#there is also a whole spectrum of types-of-spaces from public to intimate and lots of things depend on the space itself

[elaienar]

The OP's list covers a bunch of things we don't do in public spaces because they're public spaces and we're around strangers who don't want to hear it.

Trauma/illness/etc. and sex are deeply personal subjects that many people prefer to only engage with in private, with people they feel safe with. Playful rudeness and criticism can really easily cause hurt feelings and so again, people often prefer to keep this to relationships with people they already feel safe and comfortable with. Listening to someone talk about something that interests only them is a timesink and something people do for people they want to sink time into. In summary the list consists of things that many people only want to talk about with their friends, not with strangers.

Obligatory disclaimer that all of this will vary from person to person, and some people will feel completely differently, and that's not something that needs to be criticised. But it's broadly true of enough people that you can safely start off interactions with internet strangers by assuming that their answer to "Would you like to hear about my trauma/sexual experiences or be insulted/criticised?" would be "No thanks, we are not that friendly yet."

there are no hard rules for human interaction but honestly i think everyone online would benefit hugely from operating under the assumption that, unless you have been given a specific reason to think otherwise in discrete instances, internet strangers do not want to be approached with:

your trauma, illnesses, or deep-rooted self worth issues

any come-ons or sexual content

over-familiar playful rudeness

information about your dnd characters/ocs

disagreements with their harmless subjective opinions

if it is your first time speaking with someone i can not highly enough recommend that these do not be your opening topics

[soulvomit]

stuff with gender anguish about not fitting in with today’s current gender constructions

From another post I made: I need to talk about 20th century gender norms at some point as a living breathing 20th century fossil and how different it was. To most straight people, being gender non conforming meant gay, trans was on the far end of the gay spectrum, and gay was associated with being socially Not Normal at a time when you had to be Normal to get a white collar job. (The whole Normalhood thing im gonna talk about is VERY connected to mid-late 20th century construction of the white middle class.) Apropos of gender specifically... I’m not sure how 90s/00s genderfluid/genderqueer map to NB, or whether they do. It’s a big reason I am weird about IDing as NB - because it seems to mean something else than my particular understanding of my identity as it was formed in the 1990s. (Another thing is my social world being more people over 45 at this point and also I’m in a hetero relationship.) Part of 90s GQ stuff was that you could identify as a man part time, a woman part time, you could contain multitudes. “Woman-identified person with a male side” was a legit identity within that, so was “man-identified person with a female side.” You could be one person in the streets and another in the sheets. You could be several people in the sheets, especially if you were aligned with kinky culture. (And for a long time... I was.) There was a greater sense in the 90s and early 00s in genderqueerness culture that you could be GQ for no other reason than wanting to be and it wasn’t assumed to be bundled with physical dysphoria or even desire to change your public social identity. Some spaces - like West Coast geek culture and goth culture - had enough flexibility baked in that we didn’t really need to go to LGBTQ culture to explore our identities, and there was a whole geek queer sensibility that was evolving alongside of the broader LGBTQ culture that was definitely its own... thing.  And while people *say* that NB doesn’t mean any one particular thing or any of these things, that’s not always the message I get when visible NBs on TV/in film are almost always at present one very specific image or “type” of person, and that doesn’t resemble me. NB representation on TV amounts to presenting NB as a third gender with very specific codified behaviors (androgynous AFAB person who binds and has body dysphoria).   The message I get is that whatever my experience is, is better described some other way. Also the discourse around relationships with NBs is that a relationship with an NB is necessarily a queer relationship yet having been in relationships in and out of LGBTQ culture, I’m not really sure how to distinguish “a queer relationship.” My relationship is non-traditional in lots of ways and we’re both gender non-conforming in lots of ways though it doesn’t parse to most people because it’s along the lines of stuff that shouldn’t have ever been gendered in the first place. What my partner does not ever question however is his actual gender identity.  The thing is, actually publicly identifying as anything but a woman would create weird problems in my life in terms of social dynamics, and other stuff, and probably an unpredictable series of ripple effects downstream. But - that... just means I’m closeted, right? And closeted doesn’t mean your identity doesn’t exist or isn’t as unreal as someone who isn’t? And what if - as a “shapeshifter” - my relationship to myself within my relationship *is* part of that shapeshifting?  One of the things is that I’m in a heterosexual relationship. My relationship *is* one of my few spots where I’m happy in my skin, let alone happy in the world and I have no complaints with how I’m perceived in this relationship, and part of it is that practically every assumption about my gender is true, or has been true at some point, including the fact that I’m fine with being seen as a woman in the context of my relationship.  It’s in other spaces besides the intimate, that gender stuff makes my skin crawl. My deep interior gender identity is “pixels floating in the ether, which can assume any shape or form.” My gender identity among other people in non sexual friend spaces is “friend.” My partner identifies as a cis het man. I don’t feel like my relationship has any special quality that’s different from queer relationships I’ve been in, other than identities people have. If my partner doesn’t feel our relationship is queer then I don’t feel it is, either... though it’s not exactly *traditional.*  I don’t feel like our relationship is different from our hetero neighbors’ relationships regardless of whatever history I have. I have no way of knowing what my ostensibly-female ostensibly-heterosexual neighbors’ interior identities really are, or what their history is. And because we’re monogamous, it just never ever comes up. Our social world is about half queer and half not so nothing has changed. After decades of only dating people who had LGBTQ identities, and having a particular social world, now I’m with a cis het man from that same social world and nothing really has changed about the shape of my life.   I’ve moved between different spaces my entire life, sometimes I perceived myself as a boy in a girl’s body, but sometimes I didn’t, and don’t. And gender is one of the spaces in which I feel like a chameleon. There seem to be a ton of gender expression based communities that disappeared since the 90s that either disappeared or were erased from discourse and that makes this weirder/harder to talk about.  Another thing is that a lot of the discourse around pronouns (if pushed I’ll say I’m she/they but I am literally comfortable in anything, depending upon context) makes me really uncomfortable. Even in LGBTQ spaces it makes me uncomfortable. There’s the me that my friends know, and some of my family knows, and it’s a big enough world to contain that part of me at this point. I would rather not put my identity under a microscope in any space that matters. It’s weird but I wish I could just be “they” in the work, creative, etc, spaces, without the loading of what “they” means. I wish it meant nothing about the people who love me, or who I love, or how I love, or how I live my life, besides what pronoun I use. But it doesn’t mean nothing. That is why I hope more cis identified people will actually identify as they in the public sphere. There are plenty of spaces in the public sphere that I don’t think should be gendered at ALL. My wanting to be a “they” is in some ways more about wanting public anonymity and having formed my sense of self - at a tender time - online, than about my gender identity. Which means I’d be potentially appropriating “they” from people for whom it IS a deep identity, and yet... haven’t I spent half of my blog talking about how I’m not exactly the gender identity I advertise?? Haven’t I spent a long time up to now advocating for “they?” Isn’t feeling like a they, evidence that I’m a they?  And the thing is, this is such a YMMV issue and the problem is that EVERYONE has competing access needs with EVERYONE ELSE. Anything one queer person wants or needs seems to oppress some other queer person, and it sucks. But sometimes I wonder if I even need to just recognize how cis het passing my life is and acknowledge my privilege. The thing is though at that point... is it how much oppression we’ve experienced or are currently experiencing, that alone makes our identity? That’s as silly an idea as saying I’m less of a Jew because I haven’t personally experienced a hate crime. And yes there’s a lot to shared oppression experiences forming group identities, but I’m not talking about group identity. I’m talking about personal feelings of identity.

[theseventhhex]

Juan Wauters Interview

Juan Wauters

The pleasure of finding something new in what we already know. The strange face of someone close. The outsider we all carry inside. The unexplored path in our usual location. A secret, a hiding place, a surprise. This is what Juan Pablo brings us. He’s the persona that Juan Wauters embodies to tell another side of his story. Wauters latest album allows him to reinvent himself and start writing a separate chapter in his exciting career. Now, as a companion and as a prequel, he releases ‘Introducing Juan Pablo’. Introducing… is a bit timeless: at the time the album was made, Wauters left it on stand-by. That’s why its title emphasises its origin: to present Juan Pablo and, simultaneously, to reveal his inner journey… The Seventh Hex talks to Juan about his latest release, his love for water and not knowing what to expect…

TSH: For your record ‘Introducing Juan Pablo’, what sort of experiences and motivations did you draw on to express primarily?

Juan: When I was writing the songs that ended up being on this album I was at a crossroads with my relationship with music. I remember specifically that my main priority was to record a lot of music and to not think too much about what the end result would be. I mostly wanted things to unfold organically without me putting much structure around it all – like I did on my previous record. This album is also about me coming to a point where I wanted to strengthen the relationship that I have with music and to stand up for what I wanted to do.

TSH: Do you still feel that the first feeling is the most real one and overdoing things makes material more sterile?

Juan: In a way, yes. However, I just continue with my aspirations to make music. I realise that there’s some space for musical production also and it’s not just about showing my feelings. I really like it when music has a human quality to it and when it’s not all about musical production. I am open to different ways of producing my music and trying out different things. But yeah, I still like the first take the most.

TSH: Is there a level of intimacy that defines some of the songs on this record?

Juan: It’s hard to say. There’s definitely a level of intimacy in the sense that during the making of this album I was away from the stage for a long time and I was not playing many shows at all. My relationship with the music was one vs. one and it was not affected by the public or outside directions. The climate of the album is very intimate, but I feel like all of my songs exist better in moments when I let myself be vulnerable and insensitive to my surroundings and my feelings inside.

TSH: From a sound palette perspective, what type of instrumentation and changes did you want to imply for this release?

Juan: Not much really. I think my albums are a directly influenced from what I’ve been listening to at the time of making them. I remember at the time I had lived in France for a bit. I spent Christmas there and my friend’s mother wanted to give me a gift that had to do with French culture. She gave me a double CD by Serge Gainsbourg and I was really into his production and arrangements at the time, so a lot of the arrangements on this album were influenced by his styles. I was mainly letting loose with a combination of many influences coming into play, including styles of hip-hop and The Beatles.

TSH: What was the process like in forming the song ‘Letter’?

Juan: Well, most of my songs are from a collection of different songs that I’ve written. For this one, I had written the riff initially and then I wrote the beginning part and verse too. I then brought these separate parts and combined them in the same key signature and made them basically all work together. At the time I was also reading about sending letters and the song is about love too.

TSH: Also, what does the song ‘Mystery’ convey to you?

Juan: I just love mystery and the idea of walking into mystery. I don’t like for my life to become steady – I’m afraid of that, even though I’m sure one day I’ll want some stability. I don’t know what the future will be like or where I’m going to end up. With this song I’m talking about how I appreciate having mystery in my lifestyle even though it can at times be hard, just because I’m gambling daily by making decisions not the most helpful to my existence. Still though, it’s fuel for me in life to be exposed to mystery and instability - I prefer it this way.

TSH: What sort of songwriters do you mostly admire?

Juan: I’m drawn to musicians that try really hard to stand out. I also like artists with a specific attitude; artists that have a way of living life and being rebellious. I guess I like artists that want to make a point and stand up for something. I appreciate artists that get out of their comfort zones and push themselves to take risks. I’d say The Beatles had the most impact on me - they changed the game. The format that I work under with songs is based on them a lot.

TSH: You’ve touched on thinking a lot about what work means to humans these days. What do you feel society has made us think that work is?

Juan: Just somewhere you go to pick up your money and survive. Even if you’re not getting paid, it’s still work. I could be planting flowers in the garden, but it’s still work. Or cooking at night for your children, it’s still work, right? I hate how in America people always ask how you make your money and how this somehow has something to do with your personality or who you are as a person. I watch TV, go to the supermarket and catch a train like everyone else, but that’s not entirely who I am. I’m against the idea that what you do for a living is what defines you as a person.

TSH: How was your time spent in Colombia recently?

Juan: Everything was great. I was exposed to a whole new country. I felt really welcomed by the people that hosted me. I really liked how green the landscape was and the nightlife in Medellin was nice too. I got to talk to people about how life is like there, whilst appreciating their music too.

