901: Tradwife Pipe-Nine

Thank you so much for hanging out with us for 9 seasons! Join our Patreon to unlock 25+ full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more. You can also support the show by gearing up for fall at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that thinks, “It’s not the time” to be glorifying traditional heteronormative values. This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) are back from summer break and more unfiltered than ever!  We have not even been away that long and in the meantime a really insidious conservative “family values” vibe has begun to spread through the queer community. Prominent queer celebs (cough Fletcher and JoJo Siwa) who built their brands on the backs of a predominantly queer audience are “reverse” coming-out publically as dating cishet men while our rights are crumbling all around us. It’s giving ‘I’m one of the good gays’ and we are really not here for it at this time in our political landscape. Keep in mind, we recorded this episode before the Betty Who debacle and we didn’t even need that to fill an hour-long podcast on the ‘tradwife’ of it all.  Now before you get out your pitchforks, we have ZERO issues with bisexuals. Our world of algorithms and click bait isn’t really keen on nuance and this issue requires it in spades. We are not denying that biphobia exists in the lesbian community and that lesbians need to do better; AND it is also true that queerness is about more than just who you’re dating. Like it or not, there is a political and cultural component to queerness and you cannot just opt out and expect to not piss off your fanbase. There is nothing wrong with being a queer woman and dating a cishet man, that in itself does not make you less queer. However, there is something deeply jarring about the sharp pivot from Fletcher straddling women on stage in leather pants for years to Fletcher making the very calculated decision to release “Boy” (the 2025 ‘trad’ equivalent of “I Kissed A Girl”) as the single for her album during one of the most politically fraught Pride months in recent history. When highly visible queer women like Fletcher and JoJo Siwa are behaving more “trad” than the Mormon wives on TikTok (you know the ones) at the exact same time that the Supreme Court is about to potentially rip away our right to get married, there’s a serious problem. Between the decline of political queerness, the rise of traditional gender roles (where did all the “bi wife energy” kings go?), and whatever the hell is going on with all these butter-churning performatively queer “pick-me gays” taking influencer jobs away from hard-working cottagecore dykes, the overall vibe is a mess™ right now. We don’t love that the world appears to be burning down around us; but, hey, at least we have each other. Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @[email protected]. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices