#why are there massive arguments over who has it worse as a queer person??? in the current climate????

[genderqueerdykes]

as someone who is asexual and a trans man (amongst other things, i'm agender and xenic but also a man and prefer calling myself a trans man over masc + don't like calling myself under the non-binary umbrella label), seeing this massive wave of transandrophobia pop up has only made me feel more afraid online. 2016 alone was a detriment to my life, as i had just figured out what asexuality was and how that label fit me perfectly. only to find a wave of people who don't find me "queer enough" to call myself queer! i feel like i'm reliving those days again, as i've noticed a lot of trends in how people who are aphobic and/or transandrophobic tend to have similar arguments. "this side has it so much worse so you should shut up and stay in your lane" rhetoric has made me a lot more frustrated to exist in queer spaces. i don't have the space irl (due to where i live as well as my age being an issue in this regard) and having the space online just feels like this massive argument of erasure and negativity where i do not exist to these people, you know? apologies for the vent about this, at first i was going to try to articulate some sort of point about this and how trans men and asexual people are often put into this little erasure and confused person box but i sorta lost the point. mb

yeesh, i'm sorry you've gone through this. it really does seem like there's another wave of mass aphobia and aphobia, as well as transandrophobia coming to an all time high. it's really disturbing. i'm a trans man who's aromantic and on the asexual spectrum but that doesn't erase the fact that i'm queer. i've never understood why people say that aromanticism and asexuality aren't queer identities. like how? society expects very specific kinds of relationships out of all of us. if we don't fall into those types of relationships, or don't have the same kind of relationship with sexuality and romance, we're treated like shit and dehumanized. how is that not something that falls outside of the cultural norm?

people are just proudly being assholes again at this stage. it feels like rude ass people simmer down for a while and then get pissed the fuck off again in a never ending cycle. people don't like change. they don't want to have to change how they see other people. people become very attached to the versions of other that live in their heads and their heads alone. i don't really get why people who aren't/weren't a queer identity feel like they get to tell other people what it's about.

if you aren't or weren't that thing, how would you know? that makes no sense. it's just talking over people at this point. i hope things improve for you, and everyone in general. this is just sad behavior. it's toxic and abusive. it's hurting people in real time

[tweltchy]

[itsclydebitches]

Hey there! Admittedly I'm a little bit nervous since this is my first ask, but I'll try to not be too rambly.

So, recently the main subreddit, r/RWBY, made a ban on active users of the r/RWBYcritics subreddit. As a result there's been discussion around bad-faith criticism in the latter subreddit. What are your takes on bad-faith criticism?

For me personally, I think a bunch of people are misusing the term "bad-faith" and using it as a way to shut down criticism, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Hey there, everyone! We woke up to some drama this morning, huh? And hello to you too, Tortoise! I'm so glad you decided to send in an ask, even if it's following some pretty tumultuous events...

Right, I'd like to start with a story. The story of how I personally don't spend time on Reddit, but I have plenty of friends who will occasionally cross-post something for me to see. Yesterday (or the day before? Idk time is meaningless) a friend told me about a post — which, significantly, I'm now having trouble finding — that covers RWBY's inconsistent writing and the fandom's tendency to try and explain away those missteps. They'd thought I'd be interested because I'd just had a conversation here on tumblr where I made that exact point to someone who, also significantly, vehemently disagreed with me, but in a very civil fashion. Given everything going on, I feel like this side point needs emphasis: we debated, we did so in a sometimes heated, but nevertheless respectful manner, it was clear neither of us was going to sway the other, and the conversation ended. The two "sides" of the community interacted without Armageddon coming about.

But back to the purpose of this tale. I went to take a look at this point and found that it no longer exists. There's just some vague message about it not obeying the subreddit's rules. "What happened?" I asked. "Why'd they take the post down?" "People were getting too heated in the comments," my friend replies. So, given that the comments were still visible, I proceeded to read through them, expecting personal attacks, slurs, harassment, etc. Any number of things that would justify deleting the post itself to put an end to such behavior. Instead, I found a thread of people having a conversation. Was the conversation heated at times? Sure. Did one or two individual posters edge into the realm of petulant, "No. You're wrong and stupid" responses? Yes. Was any of this remotely what I was expecting given the post's removal? NOPE.

"This isn't allowed?" I said. "Well then what is? People were being civil! Or at least as civil as hundreds of strangers ever get when discussing a series they're passionate about online."

Then, this morning, I hear that the entire critic subreddit has been banned.

So to answer your question, Tortoise, I don't actually think that "good faith" criticism exists. Meaning, it's not just that fans are misusing the term "bad faith criticism," but rather that there is no unified, agreed up method of writing criticism that will meet their standards. It's not possible and we know it's not possible because fans have been trying to meet those elusive standards for years:

A fan posts nothing but praise for RWBY until changes make them criticize the show as it is now. Their entire body of work is dismissed as the product of a "hater," despite the overwhelming gap between positive and negative reviews.

A fan posts a review that's a pretty balanced mix between praise and criticism. They're dismissed because it's still too much criticism.

A fan posts a review that's 99% praise with 1% criticism. That's still too much, with fans focusing on the single problem they had with the work and using it as an excuse to dismiss the entire review out of hand.

(As an aside, the argument that critics are "obsessed" with only saying negative things and that the only problem here is that they're "too" negative ignores the argument that... RWBY has a lot of flaws nowadays. Few are willing to acknowledge the possibility that it's not fans insisting on making things up to be mad about/ignoring the good parts of the show, it's the that show is, as of now, legitimately more of a mess than it is a praise-worthy product. If I'd been writing recaps in the Volumes 1-4 days, my work would have been skewed far more towards the positive. The critics' stance is that RWBY has gotten worse, which yes, results a higher volume of critical posts. To say nothing of how criticism takes far longer to explain, likewise resulting in posts focused primarily on that side of the divide. I really enjoyed the image of a crying Jaune reflected in his sword. I did not enjoy that moment's context. Saying that you liked an animation choice is a one sentence thing. Explaining the complexities of Jaune securing emotional moments, the problems with Penny's second death, the hurt many fans experienced watching an assisted suicide, etc. takes a whooole lot longer. Hence, you get massive, multiple posts about these nuanced topics and fewer, smaller posts about the details that are working well.)

A fan talks about a topic that has been metaphorically banned by the fandom as a whole. They have something good to say about Ironwood. They dislike something about Blake/Yang. They enjoyed Adam as a character. They have a problem with Ruby's leadership, etc. There's a whole list of topics nowadays that will result in an automatic dismissal, regardless of the point the fan is trying to make or how well they make it.

A fan talks about the minority representation of RWBY — its black characters, its queer characters, its disabled characters, etc. — and as a result has something to say about the biases and missteps of those writing these characters. This is considered an attack on the writers and, therefore, automatically bad.

A fan talks about how they enjoyed RWBY as it was years ago and is having trouble reconciling the dark, complicated story with the simple, hopeful one we started out with. This is seen as an attack on Monty's vision and an unwillingness to accept that "everything is planned."

A fan does as asked and ensures that their post is meeting all the requirements of "real" criticism. They have an argument to make. They have a point. They provide evidence. They recommend a solution. They keep their tone respectful. They don't attack the creators. They provide disclaimers in every single paragraph about how they do not hate RWBY. It doesn't matter. They're considered too negative.

I have, quite literally, seen every one of the above examples on multiple occasions. I have had many of the above accusations leveled at my own work. When fans say that they're fine with criticism provided it's not "bad faith" criticism, they don't actually have a specific post-type in mind; a checklist of behaviors another fan can emulate and, provided they do that, no hate will come their way. Or, if an individual fan does actually go, "Yeah. That criticism I'm fine with" that response is in no way universal. One person's "They make a good, civil point" is another person's, "Omg stop bashing the show!" Because "bashing" has come to mean everything from curse-laden insults towards everything RWBY has ever done, to posts that just happen to say something other fans don't agree with.

It's a rigged game. There is no way to post criticism about RWBY in an agreed-upon, appropriate manner. This recent ban is proof of that. I think it's incredibly telling that almost immediately after I was going, "Wow. A pretty calm debate about the flaws of RWBY in the main sub. That's great to see," all posters from the criticism subreddit were banned. The main sub literally just had the sort of criticism that they claim to accept — people respectfully posting analysis-based arguments resulting in calm debate — and yet they implemented the ban anyway. I'm not going to pretend that I've never gotten too heated on my own posts, never made snarky comments when I'm frustrated, never used exaggerated reaction GIFs that can come across as insulting... but I'd say on the whole my RWBY work is precisely the sort of "good faith" criticism that other fans are supposedly looking for. I never make an argument I don't think I can back up with evidence. I try to allow for the nuance and differing opinions of complicated topics. I try — even if I don't always succeed — to write in a clear, respectful manner. Yet none of that work has stopped people from telling me I'm a "bitter... raging asshole," a "deranged, delusional psychopath," telling me to set myself on fire, threatening to smash my head in, or just messages to straight up kill myself. If someone like me who legitimately works hard to create fair, defendable criticism and who only ever posts on a personal blog that people can easily block, who never engages in debate until someone else starts it first, never seeks out other fans I disagree with to harass them about what they like... if someone like me is still a "bad faith" critic who "deserves" that kind of hate mail... then what kind of criticism do people want?

Nothing. That's the answer. No criticism whatsoever, of any kind, no matter if it's delivered respectfully, is making a good point, whatever. That's why "RWDE" was created. That's why the critic subreddit was created. The community at large has demanded a complete separation between Praise and Anything That's Not 100% Praise, which has now resulted in this ban. Any other explanations we see are excuses, which becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the mods' supposed reasons for implementing the ban:

"Constant arguments with r/RWBY users" - As opposed to the arguments surrounding things like shipping that never, ever happen?

"Vote manipulation and comment brigades" - The subreddit with 3,000 participants, with around 200 on at a time, is manipulating the votes of a subreddit with 155,000 participants, with over 1,000 on at a time? Those numbers just do not check out. If a positive post is downvoted, or a critical post upvoted, maybe that's because large swaths of the community actually agree/disagree with that assessment, not because the incredibly smaller group is somehow manipulating things.

"Attacking and harassing those they disagree with" — Again, as opposed to those non-critics that never, ever harass people? This is an individual problem, not a community problem. Both critics and non-critics have their sub-groups acting in ways they shouldn't. If anything, the main sub will have more individuals harassing other fans, simply by virtue of being so much larger. As the above examples attest, it's not other critics who have told me to light myself on fire and, just to be clear, the asks I've responded to are a miniscule number compared to the amount I've received. I delete the lion's share for my own sanity and to save my followers from reading the really graphic threats.

"Months-long NSFL spam brigades" — I am, admittedly, not sure what this is referring to. Spamming of NSFW content? If so, that's also an individual problem.

"Homophobic, transphobic, and racist attacks towards our users" — See the above points. Again. If someone is being homophobic, transphobic, or racist, then yes please, ban them. Don't ban an entire community for the actions of a few. It's like walking into a store and banning a customer for causing a scene... but then also banning everyone else who happened to be shopping at the same time. It's guilt by association.

The silver lining to all this? The community as a whole isn't pleased. At least according to the main subreddit comments and a few individual voices like MurderofBirds. Despite the increase (from my perspective anyway) of critical voices post-Volume 8, criticism of RWBY is still very much seen as taboo. As this ban showcases. But it's really reassuring to see so many fans, critics and non-critics alike, going, "This was a mistake." A community is meant to include all aspects of engagement: praise, criticism, and the gray area between. If anything, fans like the mods of the main subreddit should be creating a separate subreddit that is specifically for praise. In the same way that there should have been a tag for RWBY praise, rather than trying to eliminate any and all criticism from the main "RWBY" tag. The majority of fans, even those who claim to hate critics and all they (presumably) stand for, recognize that a blanket ban of all criticism is not the way to go, especially when "criticism" has come to have such a staggeringly broad definition. If you want your RWBY experience to be nothing but sunshine and roses (ha), then cultivate your own internet experience to reflect that. Create your own pockets with rules about how this is the space for praise and if you're not up for praising RWBY right now, don't interact with us in this particular space. Don't try to make the entire community — the main tools used to discuss the show online — conform to your preferences. As established, there is no "good" criticism that everyone in the fandom will accept, which just leaves a fandom with no criticism at all. I'm glad to see I'm far from the only one who, when presented with that extreme, is going, "Nope. No thank you."

[trilies]

an argument for AO3

So I’m in a conversation with someone who is kind of in the “against AO3″ camp, and they asked me a couple of questions. Namely, who wouldn’t be uncomfortable with pedophilia? Isn’t it sketchy that a beta website is asking for so much money despite reaching its goals?

And my answer became so long... I figured it might as well become its own post. Please bear in mind that this is cut from a whole conversation.

But here it is.

------

No. It doesn't seem sketchy to me at all. Why would it? I know we make jokes about how much money tumblr has cost the various sites which purchase it like Yahoo, but there's some truth there: it's really expensive to host a website to thousands and thousands of people. It's why we see so many tumblr owners trying to shoehorn in ads or make people buy services, or why Photobucket tried to pull that truly atrocious bullshit a year or two back. Without image hosting capabilities (tumblr and photobucket's big thing), the strain isn't as huge.... but AO3 is MASSIVE. It is hosting literally thousands of accounts, millions of stories. That's massive on a server scale alone, ignoring all the other work they do. Yeah, it's in beta... but that's because it's trying to reach a goal of being as good a fanfic archive as they can be, and they don't believe they've reached that goal yet. Being in beta means they can better listen to their uses on shit like tagging systems and make those changes. Not to mention, again, they are INCREDIBLY transparent. If you are worried about where the money is going, you can go on the site and they have all their stuff up there.

As for the pedophilia subject matter.... Please give me a moment. because there's honestly a lot to say on that particular issue, if nothing else. This will take a while, so if you see this and there hasn't been a reply yet.... I'm still typing lmao.

To start with, of course people are uncomfortable about pedophilia. However, there are a lot of problems with how pedophilia is viewed or *used* as an accusation in the current fandom climate.

For example, in honestly EXTREMELY recent times, I was told I was "defending" pedophilia because I disagreed that a character (an immortal food gijinka) was "minor-coded" or "designed as an underage teenager". (As a note, an argument for this view was that the character's breasts were too small.) When I pointed out, hey, that's kind of a fucked up accusation to throw at a complete stranger, especially as I am a CSA survivor, I was told "You have to be lying about that, then, because a real CSA survivor would understand."

c o o l

That's just my personal experience that happened within a couple of months. Other people have talked about running into people who think that a character turning 18 means they're a pedophile for still dating a 17 year old. Or running into people who think a 40 year old dating someone in their 30s is pedophilic. Or believe that even SHIPPING characters who were not yet 18 was pedophilic if you yourself were over 18.

(Of course, you also have the kinds of people who try to use Moral Purity as a way to bash ships they don't like. I once saw someone try to claim that a popular mlm ship, A/B, was pedophilic because one half of the equation looked young.... when some other artists drew him... Of course, on the side, this person liked to also get angry that *their* favorite ship, a dude/chick ship composing of A/C, wasn't more popular. So. You know.)

So that's one half of the problem: the word "pedophile" being so warped that a lot of people now have no idea if the person using it has a genuine concern or if the accuser is trying to smear someone who doesn't ship the same thing. FFnet and Tumblr have gone with the "burn it all down" approach, which hasn't actually helped anyone and is, to boot, sloppily moderated. So we know from history, from experience in cases like mine, that it doesn't help in that area.

The other half of the problem is... How far is too far?

This is where "anti" culture begins to find similarities with the whole Warriors for Innocence thing. If you completely and blindly block an entire tag, or anyone associated with it, you have to ask: who are you hurting? Warriors for Innocence hurt actual rape victim, and queer folk, and a whole lot of others. Far as I can tell, anti culture is on the route to the same thing, because I have yet to see appropriate answers to a lot of issues.

If one says "anything with underage sex in it is bad and should be banned", what about fics that tackle it in a serious manner? The young adult novel "Speak" deals with rape of an underage girl and how she works through that mental trauma; are fics with stories equivalent to that allowed? Do fics with underage sex have to focus purely on how it is Horrible And Bad to be allowed? Does only a chapter have to be allowed? A paragraph? An author's note? A tag? Or are we allowed to never explore dark subject matter?

Is fic with underage content in it only horrible if it's someone over the age of eighteen who writes it? Can a teenager write smut (terribly written as it may likely be) between teenage characters? Can a teenager write smut between a teenage character and an adult character? For the record, i did in fact, over the summer, run into someone who said that teens/minors "shouldn't even know about NSFW", which is asinine to me, because Abstinence Only is a terrible thing to put in schools, and somehow worse in a way when you try to put that into effect in fandom. If the answer is 'yes', what are you going to do, demand to see people's birth certificates in fandom?

(As a note, I think this is a terrible message to put into fandom for teenagers because I believe it will inevitably lead to self hatred and a warped view of sex. If you make the extremely simplified black-and-white statement of "teens and sex should never go together ever in any way", that's going to mess up teens who are starting to experience arousal in their bodies. The message, whether intended or not, ends up as "NSFW things are bad, which means my brain which thought NSFW thoughts is bad, and my brain thought those thoughts because my body had these feelings". )

(This is bad for any average teenager. This will be especially worse to CSA and rape victims, along with queer youth who, in a lot of places, are still struggling with their bodies and/or feelings because the world is still pretty damn queerphobic.)

Speaking of CSA and rape victims, what about those of them who write/read underage ships or dark content as a way to cope with what happened or Just Because? That's a thing lots of us do, especially those of us who don't look like the Perfect Victims people can use as an excuse for whatever crusade they're waging. I've heard anti types go "Well, it's an unhealthy way to cope" or claims that CSA/rape victims who write such dark content are "just as bad as their abusers"... But are they psychiatrists/therapists? Are they the psychiatrists/therapists of *those specific people*? Will you moderate this kind of content by forcefully interrogating CSA/rape victims to out their trauma to a complete stranger? Will you demand to speak to their therapists? Over fanfic?

When I was a teenager, I wrote all sorts of stuff. I wrote dark dub-con fic, because I liked to explore those dark feelings in the process and the aftermath separate from myself. I wrote a fic with a fairly young teenage girl (what age was kh2 kairi? who even knows, I sure didn't) falling for a MUCH older man built like a brick shit house so that there was never any doubt to him being an adult, even giving him her first kiss, because they were my favorite characters, I wanted both of them to have a moment of happiness (that i promptly ruined but hey), and, *in this fic*, I knew it would be alright. I knew the girl would always be in control, she'd be the one making moves, that the guy was nonthreatening and kind and protect her and work alongside her.

(and then I began the process of killing him off in the next paragraph through him saving her life, but, like. Drama (tm), baby)

This was all good for me. At an age where I was young, vulnerable, and figuring out weird shit like arousal and romantic feelings, it was *invaluable* to have a space where I could explore all of that while relatively safe from actual danger, even if the stuff I wanted to explore was a little messed up. This whole thing against AO3 wouldn't have helped me, and I'm pretty sure it's not helping a lot of other people too.

There is an issue with underage people and sex stuff- not just in fandom but in culture at large. We have Hollywood dressing up young girl actresses in super slinky or revealing clothes. We have schools saying girls basically should never wear shorts, and capitalism fucking this up further by only selling SUPER SHORT shorters. We have media of all sorts giving us adults, whether in real actors or character design, in the roles of young people. (See: "how do you do, fellow kids") We should probably take more care about fandom spaces, so that people of all ages don't feel pressured to engage in sexual shit they're not 100% game for or into, or just have it shoved into their faces without consent. It's a complex issue... and it's not stuff that can just be 'banned' and have that fix it.

AO3 has on its plate a very complex problem that will, if we're all honest, never have a perfect answer. It has given us the best that can possibly be asked for. It obeys the law by not having actual child pornography on it (aka visual proof of actual real children, defined by us law as such), which is closest to "objective" we can get at the current stage in humanity and state of fandom. It has a very comprehensive and moderated tag system, so that people can post warnings along their fic so that people don't stumble onto shit they don't need to, and so that people can moderate their own reading experience to some degree.

If some people aren't comfortable with AO3, that's fine. However, most of us are getting annoyed not with those people, but with the people who just blindly say "AO3 supports child porn and is probably stealing money" (statement simplified for the purpose of this post). It shows an ignorance of the fandom history that lead us here, no understanding in either AO3's practices or how expensive it is to run a site, and no consideration for how complex this problem can really be. It would be great if this was a black and white issue, if there was an easy answer as just "banning" certain kinds of content... but there isn't. And that's where I am.

[synesindri]

some musings on shipping culture

just to get this out of the way: this post is prompted by things i have seen people say and reblog recently about a variety of ships and fandoms, some of which i have been in, some of which i have not. it is not directed at any individual in particular. 

i am also not upset. how other people like to enjoy fandom is interesting to me but ultimately it’s totally irrelevant to how i like to enjoy fandom. in fact, my apathy about other people’s favorite ships is a major reason i am curious about how some people respond to each other/canon/whatever.

the main question is: why do people care what other people ship and why they ship it?

here’s what i got. this list is not ordered by importance.

1) purity culture 

tbh i am kind of burnt out with thinking about purity culture. probably a lot of reasons are somewhat related to purity culture, but i don’t want to get into whether or not it’s ok for people to ship stuff they wouldn’t condone in reality (although for the record, if you couldn’t tell, my opinion is: ship literally whatever you want). so, moving on.

2) whether or not ships are likely to become canon

a lot of the time, this debate gets avoided either because none of the ships being argued over are likely ever to become canon, or because one of them is almost definitely going to become canon. sometimes it’s an argument about which relationship is more important, whether romantic or not (two examples: 1) most wincest shippers understand that sam and dean were never going to kiss on the mouth on tv, but are very invested in the brothers’ relationship being the central relationship in the show regardless. 2) debates over whether elsa in frozen should have a girlfriend or stay single). 

much of the time, people get passionate about ships going canon because of issues of representation. wanting the queer ship; wanting the ship involving at least one character from an underrepresented group; wanting the ship that resonates with some meaningful experience much of the audience can relate to. that’s all cool. i get all of that. i don’t personally have many feelings about ships i like going canon because that’s not really part of the experience for me, but i understand why it’s appealing to others.

i do not, however, understand why some people whose ships might become canon care about telling people whose ships are never going to become canon that their ships are, uh, never going to become canon. like, in my experience, usually people who ship a never-going-to-be-canon ship know that it’s never going to be canon, and while they might be salty about it, they aren’t claiming that their thing is going to be what happens in canon. i get why never-going-to-be-canon shippers might get pissy at might-be-canon shippers because it sucks to “lose,” or because often (not always) might-be-canon ships are very popular comparatively and it can get tiresome to see your fandom dominated by something you don’t like/care about. but why do fans of popular (might-be-)canon ships get pissy about fans of never-gonna-be-canon ships, within fandom spaces?

a lot of this tension might be because of fandom dominance wars, rather than canon dominance wars. the never-gonna-be-canon shippers might feel that the might-be-canon shippers are dominating fandom spaces, but the might-be-canon shippers might feel that the never-gonna-be-canon shippers are dominating canon spaces. often when this happens both ships take up a lot of fandom space regardless of which takes up more, and might in fact be equally popular. so this might be just misperceptions about relative popularity, and feeling like your ship is being attacked/ignored disproportionately in the fandom when in reality it isn’t. i have definitely seen this sort of attitude from warring flagship supporters many a time.

but ok, to come back to why might-be-canon shippers make arguments against never-gonna-be-canon shippers based on likelihood of canonization: why? i don’t get it. i’ve seen this happen even with people who ship fully realized canon relationships arguing against people who ship fully non-canon relationships. why? 

my instinct is to think that last one is a sore winner thing. like, you won dude. good for you. take your winnings and let everybody else lick their wounds/carry on with their own preferences in peace. i’m even inclined to think that canon shippers as a rule should ignore most baiting by non-canon shippers because losers should be allowed to be little a bitter, as a treat. but at this point, i realize that i have just made a claim about how people should act in fandom, and who am i to say that? no one. so: never mind. and it might not be a gloating thing anyway.

another piece of evidence i see people bring up in these arguments is about basis in canon, rather than likelihood of canonization. that seems like another major point, so let’s move on to that. 

3) basis in canon

whether or not a ship is likely to become canon, there are lots of conversations about which ships make the most sense given evidence from the canon. 

i, being a massive slut for characterization, get this sort of. usually even when i enjoy crack ships i want to make them work with textual evidence somehow. i personally just think it’s more satisfying to figure out how two characters might have met and what would have appealed to them about each other to lead them to connect/date/bang/whatever, even if it never happened and never will happen and nobody would even think about the pairing unless either they were trying to be funny or they were really far down a rabbit hole. that’s my own geeky cross to bear.

i don’t get why “basis in canon” makes any ship better than any other ship though. sometimes a ship is within reach of canon characterization/story, and the work to go from non-canon to canon is suuuper minimal. these ships make sense pretty much as they are. that’s cool! such ships are usually popular for a reason: they appeal to a lot of fans of the canon because not a lot has to be done to the source material to make it work. often, the more you have to modify/do interpretation footwork, the more people’s interesting is going to drop off because you’re getting further from the source, and the source is why everyone is here in the first place. (some fandoms are of course exceptions to this.)

but why is closer-to-canon better? sometimes the work to get from canon to a far-from-canon ship is really clever, and does actually make a lot of sense if you follow the reasoning. sometimes far-from-canon ships are satisfying in a way other closer-to-canon ships aren’t (at least to some people). sometimes far-from-canon ships allow for creativity that closer-to-canon ships don’t. sometimes the appeal of far-from-canon ships is none of that, and it’s purely because the ship is sexy, or it’s controversial, or it’s weird, or people have gotten tired of the fandom flagships and they’re looking for something new. 

i don’t understand why any of that is worse than the reasons for shipping something with “more basis in canon.”

personally, i get tired of fandom flagships in most of the fandoms i’ve been in very quickly. furthermore, i lose interest in ships almost immediately if/when they become canon. that’s not a value judgment; it’s just a pattern in my own preferences that i’ve observed from 15+ years of fandom involvement. i enjoy having to work in the murky waters farther from canon to justify my weird little ships. i find the moment of canonization exciting and satisfying (and sometimes emotional and vindicating), but i do not enjoy watching people actually being in romantic relationships very much (part of this is probably due to the fact that i personally do not enjoy being in romantic relationships very much). i also just tend to enjoy elements of ships that a lot of people find off-putting, but this is going back to purity culture and, again, i don’t want to get into that. these preferences reliably lead me away from close-to-canon ships and fandom flagships. 

(just to be clear: i’m not being attacked. i do not feel attacked. i'm just using myself as a rhetorical example here.)

does this make my taste in ships bad? i don’t know what "bad taste in ships” means, but if you’re going to say that my taste is bad, i’m going to want you to justify it. 

does it make my taste in ships stupid? well, sure, i do like stupid shit sometimes. but i also feel that it would be strange, if not flat-out incorrect, to claim that my taste in off-norm ships is not thoughtful. i think about many of my far-from-canon ships a lot — often, i think about them a lot before i start shipping them/see anyone else ship them, and i decide i like the characters together because i’ve come at it from a character analysis perspective. i have liked ships for some extremely nerdy reasons. a lot of people who like far-from-canon ships get there because they like thinking about characterization and plot and symbolism. to be completely honest, i often end up liking rarepairs in part because the people who end up liking rarepairs often have higher overall intellectual skill and desire to think about things extensively on average than fans of fandom flagships do on average. so, is liking far-from-canon ships stupid? that’s subjective. is it unintelligent? probably not.

is enjoyment of these ships dumber when people don’t get there through a lot of analysis, or when they don’t try to justify their enjoyment once they’ve decided they like a ship? i have seen extremely well-written, clever, extensively researched fic about pairings the author had no interest in justifying, and imo that’s just as intellectually motivated as analysis about why the ship makes sense. so, i would say, no.

is it bad to ship stuff and have no intellectual interest in it all? i mean, everyone can have whatever opinion about this, but in my opinion, no. this is fandom. this is for fun-having. i’m a nerd, but not everybody has to be a nerd. sometimes i like to read stuff that is not nerdy, that just shows me something comforting or new or evocative and doesn’t ask me to care about how we’ve gotten there. i might care anyway, but that’s on me, and it doesn’t make my enjoyment better than the enjoyment of someone who doesn’t want to overthink it.

finally, even if a ship having no basis in canon does make it worse somehow, who cares? what is the point of arguing over ship quality, of all things? is it just elitism? is it defensiveness against criticism of fan work being inferior to original work? is it a desire for everything to make sense, paired with a belief that people prefer things that make the most sense? if anybody has read this far and has insight into this, please tell me. i see this so often, and it baffles me every time. i don’t really want to agree, but i want to understand.

so, i don’t quite get this one. i get parts of it, but overall, i don’t get it. 

4) i don’t have a number 4. i put a number 4 when i started writing this post but i think i covered what i was going to say here in points 1-3. alternatively i forgot my 4th point in which case RIP.

if you read this far, i apologize for the messy organization. i wrote this primarily to sort out my own thoughts. i’m not sure it helped, but it was something to do for an hour XD

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

How do you feel about this Kaylor obsession? i find it disrespectful

I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve thought of 20 different ways to write this as to make sure it didn’t come off in a way I didn’t mean it, but I’ve realised just I’m probably going to get criticised either way so writing what comes to me is probably easiest.

To start this, I want to speak a bit about myself. It’s not directly relevant to Kaylor, but I think it’s important in understanding where my perspective comes from. I say that because I will be the first to admit that I come from a very privileged position in comparison to most. I’m a white, cisgender bisexual girl who grew up in a rich, pretty forward thinking city and even though we were definitely poverty line poor, we never went without the essentials and thanks to the government scheme, I was able to go to university along with not having to worry about going to a “worse” school in my childhood because schooling is not as heavily linked with location here as other places. I mention this because with the exception of the church, my catholic grandparents and one or two assholes, I have rarely had issues with my sexuality. 9 times out of 10 if it’s brought up, it is me casually saying it. Most of my friends are queer, and while my family have their less than perfect moments with it (mostly ignorant comments), I have never been at risk of homelessness or abuse or suicidal ideation over my sexuality and have never felt like my parents nor siblings nor friends loved me any less because I wasn’t straight. That’s not to say where I live doesn’t have queerphobia because friends of mine have faced abuse and/or homelessness and/or committed suicide over it, but once again, I have been so privileged to have not. Once again, this is not directly related to Kaylor, but I am well aware it is a very different perspective than what most people have and I definitely feel it shapes and contextualises what I’m about to say so it’s important to say.

Kaylor is a very nuanced topic for me… moreso than any other ship, real or not,  I want to say that I personally don’t believe any romantic relationship Taylor had was fake. Do I think she had deeper feelings to some over others? Yes. Do I think her and/or certain partners knew that their relationship would give them extra publicity and that was an added bonus to the relationship? Sure. But I do not think she went into any relationship being like “The only thing I’m getting out of this person is their publicity”, especially after the world starting in on their “Taylor Swift is the problem” rampage. In saying this, I think Taylor showed us with Joe that it is possible for her to only show the relationships she and the other person wants to show and it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t the first. I feel I should also mention that in my younger years, I was a major Swiftgron shipper… not to the extent that I feel every RED song + Better Man is about Dianna, but I definitely shipped it hard and believed it happened. Likewise, I got the vibe with other females Taylor hung around at certain points even if I didn’t ship them as strong as Swiftgron. So, as you can imagine, I’m not opposed to the idea that Kaylor had something other than a platonic relationship at one stage. If they came out today and said everything the Kaylors said was right, I’d support their relationship. However I am not someone who believes that they are this massive romantic love story that’s included beards for years, especially not ones related to the Trumps. Perhaps they had something for a short time in the past, and hell, I’d even believe Gorgeous is about Karlie, but I do not think that they are secretly together when lets be real, Taylor isn’t particularly getting anything out of Joe promotion wise if he is a beard. And before someone says “she got someone who she can say her Reputation love songs are about”, there are a total of 3 songs on that album that she couldn’t spin to be about someone else, as a platonic/family based love song or a general observation on her anxieties. Of those, one of them could have easily been reworded to be about friendship/family over romantic love. Like it just really does not make sense to me that they would play their cards that way when it’d be simpler to just keep her “single” if her and Karlie were actually together. It especially doesn’t make sense now because quite frankly, Taylor has done nearly everything she can to make it clear that even if she has conservative followers, she is not a conservative person and is very ready to defend and support the queer community. And yes, I know that coming out is very different than giving support, but with the seemingly genuine “I don’t care what anyone but my loved ones think of me” attitude she’s been giving off in the last year or two, I genuinely feel like beards are off the board if indeed they were ever on it.

Regardless of how I feel about the ship though, I don’t like that Kaylors cross boundaries. I want to make it clear though that it is not just the Kaylors that do this. I didn’t like how Tayvin fans constantly spoke about Calvin’s dick and made comments about the sex they were supposedly having, Same with Joe/Taylor fans. I didn’t like hearing how Haylors (and other shippers) tracked Taylor’s plane. And in general, I hated how this fandom kept making “Not 10 months sober anymore!!!” jokes. As a whole, I think this fandom has crossed a lot of lines it shouldn’t have and in part that’s why I am grateful for the Reputation era because it somewhat forced us to take a step back and reconsider that stuff. And I say us because I will fully admit that in my younger days (early to mid teens) while I didn’t go as far as some other fans, I was far too obsessed with Swiftgron for my own good and crossed a lot of lines because of it. But as I’ve aged I’ve realised two things. 

Firstly, it’s invasive as fuck and goes against my “treat people how you would like to be treated” way of life. I was talking to friends a few weeks ago and I mentioned that I would hate to be famous because I know that because of the way I am with my friends, I would have fans being like “[insert female friend here] isn’t really with [insert boyfriend of 5+ years here]. Clearly her and Jess are in a relationship! Here’s the receipts!” or “[insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] and [insert brother here] were never in a relationship in their teens. Jess and [insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] clearly were in love but couldn’t be together because of the age difference so [insert brother here] stepped in to be a good ally and said he was dating [insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] instead!”. And here’s the thing, I could probably laugh that off as a “oh those silly shippers” thing, but I also know that I have a few closeted friends who would be literally scared if a rumour like that got thrown around about them just because they associated with me. I have other friends, both queer and not, who would lose family over it. And in general, the remainder would be rightfully annoyed that their relationships were constantly being belittled and being accused of lying about them. And people can make the argument that they’re just trying to uncover the truth so Karlie and Taylor can live their “authentic” lives, but like it’s not your place to do that. It’s not anyone’s place but Karlie and/or (preferably and) Taylor’s if in fact they are in a relationship. If they are romantically involved and hiding it, they have done it for a reason and that should be respected.

Secondly, and somewhat tied to the first point; it doesn’t matter. Look I love Taylor, I do, but at the end of the day, whether Kaylor are together or not does not matter. Same with Taylor/Joe, same with Sweeran, same with Swiftgron and same with literally any other ship you can think of. The world is and always will be bigger than Taylor and her partner. Would Taylor showing off a female partner be nice given how big she is? Yes. But the truth of the matter is in a hundred years, almost nobody is going to give a fuck about who Taylor’s partners were and which songs are about who. Like I genuinely believe that who Taylor is with, male, female or otherwise, is never going to make history like just say Ellen and Portia. The world moves way too fast for that and to be honest, at least where I live, we’re not really in a moment of time where Taylor coming out would be seen as a big deal to most people for more than a few months. To her fans it obviously would be, and I get that, I really do. It would be incredible to think that I have something so formative in common with Taylor and could look up to her in another way. But at the end of the day, not only does Taylor’s partners not matter in the sense of I don’t know these people and it doesn’t and shouldn’t impact my life, but it’s not Taylor’s job to be that person a lot of fans want her to be. Obviously if she so chooses to be and is said person then I would welcome it with open arms, but I would rather use my time being that person and supporting artists like Janelle Monae that are that person than trying to force Taylor to be that person when at this point in time, she has chosen not to openly be that if she is at all.

Anyway, this is far longer than I intended it to be, but that’s basically all my thoughts on the topic.

[thesffcorner]

The Word Is Murder

I haven’t been conflicted on a book like this, in a while. The Word Is Murder is a murder-mystery novel written by Anthony Horowitz. It follows, Anthony Horowitz as he gets approached by a Detective named Hawthorne to write a book about a case he’s been called to consult on: the murder of a woman who just six hours prior, went to a funeral parlor and planned her own funeral. I read Anthony Horowitz’s previous book, The Magpie Murders, but before that I had been a massive fan of both his work for the Hercule Poirot and Midsomer Murders TV series. I had mixed feelings on The Magpie Murders; I thought the actual mystery was great, but there were many points in the book, where I felt like Horowitz used the characters as mouthpieces for his own opinions and frustrations with current politics, culture and the publishing industry, and I found I didn’t agree or like with a lot of what he said. So I’m having a real hard time discussing this book, because, unlike in Magpie Murders where you could make the argument that description is not endorsement, and that those are the opinions of the characters (even though one of the character seemed to be quite an obvious self-insert), here we are reading from the PoV of Anthony Horowitz. He has written himself into the story like John Byrne into The Trial of Galactus. It’s a literary device that creates interesting tension, because I was left wondering how much of the book was actual life, and how much was fiction. But it also created a massive problem, because it was very hard for me to distinguish between the opinions of the characters and the opinions of the author when they are literary telling me that I should view them as the same person. I am not in the habit of seeking out media that I know would piss me off. I am aware that homophobic, or racist, or xenophobic people exist, and I don’t think that authors should only be allowed to have them in their fiction as villains. But I’m just tired; tired of having to read about horrible men that I’m forced to sympathize with or excuse their behavior because they are ‘geniuses’; tired of uncritically presenting dangerous and violent ideas in fiction; tired of the unawareness of who your audience is, and alienating so many people because of callousness. Horowitz seems to really like layers in his book; there’s a lot of meta commentary in his work, not just on the genre of crime fiction, but also on the author as a person who is both responsible and part of the story. And unfortunately, to me this whole book read as one long meta on ‘problematic’ white men, and why we should just ignore their very obvious failings, and even sympathize with them because they are so good at their job. Before I go into that, let me talk about the actual plot of this book. This is a very classic, very Sherlock style murder mystery; there are many references to A Study in Scarlet, which at this point is probably the most overused and over-referenced Sherlock Holmes story. I will say that the references were relatively subtle, and the mystery was interesting enough to keep me engaged on its own level; I wanted to know who had killed Diana Cowper. I also appreciated that, like a good mystery writer, Horowitz had given us all of the clues to the case, and the misdirection came in how the characters interpreted the clues or what they considered important. I really liked the little argument between Hawthorne and Horowitz about what details are written into the book, and how mentioning or omitting the wrong thing can lead the audience into the wrong direction. The push and pull between writing something that is true and something that is compelling was very interesting, and I enjoyed the bickering between Hawthorne and Horowitz about that. Unfortunately, I have to say that I would have probably preferred this story, had Horowitz not written himself into the book. For starters, there’s a moment in the book, where he’s having a meeting with Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg, that’s such a shark jumping moment, I had to pause the book and skim it. It made me feel such a severe case of second hand embarrassment, not to mention how much I LOATHED that Horowitz allowed Hawthorne to bully him into doing what he wanted anyway, and said nothing about it. The older I get, the more I sincerely dislike when people try to modernize Sherlock and Watson’s dynamic. The early seasons of the BBC show got away with it, because early on, Sherlock wasn’t a complete prick to Watson, and what they were dealing with was on national security threat levels. Sherlock wasn’t just some random detective, he was solving an international conspiracy, and even still, I disliked how easily manipulated and spineless Watson was in a lot of scenarios. Here, it’s even worse, because this isn’t supposed to be fiction; it’s supposed to be real life, and having Horowitz blindly decide to go chase down a lead and then getting himself in mortal peril was ludicrous! Not to mention Hawthorne BLAMING Horowitz for interrupting him during an investigation and which leads to a character’s death because Hawthorne gets distracted (????) and then again blaming Horowitz, instead of just telling him not to go anywhere near the lead suspect or just simply letting him tag along to Canterbury! The other thing I really hated, were the actual characters themselves. We will get to Horowitz, but I want to talk about Hawthorne first. Hawthorne is supposed to be the Sherlock type character; I liked that he had a chameleon type personality where he would change his character based on who he was talking to; what I didn’t like was his casual xenophobia and violent homophobia. The xenophobia was quite subtle, but once you were looking for it, it was there. He treats the immigrant, queer and black characters supremely poorly, is a lot meaner to them and snappier, while being needlessly kind to the white, straight women. I also didn’t understand why Horowitz had grown to care for/like Hawthorne; Hawthorne was a dick to Horowitz the whole time, he hijacked his life, his free time, his house, ruined what was probably the most important meeting in Horowitz’s life, he almost got him killed because he refused to talk to him, and was needlessly and purposefully secretive about his life. I also hated all the little jabs he does at the expense of Horowitz’s writing; if you hate the way he writes so much, then why the fuck do you want him to write your book? Then we have the fact that Sherlock, the most famous asexual character in the literary canon, was turned into a divorced straight guy who is a raging homophobe, for no goddamn reason! Why was it necessary to give Hawthorne a wife and child? So he can act all indignant around the queer characters? So he has a justification for pushing a 60 year old man down the stairs with handcuffs? His homophobia is never properly addressed; it doesn’t influences the plot, he doesn’t grow and change, and I downright refuse to believe that Hawthorne is a real human being and any of this happened. He is entirely Horowitz’s creation, so why would you chose to write about a white homophobe, instead of someone, anyone else? What message are you sending to your readers, queer readers who like your work and stories? That we should gloss over Hawthorne foaming at the mouth because a rich man dares to be openly gay, and calling him a pervert and implying he’s a pedophile, because why… to humanize him? Implying that he must be closeted himself, because it’s 20 fucking 19, and the stereotype that all homophobes are closeted queers still won’t fucking die. Then we have Horowitz. I’m assuming making himself kind of dense and very overprotective of his writing was intentional, but even still this character just made no sense. I like that he was proactive, but why on Earth did he agree to write with Hawthorne? Why was it necessary that this was himself, and not a character? Because if I am supposed to believe that Horowitz the character, really is Horowitz the author, then I am left with the uncomfortable realization that he is someone who is willing to excuse and gloss over blatant homophobia, and xenophobia, just because Hawthorne is good at his job. Plenty of people are good at their jobs, and they don’t go around calling gay men perverts and pedophiles, or push cuffed suspects down the stairs! Even the limp anger Horowitz has when he realizes that Hawthorne is a homophobe, is not because he actually cares about those gay friends he has; how it would make them feel knowing that he’s glorifying a man who wants them dead or in a mental hospital. No, he’s worried writing about Hawthorne might ruin his career. Then he uses this as a way to lash out at the ‘media’ who supposedly took his statement that a landlord refusing to provide a service to a gay couple on religious basis, as what it actually is: homophobic. No, death threats are never called for, but you don’t get to pretend people are just sensitive, because you exposed either your ignorance or your bigotry for the press to see. Then we have the ending. Horowitz is just petty? I mean sure, he did almost die, though I wonder how he didn’t realize until that point that the woman at the signing was related to Hawthorne. The mystery was good. Horowitz’s writing is always good. But I can’t get behind any of the messages, and I do NOT want to support a series about a homophobe and his author friend. I will not be continuing the series and I don’t think I will read anything else from Horowitz again.

