dispatch from gay christmas
and something about judith butler dunking on the terfs (again)
Welcome to this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet, a mid-week news roundup from Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends!
This weekend was Halloween, or as Autostraddle’s Carmen Phillips put it, “Gay Christmas”. Obviously, the sapphics were out and about. Niecy Nash and Jessica Betts dressed as Kelly Rowland and Nelly, Janelle Monae dressed as The Grinch and somehow still looked stunning, and Beanie and Bonnie dressed as Blair and Chuck from Gossip Girl. According to Megan Fox’s Instagram story, thousands of sapphic couples around the world dressed as Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. Adelaide Kane and her girlfriend Marthe Woertman dressed as Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (maybe THE sapphic couple Halloween costume). Cara Delevigne was classicly cringe and dressed as a “muff diver.”
Speaking of Cara Delevigne being cringe, she also apparently spent the weekend at an Azaelia Banks concert where she jumped up on stage and acted a fool. (Only watch if you can handle the cringe). The below tweet literally made me laugh out loud.
In other Halloween weekend events, a new picture of Elvira (AKA Cassandra Peterson) and her hot butch girlfriend just dropped, and they continue to serve. Who says your life can’t continuously get better and better at age 70? Peterson reveals in the interview that after coming out she initially lost 7,000 followers, but then quickly gained 60,000 more. Love wins! In other love wins news, Kristen Stewart has officially announced that is engaged to Dylan Meyer. Sapphics have known this information for months now, but I suppose it’s official news now that Straight America is in the know. The official quote from Kristen is “we’re marrying, we’re totally gonna do it,” which made me giggle.
Judy strikes again! You may recall that a couple of months ago, The Guardian published an interview with Judith Butler in which they discuss the expanding understanding of gender and womanhood. The Guardian famously cut an answer Butler gave in which they discussed the connections between TERFs and fascists. Now Butler has written an op-ed for The Guardian in which they explicitly define anti-trans movements as fascist movements, which has obviously once again angered Butler’s critics. This led to an incredible headline from Them: “Judith Butler Correctly Says TERFS are Fascists, Angering TERFS.” If you’ve got the time, Butler’s op-ed is definitely worth checking out.
In other political news, there has been controversy recently about TLVFest, an Israeli LGBTQ film festival held in Tel Aviv. Palestinian activists have argued for a boycott of the festival – which is sponsored by Israeli government agencies as well as a number of international embassies – arguing that is part of a strategy of “pinkwashing” on behalf of the Israeli government. In response to this proposed boycott, over 200 celebrities, including Mila Kunis, Billy Porter, and Helen Mirren, have condemned such criticism, calling it “divisive rhetoric.” For more on the cultural implications of pinkwashing and why it is a particularly insidious strategy, check out a definition of the concept from DecolonlizePalestine, or this overview from BDS.
If you need even more to chew on this week, check out this interview with Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on “The Future of the Left”, or this excellent piece from Michael Hobbes about “Moral Panic Journalism” and fearmongering about cancel culture.
That’s all for this week, folks! Stay cozy until next time. I will leave you with this self-portrait of lesbian painter Romaine Brooks from 1923.
