#like there is STILL this idea that your queerness is contingent on what kind of relationship you're in and. NO.

[musical-chick-13]

Now that I'm on this, I think one of the big problems I have with just going, "It's queer!" about a piece of media is that it's always, "there is a queer character in a (usually same-gender) romantic relationship" and not "this queer character exists in a major story capacity and is allowed a lot of interesting narrative choices." The implication is usually that what makes a piece of media queer is "a specific kind of romantic relationship" and not "the presence of canonically queer characters."

[incarnateirony]

15.15: The Absent Mother

I’ve had to take a great deal of time to pull my thoughts together on this episode because it was so MUCH. I’ve said in the past that I wasn’t a fan of Davy; he often layered his things very thinly. But today was a masterfully interwoven piece to the point I literally watched another show for an hour while thinking about it, went and took a shower for half an hour to scrub my head clean, and came back to this and STILL sat to write about it.

So if you’re new to my meta, I’m going to break the ice. You need to read my The Generational Family post to dip your toes in. It speaks in plain english things that will be less-plain english in this post.

If you’re less-new to my meta, but often floating in the occult references, I’m going to try to drop links to posts or tag folders of references.

But what a fantastic salute to the Empress this entire episode is.

Now let’s dive in.

It’s no secret my blog bangs on about arcana on the regular. I have spoken of the four colors (represented in the above gif but also frequenting the #hues of involution tag). 

Frankly, I consider it invariable that the brother focused episode will summon forth The Emperor as a key focus. Somewhere in that chaos binder of tags I even predicted that much when I saw the color themes of the episode, but that’s a whole other aside--just something to put a pin in the idea of while I speak of the Empress, and the Generational Family.

(15.16 update: hahahahah)

I’ve gone feral

BACK TO ORIGINAL 15.15 POST

Some time back I had made a post about Castiel’s tie to this path; be that his frequent association with Mary over time (be it storyline parallels in general arc, John and Mary’s meeting, mixtapes or whatever else); that he and Rowena served as mirror and foil from her earliest conception, back when his parental storylines hovered more in regret over Claire; that Amara and her forced bond were associations of the profound bond and many lines directly mirrored while other motions challenged each other (Eg, heart tie, profound bond>mark bond);

I even made a joke at one point that Castiel should wear a pink trenchcoat to match Rowena’s dress.

This, of course, I joked equally was absurd, and that we would probably have to settle for the violet-pink light of Death on both him and Dean in 15.13′s alchemical Marriage of the Minds.

This Marriage of the Minds you’ll find plenty of topic on for my blog, and all in association with the Art arcana, from which the Occultum is drawn to begin with in its concept. This may seem like a long drift aside from the episode itself, but is more a preface of discussion based reminders.

Either way, @meta-mania-spn​ outright trolled in to my trenchcoat joke with this when it was released, saying “here’s your pink trenchcoat.”

And how on point you were!

But I’m going to have to ask fandom to do me a favor before we continue any further in this discussion.

I’m going to need you to stop trying to shove everything in singular boxes applicable to one and only-one storyline. Go back to the Generational Family post. Make sure that’s anchored like, in your subconscious at this point. Know it, feel it. 

Okay, now we can continue.

Hah hah “You’re standing in The Trap zone.” Okay.

So obviously, we have two major story ends going on right now: On the one hand, Sam and Dean go have a discussion to Amara where they plan to lie to her to pull off a stunt against Chuck; on the other hand, we have Castiel and Jack working a case. This seems simple enough in our structure.

Amara’s face of this ends up being entirely reflection. Of her cosmogenic origins (”We are the same.”), We Are Twins (I point to Thoth’s use of the twins in generational storytelling), etc. Of her history with Dean. Of her reasons of bringing Mary back.

Fandom may not like her reasons for bringing Mary back. They may even hate them. And we’ll get back to this later, but this is the sum of this.

On the other hand, Cas and Jack think a demon is involved. They even summon one. Turns out Rowena, in taking over hell, has adopted a new system. No more tricking and damning souls. People end up where they belong. The demon is bored (which has a funny shout out at the end on him trying to find a new purpose--as a cop, which is about six levels of commentary but I digress), but the continued path of Rowena renovating hell from welcome meetings for damned souls to lack of intentionally dragging others down is made clear, while evoked.

I point back to Rowena’s own history: at one point she aspired for power, but after Funeralia, she was stricken with guilt and grief over feeling like she abandoned her son. This is a thread that I have tried to put in videos over time as a still-binding tie; Castiel staring into Belphegor’s husked out eyes at one point, even if it wasn’t really his fault, just as we lost Rowena who went to essentially reclaim her son’s legacy and throne since she couldn’t atone for his loss.

But then we get to the case. It’s a whole long adventure, much of which has some bog-standard casework; we do have Castiel coming to speak that he found new meaning in becoming a parent (rolling back to the parental thread), and there’s a bunch of great imagery we’ll cover below. But before we get to that, let’s focus on the resolution.

It reveals a broken family structure: Mother was sick and felt shoved away, Father Changed Things, and the child ended up on a destructive path about following god.

Now when I talk about not boxing things in on one level, I’m going to break down this family a bit.  We’ll also just totes ignore the Joseph-the-Carpenter tattoo on the pastor that clearly has NOTHING to do with Joseph behind Dean only an episode ago and the entire Emperor theme with the sun behind his head. After the whole Mary behind Cas thing. Nope, nothing to see here. Has NOTHING to do with the generational stuff I’m about to talk below. That’d be silly right?

You also have to think of it this way. If Pastor Joe (yes that’s his FKING name) a parallel, so is his dead wife. There are levels where it was felt she was mocked, and pushed away, which tied into Amara this episode. You have your Chuck and Amara level parallel. However, on the emotional level, the mother figure that Castiel actually ends up representing is also coming due to be absent. And this is about the father's atonement with that just as much as it is with Dean having his dialogue with Amara.

On many levels. Dean and Amara’s dialogue trades of old grudges, old motivations, but also current events and learning to live in the now. 

The child, however, was still stuck in the past--a past the mother who told her to believe in God seemed to want, but the same kind of duty Castiel became aware of needing to change in the past. But she got stuck in it.

While she judged people by their sins, Jack and Castiel end up finding the poor unfortunate man judged by Lust, after an entire aside Castiel had with the pastor about one of the victims struggling as a gay man and what-not; For Reasons(TM). But this is an arcana post, not a “point out the obvious fucking screaming queer text and subtext being put in blinker lights this episode” post, so I’m going to generally show that the misguided and wrathful child thought she was carrying out God’s will.

And then I direct you to my Lust tag.

I have far longer stuff on it, but if you skim, you’ll find the loudest message is about not letting a wrathful god judge or punish you for sins. It involves the Whore of Babylon as a symbol of power riding a beast that represented (Aleister) Crowley; or in this case, Rowena riding Crowley to power, but also birthing and rearranging a new world. I point back to the demon in question, and then I gesture to the stuff about Castiel’s impending storyline overlap.

Did other sins get punished, sure; the one girl got greed, for example. If you check my posts on the Lust topic, there are other forms of debauch actually associated with lust beyond just carnal lovers, but the message about ignoring god’s wrath and making the new world remains in-tact.

This is the kind of wrath enacted by the girl. Who is furious about how the aeon changed. Because you changed everything, dad. They don’t worship God, they worship You.

So here’s the fun question: Is this a child of man furious that man is no longer the true god because Chuck in the corrupted Emperor path has changed the world to his whims, just flipped? That is to say, that they no longer see the Shadow as The One True God? Or is this someone throwing a tantrum on Chuck’s behest that the world of man is being reclaimed? Or is it a generalized moral of all of these things contingent on the choices The Ones -- Sam and Dean -- make moving forward? And what of Jack inevitably feeling like he has to do Dean’s commands, with the task laid out to destroy God as mapped by Death, in the inevitable absence of Castiel?

Now this has drifted a wide-berth from speaking of the Empress herself, which I’ll roll back to. I had mentioned, for example, the pink. So let’s talk about why that is.

The Empress is the Matron. While she goes through many forms, this is sort of the central or individualized one. She represents a fertility in preparing to birth the new world. She holds a blossom, she takes a pose I’m not gonna bother breaking down in this post, and she is crowned in a sphere that is passed to her from the Emperor which she will wear until the next aeon from their union is born.

She is represented by the moon, and though her child will eventually become the new sun it must first be the earth, her emperor is her current sun; the son is the reflection of the father in the eyes of the mother; the Empress Moon lets the Emperor Sun shine on her face and brings life to the earth in their union, and again, I point back to the Marriage of the Minds post.

Now, see that bird in the corner? That’s a pelican. It’s frequently associated in old alchemy as the mother giving her life, as part of the birthing process is also death, for her next generation. I have spoken in the past that Byzantium itself is an ideal example of that. The pelican has intensive alchemical implications, but it was believed she “fed her child from her own heart.”

Okay cool so there’s just a bleeding heart right there while Jack struggles with feeling like he has to deal with this alone, while Castiel tries to insist he doesn’t, with the renegade child taking it upon herself to carry out god’s work and essentially going mad/bad. Castiel not wanting to let that all fall on Jack.

There’s also giant posters about THE WORLD and a mirror shadow Safe Place poster which I’m not even going to talk on much beyond gesturing vaguely at my Shadow tag and Universe tag and move on, but I will take particular note of the hands reaching out to Cas and the world as a vague gesture to once again stick a pin in.

I mean there’s a few other themes I’m going to point out for general notes: hearts everywhere,

Some stuff on Day and Night and hands all over/handholding, which I’ll point to my talk on Absence for false dichotomies

And an admittedly offtopical “lmao fuck this news screen”

But with that, I move forward:

The child here was dressed almost EERILY like Mrs Butters, for the record. And uh-- /wore her cross upside down/

They both kind of represent the same thing of misguided ideals, though Mrs Butters proved able to be reasoned with at the end and went to go return to nature where she belonged, just as man should return to his place some day free of god’s machinations; but she didn’t break her cycle and her fate is to be decided after this by court and what-not, which.. you know, fine.

But that’s a note worth passing re: Mrs Butters, but again, it needs to fall to generational; child vs parent, with Mrs Butters being the lightly lamia-associated elder who lost her sons and went mad trying to protect them according to how she had been commanded, just like this story, too, comes to misguided commands in absence.

Add in of course that Butters pointed out Jack was “too much like his father”. This, of course, was a shot at Lucifer in a way, but the serpent she evoked isn’t truly symbolic of Lucifer in our show, it’s about humanity. And uh, who is synonymous synced to in SPN? Even ignoring the relevance of the serpent to the Emperor? 

Throughout this episode, Jack waltzes around imprinted on habits from Dean, taking on the weight of the world, sacrifice, doing it alone, and inevitably, small bursts of anger.

While... Amara tracks and polka dances sideways across the Mary issue of idealizations vs realities, of the Now being more important than the Then. Fandom gets stuck on how unfair it was to Dean and considers it torture which, human perspective, fair. But Amara isn’t thinking on your human level. In fact she very loudly flags around how Dean (and frankly, the audience) doesn’t properly perceive the scope of what she even is. 

Castiel, driving home, continues to try to be an improved parent. He talks with Jack, and tries to tell him he doesn’t have to do this alone. But Jack is stuck in that rut, and it’s a rut Castiel knows too well. He’s walked these paths and the audience has walked these paths and he can’t let the child handle this alone, though Jack declares it isn’t his choice. Jack has surrendered to what he believes Death commands of him, what the job is.

It’s going to be about choice.

But right now, Jack is too much like his father. And I point back to the Moon, who lets the Sun shine on her face, perceiving the world as a reflection of the Father, of Soul in the eyes of the Mind. This is the path to teach their son to avoid just as much.

Meanwhile, Castiel is punched in the FACE basically by Jack saying not to tell Sam and Dean he’s turning into Soul Bomb Take 2. He doesn’t want to worry them over something he can’t do anything about. Congratulations, Castiel is now living the mirror of Jack knowing the Empty deal and Sam and Dean not being told, and you can SEE the reality of it ALL slam him in the face. Not just because Jack blowing up would negate the point of his sacrifice; I don’t know if that even really plinks his mental armor; but the actual magnitude of that kind of secret.

Burying my clown brain’s fierce desire to talk at length of small details like Cas opting not to wake Dean up in the room, we see a recursion-yet-subversion at the end. 

We cut off, here, abruptly. In context of the episode, we know Castiel has at least learned one lesson and is going to try to tell Dean about his deal. But on some level, this all enmeshes thoroughly to Castiel’s Empty deal. Do I think Cas is going to tell the Empty deal in 16? No, I’m gonna guess on some level Sam gets his hands on it around 17 maybe, or nobody at all finds out--or at least Dean himself doesn’t find out--until 18.

In that time they *still* will not have stopped Chuck, that won’t be until 19. So I really wish this arm flailing about “oh god they’re making it all about Cas saving Jack and then dropping it!” would stop because man guys, I’m tired, I’ve been writing you the roadmap on this for two years and haven’t failed yet, pls listen.

Even after episode 18, Castiel’s role is inevitably going to be to take the burden from Jack. ...And Dean will too, but you won’t really even start to wrap your heads around the how and the why until at *least* 16 covers the Emperor path better in scale of the generational family. That’s going to be a joint thing.

Yes, I’m saying that’s going to be a joint thing after the Empty.

The show has taken a highlighter repeatedly to the fact that Jack was neither ready to rule or remove Chuck and that it was all a bad idea. Like “Then who?!” yes HMMM WHO. 

Who is sitting here following the path of all of these individuals in this very episode? Do I need to gesture people to literal years of Castiel being associated with every one of these women’s central stories in my meta, make everyone read literal compendiums of it to get the where and why, or is it at least enough in the collective subconscious to be recognized?

What is Rowena doing? What is Rowena doing, right now? She unbirthed an entire realm and is restructuring it; where people go only where they deserve to go, where they aren’t as boxed in but certainly aren’t out there being shitheads for the sake of being shitheads. But man, if only there was SOME ONE ELSE lined up on this whole lunar path, somewhere, with these women.

