Lez Hang Out | A Lesbian Podcast

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! Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that needs everyone to drop what they’re doing and watch Heated Rivalry right now. This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out and talk about the worldwide phenomenon that is Heated Rivalry. Whether or not you’ve actually watched a single episode of the show or read the book the series is based on, you’ve definitely heard of these gay hockey boys. Queer shows so rarely make it into the mainstream, and Heated Rivalry has managed to do so in a big way. So big in fact that the lead actors, Hudson Williams (Shane) and Connor Storrie (Ilya) were chosen as official torchbearers for the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony! Even NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani has openly promoted the book series, encouraging New Yorkers to stay home and read the romance during the recent major snowstorm. While we wish lesbians could have our own Heated Rivalry moment, we have to admit that we’re really loving the show and what it is doing for queer representation, especially in the realm of men’s professional sports.  We can’t talk about Heated Rivalry without talking about the shadow of homophobia that persists for male athletes, causing most to wait until their professional careers have ended to come out of the closet, if they come out at all. The NHL is actually the only men’s pro-league that still has never had a player (current or retired) come out as gay. So, this story centering on gay male hockey players is a really important push for representation in a sport that remains heavily steeped in a culture of homophobia and toxic masculinity. While one viral series isn’t going to immediately change that culture, it is impossible to overstate the impact that its massive popularity is having on the sports world. Conservative sports podcaster bros are having to watch the show to discuss it with their listeners, because it has become too huge for even them to ignore. Closeted athletes are being inspired to come out publically following the success of the series, including hockey player Jesse Kortuem who was personally thanked for his bravery by none other than Hudson Williams (Shane) himself. We’re amazed seeing all the positive impacts that a series with only 6 episodes has already made in the queer community and beyond and truly cannot wait to see where Season 2 takes us.  Don’t forget to show your support for our tiny independent team by shopping small at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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! Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that fully supports you U-Hauling with your girlfriend of two weeks.  This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out and talk about the lesbian divorce rate discourse. If you spend any time on Reneé Rapp’s internet you likely have seen some variation of this so-called “fact” going around about married lesbian couples having a 70% divorce rate. You may even have taken this fact at face-value. We’re not statisticians and we won’t say we did all that much deep research for this episode, but the claim is absolutely a myth. And it very much misrepresents the findings of that study. The world of statistics is a mess and it’s challenging to get a clear analysis of lesbian divorce rates when women have only been legally allowed to marry each other in this country for like a decade. It’s only natural that it will take time for marriage and divorce rates to stabilize, especially with LGBTQ+ rights in constant flux. With all this confusing back-and-forth, we wanted to take some time to look into some of these studies and give our two cents on what the reasons may be for lesbian couples having a higher divorce rate (if true).  Through our super professional research we discovered a few factors that might be at play. First off, lesbian couples get married at higher rates than gay male couples and tend to be more monogamous. That coupled with the fact that women of all sexualities are more likely to initiate divorce than men leads us to believe this statistic is likely true. Next, time moves differently for queer couples. We have to consider things that straight couples simply never have to worry about, like whether we’ll legally be allowed to get married if we choose to wait. This can lead to lesbians jumping into marriages faster and discovering incompatibility afterward. We also are shown to be less likely to “stay for the kids”, probably because queer women are more inclined to co-parent equally after a divorce. However, we can’t completely ignore the flaws in the existing studies. Many include queer women who have divorced men in the past or include such a disproportionate sample size of queer couples to straight couples that it invalidates the results. While there are obvious issues with the way the research has largely been approached (mainly because the straights do not understand how we operate), we will concede that everything seems to be pointing to it being true that lesbians divorce at a higher rate than both heterosexual and gay male couples. However, we also choose to believe the studies that show that lesbian couples have higher rates of satisfaction in our marriages and lower rates of cheating than other couples. Plus, lesbians who do U-Haul prior to getting married have lower rates of divorce. So really, we’re still the best and the straights can just keep crying about it.  Don’t forget to show your support for our tiny independent team by shopping small at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 shopping small at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that really hopes 2026 is “the year that it happens”.  This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out and talk about highlights and lowlights from 2025 as we look ahead to our hopes and dreams for 2026. As far as queer media, it has been a year for the gay boys. From Will’s coming out on Stranger Things to the widespread success of Heated Rivalry, the gay boys are thriving on our screens. Sadly, lesbians have not been quite so lucky. Our biggest rep this year was probably Hunting Wives and we’re not really sure how to feel about that.  On a personal level, Leigh spent 2025 picking up hobbies like camping now that the girls are old enough, tennis, and crochet. Ellie has had a whirlwind year of travel, working on her upcoming EP with Leigh, and getting engaged. As we look ahead into 2026, we have a few dreams. Firstly, we want the lesbian version of Heated Rivalry. How is it 2026 and we still don’t have a modern Imagine Me & You? On a more personal level, we’re working to find more ways to foster queer community with in-person events and starting to think about our next musical venture. Overall, we really just are focused on finding little pockets of joy in between the constant state of horrors that we are all currently living through.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 shopping small at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that actually got Leigh to watch an entire season of a show the same year it was released! This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to discuss one of the most talked-about new shows of 2025, Netflix’s The Hunting Wives. This queer-baity murder-mystery novel turned actually-queer TV series, starring Malin Akerman (Margo) and Brittany Snow (Sophie), has completely taken over the gay internet. Whether you’ve seen a single episode of The Hunting Wives or not, you’ve 100% seen gifs of Margo and Sophie that are decidedly not safe for work. We had so many people reach out to us about this show that we simply could not leave 2025 behind without first talking about the Sophie and Margo of it all.  We don’t have wildly different opinions on shows all that often, but this one had Ellie absolutely obsessed and Leigh feeling deeply uncomfortable 80% of the time (although she still plans to watch the next season!). In Leigh’s defense, the characters are all largely unlikeable hot messes and there are way too many creepy, gross men for any one show. Sophie is an alcoholic that could not make a good decision if her life depended on it and Margo is a predatory sex-addict– oh, and did we mention these wives basically all end up being murderers? Bonkers plot aside, the chemistry between Malin Akerman and absolutely anyone on screen with her at any given time is off the charts. Even if you can’t buy into Margo’s performative sexuality, there is no denying the chemistry between her and Brittany Snow. In season 2 we’re hoping for a lot less of having to watch Margo sleep with high school boys and a lot more of Sophie taking ownership of her choices (and choosing to make gayer ones). Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Lez Hang Out is brought to you by Wet For Her.  Can’t get enough Lez Hang Out? Join our Patreon family to unlock 27 full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! You can also support our little podcast team by shopping small at bit.ly/lezmerch. We have cozy gifts for everyone on your list and free shipping on orders $100 or more.  Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that still would not sleep with a man even to avoid the outrageously high cost of IVF.  This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to talk about 2025’s The Wedding Banquet, for this Lez-ssentials episode, a recurring segment on the essential movies and TV shows in the lesbian canon. We both thought this movie was going to be a lighthearted comedy, but after sobbing on a plane Ellie would beg to differ.  The Wedding Banquet stars Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, and Kelly Marie Tran in what is technically a remake of a film from 1993 (which we have not seen). The story is a bit out-there, but the characters resonate all the same. If you haven’t seen it, the basic plot is this: a gay man and his lesbian bestie decide to help each other out by getting married in exchange for a green card for him and free IVF for her. Honestly with how expensive IVF is (and the general state of immigration), we 1000% get it. There may be nothing more quintessentially 2025 than the gays teaming up to defraud the government and get free healthcare. From the intergenerational trauma and classic mommy-issues to the chosen family and ‘be gay, do crime’ of it all, we think The Wedding Banquet is a must-watch. At the end of the episode, stick around to hear our original song based on The Wedding Banquet, titled “Pieces”, written by Leigh Holmes Foster and produced by Ellie Brigida. This and all of our original “Lez-ssential” songs are available for purchase on Bandcamp.