#syrian queer film

[fiercynn]

queer short film: "marco"

queer short cuts is a biweekly newsletter where i share queer & trans short film recommendations. i'm featuring some of my favorite films on tumblr because why not

this film was screened at the 2021 queer cinema for palestine film festival, where filmmakers pledged to boycott the israeli-government sponsored lgbt festival TLVfest. the next queer cinema for palestine, which is a global festival with screenings in many cities and some online, is from november 29-december 10, 2023, and you can sign up for updates here.

united kingdom | 22 minutes | 2019 | narrative short film audio in arabic and english; english subtitles embedded for dialogue in arabic but no closed captions for dialogue in english

marco, written and directed by saleem haddad, opens with omar (zed josef), a lebanese-british banker living in london, refusing a phone call from his mother back home in beirut. he instead focuses on getting ready for a guest: a sex worker (marwan kaabour) who introduces himself as marco, recently arrived in the united kingdom from barcelona. over the course of the evening, omar and “marco” find they have more in common than they initially realized – but that is also not enough for them to make their meeting easy and without conflict. - deepa's full review, including content notes at the end

watch on youtube, and you can find more about creator saleem haddad at his website and his patreon

[akajustmerry]

Hi

1 love your blog and podcast

2 I’m really enjoying your weekly Palestinian film recs

3. Do you have more recommendations for Arab and Middle Eastern cinema ?

Thank you ☺️

helloooooo, thank you 🥰 I have a whole sideblog which I don't promote enough called @swanasource where I and my co-mod @thatidomagirl frequently post middle eastern/SWANA film and films made by swana filmmakers in the film tag here:

I myself am still on my journey of watching more swana films (and non-english and non-Western films) so I won't claim to be any sort of exhaustive expert. but here are some of my favourites!

Salt of this Sea (2008). Dir. Annemarie Jacir. Palestinian film about a Palestinian-American woman heisting an Israeli bank

The Persian Version (2023). Dir. Maryam Kershavez. Comedy about an Iranian-American lesbian who gets pregnant after a one night stand and so decides to learn more about her family history.

Kedi (2016). A calming and beautiful Turkish documentary about the cats of Istanbul

Ali's Wedding (2017). A rom-com about an Iraqi-Australian Muslim who falls in love with the Lebanese girl from his mosque who's helping him get into med school.

The Man Who Sold His Skin (2020). Tunisian thriller about a syrian refugee who agrees to let his back be tattooed and be part of a living exhibition by a notorious artist so he can get a visa.

Sirens (2020). A documentary about the queer Lebanese all-girl metal band, Slave To Sirens, set around the Beirut explosion.

In Vitro (2019). A short Palestinian sci-fi film about an elderly woman in an underground bunker trying to describe the world before to a young woman who's only ever known the bunker.

Cairo Time (2009). Dir. Ruba Nadda. Look, this film isn't perfect but It's about a white American woman who's husband is a UN worker in Egypt. She goes to visit him in Cairo, but her husband is waylaid so he sends his bestie played by the beautiful Alexander Siddig to take her around Cairo and oh my GOD the romantic tension of this movie keeps me up at night.

Butterflies (2018). One of my fave movies ever. A Turkish comedy about 3 estranged siblings who have to take a chaotic road trip to fulfil their father's last wishes.

[originalleftist]

Cool Things You Probably Didn't Know About Amber Heard:

She was a certified lifeguard.

She speaks three languages- English, Spanish, and American Sign Language.

She worked in a soup kitchen as a teenager.

She campaigned with then-Senator Kamala Harris to support Harris's SHIELD Act- legislation intended to criminalize the distribution of non-consensual pornography (it's never passed).

She was a Human Rights Ambassador for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

She was an ACLU Ambassador for Women's Rights, and also worked with Amnesty International, Art of Elysium, Planned Parenthood, and Syrian American Medical Society.

She is openly queer, having had both male and female partners.

She became an atheist at 16 after the death of her best friend, and dropped out of her Catholic high school, but completed her diploma via home study.

While still in school, she protested the school's dress code and barring a queer couple from prom.

In addition to her numerous acting roles, she was a producer for at least two films, And Soon the Darkness and Syrup.

(Amber Heard at a pro-gay marriage protest in Los Angeles in 2010.)

[ace-hell]

So... Palestine:

-is an actual ethnostate

-Has no REAL freedom of religion

-violate woman rights

-... Violate HUMAN rights...

-was proven to use schools, houses and hospitals as terror base with weapons- which are war crimes

-kidnapped people-again, war crime

-makes missiles out water pipes... AGAIN a WAR crime

-bombed a children section in a hospital in south israel. AND YET AGAIN🙌🏻 A WAR CRIME

-Tried to bomb al aqsa like 2 or 3 times

-Genociding their christian community(im not even talking what would've happen to the jewish communities if they had any)

-literally ripped jewish people to shreds and walked around with their organs and celebrated it like its some kind of barbaric pagan human sacrifice from 2,000 years ago

-Has gender apartheid

-Homophobic as fUck with legal death punishment for queer people

-Antisemic like nazi germany

-Fought WITH the nazis

-Still support nazism, do the nazi salute, sell hitlers book, protest with swastikas, has stores under his name bc(and i quote a palestinian from the west back) "he has killed the most jews"

-advocates for murder of the "cursed" jews since childhood and teaches little kids to be shahid terrorists since VERY young age

-has a corrupt government like pakistan

-was proven to lie about hospital bombing, rape in al shifa and show pictures of victims of the syrian, armenian, afghanistan, iraqi and other wars and claim that they are all palestinians

-claimed that england stole the big ben from them💀

-claims that the flag of England represents palestine💀

-is supported by north korea, russia, south africa, yemen, china and iran: all apartheid states with corrupt dictators that violate human rights

-literally call black palestinians "slaves" (abeed)

-would rather film their kids getting blown to pieces than take them to a safe place

-celebrates the 9/11

-celebrated when hezbolla killed 12 druze kids

-hates the israeli druze

-hates israeli palestinians

-rape

-still do honor killing

-start all the wars since 1900's and then cry about them,,..,, like bffr💀

-their journalists were proven to be part of any terrorist group(either hamas, PFLP(ehem ehem bisan) or pij)

-A lot of their doctors have a certificate of being hamas members

Like sheesh even if i was anti israeli anti zionist no way in HELL would i support palestine as a country💀

[mycatwantstoeatpins]

I have no interest in seeing Gladiator II but I am enjoying Bret Devereaux's posts about it. Some excerpts (emphasis in original):

Gladiator II is explicitly set during the joint reign of Geta and Caracalla, two emperors of the Severan dynasty, but the film’s depictions of the two emperors is unrecognizable, [...] [H]ow does the film opt to portray Caracalla? Well, both of the emperors were cast as pale white young men with red hair; makeup is used to give their faces a sickly sort of color, with deep bags under their eyes. They’re presented in the film as chaotic, with Caracalla in particular being an effectively insane syphilitic (treating his pet monkey as a senator), and also queer-coded, shown with a decadent entourage of both men and women, wearing lots of jewelry (something only women and villains do in this film) and generally being fairly ‘camp.’ [...] – in contrast to the heroes Acacius and Lucius who are both explicitly straight and married to women. Indeed, even Lucius’ closest ally in the gladiator school, the former gladiator Ravi, stops to make sure we’re aware that he’s married to a woman. [...] Caracalla’s father was Septimius Severus, a man of North African extraction who claimed both Libyan and Punic ancestors. Caracalla’s mother, Julia Domna, was a Syrian woman, from an Arab family born in what today would be Homs, Syria (then Emesa). [...] [I]n the film, both Geta and Caracalla are the sort of emperors who send their generals – the fictional Marcus Acacius played by Pedro Pascal – to fight their ways, while they remain at Rome in luxury, far from any sort of violence. Indeed, this is an essential thematic contrast in the film: Rome’s failure and decadence are represented by the queer-coded, effiminate ‘soft’ men of the city and politics – Geta, Caracalla, Macrinus, Senator Thraex – while its vitality is represented by the hard men of violence – Acacius and Lucius. [...] Except the real Caracalla was exactly the sort of Roman that Ridley Scott pines for and he was a terrible emperor as a result. [...] Far from being a luxuriant, decadent, effeminate and insane figure – as Scott has him – the real Caracalla was perfectly sane. Paranoid, vengeful and violent, but absolutely in touch with reality. He is exactly the sort of man of violence these films glorify. And as a result he was a bad emperor! Caracalla’s lavish payments to the soldiers (he raised their pay substantially) and frequent campaigns (also expensive) drained the Roman treasury, while his reign reinforced the damaging precedent that the emperor was, for the most part, simply a soldier and a general. The problem with that is that if the emperor is just a general, then any general could be emperor and starting in 235, a non-trivial portion of Roman generals would try it, causing the Crisis of the Third Century. [...] For one, the film’s juxtaposition between the burly men of violence like Acacius and the weak, decadent senators is silly on its face. Indeed, Scott relies in both Gladiator films on a contrast between the career military men (Maximus, Acacius) and the political, senatorial elite. In Rome, these were the same men. To be a legatus Augusti pro praetore and to have a provincial command and a large army, one had to be a senator who had at least reached the praetorship. Not every senator was a general but every Roman general was a senator. Acacius’ claim in Gladiator II to not be “an orator or a politician” but merely a soldier and a general is a nonsense claim: at Rome, one could not be a general without being an orator and a politician. And while the film errs in suggesting that Roman collapse is just around the corner in 211 – when in fact we are close to the height of the empire and serious fragmentation is two centuries away – the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284) is coming. But the Crisis of the Third Century isn’t caused by a shortage of burly men in armor doing violence, but a surplus of them.

[lesbianboyfriend]

can i ask for lesbian book recommendations 🥹🕺

yeassss ofc my love <3

erm and obligatory disclaimer for any who might read that i don’t think “queer” or “lesbian” is a necessarily coherent category of books or adequate descriptor for a novel which is why i’ve also provided the actual genres here (sorted into which ever one i felt best fit) and descriptions. and these books have much more going on than just being about lesbians. however all books are undeniably awesomer with lesbians so yayyyyy

FANTASY:

-the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw: fantasy horror; murderous mermaid and plague doctor come across a cult of children (could be read as not lesbians bc one character is nonbinary but i choose to read as. lesbians)

-the empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unravels the tale of exiled empress’ rise to power

-when the the tigers came down the mountain by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unwinds the tale of a tiger and her scholar lover to prevent other tigers from eating them (stand alone sequel to empress of salt and fortune)

-ship of smoke and steel by django wexler: ya fantasy; girl has to steal a ghost ship to save her sister’s life

-the mermaid, the witch, and the sea by maggie tokuda-hall: ya fantasy; pirate falls in love with one of the ship’s hostages, a girl being sent to an arranged marriage against her will

-tremontaine created by ellen kushner: political fantasy; there’s a lot going on in this one okay just trust me that it’s really good esp if you love political intrigue (this was released serially and is easiest to acquire an electronic version)

-the deep by rivers solomon: fantasy/spec fic; African slave women thrown overboard gave birth to mermaid-esque descendants. one holds these traumatic memories for her whole people and must grapple with that pressure

-wild beauty by anna-marie mclemore: ya magical realism/fantasy; a family of women who can create flowers and whose lovers always tragically vanish fight to keep their land and to unravel the mystery of a strange boy who appeared

-siren queen by nghi vo: historical magical realism/fantasy; girl’s rise to stardom amidst the monsters of hollywood back in the days of the studio system

-gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir: sff; um. how to explain briefly. gideon wants nothing more than to leave the ninth house, but her nemesis harrowhark needs her sword skills to pass the emperors trial and become immortal. sure. (caleb i know you’ve read this just adding for any other viewers yayyy)

HORROR:

-white is for witching by helen oyeyemi: horror fantasy/magical realism; a house with women in its walls calls to miranda silver while the people she leaves behind struggle to make sense of what happened to her

-plain bad heroines by emily a. danforth: historical horror; when filming a movie about the macabre history of a boarding school, its past starts to become the reality for the stars and author of the novel it’s based on

LITFIC:

-girl woman other: contemporary litfic; the intersecting stories of Black british women told in verse

-nightwood: classic literary; i feel like i can’t describe this one well but nora and jenny are obsessed with robin, whose penchant for wandering and inability to commit drives them crazy. toxic dyke drama at its best

-the thirty names of night: lit fic; transmasc syrian american unravels the history of artist laila z who encountered the same rare bird his mother saw right before her death and realizes their pasts are intertwined

-under the udala trees: historical lit fic; coming of age set against the backdrop of civil war in Nigeria, two girls from different ethnic communities fall in love

-everyone in this room will someday be dead: contemporary lit fic; that moment when your ocd lands you a job at the catholic church even though you’re an atheist and also your relationship is falling apart

-stone butch blues: historical lit fic; butch lesbian realizing and grappling with her identity throughout the 40s-70s

-the color purple: classic lit fic; story of two sisters separated in their youth—one is forced into an abusive marriage and falls in love with her husbands mistress, wondering what became of her sister

-oranges are not the only fruit: semi-autobiography with slight fantasy elements; exploring growing up lesbian in a deeply religious pentecostal sect

SCI-FI:

-the weight of the stars: ya sf romance; aspiring astronaut is forced into friendship with a girl who waits on the roof every night for radio signals from her mother in space

-the seep: sci-fi/spec fic; what if aliens invaded and formed a hive mind of everyone and also your girlfriend turned into a baby again. wouldn’t that be fucked up

-the stars are legion: political science fiction; an awakes with no memory amid a group of people calling themself her family who claim she is the only one who can save their world

-not your sidekick: ya sci-fi; superheroes are real and they fucking suck

SHORT STORIES:

-sarahland: contemporary/spec fic short story collection; various stories about people named sarah

[firespirited]

No. A boycott is a strategic leverage point. We have not been asked to boycott any of these companies.

How you choose to spend your money is a different matter: that's personal and may include a sending a message via social media to the individual zionist CEO.

But I'd like everyone to take a moment and think about the fact that a company is thousands of people with the CEO insulated from any financial risk and the artists creating the dolls at the highest risk of losing their jobs.

The urge to punish individual zionists by dropping products made by a team (looking at the stranger things fandom here) is coming from the deep ache of there being no justice.

And that's where you need to slowly build a thing instead of just lashing out. True justice is the process of getting this genocide recognised as one, which would get it's proponents recognised as doing hate speech and collaboration with war crimes. That means joining existing political groups and doing the boycotts or actions that actually get something done (blocking ports, objecting to your local SWAT trained by the IDF at town hall meetings)

Choosing how you spend is a good thing, you can choose to not watch films made with the military for example. But the impotent urge to punish individual Israeli Americans many who have been brainwashed since childhood is misusing that inner pain that needs to be harnessed into long term action for real justice.

That anger, when it doesn't build anything and has no effect, turns into despair and apathy. After the anti war protests of the early 2000s a lot of people just dropped out of fighting for anything. They'd thrown all their anger against the mega wall of the military industrial complex. Others went on to build mutual aid and anti discrimination groups for muslims, for queer people, which brought about very good things.

You can't change the world with your purchasing habits but you can make anger into fuel and make your community safe for the incoming refugees (did you know a lot of Syrian refugees are originally from Palestine?), demand community policing without military including IDF tactics, protect the local jewish people getting blowback from an unrelated country's actions...

Hope yall weren't planning on buying Bratz dolls as a Christmas present this year cuz the CEO is a die-hard Israel supporter and against a ceasefire.

Please note that LOL Surpise and Rainbow High dolls aren't safe either. They're made by the same company.

[dear-indies]

hello :) please could you give some alternative suggestions to cindy kimberly, preferably someone with resources from tv & film. tysm <33

Indonesian:

Lulu Antariksa (1995) Indonesian / German.

Brianne Tju (1998) Indonesian / Chinese.

Jihane Almira Chedid (2000) Javanese Indonesian and Lebanese.

Arawinda Kirana (2001) Indonesian.

Other suggestions:

Simone Ashley (1995) Tamil Indian.

Coty Camacho (1995) Mixtec and Zapotec - is pansexual.

Lindsay Watson (1995) Kānaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, White.

Tati Gabrielle (1996) African-American / Korean.

Charithra Chandran (1997) Tamil Indian.

Amita Suman (1997) Bhojpuri Nepalese.

Janhvi Kapoor (1997) Indian.

Jaylen Barron (1997) African-American / Mexican.

Banita Sandhu (1998) Punjabi Indian.

Gabbi Garcia (1998) Tagalog Filipino.

Coco Jones (1998) African-American.

Joanna Pincerato (1998) Mexican, Syrian. Swedish, Italian - no acting resources.

Diamond White (1999) African-American.

Imani Lewis (1999) African-American.

Alycia Pascual-Peña (1999) Afro-Dominican.

Lizeth Selene (1999) Mexican - is genderfluid and queer - they/she.

Daniella Perkins (2000) African-American / European.

Kate Valdez (2000) Tagalog Filipino.

Savannah Lee Smith (2000) African-American - is bisexual.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (2001) Tamil Sri Lankan.

Josie Totah (2001) Palestinian / Lebanese, Italian, Irish, German - trans.

Isabela Merced (2001) Peruvian / White.

Finding somebody with acting resources was difficult but here are some suggestions!

