#and also spent their teenage years repressing homosexuality

[fingertipsmp3]

People find out about shit I’ve put up with in the past and are like “how did you not punch this person omg” and I just need to explain one thing to you about me. I can store up things indefinitely if I have to. I am capable of rational thought in even the most insane of circumstances and if I decide it’ll be infinitely more satisfying to get back at someone at a later date when I’m more coherent than to yell at them now, by God I’ll do it

[eructofreak]

what is AAP? :o

Autoandrophilia is the phenomenon of being attracted to one’s own masculinity, most commonly used by transmascs (while the feminine equivalent, AGP, is one that is much more common).

The idea stems from a guy by the name of Blanchard, who (spoiler) sucks absolute ass. He hypothesized that all trans women can be categorized into one of two groups: homosexual transsexual (HSTS) or autogynephile (AGP). What this means is that, at its most basic explanation, a trans woman will transition either because they are actually a repressed homosexual man, OR because they find the concept of women so arousing that they decide they should become a woman as well. Blanchard didn’t apply the same to trans masculine people, but that has not stopped the alt right from deciding that we need a term anyway.

The reason I say ‘the alt right’ is because these terms are most commonly used (in my experience) on the /lgbt/ board of 4chan, which was a place which I spent quite a large portion of my teenaged years. Thankfully I’ve outgrown the spiteful mindsets posited on there (I think), but I still find the concept of transitioning for the sole reason that you’re so attracted to men that you decide to become one incredibly humorous. As such I still apply the term to myself in a semi-ironic fashion (because I am incredibly hot, but I also doubt that the crippling self loathing my ‘natural’ body has granted me for the majority of my life is a falsehood).

I hope this explanation helps - I’m sure there are people much more qualified to explain these terms, alongside the absolute buttfuckery which accompanied their creation, but alas I am but a simple fetish blog).

[haroldhearsawho]

Ok so I’ve gone through the AO3 tags and my own AO3 history and bookmarks and here are some excellent kid fics/fics that feature Nix’s child:

Always and Forever by fiorediloto: This is my personal favorite Winnix kid fic. It’s so beautifully written and the author absolutely nails both Dick and Nix’s personalities in my opinion. Ugh I just love both of them so much in this fic. Nix has a teenage son whom he has been raising himself alongside Dick since he was a child in their home that they share together. They have always hidden (or attempted to hide) the true nature of their relationship from him, but Dick is for all intents and purposes his second father. It deals well with the secret nature of their relationship, period typical attitudes towards homosexuality, and what coming out to family would be like during that time. It also features Blanche which is always a plus 🫶 She has a great line where she says to Nix, “Well [Nix’s son] is Dick’s boy too, isn’t he?” Just a very heartwarming fic all around

In storms and at sunset by jouissant and Volta by jouissant -parts 3 and 4 respectively of the What things we have heard together series by jouissant: These are classic Winnix fics and possibly the holy grail of Winnix fics but the 3rd and 4th parts of the series specifically heavily feature Nix’s daughter and her time spent with Nix and Dick over the years and the ups and downs that went with it. It’s just brilliantly and beautifully written with great character studies and also deals with the period typical attitudes regarding homosexuality and coming out during that time very well.

Impulse Control by BristlingBassoon and Queers by BristlingBassoon -parts 2 and 4 respectively of the When we met, you'd never expect this series by BristlingBassoon: These two installments of this lovely series feature Nix and Dick’s relationship with Nix’s son over the years and their reunion/rekindling when his son is an adult. It deals with period typical attitudes towards homosexuality and coming out to family wonderfully and somewhat painfully/heartbreakingly so as well. Also the OC of Nix’s son’s girlfriend is a major character and she is a perfect addition and compliment to the story. I absolutely adore the way Nix is written in this one.

Lately, I've Been Thinking by jouissant: This is sadly an abandoned/unfinished fic but I still wanted to include it because it’s great and has alllllll the angst and repressed feelings you could ask for, plus best of all it features Dick as a single father with his own daughter and it just makes my heart warm 😭😍 Dick and Nix run into each other after not having seen one another in years and ending their relationship on bad terms, and now Nix is sober and Dick has a daughter. (Nix also has a daughter in this but is only mentioned briefly)

It Is My Heart That's Late by churchkey: This fic doesn’t actually feature their own children but it features Dick’s boss and neighbor’s little girl who he looks after and it’s very very cute

Here are a few other fics I like that I could think of that also feature Nix’s child and his and Dick’s relationship with him/her in some sort of capacity:

Soldier's Things by Falco

He That Shall Live This Day, and See Old Age by CorvidCordelia

Thrill Divine by alwaysbored

*Also just a side note but I find it funny how we know canonically irl Nix’s son was named Michael but in almost every fic other than one or two that I’ve read he has a different name and sometimes his kid is a daughter instead lol. Idk why but I just find that funny because for all of their other family members fic writers use their real names and identities

what do you think about nixs exwife kathy? and his kid... like the fact nix is a dad i cant picture it but i feel like theres a lot of untapped potential there

I assume you’re talking about the characters in the show and not the real people and just my thoughts on what the idea of them in my head were like because I don’t want to speculate on the actual people and their lives too much.

But as for Kathy, I’ve always sympathized with her to an extent however it was very clear her marriage to Nix was never going to work and they were not the right match for one another at all. I know the real Dick did not like her at all and basically called her a gold digger who didn’t care about Nix or love him. He said she didn’t know how to love him right or care to figure out how or something. But we all know how he was very biased on this front lol. But yeah Nix was definitely a terrible husband to Kathy and didn’t treat her as well as he probably should have, but from what I’ve gathered she probably wasn’t completely innocent herself and also didn’t care about Nix or being a good wife to him all that much either. I also don’t think she had any qualms or illusions about what Nix might be getting up to while overseas or with whom, it was probably par for the course and an unspoken understanding. It was for the best for everyone involved even their child that they split up.

As for Nix being a dad and his kid… Yeah it’s very hard for me to picture Nix as a dad as well. I think it’s something that he really struggled with for a very long time too. He probably wasn’t there much for the first few years of his son’s life, maybe not even much of any of his childhood. Even when he was there or around he probably wasn’t a great father to be perfectly honest. (We all know he’s not a patient person by his very nature, for one thing.) It’s not even that he didn’t want to be, he just really didn’t know how to. Especially considering who his own father was and what a terrible father he was to Nix. Like the worst father imaginable, something out of nightmares. It’s understandable that caused him a lot of trauma that also affected how he was as a father himself. I think Nix feels very guilty about it obviously and often beats himself up over it, but he’s also convinced himself that it’s best for his son that he isn’t in his life at all so he doesn’t pass down his trauma and fuck him up like his own father did to him. I also think that he feels like he never deserved to be a father while Dick did and yet he’s the one who has a kid he never sees while Dick has no children even though he’d make a great father, and he has a lot of guilt over this. It especially pains him to see how good Dick is with his own son the few times they are together, and how much his son likes Dick. And he feels like Dick is a better father to his own child than he is himself. In my head one of the issues that Nix struggles with the most in their relationship is that he’s kept Dick from living the life he deserved and meant to have which was to be a father and family man, and he feels that he’s taken that away from him and hates that he can’t give that to Dick himself. It’s one of his main insecurities, that one day Dick will come to his senses and leave him and find a nice girl to marry and make his wife and then have lots of perfectly mannered little redheaded children. Which will also make Dick’s mother and the rest of his family happy of course as well.

In my head I also think that it’s Dick that eventually gets Nix to see his son again and be a much bigger presence in his life sometime down the line when his son is a bit older. Nix seems to take to fatherhood much easier and does a better job of it as his son is older as well. He usually goes to visit his son where he lives but as his son gets older he starts to come visit him and Dick where they live together and Dick is known as his Uncle Dick, and the three of them surprisingly get on very well together. Maybe his son even visits during a week in the summer when Dick has his nieces and nephews over as well and Nix likes to pretend during that week it’s like it’s their own family that they have together, this is their own little (or not so little) family that they could have together if they were like everyone else.

(Also I’m working on putting together a list of Winnix fics that feature Nix’s child and will post it for you as soon as I do. There are some very good ones out there!)

[sapphos-catpanions]

“No, it’s not about young gays and lesbians – at least not in the way you think.

“When I first entered the gender debate about ten years ago, the entire concept of childhood transition was barely on the radar. It wasn’t until a few years later – especially with the debut of TLC’s I Am Jazz in 2015 – that you started to see the focus of the debate shift from adults to children. But when TERFs did notice that referrals to gender clinics were slowly starting to rise, most of them immediately interpreted it as a form of modern-day conversion therapy. Homophobic parents, so the story goes, where turning their gay sons into straight daughters and lesbian daughters into straight sons.

“At the time, that was probably an accurate assessment. When the first wave of detransitioners emerged in the middle of the 2010’s, it was made up almost entirely of young gays and lesbians. I don’t consider myself part of that wave – although I spent my high school years identifying as various flavors of transgender too, I was lucky enough to grow up in a region where access to any real medical intervention was pretty much impossible – but I would still say my own attraction to gender theory was also intimately wrapped up with my own sexuality and the pressures I felt from the conservative community I found myself in. Back then, there just wasn’t much of a reason for straight kids to find transition appealing, whereas there was a certain type of LGB kid for whom it made sense in a twisted way.

“But things have changed a lot in the years since gender theory began exploding into popular culture, and the narratives that previously made sense are rapidly becoming irrelevant. In my two and half years teaching in this district, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gay or lesbian student transition to better “fit in” with heterosexuality. Nowadays, gay and lesbian teenagers mainly live their lives as, well, gay and lesbian teenagers – it’s the socially awkward heterosexuals who flock around them, desperate for a “marginalized identity” of their own, that you need to be worrying about.

“In other words: It used to be that childhood transition was a way for gay kids to make themselves straight, but now it’s primarily a way for straight kids to make themselves gay. And why wouldn’t they? In these internet-poisoned youth subcultures, being a boring straight kid (especially a boring straight girl!) puts you at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy, a totally acceptable target for barely-concealed contempt and passive bullying. I had a group of queer students who ate lunch by my desk every day, and every other joke they made was about the one “token heterosexual” who liked to hang out with them. Of course, she was non-binary too by the end of the year – you can only take peers “punching up” at you for so long before you’d want to join them on their level.

“This, more than anywhere else, is where common TERF arguments break down. It’s not that modern gender theory isn’t homophobic. It is, undoubtedly. But it’s homophobic less in the sense that it represses homosexuality and more that it elevates it to a sort of in-demand cultural signifier, wildly disconnected from any actual same-sex desire. Ironically, the TERF impulse to immediately center gay and lesbian youth in these talking points is part of the problem – most of these children are transitioning precisely because they want to roleplay as an oppressed minority, and the assumption that every social ill must always have a unique impact on LGB people in particular just feeds that obsession. If you really want to stop children from transitioning, you better start saying it’s for boring straight kids, not gay ones!

