#queer people can't win

[sphinx-musings]

the writers of this show are fucking with me specifically.

[sureuncertainty]

getting to the point where i've gotten a bit wary of those posts along the lines of 'this pride month let's stop focusing on meaningless discourse and talk about actual real problems facing the queer community' because it's not always obvious whether they mean 'meaningless discourse' as in 'don't worry about other people's labels and let queer people live' or is it 'this discourse is fake and stupid and meaningless and doesn't matter at all'?

it's like the way people will reduce acephobia to "discourse", this attitude of trivializing actual bigotry and acting like it's not a big deal or a real problem in queer spaces when it very much is!

[curiosityschild]

I want to be rich enough to buy a racehorse and name it Trans Rights

[sirenium]

Every time I try to veer away from discourse, I get reminded that people hate me for no reason elsewhere 💀

[marty--party]

btw i'm personally okay with any pronouns for my chihiro but i always refer to them as she/they in my mind and in my art, if any of you wanted the specifics all i know is that chihiro is NOT cis and is filled with girlisms <3

[akajustmerry]

I wanna say from very bottom of my heart that I deeply truly rabidly despise Taylor Swift and the glamorous black hole of immorality, gracelessness and lack of integrity she represents. I truly hate that I have to witness her 2-chord mediocre stream of consciousness high school ballads win the highest accolades in music. I hate how there's not a single discourse - from sports to fucking queer theory - that's free of her. I hate her white feminism, how she's never stood for a single thing that didn't ensure her wealth. I hate how she's credited and praised for things marginalised artists did before her. I hate how she latches onto new artists so they serve HER fame, like remoras to a shark. I hate her phony humble beginnings narrative that people parrot without acknowledging she's a nepo baby. I hate what she did to olivia rodrigo and how no one talks about it. I hate the waste her concerts, lifestyle, and merch create and that a young girl died from heat illness at her concert because the swift team prioritises exclusivity and profit over safety. I hate how she and her fandom popularised the idea that critiquing a woman = misogyny. I hate how she's in her mid 30s and still writes songs like she's a teenager and that songs written by a woman in her 30s acting like a teenager are inescapable. I hate she deliberately re-releases songs and records so other artists can't chart. I hate how she regularly and openly associates with bigoted people but somehow is always given the benefit of the doubt. Most of all I hate how she does and continues to do all of this and so much more and her fans will always have a, "but!" always have an, "anyway!". she's openly and uncritically supporting a presidential candidate who's administration is enacting genocide, but because she made a joke with her cats, we're meant to be like, "yay!" I truly despise Taylor Swift and the black hole of neoliberal white feminist mediocrity she is in popular culture.

[anotherpapercut]

yesterday I went to a little meeting at my local queer community center and I was admiring their bookshelves and mentioned that I work at the public library and someone said "well I bet they don't have any [LGBTQ+ books] at our library" and I was like um. yes we do. we have tons of them. half of our employees are queer leftists so they said "oh well I bet they don't in [nearby rural county]" and I was like uh once again yes they absolutely do. gay people live and work there as well

so here's a quick reminder that if you don't think your local library has enough queer centered materials you should actually check before assuming, and if you're not satisfied with their collection you should submit a request for more such books. I don't know what the political landscape of libraries looks like outside the us rn, but within the us no matter where you are, I promise you there are employees at your library fighting for inclusion and intellectual freedom and they can't win without vocal public support