goodreads

[smokeybrand]

Coming Out

I have been pleasantly surprised by Infinite Frontier as of late. I really like Yara Flor and am genuinely enjoying her Wonder Girl series. Hell, it has even made Jon Kent interesting. I’m not a huge fan of DC comics, i don’t like how they set up their take on superheroes, but they do drop dope sh*t on the off occasion. The whole “Gods among Man” thing has never been compelling to me. How do you identify with Adonis? How does that reflect the world in which we actually live? I get that these characters have a genesis in a very different world and that high fantasy stuff was absolutely necessary but i was born long after that in a much more cynical, much more pessimistic time. I grew up reading the dark, gritty, re-imaginings of the Eighties and super edgy superficial nonsense of the Nineties. I was an adult during the resurgence of Marvel and their rather wholesome take on heroism after 9/11. I was there at, and the target audience of, what would eventually become the cinematic juggernaut that is the MCU. Some of the stuff DC released during that time was decent but it never hit me like the Marvel products. I love the mess that is The House of Ideas, even if One More Day exists. All that said, i am a massive Bat-fan. This blog is riddled with opinion essays about them. And, to no one’s surprise, this is another one. This pertains to the current shift in status quo for the third and current Robin, Tim Drake.

For those who don’t know, DC pulled the trigger and made Drake officially bisexual. I say, for those who don’t know, because those who actually keep up with the character have assumed as such for decades. Literal decades. Look, Tim is no one’s favorite Robin. Dude has been in this ridiculously nebulous state for almost as long as everyone assumed he was gay for Conner. Yeah, we all assumed that Tim Drake had the hots for Conner Kent, Nineties Superboy, even if it was a one-sided infatuation. They had more chemistry together than any of Tim’s female love interests and one of them was literally created specifically for that purpose. His romance with Stephanie Brown, The former Spoiler, a refrigerated Robin, and current Batgirl, is the one that defines Tim’s romance life because she was designed specifically to be Tim’s girlfriend. Because, around that time, questions began to be asked. Because that ConnerDrake energy was real strong This was during the late Nineties and early Aughts. People weren’t so accepting of the gays just yet, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy hadn’t aired just yet, so it was common practice to “chase the gay away” in US media. But, even then, those Drake and Brown never clicked. It always felt forced, like he was kissing his sister or something. It never felt like an organic relationship. Tim’s next big romance did WAY more to fan the flames of ConnerDrake than anything, which is hilarious, because this was a really transparent attempt to murder the notion altogether. Also, it’s really gross. After Conner got beat to death Doomsday style by Superboy-Prime, Tim and Cassie Sandsmark, Wonder Girl II, started hooking up. She and Conner had developed into one of the staple pairings at the time so, even though she was basically Conner’s widow at this point, DC opted to slam Tim into her for reasons. See? Gross. That relationship felt even more forced, like they were both just trying to reach out for whatever piece Conner had left within them. It was problematic at best and self-destructive at worst. Tim has had terrible luck with the ladies and everyone who knows, knows why. Personally, my favorite love interest for Tim was Jubilee but, alas, it wasn't meant to be...

There’s a ton of controversy around this “revelation”. Again, if you were paying attention, you wouldn’t be shocked or care that much. For us, Tim has been pretty gay for at least twenty years. but that’s not the world we live in. No, we exist in a society where people deny science and think social progress is a direct attack on their freedom. It’s dumb, just like the discourse around this reveal. Obviously, you have your requisite homophobic bigots up at arms about how comics are going “too woke”, even though the entirety of society is starting to reflect the reality that everyone under forty is super gay to some extent. Then there is the other side of that manic coin, the SJW Twatter Blue Hairs who breath outrage, demanding that you love, accept, and represent for Tim because if you don’t, you’re as much a homophobic bigot as the other side. Again, this sh*t is dumb, especially when you take into account a lot of these assholes having this argument, aren’t arguing on the merits of Tim as a character. They’re arguing in to the void over some ill-conceived culture war. “Turning the frogs gay” type bullsh*t. There is a very real chance they don’t know anything about Tim from before the nu52 happened. Tim has been around since the Eighties. That’s a lot of time to miss with a character you have such a zealous hate or love for. Like i said, it’s all just dumb as f*ck. As long as it fits the character and is written in earnest, let’s see where this goes. As a bisexual character, if it doesn’t work, you can just shoehorn a vagina in there and It’ll be fine. Tim has had much worse over the years.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm firmly in the camp that Tim has been gay for Conner since ninety-eight. I don’t care about stuff like that, though, so it has never been a big deal to me. interestingly enough, when i read the “coming out��� story, i thought it made perfect sense for the character. It read like a proper Tim Drake narrative. It read like something Time Drake would struggle to sus out. Kid has always been the smartest one in the room but, at the same time, completely oblivious to his own feelings. That’s why it’s so easy for people who know the character to accept this affirmation of his queerness. It’s always been there, right under the surface, waiting to breach. What i mean is that Tim being made officially queer was only a matter of time. Because he is queer. Because he is bisexual. Because he’s probably gay. I, personally, think Tim is gay but bi is cool for now. I don’t think Conner is gay for Tim. That feels super platonic to me so Tim should probably pass on that relationship or, at least, that’s how i would write it. I mean, never say never, specially with the current Conner in the books, but the one i remember had definitely transitioned into being more a mini-Clark and Clark has been shown to love the ladies. Making Conner gay is a great way to differentiate the two but that feels like disingenuous pandering. Besides, there are heavy curiosity vibes between the current Superboy, Jon Kent, and Bruce Wayne’s biological son, Damian. They feel like a couple but that can go either way. We’ll see what happens in another twenty years, i guess.

[cancatervation]

word vomit re: the mess Australians are in re: marriage equality

Hello and welcome to a thought dump from a person in a loving, nearly 17-month-old same sex relationship. I often tell myself I’m above making these basic sorts of posts and yet here I am!!!!!!!

To begin: I am sympathetic to those who take the position that marriage as an institution is bad. Marriage has traditionally been used to objectify and disenfranchise women. It has been used as a tool to promulgate the false idea of “family values”. It reinforces the incorrect notion that gender is binary. It has been used to validate certain forms of relationship and not others. It has turned into a consumerist mess that, when you remove yourself from the supposed romance for a minute, looks like a whole lot of waste. Relatedly, it has and will continue to amplify the most grotesque aspects of white wealth.

Yet I am also sympathetic to the idea that the institution of marriage is not immutable. It has changed and has the capacity to change again. “Marriage” can represent something as ostensibly simple as making a commitment to another consenting person that you do and will love them and you want to be with them forever, through good times and bad. What you do from thereon out is up to you.

Of course, you can love your partner without the wedding, certificate and legal status. But when you do love your partner and can’t ever hope to have those things it feels like there is a circle and you are not allowed to stand in it. It feels demeaning and rude. It is as though your relationship is not important, as though the love you feel for your partner is not as worthy of validation as the love a heterosexual person feels for their partner.

I don’t believe marriage equality will be the massive catalyst that transforms notions of queer identity such that us non-straight people will all become dull conformists, facsimiles of the people that have hated and marginalised us for so long. Frankly this is already happening and anyone who’s been privy to the racism and sexism that pervades much of the white gay community will know this well.

What I do think is that marriage equality will make it easier for queer people to prove the existence of their relationship to certain organisations. I think it will mean that young queer people will feel more confident about expressing their sexuality to others, including their families. I think it will start positive conversations and might assist with addressing LGBTQI health issues or promoting trans rights or developing high school programs to deal with bullying of queer students or any number of other things affecting this community that have been pushed to the background because this matter apparently can’t be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Marriage equality has imperfections, but I think it will do more good than bad, and so I think we should have it.

