Camp was surreal. I’ve never in my life experienced that much instant, sincere welcome. Everywhere people smiled and acknowledged you. No one looked at me strangely because I don’t wear make-up, have very short hair, and wanted to wear a tie. Such a change from south Mississippi. My cabin mates were the best people I could have possibly wished for. How can you feel like family in just a week?
Fucking is awesome! People should fuck more or less. Whatever they are into. The end.
Autostraddle’s Speakeasy Book Club #2: Come Talk About “Borderlands/La Frontera” With Us
"This past month, your favorite QTPOC think tank/cuddle collective has been reading Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa. There was a lot going on in this one, so let’s talk about it!
Here are some Speakeasy members with their brilliant thoughts, gorgeous faces and favorite quotes.”
Call it fantasy if you want, but here’s a thing Neil Gaiman taught me: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
The answers to all these questions and more will be revealed in this miniseries I’ve nicknamed Really Wedding, Really? but that I’ve officially named Wedding Feelings I’m Powering Through, because one time I did a series of personal blog posts titled Feelings I’m Powering Through and it was so cathartic I almost turned into a willow tree and never spoke again.
I now have a history of adding and deleting my OkCupid account because whenever I’m on there it always matches me with some with lesbian who is hanging off the side of a mountain in her profile picture. I have no idea what I put on my profile that makes OKC think these are the women I’m interested in dating. And honestly I tried throwing caution to the wind and saying “Hey, if the computer says we’re compatible then it must know what’s best, right?” Because honestly, while I’m open to diversity in the women that I date, I have found that usually out of 50 quick matches on OKC I might get 3 black lesbians. I met up with a hang gliding white lesbian once to see if there could actually be some sort of connection. Maybe she secretly has an affinity for ’60s soul on Stax Records or we could connect over L Word re-treads. It just didn’t work at all. The only thing we connected with was a love for Thai food and cognac which can work in certain situations. But there was no spark. And that is ok.
Hell, at least I tried.
The bottom line is that a good relationship requires everyone in it to think about how things will affect 1. them, 2. the other person, and 3. the relationship as an organism. Even though we live in the real world, and there will be times when at least one of those things has to take a hit, that should never be business as usual.
Many of my straight friends, even the most liberal, see this logic as warped. It’s one thing for them to admit that they would prefer their kids to be straight, something they’ll only begrudgingly confess. But wanting my daughter to be a lesbian? I might as well say I want her to grow up to be lactose intolerant.
WASH YOUR HANDS IF YOU ATE BUFFALO WINGS BEFORE GETTING LAID, OMG.
I realized last night that wedding vows and ceremony wordings are necessarily things that have been passed down and repeated (almost) verbatim, because that’s kinda the deal: we’re putting our names on the unfathomably long list of people who once made the same promise. It’s the ritual of the thing that grounds it and gives it weight, and I talk/write/think enough already. Maybe on this day I should say some words other people have said, because I feel the weight in them and they feel true without me having to fuck with them.
This is just some unfiltered honesty here. A feeling I’m still powering through la la la.
I felt like a second class citizen. I had to keep trying; I wouldn’t give up.
In what has already been a year of horrifying violence and tragedy for trans women of color, a young Somali-Canadian trans woman was lost this weekend in Toronto. Sumaya Dalmar, known also as Sumaya Ysl, was found dead on Sunday morning at the age of 26.