(For more on the blossom, see my Albedo tag)

For the full context and, frankly, mental breakdowns about 15.13 and what all that amounted to, I point you to the tags I linked above in discussion and lead-in to this post, because I’m not going to re-tread that ground right now.

But Castiel’s deal has always been about saving Jack. Castiel has been the Empress all year and before it. He will continue to be the empress, symbolized as feeding her young from her own heart, and--well, like that above gif (and also like 15.09, but with Sam in that generational rotation), receiving the sphere from the Emperor (Dean) and passing it to the new aeon to be reborn. Jack is the new Aeon. the mother will protect this at any cost.

But I don’t know why fandom pole vaults into assuming then that the Emperor suddenly has no place in this fascinatingly interwoven play. They are part of this cooperative birthing process together. Even in and beyond Death. As it is, there’s parts of Jack’s resignation that will inevitably tie to Castiel with Dean in 18.

As always, the case is a warning tale, but just what side of it you take really depends on where the characters choose to step. Is it a warning of man stepping away from god or god changing the rules on man? 

Even Amara’s message is multifaceted: Knowing when to walk away on your own path is not the same as betraying someone. And it’s only going to be by Dean’s manipulation that she would consider it, while he is in fact lying to her; but that’s NOT going to come without a long term price. And frankly, is itself a message for the endgame of this show, with some people thinking taking ones’ own path is tantamount to betrayal. It is not. But what matters it the truth. And the choice. And remembering that we all have a choice.

And what of Cas, after the Empty then?

My soul went to heaven, big surprise.

In order to be in the Occultum, the Occultum must be in you.

To know what he, himself, is also worth, Castiel will have to make that place within himself. And that will also be the place for his child, and his family, and humankind as he has come to adopt as his people.

...But there was a two step phase to that spell and I remind you Rowena wasn’t alone in that image.

The pink of fertile rebirth.

For more on the Empress, click here. 

Anyway

#CASTIELSUTERUS2020

[jaynovz]

tell us more abt the hannibal and black sails parallels pls

Okay, first off, I am so sorry this took so long!! I’ve been moving and shit has been so busy.

Second, yay!! This question. Now I have an excuse to ramble.

Okay so, the two shows do have a lot of similarities. The big one you notice right off the bat is that both have an extremely codependent relationship at the center. 

There are a ton of ways the Flint-Silver and Hannibal-Will relationships parallel, like, they both talk about melding minds with another person, being monstrous, reveling in being monstrous, being made complete by an unlikely source, personas/playing roles/person suits, knowing yourself more completely next to another person, darkness as a source of freedom, something beyond choice/being drawn inexorably into a person’s destructive orbit and being forever changed by it. They deal with the nature of truth, both have supernatural elements, both have religious imagery connected to one half of the ship (Flint and Hannibal both compared to god). 

Also, both shows end with an impossible choice and, ostensibly, tragedy; and they both have open endings that are interpretable based on what you want to believe. 

But at a certain point, the similarities end and the two shows veer off from each other. Namely, the dynamics between the two ships are fundamentally different in a lot of ways, and it's more interesting to look at the ways in which they don't parallel. At the end of the day, the biggest one is that Silverflint is not anywhere near as destructive, whereas for Hannigram, mutual self-destruction is sort of the name of the game. Silverflint may be as codependent but I think the important addition of either Madi or Thomas or (ideally) both, helps make the relationship a lot healthier. If they would actually just talk to each other and work some shit out, it could be great. This is of course contingent on whether you think one or the other could compromise. (The compromise being that they come to some middle ground between Flint giving up the big picture Cause for personal happiness, or Silver throwing in genuinely with the idea of revolution and it being worth the risk of the people most important to him.) The end tragedy of Black Sails sets us in a spot where it doesn’t seem like either Flint or Silver are willing to do so, but perhaps one or the other could grow and change (with helpful mediation, as stated.)

Whereas Hannigram, well. It’s rooted from the very beginning in gaslighting, manipulation, and a completely skewed power balance. It’s absolutely like, this person has done so much bad shit to you, they’ve killed people you love, they’ve sent people to kill you, they’ve lied to you, isolated you, made you fundamentally doubt what kind of person you are etc. But still, you literally can’t cut them out of your life because nothing is ever going to compare to the experience of having them around even if it’s, most often, largely a negative influence. Like, damn. So dark, so unhealthy. They’re the zero-sum game. 

For Will it’s: you love this terrible, terrible thing and you hate yourself for loving it, but also can’t deny it and it makes you feel alive. And for Hannibal, Will’s really the only person who can understand and accept him, but also is uniquely positioned to be able to lie to him, manipulate him in return, and be his utter ruin. They both tried to cut each other out and it didn’t work. So, can’t live with him and can’t live without him. That’s why we end with a cliff dive (impossible choice), Will can’t abide the thought that this thing that is objectively terrible, this ugly thing, is the thing he wants desperately, but he also can’t give it up. So it’s like, “let me try to do my last little bit to society by throwing both our asses off of this cliff b/c we’re both terrible.” Will is so interesting b/c he is at all times living in both the dark and the light and has trouble reconciling these opposing drives. It’s a function of his magic empathy.

(I think they’re metaphorical cliffs also b/c like.... there are no cliffs in Maryland jsyk. What is it with these shows that I like and Metaphorical Cliffs. Edit: I have been corrected there are some cliffs in Maryland but they're not as absurdly high as the ones in Hannibal.)

Anyway, let’s do the one-to-one and talk about Empathy and my Mirrorball boys first. Silver and Will are both extremely good at reading people, seeing what they most need to be, and shapeshifting into it. They both have the ability to shrug on different personas as easy as changing clothes. HOWEVER, the way in which they view this ability is very different. For Will, it’s a curse, he literally cannot turn it off, can’t stop himself from doing it, and it torments him. And I think for Silver, he also does it unconsciously and can’t help himself, but it’s not a torment in the same way. It’s rooted in survival and is an acquired skill that a very intelligent mind learned in order to stay alive. Though I would say they could commiserate on their mirrorball tendencies getting them into trouble/in over their heads.

As for Flint and Hannibal parallels? Well Hannibal is the unrepentant monster who revels in wickedness and largely views the rest of humanity as inferior. He’s having an absolutely excellent time murdering and cannibalizing folks, and the only real thorn in his side is Will Graham and his inability to kill Will b/c Hannibal loves him. 

I think Hannibal is the absolute beast that Flint fears himself to be. And though both are presented as the “destructive orbit” or “intoxicating presence” and both perpetrate great violence... well they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as how they view those behaviors. Flint is drowning in guilt constantly, hates that he has to be this monster, the persona of the dread pirate Captain, and that he’s losing more and more of his humanity every time he does some heinous shit. Whereas Hannibal is a “happy little duckling,” literally feels zero guilt about his heinous acts. Hannibal’s playacting a real man in a lot of ways while Flint is playacting a monster. So, Flint wears a monster suit and Hannibal wears a person suit.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The way they use supernatural elements, the way characters embed multiple meanings in subtextual dialogue, how well quotes from Silverflint can transfer to Hannigram and vice versa. Oh the way each show deals with like, queer issues, disability issues. etc etc ad infinitum

But I’ll let this be it for now, lol. If you wanna hear me ramble more, let me know~

THANKS AGAIN FOR ASKING. 

[hoe-doroki]

Alright, friends, your local demi is going to take one last bow before ace week is up.

I’m going to talk about myself, because I the lived experience of ace and acespec people isn’t talked about enough and, well, this is the week to talk about it!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bring in a good ol’ frame of reference:

78% pure. For those who don’t know this is the rice purity test, where high scores mean you haven’t participated in many “racy” activities and low scores mean you have.

First, let’s state that I don’t want to put too much stock on this test. Only 3/4 of the questions are about sex and dating while the remaining 1/4 is about alcohol, drugs, and illegal activity. (Part of the reason my score is so high is because I, unrelated to being acespec, don’t drink or smoke.) But, like I said, it’s a place to start.

Stats. I’m a 24-year-old woman. I am cisgender, straight, and demisexual/demiromantic (not asexual or aromantic). I have never had a boyfriend, I have never enjoyed kissing, I have never had sex.

Oof, and right away, I’m embarrassed saying that.

And that’s the whole problem.

(This post clocks in at ~1.6k, so the rest is under the cut. Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.)

Well, not my whole problem, haha, but it is why I’m bothering to talk about this instead of keeping it secret, like I prefer to. I want to dispel some myths that harm the way I view myself and keep me from being honest with others. Because I fear that when people look at me and hear “24-year-old virgin” they assume things about me that just aren’t true.

First thing’s first. The fact that I’m a virgin means nothing except that I have not had sexual intercourse with another person. There are no other assumptions to be made.

It hurts when people are surprised by this. I happen to fall mostly into the barbed categories of American conventional attractiveness, so when people hear that I have never had a boyfriend or that I’m a virgin, they assume there’s something wrong with me. Or that past men I’ve been around have missed an opportunity or something.

This is shitty on two levels. One, the assumption that my stats are the way they are because of some failure sucks. All it should be is a reflection of my agency and the fact that I am the queen of saying no. (In fact, it was my first word.) But then people are assuaged by the fact that I have, in fact, been approached for sex, as though that confirms for them the value that they assumed I had. As though that’s where any of my worth should be coming from.

Two, these assumptions, when flipped, imply that it would “make sense” for me to have my stats if I looked different or was less neurotypical.

Media--as it does--has played a role in these assumptions. I think about the characters who are “later-in-life virgins” and I think of Emma Pillsberry from Glee, who deals with extreme OCD and germophobia. Or Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory, the former of whom might very well be acespec and is likely on the autism spectrum as well, but who is shown to be very antisocial with many difficulties forming interpersonal relationships and the latter of whom comes from a very conservative family and a mother who ensured she couldn’t learn social skills until well into her thirties. Or the “what if” episode of Friends that basically asserts that Monica would have been too fat to get laid. Or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I don’t wish to talk about. (Oof, all such problematic examples)

And yes, these characters are all white (I am not) and that’s a discussion for another post better made by someone who is more of a media expert than me.

These characters are all portrayed to have something that “explains” why they haven’t yet had the privilege of having sex. And we see in movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or a whole host of teen movies, that virginity is something to conquer--especially for male characters.

I don’t look how people expect virginity to look. I’ll be real--I have high self esteem. I think I’m awesome inside and out and I don’t see any reason why I should be shy about that. I know that if I wanted to have sex with a stranger, I could do it tonight (covid notwithstanding--be safe, friends).

And even if I were a different person who had less self confidence or looked different or came from a different background, that wouldn’t mean that I “deserve” to be a virgin or whatever it is media is telling us. Virginity still wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the other things that make up a person.

So, louder for the people in the back: being a virgin doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.

Next point. Being a virgin doesn’t mean that I’m innocent, a prude, or that I’m “waiting for marriage.”

Gosh, I’ve been asked if I’m waiting for marriage too many times. Two things. 1. No. I’d rather know my sexual compatibility with a partner before marriage and 2. I’m an atheist. So no.

Also, I am not innocent or a prude.

My lack of experience makes me feel infantilized. It does. That’s a personal issue of mine and, ya’ll, I don’t have many answers for how to overcome it. But I have done what I can to change that.

Guys, some of the best choices I’ve made in my adulthood are the things I’ve done to reclaim my sexuality (meaning sexualness not orientation) for myself. Not gonna get super nsfw here, but I’ve invested in about a dozen sex toys and I intend to buy more. They always makes me feel so much more adult and sexy. And I’ve done things with them that I feel pretty confident that many of my sexually active, allosexual friends haven’t done. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone acespec, but it helps me reclaim my worth as a sexual being, without needing a partner to validate that.

I’m also fully valid to write erotica! I love erotica and it’s another way I take back my sexuality. It is just as valid for me to write as it is for anyone else. I am capable of research--both on my own body and from resources, experts, and classes. I don’t need to have had sex for my opinion to matter.

Oh, and being acespec has nothing to do with my sex drive. It seems that I have a libido that is either average or slightly above average--I’m also a person that the more I’m engaging with my libido, the higher it gets.

This often feels like a curse. I, unlike many, but not all, acespec people, strongly desire sex. Like, I’ve bundled up a 35-pound weighted blanket on top of myself whilst engaging in self-pleasure just to try and make the activity feel more partnered (pro tip: that didn’t work.) The truth is that I’m really sick of having to take care of my libido by myself and would much rather have a partner.

But it’s not easy.

I’ve tried online dating, guys. Many times. I can’t do it. That’s not true of all acespec individuals, but it is for me, at least right now. For me, my demisexuality means that the idea and experience of going out, even on a casual date, with someone I’m not already interested in is nearly intolerable. And my current lifestyle, for many reasons, doesn’t lend itself well to me naturally forming crushes.

I’ve only had one major crush in my life. And it was 10 years ago. So you understand the difficulty.

I hate being demisexual, guys. I do. I wish that I could write this post with the intent of spreading pride and positivity, but I can’t. That’s not where I’m truthfully at yet. I’m lonely to the point of suicidal ideation. I’m too young for it, but I’m already making contingency plans for freezing my eggs or trying to imagine a future where I could be a single mother and...I can’t yet reconcile it. I know that part of this is my dreams being created in society’s image, but all I’ve ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. And it’s hard to see that future when I can only look at my past and see images of silicone and sexual repulsion.

Remember when I said I’ve never enjoyed kissing? I’ve had more stage kisses than “real” kisses and, I have to say, the staged ones were more enjoyable because at least I wasn’t forcing myself to do them. Forcing myself to try to kiss someone so that I could feel “normal.” Forcing myself to kiss someone just because I was curious about what it was other people were talking about. My first “real” kiss was at 20 years old and it was a night where I forced myself to do a lot of things for the sake of catching up with my peers and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with that experience ever since, and I can only be grateful that I stopped it as early in the evening as I did.

Everyone’s experience is so different, ya’ll. I haven’t heard a story like mine before, so in no way can I claim it to be an experience that widely represents demisexuality. It certainly doesn’t represent asexuality, nor how queerness (or many other things) intersects with either of those things.

