#cis MEN might experience this. particularly black men. particularly disabled men.

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[johannestevans]

The Relief of a Queer Audience as a Fruity Stand-Up Comic

Explaining one’s existence takes up time.

On Medium / / On Patreon.

I’m a stand-up comedian.

Last week, I did some comedy at a queer-run, queer-centred open mic — suddenly, a twelve-minute set fit into six, because I was in a room full of queer people who knew exactly what I was talking about.

I didn’t have to take time to explain what bears, twinks, and otters are; I didn’t have to make sure everyone had a working understanding of what Grindr is; I could make puns and little quips that because of the sheer cultural gap, a cis straight audience just wouldn’t be equipped to understand.

In front of straight audiences, I often mention RuPaul’s Drag Race — in front of queer ones, I’ve never even thought about it.

There is an unfortunate rule in stand-up comedy that basically every marginalised stand-up comic has experience of, and knows that they often have to follow in rooms where they’re the minority, and even in many rooms where they’re not.

Comedy is the art of creating tension, and then breaking it. The essence of a good punchline lies in surprising the audience — they laugh because they didn’t see the joke’s culmination coming.

Because of the way marginalised people are treated in our society, when we are surrounded by those who are part of the majority of which we’re not a part, or when we are noticeably different in some way, our very existence creates tension.

As a gay man, and particularly as a gay man who’s very faggy and effete, who is most explicitly not interested in assimilating with cis-hetero society, I often find that my presence in some rooms can discomfort those around me. Straight men, particularly, often become nervous — people choose their words more carefully, or they clam up and don’t dare to speak at all.

Many of these people would say it comes from a fear of “offending” me, which is a polite way of saying they don’t know how to be normal when they talk to an obviously gay man. Either they’re ordinarily casually homophobic, or they say bizarre shit about gay people — and they feel quite comfortable saying things like that around other straight people, but when there’s a gay person right there?

Well, they might be called out on that shit.

They’re more comfortable with gay people when we exist in theory, and they can’t see one right in front of them.

Most people in 2023 do know other gay men and queer people, though, even if they don’t necessarily know one that’s as fruity as I am — as a trans man, though? That discomfort goes through the roof.

And I experience that as a white man who’s thin and isn’t visibly disabled most of the time. When I’m using my cane or wearing joint braces, it ramps up even further — friends of colour, especially people I know who are Black and darker skinned, especially who wear hijabs or other head coverings, or who have natural hair, experience all this discomfort a thousandfold, of people’s stares and discomfort, the questions that are building up on their tongues.

What does this have to do with stand-up comedy?

That discomfort that one feels when one walks into a room where one is outnumbered, where one is known to the room as Different, a Minority, and Marginalised… When you walk onto a stage, it becomes quite literally spotlit.

As I said, your existence creates tension.

People don’t often think of it like this, but stand-up comedy is a form of one-person theatre. You are in essence performing a monologue for your audience, and part of your performance is in making your monologue appear spontaneous.

As in any form of theatre, it’s important to engage with your audience. You don’t just practice in private, learn your work off-rote, and then do precisely the same thing in front of the crowd.

You listen for when they’re breathing. You pause when they need time to digest what you’ve said, or to let a particular line make its emotional impact. When they applaud, you might choose to hesitate a few moments before you go on, letting that applause dissipate — other times, you might shout over the noise.

Because the whole of the audience is fixed on you and your work on the stage, you control the room — you do this by creating a world, a narrative, that you are all sharing together.

When you start to tell a joke, you begin ramping up the tension. You are drawing your audience in, asking them to imagine the world you’re envisaging, to come along with you for the ride. The longer you talk for, the tighter you turn those screws, the more tension there is in the room, the more anticipant the audience is, the more they hold their breaths —

Then you tell the punchline, and that tension is broken as the audience (hopefully) laughs.

This process comes down to one’s theatrical skill. The audience needs to be able to understand what you’re saying and what you’re communicating, they need to trust that you’re leading them in a direction that will be funny, that you’re worth listening to, and worth laughing with.

Almost no comedian would start their set with a long joke that takes a lot of set-up to get to the punchline, because much of the audience wouldn’t listen to the set-up. They’d be irritated and impatient at all this babble that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

You tell a few shorter jokes at first — you break the initial tension between you, a stranger, and the audience. You let them learn who you are as a person, and trust that you’re funny, that you’re equipped to lead them on his journey and give them a few more laughs.

