Now we know what sliding shorts are

The 32nd week of queer things we’ve been up to and into.

FIFA Women’s World Cup (WWC). Our lovely friend and TQY resident “Comment Guy” Baby is a massive soccer (aka football, aka the world’s sport) fan. Sometimes a great way to express your love for a friend is to try to love what they love. Or, at the very least, dip your toes into a passion of theirs to get a taste of their pleasure and excitement. Neither of us ever really got into watching sports in any sustained manner, even though Amie was a sporty spice in her younger years (playing HS varsity water polo and later completing marathons and triathlons) and Heather is very sporty capable and could have been a great sporty dyke if people in the ‘80s did not automatically assume a fat person can’t play sports. Anyways, when Baby and her family traveled to New Zealand to attend early games of the 2023 WWC, we decided it would be fun to “join them” by watching soccer on TV for the first time—and we were immediately hooked. 

Over the years, Baby has been giving us a basic education about soccer, from the politics to the players, but we had no idea what we were really missing. We didn’t realize that we could be watching a bunch of hot and talented women doing what they do best, running a lot on “the pitch” while shoving each other around and kicking and headbutting a spinning sphere back and forth. The further reward is that this non-stop action is sometimes punctuated by a bellowing goooooooooooolllll and celebratory hug circles (with occasional neck kisses)—all with a plethora of queer babes and ponytailed butches (we’ve never seen so many long-haired butches outside of Dinah Shore Weekend). These athletes are so talented and such fun to watch and the camaraderie is refreshing. We started with a few games in the group round and have now watched every game since the semi-finals. It turns out, watching sports for us includes a great deal of gesticulating and shouting, with a bit of hooting and hopping up-and-down and plenty of nervousness while we suck air through our teeth. The best part: bombarding Baby with all the questions that we could just as easily look up online. 

Watching the WWC has also sparked conversations about the overrepresentation of male coaches (it’s difficult to watch a pack of white men standing around talking about how to command/direct women’s bodies to achieve victory); games with colonizer countries versus postcolonial countries (especially with the stripped and stolen resources in those places); and women’s pay equity (watch the important LFG doc about U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s fight for equal pay). While we may not watch women’s soccer all the time now, we are now converted fans, just like with Eurovision, and are fully committed to this women’s quadrennial world championship. In case you’re wondering, we’re now rooting for Japan to take the cup.

Big Joanie. We first learned about the band Big Joanie from the diary of a sista grrrl zine which we wrote about back in week 7, but really got into listening to the trio’s Black feminist queer punk music this past week (you know how it goes). It’s honestly hard to know what we love them the most for. Is it how they are fully realized ‘riot grrrls,’ making it the intersectional punk movement it always could/should have been? Is it what smart and lovely and cool humans they are? Is it how they play in a line on stage, with their standing drummer front and center? Or is it how they totally rock? Certainly, the existence of a punk band formed by three Black women is necessary, as Big Joanie singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips speaks to with KEXP host Eva Walker:

The whole idea of the band in the beginning was that, you know, the rest of the world is so hyper capitalist and devoted to like male white supremacy that you know Big Joanie is a space where we can get in a room and as three Black women just exist without those kinds of pressures. It’s about imagining what can exist if that outside world didn’t grind us down every day. So I think the idea of being Black women in a band is that we are naturally defiant, we’re naturally radical—you could say. But we’re not necessarily going to be writing songs about hating white men every day ‘cause who cares about them. ~Stephanie Phillips

It’s all fantastic and it’s all there in their music videos, from the goth-punk vibes of their newer “Sainted” to the cool vibes and animation in “Confident Man”:

In addition to our new favorite Black queer feminist trio, we’ve also been into these new music videos and live performances:

Fever Ray’s new video for ‘North’
Shamir’s recent post-punk pop ‘Our Song’
Boy Genius with live performances of ‘Not Strong Enough,’ ‘$20,’ and ‘Cool About It’

Womontown on Kansas City PBS. When watching a totally sweet and very sad episode of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning about artist & activist Sue Moreno (pictured below, left), reeling after the sudden death of her wife Beverly Powell (pictured above) from COVID, we learned about a 14-block area in Kansas City, Missouri called Womontown—an intentional urban lesbian neighborhood community. This got us really excited because we had no idea such a thing existed. We both dream of a queer commune, but neither of us are the living “in the woods” type (as much as we wish we were like some of those rad back-to-the-land lezzies of the ‘70s and ‘80s), with our soft hands, C-minus handy skills, and dislike of bugs. So, being “city rats,” we were inspired to learn about the existence of an intentional urban lez community and immediately started researching to learn more about Womontown. 

Behold! There is a PBS doc detailing how a group of lesbians organized in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to create Womontown, which had about 80 lesbians of all types, from all across the US living in the neighborhood at its height. Women, especially lesbians, at that time were kept from buying homes by rules that required a husband or parent to cosign on a home loan (among other racist and trans/homophobic practices and policies). Womontown was created by and for lesbians to find economic and social empowerment together. Since that was also the time before ubiquitous home computers and social media, the founders of Womontown advertised in the Lesbian Connection and at lesbian and women’s gatherings and festivals to draw in more women to move to Womontown and grow the community. While Womontown somewhat fizzled out in the mid-to-late ‘90s, the impact of their community efforts remains in the neighborhood, with a number of the lesbians still living there. Anyone in for a Queertown, Oregon? 

Also, we are in the midst of watching:

Reservation Dogs, final season. Good as gold.
Heartstopper, season 2. Sweet as candy.
What We Do in the Shadows, season 5. Funny as shit.
Project Runway, season 20. Missing Tim Gunn.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (miniseries). Jury is out.