Questions from the A+ Inbox were taking up such an enormous portion of the A+ Insider that we started dedicating an entire post to them instead! This A+ feature is now bi-monthly and advice questions go into our twice monthly Into the A+ Advice Box. We think this will be a lot of fun for the whole family. We’ve included as many questions as we can. We love you and your hair looks fantastic today!

MERCH, BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL CONCERNS

Q: I know it’s possible to gift A+ memberships, but is there any scope for donating the membership? Where the donor pays the money and someone unknown to them gets it?

Hm, that would mean having a waiting list of people who do not yet have membership, I guess, which doesn’t sound great. Never mind.

Nicole: I do not think this is a bad idea at all! We are actually working (in the final-ish stages) on an automated way of doing this right this moment, where people could contribute to a gift pool, and then people could automatically enter to receive a free membership for a year (awarded on a first, come, first served basis, so just chronologically). I just want to shout out the forward-thinking A+ members (like you!) who came to me with the idea and the awesome Yikes team who are working on making it happen from a technical standpoint. Yes, people who want a free membership might have to wait for a period of time, depending on how much we have in the pool, but I do like that they will automatically receive a membership as soon as there’s enough money. More news on this as soon as we have it, which will be soon!

Q: When you have an exclusive cover or trailer release for a genre I’m not interested in, should I click on it anyways because having higher view numbers would help make Autostraddle more of a leader in the space, or does it not matter? And if yes, how long do I need to leave the page open for?

Sarah: Hi! Thank you for caring about us at this introspective level. It makes my heart swell. You definitely can click on it (or watch it). Time spent open doesn’t matter, but if it’s a trailer clip giving it a mostly full or complete watch counts as a “play” which is considered active engagement and not a passive impression. So please watch! Please click. And if you see it posted on social media, give it a like, share it, comment — these actions are also considered engagement. Thank you! We love you!

Q: I’m a little stoned and reading the article about Frodo and Sam that was in Lez Liberty Lit and the effort made to preserve historical queerness made me wonder if Autostraddle has done anything to archive any of your website, or know of any queer internet archives? I’m seeing people talk about it a lot with the efforts to archive fanfiction.net now that there’s a huge potential of cultural loss with everything that’s just stored online

Riese: We haven’t because we still exist and so do our archives!

Nicole: To second that in a way: all digital archives take server space, people and resources to maintain them, etc. And so, we would love to keep existing and maintaining our own archives if at all possible!!

Laneia: I just want to say that I have boxes filled with notebooks with list after list of me being like, “respond to [freelancer] tuesday!!!!!! THIS TUESDAY” and “genius idea: we sell care packages for people to send their queer friends and relatives and exes who need cheering up?” with flowers doodled in the margins so in my own small way, I have archived us.

Q: Has AS considered limiting comments to A+ members? I’m assuming it’s been considered and rejected to keep the site open and active for all (and to make sure that there is still some commenting activity). Sometimes the shut down of a troll is fun to watch. But also, sometimes it’s annoying to see the spam and it’d be a bit satisfying to know that terfs and trolls have to contribute at least $4 to be assholes.

[Note from Nicole: This and the following are answered together!]

Q: How do bots get into the comments? How come some of the older articles (and sometimes newer ones!) end up with a bunch of spam comments? Is it helpful if readers report these?

Thanks, and just curious! It’s no hard feelings, and I’m not bugged by them I was just wondering how the spamming happens and if there is something I/we can do to help. ;)

Riese: I too would love for trolls and TERFs to give us $4 to comment, but we also wanna make sure that our comments are open to as much conversation as possible! And trolls are honestly pretty rare. Our writers love hearing back from readers and the more people who are able to participate in the comments the better in general. Also some people can’t afford a membership or are still mulling it over and we still wanna hear from them.

Nicole: One of the best things about A+ is that A+ members are keeping this whole space here for everyone who needs it, including people who cannot afford to be members right now. Trolls suck but we also don’t want to take away the ability to comment from other people because of trolls. We just ask that you ignore them as best you can, and feel free to alert us to troll activity via the A+ box. I do have to say that some people are *really determined* though, so in the cases where people pop up all over the place, clearly making multiple accounts, it’s best to just not feed them any further. Usually, we get to them in the morning when we find messages from you all in the A+ box. We do remove spam when we can, too! As for how that gets there, it’s free to sign up for a commenting account and some bots and spammers make it through the process! We clean them up when we can.