But, at the same time, I’ve never heard a story like mine before. Do you know how helpful it would have been to have been able to see a story like this a few years ago? Ten years ago? It would have been life changing. Because even though, in the middle of all that self-confidence I spouted off about paragraphs ago, there’s this kernel of self-hatred stuck in my teeth, I would have felt validated. I would have felt seen. I would have been able to DM someone who could have told me, hey, it hurts and I know no one seems to understand you, but I do.

That’s to say, if anyone is going through something similar and wants to talk about it, my DMs are always open. I’m no expert, and I bet some of the things I’ve said here aren’t going to hit some people right, but this is my experience. This is the most intimate part of my life. It is a privilege that I’m sharing this with you all, so please, hold it with care. I hope this means something to someone.

Happy ace week, ya’ll.

Oh, and the rice purity test doesn’t mean shit. It’s good fun if you want, but if it makes you feel any kind of way because your number is too low or too high, throw it away. That’s not where any part of your value comes from.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Teen Wolf full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

82% (eighty-two of one hundred).

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

35.07%

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

Twenty-eight.

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

Seven.

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

Two.

Positive Content Status:

Impressive and uplifting: it’s a show aimed at teens and young adults, and it recognises and takes full responsibility for representing a positive and progressive outlook to its audience. It’s a show full of complex, powerful, smart, skilled, wonderful, diverse female characters, and male characters who are emotional and vulnerable and honest and supportive with one another without judgment, and queer people living openly and happily without fear. I have had relatively minor quibbles, and I wouldn’t call it perfect representation, but it is easily the strongest example I currently have of the kind of positive representation I value (average rating of 3.18).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

Tough call, but season six part one edges out the competition by virtue of the highest percentage of female characters for the series (42.52%), which helps it to also score six episodes with 40%+ and three with their casts balanced or female-led at 50%+. It also turned in a 90% pass on the Bechdel.

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Season two, which featured both of the series’ under-20% female cast episodes, and turned in a total percentage of 26.5%, with only 58.3% on the Bechdel. It’s saving grace: the second-highest positive representation score of the series (3.41).

Overall Series Quality:

An absolute delight, end to end. It’s outrageous, it’s bombastic, it is, at times, ridiculous. But it embraces this about itself, it owns it and loves it and revels in it, and it maintains itself with remarkable consistency and never shows any sign of being embarrassed to be just exactly what it is. In a way, that’s another point in favour of the positive message it sends to its audience; there’s no reason to consider Teen Wolf a guilty pleasure, something to hesitate or equivocate before admitting your enjoyment, for it never hesitates or equivocates about itself. It’s an honest and uncomplicated kind of pleasure, and I, unabashedly, love it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

“You’re not a monster,” Scott declares, at the triumphant conclusion of the Teen Wolf series finale, “you’re a werewolf. Like me.” It’s a reiteration of the same line he uttered to his new beta, Liam, back in season four, and it’s a thoroughly earned mission statement for the show, a declaration that being different is ok, even if others have made you feel like an outcast for it, even if it’s difficult, even if it hurts. The way you are is ok, you have value as you are, and you are not alone. It’s easy to be cynical about that if it isn’t a message you personally need to hear, but for the youths in Teen Wolf’s target audience - especially the large queer contingent - it’s a crystal-clear affirmation that could not be more important, and not one made lightly. After all, it’s easy to make statements that sound glossy and progressive, but if you want people to really take it to heart, you have to earn it. Don’t just say it; demonstrate it. Whatever else you might think of this silly schlocky show, it didn’t just walk the walk with its representation: it strode out with pride. 

With a show that performed so admirably, it’s hard to know what to discuss in summary: the female characters really are so varied and wondrous, so complex and realistically flawed and none of them ever shamed for being different to the rest (because different is ok). The male characters really are so refreshingly low on toxic masculinity, or alternately, they have the limitations and the damage of toxic masculinity so thoroughly exposed through their narrative arcs that there’s no question about the show promoting emotionally healthy openness as a masculine ideal. The queer characters really are so numerous and loved and never made to suffer for their identities (though, if one is quibbling, there was certainly a preponderance of queer males compared to a pretty limited supply of queer females, and don’t think I forgot how they teased us with the idea of queer Stiles early on but never canonically delivered). At the end of the day though, I have discussed the above all over the individual episode/season posts, and what I really want to talk about now is how well they packaged their lesson of diverse acceptance for a young audience, because that target intention is where the show’s progressive ethos really shone.

Not all teen-targeted shows take it upon themselves to teach good morals, and to suggest that they should can come off as infantalising; as if young adults are still children, needing to be taught fundamental behaviours. Setting aside the fact that in some cases they really, really do need that (otherwise they become maladjusted adults who still really, really need those lessons on fundamental behaviours such as accepting other people for being different, et al.), the result of either option is often a bit of a disaster: you get teen shows that ignore their moral responsibility and consequently teach/reinforce incredibly damaging and even dangerous ways of thinking, or you get teen shows that treat their audience like morons while preaching in an embarrassingly out-of-touch fashion. For this reason, I have rarely enjoyed shows targeted at young adult audiences (even when I was part of that demographic) and I normally avoid such programming. As such, I am not a connoisseur of teen shows, but of the ones I have indulged Teen Wolf is absolutely the standout, not only for just getting me on pretty much every socio-political and entertainment level available, but for the attitude it takes toward that aforementioned target audience: specifically, how very in-tune it is with the way the demographic thinks and acts.

Whether a bad teen-targeted show is of the morally-irresponsible kind or the morally-preachy kind, the core problem is the same: they promote shame. It might be shame in the form of peer pressure, encouraging wild, foolish, and inconsiderate behaviour because ‘that’s what teens are like’ and making their young impressionable audience feel like weird losers if they don’t mirror the actions and attitudes depicted on their favourite shows, or it might be shame in the form of heavy-handed judgment, the idea that any experimentation or pushing at the borders of authority are absolutely BAD AWFUL things that only BAD AWFUL people do. For Teen Wolf, being in-tune with the audience means understanding that there are certain things that teenagers are extremely likely to do regardless of whether they have permission, and approaching those things as part of the audience’s reality within that spirit of understanding, focusing not on shame but rather on promoting positive and responsible behaviour. It’s really not rocket science, but somehow it’s still a wonderful anomaly. Instead of depicting teen sex as a taboo or a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t world full of dirty sluts and naive virgins, Teen Wolf is sex positive, even-handed across the spectrum of sexual activity and promoting enthusiastic consent and open discussion of boundaries. Instead of depicting teen drinking as either the worst of crimes or a guaranteed gateway to regrettable actions or something you just gotta do in order to have fun and fit in, Teen Wolf encourages making your own decisions for your own reasons, and watching out for your friends to make sure everyone gets home safe. It certainly doesn’t depict a conflict-free world where no one ever makes a bad choice or does anything stupid or selfish; it just doesn’t approach normal human behaviour with an air of judgment. There’s just no shame.

What makes this really significant is that it’s part and parcel of the whole acceptance ethos: it’s not just werewolf metaphors or telling kids that gay is ok. In order to really craft a message about not feeling ashamed to be who you are and how you are, you need to let the message touch all parts of the story, and all parts of the character’s lives, not just the big obvious points of contention. It’s a great way to be morally responsible with your impressionable audience without getting preachy and trying to tell them how to live: just encourage them to be considerate and wise about their choices by showing them how it’s beneficial for everyone, demonstrate, don’t just tell. Not rocket science at all. The other thing is that it really doesn’t need to be thought of as a ‘lesson’ at all; it’s just people being depicted in a non-judgmental fashion as they try their best to do the right thing in whatever situations they encounter. Sometimes they mess up, and sometimes they repeat mistakes, and sometimes they get overwhelmed, but they’re trying and they’re growing as people, and that’s the best you can ask of anyone, whether they’re supernatural teenagers on a tv show or not. Really, it’d be nice if more entertainment media spared a thought to reinforcing fundamental moral principles in their everyday content, because the world sure as Hell is full of maladjusted adults who are still absorbing and entrenching bad attitudes normalised in their television consumption. There’s no reason we should only expect this level of attentiveness from stories aimed at young people. That said, if this show were not targeted at young adults, it probably also wouldn’t be as good, because the reality is that the majority of ‘grown-up’ programming makes little to no effort to challenge the perceived social status quo. We’re probably lucky they kept the teen part of Teen Wolf when they adapted this story for television (the original 1985 film of the same name is NOT progressive or accepting, and I can’t recommend it - the show kept mercifully little beyond the basic idea of a teenage werewolf).

What Teen Wolf has done - and certainly not by accident - is create an entertaining safe space. For all that Beacon Hills is full of supernatural horror and grisly murders and nightmare fuel and sometimes, straight-up Nazi ideology, on an individual personal level it is a place without shame, a place where even when the characters feel backed into a corner with no good options, we can see that they have support, they have friends and family and slightly-nutty lacrosse coaches who have got their backs in a crisis, they have intelligence and skills and the hard-won knowledge of experience that will help them find a way; there is always an element of virtue shining within every moment. They still feel desperate sometimes, and hopeless, and alone. There are still a lot of bad things in their world, and sometimes that stuff is too big and too terrifying to bear, and the real world is like that too. You don’t have to be a teenager - or a werewolf - for that struggle to resonate, and you certainly don’t have to be either of those things in order to value a fiction in which being judged, marginalised, or mistreated for being the way you are is not a concern you have to add to your roster of ills. There are plenty enough terrible things in the world still, and sometimes what we really need is a little space to believe that there’s some inherent good left, too. Even if no problem is ever completely fixed, even if there will always be hate and evil and horror out there, waiting. You are valuable as you are, and someone’s gonna have your back. 

This is exactly the context in which Scott utters that final triumphant line “You’re not a monster, you’re a werewolf. Like me”, echoing that same thing he told Liam when he was miserable and afraid of what he had become and what it would mean for his life. It’s a sentiment that Scott earned from his own misery, his own fear, his own battle with having his life upended irreparably against his will. Scott is being for the new generation what no one was for him; he’s taking his hardships and forging them into a lifeline for those who come after, so that they don’t have to struggle as hard as he did. He’s doing better, one step, one person at a time. The parallel there isn’t hard to draw; the affirmation can’t get any clearer. You can’t have real representation - on any level - if you don’t have unconditional acceptance, and you can’t have unconditional acceptance if you don’t let the demonstration of it permeate your narrative. You can’t just say it. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. Unlikely as it might seem, schlocky and silly as this show was with its Steampunk doctors and Demon wolves and mountain aaaaassshhh, it was also a show dedicated to demonstrating - in varied and delightful detail - the kind of young people it hoped to be reflecting as they stepped out into adulthood. It’s easy to be cynical about that, but it isn’t useful, and there’s a kind of shame wrapped up in cynicism. Teen Wolf, to its utmost credit, was always far too busy embracing its own quirks to ever let cynicism in. I miss it already.

[bootlegvajrayana-blog]

Journaling

Last year: The visitation of Dakinis through my body, in the form of Yumi; that crazy witch! who haunts and loves me still in the aftermath of her blazing wisdom... ...of course, there is not exactly a ‘me’ left --> rather, there are memories and re-memberings, a sense of the aggregates of  Form (this body) Sensation, Perception,  Volition and Consciousness having become heaped upon with the karmic con-sequences of the sequential cons of karma.

The bliss of Samsara was exactly Awakening...

Now, there is a sense of my non-binary Being as a ‘stable’ sense of knowing, and of course this is exactly non-binary with confusion, with vacillation ‘between’ an ‘existing’ binary which needs neither navigation nor dissolution since it is already empty and not in the least bit located as Real, not in the least! *** After reading Jaron Lanier’s brilliant “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” I finally went ahead and deleted my account last night. So technically, today, Monday 18th June 2018 would be Day 1 of being off of Facebook. Admittedly, I am struggling a bit more with the idea of getting off of Instagram; I had already been, for some time, weaning myself off of dependency on Facebook, though it lingered in the background as a place for my voyeurism (and as a catalyst for generalised chronic social anxiety; not because I thought others had it ‘better than me’ or whatever, but only in terms of encountering the Samsaric omnipresence of rage, and wounded resentments of my already multiply-marginalised friends... I was and am no longer convinced that it was healthy for my mental health OR for our longer term political survival, despite the clearly GREAT things about the medium (e.g. that the disparate rag tag group of us might be aggregated as a network of ‘friends’ in the virtual-ised safe space of my Newsfeed and/or particular Facebook groups).  Lanier’s point in his book on why we should delete our social media accounts boils down essentially to the argument that, in their existing form (particularly platforms like Facebook and Instagram), it is a zero sum game. Their business model is based off of mysterious algorithms that intend to keep their users hooked by fine-tuning our dopaminergic responses to what is shown on our feeds, while maximising the likelihood that we will click on advertising links that cater specifically to the triggered insecurities in ourselves. Given such a model, what has happened is the dangling of the carrot of ‘connectivity’ and ‘friendship’ and for that matter, the promise of popularity, a throng of fans supporting our own righteous causes, etc., while at the same time all of this being foundationally contingent on our giving our consent to being psychopolitically manipulated to remain on their platforms. Now of course, we can argue that this is no different from any other for-profit business. With one caveat: In the case of Facebook and Instagram, because of the nature of the technology, this necessarily selects not only for that which will give us the most instant pleasure, but also that which gives us the most anxiety; after all, it is the most outrageous kinds of things that will be most likely to elicit a click-bait kind of response; as a result, Truth is compromised, and knee-jerk paranoid reactivities are prioritised in terms of what ultimately gets shown through all our scrolls through...  Of course, I am writing here as a racialised queer person (as a 3rd culture kid of MalaysianChineseAustralian heritage) who was networked disproportionately with other folks who experience multiple interstices of oppression; The medium is the message --> In addition to already living challenging everyday experiences, Facebook exacerbates this by normalising a kind of ‘discourse’ in which the loudest, brashest, and most extremist forms of polemic, including of those on ‘our side’ are disproportionately represented on my feed... even if it is only to trigger my emphatically reactive disagreement ... This in itself is a ludicrous manipulation of our tendencies to ethnocentrism... *** In choosing to quit Facebook, I was not and am not intending to make a comment about its being ‘all bad’; I am genuinely scared and grieving some of the aspects of what was possible for me in communication and creativity as a result of my using Facebook (e.g. instant-shares and feedback around poetry, political thoughts, etc.) that I am unlikely to find any easy replacement for. Additionally, I am aware that professional opportunities have come my way in the past because of connections through Facebook, that will now likely diminish as I have chosen this particular bridge to burn as I consider my next steps in how I want to relate more healthfully in my own constructions of truth and meaningness... The mandala of my FriendList, already meticulously parsed out according to whether I would be comfortable outing myself as trans/non-binary/femme to them as particular individuals, or whether we shared religious proclivities, whether they were people of colour like me, etc. had become unwieldly, insofar as I noticed that I was spending more of my time giving my creative and intellectual labour away on Facebook for free (self-justifying this as being about the generativity of intrinsic motivation) than I was focussing on connecting with friends in real life, and outside of the quiet safety of my own home as I have been managing a ‘social transition’ (of my gender identity ... largely, in other words, in my own head, and mediated through the gazes of those who saw me as filtered through the internet).

