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puttingherinhistory · 3 years

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“Covid has unleashed the most severe setback to women’s liberation in my lifetime. While watching this happen, I have started to think we are witnessing an outbreak of disaster patriarchy.

Naomi Klein was the first to identify “disaster capitalism”, when capitalists use a disaster to impose measures they couldn’t possibly get away with in normal times, generating more profit for themselves. Disaster patriarchy is a parallel and complementary process, where men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance, and rapidly erase hard-earned women’s rights. (The term “racialized disaster patriarchy” was used by Rachel E Luft in writing about an intersectional model for understanding disaster 10 years after Hurricane Katrina.) All over the world, patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus to reclaim power – on the one hand, escalating the danger and violence to women, and on the other, stepping in as their supposed controller and protector.

I have spent months interviewing activists and grassroots leaders around the world, from Kenya to France to India, to find out how this process is affecting them, and how they are fighting back. In very different contexts, five key factors come up again and again. In disaster patriarchy, women lose their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed on to the frontlines, unprotected, to be sacrificed.

Part of me hesitates to use the word “patriarchy”, because some people feel confused by it, and others feel it’s archaic. I have tried to imagine a newer, more contemporary phrase for it, but I have watched how we keep changing language, updating and modernising our descriptions in an attempt to meet the horror of the moment. I think, for example, of all the names we have given to the act of women being beaten by their partner. First, it was battery, then domestic violence, then intimate partner violence, and most recently intimate terrorism. We are forever doing the painstaking work of refining and illuminating, rather than insisting the patriarchs work harder to deepen their understanding of a system that is eviscerating the planet. So, I’m sticking with the word.

In this devastating time of Covid we have seen an explosion of violence towards women, whether they are cisgender or gender-diverse. Intimate terrorism in lockdown has turned the home into a kind of torture chamber for millions of women. We have seen the spread of revenge porn as lockdown has pushed the world online; such digital sexual abuse is now central to domestic violence as intimate partners threaten to share sexually explicit images without victims’ consent.

The conditions of lockdown – confinement, economic insecurity, fear of illness, excess of alcohol – were a perfect storm for abuse. It is hard to determine what is more disturbing: the fact that in 2021 thousands of men still feel willing and entitled to control, torture and beat their wives, girlfriends and children, or that no government appears to have thought about this in their planning for lockdown.

In Peru, hundreds of women and girls have gone missing since lockdown was imposed, and are feared dead. According to official figures reported by Al Jazeera, 606 girls and 309 women went missing between 16 March and 30 June last year. Worldwide, the closure of schools has increased the likelihood of various forms of violence. The US Rape Abuse and Incest National Network says its helpline for survivors of sexual assault has never been in such demand in its 26-year history, as children are locked in with abusers with no ability to alert their teachers or friends. In Italy, calls to the national anti-violence toll-free number increased by 73% between 1 March and 16 April 2020, according to the activist Luisa Rizzitelli. In Mexico, emergency call handlers received the highest number of calls in the country’s history, and the number of women who sought domestic violence shelters quadrupled.

To add outrage to outrage, many governments reduced funding for these shelters at the exact moment they were most needed. This seems to be true throughout Europe. In the UK, providers told Human Rights Watch that the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated a lack of access to services for migrant and Black, Asian and minority ethnic women. The organisations working with these communities say that persistent inequality leads to additional difficulties in accessing services such as education, healthcare and disaster relief remotely.

In the US, more than 5 million women’s jobs were lost between the start of the pandemic and November 2020. Because much of women’s work requires physical contact with the public – restaurants, stores, childcare, healthcare settings – theirs were some of the first to go. Those who were able to keep their jobs were often frontline workers whose positions have put them in great danger; some 77% of hospital workers and 74% percent of school staff are women. Even then, the lack of childcare options left many women unable to return to their jobs. Having children does not have this effect for men. The rate of unemployment for Black and Latina women was higher before the virus, and now it is even worse.

The situation is more severe for women in other parts of the world. Shabnam Hashmi, a leading women’s activist from India, tells me that by April 2020 a staggering 39.5% of women there had lost their jobs. “Work from home is very taxing on women as their personal space has disappeared, and workload increased threefold,” Hashmi says. In Italy, existing inequalities have been amplified by the health emergency. Rizzitelli points out that women already face lower employment, poorer salaries and more precarious contracts, and are rarely employed in “safe” corporate roles; they have been the first to suffer the effects of the crisis. “Pre-existing economic, social, racial and gender inequalities have been accentuated, and all of this risks having longer-term consequences than the virus itself,” Rizzitelli says.

When women are put under greater financial pressure, their rights rapidly erode. With the economic crisis created by Covid, sex- and labour-trafficking are again on the rise. Young women who struggle to pay their rent are being preyed on by landlords, in a process known as “sextortion”.

I don’t think we can overstate the level of exhaustion, anxiety and fear that women are suffering from taking care of families, with no break or time for themselves. It’s a subtle form of madness. As women take care of the sick, the needy and the dying, who takes care of them? Colani Hlatjwako, an activist leader from the Kingdom of Eswatini, sums it up: “Social norms that put a heavy caregiving burden on women and girls remain likely to make their physical and mental health suffer.” These structures also impede access to education, damage livelihoods, and strip away sources of support.

Unesco estimates that upward of 11 million girls may not return to school once the Covid pandemic subsides. The Malala Fund estimates an even bigger number: 20 million. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, from UN Women, says her organisation has been fighting for girls’ education since the Beijing UN women’s summit in 1995. “Girls make up the majority of the schoolchildren who are not going back,” she says. “We had been making progress – not perfect, but we were keeping them at school for longer. And now, to have these girls just dropping out in one year, is quite devastating.”

Of all these setbacks, this will be the most significant. When girls are educated, they know their rights, and what to demand. They have the possibility of getting jobs and taking care of their families. When they can’t access education, they become a financial strain to their families and are often forced into early marriages.

This has particular implications for female genital mutilation (FGM). Often, fathers will accept not subjecting their daughters to this process because their daughters can become breadwinners through being educated. If there is no education, then the traditional practices resume, so that daughters can be sold for dowries. As Agnes Pareyio, chairwoman of the Kenyan Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Board, tells me: “Covid closed our schools and brought our girls back home. No one knew what was going on in the houses. We know that if you educate a girl, FGM will not happen. And now, sadly the reverse is true.”

In the early months of the pandemic, I had a front-row seat to the situation of nurses in the US, most of whom are women. I worked with National Nurses United, the biggest and most radical nurses’ union, and interviewed many nurses working on the frontline. I watched as for months they worked gruelling 12-hour shifts filled with agonising choices and trauma, acting as midwives to death. On their short lunch breaks, they had to protest over their own lack of personal protective equipment, which put them in even greater danger. In the same way that no one thought what it would mean to lock women and children in houses with abusers, no one thought what it would be like to send nurses into an extremely contagious pandemic without proper PPE. In some US hospitals, nurses were wearing garbage bags instead of gowns, and reusing single-use masks many times. They were being forced to stay on the job even if they had fevers.

The treatment of nurses who were risking their lives to save ours was a shocking kind of violence and disrespect. But there are many other areas of work where women have been left unprotected, from the warehouse workers who are packing and shipping our goods, to women who work in poultry and meat plants who are crammed together in dangerous proximity and forced to stay on the job even when they are sick. One of the more stunning developments has been with “tipped” restaurant workers in the US, already allowed to be paid the shockingly low wage of $2.13 (£1.50) an hour, which has remained the same for the past 22 years. Not only has work declined, tips have also declined greatly for those women, and now a new degradation called “maskular harassment” has emerged, where male customers insist waitresses take off their masks so they can determine if and how much to tip them based on their looks.

Women farm workers in the US have seen their protections diminished while no one was looking. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, tells me how pressures have increased on campesinas, or female farm workers: “There have been more incidents of pesticides poisonings, sexual abuse and heat stress issues, and there is less monitoring from governmental agencies or law enforcement due to Covid-19.”

Covid has revealed the fact that we live with two incompatible ideas when it comes to women. The first is that women are essential to every aspect of life and our survival as a species. The second is that women can easily be violated, sacrificed and erased. This is the duality that patriarchy has slashed into the fabric of existence, and that Covid has laid bare. If we are to continue as a species, this contradiction needs to be healed and made whole.

To be clear, the problem is not the lockdowns, but what the lockdowns, and the pandemic that required them, have made clear. Covid has revealed that patriarchy is alive and well; that it will reassert itself in times of crisis because it has never been truly deconstructed, and like an untreated virus it will return with a vengeance when the conditions are ripe.

The truth is that unless the culture changes, unless patriarchy is dismantled, we will forever be spinning our wheels. Coming out of Covid, we need to be bold, daring, outrageous and to imagine a more radical way of existing on the Earth. We need to continue to build and spread activist movements. We need progressive grassroots women and women of colour in positions of power. We need a global initiative on the scale of a Marshall Plan or larger, to deconstruct and exorcise patriarchy – which is the root of so many other forms of oppression, from imperialism to racism, from transphobia to the denigration of the Earth.

There would first be a public acknowledgment, and education, about the nature of patriarchy and an understanding that it is driving us to our end. There would be ongoing education, public forums and processes studying how patriarchy leads to various forms of oppression. Art would help expunge trauma, grief, aggression, sorrow and anger in the culture and help heal and make people whole. We would understand that a culture that has diabolical amnesia and refuses to address its past can only repeat its misfortunes and abuses. Community and religious centres would help members deal with trauma. We would study the high arts of listening and empathy. Reparations and apologies would be done in public forums and in private meetings. Learning the art of apology would be as important as prayer.

The feminist author Gerda Lerner wrote in 1986: “The system of patriarchy in a historic construct has a beginning and it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course. It no longer serves the needs of men and women, and its intractable linkage to militarism, hierarchy and racism has threatened the very existence of life on Earth.”

As powerful as patriarchy is, it’s just a story. As the post-pandemic era unfolds, can we imagine another system, one that is not based on hierarchy, violence, domination, colonialisation and occupation? Do we see the connection between the devaluing, harming and oppression of all women and the destruction of the Earth itself? What if we lived as if we were kin? What if we treated each person as sacred and essential to the unfolding story of humanity?

What if rather than exploiting, dominating and hurting women and girls during a crisis, we designed a world that valued them, educated them, paid them, listened to them, cared for them and centred them?“

#women #coronavirus #life and style #world news #inequality #Covid 19 #COVID-19 #feminism #womanism #gender inequality #gender equality #corona virus

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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Jimin is a pretty bOY

This is a continuation of our discussion on my last post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, I think I agree with all of it.

Not sure how I feel about the calling eachother out bit or near scolding of others in the comments. Please let's be welcoming and respectful of others's thoughts regardless of whether or not we agree with it. It's ok to hold diverse views. We do after all come from different backgrounds and have accumulated different experiences and I think it plays out in how we see things. Everyone's opinion is valid. Plus, I purple yall.

Now, do I think he is trying to pack on muscles........? Yes. He said so himself in Festa when he said he would rush to the mirror when he thought he had gained some muscle only to find out his biceps looks like a muscled kindergartner.

He also said lately he's into exercising and staying in shape which is true because for quite sometime now since early this year he has been talking about how "weak" he is in their Vlives and have even given instances of him not being able to do certain things- certian simple and easy tasks- which is typical of him I'd say. He's always talking about how "weak" he is especially around JK and juxtaposing that with "but JK is so strong" which I'm sorry but I have to smirk at right now cos it's such a typical gay pick me simp thing to do. We've all been there.

Do I think he's trying to be a muscle bunny or revert back to his body shape around debut? Absolutely not. But I do think he is straddling the line of toxic masculinity which is what the conversation is about.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to stay in shape or even enjoying work outs. Last night I ran downstairs because I had left my stew on the stove and now this morning I called renew my gym membership because I discovered running can be actually fun to do... No. No it's not. The gym instructor would have to come for me kicking and screaming.

RM have said even though JM looks skinny and fragile he is one of the strongest within the group. Besides, this is not the first time he's expressed interest in working out and building his body- hello, on Era?

I remember people complaining he looked too buffed up in that period on SNS and PJMs quickly jumping in to clear the searches for it. The choreo for On required agility and endurance and required the members- not just JM build up some definition in their muscles.

We've seen them go through all that. So it's not simply a matter of black and white staying in shape or doing it because he feels pressured to do so. Especially, when you consider that he's undertaken some pretty unhealthy measures in the past in attempts to lose weight or soften out his body post these muscle building, weight gaining periods and we've always chalked it up to his dance and how as a contemporary dancer he has to look a certain way or this or that to try to justify and make sense of it. Next you, know there are six chapters of break the silence of him talking about all the dark places he's been, the pressures to look his best for his fans or for his job and all these other painful stories he's shared with us over the years. And it's like, but why? Why do this to yourself?

I'll never forget the look he gave JK when JK was talking about wanting to build muscles in one of the interviews for the promotion of Be- I think I made a post on it. When JK noticed JMs disapproving glare he backtracked saying he would want to stay skinny after gaining all that muscles.

I mean if I'm to be honest, he was bound to crack at one point. The signs were there being surrounded by all these men who adhere to the traditional aesthetics of a masculine body- from Namjoon to Taehyung.

I wish y'all will steer the conversation in this direction and make it more about gender norms and expressions and breaking stereotypes and diversity in the body aesthetics of men.

Jimin is a man too. He just isn't what people traditionally will label masculine. Androgynous is more an apt word in my opinion. How many times have I said, I think Jungkook hetero passes because his body aesthetics is quintessentially what most associates with a masculine man?

Breaking gender barriers is not just about embracing feminine apparels- that teeters on cross dressing quite frankly and can be a bit performative and baity. Then you have to consider their culture in itself has an inherent pro gender diversity feel to it.

Now, let me explain my problem with the Klout ad campaign a little bit.

Do you see how Tae stands out? And I'm not saying this to fuel the "Tae was their fav" debacle. It's the 007 feel... I'll explain in a bit.

Most often, alcohol advertisers as well as most advertisements intended to sell to men often try to appeal to men's internalized ideals of masculinity or try to shape and define what a man or masculinity should look like. These ideals are so often toxic and detrimental to men and mostly women too.

Take a look at these ads for example. All I had to do was google search ads for men.

Real men drink milk and look at the image they present as real men. This blatantly implies if you don't look like this, if you are not a strong cliff climbing man with abs you are not a real man.

The second image is subtle. I call it the 007 slash Kingsmen-esque ideals of masculinity. It portrays men as sexy cool badass- works out but isn't too buff, filthy rich or middle class, wears Rolex, designer clothes, is kind but has a mean exterior and is every 13 year old wattpad girls's dream of a man. In fiction, you see this kind of masculinity in characters such as Edward cullens to Christian Grey. And a lot of ads for men alternate between these two ideals of masculinity.

Do you see how they modeled Taehyung in these ads after this kind of masctheme? Tae looks the same in almost all the ads. 007 sexy cool badass.

Now, I may not be a makeup beauty guru or MUA or whatever, but one thing I've picked up on especially when it comes to makeup for men- BTS and Kpop idols mostly is that, they soften out the harsh features on their faces and make them appear more androgynous or effeminate to suit the Kpop look and they ditch it entirely in different settings.

So for instance, Tae and Kookie's natural hawkish eyebrows tend to get softened around the arch and edges- don't know how the fuck they do that- but it appears less in your face intense most times when they wear make up in kpop related contents.

However, in certain other contents that lean towards a certain gender theme those features are emphasized. Not to say hawkish features are masculine features. Just saying in men, Kpop idols, my observation is they soften those features out with makeup or surgery.

Now, take a look at JM in these ads and look at everything from his posture, make up, hairstyle and brows. It's as if someone took an eraser to his androgynousity and erased his feminine side. Take a look at his photo above and compare it to the ads.

I am not a man. But I feel the gender look they went for, intended to appeal to men, tapped into a rather outdated stereotype of what man and masculinity should look like.

What is a man?

What should a man look like?

What aesthetics of masculinity is Jimin gravitating towards now? And I'm not talking clothes, I'm talking the expression of his gender. Time and again, he's talked about how looking a certain way made him uncomfortable in the past because he was constantly fighting his feminine side. He is androgynous. Sometimes he leans more into his feminine side. Other times he leans more into his masculine side but this is the only time he's leaning into his masculinity that makes me uncomfortable to watch because like I said it bothers on toxic masculinity.

He's said whoever he was, the version fighting to look masculine, that wasn't him. So forgive me if I worry whenever i see him suppressing his feminine side and acting like 'one of the boys.' Him staying in shape is not synonymous with him erasing a valid part of himself or suppressing it. He can stay in shape, celebrate his masculinity and still be FILTER.

What I'm saying is, this not a conversation about him exercising. This is a conversation about an ad erasing his feminine side and boxing him into a narrow expression of his gender and how that might be affecting his view of himself especially in the way he's been gravitating towards a certain masculine aesthetics and how that could be toxic.

Tae has said the same thing and BTS have agreed the JM as of 2019 was the real JM according to them.They said he was that way- suppressing his feminine side, because there weren't much songs and choreos that suited him and so he had had to bend himself to fit with the others.

And so when I see him leaning a certain way I tend to wonder if his exterior environment is playing a role in that. I hope you can understand that.

He is a contemporary dancer and strength and flexibility are prerequisites for his craft. The company go out of their way to incorporate contemporary dance in their choreos for JM's sake which helps solve that problem of him trying too hard to look a certain way.

May be I'm projecting. May be my little brother is effeminate and I've always recommended Jimin as a role for him to tell him not to try to look different just because other boys look different. May be I've seen him try one too many times to kill himself in the gym trying to build on muscles and getting frustrated with himself because he ends up looking like someone else. You can't gym the queerness away. Society will never let you be who you want to be so you might as well flip it the middle finger.

These boys are being shaped by their environment. I hate to say this but the environment they are in isn't exactly progressive and the longer they stay in there cut off from the outside world...

Flying out helps. Meeting different people and being exposed to different cultures and conversations on gender expression helps.

Anywho, these are just concerns I have. Will have them till I see that's not where he is headed towards. But let's not act like these ad campaigns do not and can not psychologically impact these boys especially as these advertisers are not looking to tap into their own definition of gender and masculinity but shape it and redefine it to appeal to the demographic they intend to market to.

I think this is just a grey area for me. Rather than try to change JM to look a certain way in order to sell alcohol. I think the ground breaking thing would be to have a man who looks like JM show us how someone like him would sell a can of drink. I think that would be revolutionary.

Signed,

GOLDY

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nerdygaymormon · 3 years

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What do you think about the possible excommunication of Natasha Helfer?

Before this week, the only thing I knew about Natasha Helfer is I’d read an article she’d written about masturbation being part of normal sexual development, and she doesn’t see it as sinful. I agree with her.

Because of the publicity surrounding her summons to a membership council, I now know much more about her.

She made a video about being summoned to a membership council scheduled for April 18th. For starters, a stake where she hasn’t lived since 2019 has decided to do this, which seems strange to me.

Here’s the things the summons letter cites as “misconduct”:

Support for same-sex marriage

Teaching that masturbation is part of a normative sexual-development journey and should not be seen as “sin” or as a reason to keep our youth from being considered worthy to serve or church activities

Her stances on sexually-explicit materials, aka pornography (she believes this is because she educates about using a values model vs an addiction model in the treatment of such concerns)

She’s been critical of Church leaders

Concerns she has encouraged people to leave the Church

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I went to section 32.6 of the General Handbook which lists the things someone may face a membership council. Frankly, the things listed in the letter sent to Natasha Helfer are not found in the Handbook.

I suppose these could fit under the charge of “Apostasy,” because she publicly declares opinions different from the Church. Here’s what the Handbook says constitutes apostasy:

Repeatedly acting in clear and deliberate public opposition to the Church, its doctrine, its policies, or its leaders

Persisting in teaching as Church doctrine what is not Church doctrine after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Showing a pattern of intentionally working to weaken the faith and activity of Church members

Continuing to follow the teachings of apostate sects after being corrected by the bishop or stake president

Formally joining another church and promoting its teachings (Total inactivity in the Church or attending another church does not by itself constitute apostasy. However, if a member formally joins another church and advocates its teachings, withdrawing his or her membership may be necessary.)

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Natasha Helfer is a well-known LDS marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Utah. She’s written several articles that have been widely read. She’s been a recurring guest on the Mormon Mental Health podcast, Mormon Matters and appeared on many other podcasts.

She’s particularly sought out because of her training & expertise and her experiences in helping members of the Church overcome their sense of shame regarding sexuality.

As a marriage counselor, she helps couples where one or both goes through a faith crisis, she says she doesn’t encourage anyone to leave the Church but honors their choices and helps them work through their thoughts & feelings, and also the effect it has on their marriage.

Because of the news about her being summoned for a membership council, I’ve learned more about her positions. Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve seen in her writing:

Sex Ed in Utah public schools should be comprehensive and accurate

Sexual assault is a crime & should be talked about as such

The LDS Church should know how to address sexual misconduct and sexual assault much better than it currently does

We should embrace and minister to our trangender neighbors, not fear them and make church difficult for them

Excommunication is cruel and unusual punishment which often is a traumatic experience used by the Church to silence its critics

Service Missions should be setup to be meaningful and seen as equal to proselyting missions

LGBTQ+ members should be affirmed and included in their faith community

LDS teachings & messages to LGBTQ+ members is akin to bullying and has real-world consequences on their mental health & lives

Fear of the BYU Honor Code actually causes many to not seek repentance for fear of academic punishment

The Church teaching that only certain families that fit the mold will get to enjoy the afterlife together is harmful. Mormon Heaven = Sad Heaven. She lists many groups who are harmed by this teaching, including: mixed-faith families, LGBTQ+ individuals & their families, families where someone struggles with addiction, single-parent families, families trying to deal with abuse & trauma, families dealing with mental health conditions such as bi-polar or impulse-control, family survivors of someone who died by suicide

When the Church rescinded the policy of exclusion against gay couples and their children, it should have been accompanied by an apology, not just a brief statement of the announcement with no explanation for the change

Social media isn’t the problem, how we use it is. If we’re keeping in touch with family & friends with whom we otherwise wouldn’t because of distance, accessing support you wouldn’t find in your area, obtaining ideas & resources, these are good. Comparing ourselves to others’ “best selves”, debating others, writing mean comments and such are not helpful. Too often people behave differently online than they do in person

We should wish people well when they leave our church and faith community and wish them well on their spiritual journey. We do a good job at celebrating newcomers even though many of them had to say goodbye to something in order to say hello to us

We need to speak of abortion more than as if anyone who gets one is evil. Even the Church’s position makes room for abortion in certain circumstances and we should be more nuanced in how we speak of it

Biological sex and gender are not binary. This may be LDS doctrine but the sciences of Biology and Psychology say otherwise

She supported the law ending conversion therapy in Utah of LGBTQ+ people

Racism is a public health emergency in the USA, racism is more than hate, it’s in our systems. It’s in our scriptures, our folklore, our culture, our history

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It’s acceptance and moving forward

She also has many articles & podcasts about improving marriage relationships, how to talk with your child about sex, tips for a mixed-faith marriage and similar topics directly related to her job as a marriage counselor and sex therapist.

I’m very impressed, from what I see. She is a tremendous force for good in our LDS community. We need people willing to speak the truth.

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Here’s two articles that especially impressed me.

First is one is about masturbation, how it’s a legitimate way to meet one’s needs and some of the many benefits associated with sexual release.

Second is one about pornography, the LDS culture gives pornography more power than it deserves with our blanket bans, secrecy & shaming, and calling virtually all porn viewing an addiction.

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Frankly, based on what I post on my blog, I could be charged with all the same things that Natasha Helfer is being charged with.

Do I support same-sex marriage? Yes. Absolutely.

Do I think masturbation is a sin? No, and I think many Church websites, publications, and the General Handbook back up this view.

Is masturbation a normal part of sexual development? Yes. And it has many benefits for individuals, especially singles like me, and even within a marriage

Is porn always wrong? I definitely can think of ways porn can be included inside a healthy marriage, perhaps as a way to help a partner get “in the mood,” or for someone with a higher libido to use along with masturbation, as part of foreplay, or even getting some ideas to spice up their love life.

Have I been critical of Church leaders? You betcha. I think they’re wrong on LGBTQ+ topics and I say so.

Do I encourage people to leave the Church? I don’t view myself this way, although I wouldn’t say that I try to get them to stay, either. It’s their path to walk. I know most LGBTQ+ people leave the Church, it’s the way our journeys normally go. I feel God has told me it’s fine for me to leave this church, so in no way do I think poorly of people who leave. This church isn’t ready for queer people and I don’t think God requires us to remain some place that harms us.

My understanding is we’re allowed to have beliefs that differ from the Church, as long as we’re not recruiting people to our side. Simply sharing your opinion or some differences in how you view things shouldn’t be something we can be punished for.

I suppose the difference between her and me is she’s seen as a high-profile individual and she’s using her credentials to give weight to her opinions, and I’m just some rando gay guy who has a blog.

#natasha helfer #long post

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ready-to-obeyme · 4 years

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[OM!] All Demon Brothers + Undateables as Babysitters (Part 1)

Scenario: For the sake of the exchange program (probably), the entire cast is now in charge of taking care of kids ranging from infants to pre-K children at a daycare with you. Headcanons on what type of babysitter they would be + whatever cute shenanigans that may occur

Note: Baby fever!! Inspiration is the entirety of Gakuen Babysitter/School Babysitter. It is literally the cutest anime I have ever watched in my life and I highly recommend it if you want a cute feels-good, slice of life!! Some of the kids I may have based off of them, but you don’t need to watch it to understand this! :))

why do i always make my headcanons so long

Part 1 has the 7 Demon Brothers

[Part 2] has all five Undateables

Lucifer

This was probably Diavolo’s idea so he has no choice but to go along with it, much to his dismay

He already thought humans were fragile, and now they were going to take care of the smaller, younger ones?

His face scares 90% of the kids on his first day as a babysitter, which kind of hinders his job because every time he tries to help them clean up or change diapers, the kids start crying

The other 10% who are not intimidated by him claim him to be the Big Bad and play fight with him all the time, and considering his attitude, he’s a pretty perfect villain in their make-belief play so he’s won their hearts IMMEDIATELY

Generally a pretty strict baby-sitter who is listened to without having to repeat himself; his power and authority is unyielding (and also he’s just plain scary even if he doesn’t mean to be, and lowkey he likes the power he has because the kids remind him of Mammon sometimes)

It’s honestly a big debate whether he should just give up and ask for help or power through, but if he’s just babysitting with you, pleads with you to please help him because he’s so lost and why do they scream so loud and not that he would ever admit to it, but he is a tiny bit hurt that he can’t seem to have the kids trust him

Once he’s told that he should smile more and speak more gently, he implements it with mixed results (at first), but it’s a significant improvement from the first few days

During a moment of rest, he’s sighing when a baby crawls up to him and sits in his lap without warning, and he’s a goner

Literally has the hardest time trying to train his face not to look so pleased or happy, but his smile is so soft (and he will not hesitate to kill any of his brothers that see him like that, but for you and the undateables, he’ll just be embarrassed)

Loves infants and how trusting they are of him despite how scary his face may seem sometimes-- the epitome of unconditional love and he’s just… very tender

Probably ends up being the respected babysitter who’s super cool to all the kids but slightly unapproachable (unless you’re a babyyyy) but eventually climbs the ranks in terms of babysitters because he vouches for them if they do need him

Mammon

The kids have decided that he is the biggest kid on the playground and now to assert dominance, they must beat him up

Which is what they do-- or as much as they can with their tiny fists and miniscule strength and the fact that Mammon is a literal demon

You just stare at Mammon as he cries on the ground, whining at how the kids ganged up on him and you’re just like…. They’re literally <4 years old.

Despite that part, Mammon gets along with all the kids really well!!

He talks to them as normal and calls them ‘brats’ but they all know he’s soft for them so they kind of take advantage of that? But only a little bit because they don’t like seeing Mammon cry either

You forget who comfort the other more at this point, the kids or Mammon

Mammon is the best person to call for if the kids want to play around because he’s pretty animated himself and goes along with whatever the kids want to do

You might have to reign them in a little yourself, because you’re not quite sure Mammon really knows what’s actually dangerous for them

“Mammon, please only carry one kid at a time please, you’re scaring me”

“Huh? You know I can carry all four of them on my head--”

“Please”

Suuuper popular with the kids even though he kept complaining about them to anyone who would listen that he had to look over these tiny humans

But the moment any of the kids ask for his help or do something cute, he’s the FIRST one to go and help because ‘you need the GREAT Mammon’s help? Guess you can’t help it after all…” and he just likes the fact that he feels reliable to these kids

He might… actually save money to buy these kids Christmas gifts?? Will maybe cry if they bring little Valentine's Day candies (that their parents probably told them to give but shhh let him dream)

Leviathan

May or may not be hyperventilating as he hypes himself up to go into the daycare and meet the kids

He tried to brush it off to his brothers that they’re just kids and he doesn’t care if they like him or not because it doesn’t matter to him because he’s just an otaku-- but my god he hopes they like him

Little does he know, the fact he lets them play on his game consoles (whether or not they actually know how to play) wins them over immediately and breaks the ice

They find him super interesting to talk to and he ends up a pretty popular babysitter because he talks to them like adults (yes, even to the babies)

Catch him giving a bottle to a baby while talking to them in baby-voice (that he adopts not on purpose) about his favorite TSL season

One of the biggest reasons why the kids love him is because he really listens to them even though their rants and blabbing doesn’t always make sense

When he does talk about his interests (or it slips out, as it does), the kids are genuinely interested in what he has to say and that’s when his mission to convert all of these kids to watching anime and reading manga started

“Reading manga is going to help them develop reading comprehension!!”

Probably brings his entire stash of (kid-friendly) manga-- probably the magical girl anime with Ruri-chan-- and has the kids dig in

It does have some negative repercussions because kids aren’t exactly good at handling precious material, so things do rip and break and Levi had to excuse himself to go outside and mourn his lost

But the fire of his mission burns brighter than the sadness over what he has lost (besides, he would never bring limited edition/1st edition things outside his room so these things are replaceable)

If Halloween rolls around, the kids will exclaim that they want to be [insert character] from TSL or another anime and Levi may shed tears of happiness right there and then

Will make it his side quest to make costumes for ALL the kids-- especially if they can’t afford their own and will encourage them to be whatever they want to be!!!

He’s literally leading an army of newly-created weebs/otakus that look up to him in the daycare and the power he has over these kids is so formidable some of his brothers are actually a little jealous HAHA

Satan

Acts casual about the whole thing and is actually casual about it

He hasn’t necessarily spent much time with kids, but he figures he’d be able to do it-- and he’d be right; considering how natural he is with people in general, I doubt kids would be much different, especially if he talks to them like adults and respects their opinions

Is definitely the type of babysitter some of the kids end up having a little baby crush on, considering how charming and prince-like he can be with his gentle tone of voice

Not that he’s perfect-- some kids are just brats and he does get angry at them but he only needed to snap once before the troublemakers all learned not to mess with him

Despite that, he would most likely be the ones to keep an eye on the troublemakers, because it may be a sign of a troubled home (not always, but… well, he would know best, wouldn’t he?) and he’d want to reach out to them if he can help them in any way

What he loves to do with the kids-- and you can probably guess-- is have Story Time!!

The kids are so excited to circle around him before naptime and listen to him read storybooks, doing voice overs and dramatic/animated readings; the kids are so intently listening and giggling at the funny parts

At first, he attempted to bring all his books over to the daycare, but he had to put some back when you tell him these kids are literally three and probably don’t have the reading comprehension required to read Quantum Physics-- so he provides picture books instead; anything he procured from the human world

Really encourages the kids to try their best to read and, if he has the time of day, tries to teach them basic things like the alphabet, how to spell out each words etc (you may call him…. Sensei)

Adores their imagination too because he knows adults could hardly compare at times and he encourages them to make up their own stories and he’d help them write it down

Uses a lot of tactic like these to encourage their education and their development-- he loves books and the impact they’ve made on him and he wants these kids to be able to experience the same things

Asmodeus

A little hesitant at first because kids can be super cute and great for pictures but… they can also be super gross and kind of mean; and he’s seen both ends of the spectrum so he’s not really sure what to expect

Then one of the kid compliments his hair clip shyly and shows their own similar hairclip and he’s sold because obviously they have the cutest kids in the world

Hair undone? He’s there

You wanna try out painting nails? Oh hun, he’s got you-- free make-overs for EVERYONE-- except maybe the infants, he doesn’t wanna ruin the natural baby smell and softness they have going for them

He wants to encourage ALL the kids to express themselves so he sometimes brings old clothes he doesn’t wear anymore so they have a fashion show/runways

ALWAYS encourages the kid to wear what they want because gender norms who???

If ANY and I mean ANY parent comes up to him and talk about him letting them wear non-gender conforming clothes he WILL go off on them because they are LITERALLY KIDS-- let them express themselves and have fun

Kinda grossed out by snot and diapers tho so you’re gonna have to help him with that; and since the universe knows that he hates getting dirty, he’s probably the brother most likely to get peed on while changing a diaper

You have to force him back into the daycare after that incident because he refuses to come out of the bathroom after changing into clean clothes

But he is so captivating that the kids usually don’t cause trouble when he’s around, and also similarly to Levi, he talks and listens to them blabber while he’s doing their hair so it’s always pretty soothing

Probably ends up in charge of the creativity hour and cooing over everyone’s art project, encouraging them to sprinkle as much glitter as they want, use as many colors as they want-- as long as it makes them happy!

Beelzebub

Considering he’s the sweetest and physically the strongest, he’s actually pretty concerned about hurting them, and asks you to help him adjust to this new role so that the kids will be okay (you know he’ll be fine, but if saying yes to helping him will make him feel better, you say it)

Beel keeps to himself as a babysitter for the first few-- oh idk-- hours before some of the kids figure out how STRONG he is and he’s the best thing since sliced bread

The kids start to literally hang from him, testing how strong he really is, and are all delighted that he can hold all of them in and from his arms; he’s a little worried he’ll drop them, but since the kids are so excited about it, decides to lift them only a little high just to please them

Happily, he eventually gets used to knowing how to deal with them, and it helps that the kids are so polite to him

He’s the ultimate Big Brother figure to them, much to his surprise since he’s used to being the younger brother, and it makes him really soft inside that these kids actually look up to him and rely on him

During free play, he has definitely carried at least six kids on his back when they play horsey and not break a sweat and throws the babies up in the air playfully (and carefully) and let them pretend they were flying

He’s their protector, making sure that they’re playing safely, even though he went a little too ham on the protection, grabbing a kid by the scruff of his collar because he was running and beel was afraid of him falling and scraping his knees

“It’s okay Beel, they can handle it--”

“Are you sure?? But they’re so tiny and fragile--”

Changes diapers pretty handily after the first time; has definitely tried the baby formula and ate the entire bottle by accident before feeding a baby

Makes sure the kids are nice to each other, especially siblings, and that they eat; you tell the kids that if they eat their vegetables they’ll grow as strong as Beel, and that’s the FASTEST you’ve ever seen picky kids eat them in your LIFE

Belphegor

“Alright, nap time, everyone!”

“Belphie, they just arrived;;;”

Honestly just thought this entire thing was a hassle because kids in general take a lot of work and he just doesn’t want to put that sort of effort into something he didn’t sign up for

But since you’re there, he may as well try to be proficient enough to be well-liked enough to not cause a fuss and be able to babysit with you

He’s the type of babysitter who converses with the kids and pretends he doesn’t know something so the kid tries to teach him-- and honestly this give the kid a chance to be confident in their skills and also lets Belphie not do as much work to keep the conversation alive so win-win

As you can probably guess, is definitely in charge of enforcing nap time… by napping with the kids-- gotta learn by example right?

There are probably mats that the kids lie on but whenever Belphie lies in the middle of them, they all end up rolling and curling near his side; when he wakes up he’s always surrounded by a sea of kids and he’s so confused and he can’t move unless you wake up the kids for him

The most efficient babysitter out of all of them because efficiency means less effort and time taken to change a diaper, clean up a spill, or wipe a kid’s nose

Doesn’t understand why the kids keep wanting to interact with him but he’ll always indulge them in the end regardless of his nonchalant attitude

He actually finds a lot of them endearing when they talk about the things they like to do and about their daily life because it’s always interesting to learn about their perspective on things

When it’s creativity hour, the kids like asking him to doodle something on their paper (it can be a small chibi or caricature or just some animal) and it always makes them super happy; you watch him crack a smile as he sees the kids try to copy his drawing right next to it

If any of them are interested in stars, will gently show them the constellations in books and watch as they fascinate over them as he did before

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #School Babysitters #last post for the day #i need to focus on hw HAHAHA #very indulgent hcs

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transrightsjimin · 3 years

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seriously was not aware 'preventive care' is a thing tht happens in healthcare when elsewhere. like HUH. that sounds great??

for example, i once got a skin mole checked & the doctor said 'well it's not cancerous YET'. same w my dad's nose, which the doctor said had a 'kankertje' ('a little cancer'?) and the doctor left it as is.

a more extreme example but recently i read abt a mom who's desperately trying to find help for her anorexic daughter, who wouldn't get help frm hospitals bc she doesn't meet their standard threshhold of what is considered anorexic, but she lost weight so terribly fast nd now she's literally dying nd there's no place tht wants her and the mom considered going to belgium for it, as belgians shared dutch ppl go there often for medical help. ;_;

these are ofc just anecdotes but frm what i read, it appears preventive care before a serious complication occurs is not smth they tend to do in the netherlands. w dental, mental, physical care etc.

never occurred to me that doctors / dentists etc not doing anything abt a physical concern until you're abt to d1e isn't supposed to be the norm bc im so used to it??

not to mention of c how doctors require you to meet them irl during a pandemic even for a dismissive 1-5 minute conversation that can happen via a phone call. and how many doctors nd therapists don't wear masks, or perhaps a surgical one at most, which doesnt help much w covid, and encourage you to take it off too. i was even encouraged to take it off while getting an MRI scan. u know, when ur in a small space that a bunch of other ppl breathed in.

and then of course the way prescription medicine is rly difficult to get nd less nd less r insured. l

and how there's waiting lists for years for therapy.

the place i was supposed to get stupid gender therapy talks at got taken over by a one-person scam artist company that's more like an airbnb and job consult thing for trans ppl?, and now i gotta find smth else bc i dont want those required gender talks at the amsterdam hospital which is super conservative and i don't want to be there in general bc that hospital lets covid-infected staff go to work. and meanwhile it's been like 4? 4,5? years since i was put on the waiting list for surgery there and i could've had my turn 1-2 years ago for starting w the gender therapy talks at amsterdam if i hadnt put it off to do that at a now bankrupt institution. haha fk

#rambles #if a person tells you dutch healthcare is the best... RUN #dutch stuff #we just have cheaper paracetamol and thats it

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thesaltyace · 3 years

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I am driving myself crazy looking at clothes to wear for an interview that won't make me want to crawl out of my skin.

Like...

I literally think the fact that I've been working remotely for the past two years has ruined me for any in-person job.

Truly.

I've not had to mask for an entire workday since I'm mostly alone with myself.

I've got a better handle on my gender which means I've got a better concept of why I feel dysphoric in most clothes. So I simply haven't worn them. I literally spend every day in my underwear and a loose t-shirt. I keep a polo draped over my desk chair for department meetings.

I've been diagnosed with ADHD and probably also have ASD, so all my sensory issues suddenly make sense AND (this is key) I'm no longer willing to endure unnecessary overload for the sake of others.

I have a big problem with not only clothes as a concept, but the sensory problems and dysphoria I experience when wearing "professional" clothing in particular.

So this is literally a fucking nightmare and making me wonder if it's worth even applying to this job.

The problem is, though, that my current job isn't stable. They could decide at any time to rescind the permission to work remotely. I don't enjoy working with my colleagues. My office is terribly dysfunctional. The only good part of my job is working remotely. Okay, and the students. The rest actually really sucks.

And they pay me peanuts for a job that requires I have a bachelor's degree and maintain life coach certification. Peanuts compared not only to the field norm, but also to the university norm and the individual college norm. I am literally the lowest paid staff in this kind of position within both my college and university despite having a decade of experience. And it's bullshit.

But I'm having a fucking meltdown at 3am because I literally cannot find professional clothing that doesn't make me feel horribly dysphoric or create sensory issues. Too feminine is no good. Too masculine is no good. Pants are no good. Skirts and dresses are no good. Blouses are a big fuck no. Button ups are marginally acceptable, but the ones made to look masculine while accounting for my huge chest are on backorder. And even if I could get one, what the hell do I wear on bottom when literally n o t h i n g feels good?

You know what I like? A fucking t-shirt and my ripstop kilt. That feels good. But it's not fucking PROFESSIONAL. 😡

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victoirebisset · 4 years

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[ VICTOIRE ELISE BISSET. 28. CISFEMALE. SHE/HER] is here! They’ve lived in Silver Lake for [ SIX MONTHS ] and are originally from [ WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS ]. They are a [ PUBLICIST ] and in their downtime love [ CATCHING A MOVIE AT CINEMA PARADISO ] and [ ENJOYING A NICE BOTTLE OF RED WINE ]. They look a lot like [ ELIZABETH OLSEN ] and live [ ON SILVERWOOD TERRACE ].

the basics

full name: victoire elise bisset.

nicknames: v or vic. never, and i do mean never, vicky.

birthplace: wellesley, massachusetts.

birthdate: january 9th, 1992.

zodiac sign: capricorn.

alignment: chaotic good.

personality type: estj.

personality traits: dogmatic, loquacious, reliable, patient, rancorous, affable, critical & forthright.

gender: cisfemale.

sexual / romantic orientation: heterosexual / heteroromantic.

the biography

the daughter to a (now) disgraced politician coming from old money and a disgruntled, yet loyal to a fault, housewife, there was never a time victoire didn’t know luxury — or chaos.

as a matter of fact, her entrance to the world was an example of both. the first — and what would ultimately be only — child to gabriel and nicolette bisset, there was no expense spared as they prepared for her arrival; hundreds of designer onesies she’d grow out of within weeks were purchased, an italian artist flown in and commissioned to hand paint a mural in her nursery and her mother only received the finest of prenatal care. for most, it was an ostentatious display that was NOT needed. but that has always been the bisset way. flamboyant and shameless flaunting of their wealth was the norm as it was, so of course they’d go all out when expecting a baby.

at the same time, there was a certain level of disappointment. as far as her father went, at least. he had been hoping for a son to follow in his footsteps. but, he’d tell his wife in an attempt to convince them both, a little girl wasn’t so bad — he’d love, cherish and spoil her regardless. and he did do at least two of those three things. but that son he’d been hoping for never came. once victoire was born, his wife refused to let him touch her. he assumed it was “baby hormones” but really it was because hours before her baby shower, nicolette had received a call from one of his mistresses confessing the affair because she felt “bad” knowing she was pregnant. nicolette never confronted her husband but their relationship was never the same.

growing up in the lapse of luxury, most would assume vic had nothing to complain about. while her material needs were always met, the emotional ones were often neglected. her mother, bless her heart, tried. but it wasn’t easy for her. nicolette was responsible for raising their child and presenting the bissets as the picture perfect family all while knowing her husband was fucking around on her. who wouldn’t become resentful dealing with that? snide comments were thrown across the dinner table, there were times she’d disappear in her room with a bottle of wine. she’d try to be there for her daughter as much as she could but she struggled. and her father, on the other hand, focused more on his career than his family. a lawyer turned politician, he campaigned, had frequent business meetings and a long list of secret lovers to split his time between. hard to be present with a schedule like that.

gabriel’s career choice was confusing for young victoire. there were those that publicly villainized him and thought he was the devil. there were those that put him on a pedestal. it was overwhelming... and alluring. her father was the mayor of wellesley her entire life and was even campaigning for senate when the “scandal” happened. it was always a part of her life and politics intrigued her. she’d dreamed of being the first woman president.

her father vowed to help her get into politics and the first step of that was hiring her to be his publicist as soon as she graduated from college. it was a blatant act of nepotism but at least she was really freakin’ good at her job. she gets word accusations of bribery would be hitting the local news and that same day there’s a press conference so shots of him shaking hands, kissing babies and making grand promises distracts from the news. his morality is called into question and he’s front and center campaigning for every local charity for six months. it was a bit grimey witnessing fully the seedy underbelly of politics and her idealistic view of it changed drastically. she no longer wanted to be president or a senator or anything else like that. she did, though, learn she really did like pr and enjoyed the role she had. at least until she was expected to pay off her father’s pregnant mistress who was threatening to spill the beans about their illicit affair.

while her mother had known about his infidelities for years, vic had no clue. she always assumed her father was working. that was why he couldn’t come to her recitals or presentations in school. that was why he was late to every single one of her birthday parties. she had convinced herself that her father wasn’t a scumbag but a highly ambitious politician and anyone else in his position would do the same.

to an extent, she had idolized her father — glorifying the parent who was never really there and whose approval she would have died to get. the version of him she had created was destroyed. she was furious, heartbroken and confused. she quit that very day and a week later, the news broke. that one woman speaking out opened the floodgates and years of affairs and other naughty behavior was broadcasted across the state. her mother would have made tammy wynette proud with how she stood by her man but victoire did not follow suit. she worked in public relations so she never outright spoke against him because no one would hire her after publicly blasting a former client in the press. even if it was her father. but she knew how to expertly throw shade. and she did. quite a few times, actually.

after she quit, victoire ended up in new york where she worked with a pr firm for a couple of years before getting a job with a more prestigious one in los angeles which prompted her move to silver lake. it’s been surprisingly difficult for her to adjust to life on the west coast. she’s a new england girl through and through and there’s just something about palm trees and sunshine that feels wrong. she also just really misses her family. well, just her mother really. they make do by facetiming twice a week and they’re even in the middle of discussing flying her out for the holidays. unfortunately, though, it’s unlikely to happen as her mother is insistent on bringing gabriel. victoire hasn’t seen or spoken to her father since the day she told him to go fuck himself and stormed out of his office. not because of any guilt from “abandoning” her father. — she’d add ‘essentially ruined my father’s political career’ to her resume if she thought it’d help her — but because she is still so damn angry. the closest thing to contact they have is him wiring her money every month. this “allowance” isn’t really needed, victoire makes a very good living without needing any of what she calls bisset blood money. but she allows it to continue because she considers it restitution for decades of lackluster parenting and lies.

where victoire really shines is her career. she’s relatively new to the scene — at least compared to most publicists in hollywood — with only seven years of experience under her belt but don’t confuse quantity with quality. if you are a public figure, you want vic on your team. she’s tenacious and, while some may view her methods as underhanded, there is no story she can’t get ahead of. and if she can’t distract from it entirely, she can turn it into a positive or at least paint her client as the victim. duis, public disagreements with significant others, leaked sex tapes. she’s seen it all. she’d dedicated to the cause and makes up her own rules, but also has a strict moral code so she won’t do something or work with someone that goes against that.

victoire thrives in social situations and really loves to hear herself talk. she also tends to assume she’s the smartest person in the room and just expects everyone to go along with what she says. and she doesn’t really handle it well when that doesn’t happen. some may say she’s stubborn, she says she’s a leader who likes to take charge and handle things. she’s a very honest and straightforward person who is clear about her intentions in a relationship whether it’s professional, platonic or romantic. she doesn’t play games, she’s not wishy-washy and she has a tendency to see the world in black and white.

coming from a long line of elitists, vic is proud to say that is at least one pattern she broke. she just isn’t one to parade around her wealth. yes, she has a nice house and she does tend to favor designer brands when it comes to clothing, but there really isn’t anything pretentious about her. the closest you’ll get is her having dinner at a five star restaurant or buying a ridiculously expensive bottle of wine. but that’s only because she likes good food and even better wine. she’s not one to show off and is just as likely to be seen at a fancy hollywood party mingling with clients as she is laying on her couch, wrapped up in blankets and watching golden girls reruns. she’s a combination of dorothy and blanche, by the way.

anyways, i think this is long enough so i’ll wrap it up and just say i am excited to be here and that i look forward to writing with you all. i’ll be reaching out to everyone regarding plots at some point (i say some point because i’m a slow typer with a small attention span who is currently working 60 hours a week so i’m easily distracted AND tired) but you can expedite the process by sending me a message or liking this and i’ll put you at the top of my list. in the meantime, though, feel free to just assume connections. we can go with the flow and i don’t require connections before interacting anyway. aaaand now i’m really stopping!

#slintro #oh my god this is a READ #i'm sorry this is so long #pls love me and her anyway

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kunsthalextracity · 4 years

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The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

In the framework of the group exhibition ‘Daily Nightshift’, Kunsthal Extra City collaborated with the Urban Studies Institute of the University of Antwerp on a lecture series. Due to COVID-19 we unfortunately couldn’t allow these lectures to take place at our premises.

To replace his lecture, professor Bart Eeckhout wrote an interview with himself.

In his text Eeckhout, board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp, researches the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp and the spatial shifts that have occurred along the way. Where in the city were sexual minorities able to make contact? In what kind of places of entertainment? How did these change in shape and location? Which material traces of this nightlife remain?

Text & images: Bart Eeckhout

The History of Queer Nightlife in Antwerp: Self-Interview in a Convex Mirror

Q. So, professor, before Covid-19 changed everyone’s plans, you were going to give a lecture about the history of queer nightlife in Antwerp as part of the public program for the exhibition?

A. Well, not quite a lecture.

Q. But you were going to entertain our audience with lots of slides and flashy pictures?

A. Not really. As a matter of fact, I was wondering how to turn the presentation into something more than the delivery of an academic text, something that could satisfy an audience that is drowning in audiovisual information. The thing is that I saw myself forced to talk about a topic that is hard to illustrate, and to do so moreover as an amateur historian.

Q. How do you mean?

A. I actually teach English and American literature. But I happen to be the only board member of the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Antwerp who is simultaneously on the board of A*, the network of colleagues who specialize in gender and sexuality studies. There I have a reputation for being into queer studies and for stimulating the collaboration between queer academics and activists, since I consider myself to be both.

Q. And so the organizers came knocking on your door to ask if you could speak to the topic of queer nightlife in Antwerp?

A. Yes. And I accepted to do so because I have coincidentally been acquiring some expertise on the topic. Last year a colleague with whom I love to collaborate at the university, the media scholar Alexander Dhoest, got an invitation to contribute a chapter on Antwerp for an international book on gay neighborhoods in cities around the world – what used to be called “gay ghettoes.” We remembered that a PhD student of ours, the musicologist Rob Herreman, had spent a lot of time in archives to find out more about the recent history of LGBTQs in Antwerp in relation to music. Though we were hesitant to venture into terrain that should ideally be explored by skilled historians, we’re not aware of any Flemish colleagues doing academic research into recent LGBTQ history, certainly not with a specific focus on Antwerp. In addition, the book for which we were invited was being put together by architects and would thus probably cut us some slack. So we realized that the case of Antwerp would get attention in the collection only if we were willing to undertake the job ourselves.

Accepting to write the chapter has meant that we were forced to immerse ourselves quickly in the materials and sources we had at our disposal so as to develop a critical narrative that would meet the minimum requirements of academic scholarship. We were primarily interested in all the things we might learn from the exercise.

Q. And did you learn a few things?

A. I certainly hope so! One thing we hypothesized from the start is that the Anglo-American way of understanding gay neighborhoods would be only partially applicable to Antwerp, at best. And that is also what we argued at the more theoretical level. If you want to look for queer forms of geographic clustering in a Flemish city such as Antwerp, you should omit a lot of the social functions you find historically in the gay neighborhoods of New York or San Francisco. The “reverse diaspora” of sexual minorities from the countryside to the city that underpinned these metropolitan neighborhoods in the US never took place to the same extent, or in the same manner, in Flanders or Belgium.

In addition, a historic city such as Antwerp is relatively small by international standards. Getting around, even on foot or by bicycle, is easy, so that there’s no urgent need to choose particular residential areas if you happen to be queer. For these and several other reasons, the first thing to note about gay neighborhoods in Antwerp is that there was never anything more than some spatially clustered nightlife.

Q. Let’s talk for a moment about that nightlife then. How easy was it to go back in time to undertake your investigation?

A. That was one of the difficulties. It’s not as if you can simply fall back on standard published histories of queer life in Belgium or Flanders, let alone histories that deal specifically with Antwerp. The larger context isn’t so hard to sketch, but the specifics are a bit of a problem. When you research the history of public sex in Antwerp – by which in this case I mean the institutional environment for nondomestic sexual interactions among citizens – it isn’t hard to figure out how the first red-light district emerged during the city’s historic heyday in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As this red-light district catered primarily to sailors, it was understandably located close to the river, in the narrow streets just north of the City Hall that came to be known as the Schipperskwartier or Skippers Quarter.

This much is standard knowledge. But how did same-sex interactions ever figure into that lusting, lawless, lowlife milieu? What might possibly be the historic sources in which you might find reliable evidence for same-sex intercourse taking place in this environment? There isn’t much you can go by. You must hope that somewhere a slight flicker will flare up to evoke a fleeting image of what might have been going on. Let me illustrate this by showing the invisibility of our topic at its most palpable. Here’s the picture of a street in the former Skippers Quarter. Do you recognize it?

Q. Not immediately.

A. Don’t blame yourself. Though I personally love to roam through all the little streets of Antwerp’s historic center, I must confess I had never bothered to walk through this one before my research took me there. It’s called the Gorter Street and it’s a very short, narrow, one-way street that is about as bland and uninteresting as you can imagine. Do you see the red-brick house in the middle of the image? That wasn’t always there, of course. If we can trust the history of house numbers, it stands where previously the Crystal Palace was to be found, a gay bar whose building collapsed, literally, sometime in the 1960s. But before the Crystal Palace was a gay bar, it was a luxury brothel, as far back as the turn of the twentieth century and even earlier. And that’s where we were able to locate our first piece of not entirely reliable evidence for same-sex goings-on – not entirely reliable because it requires a detour via the fictive world of novels and a willingness to fill in the blanks. What do you remember about the Flemish writer Georges Eekhoud?

Q. Not much.

A. He was our own Oscar Wilde, if you like – the first famous gay writer in Flanders who, like Wilde, had to defend himself in court. Unfortunately, he wrote in French, which means we’ve forgotten him even more efficiently than if he’d written in Dutch. Anyway, he published a novel in 1888, La nouvelle Carthage, in which he appears to evoke this particular brothel in great detail as a cave full of mirrors in which “all stages of debauchery” took place. Given his own sexual orientation, it’s very easy to imagine that these must have included same-sex interactions, but in his description Eekhoud preferred to remain coy about the sexual acts, so that it’s really for our own 21st-century imaginations to flesh out the specifics.

Q. So for what period did you find the first evidence of same-sex activities in the Skippers Quarter that didn’t take the form of literary fiction but of nonfictional testimony?

A. We had to jump to the first half of the twentieth century for that. Mainly, what we then find is people testifying to drag performances taking place in the Skippers Quarter. Our favorite example is that of Danny’s Bar, a notorious bar for sailors where both the owner and his male staff were dressed as women and the sailors were being tempted into maximum binging.

On an online forum for retired sailors, we found some very juicy recollections of the kind of ritual that typically went on in this bar – how young sailors were being lured in as a sort of prank by older sailors, how these youngsters tended to be awestruck by the Hollywood-star prettiness of the women, and how they would be made to drink so much (and sometimes be drugged as well) until they woke up in bed upstairs only to find they had been sleeping with a man. It’s fair to speculate that some of the visiting sailors must have known they were going to be able to sleep with a man at Danny’s Bar and must have returned to the place to experiment with sexual desires and gender identities that fell outside the mainstream norms of their day and age.

Q. Are there any signs left of Danny’s Bar?

A. Not unless you have x-ray vision. The street is now almost entirely residential, though there is a modern-day “brasserie” in the house where the bar used to be. If walls could talk!

Q. These recollections of Danny’s Bar take us automatically into the second half of the twentieth century, I guess?

A. Yes they do. On the eve of the Second World War, we know that the Skippers Quarter had acquired a gay connotation to those in the know. Yet it didn’t stick to that area. After the war, its gay nightlife started to spread beyond the city’s traditional red-light district. A few of these new bars were still nearby, in the area around the Cathedral and the City Hall, but the majority sprang up close to the Central Station. This is also when we’re beginning to see some diversification. The Shakespeare, for instance, was a bar in the historic center. On the one hand, it was still occasionally visited by sailors and sex workers. On the other, and more importantly, it had a female bartender and gradually came to attract a female crowd – a niche for which there hadn’t been a market yet in the Skippers Quarter.

Meanwhile, in the working-class streets leading toward the Central Station, a number of bars were opening that were all operated by men and served a male clientele – places like Fortunia, Week-End (later known as La Vie en Rose), and La Ronde. These were generally small operations. One of the streets, the Van Schoonhovenstraat, would go on to sport more than twenty such gay bars. In this picture I recently took, you get a sense of what this may have been like when you look at the structure of the street front, for instance the houses in the middle painted in blue and mauve (one of them surviving as a sex shop):

But the Van Schoonhovenstraat wasn’t the only street. Even if nearly all of the area’s gay bars have in turn disappeared, you might still recognize this iconic place, the one with the greatest staying power and cult status:

Q. Ah yes, Café Strange! It’s in the Dambruggestraat, right?

A. Yes, and it still allows you to step into a time machine and take a trip down memory lane. We used it as our prime architectural case study, because its history shows you a lot about such gay bars in the second half of the twentieth century. A few facts and details hopefully help bring this history to life.

Café Strange was started by a gay couple as a gay-friendly “brasserie” back in 1955. The name, “Strange,” was meant to be suggestive without being explicit. In those years, the curtains behind the windows were still systematically drawn so that no passerby could look inside. You couldn’t just step inside either, but had to knock or ring a bell and wait for someone to let you in. To expedite this process, a small porch was constructed so that you could first step into the anonymous porch, close the door behind you and then open the door to the actual café – all with an eye to being as discrete as possible.

Over the years, the bar became so successful that its interior had to be reorganized and expanded so that it could accommodate not only a buffet at the back but also make some space for a dance floor. The café had a good reputation for many years until one of the owners died in the mid-seventies and his remaining partner got into various kinds of trouble that ended dramatically with his getting killed. It was then that a new gay couple, Armand and Roger, took over – you probably know Armand as the remaining owner. This was in 1980, in the era of early emancipation, and so they decided to be less discrete by painting the building’s façade in a sort of pink and adding a drawing of a sexy sailor on the outside. Inside, pictures of semi-naked and naked men were hung on the walls. The buffet was moved to the front of the room and a professional DJ was hired to turn the place into a small part-time disco. For a while, the owners even produced their own little magazine to inform gay patrons about leisure opportunities – remember that this was before the internet made looking up such information a piece of cake.

The first decades under the new owners went well: the place had the reputation of being at the same time modern, unpretentious, and laid back. There were a lot of flamboyant theme parties in which patrons could win grand prizes such as a flight to Athens or a weekend in Amsterdam or Paris. What’s interesting to observe also about the history of Café Strange is the shift in demographic over the years: while in the 1980s you could find a mix of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from a wide range of ages and social classes in the bar, this narrowed down in the 1990s to mostly gay men, and then by the new millennium morphed again into a mix of gay and gay-friendly visitors. Indeed, by the nineties, these smaller gay bars in especially the area close to the station were increasingly being pushed out of business by a new type of venue, such as The Hessenhuis.

A building with a totally different allure, of course. It’s originally from 1564 and part of the city’s historical patrimony. After undergoing renovation in 1975, it reopened as a temporary exhibition space, and then in 1993 a gay-friendly bar opened that doubled at night as a club for mainly gay youngsters. Soon, the Hessenhuis became one of their two favorite commercial nightlife venues, together with the Red & Blue. This new generation of larger, trendier, more spectacular, and essentially self-contained clubs gradually drove the small gay bars out of the market, and thus also put an end to the sense of a particular neighborhood or area in which many such bars were clustered.

Today, much of the city’s history of gay and lesbian nighttime entertainment has evaporated and become materially invisible in the streetscape. There was a time, during the second half of the twentieth century, that Antwerp contained literally dozens of gay and lesbian bars, but almost none of these survive now. Unfortunately, I’m not aware that anyone is actively trying to honor this material history by installing commemorative plaques or making exhibitions about it. It survives mostly in the memory of an aging cohort of participants, hence my insistence at the outset about the relative difficulty of bringing my topic to life to a younger generation raised on a constant stream of immersive images. But perhaps now that Alexander, Rob, and I have made our first archeological efforts and undertaken a basic form of mental mapping, a curious young historian will come along to flesh out our very schematic findings and dig up all the beautiful, funny, and naughty traces of queer nightlife that may still be hiding in public and private archives. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 5 years

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Uchitama 7 - 8 | Eizouken 8 - 9 | ID: INVADED 8 - 11 | Iruma-kun 22 - 23 (FINAL) | BnHA 82 - 83

Uchitama 7

Lemme guess…this is the ve-Yep.

The name of this segment is Ottamake. The ke means fur/hair, but it does seem like it’s referring to Tama otherwise.

For some reason, Bull’s really into cats…

LOL, you can see the cat food right there is a real brand. I dunno how they got away with that.

Hmm, this show has something to say about idol business…and it does it better than some of the human idol shows! That says something.

It even comments on the “graduation” system. Whaddaya know.

Welp, I never thought an anime could pull off this with a commentary on gender presentation, to boot. (It’s not as pervasive as Stars Align’s, but it’s still one of the better ones. I guess I shouldn’t expect it as a norm though.) I thought Kai was a dude though and so Bull’s interactions came off to me as massively gay. I’ve been thinking, maybe he’s pan? Can dogs be pansexual???

Why do I get the feeling Kai is going to be introduced into 3-chome? Update: Doesn’t happen.

This song sounds very idol-like.

Uchitama 8

Aww…I feel like we’re going to learn Nora’s backstory soon. I think it’s going to be real sad.

…Yup, there goes my kokoro. Smol Nora is cute~!

Genki can mean “healthy” as well as “energetic” – the latter is why it’s translated as “spunky”.

Why do I get the feeling Nora’s owner died…?

Oh, smol Nora has a bandaid on his leg.

Let me ask the essential furry question – they hav human ears and animal ears. Which of those sets of ears do they hear with?

Yuuki Kaji does a good job as Nora.

This song’s so sad, it almost got me crying…

Eizouken 8

This anime is like something from Studio Trigger!

The magic of Eizouken is that you get sucked into the anime they make and never look back.

Tomodachi vs. nakama, I think it is.

Id: Invaded 8

Lately, I’ve been thinking about practical cosplay (everyday wear that also doubles as a cosplay outfit). So basically, I’ve been thinking about Sakaido and El-Melloi II’s outfits a lot, since they’re rather practical while still looking cool. All I’m missing for El-Melloi’s outfit with the red jacket is a black button-up shirt, for El-Melloi’s outfit with the black jacket I’m missing a red scarf and I’m missing a brown button-up shirt for Sakaido’s (although the yellow scarf I got today to get one step closer to two of those isn’t the right mustard colour, it’s more of a lighter yellow).

Also, I noticed it’s (according to the katakana) meant to be “Id: Invaded”, but heck, it’s been ID: Invaded for so long for me, I don’t care either way.

Kiki was born in Fukui.

I always thought Mister Fixer sounded sad and now I think I know why…the bit I remember the most (the line that goes “Mister Fixer” and the bit around it) sounds like the singer is lamenting their life. Now that I see the visuals again after a few weeks (I’d get fatigued if I watched all that Fate/ and still managed to keep up with simulcasts, so I’ve been taking the simulcasts in a few eps at one time), Mister Fixer does quite sound like a crime drama song, but not as much as Thought I Knew (from Stand My Heroes).

I’ve seen images of Anaido and Sakaido in the same well for a few weeks now, so this cooperation bit is no surprise at all.

I believe Fukuda is asking why Narihisago is a –san to her even though they’ve worked together a while.

The words “data profile” are in one corner of the titlecard.

Does Anaido remember who he is in the ID Well? I presume not, but it’s hard to tell since we haven’t had as much time with him as we have Sakaido (not to mention I’ve been regularly filling my head with Fate/ and other things as well lately…so it’s hard to remember).

It’s interesting. Fukuda has the same piercings as Anaido (and even a ring on one pointer finger that matches them!), so he must’ve tried experimenting with…more legal holes, to put it one way…before getting his most iconic one.

Kaeru’s nails are chipped. Hmm.

In #Brake-Broken, which I read the first chapter of earlier (there’s a sample on the Young Ace website), Sakaido notices he doesn’t have a phone with him to call anyone or a licence (because in that manga, he wakes up in a car). It’s likely this will work the same way and Anaido won’t have any possessions on him, aside from the clothes on his back, accessories and the item that was stolen from his wrist/s.

Rings on both fingers…so I should be talking about them in plural. Update: I like how Anaido’s off-the-wall thought processes break up the inherent seriousness of Sakaido’s deductions and utilitarian way of doing things.

Anaido, you grimdark f***er. Update: For trying to eat a dead girl.

Okay, so for the sake of my practical cosplay, I knew I’d need this episode. Sakaido wears a long-sleeve brown shirt with some kind of shirt under that (either brown or black), plus a mustard-coloured scarf. (Note El-Melloi II wears a black shirt under his black button-up shirt, so I went with black as well.) In Brake Broken, I also noticed he wears dark socks (or that could be the leggings) and runners with a lightning bolt on them (I had to make do with generic black runners with a white stripe on the bottom), plus the iconic brown shorts over those (with a triangle pattern)…Why does Sakaido have a scarf anyway, versus Anaido and Miyo who don’t? As much as I like scarves, especially where colder weather is involved, getting a specific colour scarf was a bit of a headache to be honest, since I took 3 trips before deciding on the one I was going to buy (and even then, someone got it before me! The scarf I have now was my 2nd choice). Update: The shorts, leggings and undershirt are black, but I don’t know if Sakaido is wearing any socks or if they’re black too.

Just to note what Anaido has as well (although a coat like that, with the red detailing and flaps, would be hard to find…), he has a blue coat, suspenders, a white button-up top, a string tie (had to google what that was called, although its name is pretty obvious now that I know), black pants (which kinda look like leggings, but they’re not) and leather boots.

Now Sakaido can go into the loony bin…he’s talking to Kaeru.

Is Anaido going in circles? Sakaido caught up real fast…

Um, hey, protip: When stuck in quicksand, try to “float” on it. If you move, you’ll sink into it more. I don’t know how I know that, but I did stick it into my mind for times like this.

Notably, Anaido is about a head taller than Sakaido. Either Sakaido is unnaturally short and Anaido is average…or Anaido is just tall in that way some men are.

Did the bird get to this dude…?

There appears to be a man with a bun facing Hondomachi in the ED, although you can’t tell who it is from silhouette alone…Maybe he hasn’t appeared in the show yet. (Can’t be Matsuoka though. Might be the old guy who’s the head of Kura, actually.)

Update: Is the dead guy Momoki…?

Id: Invaded 9

It’s the familiar ceiling scene from Evangelion! (Okay, I’m kidding, but it’s a similar deal.)

I think the rules of Fate/ are “do it all, until you can no longer do it” (i.e. Everything is the same, until it’s different). It seems it’s the same here too.

Huh? Momoki?

“It doesn’t seem friendly.” – Yeah, and people die whe they are killed…in murder mysteries like this, usually speaking.

I noticed Narihisago’s tie is the same colour as his Sakaido jacket, if not the shirt under that.

Where did the Challenger’s clothes go after he took them off??? Hyperspace??? He wasn’t shown tossing them.

So Kaeru was Asukai all along, huh?

“Look at this.”

“It makes me think about him.” Subbers, that’s two mistakes in less than 1 minute…

I saw a fanart where Narihisago had his arm broken. I didn’t know why, but now I do. Also, TV Tropes is bad if you want to avoid spoilers…I know that already, but I go there anyway sometimes...

“It makes me wanna puke.”

Iruma-kun 22

The anime’s final episode is next week…but there’s already a season 2 in store for next year, so hopefully I survive the coronavirus and sort out all my issues this year in time for it.

Dat OP though. I’ve grown used to it and it’s actually endeared itself to me…which is odd, since I didn’t think I’d like it at first.

Demdol = akudol. Obviously, from “demon”.

Was that…Clara’s mother??? Kuromu’s older bro doesn’t look too bad, either.

Ohmygosh, this is fabulousssssssssss (and hilarious)! I’ve been waiting for this moment for many episodes, as you can tell if you’ve been following along, and I finally got the payoff!

Clara ends her sentence with –akuma (devil), hence the translation is matching it the same way.

Oh my gosh, Ryouhei Kimura (Azz-kun) sucks at being feminine, but that’s exactly what the role requires for this!

If you just pretend Azz-kun isn’t dressed in such an outlandish outfit, he looks really good…! Ayumu Murase does a pretty good falsetto, although you can tell there’s one point where Kimura’s voice gets really manly-sounding for a lady.

“Little imp” – Koakuma.

Oh! The Keroli family is all cute.

Ooh, Kuromu’s nails are blue. Never noticed that before.

Eizouken 9

Chojugiga are ancient pictures normally depicting animals. As for sepak takraw…

I wonder if Eizouken will tackle the Manabi Line one day…?

That’s a parallel for Comiket, LOL.

“A colossus that no one can see!” – Gridman, is that you?

When did Kanamori meet Asakusa again…?

Kanamori with a bun is cool.

“There is nothing fun about social media!” – Well, social media is fun for me because it’s where I escape reality, but sometimes you gotta be like Kanamori and use it for publicity’s sake.

LOL, the username for the Eizouken is @eizoukenn.

I just realised Mizusaki’s hairstyle is irregular…it’s much longer on on side than the other.

“Mizusaki bump” – I think this references the Colbert bump. (TV Tropes link)

Kanamori – she with the word “gold”…or “money”…in her name – struggles with maths? Wow, that was something to hear. (I guess it’s kinda like me and IT (cybersecurity) – I suck at it because I suck at modulos…or division in short…and even though I can be found on my computer a lot, that’s why I don’t pursue it any longer. I was decent at accounting, but man, I’d be bored out of my brain if you made me do business IT and I have zero skills in games and multimedia.)

“Was it thuggery?” – What’s thuggery? That word sounds funny.

Did you see how Asakusa fell off the tank?

I did CR’s Eizouken quiz sometime in the past and it gave me Asakusa. That’s true, basically. I like thinking up ideas and how cool they are, but because I can’t stop from elaborating on them, they get out of hand and that’s why I have a tonne of dropped projects. (Then again, with how freely I can imagine motion, I could’ve gotten Mizusaki too.) Update: Tried again and I actually did get Mizusaki…whaddaya know.

Id: Invaded 10

People have been comparing this to Minority Report…now I see why.

I almost feel like this is a discussion of euthanasia and suicide as much as it is memory and the consciousness.

Ohh…she remembers! Hondomachi!

You can’t see Muku’s face! Ohh, scary!

Aww, the music really sold this montage. By the way, that sign didn’t say “entrance ceremony”, it said nyuugaku omedetou, “Congratulations on your entry [into school]”.

It…this singer almost sounds like Bruno Mars, but that would be basically impossible, no?

Oh my gosh…when the song swelled, I absolutely cried. That’s rare, man – that’s rare.

BnHA 82

I think the leftmost figure might be Miruko, the rabbit lady. I’ve never read anything about her outside of wiki pages ad other small spoilers, but I roughly know what she looks like.

What does Gentle mean by “Anglaise”? Surely it wouldn’t refer to cream…(crème anglaise)

LOL, Disneyland parades…

Whew…that was dangerous. I almost agreed with Mineta there (to get the festival over and done with).

I swear Midoriya gets together with All Might, just like this, at the end or start of a climactic arc. He did it in the last season of BnHA, remember?

BnHA 83

Hmm…It’s interesting that the author likes to point out who has and hasn’t met Eri. Then again, it’s good for consistency.

LOL, Amajiki my boy…you’re so relatable.

Hmm…amidst the coronavirus concerns…this cancellation business seems quite timely.

Oh! It’s a drone.

For some reason, I thought Sero was drinking vegetable juice…? Eh, no matter. They have vegetable juice in Japan – I remember seeing some on my trip.

Hmm? Gentle is like a phantom thief, I just realised. Mostly harmless, but bound to cause a big stir if he gets his way.

What is Gentle’s Quirk, anyway…?

Work Son…LOL(…?)

Who bets their moustache on this stuff, anyway…? (LOL)

Iruma 23 (FINAL)

I don’t get to see Iruma become evil this season…but he will next season! That visual I’ve been seeing by the original mangaka confirms it!

Marathon - the demon puns are back.

Demonicon =Oricon chart.

Demon Star Platinum…was that…a Jojo’s reference?! *scare chord*

Oh! Maguro (tuna).

Azz-kun being afraid of fish? That’s news to me.

Okay, subbers. Whose idea was it to translate Iruma’s words as “My feels…”…?

There’s a post-credits segment. Keep watching.

Yay! Evil Iruma-kun!...In spring 2021. (I’ve never once been so excited for a character to turn evil than this! I also like how evil Iruma said it’s the “buttcrack” of dawn…but that’s just my immature side showing.)

Id: Invaded 11

��…being taken for a ride!” – Well, you’re in a car, so you’re getting a ride nonetheless. (LOL) I hadn’t heard of the term “being taken for a ride” until…what? 2016, I think? When I was still doing language anaylsis.

Sakaido used Headbutt! It’s…kind of effective? (Writing up these pseudo-Pokémon battles is fun. I should write more.)

“…put a drill to your head…”

“The victims of John Walker’s serial killers…”

I noticed Hondomachi is touching the side of her head which had the hole in it…if I remembered it right.

Is it “the Kura”? Or just Kura?

August 15th is a popular date for anime, huh? It’s in the middle of summer. (Refers to Kagerou Project.)

That ‘who knew you needed to lose something to be complete’ thing…I think I get it, but for some reason I only ever seem to get that feeling when it’s me trying to read asexuality into things (since that’s how I learnt to interpret asexuality), so…yeah, way to go, me.

Wait…Togo visited Momoki’s bedroom?!

Yep, so I was right about that being the side with Hondomachi’s hole.

#simulcast commentary #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #welcome to demon school iruma kun #mairimashita! iruma kun #id: invaded #uchi tama?! uchi no tama shirimasen ka?#uchitama?! have you seen my tama?#Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu Na!#keep your hands off eizouken!#Chesarka watches BnHA #chesarka watches mi-k #Chesarka watches Eizouken #Chesarka watches Uchitama #chesarka watches id: invaded

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butteredsims-blog · 6 years

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THE GAME OF LIFE LEGACY CHALLENGE!

So I created a little legacy challenge. I wanted to explore more of the expansion and stuff packs so some of these require more than the base game! Every generation has its own rules and goals, then on top of that each generation you will randomly roll for a “Bump in the road” AND a “Good Karma.” They are extra challenges you have to complete before the end of that generation! Its kind of like when you play ‘the game of life’ and you draw those random cards like “go to jail” or “Child goes to dentist, pay 500 dollars” you know like that!

If you would like to find out more then please keep reading! If you play go ahead and tag me so I can see your stories and share this post around so we can see if anyone does it!! IT IS KIND OF LONG IM SORRY, SINCE ITS TEN GENERATIONS ITS KINDA HARD TO MAKE IT NOT LONG.

GENERATION ONE

PICTURE PERFECT - - - Create your founder. You may also create a potential significant other in the same game, but they have to be on a separate lot. You may set them up in a house, and give them a job but you then must leave and go back to your founders gameplay. They have to meet by chance after that; if you dont organically meet them you must choose someone else you organically meet as your significant other. If you use a townie, you CAN give them a makeover but that is the only way you can use cheats; since I know everyone loves to make their sims pretty.

You may buy / download / build a tiny house for 10,000. Then use the testingcheats on cheat, and type in "money 1000". This will be your starting funds for your founder. You left home as a very young adult right after high school, ready to make your own life with just the small nestegg of 11,000 simoleons that your parent/guardian gave you as a graduation gift.

Now comes the fun part. It is time to start your legacy, this generation is going to be a little more laid back just to ease you into it. It is time to find a job! You may NOT use any cheats for promotions or money. You may sell things that you create/collect/grow or that you make from a hobby.

CAREERS: You may do any career you like, but keep in mind the other generations will have careers chosen by the challenge. So I would suggest doing something not in the later generations just to keep things spicy. You must make it to the end of the career before your heir of choice reaches young adult hood!

FAMILY & LOVE: It is time to find your one true love. In this generation you are only allowed ONE lover for your whole life. You must marry them, have children with them, and you may not divorce them at any point. Even if they start to hate each other later. (which would make a good simstory!) You must have 3 children, your favorite child may be the heir it is your choice for this generation.

CHILDREN: At least two of your children have to be at least B students in elementary school, and in high school. STUDY STUDY STUDY.

BUMP IN THE ROAD: Use the random dice/number generator website provided, roll a number 1-10. Find the number in the list below entitled "bump in the road" you must do this sometime in the generation before your heir becomes a young adult. You will do one for each generation.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION TWO

THEY'RE THE WORST - - - You spent your whole life being perfect for your parents, and now you are just sick of it. You marry the worst person you can find, and you have ASSHOLE children with him. All except one, your youngest child which will become your heir. Unlike the other children they will make good grades, and always be the sweet behaved one.

CAREER: You happen to be in the criminal career and your worthless significant other is jobless and a sloppy couch potato. You must reach at least level 5 of this career before your heir (your youngest child) becomes a young adult and starts the next generation.

FAMILY & LOVE: Before you get married and have kids, you are having a real hard time finding the one. You are married at least twice in this generation and divorced at least once. You may have kids with your first spouse but your heir must from from your last spouse.

CHILDREN: All of your children except your youngest/heir have to make bad grades, act up, be rude, ect. Your youngest/heir must make at least a B or more in elementary and high school and is not allowed to have any boyfriend/girlfriend until they have reached young adult and begin the next generation.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION THREE

ECO FRIENDLY - - - For this generation you refuse to conform to the norm. You spend most of your time out doors, camping or growing crops on your land. I would say farm but SIMS HASN'T GIVEN US FARM ANIMALS YET. If you have seasons you must have a scarecrow and befriend it until it can finally come to life! Why? BECAUSE IT IS A COOL FEATURE. You may sell your crops for money. You may not have a washer or dryer, you have to wash your clothes in the washing tub. You are also a minimalist and prefer not to have tvs, radios, computer, ect. You must also have a cow plant, and it must eat at least two strangers! If not, I guess it's not a fail. Just for fun!

CAREER: You will be living off the land, in other words you will not have a regular job/career. You will make money by selling crops you grow, things you collected, or things you have crafted. Your spouse my have a regular job.

FAMILY & LOVE: You can get married or divorced as many times as you want, it is totally up to you. You can have a good relationship or a bad one depending on whatever you want to do for your generation.

CHILDREN: You must have at least two children, one will be more of the country/southern down home punch type while the other will be more scientific and very intelligent. The scientific child will be your heir, it does not matter if it is the youngest or the oldest. Your heir for this generation must be a male! You may have more than two children.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION FOUR

BUTT PROBING - - - All your child hood you loved the idea of technology, and reading books about it but your family was wildly against it. So your dream was to be a scientist and one day reach the alien world of Sixam! (Need GTW for this generation!) In this generation one of your main goals is to get abducted and impregnated by an alien. Thats right. We are bringing aliens into this shit. CAREER: Reach the end of the scientist career and max out the rocket ship skill. Your spouse my have any job. You must build a satellite to get abducted by aliens you may not use the cheat to get a satellite.

FAMILY & LOVE: You may marry. It would be more fun to marry an alien but that is up to you! Your spouse my have any job or none that is completely up to you.

CHILDREN: The alien baby will be your heir, no matter what gender it is. You may have other children and they may be human or adopted it is completely up to you. The heir must be a happy go lucky child that is bubbly and sweet while the other children are just normal or whatever you want them to be.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION FIVE

BAKERS DOZEN - - - It's time to get to cookin'! Your alien baby from your last generation is itchin' to start their own bakery and man do they love to cook. Savory & sweet. Try your hardest to make enough money to start your own little bakery. You also must max out all skills that are cooking, baking, gourmet cooking, ect. Every Sunday you have to have a family dinner cooking a gourmet meal and baking at least one desert.

CAREER: You can join the culinary career to make money until you have enough to start your own bakery then you must quit and make your money just from your bakery! You must have GTW for this generation.

FAMILY & LOVE: No rules when it comes to spouse, you can do whatever you want or marry who ever you want and get married or divorced as many times as you want. Though in my opinion since your sim for this generation is so happy and sweet they should be looking for 'the one' and probably only marry one person but thats just what I think!

CHILDREN: Must have at least one child. Your heir should be very brooding and dark, such as a loner or maybe even a borderline goth. He hates that his parent is so happy go lucky and they are more sinister than sweet. They can make good grades or not, it is up to you!

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION SIX

THE LOVE BITE - - - That brooding baby is all grown up now, and man are they ready to move on with their life! They decided to settle down in a town called Forgotten Hollow. After years of searching the web as a loner teenager they have discovered that Forgotten Hollow is crawling in vampires, and they think the vampires are the only ones who will understand his achy heart and accept them for one of their own. Your life goal is to become the most powerful vampire around! (Must have Vampire expansion pack for this generation.)

CAREER: Career isn't very important in this generation, you can do whatever you like for money! Or you can be homeless for all I care and find yourself a rich vampire to shack up with. Sounds legit. Mmn.. Bill Compton... anyways!

FAMILY & LOVE: You find yourself falling in love with a neighborhood vampire, spending most of your time with them letting them feed on you because lets face it you are a weirdo. Eventually you convince them to change you into a vampire so you can finally become the powerful being you were meant to be!

CHILDREN: You can either have a child with the vampire while you are human or vampire. It depends on if you want your next generation to be vampire or not. If you become a vampire then have a baby with your vampire spouse it is 100% that you will have a vampire child. If you are human when doing so it is only 50% likely the baby will become a human this part is all up to your preference! Your heir must be male.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION SEVEN

STARVING ARTIST - - - You are the most creative sim on the block, and you know exactly how to channel your creativeness into making a profit. Wether you are just an insightful painter or a jack of all trades you are always working on something that will soon become a master piece, with the dream of selling art and becoming your own boss. Everything inspires you!

CAREER: You may not have a career or job. You may only do paintings or other hobbyist things to make money. Such as painting or sculpting. You may use other ways to make money on the side such as gardening, collecting ect.

FAMILY & LOVE: Because everything inspires you, you have multiple lovers. You have gotten a couple women pregnant already but you don't some very interested in raising them since you fall in and out of love every time you meet someone new. Eventually you find 'the one' and settle down and actually start a family.

CHILDREN: Your heir can be any gender, but it must be from the union of your marriage and not a love child from one of the women you knocked up in your 'stallion days'!

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION EIGHT

DOCTOR DOLITTLE - - - This is for all my sims 4 pets lovers out there, and it was requested by my sister! You must have the pets expansion pack. Your father was a starving artist and he didn't make that much money but you want so much more for your family; and you also have a healthy obsession with animals. You must own at least one cat and one dog, challenging right? Knowing you wont ever make the money you can go out and get yourself a business loan so you can open your own vet clinic! You must maintain a successful vet clinic while keeping your family happy and having positive relationships with each family member and pet. Subtract 500 dollars every Friday from your family funds to pay back your loan until your heir reaches the age of teenager. For example if you have 1500 simoleons in your family funds you will type in the cheat 'money 1000' which will set your family funds to 500 simoleons less than what it was before you made your payment. WE KNOW LOANS CAN BE A KILLER! MAKE THAT MONEY!

FAMILY & LOVE: Must have at least two children but you may have as many as you like, your youngest child will be your heir you may not choose a child.

CHILDREN: Your heir can have any traits you want BUT they must have the family oriented trait!

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION NINE

THE SINGLE PARENT - - - Did you know that there are approximately 13.7 million single parents in the U.S.? That number represents approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today. This generation is for all the kids like me that grew up with a single parent. Having the Parenthood expansion is helpful but not required! You will spend this generation supporting your child and doing as many things/activities with them that you possibly can.

CAREER: You may have any career you like, this part is completely up to you just keep in mind it needs to leave you enough time to spend with your child because that is the challenge after all is balancing work and family!

FAMILY & LOVE: This generation you will only have ONE child and you may not be married or dating. For story purposes you can marry, have a child, and then divorce but they have to move out!

CHILDREN: If you happen to have twins you can choose which one is your heir. You must have a full positive relationship with your child by the time they become a teenager and keep it that way into young adulthood.

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

GENERATION TEN

CONGRATS SIMMER!! - - - Wow you did it! That was a roller coaster huh? For this last generation you will be wrapping up this little adventure (unless you grew attached to the legacy, by all means keep going!) To reward you for even making it this far this generation is going to be whatever you want it to be! What have you been wanting to explore in the sims? What have you not done yet? Lets think outside the box. You still must do a bump in the road and a good karma!

GOOD KARMA: Same as bump in the road but you choose from the list provided called 'good karma'.

BUMP IN THE ROAD

(If you get something that doesn't correlate correctly with your generational challenges, roll again!)

1: DEATH IN THE FAMILY: You must kill off someone in your family, not including your current heir/founder, and your future heir for that generation. You must do this before your heir reaches young adult hood. Number off your other family members (husband/wife, and other children) roll the random dice which will be linked at the bottom of the post. YOU MUST KILL OFF WHO EVER CORRELATES WITH THE RANDOM NUMBER YOU ROLLED. NO CHEATING. If you use this in generation one, and you kill off your significant other; you may not remarry.

2: UNEXPECTED EXPENSE: Uh oh, something went wrong. Wether it's an overdue bill, an unexpected traffic ticket, or a medical emergency; something always happens and we end up broke AGAIN. Subtract 800 simoleons from your family funds. Broke now? That sucks. Part of life.

3: WE'VE BEEN ROBBED!: Some low life broke into your house while you were gone! They took every piece of movable furniture. This excludes large kitchen appliances (fridge, stove, sink, dishwasher ect.) Bathroom furniture (sinks, shower/bath, toilets, ect.) everything else is completely gone. You must delete all the rest of your furniture but keep track of your funds before hand. After you have deleted the furniture type in the cheat 'money moneyamounthere' and replace the exact amount of money you had BEFORE you deleted all your furniture. For example if you had 500 simoleons before the furniture, but 1800 after deleting your furniture you will type in the cheat 'money 500'.

4: SLOW N' STEADY WINS THE DIVORCE: Things become stale in the bed, you start to fight more and more every day with your spouse. Slowly but surely you begin to resent each other. Make your sim and their spouse fight, argue, insult each other SLOWLY build up a negative relationship with them until it reaches enemy status and you are forced to divorce. As a slap in the face you are left with all of the kids, and once a week you must pay spousal support of 150 simoleons a week DON'T FORGET TO PAY OR THEY WILL COME TO COLLECT AND START A FIGHT! If you roll this and you are on GENERATION ONE, you must reroll. You may remarry.

5: DIPSHIT ADOPTION: Your druggy uncle just called from prison. He's at it again, and he got the life sentence. Guess what you get out of it? His devil spawn. You must adopt a toddler, try to get one with negative traits such as hotheaded, loner, slob, ect. Have either a negative relationship with the child, or a neutral one. Make them act out such as make messes, fail classes, skip school, start fights, ect. As they age up you cannot give them positive traits such as good, family oriented, neat, ect. This child may not be killed, you must keep it until your heir becomes of age and you move on to the next generation. SORRY.

6: UP IN FLAMES: Guess who left the stove on, thats right, it was you. You can either some how light your house on fire WITHOUT killing anyone, OR you can take the easy way out and bulldoze your entire lot. If you light your house on fire you must let it burn without putting it out; remember there are no firefighter NPCs in the sims 4. I don't know how much the fire spreads so thats on you guys. IF you just bulldoze your entire lot you may not give yourself any extra money, you must basically start over with whatever funds you have left, because obviously you didn't get home owners insurance, that bites. No family members die in the fire.

7: LETTING YOURSELF GO: So you got depressed, and you ate all the ice cream. Again. With cake. Needless to say, the pounds keep packin' on. You must gain weight. There are many ways in the game you can do so, you just have to look them up because I aint yo mama. You may not exercise. That's it. You're a liddol fluffy now and their ain't no goin' back. SORRY, THAT'S HOW THE COOKIE CRUMBLES. You may not roll again, don't be a pansy and just eat some cake. You thiccccc.

8: WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS: Nah I ain't talkin' about the weather. You're spouse left you, and it went surprisingly in your favor and he didn't take all your money! But now you are on the prowl lookin' for a new boo. You had a night out on the town and met yourself a tall drink of water who said they had a PHAT bank account. After falling in fake love to get their money one sad morning you wake up and that tall drink of water poured all over your already sad life by draining your bank account. You are left with nothing but whats in your NOT phat wallet. (300 simoleons) Shit happens bro, stop bein' a ho. If you already have children you may add an extra 100 simoleons for each child you have. For example if you have 3 kids you will have 600 simoleons left in your family funds. If your generation requires you be married to the same person the whole time, roll again.

9: THE GAME OF LIFE: You just keep messing up don't cha? From here on out any time you're given a prompt for your career and the results effect you negatively, you have to take 100 simoleons out of your family funds. Sucks huh? maybe you shouldn't fuck around at work or get on your bosses bad side. Sorry buddy, get your shit in line!

10. NO BABIES 4 U: Want to have children of your own with your spouse? Too bad so sad. Any children you have must be adopted, no trying for a baby in that bush for you! They must be at the lowest age that is adoptable. No name changes, you may change their appearance (clothing, hair, accessories, ect.) but not race/skin-tone/facial features. (does not apply if you are in the first generation, roll again.)

GOOD KARMA

(If you get something that doesn't correlate correctly with your generational challenges, roll again!)

1: FOUND SOME CHEDDAR: Just walkin' down the street mindin' your own business, singin' your favorite song, you look down and what do you see? 100 simoleon bill! You look around and notice nobody is looking.. so what do you do? You grab that shit and run. CONGRATS!~

2: TO YOU, FROM THE STORK: As if you didn't have enough kids already, one night your spouse rolls over in bed and begs you to have yet another child with their crazy ass. And what do you say? SURE WHY NOT. You will add another child to the required amount of children for this generation. For example; if the generation requires you have three children, you must now have 4.

3: POT O' GOLD: Thanks family member i've never met! You just got a letter in the mail letting you know your great great great grand- whatever, just left you 10,000 simoleons in their will. LOOK AT YOU MOVIN' UP IN THE WORLD. Thanks whatever your name is!

4: EARLY RETIREMENT: WOW! Your boss must either really like you, or really want you out of the way. He/She just gave you enough money to retire early! Give your self 200,000 simoleons and quit yo job! (You must wait until atleast level 6 of your current career before you are eligible to cash dat phat check!) If the gernerational rules require you complete your profession you must roll again, SORRY BRUH.

5: FAMILY VACATION: The hustle and bustle of the town/city life is really grinding down your family. If you don't have two days off in a row, call in sick and take your family on a camping trip! Must stay at least one night. If you do not have outdoor retreat, just take a couple days off and spend some quality time with the fam bam.

6: ANGEL ADOPTION: Wow, the nest sure is gettin' empty. It's time to stock that shit back up. Adopt yourself another bundle of joy at the precious age of toddler. You must do this after all of your kids are grown to at least teen stage, no matter which child you chose for your heir THINK AGAIN. Because this liddol angel is now your only chance at a decent heir. You may give them a make over to look any way you want, and you may choose who you adopt. They cannot have negative traits, but they are the sweetest thing since great grammys cherry pie. Must have all A's in elementary and high school.

7: CHANGE OF PACE: Sometimes you just need new scenery. Your whole family came together and decided it was time to sell that house, and move to a new town! You must have a whole new house you may buy one or build one it is your choice. I suggest selling all your furniture from the previous house to put towards your new house!

8: ADOPT A FURBABY: Whether you already have a pet or not you must get another. You may adopt from your phone or computer, OR you may adopt a stray! Any breed or animal. BUT you may not change their gender, name, or appearance. Never fret, you may have more than one pet.

9: THE DEAN'S LIST: You must be either really smart, or really talented. Why? Because you were just awarded a scholarship to you college of choice. Using a cheat code at the beginning of your generation you may promote yourself TWICE at the beginning of your first career as if you had attended college and gotten a better starting position/salary. The cheat code is 'careers.promote careername' for example if you are an astronaut you will type in 'careers.promote astronaut' TWICE.

10: HIDDEN ADVENTURE: Okay i'm sorry kiddos, you are gonna have to do a little researching for this one! In this generation you have to uncover your towns hidden location/secret area. For example if you live on Oasis Springs the Forgotten Grotto has two different entrances that can only be accessed by Sims that have level 10 in the Handiness skill. The entrances can be found in Desert Bloom Park –far behind the park– and also down the cliff behind the Landgraab Mansion. A surprise awaits. They aren't hard to find if you google them and they are so interesting!

Let’s use the tag #LifeGameLegacy so I can see your liddol babies doing my challenge! You can find the random number generator here.

#lifegameleagacy #sims4 #sims 4 challenge #sims 4 legacy #sims 4 legacy challenge #ts4 challenge #ts4 leagacy #ts4 legacy challenge #sims #the sims

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anaccessiblelife · 6 years

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I am autistic

Why is that important to declare? Because even though almost one in five people have a disability, most people know very little about disability, and that’s a problem. So, if you want to learn something new today, here’s your chance:

Being autistic is like my brain having a different operating system. It is no worse, no better, just different. There are some things it does better than “neurotypical” brains, and some things it does worse.

An autistic person may perform repetitive movements to regulate their concentration. They may experience noises more loudly and have a few intense interests. That same autistic person can also be a highly empathetic person and an Oxford student.

If the autistic operating system isn’t worse than the typical operating system, why is autism a disability? The social model of disability states that what creates disability is not how the disabled person differs from the norm, but whether society adapts to that difference. Society is adapted to a “typical” operating system, not a system like mine.

Think of it this way: If we had a society where everyone was blind and everything in society was adapted to blindness, then blind people would not be disabled in that society. Similarly, if we had a society where most people only needed 2 hours of sleep each night, and you needed 7, you would most likely be disabled in that society. It’s all about whether the society is adapted to your needs.

But why should society be adapted to anyone’s needs? Of course, you could argue that it shouldn’t be, but then to be consistent, you ought to exclude the needs of abled people as well. As a highly individualistic society we like to emphasise how self-sufficient we are. This can make it hard to see just how much people depend on society meeting their needs:

Just as wheelchair users depend on wheelchair accessibility, abled people depend on the city they live in having roads or public transport. Just as dyslexic children depend on having teachers that know how to teach dyslexic children, abled children depend on having teachers that know how to teach abled children. If you think that society should meet the needs of abled people, it is only fair that it meets the needs of disabled people as well.

Whenever we talk about differences some people want to say that they are blind to them – that they don’t see race, gender, age, size, sexuality, disability etc. But being blind to these differences is a problem because it means you deny 1. A part of someone’s identity. 2. The difficulties people face as a result of society not being adapted to them and 3. The prejudice people face because of their identity.

1. I am defined by my autism, just as I am defined by my shortness. There are advantages and disadvantages to these traits, but they are part of who I am.

2. Being blind to the things standing in my way will lead you to misunderstand me and be unable to accommodate my needs. An analogy: If you are blind to my height you might think I’m being lazy if I tell you that I can’t reach the highest shelves. If I ask for something to stand on you might be reluctant to give it to me, because you can’t see why I would need it. Similarly, people who don’t see a person’s disability often end up assuming that that person is lazy, incompetent or selfish.

3. If you are blind to differences, you will also fail to acknowledge when people are prejudiced against me. Discrimination or prejudice towards disabled people is called ableism. Often people see disabled people as being less autonomous and less competent, as being worth less or being defective. This leads disabled people to be treated differently, for instance having potential employers show significantly less interest in them.

Many people still don’t believe that ableism exists. It is hard for many to understand that disabled people can be oppressed. They might think that when disabled peoples’ needs are accommodated it is a kindness, not a right. And that when disabled people don’t get certain jobs it’s just because they are unable to perform them.

These kinds of attitudes only show how far the disability rights movement has to go. Compare with the now mostly forgotten attitudes that a university is very progressive if it provides women’s bathrooms or that women don’t get certain jobs because they lack the intellectual ability of men. In 50 years, I hope we look back at the attitudes towards disabled people today and feel that they are as obviously wrong.

The lack of recognition of ableism is a very real threat to disabled people. It is the reason why the people who were killed in the holocaust for being disabled were the last victims to be formally recognized, why hate crimes against disabled people are often not recognized and why someone like Trump can mock disabled people without consequences.

So what can you do?

If you’ve stayed with me so far, you may be wondering what you can do to help me and other people who have disabilities. As is often the case, the most useful steps are often the hardest, because they require us to look at our own harmful attitudes. Here are a few such steps:

1. Check your assumptions about disability and worth. For instance, even if it doesn’t accord with their values, people often speak as though a person’s worth depends on how much they “contribute” to society. This categorises those disabled people who are unable to work as lesser.

2. Respect people’s understanding of their own ability and needs – visibly disabled people are often treated as incompetent children; invisibly disabled people are often treated as lazy. If I tell you I am limited, listen, even if I haven’t declared a disability to you. Conversely, if I tell you I am able to do something, listen. Disabled people are not children, we know what we are able to do and what we need.

3. Notice inaccessibility. If you don’t see the ways in which society is shaped to fit abled people rather than disabled people, it is very easy to think that it is “unfair” that disabled people get accommodations. Notice when there are no ramps, when the music is too loud for many people to be able to carry a conversation, when your walking speed is adapted only to abled people. And notice all the ways in which you as an abled person are dependent on society too.

4. Believe disabled people when they tell you about oppression. We all want to believe the best about people, so when someone tells you about something prejudiced that another person did to them, it can be tempting to jump in and say that it probably wasn’t meant in that way. But the statistics show that ableism is real and denying that doesn’t help the disabled person, it just makes them feel responsible for the way they are being treated. Instead, validate the reality of the experiences that disabled people are telling you about.

5. Celebrate differences. Many disabled people wouldn’t choose to be non-disabled if they could. For many, the ways that they differ from the norm is a fundamental part of their identity. Celebrate and value disabled cultures as valid minority cultures, and emphasise the strengths that come with many disabilities, without denying the problems.

6. Normalize disability. As much as we understand intellectually that disabled people are just like everyone else, we will always be swayed by stereotypes until we have enough exposure to real disabled people. That is why representation matters. This can be achieved by disclosing your own disability, calling for better representation of disabled people in the media and/or hanging out with disabled people as people, rather than objects of charity or inspiration stories.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this, it means a lot to me. I leave you with a favourite quote by Audre Lorde:

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

#Actually autistic #autism #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #disability #actually disabled #Oppression #equality #social justice #accessibility #accommodations

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residentlesbrarian · 5 years

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You get rep! You get rep! Everyone gets rep!

Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee

This was another book I discovered during the Queering YA panel of ClexaCon 2018. That panel really was where these reviews and my current mission to shine a light on the queer fiction that is present in the library world started. I was blown away by this book! Literally squealed so many times, you’ll see down below. Now onto the review!

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb: Superheroes? Paid internships? Pretty volleyball players? Oh my! This book is one you will not want to put down and then be sad when it ends, because you just never want to leave the world of Andover and the cast of characters that C.B. Lee has created.

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review:

Have you ever read a book where it was physically painful to put it down? That was exactly what it was like reading this book. The characters are immediately real in your mind the moment they are introduced on the page. The world draws you in and just doesn’t let you go.

One thing that is always hard to swallow in stories with superhuman abilities is how those abilities come about. Who gets them and why? C.B. Lee did a fantastic job of establishing the world that these types of abilities are not only possible but recognized and strictly regulated. There wasn’t a single moment that I, as the reader, had to go beyond a normal suspension of disbelief to make the world work. On that note let’s take a closer look at the plot.

I know I already mentioned how much I loved this book and I am gonna reinforce that statement here with the plot. It was the kind of story telling that pulls you in but also keeps you guessing. Even when you think you’ve figure it out you really haven’t...or at least not all of it. I love the feeling of unraveling a story and spinning theories to see if I’m right and this book was no exception, but usually when I figure something out easily it takes away from the story in the end cause I’m not surprised, but with Not Your Sidekick I was delighted when theories panned out or when I was taken by surprise. A huge part of what made that possible was an outstanding cast of characters that you fall in love with immediately.

Jess, our main character, was an utter delight to read. From her first moment on the page she felt real and vivid. Her sarcastic wit was refreshing and brought some of the best laughs of the book. One thing that was nice to see was that her sexuality was figured out long before the story takes place so it is just part of her character and is mentioned in a passing description. Her bisexuality is just part of the many things that make her who she is but isn’t at the forefront, which gives her that authentic feeling that some queer characters lack. Her attitude towards her family and how she didn’t have any abilities was a truly interesting dynamic. She didn’t have over-the-top resentment that a lot of characters in her position tend to have in today’s media. She wasn’t stoked about being the only ‘average’ member of her family, but she decided she would do the best with what she had. That kind of mindset is rarely seen in heroines, because most we see are created to be even more extraordinary than a typical hero to make sure no one can say this girl isn’t the hero of the story. There was never any doubt who was going to be the hero of this story even though she had no abilities that anyone knew about.

The dynamic between Jess, Bells, and Emma was very fun to dig into as well. These are three friends who just function through their lives with each other. If one is involved the other two are just a given. Watching as that dynamic changed into one of a less codependent nature but still didn’t change how intrinsically important they were to each other was fabulous. It was so true to real life (super powered shenanigans aside) that as the book progressed they each had different things that required their attention, like jobs and family and school projects, but at the end of the day they were still close and wanted to be around one another after the dust settled.

Now on to one of the unexpected but brightest spots of this book. My baby boy Bells Broussard. He is precious and deserves to get pampered every day and told how much he is loved. From when he was introduced he was a rather literal definition of a colorful character, with his hair and out-loud personality, but you could immediately see the depth under the fabulous hair. Then one line took him from the usual sidekick/comic relief character into a whole new dimension. Finding out he was a transman resulted in uncontrollable squealing and hand-flailing. The fact the reader has no idea that Bells is not a cis male from the beginning is something completely out of the norm. Usually a trans character is defined by that gender identity but he isn’t at all! This is the kind of trans representation that has been so badly needed. I could go on for ages but I’ll save that for the sequel, but when we get there I make no promises!

I won’t say much on Abby as a character, which doesn’t mean I didn’t like her (quite the opposite actually), but I have a hard time discussing her without going into spoiler territory. I will say that the most refreshing aspect of her character was that she wasn’t just the token love interest. She had an entire story and purpose and drive that had nothing to do with Jess. Even though her first mention was as Jess’ long time crush, the moment we actually meet her on the page she doesn’t fit the mold of the bland love interest that is nothing but a pretty face for our heroine to ogle at. The romantic subplot was so well done and woven into the story that it flowed naturally and never took away from the actual plot. I’m gonna wrap this up before I give myself any more chances to spoil this masterpiece of a book.

Something must also be said about the racial diversity in this book! Of the core group we meet, only one is Caucasian, which I have never seen in my life time of reading and it was awesome! Overall, this book and the world it brings you into through Jess, Bells, Abby, and Emma is so engaging that you don’t want to leave when the book ends. It is a brilliant example of how you can have queer characters be the center of your story but not have it focus on that aspect of them. This story is about superheroes and villains and everything that comes with that. It just so happens to be happening to some awesome diverse queer teenagers.

Queer Wrap-up: This one wracked up quite the tally at the end of the day. We have the main character who is openly bisexual and pining after a cute volleyball player and her friends pick on her about it like you would expect in any other teen book. We also have my BABY BOY BELLS!! He is the best trans rep I have ever read! I literally tossed the book down to call my brother because I had to talk to him about this precious bean. This is also a case where I will count the love interest as an additional queer character cause Abby definitely qualifies, but again I am incapable of talking about her without spoilers, so if you want details then send me some asks. That is why this book not only gets a five unicorn rating but will also be the first inductee to the Sparkly Unicorn Hall of Gay.

Links:

C. B. Lee Website

Goodreads

Amazon

If you love superhero books and are looking for some queer rep wrapped up in excellent racial diversity and a truly enthralling world this is definitely the book for you. I will eventually be doing a review of the sequel Not Your Villain and will link it after it’s posted. If you guys want to discuss anything please don’t hesitate to send me asks. As always if you want to read this but don’t want spend the money without knowing for sure you are going to like it, go to your local library. You’d be surprised what they have on their shelves just waiting to be discovered. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

#not your sidekick #cb lee #resident lesbrarian #five unicorns #sparkly unicorn hall of gay #superheroes #villains #bisexual girl #trans man #lesbian #wlw rep #trans rep #racial diversity #ya fiction #sci-fi #go to your local library #authorcblee

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mypralaya · 5 years

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“Gender Roles”

(Note: This ficlet deals with transgender experience and identity, and from the POV of a trans man. It also concerns gender identity and expression in Chinese and Indian culture. The writer, me, is a cis woman who is white and American. I have every intention of respect, but if I get something wrong, please tell me!) “So you're telling me,” said Lee, “That drag queens are STRAIGHT in China?” “Well, they're not exactly drag queens, any more than girls who play Peter Pan are...drag kings, if that exists?” said Haven. After Lee assured her that they indeed very much did, she continued, “And while I am sure not all are straight, any more so than in every other profession, the majority of them seem to be. They have wives, families, all of that. It's simply a job and is not considered an unmanly act in this context, from what I understand. Of course, that may change now that women are allowed to perform female roles, and are starting to do so. Once it becomes the norm for it to be a female job, perhaps it will become seen as feminine.” “So it's not feminine to get dressed up on stage as a woman, so long as that's considered a man's job,” summarized Lee, “Wild.”

Haven had not been sure she should come to Pride. She was not exactly clear on the unspoken social rules regarding a heterosexual woman's presence there, even as a supporter. There was Pride in Mumbai, of course, but what applied there might not apply here. Which was part of why she wanted to see New York's version, to see the differences and commonalities between the cultures, but not if it would be considering threatening, intruding, or voyeuristic for her to do so. She'd asked around though and no one she had spoken had thought there would be an issue, so long as she was respectful. Which...it was Haven, no one expected her to be anything but. Indeed, if anything, it was one of the people who “belonged” there that had been rude to her, not vice versa. A young man named had Lee come up and made quick conversation with her, and then, apologetically but curiously, asked if she was a hijra. That is, one of India's third-gender, a group most analogous in Western terms to transgender women, but their own distinct category. It was not the first time someone had thought this of Haven. With her grandiose height that put her head and shoulders above most other females in Mumbai, and a clothing style that concealed the extremes of her outrageously feminine figure, it had happened a few times, often much more negatively than this. But only in India. Never anywhere else. She'd never even met someone in America who knew what a hijra was, and was instantly intrigued by why Lee did. She was also not offended---hijra were some of the most beautiful and glamorous people there were! Lee, it turned out, was a transgender man. He was also a trans-national adoptee, given up by his Chinese parents to American ones for not being a son. It had taken him until he was fourteen to realize they were wrong, he was a son all along, but it was not until he was twenty-three that he started truly expressing that through his dress, his hair-cut, the binder that flattened his chest smoothly beneath his striped tank top, and his chosen name. He'd picked the name Lee simply BECAUSE it was so generic and stereotypical for a boy of a Chinese heritage that he felt it sold the idea easily that he was born with it. In the course of researching for answers on his own gender identity as a teen, he had explained to Haven, he'd run across articles on hijira and other such culture-specific gender categories. But he hadn't heard of nandan, a practice of necessity in the all-male Peking Opera, which she'd brought up when they started discussing the topic. This was because nandan, or dan for short, was not actually a gender category, or even a part of LGBT culture at all, as she'd just explained. It was simply men playing women's roles in the Peking opera, offered by her as an example of how such things were seen differently depending on time and place. Lee was intrigued, and had wanted to know more. Even if it wasn’t regarded that way in Chinese culture, anything that could be classed as cross-gender intrigued him, and the fact it came from his birth heritage was first thing about it that had ever made him interested in it. He’d never wanted to reconnect with a culture he never had, but this was something he did feel connected to. Haven told him about nandan, and about their all-female counterparts, the nuxiaosheng of Shaoxing opera, in which it was reversed and women played both male and female roles, no men. “It’s not common anymore, of course, and hasn’t been for decades,” she explained, “You see, during the time of the Cultural Revolution, traditional Chinese theatre was deemed as bourgeoisie and thus wiped out. It’s come back since, but it’s never regained its popularity. And as I said, it’s not required anymore than casts only consist of one gender, because it is no longer considered improper for both sexes to be on-stage together as in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Still, I did meet a dan once---we were very good friends, in fact. He actually, well...he considered himself to be courting me. At least that was what he claimed. In truth, I don’t think he was in love with me at all. Certainly not as a man loves a woman. I think he was simply in love with me as a muse---which is really much more flattering, so much so I feel rather vain for claiming it. But he told me himself!” Lee nodded, thoughtful, “So...was he gay?” “Well...” Haven pondered, “He presented himself to me as a suitor, so I would assume he did not wish to be thought of as attracted to men. But...well, I cannot speak to what his truth is; only he knows. I...I never really thought about it, since I was not reciprocal either way, so it did not matter. But I suppose, without realizing it, I did think that he must lack desire, either for women specifically or altogether. Otherwise I don’t think I would ever have entertained the “courtship” at all, let alone been alone with him, chatting in his dressing room where he sometimes had his shirt removed as he showed me his new ways of moving his arms most gracefully in a manner he swore was meant to imitate me. Despite the fact I have never handled a fan so elaborately in all my life.” Lee laughed, then said, “That is super common for drag queens though. I know you said they’re NOT, but I mean the part about getting inspired by real women. I’ve seen about a dozen Dolly Partons and Diana Rosses.” “I am in good company then.” “Yeah---the big difference there is, they go for really flamboyant women? Like Lady Gaga and Madonna. And you’re uh...you’re not.” Haven laughed a little, “I doubt I could have been his muse if I were. You see, there are different dan roles for different types of female characters. He played a dan role called the Guimen Dan, also known as Qingyi, verdant-sleeve, or Zheng-dan, straight role---straight meaning here like the “straight man” in comedy. They’re meant to represent mature women, sometimes married, not flamboyant at all like the vivacious young Hua Dan or the warrior girl Daoma Dan roles. I’m very much not either of those.” Indeed, she was not. Lee admittedly had thought that she would be more flamboyant, before he had talked to her. Her elaborately embroidered gorgeous clothing and abundance of jewelry and hair he’d thought just HAD to be a wig because LOOK at it how could all that be real? But she was...very subdued. Not the kind of big loud bombastic personality associated with a drag act at all. But probably in line with what that type of nandan she’d described was looking to imitate. The kind of woman that, perhaps, in another time and life, he’d have been expected to be, as though just being expected to be a woman period wasn’t bad enough. He’d spent a lot of time hating that ideal, hating every girly-girl in his class when he was a child all through elementary school, scowling and sneering at them simply because they embodied what had been forced on him, and he had hated them for that. It was mis-aimed, and he knew that now. But something about someone like Haven, a woman so clearly and comfortably aligned with the expectations of her sex, still sent a subtle shiver up his spine, that old childish repulsion pushing back against what had been pushed on him. He felt ashamed for that. It wasn’t the fault of women like Haven that he’d been expected to be one---and indeed, he hadn’t even been expected to be halfway like her by his parents. They’d been PROUD that their “little girl” was a “tomboy” and they’d never held young Lee back from anything “she” had wanted to do just because it was “for boys” or any of the usual cliches. They had, in fact, encouraged him with all the “girl power“ media they could get. Which, as it happened, included more than one cross-gender tale of a girl going undercover as a boy. But he’d never empathized with stories like Mulan, of girls pretending to be men. He related far more to the notion of men performing as women, because that’s what he had felt like for his whole life til very recently---he just hadn’t signed up for the role willingly. Instead, saw himself in movies and books where a man had to pretend to be a woman—-especially with the inevitable humiliation and reluctance with which the man faced it, since this was always framed as a debasing comedy at the man’s expanse, which was how it felt for Lee too. But it surely didn’t feel that way for nandan, did it, if they did so by choice like their more flamboyant drag queen counterparts in the West? Perhaps, he wondered, for some of them, they were not men dressing up like women. Perhaps they were women who had to dress like men in the rest of their lives, and only when in costume were they their real selves. Maybe that was why this Haven woman had never felt discomfort at being alone with her shirtless “suitor” when by her own admission she should have balked at such impropriety. Maybe she sensed subconsciously that “he” was really a sister under the skin. She’d said she’d never know his truth, but maybe she did. Maybe she’d recognized her dan for who “he” truly was without realizing it, the way Lee had always yearned to be recognized as a boy by other boys, even before he knew he was one. Or maybe Lee was projecting like hell, he did that a lot. Speaking of that... “I’m sorry I asked if you were a hijra,” he said, “Seriously that was...that was not cool. And I should know that, of all people.” “Oh, it’s quite alright,” she said, “I take it as a compliment.” “Okay, but---I just don’t want you to think it’s like, okay. You never ever ask someone their gender or if they’re trans, it’s...it’s a big no-no, I don’t know why I did it.” Because when he’d seen this tall, brightly-colored creature with her raven Rapunzel hair and flowing fuchsia clothes and shoulders wider than his own, all his years of proper LGBT-etiquette were forgotten because he was fourteen again and looking at pictures of “Indian eunochs” again and realizing, for the first time, there are people like me! And he’d called out to that, literally. A false flag, it turned out. She was not only no eunoch, no hijra, she was as stereotypically and traditionally heterosexual and cisgender and gender-normative and all of that as they came. And as apologetically as he’d asked about her identity, she had asked if it was alright that she was here. “Well, there’s a lot of debate about that,” he said,“But uh...I’m glad you were.” It was then that he received a text from his friends saying they were here and ready to meet up by the leather booth with the weird animal masks. He dashed off with a goodbye and as Haven watched him disappear into the crowd at a hearty job in the New York heat, she thought she saw, just for a moment against the myriad made-up faces of the colorful crowd, there like a coyly smiling ghost whose gaze was directed right at her in the perfect imitation of her own, the familiar white and red mask-like feminine visage of a painted Chinese opera dan.

#fic #writing

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did-i-overstep-blog · 6 years

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The Incredible Twat

The events that have precipitated this post are long and painful, but the gist is that a close friend of mine had the unfortunate experience of meeting and getting to know (as the title states) an incredible twat (IT). How does a sentient being earn the title of IT you ask? Well it’s through a concerted effort to behave in a manner that’s stupid and obnoxious. The IT in question actively pursued a relationship with a friend and persuaded her to enter into a long distance relationship, cheated on her once, begged for a second chance and cheated on her for the second time.

Apart from the actual cheatation, what my friends and I have a hard time grasping are all the mind games he employed to keep my friend anxious about their relationship and unsure about her own instincts that were warning her something wasn’t right.

This post isn’t about the sad, sordid details, but a public service announcement for anyone who’s gone through something similar or might be trapped in a rs with an IT.

Also just a note that while in this case the IT was what one might stereotype as a ‘dumb jock’, ITs come in all shapes, colours, sizes, genders, sexual orientations, and with varying intelligence quotients.

How to spot an IT:

1. Liar, liar, oh did the pants get destroyed in the fire? 🙊

While ITs can be quite meticulous about portraying an above board image of themselves, there are cracks that you may want to examine more closely.

For example, when asked about confirmed previous relationships or girls that seemed to be very close to him, the IT would paint an image of clingy and desperate girls that he’d dated but had no real feelings for and would repeatedly lament that these girls were just ‘catching no ball’.

Unfortunately these girls would remain ignorant as to how they had been enthralled by his irresistible attractiveness and would also be kept in the dark about the multitude of conversations they’d had on how they must keep their distance from his Adonis-like form 🙄

If all an ITs exes are reportedly psycho stalkers that may be a point of concern. Other signs include just the most outrageous lies, such as suggesting that the IT was kissing someone as part of a government sanctioned undercover spy operation.

However a more telling point of reference would be if the people near and dear to an IT all have different stories on who they’re seeing and how serious the rs is.

This IT had great difficulty keeping a story straight and as a result, his friends and family would have mind-boggling versions of his sexual and relationship history. This brings us to point 2.

2. “If you don’t believe me, ask ......”

The audacity and gall that it takes to dare someone to crosscheck their version of “truth” with a third-party, is not something new for an IT.

The gamble being that the victim of an IT’s manipulative ways would be cowed into submission when dared to check with someone else.

While my friend had let it slide on previous occasions, the IT got a bit scared when she actually took him up on his suggestion to visit the home of the girl he was cheating with. He then proceeded to ask her if she was sure throughout the journey and expressed worries on if her and her housemates would be up or at home given the late hour.

What’s truly despicable about this tactic is that it causes the person on the receiving end to doubt themselves and their gut instinct alerting them to something wrong.

This IT in particular took this tactic to a whole other level when he would use things I would say to my friend to reassure her as ammunition for his selfish interests. For example when my friend would have worries or anxieties about the IT partying late following the first cheatation, I would point out to her that he was making an effort to call her and couldn’t possibly be juggling school, a LDR, a job, sports practice and a side chick, I mean that would seem to require a level of multi-tasking I had believed was beyond the IT. Alas, where there’s a will, there’s a way. The IT would remind my friend of the points I had brought up to reassure her, as proof of his innocence..... that’s rich......

All that lead up to my friend having anxieties and worries, that the IT made seem crazy and unfounded. If someone makes u feel crazy, Cut. Them. Off.

3. Birds of a feather take a s**t together

While it’s unclear to what extent the IT’s friends actively engaged in IT-like behaviour themselves, or to what extent they participated in the ITs nefarious plan, there’s undeniable culpability in encouraging an IT.

The friends of an IT (FITs) in this case always took great care when my friend hung out with them to speak highly of the IT. Specifically how loyal and what a good person he was. At first glance there’s nothing seemingly out of place about this wingmanship, but upon closer inspection it seems curious to describe someone as “loyal”. Simply because if all the people in my circle were loyal I would not think to view this as a positive character trait. It would be a norm that would not need highlighting. Think about it, I would describe my friends as sassy, funny, sensitive, intelligent, hot, kind, nurturing and so forth, but it would never occur to me to say they’re loyal, because what else are u gonna be in a rs?

When hanging out with my friend the FITs also neglected to mention that the IT had been with a girl for a while and had been hanging out as a group with her on days/ occasions that my Friend wasn’t around.

One of the FITs in the country of study also had the temerity to tell my friend when he ran into her that the IT was a gem of a guy and really loved her. This while knowing that the IT was seeing another girl in the country of study..... Come I clap for you 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

4. Steps to de-IT your life

While there are probably a million other things that could get your spidey senses tingling, if you see or experience all 3 of these things in a person I’m sorry to announce you’ve made the acquaintance of an IT.

When coming into contact with an IT it’s important to know that the ITs actions are the ITs responsibility. It’s not your fault that you were preyed on by an IT.

The best course of action is to cut the IT off. Any attempts at engaging an IT to find out the truth will likely end up in a demented merry-go-round where the IT repeats the same mistruths while insisting their feelings for you are true.

Last but not least, if you’ve decided to leave an IT in the dust, do find someone to speak to about the events, whether friends or a counsellor. There’s a lot of self-recrimination that happens when someone lets an IT into their lives and the last thing someone who’s been afflicted with an IT needs is to let that experience weigh them down. Talk to someone and work through any issues, so that you can get the happiness you deserve.

Karma will come for the IT.

If you are an IT, with time and some effort I believe you’ll be able to rehabilitate yourself. I am sorry that you missed out on the lessons that teach us all how to treat human beings with respect and dignity. But as I’ve mentioned, where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve even gathered some reference materials that may help you with this journey:

Ego is the enemy by Ryan Holiday - available on book depository (not an ad)

A wiki how page on how to be kind: https://www.google.com.sg/amp/s/m.wikihow.com/Be-Kind%3famp=1

And if all else fails, Elmo and friends will tell you all about Respect in this easy to understand video: https://youtu.be/GOzrAK4gOSo

Thanks for reading and hugs and love to anyone who’s ever dealt with an IT in their lives.

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years

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The Middleman Full Series Review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (twelve out of twelve)

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

41.34%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Four.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

None.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Four who appear in more than one episode, three who appear in at least half the episodes, and three who appear in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Fifty. Seven who appear in more than one episode, two who appear in at least half the episodes, and one who appears in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Casting aside—a series centering on a Latina Woman of Color remains notable—the series isn’t particularly interested in excelling on this score. And while there’s nothing huge bringing the score down, there’s a quite a few tiny things which do. (Average rating of 2.92).

General Season Quality:

Quite strong, both as a comedy and when appreciated on its own terms. Understands the appeal of comic books and manages to replicate it more consistently and better than more traditional, and arguably more accurate, takes.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

When I chose to revisit this series, I was afraid that the decade between when it aired and now would make the show less enjoyable than it originally was. Things have changed considerably since 2008, and not only has TV come to embrace superhero narratives of the sort The Middleman often makes reference to, it has also made considerable leaps when it comes to representation. Going back into it, I was nervous that what had once felt fresh and funny would now feel familiar, offensive, or simply unfunny. Fortunately, no. While there are certainly things that feel more bothersome now than they did in 2008—for example, the series feels heteronormative in a way it did not before—taken as a whole, The Middleman holds up better than I’d hoped.

I read a lot of comic books. My father, who has who has been collecting them for roughly fifty years, instilled in me a love for the medium, and while time has increased my disappointment in mainstream comic books, and their consistent inability to make the most out of the toys they’ve created, my affection for them as a whole continues undiminished. The Middleman, then, is right up my alley. It loves comic books too, and is actually better than many of them.

The Middleman is,first and foremost, familiar. Its elements recall a million things. Wendy Watson has a lot in common with Buffy. The Middleman would fit right in with the Doctor. The universe the characters inhabit plays by comic book rules, and knows that the audience is aware of them. Taken together, all of these things, could have very easily led to a very derivative package, which makes it all the more surprising that the series feels as singular as it does.

Part of the appeal of super-hero comic books is the way their diverse, sometimes contradictory narratives, told by various creators, interlock over years, and even decades, to create larger stories, which in turn help make the world’s setting feel large and interesting, and worth exploring even if it’s not through the eyes of the stories’ protagonists. It’s an approach that requires a certain amount of time and looseness, and it’s one that has proven somewhat difficult to translate to the screen.

In a landscape that has become saturated with superhero narratives, The Middleman still stands out as one of the few which best captures the appeal of superhero universes. It’s one thing to tell the story of Supergirl; it’s another to tell the story in which Supergirl exists as part of a world that feels just as dense and weird and funny as she is. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in ten years, hasn’t quite managed it, at least not consistently.

The Middleman, however, feels large. It feels dense. Its adventures may be confined largely to a limited set of locations set within a single city, but nevertheless, the series manages, in twelve episodes, to convey a larger world and more history than other shows manage in three times the space and four times the budget. What’s more, it does so effortlessly and fearlessly. It gets that the audience is willing to buy stories of fish that turn people into zombies, or vampire puppets, or two werewolf administrations, and is willing to do so without trouble, as long as the stories are told with confidence and are bolstered clever writing and good characters.

Fortunately, The Middleman has those in spades.

As a character, Wendy Watson is fascinating; like the series itself, she’s both very familiar and yet stunningly unique. As mentioned, she exists in the same ecological niche as Buffy—snarky, clever, unconcerned with tradition, zealously determined to not let her job take over her life—while at the same feeling quite different in important ways, largely centering around the fact that the series isn’t concerned with making Wendy miserable. While Buffy’s destiny is considered a burden, Wendy’s job as a Middleman-in-training is not only something she got to choose (and can presumably abandon at any moment) but something that ultimately makes her life richer. In fact, that Wendy is satisfied with all aspects of her life may be the most radical thing about the series: yes, she can have it all, and it doesn’t cause the world to explode. That this is all true for a Latina woman of color makes it all the more notable, and important.

As a Puerto Rican of color, I really appreciate the depiction of Wendy’s Latinidad, which informs her character in subtle but defined ways. She feels like my friends and I do, which is not something I can say about a lot of Latino characters. Furthermore, I love that Wendy has friends and people who love her and are concerned for her happiness. While it makes perfect sense for her, as a Buffy analogue, to have them, that she gets to have them as a woman of color makes it all the more important, given the frequent explicit and implicit expectation that women of color be supporting characters in other people’s stories, without wants or desires or weaknesses of their own. Wendy cares and is cared for; that matters.

Another element that makes Wendy familiar is that she is a geek, one who feels considerably more authentic than that character type usually does. Not only are her interests more specific and varied than the norm—her reference pool goes beyond Star Wars and the X-Men—her geekery is not presented as an obstacle in her life,or something that prevents her from being socially and romantically successful. In a world in which loud, misogynistic, and often white elements within the geek communities would claim that they are oppressed because of their interests, it feels heartening to see the show make a counter-argument. The Middleman understands geeks better than those who would most violently claim that label do, and that makes me happy.

Take all of these elements, add Natalie Morales’ consistently fantastic performance, and the fact that Wendy Watson is the honest-to-goodness protagonist of the show, and you have a character that remains a standout in the television landscape, even now.

Then there’s The Middleman.

Now, I quite like the Middleman. Not only is he responsible for many of the show’s laughs, the writing and Matt Kesslar’s acting manage to ground all his peculiarities and make them feel plausible, compelling and human, instead of allowing them to overwhelm the character. At the same time, though, there are parts of him I no longer care for as much as I once did.

In general, I find The Middleman hard to pin down. Parts of him remind me of characters like Sherlock’s Sherlock—quirky geniuses who are allowed to run roughshod over other people’s lives because they are allegedly the only people who can do what they do (and, subtextually, because they are white and male). Early on, that impression feels borne out, as he does things like manipulating events to ensure a second meeting with Wendy, or suggesting that Sensei Ping, another quirky (if non-white) genius, should have free rein to be an ass. At the same time, there is a refreshing lack of ego to him: as he’ll tell you, he’s just the Middleman, one in a decades-long line, and this is both a vital element in his characterization and the show’s overall narrative: if he could become the Middleman, there’s no reason why Wendy can’t. Together, these two elements feel somewhat hard to reconcile.

Another element that bemuses me about the Middleman is his sensibilities, which suggest a certain type of conservatism—he’s a fan of old westerns and their brand of rugged masculinity, drinks milk, foregoes swearing, styles himself in a way intended to honor Dwight Eisenhower, and expresses a degree of gender essentialism—and are therefore hard to square with his overall demeanor and actions, which suggest a generally more open character. It feels as if the parts of him that recall fake 50’s wholesomeness should define him in more fundamental ways than they actually do; instead they just exist, both being and not being a fundamental part of his personality, and feeling contradictory in ways I’m not sure are intentional. It’s not enough to ruin the character, but it’s the sort of thing that makes me newly skeptical.

The Middleman spends most of his on-screen time with Wendy, and aforementioned hiccups aside, the series absolutely nails their partnership: its evolution, from the moment of their accidental meeting to their reunion after Wendy is temporarily lost in a parallel Earth, is the one of the series most enjoyable long-term stories. They are, without question, one of my favorite screen duos ever. However, a large part of what makes The Middleman special is that this is far from the show’s only crucial dynamic. The Middleman may grow to be a crucially important person in Wendy’s life, but he is far from the only person, and that matters a lot.

A tendency I’ve noted in television is that love and affection tend to be portrayed as finite resources, which can only be divvied among people in uneven slices—there’s the one single central relationship, and every other becomes peripheral. Exceptions to this are scarce: Nikita was one; this is another. Wendy not only has the Middleman, but she also has Lacey, and Tyler, and Noser, and the people in her apartment, and even Ida, and all of these feel as important to Wendy as saving the world; it is a key part of the series’ appeal.

Which brings us to Lacey.

As Wendy’s best friend and the Middleman’s love interest, Lacey is a far bigger character here than she was in the comic book the series is based on. She is also, thanks to the scripts and Brit Morgan, a consistent pleasure. At the same time, rewatching the show, Lacey became another of my chief sources of unease. While I continue to enjoy Lacey and Wendy’s relationship, I now enjoy her relationship with Middleman considerably less than I once did. The two characters together are electric,but there’s so much iffy stuff in the margins that it’s hard to actually root for them the way the show wants me to. In other words, it really bugs me that Lacey doesn’t care to know the Middleman’s name, and it especially bugs me considering the other characters she is romantically tied to.

It’s one thing for Lacey to be so smitten with The Middleman that she doesn’t care about his name—that can be explained away as a necessary conceit of the story. However, when she also shows signs that she instantly taken with the Middleman of 1969, and when the show plays around with pairing her with canonical-waste-of-space Pip, then it feels like something else is going on here. Like with the Middleman’s quirks, it suggests something, but I’m not sure what that is, and it’s prominent enough to make me wary. It’s almost enough to make me wish for her to get over the Middleman and actually got romantic with Wendy—at least, as long as they make a space for Tyler.

Of Wendy’s three core relationships, the one with Tyler is the most superfluous to the narrative, insofar as the narrative does just fine without him when he’s not around. And yet, I’m glad to have him around, in part because of how refreshing it feels to have a white male character confident enough to have no ego that needs defending. Given his and Wendy’s circumstances—he’s broke, unemployed, and struggling as an artist, while she has a job she enjoys and takes up most of her time, which also happens to be the job he could have had—it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have struggle with his insecurities, and to have him be the character in the relationship most in need of support. Instead, he manages to feel shockingly mature, and subsequently far more appealing than the usual love interest. That the show feels no need to attempt to make him Wendy’s equal feels particularly refreshing.

The Middleman’s web of interconnected characters and relationships helps ground a series that could easily feel insubstantial or bogged down by either its humor or superhero elements in something real. While part of me wishes the series’ universe included more people of color in general, and more Latino people specifically (the only other one is Wendy’s prominent but perpetually offscreen mother) their presence would only improve what is already a very solid group. Overall, it’s quite easy to imagine the series working as a “proper” superhero show, in part because the characters work so well.

Not that I’d want a more serious The Middleman. A case could be made that it is precisely because it is not interested in being a Serious Superhero Story that it succeeds where many Serious Superhero Stories don’t. It is because the series isn’t concerned about making a boy band made up of four Joshes five exiled intergalactic tyrants feel like an insurmountable threat (until the inevitable surmounting) that it can focus on making them entertaining and memorable and fun. It is because the series isn’t interested in making superheroics the only thing that matters that it can make it feel so vibrant and vital. It is because the series isn’t interested in filling its romances with angst that they are so appealing and important. No, The Middleman isn’t interested in that: it knows what it is, and what it is is a damn satisfying package, even after all these years.

#The Middleman #full series review #Bechdel Test #female representation #submissions #mimeparadox #submission

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