#and generally very unhelpful

[janokenmun]

honestly i dont get the "bi lesbian" discourse in particular. like obviously any and all exclusionism in the Be Yourself Regardless Of What Society Thinks community is dumb and stupid but that in particular i dont get

since like. to me (obv u dont have to agree), labels are meant to be *useful*, to convey information. the best labels make a useful statement that can be used to act in a more informed manner; "i have autism [gives information on potential behavioral patterns and needs]." "i am a straight man [gives information relevant to sexuality; both who you're attracted to, and gives information on whether the audience is likely to be attracted to you]." "this is a hill [this area of land rises above the nearby land]"

and to me, "bi lesbian" does that; it expresses a lot in a very concise and relatively intuitive phrase! to me (obv u dont have to agree) it expresses "i am (approximately) a woman who is attracted to both men and women, but ESPECIALLY (approximately) women". and that's useful information!

it also doesn't help that, like *any* attempt at categorization, there will be edge cases and fuzzy boundaries. the definitions between a lake, pond, pool, and reservoir are fuzzy. the distinction between a mountain and a hill is fuzzy. the distinction between a river, creek, stream, and brook are fuzzy. all of these have vague differences, like a river is generally considered to be bigger than a stream, but the cutoffs are inexact and subjective, because nature doesn't like categorization. human gender and sexuality is a lot like this, there is no objective cutoff, people are going to disagree on what exactly counts as what. and that's okay! you don't need to have the exact same definition of river vs stream, or hill vs mountain, or lesbian vs bisexual, because the boundaries are always going to be weird and subjective there; just don't try to force your definition on others and gatekeep things based on subjective cutoffs

[wonder-worker]

“Studies of Elizabeth Woodville […] have been hampered by the continuing fascination with her brother-in-law, Richard III. The Ricardian [and Yorkist] apologetic is now largely dependent upon the argument that the Woodville family posed such a threat to Richard of Gloucester, and the kingdom as a whole, that Gloucester had little option but to take the throne from his Woodville-dominated nephew. Although this argument has [irregularly] been contested, a reassessment of the queen's role in 1483 has not yet been attempted. Michael Bennett, in his 1987 account [...] still dismissed her as `an inveterate intriguer, capable in her vanity and fecklessness of some remarkable shifts and turns'. But more often she is scarcely mentioned in general histories of the period.”

-J.L. Laynesmith, “English Queenship 1445-1503” (thesis for the degree of DPhil in Medieval Studies, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, April 1999)

[uncanny-tranny]

Doctors/surgeons should come before a panel of medical experts who are trans before being allowed to administer trans-specific care

[halo-eater]

.

[bluejaybytes]

I’m curious why you found Inside Out 2 insulting? I recognize that everyone is different, but as someone with an anxiety disorder I personally found it pretty relatable

Throughout my teenage years, when my anxiety was at its most debilitating and my coping skills were basically nonexistent, I was repeatedly met with the idea that "every teen is a bit anxious". This, to an extent, is true, being a teenager IS scary and you're probably going to have some level of anxiety. However, I had an active anxiety disorder. I was prone to frequent panic attacks, skipping school because I couldn't even fathom the idea of going to class out of just sheer intense dread and fear, and all around just having an extremely bad time. I went into the movie with an already decently negative expectation because of that, I didn't like how anxiety was shown to show up ONLY when Riley became a teenager, BUT I was willing to set aside my own distaste of it for the sake of like, I do get why they went the direction of adding new emotions as characters, as much as I disagree with that.

However I found it wildly insulting because I feel the level of intense anxiety Riley is shown to have breaches what I'd consider a "normal" level of anxiety and instead feels more like an anxiety disorder, which, again, it angers me to be once again met with the idea that you only get anxious once you're a teenager, or when signs of much higher levels of anxiety than just normal nervousness are brushed aside with that excuse.

Barring that issue, though that is the biggest in my opinion, basically at every corner I was annoyed by something. This movie felt like it could've been incredibly relatable to me, I was a horrendously anxious teen (Still am anxious just not a teen and also I'm better at coping now) in competitive highschool sports (Yes marching band IS a sport I DO die on this hill), but like... it just continually let me down. The coach is genuinely an asshole, doing things like not showing what the expectations are and then proceeding to single out who she knows are the newcomers as breaking rules that had not been properly established, failing to recognize Riley clearly struggling mentally, and honestly, the biggest sin, fucking letting her in the sport at all. Riley's outburst at the other players should've gotten her taken out of the running entirely, I refuse to believe otherwise.

Which, this is kind of all over the place because I'm not really writing this as a full proper breakdown and more just "Jay angrily rambles to an anon with no direction", but hey, SUPER don't like that Riley's over-practicing isn't really called out at all as being harmful. The ROOT of it is, we know she's only doing that because anxiety is driving her to do that, but like... she performs really well. She's met by the older student (I forget her name, God) with positivity for this, and I'm personally just kind of uncomfortable with how her overworking herself is viewed as just like... neutral. And it's only the fact it's stemming from anxiety that's bad.

There's a lot more (I found the pacing bad, I think, ESPECIALLY given that this is a childrens movie, Riley should've been given EXPLICIT help from the people around her barring just "her friends say they're still friends", I think things like anxiety driving her to look at the notebook yet NOT considering the janitor walking by is just... stupid, and in my experience, not at all how anxiety manifests, ect, ect), but ultimately this is not like, a serious breakdown, more just me listing off the top of my head the things that really fucking annoyed me. Also, Ennui was a stupid character. I mean all of the new emotions were fucking stupid because they're all VERY derivative of OTHER emotions if you've made the commitment that the entire range of human emotion be boiled down to just joy/sadness/anger/fear/disgust, but whatever.

I thought the video game guy was funny though. I'm a sucker for those kinds of jokes. I like that his hair routinely was clipping through his outfit

[crimeronan]

This might sound silly but the comments you left on your vibes poll meant a lot to me as a bisexual non-binary person. I identify as queer and that term means so much to me, so I know what it's like to feel a kind of solidarity with others who reclaim terms like those. As a bi/pan person I've always felt like I'm excluded and not allowed to use those two words, even before I realized I was non-binary (which complicated it even more for me). Being intentionally included felt really nice and I just wanted to thank you.

aw, this is very sweet and not silly at all!

to be honest, that's the precise reason i made those comments in the first place. they were prompted specifically by someone lamenting in the tags that there aren't reclaimable slurs for bi people, which Shocked me. i was like ".....but.... there Are. bi people have been getting called dykes and faggots since the words first existed. gay versus bi division is fake news...."

i grew up in a situation that was Very Very Very Unsafe as a queer person, and for a long time my only association with "dyke" and "faggot" was Danger. and Fear. that's no longer my association thanks to years of having a queer community and queer friends who gleefully use those terms to self-identify -- a "dyke faggot kinsey scale" is a joke about how genderweird and sexualityweird a lot of us are. and it's me getting to be playful with words that used to scare/hurt me :)

gatekeeping queerness and queer-related slurs has always been silly to me, because like. it truly Does Not Matter to our oppressors which specific Box we fit. or if we don't fit a specific box. it only matters that we don't fit THEIR box. ace, bi, trans, gay, pan, lesbian, genderqueer.... none of us fit in their box!!

if you want those words for yourself, you can have 'em. and if you don't want them, you do not have to use them. (good god i would never tell someone they have to Like or Embrace being called slurs. peer pressure will not actually make someone comfortable with this.)

anyway. thank you for the ask, i'm glad you felt seen!

[aroanthy]

Besides Anthy what other characters do you are aro- or any kind of a-spec?

