bitspieces

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i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. martha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

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do me a favor and reblog this and put in the tags what time it is for you and what you're currently doing/thinking about

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Think about your earliest memory for a second. Now think about the fact that the you in this memory had their own rich bank of memories which (by definition) has zero overlap with that of the you that's reading these words. The thought has a certain pleasing shape to it, no? Okay, now stop. You can go back to thinking about whatever you want again.

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hope is a skill

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This reminds me of how race horses are given a goat to keep them calm

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Revisiting family photos

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If your idea of intersex activism is status quo hater then you are just a transmisogynist. Do better :(

You do realise most people don't vet every single account in a reblog tree they agree with before reblogging it, right? How would that even be feasible?

"do better :(" I'm literally a trans person living in Italy with the most fascist government we've had since Mussolini doing activism in schools to talk about queer identities and queer rights. Doing what I can to make queer people's lives less scary in these terrifying times. Fuck off.

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Anyone talking shit about this flag-

-needs to shut the fuck up.

I do not care if it's "ugly", I don't care if it's "cluttered", being pretty isn't the point of a flag. It's a symbol of our community and it serves the purpose of representing us.

Yes, I know we are included in the original flag. I prefer the Gilbert Baker flag myself for its history and aesthetics and I feel it represents me as an intersex person. But this isn't about personal preference.

You do NOT know how many people know what intersex means because they asked why that flag was put there. That's people who might've never asked that question. That direct representation of us DOES matter. It DOES help us. And your aesthetic preferences are not a good reason to get rid of a direct refrence to intersexuality in one of our broadly used queer community symbols.

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protect the vulnerable

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i'll be whole as long as i'm yours

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"do you like the color of the sky?" trans edition

I think the sky is trying to say something? 🤔 👀 🏳️‍⚧️

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and did you have to look it up

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I unironically recommend a good dose of classic Columbo to anyone suffering from this ailment. Nothing like 60+ minutes of A Guy™ solving a murder where you know who the culprit is, the detective knows who the culprit is and the culprit knows that the detective knows, to learn how to enjoy a story where you can piece together stuff as the narrative progresses.

that some people respond to any well-foreshadowed reveal with “ugh that plot twist was so predictable” proves bad faith criticism has rotted their brains to the point they think it’s bad writing if they can correctly identify information the writers were intentionally giving them

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Also tumblr memes are about participation. Colour Theory™ wouldn't have been a thing if there hadn't been all the additions and if people didn't keep bringing up how bloody, gruesome landscapes would be great for a children's hospital, actually. The Walrus VS Fairy™ civil war wouldn't have ensued if it had just been one random poll circulating the website for a couple of weeks. And even if you take like stories they existed and were successful because people kept (keep) adding to it, the next time the God of Arepo makes it on my dash there probably would be some new additions I hadn't seen before and that's the beauty of it.

tl;dr: ig and twitter memes are about single additions to a trend, tumblr memes are about participating together and that's invaluable.

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hey btw since the US states quiz is going around:

(feel free to say where you're from in the tags as well!)

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you know I got into 911 for Buck/Eddie but it's Chimney and Hen that are giving me life

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