[dillydedalus]

february reading

truly the month of the 2.5 to 3/5 star books

the testaments, margaret atwood y’all.... i was bracing myself for disappointment but yikes. the first half is semi-decent, with at least the storylines of aunt lydia’s (alleged) diaries and the testimony of a girl raised in gilead opening up some interesting themes (the third, from the pov of a canadian teen, is a fucking disaster from the beginning), but the second half genuinely reads like generic dystopian YA, it’s predictable & tropey & silly & the prose becomes bad, real bad, ‘is atwood okay’ bad. 1.5/5

paul takes the form of a mortal girl, andrea lawlor really cool & propulsive picaresque about paul polydoris, a queer student in the early 90s who can shapeshift (yeah) & explores what that means for his identity,  learning to reject attempts to force him into binary categories. it’s a fun read, but it felt a bit directionless (picaresque i know), and like... i read a lot of this on my commute & there really is nothing like sitting on the train, in a half-awake daze, and your book throwing a fisting scene at you. 3/5

delusions of gender: the real science behind sex differences, cordelia fine nonfiction book dedicated to debunking claims about the neurological basis of sex differences. it’s from 2010 so prob a lil dated (scientifically i assume, as well as a relative lack of intersectional analysis), but it’s a good overview of why such claims are often based on flawed or misleading studies (like one on toy preference where monkeys where presented w/ gendered toys, such as the clearly female-coded pan, which like... it’s a monkey...). the section on supposedly gender-neutral childraising was particularly interesting & depressing. 3/5

silence, shusaku endo (tr. from japanese by william johnston) historical novel about the oppression & persecution of christians in 17th century japan - the protagonist, a young priest, secretly travels to japan to find his mentor & ends up betrayed & captured, under threat of torture, struggling with his own doubts about his faith. it’s interesting but preeetty damn slow. also tbh i can’t really relate to the struggle of whether or not you should step on an image of jesus to save yourself or others from torture/execution. (to be fair depending on your reading god does break his silence to be like ‘dude. just step on the fucking image.’) 2.5/5

the garden of the finzi-contini, giorgio bassani (tr. from italian by william weaver) a melancholy novel in which a jewish-italian narrator looks back at his youth & early adulthood thru the lense of his relationship to the finzi-contini, a very rich jewish family whose daughter, micòl, he was in love with. although the narrative is slow and leisurely, the growing antisemitism and the narrator’s retrospective knowledge of what is to come makes this quite haunting & unsettling. what’s also unsettling is the narrator’s campaign of sexual harrassment against micòl in the end of the book, which is painted as silly, lovesick weakness, rather than, you know, harrassment. 2.5/5 why are men like this

white is for witching, helen oyeyemi i love an evil house, i love an evil house that gets to narrate (!!!), i love (conceptually!!!) an evil xenophobic white supremacist parasitic house that loves & starves its daughters. conceptually & thematically oyeyemi sets up a lot of really cool shit about haunting & grief & race/whiteness & yanno, evil parasitic houses that eat you from the inside, but i don’t think the resolution of these themes really works & a lot of the build-up just kinda deflates (the brother especially is kinda pointless). idk. i want to read more from oyeyemi tho. 2.5/5

vater unser, angela lehner (no english translation yet) the blurb for this is big cringe (’you’ve never seen a crazy person like this!’ like bitch i have to see myself every damn day) & the bones of this are not super original (mentally ill compulsive-liar narrator gets herself committed, manipulates everyone around her) but it’s pretty well-executed with a strong & funny voice, lots of austrian-specific weirdness, & a nice zippy pace. the twist is a bit predictable but still well-done imo. 2.5/5

interior chinatown, charles yu really smart experimental novel(ish) about one willis wu, struggling actor, trying to work his way up from Generic Asian Man to Kung Fu Guy in a strange shadow-world-version of chinatown where everyone is an actor & everything is part of the set. this strange half-world & the fact that much of the novel is in script-form are both really clever & also work really well in setting up the novel’s deeper point (i.e. not just that the film industry sucks if you’re any kind of minority, but that the stereotypical roles one is assigned in a culture have deeper repercussions in terms of identity and self-perception). it’s also a really funny books, and the epigraphs for each chapter are *chef’s kiss*. 3.5/5

die erfindung der deutschen grammatik, rasha abbas (tr. from arabic by sandra hetzl, no english translation) funny little collection of very short stories by a young syrian journalist & author who moved to berlin in 2014. the stories are for me most part about her experiences as a refugee, learning german, dealing with german bureaucracy & so on, often with a slightly surreal twist. fun but not super substantial or anything. 2.5/5

northanger abbey, jane austen tbh henry tilney is a condescending ass & the whole thing about him only falling in love with catherine bc she is so in love with him is a big yikes from me but it is so charming & funny (the thorpes! the narrator!) & catherine is so sweet, so ready to suspect gothic misdeeds & so naive when it comes to the much more commonplace cruelties that like, i still love it. 3.5/5

a thread of grace, mary doria russell historical novel about the nazi occupation of northern italy from ‘43 onwards, told thru various perspectives of partisans & resistance members, italian jews and jewish refugees in hiding, and catholic clergy involved with the resistance efforts. given that topic, it’s often brutal and depressing but there is always that (title drop) thread of grace in seeing the heroism of the partisans and the people who aided them & hid thousands of jewish refugees from the nazis. and russell just always brings so much humanity to her characters. not as good as the sparrow, but man, russell is great. 3.5/5

eure heimat ist unser albtraum,  ed. fatma aydemir & hengameh yaghoobifarah & many many others (german, no translation yet) 2019 anthology about racism in germany, what it means to be a minority in germany, and why ‘heimat’ (~home(land)) is a problematic concept. as it is w/ anthologies it’s a mixed bag & i will say that i don’t think it’s as radical as it presents as overall but i think the #discourse in germany just ain’t as advanced as it is in the us&uk. 3/5

currently reading: gideon the ninth (i have no idea what’s going on but it’s very stylish)

[annbrighthaus-blog]

Erotica, for those who don’t already partake, is any work of art with sex as a central focus – and the reason for consumption – that does not cross the line into pornography. This includes photography, literature, dance, sculpture, film, and really any medium that captures the human form and appetites in a compelling and sexy way. The definition is a bit vague. And pornography is hard to define as well, as the Supreme Court can attest, so erotica has, in some circles, garnered a reputation for being more sophisticated pornography, and in others, it’s just diet-porn. The recent SESTA/FOSTA acts further illustrate how difficult and problematic it is define pornography and other levels of sexual content.