Briefly, to dispel some myths that apparently require dispelling to members of the Australian media and commentariat:

Some people marry to have children. That is fine, though silly if it is their only reason. Some people marry for other reasons. That is fine also. Some people who cannot have children get married. Having children is not, and never has been, the sole purpose of marriage. A person can have children without being married, or even without a partner. Further, people in same-sex relationships are able to have children, and have been doing so for some time.

A child that does not have a “mother” and a “father” is no worse off than a child that does. There is no evidence that suggests this to be the case. A person’s parenting style should not be informed by traditional notions of gender.

LGBTQI people are not paedophiles. I can’t believe I have to write that.

Marriage equality will not be a “stepping stone” to bestiality, incest or child marriage. The Marriage Act specifies that a marriage must be entered into voluntarily. There is no suggestion that this should ever change. Marriages between a person and an animal, child, toaster, garbage bin, et cetera, are not between two consenting individuals and thus should never be lawful.

“Marriage has always been between a man and a woman so that’s the way it should be” is a line many politicians have trotted out over the last decade or so. I consider this to be an incredibly close-minded argument. It has already been established that the function of marriage in society has changed over time, and so the idea that it can change again should be considered uncontroversial. Further, amendments to the Marriage Act which stipulated that marriages in Australia were to be between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others were made only thirteen years ago, so to suggest that it’s “always been this way” is farcical.

“Marriage equality is forbidden by the Bible” is an argument that holds no merit. One does not have to read or understand the Bible to get married in Australia. Further, 30% of Australians selected “no religion” when asked about their religious beliefs in the 2016 census. To suggest that laws not be enacted because of certain interpretations of religious texts willfully ignores the nature of the Australian electorate - one that is increasingly disinterested in religion.

Further to this, it is a myth that marriage equality necessarily diminishes freedom of religion. In fact, the marriage equality bill put forward by renegade LNP members last week contained broad concessions to religious celebrants with respect to Australian anti-discrimination laws.

“Marriage equality doesn’t affect many people and is not important” is an untruth. Marriage equality will affect many LGBTQI Australians who may currently be in relationships, or who may enter into one in the future. It will also impact their families, friends, colleagues and allies. As I’ve also mentioned, it might open up the floodgates for broader societal change. Conversely, if it really were true that marriage equality is a fringe issue, then why not let it be law and do away with all the endless hand-wringing?

All this is really prelude, because the existence of majority support for marriage equality in Australia is long established and uncontroversial and I can’t imagine anyone reading this is suddenly having their eyes opened and is changing their mind. What has me writing this post is the absurd position Australians find themselves in at present, namely one where our government intends to poll Australian voters using the postal service as to whether or not marriage equality should be enshrined in our law.

Why is this course of action bad? Well, *clears throat*:

The postal plebiscite forms will be sent out it in mid-September and must be submitted by early November. That’s a couple of months of bigoted knobs expressing hateful views in the media, trying to influence your vote, while you have the ballot paper sitting on your kitchen table. A couple of months of LGBTQI people enduring discussion about the legitimacy of their relationships at home, at work, at school, in bars, on the tram, everywhere. A couple of months of extreme stress and anxiety that need not occur.

Voting in the postal plebiscite will not be compulsory, so who knows how many people will even bother to vote, and who knows how many votes the government is expecting for it to have any influence on their decision making.

The voting will be done by post. Post is not the communication method of choice for young people in Australia. People may miss their ballot papers if they have moved to a new house recently or don’t look at their mail properly. Australia Post has proved itself time and again to be unreliable.

The voting will be counted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, rather than the Australian Electoral Commission, the authority that one would expect to be equipped to deal with something like this. Why this is, I have absolutely no idea.

Perhaps most significant: even if millions of votes come in with an overwhelming majority, the government is still not bound to enact legislation to allow marriage equality. If the “yes” vote were to achieve a majority, a marriage equality bill will be put forward to be debated in parliament, and members will be permitted to follow their conscience when voting, rather than align with their party’s position. This is literally something that could happen if there were no plebiscite at all.

I know of no valid reason as to why marriage equality cannot be dealt with immediately by members of parliament. Members of parliament introduce bills, debate them, and make laws all the time. That is, indeed, the function of parliament.  There was no plebiscite to change the Marriage Act in 2004. There is no reason why all eligible Australian voters need to have a say on this particular issue.  The government’s justification for the plebiscite is that it had promised one on marriage equality prior to the most recent federal election, and so it has no mandate to debate the issue in parliament without a plebiscite first. This is an extraordinary position to maintain, given that anyone who tried to argue that the last federal election was a pseudo-marriage equality plebiscite would likely be laughed at, and that there are myriad instances of the current government’s inability to keep its own election promises. 

It will cost lots of money. Currently the estimate is $AUD122 million. (!!!!!!) $122 million spent on an opinion poll that may ultimately have no bearing on a decision that must be made by members of parliament. What a fucking crock.

I really am just so, so tired, so fed up with the contempt shown for rainbow families, so frustrated by the meddling and dilly-dallying led by members of parliament, who happen to have no vested interest in this law, projecting their own prejudices on us daily and being cheered on by disciples of Rupert Murdoch. This relentless saga is but one of the examples of extraordinary incompetence of this government. I know, deep down, that the law will change eventually and that I won’t have to huff and puff on this issue any longer. But what about people in same-sex relationships with dying family members who want to see their relatives marry? Or what about people in same-sex relationships who are terminally ill and have always wanted to marry their partner? What about queer school kids who will now have to endure bigoted opinions every day from broadcast media, which filter down to their families and their peers? What effect will that have on their mental health? What about all the other things this government is doing badly, like failing to tackle the housing crisis or listen to indigenous people? What about the fact that the Australian government is locking people up in concentration camps in remote foreign islands and barely batting an eyelid when they start dying? When does all that end?

[gamexplained-blog]

The Current State of Affairs of Identity Politics in Gaming: A Canablization of the Industry

Hey everybody! Before starting this post, I want to give a very fair warning that this post is going to be reminiscent of a post a couple weeks ago. Yes, I will be talking about politics again. However, I’m hoping and praying that it will be in a more positive light. After taking a couple more classes, thanks to my Professor Denise Ayo, I feel comfortable in calling myself liberal. Granted, it’s not to an extreme extent where I’m busting down people’s doors and ascribing “privilege” to any individual who is different than me in a neo-liberal or “leftist” fashion. I do, however, feel far more comfortable and open to understanding and recognizing where privilege occurs beyond just the obvious category of wealth. I even recognize some of my own privileges in certain regards and will continue to understand more and more of these kinds injustices. However, one thing does remain certain in my mind: regardless of any type of privilege, whether it be ascribed or evidential, people should treat each other with love and kindness regardless. Now with that sappy explanation out of the way, let’s jump into this week’s reading.

For this week, the class was tasked with reading  Scalzi, “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” (2012) and I implore you to read it for the sake of context as I will be talking about it at length in this post and will be difficult to understand without that background knowledge. In this post, Scalzi sets up a metaphor of “The Real World” in which people who play have no agency over the difficulty they play at and it is ascribed to their identity. Granted, people on harder difficulty settings are able to be more successful than individuals on lower difficulty settings, but the settings themselves are defaulted and immutable. He sets up an interesting metaphor that is very easily digestible...in terms of physically reading. On personal matters, one’s mileage may vary. Personally, for me, this post was ludicrously taxing to read for multiple reasons which I hope can explain why it was so controversial and moreover had such a volatile response (and don’t worry, I’m going to relate this to gaming later down the road).

The first, and quite honestly biggest, point of contention is how it's written is incredibly condescending. If you start off your post/rant/blog or whatever with “I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men” then you have immediately done an injustice of alienating the people you are trying to make your allies. This type of language makes my soul cry every single time I see it when it comes to identity politics because it feels like yet another proof as to people being so at the ready to not only make them the other but to such a degree that is tonally dehumanizing. To use the above example, the phrasing feels deliberately malicious (as proven later with the later comparison to vampires) because it sets up straight white men as a collective that deserves to be talked down to like their inferior toddlers of some sort who deserve a spanking. He does have a very fair argument in the regard that there is a tendency for many straight white men to just be unaware or uneducated of concepts of privilege that need help in order to understand and can and will be better off if they are. In fact, there are plenty who desperately need said education because they have done wrong things in their life because they have deliberately refused to be empathetic to marginalized groups of people or have refused to recognize certain privileges. However, to immediately go the attack and drill that anger throughout the whole point does nothing more than push those individuals further from you and further put them into an “other” category

Secondly, the huge issue fundamentally with the post is the allegory used itself: it almost feels like a cheat. Before I begin, I want to say that I agree with a whole lot of what Scalzi says, though I don’t condone the condescending language and methodology he uses in the post. I am a believer that many people, because of their identity, are unfortunately worse off than other individuals. However, the huge problem with the analogy of the MMO RPG “The Real World” is that in order to accept the argument and recognize the validity that has, the reader has to outright accept the premises at face value without question. Scalzi might do a good job as characterizing the difference performance in the game and the execution of being in certain identities, but he never explains as to why those things are. No straight white man is going to understand why he has privilege if you don’t point to specific examples or pieces of evidence, especially when the assertions of the premises are being done in such a volatile way. He might be right about the premises, but for his argument to make sense, he has to explain why he is right. Otherwise, that audience he may want to rope in for allyship isn’t going to want to join him and is likely to push themselves even further. Which leads me to allyship in gaming.

A huge problem with the communication of identity politics in gaming is that it comes heavy-handed. From my own perspective, as I had mentioned previously before, I had never thought that gaming had anything to do with politics or identity. I just thought they were fun things to play and enjoy with friends. A larger community to be a part of. So a few weeks ago, if someone is was going to come up to me and say that much of gaming culture or video games are explicitly sexist or racist, I’d be incredibly confused and honestly pretty mad especially if they then go and ascribe my defense of said games to my own identity. And I would even more so feel worse if I saw a game or franchise that I hold in my heart dearly to be changed for a political narrative or agenda that seems completely irrelevant to the game. This is the terrible push and pull for much of the male gamer side of the coin. In all honesty, much of the time it feels as though male gamers are being accused of horrible things they didn’t do because a massive collection of teenage boys ruined the gaming industry by saying and doing horribly offensive things in online multiplayer games. Being accused of something you aren’t is one of them most frustrating things to deal with. And this goes both ways! I imagine there are plenty minority individuals who are just as easily painted with a similar brush by male games as a form of counterculture by labeling them as “neoliberal fascists” that want to censor perfectly fine games regardless of them being offensive or not. In all honesty, I used to be one of those people in high school who would make those kinds of accusations because I wasn’t educated enough on the experience of the other side or rather that my mind was too closed as to have the empathy to open up to those people and understand their plight. This is a big problem with these conversations: people are too afraid of admitting they’re wrong. Even I was still struggling with this until a couple weeks ago!

But on a lighter note, this is why I love gaming so much, Borderlands 2 in particular. Granted, the game does serve some of my own values or interests of liking violent gameplay and dark and offensive humor. At the root of the game, it potentially provides an equal opportunity for everyone to play. While I can’t speak for online multiplayer games, as there are plenty of problematic issues in that vein, nothing is stopping an individual from actually playing a game other than how much that person may internalize the agendas other people throw at them. Sure, a female could absolutely internalize the harassment of pubescent teen boys when they shout “haha gamer girl” at her, leading her to stop gaming altogether. Or, the more likely scenario, she plays the single player game she loves to play anyways for the sake of her own self-interest and happiness. I believe on of the biggest misconceptions for many gamers is that if the games they love change, they won’t love them anymore. Not for the sake of excluding any oppressed group or for deliberate malice, but because their afraid that the good memories and experiences they have since childhood on their consoles are going to be rendered mute. But that’s the beauty of video games: they really can be a force of uniform good. No game is going to kick you out because you’re female, colored, or queer. I sure wouldn’t play Borderlands 2 if it did that. You can play it regardless of your identity and ascribe your own personal value and meaning to it how you want it and that’s okay! Please everybody just be kind to one another! And just remember two important notes. Just because someone takes part of a game you find problematic, doesn’t mean they’re a bigot. And just because a person thinks that the game you play is problematic, doesn’t mean they’re calling you a bigot. Peace and love friends! Game with an open mind and an open heart!

[adambstingus]

How Sex Obsessed Culture Can Ruin Men’s Idea Of Sex

One thing that’s always bothered me is the weird-ass way that modern society sets up sex as its biggest selling point, while at the same time making its audience feel completely inadequate. I’m not just talking about marketing. Our entire culture is built upon that foundation, and it’s like watching a cannibal eating himself from the feet up. “You are woefully repulsive. But you don’t have to be! Buy our product, adopt our philosophy, join our cause.”

This subject is usually presented as a massive problem for women, and it absolutely is, but it’s often assumed that men are immune to its negative effects. I’m not trying to downplay or demean the hardships that women go through where this subject is concerned — I personally believe they have it exponentially harder than men in this area. Women don’t need or want one of the biggest issues in their lives “mansplained” to them. I just happen to relate to this topic, and since I’m a man, the reasoning behind my own issues are tilted in a different direction. I want to show you what it looks like when these problems manifest on the boner end of the spectrum.

You don’t want to see the wide shot of that.

To understand how it can snowball into such a huge issue, you first have to understand a basic concept in why we think the way we do. Before reading another sentence, stop and come up with ten words or short phrases to describe who or what you are.

“Donglord” isn’t a real word. Find a replacement and then continue reading.

The list you came up with likely ranges from the very basic “man” or “woman,” to more specific descriptions like “creative” or “caring” or “funk master.” When we define ourselves as individuals, we’re assigning worth by positioning ourselves as uniquely as possible. So, for example, if I start at the base, I can say, “I am a human.” I am a part of the whole. When I move up a level, I can assign gender, which separates me from that whole. I become a bit more unique, but still a part of a massive group. I’m also tall, which puts me in a still more specific group. I’m an editor. I’m a joker. I’m a smoker. I’m a midnight toker. And on and on, until I become unique.

When someone wants to emotionally destroy you, they often go for those obvious traits, because they’re easy pickings. But strangely, that doesn’t do much damage. If they convince you that you’re not actually creative, it sucks, but it’s not catastrophic. The biggest damage comes when they attack your foundation. If they can convince you that you’re not a human, that’s devastating, because they’ve just stripped away all of your value and rendered those unique traits pointless. Watch any argument against the LGBT community, or women, or minorities, and you’ll see that in action. That’s Asshole Tactics 101.

This is why the idea of “manhood” is so important to men, even if it’s just on a subconscious level. “Man” is the very first branch on that amoebic divide that gives us value. It is the foundation of our worth as individuals. I’m not talking about machismo or any of that dumb horseshit. If someone convinces us that we’re not “men,” we crumble. It’s the same with women. “You’re a fat, ugly pig. You’re built like a 12-year-old boy.”

“Stop! Your words … they burn!”

This is the entire basis for how the issue of sex affects men. It’s that foundation that sex culture pecks away at, purposely or not, and it can change a healthy libido into an anxiety-ridden ball of neurotic fear.

How It Starts

When I was a kid, porn was a physical medium that people stashed away in some kid-safe hiding spot, like the top shelf of a closet or inside some huge broccoli. Eventually, all children gave that “kid-safe” part the finger and found the stash anyway. Or in my case, it was just flat-out presented to me by friends and family members. One of my uncles showed me my first hardcore magazine at age three. I didn’t understand anything I was seeing, but I knew it was taboo, and I felt like I was being let into some sort of secret adult club. It was awesome, if gross and confusing.

I’ve mentioned before that my dad showed me my first porn video at age six. That was his method of teaching me what sex was, and when he was caught doing that by my grandma, they got into a huge argument. His defense was that he didn’t want me or my brother to “grow up to be queers.” Most of my family’s worldview can be boiled down to that scenario.

Now go get me another beer, and don’t you come back without a boner!

Whether the intentions are as creepy as my experiences or as “innocent” as two kids pulling up PornHub on a laptop in their tree house and giggling because “Tee-hee, boobs,” seeing this kind of sexual content at a young age warps your entire view of sex. Your first impression is seeing people jamming appendages in each others’ poop and pee holes. Women moaning in gape-mouthed ecstasy while two guys ejaculate on her face. Freak-dick men jamming their rods down a woman’s throat until she damn near pukes. But there’s something even weirder than that, which nobody ever talks about …

Most sex scenes in a video are based on two people who have just met. From an adult perspective that makes sense, because we didn’t pull up a porn video to watch people go through dating and commitment and forging a relationship. We came there for the dirty fucking. But for a kid whose only sexual education is coming from these videos, the lesson he takes away is: When you see someone you want to bone, just walk up to her, whip out your dick, and put your hand up her skirt. According to Ass Blaster 7, there is no such thing as consequences. And rejection doesn’t exist in the porn world at all. There is only, “Spot who you want to fuck, then walk over there and fuck her.”

Let’s not forget that for the first dozen or more years of your life, the idea of sex is just plain gross. It’s embarrassing to talk about and disgusting to think about. “I’m expected to do that? Pee comes out of there!” Still, adults tell you that one day you’ll change your mind — which, to a kid, is like telling them that one day they’ll enjoy swimming in raw sewage. At that age, those aren’t words of wisdom; they’re words of warning. That expectation becomes a seed of fear.

“Screw this, I’m outtie.”

It Perpetuates From There

As you approach your teen years, you start to notice that every facet of life has a sexual undertone. Movies, TV shows, music, jokes, fashion, video games … everything is laced with it. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Porky’s, American Pie (which is basically Porky’s Part 5). Animal House is widely considered to be one of the greatest comedies of all time. When I was growing up, every music video was filled with strippers undulating while shitty bands played their shitty songs.

When you’re young and constantly horny, you buy into all of that. Pop music has always been aimed at teenagers, which is why it isn’t all that surprising that modern concerts look like strip bars. Why talented female singers spend a creepy amount of time bent over with their asses pointed at the audience. It’s why huge magazines and entertainment news shows can get away with so many stories about the current shape and condition of an actor’s body.

You’re inundated with sex at every corner, and the message to guys is, “If you’re not having sex, you are not a man. You are worthless and weak.” The irony is, as much as you’re bombarded with sex, and as important as they make it sound, you’re punished for talking about it. When I was four years old, my dad taught me to draw dicks because he thought it was hilarious. But when I did that on my own, I got yelled at and my drawing stuff was taken away. My uncles told me dirty jokes constantly when I was a teen, but if I told them one, I’d get chastised for it.

Sex is such a huge part of mainstream culture that if you’re not doing it, you feel like there’s something wrong with you. Eventually, it becomes a point of anxiety. Especially when you see actors and musicians in shots where women are throwing themselves at them (which was every video in the ’80s and ’90s).

You’re made to feel like if you’re cool enough and worthy enough, sex will be presented to you on a silver platter, like some sort of karmic reward. When that doesn’t happen, you feel like an ugly, unwanted piece of shit. You start to resent the idea of sex, because it’s been made clear by the lack of female attention that you’re not good enough to have it. And even though there has been no interaction between you and those girls, their lack of approach feels like rejection. You are not a man. You are not desirable. You have no worth. You are a Chad.

And the sexual anxiety climbs another rung.

Being A Teenager Makes It So Much Worse

So now you’re morphing into sexual maturity, and every urge and emotion has gone nuclear. Happiness is manic. Sadness is depression. Your mom is questioning your diet because you’ve taken five long bathroom trips today, but she doesn’t realize you’re not exactly pooping in there. It’s a confusing, frustrating mess, but you cope.

Meanwhile, the world is just starting to pummel you with its ridiculous bullshit. As a guy, you’re expected to lose your virginity at a disturbingly young age. Being a virgin past your teen years is considered sacrilege. My dad was so concerned about my virginity that he wanted to get me a prostitute at age 13. When I refused, he lost his shit, and after screaming at me for a while, finally landed on his old go-to: “What are you, a fucking queer?!”

“What’d I tell you about that beer, boy? Good job on the boner, though.”

Again, I understand that exchanges like that aren’t normal, and it most definitely played a large part in my eventual fear of sex. But even outside of that dysfunctional family setting, guys run into unhealthy pressure constantly. If your male friends find out you’re a virgin, you are relentlessly mocked until you finally give in and lie about having been laid. That’s where that tired old joke comes from: “You wouldn’t know her; she’s from Canada.” Guys get so embarrassed that they haven’t been laid by age 15 that they just want the bullshit to stop.

