Miss Jane's Place in the Sun

It doesn't matter what's happening in your real world: you're here now. So grab a drink, sit back and enjoy the sun. Over 18/not always sfw She/her pronouns

[closet-keys]

I was watching Shrek 2 and my wife and I were reflecting on how much transmisogyny was in it as jokes (e.g. “gender confused wolf” “ugly step sister” “women’s underwear” etc.) and it’s so extremely ridiculous to me the transphobes’ line that having positive representations of trans people (esp trans women) in children’s media would be “too confusing” for kids—because they are literally already making references to trans women in children’s media, they’re just doing it in the most offensive ways possible. Taking away all the empty cis rationalization of it, really they’re not arguing for kids to not see trans characters, they’re arguing that kids should see trans characters as demonized, fetishized, objects of ridicule and disgust. Like that’s literally the subtext in these “how do I explain this to my kids” conversations. They really mean “let me continue to explain this in ways that groom kids into hating trans people and themselves if they are trans”

[chiribomb-deactivated20220820]

This…is a great point

[elodieunderglass]

I don’t know enough about Shrek to argue, but there is a lot of children’s media in which stuff like “putting a masculine person in feminine clothing” is done for giggles and punishment, and it’s literally something I had to explain to my firstborn child as a small toddler, LIKE.

“Why angry” well kid, he didn’t want to wear the tutu because… he doesn’t like ballet.

“Why laughing?” yeah, they’re being mean actually. We don’t point and laugh, that is wrong. They’re being naughty.

It’s awful. Let’s explain bullying to a toddler who has never been scolded. Let’s explain malicious cruelty to someone who has never witnessed cruelty. And let’s make it repeatedly clear that femininity is humiliating. It’s very important to the entertainment and stability of society that small children, who barely grasp the usage of gendered pronouns, be shown that wearing clothes for different roles is punishment.

Let’s be real, it is not actually difficult to have a five-word conversation about queerness with a toddler. “Some people have two daddies.” “Our friend is a they.” They really do not care about this. It is not hard. They’ll listen to you.

But explaining a scene like the one above? Where you’re trying to explain that some parts of society are broken, and we don’t copy those behaviours in our house, and we hold ourselves to a standard of decency higher than Peppa Pig? That’s hard work.

[coolxatu]

its crazy when you think about how tumblr works because unless you follow someone that interacts with the inner circle of core users it really is a barren wasteland out there

[coolxatu]

obviously its the only correct way to run social media but its truly insane that there really isnt any other sites left where you get authentic word-of-mouth social networking that doesnt rely on Curated Content

[nerdgul]

Every other social media has each user in a box looking at posts specifically picked for you, it comes in through a slot in the top and that’s what you get.

Tumblr meanwhile is a large auditorium where everyones chatting and every so often someone stands up and yells something out for all in listening distance to hear and if people like it they stand up and repeat it so more people can hear and so on

[allthelonelyplaces]

I know we don’t get happily ever afters in real life. I’m a hopeless romantic, not a total fucking idiot. As my friend, Russell, said to me once, “Even with the happiest couples, one of you dies first.” But first there is such unalloyed joy. We went to the supermarket yesterday and we were wandering around and, at one point, he took my hand, because that’s the kind of thing he does. And instantly, I got flustered. Residual anxiety. Remembrance of past battery. Enduring scars. Even though I know I’m hardly likely to get my head kicked in by the salad bar, PDAs can still make me nervous. And then he said, gentle as anything, and I’m not going to do the accent… “If there’s a gay kid in here with his folks, frightened that he’s a freak, don’t you think that it might give him hope, seeing two guys wandering around, being themselves, getting their groceries, like everyone else?” If happiness is a place… it’s the biscuit aisle in Sainsbury’s. And anywhere else I am with him.

[queercomicsconnection]

Alan Cumming on BBC Four’s Queers.

[kabaks]

sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down

[l2g-deactivated20240513]

this is why this sappho fragment hits me so hard

[doomedvoyages]

[phantom-tail]

If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the political equality and social and moral elevation of women.

“The Great Geysers of California” by Laura De Force Gordon, 1879, unearthed from a 100-year-old time capsule in San Francisco, 1979.

[levourdalak]

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”

Gordon Bowsher to Gilbert Bradley, 1940s

[homoslovenc]

reading these fragments always makes me cry

[slidesworthseeing]

Found slide: Mount Amos, Freycinet Peninsula, Toorernomairremener country, lutruwita Tasmania, circa 1956 (photographer unknown)

[dicapito2-deactivated20230424]

To anyone who’s thinking this way

[nicotinecaffienesugarfix-deacti]

[id: a Twitter thread by Noah Tzedek reads,

Seeing so many people saying "I did everything right" as they say they have a breakthrough case of COVID. It is dangerous to moralize contracting a deadly disease. You cannot personal responsibility your way out of a public health disaster.