However, erotica serves an important purpose for a great deal of the population, and can enhance your erotic ardor in ways that regular, garden-variety porn cannot (though porn can be great, too), because sometimes it’s fun to take a minimalist approach and leave the rest to your imagination. Exploring erotica can enrich your feminist sex life, partnered or not, so whether you’re new to erotica or an erotica diehard, read our recommendations for our favorite feminist erotica and some hands-free toys, too!

A Brief History of Erotica

Once upon a time, long before 50 Shades of Gray became a household name, dinosaurs roamed the earth. And soon after, dino-porn probably came along. Porn has likely existed as long as humans have. It’s a tale as old as time; with each new technological invention comes the aftermath of how it can be used for sexual purposes. The printing press was invented and immediately came the list of books that were to be banned; with the daguerreotypecame pictures of erotic acts for the first time (rather than drawings). Soon after, government officials around the world took to seizing any lewd photos they found. Erotica has a rich and varied history, and sex geeks or history buffs will definitely want to check out The Whores of Yore, a sex positive website that advocates on behalf of sex workers. Not only is there fascinating information on sex, sex work, and old-timey sex phrases, the NSFW photos dating back from the 1800s are beguiling on both intellectual and sexual levels. Typically, the pictures are geared toward people attracted to women, but it is fun for anyone to see how many activities that some might categorize as new and edgy are, in fact, old and traditional.

Why You May Want to Give Our Favorite Feminist Erotica a Try

Why should you branch out from your regularly-scheduled porn regimen? Lots of reasons! For instance, maybe your interests lie in more intense fantasies – fantasies you’re not sure you’d feel comfortable watching actually occur. Erotic literature can help get your creative juices flowing and be a good testing ground, without having an image in your head that you can’t un-see. Plus, your imagination is vast and often far more delectable than what can be conceivably performed by porn actors on a porn-flick budget.

Further, people of demisexual orientation may find a greater affinity toward erotic literature than porn. In a book, you can build a strong emotional tie to a character, something much more meaningful than a pizza deliverer bringing hot sausage and an order of buffalo wangs to your door. The sex scenes often have more depth, even if they are casual in nature. And, just like porn, erotica contains multitudes. If you can dream it, chances are, it already exists. Into BBW who are into shapeshifters? Yep, that’s a thing. Lesbian werewolves with penises? Goofy, pun-laden, Santa smut? Campy, absurdist tales of a gay dinosaur? Check, check, and check. On screen, these would all be totally ridiculous. But in your mind’s eye, there’s only a very good chance that they’ll be ridiculous. Yet, sex and desire as a whole could benefit from a bit less gravity, a bit more humor, and a lot more acceptance.

Also, as it can be hard to find porn that feels welcoming to people with vulvas, and erotica is not fundamentally different. Marquis de Sade, a French writer from the 1700s, wrote books so brutal that the term sadism was coined for them. So, it’s good to know going in what you like and what’s off the table. But now, there’s a lot more readily-available, femme-friendly reads.

If you’re looking for something academic, look no further than Anais Nin; in particular, Delta of Venus. Part memoir and part short-story anthology, this book pioneered the way for literary erotica to make its way in to the mainstream. It is very ahead of its time as far as steering clear of slut-shaming and being sex positive. The Proof of the Honey by Salwa Al Neimi is a lightly erotic book that stars a young, Syrian academic who journeys through her own sensual self-realization. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters is an exquisite historical-fiction-style dive into gender roles, sexuality, and a lesbian relationship framed in the asphyxiating backdrop of Victorian-era England. More straightforward erotica, such as Curvy Girls: Erotica for Women and Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica are also some of our favorite feminist erotica titles. Lastly, Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden is a compilation of real women’s fantasies and reads as hot today as it did back in the 1970s when it was first published.

If you look for free online stories, the old adage “you get what you pay for” definitely applies here. Skip free sites like literotica.com, which don’t maintain editors or style guidelines and are often riddled with typos, plot holes, and even name changes – and those things can really wreck the mood. That caveat aside, the Sugarbutch Chronicles are a fun, queer, kinky ride. Bust has a great publication called one-handed reads. Whatever you do with your other hand while you read is your business.

Like too many other things in 2018, a lot of books in this genre don’t have appropriately labeled trigger warnings or blur the line of consent. It’s best to find an author you love and trust, and stick with them, if you’d prefer to avoid those waters.

Sometimes, reading non-fiction, “how-to” type books can be enough to get you in the mood. If you’re interested in learning how to top or learning how to bottom, these books provide admission into the kink scene and enough explicit details that you will likely know by the end whether or not you’d be into it. Or, give Sex for One by Betty Dodson a read, which is a turn on to all the ways you can explore self-pleasure and your body, with concrete techniques for you to try.

Some Accompaniments

Spend some quality time with yourself, a good book, and a good toy – perhaps something hands-free. That way, there’s nothing between you and that next steamy chapter. Why not try the Stronic G Pulsator by Fun Factory? A totally unique vibrator that has the capacity to thrust, leaving your hands to your favorite book while it pulsates away. Both your g-spot and your brain will be stimulated.

Folks with penises could cuddle up with a good book and the Pocket Pulse by Hot Octopuss! This toy is a stroker that has hands-free capability once the user is erect.

People with vulvas can keep their nose in a book and an Eva II by Dame between their legs for hands-free clitoral stimulation. Also fun for partnered sex, this cute little vibrator has three vibration settings and is waterproof for those who like to read and play in the tub.

Vibrant Has All the Body Safe Toys (and Books) You Need

Vibrant has an array of body-safe sex toys for every body. Check out our curated collection of toys and books, too! Or, chat with us, and we can help recommend the product that’s perfect for you. We’re available 9am-9pm EST daily on our website chat (just push the purple button at the bottom right!) or call us at 866-316-VIBE(8423).

[pixelgrotto]

Three free games on Steam, part one

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been scouring the Steam store for free stuff. And by free, I don’t mean free-to-play online games like DOTA or Smite, which are all well and good and certainly deserve their place on the world’s most ubiquitous online storefront, but rather the weirder, experimental indies that exist within the cracks. I was inspired to do this by the trippiness of Doki Doki Literature Club, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Doki Doki is certainly one of the most interesting projects on Steam that managed to spawn quite the considerable fanbase, all without charging a cent, and I noticed that if you take a deep dive, there are a few similar games out there also worthy of notice. Not all of them are great, but they’re all at least interesting, much in the same way that short stories and student movies are. Many of them are also text-heavy games with the same dark flavor as Doki Doki Literature Club, probably because the visual novel and horror genres mesh well with these small, self-contained free projects. Anyway, here are my quickie impressions on three of the ones I’ve tried out so far. 

Cupid - I really enjoyed this one, and I’m quite surprised that it’s free. If Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays on anime harem tropes and then subverts them by going down the path of psychological horror, Cupid is a visual novel that’s also filled with unnerving moments, but more rooted in a dark Gothic sensibility. You play as an 18th century French girl named Rosa who’s grown up under the guidance of an abusive mother and has quite a lot of issues to work through, including crippling self-doubt and a tendency towards self-mutilation. After becoming an orphan, she falls in with a young piano prodigy named Catherine who’s being sponsored by a strange nobleman named Guilleme. Eventually, a death occurs, and we learn that Guilleme isn’t exactly what he appears to be - and the nuances of his reveal actually make him one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in a game in recent memory. 

I’m perhaps not the target audience for Cupid, since in some of the unlockable development notes, the creator states that she catered towards the needs of queer female players and straight female players who wanted to question their sexuality first. But I can enjoy an intriguing story as well as anyone, and Cupid ended up addressing the nuances of love in a mature manner that really impressed me. And when I say love, I don’t just mean romantic or sexual love, though there’s at least one (very well-written) sex scene along the way - Cupid also deals with parental love, the love between friends and the love that one can have for life. There’s not too much online about the main creator behind this game - all I can find is that she’s an illustrator in Asia and has a team website here - but she wrote a compelling script that reminded me a bit of a cross between Dracula and Fingersmith, a novel and BBC serial from 2005 that I watched with an ex a few years ago and enjoyed. Pretty unique combination, really.

PRICE - This one’s an “escape the room” horror game that kinda feels like something you might find on a Flash website, but it certainly has higher production values. You play as a Dane (or German?) guy named Ivry who wakes up in his sister’s room and has to get out, and he just might not be alone in there. It was made by a tiny Chinese team, and the voice acting and sound design is surprisingly great at creating some spooky vibes. It’s even got some degree of replay value, since you unlock a second area after you beat it the first time, and the true ending doesn’t become accessible until then.  The gameplay’s of the point ‘n click variety, and it’s a tad hit and miss since the game is very dark and it’s not always clear what you can interact with and what you can���t. The story’s also something of a mixed bag - it’s certainly got great style, but at times it feels like a mish-mash of random concepts borrowed from shoujo and horror manga that the creators thought were “cool,” ie - a brother and sister who are a little too close, a flowery European setting, and lots of macabre paintings featuring skeletons and other vaguely devilish characters. There are some references to Hans Christian Anderson that caught me by surprise, though, and the game is great deal better than an actual escape room that I recently went to in real life, so there’s that!

Yume Nikki - Yume Nikki (the title translates to Dream Diary) might be the most well-known game on here, since it’s one of the more famous projects to be created with RPG Maker 2003. It first came out in 2004, and was actually one of those rare indie gems that accumulated a substantial following in the days before indie games were mainstream. In the years since, it’s inspired light novels, lots of comparisons to Earthbound and Undertale, and quite a bit of speculation on who its mysterious creator, known only as “kikiyama,” actually is. (It’s a secret to everybody!) When it was released for free on Steam a few weeks ago the reviews quickly shot up into the very positive range, largely thanks to old devotees gushing about how they’d loved it when it had first come out. Later, it was revealed that the game’s release predated a remake/semi-sequel of sorts that is decidedly not getting the same glowing reception, so it’s clear that the original Yume Nikki means a lot to quite a few people. 

For me, someone who didn’t experience the game upon immediate release, this one falls squarely into the “interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s for me” range. All you do is control a little girl who’s wandering around surreal dreamscapes, and the experience is meant to communicate the strange and often horrific nature of the things our minds create when we’re asleep. It’s purely about exploring and drawing your own conclusions about the stuff you see around you, and while I can appreciate the intent here, the actual execution left me a little bored. I guess I’m one of those people who just likes to do stuff in games, though I can see how a moody exercise in wandering around and occasionally encountering frightening imagery might be appealing to some people. It’s certainly impressive considering the limitations of RPG Maker 2003, and I have a feeling I might’ve enjoyed Yume Nikki more if I’d first played it in 2004, as an impressionable 16-year-old who was also messing around with RPG Maker and had more time on his hands to simply explore.

I’ve got a few other free titles queued up, including a game styled like a 16-bit RPG that tells the story of a Syrian refugee, and will likely write a part two to this post once I’ve worked my way through them. Overall, it’s an oddly enjoyable experience investigating the often unnoticed free section of the Steam storefront. It feels like getting a glimpse into an underground subculture, or at least like attending a university’s niche film club weekly gathering. (Actually, it’s better than the one time I did attend my college’s niche film club. I nearly fell asleep watching Death in Venice, ugh.) 

Screenshots all taken from each game’s respective Steam page.

[prince-spence]

I wrote a piece for film and I thought Tumblr might appreciate it

What are your views of America?

“I'm not sure I understand this question, or at least if I understand it in the way you probably want me to. There are two ways I can see to answer this: The historical facts of America (racism, sexism, classism) that I associate with America and our ideals, or the America thought of in media or propaganda made to teach everyone that America is good and great no matter what, such as the original Captain America. And even later Captain America comics see Cap showing dislike for what we stood for, and at one point he even drops the mantle of "Captain America" because of this. American ideals only seem to be strong and good if there is someone worse. In Cap's case, Nazis. If you can't tell, I'm a bit of a sceptic.

The idea of America as a place of dreams and opportunity (for white people at least) seems to have very strong roots in our history, at least until the great depression. With the great depression came more people dissatisfied and cynical about the government, and movements such as the first and second waves of feminism seemed to be as far out as rebellion and dissatisfaction can be seen, in masse at least. The civil rights movements and later feminist movements, as well as the queer rights movements seem to be the first time there was severe unrest, discomfort and distress regarding what America stood for and what we were willing to stand for. At least, this is the first time in history we seem to recognize today, but this is what has shaped my image of america. My image of america is rich people watching the poor die while trying to still scrape a penny out of their deaths, like the story of the radium girls. The radium girls were factory workers that were encouraged to not just work with, but ingest radium for decorating watches, when the company knew about the effects of radium but lied to save money. My image of America is straight people in power watching as almost all of the queer community died, and using their deaths to promote ideas of homosexuals being evil and deserving death. My image of America is white people killing children in protest of black people wanting to exist, like with Birmingham Sunday. My image of America is the government spying on MLK and releasing information about his personal life to to try and discredit him and his movement, while hosing and killing unarmed and peaceful black people, something that continues to this day. My image of America is arresting and murdering women for wearing dresses, because they were supposed to be men instead of women. My image of America is stripping the rights away from disabled people and making it almost impossible for them to live. Something still going on today. Did you know it's legal to pay disabled people under minimum wage? My image of America is police arresting peaceful women wanting to have the right to vote, then force feeding them with a tube down their stomach when they went on hunger strike. When I think of America, I think of Europeans coming over to the Americas and murdering most of the indiginous people and then forcing them to live on barely liveable pieces of land that nobody wanted. My image of America is turning away Jewish refugees when they only had Hitler to head back to. For context, Americans on average are warmer today to the idea of Syrian refugees than they were to Jewish refugees. My image of America is being okay with a man that says my people are rapists and murderers. My image of America is letting children get gunned down in schools to protect the rich people invested in guns. My image of America is Neo-Nazis marching in the streets and murdering counterprotesters, then being told the counterprotesters were the same as the Nazis. My image of America is gay conversion therapy still being legal. My image of America is ABA therapy still being legal. My image of America is not very kind. My image of America is not baseball, apple pie, the american dream and equality for all. My image of America is hatred, of everything different, of everyone different, of a lot of things I see as good. Sorry if this wasn't quite the assignment.”

[oddnon]

I watched the film SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE I KNEW THE VIDEO WAS COMING OUT (yes, I should have already, and it was on my radar) and as an... elder... baby... queer? Recentish... out... queer? I don't know how to square that circle, but either way, I watched the film today in anticipation of Aranock's video (that should tell you something) and it absolutely decimated me in the best way. Watching the film in and of itself... as Syrian, as NB, SO MANY BEAUTIFUL INTERSECTIONS... and ugly crying through a lot of it... ... having literally finished Nimona before this premiere... this video gave me so much more. The credits literally were rolling as I went into the premiere. And I ugly cried many times more. In many ways. Happy, sad, feeling seen... everything.

Just watch it.

My newest essay about my favourite film so far this year, because god this film is so good and I have a lot to say.

[queermuslims]

Amir Rabiyah is a two-spirit disabled queer femme poet and writing coach. They were born in London, England to a Cherokee and European mother and a Lebanese and Syrian father. Their work explores living life on the margins and at the intersections of multiple identities. Amir writes about living with chronic pain and illness, war, trauma, spirituality, redemption--and speaks on silenced places. Amir is the co-editor of Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices and has published in numerous anthologies and journals. They currently live in San Diego with their beautiful partner, two dogs, one super senior cat, and a 13-year-old film-making prodigy. They love being a housewife and believe domestic work, chanting Sufi prayers over a home-cooked meal, and nurturing our communities is crucial for revolution.

Pre-order Amir Rabiyah’s collection of poetry Prayers for My 17th Chromosome due to be released 11/14/2017

Amir has been previously featured on the Queer Muslims tumlbr. Click here to watch a video of them reading their work.

[queerfilmfestival-blog]

Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America

Written by Ali

The 81-minute documentary film “Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America” directed and produced by Tom Sheppard describes the lives of four LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East who have fled anti-LGBTQ+ violence in their origin countries and moved to re-settle in San Francisco, U.S.A. In order to understand the context of this film, it is essential to understand the lives each individual presented throughout the film. Subhi Nahas, a gay upper-middle class Syrian refugee, who after receiving many death threats from Islamic terrorists, and after brutal beating from his homophobic father, flees from a nation devastated by war. Subhi applies for refugee status and successfully moves to the US, where he eventually becomes an activist and inadvertently a leader for refugee rights in the U.S. Cheyenne Adriano and Mari N’timansieme, a lesbian couple from Angola, who after having faced terrifying harassment from family and neighbours, move to the U.S. on a temporary visa. They struggle in their pursuit of legal asylum through the American immigration courts, while focusing on their music careers. Junior, a gender non-conforming gay male from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, flees from persecution in his own neighbourhood after a near-death beating in public. Junior is granted refugee status to the U.S. through the UN, where he struggles to find basic housing in his exploration of his identity.

            The two major concepts that will be discussed are compulsory heteronormativity and intersectionality. These concepts are prevalent in today’s societies around the world, which the film reveals unequivocally.

The entire premise of this film is based upon the discrimination of LGBTQ+ peoples in non-Western countries, that was clearly portrayed in the film. From the video of Junior being publicly beat up, to the slurs hurled at Cheyenne and Mari, to the physical depiction of Subhi’s scar on his chin from the attack by his father. Compulsory heteronormativity is the idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a heteronormative and patriarchal society. Every single one of the characters in this film faced physical violence or verbal abuse from people in their community. This notion of compulsory heteronormativity drives the narrative of seeking refuge for the safety of their lives, as the characters attempt to escape culturally or politically influenced persecution from their respective origin countries. The stories narrated by each of the characters explained their discomfort in their communities ill-treatment of them, due to their identities. In the film, Subhi was unable to go to university, whereas Mari, Cheyenne and Junior couldn’t leave their homes. In Sara Ahmed’s, “Being in Question” it writes, “Queers might be asked not to make others feel uncomfortable, by not displaying any signs of queer intimacy. You might be asked to tone it down, or you might decide to tone it down to avoid creating discomfort. The availability of comfort for some bodies may depend on the labor of others, and the burden of concealment” [2]. Ahmed explains the oppressiveness of heteronormativity on LGBTQ+ people, however, this example is too Westernized, as LGBTQ+ aren’t given a choice in order to maintain physical and psychological safety, so they must flee to spaces with laws that protect their identities. The compulsory heteronormativity is a concept that drives the reason to seeking refuge for the characters in the film [2]. The film appropriately puts into perspective the individual struggles of the global LGBTQ+ community, in the face of discrimination and violence.

Throughout the film, the characters narrate the difficulties and challenges they faced in the navigation of their lives. However, each of the characters experiences differing levels of privilege and oppression. Subhi is an olive-skin tone Syrian, fluent in English, with some level of university education, and came from an influential upper-middle class family. He receives the best treatment, finding people to take him in and serve as his sponsor. He unexpectedly becomes an activist, while sharing his refugee story at the United Nations in order to promote immigration and protection of LGBTQ+ peoples abroad. He also attains a job, stable relationship, a fancy apartment, participates at pride events, and gives speeches. In comparison, Junior is a dark-skinned Congolese, gender non-conforming person who appears male, has no educational background or skills, struggles to even find shelter. Junior, coming from a poor family, suffers from PTSD, finds himself in volatile relationships, and becomes an alcoholic. Kaufman details intersectionality as, “an important and pervasive concept because it has ‘given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion’”. The intersectionality of race, class and gender are all aspects that play a role in Subhi’s rise and Junior’s oppression in their assimilation in America. Subhi’s privileges allowed him to have material and emotional wellbeing, whereas, Junior’s lack of privilege, lead to his suffering. Sheppard properly displays the differences in privilege and oppression in the intersection the character’s lives.

            The exposure of documentaries based in reality emphasizes the legitimate hardships international LGBTQ+ people confront every single day of their lives. The rights we may take for privilege, in Western society, bring awareness to the inequalities faced by oppressed groups. The ReelOut festival allows us to reflect on the modalities of our lives, in comparison to others and remind us to stay mindful.

Word count: 873

References:

[1] Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life: Being in Question. Duke University Press, 2017.

[2] Kaufman, Peter. Intersectionality for Beginners. W.W Norton & Company Inc. 2018. https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2018/04/intersectionality-for-beginners.html#more

[chicleeblair]

i watch titanic every few new years eves while i browse l various articles and sites about the disaster ans the film. now ive always noticed it’s kind of white washed and was guilty off hand-waving “big white ship going Liverpool—Belfast—NYC” the only stops the film bothers with if i didnt pull Belfast from another source. ANYWAY easy to assume the “others” are all Irish, Eastern European, and poor people.

However it took me two seconds to determine that there were 165 Syrian/Lebanese folks on board, some immigrants, some families on trips. Some, maybe all but this is a cursory google, muslim and a more speculative attempt to tell stories of lebanese passengers,,. if they check out the similarity to famous stories is heartbreaking (eg a young couple refusing to leave without each other, like the elderly couple dying together in their bunk. (the founders of Macys, fyi) there were jewish passengers too and honestly that it could be its own post. just you cannot claim that they were at all WASP entity especially because of him:

[image description: a sepia-tinted Edwardian photograph featuring a mixed race family. the mother, Juliettte, stands with a hand on her husband’s chair to her left and The other holding the hand of her toddler, Simonne Marie Anne Andrée Laroche, who is happily standing up on the cushion. to her left the father, whose skin is darker than the other three, holds a baby, Louise “my sister took all the midddle names” Laroche on his knee. she is very happily putting up her fists. i speculate she is joyously ready to fight the strange man ducking under the cloth to take fiddle with the box that goes boom. she has dark waves, and the little girl has a curlier texture but seems to be blondish.]

Like many, it seems, thr Laroche family was not originally traveling on titanic, but when they found out that Juliette was pregnant again, they put a rush to get her back to Haiti before the child was born. It is notable to that while they had first class tickets they sacrificed them so that the children could join them in the dining room and not be relegated to a nursery

Laroche’s family survived the night, but like many of the men sacrificed for the sake of women and children, he did not. I have no idea if that has a racist component; all I came here to say is that even in a situation that seems to be full of the whitest of white people, that’s generally not how history worked.  I’ve read so much about the Titanic, all classes, but never come across these stories—I should’ve sought them out earlier, but I also shouldn’t have had to do that. 

(FWIW Laroche DID have an opera written about him)

In retrospect, non-racial minorities were undoubtably represented.  I don’t really know how to go about looking for passengers with disabilities, but I am so sure they were there, grateful for passenger elevators. did a secret queer club meet in one of the common area dark corners? I don’t know but it doesn’t seem like a stretch. I don’t have much of a point, I’m just a white chick trying to use my platform to point out the white Anglo-Saxon supposed-Protestants-with-amazing-hair were not the only ones on the titanic, or in other parts of any recent history and I think that we’ve come to the point where those are the stories that need telling. it’s not a new or unique idea but something I hadn’t really examined until probably my 10th watching of this film—which prided itself on its accuracy in so many less meaningful ways. it shouldn’t feel anachronistic for minorities to be there just because our ancestors ignored them.