See, girls are taught that sex is the worst thing you could do. Having sex, especially with multiple partners, is something to be ashamed about. Do that and you’re a slut. Boys are taught that it’s the gateway to manhood. Not having sex is something to be ashamed about. It means you’re still a boy. And “boy” is emotional and social death.

When you’re a teenage male, that pressure from your friends is nonstop. Every conversation tightly revolves around sex, and your manhood is judged by not only how often you have it, but how many different girls you’ve banged. It’s everything. “I fucked this girl last week. Who are you fucking? How many times did you fuck this week? My girlfriend and I fucked for 6,000 hours last Saturday. Look at that slut over there. I’d fuck the shit out of her. But her friend is gross. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick. OH GOD, WHY ARE YOU PUNCHING ME?!”

Wait, why am I still in high school at 45?

So now the expectations have built up to the point where you recoil from talking to your friends because you know the conversation is going to come up. So not only does the conversation jump start your sexual anxiety, but the mere thought of talking about it does.

Another rung.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/how-sex-obsessed-culture-can-ruin-mens-idea-of-sex/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184053538897

[allofbeercom]

How Sex Obsessed Culture Can Ruin Men’s Idea Of Sex

One thing that’s always bothered me is the weird-ass way that modern society sets up sex as its biggest selling point, while at the same time making its audience feel completely inadequate. I’m not just talking about marketing. Our entire culture is built upon that foundation, and it’s like watching a cannibal eating himself from the feet up. “You are woefully repulsive. But you don’t have to be! Buy our product, adopt our philosophy, join our cause.”

This subject is usually presented as a massive problem for women, and it absolutely is, but it’s often assumed that men are immune to its negative effects. I’m not trying to downplay or demean the hardships that women go through where this subject is concerned — I personally believe they have it exponentially harder than men in this area. Women don’t need or want one of the biggest issues in their lives “mansplained” to them. I just happen to relate to this topic, and since I’m a man, the reasoning behind my own issues are tilted in a different direction. I want to show you what it looks like when these problems manifest on the boner end of the spectrum.

You don’t want to see the wide shot of that.

To understand how it can snowball into such a huge issue, you first have to understand a basic concept in why we think the way we do. Before reading another sentence, stop and come up with ten words or short phrases to describe who or what you are.

“Donglord” isn’t a real word. Find a replacement and then continue reading.

The list you came up with likely ranges from the very basic “man” or “woman,” to more specific descriptions like “creative” or “caring” or “funk master.” When we define ourselves as individuals, we’re assigning worth by positioning ourselves as uniquely as possible. So, for example, if I start at the base, I can say, “I am a human.” I am a part of the whole. When I move up a level, I can assign gender, which separates me from that whole. I become a bit more unique, but still a part of a massive group. I’m also tall, which puts me in a still more specific group. I’m an editor. I’m a joker. I’m a smoker. I’m a midnight toker. And on and on, until I become unique.

When someone wants to emotionally destroy you, they often go for those obvious traits, because they’re easy pickings. But strangely, that doesn’t do much damage. If they convince you that you’re not actually creative, it sucks, but it’s not catastrophic. The biggest damage comes when they attack your foundation. If they can convince you that you’re not a human, that’s devastating, because they’ve just stripped away all of your value and rendered those unique traits pointless. Watch any argument against the LGBT community, or women, or minorities, and you’ll see that in action. That’s Asshole Tactics 101.

This is why the idea of “manhood” is so important to men, even if it’s just on a subconscious level. “Man” is the very first branch on that amoebic divide that gives us value. It is the foundation of our worth as individuals. I’m not talking about machismo or any of that dumb horseshit. If someone convinces us that we’re not “men,” we crumble. It’s the same with women. “You’re a fat, ugly pig. You’re built like a 12-year-old boy.”

“Stop! Your words … they burn!���

This is the entire basis for how the issue of sex affects men. It’s that foundation that sex culture pecks away at, purposely or not, and it can change a healthy libido into an anxiety-ridden ball of neurotic fear.

How It Starts

When I was a kid, porn was a physical medium that people stashed away in some kid-safe hiding spot, like the top shelf of a closet or inside some huge broccoli. Eventually, all children gave that “kid-safe” part the finger and found the stash anyway. Or in my case, it was just flat-out presented to me by friends and family members. One of my uncles showed me my first hardcore magazine at age three. I didn’t understand anything I was seeing, but I knew it was taboo, and I felt like I was being let into some sort of secret adult club. It was awesome, if gross and confusing.

I’ve mentioned before that my dad showed me my first porn video at age six. That was his method of teaching me what sex was, and when he was caught doing that by my grandma, they got into a huge argument. His defense was that he didn’t want me or my brother to “grow up to be queers.” Most of my family’s worldview can be boiled down to that scenario.

Now go get me another beer, and don’t you come back without a boner!

Whether the intentions are as creepy as my experiences or as “innocent” as two kids pulling up PornHub on a laptop in their tree house and giggling because “Tee-hee, boobs,” seeing this kind of sexual content at a young age warps your entire view of sex. Your first impression is seeing people jamming appendages in each others’ poop and pee holes. Women moaning in gape-mouthed ecstasy while two guys ejaculate on her face. Freak-dick men jamming their rods down a woman’s throat until she damn near pukes. But there’s something even weirder than that, which nobody ever talks about …

Most sex scenes in a video are based on two people who have just met. From an adult perspective that makes sense, because we didn’t pull up a porn video to watch people go through dating and commitment and forging a relationship. We came there for the dirty fucking. But for a kid whose only sexual education is coming from these videos, the lesson he takes away is: When you see someone you want to bone, just walk up to her, whip out your dick, and put your hand up her skirt. According to Ass Blaster 7, there is no such thing as consequences. And rejection doesn’t exist in the porn world at all. There is only, “Spot who you want to fuck, then walk over there and fuck her.”

Let’s not forget that for the first dozen or more years of your life, the idea of sex is just plain gross. It’s embarrassing to talk about and disgusting to think about. “I’m expected to do that? Pee comes out of there!” Still, adults tell you that one day you’ll change your mind — which, to a kid, is like telling them that one day they’ll enjoy swimming in raw sewage. At that age, those aren’t words of wisdom; they’re words of warning. That expectation becomes a seed of fear.

“Screw this, I’m outtie.”

It Perpetuates From There

As you approach your teen years, you start to notice that every facet of life has a sexual undertone. Movies, TV shows, music, jokes, fashion, video games … everything is laced with it. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Porky’s, American Pie (which is basically Porky’s Part 5). Animal House is widely considered to be one of the greatest comedies of all time. When I was growing up, every music video was filled with strippers undulating while shitty bands played their shitty songs.

When you’re young and constantly horny, you buy into all of that. Pop music has always been aimed at teenagers, which is why it isn’t all that surprising that modern concerts look like strip bars. Why talented female singers spend a creepy amount of time bent over with their asses pointed at the audience. It’s why huge magazines and entertainment news shows can get away with so many stories about the current shape and condition of an actor’s body.

You’re inundated with sex at every corner, and the message to guys is, “If you’re not having sex, you are not a man. You are worthless and weak.” The irony is, as much as you’re bombarded with sex, and as important as they make it sound, you’re punished for talking about it. When I was four years old, my dad taught me to draw dicks because he thought it was hilarious. But when I did that on my own, I got yelled at and my drawing stuff was taken away. My uncles told me dirty jokes constantly when I was a teen, but if I told them one, I’d get chastised for it.

Sex is such a huge part of mainstream culture that if you’re not doing it, you feel like there’s something wrong with you. Eventually, it becomes a point of anxiety. Especially when you see actors and musicians in shots where women are throwing themselves at them (which was every video in the ’80s and ’90s).

You’re made to feel like if you’re cool enough and worthy enough, sex will be presented to you on a silver platter, like some sort of karmic reward. When that doesn’t happen, you feel like an ugly, unwanted piece of shit. You start to resent the idea of sex, because it’s been made clear by the lack of female attention that you’re not good enough to have it. And even though there has been no interaction between you and those girls, their lack of approach feels like rejection. You are not a man. You are not desirable. You have no worth. You are a Chad.

And the sexual anxiety climbs another rung.

Being A Teenager Makes It So Much Worse

So now you’re morphing into sexual maturity, and every urge and emotion has gone nuclear. Happiness is manic. Sadness is depression. Your mom is questioning your diet because you’ve taken five long bathroom trips today, but she doesn’t realize you’re not exactly pooping in there. It’s a confusing, frustrating mess, but you cope.

Meanwhile, the world is just starting to pummel you with its ridiculous bullshit. As a guy, you’re expected to lose your virginity at a disturbingly young age. Being a virgin past your teen years is considered sacrilege. My dad was so concerned about my virginity that he wanted to get me a prostitute at age 13. When I refused, he lost his shit, and after screaming at me for a while, finally landed on his old go-to: “What are you, a fucking queer?!”

“What’d I tell you about that beer, boy? Good job on the boner, though.”

Again, I understand that exchanges like that aren’t normal, and it most definitely played a large part in my eventual fear of sex. But even outside of that dysfunctional family setting, guys run into unhealthy pressure constantly. If your male friends find out you’re a virgin, you are relentlessly mocked until you finally give in and lie about having been laid. That’s where that tired old joke comes from: “You wouldn’t know her; she’s from Canada.” Guys get so embarrassed that they haven’t been laid by age 15 that they just want the bullshit to stop.

See, girls are taught that sex is the worst thing you could do. Having sex, especially with multiple partners, is something to be ashamed about. Do that and you’re a slut. Boys are taught that it’s the gateway to manhood. Not having sex is something to be ashamed about. It means you’re still a boy. And “boy” is emotional and social death.

When you’re a teenage male, that pressure from your friends is nonstop. Every conversation tightly revolves around sex, and your manhood is judged by not only how often you have it, but how many different girls you’ve banged. It’s everything. “I fucked this girl last week. Who are you fucking? How many times did you fuck this week? My girlfriend and I fucked for 6,000 hours last Saturday. Look at that slut over there. I’d fuck the shit out of her. But her friend is gross. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick. OH GOD, WHY ARE YOU PUNCHING ME?!”

Wait, why am I still in high school at 45?

So now the expectations have built up to the point where you recoil from talking to your friends because you know the conversation is going to come up. So not only does the conversation jump start your sexual anxiety, but the mere thought of talking about it does.

Another rung.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/how-sex-obsessed-culture-can-ruin-mens-idea-of-sex/