TSH: Water makes you feel really relaxed. With this in mind, which places with water surroundings have you been most impressed with?

Juan: I like the water in the Hudson Eastern River coming from the Hudson valley into the ocean; I really like to look at that water here in New York City. I like to see how much water moves under the bridges. I also like looking at the water in my hometown of Montevideo, Uruguay - where I grew up. I’ve gone once to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada – they have beautiful water there also.

TSH: Do you enjoy the idea of not knowing what to expect in your daily life?

Juan: Yeah, I like the idea of not knowing anything at all times. I like to leave things unattended and living in uncertainty - its way more exciting than living a life where you know what to expect.

TSH: What matters most with your musical intentions as you look ahead?

Juan: I’m not sure. Right now, I just want to continue to explore my musical spectrum. I want to make sure that I always go to different places with my music. I want to make sure that I never get stuck with my sounds. I’m always down for trying new things. Even I’m not sure what my next release will be like, and I like it this way.

Juan Wauters - “El Hombre de la Calle”

Introducing Juan Pablo

[dutytopinchthatbooty]

This post will probably go into the abyss, and I'm content with it, but seeing the posts about kink at pride has me really startled up and I was really wondering why. As a guy who is perceived homosexual to the everyday person, and as someone who only really dives into homosexual acts, I don't identify as gay unless I want to save myself time and energy into explaining my sexuality. The general public just need to know I date only guys and I'm not sex repulsed, but I do identify somewhere on the grey/asexual spectrum.

I actually googled the term asexual, purposefully trying to seek it out when I got into high school. I knew of gay and bisexuality, and it never really felt like "me", but a lot of the internet media really depicts asexuals as sex repulsed individuals which I am not. I had and still have interest in the kink communities and was definitely aroused by something - not necessarily boys though. So I just identified as a weird gay boy who wasn't really comfortable with gay sex. And honestly, it made me feel absolutely like a fucked up kid. To hear one of the defences of no kink at pride as "think of the asexuals, they're so sex repulsed" is just so insulting and really just alienates a huge part of the community which is already alienated a lot. Just from Jubilee's recent video of "Do all asexual people think the same?" you can already see a lot of the asexual community feels alienated form this community to begin with. It feels like there's less questions from the allosexual community to the asexual community and just more assumptions. And while a lot of the people on the jubilee video don't really identify as sexual, there was a great example of Issac who identifies as demisexual - another sexuality underneath the asexual spectrum. And while I am far from a demisexual - I call myself the asexual whore because there doesn't need to be a close connection for me to want to be intimate - I do really respect his input and having similar experiences to mine. Issac references that he really resonates and finds connections with the queer LGBTQA+ community (the a standing for asexuals in this case clearly) really just from the kink community alone. And while I exclusively date men and so a lot of the media I consume tends to reflect that - I totally understand. I am definitely more likely to meet and befriend more kink queer friends than I am non kink queer friends because the spaces are relatively accepting. I have fetishes and kinks. I am not sexually attracted to guys and don't crave sex with men. I'm not a virgin. And honestly, I mostly just have sex these days just so I can shove my tongue down someone's throat. If I went the rest of my life without sex, I would be the happiest man a live. TMI, but all I really need is just a nice bottle of lube and my hand and I am set for life. The kink community is vastly connected to my queer identity. And I think it's absolutely weird that the vanillas of the queer community tend to only think of the kink community as just plainly sexual. That all instances of kink gatherings to be purely sexual... it just seems that they completely refuse to acknowledge asexuals in that space. I may jack off to furry porn online but that does not mean I want to jack off with people around me. I just want to be able to share that interest with those people who helped me feel so accepted and valid as an individual - who helped me feel like I'm not a complete fuck-up for not wanting to have sex. For those who aren't necessarily sure, my interests are more for the ABDL community which is really one of the most non-sexual fetishes I think out there. While I'm not an adult baby, I get to meet plenty of asexuals who like to regress into that headspace as a stress relief and it's completely nonsexual. Hell, there's plenty of gay people in the community who use this kink as a way to escape the stress of the adult life... in a nonsexual way. We as a community are able to distinguish sex from the play and the aesthetics of the kink. And I think it's really weird to assume that someone who enjoys the art of rope tying (look at the Boy Scouts who teaches 200+ knots to young kids as an art form) is strictly just sexual for them. I think it's absolutely absurd to think it's okay to LARP warrior cats in the school's playground, but not okay for men to LARP as puppies just because they can actually afford outfits that can help assimilate that aesthetics. Assuming that it's strictly sexual is alienating a huge portion of these communities that find interest in them for multitudes of reasons, and alienates

