Also.Also.Also: Straight ‘Girlfriends’ Continue Plaguing Our Existence and Other Stories Just for Us and Not Them

This laptop stand is still too short. So. Hope you’re having a LOVELY Thursday!!

Queer as in F*ck You

How Our Cultural Obsession With Platonic ‘Girlfriends’ Sidelines Queer Women by Sadie Graham.

All Hail The New Queer Teen Stars by Shannon Keating.

WNBA Power Rankings.

G Flip: The Queer Aussie Newcomer Turning Heartbreak Into Perfect Pop.

Number of LGBT Candidates Standing for Us Office Breaks Record.

Hayley Kiyoko May Break The VMAs — If You Vote in Time.

4-H Fires Pro-LGBT Director After Backlash.

Meet the Lesbian Native American Woman Running for Congress in Kansas. Her name is Sharice Davids and hopefully you already learned all about her in our massive list of Every Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer And/Or Trans Woman Running for US Office in 2018!!

How a Lesbian Union President and Evangelical Nonprofit Leader Teamed Up to Get Puerto Rico Clean Water. It’s like, do lesbians ever sleep? We’re getting so much done.

Check Out Gender-Fluid Label Sheila Rashid’s Fall 2018 Collection.

Take this Southern LGBTQ Health Survey from the Southern LGBTQ Health Initiative!! Do it!

Saw This, Thought of You

Granny Panties: Been About You and I’m Still About You by Ecleen Caraballo.

#Blessed: Is Everyone Happier Than You On Social Media?

David Marchese In Conversation: Kathleen Turner. What if we started a new section of the Also.Also.Also and call it Kathleen Turner as in F*ck You and it’s just quotes from this interview, for the rest of the year. Think about it.

Research Reveals Media Role in Stereotypes About Native Americans.

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Laneia

Laneia has written 311 articles for us.

44 Comments

  1. Whew, I could barely get through that article about the 4-H director. So much bigoted Conservative rhetoric by the author and the comments under it are even worse.

    • I just said I do not like “gender-confused”. These people are “science/biology-confused” and confused about how other people don’t share their beliefs.

  3. Laneia, what kind of laptop stand do you have? This situation needs to be resolved pronto.

  4. That Kathleen Turner article is awesome. Can’t wait for my “fuck you 50s”

    #olderStraddler
    #lifegoals

    • I’m living them right now, getting ready for the next jump in fact. What a ride I tell you. The 50’s are not for the faint of heart but wow, what a transformation.

      It’s a bit like going through a haunted house ; your past rears up saying “Boo!” around every corner.

      Things you don’t remember happening or were like “yeah whatever” at the time, all of a sudden they take on such MEANING. It’s the perspective, I think. Seeing so much of your life in one gaze, it’s beautiful and awesome and terrifying and “why couldn’t I have gotten here sooner, now this makes sense and I can really start to live”

      Hang on through the bumpy bits (hormonal and otherwise), they’re not the story.

      Because it’s also like being in a chrysalis, you’re about to be reborn. I guess… it’s another type of puberty (gd I hate that word).

      • This is lovely. Thank you. I’m 48 going on 49 and I’ve experienced some of that already. I love the haunted house metaphor.

  6. I hadn’t heard of Kathleen Turner (I live under a rock) so I did some googling and OH SWEET MERCIFUL MARY MOTHER OF GOD WHY DID I READ A PAGE ON THE FRIENDS WIKI ABOUT A TRANS CHARACTER WHY DON’T I KNOW BETTER BY NOW

    What better way to start the day than sobbing into my laptop I guess?

    • There was a lot to love in that interview but it’s stuff like the below that make this kind of Thursday morning heartbreak possible:

      “In Crimes of Passion I was playing a designer by day, $50 whore on Hollywood Boulevard by night. Do you think I was going to hang out with whores on Hollywood Boulevard and find out what the fuck that was like? I have an imagination, you know.”

  9. I don’t like that term, “gender-confused”. It makes us sound like we’re not in our right mind. Also, HRT makes it so that the fat is redistributed to the areas where they’d be were the person capable of producing a significant amount of the hormone they’re taking. In the case of FtM people, no more period after a certain point. So these zealots really need to do something about their education in regards to biology.

    It’s quite ironic that Yulín brought those people together because she’s always instigating all kinds of bullshit against the other parties and politricks people in Puerto Rico. She’s actually extremely divisive but people who don’t know Spanish and especially aren’t from there are not likely to know this or care just because she hates Trump. To me, she and Trump are just as bad as each other (she had a guy arrested just because he said he’d do whatever he can so she wouldn’t be elected as governor. If you want to know how shit voting in Puerto Rico is, we still use paper so people chuck the boxes into rivers, ditches, the mountains).

    Regarding the stereotypes, unfortunately, those are very common all across North America. Look into The Highway of Tears. There is an inordinate amount of missing women. There are guys being shot because Innocent Farmer decided that people whose car broke down were trespassing on “his” land. ?

    Recently, when the RCMP in Calgary (city in Canada) talked about supporting the LGBTQ+ community, they included I think every known letter and a lot of people were mocking the term two-spirit. It absolutely pissed me off because some people think it’s woke to demand reconciliation for the First Nations people every time the LGBTQ+ community is mentioned but then here they are insulting something that is part of First Nations culture and beliefs. If anyone wants to know more about the plight still faced by these people, purchase or borrow from the library Prison Writings:My Life is My Sun Dance. I’m angry that he still hasn’t been released from prison he shouldn’t have even been in in the first place.

  10. Wowza that Broadly article hit so close to home for me!

    So much of my high school experience was the confusion/denial/uncertainty of where the line of “normal” female intimacy was with some of my close friends. I was so incredibly bemused and jealous at the ease in which that side of friendship came to them – whereas to me it carried so much weight and second-guessing. So much so that I resorted to keeping so many of my female friends at arms length just to make it clear to myself and protect myself rather than harbour all the uncertainty and guilt of what our interactions meant.

    I think the predominant cultural explanation of female intimacy as 100% STRAIGHT DON’T WORRY that the article talked about is so much of why I took so long (aka not until I was 21) to properly come to terms with the huge, romantic crushes I had on some of my friends as being just that rather than “girl-crushes” or just like “super, super close, like really close” friendships. SO wish my 15-year old self (hell, 10-year old self) could have read that article!

    • Though I’m unsure about how many actually do this, in Japan, there is a lot of Yuri stuff because supposedly, as long as the women/girls are under a certain age, they’re just practicing for when they marry some guy. Also remember the Lesbian Until Graduation thing that is supposedly pervasive in the US. I wouldn’t know about this but I guess it’s a thing common enough that someone wrote about it. My take is that this way of thinking is the product of countries where a very specific group of people have deluded themselves into thinking they are the Sun the world revolves around.

      • Same. My adolescence could be known as “I swear I am not like, gay, or anything. Just ‘girl crush’!”

        When I was 19, and just starting to accept being bi, I had a coworker who liked to walk that line of “is this queer?” In the end, it really messed me up emotionally.

      • I’ve been called a LUG and I’ve come to see it as a form of bi-erasure.

        I realized I was attracted to women in college, came out as bi, had a couple relationship-ish things with women and married a man post college.

        Maybe there are women who genuinely are just “trying on” lesbianism in college and then “go back” to being straight post college, when it’s less convenient to be queer. But I’m skeptical of the concept. It certainly wasn’t like that for me and the whole LUG thing kept me doubting myself and thinking I wasn’t queer enough or bi enough to be part of the lgbtq+ community for years.

        /end rant. I have a lot of feelings about LUGs

        • I never thought of it from that perspective but that’s probably because aside from that not being a thing (that I’m aware of) where I’ve spent most of my life, I am NOT one of those people who have a problem with bisexual people. At least I thought that if a person really is bisexual, they would refer to themselves as such and be knowledgeable about things relating to the community. Was this term referring specifically to bi people or is that just your experience with it?

          • Was this term referring specifically to bi people or is that just your experience with it?

            I’m not sure how to answer that. LUG is more of a stereotype than an identity. I’ve never seen anyone use the term LUG to refer specifically to bi women. But in practice, many women who are labeled as LUGs probably are bi or pan or fluid. My experience with LUG is that it’s used as a dismissive way to say that someone isn’t a real lesbian or to say that they were just experimenting with women while in college but weren’t serious about it.

            That’s why I say it contributes to bi-erasure. And why it hurt me to be called a LUG. Because it assumes that if a woman dates a man after dating a woman, she must have “changed her mind” instead of being bi / pan / fluid all along.

            Here’s a good definition of the stereotype, from an AS article – https://www.autostraddle.com/the-lesbian-until-graduation-now-a-new-york-times-most-emailed-article-81758/

            The “lesbian until graduation” is the cultural archetype of a [usually white, privileged, overeducated] girl who “experiments” with same-sex relationships in college either as part of a rebellion against her parents/hometown/former life as a high schooler with a curfew or as the result of a newfound feminist political consciousness that can only truly be manifested by touching another girl’s vagina.

    • This seems to be a really common experience for queer women and I can’t imagine how confusing and blurred the lines are.

      I have actually never had a close straight female friend after age 12 or so, all my closest female friends are queer, and in a way that also had it’s moments of confusion. I was in love with my bff in high school, but she didn’t reciprocate my feelings. Our friendship was extremely intimate and still is, but she just never wanted to be with me like *that*.

