‘Babygirl’ Is As Smart as It Is Hot — And It’s Really Hot

This review of Babygirl was originally published as part of our TIFF 2024 coverage.

Halina Reijn’s Babygirl opens with an orgasm. Or, rather, it opens with a fake orgasm. After being fucked by her husband, Romy (Nicole Kidman) will have to secretly watch porn on her laptop in order to actually come.

Romy’s husband is played by Antonio Banderas who has been one of the most overtly sexual actors on our screens since he himself was fucked in Almodovar’s Law of Desire. It’s an inspired casting choice and indicative of Reijn’s sharp storytelling. The problem isn’t Romy’s husband. The problem is Romy. Her desired heterosexuality is not actually that twisted or taboo, but it seems that way for a wealthy straight woman in her 50s filled with shame.

And so it’s fitting that the person who arrives to unlock her desires would be younger. That he’s her employee — an intern — just makes it hotter.

There are films interested in the ways women abuse their power and leave male victims in their wake. In just the last year May December and Last Summer are two excellent examples. This is not that film. Instead, the power differentiation between Romy and her intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson) works primarily to welcome us into Romy’s desires. When Samuel takes control, when he insists on Romy’s submission, any discomfort with his forcefulness is outweighed by our discomfort with Romy’s position of power. Discomfort cancels out discomfort and all that’s left is eroticism.

It’s not just youth that unlocks the taboo. It’s also queerness. Romy’s gay daughter (Esther McGregor) is carrying on an affair of her own — with a younger neighbor — and while that behavior is not excused by the film (or the daughter’s girlfriend), it does hold less intensity. When Samuel finally gets Romy to meet him in public, it’s at a club pulsing with sexuality that defies labels. A woman kisses Romy. Samuel and another men caress. There are limits and boundaries that vanish outside the paradigm of heterosexual expectations.

Babygirl has the tone and plot structure of many erotic thrillers — most notably Unfaithful — but, as Reijn said in the post-screening Q&A, she isn’t interested in punishing any of her characters. The drama remains grounded and is not motivated by some moralistic judgment on Romy’s sexuality. Rather, the hurt that’s caused is a product of a woman with very normal sexual proclivities feeling like she must hold them in until they explode.

Like Reijn’s previous film Bodies Bodies Bodies, Babygirl is a film that’s so fun, it’s easy to overlook its intelligence. Both films are sharp in their critiques and their empathies. For every sex scene that will cause you to writhe in your seat, there’s a line of dialogue or a glance shared between actors that reveals new layers to Reijn’s confident intent.

It helps that the film is perfectly cast. Nicole Kidman brings her entire self to a role that feels written for her. She’s poised and vulnerable and hungry. Romy may give up control to Samuel, but Kidman is in control the whole time. It’s thrilling to watch one of the greatest actors of all time have the chance to bring the entirety of her talent and the entirety of her celebrity to a performance. She’s matched by Harris Dickinson who transcends the archetype of home-wrecking heartthrob. While Samuel may confound Romy, he is not a blank slate of projection for her or the audience. Instead of an absence, he has so much of everything. He’s a series of contradictions. That his power feels both calculated and casual makes it all the more erotic.

Beyond the leads, Banderas proves that he is still capable of bringing his talents to movies not directed by Almodóvar. Sophie Wilde, as Romy’s assistant, takes a role that could be thankless and turns it into another layer of female desire. And Esther McGregor well-represents the experience of being a gay eldest daughter who has to mother her mother.

Before becoming a director, Reijn herself was an actor and that experience is clear in how she builds a cast and elicits performance. She doesn’t need the plot manipulations of the erotic thrillers that inspired her, because she’s attuned to the smaller dramas between people.

Sometimes sex itself feels like a murder — the killing of an identity and the birth of a new one. For some, this movie will have the same effect. But even if you don’t share Romy’s hetero blocks, there is plenty to discuss, ponder, and simply enjoy. Sex is back on-screen and it’s never felt better.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Drew Burnett Gregory

Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Drew Burnett has written 631 articles for us.

8 Comments

  4. Through Nicole Kidman’s stunning performance, the film skillfully unfolds layers of emotion and empathy, allowing viewers to feel not only the sexual tension but also the character’s inner struggles.

  6. I’m confused as to why this is here. This is just another heterosexual-relationship-focused movie being fetishized. I don’t know about the others here, but het sex isn’t hot to me. Give me a wlw with these dynamics and I’d totally get behind the article.

  7. So, as one of my fave critics, your praise of this gives me more interest in watching this. Since I was curious if it’d bring something intriguing with its exploration of submission.

Comments are closed.

The Top Gayest Moments of the ‘Wicked’ Press Tour

Happy Ozmas! It’s like Christmas but where you can’t stop thinking or talking about Wicked! What a time to be alive, and of course by that I mean what a time to be alive for one of the most unhinged and earnest and delightful and bizarre and GAY big movie press tours of all time! In my ongoing efforts to distract myself from having to wait a year for Wicked: For Good, I decided to round up some of the gayest moments from the press tour. I couldn’t even get them all, because there are too many!!!! What a chaotic and gay cast we have here!!! But here are some highlights that together paint a pretty complete picture of just exactly what this press tour was holding space for.

14. All the times Ariana and Cynthia cried

I can’t even pick just one, but this is definitely one of the many examples of just how obsessed with one another they are. Ariana suggests they have TELEPATHY!!!!!!!!!!

13. Ariana and Cynthia talking about their matching outfits day one on set

Just another example of these two being cosmically connected. Ariana’s sweatshirt saying GAY also got me good.

12. Michelle Yeoh reacts to being a “gay icon”

She’s so thrilled!

11. Ariana Grande says she looked up Cynthia’s sign

The whole lie detector interview is a favorite of mine, especially the moon landing bit and the way she pronounces “Florida,” but this moment where she talks about having looked up Cynthia’s sign and knowing their compatibility is just so theater gay.

10. Some queer and queer-coded picks for the cast’s Letterboxd Four

Overall, I thought everyone’s choices were actually quite fun! Marissa Bode picked But I’m a Cheerleader and the original Wizard of Oz; Ariana Grande picked To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, which Cynthia Erivo said she also had seen recently and loved even though it didn’t make her list; it’s unclear if Jeff Goldblum understood the assignment, but it was still entertaining to hear him talk through it.

9. Jonathan Bailey agrees Fiyero is a “bi king”

I agree about the vibes between Fiyero and Pfannee for the record.

8. “Those chickens are gay”

When asked about Pride in Oz, the cast was like that’s pretty much every day in Oz. And to be fair, yeah, there are a lot of gay people in Wicked and therefore in Oz! Those chickens clucking around Emerald City? Gay, according to Ariana Grande.

7. Bowen Yang and Bronwyn James answer gay questions about their characters

@gaytimes

@bowen yang and Bronwyn James tell us which of their @Wicked Movie characters would be most likely to… ✨ #game #wicked #wickedthemusical #snl #saturdaynightlive #wickedmovie #arianagrande #glinda #dragrace #rupaulsdragrace

♬ Cena Engraçada e Inusitada – HarmonicoHCO

I am truly obsessed with the fact that both of Glinda’s sidekicks are played by big ol’ gays who really do bring a queer sensibility to both characters.

6. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo share all of their matching tattoos they got during production

The first time I heard about their matching tattoos, I was like wow they really bonded on that set. Then when I watched the video of them explaining all the tattoos they got and their meaning and placements, I was like wow their love transcended space and time on that set.

5. Jonathan Bailey names “I’m Not That Girl” as a queer anthem

I’ve been saying this!!!! Also, not for nothing, “I’m Not That Girl” was one of my audition songs when I was a closeted musical theater kid.

4. Bowen getting his face beat while talking about Ariana pulling queer tarot cards

If the press tour was this gay, then I can only imagine what the vibe on set was. Ariana doing three card pulls from a queer tarot deck? It literally sounds like gay theater camp.

3. Ariana Grande says Glinda might be “a little bit in the closet”

She’s right, and she should say it, and in fact she did.

2. “Holding space” for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity”

Of course, of course, the iconic moment that was unavoidable even if you weren’t totally locked in to the Wicked press tour like some of us. Especially if you’re in queer media. It’s the pink hold heard round the world.

1. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo break down the viral holding space moment

Yes, even more so than the initial viral video, I think this video where they both “explain” it is the best and therefore queerest moment from the entire press tour. If there’s one key takeaway to be had, it’s that we all work in queer media if you really think about it. And cheers to that!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 947 articles for us.

1 Comment

Comments are closed.

The Best Queer Poetry Releases of 2024

Whether you’re a poet yourself or just beginning to dip your toe into the medium, we have curated a list for you to catch up on the best queer poetry releases of 2024! Check this list out for what you missed this year, and you can seek them out and then discuss them at your New Year’s Eve parties so you can sound educated and sophisticated (and hot). Buy yourself or someone else in your life one (or more, or all!) of these books, and support queer writers as we head into the New Year.

Good Dress by Brittany Rogers (Tin House Books)

Good Dress by Brittany Rogers (Tin House Books)

Queer Black femme poet Brittany Rogers’ debut book Good Dress is a love story and coming-of-age set against the backdrop of Detroit. The book is a love letter to the city, that pulls no punches about its beauty and its pain. Navigating a strong female lineage in a city whose Black history is marked by the Great Migration, Rogers looks at the internal and external with grace and power. The poems are intimate, nostalgic, and investigative, carrying the speaker through a journey of Black womanhood and the question of what it means to “belong” to a city or a place. Called a “once-in-a-generation debut” by Angel Nafis, this book holds the mastery of an established pen.

Read the poem “Detroit Pastoral”

What Good Is Heaven by Raye Hendrix (Texas Review Press)

What Good Is Heaven by Raye Hendrix (Texas Review Press)

Another stunning debut, Raye Hendrix’s What Good Is Heaven follows a young speaker navigating her bisexual identity among the Appalachian foothills. In particular the speaker’s experience of growing up in a rural area on a farm forces her to contend early with the question of violence — witnessing daily violence perpetrated against land and animal, bodily harm against queer bodies begins to feel inherent to the speaker, in that both violences are deemed acceptable by a fierce cisheteropatriarchal country. As deep as water and as soft as grass, these poems “ask what it means to love and be loved by what hurts you, to be implicated in perpetuating the same kinds of harm, and what it means to call such a complicated place your home.”

Read the poem “Meat”

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Pivoting away from debuts, Carl Phillips’ latest work enters a long oeuvre of collections that contend with desire, memory, and their implications. Like all Phillips’ books, Scattered Snows, to the North concerns itself with the past — personal and collective — and what the act of reflecting can, and cannot, accomplish. His recognizable voice remains after 17 books, yet never falters or grows tiring — only louder, more confident, more comforting to readers familiar and fresh.

Read the poem “Scattered Snows, to the North”

Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin (Brick Books)

Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin (Brick Books)

Version 1.0.0

Known best for her debut novel Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily Austin’s poetry book came to thunderous life this year. A reclamation of Catholic teachings for queer women, Gay Girl Prayers rewrites Bible passages to reflect the complicated experience of growing up gay in a deeply religious social and cultural structure. Rather than a complete takedown of religion, however, this book deconstructs what queer people have been taught to fear about faith and builds it back up into a church that welcomes all through its doors. It rotates a cast of female characters from scripture in such a way that allows them the voice denied them by years of patriarchal corruption, and turns even the queerest among them into the holiest.

Read the poems “John 9:1-12” and “Romans 1:26-27 & Ruth 1:16”

Calligraphies by Marilyn Hacker (W.W. Norton)

Calligraphies by Marilyn Hacker

Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons remains a bastion of lesbian poetry, and nearly 40 years later her book Calligraphies reminds us why. Described as a “tribute to exiles and refugees,” Hacker observes the language we use for revolution, rebellion, and identity, and catalogs a personal history against a backdrop of global unrest and pandemic. Her control of the crown sonnet and ghazal forms is so seamless, you forget the formal layers that ring around the collection like a great big beautiful old oak.

Read the poem “Calligraphies VI”

Bluff by Danez Smith (Graywolf)

Bluff by Danez Smith

If you’re reading queer poetry but don’t know Danez Smith’s name, I don’t know what to tell you other than to get your shit together. Smith’s latest collection reckons with the violent venn diagram of Minneapolis in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine coinciding with George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests that followed. Not only do these poems illustrate the brutality of that summer and its echoes, they find Smith questioning their responsibility as a Minneapolis native to document. Smith contends with the artform of poetry itself, in that it too is not free from unchecked capitalism and white supremacy, even as it is the medium the poet turns to again and again. All of Smith’s collections are brilliant, but there is something in Bluff that feels like a car not just turning around, but growing wings and taking flight.

Read the poem “anti poetica”

Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return by CAConrad (Wave Books)

Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return by CAConrad

An arguable icon of ecopoetics, CAConrad speaks with a voice seemingly ancient and omnipotent. This latest iteration is something of a gospel of the Anthropocene, engaging with extinction and regeneration — how nature, despite how we brutalize it, bounces back in new and exhilarating ways, an ecological boomerang. In an interview, CAConrad describes their poems as “breathing wild creatures. They stand on the bottom of the page, vibrating in the center of their bodies. If they were to come off the page to live with me, I would work hard to buy a house with many rooms. We would share a large bed; if they learned to jump back on the page when needed, I could take them wherever I went!” Their familiar intelligent absurdity is at ease with disruption, but never do they feel unreachable. On the contrary, each book of theirs builds a fresh lexicon to help us fall back in love with the world around us, that helps us “to / desire / the world / as it is.” An essential and irretrievable poetic icon.

Read an excerpt

impact statement by Jody Chan (Brick Books)

impact statement by Jody Chan

In impact statement, Jody Chan disrupts the colonial nature of the Western medical system, reimagining a future of a “queer, disabled, abolitionist” community whose notions of care refuse methods of care encouraged by carceral capitalism. This collection utilizes “patient records, psychiatric assessments, and court documents” to examine the racist practice of psychiatric institutions, questioning what constitutes disability when it is defined by a corrupt capitalist system that prioritizes health only as a means of production. The collection, however, recognizes too the optimism of community care, through means of abolition and mutual aid.

Read the poem “Triage”

I cannot be good until you say it by Sanah Ahsan (Bloomsbury Publishing)

I cannot be good until you say it by Sanah Ahsan

Winner of the Outspoken Performance Poetry Prize, as well as a clinical psychologist, Sanah Ahsan’s debut reflects the poet’s fierce intelligence, soft compassion, and powerful sense of justice. Their creative work is clearly influenced by their scholarly work, in that they both deconstruct whiteness and madness, questioning what we do and can mean to each other in an emotionally turbulent and politically distressed existence. I cannot be good until you say it reflects on the Quranic verse as much as it does Ahsan’s clinical psychology studies, refusing binary and embracing “the messiness of being alive, building altars to complication and presence.”

Read the poem “There is No Belief Without Unbelief”

I Don’t Want to Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (Alice James Books)

I Don’t Want to Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

The title of Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s I Don’t Want to Be Understood is the rallying cry of the collection itself: in a cultural climate that seeks to “normalize” transness, Espinoza’s verse revolts. In these poems, transness is neither a corrupting evil nor a neoliberal act of bravery — it is its own entirety, fighting against the idea that it must be understood, while also reckoning with the loneliness of mis- or lack of understanding. Espinoza recognizes in transness, as well as womanhood or broadly personhood itself, to seek to be known is often a futile act, no matter the identity of the individual grieving for it. A tour de force of poetic voice, Espinoza does it again.

If you’re interested in hearing more about this title, read this review from our beloved Drew Burnett Gregory.

Read the poem “Time-Lapse Video of Trans Woman Collapsing Inward Like a Dying Star”

DEED by torrin a. greathouse (Wesleyan University Press)

DEED by torrin a. greathouse

An exploration of canon across genre, paying homage and then questioning that homage as a trans, disabled poet whose communities have not traditionally been loved by those within the canon, DEED is a formal collection of luminous magnitude. Desire is the crux of these poems, who navigate the silt of a complex, complicated word’s history and meaning. greathouse is a master of a variety of forms in this collection, all of which call upon the violence and tenderness of desire — how we experience it as individuals, as a collective, as a culture. Described by its publisher’s website as “an innovative exploration of desire and its cost,” DEED’s mission to “write an honest poem about desire” comes from a noble, necessary voice in queer poetics.

Read the poem “Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of Saint. Sebastian”

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Gabrielle Grace Hogan

Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry has been published by TriQuarterly, CutBank, Salt Hill, and others, and has been supported by the James A. Michener Fellowship and the Ragdale Foundation. In the past, she has served as Poetry Editor of Bat City Review, and as Co-Founder/Co-Editor of You Flower / You Feast, an anthology of work inspired by Harry Styles. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can find her on Instagram @gabriellegracehogan, her website www.gabriellegracehogan.com, or wandering a gay bar looking lost.

Gabrielle has written 22 articles for us.

10 Women’s Sports Moments of 2024 That Everybody Was Watching

For all its shortcomings — and, no doubt, there have been many — 2024 was a banner year for women’s sports…and, of course, queer women have been at the forefront of that movement. As I look ahead to 2025, I reminisced about my most memorable moments in women’s sports for the year.

10. Christen Press, What Have You Done? Christen Press Plays Again

christen press returning to the game

In the 89th minute of Angel City FC’s third game of the Summer Cup, it finally happened: Christen Press stepped back onto the pitch. It was a moment 781 days in the making, more than two years, after Press had torn her anterior cruciate ligament in ACFC’s inaugural season. Play went on for five more minutes, the Los Angeles crowd vacillating between cheering loudly and holding their collective breaths anytime Press was challenged. Scoreless after full time, the match proceeded to a penalty shoot-out.

The second shooter for ACFC, Press strode up to the spot, placed the ball down, and took five steps back. At the ref’s whistle, Press runs up and sends the ball into bottom left-hand corner of the goal, just out of reach of the San Diego goalkeeper. It wasn’t much but for a striker who loved nothing more than scoring goals, seeing one go into the net…it mattered. Christen Press was back.

Seeing Press on that pitch again felt wholly miraculous, like a triumph that rivaled some of Press’ most jaw-dropping goals. For more than two years, it’d been a seemingly unending rollercoaster of surgeries, rehab, and setbacks. Even I started to wonder if we’d ever see her out on the pitch again. But Press, embodying the spirit of her late mother, was relentless.

“When you’re told you need surgery for a fourth time, the people who love you start to ask, ‘At what point is she going to wake up?'” Press told ESPN. “But it never even dawned on me to give up. That’s just how I’m wired.”

9. Transphobia in Sports Comes For Cis Boxer Imane Khelif and She Goes For The Gold

PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 09: Imane xKhelif of Team Algeria celebrates as she wins gold medal after defeating Liu Yang (blue) of China in the Boxing Women's 66kg Final match on day fourteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Roland Garros on August 09, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu via Getty Images)

(Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu via Getty Images)

It’s hard to reflect on the year in LGBT sports and not acknowledge the rampant transphobia that’s gripped the discourse. The attacks, the rampant misinformation, have made participation in sport difficult, if not impossible, for many trans athletes. But this year also offered a stark reminder that transphobia hurts us all. Here’s how Stef Rubino summed it up back in August:

Algerian Olympic women’s 66kg boxing champion Imane Khelif had to stave off accusations that she is either transgender or “too” intersex to compete in the Olympic games after her defeat of Italian boxer Angela Carini. After their bout, which saw Carini giving up on the fight after being punched by Khelif only twice, misinformation about Khelif’s sex, biology, and eligibility to compete quickly spread online thanks to comments from Carini and her team. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) quickly stepped in to defend Khelif and assure the public that the sex test results being circulated online and in the media were bogus and came from the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA), which is banned from Olympic participation. Regardless, the IOC’s statements had almost no effect on the misinformation being spread on social media and the news. Once again, the conversation on sex testing women’s sports has blasted back into our international consciousness, and people are debating everything from the efficacy to the necessity to the injustices of these tests in the public sphere.

Despite everything stacked against her, Khelif triumphed at the Olympics and brought home a gold medal.

While the spotlight has faded from Khelif to some extent, following her gold medal victory, the fight continues — out of the ring — to respond to the bullying to which Khelif was subjected. In August, the boxer filed a criminal complaint against those who engaged in cyberbullying and is preparing an additional lawsuit against French magazine Le Correspondant for libel.

Here’s hoping Khelif tastes justice in the new year.

8. The Elite 8: Brittney Griner Returns to the Olympics For Another Gold Medal

Olympic women's basketball team celebrates a gold medal

(Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

“My life is over, right here,” Brittney Griner thought when two vape cartridges were discovered in her luggage at a Russian airport. In the States, she was a licensed cannabis user but in Russia, where she was playing during the WNBA offseason, cannabis was forbidden. As she waited for customs agents to conduct their investigation, Griner felt herself slipping into a pit of despair. One mistake, one mental lapse, one rushed packing job cost Griner everything: “This is it for me. This is it for me,” she repeated to herself.

Mercifully, that day wasn’t the end of Griner’s story. When she returned stateside, after surviving a nearly 300 day nightmare, Griner pledged to never leave again, unless she was asked to suit up for Team USA. It’d be her way to repay the generosity her country had shown her. This summer, Griner got her shot.

The Phoenix Mercury center joined her WNBA peers — many of whom had been among the loudest voices advocating for her freedom — and brought home an ninth gold medal for Team USA. The path to that gold medal wasn’t nearly as easy as most people (read: me) expected. The most dominant team in Olympic sports history, the team that hadn’t lost an Olympic game since 1992, looked fallible. But thanks to Griner and her Mercury teammate, Kahleah Copper, Team USA won their eighth straight gold medal.

After the game, Griner stood on the dais, collected her gold medal, and cried as the national anthem played. She’d tell NBC News, “My country fought for me to get back and I was able to bring home gold for my country. There’s just no greater feeling.”

7. Delayed but not Denied: Sha’carri Richardson Becomes an Olympic Champion

sha'carri richardson running for her life

(Photo by Lui Siu Wai/Xinhua via Getty Images)

After winning a spot on the 2020 Olympic track and field team, American sprinter Sha’carri Richardson darted into the stands and embraced the family members who had come to watch, the family she credited with getting her to this point. It was both a moment of elation and an exorcising of grief: Richardson’s biological mother had died just a week prior. But grief is not linear and rarely ends in triumph. In an effort to cope, Richardson self-medicated with marijuana and failed the post-race drug test as a result. She was suspended and lost the opportunity to compete at the Tokyo Olympics.

But this year, Richardson came back better. She would heed the words of her grandmother — “Don’t start nothing and don’t finish it. You start, you finish” — finishing the race she started: the race to become an Olympic champion.

In Paris, Richardson would qualify in two events — the 100m sprint and the 4×100 relay — and medal in both. Her silver medal performance in the sprint was incredible but her anchor leg performance in the relay? It was the stuff of legends: Richardson destroying the final leg of the 4×100, pushing Team USA from third to first place and capturing the gold medal.

6. The End of an Era: Candace Parker, Layshia Clarendon, Merritt Mathias, Kelley O’Hara and Sinead Farrelly Retire

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JULY 16: Layshia Clarendon #25 of the Los Angeles Sparks in the second half at Crypto.com Arena on July 16, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

“I came. I saw. I f*cked sh*t up,” Angel City Defender Merritt Mathias touted, as she announced her retirement from professional soccer. In truth, that could be the slogan for so much of the 2024 class of retirees…so many of them came into their respective sports and completely changed the game.

Candace Parker revolutionized the game. The Tennessee product ushered in an era of position-less basketball with her 6’4″ frame capable of playing any spot on the floor. Her versatility helped win three WNBA championship with three different franchises. She remains the only player to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player Award in a single season. Parker announced her retirement from basketball back in April.

Sinead Farrelly might not be the household name that other NWSL players are but few have done more to change the game. Back in 2021, Farrelly and Mana Shim both came forward and shared the story of the abuse they experienced under their former head coach, abuse that drove them both away from the game. The revelations sent shockwaves throughout the league and led to firings, changes in club ownership, and the addition of safeguards for future generations of NWSL players. Farrelly retired a champion, having won the 2023 NWSL Championship with Shim and Gotham FC.

Layshia Clarendon has played for half of the WNBA’s teams in their 12 seasons in the league and, at each stop, they have brought an unrelenting tenacity and an unmatched basketball IQ. Simply put, they made every team they were on better. But perhaps the thing that Clarendon will be remembered for, above all else, is for their involvement with the WNBA Players Association. They changed the game, quite literally, with their work on the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement and the 2020 WNBA Wubble. Clarendon announced their retirement back in September.

Kelley O’Hara has been through it. She preserved as part of one of the most poorly run franchises in sports, Sky Blue FC, and a franchise rocked by abuse allegations, the Washington Spirit. Off the field, O’Hara was the backbone to the US Women’s National Team’s equal pay fight. Through it all, O’Hara has been an absolute winner. She retires having won two NWSL championships, two World Cups, and Olympic gold.

We still don’t know if this is it — and, truth be told, I sincerely hope it’s not — but it seems likely that we’ve seen the last of Diana Taurasi playing professional basketball. If this is it, Taurasi will retire as one of the greatest basketball players ever to play the game. The accolades are endless; she’s as dominant an offense force as the WNBA has seen and likely will ever see.

They came, they saw, they fucked shit up…now comes the difficult part: imaging the game without them.

5. Empire State of Mind: New York Liberty Wins the WNBA Championships

new york liberty celebrate championship

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

In 1999, the New York Liberty found themselves trailing the Houston Comets, 1-0, in a best-of-three WNBA Finals. Looking to stave off elimination, the Liberty found themselves in a dogfight on the Comets’ home court. In the final seconds, Houston took a two-point lead on a Tina Thompson basket. Houston left just 2.4 seconds on the clock. To save their season, the Liberty needed a miracle…and, to everyone’s dismay, they got one.

Teresa Weatherspoon caught an inbounds pass from Kym Hampton and launched a desperation three from 50 feet out. The shot banked in and the Liberty snatched victory form the jaws of defeat, 68-67. The team would go onto to lose the series but still, it was the closest the Liberty would get to a WNBA championship for the next 25 years.

New York’s eventual road to the championship didn’t rely on miracles — well, maybe a little bit — it was the result of a long brick by brick rebuilding of the franchise. It started with new owners in 2019, a heralded rookie in 2020, the addition of the league’s Most Improved Player in 2021, and the recruitment of a head coach with a championship pedigree in 2022.

Then the franchise heeded the wise words of Megan Rapinoe — “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team” — and went out and recruited three gays to Brooklyn: Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, and Courtney Vandersloot. It took a year to get the chemistry right but, in the end, the Liberty made magic: winning the franchise’s first ever WNBA title.

4. Do It For Marta (x2)

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - NOVEMBER 2: Marta #10 of Orlando Pride talking with tv reporter during the NWSL Championship game between Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit at CPKC Stadium on November 23, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Bill Barrett/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

(Photo by Bill Barrett/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

In the last seconds of the first half of Brazil’s Olympic match-up with Spain, Marta Vieira da Silva made a reckless closeout on Spain’s Olga Carmona. The referee showed the Brazilian star a red card and the gravity of the situation hit everyone on the pitch. Marta dissolved into tears. Her peers — her Brazilian teammates and her Spanish opponents — gathered to console her. Marta was sent off (and subsequently banned from the next two Brazilian matches) and the world wonder: would the international career of the best women’s football player of all time end like this?

Her teammates were determined to write a better ending to the legend’s Hall of Fame career. They’d defeat the host nation, France, in the quarterfinals and then trounce Spain in a semi-final rematch of that group stage game. Seleção rallied for Marta, propelling themselves to the gold medal match, giving Marta one more chance to wear the Brazilian crest.

“Honestly, in these games without Marta, we did it for her,” Brazil midfielder Angelina said. “We want to give her a really great send-off. It was a dream of mine to play with Marta, and now it’s a dream come true. To do it in the final in the Olympics, it’s just perfect.”

Brazil would fall short in the gold medal match — leaving Marta to collect her third Olympic silver medal — but that fighting spirit would follow Marta back to her NWSL club team, the Orlando Pride. The club had languished for a long time, with Marta’s presence being the lone, consistent bright spot. But this year, they found new life: propelled by the unstoppable play of Barbara Banda and a reinvigorated Marta, the Pride won their first ever NWSL championship.

3. New Leagues, Who Dis? The Professional Women’s Hockey League Kicks Off Its First Season With More New Leagues On The Way

TORONTO, CANADA - FEBRUARY 16: WNBA player Kia Nurse (C) of the Los Angeles Sparks takes part in the ceremonial puck drop with Marie-Philip Poulin #29 of Montreal and Sarah Nurse #20 of Toronto before their PWHL hockey game at Scotiabank Arena on February 16, 2024 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

(Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

2024 started off with so much promise. As the world ushered in a new year, women’s sports welcomed a new professional league to the fold: the Professional Women’s Hockey League. The PWHL kicked off its inaugural season before a sold out crowd in Toronto, Canada. The team’s two captains — Blayre Turnbull of Toronto and Micah Zandee-Hart of New York — met a center ice for the ceremonial puck drop and, afterwards, they shared a hug. It was just a brief moment but that embrace felt like a collective sigh of relief: after numerous failed attempts, female hockey players finally had a professional league that guaranteed them a living wage.

By almost any metric, the PWHL’s inaugural season was a rousing success. Seemingly every week, the league is setting new attendance records, only to break it the following week. For example, a pivotal match-up between Toronto and Montreal drew 21,105 to the Bell Centre — home of the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens — breaking a record that both teams had set just two months earlier. Everyone watches women’s sports indeed.

But the PWHL wasn’t the only new league to debut in 2024: the USL Super League, a top flight soccer league, on par with the NWSL, played its first match on August 17, 2024. The USLS debuted with eight teams and already has plans to add another 10 clubs, pending stadium availability. It’ll be interesting, in the coming years, to see how/if the USLS can compete with the NWSL for top talent and if American enthusiasm for soccer can support more than one top women’s league.

Other leagues set to debut include:

  • Unrivaled, a professional three-on-three women’s basketball league featuring some of the best (and gayest) players from the WNBA; Set to debut in January 2025
  • Women’s Lacrosse League is a forthcoming four-team league, owned and organized by the Premier Lacrosse League; Set to debut in February at the 2025 Lexus Championship Series.
  • Women’s Elite Rugby, a top flite semi-professional league, that is set to launch in 2025. The Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, and the Twin Cities will all play host to WER teams.
  • Women’s Pro Baseball League, a six team professional women’s baseball league, based in the northeastern United States, that’s set to debut in 2026.

So many more opportunities for us all to become WAGs…or, you know, play sports…if that’s your thing. I can’t wait.

2. A Bargain At Twice The Price: The NWSL’s New Collective Bargaining Agreement

Imagine for a second that you’re about to graduate university and it’s time for you to find your first adult job. This time, though, instead of having a say about it, your fate is left entirely to someone else. They get to set your salary and decide where you live without much regard to the life you’ve already crafted for yourself. Maybe you’ll get to live in a state that respects your rights and offers nondiscrimination protections but also, maybe not.

Sounds awful, right? And yet, somehow, in America, we’ve consigned prospective professional athletes to that fate… until now. In one of the most underappreciated sports stories of the year, the NWSL eliminated its collegiate draft as part of the league’s new collective bargaining agreement. In addition, veteran players can no longer be traded without their consent. The changes were spearheaded by Meghann Burke, the executive director of the NWSL Players Association, and player representatives from across the league. You can watch this video on X all about it.

The new CBA shifts the balance of power in the league: treating players like human beings and not commodities to be shifted around at someone’s whim. Moreover, the new CBA puts the onus on owners to really invest in their clubs and build strong front offices to attract players, rather than relying on the draft to stock poorly managed teams with top talent. These moves put the NWSL on par with leagues around the world but, in America, drafts remain an unfortunate reality in professional sports. Hopefully, one day, other leagues — I’m looking at you, WNBA — will follow suit.

1. Everyone Watches Women’s Sports™

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY - DECEMBER 19: The Louisville Cardinals celebrate after defeating the Pittsburgh Panthers during the Division I Women's Volleyball Semifinals held at the KFC YUM! Center on December 19, 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

(Photo by Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Last Thursday, ESPN aired the semifinals of the NCAA volleyball championship. Both matches (Nebraska vs. Penn State and Louisville vs. Pittsburgh) garnered over a million viewers and drew a bigger audience than NBA action that night.

Time and time again, this year has confirmed that the problem has never been the product, the problem has been the lack of access to an audience. Give women’s sports the platform it deserves and the audience will respond, leading to monster ratings for women’s college basketball, the WNBA, soccer and volleyball.

Everybody would watch women’s sports, if more networks gave them the opportunity. Let’s hope 2024 was enough proof to spark change for 2025.

What were your favorite sports moments of 2024? Any big hopes for women’s sports in 2025?

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Natalie

A black biracial, bisexual girl raised in the South, working hard to restore North Carolina's good name. Lover of sports, politics, good TV and Sonia Sotomayor. You can follow her latest rants on Twitter.

Natalie has written 419 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. Shout out to the women’s rugby Olympic bronze medal match! Never in my life would I have expected to encounter so many random strangers – like white male doctors in the US south – excited to talk about women’s rugby! Good stuff

  2. Wow can’t believe only one notable women’s sport moment didn’t involve the USA! This actually suggests it’s quite a sad year for women’s sports if mostly one country cycle is worth reporting on. Hopefully we’ll see more global growth in future years, I really hope Khelif, Banda, both Chawingas, Kundananji etc continue to be trailblazers for African sport.

    • Natalie says in the introduction that these are her own personal memorable sports moments, not encompassing the entire year of sport all over the world!

    • Yeah, sometimes i forget that Autostraddle is extremely American and sometimes I am not allowed to forget it.

      It’s a personal ranking, and one that I can’t relate to. It’s fine, though! My own ranking would be biased too!

  3. Your sports writing is always a treat, natalie. Loved looking back on some of this incredible year. Here’s to an even better 2025!