Q: would you ever consider making your fundraiser/A+ perks available to purchase as one-off items instead of just as perks? for example, i love the new A+ t-shirt and the mug (the mug!!!). i can’t afford to sign up for $50/mo, but i would totally buy the shirt and the mug as standalone purchases. presumably it’d be cheaper to get that stuff printed in bulk so maybe it’d be worth it?

Nicole: There’s no easy answer, just the way we’ve found works best for us. So, first, as you very likely know because you are here, for the limited edition A+ perks as well as the merch we have for fundraisers, there’s a donation included, as you’ve referenced with the $50 / month membership level. With these, there is the understanding that the price someone pays includes the perks plus a donation amount that goes toward supporting our publication. (Thank you!!) If we tried to fund Autostraddle on the profit margins on merch sales alone, unfortunately, I do not think that would work! Although, merch sales through our store are certainly an important part of our revenue mix and business model.

Another thing with these perks is that sending out A+ / fundraiser merch is labor intensive. All our fundraiser and A+ merch is sent by a single human (Hello! It is me! And also sometimes my girlfriend volunteers and helps!) because we don’t have a fulfillment service for these (before me it was Riese) and so for me to run anything like the volume of an actual store on top of my several other jobs here isn’t doable without scaling up our operation, which would probably mean hiring more people, new systems etc., which would mean we would need more money in the first place! Every fundraiser, it usually takes me several weeks of working every single day (all 7!) to get those perks out after. So, the real cost is not the printing of the merch — even in bulk — but our time. I think if it were not a pandemic, I would look into some volunteer help for fundraisers, but for now it hasn’t been doable. So, with the mug and the shirt, for folks who are able to support us at the level of $50 / month, we wanted to be able to send them something special as thanks because we are super grateful for the gift that they’re giving to keep us here, queer and working away.

I hear you though, and we do want merch to be accessible. I suspect that Sarah will have more cute merch up her sleeve for the future that will go in our store (they only fulfill items purchased through our storefront, which is different from our membership & fundraiser systems), where the price is not also a donation and so is lower, so I would keep an eye out there! AND, for future fundraisers, I think we might be able to lower our price points somewhat, so stay tuned for that! I’m super grateful for your understanding as we continously work to strike a balance. The act of balancing, in reality, is usually not about stillness so much as it is constant movement and adjustment and that is what we are always up to over here. I hope this explanation helps and also, always, thank you for being a member and for wanting to support further and for asking about this!

Q: Any chance you could put some other (non-North American) time zones on the pages advertising events? Gonna blame my dyslexia but I end up missing some of the great things you’ve set up because time conversion is a struggle.

Nicole: I’ve been trying this for some events! However, on graphics and things like that, it does get cumbersome to have a bunch of timezones. It totally took me a while to get used to everything being in PST (I’m EST) so I get it. I find that Google has a pretty good tool for “translating” the time of events into other zones, if that’s helpful, but yes! I will definitely continue to keep this in mind and do this when I can for future A+ events.

any reason for the title change from “some answers to some things you’ve been asking us” to “some answers to some things you WERE asking us”? Jw!!!

Nicole: It was titled this briefly when I was really tired during the member drive and your message encouraged me to change it! Oops! Thank youu!

Q: A technical/design wish for the website: is it possible to always include feature images as a header or in the body of articles? These images and designs are typically great, and I frequently like to refer to them while reading — but I frequently have to click back out to the main page to see them. Additionally, their smaller size there makes it hard to see details compared to the larger images displayed in some articles/features. Thanks!

Sarah: I really love this actually, and I love hearing that this is how you read and engage with things. It reminds me of when I was a kid, and I’d hear a descriptive detail or something about the character and I’d flip back to the cover and inspect it closely to see if what they were referring to was in the cover. I suppose it was a formative interest in design/art. BUT I DIGRESS. This practice is usually present in series where we hire illustrators to create art, because we want their work to shine. I think it’s something we can put into practice for more pieces that also have really intentional feature graphics. And in the future, in my heart of hearts, I’d love to have a post layout where the image is just baked in, like you suggested. ATM it’s something that the editors have to remember to do manually, and it can be hard when they’re juggling so many different checklist items to get a post up on our site! All of this is to say, yes! EVENTUALLY! And YES! I 10000000% agree with you and share your wish!