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

casual reminder before tomorrow arrives that abstaining or voting 3rd party instead of voting for harris is THE most selfish thing you can do. i know you think you are doing the right thing, but i cannot emphasize enough that these two candidates are NOT "equally bad." palestinians will be in significantly more danger if that criminal shitstain wins, IN ADDITION TO every other minority and less privileged person. if you really and truly want to prove your motivation is to stop the harm of others, then you MUST put your ego aside and do the uncomfortable thing. this is not the time for a boycott. this is not the time to dig your heels in the sand and claim you can't possibly go against your morals. the truth of the matter is that palestinians will be safer if you vote for harris. as a queer woc, with so many friends and family whose well-being is at risk, i will feel more betrayed by you than by the people who vote for trump, bc we are supposed to take care of each other, and yet you'd rather watch us burn than do the uncomfortable thing. abstaining is nothing but a selfish, holier-than-thou, performative act. if you abstain, then you are actively causing harm, and if he wins because of it, those of us who can use our common sense will never forget how much you fucked us over. if he wins, more people (including palestinians) are going to get hurt, and that blood will be on your hands. do the uncomfortable thing. it's a better show of moral integrity than abstaining will ever be

[the-iron-queen]

I ranted so much in the tags that I hit the max limit (30 wtf) and couldn't tag the shows on my reblog anymore :(

Anyway, thank you for your service I am absolutely with you.

actually in general i think i'm just gonna become a villain if i see anyone complaining about girl rules or only friends: dream on. if you don't like the toxic gays, don't watch, LET US HAVE THIS

[depresseddepot]

I talked myself into a hole at work today because I explained an opinion poorly and then clarified poorly so I've decided my only chance at participating in society is to be stupid

[walks-the-ages]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but regurgitating Radical Feminism talking point of

"Men are all Inherently Evil, Physically Superior, and Predatory to Women"

does not, in fact, do anything for Actual Feminism where the main talking point is

"We are all Human Beings and we're not Intrinsically Different based on the gender some random doctors decided on at birth"

and you're not doing anything for Queer Solidarity either when you go around proclaiming that all men, including trans men, are these evil oppressive monsters who have advantages in life based purely on their gender (even if they are trans men who are not out of the closet yet, apparently) , and I'm not sure why on earth the new crop of Trans-Inclusive Rad Fems think that being 'proud misandrists' is going to save them from being targeted by cis transphobes??? You can't win protection from transphobes by throwing your fellow trans community under the bus, and when you go around saying that all men are disgusting oppressive predators who have never done anything for the queer community ever and have never experienced any true oppression ever its like. ....

.... what the fuck is wrong with you?

Did you forget the AIDs crisis exists?

Did you forget the gay and bi men exist?

Did you forget that Black men exist??

The world's oppression does not begin and end with trans women, and if you're happy to throw the rest of the trans community under the bus so you can feel superior, I don't know who the heck you expect to have your back when you need help, because everyone else has already been run the fuck over, because you fucking threw them in the road because you somehow still think Respectability Politics is gonna save you instead of leaving your Exclusionist Bubble the community that ends up alone and isolated.

Trust me. Life is a lot more bearable and hopeful when you don't go around insisting an entire 50% of humanity is evil based on their gender. Try talking to your fellow trans men, trans mascs, nonbinary people and intersex people before you make another post about how """theyfabs have it so easy and trans men are inherently privalaged and evil because they're men and they shouldn't talk about reproductive health or the need for safe abortions because that's just speaking over women""" 🤦🤦🤦

[hockpock]

I'm having a lot of thoughts that other people will probably say much more succinctly, elegantly, humorously. But they're worth saying.

They may have won an election. They haven't won you. Scared , angry, stupid people cannot turn back the clock to a time that never existed and they can't put the wimmin and the queers and the [slurs redacted] back into Pandora's box.

Grieve. Scream cry throw up, stay in bed for a day, burn some shit.

But fuck em. Don't let them win you.

Find your community, hold on tight, be safe. Be. Exist as hard as you can. Because fuck em, because you are not alone, because even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Please.

[duckprintspress]

Just to chime in briefly on the "libraries pay authors" as an indie press - yes, we get money (that, as appropriate, gets paid to authors as royalties) every time a library buys our books. We also get money every time someone "borrows" one of our e-books - there's a per-read payment system for a lot of e-book library lending apps.

