#the lgbt+ group i go to had a session with a place that has a load of recued animals drom the exotic pet trade and by far the smelliest

[ghostieliving]

Foxes smell real bad y'all

[nyaagolor]

Pride Month Headcanons

It's about time I organized these. Under the readmore bc I have a lot to say

- Salvatore and his wife are bi4bi. More accurately, his wife is bi and Salvatore isn’t putting a label on it because while he thinks he’s bisexual his only real world experiences with men are a single makeout session in a Lumiose club during a language immersion trip and lingering too long on some Instagram models’ posts about their abs. If you ask him about it he will not say he’s bisexual bc doesn't need anyone other than his wife, but he’s pretty sure he’s bi in his heart

- Hassel and Brassius have been together for almost 30 years but aren’t officially married. For a variety of reasons, mostly centering around Hassel’s family being a possible threat to Brassius’ safety, they decided to just keep it on the DL. They live together and are for all intents and purposes married, but never actually signed the paperwork. When people ask, especially strangers, they refer to each other as artistic partners or close friends, but anyone who knows them well is well aware they’re husbands. Most people assume they got officially married, and when the school finds out they beg the two to have a ceremony, even if they don’t sign the paperwork. Tbh I could prolly make a whole post on just them (and prolly will)

- Dendra is a lesbian, she‘s had a crush on Tulip for YEARS. Despite her usual extroverted and confident attitude she never confessed and has no idea if Tulip likes women, nevermind if she reciprocates Dendra's feelings. Tulip figured out Dendra is a lesbian but never realized her crush. Somehow.

- Eri and Carmen are girlfriends. The rest of Team Star admins took a LONG time to come around to this, since they think Eri forgave Carmen too fast and were worried Carmen was trying to take advantage of Eri again. They got over it though, and she’s been invited to their hangouts ever since

- Penny is trans I’ve talked about this like 26 times and have zero intention of stopping. She transitioned a lot over her suspension in Galar and has the most supportive family and friend group imaginable. Her body image is extremely fragile but that’s honestly just anxiety from general past bullying, and her new friends have helped immensely in that regard

- Sada and Turo are bi4bi this is a hill I will die on

- Iono is super tight lipped about her sexuality because of idol streaming stuff. Unlike most, she actually likes to keep people guessing, it’s like a game to her

- Every pride, Larry wears a rainbow tie. No one has ever been able to figure out if he’s LGBT or an ally or what. Rika’s running theory is that his Staraptor is gay and he’s trying to be supportive

- Geeta is a career focused person and never took the time to think about her sexuality. If you ask her about it, she won’t have a good answer and you might just make her short-circuit. I think kissing her would make her explode

- Ryme is aroace. I have nothing to say abt that specifically other than aroace people are the coolest and so is she

- Rika is Butch. She got top surgery and everyone is gay for her, myself included. However she has negative game. Pickup game pathetic. Cringefail, even

- Raifort is a lesbian but is only into really toxic women specifically. Genuinely just the worst taste imaginable. She is always complaining about how much she dislikes men as romantic partners and then is actively running towards red flags like she’s playing flag football

- Jacq is non-binary but is a little worried to ask if he can get his pronouns updated on the academy registrar. He’s sure it’ll be fine, but he’s perpetually stressed out and a liiiiil scared of Clavell. He/they enby king with enough anxiety to put anyone else in the hospital

- The academy is the most accepting place in the world. The GSA (which Hassel runs) is one of the most popular clubs, and cishet students and teachers will often sit in just to learn or support their peers. They go HARD in June, and are the official runners of the Mezagoza Pride Parade ever year

- A big part of the reason people feel so safe in the academy is bc there’s a ton of GNC people, both LGBT and not. Saguaro comes to mind, and is someone that a ton of students look up to. He’s cishet but could prolly crumble the gender binary in one hand. He would too

- [gestures vaguely at Clavell] he got smth going on. Idk what I haven’t thought abt it but something

[natickpolycule]

“I call this session of the Natick School Committee to order. Let it be known that this is a closed session, with no members of the public allowed in. If we have a quorum, I’d like to-“

The chairperson of the committee was interrupted by a harsh knock at the door, and then the shrill voice that filled them all with dread.

She was back. It was their worst fear: Anonymous Member.

“I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER OF THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE!!!” She exploded into the door with a cacophony of knocks and screams. “IT’S URGENT AND IMPORTANT and VITAL to the SAFETY of our SCHOOL CHILDREN!”

The chairperson sighed. “Anon, we’ve been over this. You can’t just bang on the door during a closed session. We have things to discuss. Can it wait until-“

“ABSOLUTELY NOT. This is a matter of LIFE AND DEATH.”

“What? Is someone hurt? Is a child missing?” Said the chairperson, starting to get a bit worried.

“WORSE THAN THAT.” Shrieked Anon. “My DAUGHTER told me that BOYS don’t have to be BOYS if they don’t FEEL IT IS WHAT THEY ARE. She MUST have learned it at YOUR SCHOOL and that’s NOT OK.”

The members of the school committee looked at each other, confused. Was this woman actually equating the existence of trans kids to something worse than life & death? Surely not.

But they had to hear her out, otherwise she’s just go right back onto the Natick Moms Group and spew more bullshit, which they obviously couldn’t let happen.

The chairperson sighed. “Okay Anon, come in. Tell us your concern. We’re here to listen.”

“THANK YOU WAS THAT SO HARD.” Anon yelled, not changing the volume of her voice at all as she trotted in front of the public speak microphone.

Anon was wearing a neon pink floor length skirt that she clearly had bought from Frugal Fannies and then tailored to fit her figure. The skirt hugged her upper legs and tightened around her butt, leaving little to the imagination for the members of the School Committee. She had on a long-sleeved flower shirt over the top of the dress, which billowed at the sides but did little to conceal her perky, chewable breasts.

The chairperson rose. They had dressed for the occasion, with a gray tailored pant and a button-down top to match. They always wanted to present themselves conservatively so they wouldn’t be accused of bias. They completed the ensemble with just a hint of eyeliner and a choke-style necklace.

“So, you say that your concern is that you believe your kid learned about the existence of sexual and gender identities beyond the heteronormative and cisnormative?”

“DON’T USE BIG WORDS WITH ME.” Anon shrieked, already annoyed that she had to re-explain herself. “It’s not that AT ALL. My concern is, CHAIRPERSON, that I believe my kid learned about the existence of ALL THAT LGBT STUFF at YOUR SCHOOL. Kids are TOO YOUNG to learn about sex and gender. They should ONLY be taught that straight and cisgender people exist until I am PERSONALLY COMFORTABLE WITH MY OWN FEELINGS ON THIS TOPIC.”

The chairperson said, “well, that’s what I sa-nevermind ok yes I get it. What would you have us do about it?”

“I’M GLAD YOU ASKED,” floundered Anon. “I HAVE PREPARED A NEW LAW that we can sign into law. It prevents any NHS staff member from discussing anything about SEX or GENDER unless I personally approve it. I will, however, pre-approve any discussion of “Mom and Dad,” “pink is for girls,” “blue is for boys” because that’s totally different and not uncomfy for me.”

“Let me see this law…” said the chairperson, shrugging in confusion. The bailiff took the paper and presented it to the chairperson.

Strangely, the law looked super law-y. It could actually law into law, if they wanted. All it would take was a vote, and The Compact.

The Compact.

The School Committee had just executed The Compact, and this would be their first attempt to try it.

“This law looks like it has all the law in the right law places,” said the chairperson. “Now, Anon, you have two options: Option 1 is that we can all vote on it, and if it fails you don’t get to try again. Option 2, however, may be more appealing…”

“Ooh what’s option 2?” Said Anon with hope. She agreed that Option 1 was not likely to work as at least three members of the School Committee had (gasp) purple hair.

“Option 2,” said the chairperson, “is that you perform oral sex on each member of the School Committee to completion, and we’ll implement your law.”

Anon paused. Oral sex? She hadn’t done that in a while. Her husband never asked for it anymore. He was never home, always out late with his cute business partner, the South Natick Dam.

“Oral sex? I mean, I guess I would do anything to protect my kids from The Gay Stuff.” She looked to the members of the School Committee. “Okay, I consent. Let’s do it.”

The chairperson paused. “School committee members, are we all on board? The vote must be unanimous.” Each hand went up instantly. They had never been as eager for a vote as this one, evidently.

“Very well, Anon. Get to work. I’ll start.” The chairperson removed the smart gray pants, revealing a pair of black lace boy shorts. Anon approached them with a hint of trepidation. There were some women and nonbinary people on the School Committee! Would this make her Catch The Gay? And wasn’t this what she was fighting against?

Anon felt this in her soul, but at the same time, she began to feel the warmth spread between her legs. She was incredulous. Is this … turning me on? Am I supposed to like this? She felt the warm pulse increase and begin to throb as she removed their boy shorts.

Anon began gentle kisses on the inside of their thigh, rising slowly upward. She could tell they were enjoying this as her kisses found their final home. The chairperson rolled their eyes back in their head as Anon continued to work her Natick Mom Magic.

Soon, Anon was as close to climax as they were, touching herself while syncing her pleasure with theirs. Anon cried out “Oh god I’m gonna cum!!” And, just at the same time, the chairperson grabbed their chair and began the shaking that signaled their climax was imminent. “Yes, yes, yes!” As they both came, they collapsed in the chair and on the floor.

After catching their breath, the chairperson banged the gavel. “Okay Anon, next!” And Anon moved to the next school committee member, who had already removed all her clothes and was clearly wet with anticipation.

Anon didn’t hesitate this time. The pleasure was intense and thorough for both of them, with the school committee member’s orgasm pulsing through her legs so strong that she crushed Anon’s head between her thighs. The restricted airflow only made Anon come harder than before, with this orgasm rippling through her entire body.

Anon kept going, and going, and going through all 613 members of the School Committee. She decided she enjoyed this gay stuff, after all. In between member 411, whose hard length caused her sinuses to explode, and member 412, whose purple hair ended up in her teeth somehow, she realized what should have been the truth all along: who was she to say which truths about sex and gender her kid had a right to learn about?

At the end, the chairperson said, “Okay, you’ve completed The Compact. By the power vested in me, I declare your law to be-“

“Wait,” said Anon. “I changed my mind. You all helped me to understand that I really just need to process my own feelings about what makes me uncomfortable with atypical gender identities and expressions. I’m sure it relates to my childhood trauma and all the time I spend in Natick Talks. But I’ll figure it out. We don’t need this law.”

“Are you sure?” Said the Chairperson. “You went through all this work, and now you’re backing out?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Anon. “It’s been great, but y’all have a great day. I need to go find a therapist.”

And with that, Anon left as quickly as she’d come. She lived happily ever after, as did the School Committee, which decided just to keep sucking themselves off instead of doing anything actually important for the rest of the evening.

[southeastasianists]

Carolyn* can never get out of her head the memory of her parents bringing her to conversion therapy. The transwoman from South Sulawesi was 13 then, and society expected her to identify as male in accordance with her biological sex at birth.

“Deep inside, I kept telling myself that I’m not sick, that I’m okay,” she recalled.

Carolyn experienced ruqyah firsthand, a form of conversion therapy imbued with Islamic exorcism that is common among Muslim communities in Indonesia. Carolyn’s parents explained away her feminine expression as the work of a malevolent female demon.

At the time, the teenager did not fully grasp the situation she was in. She agreed to go along with her parents’ wishes due to her deeply embedded fear of sin.

Carolyn was taken before the local cleric, who prayed to expel the female demon in her body. The cleric also asked her parents to leave her with him for a few days so she could undergo several rituals.

“But at that time, I refused. I wanted to go home and didn’t want to be there. I was fine, I cried and said to my mom, ‘Mom, I want to go home, I’m fine,’” she said.

After begging her mother, Carolyn’s mother finally agreed to send her home on one condition: she had to stop expressing feminine traits and stop hanging out with her female friends. Carolyn repressed her feminine expression for several years after that day.

“To be honest, I felt very tortured. I felt very tortured mentally,” Carolyn confessed.

Carolyn said she placed a lot of pressure on herself over the years. She never felt that she was a man. She was always more comfortable expressing herself as a woman. In the final year of high school, Carolyn decided to stop lying to herself and her family. She ran away from home and learned to become a hairdresser at a salon that accepted her gender expression.

In the early days of Carolyn’s emancipation journey, her past and concerns over her identity continued to haunt her. Not a day went by that she didn’t fear persecution, socializing with others, fully expressing herself, all the while saddened by the irreparable burned bridge with her family.

Even now, at the age of 32, Carolyn is still traumatized by her conversion therapy experience. She gets easily triggered by watching religious TV shows or films that feature ruqyah scenes.

But ultimately she believes that she made the right choice, because nothing can take away her freedom to fully express herself as a woman and her achievement of becoming a fully functioning adult in a society that generally does not tolerate her people.

“I also feel comfortable and feel very relieved that in the end, I can accept myself as a transwoman. I feel like I have found myself. This is me, I am a transwoman,” she stresses.

In contrast to Carolyn, Sofia*, a lesbian living in the capital, was encouraged by her family to undergo ruqyah when she was old enough. By that time, she was mature enough to make her own decisions; and so she ran away from them.

“At that time, I was 25 years old and I was studying for my master’s degree. My position was quite privileged, right?” Sofia said.

Living in Jakarta, Sofia was more exposed to open discussions on the issues of gender and sexuality. When her mother asked her to go to therapy, Sofia was already certain about her sexual orientation. Furthermore, she had been involved in the advocacy for gender and sexuality issues.

“So I think there was nothing to lose at that time, and my identity is the core of my life,” she said.

However, Sofia’s refusal for therapy did not sit well with her family. She said they still pressured her “recover” to the point that they used violence against her.

“But I didn’t want to. I insisted because they already know me as a lesbian, so why do I have to back off?” she said.