I understand the instinct to say "I did everything right" when there's been an utter lack of national guidance, & we're being told to manage a global pandemic on a hyper local level. We focus on what is in our control. This is also how our children react when being abused.

Because it feels safer to focus on what they can control than leave relationship with those harming them, who have power over them.

HIV/AIDS activists taught us about the danger of moralizing illness. They showed us the collective power we can have when we recognize it is governmental neglect that is placing us at risk, & our fates are intertwined.

/end id]

[despazito]

one of the most disgusting takes I've heard come out of this global housing crises is "you don't have a right to live where you grew up"

[despazito]

it's not about a house, you should'nt have to move away from your family and friends and everything you know just to afford a roof over your head. it is definitely contributing to the loneliness epidemic

[lavendersisterhood-deactivated2]

[defectivegembrain]

creative writing’s just like yeah sure i can deal with my issues i just need to cover them in several layers of metaphors first

[defectivegembrain]

touch depression? with my bare hands? no hang on *invents a character* this will be my gloves

[lesbianshepard]

stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life

[pastel-selkie]

Reblog if you would burn down the statue of liberty to save a life

[randomslasher]

Here’s the thing, though. If you asked a conservative “Would you let the statue of liberty burn to save one life?” they’d probably scoff and say no, it’s a national landmark, a treasure, a piece of too much historical importance to let it be destroyed for the sake of one measly life. 

But if you asked, “Would you let the statue of liberty burn in order to save your child? your spouse? someone you loved a great deal?” the tune abruptly changes. At the very least, there’s a hesitation. Even if they deny it, I’m willing to bet that gun to their head, the answer would be “yes.”  

The basic problem here is that people have a hard time seeing outside their own sphere of influence, and empathizing beyond the few people who are right in front of them. You’ve got your immediate family, whom you love; your friends, your acquaintances, maybe to a certain degree the people who share a status with you (your religion, your race, etc.)–but beyond that? People aren’t real. They’re theoretical. 

But a national monument? That’s real. It stands for something. The value of a non-realized anonymous life that exists completely outside your sphere of influence is clearly worth less than something that represents freedom and prosperity to a whole nation, right?

People who think like this lack the compassion to realize that everyone is in someone’s immediate sphere of influence–that everyone is someone’s lover, or brother, or parent. Everyone means the world to someone. And it’s the absolute height of selfishness to assume that their lives don’t have value just because they don’t mean the world to you. 

P.S. I would let the statue of liberty burn to save a pigeon. 

[boyist]

[robotmango]

also, there is an extreme difference between what things or principles *i* personally am willing to die for, and what i would hazard others to die for. and this is a distinction i don’t think the conservative hard-right likes to face.

an example: so, as the nazis began war against france, the staff of the louvre began crating up and shipping out the artworks. it was vital to them (for many reasons) that the nazis not get their hands on the collections, and hitler’s desire for them was known, so they dispersed the objects to the four winds; one of the curators personally traveled with la gioconda, mona lisa herself, in an unmarked crate, moving at least five times from location to location to avoid detection.

they even removed and hid the nike of samothrace, “winged victory,” which is both delicate, having been pieced back together from fragments, and incredibly heavy, weighing over three metric tons.

the curators who hid these artworks risked death to ensure that they wouldn’t fall into nazi hands. and yes, they are just paintings, just statues. but when i think about the idea of hitler capturing and standing smugly beside the nike of samothrace, a statue widely beloved as a symbol of liberty, i completely understand why someone would risk their life to prevent that. if my life was all that stood between a fascist dictator and a masterpiece that inspired millions, i would be willing to risk it. my belief in the power and necessity of art would demand i do so.

if, however, a nazi held a gun to some kid’s head (any kid!) and asked me which crate the mona lisa was in, they could have it in a heartbeat. no problem! i wouldn’t even have to think about it. being willing to risk my own life on principle doesn’t mean i’m willing to see others endangered for those same principles.

and that is exactly where the conservative hard-right falls right the fuck down. they are, typically, entirely willing to watch others suffer for their own principles. they are perfectly okay with seeing children in cages because of their supposed belief in law and order. they are perfectly willing to let women die from pregnancy complications because of their anti-abortion beliefs. they are alright with poverty and disease on general principle because they hold the free-market sacrosanct. and i guess from their own example they would save the statue of liberty and let human beings burn instead.

