#then at least I have it

[thebisexualwreckoning]

Assorted thoughts on culture, generational trauma, racism, queerness and where they intersect for me

My family is from Bangladesh. Or they used to be. All of my great-grandparents were born there. At least 3 of my grandparents were born there as well. My mother travelled there on the back of trucks transporting hay. The town, practically the village, my father grew up in, is in Bangladesh.

There's this story my mother tells me. When I was around three years old, we were in a Bengali restaurant in New York and I was so happy to meet fellow Bengalis that I immediately started to speak Sylheti. They gave us a discount for that. called me Khuki and told my parents how nice it was to speak in the language of their home with someone once again.

Another time, another restaurant. This one is in London. I'm not three anymore. I don't speak Sylheti anymore either. They say I forgot because I had no one to speak it with. I don't even speak proper Bangla. It's now Bengali with a dash of Hindi. This time when we enter the restaurant, I don't approach the servers. They approach us and say how nice it is to find a fellow Bengali in the wild. We complain about how we're tired of white people food. My mother wishes she had macher jhol. The servers tell her to wait and bring out a plate of their own dinner. She cries as she eats it. Tears of joy and solidarity.

I'm twelve years old and for the first time, I decide to relearn my culture. I join a summer class, pencil in hand, ready to learn how to read and write all over again. I want to read my mother's magazines, the Feluda comics that she read out loud to me as a child. It paid off, but not in the way I expected, my mother fighting with my father, grabbing hold of my hand two days later as we boarded the aeroplane back to her father's house.

I'm 13 years old, on anti-depressants that I forgot to take some days, neurodivergence diagnosed, and learning more about myself each and every day. I come out as bisexual to my mom but do not tell her about my genderfluidity. Afraid of what she'll think when the daughter she always desired turns out to not be her daughter at all. We call my brother in Canada. He tells us about the people who shout slurs at him in the metro. We do not tell him that we are afraid that someday the slurs will turn into bullet wounds.

I'm fourteen years old, and my father's come to visit. It's his birthday so we travel to his parents' house. more than 4 hours away from ours. They greet us with barbed wire words on my grades, my brother's weight, my mother's inability to be a good wife. We smile through it all. I wonder how they can be so cruel. The people who cared for me when I was a child. The woman who named me now my worst enemy.

I'm fifteen years old now. My Bangla is clearer. Sharp vowels and clear consonants. It will never be rounded syllables of my childhood ever again. I learn of the Bengal partition in school. Learn how people killed each other in the name of freedom. I want to scream, "Amra shobai ek." We are all the same. We share the same culture, the same language but in different dialects, the same history. Stop killing, please. I'm tired of the violence and hatred, I say. This war started before I was born, will it continue after I'm dead as well?

I gathered the courage to google LGBTQ+ laws in Bangladesh today. And I realised something. I love my culture. I love my roots. I love this language, my ancestors, and every family member, even though sometimes I feel like there are too many to count. But I do not love what they have made of it. I saw the words splashed across the newspaper headlines, Anti - Queer laws still in place, Being gay is punishable with a life sentence in prison, a gay man is stoned to death in public and no one does anything to stop it. I do not cry. I've been doing nothing but crying for too long now.

Instead, I'm writing this. I'm writing this to tell everyone that it isn't over. I'm writing this to tell everyone that if I'd been born 413 km to the west exactly, I wouldn't be alive to write this post right now. I'm writing this because I am tired of our stories going untold, buried under layers of propaganda and zealotry. I'm writing this because people think my being Hindu, my being Indian, my being Bengali means that I cannot be queer.

Well sorry to prove you wrong. Because I'm still here. And I'm still kicking. And as long as I'm alive, I'm not going to stop. Neither will the thousands of others like me, telling their stories in a thousand different ways, fighting for their people in a thousand different ways.

So this one is for those still kicking.

We're Here

We're Queer

And we're ready to fucking fight.

[thelaurenshippen]

watching bridgerton and obviously there were a lot of things wrong with the way socializing has worked in the past, but honestly the idea of a "calling hour" is so appealing. office hours for friendship. you can show up unannounced at my home between 1 and 3pm. you must leave by 3pm. I may give you a pastry. lets bring that back

[cadaverkeys]

You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).

Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.

[tariah23]

White people are miserable, racist losers period. They’ve even been getting mad at Japanese people for correcting them about Yasuke as well.

[buttercuparry]

Reblog the fundraisers you mfs!!!!! I don't know why you all skip those to reblog some pic of a banner saying "FREE PALESTINE" or of news from Columbia University! Literally these people from Gaza have made an account on Tumblr and is writing in english to communicate what they need and you all are coming onto my blog or on the tag and not reblogging their posts. We have people both Palestinian and non Palestinian vetting the fundraisers! I mean more the reblogs, more the chance of the fundraisers gaining momemtum, the more there would be a chance of a donation. Please donate if you can and reblog!!! and follow them if it is possible.

@/mohammedayesh has posted about getting leaflets, telling them to evacuate Rafah. They are very low on funds. Go follow them and reblog their posts and donate if possible.

We have @/haneenatya too whose mother is suffering from eye stroke and need to evacuate. Please I have been following them for some days and it doesn't seem their own posts are getting much attention.

Follow them! They are on tumblr. Reblog their posts and donate. The protests in universities are being done on account of them. They should be our focus.

(EDIT: on re-reading my post it seems as if I am dismissing all that the students of universities are doing. I am not. I just meant, since all of it is to help Palestinians, we must not ignore them when they ask for help).

[1-800-dreamgirl]

this is what everyone has been saying!! no one is looking at celebrities for political statements, but they should and must use their platform to amplify the voices of those who need and most importantly be against this genocide!!

[goldensunset]

advice i think we should tell children is that when adults say stuff like ‘now that i’m an adult i get really excited about stuff like coffee tables and bathrooms and rugs etc’ they don’t mean ‘and now i don’t care about blorbo and squimbus from my childhood tv shows anymore’ bc your average adult still loves all the same pop culture stuff they always did; they just have a greater appreciation for the mundane as well. growing up just means you can enjoy life twice as much now. you can get really excited about a new stuffed animal AND about a new kitchen sponge. peace and love

[heritageposts]

The Eurovision song contest is facing intense scrunity and accusations of discrimination after it rebuked Swedish-Palestinian pop star Eric Saade for wearing a Palestinian scarf in the opening act of the semi-finals. Saade, whose father is of Palestinian origin, kicked off the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden on Tuesday evening with a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian and Arab male headdress, wrapped around his wrist. [...] In response, the organisers of the contest, European Broadcasting Union (EBU) released a statement saying it "regretted" that Saade wore the scarf. "The Eurovision Song Contest is a live TV show. All performers are made aware of the rules of the contest, and we regret that Eric Saade chose to compromise the non-political nature of the event," it said. [...] Eurovision later posted clips of the performances of the other two opening acts on its social media pages, but did not share Saade’s, prompting social media users to share the performance on their personal pages to show support for the artist.

Waving Palestinian flags, wearing traditional Palestinian garments, or if we're being honest, just being Palestinian, is now officially "too political" for Eurovision.

Literally, all Saade did was wear a keffiyeh around his wrist—while being Palestinian—and that was enough to get a statement from the EBU, and have his opening performance scrubbed from Youtube.

If you're not already boycotting Eurovision this year, then what the fuck is wrong with you?

Below are two statements from Saade. The first one, giving his reason for participating, was posted a few days ago, and the other was in response to the EBU accusing him of 'compromising the non-political nature' of the Genocide Song Contest:

Reminder again to BOYCOTT EUROVISION 🇵🇸

[transannabeth]

if you opened discord’s april fools day loot boxes how long did it take you to get all the items? it took my friend 18 boxes but me 65 and i want to see how bad my luck is

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Also increasingly aware that a LOT of people "manage" getting through the 40+ hour work week by sleeping less than is healthy and relying on stimulants like coffee and energy drinks to keep them going.

For people who are unwilling or unable to do this...work really does just dominate your life. Like we really should not have to rely on unhealthy practices just to have a social life or keep on top of housework or whatever.

I know I post about this a lot but I'm so TIRED all the time and it's just so depressing that this is how we're expected to spend the one life we have.

[aristoteliancomplacency]

Guys.

Y’all.

I…

I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.

Look. Okay.

There are two things you need to know, here.

First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).

Like this one, currently in the Met:

Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:

They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.

The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.

Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?

[lazer-t]

3D Animation Commission

Character belongs to @wanderingwastelands

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Quite possibly the funniest shit I have ever seen in my life

[catmask]

the 'all marriage is gay as far as im concerned' except its me watching a man and woman character in a show i like and accidentally saying 'theyre so gay' because i literally forget thats not the word for romance because to me all romance is gay

[hinamie]

I'll rip in hands and teeth and take a bite

[fox-mulder-gets-pegged]

I just wanna say bc I KNOW you're somewhere on tumblr, to the teenage girl who attended Take Your Kid To Work Day at an office building in Ontario, Canada circa 2013 and had a conversation with a middle aged woman in which you showed her your Black Veil Brides fanart and fanfics and ship content and told her about different fanfic tropes including a/b/o verse bc she happened to know who Panic! at The Disco and Fallout Boy were and thus you felt the need to show her your bandblr ship art, that was my fucking mother and I had to clarify all that to her including looking my mother in the eye and trying to explain a/b/o verse without sounding like a lunatic.

It's been 10 years and I still regularly sent evil energies in your direction. Since you'd be probably two years younger than me and thus legally an adult now, please know if this post reaches you it's on sight.