#queer academic role model

[internetxanarchy]

is there a nonbinary version of being an ‘it girl’?

like, I’m afab and in some senses I do connect to the idea of being an it girl. I love the idea that the term it girl encompasses, of being the best version of yourself & being a successful person despite the odds & discrimination you might face as a woman.

but like I want a gender neutral term. i need nonbinary role models who are ‘it people’ to look up to. as a queer person & someone rlly dedicated to improving myself & studying hard, i want to see nonbinary phd students and CEOs and world leaders. i just wish there was some middle ground somewhere between alpha male and it girl where i can fit in 💀

[sam-keeper]

Halloween Horror: Häxan (1922)

Häxan's genre defying structure makes it hard to summarize. Wikipedia valiantly offers "Silent Horror Essay", a pretty decent stab at encompassing all seven reels of this silent Swedish classic. In the early parts, director Benjamin Christensen walks us through an academic lecture on the medieval conception of the cosmos and of superstition, aided by scale models of the universe. This section feels like a proto video essay. Then, it becomes an astonishing special effects horror showcase of rites and devil worship. Then, a multi-part melodrama of inquisition, false accusation, and torture, as a town falls to witch hunt mania. Finally, it introduces a melodrama in the present of mental illness and treatment, bridging past and present with its video essay elements.

I heard the bookends around the film described as a scholarly pretense for pure spectacle of the middle section. And boy there's some spectacle! I didn't really expect it to go quite as far as it does into perverse fantasy and sadomasochism. There's a whole sequence where a priest, consumed by lust for a village woman, ecstatically receives the lashes of a flail, his agonized expression superimposed on the whipping. Later, Christensen remarks in intertitles that one of his actresses insisted on trying his thumb screws. Juxtaposed with footage of the actress laughing and gasping, the intertitles remark coyly that they won't repeat all the things she confessed to after just one minute in the device. This fascination with pain, paired with shots of, for example, nude witches going to meet with the devil, suggests a knowing, post-Psychoanalytical overt desire to delve into erotic fantasy. It's not even implausible Christenson intended the homoerotic undertones in the whipping scene, or a later sequence where blasphemous mania overtakes a convent of nuns. After all, he starred himself in role of a young bisexual man in Michael just two years later. Queer people existed as much in the 1920s as the 2020s.

I get why surrealists loved the wild subconscious phantasmagorias of this film. It doesn't hurt that the film takes a bullish stance toward the new science of psychotherapy, suggesting that witch manias have an earthly cause in the human mind, even implying that they emerge from repressed desires. (Moreover, witch accusations come, as they do in The Crucible, from people jockeying for petty social advancement, or lashing out at the vulnerable.) In one of the middle sections, there's a lengthy sequence where witches cavort at a black sabbath with all manner of (stunningly costumed!) devils. The special effects are mesmerizing to watch--so much so that it's easy to forget the whole narrative is being related by an old homeless woman sadistically tortured by witch-mad priests. As it cuts back to the lurid, slavering excitement the priests display at each new concocted detail, each new accusation the old woman levels--against the very women of the village who denounced her in the first place!--it becomes clear that the lurid phantasmagoria is none other than the titillating fantasies of those selfsame priests. Forget Blazing Saddles, I don't think you could make a film like this today, a big budget expose of the perversities of the most holy fathers of the church.

After all the mesmeric special effects, the horror of witchcraft giving way to the horror of inquisition, the film concludes with a series of shocking juxtapositions: if the witches of the past are the mentally ill (the "hysterics" in the film's parlance) of today, aren't they still with us? And do we treat them so much better? I made a sarcastic crack to my friends midway through that Seattlites react to homeless people with the same conviction as the peasants in the film, that these are fearful creatures bound to put the evil eye on them. The film shocked me later when it pronounced directly that the inquisitor of the past is the law of today, and we've traded burning at the stake for prisons and institutions.

I don't know that Häxan is ahead of its time, exactly. Rather it reminds us that as long as Horror has existed as a genre, artists have used it to turn the floodlights on society and suggest that the real horror is how we treat each other. And, hey, also, turn the floodlights on the murky subconscious and say: oh boy what gooey nonsense is happening down HERE? What thoughts did you have lurking in your head, only now articulated through the witchcraft of the big screen? The best compliment I can give Häxan is that it is, simply put, a horror movie, and what makes it great haven't really changed all that much in 100 years.

Read more horror reviews like this all season on my Patreon

[gatheringbones]

[“February 1986: Fifty freshmen, three resident counselors, and one head counselor are jammed into the lounge that is the designated meeting space for our floor. The room is a cinderblock rectangle edged with low orange institutional furniture—not quite “couches.” We fifty are one “unit,” sort of like a “bunk” at summer camp except that we will share the same dorm floor for the whole academic year. Many faces are red and angry, or red and embarrassed, or red and passionate. The Northeast Gay and Lesbian Student Union Conference is coming to Brown soon, and our head counselor had approved our lounge as a sleepover place for conference attendees. Two stereotypical jocks, in khaki shorts and backward baseball caps, are on their feet and demanding that the H.C. acted inappropriately by doing so. They demand a vote.

One of us, by which I mean one of us five who are queer, stands up too, and points out that we didn’t take a vote on whether the Princeton Marching Band could be housed here, which they were. I don’t remember now if I was the one who said it, or Nils, or Ellen, or who. What I do remember is that although we were all out to each other prior to the crisis, we weren’t out to everyone else.

The jocks finally make their stand: they’re afraid of AIDS. They’ve grabbed on to this thing which is barely a buzzword to them, as some kind of long-awaited justification for all the homophobic shit they would have kicked up anyway. They are practically high-fiving each other for thinking of it, because, after all, what self-respecting, intelligent person would share a bathroom with “that”?

And one of us, Scott or me or someone, finally says that if they think that by keeping the NELGSU Conference out of the lounge they’re keeping themselves separated from gay people, they’re wrong. That if they think they don’t already share a bathroom with gay people, they’re wrong. And, by the way, that if they think gay people cause AIDS, they’re wrong. But the issue of AIDS seems minor compared to the fact that we have just outed ourselves to the group. We have declared “We are everywhere”—and here we are.

