Why Doesn’t Autostraddle Love Me Anymore?
A deeply corny series of how to guides for trans guys published at queer feminist outlet Autostraddle has got us reminiscing about the way things used to be, and wondering about the shape of things to come.
Opinion by Alyssa Steinsiek
I won’t pretend that I’m an Autostraddle superfan. I’ve never attended A-Camp, I don’t own anything from their merch store, and I don’t even read what they publish that often. But the website, a queer feminist news outlet publishing for over fifteen years now, and in particular its cofounder Riese Bernard have put to print articles that changed my life.
So it was particularly disheartening, and kinda grating, to read this very awkward trans guy’s how to primer for picking up trans girls that Autostraddle ran the other day.
The “guide”—a term we are using very loosely—has received a lot of backlash from the trans girls I follow on Twitter, ranging from accusing author Gabe Dunn of being a manipulative chaser to suggesting that it must surely be some sort of satire. I’m sure the article isn’t satire and, more importantly, I want to put my foot down and say that nothing therein suggests to me that Gabe is predatory, as some commenters are offhandedly suggesting. We, as a community, already get more than enough of that knee jerk accusatory language.
There are a few things I take umbrage with in Gabe’s “guide,” even though I am more incidental subject than target audience, but the most frustrating through line for me is that Gabe writes about trans girls like he’s never met a single one of us outside of Reddit or Twitter. He mentions Fallout: New Vegas, thigh high socks, and D&D podcasts as the primary interests of any given theoretical trans girl. Frankly, I’m surprised he forgot to mention Blåhajs.
Reading Gabe’s article, I get the sense that I am more a conceptual creature than a real human being. I guess you could argue that the very idea of a “how to pick up trans girls” article requires a generalized girl to set your sights on, and that you could just play Mad Libs with the real interests of the real girl you want to date, but stereotyping trans girls this hard just feels a touch icky to me.
A Trans Guy’s Guide to Picking Up a Trans Girl is, as it turns out, the third entry in a series of trans guy guides that Gabe has written for Autostraddle. The first was A Trans Guy's Guide to Grindr and the second was A Trans Guy's Guide to the Men's Bathroom, both of which are similarly riddled with stereotypes. Gabe describes a men’s room experience that is totally foreign to me, a girl who used men’s rooms for twenty-four years and, to be honest, still has to use them on occasion for fear of getting my ass kicked by a stranger. And the way he talks about “female socialization” in his Grindr guide gets right under my skin.
But Gabe isn’t writing articles for me. He’s writing articles for transmascs, who maybe jive with his experiences and worldview a bit better than I do. [no it doesn’t! -ed] What chafes most about that is many years ago, but perhaps not anymore, Autostraddle was publishing work that, like I said earlier, changed my life.
In October of 2018, a shooting fueled by antisemitic hate left 11 dead and six wounded at L’Simcha Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh. When Riese Bernard wrote about this tragedy, she set me on a path that resulted in my conversion to Judaism. The way she spoke about her community and its traditions and expectations in the face of such evils moved me to tears, and inspired me to make my home in that community as well.
Later, in December of the same year, reading about J.E. Reich’s experiences growing up as an outsider among evangelicals, put on the back foot by Christian hegemony again and again throughout their youth, gave me a sense of normalcy I wasn’t aware I needed. I grew up in the deep south, surrounded by country cracker bible thumpers, and my budding desire to explore Judaism and perhaps become a Jew sometimes felt inauthentic and childish. Was I simply turning towards some new thing hoping it would make me feel whole and at home? Reading about kindred experiences with Jews helped cool those anxious worries.
I don’t want to suggest that Autostraddle “isn’t about the music anymore, man,” or whatever cliché accusation seems most apropos. Yet I can’t help but wonder what queer journalism looks like in the midst of what feels like an industry collapse.
In August of last year, Autostraddle was acquired by, or merged with, a QTPOC-owned queer wellness and tech company called For Them. Mostly they sell binders, the quality of which I cannot speak to. The company is headed by Black nonbinary CEO Kylo Freeman, and—at the time of acquisition—Autostraddle assured its readers that they would retain both their existing body of work, and editorial rights to their work moving forward. Sounds just about perfect, right?
Maybe not.
There was, of course, backlash. Former contributors disavowed Autostraddle, citing staff cuts before and after the acquisition, while long-time donors canceled their subscriptions because “[Autostraddle’s] got [venture capitalist] money now.” There was also, at the time, some weird hubbub about For Them creating a “gender tracking app” that had very lax data privacy practices? Strange stuff.
The truth is that, before they were acquired, Autostraddle was struggling under various financial burdens and was unlikely to weather their economic storm. Their choices were very likely acquisition, or shuttering their doors like so many other independent queer outlets.
I don’t know if Autostraddle’s all equity merger with a venture capitalist chic binder-selling corporation has diminished its reporting in a big way. I do know that buddying up with the money men (or money thems) rubs me the wrong way as an anarcho-communist, but what else is new? And how else can independent queer writers stay afloat in a world that won’t pay for their mass media consumption, much less donate to niche news outlets covering stories that are mostly relevant to the poor and marginalized?
I’m afraid there are no easy answers to be found here. Not about how to pick up trans chicks, and not about how to survive as an independent queer outlet without risking losing the spark that made you beautiful to begin with.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