but speaking as a leftist (i’m more comfortable with socialist tbh), my principles are not abstract things that i hold aside from life, apart or above my place as a human being in a society. my beliefs arise from being a person amidst people. i don’t love art for art’s sake alone, actually! i don’t love objects because they are objects: i love them because they are artifacts of our humanity, because they communicate and connect us, because they embody love and curiosity and fear and feeling. i love art because i love people. i want universal health care because i want to see people universally cared for. i want universal basic income because people’s safety and dignity should not be determined by their economic productivity to an employer. i am anti-war and pro-choice for the same reason: i value people’s lives but also their autonomy and right to self-determination. my beliefs are not abstractions. i could never value a type of economic system that i saw hurting people, no matter how much “growth” it produced. i could never love “law and order” more than i love a child, any child, i saw trapped in a cage.

would i be willing to risk death, trying to save the statue of liberty? probably, yes. but there is no culture without people, and therefore i also believe there are no cultural treasures worth more than other people’s lives. and as far as i’m concerned the same goes for laws, or markets, or borders.

[aquatixwitch]

Well said!

[lauraantoniou]

This is an excellent ethical discussion.

[oganizediguana]

The first time I came across this post, randomslasher’s addition was life changing for me. I suddenly understood where the right was coming from, and I had never been angrier.

[hazeldomain]

This is also why so many people on the right fail to see the hypocrisy of trying to make abortion illegal when they themselves have had abortions. They can tally up their own life circumstances and conclude that it would be difficult or impossible to continue a pregnancy, but they’re completely mystified by the idea that women they don’t know are also human beings with complicated lives and limited spoon allocation.

This is also why they think “get a job” is useful advice. In their heads they honestly do not understand why the NPCs who make up the majority of the human race can’t just flip a switch from “no job” to “job.” When they say “get a job” they’re filing a glitch report with God and they honestly think that’s all it takes.

This is also why they tend to view demographics as individuals. They think that every single Muslim is just a different avatar for the same bit of programming.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Borrowed observation from @innuendostudios​ here, but: there’s also a fundamental difference in how progressives view social problems versus how conservatives view them. That is, progressives view them as problems to be solved, whereas conservatives do not believe you can solve anything.

Conservatives view social issues as universal constants that fundamentally are unable to be changed, like the weather. You can try to alter your own behavior to protect yourself (you can carry an umbrella), and you can commiserate about how bad the weather is, but you can’t stop it from raining. This is why conservatives blame victims of rape for dressing immodestly or for drinking or for going out at night: to them, those things are like going out without an umbrella when you know it’s going to rain. 

“But then why do conservatives try to stop things they dislike by making them illegal, like drug use or immigration or abortion?” And the answer is: they’re not. They know perfectly well that those things will continue. No amount of studies showing that their methods are ineffective will matter to them because effectiveness is not the point. The point is to punish people for doing bad things, because punishing people is how you show your disapproval of their actions; if you don’t punish them, then you’re condoning their behavior. 

This is why they will never support rehabilitative prisons, even though they reduce crime. This is why they will never support free birth control for everyone, even though that would reduce abortions. This is why they will never support just giving homeless people houses, even though it’s proven to be cheaper and more effective at stopping homelessness than halfway houses and shelters. It’s not about stopping evil, because you can’t; it’s about saying definitively what is Bad and what is Good, and we as a society do that by punishing the people we’ve decided are bad. 

This is why the conservative response to “holy fuck, they’re putting children in cages!” is typically something along the lines of “it’s their parents’ fault for trying to come here illegally; if they didn’t want to have their kids taken away, they shouldn’t have committed a crime.” It doesn’t matter that entering the US unlawfully is a misdemeanor and child kidnapping isn’t typically a criminal sentence. It does not matter that this has absolutely zero effect on people unlawfully entering the US. The point is that conservatives have decided that entering unlawfully is Bad, anything that is not punishing undocumented immigrants – due process of asylum and removal defense claims, for example – is supporting Badness, and kidnapping children is an appropriate punishment for being Bad.

[oldshrewsburyian]

#ivan karamazov#enters the chat (@the-world-lit-or-unlit)

[jezebelgoldstone]

This is really long but please read it

[freknoidspeaks-deactivated20230]

When someone (or ones) sum up everything you’ve been trying to express for, I dunno, the last 25 years and wrap it in a neat little Tumblr-ed package, what is the appropriate response? Is it, “how are you so much better at this than I am?” Or “will you come live on a commune in Costa Rica with me?” Or some version of, “clearly I am not needed on this planet any longer. Can I go home now?”

[prsephonies-deactivated20200815]

when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest

[friedegg]

[friedegg]

[whats-your-name-man]

[cowboyhats]

Michelle K, I Know I Deserve More

[legsdemandias]

Commenting fanfiction is the easiest thing in the world once you start doing it. 

