exelea

[exelea]

it will pass ..

[exelea]

TIL that Harvard professor Tom Lehrer was asked at the age of 84 by rapper 2 Chainz if he could sample his 60-year old song. Lehrer replied, “I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?”

via ift.tt

[exelea]

There's an interesting recurring pattern in online trans spaces that goes "I am [a specific type of] trans, and so I should be given authority on trans issues [affecting a different group of trans people]", often deployed to argue against that different group of trans people.

Essentially, the claim is not just "I am trans and should have a seat in this discussion", but "I am trans and so my views on your problems should take precedence over YOUR views, even though you are also trans"

Then, when called out on what they're doing, the person making the claim will retreat from "I claim authority on your experiences" into "I am a part of the trans community" in order to characterise their opposition as the aggressors.

And it WORKS, is the thing. It derails the discussion entirely. Because now the discussion is no longer about the original issue and the group with a vested interest in that issue, it's about the individual who was claiming authority versus the Others who are attacking them on the basis of identity.

The actual subjects of the discussion have been decentered in favor of someone else's grievances with the fundamental premises of the discussion.

And here's the thing right. The incredibly simple thing that resolves the entire conflict between "having authority on a specific trans issue" vs "having a legitimate claim to trans identity":

You can be valid and still have a shit take.

[exelea]

Sounds hot

[exelea]

[exelea]

what are y’all’s strategies for trying to convince yourself there is joy in your future and that your time is worth being alive for

[exelea]

On Friendship.

[exelea]

every morning I wake up and think of these words from philosopher cher

[exelea]

[exelea]

working with little kids is so dangerous. you get one kid who has a unique way of speaking & then spend the rest of your life with an internal monologue like “me’s go bathroom?”

[exelea]

i think about this every day

[exelea]

Gets you with my Nice!

[exelea]

i dont have sex anymore because theres no way i could do it without being predatory. due to my awesome swaglike nature there will always be a problematic swag gap with me and anyone i.choose to engage sexually with, the power imabalnce is just way too fucked up between how cool and totally radical i am and how lame and boring as heck the person im fucking is. so i dont do it. because i'm a very moral and ethical person

[exelea]

I am obsessed with fictional guys being really weird about each other. Hard at work in the plausible deniability mines. You know those pairings who would jerk each other off before they'd kiss

[exelea]

how this guy lost the war on drugs is a mystery to me

[exelea]

how this guy lost the war on drugs is a mystery to me

[exelea]

i still dont get whats so wrong with the toothpaste flag. i thought it was a thing to move away from male as default, since like, if the rainbow is both for gay men and everyone thats obviously bad. so if you make a specific flag for gay men then the rainbow flag can just be for everyone. i mean its fair to not like the design but i feel like the intention behind it is pretty clearly good right.

historical pride flags came about due to lack of representation from within the queer community. they exist in large part because it helps form coalitions and develop language to describe experiences and oppression. the existence of the gay male flag is offensive to me on that level, because its existence sends the message that gay men are *somehow* underrepresented in the queer community. It's not so much male as default as much as that gay men don't exist at an intersection of oppression that warrants this type of shit, when they were already represented under the rainbow flag like everyone else. To me the idea that gay men needed their own flag comes from a very, idk, individualist ahistorical perspective that the flags that represent specific groups of queer people exist only to represent specific groups of queer people, and that therefore every group of queer people should get their own individual flag, when there's very much a historical reason those people needed to form their own subcommunities (mostly because they got excluded (mostly by cis gay men)).