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[praytothesky]

Being gay is natural? Okay.

You have three islands. Divide them into groups of one. The straight island, the gay island, and the lesbian island. The straight island is going to reproduce and keep going strong for millions of generations to come. The gay and lesbian islands will both wipe out in not even one century. This isn’t just about religion or morals, it’s just simple common sense. Being gay is unnatural, and not just because God said so, but because you yourself wouldn’t even be born without a REAL natural man and woman. And no, there is no such thing as a lesbian bone marrow “thing” to have children. That’s a biased fact that came from a lesbian scientist who has false opinions. If it’s not a real penis or vagina, then it’s fucking false and you’re just opinionated by dumb facts. I’m done here. Read over what I said and if you still think that being gay is normal and natural, then I hope you achieve some common sense one day. Bye

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Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.

Jessamyn West (via psliterary)

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‘which hogwarts house are you’ quiz:

which of these  d o you like most  :

- being Brave

- reading the Book

- e v i l

- yellow

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This made me do several spit takes with my coffee.

Cliches in YA Romance

gabrielarava said to fixyourwritinghabits: Hi! I’m in the process of outlining a young adult novel and am very adamant about avoiding cliches in the genre, especially romantic ones. What are some of the most common cliches in YA romances?

Truthfully, I’m a real sucker for a good romance my in YA novels. I’m also quite picky about what I read and ship. I feel like somewhere along the line, this answer turned into “all-the-things-I-hate-about-YA-romance,” but here we go!

The Love Not-Triangle. I don’t mind love triangles, as long as they actually are triangles, not something that looks vaguely like this from the start:

A “love triangle” that adds no suspense because we know by the end of chapter one that A is going to eventually end up with B, and B and C have no relationship other than their competition for A’s affections. It doesn’t matter how great C is, or how badly B treats A, A will end up with B. 

Write a love triangle that actually has the reader guessing who your protagonist will end up with. Write a love triangle with fleshed out characters that includes other complicated non-romantic relationships interfering. Write a love triangle that is memorable. 

Not-Plain Heroine. A heroine that is plain only to her eyes. Often with brown hair. Extremely pretty when she dresses up. Love Interest finds her beautiful all the time. 

The Eternally Smiling White Knight in Shining Armour and the Brooding Baddest Baddass also known as your typical male love interests. Please, give the White Knight some flaws and the Brooding Baddass some reasons for being brooding. Less cardboard cutouts, more rounded characters. 

Tragic Backstory. Everyone needs a backstory, but sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes, backgrounds with abuse and other very serious things are taken lightly and used for the sake of a flashy tragic backstory, to make a “broken” character that can be simply “fixed” by love. 

“I’m dangerous/I’m not good for you/Stay away from me.” Please no. If they really have that level of self awareness, and really are as good as the book later makes them out to be, then they should have made the effort to stay away. If someone said that to me, I’d give the creep a look and walk away. 

Unnecessary and easily solved conflict. If the problem can be solved through an easily do-able 2 minute conversation or a text, then it does not need to be dragged out into 5 chapters of angst. 

Romantic Stalking. I don’t know why this is a thing. Stalking is never romantic, it’s a creepy invasion of privacy. Overly “protective” and possessive guys are not romantic, they’re abusive. 

First Love at First Sight/Insta-Love. Well, we’ve all seen this one. People get crushes, people fall in lust, but two people do not fall in a deep, maddening, meaningful and heathy love within five minutes of meeting. 

The Jealous Third Party who exists for no reason other than to tear the main couple apart. Usually horrible, vapid and shallow. No character development other than to hate the protagonist more and more. 

Straight, cis and white. Not exactly a cliche, but you get the idea. You see a lot of YA out there with straight, cis and white people falling in love, and I’m getting a little tired of it. Of course, writing about other genders/sexualities/cultures takes a lot of work and research, but I highly encourage you to do so! 

The Magical Healing C***. Sex heals wounds. Falling in love cures you of depression. Your relationship means an end to any mental illness you’ve been struggling with. Please, stop right there. Just no. Stop. Don’t do it. 

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me: hey brain hey buddy hey pal do u think we could just calm down a lil bit there friend

brain, still rhythmically banging pots together: NO!!!! NO!!!! NO!!! NO!!!! NO!!! NO!!!!

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am I sick from anxiety or am I actually physically ill? a memoir by me

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“you’re obsessed with your mental illness”

i know right? it’s almost like it impacts every part of my life

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So You’re Dating an X-Phile

10 Surefire Ways to Win Their Heart

Call them. When they say hello, respond with “Mulder, it’s me.”

If they get a minor scrape: cradle their head, play with their hair and tell them you are a medical doctor. 

If something curious occurs, declare it “must be an x-file.”

Tell them they’re your one in seven billion.