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 getting a head start on holiday shopping at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is moving on up! This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Marita Prodger (@maritaprodger) who you may recognize as one of the stars of Season 2 of Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Queer Love. This episode is full of feels (three Pisces in one podcast makes for quite the fluid conversation), lesbian math, and musical manifestation. Quick disclaimer that we recorded this prior to the announcement that The Ultimatum: Queer Love has been cancelled, so please keep that in mind while listening.  Marita began her Ultimatum journey when she was just 24 years old, and now at 27 she credits her experiences on the show with helping her to grow, create an incredible community, and rediscover her self-worth. Although she did not come away from the show with “her person”, she walked away with a renewed sense of self-love and the understanding that she didn’t need to beg someone to love her. The right person would just do it naturally. Ending up with Britney as a trial marriage partner may not have been what either of them planned for, but it turned out to be the best thing for Marita to see her own energy reflected back like a mirror.  It’s easy to end up in a relationship that feels comfortable enough to stay, but still isn’t quite right for you. We may see going on the Ultimatum as a really drastic measure for fixing a relationship, but sometimes it takes blowing everything up to see what remains. Seeing how simple it was for Britney to show up and consider her in the small day-to-day moments was a huge eye-opener and helped to break Marita out of a cycle that without the show, she may still have been trapped in today.  You can find Marita on all the socials at @maritaprodger. Follow for information on how you can join her in the Canary Islands in January and for the chance to hear new music as she releases it.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 getting a head start on holiday shopping at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is not afraid to admit to being afraid of death. This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Elizabeth Earley (@therealelizabethearley), author and host of the popular Substack series (and podcast), Queering Reality, and the author of two novels: A Map of Everything and Like Wings, Your Hands. Her new nonfiction essay collection, Little Deaths All in a Row: Essays on Sex and Death, was released in September. We chat with Elizabeth about some super casual, lighthearted topics like the link between the female orgasm and the moment of birth or death, the age-old question of what happens after we die, how birth and death open channels to freely give and receive love, and the philosophical debate over whether humans can ever experience true reality.  Elizabeth wrote Little Deaths All in a Row in the aftermath of a near-fatal motorcycle accident that sent her mind into a panicked state while her body was in the literal process of dying. Although she survived this brush with death, Elizabeth was determined to examine her fear and attempt to overcome it so that the next time she met death, she’d be able to pass on gracefully. She explains that while she did not have a “near death experience” of the other side like some people do in terrible accidents, she does believe state of mind during the moment of death has an impact on what comes after. In order to get more intimate with death, Elizabeth began doing energy healing work on hospice patients. She expected to heal her fear of dying, but instead healed something she had not realized she was afraid of; a fear of love (she still fears death as does every human whether they want to admit it or not).  Pick up a copy of Elizabeth’s essay collection, Little Deaths All in a Row from Jaded Ibis Press [x] for more musings on the nature of reality, love, philosophy, sex, mortality, and what, if anything, comes after death.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 grabbing a cozy fall sweater at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is investing in a VHS player for no particular reason.  This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Daviel Shy (@solsticetits), a multi-disciplinary artist who wrote and directed over a dozen short films, runs and curates L.M.N.O.P (Lesbian Movie Night Ongoing Project), and co-founded DAYLiGHT FiLMs, a kinky, queer, analogue pivot into the adult entertainment industry. We talk in-depth about Daviel’s new series The Lovers, a 7-episode series available on Prime Video, that she brought to life during the pandemic lockdowns.  The Lovers follows the story of a laid off sex-worker who falls for a fitness witch in 2020’s L.A. When asked her elevator pitch for the series, Daviel explained that it’s basically a kinkier, gayer Skins and after watching it, we fully agree with that description. Prior to creating The Lovers, Daviel had a lot of experience with writing, directing and producing, but with the barriers of the lockdowns, she decided to also star in the series, a first that helped her realize she actually wanted to do what her character was doing. Through the assistance of the kink community in L.A., Daviel was able not only to create her series, but to connect with the network she would need to break into the adult entertainment industry and co-found DAYLiGHT FiLMs.  You can stream The Lovers on Amazon Prime Video or Vimeo On Demand.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 grabbing a cozy Halloween sweater at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants you to elect more lesbians! This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Janelle Perez (@janelleperezfl), the Executive Director of LPAC (@teamlpac), the only organization in the U.S. dedicated entirely to electing LGBTQ+ women and non-binary leaders. LPAC is a nonpartisan organization born out of the realization that the majority of the financial contributions made to LGBTQ+ organizations were disproportionately going to cis white men. A group of lesbians recognized this disparity and decided to try to increase equity in politics by electing a more representative government. When LPAC was founded in 2012, there was only one queer woman running for office. Just 12 years later, in 2024 there were over 200 queer women and non-binary candidates. And not only are more candidates running, but more are winning too! LPAC had an impressive 74% win-rate in 2024.  Janelle explains what it takes to become an LPAC endorsed-candidate (main answer: BE GAY!), why queer women statistically win more candidacy races than gay men do, and how a life-altering cancer diagnosis brought her parents from homophobic to “we want you to have your wedding on our front lawn” in record-time. Although she is now 10-years cancer free, Janelle’s coming out journey, decision to run for State Senate in FL, and involvement with LPAC are all interwoven with her diagnosis. At 28 years old, Janelle was diagnosed with 2 types of terminal cancer. This could’ve easily derailed her life, but instead it was the catalyst that brought her family together and gave her the itch to get involved in local politics. Janelle shares that queer women typically run for office for mission-driven reasons rather than a desire for power. She herself ran on the basis of expanding access to healthcare for people in her home state after receiving an egregiously large bill for a cancer treatment. After her experience running for office, she pivoted to the organization that had backed her candidacy, LPAC, eventually stepping into the role of Executive Director. We talk a lot about gay audacity on this podcast, and Janelle and LPAC have it in spades. If Janelle’s story inspires you and you would like to learn what it takes to run for office in your district, be sure to reach out to LPAC for all the resources you could ever possibly need to get started. Learn more about LPAC: https://www.teamlpac.com Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 grabbing a cozy fall sweater at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is issuing an ultimatum to all of you– listen to this episode or seriously miss out. This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with award-winning author, global keynote speaker, and host of I Feel That Way Too, Michelle MiJung Kim (@michellekimkim) for an in-depth breakdown of Season 2 of everyone’s favorite messy reality tv show, The Ultimatum: Queer Love.  When Michelle told us she wanted to talk about The Ultimatum, we were immediately on board. We love mess just as much as the next gays; and season 2 really went off the rails in ways that were at best hilarious and at worst downright unsettling (like, we hope Netflix paid for their therapy unsettling). This extreme level of messiness adds an authenticity to the cast that actually feels like a move in the right direction for queer representation. They’re not the usual sanitized “love-is-love” mainstream gays. Instead the cast are real queer people, appearing as they are, un-healed trauma, complicated families and all. And we think their bravery deserves a lot of credit. Now if we could just get a host that wouldn’t be so scared to take her claws out and ask the real questions, we’d have a master class for young queers in recognizing red flags, navigating conflict effectively (and ineffectively), determining consent and boundaries, and questioning heteronormative relationship values.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 grabbing a cozy fall sweater at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is begging for Britney Spears to release the non-binary edition of “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman”.  This week, co-hosts Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with non-binary actor Robyn Holdaway (@robynholdaway) who you may recognize as Layla from Netflix’s Sex Education. Robyn is a prolific voice actor, as well as an educational creator on TikTok where they make videos with their wife about everything from exploring gender and sexuality to navigating physical and mental health challenges.  We talk with Robyn about LGBTQ+ representation across media, the differences between realistic/accurate representation and idealistic representation, and what it means to actually become the representation they wish they’d seen when they were younger. In examining the intersection of sapphic and non-binary identities, Robyn discusses the (unfortunately unsurprising) amount of backlash they’ve received online for explaining the meanings of words like ‘sapphic’ using gender-inclusive (and completely accurate) language. From there Robyn dives into explaining their non-binary identity and why their marriage doesn’t feel particularly ‘sapphic’ due to Robyn’s “Gomez Addam’s”-style masculinity, and we consider our own gender identities– concluding that Leigh’s gender is “Tiny Dad Mom” and Ellie’s is “Rainbow Unicorn Overalls”.