And also another small addition - I need to make it clear that small indie presses like mine aren't "big pub" even if we're technically legally a corporation (in my case, a "limited liability corporation," which just means "if the business folds they can't seize all my family's personal assets to pay my debt, so like, my kids won't be left homeless because my business failed" - my personal liability is limited/separate from my liability as the owner of a corporation.) I am NOT saying that Joy or Alex said this, to be clear, but I've noticed a huge number of people seem to think that ANY business that isn't "sole author publishing" is the same as Big Pub and like. We're so not. Small press people are generally only a handful of employees at most (Duck Prints Press has one employee - me) and we work our asses off to try to scrape by in an incredibly hostile general world environment. Every small press person I know is right on the limit of giving up, not because we don't love the work, but because we can't earn enough to pay our authors and ourselves. As a business owner who, ya know, has some actual fucking ethics...the owner gets paid last. I make sure the editors, the authors, the artists, the graphic designers, everyone else, gets paid, before I take a cent.

And as a result, I haven't taken a paycheck in the almost three YEARS I've been running this business. I haven't earned a penny from this business, even for my own writing - when me-the-author or me-the-editor might have gotten paid if I was an outsider, I don't take the money, I just leave it in the business pool. I'm currently working as much as 60 hours a week for zero pay and zero benefits, and I take maybe a dozen days off all year, and I still am a mom, and a member of fandom, and I wish I could still be an author but I don't even have the energy left for my own writing at the end of the day, and this is all because I believe that the people we work with, as a group, can potentially do better if we collectivize and publish TOGETHER than any of us could do alone if we tried to go the solo self-pub route.

To be honest, so far, I'm not sure that's true, because there's so much stigma around "it's a corporation" that people act like we're the same as a Harper Collins or something. WE'RE NOT. Small Press ISN'T THAT.

Okay, this didn't end up a small addition, and I could probably keep going, but coming from the small press angle...we're drowning too. Big Pub is trying to kill indie publishing - and that means self-pub AND places like us - and when people pirate from us, when people go "eh, they're a ~corporation~, they must be fine," when people just...assume that any collective (as in, any group of authors trying to work together to make this work) are Just As Bad, you really screw us, and it's so exhausting to constantly see people act like "everyone who isn't a single, solitary, starving artist is Part Of The Evil." And, like ariaste says, this is ALSO while we fight against the "self pub is all crap/impossible to succeed at/not worth paying attention to" stigma that exists in more traditional circles. People who want to "support small" think we're big and people who think only big exists assume we're only doing this because we suck, and so we get it from all sides.

(And again: This is NOT something I've ever seen thebibliosphere do, this isn't about OP or the other commenter ariaste, it's about general trends I observe in how people act toward DPP and other small presses. We're. We're working so hard y'all, and we're so tired, and it's so insanely difficult to even get enough traction to publish the stories that I see so many people on Tumblr claim they want, but when we actually make them, all we get is crickets.)

(really shutting up now. sorry. sweatdrop)

I both believe "poor people deserve art" and "artists deserve food", but it's hard to reconcile those beliefs. I blame capitalism. And I suppose it mostly matters who you're stealing from?

I don't mean to question you at all, I'm against people pirating your stories. I guess I was just wondering if you had more thoughts regarding the reconciliation the two beliefs I quoted above.

I think the reconciliation is working toward a future where things are better, and authors and artists don't have to beg people not to steal from them because they think every author is Stephen King, who wouldn't notice if you stole the pennies found under his couch when in reality most of us are hunting for spare change down the back of the couch because we are earning below minimum wage.

We need people to embrace the idea that art belongs to the working class, both in terms of consumption but also creation.

If you don't support the working-class creators, you'll only end up with rich fucks with no scope of the world beyond their own narrow view of privilege.

Indie creators are actually working very hard to change the way the industry works, and the publishing industry is shitting itself over it. They don't like the success some of us are having. It's why they keep upping prices while slashing corners on their own production (while never affecting the man at the top) to try and stay competitive within the rat race they've created.