You might even hear comedians talking about rooms in terms of temperature, talking about a “warm” room or crowd, or a “cold” one, or an MC talking about warming an audience up — a warmer audience is more receptive; a colder audience is more shut down, disinterested. Even the funniest material won’t land if the audience is shut off and doesn’t want to hear it.

Sometimes an audience will shut themselves off consciously and purposely — for example, certain men might have a little tantrum when they see a woman comic walk on stage, and they might cross their arms over their chest and decide they won’t be laughing at anything she says, because they’ve already decided she’s not funny.

As a gay guy, I’ve absolutely experienced that from staunch homophobes in the audience, especially when I start making jokes about sex.

But some audiences become unreceptive not because they’re intentionally rejecting a relationship with the comedian — they’re distracted.

When I was performing as a comic before I passed as cisgender, I could often feel the audience telegraphing their “confusion” about who and what I was.

They weren’t listening to my jokes because they in their heads they were thinking, “So, is this a lesbian? Is it a man or a woman? Are they queer?”, and because they were so focused on that, they weren’t coming with me on the jokes I was actually telling.

If your identity requires any kind of “explanation,” you often try to address it in your opener, because until you break that initial tension, you can’t start building and breaking new tensions with your actual jokes.

If someone noticeably different, who’s a member of a marginalised community or is just from a background or community they’re not used to, walks on stage, a lot of the audience will wait for the punchline.

However subconsciously, the audience thinks of someone they consider different-looking — someone who looks very queer instead of straight, who’s a woman instead of a man, who’s Black or East Asian or Indigenous or otherwise not-white instead of white, who’s disabled instead of abled, and yeah, who looks like they might be trans — walking onto the stage as the set-up for a joke.

What’s unfortunate is that to get certain audiences on-side, they’ll stay shut down until in some way you assure them that you’re “one of the good ones” — if you’re gay, for example, they want to be told that you’re not one of those gay people.

(I’m not personally equipped to tell them that, because whatever negative connotations “one of those” has, I almost certainly deserve them.)

They want to be assured that you won’t say, for example, that the bigotry you’re treated with is bad — and if you must say that, you absolutely must not imply that the audience might have a hand in it, God forbid!

That’s the root of a lot of their discomfort. Audiences don’t want to be “preached” to, don’t want to hear about anything “woke”, don’t want to be called out.

Any marginalised person can tell you that a lot of the time you’re not doing any of those things — you’re just talking, and because the other person feels a lot of guilt about your existence, they interpret it as preaching or criticism. Sensitive sorts, these cishets.

Fuck me, the relief I feel when I’m in a queer comedy room, and I don’t have to explain anything.

Fuck explaining terms, or lingo, or the queer and trans cultural aspects that a straight audience might not be familiar with — in front of a queer audience, I don’t have to explain me. I don’t have to justify my existence, or footnote it, before I can get to the performance.

I can just tell the jokes I came on stage to tell, and enjoy the laughs that follow.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Here's a shortlist of those who realized that I — a cis woman who'd identified as heterosexual for decades of life — was in fact actually bi, long before I realized it myself recently: my sister, all my friends, my boyfriend, and the TikTok algorithm.

On TikTok, the relationship between user and algorithm is uniquely (even sometimes uncannily) intimate. An app which seemingly contains as many multitudes of life experiences and niche communities as there are people in the world, we all start in the lowest common denominator of TikTok. Straight TikTok (as it's popularly dubbed) initially bombards your For You Page with the silly pet videos and viral teen dances that folks who don't use TikTok like to condescendingly reduce it to.

Quickly, though, TikTok begins reading your soul like some sort of divine digital oracle, prying open layers of your being never before known to your own conscious mind. The more you use it, the more tailored its content becomes to your deepest specificities, to the point where you get stuff that's so relatable that it can feel like a personal attack (in the best way) or (more dangerously) even a harmful trigger from lifelong traumas.

For example: I don't know what dark magic (read: privacy violations) immediately clued TikTok into the fact that I was half-Brazilian, but within days of first using it, Straight TikTok gave way to at first Portuguese-speaking then broader Latin TikTok. Feeling oddly seen (being white-passing and mostly American-raised, my Brazilian identity isn't often validated), I was liberal with the likes, knowing that engagement was the surefire way to go deeper down this identity-affirming corner of the social app.

TikTok made lots of assumptions from there, throwing me right down the boundless, beautiful, and oddest multiplicities of Alt TikTok, a counter to Straight TikTok's milquetoast mainstreamness.

Home to a wide spectrum of marginalized groups, I was giving out likes on my FYP like Oprah, smashing that heart button on every type of video: from TikTokers with disabilities, Black and Indigenous creators, political activists, body-stigma-busting fat women, and every glittering shade of the LGBTQ cornucopia. The faves were genuine, but also a way to support and help offset what I knew about the discriminatory biases in TikTok's algorithm.

My diverse range of likes started to get more specific by the minute, though. I wasn't just on general Black TikTok anymore, but Alt Cottagecore Middle-Class Black Girl TikTok (an actual label one creator gave her page's vibes). Then it was Queer Latina Roller Skating Girl TikTok, Women With Non-Hyperactive ADHD TikTok, and then a double whammy of Women Loving Women (WLW) TikTok alternating between beautiful lesbian couples and baby bisexuals.

Looking back at my history of likes, the transition from queer “ally” to “salivating simp” is almost imperceptible.

There was no one precise "aha" moment. I started getting "put a finger down" challenges that wouldn't reveal what you were putting a finger down for until the end. Then, 9-fingers deep (winkwink), I'd be congratulated for being 100% bisexual. Somewhere along the path of getting served multiple WLW Disney cosplays in a single day and even dom lesbian KinkTok roleplay — or whatever the fuck Bisexual Pirate TikTok is — deductive reasoning kind of spoke for itself.

But I will never forget the one video that was such a heat-seeking missile of a targeted attack that I was moved to finally text it to my group chat of WLW friends with a, "Wait, am I bi?" To which the overwhelming consensus was, "Magic 8 Ball says, 'Highly Likely.'"

Serendipitously posted during Pride Month, the video shows a girl shaking her head at the caption above her head, calling out confused and/or closeted queers who say shit like, "I think everyone is a LITTLE bisexual," to the tune of "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the lyrics land on the word "you," she points straight at the screen — at me — her finger and inquisitive look piercing my hopelessly bisexual soul like Cupid's goddamn arrow.

Oh no, the voice inside my head said, I have just been mercilessly perceived.

As someone who had, in fact, done feminist studies at a tiny liberal arts college with a gender gap of about 70 percent women, I'd of course dabbled. I've always been quick to bring up the Kinsey scale, to champion a true spectrum of sexuality, and to even declare (on multiple occasions) that I was, "straight, but would totally fuck that girl!"

Oh no, the voice inside my head returned, I've literally just been using extra words to say I was bi.

After consulting the expertise of my WLW friend group (whose mere existence, in retrospect, also should've clued me in on the flashing neon pink, purple, and blue flag of my raging bisexuality), I ran to my boyfriend to inform him of the "news."

"Yeah, baby, I know. We all know," he said kindly.

"How?!" I demanded.

Well for one, he pointed out, every time we came across a video of a hot girl while scrolling TikTok together, I'd without fail watch the whole way through, often more than once, regardless of content. (Apparently, straight girls do not tend to do this?) For another, I always breathlessly pointed out when we'd pass by a woman I found beautiful, often finding a way to send a compliment her way. ("I'm just a flirt!" I used to rationalize with a hand wave, "Obvs, I'm not actually sexually attracted to them!") Then, I guess, there were the TED Talk-like rants I'd subject him to about the thinly veiled queer relationship in Adventure Time between Princess Bubblegum and Marcelyne the Vampire Queen — which the cowards at Cartoon Network forced creators to keep as subtext!

And, well, when you lay it all out like that...

But my TikTok-fueled bisexual awakening might actually speak less to the omnipotence of the app's algorithm, and more to how heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

Sure, TikTok bombarded me with the thirst traps of my exact type of domineering masc lady queers, who reduced me to a puddle of drool I could no longer deny. But I also recalled a pivotal moment in college when I briefly questioned my heterosexuality, only to have a lesbian friend roll her eyes and chastise me for being one of those straight girls who leads Actual Queer Women on. I figured she must know better. So I never pursued any of my lady crushes in college, which meant I never experimented much sexually, which made me conclude that I couldn't call myself bisexual if I'd never had actual sex with a woman. I also didn't really enjoy lesbian porn much, though the fact that I'd often find myself fixating on the woman during heterosexual porn should've clued me into that probably coming more from how mainstream lesbian porn is designed for straight men.

The ubiquity of heterormativity, even when unwittingly perpetrated by members of the queer community, is such an effective self-sustaining cycle. Aside from being met with queer-gating (something I've since learned bi folks often experience), I had a hard time identifying my attraction to women as genuine attraction, simply because it felt different to how I was attracted to men.

Heteronormativity is truly one helluva drug.

So much of women's sexuality — of my sexuality — can feel defined by that carnivorous kind of validation you get from men. I met no societal resistance in fully embodying and exploring my desire for men, either (which, to be clear, was and is insatiable slut levels of wanting that peen.) But in retrospect, I wonder how many men I slept with not because I was truly attracted to them, but because I got off on how much they wanted me.

My attraction to women comes with a different texture of eroticism. With women (and bare with a baby bi, here), the attraction feels more shared, more mutual, more tender rather than possessive. It's no less raw or hot or all-consuming, don't get me wrong. But for me at least, it comes more from a place of equality rather than just power play. I love the way women seem to see right through me, to know me, without us really needing to say a word.

I am still, as it turns out, a sexual submissive through-and-through, regardless of what gender my would-be partner is. But, ignorantly and unknowingly, I'd been limiting my concept of who could embody dominant sexual personas to cis men. But when TikTok sent me down that glorious rabbit hole of masc women (who know exactly what they're doing, btw), I realized my attraction was not to men, but a certain type of masculinity. It didn't matter which body or genitalia that presentation came with.

There is something about TikTok that feels particularly suited to these journeys of sexual self-discovery and, in the case of women loving women, I don't think it's just the prescient algorithm. The short-form video format lends itself to lightning bolt-like jolts of soul-bearing nakedness, with the POV camera angles bucking conventions of the male gaze, which entrenches the language of film and TV in heterosexual male desire.

In fairness to me, I'm far from the only one who missed their inner gay for a long time — only to have her pop out like a queer jack-in-the-box throughout a near year-long quarantine that led many of us to join TikTok. There was the baby bi mom, and scores of others who no longer had to publicly perform their heterosexuality during lockdown — only to realize that, hey, maybe I'm not heterosexual at all?

Flooded with video after video affirming my suspicions, reflecting my exact experiences as they happened to others, the change in my sexual identity was so normalized on TikTok that I didn't even feel like I needed to formally "come out." I thought this safe home I'd found to foster my baby bisexuality online would extend into the real world.

But I was in for a rude awakening.

Testing out my bisexuality on other platforms, casually referring to it on Twitter, posting pictures of myself decked out in a rainbow skate outfit (which I bought before realizing I was queer), I received nothing but unquestioning support and validation. Eventually, I realized I should probably let some members of my family know before they learned through one of these posts, though.

Daunted by the idea of trying to tell my Latina Catholic mother and Swiss Army veteran father (who's had a crass running joke about me being a "lesbian" ever since I first declared myself a feminist at age 12), I chose the sibling closest to me. Seeing as how gender studies was one of her majors in college too, I thought it was a shoo-in. I sent an off-handed, joke-y but serious, "btw I'm bi now!" text, believing that's all that would be needed to receive the same nonchalant acceptance I found online.

It was not.

I didn't receive a response for two days. Hurt and panicked by what was potentially my first mild experience of homophobia, I called them out. They responded by insisting we need to have a phone call for such "serious" conversations. As I calmly tried to express my hurt on said call, I was told my text had been enough to make this sibling worry about my mental wellbeing. They said I should be more understanding of why it'd be hard for them to (and I'm paraphrasing) "think you were one way for twenty-eight years" before having to contend with me deciding I was now "something else."

But I wasn't "something else," I tried to explain, voice shaking. I hadn't knowingly been deceiving or hiding this part of me. I'd simply discovered a more appropriate label. But it was like we were speaking different languages. Other family members were more accepting, thankfully. There are many ways I'm exceptionally lucky, my IRL environment as supportive as Baby Bi TikTok. Namely, I'm in a loving relationship with a man who never once mistook any of it as a threat, instead giving me all the space in the world to understand this new facet of my sexuality.

I don't have it all figured out yet. But at least when someone asks if I listen to Girl in Red on social media, I know to answer with a resounding, "Yes," even though I've never listened to a single one of her songs. And for now, that's enough.

[addictedtostorytelling]

I think one of the major flaws of csi (and this is applicable to most of the franchise) is that there was very little diversity amongst the characters (most of them presented as straight, white, cis, able-bodied). Now, I understand that expectations regarding diversity were very different back then compared to what is expected now, but it was one of the things that I wish csi had done better. Anyways, I suppose my question is, how do you think csi could have more diverse representation in the reboot? What kind of representation would you like to see (in front and behind the camera)? From the promos, it looks like there's already 3-4 characters of colour, which imo is already a step in the right direction.

hey, anon!

as you note, it would appear that, at least on a surface level, the reboot will be more racially diverse than the original series.

which, honestly, is not a difficult feat to accomplish, considering that in the original series, there were only two poc (both of them black men) who were main characters over fifteen seasons.

it also appears to have at least some women.

whether or not the reboot will feature lgbtq+ and/or disabled characters at this point remains unknown.

whether or not it will directly address social justice issues (and particularly those that relate to racial inequalities inherent in the american criminal justice system) also remains unknown.

as for what i'd like to see in terms of representation, i've got thoughts after the “keep reading,” if you’re interested.

__

so my main thing is that if this reboot is going to be more representational than the original, it's got to take a different approach to its storytelling.

the original csi would occasionally in some very special episodes™ address particular kinds of prejudice and discrimination (e.g., episodes 01x20 “sounds of silence,” 03x04 “a little murder,” 05x08 “ch-ch-changes,” etc.); however, it seldom acknowledged such problems in a wider, more sustained way. it also did not expend a lot of narrative energy exploring the diverse identities of its main characters, even limited as they were, for either better or worse.

beyond its general message of acceptance—i.e., don’t be afraid of people who are different, don’t treat people badly because they don’t look or act like you—csi didn’t tend to delve into the specifics of its main characters' diverse human experiences (like, say, in looking at how doc robbins being a double amputee impacted his work as the clark county medical examiner) or examine systemic inequalities inherent in their line of work with any kind of extended effort (like by acknowledging that in the u.s. criminal justice system that the csis serve, black and brown youth are disproportionately wrongly convicted of crimes).

if the reboot wants to do things differently and better, they need to take a fresh tack.

though the specifics of what that tack looks like will vary depending on the characters, cases, and storylines in play, as well as what particular kinds of diversity are being explored, in general, it has to start with the production team being respectful of and curious about diverse lived experiences and deliberate in writing them, particularly where the main characters are concerned.

increasing numbers is a good start, but i hope there’s quality as well as quantity (and variety)—that the writing is explorative and asks questions about how people’s backgrounds impact the ways they think and act; that it avoids lazy stereotypes; that it doesn’t shy away from opportunities to investigate different aspects of its characters’ lives and instead invites the audience to venture deep into the world of the show and to really get to know the people who inhabit it.

whereas the original series sometimes seemed almost afraid to question how warrick’s identity as a black man might influence his work as a criminalist or to lean too hard into its own coy suggestions that grissom could potentially be autistic, i would hope that the reboot embraces its characters’ identities and regularly considers how they factor into the manners in which the characters interface with the world, as opposed to only doing so on occasion.

that's not to say that all or even most of maxine roby’s storylines have to be about her being a black woman at the top of what is typically a male-dominated, white-majority profession; that allie rajan’s main deal has to be that she is an immigrant; that all or even most of what hugo ramirez says or does has to relate back to the fact that he’s latino; etc. certainly, they can and should have experiences related to various aspects of who they are and not wholly dependent on their “minority statuses.”

however, these facets of their characters also shouldn’t be glossed over or left solely between the lines, either. they shouldn't just be window dressings.

my hope is that the new show recognizes the opportunities for characterization and development that it has and isn’t afraid to dive deep. they've laid the groundwork to tell diverse stories by starting with a diverse cast (at least in terms of representing people of different races), so now they need to fall in love with the characters and really commit to telling their stories.

we don’t know a lot about the writers’ room or production crew (including the set dressers, hair and makeup artists, wardrobe managers, camera operators, editors, dps, etc.) for the reboot as of yet, but hopefully they are diverse so there are lots of voices, experiences, perspectives, and styles to draw from in crafting these new episodes. hopefully cbs also hired several diversity consultants and has allowed the actors themselves to influence the ways in which their characters and cultural backgrounds are depicted. hopefully people do their research. hopefully they write and create bravely and curiously and deliberately and with love.

good representation always comes down to more than just numbers; there’s ultimately got to be metacognition and empathy in play. some of the driving questions of the show need to be “how does who this person is and what they’ve come from and how others perceive them and how they experience the world affect what they do and what happens to them and what kinds of choices they make? how does it inflect their worldview? how does it come to bear in the story?”

that's just good writing practice in general, but it's especially important where diversity issues are concerned. it's crucial for generating depth and forming connection points with the audience.

if the reboot does ask and attempt to answer those questions—if it remains inquisitive about and interested in its own characters and its own world—that practice will undoubtedly lead to richer, better storytelling and open up doors to talk about relevant social issues within the universe of the show, allowing the production team to interrogate underlying assumptions and critique ideas and systems along the way.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[rapeculturerealities]

We all know that when the common white person was a poor farmer, being fat was attractive and being skinny was gross. When the industrial revolution hit the lower and middle classes then being thin was beautiful. This lasted until the recession all but removed the white middle class, leaving the vast majority on starvation wages, only then did we start selling white women on having an ass, being curvy, looking healthy. It was always about further emotionally abusing and guilt tripping the poor.