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Email us @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 @lezhangoutpod@gmail.com. Connect with us individually: Ellie Brigida (@elliebrigida). Leigh Holmes Foster (@lshfoster). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our Patreon to unlock 30 full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) by will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. Once we reach 100 PAID tier patrons, we will pick the winner! You can also support the show by grabbing your #pride365 gear at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that does its little dance on the catwalk.  This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Lauren Chan (@lcchan), a Canadian model, TV personality, entrepreneur, and former fashion editor. She is also an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ and AAPI representation as well as an expert in the size-inclusive fashion world.  If you happened to walk by a newsstand recently and took enough time away from petting the bodega cat to peruse the magazines, you likely saw Lauren. She made queer history with her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit appearance as the very first out lesbian to appear on the cover! Can you believe it took until now for an out lesbian to be featured? While we may think Sports Illustrated is a male-gaze aligned space, Lauren says that’s what makes it so perfect for these kinds of stories. By meeting people where they are and introducing them to concepts and perspectives they may not have had a reason to think about, Lauren provides a gateway to nuanced conversations and increased empathy. Sure, straight men may initially buy the magazine for the bikini pics, but if they stay for the coming out stories that can go a long way in changing the narrative toward LGBTQ+ people.  Lauren came out in 2023, incredibly publicly, in her first appearance in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit where she made history as the first lesbian rookie! She discovered her sexuality in a very familiar way– with the lesbian masterdoc in hand, podcasts about coming out later in life on repeat, and an expanse of free time provided by the pandemic lockdowns. From divorcing her husband to now being engaged to be married again (but, to a woman) the short years since coming out have been a real whirlwind for Lauren.  We are obsessed with how Lauren takes the media’s long history of objectifying women and flips it on its head. She may look like just another hot girl, but Lauren is a catalyst for change, inclusivity, self-love, body positivity, and sheer gay audacity.  That’s a wrap on Season 8, lezzies! Thank you for hanging out with us this season, and we can’t wait to see you back for Season 9. Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our Patreon family 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 podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch.  Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is “back in black-and-white”.  This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to talk about the 2025 Black Mirror episode: Hotel Reverie, for this Lez-ssentials episode, a recurring segment on the essential movies and TV shows in the lesbian canon.  Hotel Reverie stars Issa Rae, Emma Corrin, and Awkwafina in a bittersweet sapphic story that centers around a sci-fi style high-tech simulation of an old 1940’s classic film, “Hotel Reverie”. The premise is that Hollywood A-lister Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) will be playing the lead role of Dr. Alex Palmer (in spite of the original actor being a white man) in the remake; and to do so, she will be sent inside a fully immersive simulation of the film complete with “people” who think they are real, but are they?  Of course as soon as Brandy enters the simulation, she begins to fall for Clara, Dr. Palmer’s love interest in the original. Initially, Clara sticks to the script, but as the movie progresses, she begins to completely break the plot with her uncontainable gayness. The explanation is that the actor who played Clara, Dorothy Chambers, put so much of herself into the performance that “echoes” of Dorothy exist now in the simulated version of Clara. With the influence of Dorothy’s memories and a growing attraction to Brandy, Clara begins to be more and more openly gay and that is actually bad for Brandy– if she doesn’t manage to stick the landing and say the final line of the movie, she could be trapped forever in Hotel Reverie. Plus there’s that sticky little feature that if Brandy were to be killed in the simulation, she would die in real life. But for all the danger, Brandy cares about only one thing, Clara, their love, and the little simulated life they build while the movie is “frozen”.  We talk about the unavoidable comparisons to San Junipero, the many, many glaring plot holes throughout the episode, and the implications of Black Mirror consistently burying their gays and also only allowing gay characters to exist in simulations, video games, computers, etc. Additionally, we discuss the unsatisfying ending and why it didn’t feel as resolved or happy as it did for our lesbians in San Junipero.  