Living Under A Classic Rock

| no. 1 Quadrophenia enjoyer | worshipper of Pete Townshend | Long Live Rock |

[magicmac]

[razortouched]

This is genuinely one of the most vile posts I've ever seen on here.

The idea that transmascs (or any marginalized person, really) are excited about the idea of getting to be "higher" on the social ladder than someone else. This is just plain bigotry with literally no basis in reality.

This post already has hundreds of uncrtical reblogs. Knowing that, at minimum, hundreds of people think this of transmascs makes me sick to my stomach. When history looks back on your hatred I will not be forgiving any of you.

[livingunderaclassicrock]

am i wrong or has anybody else felt like there’s been an uptick in posts shitting on trans men recently?

[genderkoolaid]

also the thing about "we need to focus on the people most vulnerable, and transmascs may be vulnerable but not more than trans women!" is that it doesn't consider transmasc erasure as an active force.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

this is why unlearning anti transmasculinity has to start from (un)learning erasure. once you start to see it as an active force/tool of the patriarchy you realize it is the lynchpin that holds so much (especially intercommunity) anti-transmasculinity together. transmaculine absence is so normalized people experience our presence as an intrusion, and people genuinely do not understand why we would ever need to be more visible than we are. it is fucking everywhere.

[genderkoolaid]

like idk i remember reading about a trans man in India who, after he came out to his family, was literally locked in a room in their house. just shut up in a basement somewhere, out of sight and out of mind, until he managed to escape (and even then, there's also a trans man in India whose parents sent the police to track him down and kidnap him from a shelter meant specifically for trans people).

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

that is the image of transmasculine erasure. it is boys and men locked in closets and basements and prison cells disguised as hospital rooms for years until they are dead and buried as women. if they even get a headstone at all. it is dead-eyed mothers with three children who have no income or job experience and are married to a cis man ten years older than them who they know would kill them, and possibly their children, if they even mentioned being trans. if you think of transmasc erasure or "invisibility" and imagine a white cis-passing guy working stealth at his office job, congrats! transmasculine erasure is already living like a fungus in your mind. i am trying to make you feel the horror the patriarchy has trained you out of feeling about the state of transmasculine oppression.

[genderkoolaid]

if you've followed me for any length of time you've likely already seen this quote, but i wanna talk about it in this context again:

"Unless they present hyperfeminine, butches don’t have access to the job market. You will not be considered if you don’t wear nice women’s clothes. If you set up catering, you will get told, “I am disgusted; a woman who thinks she’s a man is cooking for me.” So butch lesbians normally have an assistant, or their femme partner if they have one, who is more feminine-looking to run the front so customers don’t know a masculine-presenting person is cooking behind the curtains. Many of us become sex workers [due to lack of job opportunities].… But then when police raid brothels and homes, the masculine lesbians get treated “like men.” This means more forceful handcuffing, kneeling, and stripping their shirts off." – Rosa, lesbian and sex worker rights defender El Salvador

i was thinking about this when it comes to how we describe vulnerability in our community, specifically mentioning someone is a "femme" to indicate their need for extra support. i don't know i've ever seen the same be done for butches. i genuinely cannot remember ever really seeing people talk about butches and their economic and social vulnerability, the way i see people talk about femmes.

its not that being feminine doesn't cause genuine vulnerability! but because people have such a binary attitude towards gender (and more broadly), the way we talk about gendered vulnerability leads to this view that feminine people are always more vulnerable than masculine people, that "this femme needs help" to many queers and feminists feels more urgent than "this butch needs help."

the erasure of anti-transmasculinity is so pervasive and harmful and the erasure itself is then erased. and the thing is, the nature of benevolent sexism has always made it that femininity (mediated by race and class and social belonging, amongst other things, Its More Complicated Than That) is seen as inherently vulnerable. people seen as masculine lesbians are "treated like men" in the sense of being treated harsher with more physical violence, while still being subjected to sexual violence out of both misogyny and queerphobia, and also being economically vulnerable because of the disgust aimed at people perceived as masculine women. and who talks about it? not the people who refuse to understand gender oppression through anything other than a binary lens (while pretending that's not what they are doing).

[genderkoolaid]

honestly i think on a broader level, we have been seeing the erosion of genuine queer/trans theory for a while in favor of this idea that queerphobia is reducible down to misogyny. & i do think all queerphobia does innately involve misogyny. but i feel there's been this growing aversion to attributing anything to a hostility to gender non-conformity/genderqueerness itself, in favor of attributing it to a hatred of femininity. there is no true analysis of transphobia or misandrogyny as their own forces, its just a side effect of the hatred of femininity.

this is where we get the constant refrain of "the patriarchy likes masculinity, so masculine people are always seen as better than feminine people" & why people may find it incomprehensible that there may be situations where being feminine may be a protective factor in comparison to being masculine.

another example of this from this article:

The trio made their way down a busy street in the Santiago suburb of Pudahuel, close to where Carolina lived with her mother and father. Carolina and Estefania chose not to hold hands to avoid offending anyone. Suddenly, Carolina felt a force to the back of her head. Then darkness. She had fallen unconscious, and would remain in a coma for a week. She suffered a fractured skull, a broken nose, internal bleeding and permanent damage to her hearing. There were two male attackers. One had used a large wooden pole to hit her repeatedly on the back of her head, only stopping when Estefania threw herself on top of Carolina, using her body as a shield. This is significant, says Carolina's mother, Mariela. Because unlike Carolina, who identifies as a camiona and dresses accordingly, Estefania is femme - a more feminine lesbian identity. The attackers targeted Carolina and not Estefania, says Mariela, because she represented an "unacceptable" face of womanhood. It was not just her sexual orientation that prompted violence, it was her appearance as a camiona. "I want to make it very clear they were trying to kill her," she adds. "There is no other way of looking at it. The fact that she is here is a miracle." Carolina knew one of her alleged attackers. "Before this attack he threatened me. He said, 'I am going to kill you.' He said he was going to shoot me with a gun. He called me a lesbian and swore at me. He said, 'Why do you dress like a man?'"

there are people who have been nearly (or successfully) violently murdered for being seen as a masculine woman, while their femme girlfriends were not targeted or were not the main target. but if you reduce everything in patriarchy down to "m > f" you will miss this. and

even in this article, the discussion of violence focuses on lesbianism and misogyny - which, while clearly central to the violence, one has to wonder what becomes of transmasculine individuals who are targeted by this same transphobic lesbophobia, the same transphobic misogyny, whose experiences with violence cannot be made legible through the same narratives as those who identify as women? who cannot appeal to the terms "femicide" and traditional feminist narratives as easily?

[genderkoolaid]

i feel like the fact that there is virtually no discussion of how trans men are affected by femicide even when including trans women in the conversation, and how basically every study or systemic review of studies looking at violence against trans men will discuss how little research has been done on this topic, and how the largest global review of studies on violence against transgender people (94 studies, 65,608 participants) found that while nearly all (96%) of the studies included transgender women, just half (49%) included transgender men and less than half (37%) included nonbinary people, should lead us to understand that the picture of how transmasculine people are impacted by transphobic and misogynistic violence is itself violently incomplete.

[razortouched]

One consistent aspect of anti-transmasculinity I've noticed (particularly when it comes from other trans people) is the implication or outright statement that they want their own oppression.

In this post, for example, transmasculine people are described as wanting to be viewed as different kind of men, to whom different rules apply.

When really, this is simply trans men describing their lived reality. Trans men are, objectively, viewed and treated as a different kind of man, and experience different rules and standards then cis men do. This is assuming that they're even seen as a type of man in the first place, which is not true for many trans men.

Which is interesting, because these same people have no issues when trans women described being degendered or other-sexed. Furthermore, they understand intuitively that trans women are treated with different rules and standards than pericis women.

But when trans men explain similar concepts, that they're overall affected by different systems of oppression than pericis men, suddenly they "want" to be seen as a different kind of man.

They believe that trans men are asking for it.

[genderkoolaid]

i haven't fully put this into words, but i do think there is something fundamentally transphobic about this argument.

there's a lot of talk about "basic transphobia" and "just transphobia" and whatnot. but like. it feels like in the desperation to be accepted into cisfeminism, we often cede the ground that transness in itself — not merely when validated by a binary, cis-accessible gender identity — is bad theory, because it blurs the lines too much.

like. what is being critiqued here? trans men correctly identify that, in our material lived experiences, we are not the same as cis men, and that understanding our material political-social circumstances requires starting from that understanding.

this is not incompatible with insisting on trans men's manhood. if this woman actually spoke to a large number of these trans men, she'd find there's a large amount of diversity — including people who aren't even actually trans men, they are just transmasculinized and thus need these conversations as well. there are trans men who feel strongly their gender is just "man" and that they are a man in the same way a cis man is a man, and yet, also must make sense of his lived experiences of being treated as a woman and a dyke and a tranny far more than he is treated as a cis man. analyzing your experiences as a man does not require sacrificing analysis of your experience as trans.

is he supposed to ignore his material position... for what? for the ideological purity? he needs to prove to... who, exactly, that he's a Real Man by insisting he's the positionaly same as cis men? should he just roleplay as a cis man for your comfort?

and again, why must we downplay trans people's transness? why is this not allowed to be central in our analysis, even moreso than the specific (almost always binary) gender identity? why do we treat transness as a just modifier for a binary, cis-centric idea of gender? this idea of a transfeminism that is only for women who happen to be trans, with transness pushed as far to the periphery as possible but excused because the people doing the pushing are trans, so that makes it trans + feminism, right?

just like. as a nonbinary person, it is so incredibly obvious how exorsexism / misandrogyny / transphobia warps our idea of transfeminism. people who consider themselves "transfeminist" get mad at trans men for centering their transness. why the fuck even bother calling it transfeminism if you are gonna get mad when other trans people go any deeper than "cisfeminism but with diy E" !! this is the same kind of person who insist that there is no material analysis to be done of nonbinary experiences, that nonbinary gender identity is all counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie idealism.

it's dressed up in Marxism, but fundamentally, i truly believe this attitude comes from deep and unanalyzed internalized transphobia that people like her can justify to themselves, because it's the kind of internalized transphobia that hurts other kinds of trans people first.

[ashslio]

Brian photographed by David Bailey on the 21th of January, 1965.

-> on the same day, the pictures from John and Paul were photographed that day as well. It is said that there was a tension between the two as the photos were taken. (but not shown bc I care more about Brian)

[johnentwlstle]

[minty-playhouse]

???!!!???!!!!!!!

[bitchshuutthefuckup]

[modrockmocker]

John Lennon and Brian Epstein on their trip to Barcelona

John Lennon

Let me ask you about something else that was in the Hunter Davies book. At one point you and Brian went off to Spain. Yes. Did you… you must have... We didn’t have an affair. You never had an affair with Brian? No, not an affair. What were the pressures from Brian? Cyn was having a baby and the holiday was planned, but I wasn’t going to break the holiday for a baby and that’s what a bastard I was. And I just went on holiday. I watched Brian picking up the boys. I like playing a bit faggy, all that. It was enjoyable, but there were big rumors in Liverpool, it was terrible. Very embarrassing. Rumors about you and Brian? Oh, fuck knows—yes, yes. I was pretty close to Brian because if somebody's going to manage me, I want to know them inside out. And there was a period when he told me he was a fag and all that. I introduced him to pills, which gives me a guilt association for his death. I mean they go that way anyway. And to make him talk—to find out what he’s like. And I remember him saying, “Don’t ever throw it back in me face, that I’m a fag.” Which I didn’t. But his mother’s still hiding that.

John Lennon via Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner

I was on holiday with Brian Epstein in Spain, where the rumors went around that he and I were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite. It was never consummated. But it was a pretty intense relationship. It was my first experience with a homosexual that I was conscious was homosexual. He had admitted it to me. We had this holiday together because Cyn was pregnant, and I went to Spain and there were lots of funny stories. We used to sit in a cafe in Torremolinos looking at all the boys and I’d say, ‘Do you like that one, do you like this one?’ I was rather enjoying the experience, thinking like a writer all the time: I am experiencing this, you know. And while he was out on the tiles one night, or lying asleep with a hangover one afternoon, I remember playing him the song "Bad To Me." That was a commissioned song, done for Billy J Kramer, who was another of Brian’s singers.

John Lennon via Rolling Stone, 1980

"What happened," John explained, "is that Eppy just kept on and on at me. Until one night I finally just pulled me trousers down and said to him: 'Oh, for Christ's sake, Brian, just stick it up me fucking arse then.' "And he said to me, 'Actually, John, I don't do that kind of thing. That's not what I like to do.' "'Well,' I said, 'what is it you want to do, then?' "And he said, 'I'd really just like to touch you, John.' "And so I let him toss me off." And that was that. End of story. "That's all, John?" I said. "Well, so what? What's the big fucking deal, then?" "Yeah, so fucking what! The poor bastard. He's having a fucking hard enough time anyway." This was in reference to the "butch" dockers who, on several recent occasions, had rewarded Brian's advances by beating him to a bloody pulp. "So what harm did it do, then, Pete, for fuck's sake?" John asked rhetorically. "No harm at all. The poor fucking bastard, he can't help the way he is." ...And as far as I was concerned, the real revelation that night was not that John had "had it off" with Brian, but that he had demonstrated—albeit in his own brusque way—such genuine compassion for that most hopelessly besotted of all his many admirers.

The Beatles, Lennon, and Me by Pete Shotton and Nicholas Shaffer

John Reid [Elton John's manager and partner] couldn't resist asking John whether the rumors about him and Epstein were true. This was in response to John saying to John Reid, "You're the most intimidating man I've met since Brian Epstein." And so John Reid, never knowingly one to miss an opportunity, said, "Did you ever have sex with Brian?" And John said, "Twice. Once to see what it was like, and once to make sure I didn't like it."

The Search for John Lennon by Lesley-Ann Jones

What about that old rumor that Lennon had sex with Beatles manager Brian Epstein (which was also the subject of the 1991 film, The Hours and The Times)? Uh, well, the story I was told was a very explicit story, and from that I think they didn’t have it [sex]. But they went to Spain, and when they came back, tons of reporters were asking, ‘Did you do it, did you do it?’ So he said, ‘I did it.’ Isn’t that amazing? But of course he would say that. I’m sure Brian Epstein made a move, yeah. And Lennon said no to Epstein? He just didn’t want to do it, I think.

Yoko Ono via The Daily Beast, 2015

John himself said he finally allowed Brian to make love to him “to get it out of the way” [during the trip]. Those who knew John well, who had known him for years, don’t believe it for a moment. John was aggressively heterosexual and had never given a hint that he was anything but. If it had been George, we might have believed it. George could act camp and had many homosexual friends, but John loved to say things to shock, and his sly statement was probably just another in a long line of such provocative statements. In fact, it was more in character for John to taunt Brian with promises during those long hot nights in Barcelona than to succumb. Equally, it was in Brian’s masochistic nature to enjoy being tormented, then perhaps to rush off in search of a young bullfighter. Brian adored bullfighters so much, he ended up sponsoring one. (And I think Brian would have confided in somebody if it had happened.)

Magical Mystery Tours by Tony Bramwell

John told me he had had a one-night stand with Brian, on a holiday with him in Spain, when Brian had invited him out, a few days after the birth of Julian in 1963, leaving Cyn alone. I mentioned this brief holiday in the book, but not what John had alleged had taken place. Partly, I didn't really believe it, though John was daft enough to try almost anything once. John was certainly not homosexual, and this boast, or lie, would have given the wrong impression.

The Beatles: Second Revised Edition by Hunter Davies

Years later, John finally came clean about what had happened [in Spain]: not to anyone who’d been around at the time, but to the unshockable woman with whom he shared the last decade of his life [Yoko Ono]. He said that one night during the trip, Brian had cast aside shyness and scruples and finally come on to him, but that he’d replied, “If you feel like that, go out and find a hustler.” Afterward, he had deliberately fed Pete Shotton the myth of his brief surrender, so that everyone would believe his power over Brian to be absolute.

John Lennon by Philip Norman

Brian Epstein

My understanding [of the trip] only comes from Brian. I never discussed this with John but I heard that there were lots of discussions about the business of homosexuality and Brian’s homosexuality. But I think it’s wrong to discuss something which is really rather significant when I only know one side of the picture.

Peter Brown via In My Life by Debbie Geller

It was during the same discussion [one where Brian was speaking to Lonnie about his personal life] that he told me that he and John Lennon had been lovers. Now that’s too much for me to take on. We’d never talked about his personal life before, so I left the room.

Lonnie Trimble via In My Life by Debbie Geller

Sincere congratulations on the initial success of "[Do You Want to Know a] Secret"! John and I were knocked out (almost literally with Scotch!) with the news.

Brian Epstein to Billy J Kramer, 6 May 1963, while still in Spain

[modrockmocker]

John Lennon's inscription to John "Diz" Gillespie, Brian Epstein's boyfriend, on the endpapers of In His Own Write. Diz "was given this book by John Lennon when he visited him at his home, Kenwood, in Weybridge, Surrey." (x)

To Diz You're a great TURN good God from John Lennon

[modrockmocker]

[Brian's] tiny Whitechapel office, once devoted entirely to updating the NEMs stock, had been converted into Beatles Central, his own role now suggestive of a full-time press agent. "It became hard, right off the bat, for Brian to juggle his growing responsibilities," says Peter Brown, who often picked up the slack out of consideration for his friend. By now, Brian was more interested in artist management than retailing. As the Beatles required more attention, he began to offload NEMS business matters to assistants and other underlings—or just ignore it, the effect of which was not lost on the exacting Harry Epstein. "Whatever you do," Brian pleaded with Alistair Taylor, "don't tell Daddy about any of this. If he comes in, just make up some story."

The Beatles by Bob Spitz.

[lennsteining]

THEY WERE LOVERSSSS

[modrockmocker]

Beatles Book Monthly 01 (August 1963)

[epiphainie]

brian being john's best man, joining him and cyn on their honeymoon uninvited, and being julian's godfather are all so so funny. if i was cynthia i would have killed john lennon in his sleep

[livingunderaclassicrock]

currently wondering what pokemon each member of the who would have on their teams if they were trainers

[livingunderaclassicrock]

Ok so here’s the lineups I have so far:

John’s is pretty self explanatory. You’ve got Tauros (he was the ox), Houndoom (he had an army of Irish Wolfhounds), and Gavantula (he loved spiders)

For Roger, I chose Whimsicott and Altaria cause of their fluffy and cute appearances, and Conkeldurr for the needed fighting type rep (although tbh I’m a bit less certain about him)

As for Moonie, it was pretty simple. Minior for the cute moon-shaped design, plus Exploud and Electode for their destructive capabilities

don’t really have much for Pete yet. he’s still tbd

[daytrippergilmour]

Ya