#openly queer in customer service

[wreckingball4good]

representing where i’m from and who i am.

[reasonsforhope]

"In an effort to increase protection for trans people, a Pakistani business has launched a ride-share service that will be available only to women and trans people.

Called SheDrives, the service was launched last weekend [early September, 2024] and seeks to protect trans people from discrimination and harassment, says Ammaz Farooqi, the company’s chief executive.

It currently operates only in the second-largest city of Lahore, but Farooqi said that expansion is possible...

Gay sex is illegal in Pakistan and punishable by up to two years in prison, though it rarely is. Queerness is looked down upon, which makes being openly trans or gay difficult.

It is estimated that Lahore is home to around 30,000 transgender people, with organizations advocating for their welfare estimating the transgender population across Pakistan to be about 500,000 out of the country’s population of 240 million.

Farooqi himself is not transgender, but he sees his business as a way to help two marginalized communities: women and trans people.

“I’ve taken a small step, and we may expand this service to other cities,” he said.

He also said that “a unique aspect of this app and ride service is that both drivers and passengers will be women and transgender individuals.”"

-via LGBTQ Nation, September 11, 2024

[marchingfishes]

Who do you think falls for who first out of Clay and Jack ❤️🥰

(I wrote a huge thing and it got deleted when tumblr refreshed for no reason so i had to rewrite it Argh)

If Jack stays Big Evil, then they probably wouldn't ever. They'd never get close enough to really know each other. Jack could have a hell of a crush tho. Clay aint into that evil business, no sir.

I think it depends on where Jack is at on a Being An Asshole scale. Jack is probably physically attracted to him first, but if Jack gets his shit together, Clay might get start crushing on him first. I'm a sucker for Jack eventually making his way to the side of good though.

I think Clay just getting to know this dorky dude who is kinda rude unintentionally, smart but a bit stupid, and funny even tho he doesn't mean to be, and VERY fun to pick on would be a game changer on their relationship. Not much is gonna get done if Jack doesn't drop the I'm Darkness Incarnate act around him. Even Chase has moments where he's not The Supreme Force of Evil and just eats his little snacks or pets his cats or whatever! Jack has no problems dropping the act around his parents or school/job or whatever, but around The Monks, he never does.

Jack might even go through a bit of a crisis himself not really knowing how to act without at least a little of his Badass Evil Genius persona. Maybe he's never really existed for long without it, his grandma being Evil and all, or maybe it's a sort of shield he grew up with he's not used to dropping and just being Normal with. I can see him laughing or giggling without it coming out as a cackle or evil chortle and them both being surprised and Jack being unnerved by it. Too close to Good!Jack, which he tries very hard not to be Thank You Very Much.

Or maybe it's just like Customer Service Voice and it's something he can turn off and on. *shrug*

Either way, I think it would be good for both of them if they were friends. Maybe they'd get a crush on each other at the same time- at that point it would be up to Clay on how to handle it cause while it would be the most dangerous for Jack if Wuya or Hannibal found out he's dating the enemy, Clay has the most to lose by doing anything with Jack.

I was writing a thing a while ago about them starting a friendship that I'll probably never get around to finishing but is cute

They're like 18-20ish and Clay is trying to unlearn some of the stuff his daddy drilled into him as a kid about The Gays, and he doesn't really have anyone else around to talk about this stuff with (other than his sister which is hard enough) except Jack. He's scared of getting kicked out of the temple cause who knows what Master Fung thinks about this sort of thing, and he's just scared in general of having to go back to the farm after his wonderful life here in the temple, but it's eating him up and he's that special specific kind of lonely. Jack's never had a problem being flamboyant and never shied away from being openly and comfortably attracted to other men, something Clay is having a hard time doing.

It would have to be No Good/Evil Politics zone meetings. Jack built a little room under the basement stairs that his parents, nobody really, know about but him that's a Neutral Zone where he can exist outside of the fighting and Wu hunting and evil planning; just watch TV or play video games or do some coding or smth.

Jack would agree to their little meetings thinking it'll be a long con kinda deal in getting him some Wu and maybe finding out some weaknesses (and maybe make some scratch) but ends up enjoying having a friend he doesn't have to pay and is outside the Evil Squad of his (he would never admit to this). It would be very awkward at first but I think they'd fall into a sort of easy banter of pickin' on each other halfheartedly. They'd start with painting Clay's nails, letting him feel weird about it until it's not a big deal in his mind anymore. Maybe watch a queer movie, put him in some eyeliner, eventually take him to a bar or something that ends up very uncomfortable and awkward when poor Clay is swarmed by twinks.

Eventually, it would just turn into just coming over to hang out in their little Neutral Zone and getting smth to eat, going to the beach and the mountains. Clay is 100% "stealing" the wu at this point to sneak out past curfew, which Jack finds hilarious and feels like he's corrupting him a bit. They're corrupting each other, despite the agreement saying No Trying To Turn Me To The Side Of Good/No Trying to Drag Me Into Evil Bussiness. Clay would learn to open up a bit and probably start talking more, and Jack would learn to chill out a bit and learn to act like a kinder, normal-ass person.

In a scenario like that, they'd 100% start to fall at the same time, embarrassing (especially Clay because come on it's Jack...) and scaring the both of them while they try and juggle that with not letting anyone find out about them being friends/anything more.

[coochiequeens]

In their promotional materials, HER even began using the term “womxn” to be more inclusive of those who felt “woman” was an offensive term.“

Boasting 1.5 million users in 55 countries, HER is undeniably the largest and most recognizable lesbian dating app on the market. While debatable now, it appears to have been created with the best of intentions. The app’s founder, Robyn Exton, said she first set out to design an app that wasn’t just a female version of Grindr. 

However, over the last few years, HER has become less of a platform for lesbians to mingle and more of a case study in the contagion of gender identity ideology and how it uniquely harms the lesbian community. 

Launched in 2015 under the premise of being a female-run lesbian space, HER went through a subtle rebrand in 2018 in an effort to profit from the burgeoning trends of “queerness” and “inclusivity” — terms which had gained popularity from the social justice bloggers of Tumblr and into mainstream discourse. HER, which had ostensibly been designed exclusively for female users, began to add more “categories” and “identities” so it could attract a base that included trans-identified individuals, particularly men. In their promotional materials, HER even began using the term “womxn” to be more inclusive of those who felt “woman” was an offensive term.

Exton gave an interview at the time calling the queer community “amazing” and celebrating the fact that queerness was causing people to “question, challenge, and think about their identity.” But, what started with a spark of “inclusion” turned into a wildfire of compulsion.

On Exton’s app, there was a flood of men who identified as lesbian who felt welcomed to use HER as their new mating grounds. All the while, lesbians and bisexual women who were only interested in dating females were not provided any option to filter out these men from their searches.

Over the short years following, HER began mutating into an entity that was openly hostile to its lesbian users in an effort to signal its dedication to inclusivity. 

Without the ability to filter out men, who could pick any identity they liked on the app, some female users took it upon themselves to signify that they were only interested in other women by adding it to their bio or including a photo with logos that signified exclusive same-sex attraction.

These women found themselves quite literally forced off the app.

Jen, a lesbian user known on Twitter as @cbucksrules, told Reduxx was suspended after adding “no trans women” to her bio on HER because she was exclusively same-sex attracted.

Jen had joined HER in late 2021 looking for a female partner and assuming a lesbian dating app would be the place to go for such an endeavor. Finding a veritable smorgasbord of 5 o’clock shadows and head tilts, Jen attempted to ensure she would only be contacted by other female users.

“I [wrote] in my bio what I would not consider the opposite sex as a partner nor a woman who was not a proud woman as we would not be compatible.” 

Shortly after, Jen was suspended. She wrote to HER’s customer service and asked why, and received a snarky response from an agent named “Devin” berating her for using “hateful language” in her bio, and asserting “trans women are women.”

Jen was incredulous. 

“HER banned me, a lesbian for being a lesbian and not wanting sexual and romantic relationships with the opposite sex,” she told Reduxx.

But Jen’s experience is far from isolated.

Another woman, a vocal woman’s rights advocate known by her moniker DJ Lippy, told Reduxx that she had been suspended from using HER after she uploaded a photograph to her profile featuring a sign that displayed the dictionary definition of woman as an “adult human female.” Many trans-identified males reject the definition of woman as it excludes them as they are not female.

“You can pick any gender identity and sexuality you wish and exclude any you choose… just as long as it isn’t male,” DJ Lippy remarked to Reduxx. “It’s like opening an all you can eat vegan buffet but sneaking salami into all the dishes. When you complain, they kick you out and call you a pork exclusionary radical vegan.”

Another lesbian women’s rights campaigner, Aja, told Reduxx that she was suspended after adding that she was “only interested in biological women” to her profile as she says she had been receiving regular messages from male users who identified as lesbian.

“I was messaged by lots of blokes who I ignored … so I added ‘I’m only interested in biological women’ to my profile and added a picture where I was wearing my ‘adult human female’ t-shirt. Not sure how long it took them to ban me but they did,” Aja says.

Academic and feminist author Holly Lawford-Smith also had a similar experience using the app. In her bio, she wrote that she was only interested in matching with other lesbians and was suspended as a result.

When she reached out to customer service, they advised her that she had been reported for “transphobic” behavior.

The customer service representative, Samantha, went on to inform Holly that it is against their community guidelines to list who you were not interested in matching with, and also compared a lesbian not wanting to mingle with men to a lesbian excluding masculine women.

Speaking with Reduxx, Holly said: “Everything about the app is designed to force gender identity ideology onto the people using the app. You can’t choose a sex, only a gender identity. You’re pushed towards entering pronouns. You can’t filter out males. You constantly have to swipe past men.”

She added: “It’s incredibly sad that an app designed to bring same-sex attracted women together has now been completely infiltrated by, and has completely sold out to, men.” 

Other lesbians on social media have expressed similar experienced about being banned from the app for stating that they were exclusively attracted to females.

Even as lesbian users continue to express disappointment in the fact that a lesbian dating app appears to be forcing female users to match with males, HER has continuously doubled down.

Last year, the app announced that it was taking a hard-line stance on so-called “transphobic language and behavior” by adding “improved TERF controls” which made it easier for male users to report female users for being same-sex attracted.

They also surveyed their trans-identified users and asked them what their biggest “hurdles” to dating on the app was. The number one reason given was “trans-exclusionary dating preferences.” Many women expressed outrage that their sexual boundaries were being framed as a “hurdle” that needed to be overcome. But this is hardly the first time homosexual females have been branded as “discriminatory” for not including delusional men in their dating pools.

The HER saga reached a fever pitch, however, over the past few days as it decided to celebrate Lesbian Visibility Week by explicitly attacking and cyberbullying lesbian women who refuse to date trans-identified males on their official Twitter.

In what can only be described as an unhinged tirade, HER’s social media manager used the company’s Twitter to engage in targeted harassment against women. During their episode, they defended a child molester, sexually harassed women, encouraged doxxing, and made a strange comment about feeding gender-critical crabs to trans-identified males. The social media rampage resulted in the company being temporarily suspended from Twitter.

The incident began when HER quote retweeted DJ Lippy, a user who had previously been banned from their app, who had been remarking on how a trans-identified convicted pedophile had taken the name of a feminist activist after he transitioned. Despite the fact HER had not been mentioned in the original comment from DJ Lippy, the app’s official social media page appeared to have sought out her remarks about the pedophile, and responded with an incoherent, sexualized comment mocking the original user.

“Can the TERFs not afford knitting supplies? Somebody start a GoFundMe, left their gaping assholes catch a cold,” HER wrote.

Immediately, they garnered backlash, with people outraged that they appeared to be starting an argument because a user had criticized the actions of a notorious pedophile.

As they started to get criticism, they continued to post bizarre remarks, including that they “must stay young for pedos.”

As more lesbian users came to DJ Lippy’s defense, the user at the helm of the HER Twitter account began sexually harassing lesbians who criticized them.

The overtly homophobic and sexualized nature of the replies led to many on Twitter to speculate that a man was behind the account, with others still so perplexed by the lack of professionalism that they theorized the account had been hacked.

But, after being suspended from Twitter for repeated instances of harassment, HER took to TikTok to inform people that they didn’t care about the suspension and that no one was going to be disciplined for the abusive tweets. Their account has since been reinstated on Twitter.

On April 26, recognized as Lesbian Visibility Day, HER’s founder published a blog post saying that it was her goal to reclaim the word ‘lesbian’ from those who say that “only those assigned female at birth can be lesbians.” After a barrage of insults aimed at lesbians where she calls them transphobic, bigoted, hateful, and even fascist, Exton ends the screed by stating, “There’s no such thing as a real lesbian.”

Oh, how the mighty fall. Robyn Exton, a woman who designed the app in 2015 with the seemingly heartfelt mission of creating a space for female homosexuals, denying the existence of the very base she once tried to serve.

As nonsensical as that might seem at first glance, we must remember that Exton is a businesswoman, and her strategy of booting clientele who are exclusive allows her to expand her potential customer base significantly. 

She has no vested interest in stating that lesbians are a specific, definable group of people who actually exist. Doing so would only limit her app’s potential market. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to assume she has has no interest in excluding males from the app, either, as men are much more likely to spend money on a dating app.

HER has chosen their marketing strategy: to make the app as appealing to men as possible, then bully, harass and ban any woman who does not accept their new clientele’s presence. They released two notifications this week alone asserting “transphobes” are not welcome on the app. 

These notifications were celebrated online by trans-identified males who call themselves lesbians. 

“As a trans lesbian it feels good knowing HER has my back,” one man wrote on the Reddit board r/actuallesbian, a community that is known to have a 47%user overlap with the male-to-female board.

But while HER has been boasting about their trans-inclusivity to the seal-clapping of trans-identified males, even some liberal women have been grappling with how to approach using the app if they are genuinely same-sex attracted. On Instagram, one woman left a comment stating that some women only want to have a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex. 

She clarified that she wasn’t trying to be a “TERF,” lest she be labelled “transphobic.”

HER responded by telling her to “just swipe left” and went on to explain that she needed to reflect on why her sexuality isn’t “inclusive.” Perhaps most disturbingly, they told her she was welcome to use the app only so long as she kept the specifics of her sexual attraction “to herself.”

HER is effectively telling lesbians to stay in the closet about their homosexuality in order to avoid alienating male users. The company continuously promotes the importance of consent whilst viewing women’s sexual boundaries as an obstacle that needs to be either overcome or hidden. 

The rebranding of the app from a lesbian dating app to a queer dating app sends a clear message: sexual coercion is in, and sexual boundaries are out. Consent is important, but the reason you’re saying ‘no’ is wrong. You can be a lesbian, but keep it to yourself or you may scare off porn-addled male customers. 

The confusing, undulating messaging that borders on gaslighting is the point. It is reflective of how gender ideology operates in general, where blind compliance and devotion is prioritized above common sense. And, of course, all of the compliance and devotion is intended to herd people into a machine of sociopathic profit seeking that benefits a select few.

I have no use for HER, and my lesbian friends have long since figured out to steer clear of it. My concern is for those young lesbian women desperate to avoid accusations of “bigotry” who are now being unwittingly forced into a digital conversion therapy camp — all so Robyn Exton can make a few extra dollars from men in skirts. 

Maybe I will launch my own lesbian dating app. I’ll call it HIM to keep the men away.

By Shay Woulahan

Shay is a writer and social media content creator for Reduxx. She is a proud lesbian activist and feminist who lives in Northern Ireland with her partner and their four-legged, fluffy friends

[atdutiesend]

🍇 for grim && 🍍for dove!

{ @mysteriarchae | Fruity Asks }

🍇Do they hang out with a lot of other LGBT people? Is this a conscious decision?

Yes he does, and not... exactly. Grim tends to be more comfortable and open around other openly queer and/or neurodivergent folks, so he tends to hang around them more often, and squish himself down into customer service/people pleasing mode less. Because he's being more genuine, people tend to in turn be more comfortable with him. So he ends up with more queer friends, and more non-queer acquaintances. It's not an active, conscious choice, but it is definitely a thing that happens.

🍍 Has this muse's sexuality changed over the course of playing them?

I actually just touched on this briefly! Dove was originally developed with @unsung-heroes's Zandri; we started playing the game together and it was obvious early on that Dove and Zandri were more interested in each other than the npcs or our other friends' characters... other than Dove's vast and wide-flung crushes. That developed into a semi-open relationship, which lead to Dove going from demi-for-Zandri to pan af.

These days, playing lone Dove, I'd say they're pan/demi tbh.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

concept: queer advocates but in a customer service/telemarketer way

you get to call people because of a complaint, but the complaint is "they were openly phobic in public"

you get a tired cs voice at all times

you get to quote obscure policies and rules in the tired cs voice: "I'm sorry Karen but your American citizenship trumps your personal vibes so unfortunately I am obligated to continue using the word 'queer' during the remainder of our call, now may I direct your attention to your breaking of Citizenry Rule #36: Microaggressions"

you get to refer them to your manager if they complain but spoilers it's just you again

or maybe it's your friend with an atrocious accent because they lost a bet

you get to reference public security cameras and eyewitness statements, make em paranoid of big brother while you're at it

"we're not currently looking to contact anyone else you know regarding this issue, as it seems to be a one-off at this point, but we'll keep an eye on this kind of behavior, Karen. We hope you will too."

end every call with the most dead "Have a nice day" you can muster

[deramin2]

Dropping letters from words to make them cuter is very fun, but watch out!

Do not drop the H from TRASH.

I worked my 18th year at my Renaissance Faire and finally got my stroll-about on Sunday morning because I was conserving my energy. So I was walking toward front gate from the middle of Faire, opposite of how the public is coming in.

A cheery girl in her 20s was selling adorable hand-made monster plushies. I had hadn't seen her here before, though I missed last year. She had a couple little hand printed signs taped to the side in neat lettering facing my direction.

The first reads "CASH ONLY". Okay, so she's figured out during setup there's next to no cell service out here and can't she process cards.

The sign under that reads "NO TRAS". My heart sank. Has transphobia really become so normalized that someone would openly post hate speech on their booth at a Renaissance Faire? The natural habitat of the theater kids who refused to grow out of it, and a notoriously queer space?

I know the owner will want to know about this because she's shut down a bigoted group in the past, and has a trans kid whose first faire was in the womb. Plus myself and at least two other long time participants that I've met (probably more, but I don't get out of camp much). (Later that day, a genderfluid fae shop assistant asked for my pronouns and liked them so he took them for the day. Promised he'd give them back that evening with an extra blessing.) TERF BS is very unwelcome here, but admin are not in online circles where they'd encounter the acronym (or even recognize that Trans Rights Advocate is supposed to be a pejorative term because of course advocating for trans rights is a good thing).

I started taking pictures of the sign for evidence when I notice two things.

It reads "NO TRAS' " with an apostrophe, and the lettering looks like it started too big and was running out of room.

It is above a recycling bin she has brought from home. (The faire is in the middle of nowhere and official recycling is logistically impossible.)

I waited for other customers to clear away and waved her over, quietly asking, "Is your sign supposed to say, 'No trash'?"

She replied, yeah, people kept throwing garbage in so she put up the sign.

I was very relieved at this and gently said she should come look at it again, because I think she has accidentally written a slur. (I did not say what yet.)

She's very perplexed by this and came around to look. She carefully studied it, and then suddenly her eyes went big as saucers. She just said, Oh no! That's been up since Saturday!

She immediately took it down and was very nice about it and glad someone told her. She may have been turning away the audience she wanted most. A tragic case of faire brain where there is so much to do and set up that even by Saturday of a 1 weekend event all our brains have turned to soup.

Since the interaction was ultimately quite pleasant, I have another funny story about the Renaissance Faire to share.

[mikkaeus]

게이PC방 “gay PC room” podcast recommendation - for intermediate/advanced korean learners looking for queer content 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Highly recommend this podcast! This is the first time in my life I’ve ever truly enjoyed and looked forward to a podcast (including English ones).

They have four hosts, all of which are gay men in Korea, and they talk about a really wide range of topics with various guests. In season 3 they’ve been focussing on the “ordinary queer” life (some brief episode synopses at the end of the post), but in the previous seasons (which I’ve not listened to yet) it sounds like they talked about more activist stuff.

Their audio quality is excellent + they speak slowly and clearly (compared to other native podcasts lol). Minimal talking over each other. And their voices are nice to listen to! (No seriously the audio quality is amazing for an amateur podcast because they actually use a recording studio.)

The PC is a pun on the regular definition of PC방 lol, initially I thought they were going to be like… talking about computers? But in a gay way? 😂 but it actually stands for politically correct lmao i.e. they’re going to talk about things with as much sensitivity & respect as they can.

Overall, it’s super interesting, funny, and really just struck a chord with me, esp knowing how Korea is… hm… not very progressive 😬

Their main platform is 팟빵, but they’re also on google podcasts & Apple podcasts. Google podcasts is more user friendly but if you enjoy their content pls go support them on 팟빵 as well! (Also if anyone listens to it and wants to chat about it feel free to PM me! I’m dying to talk to find people to talk to about it. I can probably help you out if you don’t understand sth as well although my comprehension isn’t 100% yet)

~ some episode synopses under the cut ~

ep 52 was about korean bear culture (iirc one of the guests was a bear and the other one was a “stan” (i.e. “standard” guy) who likes bears. good discussions abt body image and stuff

ep 47 was a bit of a catching up w/each other type episode and covered things like attending uni during covid, funerals, korean and french holiday customs, something about christian organisations installing christmas trees in public areas and being bullied away last year(?) bc of people making civil complaints? the kdrama D.P. and korean military service in general, Q-Force

ep 46 talked a lot about kpop and the korean wave because the guest was a french dude who's doing a masters or something in korean culture (he mentioned that - idk if in this one or 47 - that he's looking into the differences between how intl and kr fans perceive homoeroticism in kpop, which i thought was cool)

ep 44 was them interviewing an openly gay korean artist http://yangseungwook.com/ (and going off on wild tangents lol)

ep 40 “queer in Taiwan”. Guest was a korean dude who’d been a tour guide in Taiwan for several years, talking about his experience. There was a good helping of politics as well. If you’re so inclined I recommend getting verified on 팟빵 (super quick, just need to email them a photo of your ID) so you can access the 19+ episode because it was hilarious.

ep 39 the guest was a korean currently living in America who’d gotten married last year. they talked about his life (how he met his husband, how the wedding went etc) in part 1 and then more on the broader issue of gay marriage in part 2.

[kinsey3furry300]

Im not that old, but I am old enough to remember that when I was a kid in the 90's, openly queer people wouldn't get served in a lot of establishments not because the owners were necessarily homophobic, but because the owners knew other customers would leave if they saw a queer person getting the same service as them. The fact that we're normalised enough that big soulless brands are co-opting our iconography for profit is a huge step forwards.

I love this❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[nerdygaymormon]

Good slides from BYU Multicultural Student Services’ Instagram 

————————————————————

Microaggressions are indirect, subtle, or unintentional discriminatory acts against members of a marginalized group.

Because most people today do not engage in overtly hostile and openly biased behavior towards minority groups, many think discrimination doesn’t exist. These same individuals unwittingly perpetuate microaggressions.

