Queer | Marched on Washington | Goth Androgyne Generation | Saw Etheridge before and after "Yes I am" | pronouns he or they | Working definition of bi: relationships with people of multiple genders in the past, present and future, physically sexual and...
Wynonna Earp demonstrates that the words “lesbian” and “gay” not only are common words in English conversation, their use is less stilted than attempts by characters to avoid them.
DC/Warner need to figure out that being vague about the topic is not graceful or realistic for many people in contemporary America.
In fact, being ambiguous is one of the many forms of work (and it is work) that are required to maintain the closet and accommodate heterosexism. Why would Wonder Woman be more accommodating of heterosexism than she is of sexism?
Wynonna Earp demonstrates that the words "lesbian" and "gay" not only are common words in English conversation, their use is less stilted than attempts by characters to avoid them.
DC/Warner need to figure out that being vague about the topic is not graceful or realistic for many people in contemporary America.
It’s bi week, and I don’t have the energy to do stuff for it, and don’t feel safe doing it here on tumblr. I have multiple things on my plate in the next month to prepare for, and tumblr “discourse” is offering little beyond roadblocks.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Bi Week is Sept. 19-26, 2016!
I’ll be highlighting new bi content throughout the week to celebrate this magical time, which rarely gets as much coverage or recognition as it deserves. In the meantime, though, here are a few past videos I’ve made about bisexuality:
I was a pacifist long before I got my T levels down. It’s amazing how utterly unreal the MRA/antifem worldview looks from my perspective. It not only doesn’t match my lived experience, it leaves no room for it to exist.
Clearly I am a figment of my own imagination.
I’ve been a religious and philosophical pacifist since high school. One of my worst moments was telling my grandmother I was sympathetic to anti-war protests during the first Gulf War (1990) and getting just about every gendered slur one could think of in response. We never really got over that moment.
tag when you joined the internet and how accurate this is
2016: probably enjoys old memes unironically, no idea how anything works
2012-15: uses "XD" unironically, has a basic understanding of the internet
2010-11: is a fairly average person, advanced understanding of the internet, might be nostalgic
2006-09: wayyy too nostalgic, remembers the old days of youtube, wants things to be simpler, has a nostalgiagasm when remembering old internet, probably has old youtube amvs on their channel from when they were 12 or remembers watching youtube videos when they were 6, age varies from preteen to 20s
2000-05: remembers internet pre-facebook, pre-twitter and pre-youtube, youtube poop expert
the 90s: demigod of the internet, possesses unknown knowledge, reblogs 90s internet posts
the 80s: remembers when eternal september began, probably still uses usenet, possibly doesn't exist, possibly god
60s-70s: is literally actually god, is a human myth, rest is unknown
Whether it’s your main label, a label you use for part of your identity in addition to other labels, or a community identifier, it’s totally cool and valid
To anyone who uses queer because they can’t define their orientation or gender in more specific terms, you’re great and valid and awesome and so is your chosen label
To anyone who uses it as a political label, to combat the cisheteronormative world and to identify as part of a community, you’re also totally awesome
Using the word queer to describe yourself is great and queer is not a dirty word. It may still be hurtful to some, and that’s also completely valid. But it’s a reclaimed slur and it’s for all of us if we identify with it.
For the first time ever, students will be able to gain a postgraduate degree in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The historic university announced plans for the new course today, alongside the proposed creation of a National Queer Archive.
A small number of other universities in the UK offer postgraduate qualifications in gender, sexuality and culture, while some US institutions offer Queer Studies – but Goldsmiths will be the first university to offer a specialist MA in Queer History.
Launching in September 2017 and based in the Department of History, the course – led by Professor of History Jan Plamper – will introduce themes and research methods in Queer History, laying a solid foundation in the wider discipline of history.
It will dissect “historically binary categories, such as male/female, heterosexuality/homosexuality, active/passive, and uncover the processes through which these categories came to be seen as ‘natural’.
“It also focuses on questions of power, including how sexual orientation and race throughout history have often become interlinked in asymmetrical, oppressive ways.”
The course will mainly explore the Early Modern and Modern periods, including “classes on the nature of homosexuality in mid-Victorian Western society, and emancipatory movements (especially of the post-1969, post-Stonewall period)”.
It is intended to build towards the creation of an accessible National Queer Archive in London, involving MA and PhD students.
Dr Vivienne Richmond, Goldsmiths Head of History, said: “The Department of History at Goldsmiths has long pioneered the study and understanding of past societies through their belief systems and their attitudes to subjects such as love and the body.
“We teach issues, themes, and controversies so that students can study not only the linear aspects of traditional history but also concepts.
“The persecution of LGBTQ people in many parts of the world is acute and worsening, despite huge strides in equality elsewhere. Such injustice is fed by ignorance and there is an urgent need to counter this through insight and understanding. Alongside the imperative to confront prejudice with fact, is also a responsibility to celebrate and commemorate.”
Professor Plamper, said: “Through the study of history we can observe how LGBTQ narratives have developed across time, and critically explore the roots of the community.
“This helps build an understanding of one’s own story and identity in the present for those who consider themselves queer, but it also raises consciousness in everyone else.
“Developing self-confidence through knowledge is a powerful antidote to both subtle and not-so-subtle oppression.
“Scholarship should be at the vanguard of this, yet Queer Studies remains ‘closeted’ or indeed has been quashed at other institutions. A centre of excellence for the study of Queer History is very much overdue.”
Applications open in October 2016 for students wishing to begin the course in September 2017.
Amazing news! Want to study a post grad in Queer History? Head to London!
... but before you justify yourself using stereotypes remember the following:
bisexual people are battered and raped by our partners
we are taken to court and denied access to families
we lose jobs
we get less quality health care
we are deported to countries engaged in anti-LGBTQ violence
we are threatened.
Straight culture justifies this by saying:
we are "liars"
we're really gay/lesbian
we're really straight
we're perverts
we're oversexed
we can't be monogamous
we're cheaters
we're bad role models
we're confusing
we're crazy
we're their turn-on
but only on their terms.
It's cool to date within your own preferred social network, but when you justify it with claims about me and mine, you're creating violent conditions for many of us.
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘you can’t apply modern standards of sexuality to historical periods’ before, and how often it’s been used paradoxically to stifle any argument of feeling or behaviour that would seem to modern-day people as less than heterosexual. That has been bugging me for some time: that a concept which should open the door for a huge variety of sexual and romantic possibilities all too often is used as a weapon to achieve the exact opposite outcome: the continued presumption that everyone in history was uniformly heterosexual and heteroromantic unless we SERIOUSLY cannot argue any other way.
But I was thinking about that, and it struck me: it’s used in this way to combat a perceived bias. And the bias so feared here, in my mind, is: that of modern audiences being very quick to declare anything remotely transgressive as being definitely gay.
…which is where the problem might lie, I think? Because, of course, as most queer people could tell you, the wider public is often extremely unwilling to accept that something might be gay, particularly if the thing is desirable in some way.
It reminds me, actually of the weird obsession straight people have with stereotypes, as though they represent the be-all and end-all of oppression: it’s homophobic, I so often hear, to claim that ___ MUST be gay! Leaving aside that it’s usually queer people doing the claiming, and for very good reason: we actually don’t get all that much to ourselves.
So. My response therefore is: yes, we can’t apply modern standards of sexuality to historical periods. But the biggest problem with that going on in history academia isn’t historians being too willing to leap to conclusions that if two men or women wrote passionate letters to one another, they must have been in a sexual relationship, but rather the tendency to assume that the vast vast majority of historical people possessed exclusively heterosexual desire and behaviour, to the extent that any theory which contradicts this modern understanding must be coupled with extraordinary evidence. (And that’s not even getting into other unnamed assumptions, such as that romance and sex are inextricably linked, such that all passionate attachments not coupled with erotic desire must therefore be described as ‘friendship’.)
Which, all told, I suppose maybe rather than just parroting that old line over and over again, historians should actually look into what ‘modern standards of sexuality’ are and where their biases really lie, and be more precise about exactly what they mean by it.
so we're reading MLK's letter from Birmingham jail in English. And people keep going off on tangents like "can you imagine explaining to a child that someone hates them and they're considered inferior" and I'm off to one side thinking ab all the homophobia n everything they say and wondering how they can reconcile being ashamed of that hatred and yet act like my existence is a joke and im just so tired of it tbh. -AL anon
hey!! im really sorry that u have to deal with this at all, its terrible. my friend Laura @apollowned is wonderfully smart about queer history and they have some rly nice words to say to you and i honestly hope it helps you out and gives you strength, because honestly.. i didn’t know this and I found it to be quite moving?? “when Martin Luther King was alive, he had a friend, his best friend actually Bayard Rustin. An openly gay black man. And right now you are surrounded by people who are looking at one struggle and can’t see their hypocrisy when facing another, that while not being the same has similar aspects. But it is important to note, that the man who wrote that letter you are reading, was not like the people you are surrounded by. That he wrote that not for people like them, but for people like you. He wrote this letter about racism, and it is important to remember that, but here is something his wife said that is addressed to u “I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” I am not suggesting that Martin Luther King was a queer advocate, but I can tell you that if he had seen what you do, he would not have fallen on the side of your classmates.” I only add that ignorance is curable, and like any disease it take patience to see any effect of change through the medication of Education. It shouldn’t and doesn’t fall to you to do this though, and only exposure and a different environment will make your classmates see the error in their ways. Stay strong!!! I’m still rooting for u. i know its tiring, and u deserve a rest. I hope you’re ok.