The result of the debate was a “visitor bathroom” policy (people agreed to mark their bathroom doors “okay” for visitors to use or not), and many lacrosse balls winged blindly down the hallways at us from unseen attackers—as if we couldn’t guess who’d thrown them. By the time the conference actually arrived, the furor had died down, and we had a very festive gay pride week. Openly gay Congressman Gerry Studds gave the keynote address, and I still remember the climax of his speech. He said that if the message of Harvey Milk to the previous generation had been “Come to San Francisco and be gay,” his message to the current generation was “Stay where you are and be gay.” It was the second “We are everywhere” for me, and one that convinced me I should stick with the Lesbian/Gay Student Alliance, even though I seemed to be the only bisexual on the campus (or the only one admitting it). Stay where you are and be yourself.

I picked “bisexual” as one label I didn’t vehemently resist, partly because I liked that the definition of it was so nebulous. I had to “invent” bisexuality, I felt, which fit nicely with my antilabel attitude. It was a word everyone knew, and yet I had no bisexual culture to read about or participate in, no bisexual role models—unless you counted the old celebrity chameleon David Bowie himself. That suited me fine.”]

cecelia tan, from picture this, from a woman like that: lesbian and bisexual writers tell their coming out stories, 2000

[lurkingteapot]

I've been going through my collection of old (pre-2016 for the most part) academic papers on BL and thought, hey, why not re-read some of them and sum them up so folks can see whether they want to check them out in full?

Today's offering:

Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga by James Welker, originally presented at the Third International Convention of Asia Scholars, August 19–22, 2003, Singapore, and published in Signs, Vol. 31, No. 3, New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture (Spring 2006), pp. 841-870, UChicago Press. [Jstor]

Welker starts off with a brief explanation of what the BL genre is, what terminology he uses ("BL" as an umbrella term that includes the earlier names of tanbi, shōnen ai, yaoi, and the long-form 'boys' love'):

“Boys’ love” manga emerged as a subgenre of shōjo manga (girls’ comics) around 1970 just as women artists were taking over the shōjo market.(*) It quickly became among the most popular shōjo manga genres, and its creators became some of the best-loved artists in the industry. (* First published in the monthly Bessatsu shōjo komikku in December 1970, Keiko Takemiya’s “In the Sunroom” (Sanrūmu nite [1970] 1976) was probably the first boys’ love narrative. See Aoyama 1988, 188.) - Welker 2006:841

He goes on to challenge the common perception of BL as a genre "by straight women for straight women":

[T]he genre is widely considered to offer a liberatory sphere within which presumably heteronormative readers can experiment with romance and sexuality through identification with the beautiful boy characters. […] Members of the Japanese lesbian community have, however, pointed to boys’ love and other gender-bending manga as strong influences on them in their formative years […] Clearly boys’ love manga can be viewed through a different lens from that which most critics and scholars have been using, and hence the full potential of boys’ love is largely overlooked: that of liberating readers not just from patriarchy but from gender dualism and heteronormativity. - Welker 2006:842-843

He introduces the texts he will analyse (Takemiya Keiko's Song of Wind and Trees 風と木の詩 kaze to ki no uta, 1976-1984 and Hagio Motō's Heart of Thomas トーマの心臓 tōma no shinzō, 1974), and concludes the essay's intro section as follows:

This reading will employ lesbian critical theory, visual theory, and reader responses to these and similar texts to show how 1970s boys’ love manga is not merely queer on its surface but how it opened up space for some readers to experiment with marginalized gender and sexual practices and played a role in identity formation. - Welker 2006:843

Welker goes into the questions of applicability of theories that weren't originally developed for this specific context – visual theories were largely developed through film analysis; European and North American models of gender and feminist theory, while also having informed academic discourse in Japan, in their origin operate on culturally specific assumptions and need to be applied with care.

He talks about the tradition of androgynous and cross-dressing heroines of early shōjo manga and their connection to the earliest BL manga, the dilemma of the "beautiful boy" characters' gender and sex and how to read these – are they boys? idealised self-images of girls drawn onto boys' bodies? neither male nor female? sexless altogether?, and the way Japanese readers in the 1970s, already culturally familiar with gender performance through kabuki or the all-female Takarazuka Revue and similar troupes, received the gender-bending nature of BL stories. He also comments on the role fan interaction via magazines, and the way readers were learning about queer life in Japan:

By the early to mid-1980s, the magazines’ readers were learning in real terms about the world of Shinjuku ni-chōme, Tokyo’s well-known gay district, described as a world full of “beautiful boys like those in the world of shōjo manga” (Aran 1983, 15), as well as various aspects of lesbian life in Japan (Gekkō 1985). In spite of the connections drawn on the pages of these magazines, the possibility that these narratives might be seen to actually depict homosexuality remains broadly denied. To allow that the narratives might truly be about homosexuality—between these girls-cum-beautiful boys—would be an apparently unthinkable invitation to read the narratives as lesbian. - Welker 2006:857

Welker briefly explores how the example texts of Song of Wind and Trees and Heart of Thomas "serve many of the functions lesbian critics and theorists have outlined as roles of lesbian texts" (Welker 2006:858), then goes on to analyse the flower imagery of roses and lilies that is very prevalent in both titles, the intertextuality of these stories with European and French literature (and how the readers were expected to catch on to this intertextuality). On the transgressive and queering nature of writing and reading BL, he says:

[T]hrough acculturation to gender performance in Takarazuka and kabuki and by such cross-dressing manga icons as Sapphire and Oscar, as well as the deliberate ambiguity of the beautiful boy, the reader is encouraged to see not just a girl but herself within the world of boys’ love and, ultimately, is encouraged to explore homoerotic desire, either as a beautiful boy or as herself, either alone or with others, either as her fantasy or as her reality. […] Regardless of whether boys’ love manga were created merely to offer heterosexual readers a temporary respite from patriarchal restrictions on their desire, some readers found in identifying with the beautiful boy a way through the looking glass to a world outside the patriarchy. And regardless of whether he is read as a boy or a girl, the beautiful boy can be read as a lesbian. […] For readers whose experience of sexuality and gender contravenes heteronormativity, works like Song and Thomas offer narrative safe havens where they can experiment with identity, find affirmation, and develop the strength necessary to find others like themselves and a sense of belonging. - Welker 2006:865-866

I've been out of academia so long that I've lost any sense of what a good proportion of direct quotes to original text is, or whether it's even appropriate to quote as much as I did here. This is emphatically NOT an academic article in and of itself -- I'm posting on bloody tumblr. If anyone wants to add to this, I'll be thrilled.

One of the most commonly voiced criticisms of BL is that it's about, but not (or did not in significant part used to be) by or for gay men. This article does not address this point further—Welker does go into this in his more recent articles, iirc; if you've got beef with this aspect, @ him not me. I do however think it's worth noting that this 17-year-old article already recognises that the genre is queer, and has been since its inception.

[floral-ashes]

I think you are really cool, and I hope to be like you when I am older. You are queer and proud to be so, but you are still active in the academic world. I often feel that because I am queer, I am not seen as someone who can be in the academics. Like I am an irregularity, and am only meant to be observed by the academic world (specifically psychology because I really like it) but not be part of it. I often see transgender people being studied in psychology textbooks, but never by queer people. I may a silly person, but that does not mean I am not just as worthy of holding a spot of intelligence.

I'm going to put you on my list of role models. I wish you good in all your indeverse. :)

💖💖💖

[luane-horlis]

This is long and I apologize but I don’t have any other social media and sometimes you’ve just gotta scream into the void.

My first job in a library was a tiny rural community college with an even tinier library. The collection was mostly academic but we did have a couple shelves of kids books for early childhood education majors. No kids were really ever in there, except for one or two bored middle schoolers tagging along with a parent who needed to do homework.

This was around 2008 or so, when I was in undergrad at a Big College in the city and between that and seeing Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy I was taking my first nervous step into “huh, maybe I am one of them queers…” I had no elder queer role models in my life and there were zero out gay kids in my tiny rural southern high school, so that was quite literally my first experience with sapphic love (and Sara Ramirez is still insanely hot, I’m very very gay for her to this day.) All of this is to set the stage of me as a painfully shy, extremely sheltered, very closeted 20-something with my first real job at a library, the thing I wanted to do When I Grew Up.

We had just gotten a copy of the book And Tango Makes Three, which if you don’t know, is about two male penguins who were pair bonded and raise a chick together. My boss, a middle aged white man, was debating on whether he should catalog it for the kids section or the adult section. I thought he was nuts.

“It’s a children’s story book, why would you want to put it in the adult section?”

“Well, it’s two male penguins…”

“So?”

“It’s inappropriate…”

“How? They’re not doing anything graphic in the book, they just raise a chick together.”

Having gone to grad school and completed my Masters I now know this guy was just a shit-ass librarian who needed to exit the profession, but at the time I was boggled he even had one second thought over cataloging a children’s book as a children’s book. I, again a painfully shy 5’3” 20 year old, almost got into a shouting match with my 6ft 50 something boss over a penguin book, but he ultimately put it in with the children’s books when the Dean of Libraries told him in no uncertain terms to fuck off with his bullshit.

When I got this job working with kids and teens I resolved to be the queer adult I really needed in my own teens so I didn’t have to endure such a horrible comphet upbringing. I have pride pins and pronoun buttons on my lanyard, I wear probably way too many rainbows, I make pride book displays, I’m in the library’s pride discord, and if the YA manager asks I’ll be at every teen pride cafe program to just stand there like “hey, I’m an Adult Queer and we’re here if you need us.”

All of the above is just to say that I’m tired. At my current library we now have an asshole county councilman demanding on behalf of “numerous complaints from concerned citizens” that we move all children’s materials about gender identity and sexuality from the children’s section to the adult section “to protect the kids” and I’m just so tired. It’s 2023.

Protect the kids from what, the same miserable anxiety-ridden tween and teen years I had thinking I was fucking wrong and abnormal for the way I felt? Of being so lonely with no one to talk to and nothing to turn to like, oh, an age appropriate book for information and comfort? I still deal with feeling absolutely worthless and like I’m unloveable now in my mid-fucking 30s from growing up like that so excuse me if I want kids to have access to things which help them grow up safe and knowing they have value without fear.

I’m not giving up, I’m still fighting every damn day to do what I can in my limited scope but fucking hell, I’m tired.

[romanticize-until-you-drop]

2023-09-30

As much as I would like to proclaim from my soapbox that this was a good week — that fell into place like neat puzzle pieces — it did not.

This week was one disaster after another, which lead me to irrevocably believe, for a day at least, that I am a disaster.

But I think it’s importantly to remember, even in this midst of this sort of romanticization of productivity and work and this fetishization of academic success that I actively partake in order to cope, that making mistakes doesn’t mean we are unworthy of anything.

Failure doesn’t mean that we are undeserving of kindness. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that we are deserving of hate or pain, whether self-inflicted or otherwise.

So if anyone out here has just failed a test or screwed up on a project, stammered over a presentation or forgot a line on stage, I understand you. And it’s ok to be hurt and angry. But here’s something that someone very cool (read: queer enby biophysicist who instantaneous became a role model) told me this week:

“Success is as uncertain as physics, and life is hardly ever linear. But we are all deserving of love and good things at the end of the day.”

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Celebrating Black Queer Icons

Kye Allums

Born October 23, 1989, Allums is a trans advocate, public speaker, writer, artist, and mentor. In 2010 Allums made history when he became the first openly trans athlete in top tier collegiate sports, in the US. Allums played for George Washington University's Division-I Women's Basketball team for 3 seasons. (Career stats can be found here https://gwsports.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=3125) Allums has said that his coach and teammates were very supportive, and that despite stress from heavy media attention, his transition process was a mostly positive affair. Allums left the team after the 2010-2011 season and graduated from GW in 2011 with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts. Allums has since gone on to become a notable public speaker and trans advocate. Allums travels to high schools, universities, and colleges to speak on his experiences as a trans man and give advice on confronting bullies, as a trans person in academic spaces. Allums has interviewed with a variety of publications over the years including Time, GLAAD, and Playboy. Allums produced the I Am Enough project, to share trans stories and encourage others to submit their own, letting trans people everywhere know they are not alone in their experiences. Allums was one of seven trans people featured in Laverne Cox's MTV Documentary "The T Word" and also appeared in the Netflix Domentary "GameFace". Allums also authored a short text called "Who Am I?", a collection of poems and letters addressing his experiences as a trans man and his relationship with his mother. In 2015 Allums was inducted into the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame. Though largely out of the public eye since the late the 2010s, Allums continues to be an inspiration and role model to many.

Not sure who I will be covering next. Miss Major Griffith-Gracy and Victor J Mukasa are both near the top of the list right now. Willmer Broadnax is still on the table as well, and I may have some sourcing help on that thanks to the other mods @transunity. My content maps are like that of a AAA game publisher's though, and should be read with utter skepticism until they materialize. As always, corrections and suggestions are welcome and wanted!

[talenlee]

Queerphobia In Cobrin'Seil

Everyone in Cobrin’Seil is queer to any extent that word can mean anything in talking about my D&D setting. This is not because when you make a dude in that setting part of the character creation setting is ticking the backstory box that, at some point, he has sucked some dick or whatever, but rather is instead because Cobrin’Seil is a world where heterosexuality as you understand it was never invented.

And boy oh boy that right there opens a door, doesn’t it.

The ‘invention’ of heterosexuality is one of those terms that can confuse people because people don’t tend to think of these things as being invented. Cultural practices and roles are often things that we see as being obvious outcomes of a natural phenomena in our world, and that means we wind up imagining them as absolute and natural. That’s something really useful to cultural practices and they can create weird alienating effects when they’re demonstrated as not obviously true.

If you’re ever curious to see a different non-sexy example, ask a white person about bidets or lota. Or you know, capitalism.

Point is that when I describe ‘heterosexuality’ and refer to it as ‘invented’ I don’t mean that nobody was having boy-on-girl banging because nobody came up with the idea and the idea was invented a hojillion years ago just in time to save whatever species did that from extinction. That’s animal behaviour, putting dongs in hoohahs is a thing we’re all very used to doing as organic entities. So much so that there are a lot of animals that will try and do it with anything they interpret as a hoohah, even if it’s, say, a beanbag.

But that’s non-cultural practice, that’s things doing things transcendant of the way those actions are regarded by other members of their group. Chances are very good if you’re reading this, you share a cultural space with me on this point; you’re almost certainly going to be carrying around in your head a set of bigotries and affordances that people can have around heterosexuality, even if you don’t comply with them or value them, because the British Empire was really good at exporting its specific heterosexuality and then America refined that heterosexuality through most of the same cultural connections. The model of heterosexuality we’re talking about here isn’t even unified across that stretch of history either – non-heterosexual behaviour was tolerated extensively across chunks of both American and British culture but publically advocating for and talking about that practice was seen as vulgar (and was illegal).

What is socially accepted is determined by what is excluded from that acceptability. In our world, that acceptability tends to be tied to a serious academic structure, which is also a thing that had to be invented and if you read in your history enough you’ll find a lot of it ties back into the publication of a work by one dude, Richard von Kraft-Ebigg, who died in 1902. That’s where we get some words you may think of as ‘normal’ words, but which were Latin terms he crafted and put into a German book and we adopted them wholesale. Homosexuality, for example, or sadism. Or analingus.

We use that one every day right?

It’s also a moving target. Back in the 1920s, homosexuality wasn’t ‘has sex with men exclusively,’ it was ‘so obsessed with sex it formed a morbid fascination’ and that that focused on sex with men. Heterosexuality at that time was seen as an equally morbid fascination, a pathologised interest in straight sex. Ten years later, it lost the idea of being an obssession with it, and got the name ‘normal’ sex in the dictionary.

(You can dig into this more by reading Jonathan Ned Katz’s The Invention of Heterosexuality, if you want).

Point is, heterosexuality as you and I us the word had to be invented and named. It is a cultural practice with a meaning and associated values and expectations and at no point did it get pushed into existence in Cobrin’Seil. The word probably exists but maybe it doesn’t, and when a player uses the word to express an idea through their character, they’re expressing a different idea with different weights and vibes in the context of the cultural space they’re living in.

This kind of misalignment between player and character happens all the time. A character asks someone something and they don’t understand you so you try again in Elvish. A player doesn’t need to speak Elvish to make that linguistic hop and yet that player is completely unable to use the Elvish language appropriately. The layer of fiction smooths this over.

This doesn’t mean that a player character in Cobrin’Seil reacts to the word ‘heterosexual’ like it’s a macabre outcropping from an alien universe. It probably has some useful cognate in the world, some idea like ‘oh my primary interest is in one of the major dominant genders of my culture that I don’t share,’ and we just roll over the gap there without any need for a contextual language report. But what it also means is that no character feels the need to explicate whether they are gay or straight because in the universe that is not considered an element of culturally expressing a normal persona. You might tell someone you’re straight or gay because you want them to know your personal preferences, but that’s something that they should only really care about if the conversation is about you having some access to your interests.

Basically, in Cobrin’Seil, the assumption is that ‘people have sex with other people’ and that’s about as specific an assumption you can make. It is not the same thing as we live in, because even in our own world homosexual and bisexual and pansexual behaviour are presented as concepts in opposition to a norm, and only need definition in the context of them being behaviours that need distinction.

This means that queerphobia in Cobrin’Seil is not any kind of stated default: there is no ‘normal’ for queer people to be functional rebels against. There may be communities and spaces where queerphobia arises, but those spaces by definition are going to be insular and weird and not places with widespread state power. You can have a queerphobic space to start from but when you get into the wider world of Cobrin’Seil, you’re always going to find that the world you’re in isn’t like that.

What about the Bernean Lodges, eh, though? You, Talen, after all, invented that place (and low key named it after a church you visited) and it’s meant to be oppressive fundie churches that patrol each other. Surely they’re a bunch of homophobes otherwise how else would you, the author, get cathartic joy out of hunting them down and knifing them in the head? Well listen, first, I can be violently opposed to religious bigotry on a number of axes that draw a visceral fictional thrill out of brutal retaliation, but also the Bernean Lodges are by definition isolated communities of weirdoes. Any given Lodge has a set of inexplicable faith guidelines that they are sure are the unique and true explication of divine will in the face of the apocalypse. They’re perfect for this kind of setup.

What about the Church of Olifar in the Eresh Protectorates? They’re very Catholic in their Holy City and their Bishops and Prelates? Aren’t they likely to have some of that same vibe? Well, the Church of Olifar’s vision on these things tends to be a little more Pauline. “Look, pursuit of the divine is the best thing. But also if you can’t just spend all your days in cloistered prayer, and you need to do things like eat, I guess that’s okay. And if that means you need a job I guess that’s okay. And I guess if you’re lonely, that’s okay to have partners. And I guess if you’re really into partners, that’s okay.” Or, perhaps, “Sure, sex may be great but have you ever spent eight of your days in deep fasting and meditation on the nature of the divine, bro?” It’s a faith system that’s a lot more about claiming there is an ideal minimum amount of sexuality, but it’s also way too widespread and pragmatic to actually enforce it.

Imagine one of those cathedrals but all the stained glass windows are ace flags.

Plus, there’s the church as most people see it and the church as its own doctrine sees it. Most Eresh Protectorate citizens are pretty sure that the church’s positions line up with theirs, because it’s just not vital to the doctrines they teach most of the time, because, again, talking about sexuality in an attempt to enforce a ‘normal’ isn’t a thing that happens in the setting.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#CobrinSeil #DungeonsDragons #Games

[the-lincyclopedia]

Lori, I'm reblogging this immediately rather than queuing it, and putting this in a reblog rather than summarizing it in the tags, because I want to say this loudly: you have given me so much hope about adulthood and aging, for so long, and I'm so grateful to you for it.

Like a lot of us on this site, I think, I was in a lot of pain as a teenager. I went through my first breakup at 15 and nearly killed myself within the first month. I was convinced that no one would ever want to be with me again. My academic perfectionism was at a level that was literally threatening my life, and I was convinced that I would work myself nearly to death in high school for the privilege of working myself nearly to death in college for the privilege of working myself nearly to death at a job, and that I would die before I had the chance to do anything I actually enjoyed around all of that working, a victim either of my own hand or of the cancer that affected every woman in my mother's family and got worse with every subsequent generation, to the point where we weren't sure my mother would survive the year.

I clawed my way through my teens, and the summer before my senior year of high school I watched Sherlock, and a friend told me that I simply had to read "Performance in a Leading Role." I read it. And then I read it at least once a month for the following year, sneaking it in between studying and college applications and too many extracurriculars.

There are a lot of reasons I kept rereading "Performance" when I arguably had a lot of more pressing things on my plate. It's a fun story, for sure, and there's so much I love about the writing. But I think the main reason I kept rereading it was because it was possibly the first piece of media I remember encountering that was so abundantly hopeful about adulthood. John and Sherlock find each other in their thirties and have a grand romance that's better, not worse, for the fact that they had experience living as adults prior to their relationship. But it goes beyond that. John likes cooking. Harry Watson, Sally Donovan, and a couple other characters have gossipy dinners together. There's travel and going to the gym and spending much of the day in bed. There is something, anything other than an endless grind of work and parenting that leaves no time for fun.

I have said before--maybe to you; definitely to other people--that you taught me more about how to be an adult, at least at the very beginning of my entering that stage of life, than anyone other than my parents. There are so many random facts I know because of you--at this point, not just from "Performance" but also from plenty of other fics across fandoms. You didn't teach me to do laundry or buy car insurance or whatever, but you taught me, crucially, that there was (or at least could be) a lot to look forward to about adulthood, and even what some of that could look like. You also taught me so, so much about queerness, to the point where I referenced "Performance" almost daily for the first several months of my first visibly queer relationship, and that's important too, but I think the hope with which you portray adulthood transcends identity boundaries.

I am in a period of being painfully aware that adulthood is not always happy. I'm semi-voluntarily unemployed, having quit my job in order to navigate my worst mental health episode in several years. I've been too depressed to participate much in fandom for over a year now. And still, I am so grateful to not be a teenager, and I am looking forward to middle age quite a bit. I know that not everything will get better, that not all improvement will be sustained, that progress is not linear, that I will be mentally ill and autistic for the rest of my life. But I have role models, you included, of choosing oneself and of getting better at that with age. Childless middle-aged people with hobbies give me so much hope. That's what I want to be when I grow up.

All this to say: thank you, Lori.

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[myrefersofficial]

International Women’s Day 2023: Honoring The Most Influential Women In The USA

International Women’s Day is observed on March 8 every year to commemorate the achievements and efforts of women while confronting the injustice and oppression they continue to encounter. 

It is observed during the second week of Women’s History Month in the United States urges us to be more conscious and inclusive of women from various continents, countries, and communities.

Even though gender is a socially created term that develops and evolves personally throughout our lives, International Women’s Day is an inclusive and diverse celebration that welcomes us to engage in complex conversations about women, gender, inequality, and injustice. 

Historically, women of color, transgender, and queer women have faced far more destructive and isolating oppression than their white, cisgender sisters. We ask you to approach your celebrations with intersectionality and intention in America and internationally.

This blog includes a list of the most influential women in the USA. Also, we have curated a few ideas on “how to celebrate international women’s day?” to honor the women in your workspace. Read till the end.  

Most Influential Women In The USA In 2023

Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is the perfect role model for women and one of the most influential women in the USA. Aside from being America’s first African-American first lady, she excelled academically, attending Princeton and Harvard. She is well-known for spearheading campaigns against childhood obesity and promoting women’s educational chances.

In 2015, she started the Let Girls Learn campaign to encourage girls to attend and stay in school and share the tales and hardships of young women worldwide. “As a first lady, a mother, and a human being, I cannot walk away from these girls,” she wrote in an essay for The Atlantic. “I vow to keep raising my voice on their behalf for the rest of my life.”

J.K. Rowling

Although novelist, screenwriter, and producer JK Rowling is today regarded as one of the world’s most powerful women, she did not always have it easy. Rowling struggled to make ends meet as a single mother in Edinburgh and spent her leisure time writing in coffee shops near her home. 

Twelve publishing houses rejected her first Harry Potter manuscripts before being accepted by a smaller one. The Harry Potter books became some of the best-selling books of all time and were adapted for the big screen. Children are familiar with and enjoy the Harry Potter series, and Rowling’s writings will continue to inspire children for future generations.

Kamala Harris

No one can deny Kamala Harris’s influence in politics. She was third on Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful Women. Harris is the first woman and the first Black and South Asian woman to accept the vice-presidency nomination. She is the United States Senator from California and was previously the state’s Attorney General.

