#Boston cultural attractions

[madhubabudotblog]

Boston's Prestigious Universities: A Hub of Education and Innovation

Introduction Welcome to Boston, a city where history meets modern charm, creating a unique blend that captivates every visitor. Known for its pivotal role in the American Revolution, Boston is not just a city but a living museum of America’s birth. This blog takes you on a journey through Boston’s rich historical background, its prestigious educational institutions, vibrant cultural scene, and…

[sardonic-the-writer]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

↳ includes: scout, engineer, heavy, medic, sniper, and spy (i forgot demo i'm so sorry)

↳ warnings: bad translations, slight mentions of world war two and malpractice

↳ song: with a little help from my friends—joe cocker

masterlist | commissions | carrd

𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐭

• He would be so smug about it

• Puffing his chest out and everything

• His friends in the past- and even family members -have teased him for mispronouncing words or speaking too fast, and it’s made him a bit self conscious about the way he talks. But after hearing that you find it endearing, its a giant ego boost for him

• “Yeah dat’s right! Who’s awesome? I’m awesome!” Scout smiles as he flexes his arms in your face, subjecting you to what he likes to call a surprise gun show. You pretend to hate it as you shove his arm away, but chuckle all the same

• He’s already gloated before that he already knew his accent was the best. Boston is the greatest place in the world after all! But hearing it from you really just sent him over the moon

• Makes a point to talk to you a lot more now; as if he didn’t already

• “Yo! Hey did you see that kill out there? I totally messed dat Spy up! One wrong step and pow! He’s dead meat!”

• “I saw Scout. I was covering your flank while you did it, remember?”

• “Yeah yeah, but I just thought you’d like ta hear about it again.”

𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫

• Didn’t consider himself to have an accent until you pointed him out

• Sure, he says the occasional y’all and ain’t, but not enough to qualify as a whole different way of speaking

• It wasn’t until he dropped a hammer on his foot and cursed that he understood what you’d meant

• “What in the sam hill! Sweet hell!” He’d exclaimed, startled. Once the throbbing in his leg had subsided, Engineer replayed his words in his head, making a slight o with his mouth as he realized you were probably right. To some extent at least

• He was a born and raised Texas boy, so it makes sense that the culture rubbed off

• Doesn’t understand at first that you find it nice. Maybe he thought you pointed it out just because you could? He’s a bit distracted when it comes to anything but machinery, so he misses context sometimes

𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲

• Surprised that someone like you who can speak English fluently finds his mannerisms attractive

• Gets frustrated sometimes when he can’t remember certain words in English. Heavy is a very smart man, so it aggravates him when he looks illiterate in front of his team

• That’s why hearing that you like his mother tongue caught him by surprise

• “But you don’t know any Russian?” He’d rumbled out as a question. When you shook your head no, still sporting a smile, his eyebrows furrowed further

• “Nah. But I like hearing it when it comes from you. It sounds more natural. Like you’re more comfortable than normal, you know?”

• You’re technically right. When Heavy slips into Russian, often whilst talking to Sasha or simply forgetting that not everyone on the team know how to speak it, he is more comfortable in his words. They flow better, and he’s flattered that you’ve noticed

• One hundred percent offers to teach you Russian in his spare time. He finds it slightly adorable how you stumble over words in your broken translations, but always manages to softly correct you

• He’s a really good teacher

𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜

• Positively thrilled that you like his voice

• When you tell him for the first time, he goes into shock for a moment before breaking out into the biggest smile you’ve seen. Somehow its a perfect balance between excited and malicious

• “Do you hear zhat Archemedies? Mein freund here enjoys my accent!” He cooes at his bird, chuckling in a way that would make anyone’s insides squirm

• Once you look past Medic’s initially devious reaction, it’s very clear he enjoys knowing this

• If anything, the ex-doctor would have thought that you’d enjoy the more stereotypically romantic sounding languages. Spanish, Latin, etc

• German has always been considered harsh or scary sounding, and it turned a lot of people away from hiring him after the events of World War Two, which he understood. Still, Medic finds himself absolutely tickled that you are drawn to his accent

• Finds himself slipping more and more into German while doing checkups on you now. When he catches himself, he translates most of what’s he’s said back to you. But sometimes he’ll simply forget, and it leaves you wondering if he’s offered you a glass of water or the opportunity to swap your bladder out

• You sincerely hoped it was the former

𝐒𝐧𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐫

• Oh my god you killed him

• Sniper is very reserved. Living in his camper, hunting his own game for dinner instead of joining the others, literally pissing in jars, etc etc

• Being a man of few words comes part and parcel with that; which normally works out just find because Scout talks enough for ten people

• Hasn’t said much to you before. He mostly communicates in head nods or slight tilts of his coffee mug in your direction. Maybe a few ‘good mornin’s’ tossed around, but nothing more than that

• “You know, you should talk more.” You’d said to him one day while pouring a fresh pot of tea you had just boiled into your own mug. He preferred black coffee himself, but whatever floats your boat

• “You voice.” You elaborated after a sip. You must have noticed his confused look as you carried on. “It’s nice. Can’t imagine that you don’t have gals throwing themselves at you all the time because of it.”

• Suddenly very grateful he wasn’t drinking any of his brew at the time, because what you said surely would have made him choked

• He, in fact, had had a few ladies approach him in town before saying something along the same lines. Even a few fellas. But nothing made him blanch this strongly like you had

• Excuses himself as he walks out of the room suddenly, tilting his hat down to cover his face no one can see the furious red tint forming

• Sniper leaves you in the communal kitchen. Holding a steaming cup of liquid and looking very confused

𝐒𝐩𝐲

• Already knew before you told him

• To anyone else, it would have been passible as just curiosity. But Spy’s job is to know things, and it is an undeniable fact that you found his voice attractive

• Doesn’t utilize this weapon often. You are not a weak willed person swayed by just a few words, so when he needs something he pulls out all the stops

• Of course, that doesn’t stop him from being impressed when you eventually admit your little not-so-secret-secret to him. And of your own free will. He didn’t have to pry it out of you, which was a feat on its own

• Much like Heavy, he extends the offer of teaching you how to learn his language. Now that he no longer has this knowledge as a bargaining chip, he might as well seize the opportunity to teach you a proper language

• Considers using electroshock therapy to condition you faster, but nixes it pretty quick

• Again, like Heavy, he finds it cute how horrible you are at French. More amused than anything, but he can appreciate the way you practice verbs in your free time even when he isn’t leaning over your shoulder

• That you know of, that is

• Praises you often in french, letting excited phrases slip when you nail a particularly hard set of words

• “Merveilleux ! Tu t’améliores beaucoup, ma petite. Encore une fois.”

• While you don’t understand the full extent to his words, you smile and continue on, eventually realizing what he had said later in a fit of embarrassment

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Only Friends, Boston, and Queer Culture

I wanted to talk a little bit about an observation that I made about Boston and how he acquires sex partners (i.e. who he picks up, how he picks them up, where he picks them up, and where he chooses to have sex). Now, again, we are only two episodes in so I will not presume to make a pattern of anything quite yet, and I am looking forward to seeing how my current observations shift in light of any new information coming out of future episodes. But, it was notable to me that the only times Boston has been seen actively pursuing a second sexual encounter with someone is either in public spaces or after he has had sex with them in public.

Because Boston is very sexual, we actually have a lot of data points on him already, (and will likely get many more, seeing as Boston has been in 5 out of 7 of the heavy makeout/sex scenes in the show so far). What we have seen so far is a one night stand with Drake’s character after Boston is picked up at a bar and brought back to unnamed-Drake-character’s apartment; Boston returning for a second and third sexual encounter with Nick after he and Nick fuck for the first time in the cellphone repair shop; and Boston openly flirting with and trying to tempt Top in to sex in exclusively public spaces.

Cruising 

What is Cruising and Why is it Important? 

Photograph by Steven Barker

I realize that there are many people here who may be unfamiliar with the term/concept of ‘cruising’. As a self-defined “baby gay” there are many terms that came out of the past decades’ queer culture that I was and am personally unfamiliar with. As such, I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with the terminology. “Cruising” is a code-word/gay slang that refers to an individual or individuals ‘walking or driving around a locality, called a cruising ground, in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one time variety’ (Wikipedia). 

In her essay Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism, Jody Ahlm (then PhD candidate, now Dr.) states the following: “Cruising traditionally occurs in bars, clubs, or public spaces such as parks and public restrooms where men generally signal sexual interest in another man through established non-verbal signals (Be ́rube ́, 1996; Delany, 1999; Humphreys and Rainwater, 1975; Tewksbury, 2002).”

For the sake of simplicity, cruising is a term applied to the action of (usually, but not exclusively) gay men seeking out casual sex in public spaces. 

Cruising is and was an important aspect of queer culture, for a number of different reasons. “Tearooms” or private public spaces that were adapted to accommodate gay sex (public bathrooms, for example). While a benefit of tearooms was instantaneous sex, a much more important and notable aspect of tearooms was who in the queer community was frequenting these cruising locations

Of the bar crowd in gay (homosexual) society, only a small percentage would be found in park restrooms. But this more overt, gay bar clientele constitutes a minor part of those in any American city who follow a predominantly homosexual pattern. The so-called closet queens and other types of covert deviants make up the vast majority of those who engage in homosexual acts- and these are the persons most attracted to tearoom encounters…It may be more surprising for the outside to discover that most of these [tearoom participants] are married. Indeed, 54 percent of my research subjects are married and living with their wives. (Tearoom Trade, Laud Humphreys, 1970)

In short, cruising and cruising locations are important to ensuring that men who have sex with men (MSM) who are closeted, married, or do not frequent bars, have an opportunity to engage in sex with other men. (Tradition of sex cruising at Aquatic Park to end. John Geluardi, 2001)

How Cruising has Changed Over Time 

Overall, cruising is a lot less popular now than it was in the 1960s and 1980s, in part due to the AIDs epidemic and concerns of HIV transmission (Ahlm, 2017). Ahlm’s essay argues that the AIDS epidemic “initiated a trend toward monogamy among gay men” and that apps like Grindr have shifted the landscape of sexual interest and politics towards a “contested cultural space where publicness and privateness co-exist, creating tensions for self-presentation that are structured by contemporary sexual politics.”

Sociologists have identified a shifting in cruising culture from public, in-person spaces to private, online spaces. In her research, Ahlm noted that none of her subjects who used Grinder reported engaging in public or semi-public sex or being asked to engage in public or semi-public sex by another person. So we are seeing the landscape of where and how gay men engage in sex shift ever increasingly towards private spaces. We can ask ourselves why that may be: 

Dalton (black/mixed,5 28) says,”People like to maintain a certain image of themselves, and everybody wants to appear chaste but desirable at the same time, and whatever. People will say ‘‘Oh you’re going on there and you’re trying to do that [find sex], I just talk to people and I never do anything.’’ I’m like ‘‘Sure, right’’ [sarcastic tone].” The multiplicity of intentions on Grindr allows for plausible denial of promiscuity, while the app’s reputation requires constant management of the stigma in order for that denial to be plausible. Like the majority of users, Dalton’s profile says he is on the app for ‘‘Friends, Chat, Networking.’’ However, sexual interaction is the goal of his in-person meetings, and he only chats with people he finds attractive and would potentially like to have sex with. This contradiction between stated intentions and actual use is not unique to Dalton’s Grindr use, it is the rule rather than the exception (Ahlm, 2017)

While privacy can be a valued aspect of people’s personal life experiences, shifting cruising culture to major online spaces designed specifically for gay people, and having sex with people who connect across mobile apps, is contributing to respectability politics: 

Shifting cruising to private spaces—both actual sex acts and the practices associated with finding a sexual partner in a public space, furthers the sanitation of gay physical spaces. Users can meet sexual partners without ever leaving home, and public gay spaces become sites for platonic socializing. Gay men go to the bars with their friends to hang out, not to cruise…The performance of cruising is desexualized by the plausible deniability of using a phone app and the plausible deniability of Grindr itself, as discussed earlier. It is not just public sex that is disappearing, so too is the public pursuit of sex. This is not to say that gay bars have been completely desexualized…However, as Orne (2016) shows in his ethnography of Chicago’s Boystown, they are the cultural markers that make the neighborhood a popular place for bachelorette parties ‘‘on safari’’. They are not the same as a visible collective practice of searching for and choosing a sexual partner for the night, regardless of where the sex occurs later. (Ahlm, 2017)

TL;DR: The act of looking for sex partners and engaging in public or semi-public sex as a result (“cruising”) has been steadily phasing out as a practice in gay culture, heading towards more private sexual encounters with sex partners who meet on mobile apps, ultimately resulting in a sanitized image and partial desexualization of gay spaces/bars.

Boston’s Cruising Habits 

When I was reading that Ahlm piece, I could not help but think about our very first introduction to the characters of Only Friends in Episode 1. The show opens at a gay bar, we go around listening to Mew’s descriptions of what archetypes his friends fit in to, at which point we learn that everyone in attendance at the bar that particular evening are wearing wristbands indicating their availability to be hit on. Which is making me feel like Jojo and co. (Ninew, Den, the rest of the writing crew) are placing their characters in a past gay culture, giving them an opportunity to return to roots of public cruising. Not every character will engage in such activities, but we know for a fact that Boston and Top are cruising in some capacity from the outset of the show (Boston trying to talk his way into a threesome with Bar Stranger #1, Boston getting picked up by Bar Stranger #2 [aka unnamed-Drake-character], Top striking up conversation with Mew after Mew bumps into him), and with the direct references Jojo and co. are making to Queer As Folk (UK) (1999) if the goal of Only Friends is to highlight queer culture, I would not be surprised. 

While we are only two episodes in at the time I am writing this, it was intriguing to me that Boston appears to be one of the few characters engaging in more traditional cruising culture. It is clear that most of the main characters frequent Yo’s bar, though it appears the friend group uses the space more as a place to hang out with one another, rather than a space to cruise. All except for “The Hunter”, Boston, who is seen constantly attempting to pick up, or being picked up by other queer men in a bar setting. We know that Top also frequents the bar, and we have not as of yet seen him with any other friends, so we can presume that Top spends his time at Yo’s bar cruising as well (based on the fact that he has slept with Boston and he did hit on Mew at the bar, but we don’t have any definitive evidence of that yet because we don’t know how Top and Boston met, and Top has only actively been pursuing Mew thus far). 

A trend I saw in the first two episodes when it comes to Boston that I find particularly noteworthy (aka, is a trend I want to track as the show progresses to see if that trend continues), is that Boston is only ever repeating sex with people who engaged in public sex with him in the first place. From flashbacks we see Top and Boston making out in a photobooth, an implication there that Top and Boston then fucked in the photobooth since “once was enough” for Top and Boston. The first time that Boston and Nick fuck, they do so in the aisle of the cellphone repair shop. Nick may turn off the lights, but that does not negate the fact that there is a chance that Boston and Nick may be walked in on and caught by an unassuming customer. When Boston hits on Top, it is in a public space: the bathrooms of Yo’s bar, when Boston attempts to initiate a second sexual encounter with Top, it again is in a public space: the locker room/showers at the wakeboarding place.

Public Sex, Photography, and Brewing Thoughts about Boston 

Image by @nongnaopat

While I was reading up on cruising, I came across a couple articles with quotes and observations that immediately made me think of Boston, and a question started brewing in my mind: 

Is Boston a physical manifestation of the queer hookup cultures 60s-80s? 

Boston’s Personality v. Public Sex

Again, we have only seen two episodes of Only Friends so I am not yet secure in my own interpretations of Boston. However, I was thinking about the conversations that occurred the other day about how Boston must exert control over others (@respectthepetty), and how he is ready and willing to meddle in Mew’s life by trying to seduce Top, but that there is noticeable fear and slight panic at the thought that Mew might catch him and Top together in the shower (@stuffnonsenseandotherthings).

There was something that just spoke to me so strongly about Boston’s character archetypes in relation to the conversations brought up in Chapter 6: Tearoom Trade: Tales of Public Sex of the book Marginal People in Deviant Places: Ethnography, Difference, and the Challenge to Scientific Racism by Janice M. Irvine. 

In this chapter, Irvine discusses the essay Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Spaces written by Laud Humphreys. Within this chapter, Irvine states “Humphreys argued that tearoom participants varied in vulnerability to risk of exposure. He noted that married men and men who did not have career autonomy were highly vulnerable to negative consequences if discovered in the tearooms.” (Note: my understanding of “tearooms” from this reading is that they are public restrooms that have been transformed to better support instant sex, i.e. a broken window for a lookout, glory holes, walls removed between stalls, etc.) While an assumption could be made that vulnerable men would not engage in public sex, that assumption does not carry through to reality. Humphreys further claims that highly vulnerable men did still engage in public sex via tearoom visits, but they employed protective strategies to mitigate any suspicion of their queerness, often a hypermoral one. 

I know “hypermoral” is not a term that anyone who has observed Boston for more than twenty seconds would really attribute to his character, but what did speak to me is what Humphreys says about the strategies employed by the highly vulnerable: 

The secret offender may well believe he is more righteous than the next man—hence his shock and outrage, his disbelieving indignation, when he is discovered and discredited…Subjected to harsh social condemnation and legal penalties, the tearoom participant was likely to turn his anger and hatred on himself or others in his group. “Worse yet,” Humphreys argued, “he may justify himself by degrading others, displacing his hostility onto outgroups in the manner of the authoritarian personality.” (Irvine, 2022)

Now which Only Friend character are we thinking of based on the quote above? 

“Hence his shock…when he is discovered…” 

“The tearoom participant was likely to turn his anger and hatred on himself or others in his group” 

“He may justify himself by degrading others”

One thing we do know about Boston is that he currently does not have career autonomy. He wants to be a photographer, but he is studying business because he may have to take over his father’s company (YouTube: Only Friends, Episode 2, Part 2/4, timestamp: 2:27). How much that pressure is really on him and how highly vulnerable Boston may be if caught engaging in gay, public sex remains to be seen, but to me it is worth noting. A research question to be asked: Why does Boston act the way he does? Is he vulnerable in some way and trying to compensate for it, or is just genuinely an asshole? Not sure, but I look forward to finding out. 

An additional similarity that immediately came to mind in my readings and their relation to Boston was a reference to Rechy and his writings about male hustlers: 

Rechy wrote about how male hustlers selling sex navigated the toilets. He cited the norms of the sexual marketplace with sociological precision: “Stand at the urinal long after youre [sic] through pissing. At the slightest indication of interest from someone in one of the cubicles, go up to him quickly before he gets any free ideas and say: ‘I’ll make it with you for twenty.’ (Irvine, 2022)

Boston is not a sex worker, he is not asking to be paid for his time, but the way he approaches Top in the bar bathroom to try to prompt a second sexual encounter does allude to the hustler culture. Top is standing at the urinal when Boston approaches

He strikes up conversation with Top who only really seems to be partially engaged, Top walks away from the urinal to wash his hands, Boston follows, placing his hands around Top’s, trying to proposition sex, appealing to their supposedly similar approaches to sex.

This is not a direct comparison to be sure, but I just wanted to mention it because it felt similar enough to be a reference. This reminded me too of the nod Jojo and Ninew had to gay male sexual culture in The Warp Effect when Alex has his shoulders massaged by a random patron propositioning sex at Jedi’s bar while he is standing at the urinals. Or to the more direct reference to cruising that Jojo and Aof put in to the character of Arm in Gay OK Bangkok, or Army in The Warp Effect (two pieces which I will continue to say are required viewings before [or at this point in conjunction with] Only Friends). 

Boston’s Interest in Photography v. Public Sex Debates

Another aspect of Boston’s character that feels relevant to previous queer culture is his interest in photography itself, because photography has its own ties to tearooms and public sex. 

In 1964, The Florida Legislative Investigative Committee “published a pamphlet that featured an explicit photograph of a man engaged in a sex act in a public restroom. The report, dubbed “the purple pamphlet,” was intended to shock readers and mobilize antigay repression.” (Irvine, 2022). 

As a warning I am about to cite a pretty big chunk of text, but it is important information: 

Photography became one of several technologies police and moral entrepreneurs used to observe and produce evidence of sexual deviance. Yet photographic surveillance could also be subverted. After the tearoom photograph was published in the 1964 Homosexuality and Citizenship brochure, conservatives attacked it as pornographic. The committee quickly removed it from the report, but the photograph was reprinted and vigorously marketed by Guild Press, a publisher of homoerotic materials. Gay pulp publishing was growing by 1964, and Guild Press, established in 1962, was no doubt gleeful to find and market this photograph. The Guild advertisement pointed out that this was the only “action photo” of a glory hole scene that had ever been in print, and as historian Thomas Waugh noted, “the glory hole photo became famous.”23 The “purple pamphlet” and its widespread dissemination was an early case of how social and religious conservatives played a significant role in making visible the sexual representation that they condemned. (Irvine, 2022)

Thinking about Boston and his interest in photography, we can notice another potential link to queer culture. Going in to Boston’s darkroom, we see a number of photographs on his wall of hot men in various stages of undress. With the preceding scene of Boston taking a photo of Nick after they fuck establishing some context, we can make some quick assumptions about who those men are to Boston and what was occurring prior to the photo being taken. 

Even within two episodes of Only Friends the camera has almost served as an additional character, bringing us in to the private-public spaces we aren’t supposed to witness. In a conversation I was having with @waitmyturtles, she made the absolutely brilliant point: “the camera of the show is messing around with what we perceive as privacy”. 

Sure Boston is making sexual advances on Top in the showers of a public locker room, but no one is supposed to know that, at least no one who could be actually, emotionally impacted by catching Top and Boston together. We see it, but we aren’t supposed to. 

But I want to move beyond the show’s actual camera to briefly touch upon the other cameras we have seen alluded to on screen so far. Kudos to whoever it was on tumblr that took the screen shots of the hook up between Neo and Drake and pointed out the web camera that was sitting at the top of the computer monitor. Now, we have absolutely no idea if that is relevant at all to future plot lines, if the web cam was on, or if any part of that sexual encounter will come back to haunt Boston. But I think it is worth mentioning the very real and easy possibility that the web cam could have been recording the room (whether it actually was or not). In this way, Boston is playing with fire around what aspects of himself and his sexuality are captured on a screen. 

When Boston and Nick hook up for the first time in the cellphone repair shop, Boston stops the make out session long enough to look around. No, not around, up. Up to the ceilings as if he is scanning the room for possible cameras. Again, we don’t know for sure if a) there are cameras there, b) if that is relevant at all to future plot lines or c) if that really was what Boston was doing. But either way, Nick catches on to Boston’s scanning of the room, and turns off the light so that they can’t be seen. 

In both of these cases, whether the cameras exist, are on, recording, or saving any information is not fully the point. The point I am trying to make here is that there are constantly opportunities to have gay sex be captured, and whether or not it is comes down sometimes to shit dumb luck.

Conclusion

gif by @maxescheibechlinichacheli

I am so fascinated by Boston’s character, just thinking about the ways he does and does not fit in to the archetypes of a highly vulnerable tearoom participant: in his interest being in photography, capturing the images of queer men post-coitus, in the way he approaches Top at the urinal trying to entice him in to sex, in the ways he engages with and thinks of other people, and I am very much looking forward to seeing if this trend continues or diverges. For instance, will we see a drastically different side of Boston if we see more of how he interacts with professors in school considering that the one time that he was really quiet and reserved was during the presentation in front of the entire class? Will Boston fall in to the “public saint/private sinner” dynamic that would root him firmly in behaviors of a highly vulnerable queer man engaging in public sex? Or will he drift away from that alignment? 

Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge that I am a Westerner and I am engaging and interpreting this show and the gay culture in this show through my own Western lens as well as the Western Gay Culture lens. However, I feel comfortable using these lenses to discuss, analyze, and identify threads of interest to follow throughout the show because: 

In 1984, the ‘Boston Bar Study’ conducted by Men of All Colors Together Boston (MACTB) cited numerous examples of widespread discrimination at gay bars in Boston against black men. Similar types of discrimination have also been cited in Los Angeles and New York (Wat, 2002). Even more troubling is that this type of behavior seems to be international as well*anywhere that gay white men come into contact with gay men of color (Ridge, Hee & Minichiello, 1999). One can only imagine how many others never make it into the new stories. Rather than isolated events attributable to racist owners of single bars, the attempt to patrol the borders of whiteness in gay-owned business establishments seems to be a systematic practice (They Don’t Want to Cruise Your Type: Gay Men of Color and Racial Politics of Exclusion, Chong-suk Han, 2007). 

In short, cruising, and discriminatory cruising practices are seen worldwide, and therefore I argue that gay culture in Thailand, while likely not identical, is similar enough to Western gay culture to apply similar frameworks, especially considering the aspects of gay culture Jojo and his co-creators have placed in their past works. 

Sources 

Ahlm, Jody (2017) Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism, Sexualities, DOI: 10.1177/1363460716665783

Chong-suk Han (2007) They Don't Want To Cruise Your Type: Gay

Men of Color and the Racial Politics of Exclusion, Social Identities, 13:1, 51-67, DOI:

10.1080/13504630601163379

Humphreys, Laud (1970) Tearoom Trade. 

Irvine, Janice M. (2022) Tearoom Trade: Tales of Public Sex, Marginal People in Deviant Places, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11519906.11

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @neuroticbookworm, @so-much-yet-to-learn, @waitmyturtles for their thought partnership, edits, and suggestions!

[thegildedbee]

Sherlock Fic Recs: Christmas Edition {2023}

❄️ Gather ~ ☃️ ☃️ ☃️ ~ 'round and 🎉 make 🎷merry🍹, all ye fic-loving fandom elves -- 'tis the season to shine a spotlight🕯️on Sherlockian Christmas fics!!! Here are some of my favorites -- I tried to pick ones that I haven't seen mentioned in recent lists that have been in my tumblr stream. Whether they're new to you, or just a reminder to re-visit faves, enjoy!!! ❄️ [In order of the year they were published.] ........................................................... 1. I'm Not His Date [2014] by objetpetita [ 17,029 words / T ] :: It all starts in a Boston coffee shop, where English professor Sherlock Holmes upends a visiting John Watson in a clever and fun "meet cute" (or "meet irritating-pompous-insufferable") in a whirlwind of Sherlockian proportions, and we're off to the races. There is a snowfight on the Common, Death Driving Miss Daisy: Lacan and Popular Culture, a Harry & Clara Christmas Eve wedding, witches, and a very boozy department party. It's as adorable as my favorite Christmas rom-com film, The Holiday. And it starts off with a corker of a first sentence: "It was morning, it was zero bloody degrees, everything around him was unfamiliar and American and cold, and John Watson was right on that inhuman precipice between still drunk and terribly hung over."

2. 5,687 (Approximately) [2015] by prettysailorsoldier [ 6,771 words / T ] :: Just a few years post-uni, Sherlock is enduring the agonies of a long-distance relationship with his boyfriend, who is on deployment in Afghanistan. During those times when John's on leave, the last people Sherlock wants to see are the idiots at the Met, so they've never caught sight of John and think he is a figment of Sherlock's imagination -- especially since he can't get home that Christmas. The set-up is sketched out with delightful fic flair, and the ending is not only sweet, but satisfyingly punitive [ c/o a very bamf John ]. The text messaging is some of my favorite writing in the Sherlock fandom -- their relationship in all of its multi-dimensionality comes through beautifully.

3. The 12 Truths of Christmas [2016] by @breath4soul [ 3,321 words / T ] :: This is a fic that has at its core the surfacing of unspoken emotional attraction betweenJohn and Sherlock via a very fun concept: “In place of some appalling or imbecilic gift inflicted upon me in the name of tradition on Christmas day, I propose that you provide me with one previously unknown fact about you for each day leading up to Christmas. 12 in total, John.” #9 has all the feels, and is a tour de force -- every time I re-read it it makes me break out in a smile, even though I know what's coming. Sherlock breaks out somewhat more: "Sherlock feels a flood of heat in several places at once. He stands up quickly and walks to his violin. He plays wild, erratic snaps of quick-paced music." The author has a whimsical and entirely understandable note to add: "You may fall in love with John reading this - I did." 4. The Romance Was There [2017] by @apliddell [ 4,011 words / G ] :: The author deserves an award for this being one of the best uses of Harry Watson in a fic, and of HW by Sherlock in a fic :-) 221B has never been cozier, Sherlock has never been more winsome, and John is a species type model of John in all of his clueless Johnness. The narrative dances along and sparkles and shines as seduction evolves, and Sherlock's rogueish charm is on full display. There's a poignant and endearing confessional letter, plus there's a Sherlock/Jeremy Brett reference that is absolute perfection in serving its role in helping the narrative quickstep the night away. 5. The Man in Aisle Ten [2020] by @blogstandbygo [ 1395 words / G ] :: Sherlock has several mysteries to unravel in the midst of Harrod's on Christmas Eve: what is the perfect gift for John? why is he having so much trouble identifying the perfect gift for John? and, incidentally, along the way to solving those, a local one. Luckily, Sherlock has Moira, master department store sleuth, to lead him to the solution. This fic is a small, perfect gift -- rather like the story's denouement --and is as witty as all of SBG's fics are. This is a veritable Peppermint Schnapps Hot Chocolate of a fic, warm, rich, sweet, delicious, tingly, and you'll find you reach the last bit much too fast, immediately requiring a refill. [ And there's a splendid podfic by @podfixx ! ]

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*fic repost recruits, perhaps??? ❤️ @totallysilvergirl, @7-percent, @discordantwords, @helloliriels, @elwinglyre, @mydogwatson

[kiyoitiepie]

My Favorite BL Dramas of 2023

happy new year to everyone who uses the gregorian calendar. we had so much good content come out this year. i'm gonna list my favs. please remember these are my personal faves and may be objectively terrible. do not be alarmed.

My Beautiful Man S2 and Movie

If you ask me this series is one of the best bls of all time. idc idc. im a hira and kiyoi girlie through and through. how many bl's do you know with 2 seasons and an original movie. not those repackaged ones that they try to hand feed us. an actual movie with a plot???? the bar is on the floor clearly. but hira and kiyoi are gonna surpass that bar every. single. time.

Love Tractor

I didn't hear enough people screaming about Love Tractor. crickets tbh. Which is blasphemous in my opinion. How could you be quiet when this lovely bumbling himbo with the dopiest grin is on your screen? look at him!!

Eighth Sense

10's across the board. No question. No notes.

this scene^ BROKE me

Our Dining Table

Ok hear me out. I didn't think this was the best bl in the world BUT it was so wholesome that it deserves a spot. top tier comfort show. It got me through many bad days. Admittedly, there were a few times I purposely put it on bc i knew it would put me to sleep. please don't jump me.

Unintentional Love Story

Now...I'm not a huge kbl person. However, this was really nice. Had a solid plot. I don't remember much abt it but I know there was pottery and I had a good time

Only Friends

This was culture. This was a movement. I will never forgive them for how they treated Boston. Even still, I was there every week ready for the chaos. I had the time of my life.

Bed Friend

It's hard to believe this came out this year. Like ??? But really that shows how much I've established this show as a classic in my mind. BED FRIEND? UEA? baddest bitch in the land?? KING? greenest flag out there???? (debatable but for the sake of my argument lets pretend). It had every element. good plot, great visuals, a little heat. like come on who else is doing it like them?

i just know if me and uea were ever in the same room he would judge me so much

Dangerous Romance

I've seen mixed reviews on this one but I had a fun time. Kanghan is a prissy little spoiled brat, but he's my prissy little spoiled brat. I loved their story progression. Which is saying a lot for me bc I don't like enemies to lovers. like why are we fighting? also "i'm an introvert" is the funniest shit i've heard all year.

La Pluie

this was so shockingly good i wish it got more attention. iqiyi in general really did their big one this year. when it rains you can only hear your soulmate? love!

Laws of Attraction

this was a rollercoaster. i started watching ironically because i thought it would be terrible when i saw the mc go super saiyan. that shit is still hilarious idc.

Love Syndrome III

Now before we start throwing tomatoes...let's hear me out. Nothing has caught my attention this year the way this series did. This was another series I was watching ironically until suddenly i wasn't. It's also just so funny that they released the third one without dropping a first or second. but bad bitches don't need to explain themselves. and YES love syndrome is a bad bitch. let's stop acting like we watch bl's solely for the quality. i don't need marvel cgi to have a good time. sometimes a dollar store wig and the most toxic couple you've ever seen is enough to make some shit shake. if this was released during the tharntype era??? oh bitches would've ate it up. HAPPILY. rant over.

Last Twilight

it's good man. what more can i say? i hope it doesn't disappoint me in the end.

Pit Babe

i'm very pleased. very much so. i know alot of folks went into this show expecting a little teehee. to laugh at the omegaverse racecar show. NOT ME. i've waited for this moment. and anyone who's seen me screaming in the tag can attest. this is a game changer. not just for bl but the fandom community at large. and don't even get me started on their chemistry. babe's smile whenever he's around charlie?? mama and papa?? MAMA AND FUCKING PAPA?? we deserve this and i will bask in it for as long as I can. jeff had better be pregnant by the end of the show.

^ that’s his charlie smile 🥲

[sergeifyodorov]

bad takes on twitter fill me with some kind of sick ass glee like. you think we should abolish the nhl draft and have teams attract talent by contracts + facilities + reputation? and you think that'll work outside of boston, toronto, pittsburgh, vancouver, and montreal?? and why do you think this. because european football does it. are you aware of the cultural differences between the two regions + requirements for the sport or. no. okay

[quidfree]

i love the old married couple portion of your follow up to sober ii (melodrama)! outsider povs just tickle the brain, especially in tsh where the characters are so just disconnected from normal society. out of curiosity, have you thought any more about how students/peers/other people view francis and richard throughout that au?

i love that portion too i think the idea of them as this long established couple (for all intents and purposes, altho they may have deviated from certain aspects of a nuclear family monogamous relationship) is so funny & interesting. like sober ii already does so much legwork from canon and then the followup even further so by the time we hit middle age it’s a free country for what is allowed.

you’re right in that the tsh cast are deep weirdos to anyone normal interacting w them. i think they have naturally changed somewhat by the time we reach them in that portion bc for francis he’s now (gag) middle class and sort of domesticated / for richard he’s like.. in a long term relationship w a man (it’s funny they have reverse things to get used to) & plus yk there’s the whole thing where they’re both deeply troubled individuals with abusive childhood drama and bad relationship history so probably sticking it out together has done some healing / good down the line. so in some ways they’re a little more Normal mentally. but that said they are still weirdo murderers with terrible personalities who would both annoy and enable each other so not that normal.

talking abt how they go from sober ii to where we see them in their 40s is a separate post so in terms of outsider pov specifically i’d say they do kind of stick to themselves (codependent freaks) but like in the neighbourhood / on campus / in montreal classics circles they def have relationships and certain uhh reputations that go with them.

richard’s students are a fairly niche group so i think as a whole they tend to like him- if nothing else he’s genuine in his love of the material and he’s attractive and kind of reserved so he’s probably at his least annoying / cringe / questionable when teaching despite his inner monologue. he probs has bad timekeeping (cf his flop job at hampden) and pretentious grading but generally okay. we know he comes across much more sane and sound to people who don’t know him well (very tartt, we love). and then they don’t know francis at all apart from Maybe as f. abernathy the classics translator guy. so realistically to the students they’re actually quite a cool addition to the student rumour mill. i think over the years there have been random glimpses of them but never anything interesting until the fic incident, or similar ones that make it obvious professor papen has what seems to be a boyfriend. then everyone is ‘literally obsessed’. i don’t know if anyone ever IDs them as witnesses to the hampden murder-suicides on a true crime podcast and then gets excited about their tragic backstory and inspiring romance, but that would be fun.

professional peers see more of them obviously, but they do still keep to themselves a lot. richard’s colleagues’ opinions vary depending on how much interaction they’ve had with him and in what context, bc he definitely has beef with administration and some colleagues whose courses he doesn’t respect. he’s professionally respectable though. francis is a fairly lowkey presence in translation- he got initial buzz from the julian student clout but he only sporadically networks. he definitely has culture friends who gossip amongst themselves about him vanishing from boston so close to the wedding and no one hearing from him until his book got published. alex from NY wants to fuck both of them but finds them annoying as talents and good in small doses as friends. most of that author circle is at least a little jealous of them as a couple, maybe because they flourish when amongst people they can close ranks on.

in terms of other canon charas… some of that feels like its own post too. judy does not particularly get why richard is into francis but she thinks they’re a hot item and she overall likes them and their weird little bohemian* lifestyle (*misrepresented). she thinks they’re a good match. charles would not have very nice things to say. i think he’d think richard ‘fell for it’ with francis. his own complicated relationship with francis would predispose him to think they weren’t a genuine item. if he saw them down the line as an established couple he would probably just find it funny. and camilla… she’s sort of like “good for you crazy kids”. like it’s completely random to her but it tickles her nihilistic brain. later esp if she’s around them in person for some reason she’s just completely on board with it and has a strong fondness for their relationship bc it’s like, this one weird positive thing to have come out of the whole hampden disaster, AND it’s taken a lot of the strain out of richard’s relationship to her even though he never especially lets go of his camilla-shrine. richard’s naturally Very Embarrassed about being in any way datey with francis around her but it tapers off with age/habit despite his best efforts. francis on the other hand perversely enjoys making richard uncomfortable around camilla. guess which one she enables.

[saltygilmores]

THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS: S3/EP6: TAKE THE DEVILED EGGS (PT 4)

Meanwhile, in Boston, the GG's arrive at Creepy Sherry's baby shower. Although Lorelai only intended to drop Rory off and skedaddle to do some shopping, Creepy Sherry lures Lorelai into the affair with the offer of free food and booze. The first half of the event is fairly unremarkable. Sherry isn't exhibiting the same alarmingly weird behavior around Rory as she did the first time she met her (YET). Crusty's incoming spawn will be named Georgia “GiGi”. As far as which Gilmore Girls infant’s life is more fucked just by virtue of being born, Gigi or Doula, at least Gigi has a slight positive advantage by having a normal name. Crusty's apartment is way too nice for a human cockroach to be living in. Sherry claims Christopher doesn't care whether his child is a boy or girl and why would he it's not like he's going to be spending any time with it whether it be boy girl or four eyed purple martian.

Sherry.... ran over a bunch of people with her car and her friend helped her cover it up? The tone in this woman's voice and Sherry’s non response to this accusation are way too netural to tell if she's kidding or not. I tried Googling whether or not this was a reference to some current event of the day (did some celebrity run down a bunch of people with a car in the early 2000s?) but it was inconclusive. Edit: thank you @katereads for confirming that there was indeed a publicist who rammed her car into a group of people in the early 2000s and this is likely what CreepySherry's friend is referencing. It made big headlines at the time and Lizzie Grubman was a household name and late night talk show fodder. I knew I wasn't dreaming that.

I'm sexually attracted to painstakingly alphabetized collections of things and I hate that this beauty resides in Crusty's home.

Women are always cleaning up after useless men on this show.

I beg to differ.

The party continues with little incident as the ladies play silly baby shower games. Lorelai and Rory are uncomfortable because they're quirky and Not Like The Other Basics and Rory kinda looks she has been swallowed alive by social anxiety nearly to the point of tears and Lorelai's pop culture references & jokes don't land causing awkward silences (again). Rory performs some truly ear-splitting karaeoke. Lorelai provides Sherry with her special brand of very helpful commentary.

Okay "I have to childbirth at 5pm" is hilarious. No ine is asking the important question. How did Crusty manage to land this intelligent, beautiful and ambitious over achiever? She claims to live less than 3 miles from Harvard University, yet Crusty is the best man the entire city of Boston has to offer?

Says Sherry as Christopher's first baby that she's at least somewhat aware he had no contact with for 16 years sits feet away from her. Pregnancy hormones have scrambled her brains and she's talking complete nonsense. (but she's clearly already lost her marbles long ago seeing as she had sex with Christopher to begin with).

That is...a thing someone wrote.

This is the distance Sherry claims she lives from Harvard. How utterly convenient. Some very casual and not scientific Googling where I could very well be wrong tells me that the distances between the closest points in Boston proper to Harvard are a lot further than this, more like 5+ miles, but okay. Fine. It's close enough. It's tv. Sherry and Crusty might also live in a Boston-adjacent area and everyone is like eh close enough, let's call it Boston anyway, like Dean saying he's from Chicago the city but he was actually raised in Chicago's sewers. Honestly I just wanted an excuse to go on a side quest to determine if AmyShermanPalladino pulls these numbers completely out of her ass or if there's some research behind it. Like where 22.8 miles from Yale lands you on a map. Sherry claims she doesn't like children and never planned to get pregnant but Crusty got her pregnant anyway, quelle surprise. Hooo boy! Creepy Sherry's about to turn up the Over Familiarity to Eleven.

I cannot be the only person who finds this woman's strange behavior toward Rory alarming. Why do you always want to get so close to Rory, creepy lady? Worry about your own CrustySpawn now. Dial it back. Creepy Sherry is just chock full of presumptions ain't she. Among her wild presumptions are: 1) that Rory will get accepted to Harvard/ that she won't end up at another school entirely 2) that she actually cares about having a half sister 3) that she actually wants to spend every minute of her free time in college with Crusty and an unfamiliar infant 4) that Crusty will still be around when the baby is born 5) that Rory in any way shape or form consented to any of these plans 6) that Rory's visible extreme discomfort upon hearing these ideas is just something to be ignored 7) (as Lorelai points out a moment later) that given the choice she will prefer to spend her weekends with Crusty and Sherry instead of with her own mother who is she is extremely close to. The only assumption that Sherry has correct is that Rory is going to have virtually no life in college besides academics and couldn't use "I'm too busy" as an excuse to escape forced after-school bonding with her father, creepy stepmother and emotionally neglected half-sister.

This...doesn't make a molecule of sense. Lorelai's nephew is Jess, lol. Ain't that grand. I wish Luke and Lorelai had gotten married a lot earlier for no other reason than Jess could start calling her Auntie as soon as possible and call her that all the time. Just to fucking piss her off.

Another round of applause for the prop food on this show. Incredible.

I am of the belief that Crusty has a sniper perched on a rooftop with a red laser dot aimed at Sherry's head and she has to praise him at all times to anyone who will listen, even though everything she says is about how great he is is complete baloney, or it's lights out. Well, this was originally my conspiracy theory as to why Lorelai feels the need to constantly praise Dean and I'm carrying it over. Besides blackmail, hypnosis, a voodoo curse, or brainwashing, there's really no other explanation in either of these cases. Sherry continues that Crusty's supposed attentiveness which is totally a real thing that's happening right now comes as a shock to her because she initially thought Christopher was going to leave her to become a single mother. Now where would she ever get that idea? It was apparently something Lorelai did or said that inspired him to return to Sherry when she would have been better off raising the kid alone like Lorelai did. What did Lorelai do exactly? They did the horizontal mambo at her friend's wedding and then he skedaddled. Please, fill me in Creepy Sherry.

We know what happened. Please don't make me relive it in my memory. There's no way that 1 and a half minutes of boinking between Lorelai and Christopher was THAT good. If you blink, you'll miss Sherry admitting to Lorelai that she almost had an abortion.

[gotjacobian]

Travel journal-type posting, just describing some of the stuff I've gotten to do in Japan.

Day 1: Got off the plane, got through passport control and customs with minimum issues (I fucked up my entry date bc time zones and had to hold up the line while I fixed it whoops). Took the subway to Yokohama, also screwed that up because I was hopped up on benadryl and still only managed to sleep for 2 hours at a time max on the plane. Unscrewed it up with the help of a very patient attendant, made it to the hotel. I bought takoyaki and a highball from a place across the street from the hotel, which reminded me that I don’t actually like takoyaki. It’s too mushy. Then passed out.

Day 2: This was my full day in Yokohama before the conference. I beelined for a 7-11 to get the canned coffee I like and can only get here (and some pastries), then went to a park by the baseball stadium to eat it. Then I took off to try and at least see the (closed :( ) gundam factory exhibit. There was a triathalon in the way, so I spent awhile wandering through parks to get around it and get close enough for a picture. There were tons of beautiful gardens, and lots of people taking photos of their costumed dogs there? Like, 3 dog photoshoots for every presumed child/romantic partner photoshoot. They all seemed very happy to chill in the flowers and get fussed over.

In general Yokohama is really well suited to my kind of travel wandering - going along the harbor coast takes you through a couple different gorgeous parks and past a few museums, and also gives you a great view of the water. I ended up going into the doll museum, and immediately learned I had vastly overestimated the amount of english they’d have on the exhibits based on their website. I speak basically no Japanese, so used an image translate app a lot. That’s wasn’t an option the last time I was in Japan in 2019 - it was really useful! I drained my battery using it on basically every single plaque in the museum. The style of the exhibit captions felt different than I’d expect from a US museum. They were often more anecdotes from an artist or curator than they were descriptions. I’m curious to what extent that was cultural or was something lost in translation? The translations I got definitely weren’t perfect, and seemed to get worse the more anecdotal or conversational the material was.

The exhibit that attracted me to the doll museum was called “Why do we create objects that look like humans?”. It had exhibits of historical dolls and sculptures, as well as installations from modern artist and dollmakers. A lot of it touched on an inherent alienation in recreating the human in the nonhuman, and the ways all depictions of the human form are exaggerated in ways we sort after the fact into “beautiful” or “grotesque.” I liked it, but honestly wanted it to be more like, embodiment philosophy-y. Very much a me problem.

On the way back, I stopped by Yokohama’s Chinatown. I feel like it was much more of a tourist attraction than the equivalent in Boston or SF - lots of street food stands and people hawking specific restaurants or palm-reading services. Lots of panda-themed merch. It was VERY crowded. I bought a single pork bun for lunch, wandered through a few stores, and then ditched to try and find somewhere calmer.

A friend recommended that I check out Kaganecho, the arts district about a half an hour walk along the canal from where I was staying, so I went that way. I immediately saw a lot of signs advertising an “Art Bazaar” that was supposed to be happening in the area. There were people wandering around with tickets and brochures. It took me an hour to figure out how to get one - I was saved by stumbling on a performance piece that was part of the exhibit, a woman playing a song by hitting a series of bowls with wooden mallets, that just happened to be scheduled right then. It was right under the train line, so you got the loud rumbling drowning her out every few minutes, and also the ambient city sounds of bikes and children and wind under her playing. When she finished, I stalked some people who were watching with me and finally found the office that could sell me a ticket.

The “art bazaar” is a yearly exhibition in a series of apartments converted into studios in the few blocks around a particular train station. You’re given a ticket and a map where some of the buildings were marked. You wander around to find them, go in, and there’s Art there. I’ll probably post separately about this, honestly. It was one of the coolest gallery experiences I’ve ever had. The theme of the exhibits was “The world through no art”, and a lot of the material directly engaged with the history of the area - a neighborhood that housed a lot of bars, brothels, etc starting from the US occupation in the city post WWII, which were forcibly evicted in the 2000s, then later replaced with the studios as part of a city initiative to ‘rejuvenate’ the area. I went to every single exhibit that was open and stayed until I was about to pass out from the combination of walking and art feelings. I chickened out of going to a restaurant alone when I was already exhausted, and instead grabbed a katsu sandwich from 7-11 to eat in my hotel room.

Day 3: Start of the conference. It was raining horribly, and I have big fears about walking in the rain with my laptop, so I skipped the first couple hours until it calmed enough that I felt okay buying and using an umbrella. The conference was in this giant exhibition hall on a peninsula in the city that was all fancy hotels, shopping centers, and an amusement park. My maps app kept trying to get me to walk THROUGH the amusement park to get there, which was a kind of ominous experience when it was empty and raining. I met with some friends and labmates, we got Singaporean food for lunch (chicken and rice), and went to some of the afternoon talks. There was a welcome banquet where a guy performed with Kendamas (japanese toy/prop with a wooden ball attached to a wooden thing with cups and a spike). He did a bunch of poi tricks with them, and seemed to be having the time of his life. They also opened the expo, where I discovered they did at least have the gundam head from the gundam factory exhibit left over (still cannot believe they would close it a month before the robotics conference). Me and one of my former labmates got dinner at a katsu place that claimed to be the oldest in the city. We had to split from the group to get it, since there weren’t any vegetarian options there, but it was really good. I discovered that my hotel is like 1/10th as fancy as any of the other conference hotels, idk what happened. Very jealous of the main venue hotel people who had a room overlooking the harbor.

Day 4: Got there in the morning, did some conference stuff. We got sushi for lunch in this giant mall right next to the venue. I ditched for half an hour in the afternoon to wander through a different park by the harbor, which was also very pretty. All the greenery is very green and the water is very blue. I took another break to try and work some on my paper, since I feel bad for not doing more of that, but finding a place with decent wifi is hard. I meet back up with my labmates to get dinner, at a nearby ramen place with vegan options. I got their signature yuzu shio ramen, which was good, but I still prefer the pork-based styles.

Day 5: Is the day I’m helping present. I go to my coauthor’s presentation and then stand with him at the poster session, and get to talk to a few people. I’m surprised how fast the paper comes back to me, even though I haven’t really thought about it for at least a year at this point. I get lunch with another labmate at a milk-themed restaurant in the mall. I’m weirdly charmed that in Japan, “milk” is a flavor? And that there are prefectures proud of their local milk? The restaurant has both western-style food with cheese or cream as ingredients, and a milk and cheese bar where you can get bread, spreadable cheese, and toppings. I run back to the hotel before the conference banquet, get lost in the other hotel the banquet is in, finally arrive and realize all my labmates are either ditching or got a different banquet venue, so I sit with a very nice person from the university of edinburgh I met at the poster earlier that day. I talk about firespinning and mugs because I’m incapable of not doing so. Every one of the venues has a different style of food and performance - ours performance is actually a lion dance, which is notably… not japanese, put on by students from a school in the local chinatown. It’s still really impressive, especially given that they did it between the tables people were eating at. Like, I’ve attempted to be a base for a cheerleading toss once, and it was hard for 3 people to hold one up - these performers were jumping on each other’s shoulders the whole time, while puppeting the giant lion. They kept having it pretend to eat the heads of the people it walked past, it was a good time.

I spend an hour or two that night on my Quest, which is that I saw some kind of peach jelly drink in exactly one vending machine early in the trip and didn’t buy it. Now I want it, so I’ve been wandering through the city inspecting vending machines to try and find it again. Tonight I wander up and down this shopping center street that has a lot of them, in the rain, but no dice. I buy peach flavored ice cream at the 7-11 instead and reaffirm my mission.

Day 6: I wake up feeling bad, in both a stress and a physical way. I stay at the hotel and work on my paper, then go to a nearby cafe and try to work on my paper, but they don’t have wifi. I go back and end up sleeping, which I feel bad about, but probably needed - I can get disconnected from my own tiredness levels when I’m doing extended crunch time for a project, and I’m trying to be more aware of that. I don’t go to any of the conference stuff, but do leave at one point to get the local kind of ramen from a place I saw recommended online. The style is called ie-kei, and is an emulsified mix of pork broth and shoyu with chicken oil, served with pork, seaweed, short noodles, and spinach on top. I redeem myself by ordering and eating in the restaurant alone. It’s good in a comfort food way. I go back to the hotel and alternate working and sleeping, and end up skipping dinner with my labmates because I still feel gross.

Day 7: I feel better when I wake up, but have already committed to skipping this day of the conference because I’m going to Osaka. I find another cafe that actually has wifi, and eat there to do some work in the morning. Tangent - people really go nuts for the egg salad sandwiches here, and I don’t get it. I tried one and thought it was tasteless and had that bad cooked egg yolk texture. Super not for me.

I check out of the hotel and take the subway to Tokyo station. I get there an hour early because I forgot when my train was, so wander around the station for a while. It is SO crowded and there are SO MANY stores selling train bento, souvenirs, boxes of desserts to give as gifts, etc, and every single one has a designated salesperson shouting into the void. It is the most sensory-overloading, maze-like place I have been in my entire life. I take great pride in managing to eventually actually find the internet-recommended places to get ekibento for the train. I buy one with more traditional food, and one kids one that comes in a fake JR train freight container, because I really want the fake freight container. I also get an apple-custard pastry and a crepe with cream and melon ball topping. And then I am exhausted, and still too early for my train, so I stand by the platform and am extremely confused when someone asks me for directions (correctly assigned english-speaking person who knows where the ekibento are at the tokyo shinkansen station, I guess).

I do get on the train eventually, and eat one of the bento (I save the second because I am worried the person sitting next to me is gonna judge me for eating 2 bento, one of which is definitely meant for children, but I will eat it eventually). I said I was gonna do work but instead I’m writing this and watching out the window of the train. I feel like everyone has their travel fixation - my grandparents laugh about how when my mom and brother would go on trips as kids, they’d get disposable cameras. And when they developed the photos, all of them were of ponds, lakes, coastlines, because they grew up in the west texas desert. I grew up in the flat, flat Texas plains, and now I’m like that about mountains. This train goes straight through them, and right past Mt Fuji. It gets to me how distinctive the landscape in japan is - I’ve looked at a lot of traditional japanese art as like, a precursor to modern styles in comics, because I find it interesting. And I feel like I looked at some elements of that style - atmospheric perspective, depth through stacking flat layers of scenery, the specific abstract-seeming way Mt Fuji gets drawn - and assumed it was entirely an artistic choice. But like… Mt Fuji just looks like that. The landscape just looks like that, with the fog and the layered mountains. The green is such a specific shade of green, and the blue is a specific shade of blue, and the buildings are all such a particular faded palette in a way I feel like must make Japan instantly recognizable on geoguessr, a game I am very bad at. I love looking at the cities and buildings, too - I wish I knew the words to describe the specifics of the style and design. I feel like I'm getting increasing city architecture obsessed these days, despite not having that language. Getting to see it is the bit of travel that really makes me feel like I'm experiencing something I couldn't anywhere else. I'm gonna find my hotel in Osaka once I get there, hunt down some food, then will probably try and do some more work before bed. Then tomorrow, in theory, Osaka castle and whatever else seems compelling.

[ukulelekatie]

Hey! Sorry if this is weird or anything, but my partner and I are going to Boston for the first time in April. Do you have any recommendations for touristy type things we could do? Or any queer friendly places you would recommend?

We're pretty nervous because we've never been to the east coast before so any tips or tricks would help a lot!

Hi, love this question!! Here are some lists of touristy things I made for past anons:

And here's another list by @marzipanandminutiae

So the weird thing about Boston's queer spaces is that we don't really have a centralized location with a lot of queer history/culture, like Greenwich Village in New York, Toronto's Gay Village, etc. There are a few gay bars scattered here and there, but mostly you'll find that Boston as a whole is overall very queer friendly. However! If you're cool with boats, you can catch a ferry from Boston to Provincetown, MA, a town on the very tippity tip of Cape Cod that is known for being a prominent LGBTQ+ tourist spot.

And here are some general tips:

The weather here in April tends to be quite unpredictable! It could be sunny and warm or cold and rainy on any given day (sometimes both in the same day), and there's even a non-zero chance that it might snow a bit. I recommend packing outfits with lots of layers, and ideally something waterproof.

If you're planning on taking the T (public transit), keep in mind that we're dealing with a lot of construction and issues these days. The system is quite robust but also very old, and we're now in the "find out" era after fucking around with not maintaining/upgrading things that should have been done decades ago. There may be delays and/or detours depending on where you're trying to go, so it's a good idea to factor in some extra travel time. Depending on how long you'll be here, you might want to look into getting a weekly pass (unlimited travel for $22.50).

...And of course there's always Uber/Lyft if the T lets you down lol. Definitely check both apps before booking a ride, the prices vary wildly here. I find that Uber is cheaper during the day and Lyft is cheaper at night, but your mileage may vary.

Boston's night life scene is pretty abysmal compared to other major cities (which I think also contributes to the lack of dedicated queer spaces). We're very much a "do things during the day" kind of place, so you'll want to plan what you're going to do pretty early in the day.

That's all I can think of for now, I hope you have a great trip and I'd be happy to answer other questions if you have 'em!

[cock-holliday]

hey! genuine question, ive only seen the flag you have in your icon called the “butch lesbian flag” and i see that you say in your bio

do you also consider yourself lesbian? or are non-lesbians allowed to use the flag?

i ask because im butch but not lesbian and idk if i can use that flag

So, I for years would put the bi flag behind a character, as a headcanon or they WERE bi or because I just felt like it. I changed my icon to Van from Yellowjackets and, confident she would NOT ID as bi, it felt odd to put the flag behind her even if it was MY identity. So I put a shared one: butch.

Now, there’s lots of lesbian flags, trans inclusive or exclusive, there is the labrys, with all its complicated history and imagery. And there’s two butch flags. This one, which stresses butch lesbian:

And this one, which tends to either say butch lesbian or butch on its own:

I liked it, for its similarity to the Bear Flag, another group of shunned and complicated queer mascs.

Do I identify with the term lesbian?

Yes and no. I identify with it for the fact that many people have used it how I use bisexual throughout history, as for many it was more adjacent to “sapphic” or “likes women in a gay way.” There are male lesbians and bi lesbians and nb lesbians and lots of ways to be a lesbian. Some used the label AS a gender.

In many ways I identify with it, in others, the label makes me feel distant from another part of myself. My attraction to men would often be assumed absent if I used lesbian INSTEAD of bisexual, regardless of it I or others used it that way. So I hover on the cusp of the term lesbian and reach for bisexual first, sometimes only.

Now, words like dyke? I get told you cannot reclaim it if you aren’t a capital L Lesbian. But I’ve been called it. Plenty. I would attend dyke marches. The Boston Dyke March explicitly included bi dykes in their definition. Frankly, they said anyone who identifies with being a dyke is welcome to call themselves one.

So what about butch? I tell people to read it all the time but I went and copied the full opening essay of Butch Is A Noun titled “I Know What Butch Is” and will add it under the cut.

But long story (essay) short, if you identify with butchness, congrats, you’re a butch, and can use the butch flag.

I know what butch is. I know, and I’m going to tell you, so listen up and take notes. First of all, butch is a noun. And an adjective. And a verb.

Butches only ever wear jeans and boots, except if they’re wearing suits, and they keep their hair clipped down to a flattop you could putt off. Except if they have to for work. Or if they want to for sex. Or if they want to for some other reason. But otherwise it’s denim and leather and butch wax, kid, and don’t you forget it. Unless you’re vegan.

Toughness, even at the expense of gentleness, is a butch trait. Butches are outlaws. Also gentlemen. Gentlemen who open doors and pick up checks and say “after you” and hold your umbrella over you in the rain while the water drips down their sleeves. But butches not gentlemen if being a gentleman means imposing on the unsuspecting their sexist modes of acting out the cultural paradigm of the helplessness of women. Except if the unsuspecting are crying and need a handkerchief, or elderly and need a seat to sit down in, then it’s all right. Probably. But butches should never wait for a femme to tell them specifically that it is all right to behave in a gentlemanly fashion, they should just go ahead and do it because femmes like a butch with confidence, unless it turns out that she finds it offensive and feels as though you have imposed your gender fetish on her, you arrogant bastard.

