#I have described my gender as doll for at least a decade

[postdoe]

I understand why it would make sense to use it to fill that niche, but when the vast majority of writings on doll/witch dynamics basically turned into soft mommydom with light fantasy elements, it did eliminate almost all of the draw for me.

[katakaluptastrophy]

This may be something you have already covered, or considered and discarded, but. Thoughts on Jod being trans?

Because it seemed slightly odd to me, that a AMAB kid going to his grandmother’s house would be allowed to play with his mum’s toys. Especially if they’re “traditionally girly” toys, as opposed to being told to run around or given a ball to do sports.

Whereas a little AFAB kid would gladly be given his mum’s dolls by a traditional grandma and told to play nicely and quietly. Not identifying with the Barbies so much as finding them so pretty (especially compared to the Ken dolls that look nothing like him, which he feeds to Ulysses the dog).

And then, two or three decades later and finding that he is now God. He has consumed the Earth and her siblings and made her anew.

How easy is it to change the bits about himself he never felt were right? To remake himself as God in the flesh? To look upon himself and say, it is good?

"When I was seven, you know, all Nana had to play with in her house was some of Mum's old toys. And my favouite out of all of them..." He gave a long, shuddering sigh. "My favourite was her old Hollywood Hair Barbie," he murmured. "I loved her little gold outfit and her long yellow hair. She was the best. She got to have all the adventures. There was also a Bride's Dream Midge, but Mum had cut Midge's hair into this weird mullet. It was Barbie for me." She looked at him. He looked at her. He added, "Not Hollywood Hair Ken. Mum had him too, but he was a creep. I gave him to Nana's dog to eat."

This is what we get when John is describing the "scraps of id" that lead him to make Alecto look like some kind of nightmarish Barbie. The 'id' is, psychoanalytically, the most instinctual, basic part of the self. If John is being truthful here, then he's expressing something very basic about himself and his motivations in making Alecto.

I'm not convinced that we can infer anything about his Nana's attitude towards what toys a child should be allowed to play with. John is probably born somewhere between the mid 90s to the mid 20s, so it's just as possible that John playing with his mum's old Barbies is evidence that his family was fairly progressive. Or too poor to afford new toys. Or just ambivalent about the toys he played with.

In terms of John and gender, or at least John and masculinity, this interview has an interesting insight into what Tamsyn might be doing with that:

the God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to. Even he identifies himself as the God who became man and the man who became God.

Though of course, to quote a different interview, this is a series where "readers will end up STICKY and GREASY with GENDER and BIBLE" and where Lyctorhood is "a huge genderfuck".

So I think there's certainly scope for trans readings of John, which shift the framework for the way that John is positioning himself in relation to his masc roleplaying of god. There's a number of elements that would have a very different resonance in such readings, not least putting Alecto into such a specific version of a woman's body, and the tension between his own exercise of bodily autonomy and his utter restriction and violation of others' bodily autonomy.

Personally, my take is that John is meant to be a type of cis man I'm sure many of us have met - one who is at pains to demonstrate his feminism, who perhaps finds the boundaries of masculinity confining to some extent, but who is ultimately unwilling to examine how deeply those boundaries are part of the way he views the world and interacts with others. And with John, this is writ large, quite literally: endowed with godlike power, he falls back on the patriarchal image of god. John may go out of his way to tell us that the maternity problem was important to him, that he played with Barbies, that he *cares*, but at the end of the day that introspection doesn't translate into his actions.

Regardless of how John came to his relationship with masculinity, he's stuck with - or perhaps in context we could say haunted by - a very particular conception of patriarchal masculinity.

[fereldenturnip]

rando trans thoughts

My own personal Trans Story, feel free to scroll past!

I often see a lot of positivity posts trying to explain being transgender through wholesome analogies. I like them! I feel warm and squishy when I read them! I even share them with the friends I’m out with and they share some more back!

But there’s also this component to a lot of them that somewhat, er, chafes me. It’s the common notion that ALL trans know they’re trans at the earliest age possible. No ifs, ands, or buts.  How accurate is that though? It borders an ideology I’m uncomfortable entertaining, least of all because it has the potential to isolate those curious or anxious about their own identity.

“If I didn’t have a solid belief I was born in the wrong body, than it’s impossible I’m trans, right??” 

I don’t believe that. It’s super splendid if that was the case for you! To be that sure of yourself is a marvelous thing and I don’t want those people to ever minimize their self-belief. But I personally struggled with my identity in the world, and I know plenty more besides me do as well. 

As a kid, I wanted to run with the boys and play with their toys and laugh at their jokes. But because I was "a girl”, I was stuck in a world not of my choosing, with gender roles that felt like a pair of undersized shoes. Not enough for me to kick them off, but enough that I was weary by the end of the day. This lead me to feeling like an outsider (at worse, a failure) when it came to “womanhood”. I could read the script and execute the lines perfectly, heck, even enjoy it from time to time. Yet, whatever I was doing felt like a pale imitation of The Role that seemed forever out of reach. But what role was that exactly?

Anyone ever watch The Muppet Movies? [Bear with me!] There was a scene from Muppet Treasure Island, where Rizzo is introducing himself and his friends: 

Rizzo: I’m Rizzo the Rat and this is Gonzo, the, uh... Gonzo: The Whatever! 

It was that line that led to a mini epiphany for itty bitty Turnip. I remember, quite distinctly, thinking “Hahaha! Wait... He can be a WHATEVER?? That’s a real thing?!” From then on, that just stuck within my child brain all the way up to adulthood. Turnip, the Whatever. Maybe I was already thinking in Nonbinary before it was even a thing. It worked. For a time. 

Like all terrible moments in life, puberty hit. Oof. As I grew older, I started feeling so uncomfortable, even when I couldn’t pinpoint why. It was my skin, my hair, my body, my clothes, everything! Even my name felt odd in my mouth. It was as if people were calling out to some figure standing behind me, but I was the only one in the room. I started taking on male nicknames like it was a perfectly normal thing to do. I always dressed up as male characters for Halloween. I started painting beards on my face for cosplay; for once, looking into the mirror and seeing that Tony Stark goatee on my face felt like I was matching up to... something.

The thing is, I didn’t know that this was dysphoria. I never once thought I was trans until I was in my early twenties finally hearing more terminology thrown around. But even then, I balked. No! Surely not! I’m just WEIRD! I grew progressively more feminine in an attempt to play catch up with all the women at college getting boyfriends/married, going to clubs dolled up, GALentines (okay, I’d still do GALentines because it’s sweet and wholesome), etc. Basically, I saturated myself in femininity to prove I wasn’t as broken as I felt on the inside. 

That eventually backfired. Those innate feelings had to manifest somewhere, and it burbled up in the bedroom. I started purposely seeking out partners that let me explore my desire to top, my inner need to be seen as manly. I’d shut down whenever I’d hear ‘pussy’ and ‘womb’. Somehow, they were the wrong terms to describe my parts (parts that I just often ignored or disassociated their entire existence out of my head). I preened whenever they asked for ‘my dick’, for me to manhandle them, to spoon them or take care of them. 

Two years ago, I decided enough was enough. What truly helped was when my coworker came out as Nonbinary to us. They started a dialogue that inspired zero shame self-reflection. I think people underestimate the profound impact open dialogue has on the human existence. Being open, honest, and welcoming? It had me questioning my own identity in weeks when previously I spent over two decades ignoring the obvious.

So here I am, a 31 year old trans man, finally making strides towards living as my truest self! I’ve come out to my closest friends and they couldn’t be more happy for me. They’re already planning my new reenactment outfits and helping me find homes for all the dresses. My coworkers (turns out, they’ve all got some claim to a letter in LGBTQ+ lol) immediately changed my name on the schedule, on all the inboxes, and started chatting about throwing me a celebratory Bar Mitzvah. Hearing my chosen name and the right pronouns feels like a monumental weight has lifted off my shoulders; a cosmic shift has occurred and for once the world feels right.  This “late bloomer” realization happens all the time! Life is crazy and every experience is uniquely individual. So I hope that by telling mine, it helps someone else take one more step closer to happiness and clarity. What I want others to get from this massive spiel is: you can be 8 years old, 15, 31, 55, 72, 100! Whenever you decide come out, no matter how you expressed yourself until that point, you are valid and we love you!

[pinkchaosart]

In response to Mr. Prager

If you haven’t seen it, this is the video that this essay is in response to

So, obviously I disagree with this video. Let’s go through it: welcome to my ted talk.

1. Universities - First of all, let’s get this out of the way: just because one professor has an opinion about his school becoming a “laughing stock,” doesn’t mean that all education is going down the tubes. In reality, more people of colour and women are being educated than ever before. Kids are graduating high school more than ever, and education is more accessible than ever, at least according to the National Centre for Education Statistics. I don’t know if Mr. Prager has ever been to a modern, public university, but the only people that shut down vs debate are people who are not open to new ideas, who feel overwhelmed and persecuted because their opinion isn’t the only one in the school. Also, Christopher Columbus (pictured in the video as a pillar of education) was a genocidal lunatic. He murdered the Tainos people, didn’t discover America, and didn’t prove the earth was round. Go read about that.

2. The Arts - “The primary purpose of art was to elevate people.” I don’t know if there is a single time in human history when this stands true. This is a topic I’ve personally studied and so I’m going to tell you that, for most of human history, the primary purpose of art was for the rich to show off their money. Portraits were paid for by wealthy people to immortalize themselves. Selfie culture who? I also want to point out that, in the animation in the video, an example of “classic art” given is a painting by Monet, a modern artist who’s work was seen as shocking at the time due to it’s non-photorealism. The only reason we see it as beautiful now is because of time and the art prestige classifying it as such. I would also like to point out that the urinal in the next bit of the video was actually “made” around the same point in time. By no means is it something anyone would consider a current piece of art. I would also like to point out that Mr. Prager is being a hypocrite here, employing the imagery of “urine and feces” for shock value, the very thing he had just criticized. Pablo Picasso said, “What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.” Art isn’t for beauty, it’s all politics, war, sex and money.

3. Literature - “The English department of the university of Pennsylvania replaced the portrait of the greatest English writer who ever lived, William Shakespeare, with a picture of a black lesbian poet.” Yes they did, and that poet’s name is Audre Lorde. First, William Shakespeare’s work is not prestigious. His work was not considered refined when it was produced. It’s full of lewd and ridiculous jokes. “Much ado about nothing” roughly translates to “everyone wants the pussy”. “Nothing” was slang back then for vagina. But let’s go back to Lorde. Mr. Prager said that they replaced Shakespeare with her because they value diversity over excellence. What he’s implying is that Lorde is not worth revering, despite being a very important writer of her time, five thousand times more serious than Shakespeare ever was, and her writings are much deeper than Prager gives her credit for. In fact, he gave her no credit, didn’t even say her name.

4. Late-night television - “In America, late-night shows were completely apolitical” This is completely wrong. Late night TV started in the 1940-50’s, and often they were based on politically charged comedy, just like they are now.

5. Religion - “In many churches and synagogues, one is more likely to hear the clergy talk about political issues than about any other subject, including the Bible.” First of all, I would like to point out that political issues were what Jesus mostly talked about. “Love your neighbour” was a direct comment at the racism Jews experienced and held towards others. “Turn the other cheek” was about how to make your aggressor look like a total jerk. What is the point of church if not to give people usable tools in our modern world? That’s what Jesus did. I would also like to point out that, again, this is Prager’s opinion, and it’s clear what kind of content he thinks should be taught.

6. Freedom of Speech: “Yet the whole point of free speech is that it allows people to express any political or social position, including what any one of us considers hate speech.” Except that it doesn’t. Freedom of speech is described: “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” by the International Human Rights Law, but it also states that the rights carry “special duties and responsibilities” and are “therefore ....subject to certain restrictions ... for respect of the rights or reputation of others ....or the protection of national security of public order or of public health or morals.” Freedom of speech is not absolute, and common boundaries are hate speech, food labeling, pornography, obscenity, slander, copyrights, etc. I would also like to point out that him arguing to be allowed to use hateful words is pointing out the obvious: that he hates us, ie: people that he describes in or agrees with this video.

7. Race - “America has become the least racist multiracial society in world history” ding dong, this is so unbelievably wrong. Let’s talk about “systemic racism” for a minute. This isn’t some “angry diatribe,” but a legitimate and historically accurate concern. It is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions, reflected in disparities regarding wealth, income, criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among others. It is a reality that millions of North Americans (yes, Canada’s not clean on this issue) experience daily. For example, Caucasian people and black people consume the same amount of pot on a national scale. Black people are way more likely to be arrested and receive convictions for it. In America, once you receive a criminal conviction, you are no longer able to vote. So even though equal amounts of white and black people use marijuana, black people are arrested and convicted (and therefore cannot vote) because of a system designed to take away their voice. Let’s also touch on the “red lining” from a half-century ago which allowed banks to not lend money to people of colour which created ghettos, which is now home to an overwhelmingly poor and coloured population. That’s systemic oppression and it has been going on for decades. Mr. Prager is the epitome of White Privilege. I’m as white as he is and even I can see that this man hasn’t had to question his good fortune a day in his life and instead chooses to blame others for not “working hard enough” even though they’ve worked harder than he ever has.

8. The Boy Scouts - “They’re not even the Boy Scouts anymore, they’re just the Scouts. The left forced them to admit girls” - So? “The Boy Scouts have helped shape tens of millions of boys into independent and strong good men.” Okay, so wouldn’t you want your girls to grow up strong and independent? How is adding MORE PARTICIPANTS destroying the Scouts exactly?

9. Male-Female - “In New York City, parents do not have to select male or female on a newborn’s birth certificate.” Again, so what? How is that going to affect anyone other than that family. Also, designations of gender at birth on a certificate aren’t set in stone, they can be changed later. It’s not a big deal. Allowing a child to grow up unrestricted in gender norms, won’t create confused people. Letting your boys play with dolls isn’t going to make them want to be a girl, and letting your daughter roll around in the dirt won’t make her a lesbian. Mass confusion doesn’t just happen because of an “x” on a birth certificate.

“America is only bad compared to Utopia.” No, America is bad in comparison to most other first-world countries. The only thing that America excels in is making war. It spends billions of dollars occupying other countries while its people can’t afford health care, food, education, and other basic human rights.

What i find really interesting about this video is that it is completely his opinion. There’s no facts or sources given, he’s chosen his quotes very carefully (even taken them out of context), and I have to conclude that a video like this is only meant to drive the “us vs them” mentality. At it’s best this philosophy is unhealthy, at it’s worst it can kill millions of people and has started countless wars. Mr. Prager isn’t well-educated on most of what he’s talked about. He has an undergraduate in Middle Eastern Studies. Everything else he’s studied appears to be related to orthodox religions. He hasn’t done his research, got some of the most basic ideas completely wrong, and nobody should be listening to a word he has to say on any of the topics he’s talked about in this video.

As someone who used to go to a radical church and was part of the “us vs them” mentality for a number of years, I know that my words aren’t going to change many people’s minds. But what I will say is that we have more in common than we have differences. He said he wants us to debate, so here’s a rebuttal. You can have your opinion but only if you can defend it (not using religious texts). Videos like this are just dividing our culture even more than it already is. My uncle referred to “leftists” as vultures. How awful is that? To dehumanize people so extremely is a great first step to calling for their destruction.

Just ask your German Jewish friends, Mr. Prager.

[yumeka36]

Fandom and the death of adulthood

A few years ago, The New York Times published an article that I found very relevant to all manner of fandoms. It’s called “The Death of Adulthood in American Culture” and it involves a film critic for The Times discussing how American society has changed over the decades in terms of what it means to be an adult; he cites popular TV shows, movies, and books that reflect how the old view of adulthood – being part of an authority-following, gender role-centered society – has been losing popularity in favor of a freer and more rebellious idea of adulthood, most notably one that embraces childhood and supposedly childish things rather than cast them off.

The majority of the article talks about American TV shows, celebrities, books, etc., that I’m not too familiar with, but the basic idea of this “death of adulthood” is something that extends to all branches of pop culture and fandoms of the past 20-30 years, all over the world. A perfect example is an incident the author of the article, A.O. Scott, mentions about how a journalist named Rush Graham published an essay on the topic of how adults between the ages of 30-44 should feel ashamed for buying young adult literature (for themselves, not for their kids). Readers of her essay were furious of course, and Scott described their sentiment as “‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ as if Graham were a bossy, uncomprehending parent warning the kids away from sugary snacks toward more nutritious, chewier stuff.” He goes on to say that “It was not an argument she was in a position to win, however persuasive her points. To oppose the juvenile pleasures of empowered cultural consumers is to assume, wittingly or not, the role of scold, snob or curmudgeon.”

So if “young adult literature” should be for “young adults (older kids/teenagers) only”, then so should most video games, anime/manga, and so-called children’s literature like Harry Potter, and certainly My Little Pony, Disney movies, and any work of fiction that doesn’t scream “For adults only!” So for those of us who are a part of these fandoms, should we feel embarrassed? I’m sure most of you will say “no,” which is great, and it definitely shows how times have changed.

To illustrate further, my mom (who’s currently 72 years old) doesn’t have a problem with my hobbies. But it does puzzle her at times and I can understand why. After all, when she was growing up in the 1950s-1960s, what it meant to be an adult was simpler, but also limited: men and women would get married and have kids, with the men having full-time jobs and supporting the family while the women would take care of the home and the kids. In addition to these societal roles, there were also personality expectations: men were supposed to be masculine and authoritative, and like manly things like sports and cars, while women were supposed to be motherly and into womanly things like fashion, romance, and raising children. Men and women who indulged in childish things like collecting toys and reading comic books were basically unheard of, or if they did exist, they kept themselves hidden. So you can imagine how someone from those times must feel when they see grown men make a fuss over the cute little Pokemon plushie they just bought, or women who spend their free time playing PS4 games together over Skype instead of raising a family.

Going back to the article, Scott continues on this topic by saying that “In my main line of work as a film critic, I have watched over the past 15 years as the studios committed their vast financial and imaginative resources to the cultivation of franchises (some of them based on those same Young Adult novels) that advance an essentially juvenile vision of the world. Comic-book movies, family-friendly animated adventures, tales of adolescent heroism and comedies of arrested development do not only make up the commercial center of 21st-century Hollywood. They are its artistic heart.” I certainly agree with this as all one has to do is look at the most popular movies of the past two decades to see that they’re not the standard adult fare of Hollywood romances and dramas from yesteryear, but the very kinds of “juvenile” stories that Scott described: they’re the animated adventures from Disney and Dreamworks, the comic book sagas like Iron Man and The Avengers, and the fantasy epics like Harry Potter and Star Wars…the young adult stories that are marketed for a younger audience yet keep garnering a noticeable adult demographic. And there’s no denying that the main consumers of anime products, video games, and comic books are adults. I would even claim that the majority of Pokemon fans nowadays are adults rather than kids, evidence being that every Pokemon tournament I’ve been to in the past few years has had more adult participants than kids.

So, should we mourn this death of adulthood? I’m biased of course, but I’m definitely happy to embrace a more free and open-minded idea of adulthood than we had before. To me, being an adult simply means being responsible, thoughtful, intelligent, and self sufficient…if one is able to be in these tough times of course. And that could be another, less positive reason for this so-called death of adulthood: a lot of the current generation can’t afford to live like adults. I can’t speak for other countries, but here in the US, a young person being able to “move out and start their own life,” with that life entailing the ability to pursue pleasure and luxury while still being financially secure, is becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish when the cost of living is always going up and salaries never seem to keep up. So it’s no wonder that those in their late 20s or older who are still living like they did in their teen years, not necessarily by choice, feel no rush to grow up when adulthood has become synonymous with debt, overwork, and stress. There’s no avoiding at least some adult responsibilities, like holding down a job and paying bills, but being able to indulge in the fictional worlds of TV shows, movies, and video games is becoming increasingly attractive for adults to escape a stressful and unsatisfying life rather than just a playground for children’s’ imaginations.

Regardless of whether you’re over 30 and still living with your parents, or whether you’re one of the lucky ones who found a great job right out of college and are living happily on your own, adulthood shouldn’t be defined by how one chooses to live their life or the kinds of things they’re interested in. I’m glad that in every college class I’ve taken and every job I’ve had, there’s always been at least a few people (adults mind you) who like anime, video games, or other of these so-called childish hobbies. And at the recent fan conventions I’ve been to, I’ve been seeing more and more couples with children attending, obviously because the parents like this stuff and not just their kids. So they can now pass on this idea to the next generation that it’s perfectly fine for adults to indulge in cartoons and games as well. As Scott says near the end of his article, “It is now possible to conceive of adulthood as the state of being forever young. Childhood, once a condition of limited autonomy and deferred pleasure (“wait until you’re older”), is now a zone of perpetual freedom and delight. Grown people feel no compulsion to put away childish things: We can live with our parents, go to summer camp, play dodge ball, collect dolls and action figures and watch cartoons to our hearts’ content. These symptoms of arrested development will also be signs that we are freer, more honest and happier than the uptight fools who let go of such pastimes.”

It’s a very, very different world than it was 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. A lot of things have changed for the worse unfortunately, but what I’ve discussed here is something that I feel has changed for the better. So to wrap up this post, I’ll give you one last quote from Scott’s article that sums up our fandom-consuming, Internet-inspired generation very well: “A crisis of authority is not for the faint of heart. It can be scary and weird and ambiguous. But it can be a lot of fun, too. The best and most authentic cultural products of our time manage to be all of those things. They imagine a world where no one is in charge and no one necessarily knows what’s going on, where identities are in perpetual flux. Mothers and fathers act like teenagers; little children are wise beyond their years. Girls light out for the territory and boys cloister themselves in secret gardens. We have more stories, pictures and arguments than we know what to do with, and each one of them presses on our attention with a claim of uniqueness, a demand to be recognized as special. The world is our playground, without a dad or a mom in sight.”

*This is a revision of a previous post I wrote on my old anime blog. You can also comment on the revised post here*

*Crossposted from my main blog, Yume Dimension*

[this-is-the-salivation-army]

REVISITING THE PERMISSION FACTORY Scott Treleaven (2015)

You’ll have to forgive a few extremely unsexy paragraphs so we can get down to figuring out the lifelong, tenuous romance between punk and gay culture: how it got started in the 70s, how it got revitalized in the 90s, and why this unique relationship persists. It’s the story of how gay culture rescued the first would-be punks from the sexual puritanism of their parents, and how punk would later resuscitate the fury of a devastated gay scene. When I first got into punk music as a kid I found that I connected with a sensibility that seemed to exist nowhere else. What I could only later describe as “Weimar-esque,” punk seemed to have awareness not only of how sex could be liberating and daring, but how it could also be used to *entertain* without being sapped of its vitality. Whatever can be said about punk’s stance against normalcy and capitalism, punks knew the importance of putting on a show; it didn’t have to be a good show, it didn’t have to be a long show, but punk always promised that there’d be something genuine to experience. The fact that some twenty years on it would become relevant again, in a regenerated form as “queercore”, is a testament to punk’s original intent. And once again this reincarnation would come partly as vaudeville, and partly as social hammer.

Of all the ‘origin of the species’ stories about how and where punk got started, who its progenitors were and what historical and cultural factors came together to birth it, Jeff Nuttal’s appraisal in BOMB CULTURE (1968) rings most true for me. Written almost a decade before punk existed, Nuttall surmised that the somber and shell-shocked post-World War II generation would also have to deal with the profound moral schizophrenia brought on by a moment that annihilated the reassuring binary simplicity of ‘good guys versus bad guys,’ forever. The men and women raising children in the late sixties in the UK and the US, the children that would eventually become the first “punks,” must have had found it hard to countenance that the good guys who liberated Europe had gone on to commit the unspeakable atrocity of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Not only did it mean that the shadow of nuclear war hung over the world’s future from now on, but it begged the mostly unspoken question of how one raises a child with any kind of moral assurance when the supposed good guys were capable of the very atrocities they had fought against. Unlike the Bright Young People who emerged as a sort of upper-class, upbeat and insolent post-WWI phenomenon, the pervading air of nihilism and punk’s working class roots had more in common with the clownish despair found in Dada. The closeness of the US/UK alliance might also explain how mutual culpability created a climate that lead to punk’s simultaneous emergence in both countries. Always in the background, the same subliminal refrain, that the dominant culture no longer held moral authority.

The staggering austerity that punk emerged from made it seem like there literally was no future to be had. When I hear tales of kids playing in the bombed out ruins of an empire I think how it must’ve made the edifices of society seem as flimsy and impermanent as they, in fact, are. The only thing you could be sure of was that your young body was alive and filled with a kind of vitality that wasn’t mirrored in the landscape. Suspicion of tradition gave way to a thirst for what was outside, what was verboten. What the parents rejected the kids embraced. Reggae was alien, exciting and new; the Nazi paraphernalia that terrified their elders could be wielded partly for shock value but also to disgrace its symbolic power; and there was also a more pronounced cognizance that underneath the New York Dolls’ and Bowie’s slap was a frank acknowledgement of the wild frontier of gay culture and its influence on style. Along with the draggish maquillage, the bondage gear and the outright porn, what punk found thrilling in the burgeoning gay scene was its frank embrace of fringe and coded styles, its penchant for hidden venues, its gender non-conformity, and the inherent power in outsider camaraderie. After all, “punk” meant “gay” before punk meant punk. The queered sexiness that would become intrinsic to punk had the dual purpose of titillating the uninitiated while simultaneously ridiculing the uptight behind-the-plastic-curtains realm to which sex (or any arousing image outside of sanctioned smut and/or artwork) had been relegated by older generations. Punks were all about giving each other permission to flaunt, demystify and explore own their sexuality.

Eventually, after a particularly cold-blooded breed of Conservatism (perhaps there is no other kind) took hold at the end of the 70s, the virulence of its free market spirit had the effect of turning punk signifiers into just another load of feel good shopping experiences. Stock slogans, mohawks, safety pins and leather jackets became a uniform; anathema to the very things punk was initially about. While punk was defanged, an even more horrifying extermination of subcultural potential was taking place as the sexual libertinism and freedom that characterized the gay scene was ravaged by AIDS. Whereas the radioactivity from Hiroshima eventually dissipated, and the West somehow got back to convincing itself of its own decency, the AIDS epidemic was just getting started and the banner of morality was callously plied to create an exponential body count, and effectively ensuring a plague that could never be contained. By the early 90s the gay scene had gone back to adopting an attitude similar to the “clone” mentality of the late 70s; originally used as a way of signifying sexual difference and availability, the gay scene had now become cautious, conformist and grim as AIDS killed off most of the renegades and sexual astronauts. After approximately 500,000 cases of AIDS and 300,000 deaths in the US alone were reported by the mid-90s, gay culture was reeling and understandably desperate for some kind of homogeneity to patch together what was left. It was from this gloomy fray that queercore first emerged.

As punk had once turned to queer culture for its social-sexual strategies, now it was returning the favor. The blinkered gay and lesbian mainstream in the mid-90s felt neither inclusive nor progressive, or even particularly political, suffering as it was from what can only be called battle fatigue. Under siege for so long, the scene seemed to want to return to some kind of clement version of a pre-AIDS heyday where everyone could listen to mediocre dance music in the company of others who wanted to conform to the new gay normal. If the world was fair, the likes of Queer Nation, Outrage and Gran Fury would’ve thrived, but there was less room now for the libertine weirdos and troublemakers who might (or might not) have caused all of the chaos in the first place. Eventually two Toronto-based punks, G.B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce, would change everything by launching an incendiary campaign through zines, music and manifestoes, to call out the gays on their conservatism and to make the supposedly open-minded punks put their inclusivity to the test. Following their lead, queercore bands, zines and record labels – like Matt Wobensmith’s Outpunk – flourished. For me personally, as a twenty-year old punk recently transplanted back in Toronto in 1993 after a year of living hand-to-mouth in London, discovering that I could reconcile my music, my politics and my sexuality was a revelation. Already ideologically hopped-up on publications like RE:SEARCH, RAPID EYE and HOMOCULT, I’d also had a fortuitous meeting with queer saint Derek Jarman shortly before my return who clinched for me the idea that there was more to one’s sexuality than simply who you fucked. Jarman’s idea of queerness was that it was a blessing of sorts, a radiant kind of permission. It reinforced for me what I’d always felt: that being queer meant that you could slough off a past, an ideology and a trajectory, that's not yours to inherit and keep on forging paths that are as yet unimagined. And if that wasn’t punk, I didn’t know what was.

Graduating from art school in 1996, and with G.B. Jones’ help, I shot the world’s first queer punk documentary. More of a polemic than a who’s-who, QUEERCORE: A PUNK-U-MENTARY was an attempt to unify some of the politics and positions of the company of outcasts I was keeping. Combining these ideas with some stark pseudo-military aesthetics copped from postpunk bands like Psychic TV and New Model Army, I also started publishing my own zine, THIS IS THE SALiVATION ARMY. Rejecting salvation as a nebulous, ludicrous concept, *salivation* was where it was at; always on the tip of your tongue, something your body knows. And in the wake of the full on body-terror that followed AIDS, this kind of fluidic moniker was about more than just spit. Branding itself as a the mouthpiece of a full-fledged “queer pagan punk” movement with hundreds of members and everybody fucking each other, it didn’t seem useful, or poetically true, to tell readers that in reality it was just me with a gluestick, alone at 3am in an all-night photocopy shop. Another lesson learned from punk: print the legend. Aside from the hyperbole, the zine distinguished itself by trying to be an honest platform to discuss and celebrate sexuality in all its forms, and to this day it’s a point of pride to know that my readership wasn’t solely made up of horny homocore boys, but an equal amount of women, bi and straight readers, too.

Eventually the zine spawned a film of the same name in 2002 that would try to keep the myths alive alongside the truth. The fact that the zine and the film still get unearthed says something, to me at least, about its view of sexuality as something innately powerful, and the punk ethos at its core still gives the go-ahead to explore in the company of like-minded others; being part of an ongoing, swelling history is always better than being part of something unique. When punk first reared its head in the 70s, decrying sex as squelchy and boring was a genius way of disarming the shame-makers, the rockers and the doting hippies, showing a preference instead for anger and action over getting your rocks off and calling it a weekend. In the 90s however the slogan had shifted to take aim at the puritans and fear-mongers with a distinctly feminist pitch. The patches on people’s jackets were daubed with slogans like: You Say Don’t Fuck, We Say Fuck You!, Silence = Death, and Not Gay As In Happy, But Queer As In Fuck You! On the heels of this declaration that queers weren’t the filthy creatures that the religious zealots and right wing would have you believe, another reinvigoration of sexual awareness came in the form of a wave of punk-made porn. It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but in the pre-selfie, pre-internet world, occupying pornography was a radical act. Like industrial musician and performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti’s astutely aware ownership of her participation in pornography – usurping the male-made-for-male-gaze structure – the queercore scene wrestled its bodies away from the overly muscled uniformity of the Aryan sideshow freaks that populated gay porn and made images of their own. Like Warholian superstars, Jones’ and LaBruce’s zines and films launched a new blue generation and everyone, myself included, loaned their time and their bodies to one another in the pursuit of a new kind of radicalism. Suddenly you weren’t jerking off to the too perfect torsos in mainstream porn, instead you could find insanely erotic homegrown smut to get off on that also served the purpose of smashing the stereotypes purveyed by the other mags. The empowerment had positive effects on the models, too. Starring in a couple of centerfolds and films, I found that the lowly view I’d held of my weedy twenty-year old body started to vanish. Better yet, as I got behind the camera I learned to make other models snap out of their narrow views of what turned people on as we added our own brands of eroticism to the collective pool.

The notion that punk was anti-sex, entirely cynical or entirely nihilistic is overplayed. There would’ve been no bands, no shows, no pageantry and no studied provocation if that were true. Now that gay culture has become obsessed with the push for “equality” an ugly, overwhelming sense of genteel propriety has come along with it. The church and the army – the last places on earth a punk or a queer should be – are the mindboggling territories being fought for. When I think about the first time I saw Pete Shelley mincing around in the video for ‘Homosapien,’ even at the tender age of eight I felt that the elegant futuristic world he occupied was going to be mine too, someday, not the weddings and wars that were the destiny of my other little friends. As the 2000s kicked in, my hometown Toronto was a hotbed of queercore activity well past the time when most of the early bands had hung up their guitars and the zines had folded. The late, great artist impressario Will Munro organized a vibrant scene there that was dedicated to the idea that the sexual vitality of the queer scene aligned with the restless utopic cravings of punk could still come together to create something *other*, something *better*. The entire planet is currently groaning under the weight of conservative corporatism, and those thinly veiled fascists are floating the idea that there is no other way but theirs. The spirit of punk, if it truly did anything in the past, and if it can do anything now, is to keep kicking the can further down the road; to say, “This is bullshit and it’s not enough, we can do better. And if you can’t make it better we’ll smash it up and start over.” Sex, punk-sex if you will, can remind us of where that desire originates. It’s in our bodies, it’s innate and it says something more to us about our human place in the world than simply being on a conveyer belt through a shopping-mall-cum-torture-chamber.

– originally published in ‘SHOWBOAT: PUNK/SEX/BODIES’ (2016), edited by Toby Mott   http://bit.ly/2twFApe

[executeness]

I know how isolation and bullying feed into each other and become a cycle. The more distant and Different from my peers I was, the more I was bullied. The more I was bullied, the more withdrawn I became. On and on. But what I didn’t understand, not when I was six or eleven or fourteen, was what started it. What marked me in fucking kindergarten as Different enough to warrant abuse? 

I don’t think anything about my appearance could’ve marked me. I was an average kid, kinda cute, no glaring physical differences. My parents were still buying my clothes and picking out my outfits b/c come on, I was six. I don’t think any part of my upbringing made me act significantly different at that age. My parents were liberal and atheist and feminist in the South, but this is a relatively progressive city and, again, I was six. The differences in upbringing could only be so apparent that early and it’s not like we talked religion and politics on the playground (in kindergarten, at least. It took til fourth grade for the other kids to start telling me I was going to hell). My best guess for the longest time was that growing up without a TV to teach me cultural norms really had that big and obvious an effect.

I mean, third through seventh grade made sense, in an awful way. I’d started reading a remarkable and abnormal amount to cope w/ lack of acceptance by my peers. I’d rather sit in a corner and read than talk to my peers. Part of the cycle I described. Even later in high school, when the bullying was minimal b/c we all had more important things to do like die of stress, it made sense because any attempt I’d made at blending died in a fire and the way I dressed was very obviously different. But that was an effect of bullying, not a cause. 

If the bullying started now, I would know why. It’s because I’m bisexual, I’m genderweird, I’m mentally ill, etc. But those really became concrete in late high school and early college. I didn’t realize my queerness or get diagnosed for my mental illnesses until well over a decade AFTER the bullying started. Except... those are all at least somewhat innate, aren’t they? The depression and anxiety, maybe not. But the ADD, the queerness? Theoretically, those were already there whether anyone realized it or not. 

And maybe I’m giving them more credit than they deserve. Maybe I’m looking for bigotry where there isn’t any. But all I can think is that, SOMEHOW, in some nasty subconscious way, those little rat bastards KNEW. The same way kids pick up racism without being able to explain it (those horrifying studies with the baby dolls) or the way they play with the “right” toys when adults are watching. Somehow, they could fucking tell I “wasn’t quite right”, that I was ADD and didn’t do gender like I was supposed to, and when they were picking friends went “Not that one”. Because it’s the exclusion that’s gotten me, every time. The inexplicable but consistent way they ostracized me. 

I’m twenty-fucking-one years old. It’s been fifteen years. I can hardly remember exact instances of what I’m describing. There are hardly any particular scenes that come to mind when I say “I was bulled I was ignored I was alone”. There were plenty of small cruelties and insults, but hell if I can think of any. I just know the general themes of what I went through and what it did to me. There are a handful of people whose names I remember that I would rather put a heel through their throat than talk to again and who, if I asked why they did what they did, would probably have no idea what I was talking about b/c haha we were all just kids why does it matter. 

It makes me furious that they, in some way and to some degree, abused me and have probably gone on to think they were sweet and nice and cute when they were little. No, you putrid vile little bitches, you weren’t. You were bullies and you were assholes and you had no reason and no fucking right. Hah, and their parents, thinking they raised upstanding young citizens. No, you didn’t. You raised nasty, mean little bigots that are as cruel as they can get away with, as cruel as they can find an excuse for. I say that everyone is more than the worst thing they ever did and mostly I believe it but those kids? Those kids and the people that raised them can eat shit and rot. There is no place in my compassion for them. 

[yourmoansareasymphony]

1. Do you bite or lick ice cream? I like to eat ice cream with a spoon. If I can choose between a cup and a cone I always pick a cup.

2. What is home to you? Might sound like a cliché but is true. Pixie.

3. What was the last lie you told? I lie to my cat often. Tell him I’m going to take him out or give him shrimps later but forget. He probably doesn’t trust me at all.

4. Does everyone deserve the truth? Of course not.

5. What is the creepiest toy ever made? Baby dolls.

6. Describe a moment in which you did something unacceptable in a bad situation. I borderline odeed on xans like a weasel.

7. List two things that are more easily done than said. (No, I didn’t mix them up.) Loving and hating.

8. When was the last time you worked really hard to achieve something? PhD.

9. How organized are you? Very. Organised and prepared.

10. If humans didn’t evolve to laugh or smile, how would we express our happiness instead? I don’t know.

11. How many romantic “things” or “flings” have you had? Just this one.

12. What is your favourite background noise? (Ex. Water dripping, people talking.) Heavy rain.

13. How many hearts do you think you have broken? A few, I’m afraid, but not intentionally. Some people just take sex as a promise of something more and perhaps those have been the moments when people have been disappointed.

14. What is the most annoying thing someone can do to you? Interrupt me when I speak.

15. Do you overexaggerate? The word “over” is unnecessary here? Yes, I do, sometimes when I’m angry. Or sometimes for comedy value.

16. Have you played any instruments before? Which instruments? I can play the piano. I’ve taken cello and guitar lessons. I have an ukulele but I’m not allowed to play because it’s annoying, apparently.

17. Do you like taking selfies? Why or why not? No. Because of my face.

18. Do you have what it takes to raise a child? Why or why not? I think I’d have everything concrete that it takes: time, money, maybe intellect. But what I don’t have is unconditional love. I can’t love a person just because they’re family. I might easily hate my child if he or she was an idiot or grew up to be a UKIP voter. I want to choose the people in my life.

19. How do you cheer yourself up after a bad day? I play with my cat.

20. When was the last time you felt awkward? Gary slept with us in our bed last night. I was in the middle and they were both more or less leaning on me and they both smelled like old booze.

21. Are you introverted or extroverted? Or a mixture of both? Introvert.

22. What constitutes a good friend? I was just asked what I love about my best friend.

23. Would you rather have a lot of friends to hang out with or just one best friend? I like having a best friend. Quality over quantity.

24. In a regular day, what do you not want to hear? “Bark bark bark the liberal elite moo moo moo unelected bureaucrats.”

25. What is your dream job? Prime Minister.

26. What is a truth about yourself that others find hard to believe? My followers don’t seem to believe that I don’t masturbate. I think the last time I did was in 2012 or 2013. It is true, you wankers!

27. What have you always wondered about the other gender? Why they don’t murder more.

28. Which fantasy world would you like to visit the most? The post-apocalyptic world of the film The Road, to see how long I’d survive.

29. Imagine that you have switched bodies with someone you don’t know. You can’t switch back. What do you do? Go on with my life. Celebrate. I’d probably look a lot better.

30. If you found the recipe for immortality, would you sell it or would you burn it? I most definitely wouldn’t sell it. I would keep it and hide it and give myself at least a decade to think about what to do with it.

31. What is the most important, applicable class you have ever taken? Maths.

32. Name the last book you read. I’m reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

33. When was the last time you made the first move? 9,5 years ago.

34. What is your opinion on electronic music such as dubstep or trap? I don’t listen to it. No opinion.

35. What was the last movie you watched? Star Wars: The Force Awakens

36. Do you like and appreciate your life? Yes.

37. Do you like and appreciate yourself? Appreciate, yes. Like, not always.

38. When was the last time you cried? Christmas.

39. What are you scared of? Babies. Well, not scared of but they creep me out.

40. What is the most embarrassing, cringe-worthy thing you have ever done? I’m still mortified about the wedding.

41. What is a superficial yet annoying mistake you constantly make? Our London house is a “smart” house, this is a very stupid one. I close the bathroom door and stand in the dark for a few seconds until I remember that there’s no motion sensor and that I have to switch the lights on myself. Sometimes I forget to switch them off.

42. Are you a good friend? What makes you a good friend? If not, what makes you a bad friend? Loyal but clingy.

43. Do you honestly learn from your mistakes? Honestly, I’m not sure.

44. What have you learned the hard way? Pixie doesn’t want her nipples touched.

45. What is the most important thing to have in order to attain happiness? Statistically, money. And I agree with the statistics.

46. Which medium do you use for expressing your artistic emotions? (Singing, writing, etc.) Dance.

47. Are you a creative or a logical thinker? Both, I’d like to think. Why do people always assume that these are mutually exclusive? I think these are often found in the same person.

48. What is the smartest thing you have ever done? Left home the way I did.

49. What is the worst thing someone could do on a date? Pay the bill without asking? Murder?

50. Do you like animals? Which kind is your favourite? Kitty.

51. If you could turn one legal thing illegal, what would it be? Voting, if you’re stupid. There should be two pages on the ballot. First page: 1 x 1, which party/parties form the government at the moment, what is the EU? All 3 answers must be correct and if they’re not they will discard your ballot without counting it.

52. Do you have any guilty pleasures? Pimple popping videos.

53. What is the best thing that the internet has ever created? Human connections for introverts.

54. Are you a morning person? When do you usually wake up? Not a morning person at all. I’m physically unable to smile before noon.

55. Do you have a favourite Disney movie? Character? Dumbo. Got stuff done without talking.

56. Would you rather live in the city or in the countryside? City.

57. Would you rather live near the ocean or in the mountains? Mountains.

58. What are the best things about winter? Heh, I just talked about this with someone. I like it when my nose hair freeze when I inhale. It’s satisfying.

59. What scares you most about the future? Nothing really scares me. Stupidity depresses me.

60. What makes you feel old? My Tumblr followers.

61. How many hours do you spend on the computer or phone on average? 2-3 hours?

62. What bad habits do you do? I clean my ears with cotton buds.

63. Most prominent childhood memory? Oh boy, maybe not.

64. Imagine if you had an older brother. If you already have one, what is it like? If you don’t, how would this change your life? I have two older brothers. One’s a twin, the other one I haven’t seen since I was 18 and do not care to. Having a brother is nice, because he’s nice.

65. Do you believe in horoscopes? Of course not.

66. What is the worst advice you’ve ever been given? I rarely take advice but all these “everything happens for a reason” blaa-di-blaas are really irritating. (I don’t think they mean determinism.)

67. List the 3 most important people in your life right now. Pixie, Gary, Aaron.

68. Do you have a role model? Why or why not? No, because nobody’s perfect.

69. What is your opinion on social media? I’m not on Facebook or Twitter. It’s aggravating how everyone has the chance and the right to post whatever they wish, true or not, and there’s a constant terrifying false balance in these conversations. On the other hand, it’s a great tool to detect which one of your friends or acquaintances is actually a moron and therefore you can avoid them in future.

70. Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Still, realist.

71. List some things that you think are overpriced? Pink hygiene products.

72. What is your worst memory or creepiest experience? Amba’s death and what lead to it.

73. What are some things you did as a child that you no longer do? I don’t put so much sugar in my tea.

74. What languages can you speak? BSL, English, Finnish.

75. Favourite food? Raw beef.

76. What is the most terrifying dream you’ve ever had? I had raped Pixie, didn’t remember doing it and couldn’t understand why. I was trying to find a building high enough but every time I got on the roof the building had shrunk.

77. When was the last time you got seriously angry? Christmas.

78. What was the last friendship you broke? I haven’t broken any. Some of them just dry out.

79. Do you have any pet peeves? Yeah, don’t interrupt me when I’m talking.

80. Who was the last person you gave a hug to? Gary, when he left earlier today.

81. When was the last time you got seriously stressed? Last September.

82. What did you want to be when you were little? Dancer.

83. What are some things that you are good at? I’m getting good at knitting socks.

84. What is one thing you want to be good at? I’d like to be a better driver. I’m not bad but the reality is that I’ve driven all my adult life in central London and it doesn’t take much skill. Just don’t kill cyclists or pedestrians. I look up to Pixie (and she looks down on me). We were in her home town one Christmas and she was driving. We were looking for a parking space and saw one on the other side of the street. I thought we’d go around the block and then parallel park like normal people but no, what followed was a handbrake U-turn on ice and a neat drift right into the spot. Her spatial orientation is excellent in general. She knows instantly whether a piece of clothing will fit, whether a large object will fit in the car. We haven’t competed but I think she’d beat me in Tetris and I’m really good. And I know I’m a good driver as well but her mad skills just make me feel inadequate. She gets frustrated if I need to adjust when I’m parking.

85. What distracts you the most, especially when you’re trying to work? My own thoughts. My mind wanders so easily.

86. How important is privacy to you? Essential.

87. If you could create one social norm, what would it be? I’d like to end the greeting fascism. We all have to say hi to people we haven’t really been in contact with in years. People from school, your previous neighbours, current neighbours, your best friend’s aunt, the cousin of your childhood geography teacher, fucking everyone. One of the greatest things about moving here is that I don’t know many people. In London walking to work was always hi, hi, hello, hello, morning, yes, it’s you again, hello.

88. What’s the craziest lie you’ve ever told? I’ve lied to children. I told the Greek kid that my iPad doesn’t show cartoons because it’s an adult iPad and made her watch Brian Cox and she believed me. I told a kid once that I can forge bank notes by drawing them. That my wife is a witch. That there are pirates buried under our house. All sorts of crazy things. Children are idiots!

89. What story do you like to tell about yourself at parties? I don’t tell stories about myself.

90. What is the stupidest thing you’ve done to impress someone? Acrobatics. It starts with me and Pixie, me saying “hey, watch this!” and then I break a bone.

91. What is your morning routine? Pee, brush teeth, feed the cat.

92. If karma was coming back to you, would it help or hurt you? Help.

93. What is your opinion on playing “hard to get?” If you think it’s attractive, fine. But it might not get you the result you want.

94. What are the pros and cons of straightforward? Getting things said and done efficiently. People getting upset.

95. Are you the friend-zoner or the friend-zoned? Such thing does not exist. There are just dicks who think that being nice should be awarded with sex.

96. What is your opinion on “going with the flow?” Don’t. 

97. Do you enjoy talking or listening? When the topic is interesting I enjoy both.

98. When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone? Yesterday, with Gary.

99. Do you have any self-restraint? Lots.

100. What advice would you give to yourself 5 years ago? I would advise myself to take care of myself because by not doing so I’ve caused a lot of sorrow.

I’m going to try and drop this bomb on @my-wanton-self, @theklicker, @nirhauma​, @cherrytintedmusings, @agythi, @nakedbutterfly​ and @cherrypies​.