Harris was born in California to immigrant parents, her mother from India and her father from Jamaica. Harris, a Howard University graduate, will be the first graduate of a historically Black college or university to be appointed vice president. She mentioned in her address that the USA is a country of possibilities for young girls. 

Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates remains a business and philanthropic powerhouse. She worked as a Microsoft product manager at Expedia in 1987. She is the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private philanthropic organization with a $40 billion trust endowment. This foundation improves education and addresses global poverty and health. 

Melinda gave $560 million to improve contraception for developing country women in 2012. Obama awarded William and Melinda Gates the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 for their philanthropy. Gates, fifth on “Forbes’s The World’s Most Powerful Women,” continues to fund education, poverty, and sanitation worldwide. 

Mary Barra

Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, is ranked sixth on Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Powerful Women. She is the first woman to hold this post and the first female CEO in the automobile industry. Barra has invested billions in electric vehicles, self-driving cars, and the ride-sharing service Maven. 

In 2020, she switched GM’s production lines to assist Ventec Life Systems in producing critically-needed ventilators. Barra is the highest-paid CEO of a Detroit Big Three automaker, receiving $21.6 million in 2019. She received good marks for her company’s gender equity reports, with the company being one of two worldwide businesses with no gender pay gap.

Oprah Winfrey

Despite not making Forbes’ list, Oprah Winfrey has emerged as a formidable and respected female leader. Winfrey is best known for her award-winning talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” which grossed $125 million in its first season. 

Her style of friendly interviews, as well as her two most popular segments, “Oprah’s Book Club” and “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” continued to draw viewers. Oprah became the first black female millionaire and philanthropist. Winfrey has been a global advocate for girls’ education, and her Angel Network has earned more than $50 million for humanitarian causes.

There is no limit to mentioning the names of the most influential women. Every single girl or woman has the potential to be influential. And even they are somehow influencing the lives of the people surrounding them. We wish all the women out there a very Happy International Women’s Day. 

How To Celebrate International Women’s Day At Your Workplace In 2023?

#1 Organize a learning session

Plan and invite staff to a learning session on International Women’s Day. Organizing a learning session in your company will assist in enlightening employees about the significance of the day and demonstrate to the women in your organization that they are recognized and appreciated.

Arranging a free and optional learning session could also be a good place to start for individuals who want to participate in the discourse but aren’t sure how. To further comprehend the mission #EmbraceEquity, you can source discussion videos for a hybrid workplace or invite a panel for a live Q&A.

#2 Create unique thank-you videos

Why not enlist the help of the entire company in making a thank you video? It’s more personal than simply sending an email to all personnel on the day of the event. Involving the entire team also reflects a workplace willing to support positive change.

Request that your team share their #EmbraceEquity photo or short webcam video message so that you can simply build a thank you video montage using a video editor. Drag, drag, and edit your video clips to create a slideshow video you can share with your staff immediately.

#3 Wear unisex t-shirts to #EmbraceEquity

International Women’s Day is a great opportunity to celebrate the women in your office and promote gender equity. One way to do this is by organizing a day where everyone wears unisex t-shirts with a gender equity message. Decide on a message that promotes gender equity and women’s rights. 

It could be a simple slogan like “Equal rights for all” or “Women belong in the workplace.” Let everyone in the office know about the event and encourage them to participate. You could send an email, put up posters, or even make an announcement during a meeting. Everyone in the office should wear these unisex t-shirts on the big day. 

This will create a sense of unity and promote the message to others who see the t-shirts. Take photos of everyone wearing the t-shirts and share them on social media or on the company’s website. This will help to spread the message even further and show that your company supports gender equity. Work together to create a more equal and inclusive workplace.

 #4 Encourage more women-owned enterprises

Purchase items and services from companies owned by female entrepreneurs on International Women’s Day (and obviously throughout the year!) to help empower them. By doing so, you contribute to economic equality and empowerment. You can also use social media to review those products or services and tell people about where you purchased them. 

#5 Highlight the contribution of your female staff

On this International Women’s Day, take a moment to recognize and celebrate your women employees’ valuable contribution to your company’s growth and success. From leading important projects to driving innovation and creativity, your women employees must have played an integral role in shaping the culture and achievements of your organization. 

Honor the dedication, hard work, and leadership demonstrated by your women employees, and express your heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for all they do. Today and every day, stay committed to creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace where everyone can thrive and reach their full potential.

#6 Share your social media stories

It’s exciting to be spontaneous! Social media stories are an excellent way to give your followers an inside peek at how your firm is commemorating International Women’s Day. Captions for your Facebook or Instagram Stories could be considered and thankful. Don’t forget to include the hashtags #IWD2023 and #EmbraceEquity in your posts.

#7 Create a video of your intentions

Transparency can boost trust. Think about and figure out how your company can boost women’s opportunities in 2023. Try emailing these suggestions or adding a personal touch by requesting corporate executives to record the message using their webcam for free. You can also add auto-captions to make the video more accessible and easy to follow if it is muted.

#8 Organize an art competition

Allow your team’s uniqueness to show! A virtual or in-person art contest is a fun and easy way to reflect on the International Women’s Day 2023 theme. You can either organize a prize or simply clap for the winners. Ensure it is a stress-free exercise that allows employees to be creative and openly share ideas.

#9 Create a video of your intentions

Transparency can boost trust. Think about and figure out how your company can boost women’s opportunities in 2023. Try emailing these suggestions or adding a personal touch by requesting corporate executives to record the message using their webcam for free. You can also add auto-captions to make the video more accessible and easy to follow if it is muted.

#10 Contribute to a charitable cause

Consider donating to a charitable organization supporting women’s interests for International Women’s Day 2023 if you want to make a difference. It could be either local or global. Employees can also vote on which charity to donate to.

Final Thoughts 

Women are indeed the most influential in every role, whether a house-maker, IT expert, politician, or player. Respect them to gain respect. Wish all the women a very Happy International Women’s Day!!

Visit Us, https://myrefers.com/Original Source, https://myrefersofficial.blogspot.com/2023/03/international-womens-day-2023-honoring.html

[badrowboats]

The experience of a situation as something to be complained about is an experience of coming apart from a group. I want to think of the violence of this situation. The violence of such utterances is what you are required not to notice in order to participate in the group. You have to laugh – and laugh convincingly – in order not to stand out. You can stand out by just experiencing violence as violence. And then the violence you fail not to experience as violence is redirected towards you; the violence that was already in the room is channeled in your direction. This is probably why some laugh; to avoid the channeling. Laughing could thus be considered a form of institutional passing; a way of avoiding standing out, of trying to slide by undetected. The problem of passing is that if someone fails to pass, those who have passed are still participating in what has left someone stranded.

Sara Ahmed, “Cutting Yourself Off”

[transformativeworksandcultures]

TWC 37: FANDOM HISTORIES [SPECIAL ISSUE]

Editorial

Fandom Histories

Theory

E. Charlotte Stevens and Nick Webber, The fan-historian

Edmond Ernest dit Alban, I also eat the straights

Taylore Nicole Woodhouse, Digital archives, fandom histories, and the reproduction of the hegemony of play

Chris Comerford and Natalie Krikowa, Archive-lensing of fan franchise histories

Praxis

Lauren Chalk, Representing reggaeton through fans' online community archives

Katriina Heljakka, Fans, play knowledge, and playful history management

Ellie Jane Turker-Kilburn, Reimagining queer female histories through fandom

Kimberly Kennedy, Fan binding as a method of preserving fan fiction

Shire Belen Buchsbaum, Binding fan fiction and reexamining book production models

Kameron Dunn, Furry fandom, aesthetics, and the potential in new objects of fannish interest

Symposium

Emily Coccia, Femslash fandom and the cultivation of white queer genealogies

Qiuyan Guo, Historical poaching within celebrity fandom practices

Kyle Meikle, Time for the theme park ride-through video

Andre Magpantay, Fandom.com and fan-made histories

Tosha R. Taylor, Historicizing the fan archive of Talia al Ghul

TWC Editors, What is an anti? Exploring a key term and contemporary debates

FanLIS

Ludi Price, Lyn Robinson, Building bridges: Papers from the FanLIS 2021 symposium

Paul Thomas, How Adventure Time fans understand the 'true' producer: A close analysis of two encyclopedic fan texts

J. Nicole Miller, Information-seeking behaviors of young adult readers of fiction and fan fiction

Argyrios Emmanouloudis, Twitch (still) plays Pokémon: When spectators become archivists

Eleonora Benecchi, Colin Porlezza, Laura Pranteddu, Filling the gap: An exploration into the theories and methods used in fan studies Eleonora Benecchi, Colin Porlezza, Laura Pranteddu

Nele Noppe, Ludi Price, Kimberley Chiu, J. Nicole Miller, Erika Ningxin Wang, Serena M. Vaswani, Sarah Kate Merry, D. E. Pollock, Suzanne R. Black, Rhiannon Hartwell, Naomi Jacobs, Paul Anthony Thomas, Argyrios Emmanouloudis, Erica Hellman, Amy Spitz, What if academic publishing worked like fan publishing? Imagining the Fantasy Research Archive of Our Own

Book review

Suzanne R. Black, "The republic of games: Textual culture between old books and new media," by Elyse Graham

Judith May Fathallah, "Loving fanfiction: Exploring the role of emotion in online fandoms," by Brit Kelley

John Francis, "Manga cultures and the female gaze," by Kathryn Hemmann

Kristine Michelle Santos, "Otaku and the struggle for imagination in Japan," by Patrick W. Galbraith

Ross Hagen, "Emo: How fans defined a subculture," by Judith May Fathallah

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[badnewbie]

hi i have a brain that can’t shut up and here’s my little pet theory on what i like to call the joker’s trick: the fact that the joker is gay and we all know it, but we cannot ever say it out loud or acknowledge it

this is literally his picture on the wiki btw. also i feel like if you’re here i don’t need to argue that the joker is gay because he literally is. we’re doing gay joker analysis 2.0 here, sir

please note that i’m about to use a bunch of sexist and homophobic language, as i generally find that the most effective way to communicate the cultural norms that i’m about to touch on.

obviously, i’m using the word ‘gay’ when i’m talking about joker as a bit of an oversimplification. i’d use ‘queer’ or maybe even ‘queercoded’ (ugh), because it’s more accurate to how joker is actually portrayed, but when i grew up, gay was still very much a slur and gay-as-a-slur, an f-word, is in fact what the joker needs to be. this is for a reason: to me, the most important aspect about the joker is that he is a creation by straight men, meant to appeal to other straight men. 

so yeah, problem solved right? the joker is the symbol for ultimate evil, so he generally represents whatever his writer thinks is the worst thing that exists and for a lot of straight men, that’s a gay dude. kinda sucks, but checks out. 

except, that’s not the whole story, because straight men friggin’ love the joker. they’re dressing up as him, they’re quoting him, kinning him, coming up with elaborate backstories for him, leaving really intense youtube comments about how he’s the only one who really gets batman about him. in other words, they think the joker is cool. they think he’s really, really, really cool. They want to be the joker

why? that actually doesn’t check out at all. sure, he’s a villain who does whatever he wants, but most villains do and most of them haven’t been able to capture the hearts and minds of straight men the way the joker has. and joker has gotten more obviously gay over the years as he’s gotten more popular, not less. straight dudes love that the joker is gay! 

time for some academic perspectives: our cultural attitude towards gayness are deeply interlinked with our attitudes towards gender roles and masculinity. and masculinity is a deeply strange concept and it is something that a lot of comics concern themselves with (see: straight men appealing to other straight men). while most comic book men are usually examples of hegemonic masculinity (the culturally ideal form of masculinity), the joker is at his core a failure of hegemonic masculinity, and him being gay is the easiest shorthand to straight men for communicating this. a true man is a straight man is a masculine man is a man who is not feminine is a man who is not attracted to men. queercoding men and failing masculinity is usually one and the same in practice.

