#i just think their relationship with sex and gender is probably more complicated than mine

[shig-a-shig-ah]

I'm just wondering, if gender is fake, why to invent pronouns and identities? Aren't they are fake as well?

Short answer: because it's fun!

Longer answer under the cut because I am long-winded af about sociology in general and about gender in particular. I'm going to explain this assuming literally no background knowledge whatsoever, so please know if I over-explain anything, I'm not trying to be patronizing. Just accessible to anyone, regardless of how much exposure they've had to this stuff.

First off, we need to unpack what it means to say that gender is 'fake.' This doesn't mean that gender straight up doesn't exist--it simply means that gender is, at its essence, a made-up category. (Or, in fancy social science lingo, it's a social construct.) Essentially, this means that gender is a category that we as a society have agreed is meaningful, but that isn't really rooted in any biological/physical reality.

But sex is biological! you might say. We're a sexually dimorphic species! Males and females! Penises and vaginas! Etc., etc.! (I am speaking of the proverbial 'you' here, not necessarily of you in particular, anon.) There's this common sense narrative that we're all taught from a very young age that people can be divided into males and females, which is synonymous with men and women, and that there's something natural about these divisions.

The truth, though, is more complicated, and for a couple reasons. The first is that biological/physiological sex is not actually a neat binary. There's a lot of variation, and no matter what defining characteristic you want to use to determine sex--hormones, chromosomes, genitals--you're always going to get people who don't fit neatly into one box or another. (Intersex people exist, for starters.)

Now, some people challenge the utility of biological sex as a concept too--and here I literally just mean the categorization of the body into male, female, or intersex--but I personally don't take much issue with it. But it is important to know that sex isn’t the same as gender. If we think of sex as purely based on physiological characteristics, we can think of gender as all of the social meanings and expectations that have come to be associated physical sex. Men are aggressive, stoic, etc. Women are emotional, soft, whatever. But the thing is, none of these traits are exclusively innate to men/males or women/females--differences in behavior that emerge between men and women occur because they’re taught. We all start learning from a very young age that boys do this, and girls do that, and it becomes internalized enough that it starts to look natural, but it really isn't; it’s just become second-nature to us. And we know this is true partly because in terms of behavior/disposition, there’s as much variation among men and among women themselves as there is between men and women as distinct groups. Further, the supposed differences between men and women aren’t consistent across time and place--the norms for what men like or how they behave have differed depending on the historical period, and the traits that distinguish men and women vary from culture to culture. This wouldn’t happen if there was something biological about gendered behavior.

So, gender, then, is really rooted in identity (how we think and feel about ourselves) and performance (how we act/comport ourselves throughout the world). And these things are absolutely shaped by social forces (because we’re taught to act and think of ourselves in certain ways), but if you accept that gender is largely a construct imposed from without and then internalized, this opens up the possibility of other kinds of gender identity and gender performances.

Now, yeah, you could argue instead that we should simply do away with gender entirely. Let people look and act however they want without creating new labels or pronouns or any of that. And honestly, I think that's my ideal world. But the world that we actually live in genders everything. It's this overarching structure that shapes out interactions, permeates our institutions, and has a profound impact on our experiences. So many of our norms and our models for what life looks like are highly gendered, and as such, it's not really possible to move through our society without having some kind of relationship to masculinity and femininity, to manhood and womanhood, even if that relationship is rooted in a rejection of the constraints of those categories or (in my own personal case) a sort of failure or inability to adhere to said categories.

Creating room for 'new' gender identities creates language to articulate those relationships. (And, I do want to push back against the idea of these being new inventions a bit, because plenty of other cultures have had language and space for trans/nonbinary identities, and the rigid systems we have now are, in part, a consequence of colonialism, but that's a whole other thing.) And this desire to have language to express ourselves is just... a very human thing. We want to be able to describe our experiences and connect with people who share them. New identities and pronouns are way to do that. (Also want to note here that pronouns are not synonymous with gender identity; I know cis people who prefer they/them pronouns, and nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth who are fine with she/her pronouns. They're just one way to reflect gender identity.)

Which brings me back to: it's fun! There's a type of pleasure (in a nonsexual way) to be had in identifying a gender performance that feels right. And for some people this is along binary lines, but for others it isn't.

Speaking for myself, I didn't even come out as nonbinary until was 30, but I had a very ambivalent relationship towards womanhood up until then. And not just in a way where I didn't love the stereotypes associated with it (although, that too), but in a way where I was lowkey... bad at it. I started getting mistaken for a lesbian in the sixth grade and that's been a constant theme my whole life. And like, I am bisexual, but it took a very long time for it to click that people were really making that assumption based on my gender performance and not any real hints about my sexuality. I just wasn't quite feminine enough to pass, or something, and this was true even at times in my life where I looked more feminine.

And looking back on my life, I can literally pinpoint moments where I sort of... 'bought in' to elements of male socialization--to stoicism and to objectifying women and to many other things that my woman friends didn't that very much led to that more ambiguous gender performance. And none of this is to say that woman have to perform a particular type of femininity to be women--I certainly believe people can be gender nonconforming without being any kind of trans or nonbinary--but for me personally the result was that the 'woman' box just never felt right and I always felt sort of... confused about gender. About why it mattered or why I was supposed to pick or identify with something. Even as a bisexual person, my attitude is less 'women are hot! men are hot!' and more 'attractive people are attractive, beyond that who cares?' And the language of being nonbinary just really spoke to those feelings in a very real way, even if there's nothing innate about it. It gives me a way to express my experience as a particular type of gendered being in a highly gendered society that wouldn’t be covered by just saying ‘oh I’m a slightly masculine woman’ or something, because it’s a lot more complicated than that. 

[qqueenofhades]

So this is probably a dumb question and there is probably something wrong with me but I’m going to ask anyway. Have you ever fallen totally, madly, and deeply in love with a fictional character and all you do is think about them and it hurts to think about them but you really just want to talk to them and tell them things and hear their take on things? And you then form a weird attachment to the actor, who you are not in love with because you love the fake character, not the actor, because the actor is kind of a jerk, but since the actor played the fake character and you think they are hot now you are semi-in love with the actor by proxy since they played that stupid fake character that you’re aching to talk to/be with and they also look like them. So now you are in this stupid place where you are both in love with a fake being and in by proxy love with a jerky actor and you are hyper-fixated both on this stupid character that isn’t even real but you have real achy pains of longing for them AND the hot disaster mess that you clearly are because you’re in love with a fake character. Meanwhile, you need to get out more and make friends but you can’t because now you have a sort of real broken heart over a pretend nonexistent romantic relationship with a made up person and a proximal, nonexistent, your face is hot relationship with the sack of skin that played them. Does this ever happen to other ppl or is it just me?

Okay look. I have NOT for the life of me ever been able to find this post again, or remember the name of the category (I think it starts with the letter i, but that is all, and my attempts to Google search for it have, of course, turned up nothing but porn). But some while ago, I read a definition of a subsidiary sexual orientation called something like "ideosexual" or "imagosexual" that turned me into the DEFINITION of "I came out to have a good time and I'm feeling so attacked right now." Because the list included, among other things, experiences/feelings like:

Being primarily attracted to fictional characters, celebrities, or other people who don't exist in real life or exist only far away from you, so that you're fantasizing about them from a safe distance rather than engaging them as a real person/actual relationship;

Enjoying fictional depictions of sex/smut more than you're drawn to seek out actual sexual experiences in real life, no matter your primary orientation or the gender of the people you're attracted to;

Being mostly satisfied in experiencing these imagined or idealistic relationships, and finding fulfillment in them.

This fell somewhere on the demiromantic/asexual spectrum, where you felt sexual and romantic attraction, but for a person who was not somebody you ever expected to actually be with or who might not even be real. You enjoyed fantasizing about them and experiencing fictional sex through them, whether of the written or visual medium, but didn't really feel particularly drawn to do so in real life. As a strongly ace-spec queer and fairly nonbinary person who has a very complicated relationship with my body/a dislike of close physical touch/no particular need to have a real partner of any kind, I was a bit like... wow, that sounds a lot like me. We've all had deep crushes on characters before, we're all aware that boundaries in fandom can get confused, some people write fanfiction about real people/actors (which I find.... deeply off-putting and mystifying, to say the least, but you know, each to their own, they have their things and I have mine), and it in general creates a semi-fictional erotic space that relies heavily on personal fantasies and curated imagery. But all people do this. Even people who aren't in fandom do this. You fantasize about strangers or you watch porn or you find a celebrity hot and have an intense parasocial crush on them. Humans are inherently visual creatures who LOVE stories. It's no surprise that sex, one of our other big preoccupations, is one of the chief sources for this.

Anyway, that is to say: there's nothing wrong with you, most people on Tumblr can probably relate to this experience in some way, and the fact that you're able to set clear boundaries (this is the character, this is the actor, this is real, this is not real, this is what I feel for one, this is what I feel for another, I recognize this is confused and mixed up but I'm not sure what to do) is a very good sign. It would be much more of a problem if you weren't able to make all those distinctions, and while it absolutely does suck, the upside is that a fictional character (especially one that you have extensively created through your own headcanons) will always be with you. Real partners come and go, and this isn't to say that you only ever need fictional characters, but you don't need to completely disavow them either. If that's a secret thing you have and which you really feel, it's okay. We've all cried buckets over fake people, whether for happy or sad reasons. We all have that one character death we'll never get over (or several). And you know, I like that. The fact that we can get so invested in fake people (in a way, frankly, we should get more invested in REAL people) shows our empathy and our willingness to engage with others apart from ourselves, and that is rather lovely.

The age of social media has allowed people both to freely share their personal fantasies and private thoughts, and to be judged for them, which is a bit of a mixed bag. We're all here on Tumblr reminding ourselves that these are technically our blogs (and they are) and we can say or enjoy whatever we want, but we're all wary of some random jerk coming along and judging us for it, since we have put it into the public sphere to be consumed. This is the case even though it's placed/framed in a way where we are supposed to understand that is just one's own personal opinion. There are some truly miserable people on the internet who are on an apparent never-ending crusade to serve as the latter-day Comstock Police, but those people have existed throughout history, and they just have more tools to do it now. And guess what? I'm pretty sure those people have secret fantasies too, but they can't talk about them now because they would likewise put themselves in a position to be judged, and they don't want that.

Anyway. There's nothing wrong with you, and you're not dumb. This is a deeply normal experience for many people, and that is the truth. <3

[inawickedlittletown]

Baked With Love (Destiel fic) - 1/5

Summary: Dean never met Lisa's neighbor, but he knew one thing: whoever it was, they could bake. After breaking up with Lisa, the one thing Dean misses is her neighbor's pie. After finally meeting him, Cas' pie is not the only thing Dean likes.

On Ao3 

------

The weird thing about the end of a relationship was all the little things that suddenly just came to an end. Things like Sunday brunch and dinner dates at restaurants that Dean would have never stepped foot in before. The best things to end were the arguments when Lisa would get mad every single week about Dean’s standing bar night with Sam. Or how often Lisa had expected Dean to get her flowers. In some ways, it was strange to re-calibrate to having free time again, but in the best way. 

Dean found himself at The Roadhouse on a Wednesday night — something that would have never occurred while he was dating Lisa. Wednesday was not his and Sam’s usual night, but his brother met him there anyway. 

“How are you holding up?” Sam asked after they were already a few beers in. 

“What do you mean?” 

“The break up, dude,” Sam said. “It’s been what? Two weeks?” 

The thing that really cemented for him that he’d done the right thing breaking up with Lisa was that he didn’t even miss her. Dean had expected to, but the loss of the relationship didn’t really hurt. It was nothing like his last serious relationship with Cassie and maybe that was why Sam was so concerned. Cassie had broken him. It had been a long time after Cassie before Dean felt like he could do more than a one night stand. It was why Lisa had felt different, Dean had wanted more from her and yet somehow things just hadn’t worked. If he really had to think about it, he couldn’t even say that he missed the sex and considering how bendy Lisa was, that was saying something. 

“I’m alright, Sammy,” Dean said. “I don’t think I actually let myself get attached, if I’m honest.” 

Sam nodded. 

“But, I do miss one thing,” Dean said. He took a gulp of his beer. 

Sam made a face. “Ew, Dean!”

“What? No….I mean, she did yoga. But, no, I miss the pie.” 

“Lisa baked?” Sam asked, his eyebrow raised.

Dean couldn’t help but laugh. “No. Definitely not. But she had this neighbor. I never met them, but every Friday they brought Lisa some sort of baked good. Sam, it was the best pie that I have ever tasted. Better than mom’s even. And now, no more pie.”

“Wow,” Sam said. 

The crust had been flaky and sweet. The apples had had a crunch to them and there had been so much care put to the spices and the flavor. Dean had never believed in a higher power and yet eating that pie had felt like a religious experience. 

—

A month after the break up, Dean ran into Lisa. He really should have known better than to stop at the cafe near the yoga studio, but Dean had been desperate for caffeine and it was a better option than Starbucks. While he was there, he couldn’t help but notice the pies on display and so he indulged in a slice of cherry pie. It left Dean on his own at a round table waiting for the coffee to kick in and savoring his pie. It wasn’t an amazing pie, but it was still pie. He was so single-focused on the pie that he almost didn’t see her at first, but then he looked up and spotted her. 

She wore yoga leggings and a sports bra. Her hair was tied back into a neat ponytail and she was laughing with a gaggle of her yoga friends. Dean had met a few of them and he wasn’t ever going to be able to tell them apart. 

As she turned to get into the line, her eyes swept right over Dean and then came back to him. Dean lifted his hand in an awkward wave. He didn’t expect Lisa to do more than similarly acknowledge him, but instead she headed his way. 

“Dean,” she said. 

“Hi,” Dean said back. “How, um, how have you been?”

Lisa actually smiled at him. “I’m alright. We had fun there for a while. And I just wanted to say, no hard feelings.” 

“Good. Yeah. Uh, you too.” 

Lisa pointed at the last few bites of Dean’s pie. “My neighbor came by last night and left me a loaf of banana bread. I had to bring it into yoga class because you weren’t around to eat it all.” 

Dean chuckled. “Your neighbor should open up their own bakery. I would be their number one customer.” 

“I don’t doubt that,” Lisa said. 

“And, uh, you know, since no hard feelings and all, if your neighbor bakes a pie any time soon I am definitely available to take it off your hands. If that isn’t, you know, weird.” 

Lisa actually threw her head back and laughed. “Do you want my neighbor’s number? Get you right to the source?” 

He should have felt weird about it, especially because in the entire time that Dean had dated Lisa, he’d never actually seen Lisa’s neighbor. He’d always pictured the neighbor as a nice older woman who lived alone and didn’t have anyone to share her baking with. 

“Look, Cas is a sweetheart and it won’t be weird or anything.” 

Maybe, it would be less weird than using Lisa as some sort of go between. No matter how amicable their break up had been, Dean figured they probably shouldn’t see much of each other. 

“Alright, then,” Dean said.

Lisa nodded. She grabbed her phone out and a moment later Dean had a text with Cas’ phone number.

—

It was almost a month later when Dean saw Lisa again. This time, it was because she was having car trouble and didn’t know where else to go but to the only mechanic that Lisa knew: Dean. 

Dean co-owned Singer Auto. It had once belonged to his uncle, Bobby Singer. Bobby wasn’t even really his uncle by blood, but he’d been a family friend for so long that everyone considered Bobby family. When Bobby decided to retire a few years earlier, he’d offered Dean the shop. It was Dean that insisted on buying it from him. Bobby had eventually been worn down to selling half the business to Dean. 

Dean ran the day to day, but Bobby stopped in every once in a while — when he got bored mostly — and did a bit here and there. Business was going well. 

Lisa’s car had been in good shape when Dean was dating her, but when she called him up, it was because her car wasn’t starting. Dean talked her through tightening up the battery terminals but the car still didn’t start. 

“You might need a new battery,” Dean said. 

Before Dean could offer to head to her place to jump the battery and get the car over to the shop, Lisa told her her neighbor had just come out and offered to do it. 

“And I’ll just drive it straight over to you.” 

Lisa arrived not long after and with her came a tupperware container of chocolate chip cookies. 

“From my neighbor,” Lisa said. “I asked and Cas said you never called.” 

It wasn’t that Dean had forgotten as much as that he’d felt awkward calling someone he didn’t really know just to ask them if he could buy some pie from them. He was sort of rethinking Cas being an older grandma type, though, what with the whole giving Lisa’s car a jump thing. Maybe Cas was younger than Dean expected, or a woman that knew how to bake and their way around a car. 

“Call Cas, Dean,” Lisa said. “It would be rude not to. Cas is expecting a call.” 

Replacing her battery didn’t take long and Lisa reminded him to call her neighbor again before she left. The taste of Cas’ cookies after they were all gone later that day made him decide that he would call Lisa’s neighbor. 

—

He sent a text instead of calling. He did it early, right between breakfast and leaving for work. A kind of rip the band-aid off type of thing. 

Hi. This is Dean.

And then because that felt like not enough at all. He sent a second: 

Lisa gave me your number because of how much I gush about your pie. 

Hope this isn’t weird. 

And when that didn’t seem like enough either.

Feel free to ignore me if this is too strange to you, but I am very willing to pay you to bake me a pie. 

He read them all over a couple of times before sending one last text. 

Thank you. And promise, I’m just very enthusiastic about pie. 

After that, he just dropped his phone on the couch next to him and groaned. He wanted to take back all the texts. Lisa’s neighbor was going to think he was crazy.

By the time Dean set off to work, he had no response which was probably for the better. 

Work was busy that day. It was a constant. They had a bunch of appointments lined up. Some easy jobs like doing an oil change, but others were more complicated — the type of thing that would take days to finish. Then, there were the people that just stopped by on the chance that Dean or one of his mechanics were free. So, Dean didn’t get to glance at his phone once the whole morning. And because Sam showed up during his lunch, he didn’t look at it then either. 

It wasn’t until he got home, after a long shower to get rid of all the grime and the smell of motor oil that clung to him, that Dean even glanced at his phone. 

Hello, Dean. 

Lisa mentioned I might get a call from you. Your texts were a humorous way to start my morning. It is not weird to be complimented on something I love to do. Baking is a passion of mine. I would love to bake you a pie. Lisa mentioned my apple double crust was your favorite. 

Payment is not necessary. Friday is the earliest I will have time, if that works for you. I’ll have it ready for you to pick up by six. 

-Cas

Cas sounded formal. It was hard to infer age or gender, but Dean supposed none of that mattered when it came to it, not when this Cas person could bake a pie that was rivaled by no other. 

I would feel weird not paying you for all that hard work. Friday is great. Thanks again. 

Dean was going to make sure he gave Cas something for the pie. The whole thing already felt a little strange, but for Dean it would feel even stranger to take the pie for free. 

When he and Sam met up that night, Dean didn’t bring up the whole weirdness with Lisa’s neighbor, but when Sam asked if Dean wanted to do something on Friday night he turned him down. 

“What, you have a date or something?” Sam asked. 

Dean denied it, but his brother didn’t seem to actually believe him. 

—

On Friday, it was Cas that texted Dean first, with an address to the house on the right of Lisa’s, as well as confirmation for pick up any time after six. Dean read the text over his lunch and he texted an affirmative before he got back to work. 

The shop closed at five. Dean went home and got showered and cleaned up. And because it felt like he’d come off as too eager to show up at six on the dot, he busied himself cleaning his kitchen and getting his laundry sorted so he could put it in the wash later. After that, he went through the pile of mail that he hadn’t looked at all week. It was almost seven when he texted Cas to let him know he was on his way. 

Cas’ house looked almost identical to Lisa’s and all the other houses on that street. A neat lawn in the front, a Victorian style with a large porch, a detached garage in front of which sat an electric blue Jeep. Not the type of car that should have belonged to the middle aged woman that Dean had been expecting. He parked his car on the street, feeling just a little strange that he wasn’t pulling into Lisa’s driveway. A glance over there told Dean that Lisa wasn’t home. 

As he walked up, the first thing that Dean noticed was that Cas’ mailbox was shaped like a bee. It was really well made and adorable to boot. 

He gave the doorbell a ring and didn’t wait long for someone to come to the door. As the door pulled open, Dean was startled by a car screeching by. He turned away, looking out as a Honda Civic narrowly missed Dean’s Impala as it drove off. For a moment, Dean had almost stopped breathing. 

“I don’t know how that kid managed to get his license,” a voice from behind him said. A deep, masculine voice. 

Dean turned, slowly. Cas had stepped out and Dean’s breath caught. 

Cas was a man that stood almost at Dean’s height. His dark hair was tousled, his eyes were the bluest eyes that Dean had ever seen, and over a lean and muscular frame, he wore an apron that in cursive letters said “Save The Bees”. 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said and his chapped lips broke into a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’m actually a little behind, so your pie just made it into the oven. But, come on in.”

“Uh,” Dean couldn’t find words. How had Lisa not told him that her neighbor was a guy. A very attractive guy. 

-

Part Two

[aeide-thea]

very much the quick and shoddy version of this post bc i can't actually think or articulate anything today lmao (unfortunate since i'm meant to be ““writing”” an ““essay””)—

there's this analysis of the netflix witcher show going around that's like, ‘actually geraskier (or even any genuine positive feeling between the two characters) isn't supported by the text,’ which i should really reblog at some point so it's on my blog; and largely i agree with that analysis, probably, although there are a couple of moments (geralt's fond smile at the banquet, jaskier's explicit attempt to offer sympathy on the mountain) that i think are worth mentioning; but like, (a) isn't the entire fannish project one of reading affection into the interstices of often-mediocre, often-homophobic writing?

and (b) honestly what i actually think about the netflix relationship is that it's, uh, sibling-coded [can't believe i actually typed those words, also pls hold for my upcoming disquisition on how a sibling-esque dynamic between unrelated adults does not in fact render the notion of sexual contact between them inc*stuous, to be written when i can brain better], based on how geralt vocally puts jaskier down all the time but also repeatedly drops everything to help him?

really i feel like, fundamentally what's happening here (which i think the post in question pointed out) is that the show made jaskier pretty flamboyantly effeminate, because that's Fun, but then realized, wait, if we have our Straight Hero care too visibly about a sidekick this ~queer-coded~, he won't fit the gruff masc bill anymore, guess we gotta cut out anything too demonstrative! so instead we get this stripped-down version of the relationship where yeah, textually what's there isn't particularly affectionate, but also i do think we're meant to understand that this is a Sidekick Situation and read a certain degree of affection into it on that basis, because we know how tropes work. and it's fair not to be satisfied with that! but i think reading it straightforwardly as ‘they don't like or value each other’ is a failure to bring even the expected, mainstream understanding of subtext to the table, let alone a queer fannish one.

[in general i think there's a conversation to be had where like, l*uren h*ssrich is pretty solely interested in (a pretty simplistic kind of) feminism, and then knows she's meant to be interested in diversity, and so we get a real focus on the women in the show, and a bit of racebending, but those things seem to come at the cost of remembering that the men are also people, really—that speech where yennefer's all, ‘womanhood means you're just a vessel for people to take and take and take from, until finally you're empty and alone’ is absolutely wild to me given that it's also exactly geralt's story, like, @ ms. hissrich i promise you this is not an exclusively female experience! and honestly that could be a really interesting conversation, because i do think the way witchers are positioned outside society also effectively separates them from the societal gender binary—they aren't men as humans understand it, they're halfway to monsters, and better thinkers than i have produced a lot of theory on women-as-monsters, so. a pretty rich vein of complicated commonality we could be mining there! but god forbid we understand power dynamics as anything but a straightforward binary, lauren.]

anyway this ended up being not that short while still not actually presenting a coherent argument, sorry! i guess i just feel like, yeah, geraskier isn't in the text, but honestly, (a) in what world is ‘not in the text’ anything but an invitation to slash, and (b) what compelling interpersonal relationships are in the text? they didn't actually do a better job of setting up geralt/yennefer, which presumably they did actually want to establish—that relationship is like, (1) awkward meeting in which the eventual sex is framed as a quid pro quo, after which yennefer literally uses geralt to do her dirty work in honestly a more exploitative, less consensual way than anything people are contending jaskier's done; then (2) some intimate but kind of impersonal tenderness in their tent, like, they gaze at each other very sweetly but it feels a little unearned to me; and then finally (3) angry breakup. and it's just like, really, you want us to get invested in these two based on that cursory triptych?

but my point here isn't really to set this up as a competition between ships, which can perfectly well coexist; my point is that this text is asking us to read into most of the relationships it sketches out, and to ignore pedestalization and pressuring in most of them, such that saying ‘geralt and jaskier are (or could be) in love’ isn't much more baseless than saying geralt and yennefer are or could be. so ultimately, if we're demanding better from the text (where ‘better’ is defined as ‘more explicit relationship-building,’ which i think can be better but isn't always), i think we have to demand that across the board.

[alorenawrites]

Thoughts on Loki, Gender, Sex, and Identity

So...I've seen a few posts on transphobia embedded in Loki and I wanted to examine my own thoughts on this a bit. I'm not going to dig too deeply, just hit on a few of my thoughts on the matter regarding my own positionality as a demisexual, demiromantic, bisexual, nonbinary, gender funky human.

To begin, my own relationship to sex and gender is complicated, based on my own experiences. I'm fine with people not having this same interpretation because of differences in experience and I'm not going to sit around and listen to anyone bombarding me with statements about how wrong they think I am. Go write a post with relevance to your own experience and please don't shit on mine. The purpose of this is to share my own thoughts on this matter, not to get into an argument. I have enough real-world stress regarding these things and don't need them on Tumblr as well.

I've seen the argument that Loki is gender fluid and it is wrong to say he is sex fluid or that sex fluidity is a way to undercut or deny the validity of gender fluidity. I don't see it this way. To begin, we don't actually see Loki display gender fluidity, even though shape-shifting is clearly within his skill set. MCU Loki shifts into Sif once in The Dark World, but other than that, there is little evidence outside of his word at this. I know those creating this story did refer to him as gender fluid, but I question whether those who stand outside that fluidity might not be as well-versed in how gender fluidity comes in a myriad of experiences. I am fine with the idea that perhaps Loki still uses traditionally male pronouns while in other shapes. I am not considering comic interpretations of Loki in this, as there are so many different storylines that I think they would be hard to sum up into this character. And it is fine if you don't see this the same way.

In myth, when Loki transforms into a maiden during the marriage of "Freya" (Thor in disguise) to Thrym, the book I reference (Neil Gaiman's retellings of the myths) does, at one point, refer to Loki as "he." When the mythological Loki transforms into the mare to lure the horse Svadilfari away from the builder of their wall, the references to the mare indicate "she" (and it is worth noting that in this retelling, the mare is never referred to as Loki by name), but when Loki returns he is referred to using male pronouns yet still as Sleipnir's mother.

In the television show, Loki's file lists his sex as fluid. As gender and sex are entirely separate, I took this into consideration as a part of what defines a Loki- they may change physical sex. I did not see an entry for gender on the file. I may have missed it. But to me, the lack of listing gender and the inclusion instead of sex leads me to believe that the TVA doesn't much care for the gender of a variant, but rather the body in which they are most likely to inhabit. In this case, it would seem that knowing if a Loki is more likely to appear as a physical type without regard to pronouns or gender might be considered more important data than gender identity and pronouns. I examine this as someone who has to handle grant data that requires a sex marker in the demographics- not a gender identity, but an assigned-at-birth or otherwise legally documented sex.

I don't see these two things as mutually exclusive or an erasure of one another. I would see it as a way for the TVA to try to classify a variant without regards to any sort of identity. After all, if Lokis are destined for pruning, who cares how they see themselves? It's not like they are going to have an extended conversation with them- process them, judge them, prune them.

In the context of the Lokis we meet, and the note that they haven't met a female Loki, I do wonder why they haven't met one yet. Is it because they don't catch every Loki that comes through? Is it because they themselves have only ever experienced being Loki as men and and haven't assumed otherwise? I don't know. But I don't see it as impossible to explain, either. How many Loki variants have come through? And how many haven't survived? We don't see every variant in the Void that we see in Mobius' briefing holograms. Who didn't make it, and who is missing? Yes, the comment that she "sounds terrifying" could be read as incredibly sexist, but at the same time...Lokis grew up with stories of the Valkyrie, powerful warrior women who they likely looked at with awe, wondering why these towers of strength were no longer with them. The Valkyrie predate them and are mythic figures- we see how Thor reacts to meeting one of these warriors in Ragnarok. Given that this line comes from Loki the Elder, someone who leans into the power of sorcery and the capabilities of magic, wouldn't it make sense that the combination of these skills would seem terrifying? A warrior of the legendary capabilities of the Valkyrie combined with the might of a Loki sorcery? I mean, I'd probably think the same thing, and I think this is possibly one reason why the variant Loki we come to know would agree with him- she has been jumping through time, surviving apocalypses that likely terrify him, enchanting anyone she needs to use, and she can run circles around him. Given the tonal shift in the delivery of the line "and she needs me," I interpret this as the blustering Loki does when he wants to feel more important than he really is- he's trying to justify why he needs to find her to someone else (and possibly to himself) instead of just saying it's because he cares deeply about her and wants to know what the hell that means. Sylvie can clearly take care of herself and doesn't really need rescue. He wants to feel important enough to go back and to convince the others he is as well. That she could render him irrelevant is something that would be terrifying to someone who craves attention and affirmation.

Mobius says that the most common iterations of Lokis look like the one standing before him, yet Loki does encounter a variant file from California in the early 20th century that refers to Sylvie. So the TVA knows that there is a rare chance that a sex fluid Loki could exist (and they have, presumably, pruned them). While I wish this had been explored further, I don't necessarily see it as a transphobic intent. Did it resonate that way with some people? Yes. And that's fine. Their feelings on the matter are valid.

Another element of my interpretation of this comes from my own experiences of gender expression. Most of the time during which I have been out as nonbinary, people have read my gender as a woman. I like my long dresses and I have an extensive collection of vintage women's clothing. I also have a decent collection of corsets and well-tailored suits that fit my body type. I don't bind my chest. My hair varies from very short to as long as it will grow (not far past my shoulders). I occasionally wear eyeshadow, regardless of what gender I am on any given day. I very rarely read masculine and when I feel neutral, I still don't bother to alter my body shape, only sometimes choosing a bra or bra tank top that decentuates my curves (which, granted, aren't dramatic). So the concept of a gender fluid individual choosing gendered pronouns and reading as male during the (relatively short) time in his lifespan during which the audience knows him doesn't seem odd to me, as it is how I've existed (and I, too, used gendered pronouns for a few years on my nonbinary journey- they were a default while I searched for something that suited me better). But I have known nonbinary people who have exclusively used gendered pronouns and it does not invalidate their gender identity, nor does gendered expressions of that identity. The concept that we would only see a male presenting Loki doesn't seem very odd because I have lived a stretch of my life during which I, too, presented a very femme gender expression and used traditionally female pronouns. But that did not make me less nonbinary.

And, of course, this is assuming that gender fluidity is part of his identity, which we are never told in the text of the story. I reject that everything a creator says must be added to the text of a piece of media simply because the piece also has to stand on its own and be interpreted on that level as well. We do know that Loki shifts sex, which makes sense for someone who shifts bodies, as sex is tied more to bodies than gender is.

The point in this is that we can't assume the gender of a fictional character, just as we can't assume from appearance the gender of a living human. I may read as a woman, but this is not my gender identity and no one should be assuming that my clothes are meant to project gender. Reducing gender to an outward and bodily expression of sex is not something with which I am comfortable, and it seems that some people are conflating the two in their interpretation. Again, your experiences may differ from mine and it's fine to see this in another way.

But here's another very important thing this show can demonstrate. Allow an anecdote. My children watched this show with me. My son is nearly 7, my daughter a few months from being 10. She is very femme- loves makeup, frilly dresses, dolls, princesses, My Little Pony, the whole shebang of activities stereotypically associated with the childhood of girls. At this point in her life, she very much asserts that she is a girl. The same goes for my son- he very much asserts himself as a boy. When we were watching together, we talked about Loki being gender fluid, just like their Mum. We talked about Loki being bisexual, just like their Mum. They understood that just because Loki looks one way, it doesn't mean he is that way...again, just like their Mum. There is power in the idea that some of us are in this same position- we are assumed to be cisgender based on our appearances, but our identities are more complex than that. I thought this was a good window for my children to see through and one I could turn into a teachable moment about all the different sorts of people there are in this world. This is the blessing of imperfect media- we can find ways to learn from it and to share opportunities in it for open interpretation with those around us. And the lesson of not jumping to conclusions about gender or sex based on appearance is a deeply important one for young children to understand.

Is this an area in which I have a problem with the show? No. Does this mean the show couldn't have done more or better? Also no. We do need a variety of types of representation. But seeing the possibilities of this being someone a little more like me (though alas, I can't shift shape)? That was nice.

Hopefully we can see more of this in the future, but if we don't, we can create transformative works to fill in the gaps. It's what fan communities have always done and will continue to do. When I fell into fandom years ago with Harry Potter, long before the movies were all out, so many works were there to add queerness, racial diversity, language diversity, disability representation, all of it, into the series. It didn't stop us from still enjoying what it meant to us in those times and places and I don't think we have to outright reject this show for the imperfections we see in it. It can still thrill us and speak to something in us we've been lacking.

And in my case, that is the affirmation of wearing traditionally gender coded clothes while still asserting my pronouns are ze/zir/zirs and my gender is nonbinary, though also gender fluid, gender optional, or gender funky and that my oft-assumed-to-be-hetero relationship makes me no less bi or any other piece of my complex relationship to sexual orientation (and sharing that affirmation with my kids).

[arofili]

Ok I haven't read LACE and I have to ask - what does it say about half-cousin relationships?

[re: something I mentioned at the end of this post in the context of -- what else? -- Russingon]

I first came across this technicality in this essay about elf sex. That author draws this conclusion:

Notes in Morgoth’s Ring imply that, if you were first cousins but your uncle was your father’s half-brother, this abrogated the incest taboo enough that marriage was an option.

For awhile I took that as canon, but recently I went digging into Morgoth’s Ring to see what it had to say for itself, and if that implication was actually true. So here’s what LaCE really has to say about cousin marriages:

The relevant part, transcribed, reads as follows [emphasis mine]:

For the marriages of the Eldar do not take place between ‘close kin’. This again is a matter in which they needed no law or instruction, but acted by nature, though they gave reasons for it later, declaring that it was due to the nature of bodies and the processes of generation; but also to the nature of fëar. ‘For,’ they said, ‘fëar are also akin, and the motions of love between them, as say between a brother and sister, are not of the same kind as those that make the beginning of marriage.’ By ‘close kin’ for this purpose was meant members of one ‘house’, especially sisters and brothers. None of the Eldar married those in direct line of descent, nor children of the same parents, nor the sister or brother of either of their parents; nor did they wed ‘half-sisters’ or ‘half-brother’. Since as has been shown only in the rarest events did the Eldar have second spouses, half-sister or half-brother had for them a special meaning: they used these terms when both of the parents of one child were related to both of the parents of another, as when two brothers married two sisters of another family, or a sister and a brother of one house married a brother and sister of another: things which often occurred. Otherwise ‘first cousins’, as we should say, might marry, but seldom did so, or desired to do so, unless one of the parents each were far-sundered in kin.

SO this is from Draft A of LACE, and is an in-canon note on the in-canon text (i.e., not a note made by JRRT or Chrissy T, but by some loremaster who was most likely not even an elf). It’s at the very beginning of where Draft A diverges from Draft B, which means Tolkien revised everything that came before BUT did not revise this bit. So: take it with a grain of salt, and of course feel free to disregard it entirely!

It’s really interesting to me here is that since Finwë is pretty much the only elf of note to marry twice, their concept of half-siblings is very different from ours, and that kind of cousin incest is definitely a no-go. But this quote isn’t really about siblings with different mothers; it’s about cousins.

BUT first cousins “might marry” if they’re not considered half-siblings! This doesn’t usually happen, but it’s possible - it might be the kind of thing done primarily for political reasons (like uniting the lines of Indis and Míriel, perhaps?)

The qualification of “unless one of the parents each were far-sundered in kin” is curious also. Would this count for Nerdanel and Anairë’s children if they were both Noldor? (We don’t know anything about Anairë’s origins; I’ve seen fics where she’s a Vanya, though personally I see her as a Noldo.) What if Anairë was a Noldorin noble, but Nerdanel was a common smith? -- they would both be of the same “people” but from different ranks and probably not related to each other. Would Fingon and Maedhros therefore be “far-sundered in kin”? Does the fact that they’re part of that weird exception where even their fathers aren’t wholly related play into it?

With this technicality, I think a case could be made for the Nolofinwëans and Arafinwëans being able to marry, should they wish: even though they are first cousins (and their fathers are full brothers), Eärwen is a Teler and Anairë probably isn’t. That would be “far-sundered,” right?

And if that’s true... then Maeglin and Idril being first cousins wouldn’t really matter, either. Maeglin is half Noldo & Vanya from Aredhel’s side of the family and half either Sinda or Avar from Eöl’s side of the family, depending on your headcanons. The Sindar are definitely “far-sundered” from the Noldor and the Vanyar (they’re sundered from the Falmari, too, just not as far), and if you see Eöl as Avarin, that’s even further.

But in the published Silm, there’s this quote [emphasis mine]:

The Eldar wedded not with kin so near, nor ever before had any desired to do so. And however that might be, Idril loved Maeglin not at all; and knowing his thought of her she loved him the less.

Here this “far-sundered in kin” rule doesn’t apply. By any definition, even if Turgon and Aredhel are siblings, their respective spouses (Elenwë of the Vanyar and Eöl the Dark Elf, whatever you take that to mean) are about as far-sundered as you can get, and still the connection between Turgon and Aredhel is too much.

Maybe this is something Tolkien changed his mind on between writing LaCE and writing this section of what became the published Silm. Or maybe this is an in-universe distinction: the in-universe writer of LaCE is unclear but implied to be a human, not an elf, possible Aelfwine; the writer of the Silm as we see it is Christopher Tolkien’s edits of JRRT’s translation of Bilbo’s translation of Noldorin loremasters, the chief of whom was Pengolodh. It’s complicated.

So it seems that this note may suffer from being part of Draft A of LaCE, i.e. an unrevised section of an esoteric in-universe text that Tolkien probably never really thought would see the light of day. (Plus, he probably didn’t think a bunch of shippers in the year of our lord 2020 would be pouring over his notes this intensely to justify our gay cousin ship.)

Really this asks more questions than it answers. Without any examples for us to fall back on, what does “far-sundered in kin” really mean? Why would Maeglin and Idril not fit into that category? Would Fingon and Maedhros fit into it on account of their mothers, even if both their mothers were Noldor? How does their fathers being half-siblings impact it? Does the fact that Míriel was a Noldo and Indis a Vanya make a difference? And I honestly have no idea what Tolkien thought of same-gender relationships; that’s a whole different topic.

So what does LaCE say about half-cousin relationships? Nothing, really. And what it does say is contradicted elsewhere, and unclear on who in-universe wrote it, and when it comes down to it these are laws and customs not universal truths about elvish biology -- something which I think we as a fandom tend to forget. Mannish prejudices inevitably bleed into our tales of the elves, and really there is no one right way to see this.

This meta is already way longer than I anticipated (and it comes as a fitting sequel to the LaCE meta I wrote last year around this time) so I’m going to end here - but the TL;DR version of it is “LaCE implies that cousins can get married if the non-sibling parents aren’t closely related” and complicating that with the half-cousins situation means that Russingon was probably fine re: the incest taboo - if you take LaCE as canon.

For myself: this does make me feel better about shipping Maedhros and Fingon (and also about shipping Finrod and Turgon!), but even if this technicality didn’t exist I would still encourage everyone to ship what you wanna ship and be nice to each other!

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

Confessions of the Fox. By Jordy Rosenberg. New York: One World, 2018.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction, queer fiction

Part of a Series? No

Summary: Set in the eighteenth century London underworld, this bawdy, genre-bending novel reimagines the life of thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard to tell a profound story about gender, love, and liberation.

Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found. Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript—a gender-defying exposé of Jack and Bess’s adventures. Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography or a hoax? As Dr. Voth is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them all.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexual content (as in sex acts, not the mere presence of lgbt+ people), blood, graphic depiction of top surgery, violence, racism, gender dysphoria

Overview: I didn’t know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but something about it just hit all the right angles for me. I adore historical fiction that not only aims to imitate the aesthetics of the period, but also focuses on underrepresented identities, such as queer, non-white, and working or poverty class people; thus, it was inevitable that I would find Confessions of the Fox would be so engrossing. I do understand that this book might not be for everyone, as Rosenberg plays with a lot of academic ideas that usually fall in the realm of theory, but personally, I loved that this book wasn’t just about trans identity. While gender and identity and queerness were at the heart of this book, Confessions was also about archives and policing and commodities and so much more - things that were related and engaged the more academic part of my brain, but somewhat complicated for casual reading. Nevertheless, it was ambitious and smartly-constructed, so I’m giving it a high rating, even if I have quibbles here and there.

