you’re getting this email because you subscribed to “this is gay culture.” i didn’t want to just shove your email on a new list without your permission like every company to ever exist, so i’m letting you know about the new newsletter so you can check it out for yourself and decide whether you wanna sign up for that one with your own brain. it’s fun and free and full of bitchin’. just like my mouth!

So go get some of Enough and i hope you’ll subscribe!

ok that’s enough thank you very much for your time xoxo <3

I know, I know. You signed up for a happy gay newsletter and now you clicked on this one and you see the word “depression” and you’re like, Matt, what the FUCK is this shit? I subscribed to your free newsletter expecting you to make me laugh, you stupid clown. Well guess what, bitch? Gay culture is about dramatic twists! One day you think you’re getting a funny newsletter and then BAM, I hit you with the ol’ razzle-dazzle (depresh talk). It’s called range, sweetie. I am basically the Meryl Streep of newsletter writers.

But… it’s been a shitty week (slash month slash year), and what good is having a newsletter if I can’t complain about my life? Gay culture is about forcing people to listen to your problems! Gay culture is about making everything about you!

Now, I’m legally required to clarify: not all gay people are depressed, and not all depressed people are gay. (Even though I firmly believe, deep down, that all of us are both gay and depressed.)

But as a person of depressed homosexual experience, I am sticking the rainbow flag in my shriveled hippocampus (the technical term for the part of the brain that regulates emotions and also the term for the grounds of a community college for hippopotamuses) and claiming depression as inherently queer.

I’m no expert on depression, but I’m pretty sure it works something like this: there’s three drag queens that live inside our brains called Deaux Pamine, Sara Tonin, and Nora Eppin Ephron and they’re all here to make sure we have a gay old time and also to write Sleepless In Seattle. In lots of brains, these queens go on stage exactly when they say they will because they are professionals and that is their job. In brains like mine, these bitches take their gay ass time to do their gay ass jobs, and like all gay people, they do their jobs poorly and also leave questionable stains in the green room. It sucks that they suck at their job, but we give them some pills, take them to therapy, put them in sunlight, and hope that they do their shit better tomorrow.

I’ve had depression for as long as I’ve had gay. (And yes, I am medicated for both.) And the super exciting thing about depression is that it keeps you on your toes, like a quality stilletto heel. Your brain is like, “OK sis, don’t be mad, but we decided to be sad today, and also we’re absolutely not gonna tell you why. Good luck and don’t fuck it up!” And then you get to spend the whole day wondering: Am I just hungry? Or dehydrated? Or underslept? Or hungover? Or is it just cloudy? Or is there a full moon? Or did I just see a photo of Harry Styles on a boat and wish *I* was on the boat, except I’m not on the boat, I’ve never even been to the part of the world he’s in right now, I’m just sitting in my apartment alone, picking at an ingrown toenail and wondering if it’s gonna get infected and then eat its way through my insides from the bottom-up? Or… are my brain chemicals just not pumping right today? Who knows! There is simply no way of knowing!

I suspect a lot of us are feeling weird right now in a kind of indescribable way. It feels like the clouds have parted after a gloomy year and the gay Teletubby baby that lives inside the sun has finally peeked out, and we should be feeling more hopeful, but there’s still this lingering blahness. It’s a mixture of FOMO, of relearning how to exist in public, of living in the aftermath of an entire year of nonstop shittiness, and it feels like too much is happening and not enough is happening all at once. It’s weird. And it’ll probably continue to be weird for a little while longer.

Jason Sudekis — one of the few heterosexual men I will acknowledge — said this in GQ this week about making sense of the end of his relationship: “I'll have a better understanding of why in a year… and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.”

A chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.

All bad stuff feels immense in the moment. Our brains are good at making us feel that way. Because our brains are dramatic and gay and they like attention. But a bad day (or week! or month! or year!) will eventually dwindle away to nothing.

In the meantime, take your meds, go to therapy, call the Trevor Project hotline if you need it, get some sunshine, and do gay shit.

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In other gay news…

We’ve long known the brown and green M&M have been in a long-term committed lesbian relationship, but the communion of the red and yellow M&M remains largely unexplored. I, for one, am firmly of the belief that these two know one another carnally. But I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Welcome to another edition of This Is Gay Culture!

But Matt, you said this would be a *weekly* newsletter and this is the first one in, like, three weeks.

OK? It was Pride month. Expecting me to do free labor during the one month that being gay is legal is offensive and deeply disrespectful to my sensibilities (being gay and lazy). So why don’t you just enjoy each dribble you get from my brain whenever you get it and keep your mouth SHUT. I really don’t like when you make me yell like this.

Anyway. Let’s talk about ice cream! Or rather, let’s talk about ice cream’s queer cousin, soft serve.

As someone who used to put my face directly below the soft serve machine at Old Country Buffet and swirl a log of chocolate and vanilla straight into my throat, I can say from personal experience that soft serve is deeply gay.

But Matt, just because you sucked off a soft serve machine when you were little doesn’t mean soft serve is gay. It just means you need more therapy.

True. But creamy, billowing whirls of softness basically designed to be toothlessly sucked? It doesn’t get much gayer than that.

Now I know the hard ice cream community is going to come for me, but let’s be honest with ourselves for once, shall we? Unlike hard ice cream, soft serve is an entire experience. Anybody can walk into any Piggly Wiggly and get a tub of hard ice cream whenever they want. But soft serve is an event. Soft serve requires special equipment. A nozzle. A lever. A dairy connoisseur to sensually swirl it into a sugar cone. Scooping hard ice cream from a solid tub? Boring, bland, straight. Swirling soft serve from a puckering anus in the back of some truck? Exotic, intoxicating, queer.

And eating soft serve? You don’t have to wait for soft serve to be the perfect texture. Because guess what bitch? She came prepared. She’s already ready.

Sure, soft-serve commonly exists in the binary of chocolate and vanilla while hard ice cream famously comes in as many as 31 flavors. But for this reason, soft serve can’t just fall back on some quirky flavor profile like “Pineapple Sherbet” or “Butterscotch Ribbon” or whatever the fuck else they’re doing at Baskin Robbins. (Even though I’m not going to malign the good people at BR, because they might want to give me money one day and as a gay person who would like money, my opinion is very much for sale.) Soft serve is a canvas. Soft serve is a stage. Soft serve isn’t forcing an identity down your throat, it’s inviting you to express your own.

Hard ice cream is a finished thing. When you get it, it’s in its final form. You can try squirting chocolate sauce on top of it, you can try sticking a cherry on top, but you’re just making a fool of yourself. You can’t dip a cone of hard ice cream in a chocolate shell. You can’t cover hard ice cream in sprinkles. They would bounce right off and you’d look like a fucking idiot, standing there with your bare ice cream and a floor covered in sprinkles and your pants around your ankles.

But soft serve… Soft serve is an invitation. It is a journey. Soft serve is asking you, how do you imagine me? Might you cover me in nuts? Might you dust me with a cookie crumble?

Now yes, according to the Wikipedia article I read, Margaret Thatcher may have invented soft serve, which is a huge blow to the reputation of the soft serve community. And if you need a moment to reread that sentence, I understand, because I projectile vomited when I first got this news. Apparently, in the 1940s, literal demon Margaret Thatcher was a chemist at a food manufacturer that developed a soft-serve recipe for Mister Softee, which sounds like the beginning of an actual waking nightmare. Some outlets have written this off as a myth with little evidence. But if it is true, at the very least, I hope that Margaret Thatcher turns over in the hole where she’s buried every time my gay lips deep throat a swirled cone.

Regardless, soft serve is an integral part of the gay experience. After all, the number one profession for homosexuals in America remains Dairy Queen barista (followed by Southwest flight attendant and SoulCycle instructor). (For the record, straight people work at Cold Stone because violently beating ice cream into submission is really more their thing.) And, of course, let us not forget the queer icon that is the soft serve McFlurry machine. It only works when it feels like it, which is basically never, and THAT is gay culture.

A final note in this meandering post about frozen treats: One thing I will not abide by, despite its many attempts to queerbait me, is the biblical abomination that is frozen yogurt. One day, if I ever have the energy, I will hunt down the marketing executive who decided to frame fro-yo as the anti-ice-cream and murder his entire family in front of him. And then I will put some chopped kiwi chunks and a sprinkling of crushed cereal over their corpses and see how HE likes it.

Jesus, Matt, it’s just frozen yogurt. Leave the man’s family out of this.

NO. The man who invented fro-yo is a sick fuck and deserves to pay. Just because you give your little yogurt shop a gay ass name like Pinkberry does not mean I will be fooled into eating cultures and pretending like my ice cream cravings are satisfied. Faking pleasure is for straight people and I will not do it.

In other gay news…

I am famously anti-squirrel because I fear they are merely pretending to be erratic idiots in order to fool us into letting our guards down. But I would be lying if I said I did not deeply relate to this photograph of a tragic squirrel threesome.

But why is it tragic, Matt? They look like they’re having fun!

Because the last squirrel in this horny rodent train is clearly the sole gay participant trying desperately to convince the middle squirrel (his straight best friend) to experiment with more gay stuff, and we ALL know how that story ends. Sad Gay Squirrel may have gotten Straight Best Friend Squirrel to participate in this threesome, but the true forbidden wish, the one that all gay rodents have fantasized about at one point or another — that Straight Best Friend Squirrel will have a sudden homo-epiphany and cross over to the Other Side — is always just a fantasy, one that inevitably ends in gay heartbreak. I commend Sad Gay Squirrel for making it this far, but I fear for the emotional journey he has before him.

Anyway. On to the business of the day…

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a faggot. But Matt, you can’t call him that! He’s just a little bug! And it’s Pride Month! Well, guess what, Mimi? Bugs can be faggots. And the very hungry caterpillar is a big hungry faggot. (A term of endearment in my book, just FYI.)

If you’re unfamiliar with the late Eric Carle’s classic children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, allow me to summarize: one morning, a tiny caterpillar emerges from his egg and is immediately in a fuck-all mood because his blood sugar is extremely low. Naturally, as any homosexual is wont to do when he wakes up in a seething rage, the caterpillar launches into a hanger-fueled fructose bender, eating through an apple on Monday, two pears on Tuesday, three plums on Wednesday, four strawberries on Thursday, five oranges on Friday, and then finally, having basically deprived himself of any real food for an entire week, a processed sugar orgy on Saturday including a piece of chocolate cake, an ice cream cone, a pickle, cheese, salami, a lollipop, a piece of cherry pie, sausage, a cupcake, and a slice of watermelon. (It’s unclear where exactly Mr. Very H. Caterpillar is procuring all these foodstuffs, so I’m going to assume he’s stolen them from his local bodega because gay people are famously very good at doing crimes.)

Post-binge, Miss Catty Pillar spends the night doubled over with a horrible stomachache, wallowing in his life’s decisions before he wakes up on Sunday, eats one (1) single green leaf, and pretends like that’s enough vegetable to make Michelle Obama happy. But THEN… he looks in the mirror, sees that he’s gone up a couple of pant sizes in just seven days, and promptly builds himself a little fort to hide inside for two entire weeks because society tells him he should be ashamed of his curvaceous body. It’s honestly tragic because he doesn’t realize beauty is on the inside and also to never be ashamed of eating cake, pie, and ice cream in the same night, even if it gives you explosive diarrhea. After his brief two-week stint indoors, our little girl sashays out of the cocoon with a whole new look hoping that everybody will be distracted enough by his glittery new wings to forget about the fact that he spent an entire week in a manic binge. The end. Happy every after, etc.

So what exactly is the message of this gay little story? I mean, yeah, maybe it’s just about a stupid little worm who’s born with a very big appetite, eats too much too fast, shits his pants, and then becomes a beautiful butterfly anyway. Life is full of ups and downs, but it’ll all work out okay in the end as long as you’re hot enough. Case closed.

But *I* think it’s about a homosexual with a deeply toxic relationship with food. Miss Pillar is born on a Sunday and can’t even make it 24 hours before he’s forced into a fad diet because the other caterpillars on Instagram with six-packs and thigh gaps made him feel bad about his body. Instead of just living his life, eating as many carbs as he wants, he spends an entire week depriving himself on the One Fruit A Day diet. No, bitch! That diet is sorely lacking in the leafy greens necessary for solid pooping, and you will absolutely need Pure for Men fiber supplements if you want to avoid a catastrophe! Inevitably, because restricted diets are mentally and physically unsustainable, he cracks under the weight of it, goes on a crazy Saturday binge, pays the price with the violent shits on Saturday night, and then punishes himself even further with a single-leaf salad on Sunday. Absolutely problematic behavior.

But unfortunately, he is living out the gay experience. Participating in a crash diet because you’re trying to keep up with the hot caterpillars on the gay Internet? Hiding from society because you’re convinced your body doesn’t meet unrealistic beauty standards? Alternating between a week of manic eating and then two weeks of total social isolation before debuting an entirely new look and hoping everybody will just forget about your meltdown? Honey… that is gay culture.

So listen up, Catty P! You don’t have to do this to yourself. You are a fierce little worm, you should eat whatever makes you happy, and you never have to hide. If we learn anything from Lil Hungry C’s story, let it be this: eat whatever you want, eat it whenever you want, and fuck anybody who makes you feel bad about your choices.

But also… get that daily intake of fiber unless you enjoy disaster.

If haven’t already, I’d love it if you become a subscriber so This Is Gay Culture shows up right in your inbox every week. It’s free! Even for straight people!

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And now, some other stuff from the week in gay culture…

Blessed By The Mythical Pride Raccoon

The albino Pride Raccoon is a genderless queer cryptid rumored to show Itself once every June 1st to a worthy gay virgin, thus marking the official beginning of Pride season and the end of the long Heterosexual Winter. It is perhaps the most mystical of the fabled queer rodents — Punxsutawney Phil, Bunnicula, Master Splinter, etc. — who are all responsible for predicting our weather, sucking our vegetables, and training our teenage mutant ninja turtles. The Pride Raccoon only reveals itself to one gay individual a year and has only been captured on camera once (above). According to legend, making direct eye contact with the Pride Raccoon causes instantaneous prostate orgasm and permanent loss of speech.

Bussin’ for Robitussin

The relationship between homos and Big Pharma is unfortunately well-documented: Truvada for PrEP, Fleet enemas, the Pfizer vaccine (reportedly the shot most likely to turn your child into Clay Aiken). But the latest drug to try to jam itself into the category of Gay Medicinals, apparently, is Robitussin. Because wanting relief from chest congestion is gay now, I guess.

I mean, to be fair, most gay medicines are about loosening up your fluids, and Robitussin is all about that mucous. But let’s be clear, this is really just a naked attempt by Robitussin to unseat the true queer icon in the mucous relief space: the Mucinex monster. Nobody is doing it like the Mucinex monster.

Anyway. It is objectively hilarious that a brand of cough syrup is like, no yeah, we’ll do the rainbow thing, who the fuck cares? Gay it up.

The Angry Bird Gay-volution

You’ve probably seen this abomination by now. It’s not even from this week. It’s three years old. And yet, it has lodged itself firmly in my hippocampus — the part of the brain that can’t unsee extremely gay shit — and I’m sorry, but I can’t let this newsletter end without acknowledging it. There’s absolutely no good reason for Angry Birds to have created this leather daddy biker bird, which, ornithologically speaking, I simply must refer to as a cock. There’s no reason for this cock to have my ideal body. There’s no reason why this cock should make me feel the way that I feel inside. I just know this bird would ruin my life. Alas, Angry Birds has created the ultimate Pride post, and we must honor it every year.

What better way to kick things off than with Shrek, perhaps the perfect encapsulation of this newsletter: an ogre who seemingly represents the very essence of straight culture, but upon further inspection with a penetrating gay eye, may well be the most flaming queen to ever exist in real life.

OK, yes, at superficial first glance, Shrek is very much your typical heterosexual icon: poor hygiene! friends with livestock! has three kids, like, a year into marriage! Classic straight people nonsense. He’s a slob who delights in his own bodily excretions and appears to have absolutely NO sense for self-grooming outside of brushing his teeth with what looks like straight-up slug ejaculate. And worst of all, he only has ONE poorly laundered outfit that he wears to both casual and formal functions, including his own wedding, which is Country Singer Level Heterosexual behavior.

BUT if we just peel back the crusty outer layer of the complicated onion that is Shrek, we start to see the dazzling homo beneath…

For one, Shrek’s swamp is undeniably the Palm Springs of Duloc. Driven to the margins by a society that would not accept him, Shrek went ahead and created his own personal gay resort outside of the city: a private outdoor hot spring, an open-air art studio, an entire mud spa complete with signage specifically banning straight people from invading his gay paradise. You can call it an unsightly swamp if you want, but Shrek is living the gay fantasy. He literally does a full-body exfoliating mud scrub every single morning in his outdoor shower, which may possibly be the gayest way to wake up. And obviously, his beauty routine is working because that mint mojito skin is absolutely flawless. His pores are virtually invisible, his face is a constant dewy glow, and for an ogre, he has conspicuously well-kept eyebrows, which is actually the gayest patch of hair to keep groomed. He may present as someone with poor hygiene, but no straight would ever have skin as blemish-free as Shrek’s. That is the result of years of following Liv Tyler’s 25-Step Beauty and Self-Care Routine, and it shows.

I would also point out that, though it may not seem like Shrek has much in the way of fashion sense, considering his primary garment is a lightly tailored potato sack, there is absolutely no functional reason for that belt. That thing is holding up NOTHING. Shrek’s thighs are covered by a pair of skintight tartan Lululemon leggings, which means the only reasonable explanation for that belt is to accentuate the waist. In other words… Shrek is cinched! That waist is snatched! And he is SERVING that hourglass figure! Not to mention the fitted snake leather vest and those ankle-high dark chocolate calfskin desert boots. I see you, sis, and I support you.

Also, and I hate to be crude, but Shrek absolutely fucks. I don’t want to debase the sanctity of this newsletter right out the gate by discussing an animated ogre’s ability to lay pipe, but I’m afraid no true homosexual consideration of Shrek would be complete without acknowledging that Shrek is objectively a hunk and can absolutely put it down whenever, wherever. And no, I won’t be giving any credit to the cursed human adonis that Shrek becomes in Shrek 2. I’m talking about bald, lime-skinned, pot-bellied OGRE Shrek. He’s hot and we should say it. And yes, because gay culture values that kind of thing, Shrek’s hotness does indeed contribute to his gay icon status.

But perhaps the biggest reason in support of Shrek’s reputation as a queer hero? The simple fact that he is a complete and utter asshole. Lashing out against the world because society literally chased you to the margins? Becoming a recluse because you’ve internalized the idea that the world finds you unlovable? Only finding happiness after you learn to publicly embrace your queerness? Honey… THAT is gay culture! And Shrek, babe… he is an absolute out and proud gay icon.

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This Week In Gay Culture

A few other gay things this week…

Maple the Beaver

Maple, a 5-year-old beaver and one of the stars of the messy reality show that is the Oregon Zoo’s Twitter presence, has all the makings of a lesbian queen: an affinity for the rustic Pacific Northwest, a fondness for chopping wood and dragging foilage indoors, and a real fuck-you attitude, as exemplified by her birthday behavior just a few weeks ago, in which she shows up, fills her mouth with all the cookies and carrots she can carry in one go, and then immediately ditches her own party in favor of a quiet night of binging alone. Gay culture!

No Gays At Pride

A quintessential tradition in gay culture: the annual infighting over who’s allowed at Pride. Every year, a tweet goes viral claiming that Pride should be exclusively family-friendly and anybody who even thinks about showing up wearing anything less than the standard-issue Target khakis and red polo is a disgrace to the gay community and singlehandedly responsible for rolling back gay rights to a time when gay people could be legally tarred and feathered on the little porch outside of any Cracker Barrel. Someone else inevitably jumps in and says, and I’m (barely) paraphrasing, “Actually, Pride is about getting railed against a recycling bin in nothing but my Chromatica jockstrap, which Lady Gaga created for this specific purpose, so leave your shitty children at home and let people do gay shit in public.” Every gay person is then required to choose between Sanitized Candyland Pride Brought To You By Bounty The Quicker Picker Upper™️ and The Festival Of The Flaming Fisting Fa**ots. Nobody wins this battle. But endless fighting over the same thing every year is Gay Culture 101.

A New Dora the Explorer?

In case you missed it, an artist committed what can only be described as a homophobic hate crime against Dora the Explorer — a famous ally of gay throuple Map, Backpack, and Boots — by turning her into some kind of Nordstrom Rack demon. New Statement-Bang Dora went viral this week as Twitter assumed this beast was sanctioned by Nickelodeon itself before it was quickly cast aside as fan art and tossed into the heap of "Things My Gay Eyes Should Never Have To See Again.” But let this be a warning: Dora is a sacred presence in gay culture and shall remain untouched.

This Gay Dumpster

I want to be mad at the gay dumpster, I really do. We didn’t ask for this. We asked for more retailers to sell shorts with 4-inch inseams. We asked for another Rihanna album. We asked for more than one gay Jonas Brother. And instead we get a gay dumpster?? But you know what… I identify so strongly with the gay dumpster, it’s impossible for me to be mad. Congratulations on coming out gay dumpster! And welcome to the culture.

I’m homosexual Matt Bellassai and this is… This is Gay Culture!, a weekly newsletter about all the things that I’ve decided are super gay. I hope you’ll subscribe! 🏳️‍🌈

so what is this?

It’s a newsletter! Like, for reading. Each week’s issue will have two parts, and yes, they’ll be short because I’m aware gay people have no attention spans.

First, I’ll honor an icon you didn’t know was gay culture, according to me, a homo with absolutely no qualifications other than having a keyboard and depression. This icon might be a person, like D.W. from Arthur, a raging bitch who took no shit and lived for drama. It might be a place, like the underwear aisle at Target, which has long turned generations of gay adolescents onto the seduction of ✨ The Bulge. ✨ Or it might be a thing, like Gushers — remember Gushers? The fruit snack that was like, “Here, let me literally BUST A LOAD on your tongue!!!”

Second, I’ll include a roundup of all the super gay stuff that happened that week so you can stay up to date on just how gay the world is. Because gay shit is happening all around us, every single day! Mostly this will be random stuff that made me laugh and/or set my homo senses a-tingling. Like this Martha Stewart tweet. Insisting that you have 21 peacocks, and NOT 16? Babe… that’s gay culture.

why should I subscribe?

Subscribe so you won’t have to remember to look for it every week! It’ll just show up in your inbox, right next to all the emails from brands pretending to like gay people for Pride. That way, you can save your energy for more important gay things, like cyberbullying Kacey Musgraves into releasing her next album.

Also, if you don’t subscribe, you might miss an issue. And then everybody will think you hate gay people.

is it free?

