#it freaks me out to see other queer folks turning on us | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-firebird69 · 2 years

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Watch "Accept - Balls to the Wall" on YouTube

youtube

There's a huge groups going to the wall it took these guys a while to figure out that they should try and be a Giants and then go at it was maybe some wrecking balls and nukes and it did take everybody else a while too it's after the matrix and after the Lord of the rings and it's John Riva Lord and he goes out there he does his crew dies right in front of his eyes and it's because he hit the wall the wrong way with the ball and he murdered them by accident and decided to kill himself so he rode the ball in and it released for some reason and smashed into the wall and he is obliterated and that's the end of him. This happens in approximately week and a half and to be more accurate it's almost 2 weeks. And he dies fully general grievous is a true mutant and took over robots and looks like Stan shoots him it's like azog and bolge you certainly do they were born mutants and he was saying bilge because it spelled it that way on the computer and his mom cringed no Camilla did.

And his son said that you murder a swine you murdered your people and your marriage yourself and here it is I'm doing it for real in video before he does it

Thor Freya

And yes it is because of what he did to other people's clans and attacked them too. She gets him back for it and it's her because they lost the Midwest because of his shenanigans and they're losing more people now cuz he keeps on doing it in there and is an idiot

Hera Zues

We're here Hera it feels like the first time she tells him off quite a bit like a big lug like the hulk so it's going one way and she's steer him. But seriously folks he's pretty big it gets bigger taller and bigger pretty soon that's a jackasses are out. It makes jokes it says I don't have any money for all these clothes and some of them still fit cuz he bought them pretty big like the jacket just barely it says how am I going to prove who I am it doesn't match the license height and laugh right now 5'10 huh and he has some lines already and you're 5'4 so it's kind of funny is it always short and I can't tell and it's going to work out it's going forward but that's trying thats john remelord's last day at work

Olympus

I guess I get to say something I do appreciate the clarity of clarification and I see why it happened to them and there are devastated when you plan to use them all of them and this particular instance it would have been much more helpful and with this little idiots doing is ridiculous but our friend says he's very stupid and I mean in the case of not knowing about the balls of diamond. I do realize something you may have known how they work and stuff but didn't believe they were there cuz he's an a****** to our friend and never believes anything and supposedly that's a good thing and then what a prick he was in westborough to him is sitting there saying stupid s*** about him and shoot him a glance and say yes no he's talking about and he'd always say f*** you Joel just like Dave. I need to send it real loud and he added your f****** queer gay boy fish and Joel ran away since I don't f****** say it if you can't follow up on anything and it's throwing rocks at him and hit him right in the head. One day he was out there with Kingsley throwing rocks from the stupid job hit the dog in the head and the lady turns around says that was you fired rocks off at him the sitting there insulting me and threatening me and saying all the stupid s*** at me she said I don't want this job done this way and I want to assume would you back me up instead of course so she fired him it came back to him and he's saying that he would back her up it's in there looks like s*** I'm going to say back rub he said you realize you work for me so you're forcing me to work for you I don't really want to I'll say to say why don't you quit that's a good idea so the next week he quit. His mouth dropped and in his eyes were open and said you can't afford the truck cuz of me that's right you're a freak send it to him too amen at his house and he was going to try and capture him and said you're a prick and you just like these other idiots and trying to capture me and they're going to come by and kill you I should memorize it stupid I said that to him since you can't say that to me I said listen you're going to come by and kill you now shut the f****** f****** useless piece of s*** and say that too and he's driving away and he's collaborating and blabbing and plabbing but nobody heard him except people watching them tape also he said well I guess I could come and get me it came out and they got him probably died all the way and we have a new idiot in the same body so this is why it's filmed to make sure people know he's dead his wife is going to be crushed it's after Neo and after Lord of the rings and thank God and I actually know who the lizard man is it's not that bad of a guy but if he's in your face it's horrendous just like John Riva Lord is but usually it's for a reason this break next door just does it out of blue or thinks he can if he has the power to he's ridiculous he's doing it now playing his TV loud so I want him out of there

Stan

#Youtube

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leafwyrm · 4 years

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Every single odd number has an “e” in it.

#tagging for later

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realhankmccoy · 2 years

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Turned Out

A collaboration with MattAtl29

As I stroked myself to what had to be my fourth orgasm of the day -- or at least I couldn’t help but trying to get to my fourth -- I knew I’d never be the same.

Hunter and I had known each other for a couple of years, ever since we’d been in some of the same classes together at my technical college. We hung with the same crowd, but had never really been tight until this semester. We’d started lifting together and dude was strong. I had him by about two inches in height, but he was built and tough from years of high school wrestling. I’d taken him for more of party guy from the sticks, kind of a rough case from all the tattoos he already sported, but I had to admit the guy was a lot stronger and more serious about his physique than you’d normally think.

So yeah, since we started hanging out, I’d gotten to know quite a bit about him. He really saw himself as a fighter and a guy who was never gonna let life defeat him, no matter what it threw his way. We usually met up for drinks or the gym, a couple times a week.

I got a kick out of laughing at how he treated some of the dudes he considered inferior. Or more like how he didn’t treat them. The energy was kind of magnetic, like potential drama waiting to happen. At the gym, he’d just ignore other dudes or step right in front of them to use a bench. Something about him kept other guys at bay. Folks rarely said anything, and he just ignored the guys who did complain, even once when the guy really made a scene. He just got his way. Thing is, guys like him eventually draw attention. There were at least two dudes I had clocked at the gym who were clearly on the queer side and probably secretly boning for Hunter. I could see it in the way their eyes were always flitting over towards him, quickly looking away if he came near them.

I figured there was no way Hunter would let either of these bitches near him. He’d made his disdain for faggots very clear. We both like to talk shit about all these gay guys who thought they could just ogle anybody they felt like out in public. Problem was that I needed a cocksucker. I was into masculinity, so Hunter made a great pal, and I felt really lucky to have him, but the things is, on the downlow, I just loved to get my dick sucked. I knew I could never admit it to Hunter. Just being his pal at the gym helped draw guys into my orbit, though, since they could recognise alpha guys when they saw them.

So yeah, the two queer guys I’d pegged were often scoping out Hunter and I. One session when Hunter had hit the lockers early, I went and approached the first queer guy, but he freaked out as soon as I spoke to him and took off. I don’t know what it was, maybe I wasn’t his type. Maybe I’d even pegged him wrong, though I doubt it. The second, who I tracked down about five minutes later, was far more receptive. I’m no alpha type, but I’m hot enough with a nice dick. I had it down this fag’s throat in gym sauna five minutes flat, using my body weight to hold the door shut and keeping an ear out. He sucked dick pretty well and loved the taste of my cum, so I started fucking his throat pretty regularly over at his apartment. But he knew Hunter and I were pals, and he always asked about Hunter.

Now, it’s totally typical for a weak fag to act that way. They always want what they can’t have. They always want a superior male. And for me, it pissed me off to think that while these guys should be focusing on my dick and my pleasure, they had Hunter on the brain. I couldn’t blame em for that, I suppose, but it did sour the experience for me. I just wanted my dick sucked, not some weakling reminding me about how hot of a guy Hunter was compared to everyone else around.

In the end, he kept suggesting we should have Hunter come over. It was just pissing me off, and I really didn’t even want to get my dick sucked by him anymore. Finally, I told the bitch that if he wanted to suck Hunter’s cock so bad, he should go approach him himself. He turned into a prissy little bitch, complaining that I’d led him on and that he didn’t want me anyhow, because Hunter was so much hotter and all kinds of guys that he could get were hotter too. That really pissed me off. You know, like I’m not good enough for him suddenly, when this whole time we’d been fooling around? So I pinned him against the wall, told him never speak to me again, and spit in his face. That wasn’t my proudest moment, but the testosterone I felt in that moment was amazing.

The very next night, I, Hunter and two of the buds we often hit up bonfires and other get togethers with were the last four in the gym. We thought we were, anyhow. Three of us were getting cleaned up and ready to head out when Hunter came barging into the changing room. Right there in the changing room, Hunter was dragging that cocksucking bitch I’d been using in from the gym, dragging him in a sort of headlock. The bitch’s nose was already bleeding and it looked like he was red-faced and crying. It soon became clear what had happened. My cocksucker had taken my rejection as a challenge and had indeed approached Hunter and offered him no strings head. I didn’t think he’d actually fucking dare to do it. As expected, Hunter did not respond well, using his wrestling experience to quickly take the bitch down, busting his face on the bathroom door in the process. And now, he’d brought him here to public shame him in front of the rest of us and teach him a lesson about what happens when you approach guys like that.

In control as always, Hunter sent me to watch the door while he and our buddies taunted, slapped and took turns pinning the cocksucker down. He was just like a rag doll for us to use and laugh at. The guys were laughing and showing off their best wrestling holds and kind of roughing up -- we didn’t want to hurt him too bad and get in trouble -- but we were spitting on the wannabe cocksucker and his face was still streaked with blood and tears.

Watching the door with one eye just to make sure nobody came in, and watching them bash the guy with the other, I was almost tenting up in my briefs. Hearing them call him a faggot and a bitch as they taunted him had me aroused in a way I’d never expected to feel before. It felt like justice was being served to this prissy, entitled bitch after how he’d thought Hunter was anywhere near in the same league as him.