All Of Them.

on a more serious note, im very partial to the following aspec readings of characters:

aroace/aroace lesbian nanami; one thing to know about me is that i realised i was aromantic because of two things. the first is that i wrote a 55k word fanfiction about two side characters from the 2005 bbc political satire 'the thick of it' that was basically just me airing my fundamental discomfort with romantic relationships, and the second is watching her tragedy and the romance of the dancing girls for the first time. Yeag.

aromantic nanami is profoundly important to me and i really just resonate with her character on a personal level. like shes so me. i dont get it. i too have convinced myself of all kinds of taboo and 'weird' affections and feelings because i Dont Understand Romance (just as a side note: i understand why some people take the cold turkey 'nanami never considered romantic feelings for her brother!!' reading, but for me personally. i think it's important to consider nanami considering those feelings, specifically because they make her feel uncomfortable, alienated, etc. there's also lots of interesting things to be said about how incest can affirm heteronormativity (and how it can't!! but that's more of a kaoru twins can of worms)).

and there's other stuff but we needn't get into that. i love when other people feel able to talk in-depth about how their personal expereinces shape their responses to rgu, but im not quite at that point with certain things. i do also just really like reading nanami as an aroace lesbian bc i find her connection with utena specifically to be soooooo. gah. delicious. fascinating. devastating. and also i love aroace lesbains they are the best

asexual utena; i just think he's neat :} sometimes i feel hesitant to read characters as asexual if theyre teenagers or if they have sexual trauma and funnily (not) enough, utena is both! having said that, i recently decided 'fuck it' and have been thinking about this interpretation of his character more and more. like, my aromantic identity is partially political, partially trauma-informed, and i feel quite strongly about queerness in part being one's choice to define (or not define) themselves on their own terms, be they 'contradictory' or 'inaccurate' or whatever the hell else.

i also have a fondness for asexual masculine characters. me personally i read utena as butch and transmasc and i think it's really interesting to think about how that queer masculinity can be expressed outside of allosexuality, especially considering what rgu as a show tries to do wrt that matter. dont ask me about my feelings on ikuhara and false dichotomies of love and lust in his works or i WILL explode ok sarazanami is The aroallo show and im soooo normal about it all tbh

i have this kind of vague arospec touga reading that im always knocking about in my head but kind of scared to talk about online because like. it's quite a lot to get into and, as an aroallo person, i dont want to get into discourse about if it's problematic to read a character like touga in that way. bc like. i dont think it is. but that's because i'm basing this reading off of my own lived experience and understanding of what aromantic allosexuality can look like. to be honest, if i really had to stick labels on them (bc labels are a shorthand to me that never fully express the complexity of identity that i want to personally (writer disease)) i read anthy as an aromantic lesbian and touga as aromantic and gay. but normally you would have to waterboard that out of me because im terrified of how people who aren't aroallo respond to aroallo conceptions of like... Anything. lol.

i think the tldr of Why im compelled by those similar readings of their characters is. something about how terrifying and constraining and rigid and incomprehensible and inaccessible romance feels to me as a concept. and something else about how important sex is to me as a concept, and kind of. this radical sex positivity that is so essential, imho, to beginning to unpack the issues baked into our hetero- and amatonormative conceptions of romance and sex, and thus reclaim human connection as we please. blah blah blah wah wah wah body as a bargaining chip or whatever (guy who is mildly terrified of talking about these things for Reasons).

that's it for specific readings i have of specific characters, but i will say that i do find it hard to put myself in the shoes of certain characters if im thinking of them as alloromantic. like i think juri probably is but i dont not understand her conflict with shiori and why it agonises her so much. but tbf, most of my focus on juri as a character is her struggle for self-acceptance and her fascinating gender troubles. funnily enough, that's also kind of how i feel about saionji. they are just both so genderfuck self-hating gay plagued by the power dynamics and i love that for them.

anway yeag :} rejoice, aromanticism be upon ye

[fjordfolk]

like would it kill ppl to do comparative studies on dogs with patellar luxation with and without surgical intervention over a (postoperative) period of more than 12 weeks

[shopcat]

this might sound a bit dumb and out of no where but hmmm. how do i say this... there are a lot of posts and a general consensus about quote unquote media literacy on tumblr and how we feel about it, as well as the things that go hand in hand with all that (discussion of mischaracterisation, symbolism, analysis, etc) and i think people (generally) need to be more open about their thoughts or findings and less i don't know... harsh isn't the word but like, just less assumptive that people are inherently out to be willfully ignorant when it comes to dissecting media thematically or discussing characterisation & the narrative, esp things where the outside factor of the consumer/creator changes things drastically if you do or do not know or experience something (and therefore would have no reason to be like, somehow maliciously interpreting something). i guess?

like i get it and i absolutely understand and also hate when people seem to go out of their way to say all the wrong things and stubbornly cling onto things that are WRONG, and confronting someone's opinion and it being SO wrong that you can comfortably think of a rebuttal is ultimately very satisfying and scratches a certain itch and can lead to a lot of thoughtful discussion despite being essentially a big "get a look at THIS guy". but i do think there is a vast difference between like, a) someone masquerading behind being knowing buzzwords and being able to say the right words in the right order, b) someone who isn't familiar with certain concepts and DOESN'T know the right words to say but is happily open to learning, and c) someone using the guise of talking about "media literacy" to be ignorant, bigoted or willfully misinterpreting something in a biased way who refuses to concede if confronted or goes out of their way to pick arguments. whilst the first two aren't malicious, both could turn out to be, just like the last category tends to be rejects of the first two who dug their heels in about it.

whilst there is a DIFFERENCE if someone was being say bigoted and prejudiced with hateful intent, not being "media literate" is not actually a moral failing as much as it is made out to be in moments of sweeping generalisation, and i think punishing people for not knowing how to hold thoughtful discussion is obviously cruel and dumb and unnecessarily othering. you don't want people to learn things out of a sense of shame or guilt. i know it's not the INTENT, and i don't like, interpret even 99% of discussion about this whole thing that way, but that doesn't change that discussing people very broadly who just Don't Know something is always going to leave the 1% of a LOT of harshness thrown against someone who doesn't deserve that. even if they're the stupidest twitterina known to man or something.

media literacy itself is not inherent and it is HARD, as much as people try to pretend it isn't. personally i am someone who has always and probably always WILL struggle to understand complex themes and often do need someone else to guide me towards thinking a certain way, thinking in these ways don't come naturally to me as much as i try my best to and i often think the "wrong" thing as my natural conclusion. and every Damn time that happens i see someone going "if you didn't realise this you're a fucking idiot" like woah man 😭 calm down. i dunno i feel like people just forget that this stuff is something you have to train like a muscle, esp things like vocabulary or a more complex academic way of speaking, and to some of us that is always going to be inherently inaccessible or it's going to take twice as long for us to grasp, for whatever reason. i just wish people were more fair is all.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

.

not sure it's my post to make particularly, but I do fucking hate how the concept of white guilt gets weaponized within white people ingroups to throw at each other in order to goad each other into emotional passivity, detachement and inaction, it's just so extremely not what the concept is about initially and is actually still an extension of white guilt it turns out!!! as it's still reacting to that idea and concerned by trying to sever oneself from its perceived effects, regardless of what those are and what they do and what bigger picture they exist in!!!! anyway.

[caluski]

I need to open an advice column I miss when people would ask me stuff like maurycy how do you find a way to live :( and I would just say things

[romanceyourdemons]

alright. what the hell. i’m writing a story inspired by the life of wei qing. i mean we’ll see if it goes anywhere but it’s here for now

[dovedrangeas]

no body part is evil btw

[meowmeowmessi]

i think the whole "messi's life is like a fairy tale" narrative ended up biting him in the ass bc his teammates and friends that he's supposed to depend on for sound advice and to call him out when he's abt to make a bad career decision are all dreamy romantics

[foxcassius]

4 day work week . 4 day work week.....

[cithaerons]

my coworker is the sweetest person