Q: Gays! I keep getting so many compliments for the Soft Butch t-shirt! Wore it in a new town for the afternoon and got compliments from all kinds of strangers. Thanks for the excellent design work! (And for using such soft material so it’s comfortable, too.)

Heather: The Soft Butch t-shirt is my all-time favorite shirt! I love that that design is like an vintage softball jersey and I love that it’s literally the softest shirt ever and I love that the color looks great on everyone and I love that it says Soft Butch and I love that you got complimented on it. I bet you looked like a dream in it!

Riese: That design was my idea so THANK U

Sarah: This makes me so happy. Thank you!

Q: Seeing all these awesome product/business recommendations in the A+ fashion column is SO AMAZING! And it got me thinking… Would AS ever consider creating a business directory of queer-owned businesses? (Maybe charge a couple bucks or something cheap for each business to be listed in the directory?) Does this already exist??

Or maybe AS collaborating on the directory with some other queer entity that would actually host and maintain the site (I know y’all aren’t swimming in free time to take on another massive project).

I’m thinking of all the cool businesses and creators I’ve been introduced to via links on Autostraddle, and it makes me wish there was a central place for all that info to live that was easily searchable. On the flipside, I’ve also had the experience of wanting to buy a specific clothing item or accessory from a queer maker/company, and looking it up using the search bar on Autostraddle but having trouble wading through all of the search results (plus navigating old articles lots of broken links or businesses that have closed, sadly)

Riese: We sure have yes! We have wanted to do this for over a decade but just haven’t had the resources to do it so in the meantime have just been doing our lists. I agree with you 100% that it would be wonderful to have!

We have reluctantly accepted over the years that keeping anything updated regularly, from our City Guides (for which we’ve repeatedly attempted various massive processes to make it happen and none of them have been sustainable or functional) to our streaming lists, it’s way harder to fit regular updates into our schedules than it seems like it ought to be. When I do the annual lists for Pride it takes about a week to cull through the old links, update product links, find new stores, confirm which stores are actually owned by queer people, make sure it’s diverse in other ways, etc., make all the graphics, etc. etc. etc.

Ultimately we would build it out and put months of work into launching it, and then within six months or so it would quickly become outdated. We’d need a point person for requests to be added and a system for approving them. We’d need to ask questions like; if you’re queer and have an Etsy store do we automatically include you? If you’re queer and self-employed in any capacity at all, do we automatically include you? If no, then what does qualify someone for inclusion and is the directory useful without any qualitative analysis of the stores? Are we including businesses from all over the world, or just the countries where we have a lot of readers? Just the US and Canada? So many things!

In a dream world we could have somebody employed here full-time to oversee something like that and manage all our outreach to queer businesses, honestly — including getting special discounts for A+ members and doing cross-promotional things together.

Hi, my edible is kicking in after a rough day and I read the Ikea couch article and my advice is to please continue being perfect; I needed that discussion so badly and I too am terrified of being kidnapped by the menacing hands on the bi couch.

ALL-CONSUMING NEEDS TO SHARE

Q: Hey,
Have you seen Princess Charming?
It’s only in german for now but this youtube channel is recapping it in english
I’m obsessed with it and would love to read you guys about it!
SHE’S KISSING EVERY CONTESTAAAANT!

Sarah: Just checking, are you also the person in our Instagram DM’s? Because if you are, hi!! And if you aren’t, you have a very enthusiastic friend who also loves this show. To me this concept sounds completely dreamy, but as far as I can tell there are no subtitled versions of the episodes. So I’m extremely curious, but I also want to know what’s going on? Will you please share a tip if you know where we can watch with English subtitles?

Q: Hi! I’m a huge fan of Autostraddle (A+ member since 2016; reader since the coffee ring days). Over the years, I’ve been incredibly inspired by how you’ve built an entirely queer business from the ground up — I read This Business of Art *religiously* — and now I’m starting my own queer and trans-owned business in the form of a coffee truck in Columbus, Ohio! We’re trying to get the word out about it during Pride Month, and I wanted to reach out to one of my favorite queer places on the internet. (If you want to check it out, our website is https://thegalaxycoffee.com) Thank you for all that you do! <3 Jevonna

Nicole: I LOVE this and love a co-op! Sorry we missed you during pride month but everyone please go check them out especially if you are near Columbus! <3

Q: Emily Saliers (of Indigo Girls) and Beth Malone (OBC and Tony Nominee for “Fun Home”) have written a new musical together and have started readings/workshops for it!!!! It’s the lesbian theatre collaboration we’ve all been waiting for!!! It’s called Starstruck and it appears to be based on “Cyrano de Bergerac”? Anyway, Beth Malone has been posting about it on her IG.