Hunter and the guys were tiring of him, though, and by the time Hunter was saying that if he didn’t skedaddle out of here, he’d piss on him, the bitch had had enough and made for the exit. What was he gonna do, tattle on all four of us? That seemed pretty fucking unlikely, all for a bloody nose, but I had my guard up just in case he tried anything. The worst that could happen was getting expelled from the gym, I figured.

I did my best not to think about how much watching those guys kick the shit out of him turned me on all the way home, because we all headed back to my place for some beers. Man, could the night get any better? I felt like I’d won, and hell, we all had, laughing at the bitch’s pain and just revelling in our own superiority. The masculine energy was hot as fuck, and so much more interesting to me than letting some weak-ass, lame and not even very good-looking queer guy like him service my dick. I’d rather be around all these guys, as off-limits as they were.

We drank beer and told fight stories and talked gym stuff for a couple of hours at my apartment before my USA headed out. Even getting to bash weaklings some more, together, and talking about what we could all do to better ourselves at the gym and just as men in general was such an erotic buzz for me. Hunter was drunk and tired, half asleep on my couch already, so he crashed there. I would have offered him my own bed if it wouldn’t have seemed weird. I’d happily take the couch for that guy, especially after how he helped me out today, but I headed to bed.

As soon as the door was closed behind me, my hand was on my cock.

Seeing my buds, especially Hunter, humiliate that cocksucker tonight was all I could think of, and part of me, to be honest, had been waiting for hours for the chance to get my dick in my hand and run though the hot scene in the locker room today. I tried to remember the feeling of the cocksucker’s mouth on my dick, and wondered if I could still use him after today, maybe he’d learned his lesson, you know, but all I could think of was Hunter. Hell, it was hard not to with Hunter sleeping on my couch in just his tank top.

I tried to think of how great the cocksucker who’s ass had gotten beaten today had made me feel when he swirled his tongue around my cockhead and swallows my cum. Hunter was just a really good bud, and that was a no-go situation. The last thing I’d want would to be on the receiving end of an erotic exchange with him, as that guy was fucking tough, the sort of guy who probably didn’t even blink at the thought of skullfucking anyone he wanted to, when and if he actually was in the mood to want to do that.

But no, I really struggled to think of that weak bitch’s mouth around my dick, especially after he’d proven to be extra weak and pathetic in the locker room today. All I could think of was Hunter. His muscles and how jacked he was. The way I thought I could almost see his cock swing loosely in his basketball shorts when he kicked the cocksucker. The way he spit on that queer as if doing so were the most natural, noneventful thing in the world. I wondered about how it must have felt to be that bitch on the floor, and to actually get to feel Hunter’s kicks, his spit, to be dominated and wrecked by him for the day. Ina way, I was almost jealous. He’d never be able to suck Hunter’s dick, but at least he got to be in Hunter’s headlock and be put in his place as Hunter’s bitch.

So yeah, it was weird and unexpected to be feeling those thoughts, and yet I was getting so hard over it all. Might as well just enjoy it, I thought, you like what you like. Beating off to all these imagines in my head felt inescapable and so totally right somehow, even if I didn’t understand exactly why it all turned me on so much. What guy doesn’t get turned on my so much masculine dominance of pathetic weaklings, really. It felt profound, almost like I was waking up to my fuller potential as an even more masculine guy than I usually was. And that thought drove me to a massive orgasm.

It was a like a mind-blowing, shoot-the-ropes-over-your-head, balls-contracting, legs-shaking, almost-out-loud moaning, rocketing orgasm of at least ten shots of cum, lasting a full minute as my dick shot them all out. It wasn’t until I came down from the erotic high that I realised I’d been whispering Hunter’s name. At least I hoped I’d been whispering it.

It wasn’t until I opened my eyes that I realized he was in the doorway with an evil grin on his face. And it wasn’t until I looked down and saw the raging dripping cock in his hand that I knew he’d seen and heard it all.

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circular-time · 2 years

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#so she might at least have tried to moderate that and answer questions about her past while hiding her present

i hadnt put it together like this but yeah oh thats exactly what shes doing! trying to offer yaz some insight in past concerns while still hiding new concerns (not like shes been doing such a great job talking about past concerns but the intention was there :P) which is obviously not what yaz wants like, yeah she wants to know about what was up but she also just wants the doctor to trust her with all things i think

and your tags about men writing relationships between women are on point too but im also like. why would they be good at that you know? like i think it's fine if men cant write relationships between women super well, just let women write! asdhkfjh just get a woman to write! (im still of the opinion that not having a female showrunner for the first female doctor was a big missed opportunity. like im very happy with what chibnall has done but that choice just doesnt make sense to me at all)

On the one hand YES YES YES RACHEL TALALAY SHOULDA BEEN SHOWRUNNER ARGH or at least more female writers to write/edit this.

But on the other hand I don't wanna let Chibs off the hook for using Jack and Dan (and even Ryan) to tell Thirteen and Yaz how they feel and act as catalysts for their relationship arc.

I started writing this about 6am and it somehow turned into one of my LONG POST IS LONG essays with lots of thinky thoughts, so... SPOILERS to Eve of the Daleks, and...

See, female writers write male characters broships and relationships all the time, and we don't think twice about it. Aside from fanfic, if you look at any genre, from mystery to SF, there's some pretty notable guy-guy friendships and teams written by female authors from Bunter and Peter Wimsey in Dorothy Sayers to Kirk, Spock and McCoy in ten jillion official Star Trek novels including (especially!) those penned by @dduane .

It's like how little girls grow up learning to identify with and empathize with male protagonists from Christopher Robin and Frodo to Luke Skywalker and Captain America, but there's still a lot of people — even folks we like such as Peter Davison — who don't realize the limitation they place on boys or the ramifications it has for society down the road by saying they need male role models because (obviously) they can't identify with a female protagonist such as the Thirteenth Doctor.

I dunno. I didn't watch the Marvel movies (gasp), but was there a female character stepping in all the time to moderate the relationship and facilitate communications between Steve and Bucky? Seems like that wouldn't be necessary to play out that kind of drama.

I'm happy that Yaz's crush on the Doctor isn't subtext and is being written as Just A Thing That Happens, never mind they're both women, she's had a crush for a long time, obviously, and the Doctor's very fond of her but It's Complicated (tm), and that's good drama. I really did cry when Yaz cried and said "what am I gonna do, Dan?" because bloody hell, we've been there, and okay it's even more of a mess because the Doctor is an alien who is hiding even her NAME, but that particular cry of distress parallels the experience of a queer person (a) realizing they're queer and (b) not wanting to destroy a great friendship when you don't know whether your friend would be freaked out by finding out their same-sex BFF has a crush on them. Because there's no going back when you say it, and that is always a danger.

THAT is real, and I commend Chibs for writing that bit of gay angst 500% spot on.

And I love the character of Dan. I can see why everyone was excited about John Bishop. I wish it had been a different season he came aboard, not during the only season we'll probably EVER get that had the the opportunity to explore a friendship/BFFship/somethingship between two women (why is that so, so, SO RARE in media, rarer than a transit of Venus in SF?) but given that Chibs is a limited writer who wants to be more inclusive but seems most comfortable writing female protagonists who are as repressed and uncommunicative and antisocial as a lot of male nerds 😉 Dan may have been the best way to get over the writer's block he seemed to be having in getting Yaz and the Doc to (gasp) actually COMMUNICATE. Except they still haven't. But there's at least some overtures on the Doctor's part, so maybe she'll say a few things five seconds before regenerating.

I'm okay with an f/f ship in canon that's doomed and doesn't play out. That happens with the m/f ships with the Doctor as well: it's a side effect of the Doctor hanging out with a species with such a short lifespan and different life experiences who can only see a few facets of them. As long as it plays out in a way that's true to character, and so far, it has. I hope the Doctor and Yaz will finally, FINALLY talk. And I hope Chibs can find a way to let Yaz get out of this ALIVE having become the person she wants to be, instead of having her whole life ruined by or changed in tragic ways by the Doctor, which seems to be the default companion exit of new who. That's one thing I liked about classic Who, that companions found themselves by traveling with the Doctor and made a better life with what they'd learned through their adventures, rather than becoming sucked into the Doctor's orbit like a planet getting too close to its star and getting burned/damaged/torn apart/violently flung away. Chibs gave Ryan and Graham a classic Who ending, and signs point to him intending to do the same for Yaz, so I have hope.

Which just leaves us with a big juicy question mark of bittersweet angst over how much more Thasmin we'll get before the end of all this. Because it's not the ONLY thing we want out of Jodie's last two eps, despite the fact we've been waiting for it so long. We want Thirteen (and Yaz!) to be heroic and wonderful characters and have a few more good times and great adventures before the end. This is just an added layer that's gonna make Jodie's departure hit us even harder than it would've already, despite her Doctor really being A Bit of an Asshole sometimes behind all the fun and and curiosity and mad delight and courage and feral daft Doctor-ishness.

... All of which is just my own biased opinion, obviously.

#thinky thoughts #thasmin #meta meta meta #eve of the daleks #thirteenth doctor

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shadowfae · 3 years

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We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea.

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers.

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

#luteia laments #otherkin #fictionkin #alth #alterhuman #asks #anonymous #long post //#discussions #on community history #on politics #on public relations #commentors feel free to add your own thoughts!#Anonymous

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plague-of-insomnia · 3 years

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Lol I *hate* that post. Also like, most people don't read classic lit, and classic lit in general can be critized as being made up of primarily cis, white, straight men. Women and queer authors often have their works shuffled into YA. And fanfic?? Primarily made of of women and queer folk (and queer women). Which... is often what the reasoning is why it's targeted.

Also, children's lit and YA lit are some of the best works I've read. They deal with harsh topics. One of my favorite books from when I was a kid is Gossamer by Lois Lowry. My class read it in fifth grade (so like, 10 year olds) and it dealt heavily with abuse and coping with and recovery from trauma. The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson also deals with very dark themes, and it's YA. (Also both very good books and I highly recommend each. Look up the trigger lists for them. When I say they deal with dark subjects, I mean it.)

Fanfic and YA are such broad categories, and to dismiss them shows a clear lack of true understanding of literature. Typically, when people say they dislike them, it boils down to bias against queer people, women, and romance as a genre (which was spear headed by, you guessed it, queers and women).

Also, there's nothing wrong with liking tropes. I like tropes. Everyone likes specific tropes. We've all just been copying off of one another since the beginning of art creation, and we will continue to do so. Just let people enjoy things ffs. Reading is for fun and creating fanfic is for fun. Just because I read or write something doesn't mean I want to base a master's thesis around it

[In reference to this post: TL;DR - people who only read fan fic/YA aren’t capable of understanding/analyzing complex themes bc they’re obsessed with tropes]

Oof! @gabedemon, this is all a really good point/addition to why that OP’s point was 😬.

Now I’ll confess I do not personally like YA as a general rule, largely for two reasons: 1) I don’t like reading about teens and 2) for a while EVERYONE and their grandparents were writing YA to try and hitch onto the bandwagon of popular novels turned films like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, et al, and so a lot of people were writing stuff just to try and ride a trend rather than bc that’s what they should have been writing/what their story actually wanted.

However, you are 100% right that there are some amazing novels that fall into that broad category and are worth reading whether you’re 15 or 95 (or somewhere in between).

One of the best novels I read before my headache began (and I stopped reading novels 😞) dealt with some really heavy issues (it was focused on suicide) — and it managed to delve into complex mental illness (like BPD, borderline personality disorder) and suicidality in a really realistic and complex way while not glorifying it in anyway. I highly recommend it, if the topic isn’t too tough for you (general you) to deal with, Suicide Watch:

I definitely think you see queer authors and their stories forced into niche publishers or fan fic (I don’t know if I would say only YA here as I’ve read a ton of non-YA queer published fiction).

I think you have some people who are just “snobs” who think only “serious” “literary fiction” is worth reading and has any depth. Those people have probably never read a really good YA novel (I also recommend Freaks Like Us for one that tackles mental illness in a insightful way) or any fan fic at all. (Or if they have, it’s something like My Immortal.) So they make the assumption that all fan fic must be meaningless drivel (as if there isn’t plenty of that in mainstream, published adult fiction or other media for that matter).

They also forget that people read for different reasons, and like you said, not everyone wants to read something to write a master’s thesis on.

Some “pulp” stories, like the Sherlock Holmes tales, have survived and proliferated across time and languages because people find them entertaining and can identify with the characters in some way. (Ofc some people like to analyze those stories but not everyone does; in fact, most people don’t, and that’s perfectly fine.)

So I think you have the snobs who really aren’t looking at it from a “I must crush queer writers,” though ofc you’re absolutely right about the fact that bias still exists among readers and publishers.

As I mentioned before, trying to publish a novel with a queer MC or romance through one of the big ones is really difficult for the same reason we see plenty of queer baiting in film but very few actual queer stories. Publishers are afraid that those stories won’t sell, will offend and affect sales of other books, etc, etc,

So we see the proliferation of queer stories and writers in fan fic where people are free to write whatever they want. And that’s really wonderful, imo. (But I also hope we finally see more mainstream queer stories and authors/creators as well.)

And as for tropes, honestly that was the dumbest part of the whole argument. Tropes have always and will always exist bc there’s just some things we humans love to see over and over and over again. I’m sure you could label just about any “high” art with a trope of some kind. Just bc something can be distilled into tropes doesn’t mean that’s all it is. I mean, writing programs always talk about things like “the hero’s journey” or whatever and that’s a kind of trope, too.

Anyway, I’m gonna stop before I keep rambling 😅 but yeah I think you make some really great points/additions, and I absolutely think that “all generalizations are bad” 😅😂 and trying to make a sweeping assessment like that is ridiculous.

Kind of reminds me of how much scorn “genre” fiction has gotten (think mystery novels or romance novels or sci fi, etc) because it’s “shallow.” But that has begun to change, and I do think we’re slowly seeing the attitude toward fan fic changing…. Now, if only we could chuck all the antis and their puritanical BS out the door….

#poi answers #gabedemon #literature #fiction tropes #very long post #not kuro

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davidmann95 · 3 years

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So... Crossover #1: any thoughts?

Anonymous said: You seemed not to think much of Crossover #1 on Twitter. Your full thoughts?

wcwit said: So Cates' Crossover #1, best bad comic of the year or just regular pretentious trash?

An incidental note upfront: What you’re seeing there is the apparently SUPER-RARE SECRET VARIANT COVER I unwittingly picked up at the store - at first glance indistinguishable from the standard cover, the kid getting four-color-fucked by mysterious comic book rays is in fact themselves reading a variant cover of the book, rather than the main cover again in an infinite painting-within-a-painting sort of deal that’s the standard.

So I wasn’t gonna get this: my initial post on the comic and what an obviously awful idea it was back when we only knew half the premise and it was known as Pray The Capes Away actually got some out-of-nowhere traction recently, and I’ve grown rapidly tired of Cates’ Marvel work. Even learning that it was going to be Image’s biggest debut in decades - Jesus fuck, how and why - mostly just made me wish it was Commanders in Crisis getting those kinds of numbers. But Sean Dillon/@deathchrist2000 and Ritesh Babu both got early looks at it and assured me that I, specifically, needed to see the last page, so in I dove. I’ll be posting my reaction to the last page below because I recorded it for their amusement, and below that I’ll talk about said last page. It may surprise you, however, that that wasn’t my main takeaway from the issue.

Let’s accentuate the positive first! This book is gorgeous. Geoff Shaw was terrific back with Thanos Wins, but this is an incredible stylistic level-up aided and abetted by Dee Cunniffe’s colors: it’s rote as hell to say “They mix the elevated and the mundane so well!”, but even beyond the obvious ben-day dots stuff there’s such a tangible sense that the comic book beings don’t belong here, that they’re of higher, misty, platonic stuff and we squishy non-paper-people inevitably crumble and break and bleed in their wake, communicating that big idea so much more powerfully than the actual loads of text on the subject. And if we’re talking good things, I’ll concede it’s possible that there could be subtleties that play out in more interesting ways as it goes on, and that not everything is meant to be taken at face value: a smart friend who actually did like it mentioned being interested in it as clumsy but potentially effective exploration of ‘what if the fun hobby you had inadvertently became contaminated and stigmatized by forces beyond your control?’ In a post-Comicsgate world where we recently ended up inches away from the Superman logo almost certainly becoming a fascist propaganda symbol ala the Punisher skull for at least a generation, that’s a defensible lens to view this book through.

For all Donny Cates’ legitimate talents however, I don’t think an expectation of subtlety is gonna work out with this one.

Okay first off getting into the rest of it the main characters’ name is Ellipsis because “Those three little dots...they can become anything”, so there’s that. More importantly, in the world of this story where comic fans face social oppression after superpeople materialize and fuck up Colorado, they face EVERY KIND OF OPPRESSION: there are clear parallels drawn in here to the violence and harassment faced by people persecuted for their religion, people seeking abortions, queer people, and people of color; this motherfucker even drops a “hates and fears” to let us know comic collecting basically makes you one of the goddamn X-Men. Which in theory could be a purely misjudged allegory rather than stemming from actual, obscenely inflated to the point of disgusting fears of ‘nerd oppression’, except that the book literally opens with a quote from Wertham. If Cates didn’t want to make the message “Hating comics? That’s bad. Like, racism bad”, he utterly, grotesquely failed by inextricably intermingling imagery of real-world bigotry with systemic, deluded fanboy paranoia, at least as of this first issue that’s supposed to meaningfully convey the premise. As a queer dude I think I’m somewhat in my lane to say it’s too blunt and broad and dopey to be particularly offensive, but the co-opting of oppression is what this is rooted in.

The idea of ‘comics good no matter what people think, ain’t it?’ extends to the last traditional local comic store standing in this world: much as superheroes are the primary cause of suffering in this world but the point of the story is still supposed to reveal the beauty in them, part of this is that the comics community isn’t perfect but it sure is great. Which is expressed here via Ellie’s boss Otto, a loveable asshole who yells at people coming in trying to sell the wrong kind of comics to fuck off, but at heart is we’re supposed to understand a good enough dude that the shop he runs is “the only home a lot of (the benighted nerds) have left” (because I guess in this alternate universe the physical stores are still the main hub through which comics fans talk with one another?).

