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- Gay Voice: The First Way Gay Men Were Taught to Self-Police

- Derek Chadwick Is More Than Just A Hunk

- Best Them Headlines of 2025, Ranked

- Why Are Gays So Mean to Each Other Online?

READ ME | DEC 12, 2025, 2:55 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Gay Voice: The First Way Gay Men Were Taught to Self-Police

“Every gay kid has a moment where they see themselves on a home video and think, I sound like that?” actor Cheyenne Jackson says.

It lives in the throat. A specific type of lilt. The way that you treat a vowel, or the elongation of an “s.” In fact, long before torso-forward dating apps and wearing your sexuality on your proverbial sleeve (or, in some modern cases, via a flag in your social media bio), for many there was the voice. At once a show of authentic self and a primary site of internalized shame, gay voice was (and sometimes remains) the first way many men learned that queerness could be policed from the inside out.

A recent Instagram post from Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson brought the oft-discussed issue back to the fore. Getting into costume before a performance of Oh, Mary!, he mentioned watching a prior video he’d posted again and feeling introspective. “The first thought I had was, Wow, I sound really gay,” he said, in his natural, self-described “moderate” gay voice. “And then I thought, I am gay. What’s wrong with sounding gay? And that got me thinking about ‘gay voice.’”

The message hit people not because it was confessional, but because of who was saying it: a square‑jawed leading man publicly proclaiming the pressure to “sound straight.” But it goes far beyond Jackson.

“Every gay kid has a moment where they see themselves on a home video and think, I sound like that??” Jackson writes in an email to Them. And it starts young, often painfully young. Long before anyone understands desire or identity, the voice becomes a battleground. In the home, a parent might offer what sounds like innocent guidance: “Put some bass in your voice,” or “Speak up, but not like that.”

On playgrounds or in classrooms, the scrutiny sharpens. I was born with a lisp, not dramatic, but just pronounced enough to draw the attention of the nuns at my grade school. Beginning in second grade, a speech teacher would appear in the doorway twice a week and call me out of class with what felt like theatrical volume: “Time for your speech lesson!”

The humiliation was immediate. As I stood up, the other kids would make a hissing, snakelike sound, mimicking the thing I couldn’t help. Decades later, as a man of a certain age, I’m still acutely aware of the remnants of that lisp, and still haunted by that teacher’s summons. The message, even then, was unmistakable: Your natural voice is a problem to be solved, a softness to be sanded down. Your voice, your gay voice, is wrong because it is feminine or out of the ordinary. It is not normal for you and it must change.

Because of this widespread socialization, gay voice can often function as a gaydar. In the macro, a recent study in the Journal of Neurolinguistics found that listeners process the meaning of sentences differently depending on whether the speaker’s voice “sounds gay.” Other studies have netted out similarly.

Jackson says hearing the voice of iconic comedian and actor Paul Lynde in Bye Bye Birdie while in high school was a revelation. “I’d never heard anyone sound like him,” he says. “It was so theatrical, so funny, and had so much vocal inflection and wit. I clocked it and thought… Oh he’s gay, I can tell from his voice.”

The stigmatization, however, can last long after childhood. Even as adults, the awareness of how one sounds can shadow every introduction and meeting. In workplaces, men learn to modulate. Personally, I always brought a strong baritone to every conference room as a show of strength—of dominance. What begins as childhood correction becomes adult self-editing; a lifelong negotiation between authenticity and phoniness.

An agent once told Emmy-winning Somebody Somewhere performer Jeff Hiller to “tone it down,” when it came to his own queer cadence. “It wasn’t malicious,” Hiller tells Them. “It was the landscape. Twenty years ago, the only gay actors working weren’t out.” At the time, Hiller tried changing his tone but thought his attempts were “comical and insulting to straight men.”

“I decided to just be myself and see what happens,” Hiller says. That is evident, in part, in his portrayal of the vulnerable Joel in Somebody. “It took 20 years, but it worked out.”

It isn’t just in the professional realm that gay voice can have outsized impact, though: Ask anyone who came of age in the late ’80s and ’90s, and they’ll tell you that the first real-life iteration of the Netflix hit Love Is Blind was a visionless phone-sex line. Not a 1-800 fantasy indulgence, but an actual patch-through network where queer men sought hookups by voice alone, paying by the minute as they clicked through a carousel of horny strangers. It was like the AOL Instant Messenger that would come later, but voice only. And gay voice, ironically or not, could get you skipped over.

In this way, queer people have inherited the very tools used to constrain us, mocking someone’s voice as a coded way of policing gender, desirability, and belonging. And you can hear the difference sometimes: the way a voice might codeswitch between groups, often deepening, void of softness or sibilance in the marketplace of desire before returning to normal among “girlfriends.” As Sniffles Cruising Confessionals podcast host Gabe Gonzalez said in a recent episode: “We all know a porn star who drops their voice one octave onscreen.” That plays out in real life.

Many people are now learning to embrace their voice, as Jackson has. Over the years he noticed when he started to deepen his articulation in interviews. In particular, when he was playing the hypermasculine Chad in the Elvis Presley stage musical All Shook Up, Jackson admits, “I spoke like him much more than my real self to keep the fantasy going.” Now he’s found it “wildly freeing” to accept what emerges naturally from his throat.

“Just accept yourself however you naturally are,” Jackson says. “When I see someone who is naturally very feminine and isn’t afraid to let their fabulosity out… that is even sexier because of the confidence that takes.” It speaks to a level of authenticity that many are striving for today, and as a byproduct, can encourage those for whom masking isn’t an option.

“If this conventionally gorgeous heartthrob is proud to get sissy once in a while, he’s saying being sissy isn’t a terrible thing,” Hiller says of his own reaction to Jackson’s initial video. “That touches this sissy’s heart.”

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/gay-voice-what-is-sound-gay-accent-why on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

CULTURE | DEC 12, 2025, 11:13 AM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Derek Chadwick Is More Than Just A Hunk

With his Off-Broadway debut, in ‘Messy White Gays,’ the model-actor and Chaddy cosmetics founder proves he's the full package.

Derek Chadwick wears Versace by Dario VitaleJames Emmerman

Despite being raised in New York, actor and entrepreneur Derek Chadwick has a quintessentially Californian look to him. It’s kind of exactly what you picture when you hear the words “Abercrombie & Fitch.” He’d long been contemplating a move back to the Big Apple when he got a call to make his Off Broadway debut in Drew Droege’s hilarious satire, Messy White Gays.

Between rehearsals and shoots, Chadwick is busy running his cosmetic line, Chaddy. Fortunately, we were able to find some time to catch up with him to talk about his journey from the surf to the stage. We chat about his career as a model-actor-entrepeneur, what it’s like being branded as an “InstaGay,” and what makes some (white) gays really messy.

Messy White Gays is your theater debut, but you have been acting quite a bit in film and TV. Had you been looking to try more stage acting? Is that how they knew you'd be interested in the role?

I don’t think they thought I was interested in theater, necessarily. But I had read a few times before for [the play’s] casting director, Ryan [Bernard Tymensky], for Hulu, and I think he was doing another Netflix show. He would always say, “Oh, we think Derek’s great, but he’s just not right for this role right now.” You start thinking maybe you aren’t a good actor or you’re not good enough. But then when you see the process, you realize, “Oh, Ryan ended up telling my manager the reason I didn’t get this job at Hulu was because I was too old and the network wanted someone a bit younger.” But in your mind as an actor, as a person, you’re spiraling a little sometimes when you don’t get a job.

Because you’re questioning your talent?

Exactly. But I started doing more acting stuff the last couple of years and really started focusing on taking acting classes and being prepared. I feel like things happen when you’re prepared and it’s the right time, when luck meets preparedness. And then, honestly, I needed to find a place to live, and that also just happened super easy. It was the first person I reached out to; it was very seamless and felt like I was where I was supposed to be, doing the exact thing that was meant to happen.

Everything’s falling into place.

Yeah. And I’m weird like that. I believe in things happening at the right time, at the right place, and…

I can be a bit woo-woo, too. It’s very L.A.

It’s very L.A., yeah. I feel very in tune with the universe. Even when I made Chaddy, I felt extremely prepared at that moment to make a company and know how to run it and how to market to my best ability. Again, I feel like you just know things happen for a reason.

When you decided years ago to start taking acting classes, what was the thought process for you? Where were you in your career? What were most of the gigs and opportunities you were getting? How did those change over time?

I was doing a lot of social media stuff and a lot of modeling. But at the time, this was 2019, one of my roommates was a costume designer working on a Netflix show. He was like, "They need some quarterback football guys, and you’ll get paid. Do you want to do it?" I was like, "Yeah, sure."

I went the first day and it was just a regular day. I was in the background. Then I went the second day, but I remember telling him, "I don’t want to go today. I don’t understand why I even signed up to do this. I didn’t want to sit there for 12 hours."

Especially just as background.

Exactly. I got to experience it that first day and was like, "This is cool, but I don’t want to come back again tomorrow." And then he was like, "You made a commitment." And I’m like, He’s right. So I ended up going back. They pulled me out of a roster of, I don’t know — there was probably 12 guys there — and they gave me a solo moment [in the miniseries Hollywood] with one of the main guys. It was cool. Honestly, I didn’t even think twice about it when I left. I was like, "This was a really cool experience."

Then it was COVID, and I was sitting at home when Hollywood came out on Netflix. I just remember my phone was blowing up. Everyone was like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" It was just crazy.

Pants: PALOMO

Shoes: Stefan Cooke

James Emmerman

Top: KidSuper

Tie: Heather Huey

James Emmerman

Of course, good looks always play a role in the acting industry. You’re also impressively... large. These are qualities that can help, but do you feel like you’ve been getting a diverse array of roles?

Not really. I always go up for the sporty, jock-type role. I work out every day, I eat really well. Of course, I hope I would be considered for roles like that, but there are some [other] really cool things that I have auditioned for. Honestly, I go up for straight roles all the time. Even in the last year, I’ve only really auditioned for series regulars, and I’ve come close to booking a couple series-regular roles.

That was why I felt like it was really important for me to do [Messy White Gays]: to show that I was serious about acting and that I do take it seriously. A lot of the time, when you’re pinned for a job, it’ll come down to you and somebody else, and the network [will] pick the actor that has more experience. From a business perspective, I completely understand that, because it is a risk. It’s a lot of money, and it makes sense on their end why they would do that. So I’m hoping that after doing this show, when it comes down to me and somebody else, they’ll choose me.

There are so many TV shows right now that people who would’ve otherwise been known as ‘influencers’ have actually created. They’re showrunning.

I know.

Do you feel like there’s a bit of a pivot toward respecting so-called ‘influencers’ more?

[In] the industry now, I feel like they don’t care what you do. I was talking about this with my manager. There are people on TV now who do everything and anything. And I think it’s cool. I feel like they should work with people who are doing things outside of just one thing.

Do you feel like there’s an LGBTQ branding to you or is it just the Messy White Gays of it all? Does that affect how you think about how you’ll be seen by casting directors and stuff?

I really don’t think that doing this role in this show that’s obviously titled Messy White Gays is going to stop me from auditioning for straight roles, because I’ve been out for so long now and it’s not stopped me from getting auditions for straight characters.

That’s good.

Yeah, no, it’s great.

Because in Hollywood, there are obviously a lot of gay actors who—

Get pigeonholed.

Either they’re in the closet, or if they’re not, maybe they get pigeonholed. Or they try to downplay being out to avoid being seen as the gay actor who plays gay side characters.

I think everyone’s different, though. Just because you’re gay, it doesn’t mean that needs to be your entire identity. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. If it is, that’s completely fine. I’m just saying that’s just one part of who you are as a person; it doesn’t need to be everything. And if it is, again, it’s okay. But for me, I feel like being gay is... I’m just gay. I don’t know. I’m gay and it’s cool, but it’s not something that I’m thinking about consistently.

So, in developing the character of Addison, how much did you borrow from life, your social life? How much did you relate to it?

Addison is an influencer, and he has two million followers as well. I don’t want to break that. The funny thing is, he’s actually vegan, which for me — I’m not vegan at all. The complete opposite.

You’re a carnivore?

Yeah, I love vegan food, but I’m always eating steak or chicken.

It shows.

But yeah, I think there are a lot of similarities between Addison and me.

Do you think that was part of the casting?

Definitely. But I think it’s sometimes harder to play a character that you are. Also, I think the character is naïve, and that’s really difficult to play and have it read as that. How can you really play like you’re naïve? I don’t know. There’s definitely some similarities, but I feel like Addison cares about what other people think, and I wouldn’t say that that’s something that I...

It’s giving almost, would you say, stereotypical influencer?

Yeah.

The caricature version of it?

It’s definitely what people would think an influencer is like in real life. My character [has] very golden retriever energy, very happy to be there. He also doesn’t realize a lot of the things that he is saying are wrong. And that’s where the humor comes from, that he’s being genuine.

It’s funny, though; people always use that term “Instagay” with me, but I feel like I’ve never really been an Instagay. From the moment I started getting followers on Instagram, it was literally because I was working. I was working, doing modeling stuff. I was working with Urban Outfitters and American Eagle, and then started doing some magazine work, and then started working with Abercrombie. I slowly built up a following, obviously from posting, but [from] posting modeling stuff. Then I somehow got branded as an Instagay.

Of course I’ve done some influencer things, absolutely. But no matter how many things I’ve done outside of that, people are like, "Oh, you’re the guy from Instagram." I think now it’s a little bit different because I own a company, so a lot of people will be like, "Oh, hey, I have the product," or "I love the name,” or “I love the branding” and stuff. I think it’s transitioned to being an entrepreneur more than anything.

And that’s why I’m really excited for people to come see the show, because I feel like it’s a really good opportunity for them to see a different side of me and a new perspective.

They’ll see you acting. And there is something about theater that people seem to take more seriously than even a Netflix or Hulu show, right?

Totally.

You are officially a Thespian now. Do you think you’ll go back to the stage after this?

My manager was asking me, "If this gets picked up on Broadway, would you stay?" And I’m like, "Of course." I don’t take it for granted. Whether this happens again or not for me, I’m having so much fun, and really leaning into being in theater and being around theater people. It’s really cool, because I feel like the cast is a little fraternity backstage. We’re all like...

It's a bunch of gay guys?

Yeah. And we’re all different ages. I’m the youngest one out of everybody, so I’m like the baby, and they’ve all done theater before. They’ve taught me so much about stage presence and projecting and just having things read well to audiences. It’s been great.

I was a little bit scared because a lot of my friends in L.A. were like, "Theater people can be mean, especially in New York." I guess there’s some sort of stigma around theater. So they were like, “We hope everyone’s really nice to you.” I went in being open-minded, but a little bit more guarded.

But everyone was really great from the beginning and made me feel really comfortable. And I’m a very blunt person, so I kept telling everybody, “If there’s anything that I can improve on, just tell me.”

Yeah, you’re here to learn and grow. In the play, your character is a caricature that is sort of close to how people might unfairly brand you in their head, without knowing you. I imagine there is almost a tricky relationship there: I want to do this part, but I also want to make sure that people know this isn’t the full me.

It’s funny. Drew tells me people will call him up after the show and be like, “Is that how Derek really is?”

Well, that means you’re very believable. Surely it’s hard to actually play yourself.

Yeah. Drew is always like, "No, he’s running a business during the day." And it’s true. During the day I’m working, I’m going to the gym, and then I’m at the theater. I work nonstop and I love it. I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hat: Heather Huey. Jeans: Ambush, Carhartt

James Emmerman

James Emmerman

Did you feel a bit of reservation about people seeing you in this way and still keeping that image of you, or is there some sort of...

No. I mean, I feel like most people understand that they’re watching a play and someone’s acting. [But] I think even with TV, those lines can get blurred, and people probably think that’s how those people really are.

Definitely.

I feel comfortable not really caring about what anybody thinks. If people want to think I’m that character, cool. If people want to think that I’m not that character, great. I’m so easygoing and my patience is good. So, for me, it doesn’t really matter.

Maybe in selling your product, you have to show a little more of your authentic self. Maybe you do have a little more ownership, would you say, of your image and letting people in on the authentic you?

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, though, people are always going to make their own assumptions about you, and you just have to be okay with that. You have to just play the character how you want to play the character. You have to do what you want to do. No matter what, people are always going to have an opinion. So, honestly, you really just have to do what makes you happy.

Jacket, Pants, and Shoes: KidSuper

James Emmerman

Surfboard: Boy Kloves. Jewelry: Keane

James Emmerman

Do you feel like the intention of the show is to shine a light on a type of self-centeredness within the community? A systemic narcissism?

The characters are all white gay men, and it plays into their bad behavior. [I would say] it’s a comedy that’s also a satire about how some messy white gay people can be. Of course, not everybody. Everybody knows a messy friend. Maybe they make you laugh, maybe they’re not evil, but it’s just leaning into that.

They can be villains, too, though.

Totally.

To me, from an artistic perspective, as a writer, you want to show nuance, you want to show complexity. I think for a long time, within specifically queer art and queer media, there’s been an imperative to say we need to show our best selves so that people can respect us. We need to highlight that we are smart and tasteful and good people, because we needed the world to believe that we could be exemplary, and that was really important at a certain time.

Something I’m grateful to see in art these days, is that we’re at a place where we can comfortably depict being complicated people; we don’t have to show only one side of ourselves to earn respect. Has there been internal conversation about how cool it is to be able to put respectability politics to the side and do a story like this?

I think there is a lot of privilege in being able to show this side of the community. I really hope that after people come see the show, they laugh, but also that they think about their own sort of messiness.

Self-reflect.

Definitely have fun, but I think this is a good self-reflection, too. And, obviously not for everybody, but the community can be...

Toxic?

I don’t want to say that.

Alright, I said it. So, community check-in, basically.

[Laughs] Yeah.

Have you had self-reflective moments like that?

No, I would not. I’m not a messy white gay.

You’re perfect.

Yeah. [Laughs] I’m not a messy white gay. I know so many messy gays, in general, and I’ve been able to pull a lot of references and a lot of influence from them.

You’ve got a lot going on. A couple things that haven’t been announced yet, so we can’t talk about them here, but it’s a lot!

It’s crazy. I have done so much stuff, like being an entrepreneur and modeling and theater and television, and it’s really cool. I just feel like, at the end of the day, you can do anything you want. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s so true. You should never give up on anything that you want to do because you just never know when the right time will be.

James Emmerman

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Messy White Gays is playing Off Broadway at New 42 Studios through January 11, 2026.

Photography by James Emmerman

Styled by Willyum Beck

Creative Direction by Ludwig Hurtado

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/derek-chadwick-off-broadway-debut-model-actor-entrepeneur on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

CULTURE | DEC 9, 2025, 5:52 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Best Them Headlines of 2025, Ranked

From detransition jokes to pans of Emilia Pérez, we let our inner poets write the headlines this year.

To engage in the time-honored tradition of year-end bragging, we do a lot here at Them. We publish beautifully photographed profiles of queer and trans celebrities like Jinkx Monsoon, Lucy Dacus, Tramell Tillman, and Marissa Bode. We share essential resources for navigating life, love, dating, and transition. We cover LGBTQ+ news swiftly and expertly, and we comment on cultural trends like the so-called “performative male” with an incisiveness that is increasingly attracting notice. As silly as we might get, and as much fun as we have, we put our whole you-know-whats into this website.

But in 2025, one aspect of our work drew a unique kind of attention: our headlines. I still remember where I was when a friend asked whether I had seen “Fake Them Headlines,” the parody account run by trans actress Masha Breeze. When I said I hadn’t, I was quickly shown an Instagram asset made in our old house style with the headline “How Do We Grieve the Woman That Spider-Man Isn’t?” Imitation, as a gay person named Oscar Wilde once said, is the sincerest form of flattery, so I was delighted. Our zany lens on culture and the world was being recognized and developing a reputation! Sometimes, in the case of Ayo Edebiri directing Weird Al in a Clairo video, queer life is already so absurd and Mad Libs-esque that we don’t have to really dress up a story in an interesting or witty headline. But otherwise we spend a lot of hours coming up with the exact right sequence of words to showcase our hard work.

If you want to know what we thought the best movies, books, songs, and TV shows of 2025 are, I’d love it if you went and read those round-ups. But if you’re one of those freaks who’s here for the headlines, here are our favorites of the year, ranked. — Samantha Allen, managing editor

12. Recession Indicator? Queer People Are Drinking Dairy Milk Again by Lex Goldstein

Recession Indicator? Queer People Are Drinking Dairy Milk Again

“The ‘hot girls with tummy issues’ will keep alternative milk brands in business for the foreseeable future, but for those undisturbed by lactose, the siren song of Elsie the Cow seems to be volume up.”

This one, known internally as “the milk piece,” was the subject of so much excitement at Them that we came up with approximately 15 headlines that included “Is OAT No Longer the GOAT?” and a particularly heavy-handed joke about queer people “Making the Moo-ve Back to Dairy Milk.” But ultimately, referencing the timely “recession indicator” meme was the right moo-ve. (Look, I had to recycle the joke somewhere.) This reported feature exploring the anecdotal phenomenon of queer people abandoning alternative milks was also one of our favorites of the year: smart but winking, culturally revealing without taking itself too seriously. If you haven’t read it yet, go drink it up! — Samantha Allen

11. Let Lorde Bind and Roll in the Dirt by James Factora

Let Lorde Bind and Roll in the Dirt

“If Lorde ever decides that she wants to share a new development in her identity in more specific terms, we’d obviously celebrate and welcome that. If she’d rather make vague statements about gender and masculinity, we’re here for that, too.”

Sometimes, simpler is better. I actually went into the archives for this one to find out how we arrived at a perfectly short headline for the Great Lorde Gender Discourse of Spring 2025. Originally, this headline — the product of a brainstorm between yours truly and staff writer James Factora — was written as “Let Lorde Bind and Roll in the Dirt Without Demanding a Gender Confession.” It was meant to capture our take on the “Man of the Year” video and the pop star’s contemporaneous comments about feeling “like a man and a woman,” namely that Lorde didn’t need to come out in order to play with gendered imagery. The challenge of writing a nuanced take like that is that it’s not easily summarizable. But in this case, keeping it short — as our editor-in-chief Fran Tirado later suggested — was the right call. — Samantha Allen

10. Emilia Pérez Is Bad, Actually. Why Does Awards Season Love It? by Samantha Allen, James Factora, and Fran Tirado

Emilia Pérez Is Bad, Actually. Why Does Awards Season Love It?

“While we’re comparing, I would say Emilia Pérez is like if Ryan Murphy directed a really mid episode of Law & Order: SVU.”

It’s rare we come out with a headline as declaratively scathing as the one for this group-review of the most talked about films this year, Emilia Pérez. Though some found it incendiary or unconstructive, in our defense we spent the better part of awards season holding our tongues. The trans-led musical was decorated with every kind of nomination and positive review you could imagine, yet as a staff we collectively found it to be unwatchable. We ventured into a discussion to surface something that no one was saying: Beyond representation, controversy, and cultural division, this movie is actually bad. It has ugly lighting, terrible dialogue, the actors can’t sing, some can’t even speak Spanish, and the plot logic is of a Ryan Murphy standard. And if no one was going to say it, we would. — Fran Tirado

9. Max Is Detransitioning (To HBO Max) by James Factora

Max is Detransitioning (To HBO Max)

“Everyone’s journey to their understanding of themselves is different, and rarely linear. You might try on a set of different pronouns for size only to realize, later, that those pronouns may not fit as well as you thought they did. You might find yourself identifying strongly as a particular gender or sexuality, only to surprise yourself. You might try on a few different names before finding the one that fits you best. That’s why we stand in critical solidarity with Max, which is detransitioning rebranding to HBO Max.”

There are many nice things about working with the majority queer/trans group of people who run this website. One of those things is the fact that we get to run headlines like this when no one else is #brave enough to. And hey, it paid off — I just spent about 10 minutes scrolling back through our Instagram to find the receipts that Max’s “humanbyorientation” account (their LGBTQ+ social brand) commented on this one with, “my journey is a public one and that’s ok.” So true, king. — James Factora

8. Fangs for the Memories! Learning My Limits at a Lesbian Vampire Sex Party as told to James Factora

Fangs for the Memories! How I Learned My Limits at a Lesbian Vampire Sex Party

“At the end of the day, I ended up at the lesbian vampire sex party not for the vampires, but for the lesbians.”

Puns are risky business in headlines. If you try too hard to shoehorn them in, people react badly. But if you find the perfect turn of phrase that also is thematically appropriate for the story? That’s the sweet spot. For this entry in our “Cruising Chronicle” sex diaries, a pun like “fangs for the memories” was exactly right. The subject of our anonymous true story attends a bloodplay event only to realize there are limited contexts in which she’d like to continue exploring kink. The runner-up (“fangs but no fangs”) just felt a little too inscrutable to publish on the website. — Samantha Allen

7. Who’s Afraid of Jinkx Monsoon? by Evan Ross Katz

Who’s Afraid of Jinkx Monsoon?

“For Monsoon, truth-telling seems to be the purpose at the heart of all she’s done, both professionally and personally. Often, the truth is sprinkled in through levity or absurdity, but nonetheless there and making itself known. She’s never been one to shy away from a provocative statement, like when she proposed during an interview with fellow provocateur, Ziwe, that J.K. Rowling was a trans man, or on Good Morning America, where she declared that Abraham Lincoln was now a trans woman. ‘Since lawmakers get to rewrite history, why can’t I?’”

If there’s one thing our community is going to do, it’s identify stars before they rise to global fame (we were listening to Chappell Roan and Doechii long before the masses). So let’s say right here and now that we’ve been stanning Jinkx. The virtuosic multi-hyphenate has risen to an international platform, and our cover was a victory lap after years of keeping up with her. — Fran Tirado

6. Sophisticated “Gayfemboy” Malware Is Attacking Multiple Industries Around the Globe by Samantha Riedel

Sophisticated “Gayfemboy” Malware Is Attacking Multiple Industries Around the Globe

“We’ll be updating our firewall and sticking to IRL femboys, thanks.”

This was one of those headlines that simply wrote itself. That being said, I’m going to be honest. I still don’t really know what “Gayfemboy” Malware is. Yes, I have read the article multiple times, and I encourage you to do so as well. But I don’t think I need to get the intricacies of how Gayfemboy Malware works in order to stan the very concept of it, and neither do you. Here at Them dot us, we support gay rights and gay wrongs. Just please don’t hack us, or if you do, at least make it funny and gay. — James Factora

5. The Transgender Urge to Buy a Real Sword by Samantha Riedel

Are Swords Trans Culture? Here’s Why I’m Considering Buying a Real Blade

“So if trans visibility is a double-edged sword, a thought jabs into my brain, maybe we should just get actual f**king swords.”

In the midst of national unrest and increased political violence, “arm the dolls” became a popular refrain in radical-leaning queer internet circles. But for those who are anti-gun, we posed the question: What about swords? Not prop swords for hobbyists, but real, actual swords? E-girls, gamers, and fantasy fetishists have long known the narrative power of an underdog with a sword, but did we actually know how to go about buying one and what qualities we would look for? Samantha Riedel investigates. — Fran Tirado

4. What If We Told You That All Males Are Performative? by James Factora

What If We Told You That All Males Are Performative?

“To try and get to the bottom of this, I reached out to Judith Butler, the seminal queer theorist who first articulated their theory of gender performativity in their 1990 book, Gender Trouble. Sadly, one of their reps got back to me and informed me that they would have to decline this opportunity ‘given their other commitments.’ Can’t imagine what could possibly be more important than this, but OK.”

Much digital ink was spilled about the so-called “performative male” trend this year, which was really just a phrase meant to describe the phenomenon of city-dwelling boys carrying tote bags, drinking matcha, and reading good books. But we not only had the smartest take on the subject, penned by James Factora, we had the best headline. It felt silly to target men specifically for putting a little effort into their self-expression when gender itself really only exists as the result of collective social effort to maintain a discursive binary. (Honestly, and this is my own hot take, I’m deeply concerned about social media generalizations giving rise to an insidious new form of gender essentialism that wears a more jokey guise. Let guys paint their nails! No one has copyrighted nail painting!) Anyway, go read this excellent piece. — Samantha Allen

3. Rick Owens Is Selling Feet Videos on OnlyFans to Raise Money for a Trans Shelter by Mathew Rodriguez

Designer Rick Owens Is Selling Feet Videos on OnlyFans to Raise Money for a Trans Shelter

“When it comes to helping transgender people, Rick Owens is standing ten toes down.”

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. I, frankly, still can’t believe that this one isn’t a Fake Them Headline, but I just looked and Rick Owens’ foot-forward OnlyFans is indeed still active as of this writing. (The things I have to Google for work.) It’s also not really a traditional OnlyFans as much as it is a sort of video art project, in which the designer narrates videos of his feet with commentary about the Contessa Di Castiglione, a beauty queen of the 1800s who, once she started getting older, only sat for portraits of her feet. (And yes, this is the Most Rick Owens Move Of All Time.) The proceeds benefit La maison d’Allanah, a shelter in Paris for at-risk trans youth and refugees, so we do have to stan. — James Factora

2. When Pup Went Pop by Samantha Allen, Mathew Rodriguez, and James Factora

When Pup Went Pop

“Pup play is really getting the pop girl treatment now? In 2025? When companies won’t even sponsor Pride?”

Pups continue to permeate the mainstream, even after this headline dropped. With the many opportunities we’ve been given to nuance the oft misunderstood subculture, from Sabrina Carpenter to Babygirl to Nightbitch to “24hr Dog,” the culture was begging the critics at Them dot us to weigh in. — Fran Tirado

Addendum: You guys hated this one but we were right and I stand ten toes down. — James Factora

1. Mice, Ranked From Least to Most Transgender by Them staff

Mice, Ranked From Least to Most Transgender

“When God sings with Her creations, will not trans mice be a part of the choir?”

There are fewer moments I’ve been as proud of my team than when we decided to, in a full-staff effort, rank mice by transness in response to the president’s chaotic Congressional address claiming Democrats spent $8 million “making mice transgender.” In the midst of an international campaign to demonize trans people and put their basic right to self-determination in question, it can be difficult to remember that we are allowed to be unserious, to say, “actually this is ridiculous.” In the midst of a brutal news quarter for LGBTQ+ communities across the board, writing this was much-needed reprieve. — Fran Tirado

Honorable Mentions:

Gigi Gorgeous Explains Why She Thinks Trans Teens Should Be Allowed to Shoplift by Mathew Rodriguez

Obama Explains Why Men Need Gay and Nonbinary Friends by Abby Monteil

Queen of the Toilet? Nancy Mace Can’t Stop Taking Photos With Public Bathrooms by Samantha Riedel

You Think You’re Elphaba, But a Lot of You Are Glindas by Chase Strangio and Imara Jones

Gaylor Is Dead! Long Live Gaylor by Mathew Rodriguez

The Quiet Radicalism of Being a Weird Little Guy With Weird Little Hobbies by James Factora

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/best-them-headlines-2025-ranked on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

CULTURE | DEC 9, 2025, 3:08 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Why Are Gays So Mean to Each Other Online?

On the Gay Internet, everyone is a content creator. How do we reckon with what we've created?

Derek Abella

A “gay content creator” could be anything: a policy wonk, a drag queen, a gym rat, a nurse, a sex worker, a writer, a streamer, a derm, a TikTok comedienne, an electrician or an activist, a chef, a fashionista, a twink who outs the Crumbl CEO, the Crumbl CEO, a Russian biker promising dickprint, or some other combination of myriad subcategories.

“Content” is just something you post that no one pretends is art. Posting, meanwhile, is a self-branding exercise, and your content’s affect and style form your brand voice. Do it often enough and well enough to attract an audience, and you can go pro, maybe, or at least support (or destroy) your primary career by being Gay-Internet Famous. Do it at all, and you risk being singled out for reasons beyond knowing and accused of epitomizing the problem with gay people these days.

Of course, most posts create no waves; they appear on feeds, receive a little attention, and then disappear. But, on any given day, the gay internet may select one account from its slush pile to designate as its Main Character. See, for instance, the strange example of the gay who posted an innocuous mirror pic with his boyfriend and a photo of their pasta dinner on Valentine’s Day. Thousands of people felt compelled to comment. Whether any individual contribution was cruel or caring, insightful or stupid, that didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that the subjects themselves were not public figures or even microinfluencers operating within a gay subcommunity. Many of the contributions strived to be very funny, opportunities for everyone reading to bark or clap for a few seconds before continuing to scroll and forgetting the commenter’s existence forever. But the essential thing was to make hay of the topic du jour and its astonishing details.

Still, months later, a quote tweet will appear at intervals highlighting a necklace, tubercle, or ice cube tray lurking in the deep space of the photo. The early insults — that the men look like blood relatives, or that they approximate the builds of Mario and Luigi — have since subsided in favor of a kind of celebration of the post’s insane virality: We are no longer laughing at the shorter man for having a crumb in his zipper but at ourselves for being stupid, unhinged, and outrageous, i.e., gay. The images have become the site of a self-conscious meta-comedy about the consuming urge to post that afflicts a portion of the population.

While the results vary, this cycle of abjection and memeification is one of the central rituals of life in certain areas of the social internet. A sacrifice must be selected from the polity and bled for content. We must drink up the discharge and revel in the knowledge that someone has suffered for their sins, which are also ours. (Don’t we post selfies? Don’t we have or want boyfriends? Don’t we eat pasta?) Private accounts, private servers (on Discord and elsewhere), and the like may allow some to exempt themselves from this ritual, but even they run the risk of having their posts leaked on mainline social media. If this cycle is more intense on the gay internet than elsewhere, we might turn to a line from the artist and writer Daniel Moldoveanu’s 2023 dispatch from Germany’s Whole Festival for explanation: “As a homosexual, I live for the creation, elaboration, and culmination of drama.” If the thousands of comments and quotes on the pasta post are any indication, he is hardly alone.

The pasta boyfriends didn’t plan to become The Pasta Boyfriends, and their innocence on this account has shaped the particular course their virality has taken. What, though, of the gay couples who’ve made careers out of posting for the masses? Back in August, two gay lifestyle influencers I had never heard of announced their breakup in an awkward video that sloshed across socials for days. For anyone who missed the post and the subsequent uproar, the story goes like this: For the last 10 years, Beau Ciolino and Matt Armato, both in their mid-30s and from New Orleans, had run Probably This, a lifestyle brand that spans socials and Substacks and has spawned a book, a BnB in Tennessee, and a following of hundreds of thousands. They renovated, they decorated, they cooked, they bulged, they were hot. Periodically, they recorded advertisements for insurance providers and payment service companies. They were living a dream, or appeared to be, until August 16, when their uncoupling announcement video dropped, and they became fodder for posters in X’s haunted gay subdivision.

In it, chipper Ciolino became “black shirt,” downcast Armato “red shirt,” “the bald one,” and “mustache.” The latter, who looks uncomfortable throughout the 101-second runtime, was accused of “toxic manipulation” and “playing victim,” the former of cheating and psychopathy for the crime of waging a fist bump in the video’s final seconds. Not for the first time, the internet itself was declared weird, mean, gross, disturbed. People and USA Today ran articles about the situation. This very publication was the first to interview the guys about it all.

In the aftermath, they archived their video, gained thousands more followers, and blogged about the debacle, which, through no fault of their own, had granted them an opportunity to make new content about a piece of content intended to mark the end of their era of making content together. The snake kept gobbling its tail for a little longer, and for a little longer, some of us kept watching or involving ourselves.

One way of understanding the risks associated with posting in the (gay) content ecosystem is to chart its players on an axis with “nice” at one pole and “troll” at the other. In a 2023 essay, the novelist Greg Jackson writes :“Niceness emerged from the relentlessly public character of modern life — a response to the fear that new communication technologies had made it possible for anyone to tear your reputation to shreds. Niceness was the thin crust atop this hatred. It was toxic in the first place because it was inauthentic and transactional and dominated our relationships to the point that we didn’t know whether anyone actually liked us or we actually liked anyone. But it was more profoundly toxic because it rested on a roiling sea of cruelty and resentment that threatened at any moment to swallow the person who dropped her frantic congeniality and showed herself, however briefly, to be not nice.”

“The flipside of niceness is trolling,” he writes later. “The latter feeds off the former.” Probably This made very nice videos, constitutionally inoffensive, pleasant, maybe because those are qualities with mass appeal and endorsement potential. Maybe for the structural reasons Jackson relays. Or maybe it’s because they are simply nice people, whatever that means. When the mask slipped or seemed to slip in the breakup video, however minutely, their counterparts — gay shitposters — pissed through the gap. The pasta enjoyers, meanwhile, simply looked nice, and the hysteria they evoked suggests an evolution in Jackson’s model — we can simply project or invent missteps to warrant trolling — as well as to an imbalance between the supply and demand for gay internet personalities to dunk on en masse and to the perverse pleasure some of us take in shitting on strangers precisely because we know they don’t deserve it. Per Moldoveanu, we want to create drama.

Part of the video’s pull might be the sense that it seems to depict a flicker of actual reality shining through the “nice” facade of lifestyle influencer posting. Are we seeing something “real” between the cuts? This sense of reality might come from the fact that we seem to bear witness to more than we’re meant to, more than they themselves saw while editing the video. It comes, in part, from the sense that we’re hovering over mistakes and raw humanity, rather than carefully photographed images of buff men in tight tank tops moving house plants.

If, amid the glut of falseness and pretense that dominates much of life online, we hunger for moments of “reality,” we also understand that those moments can become punishable offenses. “Reality” in this context, when it appears as an outlier, a goof, resembles a setup awaiting its punchline.

Taking a broader perspective, we might remark, as several articles have over the years, that “Everyone Is a Content Creator Now.” That’s the title of a July piece in Dazed by James Greig. Greig posits that the drive to post might be “just the modern-day version of keeping up with the Joneses, a bid for the same kind of ‘cultural capital’ which has long driven sales of sports cars, expensive watches, wine-tasting courses, and foreign holidays.” Maybe the pursuit will help you net a new job or man or replace your work entirely. For our purposes, we might recast this observation as Keeping Up With the Oomfs: continuously asserting your belonging among a loose network of homosexual posters in order to accrue likes, followers, and increased status among the microinfluencers. Posting is a method of enacting a degraded version of that much-vaunted thing, community, with its ever-changing roster of winners and losers, in-groups and out-groups, and mean girls and sweet guys.

In her 2022 report, “I’m a Creator. You’re a Creator. We’re All Creators!,” Rebecca Jennings pegs the pastime-cum-profession’s growth to the pandemic, when bored lockdowners spent even more time than usual looking at their phones. Jennings goes on to cite a corporate VP’s 2020 newsletter, where he compares the phenomenon to startups. “Creators are less judged on their talent or passion and more on how good they are at being themselves,” he writes. Per Jennings, those who succeed may become “one-person media empires.”

That a relationship could double as a business partnership, and also serve as one of the products sold to followers (patrons?) of that business, is self-evident. Gay influencer couples in particular tend toward the broadly palatable. Some are muscled and plank atop their kid, who doubles as an engagement prop. Many are “clean cut,” legally married, and blandly aspirational. They generate admiration and delight (and desire and envy); from other quarters, they generate wariness and disgust. The drama that sometimes follows their dissolutions speaks to a broader uncertainty in the air about how gay couples should be. It’s an uncertainty also evidenced in the regularly renewed online furor over open relationships and promiscuity. In general, whether you’re an influencer couple or not, in this moment when a loud subset of online gays regularly projects its sexual anxieties, hangups, and biases onto the images of couples they encounter on their screens, posting about your relationship entails clear risks.

Among other things, a gay content creator is content: image and text. He is material to be posted about or, say, wrangled into an essay by a gay writer, who hopes to make money by offering some analysis or summary, convincing or not, of a phenomenon of which he claims the content is representative. The writer may pair his analysis with an implicit or explicit moral judgment of the activity (or of what it is said to exemplify — narcissism, casual cruelty, etc.) and, perhaps, a call to action that will, like the posts themselves, be forgotten after the reader has clicked away and become momently entranced by the next piece of content in his feed. A cycle concludes, another begins.

This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/gay-internet-posting-main-character-content-creators-twitter-instagram on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

News

- Did Nancy Mace Just Blame Trans People for Her Airport Meltdown?

- New Hampshire Republicans Want to Keep Trans People Out of Restrooms in Private Businesses

- Yes, Kyrsten Sinema Is Carrying AI-Contaminated Water for Trump

- What Happens When Sex Education Erases Trans People

- Britain Just Announced It Would Be the 3rd Country to Allow Same-Sex Ice Dance Teams

- Cis Students Were Suspended for Calling Trans Kid a "Girl Boy." Now Trump's DOJ Is Defending Them

- Lesbians and Femboys Topped Pornhub 2025 Searches and Views

- Florida Is Suing the Medical Establishment Over Trans Youth, Cites Debunked Study

- The Troll That Crashed the 'Wicked' Premiere Tried to Sneak Into a Lady Gaga Concert

POLITICS | JAMES FACTORA | DEC 12, 2025, 12:33 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Did Nancy Mace Just Blame Trans People for Her Airport Meltdown?

“If you have fought the transgender community exponentially like I have…”

Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, speaks to members of the media during a vote outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. US House lawmakers return to Washington on Wednesday for a vote to end the 43-day government shutdown, which has snarled air travel, delayed food aid to millions of Americans and forced federal workers to go without pay. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg/Getty Images

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We regret to inform you that Nancy Mace is at it again, this time seemingly blaming trans people for her throwing a temper tantrum at the airport.

At the end of October, Mace made headlines for verbally berating law enforcement at the Charleston International Airport. According to reporting from WIRED, officers with the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department were supposed to escort Mace from the curb to her flight, but never saw her car arrive, because of a miscommunication about the color of the car. She was then found at an entrance intended for flight crew members, where, she began “loudly cursing and making derogatory comments,” repeatedly stating that they were “fucking incompetent” and that “this is no way to treat a fucking U.S. Representative,” according to an incident report obtained by WIRED. (Notably, TSA agents were not being fully paid at the time, due to the government shutdown.) Mace continued to curse and complain as the officers escorted her to her gate, until she finally boarded her flight.

The Washington Post reported on the outcome of the police investigation into the incident on December 8, which found that the Congresswoman was at fault. It also contained additional details about the incident, including that Mace told officers that they were “fucking idiots.” The internal report concluded that Mace’s “continued failure to follow established procedures at the checkpoint is what turned a minor miscommunication over the color of a vehicle into the spectacle that this issue has become for our employees and airport workers.”

Conservative journalist Maria Bartiromo asked Mace directly about the incident on Fox News on Thursday morning, since she had claimed that officials falsified a police report. Rather than responding to the question, the Congresswoman went on a strange tangent in which she seemingly blamed trans people for her airport crashout. “We have to take our security very seriously,” she said. “If you’re conservative, if you’re well known, if you have fought the transgender community exponentially like I have, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s public assassination — the death threats, the amount of political violence, the celebration of the killing of conservatives is deeply disturbing.” She then cited an incident in which a “leftist person” approached her in public and physically threatened her.

Bartiromo responded, “It sounds like you’re explaining some kind of behavior. What I’m asking you is what happened.” She additionally asked if Mace was suing the airport and American Airlines, and Mace said that she had “drafted that suit.” She also maintained that she “didn’t call anybody names, that was falsified in the police report,” even though the incident report interviewed multiple airport staffers who confirmed that Mace indeed called people names.

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This, of course, is far from the first time that Mace has gotten into a heated public altercation in which she somehow found a way to implicate LGBTQ+ people. In April, the Congresswoman had a meltdown at an Ulta in South Carolina after a man approached her and asked, “When are you gonna host a real town hall for the people?” She claimed that he was “harassing” her, and made a point of telling him that she “voted for gay marriage twice.” That same month, she used the t-slur four times in a speech to the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition. Just goes to show you that transphobia rots your brain.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/nancy-mace-trans-community-airport-charleston-meltdown-altercation on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

POLITICS | DEC 11, 2025, 3:14 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

New Hampshire Republicans Want to Keep Trans People Out of Restrooms in Private Businesses

If passed, the bill would be the farthest reaching anti-trans legislation.

Adél Békefi

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Republicans in New Hampshire are hoping to pass one of the country’s farthest reaching anti-transgender bathroom bills in its next session — one that would narrowly redefine “biological sex,” allow private businesses to restrict access to restrooms, and create a new type of trespassing statute that applies specifically to trans women.

House Bill 1442 was pre-filed last week by GOP Rep. Erica Layon, who previously backed New Hampshire’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. Layon’s new bill seeks to redefine “biological sex” under state law by defining “female” as “an individual who lacks a functional Y chromosome,” and “male” as anyone who is not legally female. It additionally states that a person’s gender identity does not grant access “to any place or service provided or offered specifically to females or males.” (An identical definition also appears in another New Hampshire bill filed last week, HB 1447.)

The bill would also restrict bathroom and locker room access based on that definition of biological sex — not only on government or publicly-funded property, as is the case for most other bathroom bans in states like Texas and Florida, but any public accommodation. Business owners “may require that all multi-user bathrooms, restrooms, and locker rooms under their control be used based on the individual’s biological sex,” per the bill, which stipulates that such a policy “shall not be deemed discrimination” under state law.

If Layon’s bill becomes law, a trans woman who uses a public bathroom designated for “women” or “girls” could be charged with a “willful trespass” violation. Under New Hampshire law, “violations” are charges which can be punished with fines, but are not considered “criminal” and cannot result in jail time (unlike Florida’s bathroom ban, which threatens trans people with up to one year in prison). The bill specifically establishes women’s facilities as “sex separated areas” affected by its definition of trespassing, but not the same facilities for men. It does not specify a range of fines that may be imposed for a violation.

Per the Movement Advancement Project, nearly all anti-trans bathroom bans in the U.S. apply to government and other publicly owned facilities. A few states like Florida and Montana also restrict accommodations in some private settings, such as private schools and domestic violence shelters. If passed, New Hampshire’s bill would become one of the nation’s most expansive such bans.

HB 1442 and 1447’s strict definition of “biological sex” is also the latest attempt by Republicans to enforce a legal gender binary while reluctantly acknowledging the existence of intersex people. The bill specifically defines a “functional” Y chromosome as one that “expressed the SRY gene during fetal development,” and notes that an intersex person with chimeric chromosomes and “functional ovarian tissue” would be classed as female. But the SRY gene is only one of many types of intersex variations, and though the bill claims its definitions would “remove the need for genetic testing,” it’s still not clear how those definitions could be enforced.

“Any attempts to define who is allowed to use a particular restroom or locker room, even with narrow exceptions for the small number of women with genetic chimerism who produce ova, only threaten the safety of women and girls while reducing women to their reproductive capacity,” said Maddie Moran, communications director for the intersex advocacy group interACT, in a statement to Them via email on Thursday. “The bills fail to mention the vast number of intersex women with chromosomal or gonadal variations — who have the right to use the restroom aligned with their gender — leaving them cruelly labelled as ‘male.’ No ‘intersex exception’ will be comprehensive enough to protect intersex women and girls, as these bills are often enforced simply through who others in the restroom scrutinize and perceive as female. Bills that attempt to legislate restroom use subject all people to body policing and harassment, threatening especially the safety of transgender and intersex women and girls.”

If HB 1442 passes the state legislature next year, it could still face a veto from Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Ayotte vetoed a bill earlier this year which would have declared that “classification of persons based on biological sex” serves a “compelling state interest,” writing in her veto statement that although she agreed with its purpose, the bill was “overly broad and impractical to enforce.” Whether Ayotte would come to the same conclusion about Layon’s bill remains to be seen.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/new-hampshire-trans-bathroom-private-businesses-hb-1442 on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

POLITICS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | DEC 11, 2025, 2:23 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Yes, Kyrsten Sinema Is Carrying AI-Contaminated Water for Trump

Post life as an elected official, Sinema is pushing artificial intelligence data centers in communities that don't want them.

Bill Clark/Getty Images

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Former Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema is still making dubious bisexual history after leaving office last year — by working “hand in glove” with the Trump administration to build more artificial intelligence data centers in communities that don’t want them.

After becoming the country’s first out bi senator in 2018, Sinema left the Democratic Party in 2022 and did not seek reelection last year. Now that she’s a private citizen, Sinema is going all-in on the AI industry, founding a new “AI Infrastructure Coalition” earlier this year with former Republican Rep. Garret Graves and GOP strategist Brian O. Walsh. Sinema has proclaimed that her group is working closely with the Trump administration to enact its “AI Action Plan,” particularly regarding a proposed data center in Chandler, Arizona.

The Coalition works “hand in glove with the Trump administration as we prepare for AI American dominance,” Sinema told the Chandler Planning Commission in October, pushing city officials to approve plans for a $2 billion AI data center. “So, federal preemption is coming,” Sinema went on. “Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built. When federal preemption comes, we’ll no longer have that privilege. They will just occur, and they will occur in the manner which they want to occur.”

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Sinema’s statements were “widely interpreted as a threat from Washington,” CNN reported Thursday, though Sinema told the network her words had been misinterpreted and she believes in “local control.” The proposal is scheduled for a final vote before the Chandler City Council on December 11.

“It wasn’t a threat, it was a promise,” Chandler city councilmember O.D. Harris told CNN. “People are fired up over this now, and they’re fired up because of Sen. Sinema. She shouldn’t have come.”

Chandler residents are widely opposed to the center’s construction, per CNN. A City Council memo indicated that emails opposed to the project outnumber those in favor by 20 to one, and some residents told the network they were shocked to learn that there are already nearly a dozen data centers operating in the Chandler area alone. City planners have recommended against the project, according to the Phoenix Business Journal, saying that the center would not deliver high-paying jobs for residents.

AI has driven major financial gains on paper for some tech companies over the past several years, but concerns about the technology’s reliability, environmental impact, and potential for serious harm have recently erased tens of billions in value from those companies, as some industry insiders worry that the “AI bubble” will soon pop.

None of this seems to bother Sinema, who partnered with billionaire Sam Altman’s OpenAI — which operates the AI chatbot ChatGPT — to establish an AI center at Arizona State University in April. In an appearance on Fox News this week, Sinema insisted that AI technology “has simply enhanced our lives,” referred to the AI industry as a “national security race” that the U.S. must win over China, and broadly claimed that objections to AI are “misinformation” stemming from the political left. At the end of the interview, Sinema even gushed about the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiatives — which include debunked anti-vaccine claims and professed research into a “cure for autism.”

“MAHA is doing great things in our country,” Sinema gushed on Fox. Once more for old times’ sake, Kyrsten: can you please just not?

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/kyrsten-sinema-artificial-intelligence-trump-chandler-arizona on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

POLITICS | DEC 10, 2025, 4:29 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Real Cost of Pretending Sex Education Doesn’t Exist

Without trans-inclusive sex education, there is no sex education.

For many of us schooled in the U.S., our first sex education classes are comically — and sometimes negatively — seared into our memories. After all, the banana on the condom followed by the abstinence-only speech is a common film trope for a reason. Corvid Jernigan-Clayton, currently a 19-year-old nonbinary student, said his first sex ed class was in many ways no different; however, the reason it lives on in their memory isn’t embarrassing or imbued with sexual negativity.

Instead, his teacher, unfazed by the apparent and expected discomfort on the fifth-grade class’s faces during this sex education class, had shared a simple fact that would change his life: Sex and gender are not the same.

“That one distinct sentence just clicked and quantified a lot of things for me — to have a teacher say that my gender identity doesn’t need to have any bearing on my sex assigned at birth,” he says. “That was the push it took for me to start identifying as a masculine and transmasculine person […] And then, of course, we got to watch our teacher put a condom on a banana.”

Unfortunately, that was the only grade Jernigan-Clayton had a sex education class, though there was so much more to learn. From our early teens onwards, most of us are only just beginning to make sense of our desires, our identities, and everything in between. For Jernigan-Clayton, reliable material about the broad spectrum of gender was difficult to find on the internet and queer comprehensive sex education was even sparser, though his story isn’t uncommon, especially under the Trump administration.

Since the beginning of the year, the state of sex education in the U.S. has only gotten worse, as the Trump White House has been on a mission to dismantle inclusive sex education. In August 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through its Administration for Children and Families, demanded that “46 states and territories remove all references to gender ideology in their federally-funded Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) educational materials within 60 days. This action reflects the Trump Administration’s ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”

The order threatens that states that do not comply will have their federal funding for PREP cut. The same press release noted that California has already paid the price for not doing so, losing its federal sex education funding. Across the country, states have gradually begun to fall in line with the mandate. As of this month, only eight states explicitly require an inclusive curriculum, while 23 states’ curricular standards restrict LGBTQ+ specific topics completely. Currently, six states have even gone a step further with laws that force the outing of transgender youth if students make specific disclosures or requests about their gender identity to school staff.

The attack on inclusive sex education has been a multi-pronged one, encompassing forced outing, removing mentions of gender identity, and, of course, banning LGBTQ+ books. Since 2021, the nonprofit PEN America has been tracking state-level educational censorship legislation in its Index of Educational Gag Orders, which details every such law enacted from 2021 to the present day. Some of these restrictive laws have begun to extend beyond federally funded schools. In 2025, HB 1201, passed by South Dakota, prohibits all teachers and staff at public and private institutions from discussing gender expression or identity that differs from a person’s assigned sex.

Under this law, despite teaching at a private school, Jernigan-Clayton’s teacher would never be legally allowed to say that sex and gender are not the same thing, the most resonant thing he learned in his school life.

The impact of pretending trans kids don’t exist in the classroom

Educators, researchers and LGBTQ+ advocates have been stating a simple truth for years: data show that when schools act like trans kids don’t exist, it creates an environment that condones their mistreatment. Jesscia Jernigan, a member of a school board in Michigan, tells Them, in a personal capacity, that any time a teacher talks about something related to sex or gender, it is somehow considered sex education, even though there are separate laws defining sex education.

“It can have a tremendous chilling effect on what educators feel they can use in their classrooms,” she says. “Even if we don’t touch our sex ed or quasi-sex ed curriculum, it can still have a chilling effect. We’ve had conversations about whether a teacher asking students for their pronouns counts as sex ed. Some people genuinely make that argument.”

When it becomes increasingly forbidden for teachers to even acknowledge their trans students in their curriculum, let alone support them, it leaves room for bullying and harassment. On February 7, 2024, surveillance footage at Owasso High School in Oklahoma captured six students entering a girls’ bathroom, followed shortly by Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old trans student of Choctaw descent, and two others; later that day, in a hospital video, Benedict said he and a friend were harassed and mocked by three students. The following day, Benedict died. In this case, the link between a hostile school environment, state policy that weakened trans-inclusive education, including classes on sex and gender, was apparent to many. Sarah Adams, co-founder of Cousins, an organization that provides a sanctuary for queer Indigenous youth and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, tells Them that Benedict’s death laid bare how the erasure of Two-Spirit identities from sex education creates an environment where queer Native youth are misunderstood, othered, and made especially vulnerable to violence.

“Politicizing healthcare and sex education is always dangerous because it quickly becomes a question of who is ‘worthy’ of that healthcare, who ‘deserves’ access,” she says. “When you moralize healthcare and sex education, things become dangerous: people start deciding who in our community does or does not deserve access at all.”

For Adams, when an extremely narrow idea of sex education is imposed, or, increasingly, when sex education is virtually absent, its ripple effects go beyond the classroom.

“When they are outed in school because of such laws, or when they come out, and it isn’t safe at home, they can become homeless on the same day,” she explains. “That creates a huge need for emergency housing. When they are literally homeless, sex trafficking rates also increase. So, when young people desperately need sexual health education and care, but can’t even secure safe housing, everything else becomes more difficult. It’s a domino effect.”

Part of this domino effect includes how anti-trans school policy bleeds into local communities’ sentiment towards queer and trans people. Ryan Walters, former-Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, had defended his state’s laws after Benedict’s death. Just a month before the incident, he had appointed the social media influencer Chaya Raichik, of Libs of TikTok fame, to the Oklahoma Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee. Walters remains steadfast in his support of Raichik even in the face of multiple reports linking her to threats to a wide range of individuals and organizations.

“At one of the first school board meetings I attended after Walters took office, he was talking about trans youth in sports, right from the start,” Adams says. “When you see leadership that is openly trying to bring Bibles into schools, and a very specific kind of Christianity, it sets a tone. It’s a version of Christianity that is anti-2SLGBTQ, anti-people of color, hostile to anything non-heteronormative, and frames those differences as immoral. When that kind of ideology leads the school system, it affects everything and immediately creates fear.”

She adds that this sex-negative approach pushes youth back into the closet and tells them school is not a safe place to be out or authentic. Truancy becomes an issue, too: If they’re scared to go to school, they might stay home and then face consequences for that as well. Eric Sprankle, professor of clinical psychology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, notes that several studies have shown that when queer students receive exclusionary sex education, they disengage from the lectures when they feel the curriculum is not relevant to their lives. This lack of relevant safe sex resources leaves queer youth vulnerable. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2.2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported in 2024 — a 13% increase compared to a decade ago.

“Queer kids may not be learning even the basics of harm reduction and risk management that apply to everyone, regardless of identity, which can increase the likelihood of experiencing negative sexual health outcomes,” Sprankle tells Them. “Often, I see ‘inclusivity’ to just mean using inclusive language. While that’s important, what is still overlooked are the unique health needs queer students may have depending on their sexual behavior and relationships, and how they would benefit from learning about oft-overlooked sex ed topics like pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP), as well as that dirty word that is most often avoided by pearl clutchers worldwide: pleasure.”

For Jernigan-Clayton, it was the sex ed gap in schooling that he says prevented him from understanding the other side of what sex education should prepare you for: consent and identifying sexual assault.

“I was sexually assaulted and didn’t understand that’s what had happened until my therapist told me. I didn’t know that what this person did to me qualified as assault until I talked to her and she said, ‘Yes, that’s what it was.’ I don’t know if the person who did it realised that either,” he says. It was only later in life, after he got onto social media and certain online communities, that he discovered community-based sex education.

The fight for inclusive sex education starts at home

Alison Macklin, the director of Public Affairs at SIECUS, Sex Ed for Social Change, believes that the first step to getting inclusive sex education back in our schools is fighting local battles. If Trump releases an executive order curtailing rights, it’s important to note that some of them might not even be enforceable. Brookings has an online tracker that charts out all the legislative challenges to the federal government’s many laws and orders attempting to deflate sex education in K-12; some of those challenges end up being successful, too, even if it means briefly pausing Trump’s juggernaut.

“People really need to pay attention to their local political races,” she tells Them. “For a long time, many people thought, ‘school boards are just doing their thing.’ Because the majority of Americans support public education, not much attention was paid there. That is how the opposition has been able to infiltrate and slowly whittle away at students’ rights.”

Macklin has noticed that people often feel paralysed by the scale of the issue at the federal level. But locally, they can see how these dynamics are infiltrating their own communities and can then make a difference. That is the first, decisive step. The next step is to meet communities where they are.

“Different states have different laws, and within those states, some districts may have even more restrictive policies,” she says. “We can’t abandon those communities. Young people need this information more than elsewhere. So, we have to be creative about how we reach them. We must find ways to give them some education without compromising our values, and while continuing to fight for more inclusive policies.”

It is between these gaps that organizations like SEICUS, Cousins and AMAZE step in. For AMAZE, Advocates for Youth, Answer at Rutgers, and originally Youth Tech Health, their short videos aimed at students from 1-14 cover everything from shorts, animated videos on puberty, relationships, consent, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Their YouTube and social-platform views were pegged at over 82 million worldwide. Since 1994, Answer, an organization established by Rutgers University, has been “using the power of peer-to-peer communication to offer sexuality education directly to teens through their award-winning, teen-written Sex, Etc.”

Beyond the classroom, navigating parents can be another battle in the fight for inclusive sex ed. As Jernigan pointed out, even the mention of sex and gender in any permutation or combination can ring alarm bells. For Adams, educators must build relationships and trust with parents early on — for example, by saying, “Here are the topics I’ll be covering.” Offering parents resources about what’s being taught and why is also important. When teachers meet with parents in conferences, they can share those resources and frame the conversation around impact.

As she puts it: “For example, you can say: ‘Did you know that for 2SLGBTQ students, having just one safe adult in their life drastically reduces their risk of suicide? Did you know that being that safe adult — for your child and for your child’s friends — can literally save lives? If you want resources on how to do that, please come talk to me.”

There will be parents who absolutely refuse. They’ll be deeply threatened and afraid of their children being queer, worried about stigma, or convinced by their religious teachings that they must “tough love” this out of their kids. “We know that doesn’t work. You cannot ‘pray the gay away,’ and that kind of approach is very dangerous,” she says. “When that happens, your role becomes that of a safe person for the child, to know that they may not get what they need at home.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/inclusive-sex-education-trans-lgbtq on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

NEWS | SAMANTHA RIEDEL | DEC 10, 2025, 2:18 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

It's 2025 and Allowing Same-Sex Ice Dance Teams Still Isn't Universal

Britain Ice Skating has become the third national body to allow them.

ARND WIEGMANN/Getty Images

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British Ice Skating (BIS), the governing body for ice skating in the U.K., will allow same-sex pairs to compete in events starting next year, the organization announced this week.

BIS made the announcement on Tuesday, along with several other changes to eligibility rules, all of which will take effect in the 2026-2027 competitive season. Beginning with a qualifier scheduled for next March, same-sex couples “will now be permitted to compete in all events, including at the Championships,” BIS stated.

When the new rules take effect next year, BIS will become only the third national ice skating organization to allow same-sex pairs to compete. The first national organization to relax its gender eligibility rules was Skate Canada in 2022, with Finland’s Ice Skating Federation following suit just three months ago. As Reuters reported this week, the International Skating Union (ISU) still mandates that teams be composed of one man and one woman, meaning that same-sex partners will not be eligible for ISU-sanctioned international competitions even if they perform well in their countries’ events.

Skaters from around the world have increasingly called for gender requirements to be phased out, galvanized by Skate Canada’s rules change three years ago. In February, Olympic gold medalists Madison Hubbell and Gabriella Papadakis grabbed international headlines by performing together at an exhibition in Switzerland to call attention to the sport’s enforced heteronormativity.

“We made people see other realities,” Papdakis, who is bisexual, told the Washington Post in May. “I think when [people] see two women skating together, they are like, ‘Oh, God, this is gay,’” she added.

