Empirics, ethics, and pragmatics have failed me; I am insane and fatalistic. My anchors left are aesthetics and erotics.
This pride month I will share queer art—mostly queer male art—that means something to me. Each day, I'll post a description and my reflection on the work.
Rot13 CW: obql ubeebe, ubzbcubovn, ivbyrag frkhny nffnhyg, cneragny nohfr, hafnsr hfr bs cnegl qehtf. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A gay bildungsroman blending the real, the surreal, and the hyperreal. The environs and home of the protagonist inflict trauma on him; he drowns in the day-to-day. His body is at once desire, horror, beauty, freedom, strength.
This movie was extremely important to me as a gay traumatized teenager who loved self destructive climax and body horror.
Reflection
Still extremely good. How is it so good. This basically fixed 30% of my artistic taste permanently. It's so goddamn tense and painful and SAD.
Early on there's a scene where the main character, a child, witnesses a teenager get raped with an iron bar during a gay bash.
This deeply affects him. When he jerks off fantasizing about a coworker (he's 18 but seems very new to fantasizing instead of just jerking off!) he's violently brought back to that moment. There's this huge locus of trauma psychically linked with the idea of gay sex, penetration, and homosexuality.
Obviously this is an extreme case, but I think it speaks to something fairly common in gay men's development! Anal sex is linked to AIDS, shit, and anal trauma. Even if you're my age and AIDS isn't a huge fear, shit and pain are *scary*.
I fingered myself with no lube, sometimes water, as a Youth.
This was when I was first masturbating, maybe a while after. I got naturally curious about fingering myself, but I did it *completely wrong*. And where was I supposed to get lube? How was I supposed to react normally to shit on my fingers? It physically hurt. The thought of a whole dick? Horrifying
I basically gave up on this for years, and the thing that made it feel comfortable was easy access to lube and to toys. Aside: if we give out condoms we should give out lube. Of course I painted a toy, but it wasn't my externals [i.e. it wasn't shit on my fingers]. Much less scary. By trial and error I got comfortable!
Point being, I think the extreme trauma in the movie is an effective exaggeration of the real fear of anal trauma, and other fears around disgust, that gay men commonly experience.
Elsewhere in the movie: the body horror/real-but-not parts were as good as I remembered. 10/10 for tension & crescendo
Rot13 CW: qehtf, frk, znqarff, oevrs zragvba bs 'crqrenfgl', qvfphffvba bs fgnghgbel encr va ersyrpgvba, nobhg gur pbagrkg bs gur cbrz ohg abg gur cbrz vgfrys. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A raw poem about the horrors/beauties of modern life and gay male sexual desire. Though the courts ruled it not obscene, I will always consider it obscene in my heart.
This poem permanently changed me when I heard it for the first time as a teenager. As anyone who's seen me on [Bluesky] knows, I will never shut up about anal sex and sucking dick and holes and the transcendent beauty of men (and of gay sex)
Reflection
I don't remember when I first heard or read Howl, but I think it was on Spotify and in high school. Very possibly I had learned about the obscenity trial in class or from another source. I still read it, listen to it, and quote it regularly.
The poem hits like a deluge.
It's visceral, naked, and unapologetic. It's a clear eyed excoriation of the evil world we live in, but Ginsberg sees the fallen angels in it through the eyes of a lover. It's gay porn. It's morally inflexible in its view of Moloch. It's a lament and a cry and a Howl.
"with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,"
Howl taught me that you can scream your perversion to the world and it's art. It taught me the honor, strength, and courage in loudly, aggressively being a faggot.
I should also say, and I didn't learn this until later: Ginsberg (by his own admission) statutorily raped 16 and 17 year olds, and was a member of NAMBLA for "principled free speech" reasons. The poem itself mentions "pederasty". While I don't think Ginsberg was attracted to prepubescent boys, what he did was disgusting and surely harmed some* of the teenage boys he slept with long term*.
That said, and this doesn't excuse or absolve anything, Ginsberg is also responsible for all of you posting about sucking dick and loving boobs and etc on the internet. He radically, openly loved gay sex.
*I'm hedging because I don't know what it was like to be a gay teenager in the 50s and 60s. I imagine some of them did *not* feel harmed or victimized, but rather liberated and inducted to a new world. I say "long term" becuase a short term feeling of liberty/joy might turn ugly.
I unequivocally condemn statutory rape of 16-17 year old queer boys and see the predation they experience as downstream of societal homophobia. If you're materially insecure, you've been isolated from community, and you know you *need* but don't know how to *need* safely, you're easier to prey on.
Artists: Stan Hill (art director), Eric Luse (photographer), SFGMC members (choir)
Year: 1993
Rot13 CW: NVQF, ubzbcubovn, trabpvqr, gur ceboyrz bs rivy. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A stark, iconic photograph from the SF Chronicle & SFGMC. Men in white are surviving founding choir members while men in black represent AIDS fatalities.
Many of you have probably seen this before. The photograph shows the founding members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus as of 1993, and more strikingly the *absence* of the ones who died to AIDS. I can't put my grief and rage into words.
†Unofficial title assigned by me. The "Fifth Section" is how the SFGMC (San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus) memorializes its dead, a majority having died of AIDS.
Reflection
I picked this piece early in the day, but it took me a while to post it because I had a lot of difficulty figuring out how to credit the artists and what exactly the artwork is. I *think* it's a static photograph, conceptualized of & composed by Stan Hill and taken by Eric Luse.
However, it's also possible it's a photograph of a live performance in which the choir started off all singing, with the members in black gradually turning around and ceasing their song. This was the format used in the SFGMC's 2017 reproduction of the photograph, at least!
I think everyone who wants to understand queer history needs to see this photograph. Entire friend groups, bars, bathhouses, etc died.
You're 20 and you feel free for the first time in your life and then everyone around you is dying, you're dying, and it's because of a disease nobody knew about.
And nobody gives a shit about fags dying en masse. You can't go back to your family as you die because this is exactly what they told you would happen—even though they had no special foreknowledge. You can't turn on the TV without seeing a joke about fudgepackers getting their just desserts.
The AIDS crisis was a genocide-by-inaction. Reagan didn't cause AIDS, and we didn't have the medical knowledge/technology to treat it when it was discovered, but he was maliciously indifferent. If the deadly novel STI made PIV risky sex, they'd move heaven and earth for the public health crisis.
We lost a generation of gay men, bi men, and trans women to AIDS. Our elders aren't there because they fucking died. It's an irreducible pain that aches behind so much of our art and culture.
How many happy, gay, liberated young men died due to a cruel trick of fate? If God exists, kill Him.
I watched a documentary about the AIDS crisis with my (straight) dad one time and we had to stop maybe halfway through because it was too brutal. I should go back and finish it sometime. It's just unbelievably heartbreaking to learn about, the same as learning about the shoah or khmer rouge.
There is a flame of rage and pain and sadness in my soul that will never go out and it was lit the first time I saw this photograph.
atheism as an opressed minority is the whitest attempt to pretend you are white and opressed I have ever seen in my entire black ass life
Mhm. Like fucking clockwork lmao.
1) I'm neither white nor an atheist. But sure, me calling atheists a religious minority is me pretending I'm white and oppressed.
2) I didn't use the word "oppressed", I just said "religious minority", but since you want to go there, sure let's go there.
There is no single religious affiliation that is as widely regarded as "political suicide" in the U.S. as openly identifying as an atheist, they're one of the most underrepresented groups in the U.S. government and most of the few atheist politicians that have held any political office in the U.S. have only openly come out as such either after the fact or late into their term, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to be elected in the first place.
A 2014 study by the university of Minnesota on social prejudice against atheists found that 42% of respondents characterized atheists a group of people who "didn't agree with [their] vision of american society" and that 44% of respondents wouldn't agree with their child marrying an atheists.
And also, despite the fact that these have been later ruled to be unenforceable, it's still incredibly telling that there are currently seven U.S States whose constitutions try to explicitly ban atheists from holding public office.
Notice how most of these are worded specifically so that you're not banned as long as you believe in ANY God or "supreme being", so it's not even an attempt at discrimination against non-christians in general, but specifically against atheists and other nonbelievers.
This is an uncharacteristically US-centric post of me but let's be real this ask is written in such an aggressively american way (e.g. immediately conflating "atheist" with "white" and implicitly treating U.S. racial dynamics as universal) so I know your yankee ass isn't gonna give a shit if I talk about how e.g. a 2009 survey found atheists to be one of the most openly hated demographic groups in Brazil, or how in several countries being openly atheist is straight-up punishable by the death penalty.
There's something about atheism that I've repeatedly tried and failed to put into words on several posts on this blog but I think I finally got it.
Atheists are the only religious minority who, even (or sometimes even *especially*) in ostensibly progressive spaces are not allowed to ever act like they're sure of their beliefs.
Like I'm not even an atheist, I've considered myself an agnostic for as long as I've been able to articulate my own beliefs, but it's not lost on me how often atheists in leftist spaces are hit with rhetoric like this:
Why is it bad that atheists are 100% sure that no god or any higher power exists? I mean. That's what they believe.
Everyone else is allowed to be 100% sure in whatever belief they hold and express it, but atheists are held to the higher standard of constantly conceding that "yeah I *could* be wrong haha of course I'm not saying it's impossible for gods to exist I'm just personally unconvinced" because openly expressing any confidence on the certainty of their own beliefs will immediately be perceived as close-minded and invalidating everyone else's belief systems when like.
When you get down to it "all this shit is made up" isn't really a meaningfully more close-minded or invalidating position than "all this shit is made up except for this one, which is the real and correct one". Atheism is just held to a higher standard when failing to immediately back down and cede ground in any situation where it doesn't align with anyone else's belief system is inherently seen as a mark of close-mindedness and intolerance, a standard to which no other religious minority is ever held in these spaces.
i have to have sympathy for the degrowth people. id want the economy to grow until every forest is cut low and the world is smothered in steel and concrete on purely aesthetic grounds even if it wasn't also clearly morally necessary. so we're kind of two sides of the same coin
space travel is actually cool as hell and it sucks that people are being negatively polarized against it for the sake of dunking on elon musk. a guy can be shitty without that immediately discrediting everything they have ever expressed an interest in.
This is a photo of 32 Chunk that Ranger Tammy took YESTERDAY. as in MAY 18TH 2025.
32 Chunk is starting spring fatter than many bears end up being in late fall! He's already a Fat Bear Champion contender and the cams haven't even turned on yet! holy crap!
as KatmaiConservancyNaomi said when she posted the photo on explore: WHAT WILL 32 CHUNK LOOK LIKE IN OCTOBER?!
Empirics, ethics, and pragmatics have failed me; I am insane and fatalistic. My anchors left are aesthetics and erotics.
This pride month I will share queer art—mostly queer male art—that means something to me. Each day, I'll post a description and my reflection on the work.
Rot13 CW: obql ubeebe, ubzbcubovn, ivbyrag frkhny nffnhyg, cneragny nohfr, hafnsr hfr bs cnegl qehtf. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A gay bildungsroman blending the real, the surreal, and the hyperreal. The environs and home of the protagonist inflict trauma on him; he drowns in the day-to-day. His body is at once desire, horror, beauty, freedom, strength.
This movie was extremely important to me as a gay traumatized teenager who loved self destructive climax and body horror.
Reflection
Still extremely good. How is it so good. This basically fixed 30% of my artistic taste permanently. It's so goddamn tense and painful and SAD.
Early on there's a scene where the main character, a child, witnesses a teenager get raped with an iron bar during a gay bash.
This deeply affects him. When he jerks off fantasizing about a coworker (he's 18 but seems very new to fantasizing instead of just jerking off!) he's violently brought back to that moment. There's this huge locus of trauma psychically linked with the idea of gay sex, penetration, and homosexuality.
Obviously this is an extreme case, but I think it speaks to something fairly common in gay men's development! Anal sex is linked to AIDS, shit, and anal trauma. Even if you're my age and AIDS isn't a huge fear, shit and pain are *scary*.
I fingered myself with no lube, sometimes water, as a Youth.
This was when I was first masturbating, maybe a while after. I got naturally curious about fingering myself, but I did it *completely wrong*. And where was I supposed to get lube? How was I supposed to react normally to shit on my fingers? It physically hurt. The thought of a whole dick? Horrifying
I basically gave up on this for years, and the thing that made it feel comfortable was easy access to lube and to toys. Aside: if we give out condoms we should give out lube. Of course I painted a toy, but it wasn't my externals [i.e. it wasn't shit on my fingers]. Much less scary. By trial and error I got comfortable!
Point being, I think the extreme trauma in the movie is an effective exaggeration of the real fear of anal trauma, and other fears around disgust, that gay men commonly experience.
Elsewhere in the movie: the body horror/real-but-not parts were as good as I remembered. 10/10 for tension & crescendo
Rot13 CW: qehtf, frk, znqarff, oevrs zragvba bs 'crqrenfgl', qvfphffvba bs fgnghgbel encr va ersyrpgvba, nobhg gur pbagrkg bs gur cbrz ohg abg gur cbrz vgfrys. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A raw poem about the horrors/beauties of modern life and gay male sexual desire. Though the courts ruled it not obscene, I will always consider it obscene in my heart.
This poem permanently changed me when I heard it for the first time as a teenager. As anyone who's seen me on [Bluesky] knows, I will never shut up about anal sex and sucking dick and holes and the transcendent beauty of men (and of gay sex)
Reflection
I don't remember when I first heard or read Howl, but I think it was on Spotify and in high school. Very possibly I had learned about the obscenity trial in class or from another source. I still read it, listen to it, and quote it regularly.
The poem hits like a deluge.
It's visceral, naked, and unapologetic. It's a clear eyed excoriation of the evil world we live in, but Ginsberg sees the fallen angels in it through the eyes of a lover. It's gay porn. It's morally inflexible in its view of Moloch. It's a lament and a cry and a Howl.
"with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,"
Howl taught me that you can scream your perversion to the world and it's art. It taught me the honor, strength, and courage in loudly, aggressively being a faggot.
I should also say, and I didn't learn this until later: Ginsberg (by his own admission) statutorily raped 16 and 17 year olds, and was a member of NAMBLA for "principled free speech" reasons. The poem itself mentions "pederasty". While I don't think Ginsberg was attracted to prepubescent boys, what he did was disgusting and surely harmed some* of the teenage boys he slept with long term*.
That said, and this doesn't excuse or absolve anything, Ginsberg is also responsible for all of you posting about sucking dick and loving boobs and etc on the internet. He radically, openly loved gay sex.
*I'm hedging because I don't know what it was like to be a gay teenager in the 50s and 60s. I imagine some of them did *not* feel harmed or victimized, but rather liberated and inducted to a new world. I say "long term" becuase a short term feeling of liberty/joy might turn ugly.
I unequivocally condemn statutory rape of 16-17 year old queer boys and see the predation they experience as downstream of societal homophobia. If you're materially insecure, you've been isolated from community, and you know you *need* but don't know how to *need* safely, you're easier to prey on.
Empirics, ethics, and pragmatics have failed me; I am insane and fatalistic. My anchors left are aesthetics and erotics.
This pride month I will share queer art—mostly queer male art—that means something to me. Each day, I'll post a description and my reflection on the work.
Rot13 CW: obql ubeebe, ubzbcubovn, ivbyrag frkhny nffnhyg, cneragny nohfr, hafnsr hfr bs cnegl qehtf. The reflection below will discuss these topics, so translate the CWs first if you're concerned and would like to avoid such content.
Description: A gay bildungsroman blending the real, the surreal, and the hyperreal. The environs and home of the protagonist inflict trauma on him; he drowns in the day-to-day. His body is at once desire, horror, beauty, freedom, strength.
This movie was extremely important to me as a gay traumatized teenager who loved self destructive climax and body horror.
Reflection
Still extremely good. How is it so good. This basically fixed 30% of my artistic taste permanently. It's so goddamn tense and painful and SAD.
Early on there's a scene where the main character, a child, witnesses a teenager get raped with an iron bar during a gay bash.
This deeply affects him. When he jerks off fantasizing about a coworker (he's 18 but seems very new to fantasizing instead of just jerking off!) he's violently brought back to that moment. There's this huge locus of trauma psychically linked with the idea of gay sex, penetration, and homosexuality.
Obviously this is an extreme case, but I think it speaks to something fairly common in gay men's development! Anal sex is linked to AIDS, shit, and anal trauma. Even if you're my age and AIDS isn't a huge fear, shit and pain are *scary*.
I fingered myself with no lube, sometimes water, as a Youth.
This was when I was first masturbating, maybe a while after. I got naturally curious about fingering myself, but I did it *completely wrong*. And where was I supposed to get lube? How was I supposed to react normally to shit on my fingers? It physically hurt. The thought of a whole dick? Horrifying
I basically gave up on this for years, and the thing that made it feel comfortable was easy access to lube and to toys. Aside: if we give out condoms we should give out lube. Of course I painted a toy, but it wasn't my externals [i.e. it wasn't shit on my fingers]. Much less scary. By trial and error I got comfortable!
Point being, I think the extreme trauma in the movie is an effective exaggeration of the real fear of anal trauma, and other fears around disgust, that gay men commonly experience.
Elsewhere in the movie: the body horror/real-but-not parts were as good as I remembered. 10/10 for tension & crescendo
Empirics, ethics, and pragmatics have failed me; I am insane and fatalistic. My anchors left are aesthetics and erotics.
This pride month I will share queer art—mostly queer male art—that means something to me. Each day, I'll post a description and my reflection on the work.
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
2087
kaledo-art
dededos
pixelskylines