Take them out to lunch, order iced tea and wink.

When asked if you are done with something, say “if I quit now, they win.”

Take them to the batting cages and teach them how to swing. Bonus if you call yourself Fox Mantle and say the bat is a “nice piece of ash.”

Tell them they’re the only one you trust.

Dance to Cher’s cover of Walking in Memphis.

When they tell you they don’t want that darkness in their home, and they will say this at some point, tell them, “I think the darkness finds you and me. But let it try.” Then kiss. Their heart is yours.

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Friendly reminder that

bisexual girls who have a boyfriend are still part of the LGBT+ community

bisexual girls who’ve never kissed a girl before are still part of the LGBT+ community

bisexual girls who are more attracted to boys than to girls are still part of the LGBT+ community

bisexual girls who’ve never had a boyfriend/girlfriend before are still part of the LGBT+ community

bisexuals are part of the LGBT+ community

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Damn, I kind of love this girl.

‘Girl Meets World’ star Rowan Blanchard speaks out about the importance of intersectional feminism

A Tumblr user asked the 13-year-old Girl Meets World star about her thoughts on “white feminism” and the notion that the movement may exclude certain marginalized groups, like women of color and non-cis/queer women. Her full response shows she understands intersectional feminism better than most adults.

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Help Us Help You, Pretty Little Liars

During the Pretty Little Liars summer finale, I was chatting with Autostraddle CEO/Editor-In-Chief, Riese Bernard, about how in the world we were going to handle the show’s decision to make a transgender woman Big A. We were both discouraged and worried because trans women are the most persecuted members of the LGBT community — 17 DMAB trans people have been murdered so far this year — and research conclusively proves that media representation of minorities directly affects public perception of minorities, and public perception of minorities is the catalyst for negative and positive actions taken toward minorities. I rather optimistically said to her at the time that all eyes would be on our site to react to the big reveal, and we could use that opportunity to have a really nuanced, important conversation about trans representation on television.

To the great credit of many of the PLL writers, directors and actors, they shared my review — which was quoted extensively on other websites, including Vox, Flavorwire, and The Huffington Post — with their social media followers because they wanted to contribute to an open dialogue about what the show got right and what it got wrong, and the very real dangers facing transgender women. I was really proud and encouraged by those responses.

Today, Pretty Little Liars’ official Twitter tweeted this. 

The graphic features a quote from Alison from an episode earlier in the season, and the dialogue of the text features a quote from Hanna from earlier in the season.

As I wrote in my recap at the time:

After the show already knew Charlotte was transgender and would be revealed as A, it kept having characters refer to her as — it makes me want to throw up, typing this — “he/she/it/bitch.” And of course when I woke up this morning, I had dozens and dozens of messages on Twitter and Tumblr referring to Charlotte that way. The writers gave these transphobic people that language, just handed it right to them, and now it’s everywhere. Just like Hanna Marin saying she was a-okay with Emily being gay made a generation of young teenage girls okay with themselves/their friends being gay, Hanna Marin saying “he/she/it/bitch” about a trans woman makes it okay for young teenage girls to say that about trans women. Even inside the show, they were misnaming and misgendering Charlotte after she made it clear who she was.

And here my worry has come to fruition because the show’s official Twitter is using a line of dialogue directly from an episode to perpetuate the horrifically transphobic idea that transgender women are not women, and that it’s okay to refer to them as “he/she/it.” How does that kind of thing play out in the real world? Well, just this morning, an NBC News story revealed that a U.S. Marine violently choked a transgender woman during oral sex when he discovered that she was transgender. NBC News repeatedly refers to the transgender woman as “a transgender” and “a Filipino transgender,” despite the fact that GLAAD has released dozens of free media resources to help news organizations understand how using the word “transgender” as a noun instead of an adjective is reductive and dehumanizing, and thus contributes to violence against trans people. The same thing is true when referring to a transgender person by the wrong pronoun, or worse, as “it.”

The outcry against the tweet was swift and ABC Family took it down within an hour, but replaced it with the same graphic and different text, despite the fact that the graphic misgenders Charlotte DiLaurentis. Once a trans person comes out, it is harmful and hurtful to refer to them with the wrong pronoun, even if you are referring to them before they came out as trans. 

They also put the graphic up on Facebook. Many commenters who spoke out against the graphic due to misgendering — including myself — saw our responses deleted.

Screenshots courtesy of Catherine, who was also banned from commenting on PLL’s official Facebook page. 

While comments complaining about the reveal for reasons other than transphobia, or comments that stripped Charlotte of her humanity were left untouched.

I have no interest in participating in callout culture. I have no interest in scoring points or raging for catharsis or having my ego stroked. My interest is in educating Pretty Little Liars’ viewers, writers, social media team, etc. about the transgender community to combat some of the more problematic elements of the finale. For example:

Our trans editor, Mey Rude, talked through this episode with me last night for a long time. I’m going to amplify all her thoughts and feelings here. (And as we continue to discuss this episode, I encourage us all to remember that when trans women speak to trans issues, it it the job of non-trans folks to be quiet and listen.) The hands down most damaging trope about trans women is that they are deceitful. That they get into romantic relationships by lying about who they are, by withholding information, and tricking people into loving them. Many, many people truly believe this lie and use it to justify murdering, and sexually and physically abusing trans women. That’s a real life one-to-one correlation. The media portrays trans women as deceptive monsters; real life people kill and beat real life trans women.

That Charlotte DiLaurentis seduced her own brother under false pretenses is an egregious storytelling offense. The “deceitful trans person” and “depraved transgender” trope are used more often than not when trans people are represented on television and in film, as we’ve seen in shows and movies including but certainly not limited to Glee, The Crying Game, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Family Guy, and Lost Girl. This is how the media teaches us to hate and fear transgender people. The result is deadly.

You can see the scariness of this trope manifesting itself in the U.S. Marine story I shared above, and in the majority of the other attacks on trans people recorded in the U.S. over the last several years. 

What I said to Riese during the finale is still my goal. The question I am asking is: How can we turn this into a teaching moment? How can we help people understand and embrace the transgender community so they don’t contribute to a culture that condones perpetual and horrific violence against trans people? I work for the most popular queer/feminist website on the internet. We won a GLAAD Award this year. But our voice is so small compared to the voice of Pretty Little Liars. 35,000 people read my Pretty Little Liars recap. Three million people watched the finale. How can Pretty Little Liars’ writers/producers and ABC Family executives amplify our voice – one of truth and compassion – to educate the hearts and minds of the people we’ll never, ever reach?

I think we start by reaching out to the show’s creative team – all of whom want to do good in this world and spread love in this world and tell stories that change things for the better, I believe that truly – and ask them to make sure they’re educated on the struggles facing the transgender community, the storytelling tropes that damage the transgender community, guidelines for speaking about trans people. I think we ask them to avoid those mistakes in the future and to be honest about those mistakes in the past. I think we ask them to address these things on the air, either in the show or a special episode about the show, where they can reach the masses who probably internalized some negative, damaging stereotypes during the finale. I think we ask them to consult with actual trans people. I think we ask ABC Family and its official social media accounts to learn how to speak about trans issues and to apologize when they make mistakes and to not silence trans people and trans allies when they’re pointing out harmful content.

I think we teach people how to do good and then insist that they join us in doing good. Help me, won’t you? Spread this word, have this conversation, plead for change. 

You can read my full recap here and watch the HuffPo Live segment I participated in after the finale here. 

UPDATE: Another murdered trans woman has been discovered. That’s 18 this year. 

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If you EVER think Anthony Head is anything less than an angel then you’d best remember that I have always been a huge fan of his and we’ve always had a little contact over the years and he heard I’d come out as Trans and was having a hard time and that I was kind of sad that the photos I had from conventions with him were of me with long hair and no binder and they were all signed to “Sarah” and so he invited me to spend the day with him at his farm and he picked me up from the station and we just hung out and had lunch and he insisted on paying and took loads of photos and had them printed on photo paper the same day so he could sign them to Jay, along with other photos of him as Giles and Uther and he literally spent five hours chatting with me and got all of the pronoun stuff right every time and then he dropped me off at the station, gave me a final massive hug, waved me through the ticket barrier and insisted I message him when I got home so he knew I got back safe. (More HERE)

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My thoughts on family tonight:

I think our families of origin love us. I think they’re just bad at saying it in language we can understand.  I think we choose partners and intimate friends from people who speak the same language we do. No translation needed.

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If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo and THE END of your novel is somewhere past the November 30th finish line, don’t be discouraged. The act of reaching out to yourself, to want to reach out to others, through writing, to put yourself to paper with stories real or imagined, is such a wondrous and...

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Alison Haislip: If there is another Mass Effect, 4 fingers crossed, do you guys know where the story line might go?

Jennifer Hale: I hope straight to Shepard that’s all I can say.

Ali Hillis(in Liara’s voice): I hope Shepard comes straight to me.

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headcanon: I feel like once in a while when they’re just sitting around at home reading/online together and it’s been silent for like 2 hours Maura will wait til Jane takes a sip of her drink and very casually say something like “I want to lick whipped cream off your abs” just to hear her choke

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I am bad at a lot of things. I am, in fact, bad at most things. Here is a brief list of just a few of the things at which I am bad:

1. Brushing my teeth (my technique is all wrong)

2. Flossing my teeth (I always cut myself up)

3. Singing (I have no rhythm, no range, and no ear for...