Also.Also.Also: I Wanna Be Mad About Bratz Commodifying Pride, but That Coat

I’m eating cold sesame noodles and ice cream for dinner because I am melting!!! 🥵

Queer as in F*ck You

Ok so down with corporate Pride. You don’t have to convince me, but ok. Just ok. Hear me out —

Two Bratz dolls are in rainbow colored long fur coats while holding protest signs and are photoshopped in front of a pink background with gold and yellow sparkles. The dolls look millennial chic, despite being corporate pride.
Speaking of corporate Pride! We got this message from the folks at GoFundMe and Vanessa wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out:

“GoFundMe is supporting and celebrating Pride by making it easy to donate directly to the LGBTQ+ community and people working to create a more inclusive world. Verified fundraisers that support everything from gender-affirming care to local organizations focused on LGBTQ+ youth can be found at www.gofundme.com/lgbtq“

I don’t always include press release info like this, but I appreciate GoFundMe knowing that queer and trans people are often, well, sharing GoFundMe’s as a means of survival. Talk about knowing your market.

Meet Oregon’s Tina Kotek, Who Hopes to Be America’s First Lesbian Governor

I am so irrationally angry about this, LET WILL BE GAY!! HE IS OBVIOUSLY GAY! ‘Stranger Things’ Star on Will’s Sexuality: ‘It’s Up to the Audience’s Interpretation’

Sabotage and Pistols — Was Ellen Willmott Gardening’s ‘Bad Girl’?

On the Top 10 Reasons I Won’t Leave Autostraddle, to be honest having “menstrual leave” as a person with debilitating fibroids is very close to #1 on that list. Menstrual Leave: Some Companies Are Offering Time off for Periods

Saw This, Thought of You

I’m writing you this post while sitting in my underwear, so let’s just say that even though I don’t currently live in New York, this is at the top of my mind: “”Black New Yorkers are more than twice as likely to die from heat as white residents, city data show.” It’s Going to Be a Hot Summer. It Will Be Hotter if You’re Not Rich.

“We asked teachers across the country to describe the last two years for us. Over 1,000 submissions later, it’s clear that teachers feel forgotten, disillusioned and tired.” America’s Teachers Offer Answers to the Education Crisis

Listen. This is really funny, if you want a good snarky read: Your Personality, Explained by Your Annoying Household Habits

Political Snacks

A reporter at the Uvalde Leader-News lost her daughter in the shooting at Robb Elementary School. She asked the publisher if she could write the obituary.

This is really thoughtful (much more so than the headline implies, to be honest) and smart, but it’s also really difficult. It’s a story about how we tell stories, if that makes sense. Excellent journalism that’s about journalism. From Sandy Hook to Uvalde, the Violent Images Never Seen

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Carmen Phillips

Carmen Phillips is Autostraddle's former editor in chief. She began at Autostraddle in 2017 as a freelance team writer and worked her way up through the company, eventually becoming the EIC from 2021-2024. A Black Puerto Rican feminist writer with a PhD in American Studies from New York University, Carmen specializes in writing about Blackness, race, queerness, politics, culture, and the many ways we find community and connection with each other.  During her time at Autostraddle, Carmen focused on pop culture, TV and film reviews, criticism, interviews, and news analysis. She claims many past homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn, and Buffalo, NY. And there were several years in her early 20s when she earnestly slept with a copy of James Baldwin’s “Fire Next Time” under her pillow. To reach out, you can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram, or her website.

Carmen has written 716 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. If it makes you feel better, Bratz Dolls was started by an Iranian-American immigrant to make a doll his daughter(s?) would more relate to.

  2. I haven’t seen S4 of Stranger Things yet so didn’t read the article for fear of spoilers, but to be fair to Noah Schnapp, I saw the interview in which he said that and it was from before the season released – from what I can tell from their press, they’re treating Will’s sexuality as a spoiler (whilst it may have been obvious to us queers from the first 10 mins of the show that this kid was gay, it wasn’t to a lot of viewers), so presumably Noah was not allowed to just say that he’s gay.

    If it’s still ambiguous so far in S4, based on comments the cast have made I highly doubt it will continue to be – I imagine it will be explicit that he’s gay, if not by the end of S4 then by the end of S5.

  3. Love the piece on menstrual leave!

    As a person with near debilitating luteal phase (the 6-8 days before menstruation) I often find myself near tears at my desk in the latter part of my luteal cycle thinking about how some people (cis men) have a hormone cycle that fluctuates in tune with the workday (24 hours), while I have to do their research with a literally empty tank.

    Also, sorry if this is your name, but of COURSE the dude with “reservations” about menstrual leave is named Harvey.

  4. Omg where is my Ellen Willmott biopic?? There is a market for this!

    “Miss Willmott’s Ghost: A story of love, betrayal, and gardening. Watch it with your house plants!”

  5. teachers DO feel forgotten, disillusioned, and tired! the level of burnout among all my colleagues is just unreal, and it feels like every communication from on high is just another fork stuck in us

Comments are closed.