Autostraddle - Getting in touch with queer culture helps

Funny how I can feel so uncertain, my heart full of questioning turmoil... and then love the hell out of Autostraddle magazine.

Feeling more confident these days. Almost like I don't need EC anymore to help sort out the heap of worries piled on my chest. Almost.

Anyway, though I'm sure many have already found this and other media sources to feed their curiosity and interest in queer life as it can be - I'm just making a point to recommend it. I'm also making a point to recommend it to women, if only because I've been hunting down the XX chromosome or otherwise female identifying side of queer culture wherever I can find it and hungrily devouring every page. It helps me to like these changes in myself when I can see so much more to it - so much more to love about being a queer girl, confused as ever. It also doesn't hurt that sites and zines like Autostraddle are gorgeous and brilliant. Professional, well written, full of fun as well as support.

After this space, after telling a few friends, after trying several ways of looking at yourself and finally determining there is no answer or shortcut to the mystery of your sexuality and whatever it's tied too...

..well then is a good time to wade into the culture surrounding what we're all here to investigate in ourselves and others. Right?

It took me a while to accept myself enough to march right up to (or type right up to) a lesbian/queer magazine website and browse without feeling strangely guilty. Now that I'm settling into these big, new ideas, I'm just glad my fresh curiosity and hunger for intelligent culture have so many new places to be sated.

So, everyone else who found EC helpful and finds oneself hungry for something more intelligent, more confident, and downright more queer - get out there on the internet and find magazines, books, films, blogs!

Autostraddle
Revel & Riot
BuskFilms

any others anyone?


Who else came upon the oasis of queer culture like a well in a desert? How did it feel to first accept and enjoy openly and outright queer literature/media? When did you start to relate to it?

 

[/COLOR]I doubt you are, but I wouldn't say it's the prevailing sentiment. There's a lot to hate about the sensationalized, isolating, branded aspects of pride and gay culture. But like other minority or social movement groups, a culture springs around queer communities. It doesn't have to be departmentalized or trashy, stylized or exclusive. It often is, but it doesn't have to be. Just speaking as a writer and a reader, not as "queer" or whatever I want to call myself, but there is something good about the network - the sense of finding others or getting in touch with a "community" or "culture."

Grow up in a small town in the South, for instance, and it's probably the first place you can resonate your lifelong confusing queer thoughts to a celebratory beat. I love that. It's good, and I don't have to march right down to ATL to join a parade to celebrate the idea of community.

And, damn if it isn't amazing that gender/queer studies have taken flight in literature outside of specifically themed conference panels and outspoken essays. It's in the main arteries - music, zines, television, blogs, film - louder than ever. As it grows, it dissolves into the larger community.

 

cheers Fisnou

As for the tribal naivete - of course that's everywhere and ridiculous. Still, this Southerner finds culture to be real and ultimately positive. I don't think I can click right in with folks because of their sexuality, but it's much simpler than that. It's easy for some to get sucked into pop-gay trends, but then it's just as easy to write it all off as stupid. It isn't all bad. I look forward to when it isn't a subculture or a sensationalized thing. I don't think we are all alike or share some new connection because we've found others to relate to. Who does? But here we both are on EC, finding it interesting and helpful. Relating or not to one another within a subtext that is important to our lives.

I didn't mean to start a debate, sorry. It's just... moving from struggling to support to coping to confidence - why can't there be celebration after that? I might scoff at the trending styles, themes, banners, hats, haircuts, and celebrity obsessions - but only in good fun.

Anyway, let's not rain on parades or join them in rainbow paint.

And if you find EC helpful, some of the professionally written journals are wonderful.

 

Most of my friends are straight, married, have children, very traditional and a bit conservative, so queer spaces gives me an outlet for my habits, curiosity, and desires that are otherwise kept under wraps. For me it is less about celebrity gossip and following fads, and more about connecting with others who share this one aspect of themselves with similar folks.

Thankfully there are other subcultures I am involved in where I can find people to relate with, mostly pertaining to art, music, festivals and films that also happen to be outside of mainstream media.





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Exactly. What's more, some of the the things I learn or update myself on in the queer media are just not anywhere else. And I'm glad there is a space away from the homophobia of central news sites, too. Around here, the "queer community" can seem such a separate subculture because the local attitude regarding lgbt issues is reluctant or unpredictable. If I lived in an area where queer culture was just part of culture at large, I'd never feel like I had to find it. But I don't, so I did.

I don't believe or promote the false idea that people should default on community to migrate to a new city/state for acceptance. The South is lovely and full of lovely folks and a rising generation of better informed adults. It's home, though I'll probably leave it for some space and some time in my career.

I like to think and hope that lgbt culture starts as a subculture on its own and works its way out of those boundaries. Not everyone likes rainbows, Pink, Gaga, alternative haircuts, queer fiction, Lip Service, Autostraddle, Gay Bars, nightclubs, or such. But even though my habits and interests remain the same - outside of the "scene" - knowing that there is a proud scene is encouraging. Hell, if it were not for a gay friend of mine who regularly waxed poetic about queer theory and his local GAy Bar, I'd probably still be in denial about my own sexuality.


Anyway - yes, Autostraddle is just great.