So here’s a story of my very own! That’s me in 2013, it must’ve been some kind of special day because I’m wearing a shirt with a button. I’d at that point only frequented one of what would be my thus far four regular comic shops. The first was a great place, and while to say I had a sense of community there would be overstating it a bit, I was on really good terms with the owner and we regularly chatted when we had the time. When I left for college my store there wasn’t as well-stocked, and for some damn reason all variant covers were double-price, but I got along really well with the owner there too. The third I wasn’t so lucky; the guy regularly behind the desk was never overtly hostile, but clearly wanted to wring my neck every time I asked when a missing comic might get in or if I could update my pull list, and given I’m in the ‘ideal’ demographic for being a comic book store regular and was dropping a solid lump of money there every week, I wonder how others were treated there (the store nearly went under, was saved on the last day of operation by another store that wanted to incorporate it as part of its franchise, then shortly afterwards DID go under and is now I believe a beef jerky place). My current store is fine, I didn’t chat much with the folks behind the counter even before we all had medical incentive to get in and out of places fairly quickly but it almost always has what I’m looking for.

Just because those were my regular stores of course doesn’t mean those are the only ones I’ve ever gone to. About a year before that picture was taken - it’s the closest I could find - when I was 17 my store didn’t have something or another I was looking for, so I head across town to see if another place I had looked up had it. This other place didn’t have what I was looking for either, though I distinctly remember picking up a few issues of Hickman’s FF while I was there since I had foolishly fallen off, hence my remembering the year. I bought a couple issues, but hung around for a bit looking to see if I might grab something else out of a dollar box, setting my comics down. Without realizing it, I’d set my books down on top of another issue, and when I decided I wasn’t getting anything else, I just picked that up along with the rest of the pile and was about to walk out before the owner stopped me. He explained what I had done though assumed it had been deliberate, and because I was a good-hearted little geek I even recall thinking “Well, he’s gonna chew me out, but I guess I deserve it. I’ll try and take this to heart as a learning experience.”

Then he pulled up his shirt a little to show me the gun on his belt. He pointed at the security camera monitors at his desk, and explained to me that if I ever did something like that again, he would have it on tape, and he would pull that gun on me and hold me there while he called the cops.

As it turned out, the comic was free.

The whole thing was so sudden and bizarre and unexpected I didn’t actually freak out until the drive home. It wasn’t until weeks or maybe months later that I managed to tell my dad about the experience, because I *had* nearly stolen a (free) comic and my guilt was mixed in with my nerves and I guess I was somehow too close to register just how disproportionate his response was. It wasn’t until now, nearly a decade later and thinking about it for the first time in a long time as I write this, that I wondered if that might have gone differently - especially living in the midwest - if I hadn’t been a white, squeaky-voiced 17-year-old.

So, minor spoiler, when our cantankerous but well-meaning LCS owner yells to call the cops and grabs and yells at a small kid for pocketing a comic (and later displays fantasy racism towards said kid), I am not filled with nostalgic love for the brotherly safe space that is comic book stores, where this guy while not meant to be seen as perfect is still framed in part as a charming, witty representation of Why We Love These Places, And This Community, And This Genre, And This Medium. Cates is clearly drawing on real time at his local stores, but he equally clearly has a very different takeaway from those experiences than me. And I am, again, in a demographic - white, cis-male, abled, bi but more interested in women, disposable income, a lifelong collector - that the industry and a lot of the guys who sell it to us contort themselves around catering to, even if I had a single very negative experience and later an ongoing low-key uncomfortable one to help disabuse me of any notions of the purity of the dork community. In the world of Crossover as of #1, toxicity is intertwined, deliberately or not on the part of the creators, with what we love on the cosmic and small business scales alike, but at least in the latter case it’s the whole picture that’s beautiful, not any single kernel that needs to be worked on to be dug up.

So underneath is my video reaction to the last page of Crossover #1. Very minor spoilers because I mutter the last two words of the comic to myself, but under the video I discuss said final page and some other scattered thoughts. Whether you read that or not, my takeaway is this: I’m fascinated with wherever the hell this thing is going, I’m glad my dad liked it well enough to want to keep getting it because now I’ll get to see where it heads, but my first impression is that this is at heart meant as cheapass Oscar-bait for people who only read Batman. It’s big and high-concept but also small and intimate! It’s meta and about how great you, the reader are for your consumption, especially the consumption of this! It’s going to be in large part about a forbidden love between a couple divided across impermeable social lines (a couple where they’re a seemingly straight white man and woman, but one likes comics)! Maybe it’ll become Not That, and I’m sure it’ll do at least something interesting along the way because Cates has done good stuff before and there are some inherently interesting big ideas for him to play with here, but for the love of god if you’re thinking about getting this buy Commanders in Crisis too or instead, it’s another new book out of Image about superheroes dealing with the collapse of the multiverse but that one is really fucking good.

So the final page splash reveal is that when the comic book child discovered in here got out of Colorado, which has had an impenetrable energy shield erected around it by one of the heroes for years, she and others were ferried out of there...by Superman, as the narration declares that “This is a story...about hope.” They don’t say the word, but she sketches her savior, Ellie and Otto freak out and go “Is that---” when they see it, and on that last page we see that while a crude drawing it isn’t a rough analogue character, it’s a guy with a cape and trunks with an S on his chest. Surprisingly, I don’t have much to say: it’s just another blunt signifier that superheroes rule and are the best, paired with the most utterly devalued notion as of late of what makes Superman special in ‘hope’. I mean, I’m perversely excited to see whether this is building the entire series on a hook it can never deliver on, or if Cates actually has talked DC into an intercompany crossover; believable given they’ve done a bunch of those over the last several years, and why else would Mark Waid be supervising as ‘story editor’ on this? I guess it’ll shake out one way or another with #6 given Cates has said it “has one of the more epic and — I would argue historic — sequences in comic book history in it.” But I’m far less convinced this is gonna truly go into the meaty question of “What does Superman mean and what makes him unique in this world where superheroes in general are indisputably either failures or monstrous bastards given the scale of destruction their presence has brought about, and he himself failed to stop that?” than as some kind of holy grail of how great superheroes are despite how dang violent they’ve gotten these days for the crew to chase after, whatever additional twist will surely be placed upon it. At least he’s kinda helping an immigrant kid get over a wall, if that’s deliberate?

Random final thoughts:

* If I wrote the opening essay and turned it in in a college course, I would be expelled for plagiarizing Grant Morrison. This is not a joke.

* If mainstream American superhero comics ended January 2017 in this universe, its own last ‘crossover’ was Civil War II, which is hilarious.

* God, please tell me if it takes the dive after all that this isn’t somehow tied into whatever Waid’s Superman project is.

* I wouldn’t normally crap on issues with the finer details of worldbuilding, but A. This is rooted in a nominally ‘real’ world playing by recognizable rules, B. I’m ragging on this anyway so what’s the harm, and C. It’s really obvious. So: Why is one of the racists against the superheroes the guy who loves superheroes so much he’s the last holdout in the entire world still selling comic books about them? How does this modestly-sized shop exist long-term with apparently a significant regular customer base if there are no new comics or even reprints to restock with, ever? Who’s buying the serialized cop/cowboy comics that the U.S. government apparently created pretty much overnight (nobody, it’s just another Wertham dig)?

* The solicit for issue #3 proclaims “Don't miss this one, folks. If you do, it just might drive you...mad.”, so now I fear some kind of Ultra Comics riff.

* “Kids love chains” is the most metal-ass quote of all time and I hate that it’s being wasted as an arc title on this book.

#Donny Cates #Geoff Shaw #Dee Cunniffe #John J. Hill #Mark Waid #Me #Superman #Opinion

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writerrachelspangler · 4 years

Text

A Hierarchy of Tops

What the actual hell, y’all? Nothing to see here, except Katherine Hepburn giving us all the look that makes our collective gay insides instantly clench up then immediately liquefy.

What is that gut incinerating reaction? I can’t say for sure, but I have been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to offer 3 possible suggestions:

Attraction (obviously).

But there are many levels to attraction. There’s like a woman walks by and turns your head attraction, or A-list celebrity beautiful-person attraction, and then there’s THIS. This feeling I’m talking about goes so far beyond the “you’re attractive” sort of attraction to like “laws of physics” sort of attraction. The kind of attraction that registers not just inside your core but also psyche.

It messes with my head in ways that have turned me around ever since I was old enough to be aware of such things, and I’ve come to sum it up as “The great queer question.”

Do I want to be with you, or do I want to be you?

It’s hard when you’re young (or even not so young) and you’re hungry for role models, but also thirsty for something else. And the whole issue gets complicated by the way those two feelings register in similar places of your body. The first time you see a woman step into full ownership of her God-given gift of giving zero fucks for conformity it lights a fire in the deepest regions of your gut. And as the warmth spreads outward from that low guttural place it can cause things to heat up in areas right below your core, too. You know the ones I mean, right? Those body parts are very close together, sometimes it’s hard to separate the two types of attraction.

And I’ve made peace with that, the not always knowing which came first, or which takes precedent, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. As fun as it can be (and by fun, I clearly mean disorienting) to try to figure out if I want to be with someone or be like someone, I am non-binary enough to realize the answer can be, and often is:

Attraction and aspiration are both cool, they’re both fluid, and they totally intersect. I’m comfortable with that. I’m more than comfortable with it. I dig it.

