Month: March 2015

queer girl

Quicklinks: Happy Transgender Day of Visibility!

Happy #tdov! How are you celebrating?

Hey, everyone, btw, a quick poll: are you still using the asterisk in trans*?

I don’t watch soaps, but Heather Hogan thinks Bold and the Beautiful is doing a crappy job on their trans storyline. Straight to blackmail? Really, writers?

When I was a teenager, everyone I knew wanted to be the Clean & Clear girl with the perfect skin. That girl will now be Jazz Jennings!

Are you scared of accidentally misgendering someone by using the wrong pronouns? I know I am — I have been known to mess up occasionally when meeting new people. When you do misgender someone, you will probably feel terrible, and your first instinct might be to tell the person how very awful you feel. But this isn’t about you. Instead, acknowledge your mistake and/or correct yourself, and move on quickly. After all, Q Blog says, “there’s nothing worse than getting misgendered and then having to soothe and care-take the person who just misgendered you.”

Activist Blake Brockington was remembered at memorial services over the weekend. He was eighteen years old.

I know I always talk about it, but have you read Janet Mock’s autobiography yet? DO IT. The book helped me move to a new level in my lifelong process of dismantling the transphobia that I grew up with. Reading a well-written book is the best way I know of how to (kind of almost) walk a mile in someone’s shoes. And Janet Mock has gorgeous shoes.

Finally, look up #tdov on Twitter for an endless scroll of color and activism, anger and hope and pretty people and regular human beings! ❤

queer girl

Whack-a-Mole: The Safe Space of Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher’s Comedy

-Buzzfeed

 

These ladies are kicking ass and queering spaces in ways I don’t yet have the tools to do.

So I had the absolute pleasure of seeing Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito over the weekend. The show was great. It was also very, very gay. And as I watched, I realized that I haven’t really spent that much time yet in queer spaces, at least outside of our little community center here in town. I haven’t been to a big Pride weekend or even an Indigo Girls concert. I’m still kind of a baby gay, my skin is all fragile and new.

So during the show (when I was trying not to look at Rhea Butcher’s butt in those jeans, because she’s taken, but DAMN), I was watching this middle-aged straight man seated a few tables down from us. He was at the show with his much-more-attractive lady date, and I don’t know how they got their tickets, but I don’t think he realized what they had gotten themselves into until it was too late. (Maybe it was court-mandated comedy service for homophobes.) The show started with Rhea Butcher talking about how much she loves her last name (“that’s what I am. I am butcher than all of you”) and progressed into Cameron Esposito’s “TED talk” on what lesbians do in bed (“those women in porn aren’t lesbians. Just look at their fingernails. And if you wonder why I say that, would you keep sharp objects at the end of your dick? I’m holding the mic with my dick right now”).  And throughout, this guy just got purpler and purpler. I only saw him chuckle once, and it was pretty forced.

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queer girl

One Big Lezzie

You can always spot the Lesbian by her collared shirt.

NBC’s new show takes queer lady visibility right back to 1994.

Did you guys catch One Big Happy last night on NBC? If you didn’t, you can always head over to AfterEllen (cough *sponsored by NBC* cough) to catch up on the hype. And it’s no wonder people had high hopes for the show, with Liz Feldman and Ellen at the helm. But…sigh.

Remember in Friends (especially in the first season), when all we knew about Ross’s babymama Carol was that she was a lesbian — and wasn’t it funny? Sentences like “she’s a lesbian” and “Susan and I are getting married” were met with raucous laughter. Of course, that was a long time ago. High waisted jeans have gone out of style, come back into style, and (possibly) gone out of style AGAIN. In the meantime, the country has made great strides towards marriage equality. And especially in recent years, lots of gorgeous, funny, nuanced queer lady characters have graced our screens, playing whole people who had entire lives, and were also gay or bi or pan or curious or just plain slutty.

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