 | Dorothy Allison, the lesbian feminist author of the novel Bastard Out of Carolina and other noteworthy books, has died at age 75.
Allison, who had cancer, died Wednesday at her home in Northern California, Sinister Wisdom reports.
“Allison wrote about a queer, poor South with dynamism and ferocious love,” Literary Hub notes. “Her books tangoed frankly with historically taboo subjects, like sexual abuse, and spotlit characters under-glimpsed on the shelves of hegemony.”
Her books reflected her life. She was born in 1949 in Greenville, S.C. Her mother was just 15 years old, and Allison “had a difficult childhood marked by poverty and sexual, physical, and emotional abuse,” as Sinister Wisdom puts it. With the help of scholarships, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and she became involved in the feminist and lesbian rights movements in the 1970s and ’80s in Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
She became editor of Amazing Grace, a feminist newspaper, and contributed poems and essays to LGBTQ+ and other publications. She served on the editorial board of Conditions, a lesbian feminist journal. “Sitting on the floor at editorial meetings talking about writing and manuscripts and how women might work toward a more just and equitable world, I looked around and felt my heart thudding between my breasts,” she wrote about Conditions in an essay for Sinister Wisdom. “I loved each and every one of us. I loved what we were trying to do even as we quibbled over line breaks in a poem or structure in an essay.”
Dorothy Allison Has Died |
Quincy Jones Spilled Tea
 | The news of all-time great music producer Quincy Jones' passing hit the world this past Sunday, and with it came reminders that he spilled some of the most iconic celebrity tea ever to be spilled.
Jones, who died at age 91, produced records for artists like Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, and Lesley Gore, including songs like "Billie Jean," "Thriller," "Come Fly With Me," "We Are the World," and "It's My Party." He also wrote "Soul Bossa Nova," which later became the theme song for the Austin Powers movies.
In his career, he won 28 Grammy awards, a Primetime Emmy, a Tony, and was nominated for seven competitive Academy Awards.
But for many, one of his lasting impacts will always be his incredible interviews, where he often spilled celebrity tea no one else was willing to talk about.
One particular interview with Vulture has been coming up a lot, and not just because he called the Beatles "the worst musicians in the world" and "no-playing motherf*ckers."
In that interview, he was also asked about dancing, and when the cha-cha was brought up, he dropped a major bomb.
Quincy Jones Spilled Tea |
Don't Abandon the Transgender Community
 | Democrats are still reeling from the wave of defeats on Election Day that included Kamala Harris losing to Donald Trump. In the process of casting about for an explanation, one theory is that Trump won because the Democratic Party is disconnected from the concerns of average Americans. An example of this alleged disconnect is Democrats’ relative support of transgender Americans, compared to Republicans who’ve been engaged in a coordinated attack against trans people.
“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, a New York moderate Democrat who won re-election Tuesday, told The New York Times the next day. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports. … Democrats aren’t saying that, and they should be.”
There is no other way to put this but: No. Democrats absolutely should not be following Suozzi’s advice here. It is an instinct based on fear that should be rejected loudly and firmly from all corners of the party. From a human decency perspective, this moment, when trans people are most endangered, is not the time to throw them under the bus. It’s also wrong as political strategy in that the party would be trying to appeal to voters who would be no more inclined to lend the Democratic Party their support even if it abandons trans people.
It’s true that Trump and other Republicans went all in on anti-trans messaging this election cycle. According to data from Ad Impact, the GOP spent roughly $215 million on network TV ads alone calling transgender people a threat to the American way of life. That included at least $77 million in Senate races in 10 states between mid-July and late October and doesn’t include any online ads on the issue. That was significantly more than the GOP spent trying to whip up anti-trans sentiment during the 2022 midterm elections. That campaign strategy was a massive failure for the GOP then. There were no real gains to be shown for the GOP based on that rhetoric.
Don't Abandon the Transgender Community |
Connecting With Pansexuality
 | I was in high school, and I was in show choir, and there was a girl who was a year ahead of me in school, and I don't know, I just thought she was really funny, and I just wanted to get to know her better.
And I was like lamenting to a friend of mine who happened to be a gay man, and I was lamenting to him about like, how, like, “I think I might like, like this person,” like, “that's weird,” like, “I want to get to know them a lot more, and I find myself feeling the way that I do about like boys about this person,” and he was like, “Well, you should tell them.”
And me being who I am. I was like, “Yeah, okay, I'm gonna do it,” and so, I remember I told her, like, face-to-face – like that seems so ballsy now – I told her, and she said, “I really like you, too, but I have a girlfriend, and she's in St Louis.”
Fast forward, that girlfriend – not in St Louis. That girlfriend – best friend of hers at the high school we went to.
So, it wasn't long before that blew up in everybody's faces because, of course, I was like, “Your girlfriend's in St Louis, I'm still flirting with you.”
And so, yeah, that blew up in all of our faces because she was not pleased that I kept flirting with her in front of her.
Connecting With Pansexuality |
Ruben Gallego Wins Senate Race
 | LGBTQ+ ally Ruben Gallego has seemingly won his race against anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Kari Lake for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. He won 50% of the vote, beating Lake by 66,305 votes with 93% of all voting precincts reporting as of Monday morning, Decision Desk HQ reported. He has not yet made a statement commenting on his projected victory.
As such, Gallego will win the Senate seat that will soon be vacated by outgoing bisexual Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema — a controversial figure in the Senate, often frustrating Democratic priorities — left the Democratic party in late 2022, after earning enmity from other Arizona Democrats for not helping others get reelected that year. She announced her retirement from the Senate in early March.
Gallego has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights. In 2015, Rep. Gallego signed on as an original co-sponsor of the Equality Act, a comprehensive federal anti-discrimination bill that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to pre-existing anti-discrimination laws. He voted in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages.
In February 2022, Gallego co-signed a letter from the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus opposing Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which forbids LGBTQ+ instruction in the state’s public schools. While serving as a Marine, he was a member of Voices of Honor, a group of military members that spoke out against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), the national ban on out gay and bisexual military service members.
Ruben Gallego Wins Senate Race |
Your Laugh For The Day!
Contributors: CellarDweller115
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