my post on Lex, but when I message them, I never get a reply back. Ugh. Another(Cute Jew) told me to add them on fb but I am sure they left me on the read version of that for friend’s requests. On topic, I’ve like all the Autostraddle article I’ve read this week. Maybe it’s because I just read it, but Xoai Pham’s article about Juneteenth really stuck with me, especially the quote from Angela Davis.

    I spent my Sunday exploring nature & saw turtles!

    Thank you for viewing & reading my post. Have a positive weekend!

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  8. I’ve been looking at ways to support black owned businesses and I recently bought some cookies from this company called Partake Foods, I got the Birthday Cake flavor because my birthday is next Friday. They aren’t a queer business but they have good cookies which are gluten free and vegan and free of 8 common food allergies.

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  9. I’ve also really appreciated Autostraddle’s deliberate focus on Black Lives Matter and overall efforts to center more voices of color recently (even before the protests – for instance, with the recent AAPI miniseries).

    This month I’ve been working on another academic article, but slowly, interspersed with dog walks, sewing masks, and cautiously venturing to protests in my parents’ town. The first time I went, a group of (largely white) self-styled militia guys showed up across the street in the late afternoon. I don’t know that they’ve come to protests since then, but the effect was intimidating enough once. I already knew that it’s a conservative town…On the other hand, the LGBT+ for black lives matter solidarity protest let me see glimmers of the community I could perhaps be enjoying were we not in these pandemic circumstances: I recognized a person or two from open mic nights led by queer people of color. That is a lovely thing to start to see, given how much resentment I held for this place earlier in life. (Now I’m mostly relieved to be somewhere sunnier and more mountainous than Michigan for the time being, even though I’ll have to go back to work at the end of August.)

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  10. My mental health has been kind of messy the last few weeks. Mainly having a lot of executive function issues and not starting doing anything. Combined with my tendency to avoid difficult things, I’m not getting a lot done. It’s a pain. I’m getting a new coach, she can work with me more frequently and is more experienced in working with autism, hopefully I can get some good routines.

    I’ve been really into costuming and historical sewing/crafting lately, hope I can make of the ideas I have. I found this really funny web-show on YT (Black girl in a big dress) about a girl who loves all things English countryside, dressing up in an 18th century gown and reenactment.

    Happy to see you guys are getting rid of some of the racist statues. I saw someone online propose that that people could have their confederate statue, as long as it is a copy of the Nashville Nathan Bedford statue. So, that’s one option.

    Here in the Netherlands we have some statues and a lot of streetnames that people have been protesting against (again). Mainly JP Coen (governor of colonized Indonesia, killed thousends to own the Banda-isles for the nutmeg). In Belgium former King Leopold II and his truly atrocious rule over Congo is back in the spotlight.

    Hope everyone is doing okay and staying healthy. The pandemic has been fairly good under control here, but in the US there is a scary high plateau. Sending you all a virtual (germ free) hug. Take care!

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  12. hi pals! ok i’ve discovered my new favorite way to make mac n cheese: mixing the cheese powder directly into tomato sauce, and pouring that over Impossible Burger “ground beef.” It’s like this perfect sloppy joe bolognese abomination and it made me so happy today! also, i realize it sounds kind of disgusting. but it’s so good!

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    • Interesting, I respect it

      In mac n cheese news, I did my sorta monthly grocery order and picked it up yesterday. (I LOVE grocery shopping/stores, used to intentionally take self care breaks grocery shopping…so not being able to grocery shop is very difficult for me. But covid recovery means I absolutely can’t handle that energy exertion yet.) I ordered a few boxes of Annie’s for my difficult fatigue days….apparently! it was BOGO! because I got so much mac n cheese I was not expecting and was very confused but now incredibly happy about it!

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  13. Hi pals. I think the article which pinged my brain most this week was the one talking about planning for transition during lockdown. Some of the advice might not apply to me totally, but covid has thrown my surgery plans out of the window and locked it for an entirely unspecified time. So seeing that other people too are having this whirlpool of unknown medical waits mixed up with finances, just made me feel supported.

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    • Yesterday (19th) was midsummers eve and today is midsummer day here (in Finland). I had lovely day at our family’s summer cottage: lot’s of swimming and playing around with inflatables, great grilled food and fetasalad, chatting with siblings and cousins (and avoiding drunk aunt).. :) Oh, and as a desert we had heavenly rhubarb pie!

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  14. In the midst of all this turmoil I finalized something truly grand, I moved out on my own, the final step of my divorce.

    Tonight’s my first night in my new digs. I feel like a teenager all over again. Sleeping on a futon. In a thoroughly messy apartment. Not much furniture. But happy as a clam.

    Wheeee!

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