A Thank You Letter to All of the Magical People at Autostraddle
Hey everyone.
You probably have no idea who I am. I haven’t been an active commenter and when I do comment it’s usually enough days past an article being published that the conversation has mostly died down. But you have all changed my life.
I discovered Autostraddle close to a year ago now, just after I broke up with my fiancee/first girlfriend and moved back in with my parents while going to a small Christian university. I had to figure out how to be gay on my own terms instead of hers and I had almost no community and I didn’t realize that there were so many different ways to be a person. And then I started reading AS articles and it was like coming home. I felt like I was reading all the feelings I had ever had and never been able to put into words. I discovered a whole world of queerness that I didn’t know existed and realized that I could be so much more than a narrow label made me.
Kade, your writing in Butch Please changed my life. I realized that the fascination I had with androgyny and masculinity was okay, that the secret pleasure I got out of people occasionally telling me I looked like a boy could be a valid feeling, that being one of “those” (you know, the hairy ones) lesbians wasn’t a bad thing. A Letter to Baby Butches was one of the first writings of yours that I read and I remember whispering the word “butch” to myself over and over again, wondering if that could be me.
Although I had grown up identifying as a feminist, everyone at Autostraddle renovated my feminist education, helping me realize what issues we’re facing currently, how I can help us move forward, and how far we still have to go.
You also made me laugh. And cry. And smile. And feel like I belonged somewhere.
I just want to thank each one of you, both writers and everyone else in the Autostraddle community, for creating and maintaining such a wonderful space. It came into my life just when I needed it most and I have been grateful since then.
~Joey/Joia/Jay (<–still trying to figure that one out)
