hardpacker - Tumblr blog

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Hiroo Isono, 1982

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Orchid Mantis

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Total eclipse of the Sun, July 1860, illustrated by astronomer Warren de la Rue.

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"my transition goals are to look like someone who would—" STOP! BE! BECOME! you don't just have to LOOK LIKE someone else who hypothetically/fictionally is/does something, you can Be that person and Do those things. why keep yourself in the realm of pretending even after doing so much to become real? i don't get this at all. the desire to physically and actively embody myself and my inclinations is so powerful i never want to just "look like" xyz, like wear the trappings of a particular scene or cultural tradition so i resemble it while being outside of it? the feeling/experience of looking like something i'm functionally not... is a weird one!

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On related note, a few years ago, the Entomological Society of America officially discontinued the use of "gypsy moth" and "gyspy ant" as common names for Lymantria dispar and Aphaenogaster araneoides. L. Dispar is now known as the "spongy moth," so named for the appearance of their eggs, but I don't think a new common name has caught on for the ant species yet.

These changes we brought about, in large part, by the advocacy of Romani people in academia. You might not think that bug names are a very serious issue, but I believe that language matters. These species became known as "gypsies" because their attributes were likened to certain stereotypes and negative perceptions of actual Roma, so the continued use of those names reaffirmed those negative associations in the public consciousness. Slurs and pejoratives can never be truly decontexualized.

In my mind, one of the biggest obstacles that Romani people face when we are trying to advocate for ourselves is a lack of recognition as a marginalized group that deserves the necessary consideration. Even for seemingly trivial matters, like bugs or comic book characters, the way that people talk about us-- and talk down to us, when we get involved-- is telling. So, I always think that changes like this are a win, because it means that people are willing to learn and grant us the dignity we deserve. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to effect change in your own field, even arts and science.

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new york city 1978

greenwich village

photograph by nick dewolf https://www.flickr.com/photos/dboo/50587667147

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Jef Bourgeau

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"The point to be argued is not how to qualify the status of homosexuality across the broad historical and geographical, not to mention religious, regional, class, national, and political variances of the Middle East. We must consider instead how the production of homosexuality as taboo is situated within the history of encounters with the western gaze. While in Said’s Orientalism the illicit sex found in the Orient was sought out in order to liberate the Occident from its own performance of the repressive hypothesis, in the case of Abu Ghraib, conversely, it is the (perverse) repression of the Arab prisoners that is highlighted in order to efface the rampant hypersexual excesses of the U.S. prison guards. The Orient, once conceived in Foucault’s ars erotica and Said’s deconstructive work as the place of original release, unfettered sin, and acts with no attendant identities or consequences, now symbolizes the space of repression and perversion, and the site of freedom has been relocated to western identity. Given the unbridled homophobia (among other phobias) demonstrated by the U.S. guards, it is indeed ironic, yet predictable, that the United States nonetheless emerges as sexually exceptional: less homophobic and more tolerant of homosexuality (and less tainted by misogyny and fundamentalism) than the repressed, modest, nudity-shy Middle East." Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007)

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"well one genocide is better than xyz genocides" Have you ever considered that Palestinians are not your sacrificial lambs. have you ever considered we deserve to live just as much as you do

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court tomorrow (today) pray for me do whatever i won't discriminate. fucking hell we need this so bad please @ god @ devil can we get a big fat juicy W

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A puma rests on a rock where mountains meet the sea in the Chilean Patagonia. 2022.

(Photo: Nicolas Lagos /Panthera Nicolas Lagos)

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Halley's Comet Tails, 1910

Mount Wilson Observatory

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Before we continue, is this a personal moral failing or a mental illness? I need to know whether I should treat you like an evil monster or a helpless child when I unperson you.

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The talk I see sometimes here and there about trans men "fearing emasculation" really is being so purposefully obtuse, that it feels almost like gaslighting to even acknowledge it as an argument worth even responding to. Like, trans men "fear emasculation", as in they get upset at being misgendered and disrespected, like literally any other trans person? They have trauma around being forcefully feminized? They fear retaliation from their cis peers if they don't act a certain way? What? What are you even saying? That the implications of emasculation are completely the same across all demographics of men and it's never racist or dehumanizing, and it's always punching up no matter what? That trans men are paradoxically a suspiciously easy target and also toxic mennists who deserve to be humiliated and taken down a peg? What?