#qwertybard

[parziivale]

Yule Gift for Qwertybard of Sly!

[woman-loving]

qwertybard replied to your post “I can’t get on board with the claim that “gay,” in the US, has every...”

I think there's an important difference in this whole discussion between overarching US cultural trends and individual experiences/trauma that's super important and often missed? Which is to say I think you're right here for the overculture, but as someone who grew up in an extremely conservative environment where I only heard gay used negatively, and then later, first encountered queer in writing by/for people who had reclaimed it...yeah.

Yeah. I do evaluate whether or not a word is a “slur” based on the broader patterns of usage, but people can certainly have negative experiences with words that aren’t generally slurs. I wouldn’t consider “lesbian” a slur either, but plenty of people have had it hurled at them as an insult, for example.

“Queer” wasn’t an insult I heard much (at all?) as I was growing up, and my first significant encounter with it was in college, as a self-descriptor and community term. Which, like, I think that’s also a legitimate entry point to using the term. I know some people might look askew at people adopting the term if they don’t have more significant firsthand experience with it as a manifestation of homophobia/transphobia, and I do think it’s valuable to be aware of what your personal history is with the word and how it might differ from others. But I’m not persuaded that people from different backgrounds should avoid interacting with or participating in these alternate, community-created contexts for “queer”/patterns of use just on principle.

Or, to put it another way, I don’t think we need to actively try to prevent this more neutral use of “queer” from developing, just so it can be a perpetual indicator of stigma and suffering. But I don’t think it’s history and on-going present of as a bearer of homophobic/transphobic stigma and violence should be denied either.

[meyerlansky]

qwertybard replied to your post “in totally unrelated news, it’s a little surprising how common bigamy...”

Part of me wonders how many of these were eloping gay couples disguising themselves for marriage licences while one or both were straight married - I've read that that happened a lot during the Harlem Renaissance The other part of me is just like "I guess big cities have been poly forever huh"

aaat the risk of being somewhat depressing, it doesn’t seem like either of those are what’s going on with the arrest records i’ve found--about half of them were paired with “abandoning children in destitute circumstances” charges. i’ve gotten the vibe from the ones that have testimony included [which isn’t all of them, the records are pretty old and not necessarily complete] they’re mostly wives pressing charges against their husbands for abandoning them and their children to marry another woman, who didn’t know about the first wife and kids. there were definitely lavender marriages happening with relative frequency and i’d be shocked if there weren’t lots of poly relationships going on as well, but the arrests aren’t really police busting people for private conduct, it’s upset individuals filing civil cases against each other. i don’t think happily-queer people were dragging each other into court, y’know?

[nonbinarypastels]

Do you know when/how/why "purity culture" started being used on tumblr to refer to people pushing for moral purity in fandoms and politics? When I left the church and started doing research to better understand what happened to me there, I only ever encountered the term as specifically referring to the intense focus on sexual and emotional purity before marriage, and it's really weird and slightly uncomfortable and confusing for me to see it used in this context. (1/2)

(2/2) I'm not entirely opposed to the term being used this way - terminology changes all the time - but it threw me for a loop the first time I saw it and I'm kind of worried that using the same term for both things could take the focus away from survivors of religious hyper-policing of sexuality, so I think a discussion about it would be useful (and you always seem super reasonable about this sort of thing, which I really appreciate). Thanks in advance!

I don't know exactly when 'purity culture' was first used within fandom discussions or who first used it in that context, though I would assume it would have been some time in the last two years or so considering that's the time frame by which this particular sort of fadom disc/ourse came about, so I'm unfortunately not really able to answer you there.

As for the why, though:

'Purity culture' is most often used in the context of fandom and politics to describe a movement where people are seeking complete moral, political, and individual 'purity', essentially seeking for everything and everyone to meet an impossible standard of perfection and---when that standard is inevitably not reached---shunning and punishing people for not meeting those standards. This is often (though not always) a mindset that seeks to attack people for their expressions of sexuality and I've seen it theorized by multiple people who take part in these discussions regularly that this 'purity culture' in the context of fandom has roots in Christian conservativism, that though the people who perpetuate this culture may not consider themselves to be conservatives or religious that they have internalized a lot of the same rhetoric that conservative religious sects push (likely due to being raised in a conservative religious environment themselves) and are repeating it without actually realizing it.

