Reading list: Pride edition

In honor of Pride Month, I put together this list of the best and most memorable content about the many shades of LGBTQ2IA identity, lived experience, and history that I’ve read over the past several years. It’s a mix (in no particular order!) of moving, funny, sweet, sad, infuriating, and informative content, and is meant for both queer folks and allies.

First person/essays

“You Girls Having Fun?”, Eater.

A Modest Proposal, David Sedaris for The New Yorker.

Planning For A Future We Can Actually Imagine, BuzzFeed.

The Catastrophist, or: On coming out as trans at 37, Vox.

My Wife and I Are (Both) Pregnant + A Year Ago I Had a Baby. So Did My Wife., New York Magazine.

Introducing My Parents To My Boyfriend Meant Introducing Them To Me, BuzzFeed.

I Fell In Love With The First Girl I Dated After Coming Out, BuzzFeed.

Harry Potter and the Secret Gay Love Story, The Paris Review.

The best $6,250 I ever spent: top surgery, Vox.

No, We Won’t Sandwich the Bride: On Handling Gay Tokenism, The Toast.

My Queer Skincare Secrets, Gay Magazine.

Being Queer Means I’ll Never Stop Coming Out, BuzzFeed.

I Got Kicked Out Of A YMCA Locker Room — Twice — Because I’m Trans, BuzzFeed.

I Thought My Immigrant Mother Would Never Accept My Queerness. I Was Wrong., Bitch.

Falling in Love with My Transgender Husband, Marie Claire.

I Dress ‘Straight’ to Protect My Clients, Racked.

How I Divorced My Husband of 5 Years, Came Out at 28, and Married a Woman, A Practical Wedding.

This Is What It’s Like When Your Dad Comes Out To You, BuzzFeed.

When I couldn’t tell the world I wanted to transition, I went to Dressbarn, Vox.

Now We Have Seen The Epitome of Anti-Gay Hatred, Gawker.

Please Don’t Stop the Music, The Nation.

Only When I’m Dancing Can I Feel This Free, MTV.

After Transitioning, No One Calls Me Fat Anymore, BuzzFeed.

Could The Baby-Sitters Club Have Been More Gay?, The Paris Review.

A Love Letter To All My Gay Firsts, BuzzFeed.

‘Mallory Is Not Gone’: Daniel Mallory Ortberg on Coming Out As Trans, The Cut.

How I Learned the Craft of Going on Dates with Girls, Catapult.

How to Draw a Horse, The New Yorker.

Advice & service

‘My Parents Still Won’t Accept That I’m Gay!’, The Cut.

Ask Polly: Why Do People Always Think I'm Gay?, The Awl.

#1194: “I’m moving in with my girlfriend and now my homophobic parents want to disown me.”, Captain Awkward.

Coming Out As Gay In Elementary School, BuzzFeed.

I Don’t Know What My ‘Label’ Is. Can I Be in the LGBTQ+ Community?, Out.

19 Insanely Useful Makeup Tips For Trans Women, BuzzFeed.

Incomplete list of books by black trans women, Queer Book Club.

55 Things That Helped LGBT People When They Were Coming Out, BuzzFeed.

Navigating LGBTQ issues at work: an open thread, Ask a Manager.

100 Easy Ways to Make the World Better for Trans People, Vice.

#453: Guest Post: How Do I Come Out to My Mom?, Captain Awkward.

#978: “If you were a ten-year-old boy who just told your mom you’re gay, what would you want her to say?”, Captain Awkward.

The BuzzFeed Style Guide LGBT section.

Gender: Your Guide: A Gender-Friendly Primer on What to Know, What to Say, and What to Do in the New Gender Culture by Lee Airton.

News, culture, and history

The Woman Who Cared for Hundreds of Abandoned Gay Men Dying of AIDS, Out.

When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History by Hugh Ryan (available from Amazon and through local bookstores via IndieBound).

Black, queer, feminist, erased from history: Meet the most important legal scholar you've likely never heard of, Salon.

How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru, Priceonomics.

The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon, Vanity Fair.

No, Queer Women Aren't "Just Experimenting", BuzzFeed.

The Complicated Appeal Of Celesbian Gossip, BuzzFeed.

Who’s Afraid of Gender-Neutral Bathrooms?, The New Yorker.

Queer Eye’s “Black Girl Magic” Is the Blackest, Gayest, Most Moving TV Episode of 2019, Autostraddle.

Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Boy Problems' Is a Beautiful Gay Song of Discovery, Jezebel.

“This Is Us” Breaks New Ground With Tess Pearson’s Coming Out Storyline, Autostraddle.

Beyond The Favourite: The Royal Family's Very Queer History, Town & Country.

How—and Why—Did Fruitcake Become a Slur?, Food52.

Last Call by Elon Green.

Podcast episodes

Return to Ring of Keys, Nancy.

Bi Bi Bi, Call Your Girlfriend.

The Stonewall Uprising, You’re Wrong About.

Kitty Genovese and “Bystander Apathy”, You’re Wrong About.

Fun shit

16 Vintage “Gay” Advertisements That Are Funny Now That “Gay” Means “GAY”, Autostraddle.

An Important Look At Gal Pals Throughout History, BuzzFeed.

21 Pure Tumblr Posts About How Beautiful Women Are, BuzzFeed.

The Internet Has Made The Babadook Our New Queer Icon And Just, Yes, BuzzFeed.

34 Times Tumblr Taught You Everything You Need To Know About Bisexuality, BuzzFeed.

Space Is Gay And I Will Prove It With Science, BuzzFeed.

Baby-Sitters Club Creator Ann M. Martin is Queer, How Did I Not Know This, Autostraddle.

American Girl Dolls Ranked In Order of Gayness, The Niche.

Everyone Wants Rachel Weisz to Dominate Them, The Cut.

“Snesbians”.

Happy reading! 🌈

🍑

How to be laid off

Folks, Terri is back! Today she’s here to offer some good practical advice for surviving a layoff. —Rachel ✨

Back in January, I got laid off from my job along with Rachel, our entire team, and 200 or so other coworkers. I’ve been working in media for the past seven years and have watched the industry shift and shrink. I’ve witnessed layoffs happen around me, both at work and to my close friends, and yet when it happened to me, I was completely floored. As in, on the floor crying in shock.

I don’t know if anything could’ve prepared me for the sting and multiple stages of grief that accompanied losing my job — the numbness, the confusion, the anger, the hurt, the bargaining, the desperation — but I do know that being laid off is an incredibly specific state of being. It’s also probably different for everyone who experiences it. Some people are relieved, some quickly pivot to the next thing, some people have had something like this happen to them many times before and already have their go-bag packed. But for me, and a lot of people I’ve talked to (turns out, LOTS of people I know have been in similar situations, especially in the past six months), the experience of being laid off and the time that ensues generally follow the same outline.

So, should you find yourself in that boat, here are some tips that helped me survive my layoff:

Take time to absorb the shock.
Even if your layoff wasn’t unexpected, moving from a reliable schedule of spending most days feeling productive with the same people to...not...is a major life change. I tried to fend off the Bads by networking and setting up freelance opportunities literally the day after getting laid off. A week later, I had a full-on meltdown right in front of CVS because I was feeling like a part of my identity was gone. I’d loved my job. I led with it during small talk; I cherished the work I did and still look back on it with pride. Instead of gradually acknowledging this truth by letting it seep into my consciousness, I’d try to shoo it away. As a result, had a big old “Come to Jesus” cry on the phone with my mom in public that, blessedly, the citizens of New York let me carry on in peace. (I do love New Yorkers.) After that, I gave myself a weeklong break from any kind of work/job searching, which helped a lot.
Also, unfollow/mute/cut your former employer out of your life if you need to.
Losing your job is like going through a breakup! Especially if you worked somewhere that has a big social media presence! Seeing them continue on as normal can infect still-fresh wounds, so just block them out for a while. You can always re-follow later, or ask trusted friends to give you only the most important highlights. After a while, you might realize you don’t even care about them anyway.
Realize that you will probably deal with constant guilt.
I was not prepared for the crushing waves of guilt that happened every time I stopped doing anything job-related. With a lot more “free” time, it’s easy to feel like you need to spend all of it looking for and applying to jobs, networking, doing side gigs to scrape together money… anything that feels “productive.” And yes, job hunting really is a full-time job. But! You still need to, like, clean your home and bathe and maybe even go read a book for pleasure in a coffee shop. There is literally nothing wrong with doing any of those things, even though it feels like a violation of some kind of rule. Not being on a regular work schedule means you can very easily do worky-type things all day, but if the circumstances allow, try to avoid that. Because I was lucky to have a good enough savings and severance to augment job-related stuff with more less goal-oriented tasks, I was able to create some rules and guidelines to free myself of guilt. Maybe for you, that means you get one (1) matinee movie for every three jobs you apply to, or maybe that means carving out nap time every day because you need it. The guilt of not doing “enough” never truly goes away, but accepting it and telling it that it doesn’t need to define your laid-off self helps.
Start making a daily schedule.
You’ll be doing a lot of the same things over and over: You’ll send a lot of introductory emails, spend an equal amount of time willing certain emails to pop up in your inbox, wash endless dishes, spend countless hours alone (a nightmare for an extrovert like me), and become invested in the personal lives of daytime TV personalities. A schedule helps with the monotony and with the guilt.
Figure out your lunches.
One of the most thoughtful things someone asked me after I got laid off was, “What have you been eating?” Turns out, feeding your stupid body thrice a day is really annoying! At least when I was working, lunch was provided twice a week, and on the others, I could run out and buy something. But alone in my apartment without a steady income, I had to...make?? Food?? I’m not a great cook and I have a tiny-ass kitchen, and every time my stomach grumbled at 1 p.m. I cursed the human digestive system (and my former employer lolololol). I ended up making a lot of toast. There were many fried eggs in there, too, along with many bowls of Corn Flakes and simple dishes like chickpea pasta and lemon butter pasta. I usually love eating, but during the long, lonely days, food was sustenance, and comforting meals like these were manageable and filling. All you need is a few go-to meals to make lunchtime a little less awful.
Accept that paperwork for health insurance and unemployment fucking sucks.
Figuring this out was so stress-inducing that I asked my friend at one point if it was even worth collecting unemployment (it is, but getting money has hardly ever been less fun). Don’t beat yourself up if your heart is racing and you feel sweaty by the time you’re done with these tasks.
Don’t be afraid to tell your loved ones what you need.
When I’m struggling, I need to talk and let it out and just be with people. Pretty much everyone in my family and friend groups showed up for me in a massive way after my layoff, presenting their shoulders to me when I hadn’t even asked for one to cry on. But some people thought I needed space or that I didn’t want to talk about it or that I was doing fine. I had to say, “I am constantly grieving, but this is what I need from you if you want to be there for me.” And you know what? That’s OK! Some people needed the nudge and were relieved to be told what to do in a weird and awkward time. It’s an incredibly vulnerable, raw thing, but I’ve felt closer to my friends and family than ever since getting laid off because I was open with them.
Lean into activities, if you can manage them.
Since getting laid off, I’ve become obsessed with crosswords and the New York Times’s Spelling Bee game, tracked my Jeopardy! Coryat score, and done many jigsaw puzzles. I have not, however, become a gym rat or a master baker like I said I would. I only had the bandwidth to do so much, and I’m happy I was able to hone a few new activities during this shitty time. (Related: A case for having activities instead of hobbies.)
Lean into the good things that accompany being laid off that you might miss when it’s over.
Since being laid off, I’ve had weekday lunches at hard-to-get-into restaurants and spent quality time with friends who’d also lost their jobs. I’ve easily scheduled midday doctors appointments. I’m a terrible sleeper, and my new loosey-goosey schedule has been so generous to my restless nights. I’ve seen my parents a lot more than usual, and forgotten about Sunday Scaries (although they’ve been replaced by constant existential ennui, so…). I’ve gotten to spend some gorgeous spring days outside while people with jobs are stuck at their desks. I watched all of Fleabag and rewatched many old episodes of The Real Housewives of New York. I’ve traveled and felt more spontaneous than I did on a constricted, 10-6 schedule. Being laid off isn’t all bad, but I’d be lying if I said it was easy to enjoy these perks unreservedly (see: guilt). I know that when I start working a regular job again, I’ll wistfully remember that chunk of time when I didn’t have to set a morning alarm. But I also know those things are small, cold comforts in an epically terrible time. Know that it’s OK if you can’t summon much gratitude right now. ✨

Terri Pous is a writer, editor, two-day Jeopardy! champ, and an Aries. She loves abbrevs, reality TV, obscure facts about the US presidents, and the 🥴 emoji. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @terripous, and on sidewalks @ petting every dog.

🍑

The eight types of friends

While doing research for my book this week, I came across author Tom Rast’s list of the eight most common friend types (from his book Vital Friends: The People You Can't Afford to Live Without) and thought it was really cute/interesting.

Here’s an overview of the eight friend types Rast defines:

The Builder
Builders are friends who motivate you, invest in your development, and truly want you to succeed — even if it means they have to go out on a limb for you. These friends help you see your strengths and advise you on how best to use them.
The Champion
Champions stand up for you and your beliefs, and they sing your praises. They are the friends who "have your back" and who will advocate for you even when you're not around.
The Collaborator
Collaborators are friends with similar interests — the basis for many great friendships. Shared interests are what often make Collaborators lifelong friends and those with whom you are most likely to spend your time.
The Companion
Companions are always there for you, whatever the circumstances. When something big happens in your life — good or bad — these are the people you call first.
The Connector
These friends get to know you and then instantly work to connect you with others who will share your interests or goals. They extend your network dramatically and give you access to new resources.
The Energizer
Energizers are your fun friends who always boost your spirits and create more positive moments in your life. They pick you up when you're down and can turn a good day into a great day.
The Mind Opener
Mind openers expand your horizons and introduce you to new ideas, opportunities, cultures, and people. They challenge you to think in innovative ways and allow you to express opinions that you might be uncomfortable articulating to others.
The Navigator
Navigators are friends who give you advice and keep you headed in the right direction. You seek them out when you need guidance and counsel — they're great at talking through your options.

(Read the full descriptions and an interview with Rast here. I thought the results of his research about the importance of work friendships were super interesting.)

I immediately sent this list to a bunch of my friends to see what role they think they tend to play in their friendships. I’m mostly a Navigator, with some aspects of the Builder. I really like this list as a tool for recognizing the different ways you show up for people and as a reminder that most friends won’t be the end-all, be-all friend in our lives — and that’s completely OK. ✨

🍑

A modest proposal: Take notes when you’re hanging out with friends

I’ve written before about my friend Julia’s Ladies Article Club, which I’ve had the pleasure of attending on a couple of occasions when I’ve been in D.C. visiting her. I love a lot of things about it, but one of my favorite aspects is that someone always takes notes during the gathering. The note-taker writes down anything that comes up during the conversation that warrants some kind of follow-up — so basically, if someone mentions a product or a recipe or a podcast episode or a good Instagram account, the note-taker adds it to her list. Then she’ll start an email thread with everyone later on to collect/share the items mentioned.

I’ve always thought this idea was so smart and efficient, and I’ve started doing it more when hanging out with friends — even, just, like, during a coffee date. I like doing it because it’s practical, but also because writing these items down in my journal creates a mini diary entry about the hangout/the conversation.

Last month, I was at my friend Emily’s apartment for a little friend dinner party, and when she mentioned a book she liked, I said, “Wait, I’m going to write down the stuff we talk about so I can look it up later.” I pulled out my notebook and pen and Jess said, “Welcome to Rachel’s meeting,” and everyone laughed. AND YET! An hour or so later, Emily asked me where my pullover and my socks were from, and when I told her, she said, “Wait, I want to write all this down,” and took out her phone and opened the Notes app. And later that night, after we’d all gone home, Jess texted the group and said, “Who is sending out the meeting notes?” And we all sent around the things that we’d discussed and made note of.

I always think I’m going to remember all the things I mention or that my friend mentions when we’re hanging out, but when you’re with smart/well-read/interesting people, that’s basically impossible. Just take notes! ✍🏽

About

Subscribe

Contact

BTW