From the outside, microaggressions can seem small or insignificant, a growing body of research shows that microaggressions are harmful to minority groups and reinforce damaging stereotypes. To a person not on the receiving end, the microaggression can seem harmless, but the person on the receiving end of the microaggression, they likely have been on the receiving end of many similar microaggressions and their cumulative effect is damaging.

————————————————————

Here’s examples of microaggressions:

Alien in own land      “Where are you from?” “Where were you born?” “You speak good English.” When someone has identified as bisexual and asking a guy if he has a girlfriend, or when is she going to get a boyfriend (disregarding their identity as bi).

Ascription of intelligence      “You are a credit to your race.” “You are so articulate.” Asking an Asian person to help with a Math or Science problem

Color Blindness      “When I look at you I don’t see color.” “America is a melting pot.” “There is only one race, the human race.”

Criminality--assumption of criminal status      A white woman clutching her purse as a Black or Latino approaches. A store owner following a customer around the store. A white person waiting to ride the next elevator when a person of color is on it. “Gay people recruit children.”

Denial of individual bigotry      “I have several Black friends.” “As a woman, I know what you go through as a racial minority.” “It’s all in your head.” “You’re being too sensitive.”

Myth of meritocracy      “I believe the most qualified person should get to attend this university.” “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.”

Pathologizing cultural values/communication styles      Asking a Black person, “Why do you have to be so loud?” Dismissing an individual who brings up race/culture in a work or school setting. “Do you have to dress so gay?”

Second-class citizen       A person of color is mistaken for a service worker. “You people...” Assuming a gay man works as an interior designer or beautician.

Environmental microaggressions      University buildings named after slave owners. Television shows set in a city like New York or Los Angeles which have diverse populations, but the characters on the show are predominantly white. No gender-neutral bathroom existing in a public space. An absence of books with LGBTQ characters at a library. Difficulty changing the sex indicator on government-issued identification and on legal documents. A school not allowing clubs based on race, culture or queer identities, for example, a high school not allowing a GSA club

Offending without really trying by using common phrases based on stereotypes      “Indian giver.” “That’s so gay.” “I jewed him down.” Imitating accents, such as “ching chang chong.”

Use of sexist/heterosexist language      Use of incorrect gender pronouns, especially after the person has been corrected or informed of the person’s pronouns. “You’re too pretty to be a lesbian.” Describing a gender-nonconforming person as a “he-she” or a “she-male.” “She suffers from same sex attraction” “There’s only 2 genders.” 

Traditional gender-role prejudice      A gay couple holding hands in public receive looks of disgust or curiosity from strangers & passersby. “No homo!” “Who is the woman in the relationship?”

Non-affirming comments.      Warning someone about the dangers of identifying as LGBTQ. “You’re going to hell.” “People come out for the attention”...or “because it’s trendy.” Trying to prevent a queer person from being around other queer people. “It’s okay that you’re gay but don’t do anything gay around me.” “Just so you know, I’m not into girls, so don’t try anything.” “It’s just a phase.” “It’s a choice.” “Why do you dress like that?” “You’re just confused.” Assuming a bi person would be open to joining couples for a threesome. Asking a trans person what’s in their pants or if they’ve had surgery.

[man-reading]

Buying Gay

How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement

David K. Johnson                                            

Columbia University Press

In 1951, a new type of publication appeared on newsstands—the physique magazine produced by and for gay men. For many men growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, these magazines and their images and illustrations of nearly naked men, as well as articles, letters from readers, and advertisements, served as an initiation into gay culture. The publishers behind them were part of a wider world of “physique entrepreneurs”: men as well as women who ran photography studios, mail-order catalogs, pen-pal services, book clubs, and niche advertising for gay audiences. Such businesses have often been seen as peripheral to the gay political movement. In this book, David K. Johnson shows how gay commerce was not a byproduct but rather an important catalyst for the gay rights movement. Offering a vivid look into the lives of physique entrepreneurs and their customers, and presenting a wealth of illustrations, Buying Gay explores the connections—and tensions—between the market and the movement. With circulation rates many times higher than the openly political “homophile” magazines, physique magazines were the largest gay media outlets of their time. This network of producers and consumers helped foster a gay community and upend censorship laws, paving the way for open expression. Physique entrepreneurs were at the center of legal struggles, especially against the U.S. Post Office, including the court victory that allowed full-frontal male nudity and open homoeroticism. Buying Gay reconceives the history of the gay rights movement and shows how consumer culture helped create community and a site for resistance.

Named one of the 20 best LGBTQ reads of 2019.                                Attitude     Named one of 'The best queer(ish) non-fiction tomes we read in 2019'                                                                                                                             Advocate     Named a top ten book by the 2020 Over the Rainbow committee of the American Library Association                               Over the Rainbow committee of the American Library Association                            

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

Considering the backlash on having a (at the time) closed straight passing actor play a queer character Netflix got over heartstopper … I don’t think HBO always going to risk the outrage of having to straight men simulate gay sex .

never in my life have i seen media corporations worry about getting "liberal" themed backlash. the kind of backlash big companies like HBO try to avoid is like, "nobody will watch our show if there are too many people of color" or "people will unsubscribe from our service if we openly support gay representation"

i vaguely heard abt the discourse over the netflix show and i'll admit i don't know a lot about what went down (aside from the actor coming out bc of it, which sucks). but if that drama was mostly on twitter, as i suspect it was, then ironically enough that kind of backlash actually makes more money for netflix. the more people talk about their shows, even if it's criticism, the more money they make. and if the backlash was just angry tweets and maybe formal complaints, i don't see why netflix would even care. unless netflixed suffered financial losses because of the backlash (like people were cancelling their netflix subscriptions because of heartstopper), i don't know that anyone other than the actor were actually negatively impacted by that shitshow

also i haven't seen any "our flag means death should be canceled because rhys darby and taika waititi aren't gay" discourse and like, those two were PLENTY gay in season one even without sex. so idk why people would suddenly care about that now.

i have no idea if there's gonna be a sex scene in season 2 but if we don't get one, i'm more inclined to think it's bc HBO thought they'd lose money for being too gay and alienating their homophobic customers, not because some angry people on twitter would get mad at them for their cast not being gay enough

[saezurumurmurs]

Lezhin’s Great POTN Black Out of June 2023

(Advocating for the English Fandom)

Imagine charging us at a higher rate, for a total cost dwarfing the cost of a physical copy, and not allowing us to own a copy of the story, AND THEN not investing in the server so we don’t get this:

503: Service Unavailable

504: Gateway Timeout

I’m clicking on the POTN 116 chapter link and I see the server struggling to resolve the domain.

