Rowan the Explorer @explorerrowan - Tumblr Blog

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If people felt like throwing a little my way for Trans Day of Visibility, I could certainly use the help. I'm in the process of moving to Canada, and that's expensive.

Become a supporter of ExplorerRowan today!

#tdov 2026 #trans day of visibility

marxistlesbianist

Only a general women's movement has the power to liberate trans women, but only a union of trans women organized within such a movement has the power to ensure that it does liberate trans women. Likewise, only a proletarian socialist movement has the power to liberate women in general, but only a general union of women organized within the proletarian movement has the power to ensure that it does liberate women.

As an oppressed people, we cannot rely on the privileged classes to discover our own interests, but as a minority we also cannot rely on our independent forces to overthrow such powerful systems. A strategic alliance of all oppressed people's is needed to build socialism, whilst autonomous unions of oppressed people are needed to protect ourselves and advocate for our interests within the coalition.

Do not mistake the failures of particular movements in the US for an indication of the general impossibility of such a strategic alliance. The reactionary hegemony is a temporary phenomenon, whilst class struggle is the permanent condition of class society. No movement will appear if we don't build it, but history is on our side.

iconuk01

Hot Toys: He-Man from "Masters of the Universe"

I don't think I have ever seen such lovingly sculpted abs.

And, not going to lie, the likeness to Nicholas Galitzine is excellent and it looks like the body's muscles manage to move the proper way under the skin of the figure.

glowcowboy

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

its-your-mind

the reblog map is all of us holding hands btw

beautifulterriblequeen

We are each other's night sky. No one is alone here.

dear-ao3

night sky continues to get brighter. theres always people here for you

shinigami-social

Made a painting of all of us “Holding Hands” <3

eindraa

Spy x Family / Pokemon Crossover

Anya as a Clefairy

Yor as an Umbreon

Loid as an Inteleon

This is a side project I’m doing with anime and fusions.

secondlina

No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

✧Read Namesake✧ ✧Read Crow Time✧ ✧Store✧ ✧Patreon✧

oldschoolfrp

Legendary fantasy artist John Blanche has died. He is known mostly for his long association with Games Workshop, where he served as art director and created many of the iconic images that shaped the Warhammer and 40K worlds. He was capable of working in diverse styles, but much of his art and his own creative miniature conversions made his name synonymous with the "grimdark" aesthetic, mixing elements of moody gothic architecture and body horror with a limited color palette.

He also contributed to GW's UK edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy and Sorcery! books, and other books and album covers. Wombat Games recently published an authorised biography, Blanche: The Rise of Grimdark. A skirmish game, John Blanche's En Garde, is in development with a setting and visual style based on his art.

yayacyan

Poor thing, she's dying from cringe 😔

I can't leave comments because of some network error

duckbunny

your twenties are not "late" to start hrt. that is a normal time to start hrt. your thirties are also a normal time to start hrt. your seventies are pretty late to start hrt, but not too late. like, statistically, that's at the end of the curve. but if you are not dead, it is not too late for hrt.

avatarmerida

Happy pride month to the tiny cowboy and tiny Trojan man from Night at the Museum

This hands down the best comment in the notes, I will not be taking criticism.

song-of-sea-and-sky

happy pride month 2021 I ain’t quittin’ you…

IT JUST WONT DIE IT KEEPS COMING BACK

cristalplanetheart

😳

savethewailes

Let! That! Baby! Eat!!!!!!

adelphicoracle

Perfect tags

i-cant-carry-it-for-you

lizardsister

absolutely LOST in the sauce

battered-sausage

snoopyoftheday

snoopy of the day

bad-love

I just wanted to add this quote from the peppermint patty peanuts wiki page about Charles M. Schulz and his relationship with his gay cousin. The source here leads to a book that I did not read but the original source is Schulz's wife who confirmed this in an interview. If I can find the interview again I will link it here but uh. just in case someone tries to claim Schulz was a homophobe on this post again.

mornington-the-crescent

June 1st

breelandwalker

Listen, marketing-as-exploitation discussions aside, Rainbow Capitalism is, has been, and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of social acceptance for the queer community.

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

Sincerely, An Elder Queer

impostoradult

Agreed, and also, it has always struck me as a little bit of a double-standard in queer politics when people used to point out the exclusion of queerness from mainstream capitalist products as evidence of their marginalization (e.g., there are no m/m or f/f wedding cards)

Yet, when they start being included, they are like “well, that’s just capitalism taking advantage of us, so it doesn’t count.” Like, you can’t use your EXCLUSION from something as evidence of general societal marginalization and then claim that once you’ve started to be included, it is politically meaningless. You don’t really get to have it both ways. That’s moving the political goal posts.

I get that we shouldn’t consider Target pride merchandise as like the pinnacle of queer politics or even the pinnacle of queer inclusion. I get that inclusion in capitalist intuitions is a very ambivalent form of social progress. But the truth is, capitalism is a big part of what creates our social reality right now (unfortunately).

Capitalism makes TV shows, and movies, and books, and ads, and greeting cards, and toys, and clothing, and, and…

When every single aspect of commercial social reality excludes queerness, that DOES create a real sense of social alienation. I don’t love that capitalism is responsible for creating so much of our collective social reality. But granting that it does, I think we’re forced to accept that our inclusion in it IS politically and socially important.

And yes we should still be trying to resist capitalism as the primary means of meeting human needs. But we can resist treating capitalism as an inevitability or an inherent good, AND ALSO acknowledge that our inclusion within it remains politically important while it still holds so much power and responsibility for creating our shared reality.

quantummindclassicalheart

See also a recent article from NPR (published May 30, 2026) discussing how pride celebrations have struggled financially with the loss of corporate sponsorships. Organizing big visible events (and fairly compensating the labor of those who make them possible) is expensive.

Public support for the LGBTQ+ community by corporations has become politically risky, public relations expert says.

moghedien

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

moghedien

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

explorerrowan

Storytime!

So first off, there are two Aldis, Aldi North and Aldi South, which split in the 1960s because the brothers that ran the company couldn't agree on whether they should sell cigarettes. Karl Albrecht, the older brother, felt that selling cigarettes would encourage shoplifters to start frequenting the store. Theo Albrecht, the younger brother, was in favour of selling the cigarettes, both because it would be profitable and because he wasn't comfortable stereotyping customers like that. So they split Aldi into Aldi North (run by Theo) and Aldi South (run by Karl), and though they've been separate companies since, they collaborated on suppliers and such so that both stores had mostly the same stuff. (Incidentally, the Albrecht brothers were both Nazi German WW2 veterans, with Karl on the Eastern Front and Theo serving in North Africa. They were also the two wealthiest men in Germany for ages thanks to the success of their respective Aldi companies. Neither of these details is particularly relevant to this story, but they feel like details tumblr users will yell at me for if I leave them out.)

In the 1970s, both companies started expanding internationally out from Germany, with Aldi North first expanding into the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, and Aldi South expanding into Austria and Switzerland and Britain. Both Aldis also started opening stores in the US around that time, though they didn't gain much reach. (The North and South distinction also became redundant, since obviously Britain is north of most of Aldi North, but it's run by Aldi South, and the stores in North America were kinda scattered all over.)

Aldi North bought Trader Joe's in 1979 (so all you West Coast people's favourite store has secretly been an Aldi this whole time), but Aldi South was a little slower to expand in the North American market. A few stores here and there, mostly in communities with significant German immigrant heritage, that sort of thing. Their expansion really took off after the Wall came down and Germany was unified, but they would usually buy small local chains and keep the names for recognition, so the spread of actual Aldi stores has had limited visibility in the US.

That is, until Aldi South bought 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores across the US South in 2023. The parent company that owned both was hemorrhaging money, so they sold all their remaining stores to Aldi South. Aldi South was fine leaving most of the stores named Winn-Dixie, because brand recognition. Then the Winn-Dixie company reorganized with a fresh crowd of new investors and bought back 170 of the stores in 2025. Obviously the Winn-Dixie company still want to do business as Winn-Dixie stores, so to avoid trademark entanglements, Aldi South is in the middle of furiously converting their 200+ former Winn-Dixie/Harveys stores across the US South into Aldis. That's why the cowboy is happening, because they're needing to catch up a lot of US Southerners (who are used to shopping at a store with "Dixie" in the name) to the European Aldi way of doing things very quickly. "Watch this hick learn like you" is probably a pretty decent strategy, all things considered.

manuciruja

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

manuciruja

i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users

smadsel

would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.

smadsel

that’s not the whole flag, now is it

manuciruja

hey staff what the fuck

villainessbian

hey staff don't you think you're being too on-the-nose

shrodingers-catgirl

HEY STAFF DONT YOU THINK YOU'RE BEING TOO ON-THE-NOSE

explorerrowan

Well, yeah. @staff is nothing but cowards, and @photomatt 's blatant bigotry against trans women is at best unopposed and more likely than not encouraged by the people he has surrounded himself with. Cowards or bigots only at tumblr HQ.