Writing: As a former academic and lover of history, I very much enjoyed Rosenberg’s approach to genre, form, and writing. It would have been easy to simply write a story using modern aesthetic tastes, but Rosenberg goes out of his way to imitate the prose style of the 18th century. I loved the richness of the vocabulary and the complexity of the sentences, as well as the juxtaposition of the sacred and profane. It was refreshing to read such beautiful prose that the author clearly put a lot of love into, and if you want to be so immersed in a story that you feel like you’re reading a historical document, I think Rosenberg does a wonderful job.

I also really loved the way Rosenberg wrote about trans identity in the 18th century. There are passages, for example, where Jack’s attention wanders while being dead-named, where Jack expresses feelings of confusion or freedom when talking about his physical body, where he talks about the process of coming into being when he heard Bess use his name, etc. I thought these passages were the most beautifully written and impactful, and they stayed with me the most after I finished the book.

These 18th century “confessions” are accompanied by a number of footnotes, written by a character named Dr. Voth in the present day. In these passages, Rosenberg shifts his tone and style, thereby differentiating between past and present without having to constantly remind the reader that Jack and Bess’s story is told through something of a frame. I think the choice to have footnotes instead of chapters where Voth’s POV takes center stage was a good one - it more effectively created parallels between the 18th century story and Voth’s personal story, and reminded the reader that history (especially trans history) evolves as a result of a kind of archival work, collected in pieces by many different people. In that sense, form matched function, which I am always delighted to see in my novels.

That being said, I can’t say I enjoyed Voth’s voice all that much. This criticism is probably a personal preference rather than anything Rosenberg did wrong - I just think Voth’s voice felt a little too conversational, like he was talking to someone instead of writing.

Plot: Most of Rosenberg’s novel follows Jack Sheppard and Bess Khan as they discover Jack’s identity, evade arrest, and disrupt a horrifying commodity trade (so to speak). In my opinion, the plot points surrounding Jack’s personal journey were incredibly well-constructed; I felt that the evolution of Jack’s gender identity, the romance between Jack and Bess, and their evolution as criminals were all very compelling and touched on a number of engrossing themes, from gender to poverty to anti-capitalism. Granted, there were some areas where I think the pacing dragged, but part of me thinks this was due to the 18th century style and genre conventions, more than anything Rosenberg was doing wrong.

In Voth’s footnotes, we also get something of a personal story which includes Voth being coerced into working for an exploitative publishing company at the direction of his university administrator. As we go through the footnotes, Voth recounts conversations he had with these figures while also disclosing details about his failed relationships - with one ex in particular. While I did like the parallels that exist between the manuscript and Voth’s own life, there were some things that challenged my suspension of disbelief. For example, I would never expect an academic to record personal anecdotes and intimate confessions in footnotes for an academic project. Maybe that happens in academic circles outside mine, and I understand it needs to happen for plot reasons (just reading references to critical theory or secondary sources would be boring for most people), so this criticism is coming from a place of being too close to the setting surrounding the text, in a way.

I also think that there were some passages where sexual activity would be mentioned where it was not needed. I do understand, on some level, that sex and sexuality is an important topic in trans studies (and queer studies as a whole), and I don’t want to appear too prudish. However, I think random references to a character masturbating, even if they were making a point, were a bit egregious. I was especially put off by the story of a 15 year old masturbating (in the present-day footnotes), and though I understand the story was illustrating an academic concept and books should acknowledge that (many) teens do have sex drives, it was also a bit much for me, personally.

Characters: Jack, our primary protagonist, is interesting and complex not just because he struggles with his identity as a trans man, but also because he struggles with acting in ways that are not out of self-interest. Though he is a thief and thus acts in self-interest in understandable ways, he eventually uncovers an operation which involves the production of a drug-like substance (or something - that’s the best I can describe it). Bess demands that he destroy all samples so that the substance can’t be reproduced by others, but Jack wants to confiscate the samples for himself to make a huge profit. I liked that this conflict existed, not only because it showed Jack as having other challenges in his life other than his gender identity, but it also spurred character growth and emotional turmoil.

Bess Khan, a prostitute and Jack’s lover, was written in a way that respected sex work and provided commentary on race and policing. I really liked that she had a strong set of principles and desires that were larger than herself, and I liked that she was confident and forceful where Jack could be meek and unsure.

Other rogues were equally loveable and admirable. Jenny, another prostitute, was a nice example of women forming networks of support within the criminal underworld while also showing how white women (even prostitutes) are treated differently than non-white women. Aurie, a black queer man, was also a supportive friend to Jack who is frequently instrumental in his survival. There is also a wide variety of named and unnamed rogues who were non-white and/or queer in some way, providing a rich array of characters that dispels the assumption that 18th century England was homogenously white and straight.

Our main antagonist, Jonathan Wild, is a bit less interesting in that he’s mainly just corrupt. I personally didn’t care for the chapters from his perspective, though I do understand that he functions as an important, symbolic figure that embodies all the things Jack and Bess work against (capitalism, police corruption, etc.).

Voth, our modern day commentator, has his moments, but sometimes, I would waffle back and forth between finding him engaging and finding him pretentious. I understand that he is supposed to be flawed, and I sympathize with a lot of his plights - mainly the pressure from his university and the anxiety he suffers from. But also, I found his voice to be somewhat combative, and if the point was to make a complicated, likeable-sometimes-unlikeable-other-times character, then I think Rosenberg succeeded.

TL;DR: Confessions of the Fox is a beautiful debut novel that engages with trans identity and history, though it does so in a way that may be a bit too academic for some readers. But while it definitely demands much of your attention, Rosenberg ultimately delivers a rich, engrossing story that reaches beyond the historical and textual boundaries of the page and invites the reader to see themselves as part of a vast network that is constantly “making” and “becoming” itself.

[asexualactivities]

[This post is a submission.]

About being ace & kinky: For quite a long time I believed that I might just be too kinky to do the “normal” relationship thing. Advances from other people made me feel super repulsed. And for quite a long time, I supposed this was because a lot of heterosexual courting (which was the main thing I stumbled upon) comes with the expectation of men putting up some act of dominance or “owning” a female in some sort of way, even if it´s just done veeeerry subtly. You´re “making someone yours”, so to speak and I didn´t find this romantic or sexy but incredibly offputting and offensive. So I believed that maybe I´m just too dom to function in “normal” ways. I´m unwilling to let myself be “owned” or to compromise any of what I feel I am to any sort of cultural or sexual code of behaviour, and I didn´t feel like a stereotypical “woman” in any way nor did I want to act or be seen like one. I despised dominance in men because more often than not it got threatening or sneering very fast and I didn´t react too well to feelings of threat and even worse to the feeling that I was looked down on for my assumed gender and the dysphoria and/or oversexualisation that came with it. I liked non-threatening men, submissive men: courtesy, wit, non-sexual-things like subservience, I liked male body types from an aesthetic perspective. A lot. I got into arguments with art students who claimed that woman´s bodies were “naturally more beautiful”- I didn´t think so. Yes, they were nice, but look at a beautiful man´s back, how the muscles make all those little curves and those soft lines-… isn´t that stunning? Isn´t that beautiful? I wasn´t really out, however, so I couldn´t really verify any theories until I gained more experience. I liked sex a lot- in theory, not in practice- and it wasn´t until I had opportunities to try kink on my own terms until I realized that it actually doesn´t matter how submissive someone is - I still don´t feel like I want to have sex with them. I MIGHT actually just be asexual. I came out as both kinky and ace to most people I´m close to, and it WAS a revelation. I learned that, indeed, I liked a lot of things that came with kink and BDSM. I liked them a lot. It´s the aesthetic but also the thrill, the connection, that it´s always a small adventure how a scene will work out. That there´s always something you learn about yourself but also about your partner. I feel very “right” in the kink community, the first time coming to a fetish club felt a bit like coming home in a weird way: there was an instant realisation that this was my “tribe”, those were my people, I was one of them and I felt very safe in this environment. Weirdly enough, I´ve known that I was kinky almost all my life. I´ve just… known. Similar to how people say they´ve always known they´re gay, it wasn´t a sudden new thing that came with puberty. The new thing that DID come with puberty was the element of sex. Relationship status: it´s complicated. To this day, I physically never enjoyed actual sexual activities (activities involving the touching of gentials) with other people. I have a fairly high libido, but I don´t want anyone close when it comes to that. I´m also instantly turned off by any real sexual advances or sexual things, even in kink environments- via porn it´s okay, in real life it´s like a switch gets hit and it´s just an instant nope. This duality is kind of unfortunate on the one hand and kind of cool on the other. The unfortunate thing: kink is fun and all but you´re soon reaching a place with exploring where you´re trying to find if there´s some trick to include any kind of sex into your play scenes that you´re still okay with. Just because almost ALL models and patterns for BDSM include sex in some way. It´s such a core element to most stories and descriptions about it, that I always drift back to it and wonder how I could solve this issue. But when you´re asexual, this path is filled with land mines and ugly emotional drops and really uncute feelings that you might not have expected. And no, playing a dominant role doesn´t automatically shield you from feeling overwhelmed and/or vulnerable. Being ace doesn´t shield you from accidentially hurting a partner. The cool thing: kink IS a state of mind that allows for a wide range of activities BESIDES the actual sex to get your pulse up and do something physically intense with a clear “foreplay”, a main act and a cool down, that… probably comes pretty close to sex but, well, isn´t. It´s the thing closest to sex that I still can enjoy, and I enjoy it immensely. It doesn´t free you from contradictions. You gotta carve out your own path. But if you´re up to doing that, good things can happen, so… I´m kinky and ace, and sometimes I regret being ace because so many wonderful people aren´t and I sometimes wish I could feel closer to them. But you can only work with what you got, so. Just make the best of it <3 I´ll try that too.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #305

“you want me to be yours, well then you’ve got to be mine, & if you want a good girl, then goodbye”