__

“As I wrap up, let me just say: I don’t want anyone who reads this piece to think TERFs are only “half right,” just because I’m pointing out some places where their analysis goes wrong. On everything that actually matters, they’re the only ones out there today consistently capturing the reality I see on the ground. It’s just that they noticed what was going on before anyone else did, back when all this nonsense was strictly the domain of a few fanatics and its primary victims were gay and lesbian kids; it’s no surprise that some of their talking points are in need of an update in 2022, now that gender theory is a full-blown social phenomenon. But their fundamental analysis still captures something essential that snappier criticisms from conservatives and centrists often miss.

“You can’t understand gender theory today unless you understand teenage girls today – and like it or not, you can’t understand teenage girls today if you’re tuning out the feminists who have been ringing alarm bells for decades now. So go find some TERFs and really listen to what they have to say, as long as you remember that the situation is changing rapidly and not everything that was right on the money years ago is perfectly accurate now. As for me, I’ve got about fifteen more sensitivity trainings to wrap up.”

https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/gender-theory-in-schools-two-things?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[meirimerens]

hi hello a question about the pathologic blorbos (and their families possibly) and homophobia; expressing it, repressing it, internalising it. all that jazz. also any possible hypothetical non cis headcannons ?

gonna answer that last part bc it's the fastest: I've drawn most of the (adult!!!) pathologic blorbos I care about like In The Full Nude with the one they love at some point so if you've seen those you have your answers or at least can deduct them. i love and cherish all of my friends' hcs especially when/if they're able to Elaborate on it like all the hcs and bits and pieces and Ways These Characters Relate To Themselves/Each Other with/within/thanks to their transness and the Web Of It i eat that up i drink that up i enter my excited dog era. in my witness to greatness era. that's part 1 of answer.

now part 2 (cracks my knuckles and it echoes for thousands of years)

Dankovsky; he's the one i have The Most Thoughts about because. I'm dangling him like a little worm for the fish currently.

i think he knew very early. like 11yo that he was gay. it never was... a surprise for him. he tried to keep it relatively On Da Low because of his family matters (mentioning that in a bit) and didn't seek relationships during his teenage years. when he went to uni, it truly became like Solidified that He Did Like Men, and it kinda... scared him a lil. (one of the reasons I think he stopped drinking at uni very early on is because it gave him Thoughts about his male classmates and he was like Oh God No). he has an enormous propensity to Desire, and that's because he refused (and refuses) himself so much (he has a huge propensity to desire because he refuses himself, and refuses himself because he has a huge propensity to desire... y'know. snake bites its tail). he took on a very I'm Busy With My Studies/My Work I Can't Have A Relationship facade but actually it's cos he Strugglin With It.

to me his mother's side of the family is armenian, his father's georgian; both are relatively/very religious countries (Armenian orthodoxy for armenia, eastern orthodoxy for Georgia) so he was raised orthodox, and it brought in a general Atmosphere of homophobia, even if his parents never were truly virulent towards him.

Georgia from what I've been told has pretty strict traditions and the culture around masculinity and what A Real Man(tm) is is A Big Thing, and I think his dad started being like. 😬 when dankovsky picked up the cello as a kid instead of Guns And Weapons, and 😬😬 when he saw he wasn't getting any girls in middle & high school. He started distancing himself from his son a little because he was like Oh God I Know What That Means and an ""effeminate"" [dankovsky is 500km from being effeminate but a stricter a culture is about masculinity's rules, the smaller deviations become more apparent] son stains the father of that effeminacy (worldwide spread belief honestly), but Daniil still... was His Boy. they bonded over beetles. dad insisted Dankovsky know how to handle a weapon because he still very much wanted him to be a tough guy maybe a famed soldier or general one day, also to overcompensate what he perceived as lacking masculinity [literally dankovsky is not even that unmanly, dad was just very set in his ways]. now dankovsky is gay AND a menace. when dankovsky left for uni, dad wanted to... mend the bond a bit. eventually accepted his son was gay. offered him a chokha [georgian traditional attire] as a form of... You Might Be Gay. But You're Still My Son And I Still Think You're A Real Man, Because Only Real Men Might Wear This. Even If You Are Gay [he's not even that effeminate]. and since then they've fared well. dad doesn't get in his business too much.

his relationship with his mom was less strained because 1) as a woman, she doesn't have that My Son Must Be Straight And Masculine Or I, Too, Will Look Like A Effeminate Homosexual so she cares less and 2) to me she was like. I Spent 9 Months Making Him I'm Not Going To Be Mad At Him Over That. she's still kinda reserved about it like We Don't Talk About It :D way, but it's easier for her to accept. The one day daniil brings his man over she's like. 👀 good taste Danya.

Burakh

hilarious to me honestly. he's a late bloomer (like he discovered that about himself During The Events Of The Game). for years to me he was like "damn haha there's something fundamentally wrong with me I am incapable of love 👍" (cue his: "I'm not sure I know how to love." line from P2 pantomime). for years he just thinks there's something wrong with him but that's just because He Didn't Look The Other Way. so for decades he doesn't even know there's a closet. he doesn't know what a closet is. and when he suddenly starts to have an Inkling he might be gay he's like. aawww... what am I supposed to do with that.....

to me re:family well. his dad is dead. and even if he sees him in dreams, I think his father's potential wishes have very little weight on the scales. he has, narratively, to come to the realization that He Might Do, Or Have To Do Things That Go Against His Father's Will, Wishes, And Kin, and in that swoop he also deals with the Gay Thing. not really any... problems on his mom's side since the biological one is dead, and the Earth spits out homosexuals like sunflowers seeds honestly (I've mentioned how I think A Number of the herb brides are bi or gay + it's not a big deal, so I think it's not a big deal to them for Burakh either. that's just his problem now!)

since he [Didn't] Know How To Love he has to like. learn, in a way, all the ways to show affection and such. dankovsky had almost 20 years for everything to Bubble Up Inside and for burakh everything Hits Him in like 6 days so. love wins really.

Rubin

he had An Inkling pretty early on that he was gay but was like. what if I don't see it 👍. then he went to the army [p1 lore] and was like. oooaaagh I see it. he already feels Like A Disappointment to Isidor so he's not particularly moved on that side + Monk-Like Guy so he's like "I'll just stay celibate (shrugs)" (AND THEN DOESN'T!) but also... he doesn't live his homosexuality too bad. because anyone who could give him shit for it he could just crush them like soda can. so.

Peter

his mom had An Inkling he would turn out gay when he was little bc he was Sensitive and Not Like Other Boys and in them days [and still today for many families tbh] those are the Tell-Tale Signs. when andrey came out as bi at age like 14 and peter got himself a gf at that age too she was like "Oh... i must have been mistaken then. Ok it's that one. i guess peter is just like that :)". then peter came out also as bi at age like. 19. and she was like. "Oh. so I wasn't completely off. a little off." he didn't bring anyone home for 10 years and she was starting to get scared he'd just be alone always but then. he finds himself a nice guy. love wins.

i think he realized he was bi at uni. he had always liked girls, had like a gf in middle school (nothing serious since they were in middle school), then just thought nothing of it until he was surrounded with male classmates in their bright ages and he was like. ooooh I see how it is.

i've mentioned it already but i think their father, as a piece of shit, really disliked the Vibes he got from peter. mean about it. then they decided they wouldn't put up with him any longer so. bi rights AND bi wrongs I guess.

Andrey

cf. Peter's paragraphs. knew he was bi early and didn't let anyone give him shit for it ever. still doesn't. very comfortable in it. might have had a lil thang for dankovsky at uni before he heard dankovsky speak and it turned his wenis outside in with the sheer cringe he felt. this led him to becoming obsessed with him because no one before had left such a mark on him before and now. here we are.

he was very bold towards dankovsky in uni like "you got a problem with me and the boys sitting on each others' laps? 🤨 you... homophobic?" and dankovsky had to be like Oh My God No I'm Not. No I'm Not... and then andrey was the first person daniil told he was gay to, made him promise to Shut It about it, and since then andrey has lived like that one image of plushie pikachu looking like it's holding back very very hard not to say a curse word.

Yulia

she had Obvious Signs of being a lesbian at a young age and her parents kinda... had to deal with it. you can't do much really. as I've said they're pretty 🤷🤷‍♂️ about it. the familial atmosphere at home was already pretty formal and distant so all yulia had to do was say she was a lesbian and then move on with her life. she doesn't tell her parents she kisses a woman on the reg now, but they kinda don't have to know in a way.

she had a kind of I'm Very Busy With My Work I Can't Be In A Relationship when she first took her independence, maybe because she still wanted to Please Her Parents, but very quickly realized that. fuck it we ball. they're not here to see anyways.

Eva

her parents do not know she's bi, they haven't known before and they won't know later. she was always a free-spirited child who liked to do her own thing and leave her home at night and go hang out with friends, I think she knew she was bi age 15 and had her first girlfriend age 16 that she would slip away when everyone was asleep and go see. she, too, was very comfortable in her bisexuality, I think that's what brought her and andrey together (bi4bi evil/angel couple. thank you pathologic) + she really appreciated he didn't try to stifle her free-spiritedness. she barely gives any news to her parents so she's balling.

all i gaht for now... there are many a characters I think are gay or bi but I don't Think ABout It Too Much, or not enough to have like. LORE! for that. :3

[ladyalienist]

Rainbow walls and shame

I have a thing I need to get off my chest. It's been there for three days and half and it's now time to write about it.

So. I grew up in a pretty conservative enviroinment - in a rather complicated way, but generally speaking conservative. In early 2000s I barely knew what a gay man or a lesbian were and they were talked about with pity at best and open scorn at usual.

In 2005 a little girl joined my class. She had an incredible black mane of beautiful curls, a radiant smile, green eyes and an adorable accent. I was a bullied child - a full outcast, ostracized by everyone, frowned upon even by teachers, a disappointment in anything I tried. And this stunning creature chose me to be her first friend in class.

I felt blessed by some divine force whose goodness could not be questioned - my gratitude to her almost felt like worship. And I noticed that the feelings I had were not what one was supposed to have towards a friend. I was jealous when she talked to other girls in class (I also threw a rage fit I'm still ashamed of). I couldn't bear the thought of her having a boyfriend and leaving me alone again - yes, having a boyfriend was the big deal even then, in fucking elementary school.

So, being the curious and introspection-oriented child I was, I asked myself the dreaded question:

Am I a Lesbian?

Mind you: I was nine.

Yet I laid in bed, tense, unable to sleep (I started having disordered sleep patterns there), tormented by that terrible question. Am I a lesbian? I can't be one. I love my male crush (a boy in my class I was all over for five years and who never glanced at me twice and who's now a drug addict but that's another story). I can't be a lesbian. There's already too much wrongness in me.

Conceal, don't feel. Don't let them know.

I managed to repress what I felt for other nine years - I spent my teenage years in a constant state of confusion towards other girls, because they were so pretty and I wanted to be like them (I'm not pretty in the slightest, I'm not attractive, and it was a problem back then), but when at night I dreamed of kissing them it was very weird. Oh well, sixteen years old me rationalized, must be that I want their boyfriend and since he actually has a repulsive personality (that's another story again) it's easier to imagine having something soft with them. But I'm straight. Totally straight. The fact that sex with boys feels awful is not a problem.

I was a teen, teens tend to not be very good at rationalizing things.