[legsdemandias]

I leave a comment on every single fic I read. Sometimes when I read published books I go and leave a comment somewhere the author can find it. Granted, I literally majored in ‘leaving comments on fics’ (English Education), but once you start doing it it just becomes second nature. Now you’re gonna go to the Ozymandias school of leaving comments: 

Problem: I can’t leave kudos again.

Beginner: This is a second/third/fourth Kudos

Advanced: This is my second/third/fortieth time reading this, I still love it so much. Here are a few new things I noticed. I like the way you personally do x, y, z compared to other authors I’ve read (in this ship/genre/fandom).

Problem: I don’t know what to say :(

Beginner: Just list what you did to read this fic. “I stayed up late reading this”, “I read this on a crowded train”, “this kept me company while sick”. 

Advanced: X,Y,Z parts made me get butterflies, and I had a physical reaction to this part of the story, I squealed outloud when characters did x,y,z. I blushed at this part. I laughed out loud here. Whatever. 

Problem: I’m embarrassed to leave a comment (what if I annoy the author?)

Beginner: Short answer: you won’t EVER annoy the author (unless you’re needlessly mean) But to start, be generic, you don’t have to spill your soul in the comments section. “I liked this” “I enjoyed reading this” “nice fic”.

Advanced: This really meant a lot to me that you wrote this. This is something I feel like I’ve always wanted to read. This fic hit me in all the right places. Etc. 

Problem: I don’t know how to express myself/my experience 

Beginner: My beginners go to is to highlight a line, put that in your comment and say “i liked this” or to identify basic emotions you had while reading and comment those “this made me happy” “this part made me sad” “i almost cried” “you made me laugh”  Advanced: “Highlighted line” This line made me smile because it has to do with character development/it’s really romantic/it’s so unique/it’s moving. Sometimes I don’t highlight a line at all, I just talk about the stuff I’ve noticed were unique to the fic. “I love the way you did this particular thing with this character”. 

[toybeluga]

This? This is an amazing post. This is the Captain Awkward of commenting posts—it addresses all your fears directly and gives you actionable scripts for each one.

[hoseokchild-deactivated20220727]

doing this will make authors / writers love you forever.

[captain-snark]

Even a “thank you for sharing!” is a great comment. You could hate everything about the fic and have a red pen ready if they ever wanted a beta but can also be 100% genuine in being grateful that someone put themselves out there and shared a story for other people to read. 

[sofuckingchuffed]

[guerrillatech]

[simariethehawk]

and hilariously that is not why it is called that.

It is the circle of the bears cause of ursa major and ursa minor, and the circle without bears cause ya'know opposite part of the sky.

We lucked right into that one....

[nerdfighterwhatevernumbers]

#so what you’re saying is#the stars dictate whether bears do or do not exist in places

[team-bear-arms-deactivated20220]

Astrology is real but only for predicting where bears will be

[the-tired-tenor]

Bears do not travel to places they cannot see their gods

[aimmyarrowshigh]

“What is significant about fan fiction is that it often spins the kind of stories that showrunners wouldn’t think to tell, because fanficcers often come from a different demographic. The discomfort seems to be not that the shows are being reinterpreted by fans, but that they are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans - women, people of colour, queer kids, horny teenagers, people who are not professional writers, people who actually care about continuity (sorry). The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly.”

— Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase by Laurie Penny  (via basilandtheblues)

[podencos]

I’m too lazy for dating. Why can’t someone materialize out of nowhere and agree that we should spend the rest of our lives together

[tenant86]

“The betrayal of gay people by their heterosexual family members is as effective as it is undeserved. This confusing combination leaves us with a lifetime burden of having to try to come to terms with and understand the experience. One coping mechanism is to pretend that nothing is happening. Many gay people will say that their families are “fine.” But when you ask for details, this means, basically, that the gay person has not been completely excluded from family events. Or that their partner, if they have one, is allowed in the house. Very few experience their personhood, lives, and feelings to be actively understood as equal to the heterosexual family members. Often parents or siblings keep the person’s homosexuality secret from others, or euphemize it. They vote for politicians who hurt gay people; they contribute to religious organizations that humiliate gay people; they patronize cultural products that depict gay people as pathological. they speak and act in ways that reinforce the idea of gay people as “special interest.” In many ways the message is clear that the gay person is not fully human. But because many gay people know others who have been more severely punished by their family’s prejudices, they look on their own continued compromised inclusion to be miraculously positive and a product of their own correct behavior.”

— Sarah Schulman, Ties That Bind