      Sometimes I would wish she was straight so I’d at least be able to say “well, of course I don’t have a chance”. It’s hard to explain.

      My friendships are also really important to me and tend to be what I’d call “romantic friendships”, so I can relate to people of any orientation who have that type of relationship with their friends. I don’t see it as filling some gap I have with the partners I have sex with, it just is what it is. I don’t have a ton of friends, but the ones I do have all feel like soul mates in one way or another.

      That said, I would love to see a moratorium on straight women saying “girl crush” to mean “platonic crush”, I do find that marginalizing. Even “friend crush” is better because it doesn’t imply when a woman has a crush on another woman it’s this completely sexless, platonic thing.

      • Actually, I take back what I said about wishing my bff was straight, I didn’t really want that, it was just hard to come to terms with the fact that she was attracted to women, she just wasn’t attracted to ME (which like, so it goes, but really broke my heart as a loveless teen)

        • Regarding your first comment, it’s like the popularity of the “woman crush Wednesday” thing on Instagram. I don’t really understand from where that comes. I mean, there’s nothing inherently lesbian about saying you find a certain women admirable and beautiful. Acknowledging someone as good looking does not equate to wanting to sleep with them.

    • I’m definitely with you on all of that. It happens to me more so in the various jobs I’ve had. There’s always one particular straight-girl coworker who I get really close to and there is a lot of emotional support but for sure that lurking hetero shit is always around. It’s endlessly frustrating but also I should probably stop crushing on straight girls.

      • UGH, I HATE THAT. Listen (read?), remember that you can’t pick who you’re attracted to, just like they can’t pick how they feel about it. The only choice anyone has is whether or not they will do something about it and how they’re going to react. Also, when some heterosexual guy sees a lesbian and says, “Such a waste,” laugh in his face and tell him that that’s how you (and the rest of us probably) feel most of the time.

        Also, keep in mind that sadly, there are some nefarious ladies who will take advantage of any affection they can get irrespective of their actual inclinations. A friend of mine hits on everyone so ironically, women who say they’re heterosexual love it and many start catfighting amongst themselves for her attention. I don’t get the logistics of it. I don’t think I’d be able to get away with that sort of thing.

    • I didn’t realize I was queer until college (I’m bi and in my high school experience at least, the culturally easier accessibility of physical intimacy with guys made me, um, too distracted to realize I was into women until later). So my early best friendships with other girls were never a source of distress for me in this way. I’m sorry so many of you had to go through that – I’m definitely starting to experience it in a really different way when trying to make adult friendships, but it sounds way more bewildering to experience while you’re in the middle of growing up and figuring things out!

      I’ve been having a lot of discussions about heterosexual people using “partner” lately! My first reaction is that it really rankles me, but when I think about some of the other aspects of the issue (gender neutral terminology seems good, remembering that people in heterosexual-appearing relationships are not always themselves heterosexual, etc. etc.) then I start to feel like I shouldn’t care as much.

      I think my main issue is that it kind of feels like people do that more with me specifically, because they know that I’m queer and engaged to a woman. Like, it kind of feels like if they were talking to another straight person or couple they would say “my boyfriend” but with me they’re like “my partnerrrrr we’re totally the sameeeee” IDK.

      Does anyone else have this experience or feel this way? I’m split tbh!

      • That’s interesting. I’m bi and I’ve started sometimes referring to my husband as my partner. I started doing it in queer spaces so people wouldn’t automatically assume I’m straight and I liked it so much I’ve been doing it other places too. I’ve noticed that when I talk about my husband, people tend to make weird gendered assumptions about our relationship – like they expect me to complain about him being incompetent in the kitchen or something. But not as much when I talk about my partner.

  12. I was excited for the gender-fluid Sheila collection until I saw the price. Nearly $400 for a pair of jeans is a bit much, especially when we are a community that is less likely to afford clothing like this. I get it’s a small company, but I rarely see lines like these be more at a price more people in the community can afford.

  14. ALSO BROADLY I AM YELLING:

    ” These authors describe how they found fulfillment in other women, but the spectral figure of The Boyfriend or The Husband lurks at the margins of each piece. While he may be decentered, heterosexuality is not: it is, in fact, what is at stake.”

    like??? omg

  15. Trying to take the Southern LGBTQ Healthy Survey and temporarily stuck on #22 “In a few words, please describe a negative experiences with a medical provider (physical or mental) that was memorable to you.”

    The word “a” infers singular but I have a list and have to decide between with personal worst(makes me upset to this day) or egregiously fucking stupid that coulda killed somebody else had they not had someone to drive them to the ER like I did.

    My medical things are mild for AFAB human yet I have a LIST of negative medical provider experiences.

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