I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
When a space cares a lot about making sure its members are queer enough to participate, you get a space that aggressively polices the queerness of its members. There's no way around that, it's pretty much tautologically true. Only by paradoxically not actually caring if you're queer or not can a group really accept the full range of what queerness can look like.
Also, a space that has room for a cis straight guy who means well and wants the best for his friends has two crucial things going for it.
1) it has space for people who are learning and might fuck up a bit while they figure things out, and that learning process is probably not so godawful and unpleasant that a guy with other prospects would have to be a fool not to go find some nicer friends. This is nice because it is very difficult to personally embody the entire alphabet at once, and learning how to be good allies to one another is a crucial part of queer solidarity. It's nice for that process not to be painful.
2) it has space for people who aren't yet willing to or comfortable with presenting an externally queer label to continue to exist and soak up the queer vibes and information, which means it's welcoming to actual questioning people rather than the theory of questioning people. Probably it therefore has more interest in actually doing things rather than hierarchy politics.
3) it's probably not a radfem tar pit interested in weaponising you against people they've decided to hate in a social smear war that benefits nobody and nothing but their need for a power trip
Oh it’s even more than that! The cis straight guy is very often a ride home, dad or husband. Or a Bob which I will explain in this essay is a signifier of a healthy ecosystem, like frogs are.
This is a 3 am take so consider this a blanket apology and a readmore but if you hate this post you were warned.
If he’s someone’s ride home, then his presence enables queer people to show up. Note this importance in, say, rural America or where the person might use a wheelchair or need care or can’t drive. Or where the meeting place is generally awkward.
If he’s someone’s dad, his presence enables kids to show up. I know a 5 year old trans kid in real life. I know a nonbinary teen in real life who’s allowed to do a lot on their own, but their parents worry, and if they’re hanging out with adults the parents want to attend and meet the adults. Teenagers are so liminal with this.
If he’s someone’s husband, that’s a perfectly common accessory for a bisexual, nonbinary, or trans person. I think it adds a delightful dimension to queer spaces. I think it’s great that there’s a whole class of sexuality that’s “bi wife energy” or “straight except for loving this person” or “straight since I think nonbinary people are considered a different gender to my own - actually I’m completely lost about whether that’s true but we’ve been married ten years?” or “straight except for the fact that my partner transitioned, and we’re still married, and it’s none of your business.” At this point they’re so common that they’re their own subspecies. I think all spaces should have a slightly bewildered guy in his late forties who owns a set of good screwdrivers. I am bi and have one myself; it is a common pairing. “Why would your husband come to your social thing” idk this is a genuine thing people do sometimes in non-tar-pit spaces. They stop by. It’s almost like birds. You meet this incredible ornate, splendid older queer person and then they introduce their husband Professor Robert “Bob” Kevinsworth, who’s just this extremely straight old big fat Linux geologist in a 90s t-shirt with a trout on it, they’ve been married 45 years. Evolutionary pressures mean that the Bob must be relatively drab in order to camouflage themselves on the nest or something; if you want to attract the flashy half of the couple to your garden, then you have to provide habitat for Bob. idk it’s 3:46 am right now. But it’s like frogs; the presence of Bobs indicates a healthy and established ecosystem, like Grison and Derin indicate. Because frogs, who absorb environmental toxins readily through their skin, are an indicator species for pollution and biodiversity; a Bob means there is going to be less toxicity and more diversity.
[And also it’s none of our business but there are an awful lot of queer Bobs (Bob himself, again, possibly being queer) and it’s really none of our business. Sure, maybe that person looks like a straight grandpa. A lot of people do/did. I have always hated the idea that you can “spot” a queer person by their haircut, clothes or youth (largely because I don’t look very unusual or amazing myself.) the oldest nb person I know is a sort of Bob with a big white beard and grandchildren, and I’m sorry but at their age they are NOT going to be getting a different haircut! Let alone pink Shein dungarees and black circle sunglasses to signify their queerness to gatekeepers. A lot of people seeing them would assume they are cishet. Nope! Just old, fat and unfashionable.)
So a space that doesn’t have room for a cishet guy is a space that has made decisions about children, non-drivers, a large proportion of bi and nonbinary people, straight trans women, dads, and so on.
Which is fine in itself I suppose, but what they’re clearly kinda selecting for is a population of able twentysomethings who can all have sex with each other. and the thing is that there’s often a vibe they feel annoyed by seeing people they don’t want to fuck (children, middle-aged people, unfashionable queer people, people unironically wearing trout t shirts).