The skaters’ movement to relax rules about gender is partly inspired by a shortage of men in the sport, several athletes told the Post. Women who cannot find a man to register with are effectively locked out of pairs competitions, creating what Papadakis called a “pervasive power imbalance.” Although some events like the Gay Games have allowed same-sex teams for years, those competitions are generally not recognized by the ISU and other governing bodies.

“Boys most often hold all the cards,” Olympic skater Kaitlyn Weaver (who came out as queer in 2021) told the Post. “If you are a good-looking dude in figure skating, it absolutely is like The Bachelor.”

Figure skating was the first Olympic sport to allow women to compete in 1924, but it was only in 2022 that the International Olympic Committee began referring to them as “women” instead of “ladies.” Last year, Amber Glenn became the first out LGBTQ+ woman to win the U.S. Women’s Figure Skating Championship, lifting a Progress Pride flag behind her in celebration.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/british-ice-skating-same-sex-couples-allowed-national-level on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

NEWS | DEC 10, 2025, 1:34 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Cis Students Were Suspended for Calling Trans Kid a "Girl Boy." Now Trump's DOJ Is Defending Them

The school alleges there was“relentless harassment.”

Tom Williams/Getty Images

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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is throwing its weight behind a lawsuit against a Virginia school district, in which two students claim school officials violated their religious freedom by suspending them for allegedly harassing a transgender classmate.

Two Christian students at Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) filed suit against the district in September, after they were reportedly suspended for sexually harassing a trans boy who uses boys’ locker rooms and bathrooms at school. DOJ officials filed a motion to intervene in the students’ lawsuit on Monday, claiming that the LCPS school board violated the 14th Amendment by suspending the students and by enforcing trans-inclusive school policies against them. The students are represented by America First Legal, the far-right law firm founded by white nationalist and Trump administration official Stephen Miller.

“Loudoun County’s decision to advance and promote gender ideology tramples on the rights of religious students who cannot embrace ideas that deny biological reality,” Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Human Rights (OCR) Harmeet K. Dhillon claimed in a press release Monday. Dhillon was tapped for the OCR position last December, after previously working as a legal advisor to President Donald Trump and representing “detransitioner” activist Chloe Cole in her lawsuit against healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente.

In a supporting memo, the DOJ alleged that LCPS violated the cisgender students’ rights by requiring them to use the trans student’s pronouns and respect his presence in boys’ facilities. Those requirements “go against their sincere religious beliefs and practice, which require using sex-aligned pronouns and using sex-segregated intimate spaces,” the memo claims.

The students’ families say their children only made comments expressing that they were “uncomfortable” sharing a bathroom with the trans student, and their lawsuit claims that a Muslim student who expressed similar sentiments was not suspended. But in an October response, district officials said that the cis students had actually engaged in “relentless harassment” of the trans student throughout the 2024-2025 academic year, with one of the plaintiffs allegedly yelling “girl boy” at him repeatedly in a school hallway. The trans student made audio recordings of the harassment and filed a Title IX discrimination claim of his own in March of this year “which LCPS was obligated to investigate,” leading to the suspensions, the district contended.

LCPS was one of five Virginia school districts labeled “high risk” by the Department of Education (DOE) in August, citing district policies that allow trans students to use facilities that align with their gender. In September, one day after the students first sued LCPS, the DOE concluded that LCPS “failed to treat the male students equitably” in its Title IX investigation.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who is presiding over the case, will hear arguments for and against the DOJ’s motion to intervene on December 19, per Courthouse News.

This isn’t the first time conservatives have targeted LCPS and its trans-inclusive policies. In 2021, right-wing media blamed the then-newly adopted policies for an alleged sexual assault that occurred in a school bathroom, even though the assault reportedly occurred months before the policies were put in place.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/loudon-county-public-schools-department-of-justice-lawsuit-trans-harassment on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

NEWS | DEC 10, 2025, 12:53 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Everyone Was Searching for LGBTQ+ Content on Pornhub in 2025

The numbers are in and people love femboys and lesbians.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Holding up an uncomfortable mirror to a society in which LGBTQ+ people are under increased scrutiny and attack, it turns out that people of all genders and sexualities really love LGBTQ+-themed adult content, and that searches for such videos have risen across all parts of the site, according to Pornhub’s 2025 Year in Review. Among the winners: terms like “lesbian,” “transgender,” and “femboy.”

Femboys had an incredible 2025, as the term became not only the number one search on PornhubGay, knocking twink out of its years-long top spot, but catapulted into the top 10 categories sitewide, up 15 spots from last year. Some of the terms that saw a huge increase in the last year included “cute femboy,” “sexy femboy” and “femboy hentai.”

Hunnypaint, a top ranking Pornhubgay account that features two “two femboy sissy twinks,” as per their page, told Pornhub that a femboy is “someone who openly expresses femininity in their appearance, style, or spirit, while remaining comfortable benign recognized as male, regardless of the individual’s gender identity.”

“It’s really amusing to see the popularity of the tag “femboy” and other similar gender queer search terms rise,” Hunnypaint added. “I have a lot of fans who reach out to me, telling me that they’re straight but still love watching my videos. It seems that for a lot of ‘straight’ guys, attraction is often more rooted in their perceived femininity of someone rather than a gender identity.”

As the stock of “femboys” rose, the fate of porn featuring “straight” guy porn has fallen. Searches for “straight” on PornhubGay tumbled nine spots to 19th place, just above “cruising” and two spots below “cute femboy.” (Notably, “straight guys first time” is still in the 6th spot, though it was knocked out of the top five.)

Sitewide, LGBTQ+ content ruled, with “lesbian” being the top viewed category of 2025, up three spots. “Lesbian” as a category and term has often landed in the top results, but this year included WLW content featuring searches for “lesbian scissoring,” “lesbian MILF,” and “lesbian strapon.” And, possibly contrary to popular narratives, it’s not just men watching: lesbian was the most viewed category by women on the site.

Searches for “transgender” also flew up five spots to the second most popular overall category on the site.

“What’s happening in 2025 is more than just an increase in views; it’s a cultural shift,” Pornhub ambassador Natassia Dreams, who is trans, said as part of the report. “For the first time, trans-led content is the second most watched category in the industry. People are finally seeking out stories and performers who break old ideas about gender and sexuality. It’s amazing to see viewers become more open-minded and interested in authenticity. This growth shows trans creators are finally being seen and celebrated on our own terms.”

Queer content across the entire LGBTQ+ spectrum saw an increase, with searches for “queer” and “bisexual” also rising.

The porn site’s 2025 report comes in a year of unprecedented attacks on Americans' access to the site; in January, age verification laws that open Pornhub up to legal liability meant people in 16 states couldn’t visit it. By year’s end, that number rose to 25 states, per Wired.

Activists have sounded the alarm on these age verification bills as a backdoor way to limit free speech and eventually ban pornography altogether. In 2024, The Intercept published a video of Trump budget czar and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought admitting that these GOP-backed bills are hoping to limit American consumption of adult content.

Likewise, Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn said in 2023 that some of the GOP-touted bills being touted as protecting kids are actually meant to limit access to all kinds of trans content online as a means of “protecting minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence.”

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/pornhub-2025-top-searches-most-viewed-lesbian-femboy-lgbt-trends on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

POLITICS | JAMES FACTORA | DEC 9, 2025, 2:59 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Florida Is Suing the Medical Establishment Over Trans Youth, Cites Debunked Study

Attorney general James Uthmeier is targeting the Endocrine Society, American Academy of Pediatrics, and World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

DOMINIC GWINN/Getty Images

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Florida’s attorney general has sued a handful of prominent medical organizations for promoting the efficacy of gender-affirming care for youth.

The 75-page complaint was filed Tuesday in the 19th Judicial Circuit in St. Lucie County, Florida. The organizations being sued are the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which issues the widely-cited Standards of Care for gender-affirming care, as well as the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The suit alleges that the defendants’ claims about gender-affirming care for youth “are false and misleading,” and cites the Cass Review, a debunked study on gender-affirming care that was commissioned by the U.K. government in 2024. Ultimately, the suit claims that the defendants violate the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the Florida RICO Act, claiming that these organizations have engaged in “racketeering.” The suit asks for declarations that promoting gender-affirming care constitutes an unfair trade practice and racketeering activity, hefty fines for each defendant, and that the defendants be banned from continuing to advertise “the safety, reversibility, or efficacy or pediatric sex interventions.”

Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the suit with a video on X on December 9. “We believe these organizations failed to disclose the risks, limits and evidence when promoting so-called gender affirming care for children,” Uthmeier said in the video. “Parents were not told the full story. In fact, some parents were told that if they didn’t put their kids through permanent life altering sick procedures like double mastectomies and castration, that their child would commit suicide.” (Top surgery is rarely available to teenagers, and any kinds of genital surgery are not performed on minors, per WPATH’s own standards.)

Of course, there is plenty of evidence in favor of the efficacy and safety of gender-affirming care for minors, which is why organizations like WPATH, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have endorsed the availability of said care. But that hasn’t stopped the right wing. In July, the Department of Justice announced that it had issued “nearly 20” subpoenas to clinics providing gender-affirming care to youth, alleging that “healthcare fraud, false statements, and more” are occurring at the clinics. In August, a group of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of using backdoor methods to create a de facto ban on gender-affirming care while skirting state laws that protect the civil rights of trans people.

Them has reached out to WPATH, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics for comment.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/florida-james-uthmeier-trans-youth-lawsuit-endocrine-society-pediatrics-american on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

NEWS | JAMES FACTORA | DEC 9, 2025, 12:13 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Troll That Crashed the 'Wicked' Premiere Tried to Sneak Into a Lady Gaga Concert

Johnson Wen disguised himself in his attempt to attend the event.

Johnson Wen, who was arrested for charging at Ariana Grande at the Singapore premiere of Wicked: For Good, has been kicked out of Lady Gaga’s Mayhem Ball concert in Brisbane, Australia.

The self-described “troll,” who also goes by “Pyjama Mann” on Instagram, took to Stories on Tuesday, December 9, sharing a selfie of himself alongside the caption, “Got kicked out of Lady Gaga concert 🤣The Show doesn’t start till 8 pm! 🤌 The early Fans were booing me 🤣.”

A video of Wen being escorted out of the concert by security has also gone viral on TikTok, with over over 112,000 likes at the time of writing.

“The world is healing,” one TikToker commented.

TikTok content

“Cynthia Erivo running security,” another commenter wrote.

Last month, Wen made international headlines after jumping a barricade at the Wicked: For Good Singapore premiere carpet and lunging at Grande. In footage of the incident, he puts his arm around her and tries to pose for a photo, before Grande’s Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo physically separates him from her and several security professionals escort him away.

X content

Wen posted a viral clip of himself charging at Grande on his own Instagram account, captioning the post, “Dear Ariana Grande Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You.”

The 26-year-old was charged with being a public nuisance by a Singapore court and sentenced to nine days in jail, before being banned from the city-state and deported back to his home country of Australia.

Wen is no stranger to interrupting public events and documenting his stunts online. In August, he charged on stage during a set by The Weeknd in Melbourne. Earlier in 2025, he jumped onto the stage during a Katy Perry concert in Sydney. He has also disrupted sporting events at the FIFA World Cup and the Paris Olympics. In June, Australian news outlet 9News reported that Wen has racked up $20,000 in fees due to these incidents.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/johnson-wen-pyjama-mann-lady-gaga-concert-disguise on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

Answers & Advice

- What Is a Fujoshi? What Is Fujoing Out? The Meaning and History Behind the Manga Community Slang

- 18 Pop Culture Gifts for People Who Love ‘The Traitors,’ ‘Heated Rivalry,’ and More

ANSWERS & ADVICE | DEC 11, 2025, 4:34 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

What Is a Fujoshi, and How Does One "Fujo Out?"

Some history on the Japanese slang for the “rotten girls" of the manga community.

Bell Media

“Fujoshi,” or, as it’s often used in meme lingo, “fujoing out,” is Japanese term that was once used only in the weebiest, most anime-obsessed corners of the internet. But now, “fujoshi” has breached containment and appears to be on track to join the general internet slang lexicon.

You might have seen someone saying they were “fujoing out” over a clip of beloved K-pop group BTS or a meme of, um, Luigi Mangione. Hit shows like Boots and Heated Rivalry have prompted fujoshi claims, as viewers flock to watch episodes weeklyto “fujo out.” Lately, people have been using the term with all the breathless excitement of kids who just unwrapped a new toy.

While the term fujoshi may be relatively fresh to some portions of the English-speaking internet, the term is far from new. There is in fact a long and rich history behind the term “fujoshi,” and even entire academic disciplines devoted to studying the social behaviors of self-identified fujoshi and the media they consume. And though the term might feel fresh to some people, the concept behind “fujoing out” isn’t; after all, there’s a reason the throuples that include two men and one woman have been so coveted in media in recent years (think Elite or Challengers).

If you still have no idea what we’re talking about, fear not! Below, read on for all of the context you need on what it means to “fujo out.”

What is a fujoshi?

“Fujoshi” is a Japanese term that refers to female fans of media focusing on gay male relationships, or Boys’ Love (BL); and yes, fujoshi are into yaoi too, but that’s generally considered the NSFW subset of BL, which can be entirely chaste. In fact, BL in Japan is largely targeted toward young female audiences. According to a 2011 article written by Patrick W. Galbraith in the international feminist academic journal Signs, BL started to take off in the ’90s “when homosexuality became chic in Japanese media, especially media targeting women.”

According to the 2015 BL studies book Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, the term playfully makes use of a Japanese homophone. When spelled like 婦女子 (also pronounced fujoshi), the word means “lady,” “respectable woman,” or “wife,” per the popular wiki Fanlore. By replacing the character 婦 with the character 腐 (both pronounced “fu”), the word then translates roughly to “rotten woman.” The term is believed to have been coined around the year 2000 by users of the messageboard 2Chan, according to Fanlore, with the earliest recorded usage of the term thought to be on this Geocities site from 1999. According to Galbraith, fujoshi are considered “rotten” “because they are attracted to fantasies of sex that is not productive of children.”

Though the term began with derogatory origins, it has since been reclaimed, with many female BL fans both in Japan and around the world self-identifying as fujoshi.

TL;DR Remember Challengers and how Zendaya’s character in that movie basically spends the whole time trying to get her boyfriends to kiss? That’s essentially what a fujoshi is, as many X users have observed.

What does it mean to “fujo out?”

Functionally, it’s a way to turn “fujoshi” into a verb. According to Wiktionary, to “fujo out” means “to delight in or obsess over homosexual relationships between men; to act like a fujoshi.” It’s a relatively recent term, having only been added to Wiktionary in June 2024, per the entry’s edit history. It’s unclear who was the first to use the term “fujo out,” but the term dates back to at least 2023, according to Wiktionary, which cites a November 2023 Reddit thread in which user boot_theory asks the Grey’s Anatomy subreddit, “Do you like meredith when she’s fujoing out?” (The user admitted that they themself liked it.)

Google Trend data suggests an origin point around the same time; searches for the term “fujo out”originally peaked during the week of October 8, 2023. Data from the past 12 months shows that the search term has largely laid dormant since that fateful October — that is, until the beginning of December 2024, when the term seemingly took off on X and TikTok.

Most recently, there’s been an uptick in search for “fujo out,” perhaps tied to the breakout success of Heated Rivalry, a show rumored to have a storyline that began its life as a gay Marvel fanfiction.

What does fujoshi mean in a meme context?

If you’re still on X, the term has likely taken over your feed. In his 2011 academic article, Galbraith wrote that “fujoshi can rearticulate anything into a beautiful boy who can then be placed with other beautiful boys in yaoi relationships,” including “a written description or drawn image, a physical person, or even anthropomorphized animals, plants, and objects.” And in the meme context, people are doing exactly that, using the term in remarkably plastic ways.

In one post on X, user @realmitski (who, to be clear, is not actually the real Mitski) posted a GIF from a theatrical showing of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, captioning it, “fujoing out at the theater.” (Warning: Link is NSFW.)

Another X post includes a screenshot of actor Harry Lloyd, who voiced Viktor in the Netflix animated series Arcane, appearing to comment on a fan animation featuring his character and the character Jayce Talis, a ship commonly abbreviated to “Jayvik.” The quote post reads, “charles dickens your descendent is fujoing out.” (The actor is, indeed, the great-great-great grandson of the legendary author, and one can only imagine him rolling in his grave at everything about this.)

A TikTok features the user @ethannku reading fanfiction for the danmei (the Chinese equivalent of BL) series The Untamed on the popular fanfiction site, Archive of Our Own. The caption? “Nobody in this 150 year old library knows i’m fujoshi-ing out right now.”

A personal fave is this post that reads, “Kamala kind of fujoing out in this gif,” with the GIF in question being one of Joe Biden and Barack Obama hugging while Kamala Harris looks on.

As all of these varied examples demonstrate, in much the same way that fujoshi can turn literally anything into a ship to squeal over, the internet has made it such that absolutely anyone of any gender can “fujo out.” And we think that’s beautiful.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/fujoshi-meaning-fujoing-out-japanese-slang-history on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

ANSWERS & ADVICE | DEC 10, 2025, 1:43 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

18 Pop Culture Gifts for People Who Love The Traitors, Heated Rivalry, and More

Because giving gifts to gay people can be challenging.

I’ll admit it: Giving gifts to gay people is hard. Keeping track of everyone’s special interests, musical tastes, and movie opinions requires either a really good memory or extensive notetaking. I can get my dad a book about World War II, and I can get my mom a really nice sweater, but many of my queer friends only seem to be happy with presents that capture some hyper-specific aspect of their media consumption.

You know the type. There’s one in every friend circle. Maybe they log every film they see on Letterboxd. Or maybe they introduced you to a tiny little band called Um, Jennifer? that they insisted was about to change the world. Maybe they know more names of WNBA players than they do of sitting U.S. senators or maybe they’re a KATSEYE stan who dresses like a My Chemical Romance listener. We are truly such a diverse community who get to be annoying in a thousand different ways.

That’s why Ana Osorno and I rounded up some of our favorite pop culture-inspired gifts for your convenience. Whether your loved one is super into Heated Rivalry right now or they’re counting down the days to the next season of The Traitors, something on this list should do the trick. — Samantha Allen

Stocking Stuffers

Multi Color Foam Baton LED Light Sticks

$16

Walmart

For any ravers who want to recreate the viral video of Pedro Pascal licking a rainbow baton.

Wicked Scissors Sticker 2-Pack by Kate Leth

$7

TopatoCo

This original design by artist Kate Leth is perfect for the Gelphie in your life.

A24 Horror Candle by Joya Studio

$48

Joya Studio

A24 has a candle for every genre, but we think that horror is the gayest.

Totes

Criterion 40th Anniversary Logo Bag

$35

Criterion

If you are friends with a Letterboxd lesbian, you may be entitled to financial compensation. But get your movie-loving pal this tote to keep them at bay for now.

Doechii Denim Tour Tore by Top Dawg Entertainment

$30

Top Dawg Entertainment

The Swamp Princess has incredible merch design across the board but we’re partial to the illustration of coconut featured on this denim bag.

Books

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

$19 $18

Bookshop

Fans of the sapphic Netflix show can go straight to the source.

Nice Girls Don’t Win by Parvati Shallow

$30 $28

Bookshop

If Parvati started a cult, we’d join. Reading her book is the next best thing.

I Wrote This for Attention by Lukas Gage

$30 $28

Bookshop

Lukas Gage literally wrote this book for attention and if we don’t give it to him, he might disappear like Tinkerbell. And that would be a shame for film, television, and literature alike.

Clothes

OH, MARY! Cole Escola Cap

$35

Broadway Merchandise Shop

Nothing says you’re a cultured gay person like a piece of Oh, Mary! merch. And nothing says you’re a new play by Cole Escola like a hat that says, “A new play by Cole Escola.”

Playa Society 2025 Paige Bueckers WNBA Rookie of the Year Hoodie

$90

Playa Society

For your friend who has a pushpin board of every confirmed (and rumored) WNBA romance.

Protect the Dolls Shirt by Conner Ives

£75

Conner Ives

It was the shirt that was everywhere this year. It could be on your loved one.

Heated Rivalry Team Hats

$30

Heated Rivalry

You probably know someone who got suspiciously into hockey right after a certain gay TV show came out.

Pluribus Grenade Tee by Sony Pictures

$25

Sony Pictures

For the one friend who talks about watching shows on Apple TV you’ve never heard of.

Music

The Subway 7” by Chappell Roan

$14

Chappell Roan

Who knows how much that Rapunzel wig cost but the “Subway” vinyl only costs about as much as five trips on the L.

Holiday Chaos “Lara” Box by KATSEYE

$135

KATSEYE

KATSEYE is now one-third openly LGBTQ+. But if your loved one is a stan, you’ll have to covertly find out whether they’re more of a Megan person or a Lara person. Check their phone wallpaper.

Miscellaneous

Harry & David Pies

$60

Harry & David

You and your friends can recreate those viral lesbian pie eating contests at home, where it’s easier to wash off afterward.

Hacks Deborah and Ava Can-Shaped Glass by HBO

$25

HBO

We know they’ve said it won’t happen. But we can dream.

The Traitors Board Game

$23

GameStop

Now all your reality TV-obsessed friend needs is a Scottish brogue.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/pop-culture-gift-ideas-2025-the-hunting-wives-heated-rivalry-chappell-roan on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

Entertainment

- The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Albums of 2026

- The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2026

MUSIC | DEC 11, 2025, 3:28 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Albums of 2026

Next year is shaping up to be yet another banner one for LGBTQ+ musicians, especially trans artists.

© The Squirt Deluxe

I say it a lot on this here website, but we’re in a particularly exciting time for LGBTQ+ musicianship right now across genres, and I’ve been scouring the internet for queer and trans music since I was a teenager, long before it was my job. 2025 was a notably great year for queer and trans music, which is worth noting at a time when LGBTQ+ cultural production is being significantly symied in other areas of the arts. The pickings are so ripe right now that I had enormous difficulty paring this list down to just 10 releases for next year — and that doesn't even count the buzzy projects I’ve been tracking that haven’t been publicly announced yet. Without further ado, here are the top 10 albums that I’m excited to listen to in 2026. — James Factora

Running With Scissors by Cavetown - January 16

Cavetown’s forthcoming album, his sixth, marks a significant departure from anything he’s released before. The singer-songwriter has come a long way from the twee ukulele ballads that launched him to virality on the transmasc internet of the 2010s. The album’s singles thus far showcase sophisticated production and songwriting, with nods to hyperpop (one to-be-released track boasts a co-production credit from Underscores, who headlined Night Out, the music festival Them co-hosts with Pitchfork in June). And yet, the songs never feel too derivative or like the musician is trying too hard to distance himself from his prior sound — instead, it’s a natural, and rather exciting, evolution.

Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? by The Soft Pink Truth - January 30

The Soft Pink Truth is a side project from Drew Daniels of the acclaimed experimental electronic duo Matmos. Daniels has been releasing music as The Soft Pink Truth since 2014, with the title of each project asking a different existential question (prior titles include Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? and Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This?) The musician’s latest is an unflinching reflection of our times, asking more specifically, “What kind of solace can music offer in the face of the rising tides of fascism, authoritarianism, cruelty and genocide?” per the album’s liner notes on Bandcamp. Lead single “Time Inside the Violet” begins delicately and impressionistically before exploding into chaos — much like time itself.

Laughter in Summer by Beverly and Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland - February 6

This album from the Black trans music legend and his wife/creative partner serves as a chronicling of their epic love story, as well as a correction to a record that has all too often erased Elizabeth’s contributions to Glenn’s artistic legacy. The album bio alone is enough to bring one to tears, let alone the two singles that have been released thus far (one of which I named as one of the best LGBTQ+ songs of 2025). In general, I think we are so fortunate to be alive at the same time as the Glenn-Copelands, especially at a time when they can actualize their long-standing artistic/musical visions in the way they’ve always wanted.

URGH by Mandy, Indiana - February 6

“Magazine” is an incredibly bold choice for a lead single — and that’s a good thing. In a press release, vocalist Val Caulfield called the song “the expression of the frustration and deep-seated violence I felt while attempting to recover from being raped” and a “primal, screaming call for retribution.” Even though the song is in French, that rage is crystal clear in every single second of the face-melting, industrial track. Caulfield has previously spoken in an interview about how the band’s harsh sound and lyrics are a reflection on her condition “as a queer woman of color,” a demographic which is all too often asked to hew to respectability. It’s refreshing and cathartic to hear music that spits in the face of that expectation so boldly; and even from a strictly sonic perspective, the songs, and Caulfield’s vocal delivery, are excellent in their viscerality.

The Refrigerator by Remember Sports - February 13

This will mark Remember Sports’ first full-length album in nearly five years, since the release of 2021’s Like a Stone. The album, according to a press release from the band’s new label Get Better Records, was written while frontperson Carmen Perry was working as a teacher during the pandemic, with Perry describing it as a “Saturn return record.” The lead singles thus far certainly seem to indicate that the band has grown a lot in terms of their sound — while Perry’s infectiously pop-punk songwriting chops are still front and center, there’s also much more sonic nuance. That’s likely attributable to the fact that this is the first album they’ve produced entirely themselves — the press release also promises bagpipes (!).

No Lube So Rude by Peaches - February 13

It seems only natural that with the return of indie sleaze comes the return of Peaches, one of the progenitors of the subculture on which the aesthetic movement is based. She may not have released an album since 2015’s Rub, but the lead single, “Fuck Your Face,” sounds like she was never gone. As you can probably tell from the title, it’s characteristically raunchy as hell, with the opening lyrics “I’m a horny lil fucker / And I’ll put you in a squeeze.” But the production is cutting-edge — I can’t wait to hear this one at the club, nor can I wait for the rest of the album.

Everywhere Isn’t Texas by August Ponthier - February 13

August Ponthier has been releasing music since 2021, and their long-awaited debut album is almost here. Lead single “Handsome” is a total earworm, evoking the sounds of classic country-pop (pedal steel and everything) while waxing lyrical about the classic dysphoric dilemma of not knowing if you want to be with someone or be them. I’ve always felt as though country and folk are some most poignant soundscapes for conveying sadness/yearning, and Ponthier feels part of a long lineage of queer and trans artists using the genre for just that. When I profiled the musician in October (which also served as their public coming out), Ponthier credited their music career with giving them the courage to explore their gender, which makes me all the more excited to hear how that will manifest on their debut LP.

Man Bites Dog by Femtanyl - February 13

Digital hardcore artist Femtanyl has enjoyed a cult following online for years, and the project will finally be releasing its debut album in February. The alias refers to the duo of Toronto-based musicians noelle S and juno C, who released their debut CHASER EP in 2023, followed by 2024's REACTOR EP. The latter notably includes a feature from Danny Brown, with whom Femtanyl is currently touring alongside Underscores. Lead single “BODY THE PISTOL” is a brief but face-melting track, one that seems engineered for a room of trans people to scream along to the chorus while pummeling each other in a mosh pit.

Dreamers in Exile by Voxtrot - February 27

Speaking of the return of indie icons from the blog era, Voxtrot is back with its second-ever album, after dropping their self-titled debut in 2007. The first single, “Fighting Back,” feels like a much more grown-up iteration of the jangly, catchy-as-hell indie pop the band became known for in the aughts. (I can already tell that the chorus is going to be stuck in my head for the next 48 hours.) Notably, this will also mark the band’s first music since frontperson Ramesh Srivastava came out as gay in 2020; as mentioned above, that’s typically a shift that marks a new degree of honesty for songwriters, even if only artistically rather than lyrically. This single seems to evince that, and I look forward to hearing more of that in this new era of Voxtrot.

IS THERE ANYBODY HOME PT. 1 by rum.gold - March 27

Singer-songwriter rum.gold released the latter half of his album IS THERE ANYBODY HOME on November 7, consisting of five tracks. The first half of the album is set to arrive in March, and though there are no singles from that part of the album yet, we do have two gorgeous music videos from disc two. Disc two is a series of pensive breakup songs that infuse R&B with an indie sensibility, anchored by rum.gold’s utterly gorgeous, heartbreaking falsetto, so I’m looking forward to how disc one leads into that. Yes, the disc two/disc one situation is a little confusing considering that disc two arrived first, but it indicates a real intentionality in album sequencing, which I deeply appreciate. The release schedule also feels, perhaps, like a nod to the notion that healing is not linear.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/anticipated-albums-2026-peaches-cavetown-beverly-glenn-copeland on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

BOOKS | DEC 8, 2025, 4:01 PM EST | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2026

The books we can't wait to read next year, from heartfelt memoirs to trans alien romantasy.

It’s never too early to start thinking about next year’s TBR list, and it’s certainly never too early to pre-order your soon-to-be-fave (or request that your library purchase it!). Let’s face it, even when things feel pretty dire, there’s nothing quite like a good book to help ground you in your body while simultaneously sending your imagination on an adventure.

There are, of course, far more LGBTQ+ books coming out next year than the ten listed here — and thank goodness for that! I won't lie, it took me a long time to figure out which reads I simply couldn’t leave off this short list. So consider this a jumping off point, and check back here at Them regularly over the coming year to see what else we’re excited about, too.

No God but Us by Bobuq Sayed — May 26

No God But Us by Bobuq Sayed

$30 $28

Bookshop

In writer and performer Sayed’s debut novel, Delbar, a gay Afghan man who has been nursing drag queen dreams, runs away to Istanbul after being outed to his community in the Washington, DC, suburbs. In Turkey, Delbar meets Mansur, a refugee trying to stay safe and out of trouble in the shadow of his boyfriend, Leif. While attending the Istanbul Pride march, a crackdown from the riot police brings Delbar and Mansur together in a new way as they each must decide not only how to survive but how, and whether, they might be able to thrive. Politics and pleasure? Yes, please.

Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One by Violet Allen — May 19

Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One by Violet Allen

$20 $19

Bookshop

Are you a fan of romantasy? Do you like it when things get weird? Well, buckle in, cuties, because Violet Allen — whose work has been published frequently in the science fiction and fantasy giant Lightspeed — has got you covered. In this genre-bending, dimension-spanning first book in the series, Arcasia, a trans girl (and intergalactic moth-goddess, because some people are overachievers), is in a long-distance relationship with Opus Zhao, a trans guy (who also pilots a tiger-robot [see above]). Like, really long distance. Like, he’s been in a different universe for years. But now he’s back, and Arcasia is determined to figure out how to keep him here.

Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell — April 21

Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell

$28 $27

Bookshop

I loved Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, Patrick Cottrell’s first novel, and so I was delighted to learn that he’s written… well, not a sequel, exactly, but not not a sequel? In the new book, narrator Dan Moran has come out as trans and published a novel (also called Sorry to Disrupt the Peace) following the death of his brother by suicide. When he receives a letter with a photo of his dead brother in it, he feels compelled to return home to his estranged family and to attempt some detective work to find out more about his deceased brother. Is it coincidental that he’s working on his next book, a psychological thriller, when he decides to do this? Methinks not. Sure to be equal parts funny and upsetting, a new Cottrell novel is a reason to celebrate.

The Double Dutch Fuss: A Memoir by Phill Branch — June 2

The Double Dutch Fuss: A Memoir by Phill Branch

$30 $28

Bookshop

Director and storyteller Phill Branch grew up with the kind of father everyone seemed to love but for whom he was never good enough. Branch wasn’t like the other Black boys, and his father knew it and punished him accordingly. In this lyrical memoir, Branch explores the patriarchal masculinity and expectations he found placed upon him first as a boy and later as a man, and how these shaped his own understanding of the world, of himself, and of those he came to love and lust for as a queer man. From his New Jersey childhood to his adulthood in Hollywood, Branch explores both the blatantly rigid and the unspoken yet still onerous ideas of manhood he grew up with and how, by choosing his own path while also striving for forgiveness, he learned to free himself from them.

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn — June 23

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn

$29 $28

Bookshop

Susan didn’t even know who Eliza was until fate threw them together one night in high school when they both ended up at a concert for the hip indie band ?? (pronounced “What-What,” obviously). But the magnetic pull between them is undeniable. Susan doesn’t really know she’s gay yet, but that same night, someone else recognizes her queerness, allowing her to begin admitting it to herself. Years pass, as they do, and Susan seems to be living the dream: she’s left Long Island, works for a music label in Brooklyn, and has become friends with ??’s lead singer. But over the years, she keeps seeing Eliza — both in fantasy and in reality — and, well… let’s just say that when dreams come true, things can get very complicated very quickly. This subversive romance-ish is as much about friendship, self-knowledge, and coming of age as it is about young love. (Fellow millennials: you will also absolutely eat up the nostalgia factor in this one.)

Missing Sam by Thrity Umrigar — January 27

Missing Sam by Thrity Umrigar

$29 $28

Bookshop

Every married couple has arguments once in a while, and it’s no different for Aliya and Sam, two women who have an explosive fight after a party one night. In the morning, Sam goes on a run — and doesn’t return. When Aliya reports her wife missing, she’s struck at once by the suspicion she’s under. In a way, she’s not surprised; after all, she’s brown, she’s queer, and she’s the daughter of Muslim immigrants, three strikes against her presumed innocence in contemporary America. In her fear over Sam’s disappearance and her anger over the treatment she’s receiving, Aliya keeps making the wrong choices, at least according to the judgmental public. If you’re looking for a twisty queer thriller to cozy up with this winter, snatch this one up.

My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond by Hugh Ryan — May 26

My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond by Hugh Ryan

$30 $28

Bookshop

Historian Hugh Ryan is back, baby! The author of When Brooklyn Was Queer and The Women’s House of Detention is now writing about the 1990s: think globalization, the dot com boom, and AOL chatrooms. The rise of the internet affected queer life, activism, and visibility. That visibility was a double-edged sword — on one hand, it gave so many queer people a window into possibility, and on the other hand, it gave rise to backlash. Blending his excellent historical writing with personal experience, Ryan’s newest is a delicious, complex look at the decade we love to idealize.

Jackson Alone by Jose Ando translated by Kalau Almony — January 6

Jackson Alone by Jose Ando (Translated by Kalau Almony)

$29 $27

Bookshop

When a violent porno begins making the rounds at the offices of Athletius Japan, everyone thinks the Black Japanese man in it looks an awful lot like Jackson the massage therapist. When Jackson meets three other gay mixed-race men, he learns that he’s not the only one who’s showing up in videos like that. But who’s behind them, and why? Jackson and his new friends decide to get to the bottom of it and, taking advantage of the fact that no one around them seems able to tell one Black guy from another, decide to switch identities and wreak havoc on those who’ve mistreated them. By turns funny, tender, and righteously angry, Ando’s English debut is a perfect speedy read.

In Her Spotlight by Amy Spalding — February 24

In Her Spotlight by Amy Spalding

$19 $18

Bookshop

The conclusion to Amy Spalding’s Out In Hollywood series, In Her Spotlight is (like all the others!) also a standalone that doesn’t require you to have read any of the other books (...although if you haven’t, you’ll probably want to, and ASAP). This time, Hollywood goes to the theater with actress Tess Gardner who might be successful in the superhero franchise, but who yearns to do more actorly acting. She lands the perfect role, but when the director turns out to be her ex — specifically, the ex whose heart she broke years ago — things begin to get tricky. After all, you can’t be a superhero raking in the millions and be gay (just think of how few A-listers are out even now), so Tess is still extremely closeted. With the heat turning up between her and her ex, though, will Tess figure out how to be the superhero of her own life?

Night Night Fawn by Jordy Rosenberg

Night Night Fawn by Jordy Rosenberg

$29 $28

Bookshop

I’ve been dying to read another novel by Jordy Rosenberg since Confessions of the Fox, and I’m so excited for his newest, which promises to be unhinged in the most complimentary way possible. Written in the voice of an elderly Jewish woman high as a kite on opiates and nearing death, Night Night Fawn tells the story of her life, which is to say, it’s an extremely unreliable narrative full of her most bizarre thoughts, tales, and memories. But amid her ranting, she keeps returning to two people who disappointed her deeply: her trans son and a best friend from long ago. As her thoughts, writing, and life spiral out of her control amid illness and delirium, she might just find herself in the presence of those two beloveds yet again, but whether the encounter will be healing, horrendous, or something else entirely is anyone’s guess.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.them.us/story/most-anticipated-books-2026-bobuq-sayed-jordy-rosenberg-hugh-ryan on Dec 15, 2025 at 11:20 AM EST.

Table of Contents

Them.: 2025 Dec 12

Culture

Gay Voice: The First Way Gay Men Were Taught to Self-Police

Derek Chadwick Is More Than Just A Hunk

Best Them Headlines of 2025, Ranked

Why Are Gays So Mean to Each Other Online?

News

Did Nancy Mace Just Blame Trans People for Her Airport Meltdown?

New Hampshire Republicans Want to Keep Trans People Out of Restrooms in Private Businesses

Yes, Kyrsten Sinema Is Carrying AI-Contaminated Water for Trump

What Happens When Sex Education Erases Trans People

Britain Just Announced It Would Be the 3rd Country to Allow Same-Sex Ice Dance Teams

Cis Students Were Suspended for Calling Trans Kid a "Girl Boy." Now Trump's DOJ Is Defending Them

Lesbians and Femboys Topped Pornhub 2025 Searches and Views

Florida Is Suing the Medical Establishment Over Trans Youth, Cites Debunked Study

The Troll That Crashed the 'Wicked' Premiere Tried to Sneak Into a Lady Gaga Concert

Answers & Advice

What Is a Fujoshi? What Is Fujoing Out? The Meaning and History Behind the Manga Community Slang

18 Pop Culture Gifts for People Who Love ‘The Traitors,’ ‘Heated Rivalry,’ and More

Entertainment

The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Albums of 2026

The 10 Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2026