Taylor @drtaylor717 - Tumblr Blog

sometimes my butch ass just sits here and gets SMACKED full force with my bone deep respect and admiration for femmes and y’know what! that’s how it should be.

contemporary butch/femme culture feels a lot like a culture of reverence and emulation. of constantly learning and studying and discussing the politics and the principles of community and diversity and togetherness and support and being aware of the history, being aware that you have to respect people who are different than you just as much as the people you see more visible kinship with. of wanting to respect the efforts and struggles of those who came before us and sort of find any way we can to make them proud while taking advantage of all the opportunities they fought so hard for us to have clearer access to than they did. i don’t want to waste those chances, ever. i want to run to them and grab them with both hands and do something good. something real.

that intense reverence translates so much into just how i see other butches and femmes in public and talk to online and have such beautiful, rich conversations with and i just. i really do sometimes just get so overwhelmed with how much i love femmes, how much i love butches, how much i love this community and what it means and how we’re trying to keep it alive in the absence of so much of the physical culture that birthed it. i’ve been struggling a lot lately with whether my behavior holds up and whether i’m doing the right things, but i think a lot of it is a constant process of incorporating certain practices into your life that bring you closer to the people in your community, to the people in your corner, to the people you can and should stand up for and protect, including yourself.

and i want to continuously learn more! it pains me pains me pains me that i can’t seem to find damn near enough about femme history and femmes now than i can with some butch positivity and other butches in public, like. i want MORE i want to KNOW more and it sucks that googling these things can be so hard because of how many unreliable and bigoted resources there are out there overtaking the good, honest roots.

this post got away from me but if anyone has any femme positivity/history blogs or resources i would genuinely kiss you on the cheek so respectfully please hook me up! i just [clenches fist] love femmes so much and i want to immerse myself in learning about their feelings and experiences and specific history

religion-is-a-mental-illness

Even if Jesus existed, suffering on a cross "for humanity" should not be grounds for worship. So the phrase "Jesus died on the cross for you" has absolutely no bearing on the situation. Self-sacrifice for others is not a monopoly of Christianity. Worshipping one sacrifice while not worshipping the countless others throughout history, documented ones for truly valuable things at that, e.g. Bruno, makes no sense. In other words, that venue of guilt/debt based persuasion is out. What now?

It’s not a “sacrifice” if they do something you didn’t agree to and they demand eternal repayment afterwards anyway. It’s not even good. There’s no altruism there. That’s just a scam. Even more so when the one being “sacrificed” is in league with the one demanding the sacrifice, and they go home together.

More importantly, it doesn’t remove personal responsibility. In this case, “god’s” responsibility over every element that lead to the “original sin” debacle. From storing knowledge in a magical fruit, to putting that fruit on a tree in range of mental children, to giving serpents the ability to speak, to putting the “crafty” serpent in with gullible children, to not simply getting over it the way he gets over rape, murder and cannibalism without a second thought.

Neither “Jesus” nor any other scapegoat myth can remove our responsibility for the things we do or have done. And by the same token, we can’t take responsibility for things we didn’t do that others - such as Abraham’s omniscient, omnipotent god - are ultimately responsible for.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” William Lamb/Winston Churchill/Uncle Ben

An all-powerful god must also be all-responsible. No finger-puppet pantomime can change that.

Jesus died for me. So what? For guilt I don’t have over responsibility that doesn’t lie with me for something I didn’t do? And now I should worship him and his dad-self over this overwrought entrapment scheme? No, thank you. In some tellings of this inconsistent fable, he was a pissy brat about his great destiny all the way to the end, anyway.

Spock never demanded repayment or worship. He had no expectation of resurrection. He would have been appalled at the notion that he should be worshipped simply for doing the right thing, when doing so was completely within his abilities.

Spock is a better moral guide than Jesus.

andrewgibby

For anyone who has ever loved an addict, for anyone struggling with addiction, for each of us unearthing our own and each other’s complex humanity while doing the work of healing. Thanks to Button Poetry for this recording.

religion-is-a-mental-illness

And that none of them have ever thought about why monkeys exist, or know as much as the creationists about thermodynamics.

animusrox

nonbinary-meme-oc

lgbtqi-support-equality

tavi-the-rat

I made a trans meme y'all

magerightsyeah

Just a non-binary meme for y’all

nbkarkat

good post, but let me raise you this

sharkchunks

Pictures of Bob Ross with Akira Kurosawa movie quotes #1 - Ikiru

poems-and-word

hoanbee

glossynympheteyes

this movie is so fucking creepy jesus fuck

dumpster-king

It’s by Tim Burton, what did you honestly expect?

porcelainandgold

Actually, it’s Henry Selick, who was the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The book was written by Neil Gaiman, though, and is far…far….worse.

whatpunkin

Sorry, I’m about to geek the hell out.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

Can you see why this book still scares me?

hematite2

Fun fact I learned from seeing neil gaiman speak: when he first wanted the book published, his editor said it was too scary. He suggested she read it to her young daughter, and then decide. So she did, and her daughter wasn’t afraid, and it was published. Years later, Gaiman was sitting next to that daughter at an event and told her this story, and she said “oh I was terrified I just didn’t want to tell my mom”.

Coraline WAS too scary to be published, but exists anyway because a girl lied to her mother.