I have chosen to quit Facebook, because I think, in part, I would like to figure out what it might mean to go through my transition without being further influenced by those particular algorithms which root any kind of egoic investment in the conditions of anxiety, precarity, and only illusory solidarities with ‘frenemies’ who seem more eager to tear down what is disagreed with, than to lift up what is good and offer constructive feedback for what might be improved... * To be clear, I do not think that these habits are inherent in the particular individuals who may have indulged most in this kind of rhetorical battling... Facebook itself has normalised a culture of paranoia in which perfectly rational actors are, in fact, perfectly rational by operating from a baseline of battle, poised for war. After all, when it looks like hundreds of real people are espousing vile opinions and perspectives that cause genuine harm to those who encounter them, it does take a kind of heroism to speak out and speak back, and shut it down as quickly as we can... right? ...Not if, of course, in the first instance, those hundreds of horrible perspectives are actually just amplifications of pre-existing tendencies, tendencies that may themselves find their way into the habits of those on ‘our side’ ... I found myself balking at the extent to which perfectly good people, ‘friends’ (i.e. colleagues, ex-colleagues, wider-networked folks, friends of friends, etc.) wounded by the pathos of imperialism, colonisation, racism, cishetpatriarchy and so on, started to engage in the very behaviours that we denounced in our political opponents: --> Bullying --> Exaggerated polemics --> Outright lying (i.e. making up ‘facts’ that are not facts)  --> Refusing accountability --> Tearing down those who try --> Calling on friends for money and business and then refusing accountability for exploitative practice I realised soon enough that there was no way any of this could be remedied through the medium ... It was the medium itself that was rewarding this --> After all, even if none of us genuinely like this, the culture of fear and paranoia it engenders creates a wolf-pack kind of situation, where it is the pile ons, the likes and the dislikes, the drama created, etc. that feeds Facebook its money, while those of us whose lives and mental health have been stirred up in addiction to the use of the platform itself are being mined for our habits of use (I am more likely to remain on Facebook if I am still-stuck angry with some shit-poster, for example, than I am if everything was already-resolved and I was already-happy with my life), and then being subjected to more and more information that would be targeted to trigger us in our (otherwise justifiable) angers and passions. *** I am only now beginning to realise how fucked up I have become from having spent so much time in my young adult life being molded by these terrible logics under neoliberalism. The paradox of capitalism, in this sense, is that I cannot now deny any of the good things that came from my use! I learned new vocabularies, was exposed to new perspectives, etc. etc. At the same time, I am now committed to engendering new ways of relating to others in my life, including investing more deeply in fewer friendships, so that I can be far less lonely and angry than I have been, and perhaps so I can stop viewing any potential friend from the perspective of how quickly I can tear them apart for something wrong they’ve done, and perhaps instead look them in the eye and allow my heart to melt a little bit before offering loving kindness that bolsters all of our humanity, in the service of a healing that is desperately needed, in this age of fascist precarities. 

[pixelatedlenses]

It’s that time of year again to talk about the Elephant in the Room: recontracting. 

I thought that this might give some insight to all new potential ALTs, and might show my process of deciding on my contract status for 2018 – 2019. This is just kind of a bit of my why: there’s a lot more than this, but that’s my personal life, so I’d rather keep it to myself.. Here’s a kind of broad view though that maybe can help.

Anyways, let’s jump in.

Right now, thousands of people are making the choice this month to dedicate at least a year of their lives to living abroad. For some, this experience is mostly about the J: Japan. It’s about a chance to explore a different culture and see the country, for whatever reasons. That might be a return to cultural heritage or for many, a desire and curiosity that can stem from Anime to Sado, island included.

For some, this experience is about the E: Exchange. This is about being a bridge between Home and Japan, between positive difference. Others will find T -Teaching- to be what brings them, will encourage them to learn from a different system, to teach and help cultivate learning environments.

For all, hopefully, they want to sample all three as equally as we can. I’ll admit that I’m in strong favor of the E: I feel that encompasses so much of what makes the J & T of JET come together.

My reason for contracting deals a lot with the E: that’s been really present in my daily life.

Each day, I exchange: Japanese, English, money, papers, actions, kindness. I could say that everything in Japan thus far has been an exchange of ideas and actions that have helped me build the Me I want to be.

That’s not to say this hasn’t been a hard transition.

I would love to tell you that I’m not homesick, that I don’t miss cheese, that I haven’t cried a lot recently, and that it’s just been a party and then some all day, every day, but I’d be lying and misleading you about what life is like here. I live a good life: I have good food, good friends, and I get to travel regularly, even if it’s just in the prefecture. I have good school and feel appreciated, feel like my work is good and has lots of room for positive growth, and I feel like I get helpful feedback that pushes me to keep trying in a healthy way. 

And while yes, I’ve got a lot of happy, it’s also been tough at times too.

Life in Japan can be very humanly lonely at times, even speaking Japanese: I always feel keenly different, and that’s hard for anyone to weather without a support system. I have worries about fitting in because I don’t really like bars or drinking, miss having a car –and hate being limited to not having one for work– and often find myself wishing I maybe lived closer to other ALTS (That’s up in the air because this ALT likes quiet too!) You have to come in knowing what you will and won’t be able to handle, and truly hold onto that to buoy yourself when times turn sour.

Living abroad doesn’t mean living without worry: it just means living in a different country with the same problems you’d’ve had at home.

I’m still happy: I can say that with a honest heart. And I still have a lot let to do in Japan: there’s a lot of growth here for me that I haven’t tapped into. And I can say that I do have a good life: while I’ve shifted from spending so much time with ALTs and did so quickly, I feel connected to my neighborhood and community. I go places by myself more often than with groups, something I feel is important.

(Learn to be alone and enjoy the company of Just You. It is truly a gift.)

Even still, saying yes wasn’t 100% easy. I’m fully for saying yes, and have no hesitation, but that took work.

I had to be critical of my year here and look ahead: what struggles might break me, what might have to change, what might I have to raise my voice for to help me have success here? That’s really hard to think about, but if we don’t, then why stay? Money and travel just simply aren’t enough to sacrifice your health for.

So why am I staying?

Simple: change.

I mentioned earlier this year that I physically felt change, and I’m feeling it again: it’s like someone put a knot in my belly and is tugging, hard. It’s insistent, but I keep resisting, whether from anxiety or fear. But I want to give in and let myself change.

And that change is still here in Japan.

Last year brought a physical world of change: I moved my entire identity to Japan, had to learn how to function with my Blackness and Queerness, had to learn how to find peace in being different and Fat, how to learn how to love myself. I can feel a fresh wave of change (time to fortify!) and this time, I’m gonna ride it: I don’t want to resist it, not with all my growth.

I can’t pinpoint it –and may never be able to– but change is here for me, and it’s here in Japan. Already, I can see what they might be: a revival of my research into Girls and Women’s culture, pressing ahead with achieving N2 in my Japanese, cultivating my teaching skills as a Facilitator, and eventually, hopefully giving a lecture at Mechademia Japan in my 5th year.

In all of that, however, I want my growth to be about living in now.

I have a bad habit of planning: I plan for the future in every contingency, stress myself about what might happen a few days down the line if I chose one action over the other. So often, I treat my life as if it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except I forget that yes, even when things are bad, I can make up for it and turn the pages and have a new storyline and outcome.

Finally, I think I’m at a place of letting that go.

It feels good and cleansing to tuck away the old and bring out the new. I feel like I’m throwing open a window to the sun after a long window: refreshed, revived, and ready for a new season. While this growth and change won’t happen overnight, it will happen, and I look forward to the Me I’ll be in 2018, 2019, 2020, and finally, 2021.

I haven’t gotten my paperwork yet, but I haven’t been reading any indication of not being recontracted. I firmly believe I will: I am on time, I do good work, and I feel I contribute to the workplace environment. But when the time does come…

I’ll say yes.

[miseriathome]

I have some complicated thoughts about aro discourse I saw today and I think that some people with good intentions still need to work on respectability politics and amatonormative biases.

Lowkey bad discourse shit:

One of those “aro folks can enjoy romance-related things!” posts. Somebody included this whole thing about how preferring one night stands doesn’t inherently make somebody aro, and in fact demonstrates a dislike for commitment over anything related to romantic attraction. They even included the phrase “serial sexual partners” which is basically crime-coding sexual freedom. And it seems like such a double standard to me that the same person can support platonic non-romantic sex practices but scorn non-platonic non-romantic sex......... so really, their support of aro-spec folks is contingent upon whether or not their sexuality is rooted in some form of deep interpersonal relationship (as deemed by the observer). Which I’m sure not only paints aplatonic sex-favorable aros in a bad light, but also splashes negatively onto folks who desire both deep interpersonal relationships and also sex, but without overlap. And given that I, myself, am an aspec who greatly enjoys the one night stand life but is understandably limited to a potential pool consisting almost entirely of some type of allo folks... I can think of tons of reasons why a hypothetical aro person might not want to entangle any sort of long-term emotional relationships with their sexual doings (for example: I have been stalked before by partners who grew feelings). So at the end of the day, this person’s whole thing about one night stands and commitment just perpetuates the “arohet frat boy Chad” image except Chad isn’t explicitly aro; it’s swerf shit wrapped up in respectability politics, where throwing undesirables under the bus makes the aro identity easier for the public to swallow.

Also:

Another “aro folks can enjoy romance-related things!” post. This time, it’s about how an alloromantic (or otherwise romantic attraction-experiencing person) can date an aro/spec person, and the latter--despite not reciprocating the attraction--can engage in the relationship in a way that still satisfies their partner. However the poster included a bit along the lines of “as long as everybody in the relationship is aware and consents, it’s okay.” Which I feel like is pushing the whole “you have to tell your partner you’re aspec” agenda that aphobes have, through the implication that not informing the attraction-having partner is manipulative or otherwise abusive. Moreover, that puts me and quite a few other (questioning or label-fucked or attraction-experiencing arospec or closeted) folks in a difficult boat by placing an onus of responsibility onto us, even though we may not realize or be sure ourselves what’s going on with regards to attraction. After all, romantic attraction is a subjective social construct, and thus incredibly difficult to pinpoint, define, or identify for some people. So not only is it not my responsibility to announce if I’m questioning my attraction at any point, or if I’m unsure what kind of attraction it may be, but it’s also not the responsibility of any other queer person to out themselves or their questioning status before they’re ready, and expecting aros to do so sets a really bad precedent in that regard. In my opinion, “we both enjoy the dynamic we have, even though we might interpret what’s going on a little differently because we haven’t discussed every last nuance” is good enough, even though it might seem dubious to others. Like I honestly don’t think “withholding” a potentially arospec identity is any more abusive than “withholding” information about being mspec or trans (read as: none of the above are information that partners inherently have a right to). And so to that degree, this is another double standard that aro folks are being held to.

I’m sorry if the posters of these things see this as an unwelcome vagueblog; they’re pretty old posts and I don’t want to dredge them up--especially since I don’t follow either person and would have no idea what kinds of character development they might have undergone since then. I’ve also found that people tend to be incredibly unfriendly to anything that even resembles confrontation, even if it’s prefaced by “I agree with literally everything else you stand for” (true story), so honestly I’m just vagueblogging for my own sanity.

Writing that second recap, it occurs to me that “allo is not useful terminology” might have some merit as an argument, if only in the (rarely-explored) sense that it cannot be used synonymously with “attraction-experiencing” without sanitizing all respective aspec identities into “pure” ace/aro-ness, spectrum and nuance be damned. Allonormativity is absolutely a useful concept, but any use of allo to refer to a group or identity has to allow for the vagueness of proximity, much in the same way that perisex doesn’t exactly mean “not intersex” but “close enough to meeting the social criteria of normative biology that intersexuality cannot be reasonably suspected” (or rather, this is how I understand the distinction between perisex and dyadic). So rather than being “attraction-experiencing” or “not ace/aro,” it should be “experiencing normative attraction to such a degree that adopting an aspec identity provides no benefit” or something which acknowledges the existence of “almost indistinguishable from allo, but still aspec in some way” identities.

[moritzstiefelwiki]

Yooo for the detailed headcanon meme would u mind doing like... all the ones ure able to for Hanschen? Like feel free to skip as many as u want but itd be cool to hear ur thoughts on my Best Boy

Um? Little Hansy Rilow? Jackass Extraordinaire? Love of my life? Ofc I’ll do as many as I can!! Thanks so much for sending these! I hope you like them and I’m sorry they took me so long! (Also I answered these out of order and towards the end I was running a bit low on steam so there are some answers that are Not So Good mixed in there, sorry)

Under the cut or on Ao3 here :) 

1. What does their bedroom look like?

I think for the most part it would be tidy. Bed made, desk (mostly) clear, etc. He’s got some laundry on the floor, a couple of books lying about, and his jacket as well as his school things are never put away but everything else is in it’s place. 

His desk is by the window so he can make good use of natural light and It’s usually got assignments for school on it as well as whatever books might go along with them when he’s not using it. 

He keeps a small collection of books in his room- his favourites. Whatever he’s currently reading is kept on his bedside table and everything else is stacked by his desk but they should be on the shelf in the living room. 

He’s a nerd.

2. Do they have any daily rituals?

 I don’t think he would, not outside what he needs to do (school). Not unless you count him monologuing while he masturbates as a ritual, I have a feeling that’s a daily thing. 

3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?

 He does not, he would much rather lounge somewhere comfy with something he finds enjoyable. A book, a person, a puzzle, etc. 

4. What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?

I can see him being like “Everybody, get out of my way” (This is meant to be read in John Mulaney’s voice from the thing where he followed this with something like “I’m just here to feed my birds”) but I can also see him just clearing enough space for himself and getting to work. I guess it depends on who’s in the kitchen making what and what he’s going to be making. He’s not going to be interrupting someone that’s making cake or pastries just so he can cut vegetables in peace. 

5. Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)

His parents/governess were somewhat strict about cleanliness when he was a child so he makes an effort to keep himself well groomed, especially when adults are present. No dirt under his fingernails, his clothes and hair are neat etc. He’s less concerned about it when he’s with the other boys and even less when he’s relaxing, either by himself or with Ernst, but he still somewhat pays attention to how much dirt he’s getting on himself or how much work it will take him to make himself look properly presentable before he finds himself around adults again. 

I think I got into workspace okay with his bedroom? He’s mostly tidy because he has to be, any disorder in his room can easily be taken care of. 

6. Eating habits and sample daily menu

I think he would love sweet things (candy, fruit, berries, etc) and he’s always a slut for baked goods. I have no idea what kind of things ppl usually ate in 1890′s Germany. 

7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time

He only really considers time wasted if he’s not spending it on something he likes to do or needs to do. So he has no favourite way to waste time, he only feels as though he’s wasting time if he’s bored out of his mind for no good reason. 

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging

Ernst. It really isn’t safe for him to be smooshing booties in a vineyard with another boy but? He’s doing it. And being all poetic about it too ofc, he really likes Ernst. 

If he can indulge he will, he loves it. Life’s too short to deny himself pleasure, so long as said pleasure doesn’t harm him and/or get in the way of him becoming a millionaire.  

9. Makeup?

None. I can see him maybe trying, or at least wanting to try makeup at some point? Never with anyone around or if there was a chance of someone catching him though. (I’m a sucker for boys in makeup tho and I think modern Hanschen would enjoy makeup. If u want to hear a bit more abt that u know how 2 contact me)

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

Neurotypical Hans™

11. Intellectual pursuits?

Literature and languages. He loves reading, loves diving into a book and analyzing characters, plot, symbolism, all of it. He loves talking about them as well, he could talk for hours about his favourites. He’s fascinated by other languages and speaks a handful rather fluently as an adult. He probably also enjoys reading the same book but translated into different languages because no translation is exact and it’s always interesting to see a slightly different take on things. 

I can also see him having interest in biology? Because science is fascinating and it’s amazing how diverse and intricately designed living things can be. 

12. Favorite book genre?

He talks about the books he likes when he’s jerking off so I don’t think I really need to get into that lmao 

13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?

Multisexual. Bi/pan/ply/whatever. A pretty person is a pretty person & all that.

I think he might see the idea of sexual orientation as a little silly or perhaps performative? He understands that he’s expected to only like women and knows that once he’s older he’ll be expected to marry one, to have children etc etc. So for the most part he keeps his attraction to men to himself (Ernst being a very obvious exception, likely not the only one but it’s not something he would ever reveal lightly) and he thinks that most people are doing the same in order to avoid being judged negatively by their community.

Something along the lines of “everyone is only acting like they’re exclusively attracted to the opposite sex because it’s what’s seen as normal. They don’t want everyone else to point fingers at them calling them sinners and sexual deviants and condemning them to hell so they deny themselves half the beauty the world has to offer. For this same reason, they’re quick to attack anyone around them who might be revealed as queer. They’re so focused on keeping their own secret safe that they never realize everyone around them is keeping exactly the same one.”  

14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

16. Biggest and smallest long term goal?

Biggest: “When I am amillionaire”Smallest: I don’t think he has any small goals tbh ? 

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress

I’m not rly sure what this one’s asking tbh?? He likes looking nice tho.

18. Favorite beverage?

Hot chocolate 

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?

Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?

(I think a recurring theme would be his future- what he wants, what he can get, how he can get it etc.)

20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?

I’m stickin 2 sex ones bc otherwise it’s Too Vague and stresses me tf out tbh

Turn-ons: hair pulling, necking (he loves hickies but he’s strict about not having any that might be visible), being straddled, nice thighs, a good ass, little gasps and moans, begging

Turn-offs: bad kissing, poor hygiene, not listening to/paying attention to his feedback, going too fast (Mr. “half-closed eyes, half-open mouths, and turkish draperies” would Def love foreplay and teasing,, trying to skip right over it is? A no.)

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

23. How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?

See 1  

24. Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?

See 11 (he’s pretty good at everything tho)

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

Long dead because it’s 2017, but 5 years from the show he probably sees himself in university. 

26. Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?

I don’t know what his plans would be but I’m sure he’s got some cushy career in mind that he wants to work towards. He’s a Rilow, he doesn’t need a backup plan. 

27. What is their biggest regret?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?

Ernst. His worst enemy is probably whoever is second in the class rankings, if you go by the play. Melchior in the musical. Little Hans is In It To Win It. 

29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)

His brain shuts down for a minute and then he realizes that yes, this is happening and oh dear god I need to get out of here. He tries (and fails) to give the impression that he is calm, cool, and collected but he’s doing pretty good for someone who is screaming internally as loudly as he is.    

30. Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)

He just keeps going. He tries to act like everything is fine, to show that he’s strong. The second he’s alone he deflates. He’s depressed af but does everything he can to hide it. 

31. Most prized possession?

I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s something fancy and adult that makes him feel sophisticated. He won’t admit how much he loves it though. 

32. Thoughts on material possessions in general?

👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit

33. Concept of home and family?

He thinks of it as faintly ridiculous. 

“Why are these people somehow more important than others simply because you share blood? Shouldn’t the value of your relationship with someone have more to do with how well you get along and care for each other? What’s the point of marriage, you put on a show so you can have children as you’re expected to and this absurd cycle repeats with your children and so on.”

34. Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)

He greatly values his privacy, he usually only shares exactly as much information as is necessary. Unless he trusts you, in which case he doesn’t s hut the fu ck u p 

35. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?

See 7

36. What makes them feel guilty?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

37. Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?

Analytical for the most part. He knows what he wants out of life and  what he needs to do to put him on the path to getting it. I feel like he operates with a mindset a bit like “people can leave you but things are forever” and so he’s pretty okay with making decisions that hurt people (himself included) if it will benefit him financially, academically, raise his social status etc. 

38. Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality?

A? I don’t know tbh, my knowledge about this is limited to the 30 seconds I spent skimming the wiki article   

39. What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?

Peace and quiet, being alone. Bonus points if he’s somewhere pretty and/or rly comfortable.  

40. Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?

I don’t feel I know enough about either to say lmao  

41. How misanthropic are they?

He thinks people are ridiculous, h

ryan sent me a post abt dragon dicks which got me rambling abt this one furry i follow and. lowkey shattered my train of thought, I don’t remember what i was planing 2 say here and I’m too tired to start the Thought Translation Process over again lmao 

42. Hobbies?

Reading, puzzles, Ernst, calligraphy, 

43. How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?

He completed university. The only real difference between formal education and self-education is if you have a diploma people will believe you when you say you know what you’re talking about.  

44. Religion?

He’s whatever everyone else is. I don’t what religion everyone is in the show,, I don’t know shit abt religion tbh. But he believes in god, though he’s not as devout as everyone else. 

45. Superstitions or views on the occult?

Foolish. Ridiculous. Absurd. Childish. He believes in them.

46. Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?

Words mostly. He’s excellent with them and loves to talk and talk and talk. 

47. If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?

Ernst, probably. I don’t doubt that Hans loves him dearly but I don’t think he’s in love.  

48. How do they express love?

He talks about milk. 

I can’t think of anything lmao

49. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?

Tbh I can’t imagine him fighting. He probably just says something that pisses someone off and then gets knocked flat on his ass. 

50. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

I don’t think so, I think he feels almost like. I don’t think invincible would be the right word, but he sees no reason to fear it at his age. Yes, Wendla and Moritz died, but he has no plans to kill himself and he can’t get pregnant so a botched abortion isn’t a threat to him. He’s in good health and he’s got his wits about him. What is there for him to be afraid of? He can worry about dying later. 

[heatherannehogan]

the lesbophobia thing

Lesbophobia is real. It's the prejudice, bigotry, and oppression that exists at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny. Let me say it again: Lesbophobia is real. Hate for lesbians is real.

However, it is essential to acknowledge and understand that the term lesbophobia has been co-opted by a loud and growing contingent of LGBTQ women in communities that share troubling ties and ideology with factions that exist inside the alt-right movement — worse, the dangerous dogma that's attaching itself to word the lesbophobia has found a new home at AfterEllen.

I first encountered the word lesbophobia in response to the post I wrote called Queer Women Take Over The 2016 Emmys. Her Story got a revolutionary nod for Outstanding Short Form. Kate McKinnon took home a trophy for Saturday Night Live. Sarah Paulson won for The People vs. O.J. Simpson. And Jill Soloway scored another victory for Transparent. On social media there was a small outcry that I hadn't chosen the headline "Lesbians Take Over the 2016 Emmys," despite the fact that Kate McKinnon was the only winner who explicitly identifies as a lesbian. (In fact, Sarah Paulson is on record saying, "I refuse to give any kind of label just to satisfy what people need.") The reasons the handful of dissenters gave for my decision to call the Emmys queer was that I am a lesbophobe, an espouser and executor of lesbophobia.

To be very honest with you, I shrugged it off. The most unwinnable battle we have at Autostraddle is labeling LGBTQ people in a way that satisfies everyone. It's such a constant struggle, we laid out an explanation about labels in our official comment policy. Recently on a Pop Culture Fix, I wrote about the new queer characters coming to The Good Wife spin-off. One of them will be a lesbian, according to the show's writers; the other's sexuality has not been labeled. So, I said, "The Good Wife spin-off will prominently feature two lesbian, bisexual, gay, homosexual, or otherwise queer-identified women." Just to cover all my bases because it was almost Christmas and I was tired and I didn't want to have to argue about labels. And yet, the cries of lesbophobia came in again. I got a couple of emails, a dozen or so tweets. Essentially: "Lesbian is not a dirty word! Saying queer is lesbophobic!"

So, on December 26, I tweeted something I think is a true, fair, and accurate analogy:

Yelling "lesbophobia!" when someone says "queer" is like yelling "war on Christmas!" when someone says "happy holidays." Come on, y'all.

A couple of days later, AfterEllen's official Twitter tweeted at me and said: "@theheatherhogan oh, agreed. It's like yelling "biphobia!" and "transphobia!" when someone says lesbian."

To which beloved Autostraddle cartoonist Dickens replied:

"AfterEllen is three weeks shy of transforming their website into an online support group for victims of wyt lesbian genocide. This is honestly the most ridiculously entitled white lesbian coated petrified bullshit I have seen in a long time. And if you don't think white supremacy has reached out its dirty little fingers and touched a few groups of marginalized white folks, well. Keep an eye on their feed here and there. Keep an eye on their former writers. They aren't just trying to Make Lesbianism Great Again… They are asserting their strength. They are erasing the visibility of the defectors. They are sliding their salty little asses into spaces and feeds where they must know they are clearly not wanted or cared for. I was never a fan of AE but this new image they're building for themselves is a little too Nazi-adjacent for my galaxy Blaaaack aaaass."

Dickens was, of course, correct. And her point was proven once again the very next day when an article blasted out to the 125,000 followers of AfterEllen's official, verified Twitter account cried: “Lesbian Spaces Are Still Needed, No Matter What the Queer Movement Says". It suggests that trans women and bisexual women's desire to be included in queer women's spaces is to blame for the decline of lesbian-specific spaces, which lesbians need to stay safe from trans and bisexual women.

That kind of rallying cry feels very much like the "Save Our White Neighborhoods" rallying cry of the alt-right, so I went on a deeper dive to try to find the origins of what I called "the lesbophobia movement" on Twitter. And what I found was more horrifying than I ever imagined.

A few weeks ago AfterEllen — which everyone presumed dead after the company that owns it effectively fired everyone, including longtime editor in chief Trish Bendix — announced it had acquired a new editor named Memoree Joelle. In October, Joelle, tweeted a Change.org petition that she'd signed called Take the L Out of LGBT. The petition is a direct response to a previously failed petition that called for GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, HuffPo Voices, The Advocate, etc. to Drop The T from LGBT. The most popular supporter of the petition is a guy you might know called Milo Yiannopoulos. He signed it, tweeted about it, and dedicated 3,000 words to it in a post on Breitbart. Thanks to Milo's urging, Matthew Hopkins, one of the main perpetrators of Gamergate, wrote a post called "Why #GamerGate Should Help the ‘Drop the T’ Campaign" on his personal blog. Hopkins called it "one of the most politically important campaigns of our generation."

In addition to signing and tweeting about the petition, Joelle commented her approval. When former AfterEllen writer Elaine Atwell brought Joelle's support of the petition to light, Joelle's comments disappeared from the petition, and so did Elaine's byline from the hundreds of articles she wrote over the last five years at AfterEllen.

The comments on the Change.org petition mention lesbophobia multiple times and equate it with trans activism, as do the subreddits that discussed Joelle's contribution to the petition. "Part of lesbophobia is hating us for our same-sex attraction, but another very big part of it is hating us for our rejection of men," one user wrote on /r/GenderCritical/. (Trans women are almost always referred to as men on this particular subreddit.) Another Redditor on /r/actuallesbians decried the "male entitlement and lesbophobia" of protesting the petition. "The moment we talk about your rape culture or your male violence we're 'transphobic' or 'biphobic.'" (The men in this comment are actually trans women and "rape culture" refers to the constantly espoused idea in TERF communities that trans women are male predators.) The lesbophobia tag on the blog GenderTrender is a deeply disturbing trip down an anti-trans rabbit hole. The lesbophobia tag on the website 4th Wave Now is horrifying; it equates allowing trans kids/teens to come out and live openly as their true gender with child abuse, ideas that are — again — shared with Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos. Reddit and Tumblr are absolutely flush with lesbians using the word "lesbophobia" to back up the ideas presented in these "Drop the T"/"The L Is Leaving" petitions.

These spaces that use the word "lesbophobia" to attack trans and bi women or people who use the word queer share more than than an ideology with Breitbart. You'll find them saying things like "trans women want to colonize the lesbian community." You'll find them using the phrase "SJW" (meaning Social Justice Warrior), a pejorative term coined by the Men's Rights Activist movement. And you'll find a lot of talk about how the correct "biology" is the thing that allows people access to the protections of the majority. And lots and lots and lots and lots of just truly sickening propaganda leveled at trans and bi women. It's very much about creating an in-group and scapegoating an out-group through tried and true tactics that have been — I'm sorry — utilized by Fox News and the alt-right for years.

I wrote about these things on Twitter, and you can read Dickens further unpacking them here and here. (You should read that last thread before you jump in here and call her "my black friend.")

Look, we didn't just wake up one day with an openly racist, openly sexist, openly xenophobic, openly ableist, openly anti-semitic president in the White House, appointing the leader of the most dangerous white supremacist website in history to his top advisor position. We watched blatant and unabashed white supremacist language and ideas slowly take over the movement from the inside. We watched the most powerful scapegoat the most vulnerable. We watched Fox News make heroes out of the white men who murdered unarmed black children and terrify people with their whole War on Christmas bullshit and equate all Muslims with terrorists. A Nazi didn't walk into the West Wing and have a seat; the slow creep of white supremacy laid the path for him.

Vox did a fascinating interview with former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes earlier this year. He quit over Trump. But the whole interview is him agonizing about how, to him, the GOP had always been about fiscal conservatism and states rights and he believed in that ideological purity so deeply that he fooled himself into believing that's what the GOP was about to everybody, despite the fact that he saw the white supremacy and fascism slowly gaining power and momentum until it took over.

To realize, first of all, that you’re part of a movement that was not the movement you thought it was, that you’re aligned with people that you didn’t really understand you’re aligned with, and to realize that everything that you thought about the conservative intellectual infrastructure was really piecrust thin. You thought you had this big principled movement and then suddenly along comes Donald Trump and you realize that it was just was just the pastry on top. So I think disorienting is a great term. Disillusioning is not too strong either.

To me, what we're talking about with lesbophobia is a similar thing. Is lesbophobia a term some lesbians have rallied around to protest the prejudice and bigotry that exist at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny? Yes, of course. Absolutely. HOWEVER. I had to go searching for people using the word lesbophobia like that because my entire experience with the way the word kept popping up in my timeline and in my comments and in the comments sections of other websites was to decry the use of the word queer and to espouse anti-trans and anti-bi ideology. And that includes every single person who landed in my mentions on Twitter when I started talking about this. I did not click on a single profile without finding anti-trans, anti-bi language; or ask a single person if they believe trans women are women and have them say yes.

If you are a woman who is using the word lesbophobia to NOT do those things, and you're more angry at me for pointing out that it's happening than you are at anti-trans/anti-bi people who have hijacked its meaning, I ... I truly don't understand. What's happening at AfterEllen is terrifying me. Maybe the website is technically dead, but it still has clout and power and it's using it to push some really dangerous ideas about lesbian exclusivity, and those ideas are shared by a very loud group of people who use the word "lesbophobia" on their blogs, social media, Reddit, etc. to vilify the people (like me) who stand against them.

I don't want to cause anyone pain. I don't want to make anyone feel unsafe or unloved or unaccepted. I DO NOT BELIEVE LESBIANS ARE NAZIS. I AM A LESBIAN. If you truly think that's what I was saying when I unpacked these ideas on Twitter, I'm sorry. It was not my intention.

I do think, however, that it's imperative for you to open your eyes to how the word lesbophobia is being used to persecute and oppress trans and bi women in very vocal and influential spaces that have direct ties in ideology and language with the alt-right.

[queerascat]

“the ace community goes overboard with words?” i.e. word vomitted “nah”

anonymous submission:

(i had a long question, so, i hope it’s ok to use submit instead of sending multiple asks.)

as a disclaimer, i ask this as an ace person who usually just ids as queer ace or grey ace. i’m not asking to be combative or make anyone feel bad.

do you ever feel that the ace/aro community goes overboard with words? akiosexual, aegosexual, cupliosexual, reciprosexual - these are just a few of the ones i’m thinking of. they all refer to situational instances (“i’m attracted to you only if you aren’t to me,” or “i want a relationship despite lack of attraction,” for example), rather than about the person or type of people you’re attracted to. which, for an ace or aro person, is usually “no type of person, or limited types of people and only sometimes,” right? i just don’t understand the need for all these labels for hyperspecific situations that really shouldn’t matter to anyone but someone you’re thinking about having a romantic or sexual relationship with anyway.

i know that’s technically it’s harmless, and people should do what makes them happy, but it seems not only tedious and overthinking it, but very nearly bordering on “tmi.” what’s so wrong with just saying “grey ace,” and then getting into more detail as you become closer to someone, rather than making them google some obscure word which maybe tells them more than they needed to know? (i also feel that i see mostly teens and very early 20s people do this, but as someone nearing 30, maybe it’s confirmation bias.) it seems exhausting to try and make anyone learn or even just google all those words, even as aro or ace person, let alone any potential allies.

there’s also a small guilty part of me who sees that ace exclusionists & other aphobic people use stuff like that to make fun of us - “you guys think of yourselves as such special snowflakes!” - and secretly agrees. i’m not aphobic by any means, but it does kind of make us look silly and fussy, doesn’t it? dare i say, pretentious?

i’ve never seen anyone who isn’t anti-ace/aro express a view like this, which is why i am doing so anonymously - I hope you can forgive me! it seems like among aro/ace people, i am alone in my belief. i was curious about what you would say because you always have such well-thought-out answers and try to be respectful of everyone.

hi anon,

sorry for taking so long to respond to your submission / ask. it’s taken me a while to find the time and headspace to be able to respond in the way that i want to respond– and i’m still not entirely satisfied with the following response. then again, i never will be satisfied with any response, so whatever.

*throws response into the void that is the Internet*

tl;dr version:

you asked, “do you ever feel that the ace/aro community goes overboard with words?”

no. a better question would be to ask, “does the sheer volume of the ace/aro community’s ever increasingly specific terminology ever overwhelm you?”

the answer to which would be an honest “yes.” however, if you were to then ask me “doesn’t it seem not only tedious and overthinking it, but very nearly bordering on ‘tmi’?”

my answer would be a resounding “hell no", because i recognize that while i personally may have no use for such specific terminology to describe my relationship with sexuality (or gender for that matter), i know that the existence of such terminology can be incredibly helpful, affirming and even life changing for someone else and i am more than okay with accepting that the validity of terminology is not and should not be contingent on my personal need for it, or lack thereof.

also, i call bullshit on the idea that terminology that someone else finds relevant to them should be discarded or discouraged because others find it ‘obscure’, ‘taxing’ or ‘pretentious’ and if you or someone else find such terminology embarrassing? that embarrassment and / or guilt also known as Respectability Politics is entirely the embarrassed person’s to bear and / or combat.

i mean no offense to you personally, anon– although when it comes to blatant disparagers of such terminology and the people who find comfort in them, yes. please do take Full Offense and then ramp it up about 5 notches. people tend to see me as aggressive when i voice my opinion “as-is” without any attempt made at policing my own tone, but eh. 

i find it incredibly selfish as well as hypocritical and short-sighted for anyone (but especially for someone who themself has found comfort in some flavor of ace terminology) to allow their own personal lack of need of terminology dictate how they feel about the validity of that terminology.

to use an analogy, there are undoubtedly countless words in any given comprehensive English language dictionary that neither you nor i will ever use or even have need to use at any point in our entire life. these words may be superfluous to us, but that does not mean that they are superfluous to every other speaker of the English language and thus ought to be omitted from the dictionary or English language itself. the English-speaking world does not revolve around your usage of the English language anymore than ace terminology does and to suggest that something ought to be unnecessary– that X-word suffices for you, so it ought to be sufficient for everyone else– is outright obnoxious, imho.

it is incredibly inconsiderate of others for whom such terminology affords them a sense of community, access to resources or even an internal sense of self-acceptance / understanding– the very same things that you and i are fortunate enough to already have (to some degree or another) thanks to increasing usage of “asexual”, “ace” and asexuality in general.

but least it go unsaid and be forgotten, let me point out that increased usage of certain ace terminology and awareness of asexuality in general was (and continues to be) fought for and that every single thing that you (and others) have said in criticism of more recent ace terminology– be it the questioning of users’ age, the notion of terminology or identity as ‘tmi’, etc– has been said nigh word-for-word about “asexual”, “grey ace” and many a term / identity that you yourself may find valid today but 2 / 5 / 10 years ago the majority of people did not.

when an ace feels some kind of negative way about other aces’ creation and usage of new terminology to the point of turning around and dishing out the exact same criticisms that were once used against aces in general against their fellow aces, it almost feels to me like one human rights activist, for example, turning to another after a bill of rights has been passed and being like “w00t!!! finally got my human rights! but could you tone down that thing you were saying about those other human rights? because it’s kinda detracting from my message and making me look stupid, kthnx.”

but that’s the thing, with Respectability Politics, eh? the disadvantaged or minority have their identity, culture, language etc policed to the point that they begin to then police each other in an attempt (conscious or not) to maintain what little ground or “Respectability” they feel they have finally gained– but from who? none other than the very same advantaged or majority group that was policing them to begin with. 

if you feel that others’ usage of certain terminology– be it ace terminology, xenogenders, neopronouns or anything else– makes you feel like you “look silly” or “fussy”, pause and ask yourself “makes me look silly / fussy in the eyes of whom?” and i guarantee you that the “[in the eyes of] others” that you are likely to be met with refers to [the eyes of] your detractors.

and i don’t know about you or anyone else, but i could literally not care less about making myself look more “respectable” in the eyes of those who don’t respect my identity or that of my fellow aces, regardless of how uncommon the terminology used may be and / or how disconnected i may feel from it even as someone who is ace myself.

if someone can’t be assed to ask the person in question for clarification when they do not understand something or to turn to Google should they want to know without asking, i sure as hell can’t be assed to give a damn about their lack of understanding. it isn’t someone else’s job to simplify or gloss over something about themself for the sake of someone else’s ease of understanding and as for the ‘tmi’ of terminology that tells someone “more than they need to know”– obviously the person in question has chosen to use the terminology in question specifically because they feel it conveys information that they want you to know. i wouldn’t come out to someone as ace, nor would i put “ace” in my profile, if i felt that it was information that no one need know about me. furthermore, i am the one– the divulger of such information– who gets to decide what is relevant for someone else to know about me, NOT the listener or consumer of such information. if someone else thinks it tmi, they are free to let such information go in one ear and out the other; no one is shoving their identity or terminology down anyone’s throat or otherwise forcing them to consult Google-sensei for infromation. 

words do not invent themselves, nor do they come into usage without reason; if a word– no matter how “obscure”– exists, it exists specifically because someone felt a need for that word and made it exist. as someone who spent 26 years of life without access to or knowledge of terminology that would have made all the difference to them those 26 years past; as someone who subsequently went on to coin a word that some consider to be ‘obscure’, just as surely as cupiosexual or reciprosexual; as a former linguistics student who firmly considers themself a Descriptivist rather than Prescriptivist, even when changes in language usage leaves them disgruntled…

…all of these more recent terms being coined by my fellow aces?

i get it. even if i simultaneously don’t. 

i really do feel disconnected, disengaged with the ace community at times– especially as of late– but i’m more or less at peace with that. there are things that i won’t ever fully understand, and i’m okay with that. i’m okay with those things being for someone else and not for or about me, so no. i don’t feel like the ace community goes ‘overboard’ with words because in my opinion, there is no such thing as a truly superfluous word. words are powerful and all power be to those who find such terminology useful even when i don’t.

[incarnateirony]

The butt slap was ad libbed according to the writer. The whole it was the bi bookend to the waitress slap was not a thing. SIGH. This stuff kind of proves how a lot of queer meta is a lot of guesswork that rarely pans out. Posters in the background that must mean a thing, suddenly don't mean that thing. Macho male posturing about triplets suddenly becomes "but who says they were women" like if queer men actually brag the same way straight men do! They don't! Triplets = women. Come on! CRINGES

I’ll take “passive aggressive ‘I’m a tired concerned fan’ masquerade” for exhibit 3, as if anything I’ve talked about was at all contingent on the ass slap, and as if I’ve been engaging at all in that corner, and as if honestly that detail was even marginally relevant beyond something to chuckle at with a smile.

Lmao even the genders of the triplets are literally irrelevant in this conversation, that’s the most hilarious fucking thing. This fandom is so wrapped up in its own hilarious and frankly, half-hysterical dialogue that they get caught in the strangest hair splitting that honestly, when you’ve never plugged into this ridiculous escalation culture? I don’t… think you realize how funny it is to watch.

How Funny-Unfunny. Laugh or you’ll cry. The fact that you even GALAXY BRAINED up this post with those arguments and really thought to bring this to my wall.

Literally guys what kind of ridiculous hetnorm culture have you been not just saturated into but trained into drawing *the most* regressive arguments and giving it platform? I recently just listed a whole assed adventure in literal queer representation history. Like, the way actual cinema history works. And it’s messy, and it’s sloppy, and half of you would flay the content, but it’s us, because people are messy.

Aside from that, whether or not you clearly haven’t watched Oz,as coffeebrainblog has pointed out, or any of the groundbreaking films that DID do the kind of bold representation work this fandom implicitly footstomps for – unless you really watch your share of documentaries – Tongues Untied, even if it’s intersectional with the black community; Learn. Your. LGBT. History. Before. Engaging.

