The Dish: Charlottesville’s Impact On The LGBTQ Community, Amandla Stenberg & Janelle Monae Chat In ‘Teen Vogue,’ And We Want ‘Take My Wife’ On Netflix

Our weekly roundup of the biggest lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender women’s news and entertainment stories!

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Welcome, GO readers, to our weekly roundup of the biggest lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender women’s news and entertainment stories!

Charlottesville’s Impact On The LGBTQ Community

Three people are dead and dozens more are injured following a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend. On Friday, a conglomerate of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched on a Confederate monument that the City Council voted to remove earlier this year. Then, on Saturday, violence broke out at the “Unite The Right” rally. Among the racial epithets, antisemitic chants, and violence directed at Black counter-protestors, the white nationalists also directed hateful chants towards LGBTQ people.

In the wake of the rally, President Donald Trump oscillated over condemning white nationalists, specifically, and blamed “both sides” for the violence on Tuesday. Queer organizations in Virginia and Charlottesville were present at the protests and have condemned the so-called “alt-right” supporters. “LGBTQ people are also people of color, immigrants, women—AND, we have to assume, white supremacists,” Amy-Sarah Marshall, the President of the Charlottesville Pride Community Network, told GO in an email. “So when we’re dealing with equality for queer people, we’re necessarily needing to care and advocate for the rights of everyone else, too.”

Virginia is the only Southern state that has had nondiscrimination policies advanced in 2017 in its General Assembly, though these policies were ultimately killed in the House of Delegates. “These divisive, hate-filled, and homophobic taunts heard in Charlottesville deeply affect our gay and transgender neighbors who want only to be treated fairly,” James Parrish, the Executive Director of Equality Virginia told GO in an email. If you want to support LGBTQ Virginians, “[w]e encourage everyone to be engaged with their local leaders, from the school board member to the governor,” Parrish added. Be sure to check out how you can help on GO.

Amandla Stenberg And Janelle Monae Had A Conversation And We Get To Read It

Out bisexual actor and activist Amandla Stenberg is in conversation with singer and actor Janelle Monae in this month’s issue of “Teen Vogue”—and we are here for it. The pair discussed the dearth of black women on screen in Hollywood and how they’ve carved out a creative space for themselves. Stenberg, whose social commentary and acting is always on point, told Monae that she found out Trump won the election on the set of her new movie about the Holocaust. “An actor playing a Nazi soldier took out his phone to refresh the news and announced that Trump was president,” Stenberg said in the magazine. Stenberg is just 18 years old, but we have a feeling that she’s well on her way to becoming an icon.

“Take My Wife” Is So Much More Than A Show

The streaming network Seeso will be shutting down and going with it is the show “Take My Wife,” which features real-life married couple Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher on screen and at the helm. Though LGBTQ people have recently experienced more visibility on screen, we’re still hard-pressed to find queer women telling the stories of our own lives. In the wake of Seeso’s announcement, Esposito tweeted that the show’s writers were all women and the second season’s writers were 43 percent women of color. “We came here to claim our space and make room for others, we did it. You can too,” Esposito wrote in her tweet. So far, fans have been pleading on social media for another network to pick it up. Are you there, Netflix? It’s me, GO.

Farewell To “Orphan Black”

Goodbye, clone club. After five seasons—and a dizzying number of subplots—“Orphan Black” came to an end this weekend. The BBC America show followed the character Sarah Manning, played by Tatiana Maslany, as she discovered that she was a clone and sought out her clone sisters, including Cosima, a queer scientist. Maslany herself is an outspoken ally to the LGBTQ community. In a video for GLAAD, she teared up discussing her feelings for the community. “It just makes no sense that there wouldn’t be support for the community [or] that it even has to be a separate community. I don’t understand why there’s a line drawn,” she said in the video.

Chelsea Manning Is Stunning In “Vogue”

It might be the end of summer, but “Vogue” is heating up. Chelsea Manning is stunning in a red Norma Kamali swimsuit in the September issue of the magazine, where she was photographed on a beach by Annie Leibovitz. Manning came out as a transgender woman in 2013 while she was serving a prison sentence for leaking government documents. In January, her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama and, as the “Vogue” story details, today she’s living a fashionable life in New York City.

Honorable Mentions

Can’t get enough of stories about queer women? Here are a couple more we couldn’t forget:
Ellen DeGeneres won several Teen Choice Awards.
YouTuber Hannah Hart got her own show on the Food Network.

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