So in my admittedly highly limited personal experience, the exclusionary “queer spaces” just tend to be an elaborate drama-production exercise for twentysomethings to date each other, the rituals are intricate etc.
And all the rest of the weird queer people are just. at the seed swap.
as someone who spent much of my young adult life in queer spaces (was there helping establish the Center for Sex Positive Culture, worked at several Seattle Mister Leather contests, attended many queer-community events, taught a class or two for the community, and generally spent most of my free time in queer spaces - and that's not even counting high school or college), I can attest to all of this
see, I thought I was a Bob for the longest time, because I wasn't that attracted to my same gender, and didn't understand the big deal about masculinity but was willing to perform it, and even though I get very attracted to someone I love it wasn't always a woman (and I am never default attracted to anyone unless there's a spark, and then only after first growing close)
and on and on - these would all be obvious clues for today's young queer folk who have lots more resources for figuring things out for themselves than I had growing up in homophobic small towns USA. but I didn't really know that about myself then, and it (mostly) wasn't relevant when I had a (mostly) monogamous relationship at the time
but if those folks hadn't been so welcoming and let me be as involved in the community as I wished to be, I might never have figured out my blend of queerness. even if I hadn't, just being part of such a welcoming, interesting family was worth it by itself
good post, OP - thanks for opening this conversation
(also I've always been the guy with the tools and garage, so)
❣️ "Shipping" characters means that you are interested in the idea of what it would be like if characters were involved in a romantic or sexual relationship with each other.
❣️ Shipping something does not mean that you think that the relationship would be the most ideal, desirable, healthy or moral relationship for the characters to be in.
❣️ Shipping something does not mean that you think it should be canon.
❣️ Shipping something does not mean you think it would be good, healthy or desirable in real life.
❣️ Shipping something just means that you think that it's interesting to think about, look at art of, read fiction about, write fiction about, or create art about.
❣️Shipping something means you think it is interesting in some way, not that you think it is morally good or desirable.
friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.
IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:
Adult literacy is low.
Child literacy is low.
Information literacy has shifted dramatically in the last decade, but reputable information sources like research journals and factual news reporting have been unable to keep pace.
We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.
It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.
So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.
You're correct:
Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.
Can I also get in on the part where the doctor patiently bears with me as I scream the entire time and then gives me some spray cheese on a tongue depressor?
Saying ‘you should be bad!!’ In like Gay Voice to a white woman at starbucks has like the same psychological impact as going like ‘who’s a good boy?’ To a dog. It makes them so excited in a really endearing way.
[ ID: An exchange in the Tumblr comments. Each commentor begins the comment by tagging the previous commentor, but for readability these tags have been omitted. The comments read:
ospreyonthemoon: Im assuming you work somewhere that sells like, food or something?
gerardwaygirlmoments: He said Starbucks
fortidogi: imagine though. a home depot employee
liizardwiizard: i work at home depot and one time jokingly said that to a contractor and he looked at me and went and added like $500 more in wood to his cart lol
depicting sexual assault in media is not an endorsement of it 🤝 it's reasonable for audiences to expect a certain level of care and awareness in its presentation 🤝 there is oftentimes an over-reliance on sexual violence in creating the backstories, trajectories, and conflicts of fictional women 🤝 sexual violence is prevalent in society and stories about it do need to be told as a reflection of our reality 🤝 sometimes male writers and directors are extremely bad at telling these stories and audiences are justified in demanding better
I think people online treat driving too casually tbh, like there was a poll about people's bad habits while driving and they weren't bad habits or problematic or whatever, they were all things that literally kill people every single day. You are driving a massive vehicle that can very easily turn into a murder weapon with your carelessness, take this shit seriously.
Also people who speed up or suddenly stop or swerve a lot to freak out someone in the car for fun: it stops being funny when you get into a car accident because of it. Just so you know.
Following horny people and opening tumblr in public is the path to true strength. Scrolling quickly through porn trains your [Warrior’s Reflexes], and calmly moving past it trains your [Warrior’s Resolve].
looks like i droped my chart of alternatives to adobe software!
how clumsy of me!
it would seems i also dropped my link to flashpoint archive to play old archived adobe flash games and animations along with other old interactive elements in websites, with an included flash emulator!
don't call what you create "content". regardless of what it is. that's the devil talking. call it art, call it writing, call it music, call it analysis, call it editing, literally just call it what it is
I was going to put other things but oh my god please just don't call yourself a "content creator". you are a person you are making art / writing / music / etc you are an artist an author a musician
you are not an Image Generator For Clicks And Views. please. allow yourself to connect with your work by naming it properly and acknowledging yourself in kind
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