Heather: This is the one place where you don’t have to qualify Emily Saliers and Beth Malone with their accomplishments! We know them by heart! I’m from Georgia, so I’m an extra Emily Saliers stan. I have been following along with this project and am almost too excited to function every time they post something new. I can’t wait to see it in person and laugh and cheer and cry and sing along with it like GALILEO’S HEAD WAS ON THE BLOCK all over again!

Riese: OMG I AM SO F*CKING EXCITED

Sarah: My body is ready.

Q: Hot tip! Hannah Roberts is representing the US in BMX freestyle at the Olympics and married her wife this new years! 

Heather: Thank you for sharing this! My wife woke me up at 2 am last week yelling about it also!

Q: Wrote in about Hannah Roberts the other day and just realized Chelsea Wolfe, the Team USA alternate in BMX freestyle, is trans!

Heather: This is so rad! I didn’t know this! I will update my list (and update my aforementioned enthusiastic wife!).

Q: I missed the AMA yesterday (no joke, I was visiting my dad in the hospital— but for good reasons, he’s recovering from a successful surgery!), so here’s my question I was gonna post:

Honestly, I’m star struck by all ya’ll and I think I would totally embarrass myself if I were to, on the off-chance, run into any of you in public. Have you ever met an internet celeb crush in person? Has an Autostraddle reader ever approached you in public, and how did it go? Do you have any tips for meeting an Internet celeb crush in person? How to maintain composure? Say nothing and walk on by? How would you like readers/fans to acknowledge your presence in public? Or would you prefer we not?

Heather: Autostraddle readers talk to me all the time out and about in NYC! Or they did in the Before Times when people were out and about. I love talking to readers! It’s like we already have a launching off point for connection because we’ve read the same things and share some similar interests and senses of humor. It ALWAYS goes well, and we always both leave the conversation feeling giddy and connected. I also have met lots of Autostraddle readers who have crushes on Autostraddle writers — just recently I met someone crushing on Shelli at the emergency animal hospital and she helped me and my wife out with our injured cat so much! — and it has never, ever, ever happened that I relayed a reader crush to a writer and had them respond with anything but joy and gratitude. Say something!

Riese: Yes people come up to me all the time and I like it! Usually people will just be like, are you riese from autostraddle or are you riese from the l word podcast and I will be like, yes, and then they will say something sweet and nice that will make me feel good for the rest of the day / week. Also if I’m with other people and a fan approaches me then usually the other people I’m with will think I am cool and important. Sometimes it all feels a little bit imaginary, you know? So meeting readers in person is really cool. The only thing is that I am really socially awkward and sometimes I worry people will take that personally but usually they don’t, as far as i know. So yeah! Say hi!

Nicole: The day I interviewed with Autostraddle I saw Sandra Bernhard in a restaurant after, and while I let her eat her meal unaccosted, I did consider it an omen. And then I was hired by Autostraddle! So I guess…I assign prophetic significance to celebrity sightings but don’t speak to them? I think it’s definitely different depending on who it is, though, re: whether or not I would talk to them. ALSO: as someone who has been working at AS for the entirety of a pandemic and pretty much only during said pandemic, I would just like to say that I would love it if any members ever said hello. Please do!!! Someday!!!

Q: I don’t know if y’all have heard of it, but there’s this new(ish? I think) website called Yente Over the Rainbow that’s a queer jewish matchmaking site. It’s free and has very inclusive gender/sexuality etc questions. I just signed up so I haven’t met anyone yet, but I feel like people on this website might be into it.

Carmen: I00% I think people will be into it! Thank you for letting them/us know. I hope you’ve met someone by the time you’re reading this!

Q: Dear Autostraddle,
This cucumber in my CSA box looked more like a dildo than usual, and I wanted to share it with someone. Here is a picture:
love, me

Heather:

Sarah: Woah, woah woah!

Nicole: Whyyyyyy Heather whyyyy???

Carmen: Heather how did you eve find this????

Q: Caught a glimpse of Cynthia Erivo and Lena Waithe sitting together during Lil Nas X’s Montero performance at the BET awards and knew in my heart: ‘this will be on an Autostraddle timeline someday’.

Carmen: Oh you absolutely know it. That timeline is already well tracked and annotated deep in my brain, and I’m ready to pull it out at a moment’s notice.

Q: Thanks for keeping Pride for the queers this year (and every year). Attended my companies virtual “Pride celebration” this morning and I mean the messaging was nice and there was a cut slideshow of LGBTQ employees and their families and some nice personal stories but I couldn’t stop thinking when did Pride become an educational event for allies? Not like I didn’t expect it but it just really hit hard and different this year

Carmen: That was LITERALLY (and I cannot emphasize this enough, LITERALLY) one of the main feelings that we all felt about Pride this year. It just felt really gross and really isolating. We had a few theories about it, one of them that I think really happened is that because there was less “in person queer community” events due to the panaroma, the only thing left were a lot of… corporate Pride and well meaning straights? Anyway, I’m so glad that our coverage helped fill that void for you. Laneia ran our Pride series this year, and it’s honestly one of my favorite Prides we’ve ever done.

Laneia: 🥲

Q: A thought relevant to the teams interests — I (a librarian-in-training) am working on an entire rare books room move of 15th century materials and it occurred to me – where is the Watcher’s digitisation programme? Yes it was the 90s but microfilm/fiche was in! Giles was a librarian, and he certainly wasn’t using those school days for student outreach :) All those old delicate original demonology texts…. work smarter not harder guys

Nicole: Wasn’t there a specific episode where they were scanning the library texts and uploading them and then it invoked a demon that Willow got catfished by over some kind of instant message chat? Maybe that’s why? Just a plug from someone who loves primary sources — but if you ever find any gay things in those 15th century materials will you please scan and send them our way???

Q: For all the hot gay divorceès out there

Nicole: On behalf of all hot gay divorceès out there, thanks for thinking of us!

Laneia: This is beautiful.

Sarah & Nicole I just was not logged in and I saw an A+ ad for learning how to become the hot mean femme top of your dreams and I just wanna say I think that’s brilliant marketing. Also I hope it works because I am looking for that hot mean femme top once she like… Figures it out for herself, y’know? Okay, thank you!!

HAVE YOU WRITTEN ABOUT THIS / I NEED INFORMATION / ARTICLE IDEAS

Q: I’ve recently become a little obsessed with podcasts about dating, but all the ones I’ve found feel super heteronormative and I just don’t relate. Do you know any queer dating podcasts? (I’m more interested in a focus on early stage dating, rather than general relationship advice.)

Nicole: WE SAW THIS MESSAGE AND THEN RUBBED OUR HANDS TOGETHER WITH GLEE. Have you listened to “Wait, Is This a Date?” yet?

Carmen: NO SERIOUSLY LISTEN TO WAIT IS THIS A DATE!!

Q: Can you do a financial literacy series? I feel like such a baby when it comes to finances, and I need fucking Uncle Joe to cancel my student loans. I was 18 when I signed them and had no idea. Now I’m drowning under student debt, and I got some credit card debt and idk, maybe a gay needs some financial advice!!

Carmen: I’d love that and will make note! In the meantime, I have two things to help hold you over — How to Deal With Credit Card Debt and Not Totally Ruin Your Life Forever (this is actually one of my favorite things that KaeLyn has written and I found it very comforting once upon a time) and also our financial planning archives. I’m also drowning in my student loans, so the last thing I want to tell you is that you’re not alone my friend! We got this.

Laneia: My sweet good friend, are you also familiar with Gaby Dunn’s podcast and book?

Q: I have seen some insta comments debates over whether it is “terfy ” to use the term “womxn” and could not find any coherent info on this ! Thoughts and prayers?

Carmen: We actually were going to do a piece on that… maybe around last summertime? But it didn’t actually pan out through the publication pipeline (not because of the subject matter or anything! That just happens sometimes with publishing). But I remember the central argument of that pitch being that “womxn” actually excludes those trans women who have fought to be seen and known as women (this would obviously not be true for all trans women! No group is a monolith! But for those for whom “womanhood” specifically is important and fought for). It becomes a moving of the goal post; once this one group finally becomes “women” now we no longer want to even use the term “women” in a misguided display of “solidarity” that actually ends up being severely misplaced.

Of course nothing is that simple or easy! Womxn predates all of our internet discourse and has been a feminist framing of the word since at least the 1970s (maybe earlier? that would require more research). It was pretty common in the second wave of feminism among both white feminists and feminists of color. Now that I’m thinking about it, I also wonder if that’s part of the misconception; internet discourse has been known to reduce “second wave” to “terf” from time-to-time (and of course, that’s also not cut-and-dry, not all second wave feminists were any one thing).

As you can see it got complicated to write about pretty quickly, due to all the nuances and differing POVs involved! I’d still love that piece though.

Q: I don’t know if I’m just bad at finding this stuff, but I can’t seem to find any talk about the lesbian storyline in season 4 of Episodes. I’m not far enough into the season to know how it ends/if it’s good, but every time I come across lesbians on my TV I immediately run here to check if you’ve written anything about it. You can imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find anything on Episodes. I don’t know what my point here is, though. Have any of you watched it?? Thoughts?? If not, watch it!! It’s pretty funny, even though they drop some slurs in season 1 which I’d rather had not been there tbh. Aside from that just uhhh I love you?? I hope you’re all surviving these weird times??

Riese: I did…. I can’t remember the context or why I watched it! But I definitely did and I remember liking it. Maybe I watched it because I was trying to figure out the prominence of the character for the database or some kind of round-up we were doing…. WE LOVE YOU TOO

Q: Could we have like a flow chart for if you should move in with your partner?

Heather: Oof, if only all hard life decisions were as easy as a flowchart!

Q: My partner and I have been rewatching the real l word this pandemic. Would Riese and Carly consider doing a to l and back on the real l word???

Riese: Unfortunately I would rather put on a vagina costume and a strap-on that shoots sperm and roll around in a kiddie pool of creamed corn than do a To L and Back on The Real L Word!!!!! I’m not big into reality TV and also it is kinda weird cuz we knew then and/or know now a lot of the people who were in it. However I did do some really incredible recaps of The Real L Word, like there’s some genuine artistry there and I highly recommend them because I have never in my life spent so much time on something I liked less than those! I kept it up because of traffic but wow I hated that show. We have tons of Real L Word content in general, including interviews with everybody who was in it basically and some very epic Parodies (I was Nikki obviously, Carly was Mikey). I also interviewed Carly about it.

Sarah: Not going to lie, I would absolutely listen to this show.

Q: Please please more roundtables! A few ideas: dream post-covid vacation, vices, updated morning/night routines, being poly, being monogamous, weekend in the life… need me that cult of personality, love you all!!

Nicole: Noted for A+ purposes! Would love to hear more if you all would like more A+ roundtable content in the comments!

Carmen: I’m going to be VERY HONEST WITH YOU, A+ member! Because you deserve it and you deserve to know that we are being smart and efficient with your gay dollars — through research we’ve actually learned that doing a lot of roundtables is diluting them and we’ve stopped getting the needed traffic on them for the cost. They also keep our writers from having the individual writer bylines that they really need for their portfolios.

But I agree that they could have a purpose in A+ (it seems like Nicole is already on that!), which is where we are seeing a lot of success with our “cult of personality” content lately.  You also have my solemn vow that when we do a roundtable, it will be pretty damn special and worth it. (Speaking of which, did you see our roundtable this month on bisexuality? it was stellar and we’re so proud of it!)

Laneia: Reeeeeeal talk I would love a ‘weekend in the life’ series, not roundtable, with pictures oh my god and like a recipe if they cooked something and did they go shopping? What movie did they watch? Show me your yard! Did you organize your fucking closettttttt oh my god wow what if I just um, see if anyone wants to write these. Hm.

Nicole: I’m back to say: I love that, Laneia.

Q: Hi, thanks to the whole team for your amazing work.
I was wondering why you don’t publish Motherland Fort Salem recaps ? Is it because the team has already too much work, or is it for another reason ?
Keep on going, and good luck to all of you!

Heather: Friend! I’ve got great news for you! Valerie Anne has got you covered! We recap Motherland: Fort Salem in our weekly Boobs on Your Tube column, which publishes on Friday afternoons. If you follow us on Twitter, you’ll see tweets about it on Friday and Saturday!

Q: This seems like the place to ask this- if I want to “get into” Michelle Tea which book should I start with? I’m also open to suggestions of other writers with similar subject interests (not-for-the-straight-gaze looks at queer subculture, capturing specific times and places) or just similar vibes.

Sarah: Valencia was the first one I read. I think there’s SOOOOO many titles you could explore in this genre too. Have you checked out the A+ community bookshelf That could be an amazing place to start.