They're not interested in the proliferation of art. They're not interested in making sure their authors can afford to live. They don't want more diversity. They don't want inclusion. They want profit at whatever the cost.

And while indie creators very much need to get paid because we live in a capitalistic society and everything is burning down around us, and a carton of eggs now costs more than what I earn per hour, our creativity is directly at odds with the type of profiteering big publishers want.

The money should go to the writers. Not the CEOs. The money should go to the workers in the print houses. Not the CEOs. No one needs the kind of wealth these people have. It's obscene. We need direct action against these conglomerates. We need unionization. We need a means to fight back so that we can make art and make it accessible.

So, how do we do that? I don't know. I'm just a very tired, disabled creator doing my best to keep my head above water. But I think getting people to realize that art and books are worth saving up for would be a good start.

That putting money in the pockets of creators is just as important as your own enjoyment of their art. Because if there aren't any artists, you've got nothing.

Getting them involved with their local libraries would also be a great start. Educating them on how the industry works is part of that. The number of people telling me they had no idea libraries paid authors is staggering. And that's intentional. It's a by-product of right-wing propaganda to make you think libraries are worthless and just sap taxpayers' money.

They're not.

If they were, the fash wouldn't be trying so hard to take them away.

Basically, we need working-class solidarity and for certain people on the left to rid themselves of the idea that just because something isn't borne of manual labor, it doesn't have worth. We need the artists and the dreamers as much as we need to bricklayers and the craftsmen. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of it all?

[sirfrogsworth]

I honestly don't understand people who say Republicans and Democrats are the same.

We literally have real world examples of the difference.

Queer people are starting an exodus from Florida and Texas to blue states.

And being able to see the massive difference between Florida and Minnesota is not an endorsement of the Democratic party.

The Left has been fighting so hard to show people everything is on a spectrum and yet... ugh.

Asking for details and a plan is not siding with genocide.

And I'm worried some people don't realize the number of people who genuinely like Biden and Trump. Like, even if everyone who voted for Biden just to not get Trump voted for a third party, they would be massively outnumbered by the folks who think those two are the bee's knees. We have just enough numbers to spoil the election and get Trump. But not even close to the numbers to straight up win an election.

Being realistic about that is not a moral failing.

I watched my mom suffer and die because of Trump's incompetence. I can't do another 4 years of Trump. I'm sorry.

I will not risk making the US a giant Florida.

[traegorn]

Tell Holocaust Harris to end the genocide and i'll vote for her.

I'm going to break this down simple: We have two choices this election.

Harris, who has called for a ceasefire, and Trump who wants Israel to "finish the job." There is no third option. There is no opting out. One of those two people is going to win, and you can't stop it.

And there's so much at stake this election -- including a ton of shit at home. If you let Trump win, you're signing a death warrant for those Palestinian civilians you claim to care so much about. So I don't know what you're trying to prove with stuff like this other than say your own personal moral purity is more important than saving real lives.

Frankly, if your "activism" consists of sending weird threatening asks to queer fiction writers who make witchcraft podcasts, I don't think you do much to help anyone anyways. Sounds like this is more about trying to make yourself feel better than doing any actual good in the world.

[userautumn]

i keep thinking of all the people who won't be able to leave the country if he wins. disabled people. queer people. black people. poor people. people whose lives will be immediately jeopardized if this man gets into office. so many people could die under his watch. we've already lost SO many under his watch and there are still people who are undecided. and i'm not even talking about average citizens, i'm talking about leftists. i'm talking about people who pride themselves on being paragons of liberation and revolution and virtue all because of their supposedly radical beliefs. and yet they're willing to throw every single minority group in this country on the front lines of a war we're trying desperately to avoid because. that makes more sense than fighting with us, than protecting us. i'm so fucking sick to my stomach with fear and hatred and disgust. i can't believe this race is going to be this close. jesus christ.