This basically works off the idea that while it's not exactly the same as purity culture in the context of religious sects hyper-policing sexuality in real-world actions (e.g. who people actually date and have sex with), it has a lot of the same roots---the majority of people in fandom are women and a lot of the major disc/ourse topics WRT to purity culture in this context essentially boil down to women expressing their sexuality through fiction, writing and shipping, and people taking issue with that. It's been thought, then, that a lot of the policing of what content people consume is built off of the same misogynistic policing of women's sexuality outside of fandom except rather than policing who women can have sex with/how much and what kind of sex they can have, it's policing their fantasies instead.

As someone who was also raised in an extremely conservative Christian household, I see a lot of parallels between the kind of 'purity culture' that is criticized in the context of fandom and the culture I was raised in. Both seek to police fantasies and actions (particularly sexual ones) because they do not meet the standards of purity set forth by an authority (whether this be the church, parents, or a sect in fandom; an individual or a community hivemind), both attach a sense of 'purity' to individuals and considers them to lose that purity when they take part in certain actions (having sex, having the 'wrong' kind of sex, having certain fantasies or reading certain content), and both consider a loss of purity to essentially mean a loss of humanity and loss of any right a person may have to basic respect and kindness (shunning from the church or the community vs. shunning from the fandom, a person being deserving of scorn from their neighbors vs. them being deserving of cyberbullying and harassment campaigns). Fandom's purity culture and religion's purity culture also tend to have the same targets---not only women but also LGBTQIA+ people, mentally ill people, people of color---and it tends to rely a lot on the concept of 'thought crimes' (that your thoughts/fantasies are as equal to your actions, that thinking negatively or thinking 'impure' things makes you a bad person who must 'repent' or else you're 'condemned') which is a main componenet of religious purity culture as well.

I think that, basically, a lot of purity culture as we discuss it WRT to fandom has a lot in common with purity culture as it relates to religious conservativism and the policing of sexuality there, it's only that these cultures are taking place in different venues with fandom's purity culture taking place primarily online and religious purity culture taking place primarily offline and that purity culture as it's used in the context of fandom is often divorced from being blatantly religiously motivated (meaning that no one is saying outright "reading this fiction is bad because it makes you impure in the eyes of God" and most are likely not even thinking it, and yet the undertones and the concept of purity and the scorn that one is faced with when they do something that is 'impure' are still there).

As for whether using purity culture in the context of fandom is taking focus away from survivors of religious purity culture...I think that fandom purity culture has enough of an attachment to that same religious conservativism that it can accurately be considered a form of purity culture but I also see how people who are talking about purity culture in terms of religious manipulation and abuse want/need a term to talk about that and only that, where they can search for information and connect with one another about the subject without finding a tag full of fandom dsic/ourse. I think maybe the solution then is to be more specific in how we label these things---perhaps use 'fandom purity culture' when we talk about it WRT fandom, 'religious purity culture' or 'Christian purity culture' when it's WRT religion, 'political purity culture' when it's WRT politics, etc. Because while I think all of these things have roots in the same ideology, they all also have their own unique issues that aren't shared by the others. In a venn diagram of fandom purity culture and Christian purity culture, there's overlap yes, but there's also a section on either side that doesn't overlap with the other.

In any case, I definitely think this is something that should be discussed more and I don’t think I have enough context/information to speak about this topic more in-depth so I’m tagging @fiction-is-not-reality​ @shipwhateveryouwant​ @anti-anti-kitten​ @antipurity​ @anti-anti-survivor​ because I feel like y’all might have some more context/thoughts on this that I don’t?

[queerpyracy]

qwertybard replied to your post: me: heathenry has brought me a sense of...

are you somehow implying chucking a cookie into the void isn’t something Odin would deeply appreciate

oh i think he would Definitely appreciate it we had a good laugh as i shouted “hey old man” and sis shouted “have a cookie” before throwing it out into the dark winter night

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

qwertybard replied to your post “I'm really confused at the difference between bi and pansexual. At...”

