Lez Hang Out | A Lesbian Podcast

Strap on your fairy wings, because it is time to go save the monarchy!This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Iz Hesketh (@iz.hesketh), proud trans actor and drag performer known for her roles in British soap opera Hollyoakes and Disney’s Renegade Nell, to talk about why the Disney+ series Renegade Nell Should’ve Been Gay(er). Although we wish this series would have been renewed for a second season, the episodes we did get are jam-packed with racial diversity, gender nonconformity, and all-over queer energy; and we think it has true cult classic potential. If you have not watched it yet, we highly recommend doing so before listening to this episode as it contains quite a few spoilers. We were so excited to sit down with Iz and talk about her role as a canonically nonbinary character (one of only 4 trans/nonbinary characters in the Disney universe and the FIRST to be in a live-action series). Normally we can only speculate what creators and the folks behind the scenes were thinking when they make things that just seem SO gay to us, but this time we have firsthand accounts from someone who was actually there on set (and guess what, listeners? We were right!). Many of the people behind the scenes for Renegade Nell were queer themselves and fully open to incorporating that into the characters and story. Viewers can see this for themselves through little changes that make a big impact on representation such as changing Valerian’s (Iz Hesketh) pronouns and even incorporating the colors of the trans flag into one of Iz’s costumes. Whether the plan was for Valerian to be nonbinary all along, or if they changed it when Iz was cast, we are thrilled to see such inclusive, diverse representation on Disney+.The queerness does not stop at Valerian, however, as the main character Nell is quite masc herself and can easily be interpreted as either a very butch lesbian or a trans man. We also have Leigh’s favorite, Polly Honeycombe, a femme who is absolutely besotted with Nell, Billy, a very gay fairy (as are all fairies), and Sofia, the “enemy” in our enemies-to-lovers ship with Nell. Gender nonconformity is woven throughout the show as a main theme. Even when something pretty darn gay does happen, like Polly kissing Nell, the characters are all very accepting and think nothing of it. We know one thing for sure, Renegade Nell Should’ve Been Gay(er). Iz is saving up for gender-affirming surgery and fundraising through Go Fund Me! Please consider donating to her fundraiser if you are able.You can support Lez Hang Out while unlocking a bunch of awesome perks like access to our exclusive Discord, 22 and counting full-length bonus episodes (with a brand new bonus episode dropping October 7th), weekly ad-free episodes, and more by joining us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch (free shipping on orders $100+ with code lhoship) and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp!Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Twitter @lezhangoutpod and follow along on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.You can find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with host of Nuances: Our Asian Stories (@nuancespod), LAZOU (@itslazou), to talk about her new mini series Queering Premodern Asia,, women who married ghosts to get out of marrying real live men, one of the most prolific poets of all time, Wu Zao, and how she wanted to possess a courtesan's jade body, and the Golden Orchid Society.LAZOU, pronounced “Lah-Zoo”, is of Chinese Mauritian descent. She was born in Toronto, ON, but grew up in Mauritius. The tiny African island is the only place the Dodo bird🦤 ever lived! She is now based in California.She is a music producer, songwriter and vocalist. Her music has been featured on TV shows such as The Young & The Restless, True Lies, Real Girlfriends in Paris, & more.On Nuances, LAZOU brings Asian stories to light with Asian guest hosts and scholars. Her most recent episode, 'But Where Are The Lesbians,' highlights the rich lesbian world of pre-modern Asia, often overlooked in Western narratives. Gay men are documented everywhere, but lesbians rarely are and the tales are fascinating. Like - did you know that in premodern Japan, there were s*x toys specifically designed and marketed to lesbian women, along with drawings showing how to use these toys? We would not have made it to Season 8 without the support of our incredible Patrons! You can support Lez Hang Out while unlocking a bunch of awesome perks like access to our exclusive Discord, 22 and counting full-length bonus episodes, weekly ad-free episodes, and more by joining us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch (free shipping on orders $100+ with code lhoship) and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp!Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Twitter @lezhangoutpod and follow along on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.You can find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thank you for being a friend…of the pod!This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Stacey Powell (@bookslovejoy), later-in-life lesbian and co-host of the Lez Go Travel Show! on Tello Films, to talk about why The Golden Girls Should’ve Been Gay. Let’s be honest, if this show were made today, at the very least Dorothy would be a lesbian.Even though The Golden Girls was first released in 1985, it was quite progressive in its handling of many prominent social and political issues for the time. A ragtag group of single, older/middle-aged women live together and somehow it isn’t supposed to be the gay commune of our dreams?Blanche may be the butt of a lot of sexist jokes for her “promiscuity”, but she’s also incredibly sex-positive for the 80s. We think Blanche has chaotic bisexual energy and if you don’t see it, you’re lying. Dorothy has all the hallmarks of a late-in-life lesbian, and Rose? That’s a closeted lesbian dealing with so much comphet that she can’t even see through it. Honestly, we think everyone in this show is gay (except for Sophia, our token straight). We know one thing for sure, The Golden Girls Should’ve Been Gay. Stacey and her fiancée Christin want you to heal your heartache and find your soulmate just like they did. Check out all their love course offerings to start your healing journey today. Their co-authored ebook Get Off the Dating Apps- Journal to Find Your Soulmate is available now.You can support Lez Hang Out while unlocking a bunch of awesome perks like access to our exclusive Discord, 22 and counting full-length bonus episodes, weekly ad-free episodes, and more by joining us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch (free shipping on orders $100+ with code lhoship) and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp!Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Twitter @lezhangoutpod and follow along on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.You can find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mal Glowenke, host of the Made It Out Podcast, shares their transformative journey from a closeted lesbian in Texas to an empowered voice in the LGBTQ+ community. They discuss the challenges of growing up in a heteronormative society and the liberation felt after moving to LA. Mal touches on the need for authenticity, including reversing past plastic surgeries done for the male gaze. With a focus on political activism, they highlight the importance of voting and introduce their new series, Made It Out (To the Polls), aiming to inspire engagement within the community.

Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants to make your heart go boom, boom, supernova girl (gender neutral). This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out to talk about why the classic 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, Should’ve Been Gay. This movie was queer MAJOR, and if you were a kid in the 90s like us, phrases like “Cetus lupeedus!” are most likely still living rent free in your head. For those of you who have not seen Zenon, the story follows a 13 year old girl living on a space station in the year 2049 (which seemed a lot farther off in 1999). She is a chaotic baby gay from the second she shows up on screen and cannot help but get into constant trouble with her BF Nebula, played by the one and only Raven-Symoné. When she gets into a little too much trouble, she is exiled to Earth to live with her Aunt Judy and forced to trade her space stay gay life for a boring one with way too much gravity and nowhere near enough pleather.Between the space stay residents looking like they are perpetually at a gay nightclub, Proto Zoa’s genderfluid frosted tips, the bisexual color scheme of space, Zenon’s Earth boyfriend Greg’s whole horse-girl dyke aesthetic, and Zenon and Nebula’s totally lunarious love for one another, we are not sure how anyone ever thought this movie was for the str8s.We know one thing for sure, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century Should’ve Been Gay. You can support Lez Hang Out while unlocking a bunch of awesome perks like access to our exclusive Discord, 22 and counting full-length bonus episodes, weekly ad-free episodes, and more by joining us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch (free shipping on orders $100+ with code lhoship) and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp!Give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Twitter @lezhangoutpod and follow along on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.You can find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2024 is shaping up to be a vibrant summer for the LGBTQ+ community, especially with 55 queer women shining in the Olympics. Music is also on fire, with artists like Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish breaking barriers and topping charts. The hosts dive into the celebration of queer representation, discussing the rise of female artists and the impact of women's sports on visibility. They also tackle challenges like ticket scalping for queer events and highlight the importance of mental health in navigating these spaces.

Can you believe there is just one more week until our Season 8 premiere? To tide you all over until next week, we have something very special for today - one of our full-length Patreon bonus episodes! Our Lez-tracurriculars series is a recurring series of full-length bonus episodes created exclusively for our beautiful patrons where Ellie and Leigh get to talk about topics and movies that don't quite fit into the regular feed. If you enjoy this episode, there are a lot more where this came from! Join us on Patreon for as little as $5/month to support our little queer independent pod and gain instant access to all 22 existing bonus episodes as well as ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs, special merch discounts, a private Discord channel and more. If you're already a patron, thank you so much for your support! We could not continue to make this show without you.-----Today, Ellie and Leigh hang out with friend of the pod Rebecca Noyes (who you probably know as a host of LHO Trivia) to talk about the incredibly controversial 2010 film, The Kids Are All Right. This movie tends to incite very strong, visceral emotional reactions in queer viewers, however, it did amazingly with critics and was nominated for 4 Oscars including a Best Picture nomination. Since Ellie and Leigh were strongly in the “this movie is a hate crime” camp, Rebecca is here to share the other side, easily placing this film in her top 5 (maybe even top 3) lesbian movies of all time.If you have not seen The Kids Are All Right, let us explain why it is so controversial. While at first glance the film seems like a great step for representation, it quickly reveals a much more nuanced plot. The story revolves around the 20-year marriage of Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple with two donor-conceived children, Joni and Laser. In 2010 there were basically no other movies that showed a married lesbian couple with a family, so you can just imagine how much of a splash this movie made. Unfortunately for lesbian representation, Nic and Jules’ relationship 20 years in is not looking so good. This in itself is not all that problematic, after all, who is still in the honeymoon phase after that many years? Where things go off the rails is when the movie introduces the kids’ biological father Paul. At first the kids have idealistic views of him as he worms his way into the family unit. But it’s not only the children who are taken with Paul. Jules, who openly describes herself as a gay woman, proceeds to fall for Paul, charmed by his similarities to her children. She ends up sleeping with him, beginning an affair that truly could not be more painful to watch. For a movie that is supposed to be about a lesbian family, there is so much focus on men and somehow more male sex and naked male butts than we would ever want to see, especially because Nic and Jules watch gay male porn to spice things up in the bedroom. The one good thing about this movie is it somehow has a happy ending (which we all know is a rarity in lesbian films), with Nic and Jules remaining together despite glaring relationship problems. We personally really hope they got some family therapy after the credits rolled.We want to hear your thoughts! Do you hate this movie with a burning passion like Leigh, are you starting to feel more accepting of its existence like Ellie, or is it in your top favorite lesbian movies like Rebecca? Let us know your experience with The Kids Are All Right in the comments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It may be hot outside, but our feed drops are hotter ;P.As our hiatus nears its end (we'll be back in just 2 weeks!), we are excited to share a hilarious episode from our friend Lauren Flans over at Coming Out Pod (@comingoutpod). We have been big fans of Coming Out Pod from the very beginning and can't wait to hear what you think after listening to the episode. If you love it (and we're sure you will), don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!-----Writer Elliott Maya (they/them, and "a sprinkle of he/him in, like, a fruity Victorian dandy boy way") has a real way with words, in case you couldn't tell from that parenthetical. Raised in the *extremely* strict Jehovah's Witnesses religion, Lio and their brother were also the only Black kids at their school. As if this weren't enough, Lio started going through puberty quite early, which coincided with them realizing that they were "not like the other girls, in many ways." Lio knew that college was their only chance of escape, so they started working at the age of twelve. Along the way, they attempted to hide their queerness in high school by becoming a gay bully...but in an ironic twist, they ended up becoming "horrifically" attracted to their (also queer) victim. Besides being an absolutely HILARIOUS storyteller, Lio also has Long Covid, and started the group Covid Cautious Queers. We spend the latter half of the episode talking about the ways in which Lio's illness has changed their life, and the (easy!) ways you can help not only them, but everyone in your community.First thing's first: follow Lio on Instagram at @bougiebasquiat, and please please please see their bio for links to their GoFundMe, their Health Hub, and their Ko-fi! You can also follow them on TikTok at @transnaruto, and check out their *gorgeous* website at elliottmaya.com. Last but not least, follow @covidcautiousqueers on Instagram, especially if you're in Southern California. It's Pride Month, y'all - let's be there for Lio!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Lez Hang Out Summer Hiatus! This week we are sharing an episode from our pals Claris and Cam over at Chopstick Lesbians, a podcast that sets out to navigate the intersectionality between womanhood, queerness, and Asian identity. Grab your chopsticks and dig in to this episode on the film Saving Face. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and follow Claris and Cam on Instagram @ chopstick.lesbians.-----This week we're diving into a queer Asian-American rom-com, Saving Face. This film paved the way for queer Asian visibility back in 2004 and still does today. Join us as we walk through the film, highlighting all the moments that made us laugh, cry, feel warm, and more. Tune in to hear our thoughts on this trailblazing gem! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to hiatus week 3! This week we have a hilarious (and horny) episode for y'all from friend of the pod Ali Clayton and co-host Ever. Pour yourself a sweet tea and enjoy this episode from Ali and Ever's "Y'all Gay Podcast".-----Ali and Ever are talking the do’s and don’t for butt shaving, porn preferences, and calling Ali’s Daddy to get the facts straight about eight and a quarter.If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to Y'all Gay Podcast for more country queer shenanigans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices