10 Brilliant Things We Published on Autostraddle This Week: A Sampling
We publish at least 35 articles a week on Autostraddle, which can be a lot to keep up with! If you’re sometimes overwhelmed by all this greatness, here’s a weekly rundown of just 10 posts you absolutely have to read before Monday. I mean I could’ve listed all of the articles we published that you should read before Monday, but that’s what your RSS feed is for. Related, I recently started doing the Also Also Also, so now the entire world feels like my newsletter. (AAA content note: you’ll get the wombat joke next week.)
Tomorrow kicks off our 3rd Annual International Brunch Weekend (!!), so we’ve been running two or three brunch posts every day for the past couple of weeks (which is apparently really confusing to some readers on twitter, bless their hearts). All of these brunch-themed post have been amazing and you’ll want to bookmark this tag for future ref, even when it’s not Intl AS Brunch Wknd.
1.“Mother Blaming” Is Bad Journalism, Shaky Science by Laura
What strikes me about these societal mandates around pregnancy is how little they have to do with improving women’s health. Drug addiction, for example, is a serious health problem for many people, including some who may become pregnant. Why are their bodies only worth caring for when they house the looming specters of “damaged” future-babies? Why are legislators so fixated on creating special punishments for pregnant people, rather than programs to give everyone access to health education, drug treatment and family planning tools? (And why this obsession with pregnancy anyway? Is my health unimportant because my girlfriend can’t impregnate me?)
2. You Need Help: You Want to be an Out Beauty Queen by Djuan
I don’t have any fancy tricks or “classy techniques” to give you on how to tame your gay enough so that the heteroes don’t feel threatened. But what I can offer you, in conclusion, is this: You determine your legacy. You determine what is a big deal and what is not. You determine who matters and who doesn’t. You determine if self acceptance outweighs outside acceptance (I’ll, give you a hint: it does). You determine whether or not you will be great. And remember, there’s nothing unfortunate about being great.
3. Outside Lands 2014: A Photo Diary Straight From the Trees by Molly
The vibe here is mellower than any other festival I’ve been to, despite the crowd. It’s probably a combination of that west coast vibe and the lack of heat. And also the fact that you’re surrounded by trees. If I wasn’t feeling a band, sitting in a tree made them sound so much better.
4. Top Ten Brunch Hacks That Will Save Your Life by Elicia
Eggs benedict is one of the greatest probably-bad-for-you foods that has ever been created (after several kinds of cakes). Benedicts will always be satisfying and regularly help your brunch time hangover. You may think your Canadian bacon benedict couldn’t be more tasty, but I’m pretty sure you think that because you’ve never had hollandaise on top of a poached egg on top of a crab cake. It’s like kissing Jesus. Which means it will cure your cold sores and kind of scare you a bit.
5. VIDEO: Vee From Orange Is The New Black Sneaking Up On People by Stef
It took a lot less time than you’d think to assemble this supercut, which is notable mostly because of the menacing cowboy standoff music they use every time someone comes across Vee. She must just stand there all day glaring into space until one of her marks comes around that corner.
6. Inflexible Scheduling Just Another Way Women Are Discriminated Against at Work by Kaitlyn
When you combine these pieces of news with stories like that of Debra Harrell, a South Carolina woman who was fired from McDonald’s this summer after getting arrested for letting her nine-year-old daughter play at the park during a work shift, you see the real, devastating consequences of these attitudes and policies. Women are actually going to jail because they cannot successfully work a system designed to keep them from accessing appropriate jobs and childcare. When women do ask for accommodations, they are viewed less favorably and as less committed, even though it seems like being upfront about your needs should show you’re more dedicated to making a job work.
7. 20 Singaporean Breakfast Foods You Can Savor at Home by Fikri
In Singapore we play fast and loose with morning-time foods: if it’s served at a hawker centre before 11 (and especially if it’s sold out by that time) then you can have it for breakfast. So your first meal of the day could be toast or soupy noodles or fried dough… or all of them. In a pinch you can have any of these foods for “brunch,” though you should be aware that in this part of the world we call that “waking up at a time that disqualifies you as a productive member of society.” (My mother says this a lot less politely.)
8. Shame Game: New Study Shows Stigma Sours Trans Relationships by Mari
Perhaps one of the concerning aspects of this particular study is that it was conducted in the Bay Area, perhaps one of the most accepting areas in the US for transgender people. And yet, even there, discrimination and stigma remain a rather significant problem, to the detriment of the emotional and relationship health of trans folks and their partners. Shaming cisgender men who date trans women remains a pervasive problem, as demonstrated by the numerous “scandals” of celebrities “caught” with trans women, and the non-stop barrage of sitcom jokes about how gross it is to date trans people.
9. Sweating in Sweatpants: A Brunchventure by Hannah
Usually the wait for a table at Peaches can be measured in one million glasses of water, but we arrived just in time to beat the after-church crowd, so we only waited about ten minutes. It is during this ten minutes that I saw one woman waiting for a table wearing pin curls and a pencil skirt. Another gentleman was wearing a three piece pinstripe suit and a fedora. I was wearing last night’s whiskey sour and SWEATPANTS. Is it hot in here? It feels hot in here. You know what will probably cool me down? A Bloody Mary. Yeah, definitely that.
10. It Appears I Have Joined a Masturbation Cult by Hannah
After lots of listening and almost nodding off, two OM experts bring out a table. An adorable faerie girl named Ayries hikes up her dress, spreads her legs just so, and her OM partner, Hamsa, meticulously applies rubber gloves, a wee bit of special magic lube that they sell in the lobby, and begins stroking the upper left quadrant of Ayries’s clitoris. Almost immediately Ayries is convulsing, and getting red in the face, and moaning in a way I’ve never heard a lady moan before. Little short bursts of air. She is making spirit fingers in the way I imagine they are meant to be done. Hamsa’s face is contorted into something like the one all bassists make when they’re really groovin’.
What were your favorite posts from the week? Were you confused about all the brunch stuff, too? Just bless your little heart.