I think it's important to note that the bi community has actually used the "multiple genders" definition for a long time. Like, it's been in common usage since at least 1998, when the bisexual flag was designed, because the middle purple stripe was meant to symbolize attraction to nonbinary folks.

Okay I just checked the thing about non-binary people because I have never heard it described like that and oh my God it’s true. Which is... amazing. Here’s the quote from Michael page - the creator of the bi pride flag:

"The pink color represents sexual attraction to the same sex only (gay and lesbian), The blue represents sexual attraction to the opposite sex only (straight) and the resultant overlap color purple represents sexual attraction to non-binary genders ."

It’s in the wiki article about the flag including further sources. Thank you @qwertybard for teaching us something new :D (or maybe everyone knew that already and I was the only unknowing soul).

Maddie

[sunlit-music]

👏👏👏👏👍💕💕💕

I reblogged this post from kiwianaroha’s tumblr blog.

Original post made by ashleyetc.

seriously though bisexuality being defined as attraction to men and women is a heterosexual’s definition of bisexuality actual bisexual groups and organizations have been defining it as attraction to two or more genders or same and other genders since the nineties and plenty of nb people actually id as bi and refusing to accept how we define ourselves is so absurdly biphobic and heterosexist and jfc it’s 2014 can other queer people fucking realize and acknowledge this

[babeylove]

My deconversion process was less “religion is homophobic so I’m out” and more “people around me are telling me God Hates Gays and also God Loves Everyone and I looked up these 179 reasons the Bible verses people draw on for homophobia don’t Actually mean that” when I figured out I was bi at 12 years old. Then I slowly started questioning the Bible more and finding more and more contradictions and uh. Three years and a couple panic attacks later I was an atheist. Honestly being a queer teenage atheist in a small town school was awful, so many kids tried to convert me, told me I was going to hell, advocated for LGBTQ genocide, etc. and there was no support outside of maybe three teachers. The school counselor actually told me my panic attacks were the Holy Spirit trying to bring me back to Jesus once.

And like, even as all this was happening, I was realizing how abusive my former church actually was - not only was it an apocalypse cult for a couple years, but it pressed a lot of toxic gender role stuff (like, hardcore Debbie Pearl/John Eldridge complementarian bullshit) still bubbles up in my traumatized lil brain every now and then. Still, leaving made my life so much better and I wouldn’t trade this freedom to actually be myself for the world.

[stageofhearts]

Reflex, dexterity, wisdom, charisma

Reflex - What was the worst accidental disaster that your PC ever caused?Well there was that one time Caine got his entire team kidnapped by a True Fae and taken to the Hedge. Which merely took ten years to fix.

Dexterity - What was the most daring / crazy / unlikely stunt your PC pulled off? Zeke once scaled a giant monster from the underworld to stab it in the eye.

Wisdom - What’s the stupidest thing your PC has ever done?Zeke once scaled a giant monster from the underworld to stab it in the eye. Alternatively, one time Caine tried to buy time for his teammates to finish a job by pointing a pistol at the leader of the local branch of Task Force Valkyrie. While shirtless.

Charisma - What’s your favorite NPC from any game? In games I’ve played in, Arlinn.

[parziivale]

A commission for Qwertybard of Louis from Beastars on my pony YCH!

[ryanlewisandclark]

When your bard is proficient in animal handling.

hmmm

[whoneedssexed]

I've been reblogging exclusionist shit (I snapped out of it and deleted it) and I don't like that I'm starting to sympathize with them even though they quite literally say that ace people are only having problems because of being perceived as gay and etc when i feel like that's dismissive and diminutive. I feel like sometimes I see what they're saying and have some agreements once I block out the ace exclusion parts but idk. I feel like I do that with terfs too and I run a positive blog. Advice?

I think you need to remember that whatever “good points” or “positive posts” you think you’re seeing them make are made with bigoted/exclusionary subtext, and are also made to hook you into their ideology.

https://whoneedssexed.com/post/189317803534

https://whoneedssexed.com/post/189777379983/qwertybard-thngrn20-heatheralicewatson

https://whoneedssexed.com/post/188382731101/everyone-who-keeps-reblogging-those-posts-about

https://whoneedssexed.com/post/183959216918/im-curious-about-how-you-were-introduced-to-trans

Those are some posts that explain how it works.

- mod BP

[the-brothers-karamazov]

Thank u @spaghet-dad for the tag!

spell out ur url using song titles, then tag as many people as there are letters in ur name

N - Nvr Pass, She/Her/hers

O - Ode to Billie Joel, Bobbie Gentry

S - Say So, Doja Cat

T - The Staircase (Mystery), Siousxie and the Banshees

R - Rattle the Cage, ELIA EX

U - underneath it all, Death Spells

M - Material Girl, Madonna

E - Early Sunsets Over Monroeville, MCR

L - Liquid Smooth, Mitski

E - El Demonio De la Perversidad, Poe

U - Unicorn Tolerance, The Mountain Goats

T - Take it Away, The Used

H - Hakkerskaldyr, Heilung

E - Ease My Mind, Hayley Kiyoko  

R - Rapid Decompression, Against Me!

I - I Got the Juice, Janelle Monae (ft. Pharrell Williams)

A - A Matter of Habit, Moddi

Good god, this was fun but. If this didn’t make me finally change my url then nothing goddamn will. I’m gonna tag as many people as i can remember urls! If i missed u or if u want to do it go ham, i’m sorry i didn’t tag u but u can say i did, lmao

@kittynighterrors @guiltstripping @kinesiotaped @maliaphobic @femmegerard @flockofdoves @potofrot @qwertybard @isteppedonacookie @musicalsense @natthemess

[ryanlewisandclark]

I think toxic masculinity has the ability to infiltrate and infect any individual, whether that individual has privilege or not.

Toxic masculinity is about perceived expectations that influence our behavior. That can be a matter of relationship dynamics we've seen modeled incessantly via media and those concepts can and do affect anyone.

That's part of what terrifies me most about it, is how invasive that whole ball of poo can be.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask me to delete this if it's not appropriate.

me: masculine women don’t experience toxic masculinity because we were raised with the social expectation of femininity and toxic masculinity is caused by the social pressure on men to perform harmful forms of masculinity

me: *describes minor Relationship Feelings issue (in relationship with a girlfriend) to boyfriend*

him: oh yeah that’s a toxic masculinity thing I had to work through, here’s how it works, why it’s dumb, and how to get over it

me: …shit ur right

[queerpyracy]

qwertybard replied to your post “i truly and genuinely hate that i made a text post notorious enough...”

Tbh as someone who'd been having similar thoughts for years and had trouble articulating them, I can't thank you enough for actually saying it - even though it really sucks that it blew up and started getting attacked like it did. but seriously, thank you for writing it and thank you for writing all your other stuff and I'm really glad that post led me to that other stuff because it's cool & you're cool.

wwaahhhh ty  (ಥ﹏ಥ)

[socialjusticevegan]

Hey @qwertybard​, hope you don't mind if I start another thread, that last one was getting awfully long (we both seem to like elaborating!) and I'll try to concentrate more on your main thesis here. Link to previous conversation here for reference.

So, "humans are part of earth's ecosystems, not separate from them". I think that sounds completely reasonable, and I believe I agree with that statement. Where I get lost is how killing and eating animals follows from that. You say that humans are predators, but as far as I can tell that's just a way to describe how some animals get their food, and not some biological imperative for humans. Yes, we could get our food through predation, but I still don't understand why we should, or how doing so would make us any more a part of the ecosystem than if we didn't? Maybe I'm still missing something here, but your argument, from what I can make of it, seems to boil down to: there are other animals who do it, so it should be fine if we do, because we are also animals. I don't find that argument compelling. I don’t think it makes sense to model our behavior on what some other animals do, and either way, we have the option to eat other things, and we have the capacity to make choices. We have the choice to kill another sentient being or to not kill them. Given that we have a choice, I don't know how to rationalize the choice to kill someone we don't have to as being a moral one. The only reason I can think of is if killing other animals does not count as killing someone in the same way that killing a human does. That is, if humans are separate and distinct from all other animals, requiring a different set of rules that say it is wrong to kill us, and only us, if it’s not necessary for survival.

Personally, I don't actually think killing and eating animals is inherently wrong in and of itself. What I do believe is that killing someone who doesn't need to die for our survival is wrong, even if we plan to eat them after. I believe this should apply to all animals, including humans. There's that old gotcha question people like to spring on vegans of "if you're stranded on a deserted island and the only thing to eat is a chicken, would you eat it?" And my answer is, yes, obviously! Humans have eaten other humans in such extreme situations. I'm not going to starve to death for some ideal of moral purity, and wouldn't expect anyone else to either. But if we are not in a situation where we have to in order to survive, then we have the power to choose life or death at our whim. I don't understand why we shouldn't choose life, and I don't understand how the choice of how to use the power we have to make that decision of whether or not someone lives or dies isn't a moral one, if morality exists at all.

As for sources, here's a quote from an interview with Dr. Margaret Robinson, an indigenous vegan, who I think shows that, at least on an theoretical level, veganism is perfectly compatible with a world view that sees humans as a part of ecosystems and not separate:

Are there any philosophical parallels between Mi’kmaw culture and veganism? I think one parallel is the value of subsistence. For instance, in Mi’kmaw culture, you’re not supposed to kill more animals than you need to actually stay alive. Hoarding, for instance, accumulating a whole bunch of food in your freezer is not really done. So even people who hunt, if you hunt a moose, in my culture, you’re supposed to share that moose with people in the community who need food. Even though the practice of hunting and killing a moose is clearly not a vegan activity, I think the focus of not taking more than you need—that subsistence value—is very amenable. It parallels in some ways with the kind of values that I see in vegan communities around respect for animals and around being honest about what we need and what we don’t need. I think that because of that kind of respect for animals and ecosystems, there are ways in which indigenous values overlap with veganism, and I think that can be really politically productive in a lot of ways.

I sort of feel like sometimes people have presented Indigenous folks and vegans as if they’re like this natural set of enemies, when in reality I think we have a lot of values in common, even if we’re not expressing them in the same practices.

The full Interview is available here.

And here are some more relevant quotes of hers from another article (link here):

Portraying veganism as white erases world majority vegans and their dietary choices from the ethical and religious landscape and depicts whites as the only people who care about health, or the ethics of animal consumption. ... Mi’kmaq legends portray human beings as intimately connected with the natural world, not as entities distinct from it. ... Human survival is the justification for the death of Glooskap’s animal friends [in one legend]. The animals have independent life, their own purpose and their own relationships with the creator. They are not made for food, but willingly become food as a sacrifice for their friends.

This is a far cry from the perspective of the white hunter, in which animals are constructed as requiring population control, turning slaughter into a service performed, rather than one received. ... Even in [another] story, which attempts to justify dominion, the proper relation to the animals is only for food and clothing. Animals retain a right to their lives, and their rights cannot be lightly put aside. ... The personhood of animals, their self-determination and our regret at their death, all show that choosing not to ask for their sacrifice is a legitimate Mi’kmaq option.

Since vegan culture testifies that the consumption of animals for food, clothing and shelter is no longer necessary, then Mi’kmaq tradition suggests that the hunting and killing of our animal brothers is no longer authorized. If women initiated the hunt, as in the story of Glooskap’s grandmother, then surely we are empowered to end it.

There is a lot more to this article, I just tried to pick out the most immediately relevant parts to our conversation, but I would encourage anyone to read her words in full if possible. If you prefer video/audio, she also presented most of the contents of this article at the Human Rights Are Animal Rights conference, and you can see that presentation here.

On a more practical level, there’s Tamera, an eco-village in Portugal that is experimenting in non-violent living, permaculture, food sovereignty, and decentralized autonomous communities. They aren’t explicitly vegan, but one of their goals is “Cooperation with All Beings”, and they do not currently eat meat or fish, although they say they "continue to research whether or not we can eat animals or animal products in a nonviolent culture“.

I hope this post helps clarify where I’m coming from an anti-speciesist standpoint and more directly addresses some of your concerns about living as a part of earth’s ecosystems coming from a vegan perspective. If not feel free to ask more direct questions if you’d like so I can address whatever it is I’m missing. I'm sure there are still plenty of things I'm not understanding about your viewpoint, and I'd be welcome to hearing more if you want to elaborate. I’d like to think that we agree more than we disagree.