Sofia believes that her knowledge of diversity in gender expression and sexual orientation was one of the biggest sources of courage that emboldened her to emancipate. If LGBTQ+ people are exposed to the same knowledge, Sofia said, they will be able to accept their identities and acknowledge that they’re not the problem — homophobia and conversion therapy are.

“We must fight together to convince the world that being gay is okay. You need to learn about yourself. You’re not sick. It’s society that’s sick,” she added.

Ika*, a transwoman from North Sumatra, experienced conversion therapy when she was 13, 17, and 18. The methods that she went through were quite diverse, ranging from ruqyah, to burial rituals, admission to Islamic boarding schools, and goat sacrifice.

None of them worked. And she said she had to live with the constant pressure from her parents to get rid of her feminine expression, which, according to them, was also the work of a demon.

“What should be removed from my body? Because according to their assessment, there is an evil spirit who made me like this,” Ika said.

“In my opinion, conversion therapy is bullshit.”

Ika now works for an NGO advocating to end HIV discrimination and stigma suffered by trans communities.

‘Individual will’

Conversion therapy is not a new phenomenon in Indonesia, but the matter was hotly discussed recently when several Indonesian queer activists, including Lini Zurlia and Kai Mata, received targeted ads on social media encouraging them to undergo conversion therapy.

“It feels like I was targeted by a group of people. It made me upset, especially because this is very sensitive regarding LGBTQ+ rights in Indonesia,” Kai Mata said.

“What I think the government should do is to make it illegal. I also think that LGBT people in Indonesia deserve the right to live in this country without fear.”

Attempts to contact the conversion therapy service through the ad failed as of the time of this article’s publication. Another conversion therapy center in Jakarta, which claims to use hypnotherapy as one of its “healing” methods, did not come across like it has a vendetta against LGBTQ+ people despite providing the harmful service.

“When does sexual orientation become a problem? It happens when the values that are taught ​​[by people’s environment and family] are different from their sexual orientation,” therapist Adrianto Darma Setiawan said.

Adrianto claims to have treated around 2,500 patients in the last 12 years. About 20 percent of these patients are (or were, if he succeeded) gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The standard therapy to “heal” sexual orientation consists of about about five to six hypnotherapy sessions lasting around three hours per session.

Adrianto said that some of his patients underwent therapy out of their own accord, but most were there due to encouragement or pressure from relatives. The therapist did not say how many of his patients he managed to convert, but said that “recovery” depends on the will of the individual.

The government’s failure

Imam Nahei, a commissioner at the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan), said that LGBTQ + groups in Indonesia still have a long way to receive adequate protections from the government. For as long as homophobia prevails in Indonesia, conversion therapy will remain as one of the most harmful and real threats that haunts people from minority sexual groups in Indonesia.

Nahei said that conversion therapy is an obvious human rights violation, yet the state, which should be responsible for protecting all of the country’s citizens, has not done anything to protect LGBTQ+ people from the practice.

“The state has not done anything because, in Indonesia, this issue is still very controversial as it is associated with dominant religious views,” Nahei said.

There’s little hope for progress in this regard when homosexuality and alternate forms of sexual expression are still seen as a deviation or a disorder by the country’s lawmakers, such as House of Representatives (DPR) Commission VIII Deputy Chairman Marwan Dasopang.

Marwan supports the existence of conversion therapy in Indonesia. Not only that, he wants DPR to eventually pass legislation allowing the state to provide the service to the public. If conversion therapy was normalized, he argued, patients would not experience extreme psychological trauma, such as from being forced to “recover” by their parents.

“It needs to be regulated,” Marwan said, adding that discussion on the regulation of conversion therapy are still in their infancy.

Indonesian policy makers, and even psychiatrists, have long gone against the scientific fact that homosexuality and other sexual identities are not a disease or disorder. Their stance have emboldened homophobia, which, in turn, has fostered the continued existence of conversion therapy.

Riska Carolina, director of Advocacy and Public Policy from the Support Group and Resource Center on Sexuality Studies at the University of Indonesia (SGRC UI), said among the many forms of conversion therapy in Indonesia, most are performed with ruqyah. Others who aren’t forced to go the conversion therapy route are still made to see shrinks who practice with heavy religious influence, hypnotherapists, or admitted to religious boarding schools.

“[Conversion therapy] is a threat to the LGBTQ+ community. It is persecution to the LGBTQ+ community. It violates their basic human rights. LGBTQ+ people are not a disease,” she stresses.

Riska believes that regulating conversion therapy would violate the minority groups’ rights even more than they have suffered. Even if the therapy is carried out based on patients’ willingness, Riska argued that it still validates the idea that LGBTQ+ people have mental disorders.

“Conversion therapy must be banned. It is more necessary to provide protection, even though I know that protection is still a long way off. So I prefer that, at least, [the government] treats us equally and gives us affirmative action,” she said.

“I’m ashamed to know that Indonesia is very late in terms of acceptance and it’s already 2021. You don’t need to like LGBT people, but you also don’t need to discriminate against us, especially to the level of torture. What you do with conversion therapy is torturous.”

*Carolyn, Sofia, and Ika’s real names have been omitted, at their request, to protect their identity.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

“Faggot.” “Cocksucker.” “Femboy.” “Abomination.” Gay. The list of names I’ve been called since coming out as bisexual in June 2020 doesn’t stop there — nor did it stop when I went public with my sexual identity either.

From a young age, I knew I was different from my peers.

Maybe it was the way I walked. Or the way I talked. Or the way I dressed. I just knew I stood out to them like a sore thumb — or perhaps a rainbow of color in a sea of dull gray.

My differences became evident to me when other children at the preschool I attended in suburban San Diego, California, would forsake my company in favor of each other, already forming cliques and inciting drama at such an innocent age.

When my family and I moved to dreary Erie, Pennsylvania, I knew my struggles would only get worse.

Many of the children in my kindergarten class had already known each other for several years before I entered the picture.

They quickly noticed differences in my mannerisms, speech patterns, thoughts and ideas. I wasn’t like the other boys, but I wasn’t like the girls either. I was an outlier, a foreigner and a stranger considered dangerous and unwelcome.

Though I made friends the following few years — including some who would become lifelong companions — most of those primary friendships mirrored the kernels of a neglected ear of corn: delicious when ripe but quick to harden, rot and flake off.

By my fourth grade year, I was teased and bullied nearly daily for being too feminine, too weird, too annoying to fit into my school’s social circles.

When I told my teachers about my struggles, their solution was to attempt to masculinize me by placing me in groups of athletic boys in my class, boys I had nothing in common with and who certainly had nothing in common with me.

Even my grandparents — then and now my caretakers — noticed my un-boyish behavior and enrolled me in the local little league baseball team — whether to also attempt to instill in me a sense of masculinity and male toughness or to help me make new friends I knew not.

I would grudgingly participate in the sport for six, nigh on seven grueling years, never making a single lasting friend and crying almost weekly from the torment it caused me.

Needless to say, I felt like a floundering fish without fins in a sea of angry, hungry sharks during those years.

It wasn’t until the final year of my elementary education that I was introduced to the concepts of puberty, adolescence and sex.

I was told that very soon, I would start noticing the girls in my class and would begin to want to form meaningful relationships with them. Eventually, I would become sexually attracted to them and want to have children with them.

But in those coming years, though many girls would pique my interest, it wasn’t them who ignited the fire in my soul and made me feel the burning passion of desire — it was men.

I quickly realized it was this that set me apart from my male peers and resulted in me being shunned by the girls. I was a boy — soon to be a man — in every physical way, but I wasn’t attracted to or passionate about girls like the other boys in my class were. I was obsessed with men.

But I couldn’t possibly be gay, could I?

Growing up in a household of religious relatives, I was always taught that sex before marriage was a wicked abomination and that being anything but straight was a sin comparable to none.

I distinctly remember watching a news broadcast with my family around the time I was transitioning to my middle school years. The ABC World News clip showcased LGBT marriages being performed out west and contained affirming remarks from then-President Barack Obama on the matter.

“The Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman,” I remember my aunt saying in utter disgust at the television, murmurs of agreement echoing her around the room.

I resolved then to hide my feelings and my pubescent curiosity from my family at all costs, lest I be scolded, shunned or worse: abandoned.

During middle school, I relentlessly dug deep within myself and attempted to alter what I thought was but a simple mental barrier to social normality. All thoughts of being with men were forcibly suppressed in my mind before they could even become tangible, and each of my increasingly urgent bodily needs went ignored and unsatiated.

I even resorted to religion, the only weapon I thought strong enough to aid me in the war raging inside myself.

Day and night, I attempted to “pray the gay away,” but to little avail. Much to my chagrin, I realized that even divine intervention could not “help” me: My homosexuality seemed to be an immortal, malignant tumor infecting each and every one of my thoughts.

Thus, the preliminary years of my second decade of life became miserable and unfulfilling — I was engaged in a fierce battle with an integral aspect of my identity and was inadvertently shattering the chains that bound a beast capable of obliterating every fiber of my cognitive being — anxiety.

By my high school years, men — mean, nasty and indifferent but awe-inspiring, mystifying and oh-so-gorgeous men — had begun to control my deepest, darkest desires and fantasies. My lust had grown large enough to thwart even my most furious attempts at diminishing it.

As I slowly came to terms with the realization that nothing in the universe could “fix” me, my mental situation severely worsened. I fell into a dangerous downward spiral of self-doubt and woefulness.

My relationship with my grandparents quickly began to deteriorate, as did my relationships with my friends. Every day brought with it a new reason to hate my existence — the constant verbal altercations, the continued teasing and even bullying at school, the countless lonely nights spent sobbing quietly into my pillow.

And, to make matters worse, the true nature of my sexuality seemed to express itself in each of my social mannerisms. It wasn’t long before despicable rumors about me spread through the student body of my high school like wildfire.

My teachers noticed my strife, and some took the time to speak with me about a few of the different mental illnesses they suspected I had. But not even they could halt the hordes of horrifying thoughts racing through my head or the string of ruthless comments that would assault me in the hallways.

Soon, however, the light at the end of the long, grueling tunnel that was public education began to shine: I was graduating from high school and about to start fresh. Nothing could have contained my excitement at the prospect of escaping the largest source of my daily torment.

As I digested the freedom going to college offered, idealistic daydreams began to flood my mind — I could live how I wanted with whomever I wanted, and no one could judge me or tell me differently.

How wrong I was.

My first year as an undergraduate student at Penn State Behrend was a living hell.

Though the petty and immature teasing of high school was no longer an issue, standing up for my newfound political identity was, as well as dealing with my growing anxiety.

I was constantly engaged in polite yet heated political debates with those in my dorm. I felt like they were blatantly attempting to oppress me with their own beliefs and had grown to hate me for mine.

The same situation occurred with my grandparents, and we grew increasingly distant over the course of that year.

It didn’t help that I was still “in the closet,” so to speak, and contemplating methods of publicly revealing my true sexual identity. I hadn’t yet officially told anyone I was bisexual, and it remained my most closely guarded secret.

Needless to say, my social circumstances and the added stress of my adjustment to college academics and lifestyle allowed my mental state to reach an unprecedented low. I needed help.

That same year, I saw my family physician and then a psychiatrist, who prescribed me antidepressants in an attempt to lessen my now untameable anxiety. I took them with gusto and also began attending therapy sessions to teach me how to manage my thoughts and emotions.

For a small while, I felt better — I was actually happy in my skin and even happy with my bisexuality.

But then, even my long-awaited mental comfort abandoned me, and I slipped into the deepest, darkest pit of my life.

I became suicidal but never acted on that petrifying potentiality.

I didn’t trust myself to be alone, so I constantly sought the company of others, which only made me feel like a nuisance and waste of time, energy and space.

About a month later — in October 2018 — I got into an accident.

I was barrelling down the highway, escaping a particularly heated verbal altercation with my grandfather. It was raining that day, and the roads were slippery.

Going around a curve, I lost control of my vehicle and flew into a small ravine, flipping not once, not twice but three times in midair before landing upright — dazed, but alive.

Escaping relatively physically unscathed from the incident, with only a broken right clavicle, I was not mentally the same for weeks afterward.

I decided at that time I would come out and reveal my true sexuality at the soonest possible opportunity — I blamed my silence on every terrible situation that had occurred in my life up to that point. If I didn’t come out, I quite literally thought I would die.

Telling even my closest friends was difficult, but I managed, and the relief I felt was paramount to that of the titan Atlas in Greek mythology: I felt like the weight of the entire world — sky and all — had been lifted from my shoulders.

Fast forward to the present: I’m alive, well, out and proud. I’m no longer ashamed of my innate traits or of my thoughts.

Being a bisexual man has taught me many lessons, but foremost among them is that the people who can’t accept me for who and what I am don’t deserve to be in my life.

My anxiety made it difficult to let go of toxic relationships over the years — I learned that the primary source of my mental strife is a fear of abandonment by those I care about — but doing so opened the door to newer, healthier relationships that build me up and boost my confidence instead of chipping away at it.

I’ve since improved tremendously, and not even the onset of the coronavirus pandemic was able to pause my progress. Every day is a learning experience, and I’ve grown so much from the helpless boy I was mere months ago that if you showed me a map of my mentality from 2018, 2019 or even 2020, I wouldn’t recognize myself at all.

Revealing my bisexuality to the world didn’t solve all my issues — there were and still are other factors that contribute to my anxiety and mental health — but coming out was perhaps the most profound, life-altering moment in my 21 years. Nothing compares to the freedom I now enjoy, nor will any other experience compare to the relief I felt following my announcement.

[nonbinaryresource]

I am a tired teenager and I wanna fight god. I'm moving out of my aunt's home, and being put under the care of my racist/trans/homophobe older brother. He thinks using slurs are funny and likes to occasionally call me the f slur, he doesn't care that this upsets me. Either way, I thought I had a fairly safe place at my school, but people keep using the wrong pronouns for me, and when I actually get the courage to tell them to stop, THEY STILL DO IT. help would be nice, also thnks for the blog

This is definitely a tough situation to be in. You have every right to be tired and angry. This sounds like it hurts and I’m sorry you had to be put in this position.

