My favorite thing about The Pitt: once (1x) Mel told Langdon that autistic people are sensitive to light and sound, and even after not seeing her or being in a hospital for 10 months, he still remembers and does it whenever he thinks a patient might be susceptible
you ever think about how people take stock photos thinking they are going to like go into medical textbooks or be used for some professional thing....and most end up just used for memes?
let me paraphrase an exchange that you’ve almost certainly seen play out many times by now:
“We can’t let the platforms we use bow to the pressure to ban porn, because conservatives consider queer existence itself to be inherently pornographic. They’ll use it as an excuse to ban all queer content.”
“That’s true, but don’t forget: porn is art, and art has a right to exist even if it is unwholesome smut.”
i agree completely with both of these points, for the record. they’re not mutually exclusive, and they are both relevant, persuasive reasons to support porn. they’re the only reasons you need, honestly. these points alone suffice for a robust defense of pornography!
i want to talk about something else, though.
i want to tell you what gets me about all this.
every time we create and enforce restrictions on pornography, we reify the idea of “pornography” as a meaningful and obligatory category. we are forced to say, for any given work of art, whether it is or isn’t pornography. if it is, we restrict it: we hide it away, we place odious limitations on where it can be seen and sold, and we never, ever talk about it in polite company.
but what about art that doesn’t fit neatly into one of these two boxes?
well, the answer is that, for the most part... it doesn’t get made! it’s just too risky. the benefits of making art in the public sphere are too huge to risk incorporating content or themes that might get your art labeled pornographic. and if you’ve decided from the get-go that you are making adult content, then there’s less than no incentive to waste your time and energy creating art that doesn’t fit cleanly into the box of “pornography”, because your opportunities to reach people outside of that box are so limited.
this sucks ass!!!
eroticism by and for itself is great. but art can be anything. art can be erotic among other things. imagine if you were only allowed to eat frosting straight out of the packet. imagine if you never got to taste a cake, because there’s massive financial disincentives to combine bread and frosting into one foodstuff!
anyone who’s into romance can tell you exactly how cathartic a real, explicit sex scene can be in a story, even when that story is not necessarily about sex. indeed, romance is just about the only genre that gets away with this forbidden combination at scale. but only to a limited extent, in limited contexts, and not without its own share of heavy policing from sales platforms.
sex and sexuality are unavoidable parts of the human experience. horniness is one of the primary colors in the spectrum of human emotions. to restrict the use of sex as a storytelling tool is to make artists forever paint with a limited palette. sure, there is lots of great, sexless art out there. for that matter, there’s tons of full-on porn that is likewise great art. but there is SUCH a huge space of possibility in between these two extremes.
and we can’t have it!
because pornography exists as a category in all of our minds, and because we are compelled to reify that category at monetary gunpoint by the jesus freaks upstairs, art must only ever at most orbit the pornographic: if it touches the event horizon, there is no going back.
we don’t just need to fight back against the censorship of pornography. we need to fight aggressively to normalize the existence of pornography. we need to make pornography mundane.
finally: it goes without saying, but there are, in fact, people who are making the kind of art i’m talking about. including me! that’s one of the great things about the internet: it democratized art for a lot of people in a lot of ways. for all its faults, the internet has enabled a golden age of horny queer art that’s allowed to be anything it wants. that’s why many of us are so distraught by the recent waves of censorship at steam and itch.io. if you’ve read this far, please take a moment to consider giving the payment processors responsible a phone call to let them know how you feel about it.
This is a juvenile Chacophrys pierottii, arguably the most comically proportioned frog ever. Here is an adult. If I had not taken this photo myself I would think it’s some kind of ridiculous meme render.
These are also the frogs that bury themselves in a backwards spiral that is seriously relatable.
every day british actors wake up and think to themselves fuckkkkk i HAVE to help the incredibly bigoted woman make more money so she can funnel it into killing trans people i have to do it bro if i don't do it i will die
In case y'all needed proof that continuing to engage with HP and fucking over trans folks is in fact a CHOICE, Daniel Radcliffe has refused to even have a cameo, despite being repeatedly asked.
For those that don't speak British, this is about as close as he can get to officially, publicly saying, "for FUCK'S sake, get that thing away from me and stop associating me with it, I do not want my name attached to that bigotry."
Daniel consistently redirects the topic away from Jo and toward the Trevor Project, an organization he has been heavily involved with for almost 20 years. He puts his money where his mouth is and uses his platform and his reach to amplify queer voices and queer struggles. He explicitly supports trans people, and is choosing to walk away from a very large and very easy paycheck, because he values trans lives over anything he could get from HP.
Emma and Rupert also won't go near this reboot. Jo has stated the reason she's doing it is BECAUSE the three of them refuse to support her vile hatred.
Every actor who puts their name on this, on any level, deserves to own the choice they're making with their whole chest. If they decide the paycheck is worth being ten toes down on transphobia? They're adults. They chose. And they deserve to be treated accordingly. Actions speak louder than words.
And if you give it a moment of attention or a single penny, you deserve to face the consequences of that choice too.
Ben Barnes has been a very good sport over the years about being THE Sirius Black fancast, but when someone asked him recently if he'd ever be in the new show, he also basically said a polite "fuck no."
This is a lesser known actor, whose last franchise was cancelled suddenly, preemptively turning down a huge role as fans are actively lobbying for him to get it. Fuck all the grown-ass, well-established actors who picked a paycheck over trans people.
this isn’t the first time the DHS has tweeted literal nazi propaganda but uuuhhhh I feel like things are going to get Very Bad unless we do something. about the nazis. who are running the US government
THE PAINTING IS LITERALLY WHITE ANERICA DRIVING DARK, “SAVAGE”, NATIVES OFF THE LAND!!! YOU DONT NEED TO FIND DOGWHISTLES THEYRE CALLING THE POOCH’S FUCKING NAME
it's good to note that the depiction in media of things that are illegal in real life is not, itself, illegal. otherwise murder mysteries, heist films, and so, so much more would be illegal. i don't remember them off the top of my head, but there are a couple of US court cases directly related to this subject that even involve porn, specifically.
the secret to organising any kind of trip with your friends is to become the benevolent dictator. do NOT wait for everyone to provide a consensus on things before you book anything. do it and then ask for feedback after. do not ask people what they would like to do just tell them what is happening and let them all nod along like the sheep they are. this is the ONLY way to coordinate a group of adults in their 20s/30s
will die for Biblejeff @a-tiny-jigumi - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag