The Dish: Queer Pro Skateboarder Lacey Baker Talks Personal Style, Lesbian Gets “Husband” Designation in Divorce Decree

Kick, push.

So nice to see you here again! And to all of you lovely LA people who came out to AltarGirl last night, I hope you feel as magnificent this morning as I do.

Japan is home to a new genderless tailoring company that hopes LGBTQ people will feel comfortable sending in their clothing for better fits and repairs. Madam M even allows for customers to have consultations online and send their items in the mail for extra anonymity. This is still a concern for many gender-nonconforming people, even in the States. We have a handful of LGBTQ-specific tailors, but they’re mostly in larger cities like New York, and not always accessible to those living elsewhere. Perhaps we need a network of queer-friendly tailors that can help you look and feel your best in whatever you want to wear, because even in L.A., I see people asking for this kind of thing on Facebook all the time.

RELATED: Vogue profiled Lacey Baker, the queer skateboarding star who is now sponsored by Nike, and asked about her sense of style. “It’s a mix. A lot of it comes from queer culture, from obviously skating, and from fashion. But a lot of fashion brands are informed by skating,” she said. “Pretty much every piece of clothing I have is altered in one way or another. That’s the look I want: very basic, but not straight out of the package. So if a sponsor sends me clothes, I’ll alter them. Usually I just cut the bottoms off shirts, because I don’t like when shirts hug my hips. Pants, I taper, crop, or hem. That sort of specific stuff. It’s not about other people seeing me.”

Photo by Vogue

Speaking of queer skateboarding, Pave the Way is a queer-owned online skate shop that has bad ass boards featuring Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag and other luminaries. It makes me want to learn to skate, which is exactly what Pave the Way is hoping to achieve (not me skating, specifically, but more queer people!).

The New York Times thinks it’s total bullshit that the Census Bureau won’t be collecting any LGBTQ specific data. “Failing to collect good data on sexual orientation and gender identity allows policymakers and elected officials to hold the utterly false belief that no L.G.B.T. people use their services and that no L.G.B.T. people live in their electoral districts,” writes Praveen Fernande. “It robs policy makers of the ability to understand us and it makes evidence-based policy more difficult. It puts L.G.B.T. Americans as a group back into the closet.” Which is exactly what the Trump administration wants. Seriously, guys, it’s getting scary.

Tel Aviv’s Pride parade has a theme of  bisexual visibility this year, with a city council member saying, “Both in Israel and around the world, many bisexual people feel that they are an invisible group within the LGBTQ community. Here in Tel Aviv, we are committed to celebrating each and every LGBTQ person and ally equally, so that we can all be out and proud together.” Meanwhile, many still feel it’s all part of Israel’s pinkwashing and do not want to see anyone supporting Tel Aviv’s Pride events.

A new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art has a very LGBTQ-specific segment called “Queer Interiors” based around our homes and how they inform our daily domestic lives. Trans artists Rahne Alexander and Jaimes Mayhew explain how the “ordinariness” of things like our beds are actually quite political: “The bed is the stage for sexual acts with an assumption of privacy, but historically, the bedroom has not been private enough to prevent sodomy laws from attempting to stop ‘deviant’ sexual acts from happening.” If you go see the exhibit, make sure to look underneath the bed, where you’ll find “12 hand-dyed pride flags that represent just a few identities under the LGBTQ umbrella. The flags remain out of view except for on special occasions, which, for me, is the way many LGBTQ people reveal identity, mostly because we are presumed to be cisgender and straight until proven otherwise. Of course, some people can’t hide, or don’t hide their identities, but some do.”
Photo by Baltimore Museum of Art

Latina magazine is crushing on Catalina Velasquez, the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships and Communication for Casa Ruby (which you might remember from the recent episode of “Gaycation”). The self-professed trans, undocumented Latina activist shares her thoughts on how white feminism doesn’t exist (“White feminism is white supremacy, and we must call it out as such”) and why the LGBTQ community cannot “ignore the effects of compounded oppression.” “People of color, immigrants and people who speak different languages are victims of police profiling and struggle to access education and health care,” she said. “Then, when you compound that with being queer or trans, the rejection won’t just come from the usual suspects. You start to see this in your own community. People who want to unite and build up the community also reject you. When you really go to the root of it, yes, it’s white supremacy, but that creates trauma in communities of color, which is internalized and acted on, because hurt people hurt people. Trans people of color are rejected by the mainstream, our own communities and our own families.” Just something to be mindful of today and every day.

In case you’ve always wanted to use a strap-on with your partner but don’t know how to bring it up, here are a few helpful suggestions that really pertain to anything new you want to try in the bedroom. Remember: Consent is sexy!

Sabrina and Erica Witt are now divorced with shared custody of their child, which is actually great news for them and history-making in Tennessee. Last year, a Knoxville judge initially ruled that Erica, the non-biological mother, had no parental rights because the child was conceived via artificial insemination, and she wasn’t legally the “husband.” (Erica had also never formally adopted the child, who is now two-years-old.) But after an appeal by Erica’s attorney, judge changed his mind, as same-sex marriage is now the law of the land, and granted the divorce decree this week, angering many conservatives who still want marriage and family to be defined by one man, one woman. (STILL!?!)

The French LGBTQ community is a little scattered right now, with some gays openly supporting super right-wing conservatives who make big promises while also making homophobic moves. Sound like anyone you know?

Jill Soloway was a guest on “Fresh Air” this week where they talked about her new Amazon series “I Love Dick” and their evolving gender identity. A quote: “I think since we last spoke I’ve become more queer and more gender non-conforming, and basically [I’ve] gotten rid of everything that one would consider femme-presenting in my life. …I realized at the tender age of 50 that I had a life yet to live that I didn’t even realize was mine. I dated women and started to find myself in a queer community and around lesbians, and I think my evolution became not just about being queer, not just about being a lesbian, but really [about] being willing to look at my own gender. … Something for me about a non-binary identity and identifying as queer is allowing me to be more at home with my ideas and my mind.”

Goldie Hawn, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Chelsea Handler played a fun game of “Guess who wrote this?” from their memoirs on the new episode of “Chelsea” this week, and talked about Goldie, Amy and Wanda’s new film, “Snatched,” which is not about vaginas.

BTW, Goldie Hawn told an interviewer that her “best girlfriend” is gay and now I really want to watch “First Wives Club.”

You, too, can buy Kristen Stewart‘s track pants and feel like a celesbian! You’re welcome.

Ciao!


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