Do you call the ice cream topping "jimmies" or "sprinkles"? They're "sprinkles" down here. What music are you listening to? Ha, I just turned on music before starting this. "Sex Metal Barbie" by In This Moment is on rn. If you go to school (HS or college) does your school have a rival? N/A Have you been baptized in any religious tradition? Yeah; I was born in a Roman Catholic family. My mom's mom would've probably had a heart attack if us kids weren't. At family gatherings, are you more likely to hang out with the younger or older relatives? I mean, I'd go for those my age or older, generally. I'd hang out with kids though if they wanted me to. Considering you current health, how long do you think you will live? With my CURRENT health, probably not even 80. Do you have anything in your room that would be 'weird' to others? Posters, yeah. Have you ever done geocaching? No, but it'd be cool if my body could actually handle taking a single goddamn step. What was the last game you won? Maybe Uno with my niece? I generally let her win, but occasionally I'm "lucky" to TRY to be more convincing, lol. I think she knows I let her, though. Do you know any deaf people? If so, is it easy or difficult to have conversations with them? No. Do you enjoy playing Monopoly? Why or why not? No, because I don't like board games, especially any that involve math. Is there a doorknocker on your front door? No. Do 'laugh tracks' on TV shows annoy you? They're so normal that I don't even notice them, really. Do people often mistake you for other ethnicities? If so, what do you usually get? No, I'm pretty obviously white. Has anyone famous ever attended your school? Who? I won't say his name for the sake of not connecting dots, but a well-known football player attended my high school. Have you ever had to attend an event that occurred on your birthday? Ha, my 16th birthday landed on the Super Bowl... I was at Jason's that night, and just to be "part of the family," we watched it with everyone else that came over. I was so bored and uninterested, but that's my own fault, really. I could have said something, but this was only a month into our relationship so I was too uncomfortable to speak up. What do you think makes a girl a slut? Do you believe that label is thrown around far more often than it should be? And finally, do you think it's unfair that mostly only women receive that label? I don't give a flying fuck how many people a girl is sexually involved with so long as she is safe and open and honest with her partners. I'm not a fan of the word and don't think anyone should be called it. Do you think it's bad to have sex at 15 or younger? I don't think it's smart, really. It's just too young to risk pregnancy. Yes, abortion is an option, but like... a 15 y/o girl should never be faced with that dilemma. I'ma be real tho, I don't think it's a "good" idea until you're at least 18, aaaand I don't know any non-virgin who waited that long. Just try your best to wait, ig. Favorite love song at the moment? Love songs never sit well with me anymore. I mean I can enjoy them, absolutely, I just... have a lot of bitterness. Trying to pick a favorite when you feel like that is like trying to pick the best-looking rotten apple of the bunch. Ever wondered what it would be like dating the same gender as you? I've done that already, and it was great but also scary in a massively homophobic state. Ever paid for sex? No. During thunderstorms, how does your pet react? Neither have a unique reaction; they're unfazed. What internet browser do you use? Google Chrome. Do you like eggnog? Noooo no no. How often do you see your mother? Every day, because I live with her. Do you like croutons in your salad? No, I really don't like the texture difference. Who did you last play truth or dare with? I don't know. Have you ever brewed your own mead, wine, beer or soda? No. Have you had to make any changes in your life lately? If so, what kind of changes? ugh What's the earliest popular thing you can remember from your childhood? Ummm. I mean, probably like Barney or Elmo? Do you prefer practicality or fashionability when it comes to clothes? Well, really neither. I'm the type that wears tank tops in snow, flipflops year-round, sweatpants in summer... so I don't really dress with practicality. I don't care what's "fashionable," so. Comfort pretty much reigns over my wardrobe. Which kinds of berries grow in the wild where you live? There are these little red ones that grow in little groups and somewhat resemble raspberries. I can't remember if they're edible, though... Oh, and muscadine grapes (I had to look up if they were berries lmao) can be found here, too. They're yummy. Beautyberries are another. Have you ever made an article of clothing yourself? If so, what was it? No. Do you go to arcades? If so, what's your go-to game at one? Even before Covid, I never really went to them. I enjoy them, though. I guess my favorite is maybe air hockey? When's the last time you had an alcoholic beverage? What was it? At the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday. It was some kind of sangria... Maybe strawberry and peach? Idr, but it was good. What has been the most enjoyable job you've had? You assume I've had a job I actually enjoyed. How about the least enjoyable job? Well, I barely lasted two hours in a dairy, soooo... When's the last time you had to carefully plan how you used your time? You're asking the wroooong person, 'cuz my life is never busy enough for that. Who do you usually say hello or good morning to first? My snake Venus, usually. Well, that is if her head is peeking out of her hide or is just fully out. Do you ever chat about your favorite video games with your friends? I don't really have gamer friends anymore, so not really. What do you hope you grow out of? Being so goddamn dependent. What movie made you cry the most? I can't say for sure considering it's easy for movies to make me cry, lmao. Maybe Titanic. What was one of the happiest moments of your childhood? Seeing a container of dog food in the far back behind the Christmas tree one year. It's how I learned I was finally gettinga dog (Teddy). What brings you the most joy in life? Probably my cat lmao. What's a hobby you would like to try out? I wanna get back into video editing, I just. Don't have the motivation for it anymore. As with most things. What sort of a kiss do you count as the first kiss? On the lips and with mutual intention. What was the last event you attended? Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's, ig. How about the last event you organized? Me? Organizing an event? What's the biggest insect you've ever seen? In the wild, probably like... a rhinocerous beetle or something. NO NO WAIT. I remember at least once in my life seeing a fucking GINORMOUS moth on the ground one morning. I don't know what kind it was, but jc it was huge. How about the biggest spider? Oh yikes, I'll never forget this: an orb weaver wandering across the floor of our childhood van and under the passenger's seat. Never saw it again. I was afraid to let my feet stay on the floor for a looong time, haha. What's something you'd never ever dare to ask another person? I'd never ask certain "why" questions, like "why did you get an abortion?" or something like that. I can think of valid situations to ask most things, even controversial matters, but no one should ever have to justify something like that. "Why don't you have kids?" is another. That one gets to me. Having children is not an advancement or milestone in everyone's life, and hell, you never know if the woman's had like five miscarriages or something. What's something you've always wanted to ask someone but haven't dared? Why Mom didn't raise her eldest daughter, at least for her whole life. Katie's childhood is a big mystery to me, and I want to know more, but I know the topic is very upsetting to Mom, so I'm not about to make her explain it. What's the worst/best thing you've done without your parents knowing? Saying "worst/best" makes this question confusing... but I'm guessing you mean the best thing to me that they wouldn't have approved of? I really didn't do a lot of things that would fit that description. I can only think of a certain intimate occasion where things happened where they probably shouldn't have. If you wear earrings, what does your favorite pair look like? Ugh, I don't because of the holes being too stretched out from wearing heavy earrings too long. I still haven't gotten to putting proper gauges in so it looks less stupid. Have you ever won any money from a scratch card? Maybe like, $10 or something. How about a slot machine? I've never played one. Do like playing bingo? Sure, it's all right. What small, everyday thing makes you really happy? Cuddling with my cat. Do you enjoy puzzle games? If so, which one's your favorite? Yeah, I do. I can't really pick a favorite, though... Is there a substance you avoid at all costs? If so, what is it and why? I think in a past survey I mentioned my aversion to beer because of the association it has with my dad. I'd never be able to get a sip down. Not that I really want to anyway though, it stinks. What you would you absolutely hate living next door to? Any really busy location or travel hubs, like a train station. My childhood home was near a railroad track, and it sucked, so I can only imagine a station. What would you love to live next door to? A waterfall, uggghhhh. In the woods too to hear plenty of frogs and toads and crickets... What gives you nostalgia? It is very easy to make me nostalgic. The littlest things can do it. Hearing about/seeing/playing childhood video games, like Spyro, is a biggie. Which reminds me how damn badly I wanna play the Reignited trilogy, fuck. I just don't have the proper console. Which language do you think is the most complicated to learn? Well English is supposedly the hardest objectively, but as a native English speaker, I can't say anything about that. In my experience, Latin was like fucking impossible. Is there a place that you might call your second home? I guess Dad's house, but it's not like I'm there a lot. I feel comfortable there, though. How do you imagine your later life to look like? I DO NOT want to think about this. I fucking dread the thought. What is a job you would never in a million years want to do? A butcher. There is absolutely no motherfucking way I ever could do it, even if it kept me off the streets. What's the weirdest building in your city? *shrug* How do you keep in touch with friends usually? Facebook. Do you recognize friends'/family's vehicles by sound? Not anymore. Dad had an old car that was very easy to recognize with its shitty muffler, but he hasn't had that car in years upon years. I used to be able to recognize Jason's old car too because of sound, but primarily because he drove way too fast down our path that when I heard a car zooming over rocks, I knew it was him. What's something new you've just recently learned? It was actually a topic of recent discussion that I may have high-functioning Asperger's. Very, very unusual to learn later in life, but apparently Mom's seen the warning signs in some things since childhood, like my extreme pickiness with textures, my tendency to knead and play with my hands in situations of discomfort, my social ineptitude, hyperfixations, it actually running in our family (which I didn't know beforehand), among a lot of other things. We're not really digging into it though because it just doesn't matter; there's obviously no magic treatment for autism, and me being in therapy and having a psychiatrist to handle my meds is enough. If you were in Harry Potter, which house would you be in? Apparently I'm on the Hufflepuff/Gryffindor line when I took a survey a long time ago. Are you nagged about being on the computer too much? Not anymore, at least on the average day. Mom's accepted it by now. Dad's joked about it before though and I know others have certain opinions about it. Based on your personality, what animal do you think you'd be? Maybe a deer. Shy, reclusive, and always on alert. Have you ever been in a hot tub? Yeah. What song is stuck in your head at the moment? I have "my boy" by Billie Eilish on right now because it's stuck in my head. What's your father's middle name? John. What's the last movie you saw in theaters? Yikes, good question. I think it was The Lion King remake. Have you ever vandalized? No. What's a pet you've always wanted? Most pets I want I've had at some point or another... I guess I'll say a ferret, though I've really only wanted one in concept. I could never keep up with their maintenance, but by god they are the cutest fucking things ever. Do you like mice? I love mice! What's your favorite t-shirt? My "equal in our bones" Cloak shirt. :''') The design is so beautiful and just my style in general, plus I live to support anything Fischfuck takes part in. Did you/will you get a car for your 16th birthday? I'm 25 and still have never had my own car lmaoooo. What's your favorite tomato variety? I generally don't like tomatoes themselves, but rather products made with them, like ketchup. If I'm in the mood though, I do like tomato sandwiches with mayo and bacon; I only ever enjoyed them though if they were fresh right from an old friend's garden. Which well-known person's death shocked you the most, if any? I think Chester Bennington's was the biggest surprise. Rest easy, you legend. What's the craziest color you'd dye your hair? More like what crazy color WOULDN'T I dye it... What was the longest train ride you've been on? I've never been on one. What's the coolest hobby one of your friends has? uhhhhh idk Have you ever played in a stack of hay bales? No. If you could learn any skill, which would you like to learn? Ha, cooking. How do you like your steak? Medium well.

[shehasworktodo]

“Do you want love, or...

... do you want the D?” An old friend had asked me this question back in college, using more colorful language. The crazy thing was that I actually had to think about my answer. I’m young, I’ve still got a lot to learn about love, and I’ve always associated love with SEX. So imagine... a lovesick teen-turned-young adult so obsessed with talking about sex even though she’s never had it before, thinking everything will be picture-perfect once it actually happens. 

I’ve had my fair share of crushes, and I’ve crushed hard. I thought that if I prayed hard enough God would grant me the guy I had my eyes set on at the time. I thought these boys were property. I also thought that if I saved sex for marriage and committed my body to Christ that my husband would never cheat on me. Those were naïve and selfish thoughts. As if I had control over someone else being unfaithful.

Okay, why am I writing about this now? Why am I writing about this today? It’s 2020, so many heartbreaking things are happening in the world with every turn of our heads. We’re out here seeking love more than ever- or what we think is love. I can’t get this thought out of my head: we search for that spiritual intimacy by getting drunk and partying and going to clubs with others, dancing and kissing strangers to feel some type of high that we have to keep going back to. My flesh was satisfied for only a time. I remember getting wasted some nights so that I could make my friends laugh and have more “fun”. I turned into this bold flirt that danced until my feet got sore, and as the night went on I’d find one guy to ~fall in love~ and make out with until it was time for me to go. Those little moments, although not a lot, had a big impact on my life. I know exactly what I want in a relationship, but I always found myself running after or following things that I really didn’t. After experiencing my first major heartbreak I found myself going off the deep end. During my time with this guy, I followed “the rules” of dating and established what I wanted and what I didn’t want beforehand. I found myself conforming and compromising my beliefs because I thought that I wanted to be with this person so badly... because I wanted a relationship. I enjoyed feeling wanted. This was a one-way street that didn’t lead to anywhere. I was left out in the cold, lonelier than before. It took me months to truly believe that love still existed- because I know now that whatever I had with this guy, and the guys after, was NOT love.

All I know is that I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel ALIVE, I wanted to feel appreciated, I wanted to feel true love. And the crazy thing is that I know what true love is and feels like, but I turned to the world for the answers I already knew I had. I had the One who was love and gave His own life not just for me, but for every person reading and not reading this post. I had my mother, who has gone and will go to the ends of the earth for me. I’ve experienced true love in many different ways, from family to friends, I just had this crazy idea thinking that it wasn’t enough. I felt as if I needed more.

Now we know that the power of sex is overwhelming, so overwhelming that it affects our daily lives. From movies to music to ads to apps, we’re surrounded by sex 24/7. My teenage sister probably knows the lyrics to WAP better than I do, a song that’s been on the top of the charts for WEEKS- maybe months, I haven’t kept track. We see that as female empowerment in today’s society, kudos no doubt, but what are we looking at again? SEX! It feels good! Physical touch, attention, a short moment of a powerful release with whomever we desire, leading to polyamory, experimenting with different genders, etc. Now have you been fulfilled? Are you fulfilled? You felt “love” for the time being, am I right? I know that person, or those people, made you smile. I know you either felt really good or really awful afterwards. Sex is the one most intimate and close-knit act that you can ever perform with another person, that’s why everyone’s doing it! You want that high, you want that feeling, you want that closeness. Then, if you’re not really attached to that person, it’s as if it wasn’t a big deal. Mainstream society paints sex as something “really great, but not a big deal”. I can’t force you to prioritize what sex is on your list of importance, but I know what it’s like to scroll in search of another person for satisfaction. We don’t really analyze it, but we already know that you’re either inside of someone or someone is inside you. Believe it or not, whether you remember them or not, you carry a spiritual piece of them with you wherever you go.

I’ve learned that a lot of people’s experience with sex and love are different. Many have had their hearts broken after being in long-term relationships and go through this thing of what society calls a “hoe phase”. Like in a lot of songs you hear “f*** love, now I do what I want”, because all this energy spent on another person was deemed a waste of time. It’s our version of love that has ultimately let us down, to the point where we see that we don’t need anyone wasting our time the way someone else did before. I can’t speak from a full amount of experience, but I know what running around with someone for a brief moment of time is like. When it’s over, there’s a little dead-end sign that we hit, no matter how good or bad the experience. We just become less and less numb to the pain of rejection and discord and disagreement with each encounter we face. We have people out there that simply don’t see value in a long-term relationship. They want to love who they want to love without baggage or complications. They want that sense of freedom; it’s their God-given right. On a religious standpoint, serial-monogamists cannot stand being alone. They need to feel that sense of belonging with someone else, jumping from one failed relationship to the next.

Did we go wrong somewhere? From ghosting to who can care the least to casual intimacy... I want to know if we really are fulfilled. I don’t have all the answers, I don’t think I ever will. I can tell you I’ve honed in on people’s flaws when it comes to love and have made mistakes myself. Trust and vulnerability have gone out the window because “it makes us look weak”. In my opinion, being vulnerable and open are a couple of the strongest traits to have. It makes you real, it makes you human.

No, I’ve never experienced that kind of physical intimacy with anyone. Yes, I’m still super happy. It’s not even happiness, it’s joy.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with where I stand, but I’m going to share why I choose true love over everything else in today’s millennial/centennial society. The idea of sex is awesome, amazing, and I know why people are all about it. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. I know the One who designed it, He’s pretty great, too. I know how powerful it is, and I know how it gives life new meaning. I’ve decided not to be selfish when it comes to sex. I don’t expect it to be perfect and breathtaking the first time, or the seventh time... but I expect it to be with someone I absolutely love. I expect to make mistakes, I don’t expect him to live his life the way I chose to live mine. I don’t have high expectations, but I expect to have love. You deserve that kind of love, too.

TLDR; Everyone wants to have a someone. Everyone wants to have... someone. Everyone deserves someone. Someone that makes them smile, makes them feel important, appreciated, in that way that only they can provide. Remember to do those things for yourself first before expecting it from another- but most importantly, consider being that person for someone else. Be vulnerable, be open, be honest, show that you care. Because down the road, if things take a turn for the worst, you won’t forget who you are, who you were designed to be, and how much you are loved. Your worth doesn’t deteriorate. The physical will always have its perks, but it’s the warmth of the soul that makes the most impact, I promise.

PS: I answered the question by saying right now I may want the D, but in reality I truly want love.

[robert-c]

White Privilege

As a white male, who grew up in the South during the time of racially separate public bathrooms, water fountains and sections of the buses and diners, I’ve been the beneficiary of two entrenched privileges; white and male. Despite how long and how much I intellectually understand and condemn the sexism and racism that produced that privilege I confess that I never really felt privileged, just not disadvantaged. It was just the way things were. Like most of us, I like to believe that the success I have had has been the result of my own efforts. And to a degree that is certainly true. But the artificial obstacles of race and sex limited the competitors before I even walked onto the field, even if I didn’t actively support those limitations.

Again, this is an intellectual understanding, I don’t suppose there is any way for me to truly and completely understand at an emotional level the outrage and unfairness of such a situation.

I think a lot of whites had experiences like mine. They are not overt racists (or sexists); that is, they don’t believe or promote idiotic ideas of racial or gender superiority. That, together with harboring no ill will, we tell ourselves that we aren’t racists (or sexists). Yet, that is not the whole truth. Our lack of emotional connection and limited relationships, mean we don’t even know when we are being offensive. I don’t like admitting it any more than I’m sure others do, but I confess that I’m probably racist and sexist in some ways, even while I hope to be doing better. I also think that if we are to truly heal this long standing injustice, it will take a lot of people making a similar effort to understand that while we aren’t the most evil of people, we aren’t without some responsibility for the continuation of this injustice.

If people were being hauled off to concentration camps it would be easy to see our complicity for not speaking up or doing something to try to stop it. But racial and sexual injustice in our society operates much more subtly and masquerades behind legitimate concepts of “law and order” and “public safety”.

When I was a young man, in that generation of peace and love that was going to change the world, I thought surely by the time I was an old man in my seventies we would have succeeded. But we haven’t. I don’t want to go into how or why that didn’t happen, but whatever good we were able to accomplish, there is a lot more we wanted to do that still needs to be done.

In 1996 a truly great movie came out, A Time to Kill. It had a great cast; Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock, Keifer Sutherland and many more. A black man’s young daughter is raped, beaten and left for dead by some white boys who essentially get off at trial. The girl’s father, Carl Lee Hailey (played by Samuel L. Jackson) kills both boys as they are leaving the courtroom. The story is about his trial. There is a powerful scene between Carl Lee Hailey and his attorney Jake Brigance (played by Matthew McConaughey). Rejecting the idea of a plea bargain that might get him life in prison (instead of the death penalty) Carl explains his strategy to his attorney.

America is a war and you are on the other side. How's a black man ever going to get a fair trial with the enemy on the bench and in the jury box? My life in white hands? You Jake, that's how. You are my secret weapon because you are one of the bad guys. You don't mean to be but you are. It's how you was raised. Nigger, negro, black, African-american, no matter how you see me, you see me different, you see me like that jury sees me, you are them. Now throw out your points of law Jake. If you was on that jury, what would it take to convince you to set me free? That's how you save my ass. That's how you save us both.

I think that I, and virtually every other progressive white, is in the same situation as Jake. We don’t mean to be, but we are. And until we recognize that, and start trying to do something about it, we aren’t going to be able to right this centuries long wrong.

[juliaisabellphoto]

My 2020 Albums of the Year

Never requested, always provided. Here are my favorites of 2020. Here’s the playlist. 

The Secret Sisters, Saturn Return

As soon as I saw “Water Witch, featuring Brandi Carlile” on this tracklist I knew that the Secret Sisters would be a favorite of 2020. In February, I was staying with a friend in Nashville and she mentioned them as a local favorite, and when I stopped at Grimey’s to shop for records I came upon a signed copy of “Saturn Return.” I had never heard the Secret Sisters before, but there is nobody I trust more to recommend music than this Nashville friend of mine, so I bought it. I made no mistake here: this record blew me away. The soft, soulful, lullaby of “Healer in the Sky” pulled me through the pain of the first month of quarantine and soothed me as the world was turned upside down. In reading more on the record, this seems to have been the point: they say, “this album is a reflection of us coming to terms with how to find our power in the face of an unfair world… our hope is that women can feel less alone in their journey through the modern world.” There is something in the caramel-thick sweetness of these sisters’ voices that makes a listener feel as though they’ve been bewitched into calm. When I think of this album, I think of the cross-country drive I took at the beginning of the pandemic to make my way home and the happy moments that can be found in darkness. No album touched my heart this year in the way that “Saturn Return” did. 

Taylor Swift, Folklore and Evermore

Taylor Swift… can even be said? Somehow, while we all sat on our couches in quarantine, this woman created not one but two musical masterpieces. She begins “the 1” by stating “I’m doin good, I’m on some new shit,” and that says a lot about the album as a whole. She created the 2020 we all wish we experienced: soft, sweet, and gentle. Listening to Folklore feels like visiting a cabin in the woods, with a fireplace well lit. Swift tells winding stories of love, hardship, and mystery and tenderly walks us through the forest of her imagination. This magical feeling was amplified by her release of The Long Pond Studio Sessions, a film in which Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Aaron Dessner finally play the album together for the first time after recording it entirely remotely. The setting matches the sound: they play in an album in the middle of the woods, cozy and hidden from the snow. Evermore cuts through the delicate ice of Folklore: it is the color to Folklore’s black and white. Swift combines the soft folk sound of “willow” with some of her country and Americana roots in “no body, no crime,” drawing us in once again. She includes Bon Iver singing in his lower register in Folklore and then in his falsetto in Evermore: two sides of the same magic coin. The work in these two albums is Swift’s strongest ever, and solidifies the fact that no modern artist can really reach her. 

Chris Stapleton, Starting Over 

Following a three-year hiatus, all lovers of southern rock deeply needed a Chris Stapleton album. In “Starting Over,” Stapleton yet again does what he does best: combines his unique whiskey-tinged growl with the best lyricism present in country music today. This record can’t be captured in any singular fashion, neither musically nor emotionally. The title track sets a high bar for the rest of the record with a reflection on re-remembering what really matters, a message certainly relevant for this turbulent year. Stapleton’s typical outlaw-country brand is present in full with “Devil Always Made Me Think Twice,” “Arkansas,” and “Hillbilly Blood,” but other songs take him in a completely new stylistic direction. “Maggie’s Song” takes on a very classic old-time country feel, as Stapleton weaves sweet and simple stories as he processes the loss of his pup. He harnesses the energy of the Chicks as he angrily lambasts the perpetrators of the 2017 mass shooting at Route 91. The song is a Stapleton-sponsored judgment day reckoning, including the cacophonic sound of a crowd in panic and the shrieks of a gospel choir. In contrast with this energetic high, Stapleton goes deep into his blues side by finally releasing “You Should Probably Leave,” a song he has been sitting on for six years. This one feels just right to sway around the kitchen to. With each listen to “Starting Over” I find new lyrics to write down and remember, new sounds to love. 

Bad Bunny, YHLQMDLG

Bad Bunny. Our unproblematic reggaeton prince. In the wake of his many popular features and his collaborative album with J Balvin, Bad Bunny makes it clear that it is time for Balvin to share the throne of popular reggaeton. He features the original reggaeton king Daddy Yankee in “La Santa,” paying tribute to the very classic reggaeton style before mixing it and transcending beyond the classics in the following tracks. “Yo Perreo Sola” is the album’s standout track, accompanied by my favorite music video of 2020. The song is an ode to gender equality and the destruction of the patriarchal norms contributing to gender-based violence. “Yo Perreo Sola,” meaning “I twerk alone,” sets the overarching theme of consent present throughout the song’s lyrics. In the video, Benito’s backdrop references the Argentinian-born “Ni Una Menos” movement, a now global movement against gender-based violence. As if this wasn’t enough to make you adore him, the video further extends its activism to the LGBTQ community, with Benito appearing in full drag, in his normal attire, and at some points held in chains by women. He makes a statement about sexuality and gender expression in the video, twerking solo. The other jawdropper track on YHLQMDLG is Safaera, a perfect display of Bad Bunny’s skill in expanding the scope of reggaeton as a genre. In the same thirty seconds of the song, he subtly samples both “Could You Be Loved” by Bob Marley and the Wailers and Missy Elliot’s “Get Ya Freak On” - a segment I just can’t get out of my head. Bad Bunny’s prowess on this record is rounded out with the aggressive and prideful “P FKN R.” What a masterpiece. 

Mac Miller, Circles 

A posthumous record that never should have been posthumous. A companion-piece to Mac’s 2018 record “Swimming,” Circles takes a similar tone, one of resilience through pain. The title track serves as a somber introduction, followed by the funk energy of “Complicated” and the GO:OD AM energy of “Blue World.” The song that really got to me, and many other fans of Mac, was “Good News.” It is the pinnacle of Mac’s musical insight and talent. The melody matches the melancholy of the track, as Mac sings of his desire for time and space. The melancholy is matched in “Everybody” with the lines about death feeling particularly haunting in the wake of Miller’s accidental overdose. Somehow, Miller wrote the perfect eulogy for himself prior to his passing, one that will live in the hearts of his fans forever. 

Kali Uchis, Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞

I’m not quite sure what to call this record. If I just listened to “la luna enamorada,” a cover of a classic Cuban bolero, I would call it gorgeous. If I just listened to “fue mejor” featuring PARTYNEXTDOOR or “quiero sentirme bien,” I would call it sexy. If I just listened to “vaya con dios,” I would think she wrote the theme music for the next James Bond film. The bottom line of the record is Uchis’ absolute stunning use of her upper register. She hits notes that “Isolation” never would have foreshadowed, painting a dreamland for any listener. She slides back into the energy of her sophomore album in “telepatia,” but adds in moments of her new sound. She incorporates a slower reggaeton beat into no eres tu (soy yo), and dives into a heavier reggaeton sound in te pongo mal (prendelo.) My personal favorite of the record is “aqui yo mando!” with Rico Nasty: it is the perfect display of Uchis’ unique upper register combined with Rico’s trap style. Anyone passing this record up for another “Isolation” listen is missing out. 

FLETCHER, The S(ex) Tapes

This record has a story like no other, coming from a woman like no other. This EP was recorded while Fletcher quarantined with her ex-girlfriend, who also happened to film all of the music videos for it. It is this messiness that makes The S(ex) Tapes absolute magic. Fletcher’s own description of the name of the release explains the situation best:  “A sex tape is someone being captured in their most vulnerable, wildest, rawest form, and my ex has always captured me that way.” She captures all of the feelings of a breakup with someone you still love deeply, and the relationship relapse that comes with moving past those feelings. Fletcher’s special ability comes in representing these deeply painful experiences in an uplifting manner: this is a sexy pop EP meant to be danced to. Fletcher simultaneously validates all of the emotional tumult, but subtly nudges the listener toward blissful reckless abandon. It almost makes me wish I had a breakup to go through! The abrasive apathy of “Shh… Don’t Say It” and the flippant, angry vulnerability of “Bitter” are paired perfectly with Fletcher’s raw brand of distortion. In an interview with Nylon, Fletcher speaks to this: “Listen, I've done my fair share of just straight-up sad, crying in your bed music. I'm still going through shit, but I want to bop to it. We can still be emo and want to twerk at the same time.” Yes, Fletcher, we do. 

Halsey, Manic   

Prior to 2020, I wasn’t Halsey’s biggest fan. I wouldn’t have even called myself a fan. I just wasn’t that excited by her music. “I’m Not Mad” was the song that triggered a 180 for me. The heavy, dissonant kick of the drums and her raw, angry lyricism drew me in without hesitation. I suppose this was just the push I needed to fall in love with the rest of her music: the songs with similar bite, “Without Me” and “killing boys,” and the more raw side of the record in “You should be sad,” “929,” and “Graveyard.” Her vulnerability is so much of what makes this record perfect. The album fully made sense to me when I listened to her podcast feature on “Armchair Expert” with Dax Shepard. In it, she talks through the time period covered by the record and gives context to her powerful lyricism. “Manic” is a story of chasing someone she loved into drug-fueled oblivion, and then finally finding the power to leave. The album is brimming with this power, and I just can’t turn it off. 

HAIM, Women In Music Pt. III

HAIM is THE soft rock band of the modern era.Women In Music Pt. III, their most mature album yet, solidified this opinion for me in a way that I didn’t expect. There is so much to be said for this record: it is innovative and skilled, with the perfect balance of softness and hardness. Though the record is one of pain and trauma, you wouldn’t know it purely from its melodies. “Don’t Wanna” is a very classic HAIM pop rock number, and “The Steps” follows suit making frustration fun to dance to. Though one may not notice at first, in this record HAIM dives deeper than ever before. “Now I’m In It” does a phenomenal job of sonically representing the feeling of being completely and utterly overwhelmed. “I Know Alone” is a beautifully intimate rainy-day account of Danielle’s struggle with depression. Then comes “3AM” - a lighthearted song about a booty call with Thundercat-type bass and an R&B vibe - just in case you didn’t already know how much range these three sisters have. Everything about this record is filled with talent. 

Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

Only Phoebe Bridgers could write a song about murdering a skinhead and fill it with nostalgia. “Garden Song,” the leading single preceding “Punisher,” foreshadowed a record that is just so very Phoebe: melancholy, vulnerable, and heart-wrenching. The eagerly awaited album certainly followed suit, with typical sad ballads “Halloween” and “Moon Song” played alongside more raucous, Better Oblivion Community Center-esque songs such as “Kyoto” and “ICU.” She goes bluegrass on “Graceland Too” with banjo, violin, and layered harmonies from boygenius collaborators Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. In “Punisher,” Bridgers shares with us the wistful catharsis that she is so very talented at creating.

Noah Cyrus, THE END OF EVERYTHING 

I always underestimated Miley’s little sister, but here I am writing about her EP before I write about Miley’s in my end of the year roundup. Every piece in this record gave me chills: Cyrus’ lower register allows her to access a somber kind of ballad that I just can’t get enough of. The record starts off at a peak with the slow burn of “Ghost” and somehow manages to get even better with “I Got So High That I Saw Jesus.” This powerful song, even better in the live version where Miley joins her younger sister, builds into an almost gospel-like ode to the idea that everything will be okay. “July,” the single featuring Leon Bridges that pushed Cyrus into the national spotlight, stands as the most beautifully layered song of the EP. The soft guitar picking and choral sound complement Cyrus’ upper register. The whole record, extending through the closing title track, is a comforting, soft emotional analgesic for 2020. 