At the end of the episode, stick around to hear our original song based on Hotel Reverie, titled “A Time You Don’t Remember”, written by Leigh Holmes Foster and produced by Ellie Brigida. Join us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon for instant access to mp3 downloads of all our original songs or find us on Bandcamp to purchase songs individually.  Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join our Patreon to unlock 30 full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) by July 1st, 2025 will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode.  You can also support the show by grabbing your #pride gear at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that still pledges allegiance to Heda Lexa. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) hangs out solo with Regan Latimer (@thereganlatimer), director of the documentary Bulletproof: A Lesbian’s Guide to Surviving the Plot (@bulletproofdoc). We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the longstanding BYG (bury your gays) trope in media and the “cancel your gays” version of today. The absolute slaughter of 2016 is what ultimately led us down the path of creating our own queer musicals with guaranteed happy endings and zero dead gays. Regan was inspired in a similar way, after one straw too many– the brutal killing of Denise on The Walking Dead. She decided to turn that outrage and pain into fuel for exploring the BYG trope, learning why these plot decisions are made, and even exploring the psychology behind why lesbian character deaths impact LGBTQ+ viewers so strongly.  For Bulletproof, Regan spoke with filmmakers, screenwriters, passionate fans, showrunners, and television industry professionals about their experiences and perceptions on lesbian representation in the media. They wanted to look not only at where representation stands now, but at where it started and where it may be headed. When the pendulum for LGBTQ+ rights and societal acceptance swings in either direction, the media landscape reflects those changes. The few positive examples of queer representation we have on screen right now are as a result of projects greenlit before the pendulum began its broad backswing. Regan reminds us to enjoy the representation we have right now, to cherish the precious happy moments of Ellie and Dina while we still can.  After all, the pendulum swings as society does; and we are at a particularly scary time for queer rights and acceptance, especially here in the United States. The real worry is about what types of projects may be getting greenlit right now, whose voices and stories are allowed to be told and amplified, and whether that push we saw after 2016 for more diversity in writer’s rooms continues or is abandoned. We’re already seeing more and more shows with prominent queer characters get unceremoniously cancelled– but it is not all doom and gloom. Even with queer rights and representation sliding backward, there remains more lesbian representation than we ever had growing up. With any luck, younger gays will never have to know what its like to not see themselves on their screens, even if the only representation left is, to Regan’s dismay and Leigh’s chaotic delight, problematic queer people on reality television shows.  Canadian listeners, you’re in luck (for so many reasons). Bulletproof: A Lesbian’s Guide to Surviving the Plot is streaming now. Not in Canada? Follow @bulletproofdoc on Instagram for release updates in your country.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! Join our Patreon to unlock 25+ full-length bonus episodes (including our brand new one on Bros), ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) by July 1st, 2025 will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by grabbing your #pride gear at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants to wish everyone a Happy Pride Month, because queer joy is resistance.  This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Jennie Wetter, the Director of rePROS Fight Back (@reprosfb), an initiative that fights for sexual and reproductive health rights and justice issues. Jennie is also the creator and host of the rePROs Fight Back podcast. Among the many things that rePROS does to fight back is to grade each of the 50 states on access to reproductive and sexual health rights and care (including access to gender-affirming care). They have recently released their 13th annual (fully interactive!) 50-state Report Card and spoiler alert: The United States as a whole gets an F. Fair warning, looking up your state’s grade might make your heart hurt (unless you’re like Leigh and live in one of the 5 states that actually got an A).  We talk with Jennie about what things have been like for rePROS since the reversal of Roe and whether our Gilead robes absolutely have to be red (it’s just not our color). Although it can be really easy to become overwhelmed by how bad things are, Jennie explains that there’s actually a lot to be hopeful about. Between the abortion funds and local clinics there are quite a lot of resources on the ground to help people access care, even in states with strict legislation. Medication abortion remains available and is a fully safe option. With the recent attacks on trans rights, initiatives like rePROS are fighting even harder to ensure access to gender affirming care for all who need it, including minors. Even though at the federal level, things are bleak (that report card is a real eye-opener), there are ways to fight back at the state-level and getting involved locally can really help keep that feeling of doom at bay.  