I am drinking the coldest ice cold water of my life and you know what?  It is, in fact, refreshing.

Stay hydrated and here’s some things you can read:

Queer as in F*ck You

You can also read more about how TV has depicted AIDS activism and ACT Up specifically right here on your friendly Autostraddle.

How TV Stories Have Shaped Our Understanding of AIDS

LGBT Identification Rises to 5.6% in Latest U.S. Estimate More of us!! More of us!! Stats nerds get in here:

• 15,000 interviews conducted throughout 2020 with Americans aged 18 and older
• The 5.6% of U.S. adults identifying as LGBT is a current estimate up from 4.5% in Gallup’s previous update based on 2017 data
• More than half of LGBT adults (54.6%) identify as bisexual
• About a quarter (24.5%) say they are gay, with 11.7% identifying as lesbian and 11.3% as transgender. These are all increases from 2017!
• One in six adult members of Generation Z (those aged 18 to 23 in 2020) identify as LGBT
• However, LGBT identification is lower in each older generation, including 2% or less of Americans born before 1965 (aged 56 and older in 2020)
• In my deductions, this means that letting Zendaya make out with girls is good for everyone. In the name of Euphoria, Amen.

Tender Judging Care: #TransCrowdFund and the Politics of Desire. “Even before the GoFundMe boom, there was an element of desirability politics in healthcare.”

“I don’t think we should have to live at war with our bodies. I think less misery is possible, and it shouldn’t have to be as suspect as it so often is to simply exist as oneself, to take part in consensual activities, to live one’s life. It can be so lonely to wish to stop wanting what one often cannot help wanting…Kink itself, between consenting adults, does not cause harm. What provably, definitely harms us — and generally hurts us the more marginalized we are — are obligatory scripts about what our bodies should want, are allowed to want.”

The Willful Misunderstanding of Kink by R.O.Kwon for The Cut

Saw This, Thought of You

Sonia Sanchez Still Has Work to Do. (LOVE SONIA SANCHEZ. Have loved her since I was a little girl. Love LOVE LOVE HER. Ok, as you were.)

All My Friends’ Quarantine Bubbles Are Bursting

Yeah, that’s going to go down better with this: 14 Fixes for Pandemic Monotony

The First Girls Have Become Eagle Scouts. It’s Taken More Than 100 Years.

Hollywood’s Empty Weaponized White Feminism of ‘I Care A Lot’ and ‘Promising Young Woman’ (I didn’t love (ahem, openly hated) these movies, despite traditionally love corny #GirlBoss popcorn fare, and there’s definitely something smart worth saying here)

“Honey Girl” Is about a Woman Coming Home to Herself. If you’ve noticed, we have some ads for Honey Girl going on our site and I for one CANNOT WAIT to read this book! This interview between author Morgan Rogers and Bitch Media EIC Evette Dionne is a perfect appetizer.

Political Snacks

I was originally hoping that by the time I published this the Equality Act would have passed in the House of Representatives because I love a easy, feel good headline positive, but sadly we are still waiting. So in the meantime:

• What Is The Equality Act? Anti-Discrimination Law Explained (But you already have this part covered because you read Himani’s excellent explainer for Autostraddle a few weeks back)
• As debate over The Equality Act continued over the course of the week, America’s latest Barbie bigot mascot Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene hung an anti-trans poster in front of the office of Rep. Marie Newman (who had a trans flag displayed in front of her door, in support of her trans daughter). It’s a whole thing, and if you want to read about it more Vox has an explainer.
• But that lead to the always clear-eyed and focused Raquel Willis asking the REAL question I want to talk about…

Any studies out there on the overlap of white supremacists and transphobes? pic.twitter.com/zd0xULXGqk

— Raquel Willis (@RaquelWillis_) February 25, 2021

And so, if you’d like to have that discussion, here’s some things you can be reading while we wait for the vote:

• The White Supremacist History of “Biological Sex”
• Transphobia is a White Supremacist Legacy of Colonialism

A POST-PUBLICATION UPDATE!! THE EQUALITY ACT PASSED:

BREAKING: The #EqualityAct has passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. We are one step closer to ensuring that every person in America is treated equally under the law. pic.twitter.com/A94SFVfQkz

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) February 25, 2021

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