There were some folks on Twitter talking about how byeonduck asked for people not to spoil the chapter, and that’s why the server keeps breaking.

The 50 year old nerd in my soul: 😒 That’s not how this works.

There is no way Lezhin is doing this on purpose. They want us to pay the toll for entry, so blocking us from reading is not going to increase their profit.

What this almost 24hr long consistent breaking of the link that we are seeing, is their failure to spend enough of the money they are extracting from us blood drop by blood drop on the fucking server.

The underlying technology stack has a flaw somewhere, one that almost 24hrs later, we their consuming public have got neither an explanation for, nor a resolution.

This is more evidence of just how little Lezhin cares about its English audience. They charge us more, look down on us, fail to communicate (has anyone seen a notice? Does anyone even get ANY fucking email from Lezhin about anything?) and force us to trail Korea and LezhinES and every other localized Lezhin.

We at Digital Juicy pay for our chapters, both official translations as well as raws. So this burns in the guts.

This is why I have grown increasingly ambivalent about the ethics of where the general BL public reads. No matter how disgusting some creators behave on Twitter, bullying illegal and paying legal readers, equating them with pedophiles while engaging in and uttering openly racist rhetoric, it doesn’t improve their demands for loyalty when Lezhin does such a piss poor job of supporting their work.

Lezhin’s business model is extractive, their value for money negligible and their treatment of their English reading customers appalling. With a platform this greedy, one that exploits the creators as much as the consumers, do I as a grown ass thinking person, really feel the need to punish illegal readers when they say, “Fuck this!”

The answer is, “No”.

Tear it up. They’re asking for it.

We read legally, we buy hard copies, we buy merch… we support the creator’s Patreons and KoFis.

But no one is buying our voices and opinions or feelings about what is happening. Accusing illegal readers of lowering the profitability of the stories, ignores Lezhin’s role and ignominiously centers it on the readers.

Lezhin has built a rickety ass vehicle, underemployed its maintenance and fueling, overcharged for its output and sat back raking in the money.

The sycophantic and mindless ass kissing that goes on between portions of the fandoms and the creators notwithstanding, there is also another part of this that I notice so many people never quite catch.

Lezhin is owned and run by men. We can fairly assume the majority of them sexist, misogynistic and no doubt homophobic. But money is money. They will do stuff personally ‘distasteful’ to make money. Business is business.

They profit off of the work of women, the consumer habits of an audience of mostly women and queer people.

However, it is clear they do not invest in the majority of the stories we read. Chile, it’s clear they don’t even invest in the fucking servers! They just spend money on the ‘stars’, and even then byeonduck is their only real blockbuster story. Everything else is distant. Which is the number one reason they’re not blocking anyone. The outages are about incompetence, that’s it.

While there are a few localized Lezhins, the overwhelming majority of the non-Korean reading audience, reads in English.

So the (mostly) women that create the content we consume, are underserved by Lezhin by default. They HAVE to be out there pushing for legal readership so they can make the process worthwhile. Lezhin also doesn’t give them support in terms of the cultural differences between there and here. Do you see anything like that happening? Their marketing and promotion of the stories is anemic to the point of dead on arrival.

Add to this a mostly female audience paying through their noses to read.

And no one notices that the men at the top are keeping most of the work licensed, as well as most of the money, while pitting the creators against the readers. The creators do not get the lions share of what we spend on Lezhin. We’ve not seen exact figures obviously but we do know the split is mostly in Lezhin’s favour.

The kind of nastiness I have seen on Twitter over money, supporting creators, and the ripping to shreds of each other over extremely immature and misdirected issues, hurts my heart as a woman.

You’re watching women and queer kids fight about making rich men richer, while they starve and overwork the creators, over a platform that barely fucking works, for stories we the paying consumers don’t own copies of, stories consistently riddled with typos, while these same men look down on us, subtly mock and underserve us for creating, reading and loving stories of love between men.

We are only good for them as a source of fuel. They don’t care about either the creators or us. And we fight each other.

The internalized misogyny is so fucking loud.

Me:

Why is it that no one ever seems to notice this? Is it because I’m an old witch? Is that why it’s so obvious to me?

Why is it that everyone who engages in this behaviour, this tearing apart of each other, never seem to get that the enemy is Lezhin, not the people who read illegally. Rather, it’s the men who are using and profiting off of us, while throwing salt on us from above and justifying it!

Come on fandom, step ya pussy up!

Lezhin won’t let me read POTN and I’m about to fuckin riot

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

*rants cutely* i just love the fact that i just had a mental breakdown because my school hasn't taught me anything about how to economically manage my life after college and i literally don't know ANYTHING about ANYTHING like i literally don't they haven't taught us anything and i only have one year left before college i genuinely don't know how i'm going to survive after college i have too bad of depression and adhd to actually hold down a job or a place which means i won't be able to pay for my anti-depressants, i'm aromantic so i won't be able to get marriage benefits so i won't be able to have kids even though i really want them because i won't even be able to take care of myself let alone my kids, and i can't do anyting about any of it and i'm terrified and argh.

i know you're busy and you don't know me but i could really use some reassurance that i'll be okay even if it's not true because i've seen what happens to mentally ill queer people when it's hard for us to work or do anything and i know it could happen to me and i'm really really scared and i just need to know i'll be okay even if i won't because i'm so scared of ending up homeless

sorry i don't mean to put pressure on a random internet stranger i'm not asking for help it's not your job i just want to know that it's not impossible to make it in the world because right about now it feels like it

You REALLY know know how to pick them for emotional support.