Hi there,

A lot of factors contributed to the way fat bodies have been viewed and valued (or devalued) in our society.  Racism, wealth, social status and region have all played large roles in these changes and continue to impact and shape what we are told is conventionally attractive, healthy and acceptable.

As humans moved out of the hunter-gatherer status and into the stone age, we see depictions of larger bodies in art and religious iconography.  As you mentioned, this was generally because a fat body was seen as proof of fertility and wealth/access to a reliable and plentiful food source.

This carried into the Renaissance, where social status, famine and disease helped further cement the difference in body size, right up through the industrial revolution, which slowly allowed food (and medical care) to be accessed by a larger percentage of the population.   During this time, many cultures throughout the world still celebrated fat bodies as ideal including in China, Africa and Indigenous populations of the Americas.

In the 18th and middle to late 19th century a lot of racist “science” was being used to justify slavery and posit the “inferiority” of Black bodies and very tied to that was the concept of body size being analogous to morality.  The belief that “civilized” (read “white”) people could control themselves around, among other things, food, served to help “other” Black and Brown bodies and cement them being portrayed as “wild” and weak-willed.

So in the early 20th century in North America and parts of Europe we start to see a trend that not only shifts the beauty standard toward thinner, but also more racially motivated ideals.   Around this time a lot of media described beauty in veiled racism like “Nordic” or “European”. Of course, these parallels that were being drawn between morals and such weren’t only driven by bogus race science, but also the politics of the time.  

Sabrina Strings has a phenomenal book out that details some of the ways that race and racism dovetail with the shift in how fat bodies are seen; 

Fearing the Black Body; The Racial Origins of Fatphobia

You can hear her discuss it on the Food Psych podcast here and I’m going to quote below from the transcript of that episode:

So in the beginning a lot of the interest was on whether or not black people were "greedy eaters." And so there was this concern that, you know, black people had a very fond relationship to food and there were even prior to the rise of this particular type of race science which was in the 18th century as early as the 16th century there had been tales coming out of various colonial reports which suggested that if you went to Turkey or Egypt that you could see these women who had like a fondness for the art of feeding, right? And so that they would like, spend their entire day basically feeding themselves, right? 

So it's not as if it began entirely in the 18th century only that it was formalized as a form of racialized logic by that time. What we find is that some of these reports that were being written, again, a lot of these were being written by French theorists were being read in places like England, and so that some of this race science would make its way into mainstream reports of well just pretty much day to day chronicling of events. So that you might find in something like The Spectator, which was like a men's magazine as it was in the 18th century that they would also talk about weight in these racialized ways which was kind of fascinating when I was reading this, I was like, "Oh, well here they're sort of reproducing the idea that there are certain places where you go and you will find certain types of beauty." 

And in Europe or in England in particular, as they're talking about in the Spectator, this is where we find a beauty that's refined and refined beauties do not have, you know, they would say things like "rolls of fat," like if you want to go and find they would use terms like, "a beauty by the time," you know, here are some other places where you can go and find that. So this received wisdom from the race science was being reproduced in mainstream sources in England and the United States is the place where the slender aesthetic took off so it became the place par excellence for the thin ideal by the 19th century, because not only did they have the legacy of getting these reports from racial scientific theorists, but also of course Americans, you know, in the 19th century frequently imagined themselves to be the sisters or the kin of English people. And so they were taking on a lot of the ideas that were being produced in English popular media and simply republishing them.

So what we’re seeing now in terms of the devaluing of fat bodies and the way that morals are linked to fat bodies is heavily tied to racism, ableism and classicism.  

Today, of course, this carries on, We see fat bodies being linked with laziness, poverty and lack of control.  Whereas poverty used to be marked by a smaller body, now it’s linked to inability to access “good” food and inability to control oneself when eating.  

The fat acceptance movement has been working to combat these notions and to highlight their racist, classist and ableist roots.  And I want to note that the fat acceptance movement should be seen as separate from the BoPo (body positive) movement, and many fat activists have worked to distance themselves from BoPo as it is increasingly taken over by diet culture and fails to center anyone but cis white women who exist on the smaller side of plus size and still enjoy a lot of thin privilege. 

So when we work toward fat acceptance, we need to acknowledge the ways that it’s necessary to include and center the experiences and voices of Black bodies, disabled bodies and other marginalized groups.  This has particularly been an issue that’s overlooked in otherwise leftist groups:

#MarALard*ss and the Left’s Fat Problem

FAT PEOPLE MUST BECOME A PRIORITY TO THE LEFT

So yes,  A lot to consider in rethinking the history of fatphobia and a good chance to reflect on the roots of fatphobia that tie into so many other issues we are working to address.  But I think a deeper understanding of these things helps us to move forward more inclusively and better equips us for the struggles we all face.

-Spider

[silver-and-ivory]

The portions of MRA-dom that skew redpill/PUA/Men Performatively Going Their Own Way strike me as heinously misguided, but I can't buy the insistence that one demographic isn't 'systematically' disadvantaged when (a) legal measures that were supposedly intended to fetter another group happen to effect them as well, or (b) "neutral" carceral procedures are selectively applied due to the same bias which inspired said measures. The whole thing seems like quasi-benevolent sexist splash damage to me.

Yeah, I think there was a misunderstanding where @fierceawakening thought that systemic could only be applied when the disadvantaged group was The Oppressed Group- that is, saying “men are systemically oppressed” automatically meant that women were not systematically oppressed.

I can see where this problem could arise from, and I can especially see where it would be an issue when talking about Female Privilege.

A terrible and inelegant solution might be as follows: we could have *two* axes for gender, one that measured amount of infantilization and one that measured amount of hyperagentification. Women would be disadvantaged along the first axis and men would be disadvantaged along the second axis! This totally collapses when you realize that infantilization and hyperagentification are opposites and two sides of the same terrible coin.

A much better solution would be to admit that gender roles can harm more than one group at a time and to adjust the way we use “privilege” and “systemic” to fit this.

I should probably note that this entire line of analysis isn’t particularly inclusive of black people or Latinos or disabled experiences or like a billion other things. That’s not really a *massive problem*, you’re allowed to make gender theories about cis straight white middle class […] people; it’s just a useful thing to remember, sort of like a domain restriction in math.

[equalityforher]

Basic Income: A Feminist Issue

By Lindsey Weedston

Feminism’s biggest problem is and always has been how it treats women who are further marginalized. Many feminists refer to this as “intersectionality,” a term coined by Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, leading critical race scholar and creator of intersectional theory. It was originally used to describe how the oppression of womanhood and blackness overlap to create a unique experience. It was then expanded to include issues of gender identity, ability, sexual orientation, social class, and so on. The idea is that someone who experiences one form of oppression does not have all the same problems as someone who experiences that form of oppression and others, and not to the same degree.

This is demonstrated in the fact that black, native, and Latina women earn less on the white man’s dollar than white women do. Or the fact that disabled women don’t generally suffer from catcalling and are often depicted as completely non-sexual, yet experience much higher rates of sexual abuse than able-bodied women.

Feminists are often criticized for failing to take intersectionality into account. Prominent rich, white, cis feminists regularly give advice that only a privileged section of women can reasonably follow (“Lean In”) and then are surprised when so many women who don’t have that privilege get upset. At the same time, similarly privileged feminists are out there every day, organizing campaigns that leave out trans women and marches that don’t take accessibility into account and using language stolen from women of color. They tell us to get degrees in science or run for office or risk our jobs by reporting sexual harassment without considering the fact that many of us are too poor to do so.

Basic income is a set sum of money given to every resident or citizen by the government every month or year with no strings attached. For example, Finland started a program at the beginning of this year that gives 2,000 unemployed citizens €560 per month - about $627. The hope is that this will encourage these individuals to look for part time jobs without having to worry about losing their unemployment benefits. In Finland, like in the U.S., earning any income can greatly reduce or eliminate a person’s unemployment payout, even if that income still isn’t enough to reasonably live on.

Growing basic income movements across the world are putting forth the idea that people could be given enough money to lift everybody out of poverty by the government, solving the myriad of problems that come with not having enough cash to meet your basic needs. Zoltan Istvan, California gubernatorial candidate for 2018 and basic income advocate, said that “each California household could receive over $50,000 annually if the 45 million acres of unused land were developed,” according to the Basic Income Earth Network, and that this would “lift 19 million Californians out of poverty.”