You bet your gay ass it is! Even for straight people! Just hit that subscribe button and it’ll *poof* right into your inbox so you’ll never miss out. Just be sure to share and spread the word. It’s a nice thing to do, and you’ll be supporting me, a homosexual desperate for attention.

ok, so what exactly is gay culture…

Gay culture is, to get the obvious out of the way, rainbows and drag queens and bleached hair and the incognito browser window. It is high camp and fashion and reality TV and Christine Baranski. But it is also the Princess Diana Beanie Baby, Trix yogurt, the Loch Ness monster, the nipple suit in 1997’s Batman & Robin, Spongebob Squarepants, toaster ovens, that specific shade of pink dye in the strawberry frosting at Dunkin Donuts, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea, and that one deep-sea fish with the dangly earring that glows in front of its face. Gay culture is staking your entire reputation on a C-list pop diva’s failing career. It is falling deeply in love with a stranger on the subway simply because his ass looks incredible in those jeans. It is taking thirst traps in public bathrooms, speed-walking around straight people on the sidewalk, wearing shorts with 3-inch inseams, and drinking iced coffee in subarctic weather. Gay culture is all around us. Even inside of you.

why is it always “gay! gay! gay!” with you gays?

Because gay stuff is fun and better. You should try it.

But also, gay culture is history, babe. We’ve been here and queer since the beginning. People with bad haircuts love to say God created Adam and Eve and not Adam from the Village People, but is anybody asking whether Adam and Eve even wanted to fuck in the first place??? Maybe Adam would’ve been happier with a nice oiled Steve to prance around the garden with?? Maybe Eve would’ve ignored that apple if there’d been a full-figured Ella to give her some delicious fruit instead of a nauseating man??? I mean, hello! Their first instinct upon eating the apple and receiving the knowledge of life was to bust out the sewing machine (!) and fashion together some fig leaf jockstraps (!!) to cover each other’s genitals!!! Literally the gayest thing you could possibly do!

But really, practically all of human history is gay. You just know there were gay cavemen walking around in couture loincloths, painting big beautiful horses on their little cave walls, wearing their luxurious furs at night. Ancient Greece? Obviously one big gay steam room. Medieval knights? Sword fighting in more ways than one. And the Rennaissance? Honey, the original queer artists’ collective.

who are you anyway?

I’m Matt, a gay writer and comedian who is not qualified for this task, or any task. If you’d like, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter. And you can listen to my podcast.

I spent my closeted teenage years agonizing over becoming a gay stereotype. My greatest fear was coming out and being placed in the gay box. Being gay was one thing. Being seen and known as gay was another. But, like all gays who have since seen the light, I’ve learned just how beautiful and bright the gay box can be. It’s pink and furry and full of other gay people who love being gay. I want to be seen as gay, and known as gay, and for everything to be as gay as possible always and forever. This newsletter is my way of making the world a little bit gayer one thing at a time. I hope you’ll subscribe and join the fun!

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one important note.

This is a very dumb newsletter and definitely not a history book. But it’s important to note that true queer culture — the things that bring the LGBTQ+ community joy, the stuff that contributes to our sense of communal identity, the very way we move about the world — grew out of tremendous pain and struggle. The mainstream long denied our existence, so we created our own culture so that we could see ourselves. And overwhelmingly, “gay culture” as we know it today was created by the most marginalized among us, those who were held down by straight white society, yet chose to celebrate themselves proudly and radically in spite of it. The queer/trans black community, in particular, is responsible for what many gays (and straights!) take for granted today: ball culture (the precursor to drag as we know it), kiki-ing, voguing, “throwing shade,” “reading,” basically everything on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Black trans women led the charge at Stonewall and paved the way for the gay rights movement of today, a movement that still largely leaves trans people of color behind. As always, no celebration of queer culture, not even a very dumb newsletter like this, could exist without their contributions. We must continue to fight for trans folks so that every single member of the LGBTQ+ community can enjoy a full, joyful, gay-as-fuck life.

Support the Trans Law Center