  4. These moments truly showcase the incredible talent and determination of women in sports! It’s inspiring to see them break barriers and redefine excellence. Can’t wait to see what 2025 will bring! I adore sports games and betting sites not on Gamstop. If you like placing wagers on sports or casino games on online platforms, take a look at https://nongamstopbetting.info/uk/ for useful tips and info! And enjoy the game!

Comments are closed.

Why I Rewatch ‘The Family Stone’ Every Year

I’m indifferent about Christmas trees, whether it’s the one I may or may not put up in my own home or the one that draws crowds at Rockefeller Center. In recent years, in this post-Elfster society, I’ve happily bowed out of Secret Santa exchanges. My hand-embroidered stocking collects dust in my parents’ basement, replaced on the mantel by newer stockings — embroidered by the same hands — that now hang for my nieces and nephew. This year, for the first time in my life, I’ll be flying on Christmas Day. I’m sentimental, but when it comes to Christmas traditions, I find myself most attached to one I accidentally created for myself in 2005.

Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I rewatch The Family Stone.

I have a vague memory of the first time I saw it. We went to the movie theater near my aunt’s house on Long Island after getting milkshakes at Itgen’s Ice Cream Parlour, where my older brother and cousin would crush on the girls behind the counter. We went to the parlour often enough that our group of cousins made up a song about the unrequited love between the teen boys and slightly older teen girls. I remember walking out of the theater, belly full of Whoppers and Slushee, into the cold while the adults moaned and groaned. I thought they must have had tummy aches too, but no, that wasn’t the case. They fucking hated the movie.

Nearly 20 years after its release, my mom stands firmly by her original thoughts on the film. “The end doesn’t justify the means,” she tells me, referring to the family’s refusal to accept Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) for who she is and their cruelty toward her. My mom feels strongly that the matriarch of the family, Sybil Stone (Diane Keaton), is an irredeemable, nasty woman who selfishly ruined Christmas for her family. She also argues that none of the other characters are likable, each contributing to an overall unpleasant experience for someone who has, ultimately, done nothing wrong.

Still, it’s for all the reasons my mom dislikes The Family Stone that it has become a holiday favorite among younger queer and trans people. The film does a near-perfect job of portraying a gay relationship between Thad Stone (Tyrone Giordano) and his partner Patrick (Brian J. White). The pair serve as a grounding presence amidst the high-conflict, anxiety-laden scenes, offering calmness, love, and reason. This portrayal earned The Family Stone a nomination for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film (Wide Release) in 2006, though it lost to none other than Brokeback Mountain.

Thad and Patrick’s relationship isn’t the only thing that resonates with queer and trans people. It’s kind of… everything else in the movie. From the set design and holiday setting to Rachel McAdams’ spectacularly queer-coded character and the depiction of parental allyship, The Family Stone is many queer folks’ first introduction to warm, unconditional familial love. It’s to be loved is to be known in a perfectly paced hour-and-forty-minute runtime.

That’s my hypothesis, at least. I was able to identify all of this as unconditional familial love because, well, that’s how I was brought up. I come from a warm, come-as-you-are household, so when I saw it on the big screen (and many, many small screens thereafter), I was able to name it. But I know that not every queer person is as fortunate as I am to come from a family like the Stones. I wasn’t sure if other queer people felt as strongly about The Family Stone as I did… so I talked to them about it. Evidently, I’m not alone here! The movie seems to mean something to many different kinds of queer people — those with healthy relationships to their biological families, those who only have chosen family, those whose issues with their family have nothing to do with their queerness — all of whom are in agreement that it’s a necessary rewatch each holiday season.

Nearly the entire film takes place in the Stone family’s ambiguously New England house. But it’s more than just a house; it’s their home during Christmastime. There are plastic snowmen on the kitchen counter, Christmas cards lining the entranceway, and Polaroid pictures and souvenir magnets on the refrigerator. No two coffee cups look alike. A decorative bowl filled with pinecones sits on a table inside an office. There’s clutter everywhere. People live here. I have lived here.

Unlike many other Christmas movies, The Family Stone doesn’t overwhelm you with bright whites, emerald greens, and candy-cane reds. Instead, the set design is rich with wood: dressers, desks, staircase banisters, and a busy baker’s block in the kitchen. Even the wallpaper and curtains throughout the house are various shades of brown. The wardrobe reflects this brown palette, too — Patrick’s sweater, Sybil’s robe, Kelly’s flannel and vest — and each of the Stone siblings is brunette. When Julie (Claire Danes) arrives at the bus station to rescue her sister, she’s wearing a sand-colored leather coat and carrying an overnight bag in a matching shade.

In color psychology, brown is associated with comfort, security, and relaxation, and in interior design, it’s often used to make a space feel more open and inviting. When you watch The Family Stone, you are quite literally being welcomed into a home that three generations call their own, and you can feel it.

What better time of year for queer and trans people to get a little extra comfort, security, and relaxation than the holidays? Despite the uncomfortable drama taking place throughout the film, The Family Stone serves as a safe haven for many at a time when the uncomfortable drama is happening in their own homes. Seeing conflict they know well play out on screen is humanizing, especially when the consequences do not fall on the queer or trans family member. Being queer and around your family during the holidays can feel torturous, so, yeah, we’re going to enjoy watching an unlikable rich white lady get bullied for 90 minutes.

Speaking of bullies, Amy Stone (Rachel McAdams) is irrefutably, undeniably, and delightfully queer. Whether she’s closeted or it’s just not an explicitly defined character trait is unimportant to me because, regardless of whether she knows it or not, that girl is gay. We first meet Amy as she pulls up to her parents’ house in a clearly hand-me-down Volvo station wagon and struggles to carry both her (full) laundry basket and NPR tote bag out of her backseat. She wears a band tee over a white long-sleeve shirt and a knee-length red pleated skirt with thick, black tights underneath. She’s splendidly pathetic right off the bat, just like the youngest sibling in a big family should be. I would know. I am one.

When Amy meets Meredith, she’s confronted with everything she tries so hard not to be and, even worse, she has to grapple with the fact that this version of womanhood, the very version she has rejected, is desirable. When I was a closeted queer woman, I spent so much mental energy policing how women were… women. Projecting much?! Once I started dismantling comp-het and gender binaries — and, subsequently, my internalized misogyny — I stopped giving a shit about how other people displayed their womanhood. I suspect that’s what’s going on with Amy and her seemingly unjustifiable hatred for Meredith. There’s something about Meredith — whether it’s her voice, her face, or her clothing — that challenges Amy’s understanding of the world around her and, perhaps, herself.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that outside of all the underlying queer characteristics, at the end of the day, Rachel McAdams as Amy Stone is simply objectively fun to watch because she is hot. Specifically, she’s hot in a gay way.

Another reason The Family Stone is so popular among queer people is because it offers an alternative to the family dynamics we’re so used to seeing on-screen by making the Stone family a matriarchy. Of course, this isn’t groundbreaking. Women have been leading and managing families since the beginning of time. But it’s not very often that we get to see this portrayed on screen, especially in Christmas movies. It’s always the dad having some dick-measuring contest with his neighbor, falling off a roof and turning into Santa Claus, or discovering he has an estranged son visiting from the North Pole. So, to see a large, complicated family so sculpted by and enamored with their mother is refreshing.

Sybil Stone is not a mother without flaw. In fact, much like my own mother likes to point out, she has many shortcomings. But man, did she raise five emotionally intelligent, gentle, and (mostly) good kids. The unconditional love, understanding, and acceptance in that home and among those family members is so beyond what a lot of queer people believe to be possible. To them, Sybil is proof that a mother will love you despite what makes you different or difficult.

Take the famous dinner fight scene, for instance. Many queer people would kill to have a family member, let alone a mother, sit at the head of the table and go to bat defending them when confronted with bigotry — even if it ruffles some feathers. Even if it makes the rest of the dinner uncomfortable. More moms need to freak the fuck out and throw cutlery across the dinner table when their child is disrespected. Especially now, when households are so socially and politically divided, bigots need to know they don’t have a seat at the table. The whole scene is hysterical, both in drama and humor, but what really gets me every time is Sybil signing to Thad from down the table. She’s desperate for him to know that she loves him exactly as he is. Is that too much to ask for?

I really do think The Family Stone was ahead of its time in 2005. It does more than hold up; it might even get better with time as more queer and trans people redefine what family means to them. As more people cut ties with their biological families for their own safety, they may be seeking a fictional family and home to tuck themselves into for a moment, especially during the holidays. The Stones aren’t a perfect family, but queer people aren’t asking for perfect.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

motti

Motti (they/he) is a New York born and raised sorority girl turned writer, comedian, and content creator (whatever that means these days). Motti has been featured on We're Having Gay Sex Live, The Lesbian Agenda Show, Reductress Haha Wow! Live, the GayJoy Digest, and even played the role of "Real Life Lesbian" on Billy on the Street. In 2022, they wrote about how clit sucker toys are a scam, sweet gay revenge, chasing their dreams, and getting run over by a pick up truck in their now-abandoned newsletter Motti is An Attention Whore. Motti has a Masters in Public Administration and Local Government Management, you'd never know it from the shit they post online (see previous sentence), but occasionally he'll surprise you with his knowledge of civic engagement and electoral processes. They live in Brooklyn with their tuxedo cat, Bo, and their 20 houseplants.

motti has written 33 articles for us.

‘I Want To Support My Partner Who Is Starting HRT’

Q:

Hello lovely autostraddle writers! Long-time listener/reader, first time caller…

I have been dating one of my partners for almost a year. Since we’ve started dating they have been talking about potentially wanting to start hormones, and they made the big step recently to make an appointment with a provider to start those conversations. I’m so excited for them to be taking steps to feel more aligned with how they want to present!

I’ve been trying to find resources/advice for how to support a partner who is starting the process of taking hormones, but am really struggling to find information that isn’t transphobic. I’m also trans so coming across transphobic content is especially ugh for my brain, too.

I know there will be need to be a lot of conversations about what they’re feeling and conversations specific to how I can support them.

Most of my friends who are trans and take hormones, take T, and I’m unfamiliar with the experiences of folks who take other hormones. I’m unsure where to start to understand that experience specifically, think about how any changes they experience might impact me so I can process those feelings without putting any of that on them. I want to do as much work as I can to educate myself so I’m not putting any unnecessary labor on them.

I will also add, we are in the US, and so starting hormones has another layer of anxiety with what the recent election results might impact with access to hormones and things of that nature.

TLDR: do you have resources, support, advice, suggestions of folks to follow on social media, really anything, that might help me be a supportive partner and educate myself so I can show up in the best ways possible? Thank you!

Trying to be Supportive

A:

Hey, Trying to be Supportive

It’s always great to hear from people making transitioning a more joyful experience for us than burning it all down. I’ve had the fortune of going through that process with my girlfriend and you’ve already started making it happen for your partner. Kudos.

It’s only unfortunate that I reached your letter after the US election results arrived. There’ll be another layer of complexity due to this outcome, but we’ll get to that.

The shortest version I can give you about starting gender-affirming HRT (as opposed to other HRT) is that it’ll probably change a bit of everything and nothing at all. Sex hormones are central to our body’s functioning, and they impact every part of the experience of living. Some of those effects are negligible; others are very distinct. To complicate things, different people inscribe different values onto each of those effects so your partner will have a very personal set of opinions about each change that happens.

I had gender dysphoria about a few things that seemed irrelevant to other trans women near me. Meanwhile, I cared very little for some of my qualities I consider masculine, but they seem to be a constant source of distress for others. Gender dysphoria and gender euphoria are highly personalized experiences that can’t be predicted. The general trendline for your partner will probably be gradually improving well-being simply because they’re pursuing something they want and are sure of. They probably have a good awareness of what HRT does generally and what its benefits and risk profile looks like.

Your point about having lots of conversations about what they’re feeling is a good starting point. Your partner will experience new feelings and old feelings in new ways. They’ll have a physiological reaction that’ll change the way their body looks and works. If they haven’t had much experience with their targeted gender presentation, they’ll probably experience things they can’t quite put into words. Conversation can bring out those thoughts and reflections, but don’t be surprised to find situations where they’re just a bit lost about something and need to process. HRT is a long-term treatment — normally, lifetime. There is an entire rest of their life for them to grow into it and reflect on it.

The physical and emotional effects of HRT arrive pretty rapidly. I noticed my earliest signs within a day of starting estrogen and others around me always say they noticed something meaningful within a week or two. Physiological and mental changes are usually experienced intensely in the early months and years of HRT. Like any life-changing medical event, the changes are much  more significant the closer you are to the past self. Eventually, the changes will settle in and your partner will grow accustomed to their new, altered body. One of my happiest moments was the realization that HRT can stop being novel and interesting. It’s just part of my existence now, and I can live as I wish without interruption.

As someone external to your partner, you’ll probably see as many emotional adjustments as physical changes. Much is said about the physical changes the body undergoes because that’s much easier to quantitatively assess. The interpersonal and emotional stuff? Quite unpredictable. Generally speaking, people starting testosterone often experience a mix of frustration, anger, and a higher sex drive. Often paired with a certain rigidity of emotion. People starting estrogen sometimes describe ‘unlocking’ new emotions and may react strongly to those. Estrogen also has a habit of reducing or altering the sex drive in ways that don’t just result in an aggressive need for SEX NOW.

Those generalizations are popularly repeated, even by trans people. And while there’s truth in such experiences, we’re all multifaceted people. For every trans-masc person who is trying to figure out why they’re so goddamned angry and horny (I empathize. I did masculine puberty once.), there’s one who feels completely mellowed out because their agitated dysphoria is finally silent. I fully expected to burst into tears at every minor provocation, but I don’t cry any more due to estrogen. My sex drive though? Completely changed. No idea how it works now.

What I’m saying is there’s no manual or guidebook on exactly how to support a trans partner. Honestly, being open to the idea of supporting their decisions and agency is already the most important step. You’ve done that, and as a result, you’ve probably alleviated a large burden for them already. Beyond that, be prepared to offer a listening ear to their frustrations and excitement as their body changes.

Most of what I said is equally applicable to supporting an adolescent as a trans person. Which is why I tend to discuss transition through the lens of a ‘second adolescence’. They share numerous characteristics, and the sudden arrival of new sex hormones is only the beginning. Puberty is mostly a physiological process in the body, and your partner will be going through some pubertal experiences, mostly related to their body adjusting to a new hormone setup. But like adolescence, transition isn’t just a physical thing. Trans people also have to learn new social scripts that align with their gender during transition. They’ll take up knowledge and experiences that shape their view of the world and other people. They’ll have to figure out which gendered social norms they’ll invite and which ones they’ll reject. And of course, there will be emotional experiences that are fresh, raw, and sometimes beyond description.

It’s really a lot like a second adolescence. And my advice mirrors that. You can safely discard many of your fears about doing things ‘right’ because there is no correct way, save for the one that respects your partner’s agency and care needs. I need to tell you that, because being close to someone in transition isn’t a relationship that pulls your space and resources. Your partner’s decision will change your life, too, and it’s just as important to maintain your well-being and keep a reflective mindset as you figure things out. Just listen, ask questions that enable both of you to learn, and be prepared to explain a few things that might seem intuitive to others.

As to the Trump thing… yeah. Sucks. If you’re in a red state, I’d begin aggressively researching what your state legislature’s current status on adult HRT looks like. And think about what ways it can get worse, because it probably will. Research avenues that’ll provide your partner with HRT (private care, Planned Parenthood, others) as they become necessary. This will be stressful, but keep apprised of material changes to trans rights in your state legislature. DON’T hurt yourself every day with an endless feed of murderous Republican rhetoric and the suffering of trans people. But DO make note of happenings in your state or region that could materially impact you in the here and now. Compartmentalize the damage so you don’t get flattened under the steamroller that is the 24/7 social media news and sewage cycle.

As for resources, this document is a classic that outlines significant parts of the HRT experience. It’s aimed at people who are thinking of transition, but there’s lots of valuable information there about the potential effects of HRT on individuals. It’s all presented in a careful and approachable manner.

As for communities, I will only recommend one, because I don’t believe in drowning people in ‘research’ and ‘sources’ when the topic is close to home. It can be all too easy to overwhelm a person whose mind is already racing. But I do give the subreddit /r/mypartneristrans my highest recommendation for someone in your position. It’s a community aimed at people in your exact position that provides a space for celebration, venting, concerns, and recommendations. I particularly enjoy it, because it does not maintain an aggressive no-bad-vibes policy and leaves room for pessimism, worry, and errors made by the partners of trans people. It’s quite well-moderated and active, too. I think you’ll find an interesting variety of people there in similar positions to yours and learn a lot right from the ground.

Look after yourself and your partner, and may you build the best possible life in the upcoming years.

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Summer Tao

Summer Tao is a South Africa based writer. She has a fondness for queer relationships, sexuality and news. Her love for plush cats, and video games is only exceeded by the joy of being her bright, transgender self

Summer has written 58 articles for us.

For 50 Years, The Trocks Have Combined Pointe and Drag

That sound, not quite a tapping. It isn’t clunky, it’s lighter — the sound of wood beating against a hard surface. I’m moving toward it, climbing the stairs to the fourth floor of The Joyce Theater’s New York Center for Dance and Creativity. On the way up, posters line the walls — on one, a dancer from Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, or The Trocks, as they’re known, floats midair in pointe shoes, arms outstretched, a fluffy tutu extending from the waist, a full drag beat. At the top of the stairs, it becomes clear the sound is pointe shoes, their wooden toe boxes tap-tapping against the studio floor with every bourrée, grande jeté, fouetté. Here, dancers from the Trocks are rehearsing. On December 17, their three-week engagement at The Joyce Theater in Chelsea began, closing out the company’s 50th year.

A group of dancers from the Trocks dance in rehearsal.

Since it began in 1974, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo has become both known and beloved for its unique contribution to dance: Its entire company of male dancers perform in drag, always in the spirit of appreciating ballet with cleverness and cheek. Its roots begin in New York in the 1960s where queer theatre pioneers like Charles Ludlam and John Vaccaro, leading practitioners of the Theatre of the Ridiculous genre, bent and broke traditional gender presentations onstage with drag, camp, and a whole lot of glitter. From this world emerged the dancer Larry Rée, who danced in drag and created the character Madame Ekathrina Sobechanskaya. Rée performed the famous ballet solo “The Dying Swan” from Swan Lake in Ludlam’s work as well as that of playwright Jackie Curtis and drag troupe The Cockettes. Seeing the success of the solo in the 1970s, a time when much of the U.S. was obsessed with ballet, Rée created the Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet Company in 1972. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo was borne of it in 1974, when company members Peter Anastos, Anthony Bassae, and Natch Taylor wanted to pay more attention to ballet, while also nodding to camp and comedy.

A close up of a leg on pointe

In August of that year, the company debuted at what was then the West Side Discussion Group queer community center in the Meatpacking District. They soon drew a following from the established ballet world–lauded New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce had given them a rave review–and the downtown queer world. Soon, they’d be on TV, in magazines, and famous the world over. Despite their fame, however, being in the Trocks was still considered a career killer for dancers, and aside from the entertainment factor, few serious ballet companies were interested in their work. To be openly gay men, dancing in drag and on pointe, was something many people at the time eschewed with a firm hand. Some even thought their work stigmatized the male dancer, said Artistic Director Tory Dobrin, who first joined the company as a dancer in 1980. Over time, however, as more people got to see what the Trocks were about–they have appeared as the subject of not just one but three documentaries in the last 25 years, including one which aired with PBS’s American Masters — it attracted more trained dancers who were excited to join. It became a career option.

“As the years went on, we started attracting more accomplished dancers, and that also helped the quality to elevate. When I joined, I was older, and also it was a different time to be gay in the 1970s and 80s, as you can imagine,” Dobrin says. “A young dancer who’s interested in comedy, who’s interested in drag, who’s interested in pointe work, they [now] feel comfortable to come.”

A dancer stretches out an arm in studio space.

While the company’s history encompasses everything from Kennedy Center performances to National Endowment of the Arts funding, their past is not just one of stardust — it’s also one of survival. In the 1980s, AIDS put the Trocks, like many arts organizations at the time, in serious danger. “The AIDS crisis caused all sorts of mayhem, as you can imagine, not only organizationally, but psychologically and emotionally,” Dobrin says. He remembers the trauma of losing friends and colleagues regularly. They also had to contend with an ongoing National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) ordeal–in which government officials regularly tried to either dismantle the organization or prevent it entirely from presenting artwork it deemed “indecent” or “obscene”–threatened the possibility of the Trocks even being booked. “Theaters were afraid to present us for fear of losing their grant[s] or their money coming from the government or other sources,” Dobrin says. But by the 1990s, as protease inhibitors helped to counter the effects of HIV/AIDS, the Trocks managed to have successful tours of Japan and England. “Somehow you just keep going,” he says. That the company was able to survive is, he continues, “a tremendous goal and accomplishment.”

Two dancers look at each other as they get in position as other dancers look on.

Robert Carter joined the company in 1995 and has been dancing with the Trocks ever since. “They call me Mama,” he smiles when we chat during the company’s rehearsal break. His hair has been dyed a leopard print, and there are piercings through his nose, chin, and ears. Carter arrived at the Trocks after performing with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the later defunct Bay Ballet Theater in Tampa, Florida. He had seen the Trocks perform as a boy in his native South Carolina. While young male dancers may be discouraged by teachers from learning pointe, Carter wasn’t. Not that it would have stuck after he saw the Trocks, anyway. “After being told by so many people, or people sharing their opinion, that it wouldn’t be right, boys don’t dance on pointe, I thought, well, here’s a group of guys that does exactly what I want to do,” he says. “I’ve always been like the class clown anyway, so I fit right in.”

Carter stayed, he says, for the artistic freedom and the possibility of having a long career. “It’s like handing a teenager the keys to a new car,” he laughs. “Of course, they reined me in, but I’ve never felt like I’ve had to be so reined in.” Trocks dancers are encouraged to make each character their own while still honoring ballet technique and canon–there’s the freedom to be silly within the bounds of very serious ballet work. “I happen to be a man portraying what looks to you like a woman through this comic dance, but the message really is about art in any and all forms comes from the most unexpected places,” Carter says.

Robert Carter poses in the middle of the studio.

Andrea Fabbri came to the Trocks a little over a year ago, in 2023, after seven years with the Estonian National Ballet. There, he says, he was playing “a lot of very intense, straight-male-presenting men that were getting cheated on by their wives.” When I arrive at rehearsal, however, he is in a leotard and tutu, pale pink pointe shoes on his feet, his hair in a loose bun. At eight or nine, Fabbri remembers, he actually took a class with the Trocks’ current ballet master and former company member, Raffaele Morra, when the troupe visited his native Italy. Later, he regularly watched the Trocks’ eponymous 2001 concert film on YouTube. While a ballet student of 15 or 16 at South Florida’s HARID Conservatory, he even emailed the company about auditioning. (They told him to try after he had more years in the field.) And so he ended up working with more classical companies first. “In the ballet world, Trockoadero is usually seen as a very entertaining show. I don’t think people realize, and I didn’t as well, how much work goes [on] behind [the scenes],” he says. “It’s not just about the funny moment.”

Despite his earlier roles, Fabbri is excited about being able to engage with his feminine side. “I’ve always had a little bit [of] that side, the creative side. Now it just gets to come out in a red lip,” he laughs. He remembered being bullied for this feminine side when he was younger in ballet classes — “I would do female variations on the side secretly, and I would get caught, that already was a problem for them,” he says. But now things are different. “I don’t feel like I have to hide any part of me,” he says. “I feel so free now, and that’s the main difference. I just feel like Andrea, right? There’s no filter.”

Andrea Fabbri smiles and stretches in a black tutu on the floor.

This is the power of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Founded in the throes of the Gay Liberation Movement, the company runs on the freedom of self-expression and, of course, a love of ballet. “I’m actually doing what my younger self wished he could do in the future, but never knew that he could,” Fabbri says.

“If you want to see an entertaining show with guys in drag on pointe, you have to go see the Trockadero. That’s the only way.”

A black and white photo of three dancers in the Trocks in profile.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Elyssa Maxx Goodman

Elyssa Maxx Goodman is a New York-based writer and photographer. Her book, Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City, was named a 2024 Stonewall Honor Book for the Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, one of Vogue’s Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2023, and one of Booklist’s Best History Books of 2023. Her writing and photography have been published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, them., Elle, and New York, among others.

Elyssa has written 4 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. This is so cool, I love learning about how people are queering ballet!! Also, fun fact for any Rupaul’s Drag Race/Canada’s Drag Race fans out there, Brooke Lynn Hytes danced with The Trocks!

  2. My first introduction to The Trocks was through their homage in the music video for Annie Lennox’s cover of “ No More ‘I Love You’s” which was (understandably) a very formative experience as a child. And it is an eternal shame and black mark on the dancing profession that being a member of the troupe is a career killer knowing the skill it takes not only to be able to perform the dances, but also the comedy of it as well. Anyone can learn something perfectly if they work hard enough. But it takes a special kind of skill and talent to be able to perform something perfectly imperfectly.

Comments are closed.

I Watched ‘The Holiday Junkie’ With My Wife and It Was Sweeter Than a Peppermint Latte

I love a cheesy holiday romance movie. And when I say cheesy, I mean it as a compliment! Once, a friend of mine told me that I was so cheesy, she wanted to put me on top of a plate of tortilla chips. There’s something so wonderful about the predictability of a holiday romance made for a network like Hallmark or Lifetime. Even when the couple might doubt that things will work out for them in the end, you know it will. The dialogue is hokey, and everything is a little too cutesy, but that’s what makes it all so enjoyable! Honestly, the cheesier the movie, the more I’m going to love it.

Hallmark and Lifetime are severely lacking in the cheesy sapphic holiday romance department. (Under the Christmas Tree and Friends & Family Christmas are two notable exceptions.) So when I heard that one of Lifetime’s new seasonal offerings,The Holiday Junkie, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, has a lesbian best friend character, I grabbed my wife Beth, and a homemade peppermint brownie to watch. JLH directed The Holiday Junkie in addition to starring in it, and her husband Brian Hallisay plays her love interest. Openly queer actress Lynn Andrews stars as the lesbian best friend.

The Holiday Junkie is the story of Andie, a 30-something year old woman who runs Christmas decorating company The Holiday Junkie with her mother. This is the first Christmas she’s running the company alone since her mother’s death. When a rich venture capitalist hires Andie to decorate his house, she sees it as a way to prove her company is a worthy investment for him. But when she arrives at the house, she meets Mason, the “house manager.” A series of mishaps keep delaying the family’s return, forcing Andie and Mason to keep spending time together. As the days go by, Andie cracks through Mason’s tough shell, infecting him with her special brand of Christmas cheer.

Okay, so confession: Beth and I are big fans of Jennifer Love Hewitt. Back in the 90s, I always had her on my favorite actresses list, even though I mostly knew her from reading Tiger Beat and watching LFO’s “Girl on TV” video a million times. A couple years ago, I realized that I had a massive crush on her, and that’s why she was a favorite. She has that perfect All-American girl next door vibe about her.

JLH is currently starring on the show 9-1-1, which my wife and I have been obsessed with. (Shoutout to our favorite TV lesbians, Hen and Karen Wilson!) So it wasn’t hard to convince her to watch our favorite 9-1-1 operator stir up a little Christmas magic!

Before we started watching the movie, my wife and I made a bet. She believed that Jennifer Love Hewitt would cry three times. One thing about JLH, she’s a crier. My wager was that she would only cry once in one truly climatic scene. We’ll see which one of us is right. Without further ado, enjoy us watching The Holiday Junkie.

Sa’iyda: Okay, if she’s going to wear fake glasses, the least they can do is put clear lenses in them! You can see right through them.

Beth: Yeah, you can. They can fake it better.

Sa’iyda: Calling it: her mom is dead, but she talks to her voicemail like she’s still alive.

Both: Oh look! A set!

Beth: It’s Sue from 9-1-1!

Sa’iyda: And the guy from The Cosby Show! The one who was married to Denise.

Sa’iyda: There is no liquid in that cup she’s holding.

Beth: Nope, none. She’s practically tossing it around.

Sa’iyda: She’s drinking like it wouldn’t be a scalding hot latte.

Beth: Pretty soon, you can make me a latte (I’m getting her an espresso machine for Christmas).

Sa’iyda: Sure can! I love to steam milk.

Sa’iyda: Holy shit, this house is huge.

Beth: That is one handsome man.

Sa’iyda: I know! I love that her husband is starring as the love interest. So cute.

Beth: Ooh, what are his tattoos?

Sa’iyda: Like, look at his perfectly groomed facial hair. And those cheekbones! My god.

Beth: The fake glasses are back again.

Sa’iyda: What kind of sociopath bites a candy cane like that? I suck on it until it’s practically gone before I chew it.

Beth: We have our first cry! How far into the movie are we?

Sa’iyda: Fifteen minutes.

Beth: You sure you want to stick with one?

Sa’iyda: Yes, maybe she wanted to get it out of the way.

Both: OH MY GOD. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Sa’iyda: She gets to wake up next to that every morning! Holy shit, do you see his abs?

Beth: He has more tattoos? I wonder what they all are!

Sa’iyda: Who cares?

Beth: I want his outfit.

Sa’iyda: I feel like you have something similar? It’s just a flannel over a henley.

Sa’iyda: Ooh, is he an artist?

Beth: Someone is.

Sa’iyda: A wedding invitation. Either his fiancee died on Christmas, or she left him.

Sa’iyda: Okay, ‘Prop & Lock’ is a very clever name for a props company. I like the imagery.

Beth: “I’m gay, not blind.” The best friend gets it.

Sa’iyda: Cry number two, not even a half-hour in. You still think three?

Beth: I’m going to up it to five. That feels better.

Sa’iyda: I love her jacket. Her jacket game is always strong.

Beth: Is she really going to bake six dozen cookies?

Sa’iyda: It’s not impossible. She’s just wasting her time rolling and cutting them. Skip the cookie cutters and focus on easier stuff.

Sa’iyda: Called it! His fiancee dumped him on Christmas. That’s why he hates Christmas and is also reluctant to have feelings for Andie.

Beth: You’re very good at this.

Sa’iyda: I know, thanks.

Cry count is now at three as Andie tells the story of how her mom died right before Christmas.

Sa’iyda: Oh, well yeah, a dead mom still beats a breakup.

Beth: Who doesn’t dip their mozzarella sticks in sauce? What is wrong with her?

Sa’iyda: That is so weird, I don’t even have a response. Sociopathic behavior.

Beth: Who picked out the plates for these pancakes? They’re too small.

Sa’iyda: Too small! So the best friend needs to put herself on the dating apps again? There’s a messy lesbian breakup story.

Beth: IS THAT BUCK’S LOFT? (Buck is a character on 9-1-1, JLH plays his sister Maddie.)

Sa’iyda: Is it? Oh, it definitely is. Can you imagine that phone call?

We have officially hit the fourth cry.

Sa’iyda: Um, I’m obsessed with this 90s first grade teacher sweater her mom left her. Immaculate vibes. No notes.

Beth: They’re kissing like people who have kissed before. Hot.

Sa’iyda: Her gay best friend is wearing shoes on the bed? Truly unhinged behavior.

Beth: Wait, did they have sex?

Sa’iyda: I think so!

Beth: I really like his jacket.

Sa’iyda: It is surprising you don’t have a Carhartt jacket honestly.

Sa’iyda: That’s cry number five babe. Not even an hour into the movie.

Beth: I told you!

Sa’iyda: These singers are terrible lip synchers. They’re not even moving to the same beat!

Six cries in less than an hour. She’s on a roll.

Beth: What is Riley wearing?

Sa’iyda: A tiny Santa hat! Whimsical! I love it.

Beth: Cry number seven! Should I have upped it to ten?

Sa’iyda: I don’t know. But I love the pink lights on the wall. The handsome man understands romance.

Beth: Ooh, I like her flannel.

Sa’iyda: I love it! I also love Riley’s green jumpsuit. I want one of those.

Beth: He’s wearing a tool belt.

Sa’iyda: That’s hot. I want a tool belt.

Sa’iyda: “I’m gay, but I’m hungry” feels like something I would get on a tee shirt.

Beth: Here we go, the unveiling of the lesbian trauma.

Sa’iyda: Ooh, a bisexual woman who wouldn’t leave her husband for the lesbian. What a progressive idea.

Beth: Well it’s better than falling for a straight woman I guess.

Sa’iyda: That is so Buck’s apartment.

Beth: Ooh, she got him the toy he wanted as a kid.

Sa’iyda: It’s called ebay, it’s not that hard!

Beth: Is that Jennifer Love Hewitt singing?

Sa’iyda: Yup! Saves money if she’s on the soundtrack. I love Riley’s suit.

Beth: Are those their kids? So cute!

Sa’iyda: “Slay!” Sounds like a fifth grader. I heard all the kids saying that at school.

Cry number eight is the biggest one, complete with Jennifer Love Hewitt covering John Waite’s “Missing You” in the background. With less than ten minutes before the movie is over, we’re calling it at eight cries.

Sa’iyda: Is Riley wearing jeans in bed? I have questions about her etiquette.

Beth: No no, they’re sweats. You can see the drawstring.

Sa’iyda: Yes Andie! Get that venture capital money girl! Get your man!!

Beth: So the thing we learned is that we spent the whole movie lusting over the handsome man?

Sa’iyda: Babe, we’re gay, not blind.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Sa'iyda Shabazz

Sa'iyda is a writer and mom who lives in LA with her partner, son and 3 adorable, albeit very extra animals. She has yet to meet a chocolate chip cookie she doesn't like, spends her free time (lol) reading as many queer romances as she can, and has spent the better part of her life obsessed with late 90s pop culture.

Sa'iyda has written 137 articles for us.

4 Comments

  2. I am sure that Brian Halliday is a fine actor and upstanding spouse and father, but I can’t watch Jennifer Love Hewitt be in love with him in a Christmas movie after he played Doug and nearly kills her ass in 911.

  3. You and your wife are adorable! As is this review.

    It’s funny, I can read fluffy romance all day long, but I have trouble watching the movies. So this is perfect – please watch more (so I don’t have to)!

    • I’m the opposite — can watch a romcom any time but can’t really read romance (even though I love reading) which stinks bc that’s where a lot of the good queer storylines are!

Comments are closed.

Nahnatchka Khan’s Next TV Project Is About Big City Lesbians Inheriting a 500-Acre Dairy Farm

Nahnatchka Khan Working On New Lesbian TV Show “Fuck This Place” About Lesbians on a Supernatural Dairy Farm

"fuck this place" cover

Lesbian writer/producer Nahnatchka Khan’s production company Fierce Baby is creating more queer content for us to devour. Aside from Stephanie Hsu’s Laid, which debuted on Peacock last week, Khan is also adapting the Fuck This Place comics by Kyle Starks and Artyom Topilin, a story about “big city lesbians” that inherit a dairy farm.

Having to move from the city to a 500 acre farm is a nightmare in itself for me, but this couple thinks they’re going to live out their cottagecore dreams and become a Hallmark-ready farmer couple, but instead find a supernatural nightmare waiting for them. Only time will tell if their relationship will survive the chaos – or if THEY will. For some reason, not-a-lesbian David Smithyman will be writer and co-showrunner of this series about lesbians, but Khan will be co-showrunning as well, so hopefully there will be plenty of other lesbians/queer folks in the writers room.

I personally loved Don’t Trust the B and Fresh Off the Boat, but I’m also a horror junkie and am excited for this slightly darker turn Khan’s content seems to be taking. Horror-comedy is extremely my jam, and I enjoyed the campy fun of Totally Killer, so I look forward to this “dark thread” that Fierce Baby is following.

More Queer Pop Culture Stories For You:

+ Pixar once again makes the cowardly decision to remove a trans storyline from upcoming show Win or Lose (which I personally think is even more offensive than just not being inclusive in the first place) but you can see the storyboards of the scenes they removed (arguably more than “a few lines of dialogue)

+ Jasmin Savoy-Brown is producing a gay news podcast called Today in Gay hosted by Vico Ortiz, Bex Taylor-Klaus, and Nay Bever

+ People seem to be missing the queer point of Life Is Strange: Double Exposure

+ Girls5eva was cancelled again and I am very sad about it

+ The L Word‘s Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey are starting a PANTS Pod book club

+ Tiktok discovered “Stud Cynthia Erivo” and they are shook (the comment that said ‘they’re calling her Alphaba’ made me laugh)

+ JoJo Siwa is rumored to be potentially be dating queer actor Kath Ebbs

+ Amber Heard defends Blake Lively after reports of Justin Baldoni’s PR team trying to run a smear campaign against her surface

+ Stranger Things Season 5 filming has wrapped+ Billie Eilish sings O Holy Night on the last night of the North American leg of her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour

+ Lizzo talks about her lawsuit and lessons she learned on Keke Palmer’s podcast

+ Speaking of Keke “Booked and Busy” Palmer, Teen Vogue visited the set of the Issa Rae movie she’s doing with SZA, One of Them Days

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 612 articles for us.

1 Comment

Comments are closed.

I Saw the T-Rex Glow: Tammy and the T-Rex, 30 Years Later

On December 21, an unsung masterpiece of queer cinema turned 30, and I’ll be damned if I let that go unnoticed. Yes, the 90s sublime comedy-horror-romance, Tammy and the T-Rex, is now thirty, flirty, and thriving.

Tammy and the T-Rex might have the best plot synopsis of all time. High school himbo jock Michael (Paul Walker) is kidnapped by his girlfriend’s (Denise Richards) evil ex-boyfriend and fed to a pack of hungry lions in a nearby big cat sanctuary. Meanwhile, a mad scientist (Terry Kiser) is in search of a human brain to power his newest invention, a giant robotic T-Rex. Luckily, Michael’s freshly mauled corpse has just arrived in the town morgue and his brain is in remarkably usable condition. Understandably, Michael’s consciousness isn’t exactly thrilled to wake up inside the body of a mechanical dinosaur and he sets out on a bloody quest for vengeance. It’s up to Tammy and her gay best friend Byron (Theo Forsett) to find a way to get Michael back to normal before his new saurian body is destroyed or falls into the wrong hands.

If you aren’t sold after reading that synopsis, I don’t know what to tell you. Hopefully, you’re like me and are a gay Dinosaur Nerd™ with a soft spot for schlocky direct-to-VHS 90s cinema, in which case I’m delighted to tell you Tammy and the T-Rex can be watched in all its gory glory on Shudder, which proudly includes it on its list of queer horror films. And while it may earn its place on that list for featuring a gay character in a supporting role, I’d argue that Tammy and the T-Rex is an intrinsically queer film that asks, no, demands deeper analysis.

According to his own account, director Stewart Raffill (who is maybe best known for directing the infamous ET knockoff Mac and Me) wrote, directed, and produced the film in the span of two weeks to take advantage of the lifesize animatronic dinosaur used to create the titular tyrannosaurus before it was shipped out of the country. Given the film’s rushed production, it’s honestly impressive just how coherent of a film Tammy and the T-Rex is, which isn’t to say that it isn’t weird (and gay) as hell. The plot has a clear three act structure, but its breakneck twists and turns require that you question little and accept the unexpected. (Don’t ask why our villainous mad scientist wants to put Paul Walker’s brain inside a robot dinosaur, for example. You won’t get an answer.)

Tonally, Tammy and the T-Rex can’t decide if it’s a raunchy teen romcom or a hyper gory robot-dinosaur exploitation movie, but it somehow manages to do both, often at the same time. The costuming is also filled with all kinds of flashy, high camp looks. I’m particularly a fan of the floral bucket hat Tammy wears to go visit her recently deceased boyfriend in the hospital and the leopard print leotard Helga, the mad scientist’s main henchwoman, spends much of the final act in. Tammy and the T-Rex is the kind of flashy, bizarre film that practically demands a Heathers-style staged musical adaptation, and we haven’t even really talked about the queer stuff yet.

For functionally filling the role of Gay Best Friend in a low budget 90s film, Byron comes across as a surprisingly multidimensional character who is given a large amount of agency and focus in the story. Sure, the fact that he’s gay is loudly announced pretty much the second he walks onto screen, but Tammy and the T-Rex never treats Byron’s sexuality as the butt of the joke. There are plenty of moments where Byron playfully flirts with men or speaks in homoerotic innuendo, but Raffill, for all his many faults, never frames Byron himself as the joke. Our hero Michael, before and after his transformation into a mechanical prehistoric beast, treats Byron with a comfortable affection and even goes out of his way to ensure his safety. He even gets his own moments of heroism, particularly in the too long car chase that makes up the film’s climax. Maybe my bar is very low, but Byron’s characterization feels surprisingly progressive and normalized for a film of this sort.

While a surface-level queer reading of Tammy and the T-Rex may stop here, I’d argue there is a lot more bubbling beneath. For me, Tammy and the T-Rex feels inescapably like a film about gender, dysphoria, and a relationship struggling to find a path forward amid massive, unforeseen changes. Prior to his nonconsensual brain transplant, Michael is a well liked player on his high school football team, but he doesn’t really fit into the archetypical mold we typically see for these sorts of characters. He’s soft-spoken, kind, and wears so many crop tops that you’d think you were watching Sleepaway Camp. Michael is also almost immediately put into contrast against Tammy’s abusive ex, Billy, who dresses in black leather outfits, shouts every other line, and is prone to physical violence. For most of the time we know Michael in human form, he’s hounded by Billy and his gang of friends, which ultimately culminates in his murder-via-lion. If Michael is meant to represent a different kind of masculinity, it’s one very quickly threatened with violence and the fact that Tammy would choose this over Billy’s stereotypical badboy behavior unbalances high school gender norms.

And then of course, post-lion-mauling, Michael wakes up in the body of a mechanical tyrannosaurus. While Michael-Rex is suitably pissed and does take out his violent revenge on both his murderers and those responsible for his transformation, he spends just as much time forlornly looking at himself in the mirror or gazing sadly at his tiny new arms. A lesser film would’ve had Michael transform into a mindless killing machine, but Tammy and the T-Rex wants us to remember there is a good person inside this robot, frequently reminding us of the discomfort and sadness that comes with his sudden change. Raffill even has Michael’s revenge spree occur relatively early on into the film’s second act, leaving his dinos-phoria as the primary conflict as we move into the film’s climax and conclusion.

Once Michael manages to convince Tammy and Byron that it is in fact him inside the dinosaur that’s been tearing through the SoCal suburbs, our trio of protagonists rush into action to change him back. However, it becomes clear that Michael’s body is, well, not really in the position to accept new brains. There’s no way for Michael to return to his old self. So, in my personal favorite sequence in the movie, Tammy and Byron break into the local morgue and one-by-one present Michael-Rex with various new potential bodies to inhabit. While both Tammy and Byron have their own opinions on what form would be best for Michael, they agree it’s ultimately up to him to decide what his new body will be. Michael turns down every male body he’s presented with but spends the most time deliberating on the only woman he’s shown. While Tammy makes it clear this wouldn’t be her preference, Byron encourages her and Michael, noting they “could be like three sisters.” Michael does eventually turn down the woman’s body, but the question remains open, particularly because the arrival of the local police forces the trio to abandon their body-snatching quest before a solution is found.

It’s hard to read thematic intentionality into much of any of the story choices in Tammy and the T-Rex, but the fact that Michael is even open to the possibility of changing sex feels significant. I won’t spoil the absolutely bonkers conclusion to this film, but I will say that the question of Michael’s body and even identity is given a far from clear-cut answer. A trans reading of Michael and for the film is far from a reach and, if anything, feels like a missing subtext that helps tie much of the movie’s chaos together. (If we do ever get that stage adaptation, I’d argue for just making this full-on text — if not for the thematic weight of it all, then for the sheer amount of trans and testosterone related puns you could write from “T-Rex.”)

To me, the most endearing aspect of this storyline and the movie as a whole is the loyal and playful love affair Tammy and Michael maintain throughout the film. The two display an uncomplicated affection for one another that transcends form. I can’t help but be won over by the weird couple in-joke the two share that Michael has a habit of biting the heads off flowers. Tammy is just as in love with a T-Rex as she is with a boy, and while Tammy makes it clear she’d rather Michael not become a girl, she doesn’t fully discourage him from this option either. She quite clearly loves Michael for Michael, and who’s to say if that might not carry over should he decide to transition genders instead of species? Even still, if Tammy isn’t able to find a romantic or sexual future for the two of them post-transition, she loves Michael enough to support him and let him make his own decisions. Yes, I’m projecting here, but not by much!

So please, do consider giving this off-kilter, headscratcher of a film a watch this week. Celebrate its 30th in style and appreciate it for the unexpectedly affirming trans romance that it is. Or, just smoke a joint and tune in to watch Denise Richards in a red dress ride around on a robot dinosaur that bites the heads off people. That’s a good enough reason, too.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Nic Anstett

Nic Anstett is a writer from Baltimore, MD who specializes in the bizarre, spectacular, and queer. She is a graduate from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, University of Oregon’s MFA program, and the Tin House Summer Workshop where she was a 2021 Scholar. Her work is published and forthcoming in Witness Magazine, Passages North, North American Review, Lightspeed, Bat City Review, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Annapolis, MD with her girlfriend and is at work on a collection of short stories and maybe a novel.

Nic has written 11 articles for us.

1 Comment

Comments are closed.

The Best Queer Movies of 2024

Autostraddle’s 2023 Pride theme was Rage Party. That’s also how I would describe the best queer cinema of 2024.

While I love an easy-to-digest comedy or an unapologetically heavy drama, something is lost when our cinema treats fun and importance as diametrically opposed. Queer cinema can be about the challenges we face, the oppression we experience, the microaggressions and aggression aggressions and all the rest, and still be fun and sexy. In fact, fun and sexy are two of our greatest tools.

Even though Hollywood has pulled back from “diversity” this was still an excellent year for queer cinema. Below, I’ve written in-depth about my ten favorites, and also felt the need to shout out 20 more queer titles. (Plus 10 non-queer movies I loved too.) But as long as we’re living in complexity, I think it’s important we reflect on which queer people are able to create in the absence of more mainstream support. The vast majority of directors who released queer films this year are white — even more than most years. There’s plenty to complain about in the mainstream as Emilia Pérez will likely be the only queer film in the Best Picture Oscar race, but I think it’s also important to look at what’s missing in the indie world. And then to go deeper! There are so many film artists working on shorts or in gallery spaces or who made indie films in the last ten years that you may have missed. There’s always more to discover as we continue to fight for a more equitable world and a more equitable queer cinema.

But for now join me in celebrating some of the best queer films of 2024.

The 10 Best Straight Movies of 2024:

Hitoshi Omika shows a feather to Ryo Nishikawa in Evil Does Not Exist

10. Dahomey (dir. Mati Diop)
9. Last Summer (dir. Catherine Breillat)
8. Tótem (dir. Lila Avilés)
7. Hard Truths (dir. Mike Leigh)
6. The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)
5. No Other Land (dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
4. La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
3. Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)
2. Alam (dir. Firas Khoury)
1. Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryūsake Hamaguchi)

3 Great Movies With Minor Queer Characters but Major Queer Sensibilities:

Mia McKenna-Bruce in How to Have Sex in a green bikini top at night.

Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn)
How to Have Sex (dir. Molly Manning Walker)
The Room Next Door (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)

The 5 Best Queer Documentaries of 2024:

The best queer movies of 2024: Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras in Hummingbirds.

5. Chasing Chasing Amy (dir. Sav Rodgers)
4. Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (dir. Erin Lee Carr)
3. Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All (dir. Alexandria Bombach)
2. Swan Song (dir. Chelsea McMullan)
1. Hummingbirds (dir. Silvia Del Carmen Castaños, Estefanía “Beba” Contreras)

12 More Queer Movies You Should Check Out:

Marianne Rendon looks at Bobbi Salvõr Menuez in a close up in Summer Solstice

Backspot (dir. D.W. Waterson)
Drive-Away Dolls (dir. Ethan Coen)
Fitting In (dir. Molly McGlynn)
Housekeeping for Beginners (dir. Goran Stolevski)
I Saw the TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
In the Summers (dir. Alessandra Lacorazza)
Rez Ball (dir. Sydney Freeland)
Slow (dir. Marija Kavtaradzė)
Stroking an Animal (dir. Ángel Filgueira)
Summer Solstice (dir. Noah Schamus)
T Blockers (dir. Alice Maio Mackay)
You Are Not Me (dir. Marisa Crespo, Moisés Romera)

The 10 Best Queer Movies of 2024:

10. Good One (dir. India Donaldson)

The best queer movies of 2024: Lily Colias sits in a tent in Good One

The trailer for India Donaldson’s feature debut escalates like it’s advertising a horror movie. And, in a way, it is. What’s scarier than being faced with the humanity of a parent? But rather than leaning on genre conventions or forced dramatic turns, Donaldson trusts her environment, her performances, and her filmmaking. This is a rare feat in American cinema: a movie that understands the immense drama that happens in life’s quietest moment. Lily Collias, James Le Gros, and Danny McCarthy deliver a trio of grounded, charismatic performances that allow the film’s patience to come alive. While there have been many queer girl coming-of-age movies in recent years, few have matched this film’s sharp yet casual approach to its protagonist’s identity. It’s a film of immense power that continues to grow long after its final moments.

9. Problemista (dir. Julio Torres)

Julio Torres sits at a desk in a law office in Problemista.

In addition to making my favorite TV show of the year, Julio Torres was also responsible for one of my favorite movies. While his feature debut is more focused than the series, Problemista still has plenty of Torres’ idiosyncrasies. It’s a movie about the impossibilities of the American immigration system that portrays the cruelty of bureaucracy, privilege, and power through cinematic imagination rather than didacticism. Tilda Swinton is perfectly cast as Torres’ rich, eccentric boss and the two bounce off each other in ways that are hilarious and surprisingly poignant. He’s able to take the worst parts of our world, highlight them in all of their misery, and then provide an emotional antidote through immense creativity. Nothing is sugar-coated, yet it tastes so sweet.

8. Kinds of Kindness (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Jesse Plemons looks distraught as he is cuddled by Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley

Confession: I’m not a big Yorgos Lanthimos fan. While I’ve seen all of his movies since Dogtooth, and even liked Alps and The Lobster well enough, my disdain for The Favourite and Poor Things have left me baffled among so many people whose opinions I trust. Well, that finally changed this year. I loved this nearly three hour triptych of stories about desperate love and sinister control. This film is so smart about the ways people hurt themselves and others for a false sense of security — be it in relationships or in life — and it does so without dwelling on these themes with any self-importance. It’s just a really funny, really challenging, really weird collection of stories that are as thought-provoking as they are entertaining. Even Lanthimos’ films I disliked have had flashes of brilliance, and this felt like all those flashes stitched together. Alas, I don’t think this one will be winning any Oscars.

7. Power Alley [Levante] (dir. Lillah Halla)

The best queer movies of 2024: two queer teenagers dance back to back with smiles on their faces.

If you’re an English-speaking queer person dissatisfied with American media, please look to the rest of the world — especially South America, especially especially Brazil. Power Alley is the latest Brazilian film to blow me away with its combination of craft and storytelling we’d never see told in Hollywood. At least not in this way. The film is about abortion access and trans kids playing sports and draws a line between these two issues of bodily autonomy. It’s a film I feel comfortable labeling important even though it’s also just a really fun queer friendship sports movie. Every chance the film has to make an easy narrative choice, it does something more interesting, and the result is a movie as complex as its messages deserve.

6. Stress Positions (dir. Theda Hammel)

Theda Hammel and Amy Zimmer sit in the backseat of a car with masks on looking out opposite windows in Stress Positions.

During a moment in trans film where most of our stories — some good, some bad — still revolve around transition, Theda Hammel’s feature debut feels like a relief. While this film is too thought-provoking and beautifully constructed to be reduced to its representational value, it is about the stories we tell. More specifically, it’s about the stories its group of Brooklynites tell about themselves as they attempt to make sense of who they are and who they are to each other. At times pointedly unlikeable, I understand why this film didn’t hit for everyone. But, for me, this was the trans film of 2024. Within the confines of its Covid setting and low budget, it takes bold artistic swings. It’s a farce that’s as funny as it is challenging. It’s not going to teach any cis people about transness, it’s not going to inspire any trans people to come out — it’s just a really great movie about recognizably fucked up adults.

5. Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)

Three images of a woman and her daughter reflect against each other in mirrors

Annie Baker’s feature debut joins a small group of films — Eve’s Bayou, El Sur, Aftersun — that really capture childhood. It has all the wonder, all the magic, all the loneliness. Considering she won the Pulitzer for a play all about movies, it’s no surprise Baker was able to translate her many talents to this medium. But it’s still thrilling to witness the arrival of such a fully formed cinematic voice. Yes, the writing is excellent, yes, all the performances are excellent, but they’re both enhanced by a clear grasp on film language and the unique possibilities of the screen. I’ve talked to so many people who saw themselves in this movie, not because it achieves some sort of universality but because that’s what great art makes possible. It holds a reality so much more recognizable than real life.

4. Queer (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

The best queer movies of 2024: A man's hand reaches out toward the naked back of another sleeping man

I’m not all that invested in whether or not queer filmmakers cast openly queer actors in their work. But this is the rare film where the hetero ambiguity of its famous lead and the stated heterosexuality of its ingenue enhance the work itself. This is, after all, less a queer romance and more about the self-hatred that can arise within queer romance. Daniel Craig is so charming and pathetic as his William Burroughs stand-in and Drew Starkey is a perfect empty vessel for projection. This is a far nastier and more challenging film than the melancholy summer romance of something like Call Me By Your Name. But it also contains some of Luca Guadagnino’s boldest and most revealing work. I’m in awe of its craft and its clarity of perspective. It seduces us with sex and comedy before breaking our hearts — and our brains — wide open.

3. Love Lies Bleeding (dir. Rose Glass)

Kristen Stewart kisses Katy O'Brian in bed in Love Lies Bleeding

Rose Glass’ sophomore feature is what happens when a queer actor rebukes assimilation and uses their celebrity to help great work get made. Kristen Stewart has never been better than she is here stepping into her dykey self with total confidence. She’s a perfect neo-noir anti-hero, seduced and seducing, toxic and bold. She’s matched by Katy O’Brian in a role that feels made for her, villain Ed Harris chewing scenery, Anna Baryshnikov as a comically thirsty lesbian, Jena Malone as a straight sister worth fighting for, and a sleazy Dave Franco I assume playing some version of his brother. This is the kind of bigger budget lesbian genre cinema we haven’t received since Bound. It’s sexy and weird and takes seamless risks. This kind of work may not get you Oscars or mainstream acceptance but I hope famous queer actors look at this film and see the artistic possibilities of integrity.

2. Bird (dir. Andrea Arnold)

A girl films her hand with a butterfly on it on her phone in Bird

Rewatching Andrea Arnold’s latest masterpiece Bird, I thought of poet Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s belief that personhood is a scam, that it merely exists to grant humanity to some while denying it from others. Arnold has always approached her characters with a personal touch, opting for energy, sensuality, and complexity where other filmmakers find maudlin self-importance. While others are arrogant enough to “humanize” those who are plenty human already, here Arnold boldly animalizes. Throughout history groups of people have been compared to animals in ways that are derogatory — in this film it’s celebratory.

Since her shorts, animals have played a prominent role in Arnold’s work, sometimes as metaphor, sometimes as texture, sometimes as protagonist. Here, they are all that and more. This is a celebration of otherness, the euphoria of feeling out of place and then finding someone else like you. To be an animal is to fight, to scrounge, to scavenge — it’s also to protect, to fly, to feed. Sometimes a “ring of keys” moment involves seeing who you aspire to be, but sometimes it’s just seeing someone be themself. In a film that literalizes its protagonist’s gaze through her Gen Z filmmaking, seeing is everything. Eyes ablaze, we animals look and look.

1. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

The back of Zendaya's head in the middle of images of Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist on the tennis court in Challengers, the best queer movie of 2024.

Desire is an action. If Queer showed want as pained longing, Luca Guadagnino’s other masterpiece let it be propulsive. The want to be the best tennis player. The want to touch the prettiest girl. The want to get so close with your best friend you consume each other…’s churros. While some found this film’s trio unlikeable, I found it enthralling to watch people who want and want and want.

I could talk about Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ perfect score that is magic on its own — shoutout to them making my Spotify wrapped — and even better in context. I could talk about the cinematography of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, a long-time favorite of mine due to his work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose camera is bold and beautiful. I could talk about Justin Kuritzkes tight and hilarious script structured like a tennis match, so wise about love and ambition. I could talk about madman Guadagnino who took that 90 page script and blew it up to over two hours with character-driven style. Or I could talk about the trio of actors — no, STARS — who make the whole thing come alive.

The Red Shoes has been one of my very favorite movies since childhood and this is like The Red Shoes sponsored by Uniqlo. Challengers is a movie for people who hunger, a movie for people who understand that the need to be the best is a way of life. For all my fellow Tashi Duncans, I shout a hearty COME ON!!!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Drew Burnett Gregory

Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Drew Burnett has written 631 articles for us.

11 Comments

    • That was technically a 2023 release! (It was on my list last year.) But I agree it’s really special.

      • I was just going to suggest All of us Strangers! Man that film killed me. I see it’s the Guardian’s best film on 2024. Thanks for your list, will save for future reference.

    • This is unsurprising given it’s Autostraddle. It has been their issue for years – and they show little interest in changing.

  3. Your disdain for the very excellent Poor Things and very brilliant The Favourite but seeming love for Queer is deeply concerning. Queer was arguably the most boring, dry, uninteresting film I’ve had the displeasure of watching this year and in recent years.

  4. Yay I loved Bird! Tbh any movie with franz Rogowski has me thinking it’s a bit queer.

    Lol loved that u snuck in a James franco diss with the LLB review

  5. i loved challengers! what a film. i would lie to marry zendaya but her boyfriend is nice so i will let her have him. one of the hottest films of the year.

  6. Went out of my way to see Challengers while travelling after I read your review, and it was the most fun I had in a theatre all year (pending trying to squeeze in a showing of Conclave this week!). I really enjoyed the documentary Look Into My Eyes, which followed psychic mediums and their clients and ended up being about urban loneliness and the bids we make for connection, even when they’re ostensibly one-sided and guarded. Several of the subjects were at intersections of queerness, performance, and otherness which made for surprisingly insightful overlays. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on film and culture with us this year, you’ve changed the way I think about both and I really enjoy getting to read your perspectives, especially when they diverge from my own. Happy holidays!

Comments are closed.

Quiz: Tell Us Your Holiday Plans and We’ll Tell You What Movie-Musical Your Life Is

Theater gays, it’s really our moment to shine. Maybe in high school we were still in the closet. Maybe we were overshadowed by the gay cis man in all the lead roles. Maybe all the heteronormative girls got the lead roles while we sat there secretly wondering why we relate so deeply to Fun Home. Regardless of our collective high school theater journeys, we’re now entering an era of reliving all the joy of show tunes with none of the closeted drama! Over the past decade we’ve welcomed an endless number of musical movie adaptations. Surely you’ve already seen Wicked three times like me, but we’ve been there for Mean Girls, Prom, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, tick, tick… BOOM!, the Color Purple, In the Heights, and the list goes on! The recent release of Wicked is a celebration of this new cinematic era. An era where we can sing and dance and be full gay adults.

I haven’t been in the mood for holiday music and decorating, probably because I’m too busy watching Cynthia Erivo videos. The Wicked soundtrack IS my holiday music vibe. If you’ve managed to pull together some holiday plans, feel free to share them with us, and I’ll tell you what movie musical adaptation your life is, because we all could embrace a little more main character energy.

Tell Us Your Holidays Plans and We'll Tell You What Movie-Musical Your Life Is

Where are you planning to spend the holidays?(Required)
What's the family situation like?(Required)
What are you bringing to the table?(Required)
How are you decorating your home?(Required)
How do you feel about the holidays in general?(Required)
How are you traveling?(Required)
How are you navigating time off work?(Required)
What is one tradition you're actually looking forward to?(Required)
What is that one tradition you're trying to avoid?(Required)
Who are you planning to visit?(Required)
How are you spending down time at the holiday party/dinner/event?
Are you going to any holiday parties?

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Em Win

Originally from Toledo, Ohio, Em now lives in Los Angeles where she does many odd jobs in addition to writing. When she's not sending 7-minute voice messages to friends and family, she enjoys swimming, yoga, candle-making, tarot, drag, and talking about the Enneagram.

Em has written 80 articles for us.

How To Celebrate ‘Carol’ Day, Which Is Today!

It’s December 21, AKA the day of one of the worst lesbian dates in cinematic history: the one where Carol asked Therese to come to her house in New Jersey for some gentle physical contact and Christmas music, only for them to be interrupted by Carol’s husband Harge. Honestly, the date is going pretty well before Harge gets there! But then everyone including Harge is having a Very Bad Time, and Therese cries on the train the whole way back to Manhattan. But this is Therese’s induction into lesbianism: from an all-day date at someone’s house who you just met to crying on a train at the end, these are all quintessentially gay experiences.

So, how does one celebrate Carol day? You could simply rewatch the film, nothing wrong with that approach! Or you could revisit Erin Sullivan’s 30 Days of Carol, a slice of queer history right here on Autostraddle. There’s even a special look into Therese’s planner where she pens her December 21 date with Carol. But if you’re looking for some creative ways to celebrate Carol Day, perhaps by channeling Carol herself, here are some ideas for what you can get up to togay.

1. Tell a random woman you like her hat.
Preferably a shopgirl at a department store who is wearing a Santa hat, but it can be any woman with any hat.

2. Order creamed spinach with a poached egg and a dry martini with an olive for lunch.
I’m not exactly sure what restaurant would serve you creamed spinach AND a martini, so you might have to settle for making this at home. It must specifically be eaten for lunch though and preferably with a woman you just met — the hat woman perhaps!

3. Invite a woman you just met to your house to play the piano while you kick off your shoes and sit on the floor.
If you have an ex husband, see if he’ll dramatically barge in to really make it an authentic experience.

4. Leave your gloves behind at a store.
You never know who will return them to you! Could be a woman who upends your life and whose life you upend right back!

5. Have drinks with an ex.
Figure out who your Abby is and celebrate this gay holiday with them! It’s what Carol would do!

6. Recite the “We’re not ugly people, Harge” monologue to anyone who will listen.
This sounds like a fun holiday party trick if you ask me!

7. Go on a random Midwest road trip.
You MUST stop in Waterloo, and you MUST bring a woman you recently met, and it MUST end early and dramatically.

8. Run out of cigarettes and feel deep despair about it.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, you run out of cigarettes.

9. Wear a really nice flannel robe.
I think about Carol’s Robe in Carol a lot. And not just because it plays an integral role in the sex scene. It’s a very good winter robe!

10. Wear a fur coat.
Okay, fine, it can be faux fur for financial and ethical reasons.

11. Invite a past flame to the Oak Room for dinner at 9, unsure but hopeful she’ll show, and when she does, smile at her across the room because you know you’ve gotten her back.
This will prove a bit difficult, as the Oak Room hasn’t operated in the Plaza Hotel since 2011.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.

Kayla has written 947 articles for us.

1 Comment

  1. My first comment as a long time reader … this really cracked me the hell up. And inspired a Carol watch with my two friends who had never seen the movie before. Cozy and joyous. Perhaps now they will understand my despair at running out of cigarettes at the precise worst moment.

Comments are closed.

Reine #68: Scholarly Debate

a group of queers arguing about body hair

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Ren Strapp

Ren Strapp is a comic artist, designer, and gender nonconforming lesbian werewolf. Her work is inspired by risograph printing and American traditional tattooing. She loves weight lifting and hiking. Support her work on Patreon.

Ren has written 70 articles for us.

1 Comment

Comments are closed.

Queer Horoscopes for Capricorn Season 2024

Hi folks! I’m Deb with Queerstrology, here to share your horoscopes for Capricorn Season and the beginning of 2025!

Capricorn Season begins with the Winter Solstice and ends in a new year. Wrapping up the holiday season can bring both merry and scary times. ‘Tis the season to spend more time on your personal life. Capricorns are often associated with hard work, but during their season, they are given a break.

Ruled by Saturn, the planet of restriction, Capricorn also governs the 10th house, associated with ambition and achievements. This means you may feel significant effects in these areas of your birth chart, particularly where Capricorn and Saturn reside, as well as any activity in your 10th house.

Capricorn Season brings the energy of structure and ambition. Embracing the framework of this season will allow you to push toward your future goals. As the year comes to an end, keep what works and carry it into 2025 as a year of transformation.

Key Dates to Note:

Capricorn Season begins Saturday, December 21 at 4:20 am ET. The Sun moves into the constellation of Capricornus, ending on January 19, 2025, with the start of Aquarius Season.

December 30: New Moon in Capricorn
New moons symbolize rebirth, and under the influence of Capricorn, they bring an energy of ambition. This is a time to fully embrace your goals using that ambition to make them come true.

January 6: Mars Retrograde moves into Cancer
Mars is the planet of initiative and is retrograde 10% of the year. In the sign of Cancer this indicates emotional drive that may lead to emotional exhaustion.

January 13: Full Moon in Cancer
Full moons bring a time of reflection, and under Cancer asks for a review of your feelings. Make sure to take care of your emotional needs.

How Capricorn Season Affects Your Sign

Aries


The intensity of your energy warns you to move forward with intention. Your ruling planet, Mars, is in retrograde until late February, which may be creating extra tension for you. The areas most affected are communication, daily activities, and home life. While you may feel tempted to avoid backing down for fear of seeming weak, doing so is essential for finding resolutions. Steady your drive and focus on moving past this period into a time of reconnection.

Taurus

TAURUS
After taking some time to spoil yourself, this season encourages you to connect with others. Your social calendar may fill up quickly, so watch out for the costs associated with going out—not just financially, but for your health as well. Make sure to balance social interactions with time in your safe space. Your hard work is about to pay off.

Gemini


Your ability to adapt to various environments makes you good at what you do. The generosity you show to your loved ones will come back to you. It’s time to upgrade your finances by gathering additional resources from people you trust. When was the last time you wrote a note to those you cherish? Now is the time.

Cancer

CANCER
Every season seems to bring you the message to take care of yourself, yet you still prioritize others more often than you should. Imagine what would happen if you asked for what you want. During the full moon, the emotional journey may leave you feeling tired. Assert your need for rest and care, or you may risk your ability to nurture others.

Leo


The holiday season brings with it decorations, baked goods, and crafting. Your creativity thrives with so many opportunities for expression. Invite the people you adore to join you. Others will notice your efforts, asking, “How do you do it?” Share your ideas and enjoy spreading the fun. This will help you connect more deeply with people. Don’t forget to set boundaries to prevent emotional overflow.

Virgo

VIRGO
Virgos often feel the need for perfection, which usually leads to hosting events. Make a list of what you need to create your ideal gathering. Your social interactions during this time may inspire you to set new goals. Sometimes, the perfection you seek comes from those you surround yourself with. Your personal life feels solid, enabling you to embrace the more playful side of life.

Libra


You love the harmony and joy of this time of year. It ignites an energy within you, creating a leadership role in social situations. While you enjoy being aesthetically pleasing to others, this season pushes you to be a cheerleader for them. The need to feel comfy and cozy reflects a balanced home life. Those who experience life with you will return your grace with love and support.

Scorpio


You are intensely focused on your responsibilities, but this time of year, you allow yourself more grace than usual. Take time to step away from your burdens and check in with yourself. Maybe you need a change of scenery or time to restore your energy. Meeting new people with different perspectives may help guide your ongoing transformation.

Sagittarius


Be careful not to dig too deep into your travel fund. Since most people travel this time of year, you don’t — instead, you prefer to travel during the off-season. This is because you crave new experiences and understanding, preferably by exploring them yourself. Spending more time at your home base may inspire you to start some projects around the house.

Capricorn

CAPRICORN
Ah, the season of receiving a combined birthday and holiday gift. That doesn’t matter much to you this year, because Pluto has left your sign for good. Now is your time of exuberance, as your confidence grows stronger. Be careful not to let the power go to your head; instead, maintain a calm, clear perspective on what you want.

Aquarius


The intensity of the holiday season, combined with Pluto stationing direct in your sign until 2044, may leave you feeling drained. Make resting and resetting your top priority, or the time it takes to resocialize will be longer. The state of the world may be adding additional stress, so take care of yourself — because we need you.

Pisces


Feeling refreshed from grounding yourself, you’re ready to be more social. During the holidays, you’ve realized how much you’ve missed interacting with others. However, with more interactions come more opportunities for misunderstanding. This may lead to a need for alone time and introspection. It is best to keep balance in your interactions to keep a level head.

If you would like to learn more about Astrology, check out my social media @Queerstrology or drop any questions or astrology facts in the comments. Let’s learn from each other!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Deb Roe

Deb from Queerstrology is a queer celebrity astrologer. They think of astrology as a journey and your natal chart, the book of reference. Their brand of astrology doesn’t have the gender binary or a specific orientation. The content they produce both research based and fun pop culture astrology insights. They provide astrology readings, if you are interested in learning more.

Deb has written 5 articles for us.

Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey Want To Read Books and Eat Snacks With You

The PANTS podcast debuted in May of 2020, thick in the middle of a spring saturated with existential terror and wells of loneliness. Hosted by actors Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey, the podcast promised to deliver unto its listeners a window into the real-life friendship between the actors who played legendary best friends Shane and Alice on seminal lesbian television series The L Word and its uneven reboot, Generation Q. They interviewed original series cast-mates like Mia Kirshner and Sarah Shahi, chatted about their own lives, and eventually started recapping the show that brought them together. They made merch, did live shows, and, in 2024, added video. Their dynamic felt familiar and lived-in, their dialogue as charming for its banality as it was for its casual glimmers of stardust. Listeners, who they called “pockets,” were hooked. “It’s a show about nothing,” writes one reviewer. “But their openness and wit make it one of the best parts of your day.”

In October, they took that openness to a new level, revealing the 2025 debut of a project they’d kept close for the year it took them to write it — So Gay For You, a memoir on “friendship, found family, and the show that started it all,” a book described by Tegan Quin as “must-read queer lit and a testament to the enduring legacy of The L Word and the culture-changing stars at its heart.”

In December, they announced they’d be starting a Book Club with Allstora, an online queer book marketplace founded by RuPaul and author Eric Cervini. Spun out of Cervini’s prior venture ShopQueer, Allstora is an enterprise dedicated to improving royalties for authors (who receive a higher percentage of sales for books sold through the platform than they do from Amazon) and ensuring distribution of LGBTQIA+ banned books. The store has been gradually rolling out a modest selection of book clubs, including a flagship club hosted by RuPaul and another focused on queer history. This week they announced two more: Olympic skiier Gus Kenworthy’s Coffee Table Book Club and “fierce female leads, steamy rom-coms, empowering self-help” from trans TikTok legend Dylan Mulvaney.

The PANTS Pod Book Club is Allstora’s sole sapphic-focused faction, and Moennig and Hailey are stoked about uplifting lesbian authors. They declared their intentions for the project in an announcement video: They’ll be picking books that made their hearts skip a beat,” “whether it’s a raw memoir or a compelling piece of fiction,” and then taking that reading experience, bringing it into a shared space, and talking it out. Their first pick is How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague, a “heartfelt and hilarious” story about a 70-year old therapist realizing her feelings for her dead best friend were more than platonic. For a limited time, it’s just $1 to sign up.

Just like The L Word’s very special and unique storylines provided a foundation for queers to connect with each other, working out their own personal drama through microaggressions against Jenny and affection for Bette & Tina, they’ll now be invited to do the same with sapphic books, in conversation with their favorite queer television stars.

When it comes to queer representation in the arts, progress has rarely been linear. But when it comes to queer literature specifically, things truly have just gotten better and better every year. There’s never been more out there to choose from or more specific identities showcased than there are now. In that spirit, the PANTS pod book club will be a space for passionate readers as well as those who’ve not picked up a book in a long while.

Last week I hopped on a quick zoom call with Hailey and Moennig to talk about the project and tangentially related topics. This interview has been edited for clarity, style and length.

Riese: Okay, if your book club did take place in real life and it wasn’t a virtual one, what space would you imagine it being in? What would the vibe be?

Kate: Oh, wow.

Leisha: Let’s see.

Kate: I would choose an old school library.

Leisha: Oh, I was going library too—

Kate: An old one. One of those older ones that are—

Leisha: Good, we had the same thought.

Kate: Okay, great. So then you and I won’t argue about the location. An old school library.

Leisha: At night when it’s closed down.

Kate: I’m thinking of the Philadelphia Public Library on the Parkway. It’s really beautiful…

Leisha: Yeah, the lighting would have to be really good.

Riese: That’s really important for all things, for the lighting to be good.

Kate: It’s all about the lighting.

Leisha: Someone would have to be in charge of catering.

Kate: You’re not allowed to eat in the library.

Leisha: I think after hours, a lot of rules can be broken.

Riese: Yeah, you can do whatever. That’s the unspoken truth of the library.

Leisha: There’s no librarian like, “Shh.”

Kate: They’re pretty strict in libraries, Leish.

Leisha: I know, but this is a fantasy. We make the rules.

Riese: It’s like The Library After Dark. It’s like a different vibe, I guess, I mean, you’d have to be safe. You don’t want to ruin the books with your food. You wouldn’t serve ribs.

Leisha: We would have napkins.

Kate: It would really wind up being cheap wine and cheese—

Riese: Boxed wine and string cheese?

Kate: Boxed wine and string cheese. As long as there are leather club chairs that everyone can sit in, like you’re at Oxford during a lecture, then that is my fantasy.

Riese: What made you wanna start a book club?

Kate: Well, RuPaul and Allstora reached out to us and we figured it seemed like a great opportunity.

Leisha: They wanted us to take over their Sapphic book club, and that just sounded really interesting and cool for us. We’ve never done anything like this, so we thought it was a great opportunity to get PANTS involved with books because we have a book coming out, and it all seemed on brand and fun for us.

Riese: Do you guys read a lot of books?

Leisha: I don’t read a lot of books. We spend a lot of time reading scripts, so we’re entering into a new thing — one of the things that was appealing about the book club to us was that it would help us learn more about this world. So every month we’ll take part of an episode of PANTS to go through what we read with the people. I’ve always wanted to join a book club personally.

Riese: What did you imagine it would be like?

Leisha: Ok, so my friend has one, and they rotate hosting the party, they have snacks, they all pick a book, they have snacks and wine. To me, it’s more of an intimate, personal experience—

Kate: That’s what it is.

Leisha: So I’d be with my friends and it’s less of an insular experience when it’s a book club. That’s what I like about it, and I’m hoping we can do this virtually with people. We can have our callers ask questions about the book so it’s something we can share with them. Right now we don’t have that connection, besides the advice questions on PANTS. We don’t have that kind of outlet.

Riese: That’s interesting too, because a lot of your fans obviously connected over the stories that were told in The L Word, and that was a subject matter for them to come together and talk about and build their own community around it. And now you’re kind of trying to do that with talking about a different kind of story, like a literal story in a book. You know what I mean?

Leisha: You get it.

Kate: Full circle. It’s full circle.

Riese: How does the process start for you guys with deciding which books to feature?

Kate: We have a team at Allstora, and they’ll bring us ideas, and also our publisher has ideas, and then if something pops up on our end, we add add, and then Leisha and I decide, all right, which one sounds most exciting?

Leisha: What’s great about this team is that we get books that are not out yet, so we’re getting pre-reads of something that the world doesn’t have access to yet. So that’s great that we can take this platform that we’ve built and help people promote their books.

Riese: Yeah, it’s always a good cause to be supporting lesbian books and publishing.

Leisha: Exactly. And we actually understand what that means now, because we’re doing it next year!

Riese: Now that you’ve been through the process of writing a book, what do you think about Alice having done all of her rewrites in 12 days?

Kate: I think that’s my favorite question.

Leisha: I realize it would take longer than that. Yes. It’s a very, very long, laborious process to write a book, and Alice is incredible.

Kate: Yeah, that’s true.

Leisha: And that’s why she could do it.

Riese: I mean, Jenny did too, Jenny wrote her book pretty fast.

Leisha: Jenny was pretty good.

Kate: Jenny made a lot of money off her book. I mean, that girl was able to finance a lot of things just based off of one book and a movie that was made off of it.

Leisha: She had her movie deal pretty quickly too.

Kate: It was immediate. She had a whole entire lifestyle change based off those two things, and I think, you know — The L Word was a special place.

Riese: I think it was a New Yorker article, and then it became a book, and then it became a movie, and then she was off!

Kate: And then she’s able to afford Porsches and photography studios.

Leisha: You know… life might imitate art this time.

Riese: Definitely I think that will happen for you.

Leisha: We’re waiting.

Riese: Ok so how many of the books that are currently behind each of you would you say that you’ve read? [ed note: we were on a zoom call and they were each sitting in front of bookshelves in their own homes] 

Kate: Actually, I can answer that very easily, because I just did an audit of my books.

Riese: Oh, you did?

Kate: I’d say out of all the books up there — I’m going to say 85%, I can say that in all honesty.

Riese: Wow. Yeah, that’s good. I don’t know if my bookshelf is 85%. It’s probably like 60%.

Leisha: I can say 100% because they’re all art and design books.

Riese: So you looked at all of the the pictures.

Leisha: I looked at all of them. I look at the pictures, Riese.

Riese: That’s great! How has your interest in reading changed now that you’ve become writers of a book?

Kate: I respect anyone who puts out a book truthfully, because the process is laborious and intense, and it’s not for the faint at heart, so a massive amount of respect, truthfully, to anyone who puts one out and births it into the world.

Leisha: The process of writing a book was one of the most vulnerable things I think either one of us has ever done. Ours obviously is a memoir, but I’m just picturing the years and years people spend writing. It took us over a year. Imagine the people that have just tucked away forever, their life’s work.

Riese: Some people take ten years to write one book.

Leisha: Aren’t you writing a book?

Riese: Yeah.

Kate: Are you writing a book?

Riese: I am writing a book. Yeah. It’s taking ten years.

Kate: What kind of book?

Riese: Well, I was writing a book, and then I kinda finished it, and then I decided I didn’t like it, and now I’m writing a different book, so I probably am always perpetually saying that I’m writing a book, but yeah, I’m writing—

Kate: Nonfiction?

Riese: No, I’m writing sort of a queer romance novel right now, it starts in the mid-nineties, there’s some love triangles, friends-to-lovers and so on. It’s centered on these four main characters, two are in their thirties, one owns this exclusive resort in Palm Springs, and then her best friend is this novelist, then there’s two girls in their early twenties, both students and one is more naive and the other is a former child star. So it’s a lot of intergenerational friendships, and there’s a love story that traces through it all, and it’s centered around this resort in Palm Springs where lesbians go, but I’m explaining it really poorly right now. I guess I could describe it better than that, but it’s going to be good, I think.

Leisha: Great. See? So you know.

Kate: When does it come out? Maybe we can promote it in our book club.

Riese: Well, I have to finish writing it first.

Kate: Well, okay. When you finish writing it.

Riese: For a while I was like, “I want to write a National Book Award-winning book,” and then I was like, “No, I think I just want to write a book that will be fun for people to read.” You know what I mean? Anyway, so that’s what I’m working on, and I’m also going to work on my way of describing it to people as well, so that it sounds more captivating.

Kate: You got to find that one magic sentence.

Riese: Right. Yeah. I need an elevator pitch! Something like that. But in the meantime I am very excited to read your book!

Leisha: Did you pre-order our book?

Riese: I will.

Leisha: You will?

Kate: You did or you’re about to?

Riese: I will, I’m about to. I’m about to. I actually, I’m going to do it today. [editor’s note: I did]

Kate: Okay.

Riese: I really will. Preorders are important.

Kate: They’re very important.

Riese: Are you going to do your own book in the book club?

Leisha: I don’t know if we want to do that.

Kate: It’s a little self-serving.

Leisha: Yeah. We’d rather help someone else.

Kate: Honestly, I think at that point we’ve spoken enough about ourselves. We don’t need to add to it, so I’m going to say, no.

Riese: But you also get to go on a whole book tour and talk about yourselves even more.

Leisha: We are. We are.

Kate: Exactly. We’re going to, which is why — let’s pay it forward and we talk about someone else’s book.

Riese: Well, I’m really excited about it. I think it’s going to be great. Everyone’s really thrilled. I’ll interview you guys again about the book when it comes out but I think it’s gonna be a hit!

Leisha: We worked really, really hard on it.

Kate: We sure did. We sure did. Yeah, we sure did. It was an experience for sure. We can’t spill too much now, because we have to make you look forward to something in a few months.

Riese: Well, congratulations! Finishing a book is hard.

Kate: Thank you very much.

Leisha: When you’re done with your book. Let us know.

Riese: I will!

You can sign up to join the Pants Pod Book Club on Allstora for just $1.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

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.

3 Comments

  1. this interview made me laugh so much!!! i already signed up for the book club. thrillllled to see kate and leisha on autostraddle.

  2. Well, I loved “How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?” Such a good pick! Can’t wait for the pants pod convo.

Comments are closed.

Should I Get Married Before Trump Takes Office?

I feel bitter that we have to be pushed into something less than we deserve.
Q
I've lived outside of the US for the last four years, and for the last two and a half, I've been dating my wonderful partner who I love very much. Like many international couples, visa issues are a major concern in our relationship. If we want to be together, we have to plan ahead and figure out a way, not just trust that things will fall into place. I like living where we are now and enjoy my life outside of the US, but the States is still my home and we might want to move there together one day, and a spouse visa is the easiest way to do that.
We've been talking about marriage and our ideas on marriage since before we started dating. I've never really seen myse...

Join a crew of extraordinary humans who keep Autostraddle here for everyone!  Already a member? Sign In

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

the team

auto has written 757 articles for us.

‘The Room Next Door’ Is Almodóvar’s Tribute to Life Through Death

This review of The Room Next Door was originally published as part of our TIFF 2024 coverage.
Five years ago — despite his protests — many called Pain and Glory a swan song for Pedro Almodóvar. It wasn’t an unfounded conclusion. After all, it was an autobiographical work about illness starring a long time collaborator that seemed to reflect on an entire life. Even if it wasn’t his last, many wonder what Almodóvar could do next. What does an artist do after that sort of career capping masterpiece? So far, Almodóvar’s answer has been to play and to expand. He made two English language short films — an adaptation of a play he’d long-referenced and his sensual take on a western — and he made Parallel Mothers, his most political work in years. Having dealt with his personal demons, Almodóvar seemed ready to experiment and to confront the broader demons of past, present, and future. Those modes combine in The Room Next Door, his first full-length film in English. Julianne Moore plays Ingrid Parker, a writer whose latest book confronts her fear of death. At a signing, one young reader asks her to write the inscription to her girlfriend with the note: It won’t happen again. Ingrid obliges and says, “I hope it doesn’t,” with the melancholy tone of someone who knows it will. Death arrives again for Ingrid when an old friend at the signing tells her that their mutual friend, Martha (Tilda Swinton), is in the hospital with cancer. Ingrid visits her and the two rekindle a close friendship that culminates in Martha requesting Ingrid’s presence when she takes her own life. The title refers to this request, Ingrid wanting no witnesses but someone nearby. The title is said multiple times, each time increasing in stylized intensity. When a celebrated filmmaker makes their first film in English, people are quick to judge whether or not their style translates. Many will observe the heavy-handed script and decide it does not. This is a mistake. Almodóvar’s dialogue has always been stylized — American audiences are just quicker to accept this when a film is foreign. In fact, Almodóvar is in total control here both in moments that are grounded and moments that exaggerate for melodrama or comedy. He has also found two English-speaking actresses wholly equipped to embody his words. Tilda Swinton — the star of Almodóvar’s short The Human Voice — was an obvious choice. But so was Julianne Moore, an actress whose best performances were with another gay auteur with a unique style. Both actresses are exceptional, balancing the various tones and portraying a deep intimacy with ease. The film is explicitly in support of euthanasia. It’s also explicitly anti-cop, anti-fascist, and anti-neo liberal. Ingrid and Martha’s shared ex (John Turturro, also perfectly cast) is a climate scientist and in his doomsday speeches, Almodóvar’s own anger and frustrations can be felt. This is a film about a dying woman — it’s also a film about a dying world. How should someone spend their final days? How should the human race? What does hope look like when it’s not just a tool to evade the realities of mortality? Like the writing, the formal style is also undoubtedly Almodóvar. New York has never looked like this. His signature colors and attention to design are on full display. And yet it doesn’t feel like a pastiche of old work. He seems inspired by this new setting, managing to mix the old with the new to achieve a stunning craft that’s both personal and fresh. Before her illness, Martha worked as a war photographer. The Vietnam War and the Bosnian Genocide are mentioned, the War in Iraq is even shown in one of the film’s brief, sporadic flashbacks. This is the most unruly aspect of the film, but the reach is appreciated. How could a film about death and the consequences of human action leave out humankind’s most destructive impulse? This is a film brimming with questions and ideas, a desperate attempt to draw connections between the personal and the global. By leaving his home country of Spain, Almodóvar has not just made a movie with famous English-speaking actors. He’s also challenged himself to expand beyond the world he knows. If Pain and Glory was a reckoning with self and Parallel Mothers a reckoning with Spain, The Room Next Door is a reckoning with the entire world. There is so much suffering endured and witnessed by us all. But there’s also the sound of birds singing, passages of literature that remain like memories, late night movies with friends, and, of course, fucking. Almodóvar isn’t ready to give up on the world quite yet. For a movie about death, his latest is full of life.
The Room Next Door is now in theatres.
Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Drew Burnett Gregory

Drew is a Brooklyn-based writer, filmmaker, and theatremaker. She is a Senior Editor at Autostraddle with a focus in film and television, sex and dating, and politics. Her writing can also be found at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29, Into, them, and Knock LA. She was a 2022 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Notable Writer and a 2023 Lambda Literary Screenwriting Fellow. She is currently working on a million film and TV projects mostly about queer trans women. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Drew Burnett has written 631 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. Thank you for this review Drew, and all the festival coverage. I seem to have stopped watching (many) movies but I still enjoy a good review.

  2. So…..no lesbians in this movie? Surprising, I could’ve sworn from the trailer Tilda and Moore would be a couple. Not sure why it’s being reviewed on Autostraddle if there’s no sign of queerness

  3. I’m so unbelievably excited for this film, I’ve been waiting for your review specifically and this fantastic piece is even better than I could have imagined. Teared up reading your take on the themes of the film, what a brilliant filmmaker — I will be sat day one!

  5. This is a beautifully written and insightful reflection on Almodóvar’s evolving artistry. I love how you connect his past works to The Room Next Door and highlight his willingness to confront deeply personal and global themes. This makes me even more excited to watch this. Thank you for such a thoughtful analysis!

  6. Saw this at the London BFI Film Festival and both Pedro Almodóvar and Julianne Moore were in attendance to give their insights on the film, which was brilliant. Almodóvar never disappoints; his films are always fascinating and thought provoking.

Comments are closed.

Autostraddle’s Favorite Queer Movie Scenes of 2024

Considering my own picks were a make-out and an expression of longing, I shouldn’t have been surprised to scroll through the rest of the teams’ favorite movie scenes of 2024 and see make out make out sex crush thirsting. With a handful of notable exceptions, the team was horny at the movies this year and what a blessing.

I love deep-dives on individual moments. It allows us to go beyond the vague platitudes inevitable in a blurb to really zoom in on why a work makes us feel a certain way. And yes that feeling is often lust.

The Three-Way Kiss, Challengers

Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor kiss Zendaya's neck.

How could we start anywhere else? As Tashi Duncan says, tennis is a relationship. And while this makeout is certainly delicious, what makes the whole scene so effective is that it’s a synecdoche of the film’s relationships. The writing is economic, every moment operating on a level of entertainment and character development. The performances then deepen what doesn’t even need deepening. And yet, in every glance and laugh and line delivery, who these people are and who they are — and could someday be — to each other is made clear. But what really makes this scene THE SCENE is the filmmaking. It’s true in the tennis moments and it’s true here. Guadagnino refuses to be a passive observer. The way the camera pushes in as all three characters kiss until it moves past the boys as Tashi leans back. The way we’re placed in her perspective as they continue to physically connect with only a shred of plausible deniability. When we’re close, when we’re wide, when we’re medium, when we’re moving, when we’re static. It’s perfection. I love the whole movie, but this is its best moment — and not just because it’s the horniest. — Drew

Bathroom Sex, Love Lies Bleeding

Katy O'Brian leans on a wall with one muscly arm and looks down.

I’m staying on brand here by choosing a sex scene, but wow this was truly my favorite queer sex scene in a minute! It felt so real, lived-in, erotic, specific. Dirty talk rarely hits in films in my opinion, but it did here. The script, the blocking, the acting! It’s all hitting for me. — Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

The Conversation with “Tara,” Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara

A close up of Tegan Quin on zoom with the text: How could this not affect me?

I couldn’t stop thinking about this film for weeks after watching it. It chronicled an era and a corner of the internet I am deeply familiar with — in the late aughts/early 10s my blog and Autostraddle were engaging the same demographic as Tegan & Sara fans, and I also am and was a Tegan & Sara fan. Those wide-eyed hipster lesbians in their beanies with their asymmetrical bangs and skinny jeans? I knew them. And catfishing was indeed so rampant, and lines were so blurry, and internet social spaces were so new and also so unique and it was so meaningful to be able to connect with queers and help them feel better about themselves. Tegan & Sara were specifically so accessible to and open with their fans, and this documentary really blew open the heartbreaking worst case scenario of all that, in which a fan began catfishing other fans, pretending to be Tegan and carrying on relationships with many of them, while also hacking into Tegan’s private files and email. The documentary also looks at the viciousness and cruelty that also thrived in so many of these communities who often seem thirsty for a target to undermine or bully.

One person, “Tara,” continued appearing throughout their investigation into Fake Tegan’s identity. Tara seemingly never accepted that they weren’t in a relationship with Real Tegan, and after being blown off by fake Tegan when asking for a real-life meetup, they went on an online rampage, building a tumblr page to out Tegan as a horrible person and release her personal information, reaching out to other victims, contacting Tegan’s then-girlfriend and management, and doing what felt to Tegan like a clear attempt to ruin her life. When Tegan probes Tara to explain that behavior, Tara refuses to acknowledge that their behavior, despite being driven by a desire to destroy Tegan, had any impact on her whatsoever. In that moment a key element of the dissonance that occurs in these parasocial relationships, even those without catfishing or malice involved, is laid so bare — this idea that a person, solely due to their fame or artistic success (and the false perception that all famous people are financially comfortable and somehow inoculated from harm by that comfort), cannot possibly be hurt by a non-famous person. Tara cuts Tegan off as she attempts to summarize Tara’s actions — declaring definitively, “You weren’t affected in that capacity. It barely skimmed the surface.” Tegan is stunned. “Why do you think that it didn’t affect me? How could this not affect me? How could being violated like this not affect me?” On the other line, Tara is silent. — Riese

What Is This Feeling?, Wicked

Glinda and Elphaba look at each other in their dorm room.

Lyrics presented with minimal comment:

[GALINDA]
What is this feeling, so sudden and new?

[ELPHABA]
I felt the moment I laid eyes on you

[GALINDA]
My pulsе is rushing

[ELPHABA]
My head is reeling

[GALINDA]
Yeah, well, my facе is flushing

[NIC]
HEY DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE THIS FEELING SOUNDS LIKE? A GIANT LESBIAN CRUSH.

Ahem. Thank you Ariana and Cynthia for perfectly portraying what a secret crush disguised as a frenemy looks like. — Nic

Defying Gravity, Wicked

Elphaba and Glinda look at each other in a dark room.

This one was hard to choose, because all three hours of this movie was my favorite scene in this movie, but I chose “Defying Gravity” and specifically the little Elphaba/Glinda moments throughout. These two women find themselves full circle from where they started; they’re on opposite sides again, but it’s different this time. Glinda is still as afraid of Elphaba as she was before – or, more specifically, afraid of what she represents: standing out, not conforming, being different, and, heavens forbid, unpopular – but now she has so much respect for it. She still isn’t brave enough to join her in it, and she has to let her go. It’s such a heartbreaking moment because Elphaba and Glinda love each other so much, but they’re at an impasse. In this moment, they reflect on how far they’ve come, and they have to say goodbye. It felt like a breakup. One that neither party really wants, but both know is for the best. It’s devastating and beautiful. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande acted the hell out of this scene, not to mention SANG the hell out of this song, and I am not ashamed to admit I wept. — Valerie Anne

“Smoke” Break, Cuckoo

Hunter Schafer makes out with a woman while holding a cigarette.

The blocking of this make out scene in Cuckoo is so gorgeous. Hunter Schafer holding that cig while stroking her hair! So hot! Also “do you smoke?” is such a good euphemism for “do you want to go make out?” I’m taking notes. — Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Ghost-Like Hands of Desire, Queer

Daniel Craig talks to Drew Starkey at a bar, a phantom hand floating up to touch his face.

The first time we see Lee’s desire manifested, Allerton is just telling a story. There’s nothing sexy about this moment — he’s talking about working with the Counter Intelligence Corps — and isn’t that when it’s most overwhelming? When you desire someone as they speak, fully clothed, in public? The script describes what happens next as a “ghost-like hand” of Lee’s reaching up to caress Allerton’s face. It’s such an obvious portrayal of longing and yet I’ve never seen it before. Every time this technique is used in the film, Lee’s ache became my own. It’s so simple and so effective — Drew

Welcome Back, Wayhaught!, Wynonna Earp: Vengeance

A woman in a cowboy hat kisses another woman.

The first time we see Wayhaught together in Wynonna Earp: Vengeance, there’s no big deep conversation or conflict to work through. Waverly drives up as Nicole greets the Purgatory residents in a way that’s clear she does this all the time. Nicole pretends to give Waves a parking ticket while they banter and flirt with each other. It’s so simple, so familiar, so lived in. They’ve been living together as wives in Purgatory for some time at this point, and as much as I love it when they’re in the throes of demon-slaying, their quiet moments of intimacy and comfort are some of my favorites to watch. — Nic

Team Earp Debrief, Wynonna Earp: Vengeance

The main characters of Wynonna Earp sit around a table smiling.

It feels weird writing about Wynonna Earp in a movie list, but thanks to Tubi, that’s how Earp lives on, so here we are. It is impossible to pick my favorite part of the movie, because it’s all just so fun and Earpy, but I’m going to pick the moment that Wynonna, Waverly, Nicole and Doc were sitting around the table, because I think it encapsulates a lot of what I love about Vengeance: it was all such classic Earp. It had the Earp sisters holding hands, the wives making sapphic sex jokes, Doc Holliday going on a rambling tangent, all while trying to discuss their current supernatural problem and come up with a plan to solve it. It’s humor and heart and supernatural silliness and everything I love about Earp, all wrapped up in one simple scene. They say it right in the scene, how I feel: “Sounds wrong to say this exactly right now, but I’ve missed this. The batshittery of our lives.”
— Valerie Anne

Janice Is Gay, Mean Girls (2024)

Auli'i Cravalho as Janice looks out at a group of people.

Now, this is sort of cheating, because it’s not necessarily the scene itself that I love as much as the FACT of the scene. Like, the scene was great and cute. Damien giving Cady the Janice lore, Janice trying to disappear about it, occasionally chiming in, old wounds reopened. It IS a very cute scene. But what I loved is that it exists at all. Instead of a throwaway line about elementary school Regina being homophobic, the backstory between Regina and Janis is more complex. They were friends, even after Janice first game out, Regina even showed allyship. Until a spin-the-bottle kiss; Regina claims she was using Janice to make a boy jealous, but I think perhaps she liked the kiss a little more than she intended and spent her energy publicly distancing herself from Janice as a defense mechanism. It adds so many layers to their feud, and to Janice’s character overall. Plus, then it leads right into Revenge Party, which is just a delight (and yet another time Auli’i Cravalho absolutely nails the singing in this movie), and it means Janice gets to take a girl to the dance at the end, so it’s a win-win-win in my book. — Valerie Anne

One of my favorite things about Mean Girls the movie the musical (2024) is how unabashedly queer they made Janice (played by out multi-hyphenate Auli’i Cravalho) this time around. So many of her moments were top tier, but her performance of “I’d Rather Be Me” stands out especially because of how much harder the lyrics hit coming from a queer high schooler. She sings about staying true to herself even if it means sitting alone at lunch which might seem trivial from my 37 year old perspective, but my memory is good enough to remember how hurtful being excluded can feel. It’s a strength and confidence High School Nic could only dream of. Plus, this rocker version of the song SLAPS! — Nic

Ariana DeBose Piloting the Boat, Argylle

Ariana DeBose in a white tank top and corn rows pilots a boat with two men on her side but their faces have emojis over them.

Look, say what you want about Argylle, but if you don’t think Ariana DeBose in a white tank top and cornrows is queer culture then I can’t help you. 10/10, NO NOTES. — Nic

Makeout Party, Drive-Away Dolls

Geraldine Viswanathan looks surprised as Margaret Qualley talks to her.

The makeout party scene in Drive-Away Dolls is so indulgent and horny it’s hard to understand how any queer could not be at least slightly delighted by the fact that it exists. On a wild road trip to Florida, destined for chaos neither girl can possibly conceive of when agreeing to embark on it, lesbian lothario Jamie sexiles Marian from their hotel room. Marian’s theoretical discomfort with Jamie’s entire deal becomes literal. The next day, Jamie snags an invite to a “basement party” in Marietta, Georgia, with the entire UGC soccer team, who she describes as “very committed lesbians.” The basement party in question turns out to consist of everybody taking turns making out with each other, switching partners after a set amount of time has elapsed. Did this happen with women’s soccer teams in the late ‘90s? Let’s hope it did. It’s an event that exists squarely in Jamie’s comfort zone and directly outside of Marian’s.

The basement itself is familiar. Everybody’s in shorts, polos, gym socks, slides, there’s a tragically romantic country song whirring on the record player, the couches were clearly upholstered in the ‘70s. The ringleader blows her whistle and calls for a rotation, finally landing Marian in front of Jamie. Jamie is thrilled. Marian is terrified. Finally, their conflicting approaches to romance and sex meet up for the first time. It’s always a weird moment when you’re kissing a close friend for the first time, especially when it’s someone you’ve talked to about sex and romance so much, but always in the context of other people. Considering going there with each other is scary on so many levels, especially for girls as different as Jamie and Marian. Marian ends up freaking out and leaving the party, but there’s no un-ringing that bell. An attempt at sexual chaos becomes a turning point towards something else entirely. — Riese

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

The TV Team

The Autostraddle TV Team is made up of Riese Bernard, Carmen Phillips, Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Valerie Anne, Natalie, Drew Burnett Gregory, and Nic. Follow them on Twitter!

The TV has written 238 articles for us.

4 Comments

Comments are closed.

Excuses To Leave Your Family Holiday but They’re Just Plot Points From Yellowjackets

Picture this: You’re at your weird family member’s house for the holidays and you’re feeling trapped. First of all, that’s pretty insensitive of you considering there’s an entire girl’s soccer team trapped in the wilderness and they don’t even have iPhones to help them cope because it’s the 90s. Second of all, you’ve probably already exhausted all of your go-to excuses to leave the family event on Thanksgiving. So, you’re in need of some new ways to get out of family obligations before you reach your limit of microaggressions or lines of questioning about your lifestyle or dead-end conversations with your cousin of the same age but wayyyy different TikTok algorithm.

That’s where I come in! I am here to provide you with foolproof excuses to get you out of your family’s holiday plans:

1. “Oh my God, I have to go. My friend is having a psychotic break and playing makeover with a corpse.”

2. “I don’t mean to be rude, but a wolf literally just ripped off half my friend’s face.”

3. “I wish I could stay for dessert, but I actually just found out my friend from high school started a cult upstate and she really needs my help.” 

4. “As much as I’d like to stay for caroling, a tradition you know I love, I do have to go. It’s hard to explain. My friend is going through a rough patch in her marriage because her husband is her dead best friend/lesbian lover’s high school boyfriend. Just her luck, she recently got in a fender bender with some guy and you know, he caught her at a really vulnerable time and so the two of them sparked a romance. I know. It’s bad. Anyway, she just killed that guy. So I have to go to his art studio and help clean up.”

5. “Hold that thought, Grandma. My team just made nationals.”

6. “SHIT! You know that timeshare cabin I got with some friends in the Canadian Wilderness? No? Okay I literally Instagram it all the time. Well it just burned down, so I have to call my insurance company.”

7. “I’m going to have to miss the Die Hard rewatch this year, guys. My friend’s little brother is being hunted through the wilderness by some teenage girls and I have a bad feeling the wilderness is going to choose him.”

8. “You’re never going to believe this. My wife sacrificed our dog at the altar. 

9. “Ahh, I gotta go! My friend Laura Lee just took off on her very first flight as a pilot! Everyone’s going to go watch by the lake. Oh wait. Shit. I gotta go to my friend Laura Lee’s funeral.”

10 “I wish I didn’t have to go! But my girlfriends and I are bringing back the hunt.”

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

motti

Motti (they/he) is a New York born and raised sorority girl turned writer, comedian, and content creator (whatever that means these days). Motti has been featured on We're Having Gay Sex Live, The Lesbian Agenda Show, Reductress Haha Wow! Live, the GayJoy Digest, and even played the role of "Real Life Lesbian" on Billy on the Street. In 2022, they wrote about how clit sucker toys are a scam, sweet gay revenge, chasing their dreams, and getting run over by a pick up truck in their now-abandoned newsletter Motti is An Attention Whore. Motti has a Masters in Public Administration and Local Government Management, you'd never know it from the shit they post online (see previous sentence), but occasionally he'll surprise you with his knowledge of civic engagement and electoral processes. They live in Brooklyn with their tuxedo cat, Bo, and their 20 houseplants.

motti has written 33 articles for us.