Ask Me Anything #1

Celebrating One Year of the Newsletter By Answering Your Questions

This is the Sunday Edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends!

It’s officially been a year of Paging Dr. Lesbian! I published the first issue of this newsletter on January 10, 2021, so I decided it was time to celebrate. In the style of a classic Reddit AMA, I asked you all if you had any questions that you wanted me to answer, and then I went about answering them. Whether you’re a new subscriber or you’ve been here from the start – thank you! It’s nice to know that I’m writing to actual other human beings, rather than just shouting into the void. Here’s to another year of Paging Dr. Lesbian.

Do you foresee more low-key coming outs in the future? Just queer celebs vibing, no big announcements etc.

Yes, it seems like that’s going to keep happening more often in the future. We’re obviously a long way from Ellens’ iconic “Yep, I’m Gay” TIME cover, culture-wise. Even Kristen Stewart – who I guess has been “officially” out for several years now – didn’t come out in a particularly dramatic fashion. I’m also thinking of Emma Corrin “coming out” by posting a photo of themself captioned with “ur fave queer bride,” for example. Or “Yellowjackets” star Jasmin Savoy Brown, who I recently heard in an interview say “look, I’m a lesbian” very casually, which frankly isn’t something I recall hearing before in a discussion that wasn’t explicitly about sexuality. (To be honest, I really can’t recall any celebrity explicitly saying “I’m a lesbian” in such a casual manner before. Let me know if you can.)

So I do think things are becoming less formal in that sense. And it seems like maybe younger actors and celebs– like Savoy Brown – are less concerned with getting typecast in a way that actors a bit older than them might have been (and still are). I recall that Kristen Stewart was advised not to come out because it would severely limit the roles she could play, and I think this has become at least slightly less of an issue in recent years.

Do you follow many lesbian couples in sport? Would love to know which teams you support!

To be honest I don’t really follow any sport that closely, but I do obviously pay attention to certain athletes because there are so many sapphics in women’s sports. I obviously love Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird, and I vaguely follow a few other WNBA and NWSL players. (WNBA player Candace Parker’s “coming out” announcement was obviously incredible, speaking of low-key coming-outs.) I did watch a lot of the women’s sports in the Olympics this past summer.

I’m originally from Seattle so I implicitly support Reign and the Seattle Storm (who, coincidentally, Rapinoe and Bird play for). Like many of us, I also became deeply invested in the USWNT in 2019, and I recall that summer of the World Cup being probably the most fun I’ve ever had watching sports in my life and also filling me with a deep sense of pride. I was a baseball fan as a kid – where are my Mariners fans at? – but I don’t really follow the sport anymore. I also played softball in high school, of course.

Which gay media are you looking forward to in 2022 and where do you see gaps for improvement?

I’m excited about there being queer women (one of whom is played by Jasmin Savoy Brown, who I mentioned above) in the new Scream film because it’s my favorite horror franchise of all time. I still don’t really know what it’s about but I’m excited for the Tig Notaro/Stephanie Allyne movie Am I Ok?, which stars Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno. I also recently found out that Jamie Clayton (who I’ve loved since Sense8) will play Pinhead in a new Hulu version of Hellraiser. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be particularly trans or queer, but I hope it’s good. I’m also hoping there will be a third season of For All Mankind premiering this year. It’s definitely my favorite space show that I’ve seen (and one of my favorite pieces of space media, full-stop), and also stars Jodi Balfour as a lesbian astronaut. Check it out!

In terms of gaps – there is obviously still a huge deficit in queer representation in terms of race. Queer women and queer people of color, especially black lesbians and black queer women, are still few and far between on-screen. I posted a link to this in my last newsletter, but in a recent retrospective about the Dee Rees film Pariah, the author describes how Pariah was the first film centering on a black lesbian to be produced by a Hollywood studio (Watermelon Woman was a true indie), and there hasn’t been another one since. I think Pariah was one of those moments where people were like “wow – this is a watershed event!” and then no more films like it were ever made again. There is also still a huge bias towards femme women in media – the butchest character featured in the new L Word, played by Rosie O’Donnel, was treated horribly, for example– which certainly does not reflect the lived reality or existence of queer people. Both of these things definitely need to change, I think, so that white femmes are no longer the prevailing image of queerness.

Who is your favorite lesbian? 

This is an impossible question and I’m about to break out in hives trying to answer it. I will probably have to say Kristen Stewart because she’s the sapphic I’ve loved for the longest – you know I was a Twihard – but I’m also very obsessed with Kehlani.

What is your favorite lesbian TV show?

This is a hard question to answer because really the only (American) TV show actually about lesbians is The L Word. (I suppose Gentleman Jack and Work in Progress could also be included here.) In terms of shows that include lesbian characters, I will have to say Buffy The Vampire Slayer because Willow and Tara kind of changed my life, to be honest. Runner up would have to be Vida, which is incredible (and also incredibly underrated).

What is your favorite lesbian movie?

Another question that is really hard for me to answer. Plus, I truly struggle to pick favorites of anything. I think I’m going to have to go with Portrait of a Lady on Fire here, because I think that movie altered my cellular makeup somehow. Runners up go to Carol, Bound, and Desert Hearts.

Who is your favorite lesbian musician?

Not another favorites question…Here are my top favorites: Brandi Carlile, Kehlani, King Princess, and Torres.

What is your Dunkin’ order?

I regret to inform you that I have never patronized a Dunkin’ Donuts before (in my defense, they don’t have them in Washington), and I also don’t drink coffee. So I simply have no answer for this question.

Dinner with one person dead or alive?

I’m gonna be really gay and say Sappho. What was she doing on that island with all those ladies???

If you could have any farm animal shrunk to the size of a cat which would you choose?

A llama.

Would you rather go to the moon or the bottom of the ocean?

The moon. I love space. But I would also love to go to the bottom of the ocean, but maybe less so after watching the Kristen Stewart submarine movie Underwater. (See? Everything comes back to Kristen Stewart.)

How long have you been writing in the way you are here?

I got started writing about lesbian pop culture in college, when I wrote my undergrad thesis about The Bury Your Gays trope. (If you really want to, you can read it here.) I then got my Master’s Degree in Media Studies at The University of Texas, where I wrote another thesis about queer fandom. I started dabbling a little bit in non-academic writing while in graduate school, but didn’t start getting more serious about it until after I graduated in 2020. As you know, I’ve been writing this newsletter for a year now, while also doing some other freelance writing work.

And how did you get the idea for this Blog/Newsletter?

In late 2020 I started seeing a number of prominent culture writers – namely Anne Helen Peterson, who actually came out of the same graduate program as I, and Hunter Harris – leaving their staff writer positions to start Substack newsletters. I obviously did not have a staff writer position or any sort of employment security to begin with, but I decided that starting a newsletter would be a good way to get my writing out there and maybe even build up an audience. Also, there are really not many publications out there that focus exclusively on lesbian and queer pop culture (besides Autostraddle, of course), so I thought I could help fill that gap.

I came up with the idea sometime in December of 2020 and then launched my newsletter in January of 2021, beginning to build up my subscriber base by basically reaching out to all of my family and friends (and asking them to do the same). I came up with the name “Paging Dr. Lesbian” basically because it made me laugh, and now here we are, a year later. I couldn’t have done it without the support of everyone who reads this newsletter, so I do thank you.