100 Pictures of 2012: Queer Girls & Friends All Over The World

What a special year it was for queermos all over the globe. Let’s all take a moment to stare into their faces and eyeballs and think about love and togetherness and imagine a big bright beautiful future glimmering ahead of us in 2013, when unicorns will dive into rainbows and turn into pretty dragons who will stop global warming and ensure equality for all forever and evermore. Not all of these photos are of queer girls, but most of them have queer girls in them somewhere.

If you’d like your photo removed or if you spot an error in the caption, email bren [at] autostraddle [dot] com or carrie [at] autostraddle [dot] com!

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3279 articles for us.

28 Comments

  1. I thought I could prevent the tears from coming, but when I saw the picture of the Ugandan gay pride I couldn’t hold them in any longer. Thank you for a lovely and heartwarming (and sometimes, heartbreaking) gallery!

  2. God, I cried all over this. I am so happy to be a part of this beautiful, glorious community. 2013 is gonna be EVEN BETTER!

  3. Hi, a friend just directed me to this page after seeing a picture of me on this site. I’d just like to add a correction: I’m not a girl. I’m not 100% sure about how you got a photo of me, but I’m uncomfortable with being misgendered like this.

    • oh no! we’re truly sorry, Kai, and we have emailed you so you can let us know which photo it is that needs to be removed. (Also not all these photos are of girls. We have a really diverse community around us and therefore there are straight people and male-identified people and non-queer-identified people and non-binary-identified people featured in these photos as well, as often indicated in the picture captions.) We are profusely sorry about any misgendering happening in the captions on these pictures and hope we can get this straightened out!

      in the future, emailing carrie, bren or lemon [at] autostraddle dot com with specific information is the best way to get these things taken care of quickly.

  4. my god, so much cuteness in this. cant handle all the feels i got, seeing the couples getting married, allies, gay pride, etc. it makes me more hopeful for our future :’)

  6. If your then short of a picture, can I STRONGLY reccomend he guys and gals that pulled off the first ever gay pride event in North Wales, UK.
    North Wales is not the most tolerant area in the UK and they managed to pull off an amazing event! I can’t big up these guys enough!! Seiouse hero’s !!!

  7. These photographs fill me with pride! 2012 has been such a significant year – so many tears and so many victories, so many battles and moments of joy still to come in 2013. Great recap of some of the wonderful moments and events from this past year.

  10. Boo @ Azealia Banks. She called Perez Hilton a “messy faggot” this week, then stood behind it.

    The ‘BBD’ rapper went on to call Hilton “dickbreath” and told him to “gobble a dick”. Banks later defended what she said by tweeting: “A faggot is not a homosexual male. A faggot is any male who acts like a female. There’s a BIG difference.”

    • Yeah about that..a buddy said something interesting this whole “BOO! ALZEALIA BANKS” I keep seeing every time her name is brought up:

      “idk all these white ppl i see proclaiming they are ‘SO DONE’ with Azealia and then tearing her down just reminds me of how they can’t forget Chris Brown’s asshattery and will constantly bring it up and villify him but will forgive Charlie Sheen/Sean Penn/Michael Fassbender/Sean Bean of the same crimes.

      there’s a difference between calling someone out or burying them. Azealia Banks says fucked up shit but so does Lana Del Rey and Marina Diamantis and Lady Gaga and Ke$ha and Kreayshawn but they don’t suffer the same rabid demand for public penitence that Azealia does. The reactions are disproportionate even though similar mistakes are made.

      it is important to examine where your ire is coming from. that’s all i’m saying”

      *side-eyes*

      • Yeah, but I’ve also never heard some of those people call someone a faggot and then defend it. I also don’t listen to them much but that’s still beside the point. What she said was a disaster, yet I kind of feel like here we go again: we’ve got a “member of the LGBTQ community,” and because she’s famous and therefore making LGBTQ a little normalized, we allow her to do these things because ‘bigger picture!’ which I think is bullshit. I mean, Charlie Sheen, Sean Penn, Fassbender, and Bean are all total jerks in my book, too. And I gave up on Chris Brown IMMEDIATELY after the Rihanna debacle, much to people’s “it’s just music” dismay. I mean, talk about excuse making…this is a big one. She’s kind of not a good person, but we make her out to be for her cool factor and I’m just over it. She’s one of many. And I’m not even one of those people who gets that into this stuff, but NEVER will “faggot” be a word in my vocabulary. It’s one of my big three baddies, and I don’t think we should push it off to the side, especially!! since she’s defending it in the WORST, rudest way possible.

      • What Chris Brown did was not “asshattery”… it was physical abuse. Juxtaposing some pop-culture term for being an a-hole with beating up a woman is really wrong.

        Azealia Banks, by virtue of being a bi woman of color and having gay friends, doen’t get a free ticket for the language she used… especially telling him to go kill himself (nor should Perez Hilton get a free ticket for all the transphobic shit he’s said in past… but at least has tried to take responsibility for it). We each get to respond to a celeb’s behavior in the commercial realm. I’m going to choose to not purchase any of her songs just as I don’t with Chris Brown, just as I’ve decided to not see Michael Fassbender films. If Perez Hilton had anything worth purchasing I wouldn’t buy it. And I haven’t heard Marina and the Diamonds, or Lana Del Rey say anything near as ‘eff’d up as Azealia Bank’s remarks to Hilton, so I don’t even know what you’re talking about there.

        • Personally I find it to be anyone’s prerogative on how they respond to such controversies. I was not trying to juxtapose what happened with AZ with Chris Brown to be “equal,” yuck, but how ALL POC celebrities are given much more critical negative reaction than their white counterparts who do the same damn thing.

          That. is. all.

  12. This gallery is absolutely wonderful and fills me with so much joy. Thank you so much for putting this together to show we are one big family. The Uganda pride pics made my heart swell and I also shed a tear to see the fearlessness of these people.

    Many people like to blame the rampant and rather aggressive homophobia on “crazy African (the country) politics/religiosity” but there is so much more complexity. I can burst into glitter people on how wonderful this whole gallery is!!!!

  13. “Demonstrators demonstrating at a demonstration” made me giggle. Beautiful gallery for a beautiful year.

    • me too. so wanna join that gay rifle club together? somebody said once green is my color and I do like funny hats. I will not ever touch a gun, tho’.

  16. This post is giving me all sorts of fuzzy warm feelings. Do I have clearance to hug all of you?

  19. oh and vanessa that pic of mareika and PJ at the end is so amazing and i just said awwww out loud :)

  21. We was first stuck on stage 189 on Candy Crush Saga..
    but nto any more because i obtained my free existence and moves.

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