So if there’s no great conflict around attraction, why should that photo of ole K. Hep and her butchly furrowed brow still make my tummy so. damn. squimbly? Could it be something deeper than attraction? Something more complex? Something more elemental? Something like...

Recognition.

You see, over the last few years I’ve gotten into the concept of ancestral echoes, or the idea that memories and the knowledge that comes from them can be passed down through our DNA. That you can, on some level, know about things you’ve never experienced for yourself, and you can recognize the same sort of knowledge in other people.

Example: Folks way back up my family tree were sea-faring explorers. It’s been like 15 generations and I am super susceptible to sea sickness, but I am still so drawn to boats and the ocean. Not just like I find them pretty, but like I’m freaking Moana or something. There’s a pull there that goes beyond all reason and logic. I know that if I get on a sailboat there’s decent chance I am going to lose my lunch, but I can’t stay away. Even as I go green in the gills and my stomach does summersaults a part of me is still like:

I feel the same inexplicable connection when I look at that picture of Katherine Hepburn. There is a gay DNA level kind of recognition. A big queer ancestral echo. Whatever part of me that makes me gay senses its mirror in her.

Now I don’t know what part of me that is, nor what part of her trips that recognition trigger for me. The insolent stare? The turn of the mouth? Those gay AF eyebrows?

I’m not sure, but I feel certain it would exist even if I didn’t know the words gay or DNA. Something queer in me honors something queer in her. It’s inborn, liike gaydar on steroids boiled down to its most primal level. It runs through the generations on double helix rainbows. It vibrates across my chromosomes humming through the lowest, most animal regions of my brain.

I know you.

We are the same. Whatever this thing is, it builds an unbreakable bond. A shared ..something. Brotherhood is too gendered. Personhood too vague. A queersterhood. A ... wait for it ... Listerhood?

You didn’t really think I’d make it through this gay ass therapy session without her did you?

Well I didn’t, because I can’t. I am physically incapable of looking away from this paragon of queer top perfection. And while I get that this is exactly the point where I should be able to tie this post up neatly on some note about our foremothers of the past living on through our legacy, that’s not going to happen.

As much as I would like to have some spiritual or academic conclusion for the things I feel when I see this, I don’t.

Nothing about my reaction is academic, or hypothetical or high minded.

I’ve looked these photos it so many times, trying to figure out what is bigger than attraction and deeper than recognition, and there’s only one word that comes close to capturing the experience for me:

Reckoning.

Reckoning involves looking something in the eye and taking stock of it and you at the same time. It involves taking weight and measures, taking inventory of your totality, and checking receipts on the things both utterly unquantifiable and yet indisputable.

And when I look at those women, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental truth:

They are better tops than me.

Katherine Hepburn is a better top than me. Ann Lister (as played by Suranne Jones) is a better top than me. There’s no way around it.

No matter how much I like to think I have some natural predication for topness, they have more. Clearly.

Sometimes you look at someone and you just know they know things. Things you are desperate to know. They possess a command and understanding you do not possess. They have skills you can only, and probably only ever will, aspire to.

I am not ashamed to admit it. It’s just the natural order of things. Did Joe DiMaggio feel shame at not being Babe Ruth? Or for you non-sportsball people, does Lizzo feel ashamed for not being Aretha Franklin? I hope not. There’s no shame in having your greatness fall just below that of divine master. Not everyone can be the GOAT. I’m okay with that. It’s not a competition. I don’t need to best anyone.

But I do need to make peace with that reckoning in other ways. Like a wolf who just met the new pack leader, or pirate captain whose ship just got overrun, there’s a new world older that must be acknowledged in those moments. There is a hierarchy of tops and topness, and it’s just been indisputably altered.

I am not the top top, not even in my own mind. I can’t ignore it, I am the one who acknowledged it in the first place. I could run from it. At least in theory. I could look away, close my eyes, or banish those understandings to vast reaches of the unfollowed internet, but I am not a coward.

As fluid as I am, and as secure as I am in who I am, I can feel gratitude at the the opportunity to look upon greatness. To indulge my awe. To relish my vast appreciation of the most transcendent of beings.

And then, of course, as is only right, I feel compelled to roll over. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could feel compelled to do anything other than roll over when they look at that picture. That is the great tremble in my gut: it is all the scripts being flipped.

Does that make me a lesser top? Maybe. Does that make me a bottom? Perhaps sometimes. Does that bother me?

Not at all.

Cause really, what’s the use of recognizing a hierarchy to tops, if you don’t intend to enjoy every possible aspect of your own position on that spectrum?

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ranma-rewatch · 4 years

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Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Hey, it’s Ranma Rewatch, I’m on episode 7, and I don’t want to waste too much time with the preamble. I am super excited for this episode, my boi is here, I really hope it holds up, see you after I watch it again!

That wasn’t exactly how I remembered it, but not in a bad way. The episode starts with a short scene that has become pretty freaking iconic, and has been sampled in dozens, if not hundreds, of AMV’s: A man cloaked from head to toe, walking through a desert, his eyes barely visible under goggles. It is a really cool shot that catches the eye right away.

We cut from that to that same person approaching a small village, deciding to throw off his concealing clothes to reveal his typical yellow and green outfit, with a bandanna around his head and an umbrella on his back, which he takes out to slow down his descent when he jumps off a cliff. This village happens to be being attacked by a huge wild boar, wrecking everything in its way, but this fellow is able to stop the animal with little effort and send it flying. When the grateful villagers approach, he only has one question for them: where is Furinkan High School?

At first they don’t understand the question, until they look at what he has for a map and realize it’s of Tokyo. The problem is, this young man is on Shikoku, a completely different island in the archipelago. They point him in the right general direction, and he reveals before the scene ends that he is specifically trying to find Ranma Saotome.

Speaking of the show’s titular character, we get a small scene of him in his cursed form being blackmailed by Nabiki into wearing women’s clothes because all of his stuff is in the wash. After that, we get another scene of the mysterious umbrella-wielding stranger asking someone for directions to Furinkan High School, but this time he’s in Hokkaido. Once again a completely different island, only this time on the opposite end. Fun fact: Hokkaido was the inspiration for Sinnoh in Pokemon!

We get another small cut-away to Ranma in various outfits, then another of our new character somehow ending up back in that village he was in earlier. The point is being made clear to us: he is terrible at getting where he wants to go, but is also so inhumanly strong and resilient that he has no trouble surviving in the wilderness in the process.

What seems to be the next day, he finally gets to where he’s going, just as school is letting out for the day. Ranma is being chased by Akane for something, though we don’t know exactly what. (Of course, we know their dynamic well enough by now to know it’s almost certainly something Ranma did to annoy her.) The newcomer slams into the ground where Ranma is landing at the same time, leaving a crater in the cement from the force of his landing, all while screaming how Ranma has to die.

The problem is, Ranma has no clue who this guy is, which pisses him off to know end. Even after he brings up that his vendetta has something to do with Ranma never showing up for a duel, Ranma still struggles (and fails) to remember this guys name, but luckily he gives it to Ranma anyway: Ryoga Hibiki. They went to Junior High together, and they’d agreed upon a duel, but it never happened because Ranma wasn’t there when Ryoga arrived.

Now, Ranma protests that he waited in the agreed upon empty lot for three days before taking off for China with his dad, which is honestly more time than most people would have waited. As we already know though, Ryoga can’t seem to get anywhere quickly, so he got there on the fourth day. Oh, and the lot was right behind his house.

The crowd of students who only moments before considered him with awe over his fantastic martial arts abilities are now looking at him like a buffoon, and Ryoga is ready to get his revenge on Ranma already. But Ranma puts a pause on that, runs out, and comes back with a bunch of different kinds of bread. Why? Because bread was the reason for their duel in the first place. Their school was only for boys, and getting food at lunch was a nightmare. Ranma ended up snatching the last piece of bread just before Ryoga could get it time and time again, and all the bread he brought was one of each type he’d taken years before.

But Ryoga doesn’t care about that, making it clear that the bread isn’t something he cares about anymore, that Ranma has put him through hell, even if Ranma has no clue what he’s talking about. But before they can get a proper fight going, Ranma runs away, losing Ryoga enough that when he starts busting up the school looking for him, he ends up going the wrong way and out of the area entirely, leaving Ranma and Akane to wonder where he went. We do get to see where before the episode ends: once again back in that village that had the boar problem, where he gets a meal before running out into the evening to find Ranma once more.

Like I said before, this episode wasn’t entirely how I remembered it. Namely, there was a lot more humor than I remembered. For the most part, that’s not a bad thing, there was actually some really good comedy, and I don’t feel like it trampled over the more serious parts of the episode.

If it isn’t clear, I am going to say right now that I did still love this episode. The animation was really on-point, some of the visuals of Ranma darting around people or the brief combat he gets with Ryoga just looks beautiful. Also, even though we don’t get a fight between the two just yet, it’s already solidly communicated, through Ryoga easily beating the boar, barreling through steel barriers, and hitting the ground so hard it destroys concrete, that he is strong as hell.

As much as I love the opening desert shot, I actually think my favorite part of the episode is some of the conversation between Ranma, Akane, and Ryoga. Ranma straining his brain to remember who Ryoga is killed me. It was weirdly relatable too, I’m sure many of us have run into someone who obviously knows us, while we can’t even remember how we know them, let alone their name. The fact Ranma actually specifically bought one of each bread he’d taken from Ryoga before was kind of cute, more than I expected of the usually flippant martial artist.

There’s also an exchange I’ve seen on Tumblr a few times in screencaps and gifs, and there’s a reason people love to share it. When Ryoga says he’s going to destroy Ranma’s happiness, there’s this shot of him freaking out, only to turn to Akane and blankly ask if he is happy, to which Akane doesn’t understand why he’s asking her. They take such a trope-y line from a character seeking revenge and turn it around into a really good joke.

There was also a really interesting thing I noted in terms of translation. After hearing about the string of times Ranma stole bread from Ryoga, Akane makes an analogy to why it mattered so much, but it’s different from dub to sub. In the English Dub, she says the straws broke the camel’s back, a common phrase that seems to fit the situation. But in the English Sub, she says (loosely remembering) “enough dust can make a mountain”, and I think that actually fits much better. After all, we soon learned that the bread isn’t really why Ryoga is angry, but once you do know everything that happened that led to Ryoga’s rage, that analogy fits perfect: it isn’t so much one specific event, as a collection of small events that collected into an enormous vendetta.

All my compliments aside, I did have some issues with the episode. Some of the comedy didn’t really work for me, and that was most true with the early scenes of the Tendo girls trying to dress Ranma in Akane’s clothes. Some parts did make me chuckle, but on the whole the mini-plot made me uncomfortable. Primarily because, as I’ve said before, I feel like the best way to look at Ranma’s cursed form is as a trans man. Even though his body has changed, his gender hasn’t, he’s still a man. The scene has Ranma protesting again and again that he is a man, even as they try to dress him as a woman. The idea of some cisgender folks trying to force a trans man into women’s clothes just...isn’t very funny to me. It’s kind of terrible, at least from a more queer perspective. That complaint done, let’s do the character spotlight.

Oh come on, who else did you think I was going to do? If it isn’t clear yet, Ryoga Hibiki is my favorite character in the series, and he has been since I was a teenager. Who knows if that will remain true this entire watch-through, but so far I’m not liking him any less. I’ll get into why, but first let’s talk about his voice actors.

The voice actor I’m more familiar with, his English one, is Michael Donovan. Like most of the actors for this dub, he’s someone who worked with the Ocean Group for a lot of series around this time period. That said, if you’re a fan of the Fate franchise, he has done some voices in Ufotable’s recent anime adaptations, playing Risei Kotomine and Zouken Matou. In Japanese, his voice actor is one Kōichi Yamadera, and he continued the pattern of voice actors who are well-known in Japan for dubbing English works. He’s most well-known for dubbing over Jim Carrey in a lot of movies, but he’s done a ton of others as well. In anime, some of his notable roles include Spike Spiegel, Beerus in all the recent Dragon Ball movies and anime, and Gentle Criminal in My Hero Academia. Seriously, diving into this guy’s list of roles is like swimming in an ocean of great roles.

So, how do they do? Well, so far I’d say I like both of them a lot, but they do play Ryoga differently. At his core, Ryoga is actually kind of a perfect microcosm of the tone of the series itself. Ranma 1/2 is simultaneously a shonen battle anime, a romantic harem series, and a wacky comedy. Ryoga is someone who takes himself very, very seriously. His desire for vengeance against Ranma isn’t a joke, and neither is his ability as a martial artist. But he’s also a doofus who ends up crossing the length of Japan several times because he can’t follow directions properly and the reasons (so far) for his hatred of Ranma are completely laughable.

I wouldn’t say that Michael Donovan’s performance lacks seriousness, in fact when he wants Ryoga to sound menacing I think he does it well, but on the whole he leans more heavily towards the comedic parts of the character. Meanwhile, Yamadera’s Ryoga hasn’t really sounded silly once to me. He plays the character dead straight, and let’s the comedy come through in the contrast between that demeanor and the circumstances around him. We’ll have to see as we go, but I actually might be preferring the Japanese performance so far, a rarity for me.

Okay, so, why do I love Ryoga so much? There are SO many reasons, many of which I won’t go into just yet because I’ll save them for when they appear in-series. But there is still a lot shown in this episode that I feel I can discuss. To start with, I adore his design. I don’t mean the cloak and goggles, though those are absolutely awesome, I’m referring to his standard mode of dress. The yellow and green as a color scheme, with accents of black to top it off, is something really unique. I don’t know enough about art to really articulate why, but I just love every touch of his design. My favorite small touch has to be the yellow strands wrapping around his lower legs, clashing with his otherwise dark green lower half. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be for, but they just add something, almost making him look more rooted to the spot of wherever he’s standing, more solid.

That is a good word to use for Ryoga in general. Even though we haven’t gotten to see him in a proper fight just yet, we’ve seen quite a lot of evidence of his main attributes. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, Ryoga is making out his Strength and Constitution. He hits like a truck and he can be hit by a truck without slowing down. I love that because it contrasts so perfectly with Ranma’s strength: his speed and precision. I adore it when rival characters actually have qualities that make the fights between them more interesting from the contrast, and Ryoga fits the bill there quite well. He’s also a good foil in terms of personality: Ranma is easy going, likes screwing with people, and is quite quick-witted; Ryoga has a hot temper and a long memory for grudges, hates it when people trick him, and tends to let his emotions do the thinking for him.

I will say it feels like his character has some classic Early Installment Weirdness, as he uses his umbrella quite a bit in this episode. If I remember correctly, after his introductory arc, he doesn’t use his umbrella much at all for the rest of the show, preferring to rely on his fists. It definitely feels like they hadn’t quite nailed the character completely yet, if that makes any sense.

Ryoga is also doing that thing where he’s seeking revenge and really angry, but refuses to talk about why, drawing out the mystery as long as possible. While that trope can become annoying, I don’t really mind it in this case. This isn’t a situation like Godot from Ace Attorney, where Ryoga is purposefully hiding it for some grand plan or something, or to teach a lesson. Ryoga doesn’t go into specifics because A) he thinks Ranma should already know; B) Ryoga is very mad; and C) he doesn’t want anyone else to know his secret. I’m not saying it isn’t stupid that he doesn’t tell Ranma why he’s mad, but I am saying that it’s in-character.

Are you surprised that I adore this episode? You shouldn’t be, I’ve been gushing about it this whole time. Even with the parts I found more rough to watch, this is still my favorite episode of the series thus far, putting the rankings at:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

The big question is: will the next episode of this four episode Ryoga arc be even better? We’ll find out next time with Episode 8: “School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga”. See you then!

#episode 7 #Enter Ryoga the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’#ranma 1/2 #ranma saotome #ryoga hibiki #anime analysis #anime rewatch

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flyandfamousblackgirls · 5 years

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6 Things Intersex Folks Need to Know About How We Perpetuate Anti-Black Racism

1. The Segregation in Our Intersex Movement Is Real

The intersex movement has been mostly white since day one. Consequently, it’s necessary to ask ourselves if we’ve inadvertently created an atmosphere that urges Black intersex people to put aside their Blackness — and the oppression linked to it — in order to focus on our collective goals.

In creating this type of environment, it appears our community hasn’t yet been able to connect the dots between Black and intersex people’s oppression — which Saifa reminded me are both rooted in state violence — and our liberation.

Black intersex folks who’ve lived in isolation and have dealt with segregation in their daily lives shouldn’t have to contend with similar experiences once they’ve finally found, and entered our community.

I’m not talking about highly visible institutionalized segregation like the Jim Crow era when Saifa’s uncle, who was also intersex, was forced to sleep outside on the porch of his hospital after a surgery.

I’m talking about the low-key, harder to detect, segregation.

The kind that just takes for granted that the majority of people in the room will always be white. The type that may have a few Black and Brown faces sprinkled here and there, but on a vanilla frosted cake. Is there a path forward?

Sean Saifa Wall, a Black trans intersex activist and collage artist based in Atlanta, reflected on this question by looking back on his time spent as the former board president of an intersex non-profit. Saifa captured why increasing representation shouldn’t be the endgame.

“I think I made the mistake of thinking we need more people of color… but what does institutionalized white supremacy do? It brings in Black or Brown faces who won’t challenge white supremacy — and that’s how white supremacy perpetuates itself. You don’t need white folks to perpetuate it, you just need folks who are invested in white supremacy.”

When I was younger and mistakenly believing that whiteness was the norm to strive towards, I ended up internalizing racist ideologies and, as a result, never fully connected on a truly deep BFF level with my Black friends. Perhaps our movement, and its longstanding quest for acceptance, has created a similar divide.

The global intersex activist network consists, to my knowledge, of less than only 5 Black intersex activists. One of them is Saifa.

2. One’s Race and Intersex Identity Overlap

Born amidst racist flames that attempted to level his neighborhood, Saifa was brought up whilst his borough, The Bronx, was attempting to rebuild itself.

“When I was younger,” Saifa recounted, “I realized I had a different body. Then, due to interactions with NYPD, I was made to know that I was different in another way as well.”