asexuals even more from viewing that as being a part to introduce them to a queer identity if they so choose to dive further into it. It erases the possibility that asexuals might actually find a queer community in these groups because how could kinks possibly be so <<diverse>> to include people who identify as all types of sexualities which is what pride is all about? If I had more introduction to these communities and more conversations of the different types of spectrums asexuals can fall upon than just <<Sexually repulsed>>, I would have loved myself a lot sooner. And I'm not blaming the queer community for excluding these fetishes for not loving myself as they weren't at all popular as they are now to even be discussed about now, but why not try to open the conversation more? Why not allow to open up the kink communities into these pride parades and show asexuals that these kinks have spaces for our own communities? That it is possible to identify as a grey/asexual and still enjoy the feel of leather... And please, it's just absolutely wrong to assume a go go dancer is okay on a float but not somebody dressed in puppy play gear. It's not about consent, it's about what your preconcieved notion is of that community and what your idea of sexy is. It's kink shame at this point. ALSO - if it's about the kids - why is it okay for them to watch rupaul's drag race but not see someone wearing leather gear and having discussions about consent and expressing how diverse their communities are? Have you seen the newer episode of drag race down under with "discharge", "piss", "snatch"... and that was just one episode. The whole franchise is riddled with inappropriate things for kids.... but it's somehow acceptable but not someone wearing a leather pup mask.... go off.

[hencoplumbingservices]

Café con Tanya welcomes Spanish-speaking parents of children with special needs

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Having a child diagnosed with a developmental disability such as autism or Down syndrome can be scary for any parent. But if you primarily speak a language other than English, that creates a whole new set of challenges.

“A lot of things get lost in translation, and that’s a big obstacle,” said Tanya English, who’s been the part-time Hispanic outreach coordinator at Vancouver-based PEACE, or Parents Empowered and Communities Enhanced, since October. The outreach program was started by Maria Rangel, who now does bilingual outreach for the Northwest Down Syndrome Association in Portland.

English provides one-on-one support to Spanish-speaking families who are trying to navigate Individual Education Programs and the Developmental Disabilities and Social Security administrations. It’s common for PEACE to hire interpreters for their larger group trainings, said Executive Director Darla Helt; Spanish is the most requested language.

English recently began offering a more intimate education and support group for Spanish speakers, where they can talk about whatever is on their minds. English, who also works as a paraeducator at a blended preschool, heard coordinators around the state were hosting coffee gatherings.

“Culturally, when you come in and you invite someone to your home, you offer them something. You offer them coffee, you offer them bread, you offer them whatever that you have,” she said.

Coffee with Tanya, or Café con Tanya, began in December and meets the first and third Wednesday of every month. There’s coffee to sip and cookies to eat as families chat. The goal is to provide a warm and welcoming space.

“We’re just here to help them with what they need,” English said.

English invites experts — both those who speak Spanish and those who don’t. On Wednesday, David Pitonyak, a consultant with Virginia-based Imagine, spoke through an interpreter to the small group of families who gathered in a meeting room at Innovative Services NW in Vancouver. Families are welcome to bring their children; the little ones occupied their time Wednesday drawing on a white board and playing with fidget spinners.

Karina Vazquez explained through an interpreter that her 4-year-old daughter, Tita, has fragile X syndrome and autism. She said Tita is sometimes shy and doesn’t know how to react to things, and has anxiety around going to the restroom.

