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chrisdemmons · 1 year ago

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Dr. Tingle, what's the lonesome train?

the recognition that we will all one day leave this timeline and board the lonesome train to ride away into the night. this is the existential weight that trots along with all sentient buckaroos, a realization that time will not stop for us. it can be a powerful knowledge when you harness this thought to say 'i will make the most of every moment because one day i will get no more moments' but it can also be overwhelming. finding a balance in this way is a constant journey for chuck, but late at night when you are staring at the dang ceiling and the call of the lonesome train rings out it can be hard for any buckaroo to keep this balance. but that is the journey we are on. eventually we can find comfort in fact that we ALL have to ride the lonesome train one day, which actually makes it not so lonesome after all since it is the one universal experience

i think most buckaroos do not realize the lonesome train is also a REAL TRAIN that would drive past at night when chuck was a young buckaroo. it would call out and i would get a feeling about all the lives existing on this train and all their stories and just how overwhelming that was (to be honest i think having such emotional significance in such an abstract way to a specific sound might be one of chucks autistic trots, not sure)

i would think 'i am SO thankful to be here existing i never want this to end'. it made me very ambitious with my time and aware of times passage from a very young age, so now i get a LOT done. but accomplishing a lot is a double edged trot. these thoughts can hurt you if you heed their call for too long so i am constantly looking for balance

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chrisdemmons · 2 years ago

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Now that the post is over 10k and my notes are straight-up unusable...

One thing I wish I'd spelled out more explicitly in the original post because I see this point getting lost on a lot of rebloggers who don't understand why the healthcare thing was such a big deal is like

The subtext I thought would be understood bc I lived back then but apparently has been lost today is that making sure queer employees and their partners had healthcare in the early 90s meant Disney was paying for a lot of AIDS treatment.

This is one reason fundie Christians were so upset and queer employees were so grateful. It's one reason why it was such a controversial decision. It was a major talking point amongst my family, who believed back then that AIDS was a punishment from God.

(Some still do, I think. We don't talk.)

I keep seeing people saying that Disney only chose that option "because of their bottom line" and it's like??? Were you listening??? Disney has been paying for that decision for literally decades, but they've stood by it.

Like... the 90s weren't like now! It wasn't profitable to cater to the queer population of the country back then. They weren't raking in money with this.

It's in no way a perfect company but I fully believe in criticizing people for the specific things they do wrong and praising them for the specific things they do right. Disney has fucked copyright, monopoly, and labor laws and I'm not about to defend that. But they are well known in FL for being friendly to both queer people and disabled people, and that is unambiguously a good thing.

(Like side note, I could talk about Disney and accessibility for days. I have traveled extensively while disabled and no one does it like Disney.)

I've had people reblogging the post like "I straight-up don't believe Disney is an industry leader in equal protections for queer employees" and it's like ??? do you think I just pulled this out of my ass? If you want more information, go look it up! You'll see that this is well-established history. It's not my fault y'all don't read! :|

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chrisdemmons · 2 years ago

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So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America.

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

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chrisdemmons · 3 years ago

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Kendra Wells.

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chrisdemmons · 3 years ago

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It is unknown how Musk will manage Twitter moving forward. His statements about protecting free speech, for now, are just promises. And those promises are complicated by his historical hostility toward speech he perceives as damaging toward his economic interests. One thing we do know, however, is that the world’s power and influence have become even more concentrated. By taking the company private, Musk will have tremendous power to make decisions about the future of the platform and few obligations to make those decisions public.

Musk is a “free speech absolutist” except when he’s not (via wilwheaton)

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chrisdemmons · 3 years ago

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