here’s another thing about manhood: it’s often precarious. with ‘precarious manhood’, we refer to the phenomenon that manhood for men often feels like something that can be taken away from them. while being a woman is often conceptualized as something innate, for men it is much easier to be accused of not being a ‘real’ man. as such, men tend to be more pre-occupied with their own masculinity and often remain in a more anxious state in which they constantly try to re-affirm their manhood to both themselves and their surroundings.* this is what many people incorrectly refer to as toxic masculinity btw. It should also be noted that hegemonic manhood is a cultural ideal and therefore attaining it is fully impossible and this is leaving a lot of men frustrated. they reach for an unattainable goal under the treat of cultural punishment if they fail. also, this effect is generally stronger in straight men, as queer men generally already ‘know’ that they will never reach hegemonic masculinity, as it is defined through being attracted to women only, and therefore, in this aspect, they can walk the mile

so what is a frustrated straight man who is feeling like a failure of masculinity to do? well...what if there was a role model for you who is on every account a failure of masculinity too and he was thriving? what if there was a guy who’s laughing about all these gender rules and breaking them and maybe it made him even more badass? maybe there’s this complete failure of masculinity, not just walking the mile but running directly in the opposite direction and he’s scary and powerful and maybe that’s true power and maybe you are in some way even more powerful (masculine) than all those other guys who are effortlessly performing their masculinity. what then?

but is he gay? don’t worry straight men, of course he isn’t :) 

(is he gay? yeah)

(but is he?? no, he isn’t (although he is))

seriously, is the joker gay? yes! but also no! because his purpose is to be a (lol) safe space for straight men to project their anxieties about their own masculinity on. the joker has to be gay in order to be an effective failure of masculinity, but he can’t be gay because then he’s just some gay guy whose nature is just naturally different from straight men/real men and straight men can’t project on him anymore.

so yeah whoops, it’s still homophobia. but at least it’s weird homophobia. it’s what the joker would have wanted * this also can lead to much greater difficulty for women to go against their assigned gender role, which is often constricting and oppressive. i blog about this a LOT on my main, so please don’t come for me on this

[platy-with-a-pencil]

WHERE ARE THE BISEXUALS?

Personal essay submitted to the zine The Femme Voice (2018)

Be it on TV or in daily life, for many years I struggled to find bisexual role models and spaces. Too straight to fit in with the gays, too gay to fit in with the straights. Bisexuals have their own set of struggles which few people outside of the spectrum will bother to understand. 

In my early teens, there was a ‘bisexual boom’ in school. It was the first time I thought about labelling myself. Despite the ‘boom’, things were confusing as most people seemed to only want the label on a superficial, verbal level. Eventually, I ended up dating a classmate who I’d fancied for a while. One of my friends, who was throwing a birthday party on the weekend, pulled me aside and said my girlfriend and I couldn’t be together at the party because it’d make people uncomfortable. It upset me a lot, but not as much as when the relationship ended. Since then I discovered that dating boys is a lot simpler as they are an easy catch. Around that time I also realised that when we were gossiping excitedly about dating, my romance stories were simply not welcome if they featured a girl.

Some years later, watching Orange Is The New Black one night, Piper’s reluctance to ever come out to her parents as bisexual irritated me, as her family pressured her to decide ‘which team’ she played for. 

It was isolating and frustrating. 

Creators are still hesitant to use the word “bisexual”, the sexuality which shall not be named. I had now started university and had access to a lot of academic books on sexuality and despite this topic not being related to my main area of study I’d spend countless hours reading, doing research and compiling media and books which discussed relationships between women. Gay men have the biggest chunk of attention in mainstream media. Lesbians have a lot less in comparison, but still much more than bisexuals. Bi characters are usually portrayed as evil, using their sexuality as a means to achieve their goal. In contrast, they can be given the choice of sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Often, they end up with a man and if in a twist of fate they end up in a same-sex relationship, they are promptly killed. The message these characters are sending is clear: bisexuals don’t deserve a happy ending unless they end up with a man, and by doing so their identity is erased. 

When I decided to officially come out to a small group of friends, it went great, except my best friend (who happens to be gay) brushed me off by saying I was only doing it for the attention. Bisexual started to feel like a dirty word and it wasn’t the first time I felt like this. Was I just confused about myself? I started to question whether I really liked women to be different or if it was genuine. Suddenly there were many boxes that I didn’t tick:  I hadn’t had sex with a woman, I hadn’t kissed as many girls as I had boys, I didn’t frequent any LGBT+ spaces.

Where were the real bisexuals? I needed them to evaluate whether I dressed appropriately enough to be part of the group.

I signed up to a couple of dating apps only to see several women who openly wrote “no bisexuals” on their profiles. Meanwhile, I joined an LGBT+ society and failed to blend in with the crowd, hearing blatant biphobia from other queer people in that space. 

It’s nothing against Bis, you do you, it’s just that they’re a risky gamble.

Speaking to a lesbian friend, she warned me that some LGBT bars were known for barring anyone that didn’t look a certain way from entering. I tried anyway and met more straight girls than I knew what to do with.

So, to tally up the results I had failed miserably in integrating myself with the gays and I hadn’t met any other bisexuals in the process. 

In 2018, the infamous Netflix series ‘Insatiable’ airs. Expecting nothing but a weak excuse for a comedy, I was surprised to find an extremely relatable character called Bob Armstrong. Lawyer by day and beauty pageant coach by night, he has a wife he’s ardently in love with, despite his very feminine mannerisms and eye for fashion. Bob eventually receives a confession from another man and in a turn of events the two end up making out, leaving Bob confused: "Bisexuals are like demons or aliens. They don't exist." After experiencing identity and spiritual crisis, Bob decides “If [...] demons were real, maybe bisexuals were too.” Thus I found my life motto. There are positive bi icons out there, they are few, but they deserve recognition. Annalise Keating in How to Get Away With Murder, the lawyer with an unbeatable mind and Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn 99, a stony-faced police officer whose coming out was perfectly handled by the show.

It was becoming clear to me that I am who I am, despite not ticking imaginary boxes of what the Ideal Bisexual is like. The real issue here was something else. There is an agenda trying to silence and bury bisexual identities. To make matters worse, I had taken it on myself.

Recently, I went to a local kink night. I dabbled in BDSM for a couple of years now and in my experience, it’s much more of a safe space than groups with an LGBT stamp on them. I’d be barred at the entrance for not having enough kink gear on, but never for “not looking gay enough.” During the event, I got talking to a cute girl who was new to the local scene. Between drinks, she revealed her bisexuality. There was that immediate spark of excitement. We instantly connected, sharing our stories and struggles related to our identity. Unfortunately, we didn’t exchange numbers, but at least I know bisexuals exist after all.