Jennie reminds us that no one person can do or know everything (even if Ellie’s ADHD really wants her to try). Figure out which one cause you want to put your energy toward and focus solely on that. Even Jennie doesn’t know everything, but she makes herself a trusted resource by knowing what direction to point people in when they come to her for help. Take a deep breath and remember, you don’t have to take on everything yourself! Find your lane and follow it and know that others are doing the same in the lanes you didn’t choose. Burning yourself out trying to do it all won’t help anyone and certainly won’t help you feel any better. We see you, we appreciate you, and we want you to remember: no act of resistance is too small.  Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! 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! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers—so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) by July 1st will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode! You can also support the show by stocking up for Pride at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants to take you to, “Bermuda, Bahama, Come on pretty mama.” 🎶 This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Tisha Floratos-Silano, Executive Vice President and Cruise Director at Olivia Travel (@oliviatravels), the company that’s been making lesbian and all LGBTQ+ women’s travel dreams come true for over 35 years. We dive into the history of Olivia, from its roots as a women-run record label in the ’70s to the full-blown lesbian and LGBTQ+ women (trans and nonbinary inclusive!) travel company it is today. Olivia offers everything from small group adventure trips to full-ship cruises and all-inclusive resort takeovers, with themes like gay prom, pajama night, and under-the-sea (mermaids!!!), plus affinity groups for trans and nonbinary travelers, people of color, solo travelers, and more. Whether you’re looking for a quiet connection or full-blown sapphic chaos, Olivia’s all about creating spaces where everyone can show up as their authentic, unedited selves. Tisha has been on 105 Olivia trips and she even met her wife on one of them about 20 years ago. Now they have a beautiful life together with their daughter and their color-coordinated cruise and resort outfits. As far as we’re concerned, Tisha is literally living the ultimate dream lesbian life thanks to Olivia Travel and someday that could be you! If you’ve ever dreamed of a completely sapphic vacation where you can just be you (Hawaian shirt and all), you’re welcome– we totally found it for ya. And if you're ready to start planning, check out all of Olivia’s upcoming cruises, all-inclusive resorts, and adventure trips at olivia.com. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. You can find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! 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! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by stocking up for Pride at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that’s, “leaving on a midnight train”. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Devon Matthews, the Head of Programs for Rainbow Railroad (@rainbowrailroad), a global nonprofit that helps LGBTQ+ people get to safety worldwide. We talk with Devon about how Rainbow Railroad got started (spoiler alert: it took a LOT of gay audacity), what types of requests for help they receive, and how they organize with other nonprofit organizations and even government leaders to make the seemingly impossible, possible. We also discuss the challenges for Devon and the rest of the Rainbow Railroad’s staff of tireless advocates in providing trauma-informed care as people who mostly come from trauma-backgrounds themselves.  Content warning for discussions of trauma related to queer and trans identity, situations involving domestic and state-sponsored violence, and the distressing realities of forced displacement. Through the support of partner organizations on the ground in countries all across the globe, Rainbow Railroad has the extraordinary task of connecting queer and trans people who are in great need with critical resources and a pathway to safety. When a request for help comes in, the case managers work to meet individuals where they are and devise a plan specific to their unique circumstances. The realities of assisting a queer youth who is trying  to escape from domestic violence at home in a country where being gay is all-out illegal to assisting a trans adult in Europe get to safety are vastly different and require different approaches. Devon explains that the more visible the organization becomes, the more requests from LGBTQ+ people in serious crises come in– a sad fact of Rainbow Railroad’s growth is that it is needed at all (and at an almost unimaginable scale!).  