Somehow this feels appropriate, I am a dark-skinned Black queer gender non-conforming person. None of those things are really meant for polite society, so any attempt to subject folks to this kind of content is of course inappropriate, ergo explicit. Because truly no one looks like that, lives like that, or exists like that, clearly this thing is a deviant we must protect our children from.
This prompt came from me having to explain why I had a 'mature content' label on what was simply a photo of my face. @rpepperpotshipssciencebros Albeit accidental, it still feels appropriate, I was never really invited to the social picnic that is called America. My sissy-assed faggotry was explicitly forbidden, and no one wanted the dark-skinned husky flat-footed kids to play on their team. And as an adult that extra-Black, African-inspired gender non-conforming darky is just too-damned uppity to be in Our corporate America, let them collect public benefits, and live in sub-standard conditions like the rest of her kin, while we pretend that we didn't give them appropriate opportunities, but their otherness made us very uncomfortable, so we stopped hiring them.
Once again, explicit seems about right, how dare I take up space, how dare I wanted to be treated humanely as the normal people. Who was I to think I deserved similar opportunities as those cis-gendered, Caucasian, heteromantic, breeders who came from proper nuclear families where there weren't multiple daddies to one mommy.
A former employer said I was being "too visible", ergo my mere presence was too explicit. I should have dimmed my light, diminished my personality, made myself more palatable to my whyte co-workers, and kept all that Black gurl magick to myself.
Like many young Black girls, my body which can't seem to pick which team it wants to play for, is "sexually-themed" even though it's just unclad. But even fully clothed our children are adultified, made to be something they never were, perceived as violent when none was ever committed. We are "mature" before we are ever actually mature.
Flagged as explicit seems necessary.
It makes it very clear that I am other, that I am not the norm, that what, and who I am are in essence un-American and don't belong. That I should go back to where I came from, wherever that may be. But if I continue to want to be treated with the respect that I clearly don't deserve, then I will be kept from public view, and our personal Puritanical/Christian moral-outrage. I will be once again regulated to the back of the bus, the undesirable places, eyes will be averted to the things I attempt to share, and show, because unless they meet our very arbitrary standards they are nothing but a step below pornography.
Thanks to @tumblr and every platform just like them that attempts to pit the blame on Terms of Service, Community Standards, User Guidelines and if @Apple will remove their app from their @AppStore - Like we don't recall the history of your platform and the real shenanigans that were going on up in here till someone called you out. #WeSeeYou And my Marked Explicit, Mature Content, Flagged As Inappropriate ass will be right over here doing what I do, and trying not to bow my artistic voice to the Puritanical peer pressure of Internet 2.1+ or whatever the fuck this is....
