All right, folks, we are officially entering into the first weekend of Pride Month. Shake off any weird Pride-themed HR announcements from the week and let the real celebrations begin. But first, don’t miss out our roundup of five queer and trans stories that are need-to-know.
1. Kim Cattrall announced that she’ll appear on Season 2 of And Just Like That …
2. Mike Pence got pissed about the L.A. Dodgers inviting drag queens to Pride
3. A new report reveals decades of homophobia in the U.K. armed forces
4. Support for queer rights at all-time high
5. Mel B said the Spice Girls wouldn’t have been possible without the LGBTQ2S+ community
1. Kim Cattrall announced that she’ll appear on Season 2 of And Just Like That …
Kim Cattrall will be making an epically unexpected and genuinely shocking return to the Sex and the City universe, and folks, she did it for the queers. (Well, and probably for a massive payout, but both can be true). On Wednesday, Variety announced that Cattrall, who played Samantha Jones on the hit Y2K show, will make a cameo appearance in the second season of its love-to-hate-it reboot, And Just Like That … This was massively surprising, given Cattrall is famously rumoured to be in a years-long feud with co-star Sarah Jessica Parker, and did not appear on And Just Like That … Season 1.
But readers—to return to ourselves for a moment—when Cattrall posted the announcement on her Instagram page, she captioned it “Happy Pride.” So, I think we know who the real closers of this deal are. Cattrall reportedly already filmed her scene, without speaking to or appearing on set with the other cast members or the show runners. Which, honestly, is kind of iconic.
And, to top it all off, Cattrall’s new Netflix show, Glamorous, which follows a young gender nonconforming person, will premiere later this month.
2. Mike Pence got pissed about the L.A. Dodgers inviting drag queens to Pride
This has not been a good week for queer baseball fans. To add insult to Anthony Bass’s injury, former vice president Mike Pence took to Twitter on Wednesday to voice his anger at the L.A. Dodgers for reinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—a drag activist group that uses religious imagery to satirize sex, gender and morality–to the team’s Pride Night.
Pence called the Sisters a “hateful group that blatantly mocks Catholicism” and called their upcoming appearance at the game “deeply offensive.” He even went so far as to call them “anti-Catholic bigots.”
Luckily, the Sisters seem unfazed. After initially being invited to the L.A. Dodgers game to receive the Community Hero Award, they were briefly uninvited by the team, which was bowing to conservative opposition to their presence. However, the Sisters snagged their invite back and posted on their site that they accepted the explanation and apology given by the team. “May the beer and hot dogs flow forth in tasty abundance,” they wrote. Amen!
3. A new report reveals decades of homophobia in the U.K. armed forces
To the surprise of absolutely no one, it turns out homophobia is alive and well in the army. Yesterday, the Advocate reported that an upcoming report on the U.K armed forces, commissioned by former prime minister Boris Johnson, will show exactly that. The report covers the years 1967 through 2000, when the ban on LGBTQ2S+ people serving in the army was lifted.
Using anonymous submissions from over 1,000 individuals who served during that time frame, the report paints a picture of deeply entrenched anti-queer culture. At its worst, that culture led to incidents of blackmail, sexual assault and “treatments” like drugs and electroshock therapy that were administered in an attempt to “cure” queer service members.
The accounts “paint a vivid picture of overt homophobia at all levels of the armed forces … and of the bullying that inevitably reflected it,” said Terence Etherton, the member of the House of Lords who led the investigation. He said that many queer service people were left “severely traumatized.”
4. Support for queer rights at all-time high
Okay, okay, time for some good news, cause it’s Pride Month now, goddamn it! You wouldn’t know it by the state of anti-trans legislation, but apparently support for equal rights for LGBTQ2S+ people in America is at an all-time high, according to this year’s iteration of GLAAD’s Accelerating Acceptance survey.
The study, which came out on Thursday and is based on data collected in February, found that 84 percent of respondents endorsed equal rights for queer people. It’s the highest that number has been since GLAAD introduced the survey in 2015, and it’s up three percentage points from 2022.
Unfortunately, there were some less exciting stats in the report as well (you knew it was coming). Sixty-six percent of respondents believed, falsely, that the queer community is a homogenous group with one set of needs and interests, and 54 percent believed that those using them/they pronouns are “in the process of figuring out who they are.”
5. Mel B said the Spice Girls wouldn’t have been possible without the LGBTQ2S+ community
That’s right—not only can we take credit for Kim Cattrall’s cameo in And Just Like That … , but this week we found out we can also take credit for the Spice Girls. No wonder we block off a whole month to celebrate us!
Mel B—aka Scary Spice—is currently a guest judge on drag singing competition, Queen of the Universe, and it has her reflecting on her formed band’s relationship with the queer community. “I think it’s been everything and they’ve been there for us from the very, very start,” she told Metro. “Without them, it wouldn’t have really happened, I don’t think.
“And you can’t get better than the gays and the drag scene embracing you, and we’ve been embraced by both since the start of our career,” she added, sayingthat the Spice Girls were definitely “influenced” by queer aesthetics. Oh, and, a friendly reminder that the Spice Girls were more than just aesthetically queer. Happy Pride, indeed!
🌈Bonus good news (because we need it)🌈
Great news for fans of cannibalistic teen lesbians—Yellowjackets is getting a bonus episode! Maybe it’ll answer some of the questions the finale left us with … 👀
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