Let’s see how cute it is in 10 or 15 years…
[same commenter, a few minutes later]
So many ifs
Autostraddle commenters! Autostraddle readers! THE PERSON LOOKING AT THIS RIGHT NOW, BASICALLY.
Assembling myself for the daily interrogation of my femininity is a careful procedure. As a woman in New York City I must be desirable enough to navigate public spaces of transportation comfortably, but subdued enough to be left alone. As a trans woman, getting catcalled is the relief of my gender being read correctly muddled with the fear of my name appearing on social media in honor of my life the next day.
I know there’s something completely uncool about my approach here, but that’s also part of growing up in small towns. Those gender expectations are so hard-wired, so unquestionable that even buzzing your head and wearing men’s clothes isn’t enough to get you much more than looks of sympathy and once, insultingly, an offer to go clothes shopping together. Fuck you, well-meaning coworker.
I don’t know when is the right time to stay friends with an ex and when isn’t! I just don’t. I wish I did because I would sell a book about it that would make a million dollars. I think we can agree, though, that on a fundamental level, if someone is an ex at least one of you has decided that your romantic relationship wasn’t working, and so if your friendship is going to work, it should be substantively different in some way.
Hosting a holigay meet-up is more fun than baking a batch of sugar cookies shaped like snow people, and it’s definitely easier than humming any part of The Nutcracker in tune. Make the season gay and get into it!
I remember smiling like a fool. I had learnt how to love a world I once feared. Now, I must do it again.
Gabrielle Bellot, Making the Dive and Loving Myself Dangerously
Those girls! Carrying on like that! They had to be punished! I told them! They shouldn’t kiss, hug like that with the boys! They wouldn’t listen to me! Wouldn’t listen! Those girls! Those stupid girls!… I never meant to do any of this! It just came over me and I couldn’t hold it back.
Miss Brant, a murderer who is considered by many to be television’s first lesbian character, appearing on “The Asphalt Jungle” in 1961 (10 First-Ever Lesbian Characters On American TV: Killers, Tramps, Thieves and Therapists)