If your entire premise ends up centrally featuring what is, essentially, alt-right viewpoints (eg not gay if the dicks don’t touch because ewww; three+somes in regards to generational closeted queer culture, or certain preformances of affection expected of characters in the show, all kinds of shit the LGBT community has talked to death and explained and featured and held LONG DIALOGUES WITH TREMENDOUS NUANCE) 

And here’s supposedly socially liberal tumblr or whatever with people explicitly going to 1. unearth these mindsets (if not actually having internalized them) 2. Delete content 3. use arguments entirely premised in like, ignorance of how many decades of LGBT discussion because someone literally chooses to elevate alt right thinking as if it’s even an argument angle to bring to the table in the year of our lord 2019.

You REALLY THINK a fucking middle aged LGBT male political rights activist who was writing polemic commentary about LGBT representation via incrementalization BEFORE SUPERNATURAL EVER EXISTED much less before he wrote on it – what, is writing this content for the alt right conservative demographic he drops Trumps America burns on at any time? Or that he has no idea how to arrange queer content, which I’m sure you have other hilariously disconnected-from-the-text-value arguments like this original anon. You know, it’s not a mix tape bro, because anyone in the actual represented character demographic would know what that is, it’s just a tape of songs Dean likes. Yes, literal argument of hilarity heard. No, absolutely not relevant to the discussions of our canon and not whatever the mythical monolithic GA this fandom dreams up yeets themselves to either.

So this shit? Yeah nah. Miss me with that fam. Watching people still trapped in hetnorm ideals and heavy internalized dialogues talk down their own content while disregarding actual lgbt media representative history and the political activist author on deck that has been open about this very same issue is some whole other form of Dumbass Circus people are choosing to perform.

Not to mention this new bizarre purity culture of representation people will only accept now that no actual rep guideline discussions ever came up with, we just want to be “represented” by people who don’t sometimes do bad things. And yes, the nature of conservative representation has also been dogged to death by Bobo, along with packaged heteronormative picture framing of gay men ala Pete Buttigieg. And no, what you think is “conservative representation” (eg, haven’t popped out in a coming out ceremony that was full central text, haven’t been illustrated in bed even if the straight couples don’t anymore, haven’t kissed even though… the straight… pairings… don’t…. ) Conservative means all these fucked up ideas framing this conversations right here and right now officer.

Well that and in the other corner the people that keep trying to bring incest into LGBT discussion. Which IS, according to representation guidelines and again, decades of internal discussion that is already WELL PAST any of the arguments someone with their Ao3 ship has come up with and spun this fandom in circles about – generally, it’s actually conservative rhetoric to try to include that in LGBT discussion too. Which is why it’s banned to begin with. It’s defamatory because it’s literally a slippery slope argument used to strip us of rights. And no, we don’t want it here, and we don’t claim it and we never will and this was settled decades ago kiddos, right alongside pedophilia and beastiality which, surprise, are all summarily forms of rape. No, “consensual incest” got put down like a fucked dog too years ago, don’t. Don’t start.

So even the fandom’s habit of trying to blend “all ships [in fanon] are equal” into “all ships are equal” in the representation field already pitched you more right-of-center than america is with the rest of the world, and then everything after that has been one downhill spiral anchored in a thousand representation activists that don’t know representation history. A lot have come around. Thankfully there’s a very low volume of y’all that haven’t started tuning in to the LGBT middle aged man you’re saying you’re here to represent. There’s poorly-trafficed failed tumblr threads and a handful of anons, and beyond that, a few people mistakenly choosing to cycle this regressive dialogue by what ultimately amounts to social pressures skewing perception. Now just waiting for everyone to catch on to how illusory those social pressures and perceptions are.

Literally ignoring decades of nuanced discussion of LGBT cinema media representation elevating voiceboxes of LGBT men, and the voice of an LGBT male author in the demographic, who was politically active before some people here knew how to read. What a bizarre “representation” discussion.

So before anyone starts talking representation in canon, why not go back and review queer canon. Yes, that big list I posted. That is literally a list of queer representation canon, long before you ever started yelling about a gay angel.

[anitapena94]

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How To Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back Quiz

[brajeshupadhyay]

Bois Locker Room case underscores vital need for radical, political reimagining of an education that liberates us

In 1984, Delhi’s St. Stephen’s college was in the news for a time-honoured tradition: chick charts. Tradition is such a flexible word — making a practice sound unchangeable. In fact the college started admitting women students only in 1975 (it had been co-ed in the past, from 1928-1949). The nine years that women had been attending the college, was enough to term tradition, the frequent posting on the official college notice board, of Top 10 charts, made by male students, rating women on their breasts, butts, legs, mouths — and sometimes maybe, smiles. Smiles were what most women apparently used to mask the discomfort of the back-handed humiliation. When women are a minority, granted entrance to the worlds of men, going along with such behaviour, or being called a bad sport are often the perceived choices.

That year, the college was closed as Delhi witnessed harrowing anti-Sikh violence. Shortly after it re-opened, a “Sardines Chick Chart” came up on the notice board, sardines being slang for sardarnis. The most striking quality of quotidian violence is its wild-eyed avidity. The instinct to further leer at the women of a community that has recently been brutalised puts the violence in sex like masala films can but dream of.

The incident however, broke the uneasy acceptance of the ‘tradition’, and grew over time to become a protest that made it to the newspapers. Consequently, as the filmmaker Saba Dewan has recounted on Kafila, women students had men hissing ‘fuck off’ at them as they walked the corridors. The Girls’ Common Room was vandalised and students’ bras and panties were strewn everywhere, including furled from the college turret, just like victory flags of war. A Hen Chart was put up, making the clichéd connection between feminists and frumps, naming the most vocal members of the protest. The administration never held any men accountable, but did call in the women’s parents to complain about them.

At around the same time, the filmmaker Bela Negi was studying in Sherwood College, a posh boarding school in Nainital, which too had only recently begun to admit women. “I was the head-girl. The head boy was the principal’s son and he wasn’t much into rules. I was a bit of a goody two-shoes so I would take my job somewhat seriously,” Negi said to me. On one occasion, she crossed the head boy over something. A few days later, “when I went out in a short skirt”, a group of about 25 boys pounced on her and gave her bumps on a pile of horse dung. “I knew it was no use complaining to the administration, so I got up and walked away, refusing to give them the pleasure of knowing they’d humiliated me.”

The similarity to the Bois Locker Room incident — an Instagram group where schoolboys aged 14 to 18, rated schoolgirls’ body parts, shared their Instagram posts without consent, morphing their heads onto naked bodies — does not require over-articulation here. There’s no real difference. Bonding in private rooms, competing to trash talk women, dismembering women metaphorically, into body parts. Threatening to assault actually or metaphorically through public shaming, when called out. Traditions are what keep a society going, no?

One of the unexpected discoveries I made while writing this essay was that the niece of a close friend was one of the minors discussed in the Bois Locker Room. I had heard over the last year that she and her mother had had several conflicts over her posting very sexualised images on Instagram. “Why do you think she does it?” I’d asked my friend then. “It’s the only way for girls to be popular in their schools”. It’s a tricky path, when popularity is equal to being an aspirational object, often leading to violent responses that you’re a bitch if you aren’t attainable, and a whore if you are. Eventually you find yourself beheaded via app and discover the dehumanisations that gives these currencies of attractiveness their power — for all genders.

St. Stephen’s and Sherwood College are among the country’s elite educational institutions, grooming the rich and powerful for generations, a tradition being carried forward by the growing number of private schools today. Many students who were part of the incidents described above, as participants, or as uneasy bystanders, doubtless occupy positions of influence today — in politics, in civil services, in media, in academia, in corporate life. Many would be considered liberal leading lights. None of them, until today, have managed to create structures that naturally incorporate the point of view of anyone except elite heterosexual men — that we know of. Many of them might run the kind of organisations that yielded a bunch of #MeToo stories. Maybe on jolly social occasions, they say to women who object to their wife jokes, ‘yaar stop being such a feminist. You’re too serious’. Well, they’re just good students. They were groomed to decide what is serious and what is not on other people’s behalf. Someone married them, not expecting, or simply going along with, becoming a wife joke. Perhaps their kids go to the ‘good South Delhi schools’ everyone keeps mentioning when they express shock at the Bois Locker Room case.

It’s such a sleight of hand, ‘good’ schools, ‘good’ families, that conflates virtue with privilege. “How can an educated person do this?” people exclaim. It is precisely an educated person who does these things. Elite education is designed as it always was, barring a few cool accessories, to train elite men to dominate other people and express that domination in a variety of ways.

Education is structured to underline the importance of material success and competition at all cost, including the cost of understanding your own pleasures, relationships and emotions, which are considered distractions to be quelled, a source of weakness. Parents focus mostly on whether you are studying, when they think of your future, not about nourishing your inner life. They might notice an issue with your inner life only if you don’t do well at school. Everyone else is your competition. Everything you do requires fitting in but still, having an edge over others. The limit of learning is the exam — not the idea that you will keep learning from life. Exams are war and everyone must be an exam warrior. When we are trained to always go to war, what can we possibly know about how to go to peace?

As you go up the ladder, the self-congratulatory declarations — “it’s just business”, “I’m just being practical” — all mean that empathy and emotion have been successfully numbed, enough, that you can defend the scrapping of labour laws and can go to the government and say, “Do not send migrant labourers home. We may need them for our (just) business.”

The making of chick charts, the rating of girls, the slurs against queer and Dalit colleagues — these are all social reminders that elite, straight men are the ones entitled to define these structures, who get to grant approval and make decisions, in schools and colleges, and later in offices, governments, the internet. Your continued presence is contingent on fitting into this system and not objecting to its ‘just fun’ traditions. They are the foam in a double shot cappuccino of privilege.

Twenty five years after the incident in school, Bela Negi ran into one of her classmates at a school reunion. “He said to me ,‘remember how we gave you bumps, ha ha’. I said, ‘I can’t believe that as a grown up you’re laughing and bragging about it instead of feeling remorse or embarrassment’.” Other male classmates looked uneasy when she brought it up. Women at the party told her ‘forget it, now it’s in the past’.

But it’s not in the past, is it? It is firmly with us in the present — the sexual language used to attack women in a political disagreement online. The baying for sexual violation of Muslim and ‘sickular’ women by right wing men. The number of liberal men named in #MeToo accounts. The calling Safoora Zargar, the arrested member of the Jamia Coordination Committee, prostitute and saying ‘give her a condom’ because she is pregnant — and Muslim and politically active. It is so much with us, that the day the hashtag #boislockerroom started trending I didn’t pay attention because I thought, “it must be some new web series”.

A lot goes into maintaining the illusion that elite men are not sexually violent on a casual and intensified basis all the time. Part of this is the reigning discourse around sexual violence, which privileges the safety of women — elite women — over their freedom. The public space is painted as a dangerous one for women, where they are under threat of being attacked by ‘other’ men — read, lower caste or class, men. If elite men bother to talk about women, it is only to hold them up as emblems of purity or achievement, or to school other men for not knowing how to respect women. (In other words they don’t seem to know how to talk to women, but that’s another discussion).

Being a bro who stands up for feminism is an elite pastime across the political spectrum — sometimes they are scolding creeps in a music video, sometimes they are killing your boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. This discussion about ‘others’ is like a curtain. Behind it is the private behaviour of men — and that is never to be discussed. A man who does it is weak. A woman who brings matters private into public light, risks marginalisation and vilification. We have seen that, through domestic violence scandals and sexual harassment cases.

That is why the first responses to many such incidents is to blame women — #girlslockerroom — and then to clamp down on the freedom of women or blame them for acting as if they lived in a world where men’s violence against them is not a given. Boys will be boys, goes the platitude. As if this is an immutable condition and we must all tiptoe around them, which we are constantly, daily being trained to do, lest we provoke their boys-will-be-boys-ism.

The other response is to demand strong punitive action against perpetrators — we don’t mind if boys are boys as long as their privilege does not expose itself through an act of criminal violence. Then, we must teach them a lesson. One sometimes wants to say, but this is the lesson you have been teaching them: of supremacy. All other lessons are sitting in the pocket of that lesson.

***

Interviewed by media, one school principal expressed bewilderment that their students could be involved in the Bois Locker Room because “the school has regularly provided inputs on gender”.

At every school and college where I, or my colleagues at Agents of Ishq have done a talk or workshop, in the last two years, young women have come up to discuss, exactly the same experience of the Bois Locker Room case. They don’t know how to counter the distasteful misogyny that the cool, edgy filmmakers and forthcoming media sensations of the future subject them to. “Why don’t you say something?” I ask. “Because I don’t feel like being rude to a friend.” “Because they call me a prude or they might think I’m un-cool.” “Why do you care what they think?” I asked a young woman. She kept quiet. She knows in theory, that she need not care, but the world has not reshaped itself enough to make this automatic and there is very little conversation to help her figure out the way to do this positively, not negatively as a victim or an aggressor.

If you are a woman working in a cool corporate job, media, art films and so on, you will recognise this experience. In elite worlds where cool is a very necessary currency, you try to hold on to it tenuously, timorously. To not accept the banal misogyny and poor humour of men, marks you as un-cool. Despite being a grown woman, you must carry out an adolescent exhibitionism while talking about sex, to show you are blasé, so you may be accepted as one of the guys — and it’s simply a different version of young schoolgirls posing in particular ways, to gain importance in this world. Even my gay friends have called me a prude (and consider, I run a platform about sex) when I tell them not to bore me with misogynistic TikTok clips. If you don’t talk about sex the way men have been trained to talk about it, then you are a prude and simply not cool enough for school.

The workshops might not be useless. But they are not the real answer to finding our way out of this dystopia. Education, like patriarchy, is a structure. Just dropping new content into it doesn’t change what it does. In the structure of competitive education, those gender and sexuality workshops too can become one more competitive module you learn to ace — because your basic purpose has not altered. The same boys who are in Bois Locker Room, might easily be acing the Model UN and debating circuits, the social media conversations, saying all the right things about gender bias, toxic masculinity and inter-sectionality.

Liberal parents often show off their children’s by-rote sensitive (but not always good) writings — the passionate awareness of being a victim of gender discrimination, the performative pain of class inequity. It is not so different from saying ‘uncle ko poem sunao’.

The same by-rote politics will manifest later in ‘women-centric’ films made by men — liberal men castigating others for not knowing how to treat women. The right gestures will be made — like putting your mother’s first name as the middle name for the entire crew, in a sudden burst of born-again feminist consciousness. The catechism or rights-based discourse will be read out. And the performative mea culpas and ritualistic discussion of toxic masculinity will follow.

In a world where life is an exam — where you have to know the poem, not become it — everyone learns the right things to say, in order to win approval. And in the same way, everyone also knows what to hide.

Education and all the resources we put into it are about succeeding in public life — to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet, as TS Eliot wrote. We do not value the private sphere enough to put thought into an education for that, mostly hidden, part of life. We can be depressed but not surprised at the inability of young men to stand up for more humane relationships with women, sexuality, desire, because that has never been part of the syllabus anywhere. They have no language for it. Young women don’t have the means to recognise it — they still imagine that a man with the right terminology will also be decent. They have only been taught to think of men in terms of public attributes, not private ones. It would be hard to find the profile of a successful man in the Indian media, which mentions what kind of friend or partner he is, or asks what he feels about the world of love and emotion.

Sex is even more separated from the discussion. It is never discussed as part of life. It is a place of secrecy, shame, embarrassment and judgment, only made public through lewd jokes or lectures about violence. The only sources of sexual knowledge — in an experiential and not clinical sense — is mainstream pornography, which fragments sex into discrete acts and bodies into body parts — and online frat house culture. Mixed with a cultural universe and an educational system that emphasises hierarchy, disconnection and competitiveness, this gives us a recipe for self-hate. It leaves young people of all genders with a complete lack of resources to manage the world of desire that surges within them. The only language young people have is a second-hand one, and how can you find your own self, when you are always speaking in someone’s given language?

At the very least, Bois Locker Room may remind us that we need sex-education, which is age-appropriate — a curriculum that grows in scope along with the child — and that it should be comprehensive: looking at how health, desire, orientation, emotion, politics and culture intersect to create a sexual world.

But the task before is a more radical and political one. If education enslaves us, compelling us to be part of herds, gangs, clubs and cliques, then what does an education that liberates us look like? If education fragments us, keeping our minds, bodies and hearts separated like Science, Arts and Commerce, what is the education that integrates all these different aspects of being a person look like?

The bandying of phrases like toxic masculinity and that most Brahmanical of words, ‘problematic’, is not the road to discovering this education and this existence. The idea that boys have to be ‘fixed’ is itself a violence that does not acknowledge that every one of us lives in the patriarchy, is shaped by it and is also wounded by it. Such an attacking language only serves to harden the divisions and make the conversation inimical.

Three years ago I went to a town in Uttar Pradesh to do a workshop in a programme on masculinity. It was an all-men’s group and it was exhausting. They trotted out the politically correct self-analysis about masculinity. But probed to speak beyond it, about their emotions and relationships, about areas of doubt and experience, they congealed together into a sticky mass of resistance. They made jokes, sometimes demeaning each other and challenged the trainers by trivialising each question.

But when we recorded their narratives individually, very different behaviours emerged. There was a small percentage of absolutely intractable men I have come to categorise as Sententious Lecturers and Eternally Wounded. One kind speaks in lofty proclamations that mean very little. The other refuses to let their wound of rejection or hurt heal, and turns it into a justification for seeing numbness as strength and love and emotion as weakness. “Now I only use girls,” one said. “If I like a girl, I don’t sleep with her, because I won’t be able to give her the love she expects.” The world of emotion is expressed as an impossibility. But the majority of other men spanned the range. Some were tentative about their relationships, some confessing to hurt and inadequacy, even depression. Some laughed at their own sentimentality or discussed wanting more confidence, more love, less pressure.

Detached from the herd, and spoken to as individuals, about their emotions, they were quite different from each other and did not adhere to a fixed identity of gender and its associated behaviours. They did not have the confidence in themselves as individuals, to be themselves in front of a larger group of men.

In that they were reminiscent of the young women, who approached me in distress about the demeaning way their male friends discussed women, their conflict between seeing distasteful aspects of a friend you liked otherwise. These young women also did not have enough language to think through these contradictions.

Put very simply, we don’t give young people the means to see themselves as complex individuals — nor each other. Political language is important to identify structural issues, but in its current form where it essentially only knows how to describe a problem, it is insufficient to enable journeys of transformation and spark imaginations of change.

Education helps you to fit in with the herd to serve the larger power structures in a society. If you are very elite, you can learn the double speak of benefitting from this system, while also critiquing the system for your US college application essay.

An education which grants you immunity from the herd has to give you belief in your inner life. It has to grant importance to emotions, to desires, to pleasure, to poetry — to the ill-defined idea of personal life, an inner life — alongside the public.

I know it sounds utopian, but I don’t believe it is impossible. What it does ask from us, is to abandon the old system of report cards, to discard the traditional indicators of success and impact.

At Agents of Ishq, once we liberated ourselves from the logic of just garnering numbers for content or even working with a fixed curriculum, we began a journey that has constantly shown us new aspects of what young people need to strengthen their personal lives — they need information, they need conversation, they need a new language which fluidly incorporates love, sex, desire, attraction, lust, queerness, consent, gender identity, affection, friendship, rejection, relationality — not a language which puts all these in silos. Think of it as literacy in intimacy. Knowledge of how to relate with others on their own terms.

Perhaps all of education needs to be reimagined the way sexuality education has been reimagined. Perhaps our inner lives and our inter-dependence have to lead the way more, in redefining education. As we confront disconnection in myriad ways with pandemic isolation, we can see that we need a politics, a philosophy, a practice of relationality with others. Where the understanding that sexualness is mutually exchanged, not simply conquered and captured, is interwined with understanding that our emotional and personal worlds can be places of sustenance not weakness, to be attacked or guarded. And that is also intertwined with being able to see that resources are something to be shared for mutual survival, not hoarded, and grudgingly given or strategically taken away.

The Bois Locker Room and the crisis of our society in its current breakdown have a lot to say about each other. Both of them tell us that we have reached the limits of the system we live in. If the way out is together, then we need an education on what it means to do that.

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer whose work focuses on gender, feminism, urban life, love, desire and popular culture and spans many forms including documentary, fiction, print, video and sound installation. She is founder and creative director at Agents of Ishq.

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[cirgaydian-rhythm]

I just wanna talk through sth here

I didn’t play Kingdom Hearts until I met Tree, about 11 years ago now, but I was absolutely infatuated with it the first time I saw commercials for it on TV. The music and the graphics grabbed me in a way I couldn’t explain, and without experiencing any of it at all (because my mom refused to buy me a PS2 for “just one game”), I was in love with it. So despite not actually getting into it until I was 20, “Simple and Clean” evokes so much childhood nostalgia that I feel like it’s always been a part of my life.

Until recently, I’ve been happy with skimming favorable fan content from the sidelines - I didn’t have the systems to play through all of the games, so my knowledge of the lore and timeline was spotty and incomplete, so I simply focused on what I liked and gravitated to fan content that catered to that. But then the compilation set came out, and we got a PS4, and with 3 and Re:Mind coming out, Tree (who has always been the bigger KH fan) dove headlong into the fan theories, and I (of course) followed.

The problem with getting into the thick of this fandom, in particular, is that it’s had a very long time to grow, and with that growth has developed malignant cells. And those cells are very quick to attack others that are literally just trying to enjoy the series in their own ways.

I’m a very “ship and let ship” kind of person - or I try to be, anyway. I know I get ranty on here about particular ships, but I try to keep it here, on my blog. I don’t seek out people who ship something I dislike and harass them about how “stupid” or “delusional” they are - hell, most of the time, if it’s a ship I really have a problem with, I just block them. I don’t really have any desire to start an argument with people over something like that. (Don’t get me wrong, I do love me a good argument, but “I like this ship” is an opinion people are free to have - it’s not a fact they’re objectively wrong about.) Ideally, fandom should be about people being able to enjoy the content in whatever benign way they like - not about fighting over who’s “right” or “wrong.”

And what bothers me the most, I think, is that the malignant elements in this fandom boil it down to “just a ship.”

Kingdom Hearts is a very character-driven game. Yes, there is a lot of plot, but at the heart of it, it’s about Sora and Riku’s relationship, and how relationships can grow and change over time - and this is something that’s been backed up by the creator. KH1 does focus on how Riku, Sora, and Kairi all relate to each other, but after that, Sora’s motivation is largely about Riku, and Riku’s is largely about Sora. Direct parallels are made between canonical Disney couples, and Sora and Riku. Regardless of whether you ship it or not, it should be very difficult to discount the idea that Sora and Riku and extremely important to each other - more than friends, more than brothers, more than anybody else.

That is, it should be difficult to discount...if you’re not homophobic. I’m not saying “ship this or you’re homophobic,” I’m saying that if you’ve gone through all 10 games and you think Sora and Kairi’s relationship is more developed than Sora and Riku’s, you’ve got some serious het-goggles on. (As for the contingent who believes that only the numbered games matter, or that Re:Coded and/or Dream Drop Distance are insignificant... Well, I’m ignoring them as much as they’re ignoring Nomura himself. It’s fine to pick and choose what’s canon to you if that’s what lets you enjoy it, but it’s functionally an entirely separate fandom - any arguments made from one to the other are just as absurd as arguing what should happen in Elementary based on what happens in the BBC’s Sherlock.)

Right now, Tree is part of a group that’s going through the series in Japanese and English and finding everything that could pertain to Sora and Riku’s relationship - not because it’s hard to find (because it’s not), but because there’s so much of it that they need a team to go through and compile a whole-ass wiki to catalogue it all and sort through how it relates to various fan theories. (Plus, it’s allowing them to compare and critique the English translation, because it’s somewhat off for all the games, but it’s the worst in 3.)

And yet, when a preview pic is released of Sora and Kairi standing near each other, the Sora and Riku shippers are attacked, unprompted, for being “delusional” because Sora and Kairi are “canon” now.

What hurts the most is that we know this could very well happen. We know that, despite everything, Sora and Kairi could become canon. It would be very bad writing, but that hasn’t stopped people before.

And that’s the thing, is that it’s more than “just a ship” - we have mountains of evidence that Kingdom Hearts could actually, sensibly, logically be a long-running story of two queer boys learning to accept themselves and their feelings as they are, while fighting to save the world. It would be a hugely important development because this fandom is so big and the series is so long-running - it would mean so much to so many people.

If it ends with the underdeveloped and largely ignored hetero option instead... Well, it’d be a worse love story than Twilight. It wouldn’t mean anything, it wouldn’t do anything. It would be a poorly written nothing.

But even aside from all of that, no matter what you ship, it’s fucking petty and idiotic to go out of your way to harass other people who ship something else, just because you think your ship has more canon potential. Even if your ship does become canon, that still doesn’t give you any right to be an ankle-biting cockstain to other people. It just doesn’t.

[questionkayla]

Welcome to 2020!

I have never been too into New Year’s resolutions (Or however we spell it) and seeing the first of the year as a significant change. I always saw change as happening anytime throughout the year, however with it being a new decade, the first has a little more meaning to me. A breath of anew.

When I made this blog in 2018, I was in a pretty dark place of confusion, rejection, shame, and insecurities, which was pretty much my theme of 2019. With the new decade approaching, I started to reflect on my decade in general and noticed that theme appearing so much more throughout the past ten years. My high school years were filled with overcompensations for my depression by being a star athlete, maintaining straight A’s, and diving within to find my beam of light to share with the world, which I later realized continued until now. When I got engaged in 2018, all those years of compensating rushed into my heart with a different kind of ache because I was finally choosing a happiness for me rather than others. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of people that feel the joy I feel about marrying a woman, which has made it more difficult for me to be overjoyed in this experience.

The love I had for myself and my identity was met with pain and resistance from the beginning of 2018 (and likely at the beginning of my coming out phase) until the end due to feelings of rejection, racism, homophobia, and not feeling appreciated in many areas from my occupation to personal relationships. It became such a mess because I also allowed it to be. I didn’t stand up for myself or refute things that filled me with inappropriate shame. It was not until I spoke with my therapist recently that he helped me see that for most of my life (probably all of it if I’m being honest) I have been letting others control my narrative. My happiness, my joy, my sense of accomplishment was contingent on how someone else saw value in me. That was a heavy concept for me to recognize because I always thought I had control, when I gave that control away a long time ago because I did not think I deserved it. Sometimes I still feel this way.

Being a Christian, Queer, Black, Woman had always brought a sense of weight on me because it came with so much negativity from the world (internally and externally), and part of that is because I have allowed that negativity to enter my heart. As a result, I reached the lowest moments of my life and did not realize until recently that that was all because God wanted me to feel that to become strong (2 Corinthians 12: 9-10).

So, when I made this blog, I needed a space to simply express myself without caring about judgment or backlash from anyone that agreed or disagreed. I feel this blogging experience has opened my heart to beginning to work through a necessary healing process. It has been my truth and my thoughts just to flush out and share with the world. Most people assume that I am usually the brightest person emotionally and spiritually, which may be true often because I feel a lot of joy, however I have many lows and needed to be realistic with myself as well, so I shared my story. I am still sharing my story and have no idea what will be next for me in this new decade, but (I don’t care how cheesy it sounds) I do have a “2020 vision” of who I want to be. So, my decade resolution is honestly to focus more on healing through love. My mantra is to follow 1 Corinthians 13 because I want to love MYSELF, OTHERS, and JESUS just like THAT, which has been hard to do, especially this past decade, and probably my entire life. I will need this kind of love as I embark on the journey to marry a beautiful woman as I know that will come not only with love, but difficulties because I have cared so much about others’ feelings over my own. However, I get to control what I let enter my heart this time.

It may have taken at least 10 years to get here, but I’m grateful for the brokenness that has grown over the past decade because it allowed me to get to this place where I recognize I need and deserve healing. I appreciate if you have taken any time to read my words and I hope you have your own mantra to help you get your much deserved healing. I don’t know where this blog will take me this next decade, but one thing I know for sure is that I’ll keep having questions.

2 Corinthians 12: 9-10: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”