Fag hags: Allies, Breeders and Idols

A Research Blog

[fag-hags]

The Place Beyond the Fire Island Pines

Columbia County, a quiet part of upstate New York, has emerged as a 21st-century haven — and a reminder of the ongoing relevance of the queer community.

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

Called by an injurious name, I come into social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially.

Judith Butler (via coocoolah)

[thelovejournals]

Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers.

Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You (via homo-infimus)

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

Violence is redirected toward those who do not participate in violence, or those who try to challenge violence. Each time you say no, you have to be prepared for increase in the intensity of the violence. […] You have to keep saying no when there is an effort to stop you saying no.

Sara Ahmed, “No” (via coocoolah)

[fag-hags]

She was also interested in Saint Irene, who nursed Sebastian back to health after he was shot, imagining her anachronistically and playfully as a kind of fag hag avant la lettre.

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

Alienation is studious; you learn more about wishes when they are not what you wish for. We can think of alienation then as wonder: we wonder about things; we marvel at their assembly. […] It is when we are not attuned, when we do not love what we are supposed to love, that things become available to us as things to ponder with, to wonder about.

Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (41-2)

[fag-hags]

I suppose perseverance is a virtue, even if in a foolish cause.

Edward Lear,  19 February  1886

[the-argonaut]

The sons of our sons will marvel, Paging the textbook: “1914 … 1917 … 1919 … How did they live? The poor devils!” Children of a new age will read of battles, Will learn the names of orators and generals, The numbers of the killed, And the dates. They will not know how sweetly roses smelled above the trenches, How martins chirped blithely between the cannon salvos, How beautiful in those years was Life. Never, never did the sun laugh so brightly As above a sacked town, When people, crawling out of their cellars, Wondered: is there still a sun? Violent speeches thundered, Strong armies perished, But the soldiers learned what the scent of snowdrops is like An hour before the attack. People were led at dawn to be shot … But they alone learned what an April morning can be. The cupolas gleamed in the slanting rays, And the wind pleaded: Wait! A minute! Another minute! Kissing, they could not tear themselves from the mournful mouth, And they could not unclasp the hands so tightly joined. Love meant: I shall die! I shall die! Love meant: Burn, fire, in the wind! Love meant: O where are you, where? They love as people can love only here, upon this rebellious and tender star. In those years there were no orchards golden with fruit, But only fleeting bloom, only a doomed May. In those years there was no calling: “So long!” But only a brief, reverberant “Farewell!” Read about us and marvel! You did not live in our time — be sorry! We were guests of the earth for one evening only. We loved, we destroyed, we lived in the hour of our death. But overhead stood the eternal stars, And under them we begot you. In your eyes our longing still burns, In your words our revolt reverberates yet Far into the night, and into the ages, the ages, we have scattered The sparks of our extinguished life.

Ilya Ehrenburg (1919)

[fag-hags]

Seinfeld: Season 6, Episode 13 - The Beard

The fag hag as beard and fag hag as a woman who attempts to convert gay men.

[fag-hags]

Lisa Simpson, fag hag.

‘Non-Threatening Boys Magazine’

[fag-hags]

At a Fabulous Halloween Protest in 1989, Queers Already Recognized the Danger of Donald Trump

On October 31, 1989, roughly 100 protesters from the AIDS activist group ACT UP New York descended on Trump Tower at 5th Avenue and 56th Street. One pr ...

But 24-year-old Ronny Viggiani—the activist dressed as Dorothy—escaped capture. As the gay magazine Outweek reported at the time, police stopped the escalators with Viggiani at the top. Viggiani shouted, “You’ve got to turn it on, because I can’t walk [down] in these heels.” The police eventually relented, turning the escalator back on, and Dorothy floated down, like Glenda the Good Witch, as other protesters cheered.

[fag-hags]

everything extraneous has burned away this is how burning feels in the fall of the final year not like leaves in a blue October but as if the skin were a paper lantern full of trapped moths beating their fired wings and yet i can lie on this hill just above you a foot beside where I will lie myself soon soon and for all the wrack and blubber feel still how we were warriors when the merest morning sun in the garden was a kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all death it turns out war is what little thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home oh sweetie will you please forgive me this that every time I opened a box of anything Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was the worst I'd think will you still be here when the box is empty Rog Rog who will play boy with me now that I bucket with tears through it all when i'd cling beside you sobbing you'd shurg it off with the quietest I'm still here I have your watch in the top drawer which I don't dare wear yet help me please the boxes grocery home day after day the junk that keeps men spotless but it doesn't matter now how long they last or I the day has taken you with it and all there is now is burning dark that only green is up by the grave and this little thing of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here

Paul Monette, ‘Here’

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

[S]ome bodies more than others have their involvement in the world called into crisis. This shows us how the world itself is more ‘involved’ in some bodies than others, as its takes such bodies as the contours of ordinary experience. It is not just that bodies get directed in specific ways, but that the world is shaped by the directions taken by some more than others.

Sara Ahmed, “Queer Angles” (via coocoolah)

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

[I]t is often a requirement upon oppressed people that we smile and be cheerful. If we comply, we signify our docility and our acquiescence in our situation. […] [A]nything but the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean, bitter, angry or dangerous.

Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (2)

[drnandi]

Affection had appeared, but through a fissure, a crevice, in the person, through which, behind affection, came all the winds of fear. For the act of love is a confession. One lies about the body but the body does not lie about itself; it cannot lie about the force which drives it.

James Baldwin, Another Country (180)

[fag-hags]

Nicholas Andry (1741). Frontispiece ‘Haec Est Regula Recti: This Is The Rule For Straightness’. Orthopaedia: Or the Art of correcting and preventing Deformities in Children. By such Means, as may easily put in Practice by Parents themselves, and as such as are employed in Educating Children.

[fag-hags]

[fag-hags]

Nicholas Andry (1741). Frontispiece ‘Haec Est Regula Recti: This Is The Rule For Straightness’. Orthopaedia: Or the Art of correcting and preventing Deformities in Children. By such Means, as may easily put in Practice by Parents themselves, and as such as are employed in Educating Children.