With over 120 million displaced people worldwide, there is an immense need for Rainbow Railroad and their partner organizations. But they can’t do it alone. The time is always now. There have never been a larger amount of requests for help from Rainbow Railroad than after the recent election results right here in the United States. If you are feeling fired up and ready to join the fight, consider donating to Rainbow Railroad, signing up to volunteer, or reaching out via email with ways that your access can help. There is always something we can do as individuals to fight for queer liberation– Whether you have a rich aunt ready to donate on your behalf, a property (or literally just a bedroom)  you’d like to offer up as a “safe-house”, or are really good at community-building on the ground– YOU can make a difference.  Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod.  Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! 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! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by grabbing some merch at bit.ly/lezmerch or picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that believes sharing our individual stories is a powerful way to inspire change. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with journalist and historian Eric Marcus (@makinggayhistorypodcast), the creator of Making Gay History, the podcast that brings LGBTQ+ history to life through intimate, first-person stories from the people who lived it. This is a bit of a heavier episode than we usually do, so please take care of your mental health and listen mindfully.  From conversations with trailblazers like Sylvia Rivera and Frank Kameny to countless unsung heroes whose stories deserve to be heard, Making Gay History is a powerful reminder that queer liberation has always been hard-won. (After all, the first Pride was a riot.) These first-hand accounts offer more than nostalgia. They’re blueprints for a much needed resistance. At a time when book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and chillingly fascist rhetoric are once again becoming the norm, Eric’s archive provides a pivotal look into our collective past so that we can all be better prepared for the road ahead. The struggle sadly isn’t new; but with a little courage and a lot of community, we believe that queer people will always persevere.  Eric shares the origins of Making Gay History (which originally started as a book in the late 80s!), the importance of preserving queer voices, and the deep responsibility of memory work in the face of erasure. This episode is both a tribute to the ancestors that fought for our rights and a call to action: to listen, to remember, and to keep telling our stories, especially now. You can explore Eric’s archive and the most recent season of the podcast (A 12-part series about the experiences of LGBT+ people during the rise of the Nazi regime, World War II, and the Holocaust) at makinggayhistory.org.  Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod.  Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women!  When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs (including our brand new song based on PLL), an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! We can’t wait to see you there.  You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch.  Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast where “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”.  This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with return guest and founder of TGI Femslash, John Arrow (@jarrow272), to talk about the 7 season teen mystery drama, Pretty Little Liars, for this Lez-ssentials episode, a recurring segment on the essential movies and TV shows in the lesbian canon.  Come with us on a journey back to 2010, when television seasons were 26 episodes long and showrunners were just starting to figure out how to harness the power of social media to engage with fandoms in a big way. Pretty Little Liars itself does not age all that well in many ways, especially in the treatment of their one and only trans character; but back in the 2010s it was actually considered pretty progressive for having several queer characters and a lesbian showrunner. If you were queer or questioning in the early aughts you 1000% knew about Shay Mitchell as sporty lesbian Emily Fields who seemingly turned every woman within a 5 mile radius of her gay. If you are a lesbian of a certain age, Emily likely played a role in your own coming out journey too. For those of you who were part of the #BooRadleyVanCullen (like Leigh), you may recall more of the social fandom experience than you do the plot. Before Twitter became the cesspool it is today, there were the golden days of weekly live tweeted episodes of PLL with the cast members, the showrunner and the writers. The extremely unhinged plot made it the perfect group-viewing show and we highly recommend that if you have never watched PLL, you watch with a friend or three. While we do talk about a lot of the major plot points, the whole series is just too convoluted for us to really spoil anything for you. Even hardcore fans like John find something new in each rewatch.  At the end of the episode, stick around to hear our original song based on PLL, titled “A Liar”, written by Leigh Holmes Foster and produced by Ellie Brigida. Join us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon for instant access to mp3 downloads of all our original songs or find us on Bandcamp to purchase songs individually.  Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices