#that's queer erasure

[fgmetanoia]

Hold on hold on. How is it even possible that in the year 2024 Netflix is making a remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray where Dorian and Basil are BROTHERS

[fixing-bad-posts]

gender force go!!!

[thetreetopinn]

Sources for Somerton's Plagiarism from Hbomberguy's Video (as much as I could get)

I went back through Harry's video, focused entirely on the sources James Somerton pulled from in the hopes of creating as much of a comprehensive list as I could--though my Google-Fu is not very strong. I did however find something I thought was forever lost and that made me very happy--specifically the magazine Midlands Zone containing the column by Steven Spinks that Harry poignantly used as an illustration of gay erasure... while Somerton uses it to sound like HE is waxing remorseful about the very subject.

This is not a complete list, I'm sure. For one thing, I was only able to attempt to pull sources that Harry himself mentioned in the video. Surely there's so very much more out there. I expect there to be a great deal more internet archeology to unearth just how much writing and culture Somerton has stolen like he's the British Museum of Natural History but for gay people.

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Harry's list of mentioned youtubers:

Alexander Avila - https://www.youtube.com/@alexander_avila Matt Baume - https://www.youtube.com/@MattBaume Khadija Mbowe - https://www.youtube.com/@KhadijaMbowe Lady Emily - https://www.youtube.com/@LadyEmilyPresents Shanspeare - https://www.youtube.com/@Shanspeare RickiHirsch - https://www.youtube.com/@RickiHirsch VerilyBitchie - https://www.youtube.com/@verilybitchie

Harry created a convenient playlist of videos by these and other people he wants to bring to everyone's attention.

Please give them your support.

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Midlands Zone Magazine - Column by Steven Spinks

After a great deal of searching, I found an archive of the "Midlands Zone" magazine, where you can read through past issues dating all the way back to February 2014. I have also found the issue from which Somerton took Spinks' poignant discussion of gay erasure: Overall archive Specific Issue - Pages 16-17

It will not allow you to download it, but you can read it exactly as it appeared in print form.

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My best effort to find the exact book or article Somerton lifted from to be able to get attention to the original writers

Tinker Bells and Evil Queens By Sean Griffin

The Celluloid Closet By Vito Russo Wikipedia article about the book Wikipedia article about the documentary My weak google-fu could not find where you can access the book or documentary. Check your local municipal or university library for book or documentary, or if you know a good source for one or both, please reblog with it added

Camp and the Gay Sensibility By Jack Babuscio

The Groundbreaking Queerness of Disney's Mulan By Jes Tom Personal site with links to social media accounts

Why Rebel Without a Cause was a milestone for gay rights By Peter Howell

Why "The Craft" is still the best Halloween coming out movie By Andrew Park

Opinion: From facehuggers to phallic tails, is 'Alien' one of the queerest films ever? By Dani Leever

Women and Queerness in Horror: Jennifer's Body By Zoe Fortier

[Pride 2019] We Have Such Sights to Show You: Hellraiser and the Spectrum of Queerness By Alejandra Gonzalez

Revealing the Hellbound Heart of Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' By Colin Arason

Queering James Cameron's Aliens (1986) By Bart Bishop

Demeter and Persephone in space: transformation, femininity, and myth in the 'Alien' films By David Greven

Fears of a millennial masculinity: Scream's queer killers By David Greven (Scholarly site, unable to access original work, offers a way to request a full copy of the text in PDF)

Queer Subtext in Stephen King's It - Part 1: 'Reddie' Character Analysis By Rachel Brands Rachel is the very unfortunate lady who found out she was being stolen from because she supported Somerton through Patreon and saw one of his videos early with her writing--lacking any form of citation or credit

How 'It: Chapter Two' Leaves Richie Tozier Behind By Joelle Monique

When Horror Becomes Strength: Queer Armor in Stephen King's 'IT' By Alex London

Why Queer People Love Witchcraft By Amanda Kohr

'The Favourite' Queers The Past And The Present By Giorgi Plys-Garzotto

(Wuko) Crush (Mako x Wu) By MoonFlower on YouTube

5 Terrible Movies With Awesome Hidden Meanings By J.F. Sargent

The Radicalization of Sexuality: The Queer Casae of Jeffrey Dahmer By Ian Barnard

Netflix's 'Dahmer' backlash highlights ethical issues in the platform's obsession with true crime By Shivani Dubey

The Possible Disturbing Dissonance Between Hajime Isayama's Beliefs and Attack on Titan's Themes Original Article by "Seldom Musings" (Author has made all posts not related to Attack On Titan private and has retired from the blog)

Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan? By Gita Jackson

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The following people are otherwise named in the video. There are no direct citations of articles or books by them in said video. I am unable to guarantee that I have identified the correct individual.

Darren Elliott-Smith Michaela Barton David Church Claire Sisco King Amanda Howell Jessica Roy

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Telos announced and cancelled a film likely based on this book: The Final Girl Support Group - By Grady Hendrix

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I refrained from including certain sources.

First off only focusing on Somerton's work.

Secondly not including anything that might be visible enough to not require amplifying their voice (I cannot speak for all of those I have found links to, but journalism is frequently a thankless job).

Thirdly any source that is of a nature that is antithetical to the very existence of the queer community, such as the right-leaning source that didn't make it into Somerton's video, but Harry was able to identify as a source he had considered using.

If you feel I have missed a mentioned source--or you know of a source from material that was not covered in Harry's video--please do not hesitate to reblog with added details.

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Please share this information far and wide, and please add to it if you find more material that can be positively identified and linked to the creator/writer.

[juney-blues]

there is, famously, a huge amount of social pressure on gnc cis people to transition. society just wants more trans people, trans women especially. this is a real and serious problem. there are just too many trans women making egg jokes. we have to protect the poor cis people from being compared to us (which is clearly and self evidently a horrible thing to do clearly)

[taliabhattwrites]

I don't think there is a significant or notable number of people who believe transmascs are not oppressed.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

I sincerely hope that whoever needs to see this post sees it, and that something productive--more productive dialogue, at least--can arise from it.

[renthony]

It's real fucked up how many queer people dread Pride season due to both systemic queerphobia and queer infighting. Pride season always rockets up my anxiety, and I know I'm not the only one.

This shit sucks, y'all. We gotta support each other more than the queerphobes hate us. I'm not saying we have to love each other, I'm not saying we even have to like each other, but we cannot keep subdividing communities, circulating callouts, and dogpiling each other over who has it worse. That shit will kill us all.

We cannot keep thinking of our individual experiences with bigotry as, "I know [xyz kind of queer] has it worse, but...", and we cannot keep looking at other experiences with bigotry as, "that's bad, but [abc kind of queer] still has it worse," when the reality is that we are all being targeted. It's all bad! It all deserves to be talked about and fought against without trying to put it in some kind of hierarchy! Hierarchies are not fucking helpful here!

Some fucking unity, please.

[shamebats]

I'm listening to an episode of the Cults to Conciousness podcast about gay erasure in Amish & Mennonite communities and one interesting thing one of the guests (a bi woman) brought up is that sometimes conversion therapy doesn't look like overt violence and attempts of sexuality conversion (although it does happen), because especially queer people in the social role of girl/woman in such communities will often simply not have their queerness acknowledged at all. The conversion therapy for this guest was when her father walked behind her and corrected her so she'd walk like a "proper lady", it was corrective rape and it was forced marriage, something she just barely escaped. Sometimes the conversion therapy is covert, like your community pushing you into marriage and having children so you'll be too busy to think about your sexuality, gender, freedom and self-actualization. It's not what we think of when we hear the term conversion therapy, but it's still violent, oppressive and has the same end goal.

One of the things that deeply hurt her was when a sociologist, an outsider, wrote about her community and declared that there were "no gay people" because there were not allowed to be any. It made her feel so unseen and even more like she shouldn't exist.

I can definitely see the parallels between that and how trans people have been treated historically and how trans stories are still often erased.

To believe that there are/were no LGBTQIA+ people in certain communities and time periods is to believe that conversion therapy, in any of its forms, works (which it does not).

[unlimitedbutchworks]

one fun thing about being a trans woman is that if you ever try to talk about how something or someone has mistreated you or other trans women it literally doesn’t matter At All how much of a preamble you give or how much you try to clarify that you don’t hate transmascs or that white trans women are plenty capable of being racist, people will just blow past it all anyway to warp your plea for people to give a shit about and grow past their transmisogyny as a thinly veiled attack against whichever identity category of theirs makes you sound the worst

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

The way the actors' and showrunner's faces fell and froze when the interviewer called Edwin and Charles a gay/straight friendship continues to bolster my trust.

But also, that was just an accurate bisexual experience.

[past-the-blood-and-bruise]

refusing to legally recognize queer identities historically has not stopped people from being queer. try to erase us all you fucking want. if you ever take me down, i’m going down with your flesh between my teeth and love buried in my goddamn bones.

[thecommunalfoolboy]

It’s crazy how many people just don’t understand why a lot of aro and or ace people don’t like that Alaster gets shipped. It’s not that hard to understand we don’t have a lot to let ourselves lose. I mean can you name 10 asexual characters? 5? Can you name two aro characters. There’s the guy from Archie who they made have a sex scene in a movie version. There’s a few books. I think a background character in Heartstopper? Do you see the theme here??? You’re all queer people, do you not get it? How it feels to have nothing? Is it so wrong to be upset that there’s finally an outwardly aroace person in popular media and instead of people embracing that they’re fighting on the internet about why it’s ok to ignore it? And I will never in my fucking life have anything against the people who are aro and or ace and portray him in THEIR experiences, even if it is a romance or sex favorable experience, but it is obvious that way too many of you guys are allo and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t even like him as a character that much, he isn’t even made by an aroace artist. The show isn’t even that fucking good, I just want to keep someone like me for once in my life. If there were a million other aroace characters I wouldn’t care, but it just hurts seeing erasure coming from my own community. It just sucks, man, I don’t know. It just sucks

[unapologeticallygay]

a list of (some of) the things we owe to lesbians

the stonewall uprising (x)

pride marches (x)

homosexuality being removed from the dsm (x)

paving the way for the legalization of cross dressing/influencing gnc women’s fashion (x) (x) (x)

aids organizing and care (x) (x) (x)

fighting to include black women and lesbians into feminism/women’s rights movements (x) (x) (x)

black history month in the uk (x)

legalization of gay marriage in the usa (x) (x)

physically protecting the community (from storme delarverie who patrolled gay neighbourhoods to the butches protecting drag story time)

[fixing-bad-posts]

I guarantee kink is part of pride, we need kink at pride.

[drchucktingle]

MY NEXT HORROR NOVEL, LUCKY DAY, IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER. 

WHAT A TROT BUCKAROOS. it will be out next summer, and yes thats a long way to go, but consider this an exciting gift to your future self. also consider that the entire publishing industry is built around how many preorders an author gets, whether that means publishers deciding your initial print run or bookstores figuring out how much shelf space to offer. all that is to say IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON GETTING THIS BOOK ANYWAY, STRONGLY CONSIDER A PREORDER i cannot tell you how much it helps out. 

if you have ever felt ‘chuck has proven love to me’ then consider this a way of proving love back

i will talk more on this book as the days approach. for now i will tell you what it is about, not on the surface but in the depths. 

as a bisexual buckaroo i understand what it feels like to be told you do not exist. that feeling was the seed of this book. ultimately this is a story about a bi buckaroo standing up and going head to head against nonexistence.

yes this is cryptic but as you know from CAMP DAMASCUS and BURY YOUR GAYS my books are never quite what you think they are going to be. i will end with a last little hint from page 183 of camp damascus. now get those preorders in an i cant wait to meet you on the gaming floor of THE GREAT BRITANNICA HOTEL AND CASINO

[lgbtqtext]

[kainekillinggod]

ok but racism and fatphobia in the queer community is crazy btw. Like sometime you gotta ask,

Are they butch/masc or are they a poc? Are they fem or are they white? Are they androgynous or are they skinny? Is their hair style choice non conforming or is it just not straight/fluffy? Honestly sometimes I see some strange things being said up in here, and irl too. I just. Idk mann