At eighteen I could not lie to myself any longer: I was in love with another girl. Now I could write an entire book about her and I - but that would be beside the point.

I laid in bed again, tears rolling silently down.

I am bisexual.

Now: I was not that terrified child anymore. I had been exposed to LGBT activism, I fully supported gay rights and gay people. My first "boyfriend" (another complicated story) was openly bisexual and I had supported him.

Yet it took me some time to come to terms with it for many reasons. I'm telling only the main two. One was: if I am part of the community, then my support for it when I told everyone I was straight as an arrow becomes a little hypocritical (teen black-or-white reasoning). The other: I cannot have a meaningful relationship with a boy, how am I ever supposed to achieve anything with a girl? The fact that the main reasons I couldn't have a nice boyfriend was that boys suck, or just that a life can be full even without romantic relationships, was unthinkable back then.

You see what was present at nine but absent at eighteen?

Shame.

I was not ashamed of myself or my sexuality. Not at all. I was not wrong for being bisexual - I actually thought it might be the least wrong thing with me.

So, now the actual post begins:

Monday was International Day Against Homophobia And Its Various Declinations. My social media feed was flooded with rainbows and tearful posts about LGBTQ+ youth and LGBTQ+ rights and whatever, blah, blah. From well-meaning people, let's be really clear.

I stayed silent, for I was feeling nothing but tired and ashamed. Tired - I want this to end. I want this to be a day for LGB, a day to actually speak about us, about our history, and not made it all about the TQ+. I want an honest conversation, I'm tired with this performative, shallow, useless rainbow wall. Ashamed - because I know how much the B, or at least a subset of people self-identifying as B, has its own responsibility in the loss of meaning of everything aimed at LGB.

I feel ashamed everytime I think a man is attractive and I would be lying if I said it doesn't happen (even when it comes to just celebrities, given also the unusually unsocial historical period). I feel lost when I find myself fantasizing about having a boyfriend - rationally I know I can never achieve a good relationship with a man, but wouldn't it be nice to just find one who can do the impossible? I'm not immune to my socialization. Even in radfem spaces it's hard to talk about it because it's hard to find a balance between male-pandering, I don't want to offend attitude and straight up rudeness.

At the same time I'd like a girlfriend - and I don't feel worthy of being loved of a woman who's amazing enough to be my romantic interest. I don't feel ready, I don't feel capable.

My bisexuality really feels like half-and-half. Like I can never be fully committed to someone (thanks to way too much of bisexual rep), I can never be fully described, I can never be fully understood. Even talking to fellow bisexuals sometimes is of no help, let alone to straight or homosexual people. I sometimes feel like I exist only as a porn fantasy - and I personally can't be that either because let's be clear no man wants a threesome with me (which is something I'm currently really glad of). I'm but a series of mismatched parts and desires that can never be accomplished - and that I can't talk about in this climate, because straights don't want to hear about us experiencing SSA and gays are rightly unwilling to hear about us experiencing OSA. And when you find the "inclusive" space it's all about dyed-haired queerios who LARP as gays and claim that "cis gays are gross" in the same sentence.

I cannot say I'm bisexual in a "normie" space because of fetishization and stereotypes - I cannot say I'm bisexual in LGBTQ+ spaces because anything is about the queerios - I cannot say I'm bisexual in other spaces because of this... because of that...

Maybe it's just a personal experience that still stems from feeling that there is a lot wrong with me. I have no clue.

But I really wished I could talk about how I feel openly, with no shame. And the very same community who should have made me proud of what I am is making me feel ashamed.

I don't know. I just needed to write it off.

[b0rtney]

Why I Do What I Do: 1. A Human Being with a Place of Birth

You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’re from, so today I’ll talk a little bit about where I’m from, and why I do what I do. This first part is about where I’m from as a human being.

I was born and raised in a nice little suburb of Missouri, about twenty minutes from downtown St. Louis. 

For kindergarten, I went to a nice Henry school and attended a nice Baptist church on Sundays, and maybe one other day of the week if I’m remembering that right. These were the kinds of places that would make any moderate person’s skin crawl. My older sister would scream and pout when my parents wrestled her into a church dress, but it would be a scandal if she tried wearing pants– that kind of place. My parents got divorced when I was six or seven, and that kind of thing had every person in that church turning their backs on my family, the fact that my mom soon began working to support me and my siblings was, I’m sure, the talk of the congregation for a little while– that kind of place. 

After my parents got divorced, I switched to another nice Henry school, and I moved to new houses: one for each parent. That nice Henry school didn’t work out for long. My mom couldn’t stand Henryity in almost any form anymore. And the tuition was too expensive for an electrician with a declining business and a brand-new real estate agent in 2007. So, public schools. My dad was zoned for a school with the best public schools around, so we used his address. Kehrs Mill Elementary was where I went starting in second grade, and where my brother went starting in Kindergarten. My sister started sixth grade at Crestview Middle. 

I went about half the year friendless in second grade, and then I met Fernanda. She was the only Hispanic girl in the whole school (there was one Philipino boy, two Chinese girls, an Indian girl, a Middle Eastern boy, and everyone else was African American or Caucasian). She, kind of literally, yanked me by the arm and dragged me into friendship, and I’d never been happier. We played Warrior cats (yes, based on the books, don’t look at me like that every school had some kids that did it… although I think the part where we lapped water out of the sink and hissed at her mom was a little weird). We made up a version of “Cowboys and Indians” where we would be two Chieftesses with inexplicable numbers of children and no husbands, facing moral dilemmas like what to do with prisoners of war when they won’t hear of peace– while our brothers (my one and her two) tried to shoot at us with Nerf guns. 

At this point, if you had asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I would have told you what I considered an impossible joke: I wanted to marry a woman, run an orphanage, adopt a bunch of teenagers and babies, and drive a van big enough to fit everyone in it when we went grocery shopping together. 

In third grade I took a long test in the school’s brand-new computer lab and I scored so well that they took me, once a week, on Wednesdays, to a different campus with other kids that scored really well on that test and we learned about lazers and climate change and cloning and other things for “gifted” kids. But otherwise, third grade passed in much the same way as second grade, but nothing exists without complications and so there came along a boy named Henry. He was new to school and he had what could have been called a cool haircut, for 2009, and Fernanda loved him. I didn’t. But she did, so I thought it was normal to like a boy, so I said I liked him too. And then he said he liked me better than her because she was weird and I kicked him in the shin and said something mean that I don’t remember anymore. But Fernanda didn’t like that, and she didn’t like me. So at the beginning of fourth grade she told me she wasn’t going to be my friend this year so that she could try being friends with someone else. 

So, I was alone again in fourth grade, for a minute. But by this time my real estate-mom had moved us to house number three (four, maybe?) since the divorce: a condo with blue carpets and mostly old people living there. This was where I met Branch, a kid from my class who visited his grandma in the condo directly above us. Branch and I each had a little brother, and by now my sister had taken to locking herself in her room and not talking to anyone, so Branch and me and our little brothers played “Hup-hups,” a war game where there were two sides, each with a commander and an infantryman who would respond to commands like “stay,” “go,” “attack,” and “attention.” It was pretty fun, so Branch told his friends at school about it, and they all wanted to join my faction, and this went on like a domino effect until I was running an army comprised of something like 30-50 fourth-grade boys, depending on the day, at recess. I don’t think I realized how weird that was at the time. We mostly just screwed around until another boy formed an oppositional army, calling themselves the Arachnids, because that was just about the biggest word you could know in fourth grade, and they started guerilla warfare. They would just straight-up attack us and try to hurt us. I would scream at the boys following me to run away, because I never wanted anyone to get hurt, but then the oppositional army leader had his arm around my throat and I was choking so I couldn’t yell very loud, and all the boys on my side just went to town attacking the Arachnids back. Somehow, none of the recess monitors– these were two grouchy old women who would always yell at me and Fernanda for trying to climb the trees– ever saw this, or stopped it. The violence continued until people got tired of it, and by the end of the year I was alone again.

Fifth grade was when the depression I’d had since I can remember really kicked it up a notch. It should be noted that I had no idea what depression was. I thought it was normal to just not want to get out of bed in the morning, to want to die all the time, to dig needles into your skin and try to make yourself bleed because at least then you have control over something. By then my mom had moved to house number five, within walking distance from the school, so my brother and I would walk together every morning. I made one new friend, named John, and he talked me out of suicide not once but twice, once by yelling at me over the phone and once by just existing, which is very impressive for a fifth grader, if I’m honest, but also I think I’ll always feel a little horrible for putting that pressure on him. I convinced myself that I loved him, at the time. 

You may be noticing a pattern with me and boys, but we’re not quite there yet. 

Of course, between fifth and sixth grade my family picked up and moved across the country from Missouri to Southern California.

I spent sixth grade and most of seventh grade friendless, and met a few friends in eighth grade– two of those friends are still with me to this day. In eighth grade I met a girl named Chloe, who had three pregnancy scares in a year and who convinced me to make out with her in a pillow fort in the room I shared with my sister while my sister was out with her boyfriend– and that was the first kiss I ever had and it felt like liquid lightning in my veins. But in eighth grade I also listened to my Republican parents on the matter of gay rights– of course, I barely knew what gay was, I just knew it was something you called people you didn’t like because that’s all that a Missouri elementary school teaches you about it– and so I thought gay people were a little gross, and I was a little gross for liking it when I kissed a girl, and I buried that part of me. In eighth grade I also met the boy who would be the first one I would date: Chris. I dated him from the middle of freshman year to the end of sophomore year in high school. We went on a few awkward dates, we held hands even though his were sweaty and we couldn’t get the timing right, we kissed even though it felt about as exciting as eating plain bread– not exactly bad, just not exciting or fun. 

Now the pattern might seem more clear. It certainly became very clear to me. 

I didn’t like boys. I like girls. I’ve liked girls since forever, and no amount of shame or repression was going to “fix” me because I. Wasn’t. Broken. I was depressed and I was anxiety-ridden and I was introverted maybe a little too much, but being homosexual was never an issue. 

I broke up with my boyfriend. I came out to my friends, then my siblings, then my parents, then everyone else. I had a girlfriend, and she lost interest, so I broke it off. I had another girlfriend, but I had never been interested, so I broke it off. Then I put dating aside. 

I continued to get straight As in school, take all the AP classes, run three clubs, rank nationally for field hockey goalies, help a friend of mine transition from straight girl to gay girl to nonbinary kid to straight boy, and accumulate a solid group of five friends. 

Then I got rejected from every college I applied to because of a clerical error I didn’t know about until a year later (after appeals were already a lost cause), so I got a job, I went to a community college, tried to go for a business degree and hated it, switched to a creative writing degree, and now here we are! With my applications submitted and one acceptance in the bag (thank you, University of Iowa!), now I want to focus on my writing and try to get published next.

Now that you know where I’m from, you know at least a little of what I care about. I deal a lot with mental health, so does my writing. My sexuality was a major unknown for me for a large portion of my life, so I include that a lot in the hopes that I can help someone else not be so lost with that. My hometown had very little racial diversity, so I want to represent more diversity in my writing. 

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself: in the coming posts, I’ll show you what I’ve written and read, so you can have a better idea of where I’m coming from as a writer, now that you know where I’m coming from as a person. 

