Chosen Family

I’ve listened since I was a freshman and now I’m graduating high school. I love having three different personalities who have funny and honest conversations. Thanks for making me smile and laugh and think every week! I’m poor so I’m doing what Mak said and writing a review

I find Alayna and Mak to have entertaining and interesting perspectives, dialogue, banter, humor and I enjoy listening to the episodes they’re in without Ashley. Unfortunately, Ashley frequently (and very loudly) talks over them both, derails interesting and funny conversations to make it about her or to “do bits” that are more annoying than entertaining, and often says things that indicate unexamined internalized misogyny (overgeneralizing women, perpetuating harmful stereotypes, saying things that are reductive and objectifying to women, like “I was bangin some hot chick,” or going through her DMs and judging women’s hotness to see who she can have sex with). Ashley also comes across as entitled and self-victimizing, often complaining about fans or listeners not subscribing, and has somehow positioned herself as the victim and having “PTSD” after experiencing backlash from telling a fan with a history of a suicide attempt to try harder to kill herself. I want to support all sapphic content, including those who may have caused harm in the past but have learned and grown from the experience, so I’ve listened for over a year. Unfortunately, it seems Ashley’s learned the wrong lesson. I imagine Ashley will think, as she’s said in the past, that I’m some loser in a basement with nothing better to do than write bad reviews to try and take down someone doing good work, but it’s unclear how she’s supporting our community, and I took the time to write this with the hope that it may possibly inspire some reflection and make the podcast more supportable for Mak and Alayna’s sake. As a nurse practitioner who is serving our community by working with women experiencing trauma, and doing advocacy work, I absolutely see the value in and appreciate having queer content to provide levity and entertainment after a day of doing the boots on the ground work. Ashley isn’t doing that for me or anyone else I’ve asked, so I’ll stick to supporting the sapphic creators who are both entertaining and don’t cause harm to our community (including Mak and Alayna’s independent projects)

Maybe I’m just too old, I I can’t handle the mattea episodes

Chosen Family podcast is criminally underrated 😌