1. Are you able to stay in your aunt’s home? Can you fight going to your brother’s house? I don’t know the specifics so this would be very dependent on the situation with them.

2. Become emancipated. If you do this, you would be legally an adult. (This is based on the US)  How to get independence without being emancipated

3. Many countries protect the right for students to have their correct pronouns used. England, Scotland, Wales The U.S. 

4. When you hear your brother call you a slur or someone else is calling you the wrong pronouns, remain visibly calm. (I’m not saying you can’t correct them.) If you get angry or upset, some people will use this as a “reason” to keep doing it.

5. If you do want to talk to your brother about how he talks to you, write down what you want to say first. You could even email, text, or message him. 

6. Remind yourself that you are not the problem. The problem is your brother’s homophobia and your classmate’s misgendering you. Even if you had just told them your pronouns the day before and they forgot the next day and it was blamed on an accident, you would still not be the problem. 

7. If you had recently come out, give them time. This is frustrating and painfully slow but they will really not use the correct pronouns before they’ve mentally adjusted.

8. Stand up to your brother or classmates. Only do this if you feel you would be safe. 

9. Go to a GSA and make new friends? Does your school have one? If not, you could always petition to start one yourself.

10. Join some sort of club/program/activity/sport outside of your school? Many libraries have teen groups and some even have LGBT+ teen groups.

11. Misgendering and slurs can be a result of ignorance. If you wanted, you could provide your brother or your classmates with some resources so they have more knowledge.

Nonbinary/Genderqueer 101

Transgender FAQ

Basic Gender Q&A

Little Bit More In Depth

What NOT To Ask A Trans Person

Breaking Myths About Nonbinary People

Basic Nonbinary Explanation

Genderbread Deadnaming

Misgendering

Pronoun Practice

12. This site goes over everything related to being in school.

13. I wrote a post previously that is similar to this and might be useful.

14. If this is affecting you daily and you need a safe person to talk to, you could ask your school if they have counseling sessions. If you are in college, they offer counseling services, too. Some colleges also have an online self led program. (UW has it.)

Free therapy over the phone (made for LGBT+ people)

Trevor Resources 

TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, TrevorText (LGBT+, nonbinary positive hotline) 

TrevorSpace (support network for LGBT+ young adults and teens)

Tons and tons of self-help guides for (almost) anything

Worksheets and resources with sections that focus on Latine, Middle Eastern, Asian, Black and/or African American, and Indigenous mental health.

**I am not a medical professional and these were included to make it easier for you in case you did need some resources. I am not trying to diagnose you, just providing resources.**

"I believe in a future where we don’t have anyone telling us how to express ourselves — be that the bullies at school, the police, or even our own friends and families." -Alok Vaid-Menon

-Mod Zay

[lokiondisneyplus]

Prior to the pandemic, Frank Patterson would spend most days at the sprawling production facility, formerly known as Pinewood Atlanta Studios, that he runs outside of Atlanta. Then COVID-19 hit, and not even he was able to make his health and safety team's cut of essential on-site personnel.

"They were like, 'Frank, why are you here? You're setting a bad example,' " says the president and CEO of what is now Trilith Studios, the in-demand filming location known for hosting a suite of Marvel projects, including WandaVision and Avengers: Endgame.

Since Patterson took the reins in 2016, he's transformed the place from a set of soundstages to a full-fledged film community. After divesting from the Pinewood Group, Patterson led investments in new technologies and content companies, as well as expanded Trilith's footprint. The result is a 935-acre master development that includes the studio as well as a European-inspired town including homes, restaurants and schools that serve as a live-work community for the many creatives on the lot.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Patterson, 59, opened up about the most challenging aspect of COVID-era production, the studio's biggest concerns and whether he'll mandate vaccines.

You've had multiple projects in production during COVID-19. How has it been going?

We've been very fortunate. We had the first studio feature in the industry back to work in June. I can't say what it is, but they'll be finished soon. It was an intense amount of research and work to put together protocols, recognizing that the disaster version looks like an outbreak. None of that's happened. We've had enormously low numbers of positive tests. And we have a full lot: 3,200 people drove on today.

How much more expensive is it to make a film or show right now?

It's costing about 20 percent more money and 20 percent more time. Things are slower and clunkier and it's taking more space. But the good news is cast and crew are taking safety very seriously. I'm sure you heard the story of Tom Cruise getting upset at the crew for not following protocols [on Mission: Impossible 7]. I don't think that's common. What we have found is with the exception of the day player — they tend to test positive more than the average crewmember — people are taking care of themselves.

A year in, how do you feel you did with the COVID-19 protocols?

They're pretty routine now. We're not just making stuff up like we were in the very beginning.

Which of those do you expect to remain post-pandemic?

The washing hands and standing apart, that's how we keep from spreading these diseases and how we need to work. There's a heightened awareness for cleanliness. People used to drag themselves to work miserably sick because if you missed work, you were letting your team down. Well, that's changed. If you show up and you're sick, they're like, "Get out of here." That'll go forward.

Fellow Georgian Tyler Perry said when he was shooting his shows last summer, there was an elderly actress who didn’t feel comfortable coming on set given the risk, so they had to write her out of the scripts. Have you heard of anything like that happening on any of your productions?

Not leaving a show, but changing of schedules to accommodate people's tolerance for coming back to work. There's an, "OK, let's not shoot this right now because this actor is not quite ready to come back to work." They're pivoting and shooting other stuff first and coming back. That's happening across all the productions.

What are the biggest concerns that you hear from the studios now?

Everyone's overwhelmed with the need to get stuff made, but we aren't returning to the speed that we had and we're spending more dollars per frame captured in just the pure production. And it's not like people don't care because you always care when you're spending more money than you planned, but it’s a way a distant second to: Are we getting this stuff shot?

Are all the studios behind?

Nobody is meeting their goals. Just look at the Disney+ line-up, all the stuff that they want to put in place. Look at what Paramount is doing now with Paramount Plus. If you just look at these pipelines, this is the anxiety that everyone feels right now. And then, by the way, WandaVision's a hit, so you got to feed that beast, right? That’s the tension that you feel every day.

How much of that is not having enough physical space to film? Several production facilities, including yours, are fully booked.

It's not just about space. Yes, of course, we could use some more facilities, and we're putting in five more stages that will be ready by June. But that's only one small part. Even before COVID hit, there weren't enough people — I'm talking about crew, not to mention the storytellers — to meet the demand that Wall Street was pouring into the pipeline. There's a talent drain. With COVID, it's [only gotten worse].

Georgia opened sooner than other states. Did you field a lot of calls?

It was overwhelming. Guys were like, "Hey, we heard you guys figured it out." First of all, we didn't figure it out. We have a version and it's working. But there was a lot of attention on us. And we had the good fortune of not having to worry about what role our government leaders would play because they basically said, "We're going to let the industry figure it out." That's the good news. The bad news: It was on us to figure it out and take responsibility.

Are you getting involved in the vaccine rollout as you did testing?

No, we decided we would just keep our focus on the testing protocols. We have to make certain that we just take it all the way to the end — and we'll let [union, guild and association] leadership decide when that is and when those protocols can change. And then again, as an industry, we're going to have to decide what we want to carry forward and what we don't. That's the next phase, and the rate at which we're vaccinating may advance those conversations faster than I thought. I used to think [the protocols] were going to go into 2022. I don't know if that's the case anymore.

Have you had conversations about mandating the vaccine on sets?

We haven't. We know that when it comes to mandatory protocols, we'll have to work in collaboration with industry leadership. No one goes on our lot without a mask, for example. And that was a political thing. Fortunately, Governor Kemp said, "How can I help?" And we were like, "What would be helpful is if you wear a mask in public," and he said, "OK." So when a crewmember said, "It's my right [not to wear one]" or whatever, of course we can say, "This is private property, sorry," but what our security team said instead was, "Hey, listen, the governor's wearing a mask, and you should wear a mask to protect our industry." It was us taking a stand, but the stand was really only taken because the unions and guilds and associations agreed. We'll have to do the same thing with the vaccination.

You're building out a neighboring town for people to live. Is this the future of production facilities?

I don't think so. In some ways, what we're doing is what Mr. Disney did. The mill town is not a new concept. But if we didn't have a state with a reputation for being so business friendly, for having the tax incentives, for having the most traveled airport in the world, if those things didn't exist right there, believe me, we couldn't do this. I grew up in Hill Country outside of San Antonio, Texas. You cannot do this in San Antonio, Texas.

How many people are buying houses and apartments on the Trilith property?

We have 400 of the apartments built, 260 of them occupied. We’re at almost 300 homes now sold and 500 people in the town. We're working on our next set of 150 homes right now and starting our third micro village. The second micro village filled up like that (snaps fingers). We have 36 people on the waiting list. What’s happening — and this is a global trend — is that COVID has heightened our awareness of the benefits of this approach to working. The distributed workforce and the way for us to collaborate with these electronic tools is causing a lot of people to realize that they don't have to live in the town they thought they have to live in. So I think people thought it was going to be more like a second home, but they're actually staying here.

Every few years it seems there’s some controversial legislation in Georgia that pops up and Hollywood threatens a boycott, whether it’s an anti-LGBT or anti-abortion bill. Do you just assume it's going to pass?

These kinds of ebbs and flows of social discourse and its impact on the industry will never go away. Georgia is not immune to it. The film industry has been this wonderful beacon of possibility, and I do worry, given what's going on in our culture right now, that we as an industry could get caught sideways in this in some way that really dampens our ability to continue to have diverse views on the world.

Georgia's film incentives program has been criticized by some as an irresponsible use of taxpayer money. Do you see it being phased out or pared in the future?

This state is very proud of the fact that seven years in a row now it’s the number one state in the United States to do business. They saw the film industry as a way to really diversify its economy, to bring the creative class into the state. So they wrote this policy that was supported left and right, and that still is the case. I'm not a politician, but I'm on all of these committees, and what I noticed is they were so careful and specific about making it make business sense. It would be very difficult for anyone to turn it around now because it's just good, smart money — and you have both Democrats and Republicans looking at it. But in every session in every state always in the U.S., you will have people come up and write up some kind of legislation, "Let's get rid of tax incentives." It's just not going to happen. I would be really surprised.

But there were some changes to it recently, yes?

There were parts that we needed to improve on around auditing and how we manage the information and our relationship with all the productions. We needed to clean up some of the back of house stuff, so Representative Matt Dollar passed some amendments last session that are now going into effect that really helped clean up the whole process.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

[morningflames]

a word of warning

well here’s a post i never thought i’d be making

it’s come to my attention that a Certain Someone is planning on making a comeback to WrA soon and it fills me with nothing short of dread. i spent the day yesterday warning people he terrorized and manipulated that this was happening. you know it’s bad when there’s a literal network of people who share an abuser that have remained in contact for years in the event this happened again.

i am not going to lie and say that making this post does not terrify me but i cannot in good conscience sit back and let him worm his way into the rp scene again and do what he did to me and at least half a dozen others all over again.

to summarize: tarcanus aka tarcanus frostborne is a manipulative, emotionally abusive and predatory individual that should be avoided at all costs.

i am the player behind lyrinel, a former officer of his and someone who was on the receiving end of nearly a years worth of abuse and manipulation. my experiences pale in comparison to those of others who dealt with him and came forward to me after i left his guild, and i cannot speak for anyone who does not feel comfortable coming forward. if you do want to let your voice be heard, feel free to reblog and add your own anecdotes.

my story below the cut.

tw: manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, coercion, grooming

i first joined coram populo in early 2014 after my best friend and fellow survivor (i will refer to her by her character’s name of thradia from here on out) joined the raid team in december of the previous year. we were both just looking for a social place to park our characters and maybe start role playing again, as we hadn’t had a guild or dedicated rp group in a while. things were fine and friendly for the first couple of months, though it’s worth noting that a large part of the office corps had just left or was in the process of leaving when thradia and i joined. we were both 18 at the time.

i made the mistake of reaching out to tarc in the spring, when i noticed him posting to his tumblr about how busy he was. i offered to be an IC assistant of sorts to his character and he was more than happy to toss me into an absolute whirlwind. we still didn’t know much about each other, but in the span of a couple weeks we went from casual contact in guild chat to immensely long (sometimes between 10 and 12 hours) skype calls, constant DMing, and an almost uninterrupted stream of conversation. i was struggling to finish high school at this time (spoiler: i failed to graduate) and found myself suddenly caught in an all-consuming relationship with this man and his guild. from the moment i woke up to the moment i finally hung up and crawled into bed, my time was taken up by tarc and the guild and the game.

i was promoted to officer less than five months after joining the guild. this was overwhelming for a number of reasons, chief among them being the fact that i had never been an officer in a guild like this before and i was very quickly escalated to tarc’s “inner circle.” this was a circle that he evidently didn’t even include his most senior officers in, as he didn’t seem to communicate with them to the extent or abundance that he did with me - and later, when she was ALSO promoted to officer, thradia. 

within a few weeks i found myself at the center of dozens of micro-confrontations and venting from tarc about other members of the guild, raid team, and even fellow officers. every time, i would tell him he needed to take it to his co-gm and talk it through with her. she, like him, was a grown woman with a lot more experience and better people skills than me, a teenager barely out of high school, but tarc insisted on beating me over the head with his frustrations and then proceeding to guilt me and tell me i was a terrible friend when i didn’t agree with him or expressed i was uncomfortable being in the center of a vent session that i felt was unwarranted. 

tarc was never wrong. he did not apologize. the words “i’m sorry” did not exist in his vocabulary, and if they did, they were almost always followed up with the word “but.” constantly he would be sending multiple messages to me or thradia while we were running events and raids for the guild, ranting about a few particular members that he disliked at the time regardless of how we felt about said members. thradia and i would both be reduced to tears and/or anxiety attacks by his outbursts that all but demanded we take his side even if we didn’t. his feelings and circumstances were paramount. everyone else’s were just inconveniences. 

tarc was always the victim. no matter what was going on, no matter who had instigated whatever vein of conversation we were on that had gone awry, he had a way of making you feel like utter shit until you grovelled for his forgiveness, which he rarely gave. instead he would move on without giving any closure or allowing you to discuss your feelings at length. if you tried, you were the insensitive one who he couldn’t go to with his “unfiltered emotions,” which was the entire purpose of his inner circle to hear him say it. i was not allowed to just be his friend or just be an officer, i had to be both and neither at the same time, and it still was not the right course of action. nothing ever was.

tarc was openly manipulative and antagonistic, always citing it as an “inside joke” when called on it. i opened up to him once about my father’s alcoholism and how i was uncomfortable with alcohol culture and being around drunk people. regardless, he would constantly call while drunk (or maybe he was pretending to be to get a rise out of me, i honestly do not know what was genuine and what was put on with him) and make me stay on the call with him for hours. when he was (allegedly) diagnosed with an inability to process certain alcohols that could be life threatening, he continued to drink (or claimed he was drinking) dangerous amounts, which lead to me begging him to stop as i feared for his life. one of the worst anxiety attacks i have ever had was over him endangering his health and me believing i was going to see a friend die. he knew how much this upset me and he did not stop. he held me as a captive audience to his self destruction (or the playacting of it) and let me cry and beg and plead with him to take care of himself.

tarc loves to promote a clean, “family friendly” persona online. he will go on and on about the positive atmosphere his guild provides and how progress and accepting he and his “safe spaces” are. as soon as you are inducted to his inner circle, however, you learn otherwise. he will gladly engage in sexually charged conversation with you, even if you are ten years younger than him as thradia and i were. we were both legal adults, yes, but just barely. i can’t count the inappropriate remarks and jokes made about us, our friends, and even minors all in the spirit of joking “what if” conversation. he has a history of making young LGBT+ people uncomfortable, making their sexualities and identities about him and how he can relate to them. 

tarc was the most two-faced and divisive guild leader i’ve ever seen. he would rant to me mercilessly about wanting to kick one of the junior officers and raid team members in private while never saying a word to their face or bringing it up with the co-gm. he would start schisms between people, telling each what they wanted to hear and encouraging both parties not to confront each other about it, allowing the resentment and distrust to grow as he fanned the flames on both sides. he wanted people to stay in the guild and continue to basically work for him while also putting him above anyone else in their friend circles. he told straight up lies to thradia and i, claiming one of us had said things about the other that we never did, driving a wedge and distrust between us.

tarc treats his guild(s) like a business. he is entirely capitalist-minded even in an MMORPG that people play for fun, churning out “content” and keeping up appearances like a machine. he treats his officers and guild members like employees, not people. any time irl would demand attention away from the game, forcing someone to miss or cancel an event, he would subtly guilt them about it until they apologized, even if it was a dire situation or a family emergency. 

when tarc wanted to start a wow roleplaying podcast, he approached me about cohosting. he wanted a female voice, and since i was out of school and had no job lined up due to not graduating i was the perfect candidate. i came on to narrate and research the lore segment of the looking for roleplay podcast, which was little more than me paraphrasing a wowwiki article, but i was held to a “professional” standard. i had to have my research done by a certain day, my recording done in advance, etc. 

the podcast was a spot of contention for several reasons, one being the mysterious emails tarc would allegedly receive about it. the podcast had a shared email account that all three of us could access and look at, but tarc claimed that people sent emails directly to him since “everything’s under his email.” he would use these strawman emails as indirect criticism of turwinkle and i, reading them aloud or typing up what they supposedly said but NEVER producing a real screenshot or address to verify them. i’m convinced he only did this as a way to make turwinkle and i feel badly and work harder “for the listeners” to appease things tarc didn’t like about our segments. he also insinuated he got inappropriate emails about me specifically at this account but, again, i was never allowed to see them with my own eyes, just hear about them secondhand, which is why i believe they did not exist.

around this time, tarc began recording conversations without mine or thradias consent. he would start recording random sections of calls and taunt us, playing back out-of-context lines and joking that he would make “podcast commercials” out of them. they were often embarrassing, personal, or just wildly out of context lines that we didn’t want played to the public, and i heard only a fraction of what he possibly recorded of me. i have no idea what kind of material he has of me and thradia that was recorded without us knowing or consenting. it felt like blackmail. it still does.

i internalized all of this. i thought this was normal. i thought he was an excellent guild leader and a role model for leadership. i had begun to treat world of fucking warcraft like a goddamn job and i thought that was fine. my life revolved around coddling and entertaining him, socializing and promoting and recruiting for the guild, raiding, running pvp entirely on my own, keeping up IC connections and attending events, recording for the podcast, all of it. i ate, breathed, and slept wow and coram. it was insane. i had been talked into having no boundaries for myself and my time, and any time i tried to correct that and build a boundary i was attacked for it until i backed down. i have never felt worse about myself than i did while i was in this guild. i trusted no one. i was worn thin.

i finally had enough early 2015. at this point this man was trying to get me to come live with him hundreds of miles from my family so that i could attend a technical school in his area. i am still 18. he was 28. i had been trying to step down from my position as an officer, citing if i was going to be LIVING WITH HIM that it was going to give me an unfair bias in my standing in the guild. this set him all the way off. he was planning a trip to atlantic city for me, himself, and thradia, who i had a ticket to visit for my birthday. he was getting frantic because he had been pursuing thradia for months, and i was no longer cooperating. 

when i threw this wrench in everything, our relationship devolved in the span of a few hours. within the day i left the guild on all of my characters and pulled myself out of all of his projects. within the month i had frantically faction changed several characters and eventually unsubscribed from the game for two years because i lived in fear of him. he had always alluded to “knowing people” who could hack and track IP addresses and kept tabs on everyone who visited his blogs and websites. i didn’t know what i thought he was going to do - all i knew was his thinly veiled brags and threats were at the forefront of my mind. i have played this game since 2006, but for the first time in my life i couldn’t enjoy it out of fear and exhaustion caused by him. he had ruined my favorite game in less than a year and made me paranoid about my entire online presence, to the point where this blog was abandoned for months before i turned it into what it is today. 

and the thing is, tarc’s not a creepy or abrasive guy when you first meet him. he’s funny and charismatic and outgoing. he loves to tell you about his world travels and show you pictures of him petting baby tigers at rescues in southeast asia and go on about these crazy winnings he would have in vegas. he’s larger than life - at least online. he came to visit me twice in the year that we knew each other. the first time was also the first time i had ever met thradia in person, and we had been friends for six years at that point. he has met my family, and that of several other members (both my age and older). no one ever questions why he’s there. no one ever thought it was odd that for a week he hung out with three teenage girls exclusively. 

this horrifies me to this day. 

thradia and i are still best friends. we compared notes and were sickened at how we were played against each other. slowly, i returned to the game. i reached out to people who had left or been on their way out when i first joined the guild, curious to see if there was a common thread. there was. everyone i spoke with had similar stories: being made to feel like shit, nothing they ever did for the guild was enough, they weren’t allowed to miss events or raids no matter what the reason, they were questioned and joked about inappropriately and made to feel uncomfortable and preyed upon, etc. i was not the only one. thradia was not the only one. at least half a dozen other former members and/or officers had these stories, and tarc just kept getting away with it.

he cannot keep getting away with it.

i am being open with this for the first time in six years because i don’t want to see it happen again. because i don’t want to know that, had i said something sooner, more people could have been protected. i was 18 when this was going on. i had no real world experience. i had no standard for how i should be treated, much less by someone almost ten years my senior and who claimed to be my friend. but he knew better. he should have had boundaries and space and lines he refused to cross. he did not. he crippled my trust in people for a very long time. i have only become comfortable playing wow on horde side again in the past year or so. i finally stopped looking over my shoulder, /who’ing him and his guild, avoiding rp hubs. but now i feel like i can’t do that anymore. the safety i have worked so hard to achieve for myself is now threatened.

i understand my experiences are mild in comparison to what some offenders on this server have done. but at the end of the day, this year was the worst year of my life. to this day, the skype ringtone literally triggers me because i associated it with him and his endless calls that i never knew what to expect from or how to get out of. i can’t look at certain parts of the game without feeling fear. for months i held my breath going online or logging into wow because i was waiting for him to pop up and start accusing me of things or trying to guilt me into coming back.

tarc ran coram populo, a guild that, as far as i know, still staggers along with a few members who can’t be bothered to leave. whether or not he’s planning to return there, i don’t know. he organizes and runs (from what i can tell) the azerothian trade federation (whatever the fuck that is). i don’t know what his plans are. i don’t know what his online presence looks or will look like when he comes crawling back. but i beseech you, do not give him the time of day. do not give him a platform, no matter how nice and “woke” he makes himself out to be. he lures you in with humanist ideals and then sucks the absolute life out of you- and that’s if he doesn’t want to pressure you into a relationship on top of it.

to tarc: if somehow you’re reading this, stay away from me. keep my name out of your mouth. i do not want an apology and a string of half-assed, gaslighting excuses. i have records of past conversations. i have screenshots. i know what you fucking did to me and to my friends. i do not want you back. i do not want you here. i do not want to share space with you. i want you to go away and never come back. 

you alone made it so hard to trust myself and other people. thradia and i both have had to seek therapy due to you. and now, you have the audacity to come riding back into the scene on a white horse, being self righteous about abuse and predatory behavior online, and have the utter gall to condemn behaviors you yourself emulated without apology or second thought. i know you think you’re a good guy. that’s what makes you so fucking dangerous. you genuinely don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, and if you do, you’ve buried it and squirreled it away and have covered it up to the point where you can turn any accusation back on the claimant. 

do not attempt to contact me. do not try to threaten or appease me. go back where you were. i am finally at home again, and you will not take that from me. go. away.

[pnwriter]

Endemic Pandemic

Part 1:  Seattle as the Epicenter

How did it all start?  First, it was STEP A, everyone from China, talking about it and one student bemoaning the fact that some people in Wuhan, China will eat anything.  It seems eating a diseased bat started it, as contact with a monkey started AIDS.  That group made it back and we had a fun time.  The next two-week class was canceled because travel from China had been suspended.  I skipped the next group to go to Mexico with Rene and Anne, and started the fourth group with a reduced group.  After only one week, the UW decided to cancel in-person classes and that program ended.  Now, there is the worry that I may not even have enough work to retire as I had planned.  I started job hunting as soon as we heard the program will probably close the end of summer.  Now, it's the start of spring quarter, and we only have 20 new students (as opposed to a healthy 80).  Moreover, these classes may have to be on-line, so I'll have to learn a program called Zoom.  All the signs are pointing to me getting out of this career and Rene is talking about getting out of the country.  China and Iran took the biggest initial hits, then Italy closed down.  Just today, 3/11/2020, Dumptr canceled all flights to and from Europe, except for England, who Brexited earlier this year.  Also, today, the public schools followed the university's precedent, and closed down, as did the Burke Museum.  The governor has banned any meetings over 250 people.  Any meetings over 13 are discouraged and on my way back from the gym, which is still open, the train was mostly empty, with the buses being just a little fuller.   You see people in masks, bus drivers, students until the classes were cancelled, doctors and nurses, shoppers, passers by.  It's all disconcerting.  People are over reacting, in my opinion...the North Dakotan whose bus driver always made it through when all the others cancelled.  

Facebook and Instagram are double edged swords.  First, it is and always has been a community of contact at a time when face to face contact has decreased steadily over the years.  (Ironically, it's been decreasing directly because of the technology that gave us Facebook in the first place!)  I send a photo of a candle burning for all our brothers and sisters across the world to my Greek pagan witch friend Vas.   I am at home after going to our favorite neighborhood coffee shop this morning with the dog (hoping to see its friend Pinky there), only to find out that they are closing, due to the uncertainty.  There are those who say that what is happening now in Italy will happen here, too.  It's only a matter of time.  

Speaking of FB, I'm chatting on line now with Alban, my brother-from-another-life teacher friend in France, where everything is still normal.  We talked about how people are getting into being the characters in an epidemic horror film and acting accordingly.  We both acknowledge the advantages of learning in the flesh, but also know people are lazy and always take the easy way out.  Even as we communicated, President Macron issued the edict to close all schools and universities starting Monday.  I look outside to the sunny March day and think similar days greeted the Spanish Flu and the Black Death.  At least this one is not smelly.

Here's the resume I have sent:

CAREER SUMMARY

My international experience began after undergraduate school with the Peace Corps in Morocco.  My strengths of responsibility, patience and adaptability gained from being raised on a farm contributed to a successful and rewarding overseas experience. The professional aspect of my international experience began with teaching and studying in the Teaching English as a Second Language Program at CSU.  As the Graduate Student Representative, in addition to teaching, being the liaison between the faculty and the students honed my leadership, organizational and diplomatic skills.  From my first teaching job at Saint Martin’s College to my extensive career at the University of Washington, these skills developed greatly over the years.  

                Writing and editing, International relations, counseling, public relations, intercultural communication,  

EMPLOYMENT

      English Language Instructor, UW Campus and downtown ELP, material development, listening and speaking and grammar specialties 3/16/2005 to present

      Compliance Specialist, (change to Professional Staff status from Extension Lecturer) effective March 2004

     Admissions and Immigration Director, University of Washington International Outreach Programs, Seattle WA.  Admissions and Immigration for all UW Educational Outreach International Programs.  Primary Designated Student Official in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement SEVIS program. 1/2004 to present.

    Director of Student Services, University of Washington Educational Outreach, Seattle, WA.  Directing all international student services in the English Language program including acceptance, immigration advising, orientation (initial and on-going), information dissemination (weekly newsletter), sponsors, housing, language exchange and extracurricular activities.   Teaching an English Language class is part of the administration positions.   9/2000 to 1/2004.

   Acting Director, Downtown ESL Program, Directing ESL program with 80 students and nine faculty and staff.  Payroll and expenditure authorization, supervising office staff and providing support for teachers and students.  June 12-August 18, 2000.

    International Student Advisor, ESL Programs, University of Washington Educational Outreach (UWEO), Seattle, WA.  Immigration, academic and personal advising.  Activities supervisor, conversation exchange program coordinator, extended orientation class development and instruction, weekly newsletter publisher.  Taught extended orientation class in ESL Program, speaking and listening focus.  Liaison with UWEO Business Office, sponsoring agencies and embassies, UW housing office, and home stay agencies. 3/87 to 9/2000.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SERVICES

Peace Corps Volunteer, Taza, Morocco.  High school instructor of English at Lycee Sidi Azzouz in Taza.  Outreach to disabled children in a special summer project at a special school in Martil, Morocco.  From 6/78-6/80.  

Member NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the Association of Washington International Student Affairs (AWISA).  Received Outstanding Service Award.  Reached out especially to the LGBT international community by producing a video and presenting workshops and sessions yearly at national and regional TESOL and NAFSA conferences.    

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Cetlalic Language Program, Cuernavaca, Mexico, Intensive Spanish study January 3-16, 2004.

International House, Madrid, Spain, Intensive Spanish Study and Study Abroad experience 99-00

NAFSA Professional Development Training May 1998

M.A.  TESL/Linguistics, Colorado State University 1982

B.S. Psychology, Minor in French, University of North Dakota, 1977

a week, we had done some bonding and I was remembering the difference between the two girls with similar, to me, names.

Like the 1918 Spanish Flu, which took my grandmother Voeller and Catherine Thomas' husband, starting the huge Voeller clan, the last dying before this next-100-year epidemic took hold.  It centered in a nursing home in Kirkland, and has taken mostly the elderly.  Some say it is cleaning out the dark, negative energy.  

Part 2:  Two Months in

It's now been over two months since people were sent to their rooms to thinking long and hard about what they have done...to the

Mother, to Gaia.  Yesterday was Mother's Day and I posted photos both of my mother and Gaia in celebration of the day.  I have picked up a variety pack of online friends...Roial Co (Philippine Reiki Master (I attuned him from 2 to 3 over the phone in an hour-long ceremony last weekend.  He could be part of the soul family...other members being Kim, Aric, Bob, Bachir, Robert, Vivian, Paki, Roy, Cynthia, Alban for sure), Mahamed, Eryk (also for sure), Samuel and the latest...Randy.  There could be up to 90 scattered across the planet at this time...like shatters of glass (Roi).  I'm almost to the point where I can start writing in my books again.

The state was supposed to go into what is called "Stage 2" on June 1, five days from now, but people are still dying (up to 100,000 in the states, 300,000 worldwide) so now it's mid-month.  More monetary help is on the way.  The veil is thinning.  Strange events are starting to become common.  I am meeting good people around the world on social media.  We send money to Samuel after vetting him, but Kelvin Moore turns out to be a Yemeni hack.  Oh well.  My gardens, on the other hand, are glorious and giving me much pleasure.  I have fresh flowers here at my little at home desk and downstairs on the kitchen counter.  The ones at my office desk are from the top deck and the ones on the counter are from the east English garden.  I am trying to attract elves and fairies to both gardens and have started playing my harp out there, with melodies that come to me from the plants' exhalations.  I installed a lady bug house at the base of the climbing vines and will sit out there when the weather gets better and it's supposed to reach record heat this summer.  Yikes.  Along with world pandemic, murder hornets, ravaging storms and the 17 year cadydid cycle falling on 2020, a record heat wave and resulting fires are just par for the course.  

Going out in public these days, at least here in the city, you would see that nearly everyone has a mask on.  It's a bit disconcerting looking at eyes above various colors of masks, the new item of outer wear.  The cute barista wore a black one, the owner a bandanna, his wife, the chef, a more medical-looking surgical mask, the lady in front of me, a homemade jobby.  Out in the boonies, there is a culture war between those who believe we need to wear masks to protect both ourselves and others and those who believe that it's all a hoax and it's a way for the government to muzzle us, limit our freedom.  Both sides see the other as sheeple.  

Part 3:  Month 6

It's now 70 days until November 3 and as Antonio from Spain said, "At the end of the day, it's up to a few Floridians, a bunch of Ohioans and a handful of Michiganians to decide the future of mankind..."  The DNC went better than anyone had expected, with great speeches from both Michelle and Barack Obama, the AOC, Kamala Harris and culminating with one by Biden, himself.  This week, the shit show in a burning dumpster called teh RNC has started with hysterical screaming and drug-induced ramblings laying all blame the the Dems and predicting a daily reality of lawlessness, rioting and burning cities if Biden gets elected.  Only 70 days until we decide whether to stay in this country, or like our ancestors, try our luck in a new one:  Mexico, Spain or Portugal are the top runners right now.  We plan to go south to check out Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona this Christmas.  Last Christmas, it was El Paso, Alpine and Marfa, Texas and Los Crucas, New Mexico.  

I am on the break between summer and fall...noteably the longest one of the year, often five weeks.  I usually go back to North Dakota during this time, but that's not happening this year, probably never again.  The last time I was there, I was suffering from depression and I had a feeling I would not be seeing it again.  Best to leave it to my memories of happier days there when the people I grew up with were still alive.

This divide in the country, instigated by Russian bots and carried out by Puppet Dumpster, has been the last straw, the one to have broken the camel's back that was my family connection.  Foreseen by my late sister Lori, when she said (in response to whether it was now my job to keep the family together), "We are all adults now.  If anyone decides to never see the others again, then that's up to them, not you."  First, it was LaVonne who stopped texting or answering my texts.  Then, Dennis stopped answering my phone calls and stopped calling as well.  Rosie and Jamie are still cyber-stalking me on Facebook and Instagram (Rosie made an Instagram account as soon as I said I was leaving FB in disgust.  She has never posted anything and has no photos in her folder...she just checks to see what I'm up to.)  I stopped posting political craziness last week as it was becoming too much work to research what was fear-inducing truth and what was fear-inducing fiction.  The tainted GOP is all about striking fear into the hearts of anyone who will listen to their rabid rantings.

Another week, another innocent black man shot by racist white police.  Then, to add insult to injury, a trumped up 17 year old from Illinois goes across the border to shoot two protesters, walking by police to go home and then turn himself in the next day.  (It comes out later that he shot the first victim in the back, and that his mom drove him to the protest, as if it were a soccer practice!) I had to break my political silence on FB, which I have just decided I will have to leave.  I don't know if I can deal with Liker, the current alternative, either.  It's the brainchild of some guy who saw where FB was going in 2012 and decided people needed an option.  They need an option, all right.  The option to opt out of social media, the new Dolls of the 2010s and now 20s.  

I wake up early on 8/27/2020 and disable my Facebook account.  I can't quite go cold turkey and get rid of Messenger along with it, because there are some people on there I still want to support.  This is the second time I have tried to do this.  After 13 years (is that all?  It seems half my life!), it's a main social outlet that I am moving away from.  Especially now, in the time of pandemics, it will be more isolating, but the vitriol and Hate being spewed forth is out of balance with what's really out there...I hope.  There were those who had to spew the venom that the skateboarder that was killed, a gentle, long-haired hippy soul, deserved to die.  I can not relate nor be exposed to such unadulterated hate.  Their minds have been poisoned by no other than the POTUS, (and the institutionalized racism/hate behind him) as well as hate speech on line.  My family has succumbed to the Fear of the Other as well.  So be it.  It may mean leaving the country if this upcoming election is stolen like the last one was.  I refuse to believe that a majority of people in this country have drunk the Kool-aid.  

Reading "The Witches are Coming" by Lindy West is giving me more insight, a chance to laugh and even some hope.  

"Our propensity for always, always, always choosing what is comfortable over what is right helped pave the road to this low and surreal moment in US history."

Part 4:  Month 7

From September 8 to 18, Seattle was socked in under a cloud of ash from the fires down south.  I could feel the ashes of the bodies the those who died, as well as the chemicals of the burnt human structures.  Breitenbush Hot Springs lay in ashes with only the main buildings saved.  I could feel the heaviness in my lungs.  Mishka could sense it and acted out by peeing outside the box.  On the 14th, it finally rained some and we still have more days to endure.  I got up from epic dreams of lost family (my mom, That Bitch Denis, DJ, my nieces who my mom prepared us for so they could come in and check us out sleeping) and went out into the acid rain to witness it.  The craziness coming from the POTUS and media intensifies as it's now 50 days till the election.  

Then, when it seems to be darkest before the dawn, the triple threat of the GOPruients, COVID-19 and the death-ash from the west coast fires, we find on the evening of 9/18/20 that the Notorious RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, justice of the SCOTUS, died at 87, after having fought numerous ailments, including cancer.  That bitch, Moscow Mitch immediately states the Senate will vote on a replacement even before the body is cold, even though in 2016 he said that the people of the US should have a say in the next SCOTUS, therefore, the appointment should wait until the election of the new president...blocking Obama in this last year, from appointing one.  This will enable the Dumpster in his last weeks to appoint another conservative, anti-abortionist.

It becomes harder to grasp what is actually going on..these times are so unprecedented in our life times, though to those of us for whom AIDS was an epidemic, this is our second time around fearing for our lives.  We know it's a long haul with many casualties before we come out on the other side, but whatever was normal no longer will be.  

We go out for healthy burgers at Little Big Burger, where you can get a lettuce wrap in the place of a bun.  We are both on edge and irritable and go to our separate corners after we eat in silence to grieve in our own way.  Me typing here with all my altar lights on and a candle burning by the RBG candle, as the first fall rains sound outside, clearing the air for the first time in 10 days.  The temptation to sell the house and leave the country is strong.  The need to stay and fight on will probably prevail, but may not take the re-election of the anti-Christ, the embodiment of the Seven Deadly sins:  pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth,

[skincarebeautymakeuptips]

Pride 2020 & Beyond: The Journey of a Female Transgender Software Engineer

2020 has been quite the year so far. From the recent black lives matter protests to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, which has put quite a damper on the yearly pride parades in city streets around the world. We wanted to look inside of the up-and-coming beauty tech startup, Mira, the world’s largest catalogue of skincare & cosmetics products, ratings & reviews covering thousands of beauty brands, and gather some feedback from their team about their take on Pride in 2020 and the future of it.

Below is an enlightening, must-read Q&A with Jess, Mira’s first senior female engineer.

Tell us more about yourself?

My name is Jess and I’m a software engineer here at Mira. I was one of the first developers to join the team, and their first senior female engineer. I am a transgender woman, who has been transitioning for just under 3 years. I am passionate about both data and beauty and feel lucky I have found a place where I can live up these two passions at the same time. I believe in the transformative and empowering power of makeup, because it’s brought me the confidence boost that I needed.

Do you think virtual Pride parades are here to stay post COVID-19?

I hope so. A large part of Pride is to be visible, be seen, to get out there, and let people know that we members of the LGBTIQ+ community exist, matter, and are here to stay. Some of us still can’t get out of our towns to go celebrate in person, and with COVID19, virtual events are an opportunity to provide greater access to educational and allyship resources to all. I am confident virtual pride events will find their purpose, separate from physical parades and celebrations which are as important to the community.

How much do you think Pride events will grow to 2021 worldwide?

It will grow every year, especially as more and more allies become aware of the importance of LGBTIQ+ rights. Until we are all recognized as equals under the eyes of the law, we can expect more people to come out in support of the community. While acceptance grows for some, we are still facing major challenges in the United States. The overall homicide and suicide rates of transgender Americans is higher than that of cisgender individuals. Three in ten young trans people attempt suicide in the country, and the average lifespan of a Black transwoman in America is about 40 years old. Violence against trans individuals is increasing, and it’s not helping that trans rights are under perpetual attack by the Trump administration. This is what the world needs an LGBTIQ+ Pride Month for, more than ever.

Tips for beauty brands to engage customers during Pride?

As a transwoman, one of the biggest hurdles I encountered was having little experience or education in applying makeup and beauty products; I had never been taught at an early age, unlike most women. More education, acknowledgment and accessibility would massively improve the experience of trans and gender non-conforming people in navigating various beauty products. A good example is beauty classes and tutorial sessions with makeup artists. There is no need for custom trans makeup – I am a woman, like any other woman. The only difference is that I didn’t have access to beauty education until I became my true self in and out. So, I have a heck of a lot to learn! We here at Mira are achieving this by improving access to information on all things beauty, regardless of how you self-identify. And we offer the most supportive and inclusive community.

Tips for business to engage and encourage employees to support Pride?

Raise your voice. Or seize opportunities to have one. Some formal diversity and inclusion training is absolutely necessary, and NOT just because it’s Pride Month. We are all different, we all respond to things differently, and it’s important to acknowledge that. Pride isn’t just the time to show off your rainbow logo, it’s not just a time to show your values externally. It’s a time to show your values internally, including normalising name tags / pronoun pins for everyone, not just those who request them, and protecting LGBTIQA+ people from being “outed” or exposed. Coming out is a personal experience and process, and to each their own time.

Any Pride makeup tips for virtual event participants?

Be creative, be fearless, be you. Wear your colors proudly. I personally love seeing pride flags and colors around the eyes, particularly on the eyelid, crease, and brow. I would do this, but unfortunately me trying to do any makeup around the eyes scares me because I’m so terrible at it! Need more practice, practice, practice!

How can a novice support Pride online this year and next?

Pride is for everyone: every marginalized group – and there are quite a lot! Join in, positively support and talk about it within and outside their social group and donate to affiliated charities. I have seen first-hand the kind of work these charities (namely the San Francisco LGBT Center) do for the community, and it is nothing short of incredible. Donations can impact so many lives.

Thoughts on the Pride movement the past few years?

I hope 2020 Pride will be remembered for the Black trans community. And I hope it will stay that way: Pride is about giving visibility to those who need it most, which hasn’t always been the case in recent years. I think much of Pride has become too corporate and too much about partying and sponsorships, rather than being seen and heard. While it is a step forward that companies are willing to advertise to us and with us in the LGBTIQA+ community, where even a decade ago this would be seen as financial suicide, it’s still little more than tokenism in many cases and does not really give anything back to the community. Much of the advertising ignores smaller parts of the community, in favor of more “accepted” segments. This needs to change.

What do you think Pride parades will look like in 5 years from now?

More inclusivity. Much larger crowds and more allies I would hope too. As misinformation about the transgender and non-binary community continues to clear up, I would expect to see a greater proportion of those groups represented within Pride. It’s actually what the LGBTQIA+ community is expecting from brands: Be part of leading the charge on true inclusivity, just not the politically correct one.

Cheers to Jess for providing such a great take on the pride movement and helpful feedback for other transgender professionals too. Although Pride is very different this year, it will be celebrated with much love virtually around the world. So, if you’re looking for some ideas for your virtual pride parade with friends, family, and supporters everywhere, Mira has provided an amazing list of pride makeup looks for 2020 to consider using for your upcoming virtual Pride Parade this year.

Source: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/pride-2020-beyond-the-journey-of-a-female-transgender-software-engineer/ 

[historian--in--training]

Unsung Heroes: The Societal and Historical Suppression of Black Women Activists During the Civil Rights Movement

by Sarah Slasor

I asked my boyfriend what he knew about Rosa Parks, to which he replied, “she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white guy, right?”

While he is not wrong, his response got me thinking, why is this all he knows? Why is this all I know? Is this obliviousness a product of my own ignorance, or is something larger at play? I decided to dig deeper.

The involvement of female activists, specifically Black women, during the civil rights movement has been historically distorted and simplified. Important figures tend to be remembered for singular aspects of their extensive contributions, while male activists are promoted as representatives of the movement and, in turn, are studied in greater depth. Historical studies often mention Black women, but fail to include details about their activism or political thought.[1] Rosa Parks, who is known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, and Coretta Scott King, who is typically remembered as the widow of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), have both made significant contributions to the movement that are seldom discussed. Both women are national icons, yet their lifelong efforts to achieve racial, economic and gender justice remain largely unknown.

The suppression of the voices and legacies of Black women in the civil rights movement is largely a result of the intersection of racism, sexism, and classism, as well as the nature of scholarship and the way history is digested. Women activists, having taken on the title of “invisible unsung heroes and leaders,” are often ignored by academia, as the history of the movement tends to focus on men as leaders while feminist scholarship tends to focus heavily on white women.[2] This essay will highlight the extensive accomplishments of Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Ella Baker, and will then explore the factors contributing to the suppression of their legacies and how the issue can be resolved.

Portrait of Rosa Park at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960.[3]

Rosa Parks is best known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott, in which she denied a bus driver’s orders to give up her seat for white passengers. It was not that moment that initiated her fight for justice, but instead her entire life that had been leading up to it. Parks’ passion and love of learning was instilled in her by her mother and grandfather, whose examples Parks followed in dedicating her life to racial justice.[4] Before the bus boycott, Parks was elected secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and founded the Montgomery NAACP Youth Council, where she worked with the community and encouraged voter registration.[5] Parks led training sessions on desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, advocating against racial and sexual violence both nationally and throughout Alabama.[6] Following the boycott, Parks relocated to Detroit and pushed for Black freedom, helped elect John Conyers, a Democratic Michigan Congressman, in 1964, for whom she worked until her retirement in 1988.[7] In the 1980s, she co-founded the Raymond and Rosa Parks Institute for Self-Development to bring young people into the freedom movement. Parks, often described as quiet and meek, dedicated over sixty years of protest to the fight for justice.

Coretta Scott King at the Vietnam-In-Peace Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968.[8]

Of everyone I asked, those who actually knew of Coretta Scott King knew her as the wife of MLK. As it turns out, when Coretta Scott King met MLK in the 1950s, she was the political activist and influenced his decision to become involved. Like Parks, King claimed more than 50 years of activism before her death in 2006. During her career, she was a member of both Women Strike of Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; led a campaign in support of school desegregation; met with Reagan to urge American divestment in South Africa and was later arrested during her protest at the South African Embassy in Washington; brought attention to Black poverty and the HIV-AIDS crisis; and worked to end discrimination against LGBT communities.[9]

From 1968 onward, King led the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, in which her husband’s papers were archived and educational community projects took place.[10] King spearheaded lobbying campaigns to recognize her husband’s birthday as a national holiday, and later lobbied for the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill that promoted full employment and fair compensation to combat rising poverty levels. In the last two decades of her activism, King served on the boards of the Black Leadership Forum, the National Black Coalition for Voter Participation, and the Black Leadership Roundtable, and was present at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords and South Africa’s first free elections in the 1990s.[11] King was not simply the wife of MLK. Her activism was present from early stages of her life, and she used her platform to make extensive contributions to social change, the fight for freedom, and racial and economic equality. In doing so, King kept her husband’s legacy alive, and established herself as an unstoppable force in the fight for justice.

Ella Baker on September 18, 1941.[12]

Ella Baker is another name I admittedly had never heard. In the 1930s, Baker addressed the stigmas of gender, race, and poverty in her exposé, “The Black Slave Market.” In 1940, she was hired by the NAACP to organize branches throughout the South, and by 1945, Baker had helped the NAACP grow from 50,000 to over 450,000 members.[13] By 1958, she was the President of their New York branch.[14] Baker partook in leadership conferences throughout the 1940s, and in 1957, became the executive secretary of MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), though she never obtained a leadership role. Baker disapproved of the SCLC’s male-dominated hierarchy, and of its centralized structure around MLK as a singular charismatic leader, as she felt that “group-centred leadership” would have been more effective than a “leader-centred group.”[15]

During the sit-in movement of the 1960s, Baker brought together student demonstrators to form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became known as the “shock troops” of the civil rights movement.[16] Through the SNCC, Baker created a “classroom without walls,” in which she educated young proteges and organized protests with the aims of non-violent action and voter registration.[17] Though the SNCC disbanded in 1972, its leaders continued to work toward Baker’s ideals with different organizations, and Baker joined the African liberation movement and fought for civil and human rights in her final years.[18]

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement from medium.com.[19]

These women, among countless others, have incredible stories that go largely untold. The fact that these women are not the primary faces of the movement and their accomplishments go unrecognized at the surface-level of academia is the product of the three interlocking systems of oppression: racism, sexism, and classism. During the civil rights movement, societal attitudes toward Black women suppressed their voices. Today, social movement scholarship’s focus on men and elites as leaders, along with feminist scholarship’s focus on white women ignores the accomplishments of Black women in history.

Attitudes toward Black female activists, in the rare instances that they are actually studied, have been historically negative. Under the patriarchy, many looked to males for leadership, which, at the time, largely stemmed from religious traditions of having a male leader.[20] This was evident in the experience of Ella Baker, who was never given a permanent position in SCLC nor a salary comparable to any man who replaced her.[21] Many organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, maintained a male-heavy image, as their intention was to appeal to the “brothers on the block.”[22] While this attracted members, it shut out many female activists who struggled to be heard.

This male-dominated arena is perpetuated by historical scholarship, which tends to focus on formal organization and membership and ignores women’s radical protest and activism. As a result, history commemorates formal leaders and overlooks women, as leadership positions were often unattainable for women activists. Women of colour are frequently viewed as uninvolved in feminist organizations, and therefore unconcerned with women’s rights.[23] This was not the case, as pointed out by historian Gerda Lerner, who remarked that women’s liberation meant different things to different women during the mid-20th century, and emphasized that while the mainstream societal ideology of women’s primary place was in the home, Black women’s place was in the white woman’s kitchen.[24] Liberation was different for Black women than for Black men, and the repression of many women’s voices during the civil rights movement is reflected in the way scholarship digests history.

According to historian Bernice McNair Barnett, there are three major biases that influence the way that Black women’s history is construed: (1) Black women are stereotypically connected with “pathologies” within the family, such as female-headedness, illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, poverty, and welfarism; (2) there is a middle-class orientation that ignores poor and working-class women, a large percentage of whom are Black; and (3) there is an apolitical, non-leadership image of Black and poor women as political passivists as opposed to movement leaders.[25] In turn, the roles of Black women have been ignored in research of modern social movements. As such, it is generally assumed that the women involved were white, and the men were Black.[26] While the “great man” theory of leadership is often critiqued by sociologists, this perspective is perpetuated by history, as the leaders were predominantly male, and history loves leaders.

One of the foremost exceptions is Rosa Parks. Parks’ story is included with that of Malcolm X and MLK in history classes, but, in actuality, students only know of her for one event, despite the rest of her activist career being of equal importance. Along with Parks’ lifelong activism, history often fails to mention Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, Alabama State College English professor and president of the Montgomery Women’s Political Council, where Robinson had been actively planning a boycott of city buses months prior to Parks’ arrest.[27] History also ignores the hundreds of women, like Robinson, who were forced to resign from their positions at Alabama State University and other workplaces across the United States for making noise about equality.[28] Society has excluded, ignored, and oppressed Black women; and historical scholarship is no different.

The civil rights movement, though perceived to be led by men, was heavily bolstered by Black women. Though not typically recognized as leaders, Black women initiated protests, formulated strategies, and mobilized other resources necessary for collective action. Racism, sexism, and classism created an environment in which women were silenced, and, as a result, frequently go unnoticed in historical scholarship. Rosa Parks, largely known for her actions on one day in her sixty years of activism, Coretta Scott King for her marital status, Ella Baker for her association with the NAACP, and countless others are the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. It is imperative that we recognize their accomplishments to cease history’s glorification of male leaders when Black women were integral to the success and legacy of the movement, and look past what history wants us to believe.

All sources cited in this essay are written by women.

_____

Notes

[1] Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War, New York; London: NYU Press (2011): 161.

[2] Bernice McNair Barnett, “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 163; Ibid, 164.

[3] Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005.

[4] “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February,” Connie Martinson.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid; Christina Greene, “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” Oxford University Press (November 2016): 3.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph.

[9] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 3; Vicki Crawford, “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy,” The Journal of African American History (January 1, 2007): 112.

[10] Ibid, 114.

[11] Ibid, 116.

[12] Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine.

[13] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[14] Anne Romaine, “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 11.

[15] Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (August 1993):4.

[16] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 5.

[17] Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press (2003): 284; “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine,” 12.

[18] “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes,” 5.

[19] Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph.

[20]  “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 175.

[21] Ibid, 176.

[22] “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements,” 9.

[23] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 164.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid, 165.

[27] Allison Berg, “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta,” Journal of Women’s History (2009): 89.

[28] “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class,” 174.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Baker, Ella. “Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977.” Interview by Sue Thrasher. Documenting the American South, n.d. Retrieved from https://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0008/G-0008.html

Black Women: The Backbone of the Civil Rights Movement. Photograph. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@nadiarising411/black-women-the-backbone-of-the-civil-rights-movement-618b9859a5c

Coretta Scott King at the Peace-In-Vietnam Rally, Central Park, New York, April 27, 1968, photograph. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/coretta-scott-king-fast-facts/index.html

Ella Baker on Sept. 18, 1941. Photograph. Afro Newspaper/Gado/Getty Images, from Time Magazine. Retrieved from https://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/

Parks, Rosa. “Rosa Parks Interview, 1992 February.” Interview by Connie Martinson. The Drucker Institute, February 1992. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/81d0ae423e14a2f67d20fdb34b3b0cc3

Portrait of Rosa Parks at Mrs. Anne Braden’s home, May 31, 1960. Photograph. 3.5 x 5 inches. Louisville, Kentucky. Highlander Research and Education Center: Highlander Research and Education Center Records, 1917-2005. Retrieved from https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM52893

Romaine, Anne. “Anne Romaine Interviews, 1966-1967: February 1967; SCEF Office, New York; Ella Baker Interviewed by Anne Romaine.” Recollection Wisconsin, Wisconsin Historical Society, 1960-1968. Retrieved from https://dp.la/item/5493d0d6be916f0b12a9cc57534d3906

Waldschmidt-Nelson, Britta. “Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes.” FOCUS: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, August 1993.

Secondary Sources

Berg, Allison. 2009. “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta.” Journal of Women’s History21 (3): 84-107.

Crawford, Vicki. “Coretta Scott King and the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights: An Enduring Legacy.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 1. January 1, 2007.

Gore, Dayo F. Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York; London: NYU Press, 2011.

Greene, Christina. “Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.” Oxford University Press: Oxford Research Encyclopedia, American History, November 2016.  

McNair Barnett, Bernice. “Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: The Triple Constraints of Gender, Race, and Class.” Gender and Society 7, no. 2 (1993): 162-181.

Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

[thedisorganizationofelliot]

podcasts

This past year I’ve gotten really into podcasts as a way to help manage my adhd, so i’ve gone through quite a few of them and i thought about making my own rec post. obviously i have adhd and was putting it off lol but my friend expressed interest so here’s the list of podcasts that i’ve gotten through at least a full season of and loved.

The Bridge

10/10 erie atmosphere

"A podcast about the fictional Transcontinental Bridge, the people who live there, and the stories they leave behind. Oh, and monsters."

The Magnus Archives

holy crap this is so well done. it’s horror so i can’t listen to it to help me sleep but if you want fear and true spookiness this is great. the main character is a department head for an institute that deals in the paranormal. his job is to record ppl’s statements of the weird unexplainable things that happen to them. but he’s more on the skeptic side of things which creates just enough humor to get me through a horror podcast. queerness does happen in the background. 

The Adventure Zone

i feel like if you’re looking for fiction podcasts you’ve already heard of the adventure zone. three brothers and their dad play tabletop rpg. it’s hilarious and made me cry. when they accidently do something like say kill the first lesbian couple on the show, they actually do make up for it and apologize for not realizing. their solution was to keep giving us so many lgbt characters that i didn’t even notice that the first were playing into the bury your gays trope until i went back and listen to their the the adventure zone zone eps. 

Victoriocity

 do you want quirky crime solving steampunk adventure? bc this show will give you just that. It’s full steampunk victorian london shenanigans. reminds me of patrick carmen’s writing a bit if you read his books as a kid i’d highly recommend this. 

Inn Between

okay this is a show that’ll give you a toothache. it’s all found family adorableness. it takes place in the inn that the group goes to in between dnd adventuring. it’s very heartwarming and i adore all the characters. 

The Penumbra Podcast

if i only had the choice of listening to one podcast ever again, this would probably be the one i choose. its so goddamn good and so goddamn queer. they’ve given me my dream sci-fi world and fantasy. there’s a canon poly relationship that i love soooo much.

The Amelia Project

what does one do when they want to disappear? why call the amelia project of course! each episode starts with a phone call, involves hot coco, and crazy schemes to make ppl disappear. 

Girl in Space

i can’t say too much about this without giving things away. there’s a girl alone on a spaceship with a very important job and a copy of jurassic park. then suddenly she’s not alone and it turns out that her ship is full of something very valuable and isn’t technically hers.

if you want space adventures about friendship not romance this is one for you. seriously i love it so much.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris

this one is totally completed. it’s short. in my eyes it’s a better firefly. you’ve got your morally questionable main crew (and the pilot is an alien bc they’re not cowards) who take morally questionable jobs. they end up picking up the only survivor of starship iris and well there’s some fishy things that happened that everyone wants to figure out. 

We Fix Space Junk

do you fear corporations taking over the world and charging so much for things that you’ll be in debt for life? well this is your fears come true.  it’s lighthearted tone makes things even more unsettling at times. it’s main plot is between a women who’s been working off the debt of her ship for way too long and her new, previously an heiress, apprentice. 

Be the Serpent

three red headed fantasy authors talk about books and fanfiction and make dick jokes. i love them.

Death by Dying

i dont really know how to explain this one. it’s kinda got a pushing daisies style to it. the obituary writer goes around and sorta accidentally solves murders while he’s doing his research.

Eos 10

did you want a scrubs in space? bc this is scrubs with space pirates, a reluctant recovering alcoholic, a hypochondriac disposed alien prince who is now a dishwasher planning to a kitchen revolution, a nurse who’d could kill you but has, hopefully, decided to help you.  it’s pure shenanigans. they get into so much craziness. definitely has that found family vibe bc i know what i’m about.

King Falls AM

did you also listen to nightvale in highschool but gave up on it after 20 or so episodes bc it didn’t really have a plot? then this is perfect for you. two dudes run a late night talk show in a perfectly normal town. it’s completely normal to have ghosts that move road signs, a lake monster, a vampire???, alien abductions, and calling your favorite local radio station about all these totally normal happening and how you can’t believe they’re interfering with the fishing tournament. 

i’ll be honest this was annoyingly boy heavy for me at first. the only women at first seemed to be the perfect librarian, the soccer mom,  and gwendolen the racist witch. but then there’s a plot about punching himminsts and all these women getting fed up. so i think it's totally worth it. THEY GET FLESHED OUT EVENTUALLY 

The Bright Sessions

for a podcast about a therapist to ppl with superpowers this one stresses me out. which is good. i mean there’s a lot going on and a shady government agency

The Ordinary Epic

a group of fictional ppl play as fictional dnd characters. Season one left me on kinda a cliff hanger and idk how to feel about it. It entertained me, so like a 6/10 maybe a 7? so far. 

The Two Princes

gaaaaaaaaay if you want a fairytale romance this is the place to be. 

[quarkcore]

1-5 for the asks :)

1: Song of the year?

ok so i feel like theres so many contenders for this. This year has been strange for me, and right until i finished my degree, I didnt listen to much new music. I had a real focus on nostalgic faves. Because of that I have a hard time placing a specific favourite; its all just this long blur of old familiar tunes. If we go by my spotify, “Alone Again Or” by Love is my top song, and i cant deny that its absolute bop. If were going by what song i consider my fave right now, its “Lay This Body Down” by Sam Lee.  If i was gonna choose an absolute favourite new track, I think i would go with “Rack Of His” by Fiona Apple. Obviously, her new album is an absolute masterpiece, and thats the song that i just consistently enjoyed the most.

2: Album of the year?

Not Fetch The Boltcutters, surprisingly. For the place I was in, I personally found it just a bit too much to take in. I had a pretty massive shift towards pop, which FTBC just..... isnt. I needed comfort, familiarity, something i didnt need to analyse. With that in mind, The Mountain Goats’ The Jordan Lake Sessions is becoming a real late game favourite for me. I have started listening to stuff that challenges me a bit more again, but i still crave old favourites, and TJLS has packed a lot of old favourites onto one album, while also filling the gap that the lack of live music venues created in my life. Listening to TMG live is a really special experience for me and to have something replicate that, even imperfectly, really meant a lot to me.

3: Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year?

There isnt an immediate standout for me, so I’m just gonna list a few good contenders. Rina Sawayama, who id technically listened to before, but never to the same extent is an obvious choice, Noname (who id also technically listened to before) is another. Id also listened to the Kinks before, but got into them after watching a part of the umbrella academy and rewatching hot fuzz (they feature on both soundtracks). Ive really been enjoying Dorian Electra, and 100 Gecs became a new favourite in abt the same time period. yet again im limited by how little new music ive listened to lghdkfgj.

4: Movie of the year?

FINALLY ONE I CAN DO!!!!! ITS PARASITE ITS 100% PARASITE!!! nothing has worked its way into my brain in the same way, I’ve watched it 3 times and every single time i went fucking ballistic. i dont think theres anything i can say thats not already been said better, but the single bit that hits me the most is the one where the Kim family’s sub-basement has flooded and the father tells his son “You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan. No plan at all. You know why? Because life cannot be planned. Look around you. Did you think these people made a plan to sleep in the sports hall with you? But here we are now, sleeping together on the floor. So, there's no need for a plan. You can't go wrong with no plans. We don't need to make a plan for anything. It doesn't matter what will happen next. Even if the country gets destroyed or sold out, nobody cares. Got it?” because GOD how fucking real is that. every fucking day im thinking about parasite.

5: TV show of the year?

SPN’s Destiel but only for the bants.

Nah, kidding. its still deep space nine for me right now, but red dwarf is also a contender. both are rewatches (continuing the trend for the year glhfgkj). If you havent watched red dwarf, its a sci-fi sitcom, focussing on Lister and Rimmer, the two lowest ranking people on the ship red dwarf. Along with the Cat (exactly what it sounds like) and Holly, the ships’ AI, they on a quest to return home to earth. If you are a big fan of star trek, and want something extremely funny, and which in many ways critiques utopian sci fi (imo) you cant go wrong. Red Dwarf’s vision of the future is that its more or less the same as now, and thats mined both for comedic purposes, and for more serious plot lines. I first watched it when i was around 10 years old, and going back and rewatching only reinforced my belief that its one of the greatest shows of all time. It has a lot to say abt the british class system, and abt the capabilities of the peopel at the very bottom of society, in my opinion. It also unfortunately has a lot of homophobia and misogyny. The way i personally cope with that is by not watching the only season with an actual human woman (yes, really), and by taking all the  gay jokes to their logical conclusion, and actually headcanoning multiple characters as lgbt. its my show now and i can do what i want.

if youre here, then i assume you know what ds9 is like and why its good.

edit: A) what did tumblr DO to this post, B) i forgot joanna newsom!!! its bc shes not on spotify rip. DEFINITELY a new fave and contender for new fave artist.

[southeastasianists]

Editor’s note: The following is a guest piece authored by LGBT+ advocacy group Heckin Unicorn on so-called conversion therapy in Singapore. It was not produced by Coconuts Singapore.

Sam embarked on a journey of self-discovery in his 20s. He had been through many abusive relationships, and for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, he’d always felt that something was missing in his life. Sam wanted to get in tune with his emotions. He wanted to heal.

At 26, Sam flew to Japan to attend a spiritual workshop. The workshop’s exercise was simple, but intense: attendees were paired up, and for 3 hours, each pair had to stare meditatively into each other’s eyes. The poetic beauty in this exercise wasn’t lost to him: staring into the windows of another’s soul would help him get in touch with his own.

Yet for hours, nothing happened.

Then his sensei came over and gently touched his chest, or what spiritual practitioners called the “heart space”. And in a single stroke, Sam’s inner soul broke loose with an explosive force. He started shrieking — so uncontrollably, in fact, that he had to be restrained by several workshop attendees. Anguish, anger, and confusion raced through his mind. It was an excruciating 30 minutes of raw physical reaction, as if years of emotions ripped through his body. Yet it was nothing compared to what was about to hit him in the months to come.

Because in that moment, something clicked into place. Sam suddenly recalled that he was a victim of “conversion therapy” over a decade ago. He finally understood why he’d always felt that something was missing, and why he felt so strongly that he had to heal himself. Deeply repressed and harrowing memories came rushing back like an avalanche.

Sam fought to stay alive over the next 3 months. He suffered from hallucinations, and would cry inconsolably for days on end. He would vomit uncontrollably. His body burned in pain. He wanted to end the suffering. He wanted to end his life. But in between the painful outbreaks, Sam found the strength to fight for his survival. He knew that to live, he had to find out more about what had happened to him. He began researching extensively about “conversion therapy”, and the more he researched, the more he recalled the lost years of his adolescence.

Slowly, his memories fell into place.

Sam went through a lot at a young age. He learnt that he was gay while going through puberty. And through interactions with his closest family members, he learned that it was something he needed to get rid of.

When he came out to his mum at 13, she told him that she expects a grand funeral when she dies. It was her cold, indirect way of telling him that she expects him to bear children and grandchildren for her. When Sam turned to his aunt, she called him derogatory names and told him that people will not accept him if he continues to be gay. The message from his family was clear: turn straight, or else.

So at 15, Sam scoured the internet for answers about his sexuality. In the age of dial-up internet, genuine LGBTQ+ content was hard to come by. The information that he found about STDs scared him — HIV was still called the “gay virus” back then. Sam started getting desperate. He needed to find a way to turn straight.

And then he found a solution — or so he thought.

Sam began attending a “conversion therapy” programme offered by a local church when he was 15. It marketed itself as a counselling service that could help people who were “struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction”, and sounded exactly like what Sam was looking for. Even though he only signed up for their counselling services, he felt compelled to attend their church services as the years went by. His family never knew that he was participating in “conversion therapy” sessions; they were more concerned that he was converting from Taoism to Christianity.

Perhaps the scariest part about the “conversion therapy” programme was how, to 15-year-old Sam, it just felt right. Sam’s 1-on-1 sessions with his counsellor felt like normal counselling sessions. Sure, scripture was quoted a lot in their hour-long sessions, but to Sam — and anyone who desperately wanted to turn straight, for that matter — everything seemed to make sense. Because in a world full of rejection, the programme claimed to provide all the answers.

Sam’s memories about his counselling sessions are hazy, but their core message remains clear in his mind: you’ll go to hell if you’re gay. It was a powerful and terrifying message, and it fueled Sam’s desire to continue with the programme. He didn’t know back then that his sexual desires were innate and perfectly normal, so he confided his feelings with his counsellor and followed everything he was instructed to do. For a long time, everything he heard in his counselling sessions made him feel like turning straight was a real possibility.

Celibacy was a strong mandate of the “conversion therapy” programme. Sam’s counsellor told him many times that he would go to hell unless he stopped masturbating. He told Sam that it was wrong and sinful to have sexual desires. And as an impressionable teenager going through the peak of puberty, Sam absorbed and believed everything his counsellor told him.

Throughout his 4 years in the programme, Sam suppressed his desires and took things to the extreme. He would hold tightly onto his bed frame every night before going to bed to prevent himself from touching his body. It was a physically and mentally exhausting exercise, but Sam managed to push through every night for 6 consecutive months before he succumbed to his desires. He wouldn’t know this until years later, but this extreme psychological conditioning left him with a debilitating inability to touch himself.

In one church session, the pastor discouraged churchgoers from listening to secular music. Only Christian music should be allowed in their lives, the pastor declared. The next week, Sam brought his entire music CD collection to church, and watched it being burnt and destroyed. Sam was so enthralled by the programme’s promises that no physical coercion was required to get him to engage in such extreme activities. To him, listening to everything they say was the only way to not end up in hell.

There were a few reasons that ultimately made Sam leave the programme after 4 years. First of all, nothing worked. Sam knew that he was still gay, and that all he managed to do was to suppress his innate desires and convince himself that he isn’t worthy of love. He was also harassed by a cell group leader, but nothing seemed to be done about it after he raised this up to the church leadership. And in an attempt to negotiate some joy back into his life, Sam asked a church friend if God would accept him if he were to be in a loving gay relationship, but abstained from sex for life. The answer: an unequivocal no.

When Sam left the programme at 19, he wasn’t a changed man — he was broken. He left not because he realised that their teachings harmed his mental health, but because after 4 years of trying, he has resigned to his fate of going to hell.

Sam turns 38 this year. And in the last decade or so, he’s been to hell and back.

After spending thousands of dollars in medical scans, Sam was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. In simple terms, he experiences chronic physical pain induced by his extreme psychological trauma (side note: psychological trauma isn’t the only factor that could induce symptoms of fibromyalgia). These painful outbreaks aren’t just unpredictable, but also incurable. His chest would tighten and he would gasp for air; his face would twitch suddenly and uncontrollably; he would suffer from the inability to speak; he is often fatigued and would suffer from migraines.

Sam also faced considerable financial challenges over the last couple of decades. There were months when Sam was unable to get out of bed. His inner demons would take control, and he would find himself once again fighting for his life. Because of this, Sam had been in and out of jobs. This, coupled with his expensive medical treatment and therapies, set his finances back considerably.

It would be nice if we could end Sam’s story on a positive note. But the truth is that even though Sam is a fierce survivor, his experience with “conversion therapy” still affects him decades after the sessions have ended. Sam isn’t ready to date yet, because he thinks that he carries too much emotional baggage for any relationship to work. He continues to face difficulties fully accepting his sexuality, even though he understands that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. And he continues to sleep with his arms wide apart, because physical contact still makes his body burn in pain.

Let this be clear: “conversion therapy” practices exist in Singapore. Many of these programmes continue to showcase “success” cases without acknowledging, or perhaps understanding, how “conversion therapy” can irreparably damage a person’s psychological and physical wellbeing.

According to the United Nations, any attempt to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a form of “conversion therapy”. Many international psychiatric organisations have condemned “conversion therapy” practices because the medical consensus agrees that they not only don’t work, but could cause mental harm to participants (page 115). Taiwan has fully banned “conversion therapy” practices, while Germany has done so for minors. Other countries such as Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and the UK are considering legislation that would make them illegal.

Yet “conversion therapy” remains legal in Singapore. Many teenagers like Sam will continue to enrol in programmes that psychologically condition them to suppress their innate sexuality. Most of them would emerge from the programmes with their sexuality unchanged, but mental health deeply affected. Some of them will kill themselves.

[pnwriter]

Endemic Pandemic

How did it all start?  First, it was STEP A, everyone from China, talking about it and one student bemoaning the fact that some people in Wuhan, China will eat anything.  It seems eating a diseased bat started it, as contact with a monkey started AIDS.  That group made it back and we had a fun time.  The next two-week class was canceled because travel from China had been suspended.  I skipped the next group to go to Mexico with Rene and Anne, and started the fourth group with a reduced group.  After only one week, the UW decided to cancel in-person classes and that program ended.  Now, there is the worry that I may not even have enough work to retire as I had planned.  I started job hunting as soon as we heard the program will probably close the end of summer.  Now, it's the start of spring quarter, and we only have 20 new students (as opposed to a healthy 80).  Moreover, these classes may have to be on-line, so I'll have to learn a program called Zoom.  All the signs are pointing to me getting out of this career and Rene is talking about getting out of the country.  China and Iran took the biggest initial hits, then Italy closed down.  Just today, 3/11/2020, Dumptr canceled all flights to and from Europe, except for England, who Brexited earlier this year.  Also, today, the public schools followed the university's precedent, and closed down, as did the Burke Museum.  The governor has banned any meetings over 250 people.  Any meetings over 13 are discouraged and on my way back from the gym, which is still open, the train was mostly empty, with the buses being just a little fuller.   You see people in masks, bus drivers, students until the classes were cancelled, doctors and nurses, shoppers, passers by.  It's all disconcerting.  People are over reacting, in my opinion...the North Dakotan whose bus driver always made it through when all the others cancelled.  

Facebook and Instagram are double edged swords.  First, it is and always has been a community of contact at a time when face to face contact has decreased steadily over the years.  (Ironically, it's been decreasing directly because of the technology that gave us Facebook in the first place!)  I send a photo of a candle burning for all our brothers and sisters across the world to my Greek pagan witch friend Vas.   I am at home after going to our favorite neighborhood coffee shop this morning with the dog (hoping to see its friend Pinky there), only to find out that they are closing, due to the uncertainty.  There are those who say that what is happening now in Italy will happen here, too.  It's only a matter of time.  

Speaking of FB, I'm chatting on line now with Alban, my brother-from-another-life teacher friend in France, where everything is still normal.  We talked about how people are getting into being the characters in an epidemic horror film and acting accordingly.  We both acknowledge the advantages of learning in the flesh, but also know people are lazy and always take the easy way out.  Even as we communicated, President Macron issued the edict to close all schools and universities starting Monday.  I look outside to the sunny March day and think similar days greeted the Spanish Flu and the Black Death.  At least this one is not smelly.

Here's the resume I have sent:

CAREER SUMMARY

My international experience began after undergraduate school with the Peace Corps in Morocco.  My strengths of responsibility, patience and adaptability gained from being raised on a farm contributed to a successful and rewarding overseas experience. The professional aspect of my international experience began with teaching and studying in the Teaching English as a Second Language Program at CSU.  As the Graduate Student Representative, in addition to teaching, being the liaison between the faculty and the students honed my leadership, organizational and diplomatic skills.  From my first teaching job at Saint Martin’s College to my extensive career at the University of Washington, these skills developed greatly over the years.  

                Writing and editing, International relations, counseling, public relations, intercultural communication,  

EMPLOYMENT

      English Language Instructor, UW Campus and downtown ELP, material development, listening and speaking and grammar specialties 3/16/2005 to present

      Compliance Specialist, (change to Professional Staff status from Extension Lecturer) effective March 2004

     Admissions and Immigration Director, University of Washington International Outreach Programs, Seattle WA.  Admissions and Immigration for all UW Educational Outreach International Programs.  Primary Designated Student Official in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement SEVIS program. 1/2004 to present.

    Director of Student Services, University of Washington Educational Outreach, Seattle, WA.  Directing all international student services in the English Language program including acceptance, immigration advising, orientation (initial and on-going), information dissemination (weekly newsletter), sponsors, housing, language exchange and extracurricular activities.   Teaching an English Language class is part of the administration positions.   9/2000 to 1/2004.

   Acting Director, Downtown ESL Program, Directing ESL program with 80 students and nine faculty and staff.  Payroll and expenditure authorization, supervising office staff and providing support for teachers and students.  June 12-August 18, 2000.

    International Student Advisor, ESL Programs, University of Washington Educational Outreach (UWEO), Seattle, WA.  Immigration, academic and personal advising.  Activities supervisor, conversation exchange program coordinator, extended orientation class development and instruction, weekly newsletter publisher.  Taught extended orientation class in ESL Program, speaking and listening focus.  Liaison with UWEO Business Office, sponsoring agencies and embassies, UW housing office, and home stay agencies. 3/87 to 9/2000.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SERVICES

Peace Corps Volunteer, Taza, Morocco.  High school instructor of English at Lycee Sidi Azzouz in Taza.  Outreach to disabled children in a special summer project at a special school in Martil, Morocco.  From 6/78-6/80.  

Member NAFSA: Association of International Educators and the Association of Washington International Student Affairs (AWISA).  Received Outstanding Service Award.  Reached out especially to the LGBT international community by producing a video and presenting workshops and sessions yearly at national and regional TESOL and NAFSA conferences.    

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Cetlalic Language Program, Cuernavaca, Mexico, Intensive Spanish study January 3-16, 2004.

International House, Madrid, Spain, Intensive Spanish Study and Study Abroad experience 99-00

NAFSA Professional Development Training May 1998

M.A.  TESL/Linguistics, Colorado State University 1982

B.S. Psychology, Minor in French, University of North Dakota, 1977

a week, we had done some bonding and I was remembering the difference between the two girls with similar, to me, names.

Like the 1918 Spanish Flu, which took my grandmother Voeller and Catherine Thomas' husband, starting the huge Voeller clan, the last dying before this next-100-year epidemic took hold.  It centered in a nursing home in Kirkland, and has taken mostly the elderly.  Some say it is cleaning out the dark, negative energy.  

"If

[ademocrat]

Mark Takano is taking charge of protecting veterans & LGBTQ people in Congress

Representative Mark Takano is one of seven out members in the current House of Representatives. He has served California’s 41st District, covering mostly Riverside County, since its inception in 2013. Takano was also the first person of color that was openly gay upon his election to Congress, and now he is one of two in the legislature, alongside Native American Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS).

Takano also co-chairs the LGBTQ Equality Caucus alongside the six other LGBTQ members of the House, which works with over 160 other members, and serves on the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Additionally, since last year, he has also served as the Chair of the House’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee – the first, and only LGBTQ Representative currently, to have the distinction of chairing a committee.

Related: EXCLUSIVE: Maxine Waters cheers Mayor Pete’s likely Iowa win

That’s a lot of communities and constituents that one person is expected to proudly represent, but Takano is up for the task. Topics of importance to him as of late have included ending conversion therapy, gun control legislation, and protecting Medical Care for All. He has also called for an official Congressional Office of Technology to deal with the modern issues of our time.

He spoke with LGBTQ Nation live at the 2020 Millennial Media Row, hosted by his fellow California Rep. Maxine Waters. “I have a gavel, just like Maxine,” he says about chairing the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, “and like Maxine, I know how to use it.”

I had the opportunity to talk with @DanReynolds from Imagine Dragons about the effort to end conversion therapy nationwide.

Dan is using his platform to shine light on the struggles LGBTQ youth face and spreading love and acceptance. I'm grateful for his work. #ImagineEquality pic.twitter.com/h91g5QYBrM

— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) February 6, 2020

No child should EVER have to endure the immoral and dangerous practice of conversion therapy.

19 states have already banned this despicable practice, we owe it to #LGBTQ youth to ban it nationwide.#DefundConversionTherapy

— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) February 5, 2020

Takano begins to speak on his experience working on the Committee, reminding us that “VA is the second largest department in the federal government – only second behind the Department of Defense.”

Speaking on the population he’s tasked with serving while acting as chair of the committee, the self-declared “Gaysian” talks about the uncertain population of LGBTQ people under his purview. “The Veterans’ population is becoming more diverse, we know 15-20% of all service members are women…I can’t tell you an exact number of LGBTQ people, but there’s going to be more of them that are open, because 10 years ago, we overturned ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.'”

Takano remembers to point out, however, that trans people are not within that group. “They’re mistreating [trans people] in the army, and the navy, and the military…you know, don’t get me started on what this President said he was going to do for the LGBTQ community, and made it sound like he was an alright Republican.”

“He turned out to be someone who’s going to discriminate [and] promote discrimination against our community,” Takano says.

As a former teacher, Takano first tells us about how personally he takes Trump’s “undermining” of public schools, most effectively by allowing Betsy DeVos – “an enemy of public schools for most of her life” – to run the Department of Education. “This is not a good thing for minorities, and especially LGBTQ people!” Takano declared.

“They want to move in a direction where federal tax dollars can be given to private schools that can discriminate against LGBTQ people,” Takano tells LGBTQ Nation, “and, that’s a terrible policy, it’s a horrible thing. We need a strong public school system where everyone, regardless of who they’re attracted to, regardless of their gender identity, regardless of their race, regardless of their gender…is protected by laws, and they have rights, and that no citizen’s dollars are being used to discriminate.”

We ask Takano to explain to us what he plans to do for the remaining Congressional session, with up to a year left in the current administration. How does he hope to help the LGBTQ people under attack by Trump, DeVos, and so many others? What about Veterans and current military members? What can be done to support trans military veterans?

Takano answers, “I have a lot of legislative agenda that I want to achieve in terms of preventing suicide among veterans, that’s a whole agenda in itself…people who are most vulnerable to suicide are people who have been subjected to military sexual assault,” explaining that men are committing most sexual assaults against men within the military, although the sexual assaults against women happen at a much faster rate. “There are ways in which I think we need to reform our process, so that people who have been subjected to assault will come forward, and will report what has been done to them,” Takano says.

He also looks forward to pushing an agenda in order to protect student veterans that become targets “from predatory, for-profit schools…because of their generous veterans’ benefits.” He points out that “these aren’t specifically LGBTQ issues, but they are issues that affect all veterans, and actually, affect all students.”

What Takano believes is “the most important thing to do” is holding everyone accountable for better results. “Hold this administration accountable, hold the VA accountable, to serve veterans well – to make sure the VA is a welcoming and inclusive place.”

Specifically in regards to trans people, he says that the overall treatment of trans veterans has been positive, “as far as I can tell.” Alluding to the struggle in clear results caused by the Trump administration’s policies, Takano admits that “we need to make sure.”

“I just want all trans people to know that I’m here to listen to trans veterans, who need better access,” Takano promises. “The Veteran’s Health Administration treats veterans on a medical basis, they don’t – they’re not supposed to be discriminating, and as chairman, I’m going to keep it that way.”

In looking ahead to the next Presidential administration, Takano speaks on Pete Buttigieg’s success in becoming a ‘leading’ candidate (“I was going to say, ‘on top’, but that expression, in our community…” he trails off.)

“It’s amazing that an openly, gay, VETERAN is leading in Iowa,” Takano exlaims. He clarifies that he has “not gotten behind any candidate,” but he finds Buttigieg’s performance “remarkable.” Looking ahead to the upcoming New Hampshire caucus, Takano points out that Ann McLane Kuster – one of two Representatives of the state – has endorsed Buttigieg – “So 50% of the state,” essentially.

“I think [people saying], ‘Oh, I can’t believe the mayor of South Bend is gonna really get to the end’ – we don’t know that,” he says of Pete’s electability detractors. “…so, my congratulations to him, for representing our community, the LGBTQ community, and showing those LGBTQ teenagers across the country…'[you can] have worth in themselves, and you too, can run for President.'”

In his parting words, Takano urges Democratic voters across the country to get out and vote – “take these names down,” he requests – so something special can happen in Congress.

He names four candidates – Ritchie Torres, Georgette Gómez, Jon Hoadley, and Gina Ortiz Jones as “just a few LGBTQ [candidates]” of color that can be elected into Congress in the upcoming year.

According to Takano, here’s how the candidates shape up: Torres, running in New York’s 15th District, “could be the first Afro-Latino who’s gay to become a member of Congress.” Gomez would be “a[n out] Latina [from] San Diego” if elected, and Hoadley is a Victory Fund-rated ‘game changer’ that is “running out of Michigan”. Jones is a veteran vying to represent Texas’ 23rd Congressional District on her second attempt at the seat.

Takano actively wants to welcome these candidates to the House chambers, having even endorsed some of them. Why?

“Actually, I could start a whole new caucus,” he says. While he remains “the only Gaysian, still,” he says that along with Rep. Davids, they could form a subcaucus within the LGBT Equality Caucus that would represent LGBTQ people of color.

“That’s not only going to be LGBTQ diversity, but intersectional diversity, right? I think that’s very cool.”