I have major depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I am not okay 🤣

But as a mentally ill queer person myself you'll probably be fine.

First but if advice is get some customer service experience before you graduate college. You'll do better.

Second bit of advice is get a paid internship in your field preferably Junior and Senior year of college. It'll help you get a job right off the bat.

Third bit of advice is don't choose a major where you will experience discrimination. My life would be a thousand times easier if I weren't a femme in STEM.

Fourth but if advice is check out the insurance options on the open market. Call a medical insurance broker and review your options. If there's viable options in your state, you might want to look at contract jobs. They generally pay more (account for the fact that they don't contribute to your taxes or insurance). The only downside is you don't get PTO.

And medical insurance is a pain in the ass, but get an insurance broker. You don't have to pay anything, and they'll help you with the just stressful parts. I legit wouldn't have had insurance last year without it.

And as long as your pay is pretty straightforward (no tips or anything like that) you can use a free tax service. Your job will mail you you're W2, and you just enter the numbers from that into a free tax service. Taxes are easy if your pay is straight forward.

You'll be fine. You just have to get a job that's good for you. I recommend if looking for a new job every year or so is too stressful, try to find a well-rounded job. I'm a full-stack developer, so my job changes every day and sometimes every few hours and it's great.

Another thing if you want to find a job you like ask your interviewer if they'd let you switch to different roles or projects relatively easily if something else caught your interest. My favorite (as a developer) is "I understand this role is front-end, but if in five years I wanted a more backend role, would I be able to move around in the department like that?" If they say yes, that's a good job for ADHD.

Just always be sure to have questions about the company ready at an interview, and always frame your questions like "in five to ten years" this does 2 things. 1) it gets the image of you working there in their mind. 2) it shows if they hire you, you'll stick around. They like that.

Hope that helps. I've only been adulting for a few years, so I'm always happy to infodump the 101 things I wish people told me. Maybe my life would be easier if I had someone do the same for me.

Remember, if you get hired and it doesn't work out? Change jobs. I've been at my job a year and a half, but they don't quite have the pay/benefits I think I deserve, so I'll look elsewhere.

Most importantly, when participating in capitalism, always put yourself first. Remember your employer won't put you first. Their first priority is the company.

MOST IMPORTANTLY DON'T FORGET TO UNIONIZE. Don't talk union at your job, obviously, but the only way to ensure you're treated fair is to talk openly with your coworkers about everyone's pay and unionizing (outside of work, obviously, and only with your coworkers not your boss or manager).

-fae

[icouldntresistit]

I often see people commenting on how if km ever came out, their careers would be over. I am not talking about the ones who say it would affect their careers since that is basically a given, but the ones who claim it would end them.

I am not sure if that would be the case.

For starters, bts have a HUGE fanbase. Amongst it, their fans from lgbtq+ friendly countries aren't by any means small in number.

In the west, there are openly queer artists who succeed without having even a quarter of the fanbase bts has. They still face hardships and discrimination but they are able to do what they love and have many people listening to their music.

Even if they lost a significant amount of fans (homophobic fans by the way), the remaining ones would still be enough for them to profit greatly of their music, reach people with their message, and perform for big audiences. They would be left with a reduced but still not small fanbase made of people more loyal to them and, most importantly, accepting and supportive of them.

Of course, they would most likely have to change their target demographic to focus more on progressive countries (something they probably don't want to do) and would face backlash in South Korea and other conservative parts of the world. As far as I know, they are very patriotic so this would be horrible for them.

However, that doesn't mean their careers would be over, like many tend to say. Even if their popularity plummeted in SK, they would still have enough fans to continue pursuing their passion succesfully.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think they lack reasons to not want to come out. Like I said, they really appreciate their country's support so receiving hate from them and their media is definitely something they don't want to go through. There is also the issue with the military service, the consequences it could have for their families, them being korea's representatives, etc. This is all very unfair and part of why I don't expect them to come out.

Having said this, to me, it is a little difficult to imagine that it would be career ending considering their huge fanbase in the west.

Is this just my impression? Would they really be unable to continue living off of music and performance with moderate success, thus ending their career, if they came out?

I’ve never thought much about this but honestly, I do think their careers would suffer if any member came out. Internationally, it might not move the needle as much, but domestically, they’d likely take a huge hit. A good portion of HYBE’s investors are Korean corporate conglomerates and Korean nationals. If Korean investors pull out, then HYBE is left with a fraction of their current resources, which would effectively halt production of any bts-related content and/or merchandise. Also consider that in business, it’s not only about having a customer to sell to, but also a method by which to deliver the product. Exhibitors and distributors could blacklist them--which would severely limit their ability to sell anything, let alone perform on shows/go on domestic tours, etc. Imagine Samsung without all the electronics stores, appliance stores, mobile phone companies, etc, to distribute their products through. They would have to rely on their own retail outlets which make up only a fraction of Samsung’s retailers. They would lose revenue on that alone. Likewise, imagine BTS’ situation if suddenly Naver, Melon, MNET, etc. pulled any bts-related content. BTS would have to find a way to make the same amount money on things like YouTube and Spotify US alone in order to maintain their current business model and individual lifestyles. They would definitely still make money, but it wouldn’t be as much. Now, I don’t imagine that all of their investors would suddenly pull out (money does talk after all), nor do I imagine that they’d be blacklisted from all domestic distributors, but they would most likely suffer a hit that would lower their current status in the industry.  But honestly, I think the worst part would be how their image would suffer.  At least for a period of time, they would be socially outcasted by a good part of the Korean public (definitely not all people though). And Jimin and JK specifically are strongly nationalistic (not unlike a lot of Korean men) and put the support of fellow Koreans above any international success. If someone like this loses the support of their home nation, I can imagine it’d be a worse toll than losing the money. You’ve now effectively become a pariah in the place you love most. I mean, look at what Koreans have done to Sam Okeyere for daring to even speak on discrimination in South Korea All of this, of course, is just conjecture. Because there’s no precedent to be able to tell us how the korean public would react, only attitudes and predispositions of trendsetters and decision-makers. Something like this has literally never happened before (an idol coming out as both LGBTQ+ and in a relationship with their member) so it would honestly just have to play out for us to truly know TL;DR: It would most likely cause damage in the interim but really, I don’t know and neither does anyone else lol

[stolenvampires]

NSFW-Tumblr and What to do bout it

So y’all might have noticed Tumblr is going to ban NSFW content flat soon and thats an issue. I’m going to go into some details that are from what In understand is going on, and, how to protest the changes.

This ban is obviously, a big deal for many of us, and I’d argue, it should be a big deal for all of us. In the past Tumblr has threatened such a ban but the backlash made it reverse the decision. Thing is, that was just after the yahoo buyout, and, the site wasn’t recovering from getting it’s ass handed to it by apple and google over rampant pornbots and childporn being left unbothered for 3+ years. But now, they ‘fixed’ the porn bot and CP issue... and decided to cut the problem off at the source, ban all nsfw.

Now, here is where things get very frightening. The first time around, the site powers that be (shareholders), had 0 real justification to ban nsfw content other than in an attempt to make Tumblr more marketable. Now? They have a very big, very ugly pr event to point at and say ‘See, NSFW is an ISSUE and we need it GONE’. And now, they’re right, and no matter the backlash, they can point to the event, and use it to justify their ban. They have a *reason* now to ban said content, even if the issue they cite is one they helped create to begin with.

Why ban NSFW?

Yahoo is not good with business or marketing decisions. They just aren’t. They have a vast track record of buying up sites, killing them, and then trying to launch something of their own, (with 0 success). But with tumblr, they see nothing but a VAST market-ready base... just needing a bit of direction. How do you give direction to a site that basically is a old god of chaos’s wet dream of the cosmos set on the internet? You filter content. You narrow down users experiences to key aspects. We’ve already seen these tools slowly being implemented over the years, and for the most part, they’ve been annoying at best, slightly intrusive at worst. A ban on nsfw is a large step in moving towards narrowing their scope a lot more. Banning NSFW opens up a LOT of ad revenue companies because most won’t sell/buy ad space unless they *KNOW* the target audience. Right now, tumblr’s algorithm for marketing does not work. If they can narrow it down much like FB has done, or other sites have done? Boom. You get more ad companies selling.buying your ads, your able to get more $$$. AND THATS WHAT TUMBLR SHAREHOLDERS ARE AFTER.

Money.

WHY THIS IS AN ISSUE:

Here is the thing about what happens when you ban NSFW on a platform that has allowed it for years. You end up with people reporting anything they deem as ‘unsavory’. AND THAT MEANS LGBTQA+ CONTENT.

Like, I wish this was some kind of joke but it historically, is not. LGBTQA+ spaces thrive on nsfw friendly sites because a lot of it has to do with the discussions around sexuality and self discovery in terms of attraction and sexual thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is not that LGBTQA+ is inherently ‘nsfw’, only that it is safer for it to exist in such a space where the sexual aspects of it may be openly discussed. Many non 18+ sites have safe LGBTQA+ spaces, but have to rely on outside sources and resources for some material and have limited ability to provide information on those topics. It’s a hindrance at worst. So why again, is tumblr’s ban so alarming and such a threat? Because those ‘ SFW LGBTQA+ friendly’ social media sites? They’re not all that friendly. They’re rife with rampant abuse of false nsfw reports- reports that often go unanswered, or, hold up bans on perfectly safe content because someone deemed LGBTQA+ material as unsafe. Because they can. It’s a well documented thing that many sites grapple with because its a system that gets abused by those who think (wrongly), LGBTQA+ content is sexual. They abuse the report system, and sites... do not care. They care about their bottom line. And that bottom line means removing content the lowest common denominator sees as ‘offensive’. Thus- LGBTQA+ spaces become targeted, and are not as safe and a site will claim.

How to Fight back

Contact Tumblr DIRECTLY and tell them you will:

1) Leave the site and seek another social media platform, and encourage your followers to do the same

2) Encourage friends and other members you know to leave with you. 3) (THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO INCLUDE) That you will not buy any services or products, or buy anything affiliated with tumblr, (including other yahoo owned entities) now, or in the future.

Tumblr needs money. That’s what it’s shareholders want, and that is very likely, why we see this nsfw ban moving forward, especially with such a quickly approaching deadline. By making clear you will never patron the site and buy any product or service, you are directly telling them you are willing to effect their bottom line.

And THAT is what will get attention. You aren’t worth anything to this website except as a potential customer. A consumer. Use that to your advantage.  I’ve included the link below with their customer Support, but no doubt other avenues exist.

I would like to think I’m wrong. But historically, when other sites have done these things, the aftermath is consistent. Queer spaces are targeted and removed because people think we don’t belong. Tumblr can do all the lip service it wants but it’s just not true. Tumblr already has a history of removing safe, non sexual content hosting queer blogs because of false reports. Their filtering system flags queer content for no reason. Lip service will not cut it. It never has, and it never will. I like nsfw content. Hey, who doesn’t? And if the site was built around it being void of such content, then this would not be the issue that it is. But it wasn’t. It was built allowing it. Granting queer spaces a safety net to fall back on against those false allegations and able to fight the ‘charges’ of being nsfw.

Artists are greatly effected by this as well, naturally, but I wanted to focus on what I feel is a more important underline effect of the nsfw ban that on many sites is unseen. Please encourage those you know to make a stink as much as they can. Tell them to e-mail support to express their frustrations. Tell them you won’t give them your money as a result. Threaten their bottom line.

We, the users, are nothing more that consumers they want to sell to.

But if we refuse to buy, they’ll have to rethink their business strategy, or die trying.

Tumblr Customer Support

http://www.tumblr.com/support