comic by S.P. Burke via oh goodie
by riese, rachel & laneia
One of the more inspiring results of the kerfuffle surrounding Bryan Goldberg’s launch of Bustle.com has been the increase in attention towards a slew of incredible websites aimed at women — websites Goldberg neglected to acknowledge when declaring that the web had yet to see a women’s site featuring both beauty tips and news. But the women’s sites that have been garnering such mentions — from name-drops to editor quotes to spots on lady-blog-lists — are predictably limited. BECAUSE OF THE PATRIARCHY.
In just the past few days, queer women’s websites including Autostraddle failed to make this List of Bustle’s Rivals, CJR’s Required Skimming: Ladyblogs and Forbes’ The 100 Best Websites For Women 2013. That’s right, not one queer website on a list of ONE HUNDRED WOMEN’S WEBSITES. This is silly ’cause we’ve been operating Autostraddle for over four years now (longer than most of the frequently name-dropped sites), not to mention that the Forbes list includes sites that aren’t explicitly women-targeted, sites that are called “Pinterest,” sites that don’t get our traffic or AfterEllen’s, sites that don’t have THE BEST READERS IN THE WORLD, didn’t win Best Blog of 2012, haven’t started their own gay camp and haven’t printed boyshorts with “STRADDLE THIS” on the butt.
We usually channel our unattractive bitterness and jealousy into building houses for abandoned kittens and demolishing patriarchy with our bare hands (just kidding, we channel it into bitching with each other on Skype Chat) but today, when the Forbes list author responded to a commenter complaining about AfterEllen’s exclusion with, “we feel the 100 sites here are valuable (and entertaining) to women regardless of sexual orientation,” we were like “what do they think we write about?” and then Executive Editor Laneia joked that we should do a “listing of headlines for posts that other sites who ignore us must think we write.” You know, maybe they just don’t know that queer women are women, or maybe they don’t know that we also write about abortion and lipstick?
listling of headlines for posts that places who ignore us must think we write
1. Poetry About Your Girlfriend’s Yeast Infection
2. Eight New Kinds of Dildos For You To Gay Marry
3. Lilith Fair or Lilith Foul?
4. People We Know Are Gay Even Though They Think They Aren’t, Stupid Idiots
5. 35 Ways Of Looking at Ellen Degeneres’s Haircut
6. Cuteness Feeds the Patriarchy: Why You Need To Burn All Your Makeup and Hair Products
7. Does This Shirt Make Me Look Straight? How To Avoid Fitting In With Heterosexuals
8. Why Reproductive Rights Are Straight Girl Problems
9. It Happened to Her: My Straight BFF Crush Was Ostracized From Her Peer Group When Everyone Assumed We Were Fucking! LOL!
10. Make a Thing: Voodoo Dolls of Your Ex-Girlfriend Or Straight Best Friend Crush
11. How to Make Sure You Have The Coolest Set of Pronouns At the Potluck
12. Why Your Gender-Neutral Offspring Will Be Superior To Other Children
13. How To Avoid Ever Buying Things, Ever, Because Lesbians Hate Money
14. Seven Types Of Privilege You Didn’t Even Know Someone Could Have
15. Raise a Ruckus!: Being The Obnoxious Queer Moms At The PTO Meeting
16. Advanced Gluten Freedom: How To Eradicate The Last Traces of Gluten From Your Life (And Also Men)
17. Ode To My Pantry: Leftover Male Body Parts
18. It Happened To Me: I Was Best Friends With Someone’s Husband and He Fell In Love With Me Even Though I’m Gay
19. Top Ten Most Cruelty-Free Queer Studies Programs For Womyn-Loving-Womyn
20. How To Trick Straight Women Into Having Sex With You, and Then Kill Them!
21. This Long Rambly Mess About The Indigo Girls*
22. Birkenstocks: Best Shoe, or Only Shoe?
23. How to Overthrow Your Heteronormative Co-op/Farmer’s Market
24. You Think You’ve Thought of Everything You Could Possibly Paint With Menstrual Blood, But You’re Wrong!
25. Drum Circles For Dummies
26. God I Hate Men Even More Than I Thought I Could
27. It Happened To Me: Lesbian Separatist Commune
28. Shaved or Unshaved: Melissa Etheridge
29. Shaved or Unshaved: Rosie!
30. Shaved or Unshaved: You! — The Girl Gallery
*This is the current headline of an actual post Riese is writing that is still in the unfinished drafts folder. lol!
16. Advanced Gluten Freedom: How To Eradicate The Last Traces of Gluten From Your Life (And Also Men)
Yeah I was gonna submit that piece for consideration…
I am a woman and Autostraddle has changed my life for the better, more than any other website on the internet. Ever. Sit down Bryan Goldberg. The End.
If it’s any consolation, I actually did submit AS for consideration for the Forbes list. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
THIS LIST IS ATROCIOUS. Mint.com? Mentalfloss? something branded “Groupon for Moms?” This is wayyy too mom-centric.
Would a list of the 100 best websites for men include a bunch of stuff about children as well?
Moms are great! Moms are great and they are also people with opinions and other interests besides kids and coupons!
sorry I am dying so I cannot form coherent comments.
I always have this reaction. I’m always like, my mom is a mom AND SHE READS BOOKS. AND WATCHES/READS NEWS. AND IS THE REASON I CAN SPEAK COHERENTLY ABOUT POLITICS.
I counted 18 mom oriented websites. I probably missed a few. But I did include the weird one for like, aunts and godparents and stuff.
Because that’s less of a niche website than a website for queer women is.
That was my exact thought! Also if you are going to be specific-mom-content-centric why not include queer moms?
I know, right?
You’d think most parenting advice can apply regardless of gender and sexual orientation. You would think.
Mint made me scream too.
Also the reply to Cyrstal’s comment was so patronizing. The author basically said No, I’m totally all for gay people, I just think you are too different from other women for your websites to be relevant.
As though the list didn’t iritate me enough, the graphic at the top shows a shot of “We-News” featuring Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a right-wing politician running for mayor of Paris who didn’t vote on the recent gay marriage law because she says she supports gay marriage but opposes adoption for same-sex couples (the law included both). Guess what you won’t find on all those Mommy sites on that list? Advice for gays who want to adopt! Also I just can’t stand NKM and see too much of her on the teevee here already.
Really? I thought Casserly seemed polite, and receptive. But then Marika & others called out the omission of queer women websites on the comment page, enough that she mentioned next year. I really think AS could get on the list in 2014, if only cause Forbes won’t make the same mistake twice. Keep in contact with them.
Leftover Male Body Parts is definitely going to be the name of my hypothetical future riot grrrl band.
5. 35 Ways Of Looking at Ellen Degeneres’s Haircut
(im)patiently waiting for this article
I was going to post this exact comment! =)
“People We Know Are Gay Even Though They Think They Aren’t, Stupid Idiots” I cracked up at that and it just got better from there!
Um, what does it mean that I would actually read most of these?
oh honey, we all would
I would write #12. Just FYI.
And I would read it.
I might frame this. (Can I say that I think a lot of my friends are pretty sure these are the titles of workshops I’m going to at A-Camp this year…)
I’m laughing so hard my whole body hurts.
good god i love working for you people.
In all seriousness, looking at that Forbes list is brutal. They snuck quite a few sites about reproducing/parenting & home-ec-centric as good sites for women.
I know, right :/
Going On A Tangent: I read your straddler on the street a couple days ago, thought it was cute, just thought you should know.
d’awww you are all so nice.
Since when is autostraddle not geared towards all women?! Granted I found this website while searching for answers to my baby lesbian questions, but what I found here is so much more than LGBTQ topics! I’ve even recommended this website to straight girlfriends because I think it applies to us both as women regardless of our sexuality! We need to stop segregating things into being for these ppl or those ppl, or that person or this person. Yes this site may appeal to larger group of queer ppl but that does not mean that it’s autostraddle’s ONLY demographic! And autostraddle most certainly deserves to be mentioned on everyone’s top websites of the year!!!!!
I could go on about how amazing this site is but instead I will continue to support you guys and the community you have created here as we’ll as spreading the word about the awesome stuff you guys do on here! Much love ladies!!!!
Agreed. On more than one occasion I have referred straight friends to this website for guidance for a range of different things.
Most of those articles actually sound pretty interesting to me.I want to learn how to overthrow my heteronormative co-op/farmer’s market.
31. 112 Activities That Could Be Occurring Under Rachel Maddow’s Desk
I’ll be in my bunk.
This post made my night. Giggling all over the place.
Good lord, I am not pretty when I snort-laugh. Couldn’t be helped.
I feel these feels.
^comment award
“How To Trick Straight Women Into Having Sex With You, and Then Kill Them!” and “Birkenstocks: Best Shoe or Only Shoe?” made me laugh when it was first said in our Skype-Chat and it made me laugh when I added it to this list and made me laugh when I previewed this post and made me laugh when i published this post and looked at it again to make sure nothing had changed to 13-point font with phantom span tags and then it made me laugh when i looked at this post again just now
I am interested in half of this potential article!
32. Just How Many Cats Are Too Many
Answer: The limit does not exist.
Followed by the dog people’s rebuttal, ‘Best bitches for bitches’?
…too much? Probably too much.
but what about BEST BITCHES FOR BUTCHES, eh?
Dogs For Dykes!
THERE WE GO.
For the multi-pet species household, “When Exactly Does It Become A Menagerie”
“Hey Sue, Did We Buy A Zoo?”
“Heather Has Two Mommies and a Capybara”
this is why my mom thinks i work for a radical fringe
i hope you emailed this to her
For what it’s worth, I would not only read and enjoy most of the articles on this list, but I would pass them on to my straight lady-friends and they would enjoy them too.
i love you all.
#16 just kills me dead!
Also, Martha Plimpton just RT’d your article! Martha Plimpton is better than Forbes, in my opinion.
so good. reason #218,457 why i love y’all.
#2, 7 and 26 are fantastic.
I think these are my favorites, too. And #9.
oh my god, this is why i read this site daily.
The Forbes list makes me want to gag. (Ooh, “Have a Sensitive Gag Reflex? Not My Problem, Suckers!” = another possible piece of “journalism” people maybe think goes on here.) Anyway, I had trouble reading most of the list because of how hard I was laughing at #1.
26 is totally all my feels right now, though. Havin’ one of those Man Hating Lesbian phases for a bit. PLEASE CATER TO MY NEEDS OKAY? (Seriously though how do the straight feminists DO it? Actually having The Patriarchy as a permanent fixture in your home? I don’t care how enlightened he is, whyyyyyyyy)
i feel as proud of this as i felt re: 8 honest things about new york.
It’a like the gay version of XOJane….
BAHAHAH … TODOS los LOLs all over this article.
Also I would’ve benefitted greatly from #7 when I first came out!
More importantly, I *must* read all of these articles. Twice.
But really, DOES this shirt make me look straight? This should be a regular column.
I know. I ask myself that goddamn question every morning in some form or another. “Does this look queer to you? ‘Cause I’m not sure if this reads queer or straight hipster.” HELP ME!
I ask my girlfriend this question almost every morning, and almost every morning she just laughs and points at my haircut.
One time my girlfriend told me I looked like a hipster dyke and I was sort of offended until I realized that I was holding an Urban Outfitter bag filled with bottles of champagne. She was right. I was ok with it after that.
God this is fantastic
Way to spoil next week’s Make A Thing.
I am going to print this out and carry it around for when I am asked, ” I mean how many things can you possibly discuss on a (insert air quote fingers) lesbian website?”. I thank you in advance for the amazingness this will bring into my conversations.
I am sorely disappointed that a comment with “fingers” and “lesbian” put so close together did not turn out to be what I thought it’d be about when I first skimmed it.
write the sex joke you wish to see in the world, fikri
-1 point to me for placing lesbian and fingers so close together without the required sex joke. I recognized my mistake all too late. I promise to improve.
These are the greatest!!!!!!
And for the lesbian shock factor, “Expose: Tofu NOT the only food group.”
What is that comic strip at the top of the page?
Click it!
Ok this site needs an Onion-style section that starts to publish those stories. Such great satire is possible here people!
omg yes please do this thing it would be amazing and the possibilities are endless
I was going to comment here to suggest exactly this! I suggest calling it The Kale.
20. How To Trick Straight Women Into Having Sex With You, and Then Kill Them!
Finally, bisexual content! Because Vampires – the only representation (besides Porn) bisexuals have in popular media. I’m so exited.
…I can not hide it!
this is all the reasons i love this place. amazing.
33. Quiz: How Close Are You and Your Partner to Completing the Lesbian Life Merge?
Follow up: Reader Submission Gallery- 25 Dyke Couples You Won’t Believe Aren’t Clones
“25 Dyke Couples You Won’t Believe Aren’t Clones” is trick, they’re all Tatiana Maslany
oh my god I am in pain right now crying with laughter, this is the absolute best
I am overwhelmed with a lot of feelings right now – mostly this is the most hilarious, magical thing and I love you people a lot and I’m really grateful that this site exists.
20. How To Trick Straight Women Into Having Sex With You, and Then Kill Them!
I’m dead. this post has killed me and now I’m dead.
you guys are hilarious!!
i love them ALL, but “14. Seven Types Of Privilege You Didn’t Even Know Someone Could Have” really made me laugh.
When I first saw 28 I thought it was going to be about pubic hair grooming preferences.
oh it is
^ comment award
Relevant: http://the-toast.net/2013/07/02/all-you-can-say-about-pubes-online/
I am laughing hysterically at work right now. I love this website more than anything.
Also, April Fool’s Day joke article ideas? Yes?
So funny.
Also I kind of wish some of those were real.
Oh my god, I would read the shit out of every one of those articles. I’m not even sorry.
I desperately need #10. And fast!
So, how are these being divided up to become real articles?
still laughing about this today
Impatiently awaiting completion of the Indigo Girls ramble! (Not that I really listen to them these days BUT I am certainly interested in reading whatever Riese has to ramble about them.)
IT’S GONNA BE AWESOME
“34. U-Hauling: Should you be saving it for the second date?” +
“NSFW Sunday: 50 cute lesbian couples wearing each others’ clothes”
“NSFW Sunday: 50 cute lesbian couples wearing each others’ clothes”
OK this is all I want from the world to make up for the terrible month I’m having. Pleeeeeease?
reading this list made me miss the bus to yoga, so i biked instead.
GAY
This was just too funny. I loled in class waaaaay too many times.