And butches are monosyllabic, until you get to know them, which they will not allow but want, or will allow and want, or will allow but don’t want, or won’t allow and don’t want, so you may or may not get to know them, but you should try, or not. But butches are monosyllabic because all that talking is girl stuff, you know? Butches grunt in answer to questions; they speak sharply and emphatically. They do not share, process, or explain because these are activities that bring nothing but trouble, unless they are bringing relief to the troubled heart of a butch carrying around too much hurt or pain, though butches do not actually feel pain; they’re tough enough to either slough it off like dead skin or deal with all of that themselves. Unless someone wants for them to be emotionally available, in which case they can feel their feelings even though the presence of feelings is suspect in the first place, but they must stop immediately as soon as someone else is having a tough time so that all their resources can be directed to soothing that person.

I know what butch is. Butches are not beginner FTMs, except that sometimes they are, but it’s not a continuum except when it is. Butch is not a trans identity unless the butch in questions says it is, in which case it is, unless the tranny in question says it isn’t, in which case it’s not. There is no such thing as butch flight, no matter what the femmes or elders say, unless saying that invalidates the opinions of femmes in a sexist fashion or the opinions of elders in an ageist fashion. Or if they’re right. But they are not, because butch and transgender are the same thing with different names, except that butch is not a trans identity, unless it is; see above.

Butches are always tops. They always fuck the girls, and, for that matter, their partners are always girls; there is no such thing as a butch who is attracted to men. Well, transmen, but that’s just butch-on-butch repackaged as faggotry. But no non-trans-men. Unless the butch in question is a non-trans-man, then it’s okay. Except that non-trans-men cannot be butches, because butch is a queering of gender that assigned-male people cannot embody, unless they occasionally can, in which case they have to be gay men. Or the partners of femmes. Or not. But no one with an assigned-female body can be a butch and do it with assigned-male men. Unless they’re femmes. Or butches. I’m really putting my foot down on this one.

I know what butch is, and butches definitely, absolutely, do not get fucked, even if it feels so good to have someone slide in sweet and hard and rock them just right. They might eat pussy but they never suck cock, because licking pussy is chivalry without pants, and, of course, any butch would want to do anything to please the femme in hir life, if there is a femme. Which there has to be, in order to be a true butch, except if there does not have to be, but you cannot be a misogynist about it either, which a lack of interest in femmes and their attendant delights may be read as—if there is a lack, which there shouldn’t be. But anyway, cocksucking is about ownership and dominance, so butches must always be the ones having their cocks sucked, unless the owner of the cock being sucked by a butch is tied to something, but if a butch were tying down someone with a cock of some variety then the above rule would quite likely be violated, and I think I’ve been very clear about that, so never mind.

Butch has a lot of privilege because butches pass as men a lot, and butches also have a lot of privilege in the queer community because butch reads as queer and femme doesn’t always, and being able to pass to keep one’s self safe isn’t privilege if you’re a femme but it is if you’re a butch. Unless this is a butch who can pass as a heteronormative woman, in which case ze’s not really a butch anyway because no butch could do such a thing. Except that some of them can and also having kids really helps, even though no butch could have kids because of the rule about not getting fucked and also because that’s a femme’s job, but not everyone really understood their butchness all the way along and also sometimes there are fertility issues and also sometimes there’s not a femme so we’ll grandfather in some children but we’ll be suspicious of those butches. Unless they’re really great butch dads of whatever sex, in which case we’ll think it’s the damn cutest thing in the world and punch them on the arm, or if they’re awesome butch moms we’ll make approving comments about their ability to raise feminist men, but otherwise no children and no heteronormativity for sure, except for assigned male butches who do not exist.

Besides all of that, the butch pays. If there’s only one butch on the date. Unless the femme wants to. If there’s a femme present. If there’s a femme present, the butch pays unless hir paying would upset the femme or unless it creates class issues for the butch or patriarchy issues for the femme. Or if it’s two butches on a date, which they shouldn’t be. Or they should. In any case, they arm-wrestle for it. Except in such situations in which a public display of aggression on the part of butches, or an interaction which may be read as such, could potentially be detrimental to the community, to the mental health of those witnessing the act, to the butches themselves for feeling compelled to act out normative masculine-gendered conflict-resolution tactics, or to the glassware of the dining establishment, which so often gets broken. But otherwise, the butch always pays, and there’s just no getting around that.

I know what butch is. Butches are a brotherhood, or possibly a sisterhood, which would be a marvelous way to reclaim butch’s roots in the lesbian community except some butches were never part of the lesbian community and some were but aren’t any more, but placing masculine identities on butches is disrespectful, except when it’s desirable, but anyway, butches are a tribe, a tribe of people who have been maligned endlessly for, and in fact forged an identity in part out of, not fitting the gendered expectations of the culture in which they exist (until or unless they work to pass as men, which always or never or sometimes happens and is absolutely a great or problematic thing), so butches are very open to gendered variations in others and would never, ever try to make another butch feel like shit for having displayed a behavior which does not fit the microculture’s standard of what it means to be a butch, which is a useful or idealized or ridiculous or just plain complicated standard, so it should be adhered to, or critiqued, or aspired to, or not. Butches would also certainly never try to school younger butches in ways that are angry and dangerous because they feel like the process of toughening has disappeared from modern culture and butches need to be tough, dammit. Butches who do those sorts of things either are Real Butches or are Not Real Butches, depending who you ask.

There, that should be perfectly clear.

[figureofdismay]

I love MSR you know I do, since I was 12 it's been foundational in my fannish life. I always come back to it.

But.

I just had an accidental evening nap and a crazy dream where I managed to combine Northern Exposure and TXF into a thing where 20-something Scully does not go into Pathology after Daniel but picks something like Internal Medicine and Diagnostics, and ends up working in the nearest small city to Cicely, Alaska, and they keep meeting when Joel flies out with more difficult/complex patients who need hospital scans, and she flies out there for initial consults with elderly patients that would be more stressed out by the trip if it's not necessary (and because she likes Marilyn, and, yes, Joel, and having a coffee with Maggie at the Brick, and enjoying all the small town air before flying back to the city).

She makes Joel super nervous at first because she's so reserved and matter of fact about the work, and they can argue intensely about the diagnosis or whether they think the patient should move out of the wilderness for treatment (Scully actually thinks less disruption in general = better survival chances with the elderly, though not always possible, Joel still sees Cicely as 'primitive' and doesn't see why anyone would stay there voluntarily). But she does find him charming and intelligent and an interesting kind of oddity out in the middle of nowhere and thriving even though he's complaining along the way.

She's terribly jealous of how Joel and Maggie flirt, even though Maggie has Rick until the satellite. And later Mark, the chemically sensitive hypochondriac she finds herself flying out to deal with along side Joel regularly. And Eve, of course. Lots of almost-legitimate reasons to visit Cicely along side the more genuinely urgent patient cases. She doesn't balk at the state of Joel's "doctor's office" as provided by Maurice, and end up helping Joel insist on Maurice ordering better on site lab equipment when they want cultures back quicker than sending them out. She's still great at attracting all the most bizarre, emergent, and supernatural sorts of cases.

One part in my dream was Joel watching Dana berate Maurice for not outfitting the doctor he went out of his way to buy on indentured sufferance with the tools he'd need to actually look after all the souls of 'his' town, while she was wearing that big white parka from Ice and marching into town, and then watching her peering into slides under the microscope in the back room at the office and making notes, her hair gleaming under the old fashioned one bulb lamp, and being enchanted, by her beauty and her coherence.

There was also a part in my dream where Dana and Joel were visiting an older patient at her house at the edge of town who was having weakness and memory lapses and blurred vision where she would 'see things from another time or from other places' which Joel thought might be mini strokes and Scully thought might be an epileptic disorder found very late. But they ended up having their 'fussing' brushed off and spending the evening with her in her sitting room after sending some things off to test, talking about her two grown children, a boy and a girl, the boy grew up and ran off with a girl he met in college and lives in California, and the girl, the first born simply vanished one day when she was 15, the police were useless. It was after that that she and her husband and son moved from Boston to Cicely and never regretted it, except that her son found it boring to visit, and how her husband was the love of her life and he and she used to dance to their records in the sitting room every Friday night like the used to at the dance halls when they were courting during the war all the time they were together, and they were happy up there in Alaska for another 20-something years until some years before, he simply vanished, too, one morning she woke up and he simply wasn't anywhere, and she's happily convinced that she's got 'vanishing from the face of the earth disease' now too and will soon see her husband and daughter again. (the part of me slightly aware of the dream wondered about an abduction storyline connection here lol)

So the old woman keeps trying to cheer Joel and Dana up over their objections that that wasn't a condition people can have in the real world, by insisting that they dance together in her sitting room while she runs the record player so she can hear all the old albums with the sound of feet shuffling the way they should be 'i can't listen to 'em without that, they don't sound right you know.' So Joel and Dana end up taking off their parkas and their muddy walking shoes and laughingly dancing together in their socks and jeans on Mrs. Something-or-other's worn persian rug to the sound of her torch song albums and her gentle instructions on finding the beat and it's slowly cozier and more lovely, and more surprisingly serious to watch each other's faces by the rosy glow of the dim chandelier, with the short Alaskan autumn evening faded away.

Until Mrs. Thingumy drifted off in her rocking chair and they sent her to bed while they put their boots and coats on, and went back out into the reality of the night -- i remember having such a clear sense of the shift from the stuffy potpourri sitting room to the cold, damp outside -- and it was all suddenly shy and charged between Dana and Joel. He tried to nervously diffuse it by starting to chatter about a hypochondriac old auntie he'd had growing up, but she just sort of looked at him and smiled ironically until he stopped, and offered her his hand to steady her as they walked back towards town. (I don't know why Joel didn't have his truck in the dream.)

Also Scully didn't want to admit it but she was worried about this 'vanishing' problem which she didn't know how to talk about to get Joel to take it seriously.

And when i woke up i asked myself if my brain had just put Scully's face on Maggie O'Connell in confusion, but no looking at it I really did mean gentle, earnest, serious early days Doctor Dana Scully, with Joel and it works surprisingly well. So yes. Joel Fleischman x Dana Scully. The wouldn't be an epic 'to the ends of the earth' Love Of Each Other's Life kind of pairing, but I could also see them being very happy and a bit silly and a bit heart-felt together for a while, at least while their lives intersect. I ship it now, kind of a lot. Feel free to jump on board!