“People who are on the spectrum often have a lot of anxiety in their bodies. It’s not unusual,” said Pitonyak, who specializes in behavioral issues.

Over the course of his conversation with Vazquez and the other moms, Pitonyak provided advice for fostering a calm environment that helps children feel more comfortable. He advocated for establishing a routine because children benefit from knowing an activity has a beginning, middle and end.

Vazquez had several pointed questions for Pitonyak as she relayed her challenges with Tita. She said she heard about Café con Tanya through a flyer at her daughter’s school.

“We learn from all our families — their testimonies, what they’re going through — and learn we’re not the only ones going through it,” she said through interpreter Gabriela Ewing.

Ewing, who works for Crescent Moon Interpretation Services, said when she is interpreting in this setting, she has to condense what experts say and understand the lingo around special needs. She has to explain terms that don’t have a Spanish equivalent.

“Not just anybody can do this type of interpretation,” Ewing said. “It’s a huge need in the community.”

It can get tricky. Ewing has a son with autism and runs her own support group for Spanish-speaking parents that meets at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Brush Prairie. In her experience as a parent to a child with special needs, she’s noticed people interpreting incorrectly. She said it’s important that the interpreter is impartial, and not attempting to favor the organization they’re interpreting for, whether it’s a school or provider.

“The language around developmental disabilities is fairly specific, as it is for any sub-group of anything,” Helt said. “If an interpreter is not skilled in special education, they may not have the language to interpret what that means.”

Two bills introduced in the Legislature earlier this month address language access in public schools. One of the provisions of House Bill 1130 requires the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to “document the language in which families of special education students prefer to communicate and whether a qualified interpreter for the family was provided at certain meetings,” according to the bill digest.

English said there can be fear around reaching out and asking for help, whether due to citizenship status or a cultural barrier. Also, there’s fear around the fact that a family’s future for their child looks different than first envisioned.

“It’s challenging culturally to assimilate the fact that you’ve got a different road,” English said.

Through Café con Tanya, families try to navigate that road together. 

Support Groups

Coffee with Tanya

• What: Information, education and special guests for Spanish-speaking families with children with intellectual or developmental disabilities.

• When: 10 a.m. every first and third Wednesday.

• Where: Innovative Services NW, 9414 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd.

• More information: Contact Tanya English at 360-823-2247 ext. 103 or at culturaloutreach2@peacenw.org.

Café con Tanya

• Qué: Información, educación e invitados especiales para familias Hispano hablantes con niños con discapacidades intelectuales o de desarrollo.

• Cuándo: 10 a.m. cada primer y tercer Miércoles.

• Dónde: Innovative Services NW, 9414 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd.

• Más información: Contactar a Tanya English al 360-823-2247 extensión 103 o á culturaloutreach2@peacenw.org.

Spanish-speaking parent meetup

• What: Come and meet other parents who share the experience of having a son or daughter who experiences a disability.

• When: 10 a.m. every second and fourth Wednesday.

• Where: Resourcefulness Center, 11611 N.E. Ainsworth Circle, Portland.

• More information: Contact 503-262-4029 or mrangel@nwdsa.org.

ReuniÓn en Español para padres

• Qué: Venga y conozca a otros padres quienes al igual que usted comparten la experiencia de tener a un hijo/hija que experimenta alguna desabilidad.

• Cuándo: 10 a.m. cada segundo y cuarto Miércoles.

• Dónde: Centro de Recursos, 11611 N.E. Ainsworth Circle, Portland.

• Más información: Contactar 503-262-4029 o mrangel@nwdsa.org.

Hispanic Disability Support SWWA Pasitos Gigantes

• What: Support group for Spanish-speaking families.

• When: 10 a.m. every Tuesday.

• Where: St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 8701 N.E. 119th St., Vancouver.

• More information: 360-241-2280.

Hispanic Disability Support SWWA Pasitos Gigantes

• Qué: Grupo de apoyo para familias Hispano hablantes.

• Cuándo: 10 a.m. cada Martes.

• Dónde: St. John the Evangelist Iglesia Católica, 8701 N.E. 119th St., Vancouver.

• Más información: 360-241-2280.

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