Heather Hogan’s misandry gives me LIFE.

REALLY NICE THINGS YOU TOLD US

Q: Shoutout to all my fellow members of the dead parents club! I feel like autostraddle has a surprisingly-high amount of good grief content due to the random chance of multiple writers having lost parents — and it sucks so much, but I’m grateful for the amazing writing you all put out, and grateful that I can find community here about grief too. Love you all <3

Riese: WE REALLY DO it’s true. The crickets you hear in this office when Father’s Day comes up I will tell you what! For a while it wasn’t totally a coincidence because we did have a lot of writers here who got here via my writing and it’s obviously a COMMON THEME in the stuff I write, but now it has become truly random and yannow, here we all are. SAD AS HELL ALL THE TIME FOREVER.

Laneia: Yeah woof, lots of dead parents over here! Vanessa’s latest piece on grief this week was just devastating as fuck and I loved it so much.

Q: WOW Drew’s interview with Daniela Sea was NEXT LEVEL!!!!!! It was so kind and gentle and nuanced and delightful in every way and I feel like a better person and more informed media consumer for having read it. And, I can’t imagine anywhere else I would get to read something like that. A truly perfect long read for morning coffee on a holiday weekend.””Drew has got such a lovely writing style!

Drew: Aww thank you!!

Q: I just want to say that interview with Daniela Sea is one of my favorite things I’ve read on Autostraddle (and maybe my favorite interview I’ve ever read??) I hope more people outside of the immediate AS community read it, and that it picks up steam, and brings more nuanced conversation to the wider Gen Q conversations. And, I hope that it brings good things for Daniela! I related so hard to their feeling overwhelmed by the Internet and curating/maintaining an online presence.

Not to be too hyperbolic, but reading that interview felt like a turning point- like it kept hitting me over and over that this would be such prime opportunity for narratives about Max to be corrected in mainstream media (or at least for Daniela’s wiki page to be fixed!), and for there to be more of a reckoning with the shittiness of some of the key decision makers and creators behind the L Word franchise.

Drew: Wow that is so nice!! Thank you for sharing.

Q: hi laneia. in the “answers to some things” post, your lil paragraph about the gay agenda notebook and the splashpad… made me cry! in the best way. i love your writing. like, what a mood. what a perfect summary of what i hope my life is — a collection of moments of clarity for baby queers! and some other stuff too. but mostly that.

Carmen: Can I just tell you that LITERALLY JUST THIS VERY EVENING, NOT MORE THAN FOUR HOURS AGO I was telling Laneia that she’s one of my favorite writers!! She has such a gift for making even the mundane feel otherworldly. Thank you for backing me up!

Laneia: WOW THANKS FOR MAKING ME EMOTIONAL FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. What a bunch of beautiful things to say!

Q: Dr. Carmen Phillips, You are a star! But most of all, you are doing an amazing job as Editor in Chief. I’m so happy to see the “interim” is gone, and to know that AS is in such good hands. Congratulations!

Carmen: This is really so much! Too much, even! But thank you! I can’t wait to see what we keep building together.

Q: I do not have anything worth sharing to the spaces & places gallery. But thank you for putting that content up because it finally motivated me to start fixing my wardrobe. I have exactly 22.4 inches of hanging space but now things are reorganized so I can actually see what’s there! How’s that for interior design! Small steps but my space is improving!

AND

Q: Everything about the Queer Design series is amazing and not something I realized I needed in my life! Will be coming back to this again and again!

Meg: omg YAY thank you!

Q: What is this new “Tampa Baes” show?!? It’s in my own backyard and I had no idea! Also, what rock have I been living under because I thought we had no lesbian culture here! Omfg.

Heather: We don’t know exactly WHAT it is yet, but you can count on Kayla covering every second of it.

Carmen: Hmmhmmm and Shelli’s really excited to write about it, too!

Laneia: I wish I wasn’t so excited about this show but here we are. It’s because I watched fucking Love Island this summer. That was my gateway drug.

Q: Just dropping by to say I’m really looking forward to AS hopefully recapping season 2 of Never Have I Ever! Himani’s season 1 recap held so much complexity in such a beautiful way. Love y’all, hope you’re hydrating ❤️

Heather: Totally agree! Himani is the best and her TV writing is spectacular! And here you go — season two!

Carmen: I loved working with Himani on that piece and I hope you loved reading it just as much.

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