The Chicks, Gaslighter

This record is gorgeous. It is painful. The feelings Natalie Maines expresses in this record are feelings I have felt far too deeply in personal relationships, and they also are feelings everyone is feeling globally in 2020. “Gaslighter” is just straight up fun, a perfect extension of the Chicks’ energy found in “Goodbye Earl” and other older revenge numbers (but with an extra poppy Jack Antonoff twist this time.) “Tights On My Boat” is bitter, funny, and shows off Maines’ upper register with stripped guitar. “Sleep at Night” musically and lyrically embodies the pain of being betrayed. “Julianna Calm Down” is a stunning ballad of female resilience. “Texas Man” perfectly captures the bubbly feeling of moving on. “For Her” and “March March” fit in with the frustrated, betrayed, power-centered theme of the record in a very different way. The Chicks’ dualistic ability to discuss her ex-husband’s cheating alongside the band’s political views is what makes the record special: not only are we watching a woman try to move on and develop her personal strength, but we are also seeing this personal strength harnessed for political impact. They simultaneously denounce the abuse of power in both politics and relationships, while reclaiming that power for themselves in standing up for what they believe in. How very Chicks of them. 

Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia

Dua motherfucking Lipa. This woman would have been the official owner of 2020 had we been able to dance to this record at bars and clubs. This was proven ten times over by the success of the album’s first single, “Don’t Start Now,” a song that is absolutely the MOST fun. Or so I thought… until I heard “Physical,” “Levitating,” and “Break My Heart.” What poor timing for such a phenomenal dance record, but at least she gave the people some great material for Tik Tok dances! All COVID-dance-related concerns aside, this is a really well done sophomore album for Dua Lipa. The funk elements of the album most clearly seen in “Levitating” elevate Dua’s brand of pop to a new level. The all gas no brakes nature of this dance-pop record works wonders for her - she knows what the people want from her, and she delivers. 

Megan Thee Stallion, Good News

THIS! RECORD! If WAP could be an album of the year, it would be, but it’s a standalone single and Megan Thee Stallion proceeded to release the next best thing. The explosion of Megan Thee Stallion has been a pleasure to watch in 2020, with both WAP and Savage leaving the charge. With an artist like her, it’s easy to get lost in the smash hits and ignore the prolific nature of her work. “Good News” is an immaculate rap album, brimming with sass and defiant bad bitch energy. “Shots Fired” kicks off the album with a Biggie sample and a diss to the man who shot her in the foot earlier in the year, personally my favorite track of the record. Other highlights of the record include “Don’t Stop” with a Young Thug feature, “Body” which is now a Tik Tok staple, and “What’s New.” Perhaps the most impressive work Megan does on “Good News” is “Girls in the Hood,” a rework of Eazy-E’s Boyz-N-The-Hood. She inverts the classic misogyny of the original song by emphasizing her control over men like Eazy-E in an indignant assertion of female power. This embodies Megan Thee Stallion’s essence: busting in on a male industry and making her presence known.

Rico Nasty, Nightmare Vacation

Nobody does it like Rico Nasty, and I’m convinced nobody ever will. I saw a New York Times headline titled “Can the Mainstream Catch Up to Rico Nasty?” the other day and I think the answer is a firm no. Rico is abrasive, rude, and outside the box in the absolute best way. Need an album to slap in the car when you’re feeling like a bad bitch? This. is. it. The record kicks off with “Candy,” a song with a wild beat and the iconic chorus line “Call me crazy, but you can never call me broke.” Following is a Don Toliver and Gucci Mane feature in “Don’t Like Me,” a song that truly should have hit the mainstream by now. She gets back to her signature scream-rap in “STFU” and “OHFR.” “OHFR” is the confident standout of the album, along with the reworked re-release of “Smack a Bitch,” making it clear that Rico Nasty is not a woman to be fucked with. In “Back and Forth” with Amine, Rico steps into Amine’s “Limbo” style and does it well. The record’s second single “Own It” is a more classic club banger that unfortunately didn’t get to see the dark of night in any clubs this year. Even if the mainstream never catches up to Rico Nasty, I’ll be following along with her self-labelled “sugar trap.” 

Ariana Grande, Positions

I mean, duh. Ariana just doesn’t miss. She surprised everyone with this album’s release in Fall 2020, displaying the bliss of her relationship with later-confirmed fiance. She goes dirtier than usual in the sex-centered “34+35” and “nasty,” rounding the record out with the Craig David-reminiscent “positions.” Ariana allows herself to lust for someone and even love for them in these three, but defaults to her brimming self-confidence in “just like magic” and “west side.” The album is more R&B than pop at times, with the peak of this style visible in the groove of “my hair” and the Mariah Carey ballad-like nature of “pov.” Each album, Grande shifts just a little bit, keeping us attached: “Sweetener”’s cotton-candy pop, the savage pop-trap of “thank u, next,” and the R&B conclusion of the spectrum with Positions. 

Miley Cyrus, Plastic Hearts 

This year I anticipated no record more than I did “Plastic Hearts.” Its leading single, “Midnight Sky,” described by Pitchfork as a “cocaine-dusted disco track,” channels Stevie Nicks’ eighties rock-pop era in the absolute best way. Apparently this opinion was even picked up by Stevie herself, as the two collaborated on a mash-up of “Midnight Sky” and Stevie’s “Edge of Seventeen” (the excitement from which nearly led to my passing away, by the way.) Cyrus’ voice is in the perfect place on this record, with “Plastic Hearts” emphasizing her rasp and making me want to spin around a room. She dips into the pop realm in “Prisoner” with Dua Lipa, a song that Lipa clearly influences with an unforgettably sexy music video. Every song is different on this record: “Gimme What I Want” channels the grinding rock sound of Nine Inch Nails, “Bad Karma” allows Joan Jett’s punchy style to run the show, and she slips on the shoes of Billy Idol in their collaboration, Night Crawling. Somehow, Miley manages to wear the shoes well, and 80s copycat record or not, I can’t stop listening. “Never Be Me” is where she shines most deeply, baring her soul, the complicated nature of her past few years’ journey, and her knowledge of who she is and always will be for the world to hear. I’m not sure if I’m blinded to the album’s flaws by my absolute and complete love for everything about Miley’s current persona, but I am a huge fan. 

Glass Animals, Dreamland

The sound of this album is such a blissful respite! Glass Animals gives us the fun and funky techno-pop that they always do, but dive into personal lyricism in a way that they never have before. Many of the songs actually have a storyline (an intentionally rare feat for Dave Bayley, first broken with the incredible “Agnes” on their last album.) This record explores trauma and pain in “Domestic Bliss” and “It’s All So Incredibly Loud,” Bayley using the soft sides of his voice to express pained desperation. The boisterous energy of the past two records is not forgotten in Dreamland’s intimacy, however: “Hot Sugar,” “Tokyo Drifting,” and “Space Ghost Coast To Coast” do the trick. “Space Ghost Coast To Coast” is the most intriguing song on the record: at first listen, I had absolutely no idea what Dave was discussing and assumed it was just his typical neuroscience-inspired ear-candy. Upon a deeper dive, the song addresses the factors that encouraged Dave’s childhood friend to bring a gun to school. He disguises a discussion of the risk factors involved in school shootings within his flowery, figurative linguistic excellence. This duality of blissful melody and solemn subject matter is the magic of Glass Animals. 

Empress Of, I’m Your Empress Of 

This album is an emotional electro-pop masterpiece. This record meditates on the feelings felt in the wake of a relationship’s end. She begins the album with a quote from her mother about the reality and value of struggle, then launching into a synth-filled storm of missing someone. “Love Is A Drug” is the album’s next fun dance track, addressing the addictive quality of touch after you lose someone you love and embodying the urgency of the feeling. She takes a more somber tone with the influence of Jim-E Stack in “U Give It Up,” incorporating quotes from her mother about the difficulty of womanhood and reminiscing on love lost. In “Should’ve,” the post-relationship regret is palpable in her vocal tone and production, and in “Maybe This Time” she contemplates this pain. In “Give Me Another Chance,” her emotions swing the other way, with a bouncing dance beat and pleading vocals. The album concludes with the heartfelt and pain-filled “Hold Me Like Water” and the dissonant “Awful,” leaving the listener to meditate on the mood swings of a broken relationship. 

Tame Impala, The Slow Rush 

This album came out so early in 2020 that it already feels like a vintage piece of music. Perhaps that was the point. Although “The Slow Rush” had a hard time living up to Kevin Parker’s last epic masterpiece “Currents,” it was the fix many fans like myself needed after five years without an LP. “Borderline,” the single that allowed anticipation of the album to build, stands out as one of the most essentially Parker tracks of the record. He introduces a little Toro y Moi style funk in “Is It True,” and highlights his voice more than usual in “Lost In Yesterday.” “Posthumous Forgiveness” builds in the wonderfully dissonant fashion that fans learned to love through “Eventually.” The bass track on “Glimmer” is so good that I never even noticed it had nearly no lyrics. This record is not groundbreaking by any standards in the way that “Currents” was, but it is intentionally jubilant and energetic in a way that still feels good. Even if he doesn’t shatter any expectations in “The Slow Rush,” Tame Impala’s tracklist still makes the perfect sunset companion. 

Joji, Nectar

Joji’s “Nectar” is just that: sweet R&B nectar, from the minute the first track plays. Joji’s work here is not in the individual tracks, but in the sonic experience he creates with the album as a whole. This is not an album to pick out singles from: it is a full cinematic mood adjustment. Maybe it’s the weed I smoked when I first listened, but the record feels like a wonderful progression of gentle yet rhythmic R&B songs. The transition from the soft and contemplative “MODUS” to the more upbeat trap-infused “Tick Tock” to the full R&B ballad “Daylight” featuring Diplo raises the listener’s energy gradually to a crescendo. “Run” is a gorgeous and sad confessional of disappointment, and “Sanctuary” follows as a soft and uplifting analgesic to that pain. “Pretty Boy” and “777” mark the more upbeat section of the record, filled with Joji’s accounts of living far too fast. The tracks of this record all bleed into each other seamlessly, mixing pain and confidence in an emotional rollercoaster.

Amine, Limbo

My journey to being an Amine fan started with “Caroline,” ended with “Heebiejeebies,” and started back up again when he found depth in “ONEPOINTFIVE.” His 2020 release is exactly why I came around to his music yet again. The record is soulful and fun, with the flute and cocky lyrics in “Woodlawn” and the funky beat and Young Thug feature of “Compensating.” The two songs I absolutely can’t stop listening to however, are “Can’t Decide” and “Becky.” “Can’t Decide” highlights Amine’s singing voice and dips away from rap and trap into the more traditional R&B realm. “Becky” is an intimate account of the difficulties involved with interracial dating, both in public and in the family realm. The two sides of the album, one emphasizing rhythm and immaculate production, and the other lyricism and emotion, are found in these two songs. The punchy “Pressure In My Palms” (featuring slowthai and Vince Staples) and “Riri” round out the record’s light side. In “Limbo,” Amine finds the perfect balance. 

Fleet Foxes, Shore

This album is a wave of calm. Robin Pecknold’s soothing voice is exactly what we needed more of this year. Pitchfork described his mission as “turning anxiety into euphoria,” and that is how this record feels. Each song is dynamic and filled with what makes Fleet Foxes so special. There is a choral quality to the vocals of “Shore,” as always, adding to the calm aura of the record. “A Long Way Past The Past” takes the listener on a what feels like a long walk filled with serious conversation. “Going-to-the-Sun Road,” a song that takes its name from the famous cliffside road through Glacier National Park, oozes sunshine in its Tame Impala-Bon Iver crossover sound. “Cradling Mother, Cradling Woman,” truly feels like being cradled in sound. Fleet Foxes has a knack for beginning songs by hitting the listener with a wall of sound, and that is so perfectly represented in this track. This is a seriously beautiful album. 

Cam, The Otherside

Cam’s voice is irresistible. She showed her talent for sharing painful ballads in her breakthrough single “Burning House,” and in “The Otherside” she digs deeper. She writes this record in a period of change, and captures this change and dissonance in the nostalgia of “Redwood Tree.” She teamed up with Avicii for the title track before he passed away, and it shows. His signature building melodies and guitar breaks are clear, and they go perfectly with the range of Cam’s voice. She truly shows her range in this track and this record in general, from the highs in “The Otherside” and the lows of “Changes.” “Changes” is another standout of the album, co-written by Harry Styles. This record is a gorgeous account of outgrowing love and outgrowing people after the deep bliss that you felt with them in the past. “Till There’s Nothing Left” and “Classic” are the big love songs of the record, one that melts you and one that makes you want to dance in a field of flowers. The sisterly confessional “Diane” pulls Cam back to her country roots. She ends the record with what made her famous: a beautiful, sad ballad backed only by piano. Her unique vocals are on full display as the record concludes, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more. 

Omar Apollo, Apolonio

Omar Apollo had his breakthrough in this record. His work spans languages and genres in a big way in “Apolonio.” “Kamikaze” and “Staybacik” stick to his typical R&B style, better produced than it ever has been. “Dos Uno Nueve (219)” goes a completely different direction, a Mexican corrido track featuring Yellow Room Music, honoring the Latinx musical styles that he expressed admiration for. Apollo also explores his sexuality in this album, fluidly discussing his bisexuality in “Kamikaze” and “I’m Amazing” in an exploratory manner. The whole album is generally quite exploratory, a quality that makes me even more excited for the work that is to come from Apollo. 

Also worth mentioning: 

Diplo, Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley: Snake Oil

Thundercat, It Is What It Is

Sylvan Esso, Free Love

Lauv, ~how i’m feeling~

Niall Horan, Heartbreak Weather 

J Balvin, Colores 

Kelsea Ballerini, kelsea 

Dominic Fike, What Could Possibly Go Wrong

[marta-bee]

Today someone reblogged a really old post of mine and left a tag about how it was impossible to be truly open-minded while still being religious. I don’t remember if I even went into religion in the post --it was about gender roles in Tolkien but beyond that I don’t even remember the specific content so I won’t rule out I delved into Tolkien’s Catholicism-- but even so.  This seems rude.

(Long post is long, but continued under the cut.)

