balthazarslostlibrary - Tumblr blog

[balthazarslostlibrary]

My one friend group can't stop saying, "See you in hell!" in a cheerful voice instead of, "Talk to you later!" and my other friend group can't stop calling things "penis" instead of "cool" or "good", so I just unironically uttered the phrase, "Sounds penis, see you in hell," as I got off the phone.

[balthazarslostlibrary]

My first woodcuts in order of when I made them! Mirrored so what you see here is what will get printed when I make it to the studio. They look really weird to me now because of it though skdks

All are A5, the sea lion will get printed only so I have proof I made it, then will get repurposed and have something else carved on the other side. Cottage is a key block print so will have other colours on the actual print. Wolf is a single colour and the one I'm most happy with

[balthazarslostlibrary]

she's making soup

[balthazarslostlibrary]

I got told I cannot use the word fag/faggot because, as someone who is not a gay man, I am not allowed to use it or reclaim it, and that I should really think about the hurt that word has caused to gay men before using it.

Looking back, I dont really like how aggressive my response was, because it really triggered that pufferfish response and I came out hot and spiky. Part of that response was the assumption that I dont have real life experience dealing with people using that slur against me, and that there is a clear cut history of the types of slurs used against trans people that clearly delineates our culture from other queer circles.

What frustrated me so much was that I have worked really hard to try and make these words not so painful to me, to make them empowering, and then I was being told by someone who probably was trying to prevent harm that I didnt have the right to do these things, purely because they didnt have the real world experience i did and was discounting it.

If that person sees this, I stand by what I said, but I’m sorry I was so aggressive, that wasnt necessarily fair.

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

[balthazarslostlibrary]

can we like…get rid of the so-called leather and rubber “pride flags” ? it’s honestly ridiculous and offensive to the lgbtq community. those aren’t pride flags. 

[balthazarslostlibrary]

gender euphoria is looking rly hot to other queer people and offputting to everyone else

[balthazarslostlibrary]

the funniest dynamc between my boyfriend and i is the chef/baker divide runs so deep. experimentally my boyfriend is a genius with figuring out what flavor profiles will not just taste good together but also will be enjoyed by the specific audience he is cooking for. a recipe is not a guidebook so much as a suggestion and he will frankenstein ideas together to get exactly what he wants to happen. he also didnt know that sugar will not work properly if you dont mix it with the wet ingredients in banana bread and when i asked 'why didnt you do it in the order of the recipe' he said 'i didnt really think it mattered'. autistically i exploded his head in my mind

[balthazarslostlibrary]

he's the worst man alive he's the love of my life he's covered in blood he's weird about god and he's a lot, he's not perfect, but most importantly he's bisexual

[balthazarslostlibrary]

A bechdel-esque test where instead a piece of media passes if at least two men openly talk about their feelings without there being a woman to be the ‘mediator’ of the conversation.

Bonus points if they dont use single word answers like ‘fine’ or ‘bad’

A gold star to the piece of media if at least one of the men talks about a possible cause to their emotions. They dont even have to be correct, they just have to identify a cause.

Lets get some examples of this, I’ll go first:

Paranorman (2012), in which Norman and Neil talk about bullying and how it makes them feel. Neil even poses a cause and helps Norman feel less alone!

3/3 gold star

Midnight Mass (2021), specifically the scene in which Riley and his father go out on the fishing boat and Ed talks about his feelings about what has happened to and with Riley.

4/3 amazing scene. I know I said three categories but this scene gets even more points for including a male character identifying and correcting/apologising for his own misdeeds due to generational trauma.

Keep the list coming!

[balthazarslostlibrary]

Personally i would like people to use my correct pronouns even if i do have visible facial hair

[balthazarslostlibrary]

nurse feratu and dr. acula are ready to see you for your blood tests

[balthazarslostlibrary]

lets give it up for pleasures of the flesh !!

[balthazarslostlibrary]

The Phantom of the Opera Ugandan Premiere

The Phantom of the Opera will premiere in the capital city of Kampala, Uganda in May 2024 starring Peace Ayikoru and Joy Victoria Geria as Christine, as well as Mukiza and Gilbert Byamugisha as the Phantom.

I'm not seeing a ton of information like further casting, I believe this is associated with or using the performance spaces of Makerere University in Kampala. But the use of the full face mask logo makes me think this is actually the ALW/Hart/Stilgoe version

[balthazarslostlibrary]

floor time save me. floor time. save me floor time

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I think a lot of like discourse of what to focus on with this or that thing gets the end goal and things to ease newcomers into your ideas confused with each other.

Like yes perhaps the end goal is to get UBI going but if your Uncle Jerry is currently struggling with the concept of taxes maybe get him to understand the cost of road maintenance first before you start trying to get him onboard with free preschool.

Also just because someone is explaining the concept of taxes to Uncle Jerry doesn’t mean they don’t believe in free childcare.

[balthazarslostlibrary]

so back when i was teaching, one of the things i learned to look for were the "mood makers", as i liked to call them, of the classes. there were always 2 or 3 per class, and it was easy to find them in the first few days. you got those kids on your side, and it was a ripple effect with the rest of the students - they would all follow. so winning those kids over was huge when it came to how the year would play out. and from time to time, whenever the class was sort of faltering - middle of winter, of a big project, burn-out high - i would lean back in on those mood makers again to turn things around.

one particular class, when we had a big multi-month group project happening, were just... really struggling with getting their shit together lol. they were supposed to be practicing their presentations (english speaking class) and they were doing pretty much anything but, and their presentations were supposed to start the next class day. they were also PANICKING as i started giving out some feedback - which was NOT GREAT - as they were running through the lines they were supposed to be remembering. after realizing all of them needed so much extra work, i decided we needed to have a turn-around, so i invited one of the mood makers up to the front. i held out a cup to him, with two papers inside.

"one of them," i said, "says tuesday, and if you draw that, presentations go as planned. but one of them says thursday, and if you choose that one, everyone gets extra time to practice."

everyone was like OH SHIT. OKAY. THIS IS IT. and this mood maker, he was a big personality (they usually are) so i knew he'd really ham this up, and he did. we made a huge deal, with drum-rolls and everything, of him picking one out of the cup. he opened it up the paper and announced THURSDAY to a round of huge cheers. he was the class hero. everyone had TONS of motivation to work super hard on this gifted extra day, and really put the time in. their presentations were great. morale SOARED.

the plot twist was that both papers said thursday, because they all needed the extra time. my forever teacher advice: find creative ways to make things happen so that you get the buy-in from the class.

[balthazarslostlibrary]

God you people really are desperate to invasively speculate about people’s gender identities, aren’t you?

“Uwu egg jokes are fine because it’s not bad to be a trans woman and cis men have it so easy.”

No one was saying not to call random people eggs because it’s like, some horrifying nightmare to be transfeminine that we shouldn’t wish it on people, nor that it was somehow oppressing cis men.

(Notice how it’s always about people being secret or unrealized trans women, and very rarely are trans masc or non-binary identities even acknowledged in these conversations.)

We were saying, or at least I was saying, not to call random people eggs because:

Strangers’ gender identities are none of your business

If someone’s a GNC person, they don’t like, owe it to you to be trans or something

And if you’re right, it’s still potentially dangerous, humiliating and rude to out people without their permission, the more so if you’re outing them for an identity they don’t even know they have! Fuck! I should not have to explain this! This is basic fucking queer etiquette.

So knock it the hell off or at least understand why people are telling you not to do it. It’s the least you could do.