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potteresque-ire · 4 years ago

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More ask answer about Word of Honour (山河令, WoH) and the so-called “Dangai 101 phenomenon” under the cut ~ with all the M/M relationships shown on screen, does it mean improved acceptance / safety for the c-queer community?

Due to its length (sorry!), I’ve divided the answer into 3 parts: 1) Background 2) Excerpts from the op-eds 3) Thoughts This post is PART 1 ❤️. As usual, please consider the opinions expressed as your local friendly fandomer sharing what they’ve learned, and should, in no ways, be viewed as necessarily true. :)

(TW: homophobic, hateful speech quoted)

After WoH had started airing, I had waited for one of China’s state-controlled media to publish opinion pieces about the show. Specifically, I’d like to know ~ what is the administration’s current take on Dangai (耽改), as a genre? How does it characterise the closeness of the same-sex leads—the closeness that is suppressed when the original IP, of the genre Danmei (耽美) was converted for visual media presentation?

This is important, as China is a country where the government’s attitude becomes the official public attitude. The state opinion pieces will be quoted and parroted, especially if they come from heavy-weight sources (state-controlled media also have their importance/influence hierarchy). Production of the upcoming Dangai dramas will adjust their scripts accordingly. Marketing tactics will also adjust, make sure it doesn’t spread “the wrong message”; Dangai and Danmei dramas have both been pulled off shelves during or immediately after its airing before (Addicted 上癮 and Guardian 鎮魂, respectively), despite having already passing the censorship board.

If a heavy-weight state opinion piece pans the one-lead-fawning-over-the-other scenes in WoH (there are a few of them), for example, scenes / lines of such suggestive nature will likely disappear from the upcoming Dangai dramas for at least a year or two. If the critique spills over to a harsh stance against the presence of queers in Chinese media, all future Dangai dramas can become strict “socialist-brotherhood” stories, their “no homo” message reinforced by, for example, by inserting a female lead (or changing one of the leads to female).

Whether the official public opinion equates the true public opinion or not, public behaviour in China is quickly driven by the official public opinion. Example: the Xi regime’s conservative stance on queer issues has already translated to a quick deterioration of queer tolerance in China; open expressions that were tolerated, even welcomed, just several years ago are now met with significant hostility in the public.

This is a reflection of the nature of their government. A quick thought experiment may explain this. Take … jaywalking. It’s probably fair to say we’ve all committed this “crime” before?

Will you still jaywalk if your government declares it immoral to do so? Where I am, in the United States, the answer is definitely a no. The public will probably laugh at (and make memes about) the poor official who made the declaration, kindly ask the government to do something useful for once (f*** off), and keep jaywalking.

Now, what if the declaration comes with a law that includes a one-year prison term + lifelong criminal record for jaywalking? Let’s say this law is fully executable and irreversible, given this being a thought experiment—nothing you, or the public, can say or do can contest it.

Will you still jaywalk, even if you disagree with government’s stance that the act is immoral? You’ve got a neighbour who continues to defy the law. Will you think twice before letting your young loved ones go out with them?

Very soon, jaywalking becomes “bad”—even though such “badness” had little moral basis at its origin. It is bad because the government has “characterised” it to be so—an authoritarian government that doesn’t allow challenge of the characterisation.

The retention of queer elements in Dangai is the jaywalking in the example. The Chinese government stepping in to characterise (定性) an event, a phenomenon etc is common, and the people know the drill well that they fall in line quickly.

If a powerful state-controlled media publish a negative opinion piece on the queer elements in Dangai / Danmei, therefore, those elements can disappear overnight.

My question had been: will the state do it? The Xi regime has made its distaste for LGBT+ representation in visual media abundantly clear with its NRTA directives. However, while the Chinese government typically puts ideology (意識型態) as its Guiding Principle, exceptions have always been made for one reason. One word.

Money.

TU is a legendary financial success story every production company (Tencent itself included) wants to replicate. As a result, there are ~ 60 Danmei IPs (book canon) with their copyright sold for Dangai dramas; this long line of Danmei dramas in the horizon has been nicknamed “Dangai 101”, after the name of the show “Produce 101” Dd was dance instructor in. These dramas are all competing to be the next TU by profit.

Adoration from fans is nice, but money is what matters.

C-ent is currently in a financial bleak winter. The anti-corruption, anti-tax-fraud campaign started by the Xi regime in 2018, which cumulated to a sudden (and unofficial) collection of 3 years of back-taxes from studios and stars, has drained a significant amount of its capital; the number of new TV dramas being filmed fell 45% between 2018 and 2019, and production companies have been closing by the tens of thousands. The tightening of censorship rules also means production is associated with more risk. The commercial sector outside c-ent is also eager for replications of TU’s success—they need more “top traffic” (頂流) idols like Gg and Dd whose fans are sufficiently devoted to drive the sales of their products. Such “fan economy” would benefit the government, even if it doesn’t have direct stakes in the companies in and outside c-ent. People’s Daily, the Official State Newspaper, previously published a positive opinion piece on fan economy in 2019, estimating its worth at 90 billion RMB (~13.7 billion USD) per year.

But if the state allows the queer elements in Dangai’s to pass the censorship board (NRTA) for profit, how can it do so with the current “No homo” directive in place? From previous experience (scarce as it may be), the queerness has to be sufficiently obvious for the shows to make the profit everyone is wishing for. Dangai dramas in which the leads’ romantic relationship remains subtle have not sold the way TU does, even if they are well-reviewed and feature famous, skilled actors (as Winter Begonia 鬓边不是海棠红 last year.)

NRTA, and the government behind it, can’t just say I’m turning a blind eye to the flirting and touching for the money. What can it say then?

Here’s what I’d thought—what it can say, or do, is to “characterise” these Dangai dramas in a way that leave out its queerness. It did so for TU. TU’s review by the overseas version of People’s Daily devoted a grand total of two characters to describe WWX and LWJ’s relationship—摯友 (“close friend”). The rest of the article was devoted to the drama’s aesthetics, its cultural roots. (The title of the article: 《陳情令》：書寫國風之美 Chen Qing Ling: Writing the Beauty of National Customs).

How could it do that? The State’s power ensuring few questioning voices aside, I’ve been also thinking about the history and definition of Danmei (耽美)—Dangai’s parent genre as the causes. Based on the history and definition, I can think of 3 ways the queer elements in Danmei (耽美) can be characterised by the state, 2 of which provide it with the wiggle room, the movable goalposts it needs should it choose to want to overlook the queerness in Dangai.

The 3 characterisations I’ve thought of, based on the history and definition of Danmei (耽美) are:

1) The queer characterisation, which focuses on its homoerotic element. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is gay.

2) The “traditional BL” characterisation, which focuses on BL’s historic origin as a “by women, for women” genre. The M/M setup is viewed as an escapist protest against the patriarchy, a rejection of traditional gender roles; displays of M/M closeness are often “candies” for the female gaze. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is women’s fantasy.

3) The aesthetic characterisation, which focuses on beauty—from the beauty of the characters, the beauty of a world without harm to the romance. * Summary for the characterization: Danmei is pretty.

The queer characterisation (1) is well-understood, and likely the default characterisation if it is to be made by the fraction of i-fandom I’m familiar with. Most i-fans I’ve met, myself included, would likely and automatically associate the M/M relationships in The Untamed (TU) and WoH with queerness.

The “traditional BL” characterisation (2), meanwhile, equates Danmei with BL as the genre of homoerotic works developed in 1970’s Japan for women comic readers, and has been widely interpreted from a feminist point of view.

Under such interpretation of “traditional BL” works, the double male lead setup wasn’t meant to be an accurate depiction of homosexuality. It wasn’t about homosexuality at all. Rather, it was about the removal of women and along with it, the rage, the eye-rolling, the unease women readers had often felt when attempting to interact with mainstream romance novels of the time, in which the female leads had mostly been confined to traditional women roles, and their virtue, their traditional feminine traits.

The M/M setup therefore acted as a “shell” for a het relationship that allowed removal of such social constraints placed on women. The lead with whom the woman audience identified was no longer bound to the traditional role of women, such as being the caregiver of the family. The lead could instead chase their dreams and roam the world, as many contemporary women already did or aspired to do; they were no longer limited to playing the passive party in life and in the relationship—and they enjoyed such freedom without risking the love, the respect the other male protagonist felt for them.

BL, in this traditional sense, has therefore been interpreted as an answer for, and a protest against the heteropatriarchal gender norm still dominant in societies deeply influenced by Confucianism, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China. The M/M setup is, at heart, (het) women’s fantasy. The inclusion of two young-and-beautiful male leads also satisfy “the female gaze” ~ the popularity of BL among het women has therefore been compared to the popularity of lesbian porn among het men. In both cases, the audience is drawn not for the homosexual element but by the presence of double doses of sexual attraction.

(Please forgive me if any of my wording comes as disrespectful! I’m not used to talking about these topics.)

The availability of the “traditional BL” characterisation (2) is key to bypassing queerness as a topic in the discussions of Danmei (耽美).

The aesthetic characterisation (3) is very closely related to 2) in origin, but deserves its own point as a characterisation that can stand on its own, and may be more obscure to the English-speaking fandom given the common English translation of Danmei (耽美) as Boy’s Love.

Boy’s Love, as a name, amplifies the queer characterisation (1) and de-emphasises the aesthetic characterisation (3); Danmei (耽美), meanwhile, does the reverse.

Where does the name Danmei come from?

When BL was first developed in Japan, it used to have a now out-of-fashion genre name: Tanbi. Tanbi was borrowed from same name describing a late 19th century / early 20th century Japanese literary movement, known as Tanbi-ha and was inspired by Aestheticism in England. Aestheticism “centered around the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose”. Along the same line, the core belief of authors of Tanbi-ha was that art should celebrate beauty and reject the portrayal of ugliness in human nature, the darkness of reality:

…Tanbi writers argued that the ideas of naturalism writers such as “objectivism,” “truth is more important than beauty” and so on would “oppress human beings’ desire” so as to “lose beauty and human nature.” Accordingly, they insisted on “acute mental and emotional sensibility” [Ye, 2009].

(Source, with more details on Tanbi.)

Neither romance nor homosexuality were requirements for works in the original Tanbi-ha genre. BL borrowed the name Tanbi because its early authors saw their work created under the same principles: the emphasis on the beauty of their characters, their love (romantic and platonic), in a world that was also beautiful and untouched by ugliness such as sexism and homophobia.

The stubborn persistence on keeping one’s eyes trained on the beautiful, the willingness to turn a blind eye to reality for the sake of the beauty is built-in in the genre’s name. Tanbi meant more than beauty, aesthetics; its kanji form was written as 耽美; 耽 = to sink, drown in, to over-indulge in; 美 = beauty.

Tanbi, therefore, literally means to drown in, to over-indulge in beauty.

Over time, as the genre expanded its writing style, Tanbi eventually fell out of favour as BL’s genre name in Japan. However, as it gained popularity in the Sinosphere in the 1990s, starting with Taiwan and Hong Kong, the kanji of Tanbi was retained as the Chinese name of the genre.

In Mandarin Chinese, 耽美 is pronounced Danmei. A hyperfocus on the aesthetics, the utopian aspects of traditional BL is therefore retained in Danmei by its name. People’s Daily could therefore devote its review of TU on its aesthetics. Realism, including politics and all discussions of social issues, can therefore be swept aside in the name of respecting the genre’s tradition.

I’ve mostly been reading about and observing c-fandom, and I believe these 3 characterisations have all attracted its own kind of fans. Fans who care and talk about queer issues even when it isn’t encouraged by their sociopolitical environment, who shine a light upon these issues in their fan works. Fans who treat the M/M leads as if they were a traditional cishet couple, such as calling one of the leads 老婆 (wife) and assigning him biologically female functions when needed (via, for example, the ABO trope). Fans who insist the works must meet their beauty standards, rejecting those that fail (for example, if the leads are not good looking enough) by claiming they’re there for Danmei, not Danchou (耽醜, “over-indulgence on ugliness”). Fans who are drawn to the genre by a combination of these characterisations.

By the history and definition of the genre, all the above reasons for fanning Danmei are as valid, as legitimate as one another.

I thought about this related question then: are c-fans of the second (traditional BL characterisation) and third (aesthetic characterisation) groups homophobic? When I first asked this question, I—a fan whose fandom experience had been entirely in English-speaking communities—assume the answer was yes. I thought, in particular, the insistence of treating Danmei’s M/M couples as cishet couples in a homosexual shell had to be conscious queer erasure. How can anyone ignore the same-sexness of the leads? How can anyone talk about Danmei without associating it with homosexuality?

However, as I read more—again, specifically about c-fandom, and in Chinese—I realised the answer may be a little more complex.

Previously, I had largely thought about homophobia in terms of individual attitudes. This has to do with my current environment (liberal parts of the United States), in which the choice to accept or reject the queer community has become a close to personal choice. Pride flags fly all over the city, including the city hall, every summer, and most churches welcome the LGBT+ community. I hadn’t considered how an environment in which queers have never enjoyed full social exposure, in which education of related topics is sorely lacking, would affect Danmei’s development as a genre.

In such an environment, it is difficult for Danmei to evolve and incorporate up-to-date understanding of RL queerness.

The consequence I can see is this: Danmei is more likely to be “stuck” in its historical characterisation as (het) women’s fantasy inside than outside the Great Firewall, with its queerness de-emphasised if not erased—and it draws fans who are attracted to this kind of characterisation accordingly. This is, perhaps, reflected by the fact that the (het) women-to-queer ratio of Danmei / BL fans is significantly higher in China than in the West (Table 1 in this article summarises how Danmei / BL fans have split between different genders and sexual orientation in the Sinosphere vs the West in different research studies).

Another driving force I can see for Danmei to retain BL’s traditional feminist and aesthetic characterisations: women in China are not free from the social pressure that led to the birth of BL in 1970’s Japan. While many of them have achieved financial freedom through work and have high education, the young and educated have been subjected to immense pressure to get married and have children especially in the past decade.

In 2007, the China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation (中華全國婦女聯合會), coined the term 剩女 (literally, “leftover women”) for unmarried, urban women over 27 years old. The government started a campaign that, among other things, associated women’s education level with ugliness, and their unmarried status with pickiness, moral degeneracy. The reason behind the campaign: birth rates are plummeting and the state wants educated women, in particular, to nurture a high quality, next generation workforce. More importantly, the government sees a threat in the M/F sex imbalance (high M, low F) that has commonly been attributed to the country’s “one child policy” between 1979-2015, which encouraged female infanticide / abortion of female foetuses in a culture that favours surname-carrying boys. The state fears the unmarried men will become violent and/or gay, leading to “social instability and insecurity”. Therefore, it wants all women, in particular those who are educated, to enter the “wife pool” for these unmarried men. (Source 1, Source 2: Source 2 is a short, recommended read).

For Chinese women, therefore, patriarchy and sexism is far from over. Escapist fantasies where sexism is removed—by removing women from the picture—are therefore here to stay.

Danmei is therefore not queer literature (同志文學). The difference between Danmei and queer literature is highlighted by this reportedly popular saying (and its similar variations) in some Danmei communities:

異性戀只是傳宗接代，同性戀才是真愛 Heterosexuality is only for reproduction. Only homosexuality is true love.

The attitude towards heterosexuality is one of distaste, viewed as a means to an end the speaker has no interest in. On the contrary, homosexuality is idealised, reflecting the disregard / lack of understanding of some Danmei fans have towards the RL hardships of c-queers. The ignorance may be further propagated by gate-keeping by some Danmei fans for safety reasons, keeping queer discussions away from their communities for fear that their favourite hangouts would meet the same uncertain fate of other communities that previously held open queer discussions, such as the Weibo gay and lesbian supertopics. Such gatekeeping can, again, be easily enforced using tradition as argument: the beauty 美 is Tanbi and Danmei (耽美), remember, includes the beauty of utopia, where ugly truths such as discrimination do not enter the picture. A Danmei that explores, for example, the difficulty of coming out of the closet is no longer Danmei, by its historical, aesthetic definition.

[I’ve therefore read about c-queers viewing Danmei with suspicion, if not downright hostility; they believe the genre, by ignoring their RL challenges and casting them as beautiful, even perfect individuals, and in some cases, by fetishising them and their relationships, only leads to more misconceptions about the queer community. Dangai, meanwhile, has been viewed with even more distaste as potential weapons by the state to keep gays in the closet; if the government can shove the Danmei characters into the “socialist brotherhood” closet, it can shove them as well.

I haven’t yet, however, been able to tease out the approximate fraction of c-queers whose views of Danmei and Dangai is negative. The opposing, positive view of the genres is this: they still provide LGBT+ visibility, which is better than none and it would’ve been close to none without Danmei and Dangai; while Danmei may skim over the hardships of being queer, fan works of Danmei are free to explore them—and they have.

This article provides insights on this issue. @peekbackstage’s conversation with a Chinese film/TV director in Clubhouse is also well worth a read.]

That said, Danmei can only be dissociated from the queer characterisation if there’s a way to talk about the genre without evoking words and phrases that suggest homosexuality—something that is difficult to do with English. Is there?

In Chinese, I’d venture to say … almost. There’s almost a way. Close enough to pass.

The fact that M/M in traditional BL has been developed and viewed not as queer but as a removal of F also means this: queerness isn’t “built-in” into the language of Danmei. The name Danmei itself already bypasses a major “queer checkpoint”: it’s impossible to refer to a genre called Boy’s Love and not think about homosexuality.

Here’s one more important example of such bypass. Please let me, as an excuse to put these beautiful smiles in my blog, show this classic moment from TU; this can be any gif in which the leads are performing such suggestive romantic gestures:

How can I describe this succinctly? In English?

Two men acting in love? Er. That’s… the definition of gay, almost.

Two men acting gay? Well. GAY.

Right. Fine. Let’s go negative. Queerbaiting? … Still gay, because the word “queer” is in there.

[Pie note: for the record, I don’t think TU or WoH is queer-baiting.]

Personally, I find it impossible to describe the GIF above in English that I do not automatically associate with RL romantic love between two men, with homosexuality. But can I do it in Chinese?

… Yes.

There’s a term, 賣腐 (pronounced “maifu”), literally, “selling 賣 the rot 腐”, derived from the term known among i-fans as fujoshi and written, in kanji, as 腐女. Fujoshi, or 腐 (“rot”) 女 (“women”), describes the largely (het) female audience of the Japanese BL genre (>80%, according to Wikipedia). Originated as a misogynistic insult towards female Japanese BL fans in the 2000s, fujoshi was later reclaimed by the same female BL fans who now use the self-depreciative term as acknowledgement of their interest being “rotten”, for BL’s disregard of the society’s traditional expectations on women.

賣腐 is therefore to “sell the rot” to the rotten women; ie. the suggestive romantic gestures, exemplified by the GIF above, between the M/M leads are catering, performing fan service to their target audience.

[賣腐 is also a term one will see in the state opinion pieces.]

There’s nothing gay about this term.

I’ve therefore found it possible to talk and think in Chinese about Danmei while giving little thought to queerness. The history and definition of Danmei allow that.

Again, I’m not saying any of this to excuse homophobia among in Danmei and Dangai fandoms. The point I’m trying to make is this — given that Danmei has three potential characterisations, two of which can be discussed without abundantly evoking queer concepts and vocabularies, given that history of Danmei, as a genre, already favoured characterisation 2 (traditional BL), the government addressing homosexuality in its opinions on Danmei and Dangai is far from a given.

By extension, the popularity of Dangai may mean a lot or little to c-queers; by extension, the state can approve / disapprove of Danmei and Dangai in a manner independent of its stance on homosexuality, which is itself inconsistent and at times, logic-deying (example to come…).

This is both good and bad, from the perspective of both the government and the c-queer community.

For the government: as discussed, the “triality” of Danmei allows the state to “move the goalpost” depending on what it tries to achieve. It has characterisations 2 (the traditional BL characterisation) and 3 (the aesthetic characterisation) as excuses to let Dangai dramas pass the censorship board should it want their profit and also, their promise of expanding the country’s soft power overseas by drawing an international audience. These characterisations also allow the state to throw cold water on the popularity of Danmei / Dangai should it desire, for reasons other than its queer suggestions—despite the Xi regime’s push against open expressions of queerness (including by activism, in media), it has also been careful about not demonising c-queers in words, and has countered other people’s attempts to do so.

Why may the government want to throw cold water on Danmei and Dangai? They are still subculture, which the state has also viewed with suspicion. In 2018, a NRTA directive explicitly requested that “c-ent programmes should not use entertainers with tattoos; (those associated with) hip-hop culture, sub-cultures (non-mainstream cultures), decadent cultures.” (”另外，总局明确要求节目中纹身艺人、嘻哈文化、亚文化（非主流文化）、丧文化（颓废文化）不用。”).

Subculture isn’t “core socialist values”. More importantly, it’s difficult to keep up with and control subculture. 環球網, the website co-owned by People’s Daily and Global Times (環球時報), ie, The State Newspaper and The State Tabloid, famously said this on its Weibo, on 2020/03/04, re: 227:

老了，没看懂为什么战。晚安。 Getting old. Can’t figure out what the war is about. Good night.

The State also cannot stop subculture from happening. It doesn’t have the resources to quell every single thing that become popular among its population of 1.4 billion. What it can do to make sure these subcultures stay subcultures, kept out of sight and mind of the general public.

Characterisation 1 (the queer characterisation), meanwhile, remains available to the state should it wish to drop the axe on Dangai for its queer elements. I’m including, as “queer elements”, presentation of men as too “feminine” for the state—which has remained a sore point for the government. This axe have a reason to drop in the upcoming months: July 23rd, 2021 will be the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the state may desire to have only uniformed forces and muscled, gun-toting “masculine” men gracing the screens.

What about for c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans)? What good and bad can the multiple characterisations of the genres do for them?

For c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans), their acceptance and safety are helped by the Dangai genre, by the Dangai 101 phenomenon, if and only if the state both characterises the queer elements in these dramas as queer (characterisation 1) AND their opinions of them are positive.

Personally, I had viewed this to be unlikely from the start, because a queer characterisation would mean the censorship board has failed to do its job, which is embarrassing for the Chinese government.

Characterisations 2) and 3) are not bad for c-queers and their supporters, however, and definitely not “enemies” of Characterisation 1); they can not only serve as covers for the queer elements in Dangai to reach their audience, but also, they can act as protective padding for the LGBT+ community if the content or (very aggressive) marketing of the Dangai dramas displease the government — with the understanding, again, that the “traditional BL” arm of the Danmei community is itself also highly vulnerable by being a subculture, and so its padding effect is limited and it also deserves protection.

The downside to achieving LGBT+ visibility through Dangai is, of course and as mentioned, that these dramas are, ultimately, deeply unrealistic depictions of the c-queers. The promotion of these dramas, which has focused on physical interactions between the male leads for “candies”, can encourage even more fetishising of queers and queer relationships. The associated (character) CP culture that makes and breaks CPs based on the dramas’ airing cycle may also fuel negative perception of queer relationships as attention-seeking behaviour, something that can be initiated and terminated at will and for the right price.

Finally, with all this said, which characterisation(s) have the government taken re: Dangai and/or WOH? And what opinions has it given to its characterisations?

PART 1 <-- YOU ARE HERE PART 2 PART 3

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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birobertkarow · 3 years ago

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your honour this is homosexual behaviour

#tatort saarbrücken

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woman-loving · 3 years ago

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Islam, heteronormativity, and lesbian lives in Indonesia

Selections from Heteronormativity, Passionate Aesthetics and Symbolic Subversion in Asia by Saskia Wieringa, 2015.

These passages discuss some general social developments related to sexuality and gender in Indonesia, and then describe stories from different (mostly lesbian) narrators. They also touch on the creation of a religious school for waria (trans women), and include two trans men narrators, one of whom talks about his struggle to get sex reassignment surgery in the 70s. I also included a story from a divorced woman whose sexuality was questioned when her husband complained that she couldn’t sexually please him. Accusations of lesbianism can be directed toward any woman as a method for managing her sexuality/gender and prodding her into compliance with expectations of sexual availability.

In spite of protests by religious right-wing leaders, Islam does not have a single source of its so-called 'Islamic tradition'. There are many different interpretations and, apart from the Quran, many sources are contested. Even the Quran has abundant interpretations. Feminist Muslim writers, such as Fatima Mernissi (1985), Riffat Hassan (1987), and Musdah Mulia (2004 and 2012), locate their interpretations in the primary source of Islam--the Quran. According to those readings, sexuality is seen in an affirmative, positive light, being generally described as a sign of God's mercy and generosity toward humanity, characterised by such valued qualities as tranquillity, love, and beauty. The California-based Muslim scholar Amina Wadud (1999) describes the jalal (masculine) and jamal (feminine) attributes of Allah as a manifestation of sacred unity. She maintains that Allah's jamal qualities are associated with beauty that, although originally evaluated as being at the same level as Allah's masculine qualities that are associated with majesty, have en subsumed in the 14 centuries since the Quran was revealed.

The Quran gives rise to multiple interpretations. Verse 30:21 is one of my favorites:

“And among Allah's signs is this. That Allah created for you spouses from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquillity whit them, and Allah has put love and mercy between your [hearts]: verily in that there are signs for those who reflect.”[2]

The verse is commonly used in marriage celebrations, and I also used it in my same-sex marriage ritual. It mentions the gender-neutral term 'spouse,' which leaves room for the interpretation that same-sex partners are included.

Indonesian waria (transwomen) derive hope from such texts. In 2008, Maryani, a well-respected waria, opened a pesantren (traditional Islamic religious school) for waria, named Al-Fatah, at her house in Yogyakarta. After her death in March 2014, it was temporarily closed, but fortunately soon reopened in nearby Kotagede. A sexual-rights activist, Shinta Ratri, opened her house to waria santri (santri are strict believers, linked to religious schools) so they could continue to receive religious education. At the official opening, Muslim scholar Abdul Muhaimin of the Faithful People Brotherhood Forum reminded the audience that, as everyone was made by God: "Everyone has the right to observe their religion in their own way...", and added: "I hoped the students here are strong, as they must face stigma in society."[3]

Prior to her death (after she had made the haj),[4] Maryani herself, a deeply-religious person, said: "Here we teach our friends to worship God. People who worship are seeking paradise, this is not limited to our sex or our clothing..."[5] So far, hers is the only waria pesantren in Indonesia, perhaps even globally, and may be due to the fact that Maryani was an exceptionally strong person who spoke at many human-rights meetings. In October 2010, I also interviewed her and was struck by her warm personality, courage, and clear views.

In spite of those progressive readings of the Quran, women's sexuality is interpreted in light of their servility to men in practice, and has been linked to men's honour rather than women's pleasure. Although marriage is not viewed as too sacred to be broken in Indonesia, it is regarded as a religious obligation by all. An unmarried woman over the age of 20 is considered to be a perawan tua ('old virgin'), and is confronted by a continuous barrage of questions as to when she will marry.

Muslim (and Christian) conservative leaders consider homosexuality to be a sin. Women in same-sex relations find themselves in a difficult corner, as exclusion from their religion is a heavy burden. Some simply pray at home, privately hoping that their God will forgive them and trusting in the compassion taught by their holy books. However, outside their private space, religious teachers and society at large denounce their lives as sinful and accuse them of having no religion.

Recent Indonesia legislation strengthens the conservative, heteronormative interpretations of Islam. Apart from the 2008 anti-pornography law (discussed below), a new health law was adopted that further tightened conservative Islam's grip on women's reproductive rights and marginalised non-heteronormative women. That 2009 health bill replaced the law of 1992, which had no chapter on reproductive health. The new law states that a healthy, reproductive, and sexual life may only be enjoyed with a 'lawful partner' and only without 'violating religious values'--which means that all of our narrators would be banned from enjoying healthy, sexual, and reproductive lives.[6]

Conservative statements are also made by women themselves; for example, members of the hard-line Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir, who not only want to restrict reproductive services (such as family planning) to lawfully-wedded heterosexual couples but also see population control as a 'weapon of the West' to weaken the country.[7] They propose to save Indonesia by the imposition of sharia laws. Hard-line Islamic interpretations are widely propagated and creep into the legal system, thus strengthening heteronormativity and further expelling non-normative others.

Yet strong feminist voices are also heard in Indonesia's Muslim circles. Even in a relation to one of the most controversial issues in Islam--homosexuality--a positive, feminist interpretation is possible. Indonesia's prominent feminist Muslim scholar, Siti Musdah Mulia, explains that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon as it was created by Allah, and thus allowed by Islam. The prohibition, however, is the work of fallible interpretations by religion scholars.[8] In her 2011 paper on sexual rights, Mulia bases herself on certain Indonesian traditions that honour transgender people, referring to bissu in south Sulawesi, and warok[9] in the reog dance form in Ponorogo. In those cases, transgender is linked to sacred powers and fertility. She stresses that the story of Lot, always cited as evidence of Quranic condemnation of homosexuality, is actually concerned with sexual violence--the people of Sodom were not the only ones faced with God's wrath, as the people of Gomorrah were also severely chastised even though there is no indication that they engaged in same-sex behaviour. Nor is there any hint of same-sex behaviour in relationship to Lot's poor wife, who was transformed into a pillar of salt. Mulia advances a humanistic interpretation of the Quran that stresses the principles of justice, equity, human dignity, love, and compassion (2011: 7). Her conclusion is that not Islam itself but rather its heterosexist and patriarchal interpretation leads to discrimination.

After the political liberalisation (Reformasi) of 1998, conservative religious groups (which had been banned at the height of the repressive New-Order regime) increased their influence. The dakwah ('spreading of Islam') movement, which grew from small Islamist usroh (cell, family) groups and aimed to turn Indonesia into a Muslim state, gathered momentum.[10] Islamist parties, such as the Partai Kesejahteraan Sosial (PKS), or Social Justice Party, gained wide popularity, although that was not translated into a large number of seats in the national parliament (Hefner 2012; Katjasungkana 2012). In the early Reformasi years, official discourse on women was based on women's rights, taking the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as its guide, but recent discourse on an Islamic-family model--the so-called keluarga sakinah ('the happy family')--has become dominant in government circles (Wieringa 2015, forthcoming). The growing Islamist emphasis on a heteronormative family model, coupled with homophobia, is spreading in society. During KAN's [Kartini Asia Network for Gender and Women's Studies in Asia] September 2006 TOT [Training of Trainers] course in Jakarta, the following conversation was recorded:

“Farida: Religious teachers go on and on about homosexuality. They keep shouting that it is a very grave sin and that people will go straight to hell. My daughter is in the fifth form of primary school. She has a best friend and the two were inseparable. But the teachers managed to set them apart, as they were considered to be too close. The mother of my daughter's friend came to me crying; she was warned that she had to be careful with her child, or else she might get a daughter who was different. And now the new school regulations stress that a woman must wear the jilbab [headscarf].[11] This has put a lot of stress on tomboyish girls. They cannot wear the clothes they are comfortable with any more. Zeinab: When we were taught fiqih [Islamic law], we never discussed homosexuality. When we studied the issue of zinah [adultery], one of our group asked: "But how about a woman committing zinah with another woman, or a man with another man?" Our teacher just shook is head and muttered that that was not a good thing. The only story we learnt was about the prophet Luth [Lot]. But when we went to study the hadith [Islamic oral law], we found the prophet had a very close friend, Abu Harairah, who never married, while all men were always showing off their wives. There were some indications that he might have had a male lover. Yet the prophet is not known to have warned him. So, while the mainstream interpretation of Islam is that they condemn homosexuality, there are also other traditions that seem to be more tolerant, even from the life of the prophet himself.”

The above fragment shows how fundamentalist practices creep into every nook and cranny of Indonesian people's lives--the growing suspicion toward tomboys, forcible separation of close school friends, and enforcement of Muslim dress codes. But we also see a counter-protest arising. At the TOT training course, the women activists realised that patriarchal interpretations of religion had severely undermined women's space, and started looking for alternative interpretations, such as the story of the prophet's unmarried friend.

However, for many of our narrators, religion is a troubling issue. Putri, for instance, does not even want to discuss the rights of gays and lesbians in Indonesia; she thinks the future looks gloomy, with religious fundamentalism on the rise, and her dream of equal rights is buried by the increasing militancy of religious fanatics. [...]

Women-loving women

Religion is a sensitive aspect of the lives of our women-loving-women narrators, who are from world religions that, although propagating love and compassion in their distinct ways, interpret same-sex love negatively. In some cases, our narrators are able to look beyond the patriarchal interpretations of their religions, which preach hatred for what are emotions of great beauty and satisfaction to them, while others are devastated by guilt and shame. [...]

Indonesian male-identified Lee wonders why "people cannot see us as God's creatures?" but fears that Islam will never accept homosexuality. He knows the story of the prophet Lot, and how the city of Sodom was destroyed by God as a warning so others would not commit the sin of sodomy. Lee was raised as a good Muslim, and tries to follow what he has been taught are God's orders. For some time, he wore a man's outfit for praying.[16] At that time, he thought that religious duties--if conducted sincerely--were more important than his appearance but, after listening to some religious preachers, he felt that it was not right to wear men's clothing: "Sometimes I think it is not right, lying to myself, pretending to be someone else. We cannot lie to God, right? Even if I try to hide it, definitely God knows." So, after attending religious classes, he decided to wear the woman's outfit--the mukena--when praying at home.

Lia grew up in a strict Muslim family. When she pronounced herself to be a lesbian, it came as a shock to her relatives, who invoked the power of religion to cure her. When her mother went on the haj, she brought 'Zamzam water' from Mecca. The miraculous healing powers of the liquid from Mecca's Zamzam well were supposed to bring Lia back to the normal path. Dutifully, Lia drank from it and jokingly exclaimed: "Ah, my God, only now I realise how handsome Delon is!"[17] Yet she found succor in her religion when she went through a crisis in her relationship with Santi:

"When Santi hated me very much and avoided me, I prayed: "God, if it is true that you give me a guiding light, please give me a sign. But if it is a sin...please help me..." Was my relationship with Santi blessed or not? If it wasn't, surely God would have blocked the way, and if it way, would God broaden my path? As, after praying so hard, Santi and I became closer, God must have endorsed it. Does God listen to my prayer, or does God test me?"

So, even though she got together again with Santi after that fervent bout of praying, uncertainty gnaws at Lia, who realises that mainstream Islamic preachers prohibit homosexuality. Ideally, she feels that a person's religion must support people, but Islam does not do that because she is made to feel like a sinner. But, she says, the basic principle that Islam teaches is to love others. As long as she does that, Lia sees nothing wrong in herself as one of God's creatures. She realises that, particularly in the interpretation of the hadith (Islamic oral tradition), all manner of distortions have entered Islamic values, and wonders what was originally taught about homosexuality in Islam. She is aware that many Quranic texts about the status of women were manipulated in order to marginalise them, and avidly follows debates on feminist interpretations that stress that the real message of the Quran does not preach women's subordination.

Lia knows that there are lesbians in the pesantren who carry out religious obligations, such as praying and doing good deeds. If someone has been a lesbian for so long that it feels like natural character, and has been praying and fasting for many years, they cannot change into a heterosexual, she decided.

Religious values are also deeply inculcated in Sandy, who is tortured by guilt and shame about her lesbian desires. Although masculine in appearance and behaviour, she wears the mukena while praying both at home and at the mushola (small mosque) that she frequents. Since she was 23, when her mother died, she realised that what she did with her lover, Mira, was a sin and started reading religious books to discover what they said about people like her. She accepted the traditional interpretation of the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom. When she was 25 years old, Mira left her to marry a man. Sandy was broken hearted and considered suicide. In that period of great distress, she realised that God prohibits suicide and just wanted her to give up her sinful life. She struggled hard against her desires for women and the masculinity in her:

"If I walk with women, I feel like a man; that I have to protect them. I feel that I am stronger than other women. But I also feel that I am a woman, I am sure that I am a woman, that is why I feel that I am different from others. I accept my own condition as an illness, not as my destiny. ... Yes, an illness, because we follow our lust. It we try to contain our lust, as religion teaches us, we would never be like this. So I try to stay close to God. I do my prayers, and a lot of zikir.[18] I even try to do tahajjud.[19]"

Sandy believes in the hereafter and does not want to spoil her chances of eternal bliss by engaging in something so clearly disproved of by religion, although she has not found any clear prohibitions against lesbianism in either the Quran or hadith.

Bhima, who considers himself to be a secular person, was brought up in a Muslim family. His identity card states that he is a Muslim, which got him into serious trouble when he went for his first sex-change operation at the end of the 1970s. He went through the necessary tests but the doctors hesitated when they looked at his ID, fearing the wrath of conservative clerics. Bhima was desperate:

"Listen, I have come this far! I have saved up for this, sold my car, relatives have contributed, how can you do this to me? Tell me what other religion I should take up and I will immediately get my identity card changed. I have never even been inside a mosque. I don't care about any institutionalised religion!"

The doctors did not heed his plea, instead advising him to get a letter of recommendation from a noted Muslim scholar. Undaunted, Bhima made an appointment with a progressive female psychologist who had been trained in Egypt and often gave liberal advice on Muslim issues on the radio. He managed to persuade her to write a letter of introduction to the well-known Muslim scholar Professor Hamka. Letter in hand, Bhima presented himself at the gate of Hamka's house, and was let in by the great scholar himself. Bhima pleaded his case, upon which Hamka opened the Quran and pointed to a passage that read "when you are ill, you must make all attempts to heal yourself":

"Are you ill?" Hamka asked. Bhima nodded vehemently. "Fine, so then tell them that the Quran advises to heal your illness." "It is better, sir," Bhima suggested, "that you write that down for them."

With that letter, Bhima had no problem to be accepted for the first operation, in which his breasts were removed.

Widows [...] In Eliana's case religion played an important role in her marriage--and subsequent divorce. While still at school, she had joined an usroh group (created to teach students about religious and social issues in the days of the Suharto dictatorship). Proper sexual behaviour played an important role in their teachings. According to usroh, a wife must be sexually subservient to her husband and accept all his wishes, even if they involve him taking a second wife. Eliana felt close to her spiritual leader and tried to sexually behave as a good Muslim wife would. She forced herself to give in to all her husband's sexual wishes, including blow jobs and watching pornography with him. Yet the leader blamed Eliana for not doing enough to please her husband, saying that is why he needed a second wife. Her teacher even asked if she was a lesbian, because she could not satisfy her husband. As both her spiritual leader and husband agreed that it was not nice for a man to have an intellectually-superior woman, she played down her intelligence. Eventually she divorced her husband.

Internalised lesbophobia and conservative-religious (in this case, Muslim) norms prevented Jenar for enjoying the short lesbian relationship that she had between her two marriages. It is interesting how she phrases the conversation, starting on the topic by emphasising how much she distrusted men after her divorce (because her husband did not financially provide for their family). The relationship with her woman lover was not long underway, and had not advanced beyond kissing, but she immediately felt that, according to religion, what she did was laknat (cursed). Anyway, she added, she was a 'normal,' heterosexual woman and did not feel much aroused when they were touching. A middle-aged, male friend added to her feeling of discomfort by emphasising that she would be cursed by God if it would continue. He then took her to a dukun (shaman), where she was bathed with flowers at midnight in order to cure her. That was apparently successful, for she gave the relationship up. However, even though she had stressed that she was 'normal' and did not respond sexually to her lover's advances, she ended the conversation by saying that she felt lesbianism was a 'contagious disease'. That remark stresses her own internalised homophobia but also emphasises her helplessness and lack of agency--contagion is something that cannot be avoided. It also hints at the strength of the pull she felt for a contagion that apparently could not be easily ignored. The important role of the dukun indicates that she follows the syncretist stream of Islam, mixed with elements of the pre-Islamic Javanese religion--Kejawen. [...]

Women in same-sex relationships [...]

As in India, the human-women's-lesbian-rights discourse is gaining momentum in Indonesia. It could only develop after 1998, when the country's dictator was finally forced to resign and a new climate of political openness was created. The new sexual-rights organisations not only opened a public space to discuss women's and sexual rights but also impacted on the behaviour of individuals within their organisations (as discussed in more detail in chapter 9). Before Lee joined a lesbian-rights group, he had decided to undergo sex-reassignment therapy (SRT) to physically become a man as much as possible. Activists warned him of the operations' health risks and asked whether he really needed such a change in order to live with his spouse. Lee feels secure within the group, and is happy to find like-minded people with whom he can share many of his concerns. Lee actively sought them out after reading a newspaper article about a gay male activist: he tracked him down at his workplace and obtained the address of the lesbian group. Lee is less afraid of what will happen when their neighborhood find out that Lee's body is female--as he says: "I have done nothing wrong, I haven't disturbed anyone, I have never asked anyone for food." However, Lee is worried about the media, where gay men and lesbian women are often represented as the sources of disease and disaster.

Lia had no idea what a lesbian was when she first fell in love with a woman. There were many tomboys like her playing in the school's softball team, and she once spotted a female couple in another school's softball team. Her relationship with Santi developed without, as Lia says, any guidance of previous information. Only at college in Yogyakarta did she start reading about homosexuality on the internet. Through the Suara Srikandi portal (one of the first lesbian groups in Jakarta), she came to know of other Indonesian lesbians. Another website that she frequently visited was the Indonesian Lesbian Forum, and one of her lecturers introduced her to the gay and lesbian movement in her city. In 2004, she publicly came out at a press conference. She first joined the KPI, which has an interest group of sexual minorities, but found the attitude of her feminist friends to be unsupportive and decided to join a lesbian-only group. The women activists only wanted to discuss the public role of women and domestic violence, and told her that lesbianism was a disease and a sin.

Lia wants to broaden the lesbian movement. She feels the movement is good in theory but lacking in practice--particularly in creating alliances with other suppressed groups, such as farmers and labourers. In focusing only on lesbians, not on discrimination and marginalisation itself, she asserts that it has become too exclusive. By socialising with other movements, she argues, they will better understand lesbian issues, and, in turn, that will help the lesbian movement. It is true, she concedes, that lesbians are stigmatised by all groups in society but, since 1998 (the fall of General Suharto), the country has seen a process of democratisation. "We must take up that opportunity and not be scared of stigma," she exhorts her friends in the lesbian movement. Lia herself joined a small, radical political party, the PRD,[33] and faced stigma ("we have a lesbian comrade; that's a sin, isn't it?"), but feels that she has ultimately been welcomed. Now, her major problem is to find the finances to conduct her activism. At the time of the interview, she had lost her job and could not find the means to print handouts for her PRD comrades.

Lia is a brave forerunner. At the time of the interview, her lesbian friends were too scared to follow in her footsteps and told her that she was only dreaming. However, her heterosexual friends (in the labour movement) said that they were bored with her, and found her insistence of a connection between the struggle for sexual and labour rights to be too pushy.

Lia dreams of equal rights for lesbians. First, she would like to see a gay-marriage law implemented in Indonesia, which would ensure that the property rights of surviving spouses are protected in case one passes away. She also would like to set up a shelter for lesbians, as she knows many young lesbians who have been thrown out of their family homes and are in need of support.

Sandy is rather hesitant about the rights she would like to see introduced to Indonesian society. Most of all, she wants to be accepted as a normal human being, where no one says bad things about or harasses lesbians like her. What women do in the privacy of their bedrooms is one thing. Women should have the right to have sex, for it comes straight from the heart--it is pure love. But, in public, their behavior should be impeccable: no kissing, no hugging, no holding of hands. However, Sandy thinks that marriage rights for lesbians will not happen in Indonesia, and are only possible in Christian countries. But, minimally, she hopes to lead a life without discrimination or violence:

"If they see us as normal, they won't bother us. We are human, but if we act provocatively then it is ok for them to even hang us ... [I just hope they] won't harass us, or humiliate us. That is all I ask, that if we are being humiliated there is a law to prevent it. That a person like me is protected. To be laughed at is okay, but it is too much if they throw stones at us and if we are not allowed to work."

Sex workers want the right to work without being harassed, and women in same-sex relationships want to be treated like 'normal' human beings and enjoy socio-sexual rights, such as health benefits or the right to buy joint property. Yet the state does not provide those rights and does not protect its citizens in equal measure. As a major agent of heteronormativity, it restricts its benefits and protection to those within its margins. Couples with social stigma and conservative-religious interpretations, some of our narrators have reached deep levels of depression.

#lgbtq #indonesia #trans men #trans women #waria #islam #saskia wieringa #lesbians #women loving women #wlw

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professionallyprocrastinating · 5 years ago

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Spitefic (after a long break)

So, I don’t normally write Iron Man specific spitefics, but this one has bugged me for a long time. Another post about how not noticing Stark Weapons on the black market wasn’t Tony’s fault prompted me to put them together. Takes place some time between Iron Man 1 and 2 TW: Homophobia, Transphobia, hints of racism.

***

Tony left a devastated Rhodey in Pepper’s capable hands - she’d handled him as an incoherent mess enough times to get the details out of the good Colonel - and walked down to the lab, where he kept the hangover cures and the phone with the direct numbers of several people too high up to be bothered with calls from just anyone.

Rhodey had called Happy a few hours ago, asking for a ride. Happy Hogan, finding his boss’s bestie drunker than even Tony managed to get on the regular (a few epic benders nonwithstanding), panicked and took him back to Stark Tower, taking the direct elevator to Tony’s penthouse. Rhodey had been barely able to stand under his own power, and calling his speech ‘slurred’ would be a compliment to the unintelligible rambling pouring out of him like water from a fountain. It would be like comparing a fight between alley cats to the Gettysburg Address, even, and Tony liked his friend too much to do that to him.

The most Rhodey’ s friends had managed to extract was something about how his life was over and assholes who couldn’t keep their mouths shut.

Rhodey had been deployed on a flyover mission for the past week, perhaps something had happened there? The Military as a whole might be pissed at Tony Stark for halting his weapons division, but enough of them owed him favours that they should give him at least an outline of an answer. The General who picked up didn’t sound happy to hear from him, but agreed to send him a copy of the report.

Bringing his StarkPad with him, Tony headed back upstairs, skimming through the report as he went.

The mission itself had been routine, but there was a note about Colonel James Rhodes being called in for Disciplinary Action as soon as he landed, leaving the junior pilot who had been his wingman to deal with the report and debrief. That, from what little Tony understood of military protocol, was unusual in the extreme.

He emerged from the elevator to find Pepper and Happy talking in soft voices, concern clear on their faces and Rhodey nowhere to be seen. “Where did he go?”

Pepper sighed, “I put him in one of the guestrooms to sleep it off. He’s not in a good shape, in any respect.”

Tony nodded, relaxing a little. “Thanks. Which one, I brought aspirin and a hangover remedy.”

The look his girlfriend and driver exchanged didn’t fill him with confidence. Pepper took both from his hands. “Happy, will you take those in? I’ll explain matters here.”

Something a lot like relief flashed across Happy’s face, which didn’t make Tony any less suspicious. Or apprehensive, when he noticed the chill in Pepper’s eyes that only appeared when he really screwed up. Pepper folded her arms and aimed the full force of her disappointed frown at Tony.

He squirmed, trying to deflect. “All the General told me was that there was a Diciplinary meeting once he got back from the mission he was on.”

Pepper inclined her head, the frown not wavering an inch. “Colonel Rhodes received a dishonourable discharge, for conduct unbecoming and against the regulations of the US Military.”

Rhodey, discharged for dishonourable conduct?

How? Why? Rhodey was one of the most honourable and rule-abiding people that Tony knew! It made him a terrible spokesperson, since it was way too obvious when he was shading the truth, but an excellent leader. Why would anyone think that kicking him out was a good idea.

Tony spun on his heel and stalked back to his lab, ready to shout at whoever he had to in order to get this fixed.

This time, the General was far less helpful. “I’m sorry, Mr Stark, there’s nothing we can do. He came out as having had homosexual relations, in front of a dozen personnel. Even if he did so with your support, we can’t hush that up now.”

With Tony’s support? A dozen personnel? Rhodey was tight-lipped about his personal life at the best of times...

Oh.

Oh, shit!

Tony cleared his throat, sure that he could still pull a few strings. “Is this about what I said about Spring Break? That was just me trying to make Rhodey squirm and get the others to lighten up.”

He could practically hear the General shrug, and wondered if the slimy note in his voice was just the landline connection. “The only loophole would be if discharging him was against the best interest of the armed forces. While you were so closely connected with the Military, having your friend in charge of your itinerary was beneficial. Now that you’ve announced your decision to no longer sell weapons, however...”

The implications were clear, and Tony froze in place. He had finally had it rubbed in his face that selling deadly missiles to the highest bidder was a bad idea that got people killed. Until he discovered whether Stayne had been working alone in his blackmarket dealings, he couldn’t risk adding more blood to the flood that already stained his hands.

The General hung up before Tony collected himself enough to reply, and Happy stuck his head in. “Hey, Boss, there’s a lady here asking for Rhodey.”

Oh, what now? Tony went down to meet the mystery woman, who turned out to be a tall blonde with a faint accent and rather more muscles than Tony was used to seeing on a woman. The angry, narrow-eyed glare that she aimed at him was less unfamiliar, though Tony didn’.t remember sleeping with this one.

The elevator dinged again before the newly-minted Iron Man could put his foot in his mouth, and they both turned to see Rhodey emerge, looking only marginally better than when he arrived. The woman pushed past Tony and ran to his side, slinging Rhodey’s arm over her shoulder, supporting him and earning the faintest of smiles. “Thanks, babe.”

The woman pressed a light kiss against his cheek. “I have a few friends who let me know whenever someone falls victim to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Figured it was the least I can do, since it’s indirectly my fault.”

The pieces clicked together.

Tony had left out most of the details about that particular spring break, like how Ivan was actually Ivana, who moonlighted as an escort to pay off her Top Surgery medical bills and save for Transition. She’d thrown her drink in Tony’s face when he misgendered her one too many times, which resulted in her date of the night starting a brawl (Tony still wasn’t sure if he’d been actually unaware or just pretending, and they’d both vanished by the time Tony returned from changing his shirt. Rhodey hadn’t mentioned Ivan/Ivana again, and Tony assumed that it had been a one night stand, or a drunken make-out, or something.

Apparently, Rhodey had just applied his legendary discretion to his own relationship, and had very specifically not told Tony. In hindsight, of course, Tony couldn’t blame him, especially not now.

Rhodey paused for a moment on his way out. “Tony, I know what High Command asked for in exchange for not discharging me, and I know that you make bad decisions when you feel guilty. This time, don’t. I won’t be responsible for more deaths than I have to be.”

Ivana squeezed the arm that she had wrapped around Rhodey’s waist. “There’s a network, matching discharged vets with more open-minded businesses. It’ll be ok.”

Maybe Rhodey would be ok, but it wouldn’t be any thanks to Tony.

Perhaps it was time to take Pepper’s advice and talk to a behaviour therapist, instead of blurting out whatever glib witticism popped into his head.

#anti-tony stark #anti iron man #Iron Man 1 #transphobic #homophobia

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funyasm · 4 years ago

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tagged by @teamsarawatshusband thank u hun ♥

• Your top five BLs (in no particular order)

Where your eyes linger

YYY

2gether

Theory of Love

Gameboys

(if ramking had its own drama, it would definitely be up there but as it is, i don’t care enough about the other pairings in My Engineer to do so)

• Favorite non-BL series

adapted from a BL novel but not technically a BL because of chinese censorship laws: The Untamed.

• Favorite OST

i usually love soundtracks but i can’t say that BLs have caught my attention on that front. some are even pretty kitsch (usually saxo themes make me lose it). i know i said it’s not a BL, but can i just answer The Untamed again?

• Favorite couple

hands down, Ramking from My Engineer

but i also have a soft spot for Teamwin from Until we meet again

• Your favorite ghostship

Earnpear from 2gether

• Favorite actor

Talay is a dumbass and i love him

• Favorite character

i kinda feel like we all need a king in our lives. i love how he managed to get close to ram despite how guarded, aloof and distant ram can seem (or maybe because of it) ; how he’s genuinely caring and attentive, respecting ram’s limits and apologizing when he did something wrong. he’s just really precious.

honourable mentions: pearl from Gameboys and two from Theory of love

• Actor you have a crush on

i don’t really have crushes on celebrities, but i’ll say this: perth nakhun is the softest boy, and watching his youtube videos always puts a stupid smile on my face.

• First BL

Tharntype. Kind of a miracle it wasn’t the last one too.

• An unpopular opinion of yours

i think we all know how problematic BLs can be... i try to keep in mind that it’s a different culture and it’s not my place to judge, but they’re clearly written by straight people for straight people, and despite the focus being on gay men it’s so often blatantly homophobic i’m sometimes not sure whether watching them is more comforting or more upsetting. that being said, i’m not a gay man, but as a lgbt person i take what i can get in terms of representation, and sometimes i just want a cheesy queer love story (i really hope we’ll get more wlw dramas too).

• A pet-peeve of yours

pft. i have too many to list them but here are a few:

- everything dubcon/noncon (in general, but in BLs it really contributes to that toxic stereotype that homosexuals are predators and can’t keep it in their pants)

- miscommunication and issues that could so easily be solved IF ONLY THEY TALKED SDFHDG

- incest

- girls being introduced only to cause trouble in a couple (love triangles, jealousy, basically being either a rival or just a bad bitch) - also, fujoshi characters objectifying gay men.

- gay relationships written in a very heteronormative way (the whole “husband/wife” and “top/bottom” thing, with the “wife/bottom” being the emotive, shy, fragile one and the “husband/top” the strong, protective, pushy one etc)

- toxic behaviours being romanticized

• Your favorite type of pairing

enemies to lovers is definitely a fav, but i also love ships where one is grumpy/distant and the other one is all sunshine and puppies

• Favorite declaration of love

so many were sweet and some very funny (i absolutely loved that Love Actually parody scene in Theory of Love) but i’m a sucker for a good “angst that culminates in a passionate kiss” scenes so yeah, Ramking owns my heart again.

• What you are currently watching

eh, too many things... Quaranthings, Love by chance 2, Still2gether, Oxygen, and i just finished Gameboys and The reason why he fell in love with me.

tagging @dreamboatsandtrenchcoats and anyone else who wants to do it ♥

#tag games

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acityofaquatint · 5 years ago

Note

Hi! Love your blog, it is really neat. Two questions: do you know some books that analyse brideshead? Because I like it but I don't know what really it is about. And are the main characters your bright things or not because I am about to read Vile bodies and maybe I could make a suggestion or two

hello, and apologies for taking so long over this answer; i wanted to do it justice. while my answers may not follow your questions directly, i hope that they are useful nevertheless :^)

do you know some books that analyse brideshead?

i'm afraid i haven't read any analytical books on brideshead (i don't read analysis, it's very bad of me), but perhaps i could recommend you some books that touch on similar themes to brideshead, and some reviews that talk about the themes?

books &c

- for historical homosexuality in oxford: the invention of love by tom stoppard, a biographical play about the life of a e housman

- for society and social status: the edwardians by vita sackville-west, following a moody son named sebastian as he navigates society and aristocratic life

- for repression, religion, and historical homophobia: maurice by e m forster, about a cambridge student who deals with experiencing homosexual attraction in the pre-war period

- any other waugh book, such as the sword of honour trilogy or (as you are reading) vile bodies

- other books by members of the bright young things such as betjeman's collected poems (of which i recommend narcissus and a hike on the downs, for comparison with brideshead)

- for a contrasting exploration of society life across the pond: the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald

- i cannot think of any specific books that tackle catholicism in the way brideshead does though i am sure they exist, but if you are not familiar with the roman catholic church then i recommend you research some beliefs and practices in order to better understand brideshead, as well as reading about the experiences of other catholics. (it is interesting to note that many people consider brideshead to have been written to explain and encourage conversion to catholicism, despite portraying negative aspects of catholicism very strongly. he himself said that was about gd drawing souls to himself.)

Edit: Mad World by Paula Byrne, about waugh's life and the origins of brideshead (thanks @katherinebarlow )

reviews

- this one discusses the tv show from a particularly religious perspective: https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/12/07/brideshead-revisited-changed-my-life-can-it-work-its-magic-downton-abbey

- this is a general review/discussion of many facets of the books: https://www.entertainment-focus.com/book-section/book-reviews/evelyn-waugh-brideshead-revisited-review/

- this review focuses on the themes of family: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/dec/23/families-in-literature-the-flytes-in-brideshead-revisited-by-evelyn-waugh

- this review gives a specifically lgbt response to the novel: https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/sep/15/kate-scelsa-on-brideshead-revisited-evelyn-waugh

i'd also recommend watching the movie those people which was on netflix last time i checked, as, though it has its differences, covers many similar themes such as wealth, family, societal shame, substance abuse, and repressed sexuality

to be honest, if you want to know more about what brideshead is considered to be about, one of the best things to do is talk to others who have read/seen it (including me! i'd love to have a chat) and hear about many people's interpretations as a book is only about what people read in it.

are the main characters your bright things or not?

i'm not entirely sure what your question means? but as i understand it, you seem to be asking about connections between the characters in brideshead and the bright young things, and indeed there are many similarities. for example, sebastian is thought to have been inspired by alaistair hugh graham, hugh patrick lygon (possibly a lover of waugh's), and stephen tennant, while his teddy-bear habit was inspired by the poet john betjeman and his bear archibald ormsby-gore. the other character particularly reminiscent of the bright young things is anthony blanche, who is thought to have been inspired by brian howard (though some behaviours such as the poetry reading are derived from others like harold acton). the period of the book is a little later than most would consider to be during the 'bright young things' period but nevertheless the similarities remain as the novel is based on waugh's experiences and he was contemporary with many of the bright young things.

i hope these answers are useful if a little belated, and that you continue to enjoy the novel and waugh's other work as you build your understanding of it 💞

#brideshead revisited #not a suggestion #anon #lit

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pup-play245 · 6 years ago

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Some people can identify a defining moment in their childhood - an incident that brings an idea to mind which is then indelibly fixed in the psyche. For Gelding - an adopted alias for the American internet guru to all wanna-be eunuchs - that moment came when he was 12 years old and thrown against an older boy in a packed bus. "Do that again and I'll crush 'em," said the older boy, grabbing his genitals. The pain was as piercing as the pleasure. And so began a lifetime's quest to be castrated.

In the UK, self-motivated castration mainly exists only in the most extreme S&M scene, while in America those aspiring to be castrated comprise a burgeoning and divergent tribe made up of both gay and straight men. Men who want to be castrated fit no stereotype, have no common neuroses or childhood experience. Some are androgynous types (thin and underdeveloped) who want to remain in a prepubescent, asexual phase, others are eroto-phobes who don't like to feel driven by their libidos and want to become surgically tranquillised. Some want to be feminised, a few - known as nullos or smoothies - want to become nullified by having their penis removed along with their testicles.

In Gelding's experience a quarter of those who get castrated continue to regulate their libidos with testosterone, which allows them to have full sex. But what compulsion drives grown men to be castrated in the first place? According to Gelding, for most men the desire to be castrated stems from puberty but does not develop into a fixation for at least 10 years.

This was certainly his experience. Now in his early 50s, he has been without his testicles for six years and is keen to point out that he has no desire to be feminised. Growing up in rural New York State, he knew he was gay from childhood, but it was only in his mid-20s, while working for the military in a top security position, that he discovered the gay S&M scene and a world where castration was honoured rather than abhorred.

One of his first boyfriends was a cutter - a man who worked in the netherworld of the gay S&M scene, cutting off men's testicles, consensually and safely. By 1991 Gelding's testicles had become an unbearable affront to him. The idea of cutting aroused him sexually, but more than that, there was an aching need to be rid of something that had begun to take a stranglehold of his life.

At first he tried to cut off the offending items himself by using rubber bands as a tourniquet and drenching his balls in ice water. But after an hour he ran out of adrenaline and went into clinical shock. In hospital a horrified A&E surgeon castigated him for trying to remove healthy tissue. Three years later he went to a cutter in California and got rid of them safely and efficiently. "I've never felt more myself, more complete or happy," he says, unemotionally.

In order to receive the testosterone that he requires to keep him functioning as a man (he has occasional erectile problems but can still ejaculate) he has devised a cover story which makes him eligible for medical treatment. The story is posted up on the web and tells how he lost his balls against his will in a gay S&M episode which went horribly wrong. "My cover story also means that if someone finds out I'm castrated they view me as a victim, or a brave stalwart rather than a deviant or psychotic person," he explains. As well as resurrecting the libido, testosterone prevents osteoporosis and reduces the flab that castration causes to the hips and breasts. (On the down side, it also increases the risk of prostate cancer.)

A self-confessed mother hen, Gelding has for four years been dispensing advice on his website to men who want, or think they want, to be castrated. In that time he's had 5,000 enquiries from both gay and straight men, all believing that their obsession is unique. Consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Reid, of Hillingdon Hospital in west London, identifies castration fixation as "highly disturbed behaviour, in mainly gay men, whose self-hatred is directed towards their genitals".

Gelding's response to this interpretation is equivocal. "Yes, it's true that no normal person would do that, but then given that homosexuality has always been called a sickness, what's normal?" Reid's experience of this tender topic is predominantly with transsexuals (some of whom even castrate themselves) as well as with men who are hypersexed. "These men are led by their erect penises and some are driven to offend. Being castrated can be a huge release because they become pre-pubital, and sex is no longer an overwhelming preoccupation."

He finds the origins of the fixation perplexing but speculates that it might be a case of the fear of castration turned on its head to become a uncontrollable craving.

But eunuchs are nothing new. For 4,000 years they have represented some of the most marginalised and most honoured in society. In ancient India, eunuchs advised princes and guarded their harems, and the Biblical Daniel was a eunuch who rose to become prime minister of Babylon and later Persia. More recently there have been the Italian castrati of the 19th century - boys who sacrificed their manhood for the sake of singing careers in the opera houses of Europe. Today there are the cross-dressing Hijras in India and religious extremists such as members of the Russian Skoptsy sect who see the testicles as an organ of weakness. The medical profession understands this "syndrome" only in relation to transgender reassignment surgery or as part of body dysmorphia (a syndrome in which people become fixated with having a limb amputated). But Gelding disregards the connection with the body modification scene, believing the desire to be castrated is far more complex.

Nor can he relate to the transgendered, "some of whom get castrated just to get on to a gender reassignment programme". He is also reluctant to help those whose desire to be castrated hinges on the ritual of cutting: "Because if that's the overriding issue then most of these people are into fantasy and role play and don't have a true fixation." When castration is a true fixation, Gelding believes it is vital that surgeons treat the problem in a much more educated fashion. "There isn't a doctor in the world informed in this area, because nothing will justify to a physician the removal of healthy tissue."

There are several doctors in the US who will surgically remove testicles, but seldom before getting their patients to sign a consent form saying it is for gender reassignment. Dr Felix Spector, who advertises castration on his business card, has become something of a celebrity in the murky world of eunochdom, having performed his first castration in 1957. But the vast majority are amateur cutters, subject to prosecution for practising medicine without a licence, and desperately sought after on the net by men in urgent need.

Although these cutters offer a necessary service (reducing the instance of self-castration), for the most part they too find the act of cutting erotic. Talking about doing a DIY castration, one cutter described the "lovely crunching sound" a Burdizzo (a castration device) makes "like biting into fresh celery". Burdizzos, elastators and other animal castration devices can all be purchased on the net. The internet has become a sanctuary to these would-be eunuchs. There are numerous websites providing information, and chat lines link men from all over the world who share this compulsion.

When Gelding was delivering himself into the hands of the cutter there were no such support services and perhaps that's why it wasn't until he was in his 40s that he finally did what he had always wanted to do. Since then, he says, he has found some kind of inner peace, but at a price. He would have preferred to have been one of those who rationalised their way out of it, something he encourages all his correspondents to do. He considers those who manage it to be the lucky ones.

The others must join him among one of the most disenfranchised of groups. Men who are ridiculed, despised and misunderstood by a society which will never be able to make any sense of why they feel incomplete with their testicles and yet complete without them.

Hidden Love: Modern Day Eunuchs is on Channel 4 next Tuesday at 10pm

As 2019 begins…

… we’re asking readers to make a new year contribution in support of The Guardian’s independent journalism. More people are reading and supporting our independent, investigative reporting than ever before. And unlike many news organisations, we have chosen an approach that allows us to keep our journalism accessible to all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford. But this is only possible thanks to voluntary support from our readers – something we have to maintain and build on for every year to come.

Readers’ support powers The Guardian, giving our reporting impact and safeguarding our essential editorial independence. This means the responsibility of protecting independent journalism is shared, enabling us all to feel empowered to bring about real change in the world. Your support gives Guardian journalists the time, space and freedom to report with tenacity and rigor, to shed light where others won’t. It emboldens us to challenge authority and question the status quo. And by keeping all of our journalism free and open to all, we can foster inclusivity, diversity, make space for debate, inspire conversation – so more people, across the world, have access to accurate information with integrity at its heart. Every contribution we receive from readers like you, big or small, enables us to keep working as we do.

The Guardian is editorially independent, meaning we set our own agenda. Our journalism is free from commercial bias and not influenced by billionaire owners, politicians or shareholders. No one edits our editor. No one steers our opinion. This is important as it enables us to give a voice to those less heard, challenge the powerful and hold them to account. It’s what makes us different to so many others in the media, at a time when factual, honest reporting is critical.

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margarittet · 7 years ago

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“Tombstone” (1993): cowboys and gay subtext

Disclaimer: I wrote this text long time ago, when we first heard the title of the episode, and we knew perfectly nothing about the plot - I just somehow never got to posting it. Back then I never DREAMED that we will be getting Cas and Dean roleplaying Texas rangers, and running around in cowboy hats. (What a time to be alive!) Anyway, I hope this little rant about how “Tombstone” (1993) is relevant to tomorrow’s episode will still be fun to read.

Disclaimer 2: I do not equal effeminate/weak bodied/flamboyant = gay, just different from the surroundings in the context of this movie. At the same time, the movie uses cheap stereotypes to characterize their characters in subtext. It is 1990s, and this is not good, but it happened back then.

File it under the “Things I do because of my “Supernatural” obsession”: I watch and read stuff I hadn’t expected to before I started watching the show - you know, like a 1993 western telling the story of the legendary gunman Wyatt Earp and his two brothers, hunting and killing some Old West gang of outlaws in a frontier town.

Nevertheless, I did watch it, and now I will write about it because I am painfully aware that episode 13x06 is called “Tombstone”, that it has a western theme, and that it’s an episode by the writer who gave us “Stuck in the Middle with You” (12x12). It is therefore quite possible that the source material is relevant to the final product - plus with Tarantino being a western buff, it all connects nicely.

I will not speculate about the actual episode since we have almost nothing to go on at the moment - besides a few pictures from which we can gather a couple of facts:

The boys are most probably in Dodge City at some point (we saw pictures from the set saying “Dodge City” on one of the buildings). The city is about 3,5 hour drive from Lebanon - where the bunker is - and it was here Wyatt Earp was the sheriff before he moved to Tombstone. It also is “the cowboy capital of the US” because of it being the main city on the old “cattle trail”, famous for its cow markets and for its gunfights. We saw Dodge City on the show once before when Krissy’s dad was attacked in “Adventures in Babysitting”, but otherwise this is the first time we visit it,

We also know that at some point we will visit a cowboy-themed motel.

[While all of this gives us no story hints whatsoever, I think it’s safe to assume that the keywords for the episode are “cowboys” and “western”. Since Davy Perez’ most noteworthy episode last year was Tarantino themed, I am not remotely surprised this season for him is “westerns” (he is also bringing us the train heist episode later this season - yes, please.)]

I can, however, present the movie “Tombstone” that may or may not have something to do with the final episode (we’ll see). As I am aware that not everyone is as dedicated (read: bored and obsessed) as me to check out every pop culture reference on the show, I decided to share my newly aquired wisdom with the class.

Ok, so the story. The movie tells a (rather idealized) version of the shootout that occured in the frontier town of Tombstone, Arizona, between Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp (plus their friend, Doc Holliday) and the gang of outlaws who called themselves “the Cowboys” - known as the gunfight at OK Corral. I will talk just about the movie here (since the historical truth is a little different, and a compare-and-contrast historical analysis is not what we need right now).

So, Wyatt Earp got famous being the marshall of Dodge City, while also being a pacifist and trying to avoid starting conflicts as much as possible. Tombstone was supposed to be his retirement - he wanted to settle down, finally having his family around, and earn some money for a comfortable and silent life. He came to Tombstone together with his two brothers and their wives; upon arrival, he found out that his best friend, Doc Holliday, also ended up in the town, searching for his luck and trying to cure his TB - an illness that will later kill him at the age of 35.

We meet Wyatt Earp when he has people closest to his heart right around him, and is very content with his life. He is also very adamant to leave the past and the fame behind, and start a completely new chapter in Arizona. The Earp brothers find out very quickly, however, that Tombstone is very far from the sleepy abode the name might suggest. The town is full of colourful characters - gamblers, gunslingers, preachers, prostitutes, outlaws etc. And of course there is a conflict boiling just below the surface.

Unwillingly, one by one the Earp party is pulled back into being the law officers again, and into the bloody frontier war.

SPOILERS AHEAD (you know, if you wanna watch the movie yourself)

So many themes here that remind me of SPN!

We have a duty bound man who meets a maverick and outgoing woman. She offers him excitement and adventures, and of course he falls for her, but doesn’t let himself have what he wants because of his mission, his situation (he was married at the time), and the need to act honourably. He is, however, perfectly aware of his feelings and that a part of this behaviour is fear of following his heart because he had never done this before in his life;

It takes a death of his closest friend to realize life is too short, and he should go for what he wants, which he does;

Before this, however, he follows the murder of one of his brothers by going on a shooting spree, and killing every bad guy he can find until they all are eradicated,

There is also so much gay subtext between two of the characters that the movie is always mentioned when “gay westerns before Brokeback Mountain” are discussed.

“Tombstone” as a lesson in gay subtext:

It is never mentioned in the movie that Billy Zane and Jason Priestley’s characters are gay. Yet, it is so obvious from the way they are portrayed that even people who are not used to reading subtext are perfectly aware the two characters are most probably lovers.

The characterization

The first thing we notice is the look of the characters. The two man are both dressed in a way that differenciates them from the enviroment around them - Billy Zane’s Fabian is completely different from the masculine world of the Old West, with his soft hair, boyish good looks, clean shaven face, and elaborate outfits.

Jason Priestley’s Billy is more in accordance with the tough world of Tombstone - he is the deputy sheriff after all, and can be tough when needed - but still, in his time off he is portrayed as soft, effeminate, especially while contrasted with the criminals he usually runs with. His outfit is not too different from everyone else’s, but he is the only person to wear a bowtie (everyone else wears neckties or bandanas) and spectacles. He is portrayed as a slightly weaker and more vulnerable person.

Exposition in relation to other characters

The two characters sexuality is shown, not talked about, especially through the kind of interractions they have with other people.

We meet Fabian when he steps out of a carriage, all confident, flamboyant, well-groomed and witty. His person awakens the reaction in the manly-men of the West, which is shown by Morgan Earp asking the local sheriff “What kind of town is this?” (at which point Wyatt shushes him, as if he said something offensive).

To hammer the point home, Fabian is an actor who travels with a gorgeous woman, but obviously has no sexual interest in her - they are best buddies who ogle the Earps together, and comment on their attractiveness.

As for Billy, we meet him when he arrives at the theatre to see the actors’ performance, and right away he is shown bullied by the Cowboys. The quips obviously refer to his sexuality (“Hey, sister boy, gimme some!”). He doesn’t try to shoot them down, just tries to avoid being touched. Quickly he is “saved” by the leader of the gang, and seated beside him. Shortly afterwards the camera shows us the difference between the Cowboys and the deputy sheriff’s approach to Fabian onstage (mocking vs in awe).

Later, during a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, Billy grabs Fabian in the saloon, and cordially invites him to his table. This is the last time we see the two men together, alive.

Fast forward to the end of the movie: Billy is riding around with the Cowboys while Wyatt Earp runs around, shooting everything he can find. The outlaws stop a carriage and find the actress and Fabian in the back: the actor is dead, shot by the Cowboys. Everything here happens completely beside the dialogue and the rest of the scene. Billy watches dead Fabian while the actress holds her dead friend, and angrily discusses the war with the leader of the gang.

(Just for your viewing pleasure, I created THIS GIFSET of the scene)

It is never said out loud that Bily and Fabian are lovers. It is still pretty damn obvious. It is perfectly clear from the way they are presented, their interactions with other characters, and the (very limited) onscreen interactions with each other.

“Tombstone” is a cowboy movie that takes a step towards the actual reality of the Wild West, and makes it almost textual. Homosexuality was a natural part of the cowboy lifestyle - it was after all a society full of men, where the men to women ratio was around 8:1. Everyone had needs, not everyone had money, and love and sexual encounters between men were as common as in any other, similar enviroment. There is a reason why the uber-masculine cowboy stereotype is one of the main figures in American gay iconology - think everything from “Midnight Cowboy” to The Village People and “Brokeback Mountain”.

Why Davy Perez chose to call his episode after the kettle-market town in Arizona, but also after the movie with such a strong gay subtext?

WE MAY NEVER KNOW!

#spn vs tombstone #spn 13x06 speculation #pop culture references #gay subtext #destiel #spn season western romcom 13 #yeehaw

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idigitizellp21 · 3 years ago

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Issues Faced By The LGBTQIA+ Community

A community is a group of people who share certain characteristics, share similar ideologies and mindsets, and/or live in the same area. But what about those who strongly believe they do not belong in the community, or who are forced to feel like outcasts and are bullied as a result of their differences? The LGBTQ+ community is subjected to similar forms of discrimination.

LGBTQ+ is an umbrella term that refers to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, queer people, and anyone else who feels they belong to a community with no boundaries. Individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, face a variety of socioeconomic and cultural injustices as members of a social minority group. Their ability to fully access and enjoy their rights as citizens is hampered by a lack of social recognition. Because of their sexual orientation, they are more likely to face intolerance, discrimination, harassment, and the threat of violence than others. Unfortunately, these are not the only issues that this large community of people is dealing with. This article will give you a brief overview of the types of injustices perpetrated against them and what they are denied.

The effect of family reactions on children, which results in rejection and conflict: The topic of sexuality, sexual preferences, and same sex relationships is viewed as a threat to the Indian culture. This is the primary reason why homophobic families frequently abandon their children who come out as members of this community. If they are not abandoned, other cruel attempts are made to “normalise” and hetero-sexualize their child. Parents must understand that their child’s gender and/or sexual orientation do not reflect their abnormality, and that instead of making them feel unaccepted, they should be supported and encouraged in all ways.

Social exclusion and marginalisation: The number of atrocities committed against humans as a result of this is unfathomable. There have been reports of village medics and babas prescribing rape to cure lesbians of homosexuality because refusing to marry leads to more physical abuse. Honour killings are also reported in many parts of the country, so the only way for an individual to survive is to flee without any financial or emotional support from their family.

Discrimination in workplace/ Unemployment: Although Section 377 only decriminalises homosexuality, the LGBTQ+ community continues to face discrimination and injustice. Another issue they face is unemployment; many organisations refuse to hire them, primarily to avoid conflicts with other employees. Even if they are hired, there is no guarantee that they will not face discrimination and bullying. There is still a chance that they will feel unwelcome and harassed at work if they do not receive any support.

Furthermore, the discrimination “affects their ability to fully enjoy their civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights.” According to a report, trans and intersex people face severe forms of discrimination and violence. Because of harassment, bullying, and violence, LGBTQ people are frequently denied educational and training opportunities,” according to the several report. Same-sex couples are also barred from adopting in India or, following the passage of the Surrogacy Regulation Bill last year, from using a surrogate.

The instances and issues mentioned above are those that the community is aware of; there are several other issues that they face. It is unjust to make someone feel excluded solely because of their gender or sexual orientation. It is critical to treat every human being with generosity and compassion, regardless of gender. People must accept that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, and no cultural norm should interfere with that. Raising awareness is the first step toward acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, followed by non-judgmental behaviour. Make sure that you do your part to make our country a safe haven for all and a hate-free zone.

Hence, if you find yourself unable to manage the society pressure of belonging to any of the above group, or it is interfering with your functioning, do not hesitate to ask for help. Reach out to a Counsellor or Therapist of your choice and comfort.

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feminismletstalk · 6 years ago

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Let’s talk about sex(uality) baby.

In honour of pride month I would like to advocate for and discuss sexuality as a fluid concept. Beforehand, I believe that it is important to note that as I discuss components of sexuality and advocate for fluid sexuality, that I am in no way shaming those of you who choose who identify themselves with a sexuality label. I wholeheartedly support the gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, etc community as I recognize these labels as a liberatory advance against discrimination and the “abnormal” concept of the heterosexual/homosexual binary. Further, I believe a fluid or queer sexuality opens many doors that seek a future which rejects abuse and discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community. (I will save the concept of queer theory for a further discussion).

In my personal experience I often find people feel some innate desire to label me. This desire comes from a long withstanding history of the cis-heteronormative institution. When I discuss this institution I am referring to the social and cultural construction that has created categorization of behaviours, acts, dress, and sexual relationships associated to women and men, heterosexuality and homosexuality. It is important to recognize that this institution respectively lies in a binary of good and bad, from which, we can understand the need for women’s and gay rights organizations. To the point, my peers and friends, who although, always support me, cannot seem to grasp my ‘ever changing’ sexual labels and gender non-conformity. Part of the problem lies within the misunderstanding of the terms sexual identity and sexual desire. Thus, I wish to define these terms and shed light on how these terms can be mutually exclusive.

To begin, sexual identity is a self proclaimed label that describes ones romantic and sexual preferences, specifically who and how they have sex. Sexual identities include gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, etc. The names, at their core, are simply labels that do not speak to ones innate desires, despite socialization of sexuality categories. The label is chosen and declared by oneself, likewise it’s meaning is independent to that person. For example, you might identify as bisexual and only engage in opposite sex relationships, however choose this label due to same sex desires and/or enjoying sex with someone of the same sex, or having threesomes with a member of each sex. (In the same sense, this person may choose to identify as straight, despite same-sex interactions and relationships). To contend, sexual identity is determined by the self and is therefore, open to interpretation, change, and fluidity. Sexual identity is a socially constructed label.

Sexual desire is the second piece to sexuality. Sexual desire is the biological, innate, phenomenon that controls our attraction to someone and (may) determine who we have sex with. Sexual desire is the uncontrollable aspect of sexuality because we are unable to choose who, specifically what gender and sex, our hormones react to. Unlike identity, desires do not have a label, however sexual desires (along with social construction) often determine how we label ourselves. To expand, a woman who is attracted to women and has sex with women, would likely label herself as a lesbian. But I digress, this is not always the case. A sexuality label, as a controllable construct, has the ability to be changed throughout one’s course of life; ie someone might identify as gay and then identify as bisexual a few years later. Sexual identity is adaptable by the terms of individuality.

Sexual identity and sexual desire are mutually exclusive, meaning that desires do not always match up to the label. To my own observation, many women identify as straight and yet acknowledge same sex attraction or engage in same sex acts; commonly referred to as experimentation and bi-curiosity. This can be very frustrating for many queer women as it feels like appropriation of our identity. However, I urge lesbians and bisexual women to accept our “bi-curious” sisters, on the foundation that one’s identity is not a stable construct, but is fluid, and our desires are non-controllable. Likewise, a gay man may engage in sexual relationships with women and have relationships with only men, and wish to continue to identify as gay.

I hope this sheds some light on sexuality and hopefully invites any of you to experiment and explore your sexual desires within the safety of your chosen identity.

#lgbtq #lgbtpride #pride #pride month #feminism #femininity #queer #sexuality

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chariflare · 4 years ago

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i got the (unethically made) viking AC game second-hand bc i was like "fuck it, i just need a basic-ass Game where you run around a big map with 20000 treasure chests" and. i hate it

one of the main problems with standard triple-a open world games is that they don't seem to understand that what you leave out is just as important as what you put in (e.g. related to the graphics). the other main problem is that the writing is dogshit. further discussion below the cut

an example via a quest: there's a woman who's told some dudes that if they find her comb, she'll reward them with sex. there’s like 2 guys at a waterfall looking for it. after you find & give her the comb, you walk 50m away together, on a picnic blanket. there's some unsexy innuendo dialogue implying she will have sex with the pc (something like “your hair looks very uncared for. i can reach in there and tear out all the tangles” “yes, i would love if you combed out all the... knots”), then the scene fades to black. when we fade back in the pc & npc are just sitting there. medium shot, standard camera angle. “you’re sexy, i had a good time” "yes, i had a good time. thanks". (video of the end of quest discussion)

like why were there two men in the snow trying to find her comb? are they still there freezing, like, half a block away? while the protag has sex outdoors? in the snow? they explain why the lady does things this way. but it doesn’t really line up with what you did to solve the quest? i’m nitpicking by asking these questions, but with the hyper-realistic presentation of this style of game, and how little the quest gives me, it’s difficult for me not to ask them

idk what you’re meant to get out of this other than “tick a checkbox”. you could say there’s worldbuilding (the protag doesn’t have a strong reaction to the woman’s behaviour, and this scene happens for the female pc, indicating that homosexuality & some amount of promiscuity is accepted), but eh...? it’s not significant, and it wasn’t funny, fun, challenging, etc. there are hundreds of mini-quests like these, most of a similar level of depth,,,, i’d rather less content in higher quality

i understand why people like this sort of game!!!! sometimes mindless ticking checkbox good but (even then) for me i’d rather there be at least a little more substance. or i’d rather be playing cookie clicker

other notes:

i was hype to play a buff muscle woman with an axe, but i’m starting to get a “are we the baddies?” vibe in an unfun way. so far she’s a viking stereotype with a half-personality, an asshole obsessed with honour. who is soon to become a colonialist

if i loved vikings i’d DEFINITELY be into this more

about the graphics - i’m not sure why this kind of simple pulpy story is being told with this art style? or, i understand WHY (the Gamers expect it, and it’s probably more palatable to a general audience who expect console games to be like prestige tv shows - even if they rarely have the quality of story to back it up), but i feel like this story would be easier to accept if it had some amount of visual panache (e.g. any visually arresting movie, like a john wick or a w*s and*rson film) or stylisation (e.g. cartoonier art). i’d also love if mini-quests used any sort of cinematic technique (e.g. more appropriate camera angles,) even if it meant stealing the camera from the player

i feel like the opening part of the story should’ve taken less time

WHY DO THEY STILL HAVE THE SCI-FI FRAMING DEVICE...... if i hadn’t been into gaming early enough to know something about the first few ACs, i would be so confused

combat is so easy!!! but it also feels like if i turned up the difficulty, it would become unfair?

#pfssws #I REGRET BUYING THIS INSTEAD OF SNAP #the last time i touched an ac game was ~5yrs ago now so. lol. i heard origins is good? but i also heard this one was good so lmao

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earlybirdsmith · 4 years ago

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For your information, God loves you 24/7, 8 days a week, unconditionally and more than you will ever know, but if He is ever forced to chastise and shame you in public because of your constant unruly behaviour, then He will do it. In the meantime, how do you sleep at night knowing that you are living a lie that involves the ungodliness in question? Why is it so easy for you to commit sin after sin when you are supposed to be a Christian, an anointed child of the King? Let me remind you of something in case you have already forgotten or just don't care anymore? Flee the fornication, the adultery, the pre-marital sex, the incestuous behaviour, the sexual immorality, the phone sex, lesbianism and homosexuality and the casual one-night-stand sex. Let me say again, what you are getting up to in secret as a Christian, while 'Playing church' is a sin that is only sending you all to hell. Tell me, why are you still committing carnal sin after so many obvious warnings from the Lord to stop it, enh? Do you really and truly expect to get away with it? No matter where you go or hide to commit your sins, God is watching you, you know. Regardless of the ministerial office you hold, or whatever carnal practices you are using behind closed doors to avoid unwanted pregnancies, it won't work. No matter how you perform it, what you are doing is still sexual intercourse, and it is still a sin. Furthermore, you should not be doing what you are doing, and you know that, considering the circumstances you are already living under? "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Hebrews 13:4. Whether it is marriage to your partner or marriage to Christ Jesus, "Be sure your sins will find you out." You preach the gospel of Jesus Christ outwardly, but inwardly your body language is preaching something else? Yes I'm talking to you and you, all of you, and you as well! How long do you intend to commit this ungodliness? Please stop, stop doing it, cease and desist the nastiness and the slackness. All I ask is that you repent of all your sins before you get caught any day now. Turn away from the lies, the cheating and the sinfulness and do it now. Return to the Body of Christ Jesus while you still have the chance. Don't let me have to tell you again. You have been duly warned! The time is 12:43, on the 6/3/2021, time enough to confess your sins, I guess?

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kinuskikakku · 7 years ago

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Something off about Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Editions

Okay, so! I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while now. And if you’re fan of the good ol’ Baldur’s Gate games, you might have.. all sorts of thoughts on the matter. But here are my thoughts. (there will be spoilers)

Okay, so, some of the old fans in general seem to have been generally against of just.. adding anything to the Enhanced Edition. Which, sure, people tend to dislike change in things they love. But one thing that seems to cause a lot of discord is the new available party members in the games, some seem to dislike the fact alone that they.. well, exist. Even more so some people seem to just loathe the fact that The Gays(tm) dare to exist. Like how dare The Gays(tm) do that? This stupid PC bullshit is ruining everything. (disclaimer- I am super gay myself, and I’m actually being facetious).

Me? I’m fine with these new characters existing, they can be nice additions and now Baldur’s Gate 2 has something it didn’t really have before: a pure-class thief. I do have a different sort of gripe with these new characters though. Wanna know what it is? Well too bad, I’m going to tell it anyways.

So, I’m gonna focus more on BG2 (particularly SoA) here, since it’s got a lot bulkier story, generally a lot more character interaction, more in-depth romance and so forth. But anyways, I’m gonna go just point by poitn here.. kind of.

First thing is... a lot of these new possible party members have this weird tendency just intersecting your adventures with drawn out cut-scenes that just shove them in the player’s face. This seems invasive, takes away any sense of discovery, and just.. I dunno. I understand that Beamdog wants to bring out their creations and make them easily accessible. But when you have to halt what you were doing for what seems like.. way too long after a couple of playthrough, I feel like they’re doing something wrong.

Granted, the vanilla game also made some characters kind of intersect your character with their.. thing. Like Jan Jansen trying to sell you his dubious stuff, or Viconia DeVir being on the stake about to be burned, or Edwin Odesseiron being a quest giver, or Anomen Delryn getting on your face about duty and honour and stuff while hanging out in a seedy bar). Yes, they do that. But also, in the vanilla game these moments seemed a lot more well-woven and these characters were acting in-character. (to be fair, the new EE characters are also acting mostly in-character but.. much less well-woven)

While I’m not against adding new things and new characters, I’m just wondering if there could’ve been some better, less invasive way to implement them in the game?

Then, the new romances. Baldur’s Gate 2 was one of the earliest RPGs to implement romance in their games. And to their credit, the vanilla game handled things exceptionally well for their time. (honestly, this over 17-year-old game handled romance much better than some modern games do)

So, how are these added romances handled in Enhanced Edition? Generally speaking, okay. The people writing them clearly put their best into writing them, I’ve no doubt about it. They do a really tough act to follow, though. So at times, they seem less good compared to the vanilla game’s romance. Still, for the most part, they’re fine.

But now, earlier I mentioned two things: 1. I am super gay, 2. the evil Gays(tm) dare to force themselves in this.

And here, “evil gays” is sadly kind of accurate.. not just kind of, but literally accurate. I do think they were genuinely trying to add diversity with the best intentions, but it comes off.. weird, when both possible queer romances - the bi-/pansexual Dorn Il-Khan and the purely homosexual Hexxat - are Neutral Evil by their alignments. I mean.. EVIL gays.

Okay, sure, in DnD “Evil” is mostly about self-interest and stuff like that, not exactly about mustachio twirling cartoon evilness. STILL I feel like there’s some really bad implications when you make your queer characters that way!

But I do have some other gripes too, especially with our big Dorn here. And that’s... it’s not really romance, and for another.. Dorn doesn’t seem really Neutral evil, but rather Chaotic Evil. To comedically summarize the “romance” with Dorn: “Hey, let’s go commit mass murder and use blood as a lube on top of the pile of bodies!”

But to be more in-depth. First, the alignment thing. Dorn’s deal seems to be that he just wants to go around murdering people just for the thrill of murdering people, without paying any mind to to whether or not this benefits him in the slightest. Which is CHAOTIC EVIL. A Neutral Evil person in this world would mostly focus on the question of how does a thing benefit them. Sure, they would have zero qualms about killing someone, and might even do it if someone looks at them funny in a bar if they’re in a lousy mood. But they’re not usually interested in the thrill of killing itself, death and murder are just means to their ends.

Then.. the.. ugh.. “romance”. The thing is, what you get with Dorn isn’t romance or love. What you get with Dorn is lust and something that is purely physical. Dorn never is interest in your for you, Dorn is attracted to power, and you are playing as Gorion’s Ward, a Bhaalspawn, a demigod. From the get go, Dorn makes it clear that he sees power in you wake, and that’s what draws him to you.

And even if you argue that there is some semblance of love, it’s purely conditional on Dorn’s part. It’s his way or the high way in this relationship.

Now, I can’t speak for all of The Gays(tm), but as a gay man myself, I can’t be into this. I don’t understand why is this sociopath appealing. And why after the interest piqued by a queer guy in this game am I so badly let down.

Hexxat though? I think she’s pretty cool. I mean, haven’t finished Throne of Bhaal with her. But her behaviour seems to be focused more on the question of “how does X benefit me?” as per Neutral Evil. But in SoA it wasn’t like she was devoid of compassion or empathy to others. Sure, she might act nice and cool to others for her own benefit, but hey.. at least that makes her someone appealing. Not sure what to think of using the evil lesbian vampire trope, but.. even with that, she seemed fairly well handled.

Ugh, this got so rambly, but at least I got out all my steam about this! If you bothered to read this through, thanks. And if you don’t like The Gays(tm) in your games.. I dunno.. go away, don’t tell me about it. I get to see it more than enough already, trust me.

#rant #ramble #me babbling #baldur's gate #baldur's gate enhanced edition #lgbt #lgbtq #the gays(tm)

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