[rigginsstreet]

As much as I understand that fp is a very stubborn boy and he had good reasons for doing what he did, what happens in an AU where he comes over to Fred's house a month or so after graduation when they've already had their big fight, wraps his arms around him and tells him he's changed his mind about the army, that Fred was right and he's staying? 😓

the blessed timeline 😭

fp spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out what to do and after many conversations involving some rather tough love from alice and mary, fp knew that he had to stay. so he shows up to freds house out of the blue. freds still not exactly happy to see him, figures he’s just stopping by one last time to say goodbye and honestly fred doesnt want to hear it. he was hoping fp would just quietly leave, make things easier. but then fps telling fred he’s realized what an idiot he was being and how he was scared of the future, scared of what that meant for the two of them and how fp didnt think he could live up to what fred wanted. but he knows now that he doesnt need to run off to the army to find himself, to make himself a better person. fred already makes him want to be better. 

this is all said in a completely platonic, not at all homosexual way. 

so fp’s there when artie gets sicker and sicker. he helps around the house, running errands for bunny and making sure fred isnt overworking himself and has someone to lean on so he doesnt have to carry this all on his own. he’s there when artie dies and fred feels like he’s falling apart at the seams, can barely get himself out of bed in the morning. 

after about a week or two of fred being neck deep in his grief, bunny and fp agree it would do fred some good to get out of riverdale for a while. so fp plans a roadtrip down the coast. freds of course worried about leaving his mom behind, though fp and bunny both suspect it has more to do with fred looking for an excuse out of this, but eventually they both talk him in to going. its 3 days into the trip when fred finally smiles again, when fp finally hears that laugh he’s missed so much. its a day later when they fall into bed together, months of repressed feelings and skirting around each other coming to a head.

they start finding their rhythm again after that, though its not all smooth sailing. fred still gets in an occasional mood and fps learning how to be more open and comfortable with fred in public now that theyve made this thing between them official. its a lot of push and pull in the beginning but they make it work. 

a few years down the line fred decides he wants to start up his own construction company. he and fp dont work together, ultimately coming to the conclusion that itll be better in the long run for them not to spend every waking moment together. also, should anything go wrong with either of their jobs theyll have something else to fall back on in the meantime. fp had been working as a mechanic and ultimately took over the shop when his boss retired. 

a few more years pass, theyre both settled into their jobs and a home theyve made for themselves and fred starts bringing up how he wants kids. he and fp still cant legally marry and fred swears up and down that it doesnt bother him (in the way that fp thinks it does, when fps feeling insecure about not being able to give fred the life he was always talking about when they were teenagers. wanting the white picket fence and kids running around in the yard, someone like hermione by his side), but he does still think about kids. knows with every fiber of his being he was meant to be a dad. fp’s scared shitless of the thought of being a parent but theres no one he’d rather face it with than fred. so they run through their options, ultimately deciding on surrogacy. they ask mary and after a lot of deliberation she agrees. she moves back to riverdale for the duration of the pregnancy. 9 months later archie is born. mary visits as often as she can, always comes for birthdays and holidays. the 4 of them become this unconventional family.

the day its announced same sex marriage has been legalized fred and fp turn to each other at the exact same time to propose. they have a small ceremony for their closest friends and family. archies about 9 or 10. he’s the ring bearer.

fred and fp continue to live on in domestic bliss. they have their rough patches here and there like any other couple but they always make it through. theyre happy and healthy and in love, raising their boy. they grow old together in a peaceful town that isnt filled to the brim with murder and adultery and stupid snake gangs (well maybe the serpents are still there but fp sure as shit aint got nothing to do with them). everythings as it should be and all is right with the world. happy christmas to all and to all a good night.

[alittlegayhistoria]

Oscar Wilde – 16 October, 1954 – 30 November, 1900:

Oscar Wilde remains one of the greatest playwrights and novelists, famous for their rich and groundbreaking wit. Wilde was born during the Victorian era, a time inextricably linked with sexual repression and rigid social tradition. In his teenage years, he began to coin his distinctive identity of flowing hair and flamboyant dress. Wilde also showed academic excellence and after graduating from Oxford University, began to lecture as a leading poet, art critic and figure in the Aesthetic movement.

The first publishing of “Dorian Grey” was released in 1890, and was rejected by popular critics for being decadent and ‘homoerotic’ but nonetheless did not hinder Wilde on his cultural breakthrough. “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, his first play, debuted in 1892 and truly began to display Wilde’s signature sharpness and provided a vibrant social commentary against the ultra conservative pretenses of Victorian society. “The Importance of Being Earnest”, arguably his most prominently play and considered one of today’s literary masterpieces, hit main theatres in London by early 1895.

During this successful period of his career, Wilde became engaged in a love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, known as ‘Bosie’. Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, was outraged and insisted legal action be pursued, and in 1895, left a calling card at Wilde’s home; accusing him of “posing as a sodomite [sic]” and lead to his arrest for sodomy and gross indecency. His name was struck from theaters, and he was sentenced to two years in a hard labour camp. The court trial truly paid homage to his courage and pride in the face of injustice and oppression. When questioned upon the “love that dare not speak its name” a euphemism for homosexuality, Wilde expressed; “It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art… It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection… The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”

He spent his final years in great poverty and self-exile, but while much of his career had ceased, his charisma and mind had not and on one of his last trips out, he famously said to a friend; “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.” and he shortly passed after in Paris in 1900. Wilde’s strong beliefs within his sexuality and identity have made his works all the more vital. His refusal to conform, vivaciousness and unflappable spirit makes him iconic within popular culture, and gay history alike.

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” - Oscar Wilde

[delphizoa]

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions—Sub vs. Dub (Post 7 of 7)

**EDIT I have been advised to “warn for wank” by an unhappy Prideshipper who clicked the “Keep reading” link looking for... I’m not sure? Anyway, this is just a discussion of Prideshipping in terms of the degree to which it’s suggested by sub vs. dub DSoD. I wanted to share thoughts that were buzzing after seeing the sub today, and I thought some people who haven’t had a chance to see both versions might be interested. However, I am not a Prideshipper and you won’t find any hot Kaiba on Yami Yugi action past the cut. You have now been duly warned.**

Shipping

What would a discussion of Yu-Gi-Oh be without at least one mention of ships, right? Seriously... have you seen that list? It’s crazy. Who has time to conjure all those combinations? I don’t even have the patience to read them.

I am actually not a shipper beyond finding some odd satisfaction in Abridged Thiefshipping. While I'm totally cool with you or anyone else supporting whatever romantic pairings float your respective boats, for me YGO is about other kinds of relationship bonds. With Kaiba, in particular, I have trouble imagining romance, because the character is so emotionally closed off. Okay... okay... there's also the fact that it's not as much fun fangirling if the object of your affection is happily paired, but mostly I don't ship him because of that that other thing. I swear.

Despite my personal viewpoint on shipping, I can totally see why English-speaking Prideshippers were doing extended happydances after seeing DSoD. Dub Kaiba's comment about his and Atem’s bond, as well as his attention to things like “perfectly coiffed hair," sound like the kind of earnest admissions you find in a crushing teenager’s diary. In fact, I saw the dub with a friend of mine who is gay. He said the dialogue reminded him of how he would talk about other boys in high school before he understood his sexuality. He would gush, thinking he was simply fascinated with a cool new friend when really there was a deeper interest he wasn't ready to acknowledge. So, yeah... I get it. I understand why enough people are going there to cause my fan-art heavy Tumblr feed to look like a wedding announcement.

However, even though I’m tracking, I’m not buying. When I first saw the English release, I assumed the shippy qualities weren’t intentional but rather represented loss-in-translation. 4K Media said they weren't going to futz with the plot, and I theorized this was actually evidence of their keeping the faith. After all, dialogue viewed as homosexually suggestive between boys in America is often understood as completely platonic in other countries, particularly those where non-sexual affection between men isn’t culturally taboo.

Therefore, I went to the sub today fully expecting to see the same level of Prideshipping if not more. Surprise, surprise, though, the ship actually seemed far less evident. Instead of perfectly coiffed hair, Kaiba mentions Atem's "annoying personality." Rather than, "You have your bond with him, and I have mine," sub Kaiba simply asks Yugi something along the lines of, “Are you sure?” when Yugi says that he (Yugi) doubted Atem’s return when Kaiba never did.

Huh... go figure. I never would have pegged 4K Media for adding adult content. Perhaps they’re making up for all those repressed years spent airbrushing guns and cutting scenes of male friends sharing a bed on a blimp.

Anyway, for myself, I prefer the less shippy sub version. My own views about YGO shipping factor to some degree, but I also think the story is stronger and more nuanced with Kaiba confronting feelings of grief over someone who, as both a rival and a friend, was instrumental in making him who he is... stronger than it is with sex in the mix, that is. Really, though, anything is step for a character with massive childhood baggage and the biggest emotional wall EVER.

[sartle-blog]

Sex Lives of Dead Presidents

[gyrlversion]

Journalist reveals chilling account of meeting honour killing family

Lene Wold watched in silent horror as the woman in front of her removed her niqab, the scarf covering her face.

Underneath, the features were destroyed by deep, livid scars, stretching over her nose and cheek and slicing through her eye.

The skin was red and mottled, and parts of her chin were gone.

Her name was Amina.

‘Who did this to you?’ asked Lene, an author and journalist.

‘Baba,’ came the reply. ‘My father.’

Amina, who was 16 when she was attacked, was lucky to survive. Her elder sister, tied up beside her, had already been shot dead when their father turned to his younger daughter, pointed a pistol directly in her face and pulled the trigger. He was obsessed with family pride.

 In the middle of the Jordanian desert, Lene Wold met Amina, a 40-year-old woman who had years before survived an attempted honour killing by her father that had killed her sister

Every year, more than 5,000 women and girls around the world are murdered in so-called honour killings and thousands more are mutilated. Most common in South Asia and in the Middle East, there are an estimated 12 to 15 honour killings every year in Britain, too – and around the world the number has grown as increasing numbers of women take a stand against repression.

The supposedly immoral behaviour of the victims consists of anything from adultery and homosexuality, to dating someone from another culture, or merely daring to wear Western clothing. And the punishments meted out are savage: stoning, burning, drowning, being forced to drink poison or, as in Amina’s case, shooting.

To most Western audiences, however, honour killings remain shrouded in mystery. What really drives the perpetrators – who are mostly close relatives – to murder their own flesh and blood?

How could anyone place their family’s reputation above the lives of the mothers, wives and daughters they purport to love?

Today, a compelling new book provides some of the answers by uncovering, step by step, the explosive details of the crime that destroyed Amina’s family – an insight into the medieval codes of shame and repression that still govern the lives of millions of women.

Inside An Honour Killing tells how Amina became a victim of her parents’ barbarity for nothing more than telling the truth.

It describes how, although innocent of any wrongdoing, the Jordanian authorities then jailed her for 13 years for her own protection, before finally releasing her to live out the ruins of her life alone.

And, remarkably, it includes testimony from her father as he attempts to justify his actions – a man who murdered his mother and eldest daughter, before turning the gun on Amina.

All in the name of ‘honour’.

Writer Lene Wold travelled to Jordan to research honour killings, which although they have been declared contrary to sharia law still occur across the same

Simply to find Amina took huge bravery from Lene Wold, a Norwegian-born writer who spent more than five years in Jordan investigating honour killings. Jordan is a deeply conservative country – and Lene is gay. It is also a dangerous place to be female.

Jordan is said to have one of the best human rights records in the Middle East, yet 20 women are murdered every year for reasons related to family honour.

To reach Amina, Lene travelled for hours into the desert accompanied by a man she’d never met before. Her mobile phone was taken from her, and she was made to wear a blindfold.

Fearful for her life, she had texted her sister back home in Norway before the journey began, asking her to raise the alarm if she hadn’t heard from her by the following morning.

Her destination was a tent in a desolate spot surrounded by mountains – and inside was Amina, a woman who had been a teenager when her parents tried to kill her. Now she was 40.

‘Sit down,’ she said to Lene. ‘Where do I begin?’

In agreeing to tell her story to a stranger, Amina herself was taking a terrible risk.

Every year, more than 5,000 women and girls around the world are murdered in so-called honour killings and thousands more are mutilated

Fearful that she will be identified, she will spend the rest of her life knowing that the violence started by her father could return with a still more terrible conclusion.

So the trust she placed in Lene was all the more remarkable.

Amina explained she had grown up with her elder sister Aisha and their younger brother Akram in a little house on the outskirts of Amman, the Jordanian capital. Life had seemed unremarkable. Although their mother Noora was traditional, insisting her girls wore hijabs, their father, Baba, made a show of embracing Western values.

But everything changed the summer Amina turned 16 and her family threw a party. Among those who attended was a family friend called Maram, a married woman. In the following months, Amina noticed that her big sister was behaving strangely, becoming secretive and spending increasing amounts of time with Maram. Aisha even invited her friend to join their family on holiday to Aqaba on the Red Sea. And it was there, as Amina lay in bed one night, that she heard her sister and Maram whispering their love for one another.

Amina was horrified, knowing instantly that her sister was putting herself in grave danger. Homosexuality is forbidden under sharia law.

Amina was tortured about what she had heard and, the following day, she told her mother, believing it would help Aisha. It was a disastrous mistake.

Rather than the concern she had expected, Amina saw hatred in her mother’s eyes. Noora screamed at Aisha, spat on her and swore that if she ever saw Maram again, no court in the country would hold her responsible for what she would do to her daughter.

Amina had found out that her sister was gay, which is forbidden under Sharia Law

Both sisters were terrified, and with good reason. Amina already knew what was possible in Jordan. Her father had told her how he had killed his own mother when he was a young boy of just 11.

Baba’s mother had left her family because her husband was violent, yet Baba’s friends turned on him and his brother for this supposed shame. They blamed the men in the family for failing to control their mother. ‘Your mother is a whore,’ they had shouted at him. ‘Your father is a pathetic man.’

So, goaded by his father and brother, Baba strangled his mother with a steel wire. As a result, after months of being shunned, the family was allowed to become part of society again.

Baba had told Amina that he couldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done, but that he’d had no choice because of the dishonour his mother had brought.

Then he left his small village in southern Jordan, telling himself he didn’t want his own children to experience the same violence.

Yet the pattern of bloodshed would soon be repeated.

Already living in fear, Aisha and Amina found their situation grew still worse when the authorities decided to intervene.

Because she was suffering terrible panic attacks, Amina went to hospital with her elder sister and there, grasping the seriousness of the danger they were in, a doctor called the police. For her own protection, Aisha was put in prison. Governors in Jordan have the legal right to hold a woman in ‘administrative custody’ if her release might lead to a criminal act taking place, such as one of her family members killing her.

The consequences would prove devastating. Aisha’s absence led to rumours that she was involved in immoral behaviour. The family was ostracised by neighbours and Baba’s memories of childhood humiliation came flooding back.

Jordan has taken steps towards ending the practice of honour killings. A fatwa was issued in December 2016 that declared, for the first time, that such murders are contrary to sharia law

Their father signed a document stating that he forgave and would protect her, and Aisha was released. In fact, both parents were planning an attack of inconceivable brutality: on Aisha for her relationship with Maram, and on Amina for ‘conspiring’ with her.

Just days after Aisha’s return, the sisters were dragged into the living room and tied to chairs while Baba wielded a kitchen knife.

The sisters held hands as Amina was hit on the head and blacked out, but she came round to see Baba approaching her with the knife. He pushed it into her chest, causing indescribable pain.

Then Baba pointed a pistol at Amina’s face and fired. He had already killed Aisha, but somehow, miraculously, Amina survived.

Police arrived and Baba was arrested. Yet because he had killed his daughter in the name of honour, under the Jordanian penal code he received a reduced sentence.

Amina, meanwhile, was locked up for 13 years in a prison in Amman – far longer than her father – for her own protection. She will spend the rest of her life in hiding.

Lene’s next move was equally courageous. Distressed yet gripped by Amina’s story, she spent the next year tracking down the man responsible – Rahman Abd Al-Nasir, Baba’s real name.

The two first met in a cafe in Amman, but it required a great deal of persuasion – and subterfuge – to get him to open up.

At this stage, it was impossible for Lene to reveal she had met Amina or that she knew what Baba had done.

Instead, she led him to believe that she wanted to interview a respected man who was well-known for his vast life experience. In due course, Baba threatened Lene, too, openly displaying both his terrible violence and misogyny.

During one of their meetings, for example, Baba said he would cut off Lene’s hands if he discovered she was in a relationship with another woman. But thankfully, she had already claimed to have a husband and children back home in Norway. When Lene asked him why he would say such a thing, he replied: ‘Because you would bring shame on the family. Because you would deserve to die, or at the very least to lose your hands.’

It took two years and countless meetings to discover the full truth. Although nothing he said could ever begin to justify his actions, Lene persuaded him to describe a traumatic incident he witnessed as a child.

At just ten years old, he had watched as a little girl, a friend of his, was stoned to death for being the victim of a rape. This disturbing experience had clearly affected every decision since.

He told her that honour is the cornerstone of Jordanian society. Honour killings are not sanctioned by Islam – they are about culture, not religion, he admitted. Women, he continued, have ‘ird’ – propriety. Men have ‘sharaf’ – honour. If a woman loses her propriety, that is gone for ever, whereas a man’s honour can always be restored.

At the end of one of their meetings, Lene finally confronted Baba with the truth – she had met Amina, the daughter he had disfigured and disgraced.

At first, he denied having any daughters. He said Lene had the wrong person and he stormed off angrily.

Then, that night, as she lay in bed, she heard him knock on the door of her hotel room.

‘He’s going to kill me, I think, feeling for the hotel phone on the nightstand with shaking hands,’ she wrote.

‘The confession I’ve been looking for all these years might be moments away, but how much am I willing to risk?’

With security by her side, she met him in the lobby and they sat down to talk.

But when Baba told her what he remembered from the day he attacked his daughters, he was without remorse.

He explained that his wife had said to him repeatedly: ‘What kind of man are you? Your son is going to grow up in disgrace. Your daughters are mocking you. You have to do something.’

He couldn’t see any alternative, he said. If he didn’t act, the community would shun the entire family. He was broken by the situation. He couldn’t fail his son as he’d been failed by his own father.

He kept repeating the same words: ‘I am a victim.’

Since Lene’s investigation, Jordan has taken steps towards ending the practice of honour killings. A fatwa was issued in December 2016 that declared, for the first time, that such murders are contrary to sharia law. Then, in July 2017, the Jordanian parliament voted to remove the mitigating excuse offered to murderers who kill in the name of family honour.

Inside An Honour Killing, by Lene Wold, is published by Greystone Books on May 2, priced £19.99. Offer price £15.99 (20 per cent discount, with free p&p) until April 21. Pre-order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. Spend £30 on books and get FREE premium delivery.

  The post Journalist reveals chilling account of meeting honour killing family appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[mrmichaelchadler]

Obsession and The Void: The Performances of Christian Bale

In an early scene in Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” youthful and Adonis-like stockbroker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) runs through his almost pornographically detailed morning routine: a workout with 1,000 crunches, an array of hair and skincare products, all in an exact order to present “an idea of a Patrick Bateman.” Bale performs the scene with a blank fastidiousness, showing no joy or even stray morning wakeup feelings of exhaustion or boredom, all while narrating in a calm but detached tone of a magazine readout. There is a similar scene in the opening of “American Hustle” that functions as a parody, in which Bale’s con man Irving Rosenthal, flabby and balding, puts just as much work into maintaining his elaborately pathetic combover with a far more careful level of focus, a sense that what he’s doing to prepare himself has a real function. The two men are at different ends of the food chain, one obscenely wealthy, the other scrambling to get by; one is cold and unfeeling, the other empathetic and desperately human. Their commonality, then, is how much they have to work to do just to maintain a sense of self, to show that they have a reason for being, even if only to those on the outside looking in. 

That’s in line with much of the praise, and sometimes the criticisms, of Bale’s career. He’s undoubtedly skillful at reshaping his own appearance—often gaining or losing weight to extreme degrees—but the focus is frequently put on the surface external appearances, lauding how he’s become “unrecognizable” (both an exaggeration and more accurately praise for the makeup crew) or knocking his work for being too focused on nailing an impression or a physical quality at the expense of emotional connection. This misunderstands Bale’s strengths, however: he is an actor for whom physical transformation is but an anchoring facet to a depiction of obsession, be it Patrick Bateman’s pathological need to project normality to hide his depravity in “American Psycho,” Irving Rosenthal’s need to project success to attain some sad measure of it in “American Hustle,” or Dicky Eklund’s fixation on his one brush with greatness as a fighter to stave off the truth of his all-consuming crack addiction in “The Fighter.” They’re people who feel a deep need to construct or pursue some idealized form of self as a way to succeed or survive. It’s reflected in Bale’s own process, in which he seemingly constructs a façade, an attempt to hide himself, in order to find something authentic in his roles. The prosthetics, the hair changes and the punishing fluctuations in weight can sometimes be a crutch, but they’re also directly tied to the ring of truth in his best performances.

Bale’s new film, the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice,” has drawn fiercely polarized responses, with criticisms thrown both at typical Great Man Movie problems (lumpy one-thing-after-another structure, an over-explanatory script) and writer-director Adam McKay’s own additions (divisive fourth wall breaks and an uneasy tone that walks a thin line between “lacerating” and “lecturing”). The actor's deceptively sensitive work as Cheney, however, does showcase much of what makes him interesting as a performer beyond the bodily transformations and close attention to detail: he plays people with a single-minded obsession that outweighs other concerns, a need to pursue it at all costs or else fall into the void of their lives, and a self-presentation meant to prop it up.

One could look at any number of Bale performances to highlight this, but these five best discuss the range of emotions and tones he’s able to explore while exemplifying this theme.