My relationship to religion is profound, but complicated. It’s not an exaggeration to say religion (or at least the mindset it developed in me over the years) has literally saved my life. As in, at one point my life was very difficult for a long time and religion is probably one reason among many -- not the only reason, but certainly significant -- why I didn’t complete suicide. And I get that for a lot of people religion is wrapped up in hatred and homophobia, and I can definitely appreciate how that would dominate how you’re able to relate to religion. Even absent that, I think in a lot of peoples’ experience it’s just irrational and superstitious. And I’m all for discussing religion and making it better, just as I’m all for people who just need to walk away.

But at the same time, I’m also aware that for a lot of people their religion is a part of their identity. I also think it’s much more accurate to say by and large religion reflects human hatred. Where people aren’t religious, they still find a reason to hate each other and hurt each other. Religion is more like a tool -- for some people it’s a good way to build community and internalize tolerant beliefs to the point that they become real, become character; for other people, it emboldens them and gives them the cover and ability to really rip out each others’ throats. Which doesn’t mean all religion is equally good; there are ways of being religious that encourage tolerance and love, and equally ways that equip us with the extra-large flesh-rending claws we seem so ready to use.

But that’s not even the big point. Even if this person was unequivocally right about religion, because of the way Tumblr is structured, this kind of tag gets shoved in the OP’s face; and then everyone that likes it also gets pushed on the OP. The next several days will be full of likes dribbling in where I’ll be left to wonder if they liked hat I said or liked someone saying something I care about had to make you a bad person. I don’t think that’s what any of us signed up for.

Let me put it another way. I once wrote a Johnlockary story involving a pretty risque and not-at-all-Vatican-approved sex scene, while they were reciting a RCC prayer. Mary had been disguised as a French nun before clothing became less than necessary, and they used a rosary to tie up Holmes’s wrists, if memory serves. And the scene was very much about what we consider sacred, what grounds us, what gives us our foundations, and because of the story (and, let’s be honest, the author) it was actually pretty important to explore these themes within the context of religion. If someone had come along and said “The sex scene was hot and I loved what you did with Watson’s character here, but next time lose the prayer. Religion just sucks.”, I’d have been very insulted and I think reasonably so. 

I’m wondering why it’s okay to do this on a meta post or even a personal one, particularly with people who don’t know each other well; and if it’s not okay how we’re to ever reason together about religion. Because closing that off is not ideal, either. Still, to be so dismissive about it, particularly with something that really is a live issue for me, does touch a nerve.

[aceadmiral]

Torrent

[Crossposted to Wordpress]

I've been trying to use my Shut In Time to read this book I've been putting off, but there's something about it that's making it even harder now.

When I read fiction, I don't really visualize it. I don't think it's necessary? The meaning is in the words. If you tell me Character A has black hair, I will certainly keep track of that fact, but I don't consciously draw up a 3D polygon model to keep track of it or what have you.

That said, there must be some background process running in my brain, because trying to read this book--in Italian--I feel blindfolded, unmoored, like I can't quite latch on to the situation, like there are no assumptions I can rest on.

Reflecting on the 6 Feet of spACE livestream yesterday, I find it feeling like a tight passage: there's nothing truly impeding one's motion, there is still enough clearance, but only just. Some parts had more room to breathe while others required more deliberate navigation.

I don't think the hosts and guests noticed the banks, though. I was more and more aware as the stream went on that they were putting assumptions on the shape of the people in the passage, implicitly forwarding an idea of the ideal dimensions of ace (and arospec) people.

There was even a point where I probably could have squeezed through a particularly narrow strait, but I chose not to.

---

I've faced situations like this current Italian book with others before, and to that end, I know that gradually, as I keep reading, the story will become its own context, wrapping up more and more until it is a solid yarn-ball of a yarn.

But I have to dive into that disconcerting period with nothing to grab on to and no sense of up or down first, and right now, it's hard to find the mental elasticity to do so. My river is running pretty high right now, and I'm being pretty conservative in managing the surge.

---

I shouldn't have been asked to attempt that narrow strait. I don't accept that the shores are the shores are the shores.

It wasn't just the one that got me, though. There were plenty of others that were subtle, but that could definitely could have squeezed some people who weren't the right shape. May have squeezed them, but I don't know; I didn't see any reaction to that effect, at least. The thing about passages, though: they've been more constrictive for lots of us in the past, led to us running aground, and so I wonder if people felt the squeeze or if they're inured to it.

There was nothing truly wrong with the stream--there was a path from one end to the other. But it was so Basic.

---

Because of the ambient stress levels, I am also of course reading plenty of things that are easier to digest. In English, under 10,000 words, not particularly interested in anything philosophically or logistically complex. ...Not asking me to pay the normative relationships tariff.

It's not particularly uncommon to have it levied--AVEN tweeted a question about shallow compulsory romances just recently--but where I can find the type of emotional intensity that I want, sex is just mixed in as a matter of course. I've paid this toll for years and years as the "price of doing business," especially through fanfiction, where the tags can at least give me an informed idea of how much it will be.

So seeing a tag like "take your pick of whether they’re bffs or kinda married or in a qpr or banging like a screen door," that's. That's everything.

---

There was a rare moment right at the end of the stream. Most of the guests came back and David Jay spontaneously hopped on and the last thing before getting off, he said he had a question for all of them: What even is a relationship?

It was like. It was like a cold front and a warm front meeting in a tornado. Like two buff (super)men throwing simultaneous punches and when they are evenly matched the environment is forced to yield to the sheer power, inscribing a circle of rubble in the pavement around them. These two schools of asexual thought threw mutually each other into sharper relief than I've seen before

The 700 words preceding this (and the 200 to come) give a pretty clear indication which of the two traditions I adhere to, but in truth I don't think David's question has much substance, an example perhaps of a-sexual onanism. No, it was that it was emotionally satisfying to have such a smoke bomb introduced: his earnestness, his lack of guile.

Aces have a complicated relationship to naïveté because we are so often attacked on those terms. The spirit of the livestream was accepting the terms, so to see David effortlessly and unconsciously disrupt it was restorative.

---

Easy for me to call someone else Basic; a lot harder to justify it.

I don't mean in absolute terms. There were plenty of things both scripted and un- that could stand refinement and broadening of perspective. But morally: my castle is made of sand, too.

I put gender- and sexuality-related topics through my own lenses, and I do think that can yield insight, but my training is in physics and modern languages. I lack the background or breadth to have started from anywhere but zero. Just because I showed up with my pail and shovel years earlier and because I've been architecturally ambitious--of course mine looks cooler.

I think a lot of queer people are showing up to the beach and having a grand time inverting their buckets, sticking on a few shells, and proudly snapping a few shots for the 'gram.

I don't want to take anything away from them, but upending buckets isn't how experienced architects make sandcastles, to say nothing of actual castles.

[perpetuallyfive]

genuine question why do u think asexuality is part of lgbtq

The obnoxious easy answer is probably “because they are” or “because they’ve been here the entire time.” 

Other obnoxious answer: “I don’t think it; I know it.”

All of those things are true, but I’m guessing you’re looking for something more than that.

Hey, this is going to get long.

This is a really, really hard question to answer eloquently because there are a lot of facets you could be coming from with your own questions and uncertainty. I’m going to go ahead and assume you are seriously asking with the best of intentions, since you’re presenting yourself that way, and do my best to answer thoroughly, however inelegant that might end up being.

In a lot of ways I’m not the right person to speak on this topic because I feel like it’s a bit like me talking over people I actually know. Like, frankly, I feel like a lot of people only don’t think ace people are part of the community because they… don’t know any? I’ve known ace people in the community for as long as I’ve been a part of it myself, and that’s a pretty long time. (I’m not actually old old, but I’m tumblr old, you know?)

First of all, we all know that LGBTQ identifying people of all kinds are relatively rare compared to the cis het majority. Ace people are even more rare. In my personal direct experience, ace people who are cis and also heteroromantic are even more rare. Most of the ace people I’ve met who engage directly and frequently with the LGBTQ community are ace aro or ace homoromantic, yet the fixation on policing identity seems to be centered around a minority within an extremely vulnerable minority as somehow being a major “problem.”

I think to an extent this question kind of comes down to how people define their space within the LGBTQ community. I don’t think being a lesbian is primarily about sex and sexual expression, personally. I think that viewpoint is actually kind of homophobic. Like obviously for people who aren’t ace, sexual desire is totally healthy and a part of who they are, but the idea that queer identities are innately sexualized is something the hets put on us. I don’t think we need to make it our primary definition of what makes us a community.

Because what does that say about trans people or non-binary people? It’s pretty obvious that the community is not, centrally, defined by sexual desire, at least as long as we believe trans, non-binary, and gender queer people all have a space alongside us. (These questions of who does and does not belong almost inevitably lead to complicating rules that help to divide and I tend to question the intentions of the people who invest a lot of personal stakes in strictly enforcing who does and does not deserve a space, particularly since a lot of them are eager to accept actually cis het “allies” while seeking to exclude ace people.) 

The community, for a long long time, has been defined, primarily, by separation from the mainstream identification of gender and sexual expression. That’s why it’s not actually about who you’re sleeping with or have ever slept with, and asexuality is pretty fucking far away from mainstream understandings of both gender and sexual expression. It’s so far away that even a lot of queer people have trouble really wrapping our heads around it, because it’s so removed from any cultural context we know. 

I constantly see people saying really flip things like, “oh wow, demi is literally just not having sex until the second date, lots of people do that, you don’t need a special name for it,” which is absolutely not at all what being demi is. But the idea of an actual literal lack of sexual desire, not just abstaining from it or choosing not to act on it, but literally not having it is so removed from how we understand the world. 

An ace friend of mine articulated it really well to me, when I told her I was writing this post actually. This impulse to divide or separate really ignores the reality of how people tend to figure out their gender and sexual identity. Sometimes, sure, it’s clean and easy, and you just know. But that’s not everyone; I don’t think it’s even close to how it works for most people. If you’re someone who thought you were bisexual because you felt equally attracted to both genders and then realize that equal attraction is, in fact, a lack of attraction and you now realize that you’re actually aro ace, do you… have to leave the community you’ve been a part of, that helped you figure out who you are? Are you no longer welcome? And why is that?

I just don’t, personally, understand the impulse to eject or entirely reject. I don’t know who it helps, except for the straight majority. I don’t define my identity as a lesbian, as a queer woman, as being about my oppression. I don’t think that people who grew up in more liberal areas, with an accepting family, are any more or less welcome in the community than people whose experience was more harrowing. I think if you have been force fed an idea about sex and gender from the mainstream that does not align with your own, if you have had to spend time figuring out who you are, and your answer led you to the LGBTQ community, then I’m not sure who I am to say you don’t belong. I don’t have to like everybody’s label, you know, or even everyone who is a part of it.

I’m a lesbian who can’t stand plenty of other lesbians. Why the fuck should I care? I don’t need to invite everyone to a cookout; I’m just also not going to work as hard as I can to help divide and conquer on behalf of the straight majority. I understand that, for a fair number of people, they question or feel confrontational about ace inclusion because of a very personal context and experience. 

I get it. I used to be a biphobic dickhead because of my own personal context and experience. I was closeted and self-loathing and knew a lot of bisexual girls with boyfriends in high school who were out and I resented them, a lot, because their experience with oppression didn’t mirror my own. Instead of getting mad at the systems of oppression, I resented someone else who I thought was getting it easier than I was. We’re conditioned to never actually fully blame the mainstream that we want to eventually be a part of.

But fuck that, honestly. I’m done defining myself and my community primarily through our relationship to pain. I was wrong when I fell for exclusionist impulses, and the new wave of exclusionists are wrong now.

Ace people are a part of the LGBTQ community because almost every argument about why they aren’t sounds like hateful shit straight people would say. 

I’m not interested in acting like I’m a straight loser during pride.

[kiraziwrites]

⭐!

since you’ll like this, a note on Brienne’s gender situation as I’m trying to portray it in Winter Should Have Meaning (in particular, although there are traces of this stuff in my other fics too).

There are a range of canon-plausible takes on Brienne’s relationship to womanhood, femininity, and sexuality, but my personal headcanon leans towards portraying her as affirmatively genderqueer: i.e. someone who chooses and prefers to pursue the masculine-coded dress and behavior associated with the role of knighthood, rather than defaulting to them as a result of rejection (for failing to live up to the standards of normative femininity, like beauty and delicacy and domesticity). I don’t see her as someone who hates or scorns femininity, just as someone who’s never really felt at home in it, at least not according to the way her society imagines womanhood. I think she admires and respects many women who are more traditionally feminine—Catelyn, Sansa, even Margaery—while feeling a sort of bewildered incomprehensibility when she tries to imagine herself playing a similar role. And I think she’s a little bit unsettled by women who perform an exaggerated sort of seductive femininity as a power move (Cersei, obviously, and Daenerys, and also probably Margaery to some extent even if Brienne liked her despite it). Anyway, Helaena exists in this story partly as a catalyst to bring out and complicate some of Brienne’s feelings around gender and sexuality, and to give her a chance to develop a relationship of mutual respect with a woman who’s very different from her in precisely the ways that trigger some of her complicated feelings. (Also, because I’m Still Mad about the show’s depiction of queer women and sex workers and wanted to do some fix-it work there too). I hope it’s done with a reasonable degree of subtlety, but that’s what I’m up to with all that. 

Also, to clarify: I don’t see this headcanon Brienne of mine as necessarily trans or nonbinary (although I’d love to read more explorations of the character along those lines!) but as someone who might identify, if she had the vocabulary for it, as a genderqueer/masculine woman. One way of explaining it might be that her pronouns are she/her, but her title is Ser. Or as she puts it, in chapter 3:

Still, that’s something she’ll always be grateful to Jaime for: the right to finally be addressed in a way that feels correct, that settles on her shoulders as comfortably as a fur-capped Northern cloak, with no discomfiting rasp of lace about it.