As he got older, Saifa came out as queer, intersex, and trans to a mother — and a world — who wasn’t always ready or eager to respect his intersecting identities. Regardless, his Blackness, sexuality, and intersex identity were always interwoven.

“I cannot separate my intersex identity from my Black identity,” Saifa said. And he shouldn’t have to.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid our community hasn’t figured out ways yet to allow people to show up as their whole selves.

For instance, on the international level, it’s become a known issue that intersex activists from African countries don’t get similar amounts of representation, or speaking time at gatherings. And nationally, our support group meetings rarely, if ever, have been led by Black intersex folks or had sessions dedicated solely for Black intersex community members to come together.

It’s only in the past few years that single Black folks are sitting on boards, or in staff positions of our organizations. There’s also never been, to my knowledge, any Black clinicians present at our Continuing Medical Education (CME) sessions that happen before our support group conferences each year.

Race, especially as it relates to anti-blackness, feels as though it’s at times an elephant in the room.

For me, this elephant peeped its head out when I realized it had become a tradition for one of our non-Black community members, who I love and cherish dearly, to sing Macy Gray’s “I Try” — in Gray’s uniquely raspy voice — at the annual talent show, which is supposed to provide a fun contrast to the rest of the conference.

The audience, if it’s a diverse year, might have a handful of Black folks. This year, there was only one person. I can’t imagine how isolating that experience might have been for them.

And this bring me back to the story I shared at the beginning, about the person who had Obama on a hit list.

Often, racism perpetuates itself by wearing the mask of a “joke” or “fun,” but racism is never a joke and the mask just presents one more hurdle in calling racism out.

It’s time us non-Black intersex people become more aware of our whiteness problem.

We need to keep having difficult conversations about race and oppression every step of the way.

Most importantly, we need to show up the few Black intersex people we do have in our small community, and check in with them to see if there’s anything else we could be doing to have their back.

We can challenge white supremacy in our movement just by asking Black intersex folks in our community what they need to feel safer in our collective spaces.

For our movement to be successful, it’s imperative that Black intersex folks feels they can participate as whole persons.

3. We’ve All Been Dehumanized

The list of atrocities against people of color, especially Black folks, carried out by the medical industrial complex and other agents includes: “the father of gynecology” using enslaved Black people as surgical research subjects, being disproportionately targeted by the US’s eugenic sterilization program that served as a catalyst for Nazi Germany’s and today’s “population control”policies, and the shackling of pregnant women inmates — who are disproportionately Black — in labor delivering children whom they most likely will be immediately separated from.

Likewise, intersex people have been rendered hermaphrodites and featured in freak shows, gawked at as monsters to at on TV, disproportionately put up for adoption, pumped with artificial hormones, robbed of their reproductive organs and genitalia, selectively aborted, raped, and brutally murdered.

Lynnell, a Black intersex lesbian activist, was born intersex but raised male by a single mother in a low-income household. She grew up in Chicago’s mostly Black, hypersegregated, South Side where her family — unlike mine on the North Side — was forced to deal with the effects of the city’s racist public policy and divestment responsible for the destruction of local economies, public schools and affordable housing.

Hyde Park, a pocket of wealth and whiteness on the South Side and home to the University of Chicago (UofC) Hospital, is where Lynnell’s mother took her as a child for doctor appointments.

Lynnell shared memories of that time stating, “My mom wasn’t given the tools she needed to make informed decisions.” As Lynnell grew older, she also “wasn’t taken seriously at first by [her doctors] either.”

Low-income and single mothers of color, labelled unfit by society, experience discrimination. Lynnell’s mother went to U of C seeking care, not charity, for her child. Seeing a golden opportunity, Lynnell’s doctors manipulated her mother’s financial status and turned the situation into a charity case anyway.

“They told my mom they were doing her a favor because they weren’t charging her.” In the doctor’s mind, they were participating in an equal trade with Lynnell and her mother.

To Lynnell, it was torture. “For eight years, every summer, for at least a month, I was put on different drugs, experimented on, given unnecessary procedures and manipulated.”

Exploitation of marginalized people by the MIC for their gains, especially in teaching environments, has been well-documented. Exploitation specific to Black intersex patients has yet to be researched. Lynnell’s doctors, I imagine, took one look at Lynnell’s mother and decided a poor Black woman wasn’t powerful enough stop what they had in store for Lynnell.

“I don’t know many white people that were used as guinea pigs like me,” Lynnell said.

4. Doctor’s Aren’t the Only People Attempting to Erase ‘Difference’

Intersex people are pretty familiar with secrecy, shame and stigma thanks to the pathologization of our bodies. As such, it’s important we have spaces to process our stories with each other. Yet, it’s important to note that as oppressed people, we are still capable of participating in the oppressing others.

The few times I’ve witnessed our community attempt to break down white supremacy and talk about racism, white intersex people successfully shifted the conversation, almost immediately, back to a conversation that centers them and their experience with intersex oppression.

Spaces where intersex people get together and talk are rare, so it makes sense why someone would want to relate and process, but in doing so, we are inadvertently preventing Black intersex folks in our community from expressing their unique experiences.

Saifa recounted a time when he “was trying to bring up the topics of anti-oppression, racism, etc., in the movement and people lost their damn minds. People were like, ‘we cannot hear it.’”

He also shared, “Anti-black racism showed up when I went to South Carolina on behalf of the MC case [a lawsuit involving the parents of a young Black intersex boy and his doctors] and one of the lawyers was condescending, talking down to me as the only Black person in the room. I was constantly pushing back against his patriarchy and racism.”

He continued, “I feel like people don’t care about issues related to anti-black racism in the intersex community.

“I think there’s some intersex people who really see those intersections, who really are affirming of people of color, but for the large part I feel that the level of anti-black racism awareness ranges from hostility to apathy.”

I asked if people ever seemed to care and he replied, “When funding is involved. That’s when people start to care more. Or, when a group wants some representation of diversity—but I found they wanted a Black face, but weren’t necessarily committed to issues around anti-Black racism.”

As a movement, we can’t only focus on these issues when funding dollars are at stake. That tokenizes Black folks.

Instead, we have to stitch anti-Black racism training, and education around white supremacy, into the fabric of our work together.

Saifa pointed out, “In the world, I’m confronted with anti-Blackness, and it’s par for the course, but it’s particularly more devastating when it’s from intersex people. Why? Because I think, ‘Oh, you understand.’

“Or at least I think they understand, until they say or do things that’s really racist and are unapologetic about their racism.”

5. We Need an Intersectional Analysis to Combat Racist Stereotypes

One of the white people present at Lynnell’s first intersex support group meeting recently told her that she was “afraid” of her at first, “because [Lynnell] had on leather and dark sunglasses.”

I asked Lynnell why she entered that support group meeting dressed in leather, sunglasses, and the rest of her leather daddy alter ego outfit. She responded, “Because I was the only Black intersex person there.”

Lynnell shouldn’t have to feel the need to protect herself like that in a room that was supposed to feel like home, a room where she was supposed to be able to let her guard down amongst people with similar experiences.

Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that can happen when a community doesn’t have a firm commitment to operating with an intersectional lens — one that places its most marginalized folks at the center.

Lynnell needed to protect herself at a support group, and in doing so, made a white person feel afraid, circles back to my main point.

We need to place Black intersex folks and their particular needs, struggles and desires at the front and center of our intersex activism.

If we don’t, we risk ostracizing Black intersex folks, again, within spaces meant to be a reprieve from shame and stigma.

6. Confronting White Supremacy Means Confronting Disembodiment

Disembodiment, or feeling detached from your body, often happens as a coping mechanism in response to intense trauma. Intersex activist, Mani Mitchell, once described it as feeling like a “floating head tugging around a body.”

Saifa, someone I admire for their commitment to somatic healing work, believes that white supremacy is rooted in disembodiment “because you have to be disembodied in order to not allow your self to be impacted by the inequity or suffering of others.”

Regardless, Saifa thinks it’s “imperative that white intersex activists feel their feelings regarding any shame they may have as they interrogate white supremacy and its brutal history.”

“It’s only fair that white intersex activists start to acknowledge, as much as their embodiment can hold, the shameful and disgusting emotions that come up after hearing the bitter truth and realities of Black folks and people of color.”

“Doing this work is difficult,” he acknowledged, “and it can bring up things we’d rather not have to face about ourselves.”

Still, non-Black intersex folks need to “confront those feelings and allow themselves to be impacted, then hopefully they can be motivated to action, and allow that empowerment to impact others.”

In taking Saifa’s advice, we can create positive ripple effects throughout our whole community. Doing the work to steer our movement towards becoming an intersectional, anti-racist, intersex movement is a win-win for everyone involved!

#Intersex #intersex black women

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studiohailstorm · 3 years

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Unsolicited advice to parents of Disabled kids

I woke up this morning processing a lot of medical trauma and feeling a REALLY strong impulse to share some unsolicited advice for non-disabled parents/caregivers of Disabled kiddos. I actually wrote this for twitter but couldn't figure out how to format it so I thought I'd start by sharing it here. I have a hunch this post might rub some folks the wrong way and I'm a perfectionist who wants everyone to like me but I'm gonna try and be brave and share anyway. Hopefully this will be useful to at least one person!

You might be like, 'ok haley, but who the heck are you and why should I listen to you abt this' and that's reasonable! I am not a child psychologist. I'm an OI (type V) adult (turned 30 this year!) who's worked with children for 17 years, and I have non-disabled parents. Ok let's start with 10 points in no particular order...

1.Stop praising your Disabled kid (directly or to other people) for being "positive," especially around medical procedures or painful experiences. While it may seem harmless to you, it trains your kid to suppress their extremely valid responses to pain for other people's comfort. Your kid should get to feel however they feel about whatever medical shit they're going through. Validate whatever feelings are coming up for them instead of constantly asking them to stay positive or be brave.

Anecdote: a kiddo I was babysitting cut his finger open when we were doing a project, and he was absolutely freaking out (understandably!). After we handled it and he was feeling better, I said to him "I'm so glad you're feeling better. You were super brave.”He said "because I didn't cry... that much?" (He cried a lot). I said "No! It's still brave if you cry!! You were brave for getting through it, and for sharing how you felt about it. You were brave for crying. It was scary and it makes sense to cry when you're scared."

2. Relatedly, protect your kid from other people relentlessly praising them for their positivity. Look up the late Stella Young's (badass OIer, btw!) talk "I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much." Allow your kid the dignity of being a complex human being with lots of different feelings.

3. I see a lot of social media posts in this realm, where parents post pictures of their Disabled kid in the hospital goin thru shit, with an inspiring caption. I get that this might help *you* process your feelings about that, but ask yourself how would it feel to be in your kid's position. How would it feel if your body was photographed at its most vulnerable, and your trauma was posted on social media for all to comment on?Having a kid going through medical procedures is traumatic for their grown-ups too, and sharing is probably cathartic for you: try sharing with a private text thread of close friends and family, instead of... literally everyone.

4. You, grown-up, are going through the ongoing traumatizing experience of having to fight for your kid in the medical realm and coordinate their care. It's a lot. Your feelings are valid too. AND…I truly believe that it will serve both yours and your kid's well-being for you to process that shit in therapy, if you have access to that. It should be a top priority.

5. Do you have Disabled adults in your life? Do you have Disabled friends? Do you follow Disabled activists and organizers on social media? Do you (and your kids) watch shows and movies with Disabled characters (played by Disabled actors?), read books by Disabled authors? If so (amazing), do the Disabled people in your life span across other intersections of identity -- are you in relationship with BIPOC, queer, poor Disabled folks, for example? Do you recognize that Disability intersects with other facets of identity in complex ways? Do the advocacy (/charity) groups and organizations you follow and participate in have Disabled leadership? If no, ask why not. Also, seek out advocacy groups with Disabled leadership.

6. Some non-disabled grown-ups of Disabled kiddos do their best to seek out a Disabled 'mentor' for their kid. Which is amazing and super well-intentioned. But imho if *you* don't model that *you* cherish and value Disabled adults in *your* life, that mentorship is likely to fall flat once your kid starts to internalize the ableism that the culture is constantly throwing at them.

7. Examine and work to uproot your own Ableism. (We all have it). Google "Disability Justice."

8. Recognize that your kid might be experiencing physical pain even if they aren't naming that. I think a lot of my tantrums and my resistance to bedtime (which are also just normal for all kids) involved the additional layer of physical pain / not wanting to be alone with pain.

9. Fiercely resist body-shaming in *all* forms, and start with yourself. Model what it is like to heal your own body-shame and develop a respectful and loving relationship with your own body. Model that all bodies are different, all bodies have needs, all bodies are worthy.

10. Relatedly, help your kid develop curiosity, joy within, and agency around their own body. Help them name what is happening in their body in positive moments as well as more painful/negative ones. Express to them that their body is THEIRS. Practice consent. When consent is breached (as it almost always is in medical settings with children), honor the trauma of that.

If you read to the end... CONGRATULATIONS! Even just having the courage to read and consider advice from a Disabled adult about your parenting is a big deal, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic or condescending way. I get that parenting is the hardest job in the world, and I know that you love your kid so fiercely. Sending love!

#raisingDisabledKids #parentingAdvice #DisabledAndProud #Disability #DisabilityPride #KidsWithDisabilities #parenting FaerieGodmother

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meta-squash · 4 years

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It’s been years and years since I watched Queer As Folk but periodically I think about that scene in season 4 when Justin’s in the Pink Posse and he’s sketching his way through a million pages of Rage smashing homophobes’ faces in and he and Brian have that conversation about getting back at bashers.

And every time I think about it, I can’t stop thinking about how Justin gets to work through the trauma of his bashing, but Brian doesn’t. I mean, it happened to Justin, so obviously he’s gonna have a ton of trauma from it, and on top of that it means he doesn’t remember that night, and he had to relearn how to use his hand, etc. A lot of things were taken from him. He absolutely has the right to so much trauma and anger and hurt etc etc. And he gets to work through it, in the form of the Pink Posse, which I think is really really good. Not because of what it is, but because he gets to work through it in a way that is independent. Yes, Brian spends the whole time worrying about him and hinting/downright saying it’s dangerous and a bad idea, but he never stops Justin. Which I think is really important. Justin goes as far as he needs to go and then realizes he has to stop. But it also means he gets to feel some control come back, he gets to work through his hurt and all that.

But it always reminds me that Brian never really got to do the same. In that scene in 4x02, when Ian is sketching angrily and thinking about joining the Posse, and they have that conversation, and Justin says “[You’d be pissed too] if you got your head bashed in,” Brian responds so quietly with, “I know. I was there.” It sounds like he’s practically got his teeth clenched. And it always makes me think back to two things. First, it reminds me of the scene when Justin returns to the loft for the first time since the bashing and asks about what happened. Brian tells him what he remembers, but he spends the entire time facing away, shoulders hunched, so tense he’s almost rocking. His gaze is so distant, until Justin comes over and hugs him. He’s clearly traumatized as well, but he never ever mentions it or brings it up, aside from mentioning that he can’t get it out of his head or that he wishes he could forget. The other scene it reminds me of is Brian going to his psychiatrist acquaintance to try and figure out how to help Justin and then going back to the parking garage with him. They park in the same spot and then Brian does not move from where he’s standing even as Justin wanders around, trying to remember. It’s clear he’s staring at the spot where Justin had lain.

I mean, Brian is someone who is this tangle of contradictions all put together to protect himself. He projects assholery, is a total dick to his friends sometimes but then turns around when they really need it and is so incredibly generous. He’s terrified of being seen as weak/vulnerable/imperfect, something that’s pointed out constantly. But he’s so protective of and generous towards the people he loves. Just after Justin’s bashing, Brian’s back in his shell. He opened up for Justin, came to his prom, just for it all to blow up in his face and nearly kill someone he cared for. So he pretends not to care, to push it all away, when clearly he feels so guilty and responsible for all of it. Which is why he’s so adamant about pushing it away and ignoring it. When they do talk about the bashing, he always pulls back. He talks about it, but in this way like he’s trying desperately to keep his distance.

That first time in season 2, Justin tells Brian it wasn’t his fault, but I don’t think Brian ever gets the chance to believe that. Whenever Justin’s injury, or the possibility of Justin getting hurt, or anything to do with the bashing comes up, Brian immediately shies away from it and interrupts or gets mad or ignores it or changes the subject. It’s like he cannot let himself linger on the thought of any of that because he might freak out somehow. I just always think it’s really interesting that we get snippets of Brian’s vulnerability, of his traumas from childhood and from things like the bashing, but he never really gets the chance to work through them or get them to a place where they aren’t eating at him.

It’s part of why he’s so angry and irritable and distant, I think, even when he’s so good to his friends. He’s so scared of being hurt, or being dropped, or having anyone see a crack they could use to manipulate or cripple him. So when he lets those few people through, namely Justin and Michael, and to some extent Lindsey, it’s those people he lashes out at the most as well, or distances himself from the most.

Anyway, just think about that scene and by extent those few other scenes where we get to see Brian’s reaction to the bashing quite a bit. It’s such an intensely vulnerable and traumatized part of him, I think because it’s unlike anything else he’s experienced. He lived through a home life that was abusive and alcoholic and frigid and awful. We never learn what his school life was like other than that he protected Michael but I’m sure it wasn’t great. I’m sure there was other shit too. But it’s completely different to see someone he cared about get bashed in the head and be completely and utterly helpless the entire time. It’s something he seems to linger on, the fact that there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t stop Chris Hobbes, and then he couldn’t help when the paramedics got there, and then he couldn’t face Justin in the hospital, etc etc. He absolutely thinks it’s his fault.

And I think he never really gets over that. He never really manages to let go of the idea that maybe Justin wouldn’t have had to go through all that if it wasn’t for him. I don’t think he ever thinks that Justin might be attached to him or vice versa because of that guilt/blame, but I think it’s a self-blame that he beats himself up over. And I think the fact that Justin never remembers is also painful. Because he’s the only person who remembers. Maybe if Justin remembered, he wouldn’t linger on it. Maybe if Justin remembered they’d have worked through it together. But Justin’s time with the Posse and with Rage and all that is him working through a trauma that he’s experiences only through effects, rather than memories. Brian is the only one walking around with the actual images in his head of that night: the good mixed with the bad and I think that’s what makes it so much worse.

#queer as folk #queer as folk meta #queer as folk us #brian kinney #justin taylor #misc meta

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