[aroshit]

(R)Ace

“And a lot of aces are white. The whiteness of the ace community--over 83 percent of respondents in 2016 global survey identified as white only--is glaring, though not necessarily surprising. White people typically have more economic, political, and cultural power than people of color. They are usually given more credit when championing a cause and are more likely to become the figureheads.”

“Many early figureheads were white, so a white culture with white artifacts developed. White people feel most comfortable in this community and join it, therefore making it even more white.”

“Until high school, Selena, a Bay Area workplace consultant, thought of herself as a straight boy with a high sex drive. She craved intimacy and romance and hated the stereotype of East Asian men as emasculated and sexless. "Before I identified as trans it was important for me to fight that stereotype by wanting to have sex, maybe more than I really wanted to,” she says.

[...]

“As Selena's hair grew longer and she began wearing makeup, it was no longer necessary to counter the stereotype of the sexless Asian man. That stereotype didn't apply anymore, but as one restriction lifted, another replaced it. Selena now wanted to have less sex to spite the fetishists who were suddenly interested in her new presentation as an Asian woman.

[...]

“Her experience of sexual attraction is inextricable from other facets of her identity, she says. Selena cannot talk about being ace without also talking about being trans and being Asian.”

“When it comes to race, so many different, complicated threads keep the ace community white. Asexuality has been idealized and it has been denied. Both are problematic. Asexuality is tied to whiteness because white people (and especially white women) are often assumed to be sexually "pure," whereas Black and Latinx people are often considered hypersexual--and these racialized sexual stereotypes are a form of control themselves. At the same time, asexuality can also look suspiciously similar to racial tropes like the mammy or the China doll, which again keeps people of color away.

“Picture whiteness as a neutral backdrop, a white wall. It is easier to paint a white wall light blue than it is to paint a dark green wall light blue. The dominant media is filled with images of many types of white people; white people, for the most part, have the freedom to be anything they like. People of color need to scrub away the dark green--racial stereotypes and expectations--before determining whether we are really ace. We carry an extra layer of awareness that comes from knowing how, specifically, our sexuality is supposed to be and what our wanting should look like. The project of self-knowledge is complicated by both racial stereotypes and our desire not to be controlled by these stereotypes.”

“Others struggle because their asexuality seems too dissimilar to what is expected. Latinx aces say they chafe against the "spicy Latina" or "exotic Latin lover" formula that makes their ace identity seem less believable. Cassie, a twenty-nine-year-old therapist in Chicago, is blunt about what their body signals to others. "I'm perceived as a Black cis woman, with large tits and a large ass" they say. "There's absolutely no way in hell, societally speaking, that I could possibly not be a sexbot."

“Not when white Americans have long considered Black women to be sexually promiscuous jezebels, the opposite of the pure and proper white lady and a target of racist anxieties over miscegenation. The term jezebel may seem outdated todasy, but Black women are still over-sexualized, with young Black girls perceived as knowing more about sex than their white counterparts. And as Boston University English professor lanna Hawkins Owen has shown, the opposite stereotype also exists--that of the sexless and sexually undesirable mammy, the racist Southern trope of the Black nursemaid to white children who is safe to employ because she won't sexually tempt the white master. "Being a Black asexual woman often feels like living in the shadow of the mammy, a caricature whose asexuality is conceived of only because she is expected to mother everyone around her," writes essayist Sherronda J. Brown. "Mammy is allowed to be free of the racialized hypersexualization only because it permits her more time, energy, and space to perform her endless duties. She is not allowed to have desire or desirability, not allowed to seek out sexual pleasures and intimacies, because her entire focus should be on her domestic and emotional labor.

[...]

“Cassie's refusal is more than a disappointment on its own terms. It is accompanied by a bewilderment, conditioned by the images of mass media, that might not be there if Cassie were not Black.”

“To suspect that one's sexual orientation is actually a reaction to racism is disconcerting. It feels false and fraught, traitorous. Asking these questions of oneself seems necessary, and asking takes extra psychological work that might not be necessary if people could look around and see others like them. White female aces who struggle with the perception of being repressed can turn to plenty of other white female aces for support. Aces of color can be far more isolated.”

“Vesper, who grew up in Las Vegas and for years was an English teacher in Japan, long ago absorbed the idea that Black people are supposed to be extremely sexual and also good in bed. Now, Vesper fears that other Black people who believe the same, or who believe that asexuality is a tool of white control, will be judgmental of their identity. "I feel more vulnerable with Black people than with white people because I fear that the second I meet another Black person, they can tell that there's something different about me, something that is unconsciously and invariably associated with whiteness," they say. Vesper has long been self-conscious that their hobbies and "that I'm not a Beyoncé fan or whatever" marked them as not Black enough: "There's already that foundation before I even open my mouth about anything sexuality related.

[...]

“White and Asian aces complain about being perceived as prudes but that's not something people say about Vesper. There is no prude accusation, only surprise that Black aces exist at all. Certainly, no one like Vesper is on television, and people's imaginations are not as strong as they would like to believe.”

- Ace, Angela Chen

[vampireghostlawyer]

happy pride month, if you have a minute, please listen to the story of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell "Rat" Cheney, two men who fell in love in the 1920s and whose romance was preserved in great detail through letters and diary entries by Matthiessen, and through the historic preservation of Cheney's life as an artist.

In 1924, two men boarded a cruise ship to Europe called the Paris. One of these men was F. O. Matthiessen, a Harvard instructor who had realized he was gay during his undergrad at Yale, and had struggled with depression since. The other was Russell "Rat" Cheney, an artist from the East Coast who was starting to see success in his field, and who had also experienced an attraction to men in his life. Almost immediately, the two became fast friends and got to know each other well.

Over the next few days, the two became even closer until Cheney was as dear to Matthiessen as many of his oldest friends. As time wore on, Matthiessen began to panic about whether or not he should tell Cheney he was gay. He decided he wanted to tell Cheney, but failed to gather the courage throughout multiple attempts. Eventually, one night, the two men went out together for a night cap and midnight snack, and Matthiessen realized he felt he had to tell Cheney.

By this point, only a few days were left of their time on the Paris. Over these last hours, Matthiessen found himself falling in love with Cheney, and Cheney felt the same.

While the two men had to go their separate ways once the boat was docked, they promised to write each other regularly. Matthiessen immediately wrote him five letters in one week, and then five more in a single day. He came up with the nickname "My Devil" for Cheney and addressed him as such in his letters. While Cheney urged Matthiessen not to rush into a relationship with him while he was still sorting out his feelings about his sexuality, he was also in love, describing their feelings for each other as "stronger than death [and] stronger than sin."

A year later in 1925, the two men could no longer keep their relationship long distance and arranged to meet in person once again. They met in Italy and traveled back to Boston together and formally entered a relationship, spending all of their free time with each other. Even after Cheney's health declined and he was forced to move to Maine, Matthiessen traveled to him every weekend, holiday, and for the entire summer.

Cheney's family learned of the relationship and attempted to separate them, but were unsuccessful. Over the next twenty years, Cheney's health would continue to decline and the two men would be forced to stay in different states for their careers, but that was also not enough to separate them. Until Cheney's death in 1945, they remained in a committed relationship, which Matthiessen regularly described with joy.

Matthiessen killed himself following Cheney's death, after writing a letter to a close friend describing his life without Cheney as a loneliness that he would never overcome. Before his suicide, Matthiessen also wrote an introduction to a memorial collection of Cheney's work, which is still used for the collection today. Both men are still recognized in their fields and their love has been immortalized in memoirs by their friends and family, and historians, for ages to come.

Matthiessen and Cheney:

their house (you can see Cheney's studio in the picture, as well):

I found this story while browsing some essays about queer culture throughout history, and it brought me to (good) tears. I know for many, and myself, pride this year has been difficult, with all of the rampant homophobia and transphobia present seemingly everywhere. But seeing a couple who, despite the hostility and prejudice of society a century ago, were able to find such a strong and tangible love and joy in each other, was a great reminder for me of the beautiful parts of being queer. I hope someone else can find the same in it <3

[flashdyke]

What's a romantic friendship?

pretty much what it says on the tin: a long term committed friendship between women that was, to varying extents, what we'd call romantic. They were more common prior to modern concepts of sexuality, and amongst upper class women who might have means to live independently of men. It was considered an acceptable and chaste way for young women to express romantic feelings before they were married off, but there were women who'd avoid marriage by having a shared home and finances with another woman, who was her equal, and who wouldn't have the legal or social right to control her lifestyle like a man.

Some of these relationships were absolutely sexual, either regularly in the way we might have same-sex relationships now, or on rare occasions, but some of the relationships were basically intense friendships. Either way, it was generally assumed that the relationships weren't sexual, even if it was known that the women shared a bed (unless, perhaps, one of the women was distinctly masculine).

They tended to appear in girls' schools and universities, because the beginning of formal education was obviously the first time most girls got an opportunity to spend a prolonged period of time mixing with other girls, and were therefore more likely to meet ones they really got on with. In the USA, they were often referred to as "Boston marriages" because of course, a number of the early women's colleges were set up in Massachusetts, but I know that they were also quite common in Japan, when formal education for girls was made available there too. The culture in the girls' schools, including romantic friendships, produced the word 'shōjo' as a term for young unmarried women (who couldn't be considered an adult), and the themes that went into Class S literature and then shōjo manga.

My personal interest has been the very obvious overlap romantic friendships have with lesbianism, but it is also true that not all of these relationships were sexual, and I was wondering if women who have these aspirations of "being with women" but aren't actually very sexually attracted to women might be more capable of leaving males and involving themselves with other women if there was an understood sort of "girlfriend lite" option.

[kolajmag]

THIS WEEK AT KOLAJ MAGAZINE

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FROM THE PRINT MAGAZINE Art for Life Award Report on Kellie O’Dempsey

Read the full update

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Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

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