"Empire of the Sun" / Warner Bros. Pictures

1987: “Empire of the Sun”

When Steven Spielberg cast 12-year-old Christian Bale as Jamie “Jim” Graham in his adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel, he had no way of knowing his young lead actor would grow up to become one of the biggest stars of his generation. Even so, “Empire of the Sun,” the story of an English boy coming of age in Japanese-occupied China, marks the breakthrough of an extraordinarily gifted young actor, one with a real skill for sketching out the death of innocence. Bale’s early scenes show a classic Spielbergian dreamer, one whose fixation on airplanes shows no real understanding of the ideology behind the battles or the life-or-death situations that people find themselves in. He looks to everyday misery (beggars in the street) with curiosity but not compassion, and his casual cruelty to his family’s Chinese servant (a matter-of-fact, disinterested “you have to do what I say” when told his mom doesn’t want him eating before bed) is less out of a sense of superiority than a total lack of understanding of how his privilege dictates her life, to the point where he's completely shocked when that same servant slaps him after the Japanese invade and she no longer has to pretend to respect him. 

As Jamie falls in with John Malkovich’s savvy crook Basie and they’re both sent to an internment camp, Bale shows a child’s adaptability, rushing through the camp and carrying out chores to win over everyone from his mentor to his captors. He’s at once a young opportunist and an earnest child, one whose mimicry of Malkovich and company (adopted American clothing, repeated jokes without understanding their cruelty) never quite gives way to comprehending that they don’t care about him (his sincere declaration that Basie is his friend is met with little more than amusement from the older man). At the same time, his admiration for the Japanese—a childlike fascination both with their aircraft and their sense of honor—protects him from the harsh realities of the camp, where people are beaten and starved or left to disease. In a late scene, Bale’s shift from unbridled joy at seeing bombers in action (hugging himself, cheering) to emotional breakdown after he’s rebuked by an elder (“I can’t remember what my parents look like”) show how much he’s depended on a fantastical sense of the world to escape how little he has left. His adoption of American habits and Basie’s theory of survivalism, paired with his salutes and bows to Japanese military men with a palpable sense of respect, is a child’s way of playing war games, an ideology- and nationality-blind view of war straight out of boys’ games and comics. Jamie has to act it out, or else realize that there’s little honor in doing whatever it takes to survive and that he’s unlikely to make it out in one piece. If the film and performance show a child’s resilience, they also show how quickly their views of the world can crumble, yielding only pain.

"Velvet Goldmine" / Miramax

1998: “Velvet Goldmine”

A few notable exceptions like his cocky performance in “Newsies” aside, Bale spent much of the ‘90s giving quietly sensitive, soulful supporting performances that he’s since only reprised on occasion (most effectively for Terrence Malick, who yielded one of his very best performances as John Rolfe in “The New World,” where Bale somehow makes unfailing kindness magnetic). Bale is very good in literary adaptations such as Gillian Armstrong’s “Little Women” (as the charming, lovelorn Laurie), but his best work of this period is in Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine” as Arthur Stuart, a music journalist reminiscing about his self-discovery as a gay man in the glam rock era. Haynes’ film borrows its structure from “Citizen Kane,” attempting to find how Jonathan Rhys-Meyers pop superstar Brian Slade disappeared, but it also works as a “Kane” for Bale’s character, who’s introduced in the middle of a youthful, “A Hard Day’s Night” rush to a concert, all teased hair and youthful excitement. Then we’re yanked to 1984, and his eyes are sunken, his demeanor sad and reticent. What happened that brought him to this place?

Bale’s greatness as a physical actor is often yoked to his extreme dedication to losing and gaining pounds, but “Velvet Goldmine” can serve as an example of how he can use his body to tell a story. He plays teenage Arthur with a measure of shyness that suggests a boy who hasn’t yet found an outlet for his dreams or a place to be himself; he hangs his head in embarrassment when he’s told his musical hero is a “poof” and that he himself is “disgusting.” Contrast that with his first strut on the streets of London minutes later, in a tight purple shirt, a moment of freedom that’s both liberating and frightening, his gait more open but still uncertain. The rest of his journey in the ‘70s scenes of the film is a navigation between those two poles of repression—his heaving frame as his father shames him for his homosexuality—and short-lived freedom, including a first romantic connection with rock star Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor). It makes his scenes in 1984 all the more painful, in which a withdrawn, older (and older-looking) Arthur shuffles through the streets, looking as if he’s trying to blend in with everything rather than stand out on his own. 

Bale plays the role not as someone who’s found a permanent new identity and acceptance, but rather as someone who, briefly, saw a better life and the first stabs of individuality in the music and fashions that meant so much to him, before those small gains were rolled back and a new, more powerful form of repression turned his world to gray. Perhaps Arthur wouldn’t have stayed glammed up his whole life—most people don’t look and dress like they did when they were teenagers—but he’s stuck in a point in time where he can’t even find a modest form of self-expression. Bale the actor locates that moment of temporary self-discovery and shows just how it’s so intoxicating: it’s a first assertion of self, even in an idealized form. That adult Arthur can’t fully break from that fixation is understandable; that he should be required to totally deny any semblance of it is tragic.

"American Psycho" / Lions Gate Films

2000: “American Psycho”

Bale really arrived as a Great Actor™ with “American Psycho,” the first film that showcased his ability to dramatically transform his appearance for a role. Bale hasn’t shaken his attraction to these challenges, and while he usually manages to transcend the stunt-y nature of these roles (“The Fighter,” “Rescue Dawn,” the otherwise tedious “The Machinist”), there are times where the trick is more impressive than the performance (“I'm Not There,” the “Dark Knight” trilogy). Still, none of this detracts from his work as psychopathic yuppie Patrick Bateman, which remains his most iconic performance. 

“American Psycho” director Mary Harron has spoken about Bale being inspired by a Tom Cruise talk show appearance in which the star displayed “intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes,” and the film itself draws parallels between him and President Ronald Reagan’s use of sunny optimism to sell cruel policies. Either comparison works: in his public life, Bateman has a near-permanent tone of unfailing cheerfulness, discussing the importance of ending apartheid and world hunger as he flashes a killer smile. His eyes, however, always have the glint of predator, a coldness that only occasionally breaks through in creepy remarks, delivered with the same psychotic chipperness (“Not if you want to keep your spleen”) that might not hide their perverted nature if any of his friends were a little less self-absorbed and a little more perceptive.

What’s brilliant about Bale and Harron’s conception of Bateman is that they’re able to convey the character’s essential loneliness without losing the humor or downplaying the grotesque nature of his (possibly imaginary) crimes. Most talk about Bale’s performance focuses on his informercial slick delivery of Huey Lewis factoids before chopping up Jared Leto with an axe. More telling, however, is his scene with Chloe Sevigny’s secretary, in which Bale shifts from blithe morbidity (bringing up Ted Bundy’s dog, Lassie) to psychotic fixation on consumerism (lashing out at Sevigny for almost leaving an ice cream-covered spoon on his coffee table) to insincere, monotone openness (“I guess you could say I just want to have a meaningful relationship with someone”) to, finally, a real recognition of his own hideousness (“I think if you stay, something bad will happen,” delivered with something that approaches but doesn't quite reach sadness).

Bateman’s cruelty and emptiness couldn’t be plainer, and yet he finds no release in his actions or his confessions. We see that morning routine, the search for the perfect business card, the hunt for the reservation at the best restaurant, and see an attempt to assume the role of the idealized yuppie, but it’s all work ... no soul, no joy. The same goes for Bateman’s more sociopathic actions, whether it’s a self-regarding attempt at a threesome (in which he’s more enamored with striking godlike poses than the sex itself) or stabbing a homeless man on the street. He has the impulses that give him a brief flash of life, but there's little catharsis. Bale plays his compulsions, both murderous and consumerist, as those of a joyless man who attempts to approximate enjoyment. His intense commitment to the role’s physical requirements mimics the character’s own intense commitment to a lifestyle, but where one finds a pulse, the other finds a pit. If most of Bale’s characters attempt to outrun an emptiness or pain in their lives, Bateman is his own emptiness, and no amount of heavy lifting and slashing can change it.

"The Prestige" / Warner Bros. Pictures

2006: “The Prestige”

If “American Psycho” made Bale a name actor and “The Machinist” cemented his reputation for near-deranged commitment, “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” made him universally recognizable, physical transformations be damned. Truth be told, his most famous films with Christopher Nolan aren’t his most notable, succeeding primarily on the basis of their villains and thematic ambition. While he’s admirably grounded and present as Bruce Wayne, Bale never quite dives into the monster that Batman's alter ego is fighting so hard not to be; his line readings are too glum, his face too stoic, rarely registering the internal struggle that Nolan’s scripts try (a little too hard) to give him (for a better heroic Bale performance, see “3:10 to Yuma”). It’s his other collaboration with Nolan, “The Prestige,” that best exemplifies that inner conflict and, indeed, the defining theme of Bale’s career.

There’s no way to talk about Bale’s performance in “The Prestige” meaningfully without diving into spoilers, so here’s your warning.

Bale’s Alfred Borden is established as the more risk-taking of “The Prestige’s” central characters, compared with Hugh Jackman’s Robert Angier, something hinted in early scenes as the actor speaks to Angier and Michael Caine’s Cutter with an air of arrogance and almost demented devotion to the craft. This extends to his personal life, which is eventually revealed to be a literal double life: Bale’s playing both Borden and his twin (dubbed “Fallon”), who loved separate women (Rebecca Hall and Scarlet Johansson) and ruined their lives through a total obsession and commitment to their craft over all else. Observant viewers can spot the moments in which Bale’s warmth with Sarah (Hall), Borden’s wife, is genuine and when “Fallon” is speaking to her with nothing behind the eyes. One particularly painful scene, a final confrontation between “Fallon” and Sarah, features one of the most gutting moments in Bale’s career, in which his anger at her realization of the truth prevents him from even attempting to maintain the illusion. Asked if he loves her, he spits out a “Not today” with a level of coldness worthy of Patrick Bateman.

The performance is, on some level, as much of a stunt as “The Machinist” or “Batman Begins,” but the trick of it feels all the more appropriate, given the subject. Bale imbues his twin magicians with a combination of mischievousness and palpable sadness, showing a flash of joy in their eyes after showing a child a magic trick ... and a sense of loss as the twins face each other, knowing only one can exist. Perhaps Bale found something moving in the idea of men who find purpose in deceiving viewers in order to entertain them, and in the idea of men who are madly committed to realizing an idealized form of craft at the expense of their personal identities. The dual performance shows two men who are constantly amused at their own ability to pull off a trick (especially at the expense of bitter rival Angier) and simultaneously aware that they’ve sacrificed true happiness for an obsession that they seem to be pursuing without any real thought as to why.

"The Big Short" / Paramount

2015: “The Big Short”

By the late 2000s, Bale’s own commitment to his craft seemed to have lost real direction, lapsing into self-seriousness (“Terminator Salvation,” “Harsh Times,” his dull work in the otherwise sturdy “Public Enemies”) or pure imitation (“I’m Not There,” in which he’s by far the weakest Bob Dylan). Whatever the weaknesses of post-“I Heart Huckabees” David O. Russell (shapelessness, self-satisfaction, volume over everything), he managed to get Bale to loosen up as few directors beyond Gillian Armstrong and Werner Herzog had, directing a pair of lively performances in “The Fighter” (for which Bale won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) and “American Hustle” (another nomination). Bale is at his best as of late when tapping into his comedic side, as best demonstrated in his first collaboration with Adam McKay, “The Big Short” (a third nomination). 

Playing hedge fund manager Michael Burry, the oddest of the men who made millions by betting the U.S. economy would collapse, Bale roots the comedy of the character in his behavior. A whiz with numbers, Bale’s Burry nevertheless has no social skills; the humor of his bizarre compliment (“That’s a very nice haircut. Did you do it yourself?”) to prospective employee is not only in its inherent strangeness, but in his halting delivery and blank expression, as if he knows he’s not good with these interactions but not exactly why the thing he’s about to say is weird. His gestures are similarly uncomfortable, whether he’s flashing a smile for no reason or awkwardly rubbing at his glass eye while stammering about subprime mortgages. And yet, Burry is one of the least deceptive and most honest characters in Bale’s three-decade career, focused entirely on the tangible at the expense of more difficult-to-pin-down things like social niceties and gut instinct. It is a very different, but equally telling, echo of Bale’s own methods that one can find in his more deluded characters. If Dicky Eklund or Irving Rosenthal act in self-deception to convince themselves and others of something, Burry concentrates only on what he can see empirically to find his truth, not unlike how Bale drills down on tangible external details (hair, weight, voice) as a way to find his own.

If Bale’s performance in “The Big Short” is his funniest, it is also among his saddest, as his character’s obsession with numbers at the expense of person-to-person interactions make him both the ideal person to predict a market collapse and the worst person to convey it. When confronted by angry investors, he does little to assuage their concerns, instead speaking in a low but self-assured tone (at the idea that nobody can see a bubble: “That’s dumb ... ”) that he can’t see is doomed to only further enrage people. When he’s rebuked, he can admit his weaknesses, but not without reinforcing his total conviction in what he does. “I don’t know how to be sarcastic,” Bale says with a slight shrug and a tone that’s equally confessional and weary. “I just know how to read numbers.” It’s the rare Bale character where one’s obsession is what can help spot the looming, soul-and-economy-destroying void, even if it can’t help avert it. 

"Vice" / Annapurna Pictures

This makes for a fascinating polar opposite to his most recent McKay-directed performance. Like Bateman and others before him, Bale’s Cheney in "Vice" is a cold-hearted cipher, a man so consumed with the idea of power and the need and ability to wield it that questions of ethics, morality or popularity never elicit a moment’s thought. His measured cadence and small gestures (a small head jerk on “different understanding,” a shift from a guarded posture to a hand wave on “mundane” to suggest a helping hand) show someone who has weighed exactly what he has to do to pull someone over to his side in a way that makes them think he’s nudging them along to where they always wanted to be, rather than totally manipulating them. 

Bale actually almost played George W. Bush himself in Oliver Stone’s “W.” before finding the prosthetics weren’t to his satisfaction (another case of needing tangible details, or self-deception, for a successful performance), but he feels like a better fit for Cheney, a man hiding behind a façade of reserved normality to hide an all-consuming desire for expanded empire, denying ulterior motives to the public and possibly to himself. The world is remade in his cruel image in a way that persists to this day, and that will be near-impossible to change. If Burry, like Bateman, can clearly see the void, Cheney, like Bateman, is the void.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2FvN4OM

[filmfanatix]

A RUNDOWN CASTLE somewhere in Austria, the widow of a rich Count, the Countess Herthe Von Ornstein, who’s lost her fortune, her two teenaged children, a 17 year-old son named Helmut, and a chubby but cunning 15 year old daughter named Lotte. There was no money to send the children to boarding school so their days were spent swimming in the nearby lake and moping all day. Their mother, the countess could not care less about them, busy enough as she is with the ever-mounting debts the upkeep of a medieval castle requires. Like their castle, all of them have seen better days.

In walks Konrad Ludwig, a handsome, strapping young man, out to make a fortune for himself. It is after the war in Europe so he thought there were plenty of opportunities in the countryside especially in the palatial homes of the now destitute rich. He ingratiates himself into the Von Ornstein household and becomes the butler after the real butler dies in a freak accident. Rudolph, the butler and he went carousing in the nearby village and as they were walking home drunk they strayed onto the train tracks. As the train neared, Konrad got off first thinking the butler will . And so it came to pass that Rudolph the butler got hit by the train and died.

The Countess Von Ornstein wasted no time in hiring Konrad in place of  Rudolph and thus our story begins where there’s SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.

This film, starring the deliciously funny Angela Lansbury as the Countess, and Michael York as Konrad, the new butler, dealt with bisexuality and homosexuality and rode the new sensitivities of the sexual revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was one of the first films to touch on these subjects and it did so in a matter of fact way. It did not dwell on these issues. Rather, thanks to the screenplay by Hugh Wheeler (who also wrote Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) under the direction of Harold Prince (West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, and Cabaret) from the novel by Harry Kressing, it maturely presented them as the norm rather than the exception. After all this was Europe not America, Europe where bigotry is a bit more tame and not frowned upon where members of the aristocracy are concerned provided they are kept under very tight leash.

As Konrad starts affairs with both the countess's son and the daughter of a wealthy businessman, the idea grows to get his two lovers to marry each other and make the house rich again. Sounded solid-proof but there were roadblocks along the way, although that’s where the fun is. Expect the characters to also spring surprises especially the youngest daughter, Lotte, played by the wickedly funny, Jane Carr, who has appeared in many British and American TV series through the years among them, Two and A Half Men, Better Things, How I Met Your Mother, and Fish Hooks. That she had not appeared in as many films as on television series is difficult to explain. With her close-set eyes, lilting voice, trowel jaw and bubbly disposition as a character actress she could take her pick of film offers. Maybe it’s just as well for it helps, of course, having natural comedic timing and the necessary vocal skills to be in constant demand.

Helmut is played by the British actor, Anthony Higgins, one of the bigger young stars from that decade, trained like many of them over in England, in Shakespeare. He plays Helmut as a burgeoning homosexual, long repressed by his mother’s firm hold of their future given their now limited financial means. Konrad hatches a plan with the Countess to force Helmut into an arranged marriage with Annaliese, played by German actress, Heidelinde Weis. Everything was going to plan - if the Countess dies, she leaves everything to Helmut – which is really close to nothing apart from the castle. Should Annaliese’s father die, he leaves  everything to Analiese, and if anything heaven forbid happens to Annaliese, Helmut inherits all the money. But soon Helmut and Annaliese discover the darker motives that lurk beneath Michael York's gleaming blonde appearance against brilliant cinematography in the shadow of King Ludwig's Castle, in Neuschwanstein, Germany. Everything will unravel if Konrad does not think of a new strategy quickly.

Something for Everyone was released in 1970 and became known as renowned Broadway stage director Harold Prince’s debut as a film director.

[radthursdays]

#RadThursdays Roundup 06/29/2017

A tweet by @ccspox with a picture of them holding a sign that asks, "Who gave me the right to marry?" The Supreme Court is crossed out, and the answer, "trans women of color throwing bricks at cops" is circled. The tweet says, "ready for #SFPride tomorrow 🌹". Source.

Pride

Softball: A tiny comic by Sophia Foster-Dimino‏ (alt text for the images), created for the Queers & Comics Conference.

Decolonial Love: A How-To Guide: "At its heart, decolonial love is actively creating a space for our histories as Indigenous/racialized survivors of colonization (we’re all survivors, babe) to be acknowledged within our relationships. Decolonial love is an accountable love that reciprocates our beauty and wholeness as Indigenous/racialized peoples. Decolonial love steps out of western heterosexuality, homosexuality, and queerness to form unique bonds between two people, regardless of gender or sexuality. Decolonial love also affirms our partner’s gender and spirit. It embraces our bodies as they are, whether this is brown or white, larger or smaller, and cis or trans. Decolonial love is simply love as we are, broken and figuring it out together."

A tweet by @newyorkyearzero with a picture of a New York City Correction Department's prisoner transport van. The van has "NYCD" and "CORRECTION" in huge rainbow font and the slogan "Pride, Equality, Peace". The tweet says, "take a pride ride in the gay prisoner transport van". Source.

Our Work Isn't Done

Trans-Led Coalition Shuts Down Chicago Pride Parade: "Trans and queer communities, leading groups of accomplices, gather in a unified stance against the annual Chicago Pride Parade and Festival. We disavow the numerous atrocities done to the legacies of our ancestors and foremothers in the movement for trans and queer liberation, and the ever-increasing corporatization, whitewashing, gentrification, racism, and cisnormativity that have infused Pride for decades. This year, like so many years before, our communities have reached a breaking point. The trans community of Chicago has risen up to explicitly denounce the Chicago Pride Parade and Festival, and to announce our intention to once again form our own spaces, to better serve and represent our own pride and liberation. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riots and the Stonewall Riots are how we mark the legacy of Pride: Strong, proud, and unapologetic trans resistance in the face of a world that continues to prefer our bodies as corpses in the ground, rather than revolutionaries in the streets."

How Can The Queerest Generation (Ever) Still Believe In Gender Roles?: "Would millennial men’s opinions about gender be different if gay marriage had gone down a more feminist path? Maybe not: Toxic masculinity is strong in this country, and misogyny at home seems to be especially intractable. But imagine the impact we could have had; instead of gay cake toppers and vapid “love is love” slogans, a campaign that had invested the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on gay marriage advocacy to building support for brave trans teenagers. Imagine a movement that stood up for its trans and gender nonconforming members as fiercely as Black Lives Matter does. Or, at the very least, imagine a gay marriage movement that had refused to abandon trans people to pass legislation. Success might have taken longer that way; I might not be gay-married right now. But if that meant that both cis and trans women dealt with less daily oppression, then I have to think I’d be okay with that."

Queer and Chechen: No Place To Hide: Video of a panel discussion with Russian LGBT activists who have spearheaded evacuation efforts of gay men in Chechnya who have been held in unlawful detention centers, tortured, and killed as part of a campaign against LGBT people. You can also read text notes and a summary of the talk, originally posted on the RUSA LGBTIQ – San Francisco Bay Area Facebook page.

Riot police officers arrest LGBT activists during a gay pride rally in St. Petersburg, Russia in June 2013. The rally was considered illegal under the Russian federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values”, which targets those who “promote non-traditional sexual relations to minors” and was unanimously approved by the State Duma just weeks before this photo was taken. Source.

Fucking Over Poor People

The End Will Be Delivered By Amazon Drone: If something else doesn't kill us first. "'The rich will sit secure in the knowledge that their replicators and robots can provide for their every need. What of the rest of us?' Frase argues, persuasively, that a world ravaged by disease and hunger brought on by climate change, combined with the total independence of the wealthy from the need for human labor, will lead to mass extermination. 'In a world of hyperinequality and mass unemployment, you can try to buy off the masses for a while, and then you can try to repress them by force. But so long as immiserated hordes exist, there is the danger that one day it may become impossible to hold them at bay. When mass labor has been rendered superfluous, a final solution lurks: the genocidal war of the rich against the poor. …An exterminist society can automate and mechanize the process of suppression and extermination, allowing the rulers and their minions to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions.' The Bezoses and Thiels of the future will not even have to get their hands dirty. In his conclusion, Frase points out that this isn’t so implausible. The descendants of the exterminators may not even feel too guilty about it. How, after all, did North America come to provide such an abundant home for the children of European conquerors?"

After the Fire: "As with many similar buildings across the country the exterior of Grenfell Tower had recently been covered in an aesthetically pleasant cladding—partly to increase insulation; partly, and, many suspect predominately, to please the eyes of wealthier residents of the surrounding area. This morning, Scotland Yard announced that the panels had failed safety tests conducted as part of its investigation, and that a manslaughter enquiry was consequently being launched. The Metropolitan Police have “seized . . . material” from various companies involved in installing the renovation work. Though it’s too soon to know exactly where the blame lies, it has become clear that an active decision was made to convert a tower housing hundreds of low income, predominately ethnic minority individuals into a twenty-four-storey tinder box."

The Fire Last Time: “Against a welfare state founded partly on the idea of redistributing social and physical risks — the risks of unemployment, of injury, of poor health — we have a property system that actively produces risk for specific sets of people. This system manufactures, sustains, and transfers risk onto working-class people. Then it burns down their homes, willing to sacrifice lives in the pursuit of profit.”

Gay rights activist Barbara Gittings picketing Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA in 1965. Her sign reads “HOMOSEXUALS should be judged as individuals.” Source.

Issues

Why Are So Many Adults Today Haunted by Trauma?: "I think normalcy is a myth. The idea that some people have pathology and the rest of us are normal is crude. There’s nothing about any mentally ill person—and it doesn’t matter what their diagnosis is—that I couldn’t recognize in myself. The reality is that, in every case, mental illness is an outcome of traumatic events. And by trauma I don’t mean dramatic events. There’s a difference. Fundamentally, it has to do with whether human needs are being met or not. Since we live in a society that largely denies human developmental needs—doesn’t even understand them, let alone provide for them—you’re going to have a lot of people affected in adverse ways. Most of the population, in fact. And so then to separate out those who meet the particular criteria for a particular diagnosis from the rest of us is utterly unscientific and unhelpful. More to the point, you need to look at what is it about our society that generates what we call abnormality?"

Trump’s travel ban will go into effect tonight: "The Supreme Court reinstated parts of President Trump’s travel ban this week, banning nationals from six Muslim-majority countries — with the exception of those who have a 'credible claim of a bona fide relationship' to a person or entity in the U.S. — until it hears oral testimony on the case in the fall. […] The State Department also limited which family relationships are considered 'close' enough to be bona fide. Only 'close family' members like spouses, parents (including in-laws), siblings (including step-siblings), and children (again, in-laws included) of U.S. citizens from the six countries included in the ban can enter the country, the cable reveals. Grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters-in-law, fiancés, and other 'extended' family members of U.S. citizens aren’t considered close enough to make the cut. 'Even if the actual familial relationships may seem distant through the lens of American culture, they may not be distant in those cultures. Also just factually, there are people who aren’t closely related to you, in that sense of the term, but they’re still close to you. How do they prove the bona fides of their relationship?' It’s unclear whether refugees who have already connected with resettlement agencies in the U.S. will be allowed to enter the country."

Activism

More than 40 protesters arrested in 'die-in' at Capitol. Many forcibly removed from wheelchairs: "Dozens of disabled men and women were arrested after participating in a 'die-in' protest outside of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office at the Capitol. The demonstration, organized by the national disability group ADAPT, was staged in response to the Senate GOP's healthcare plan, which proposes drastic cuts to Medicaid. It's the primary source of funding for services that allow [disabled people] to live at home, sparing them from institutionalization."

All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down: News about protests against the Republican health care plan, Trump presidency awfulness, a law in North Carolina that makes it "legal for men to finish a sex act as long as it began consensually", ongoing reports of abuse against J20 protestors, killer cops, deportation resistance, and indigenous resistance.

Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War: Updated listing of prisoners by the NYC Anarchist Black Cross. Write a letter!

Direct Action Item

Did you know that the World Health Organization classified homosexuality as a mental health disorder until 1990? LGBTQ+ rights have expanded substantially in recent years, but things are still shit basically everywhere, and getting worse. So consider giving some of those sweet capitalist exploitation-bucks to these well-reviewed charities, selected for Pride Month by Charity Navigator.

Seven colorful muppets stand side by side, forming a rainbow. The muppets are, in order: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet, as in the 7-color version of the Rainbow flag. Source.

If there’s something you’d like to see in next week’s #RT, please send us a message.

In solidarity!

What is direct action? Direct action means doing things yourself instead of petitioning authorities or relying on external institutions. It means taking matters into your own hands and not waiting to be empowered, because you are already powerful. A “direct action item” is a way to put your beliefs into practice every week.

[literarylondonhq]

20 years since we lost the Alan Ginsberg ‘beat’

Although our ‘manor’, as they say in all the best cockney gangster films, is most definitely London, there was an anniversary this week involving an American writer that I had to mention. - especially as he came to London for a while.  Now, as you know, I love Americans.  I’ve not met a bad ‘un yet.  It’s interesting that since His Trumpness became boss of the good old US of A, there has been a huge rise in the sale of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984.  Shows you what a good bunch most of the Yanks are really.  They've done a pretty good job of things since we left them to it in, ooo, what was it… 1776?

But joking aside, this week saw the 20th anniversary of the death of poet Allan Ginsberg.  His first name was actually Irwin, but he obviously didn't like it, ‘cause he dropped it sharpish.

He was born on 3 June in 1926 and was one of the leading figures in what was the ‘Beat Generation’ in the 1950’s USA.   And he became a leader of the counterculture that would follow.  

Alan Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson.  As a young teenager, he began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights.  While in high school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman, inspired by his teacher's passionate reading.  (We all need a good teacher, er?  Thanks to Mr Hewitt of Wheelers Lane School,  Birmingham.  But that is for another time…!)

In 1943, Alan Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson.  In 1945, he joined the Merchant Marines to earn money to continue his education at Columbia.

Young Al was no literary slouch!  While at Columbia, he contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jesterhumour magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize, served as president of the Philolexian Society (a literary and debate group), and joined the Boar's Head Poetry Society!

Ginsberg has stated that he considered the required freshman seminar to be his favourite course while at Columbia University. I'm not sure what that means, but I know why he liked whatever it was.  Its subject was The Great Books and was taught by Lionel Trilling.  Thrilling!

Alan vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression.  He was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions.  He was one of many influential American ‘Beat’ writers of his time which included famous contemporaries such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.

Ginsberg is best known for his poem Howl, in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.  Needless to say, in post war America, it caused a stir!  In 1956, Howl was seized by San Francisco police and US Customs and in 1957, it attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when homosexual acts were a crime in every U.S. state.

Howl reflected Ginsberg's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, who he met in San Francisco and was to become his lifelong partner.  

But another reason I love Americans, was the Judge in the Ginsberg obscenity case.  Not only did the judge have a fantastically theatrical name - Clayton W. Horn! - but he ruled that Howl was not obscene.  And what a brilliant summation from an ‘establishment’ figure so apparently derided by Ginsberg.  Judge Horn said, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

Way to go, Horn!  

You can hear an old recording of Alan reading Howl on the LondonLiteraryPubCrawl.com Podcast page.

In 1957, Ginsberg surprised the literary world by abandoning San Francisco. After a spell in Morocco, he and Peter Orlovsky joined Gregory Corso in Paris. Corso introduced them to a shabby lodging house above a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur that was to become known as The Beat Hotel. They were soon joined by Burroughs and others. It was a productive, creative time for all of them. There, Ginsberg began his epic poem Kaddish, Corso composed Bomb and Marriage, and Burroughs (with help from Ginsberg and Corso) put together Naked Lunch from previous writings. This period was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who moved in at about the same time, and took pictures constantly of the residents of the "hotel" until it closed in 1963.

During 1962–3, Ginsberg and Orlovsky travelled extensively across India, living half a year at a time in Calcutta and Benares.  During this time, he formed friendships with some of the prominent young Bengali poets of the time, including Shakti Chattopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay.  Ginsberg had several political connections in India; most notably Pupul Jayakar who helped him extend his stay in India when the authorities were eager to expel him.

Continuing his travels, in May 1965, Ginsberg finally arrived in London and offered to read anywhere for free.  Good lad!  Shortly after his arrival, he gave a reading at Better Books, which was described by Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind.”  Tom McGrath wrote: "This could well turn out to have been a very significant moment in the history of England – or at least in the history of English Poetry".

Soon after the bookshop reading, plans were hatched for the International Poetry Incarnation, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 June, 1965. The event attracted an audience of 7,000, who heard readings and live and tape performances by a wide variety of figures, including Ginsberg, Adrian Mitchell, Alexander Trocchi, Harry Fainlight, Anselm Hollo, Christopher Logue, George Macbeth, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Horovitz, Simon Vinkenoog, Spike Hawkins and Tom McGrath. The event was organized by Ginsberg's friend, the filmmaker Barbara Rubin.

Peter Whitehead documented the event on film and released it as Wholly Communion. A book featuring images from the film and some of the poems that were performed was also published under the same title by Lorrimer in the UK and Grove Press in the US.  I've not seen the film yet, but it's on my must see list!

Alan returned to the USA and continued to form a bridge between the beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, and Bob Dylan.

Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by Modernism (most importantly the American style of Modernism pioneered by William Carlos Williams), Romanticism (specifically William Blake and John Keats), the beat and cadence of jazz (specifically that of bop musicians such as Charlie Parker), and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary poetic mantle handed down from the English poet and artist William Blake - who spent almost his entire life in Soho and is a personal favourite - the American poet Walt Whitman and the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.  The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration that he claimed.

Using his fame as an international podium, Ginsberg spoke out on such controversial issues as the Vietnam War, gay rights (he listed his lifelong companion, Peter Orlovsky, as his spouse in his Who’s Who entry), and drugs (he was an early participant in Timothy Leary’s psilocybin and LSD experiments). At times, his opinions landed him in trouble: he was expelled from Cuba and Czechoslovakia in 1965 and, like many outspoken artists and activists, became the subject of a voluminous FBI dossier. His opinions and knowledge, however controversial, were highly solicited. He testified before Senate subcommittee hearings on drugs and his political essays were in constant demand. Accredited with coining the term “Flower Power”, Ginsberg became a figurehead of the global youth movement in the late 1960s.

Ginsberg continued to help his friends as much as he could, going so far as to give money to Herbert Huncke out of his own pocket, and housing a broke and drug addicted Harry Smith.

Alan Ginsberg gave his last public reading at Booksmith, a bookstore in the Haight Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco, a few months before his death in April, 1997.

He died surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New York City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis. He was 70 years old.

Gregory Corso, Roy Lichtenstein, Patti Smith and others came by to pay their respects.

Alan Ginsberg is buried in his family plot in B'Nai Israel Cemetery in Newark, NJ.  He was survived by his life-partner, Peter Orlovsky who died in 2010. What a guy!  I would loved to have met him.  I guess the echoes of the New York Beats seem very close to the Verse of the Soho Shrieks!  

And let's face it, any fan of Blake, is okay in my book!