Class is not the be-all and end-all of oppression, as some individuals believe. But it does have an effect on every marginalized individual, and oppression and poverty tend to go hand-in-hand. Therefore, any feminist who claims to want to be intersectional should advocate for basic income.

It’s not an easy sell, especially in the U.S. Racialized misconceptions about work ethic and rumors of “lazy takers” and mythical “welfare queens” abound - it’s assumed that without the threat of starving to death, many people won’t work at all. This is untrue. A basic income experiment done back in the 1970’s in a small town in Manitoba, Canada found that the only people who quit their jobs under basic income were young people who wanted to stay in school. Mothers also wanted longer maternity leave, but still, most of those who were employed stayed employed. This is largely due to the simple fact that people need to do something with their time in order to feel good.

While it’s true that “being active” or “productive” isn’t a magical cure for clinical depression, it’s also true that people who have nothing to do tend to become depressed. This is why post-retirement anxiety and depression is such a common phenomenon - and why so many retirees seek part-time employment even when they don’t need it financially. If it’s true with people past age 65, it’s going to be true with younger people.

As for where the money will come from, there are a multitude of proposals on how it could be funded, but the money is there. Plus, the idea is that basic income will significantly reduce the cost of tax-funded services. Experiments in basic income have found that it reduces emergency room visits and mental health care costs, plus costs related to crime. It’s a big investment into giving everyone a better world instead of using that money to clean up the results of poverty.

But the best and most feminist part of basic income is how it will help all women and all people of marginalized identities, particularly those who are so often forgotten by privileged feminism. Disabled and chronically ill women won’t have to worry so much about whether they’ll be able to live. Though you can get welfare payments for disability, the hoops that these individuals are forced to jump through in order to get a sum that is no longer enough to live on are a full time job and a constant source of anxiety. Basic income in unconditional. They won’t lose it if they save up too much money or a form gets lost in the mail. If universal healthcare is also implemented (which should be another top feminist goal), they could live in relative peace instead of being forced into poverty at high rates because of something they can’t control.

If I had basic income, I could go to therapy for my mental illness without having to worry so much about the cost or how it might conflict with my work. Last year, I had to give up going to therapy to get a 8 to 5, Monday through Friday job. Since my therapist also keeps those hours, I couldn’t see her anymore. Luckily I don’t desperately need it, but if I did, it would severely limit my job prospects and/or which therapist I could see - and it’s hard enough to find a good therapist.

Although marriage equality is great, one of the biggest problems for LGBT+ people is the high rate of homelessness. To this day, teens are still kicked out of their homes by homophobic and transphobic parents, forcing them onto the streets. Homeless shelters aren’t enough to protect them, and can be unsafe, especially for trans people. Feminism has such a persistent problem with transmisogyny, with trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) misgendering refusing space to these vulnerable women, and even going so far as to fight to take away their ability to exist in society. Trans women of color in particular face shockingly high rates of murder, and living on the streets increases that risk exponentially. Basic income could save so many of these lives and likely reduce suicide rates, as well.

Arguably the most often forgotten women are the sex workers. I’m not here to argue that basic income should be implemented to save them, because many sex workers like what they do and would continue regardless. But as long as sex work remains taboo and some forms illegal, personal safety will be an issue for them. With basic income, however, many of these individuals who are struggling to get by won’t have to consider putting themselves in a risky situation so that they can eat the next day. They could afford to be choosier with clients, reducing their high rates of on-the-job violence.

Wage gaps shrinking. Educational gaps disappearing. Parents able to spend more time with their kids no matter how much money they make. With so many problems alleviated by basic income, we could better focus on the rest of the issues plaguing marginalized communities. It’s even possible that otherwise privileged poor people might not feel the need to take out their frustrations by attacking immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and anyone else easy to blame for their problems.

Getting basic income may not be an easy goal, but neither is eliminating rape culture, or achieving parity in government, or getting men to calm the hell down and stop killing us. If there is such a thing as a unified feminist agenda, let basic income be one of the top on the list. Our feminism will raise up all women, or it will be bullshit.

Lindsey Weedston is a white, cis, pansexual Seattle-based feminist writer and creator of the blog Not Sorry Feminism. She is working toward a career as a full-time advocate for social justice, human rights, and boosting up marginalized communities. You might also find her playing videogames, watching Netflix, and trying not to be anxious about everything.