Resident Angry Queer

[theburialofstrawberries]

awesome awesome interview with Emily Wilson

[ploobytumbls]

I would like to share the story of a very understandable but unfortunate mistake i made at work recently

So I'm weeding our ancient and terrible collection of children's books for the first time in possibly ever, and I'm making a decision about a book about migrant workers by Sandra Weiner, called Small Hands, Big Hands. And I'm not 100% sure and I go to just see if there's anything out there about this book's being notable in any way so I do an open web search for

"small hands big hands weiner"

And then I look at my results for a moment

and then at last I somberly add to the end of my search, "BOOK"

[chaostheorietblr]

I have one like that:

In mathematics, you often consider the two-dimensional plane - you know, the idealised flat two-dimensional object that extends infinitely - which can be real or complex (doesn't matter what that means)

On this, you can perform a mathematical operation called a "blow-up" (resulting in a more complicated geometry)

I needed to look up a formula related to this, so I confidently typed into the search bar:

"Blow up real plane"

The results were not what I wanted and I am not sure if I'm on a terror watchlist now.

[three--rings]

This reminds me of my corsetmaker days when i found myself searching for "extra thick boning."

[schistcity]

currently maybe possibly single-handedly crashing whatever servers eton hosts its archived student newspapers on because me and a friend are getting obsessed with a single outspoken prefect from 1883

[schistcity]

@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:

Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive

The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.

Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!

I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.

Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.

The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.

Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!

And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"

(They were very divided)

Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":

Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.

The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.

Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):

We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.

In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:

To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life

Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.

Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about

Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡

[youhavethewrong]

Perhaps this is an obnoxious take on my part, but video games should, above all things, prioritize the ability of being paused. At any point. Regardless of whether it's during a cutscene, a special animation, or a time-based puzzle. You never know when you're gonna get a phone call, or someone will need you in another room, or you get a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, or you hear your cat licking plastic, or whatever. Other entertainment mediums like books, movies, and music can be paused whenever you want. Why do some games not give you the same luxury??

[eldritchsquared]

a customer today looked at me, said “y’know? i think you’ll appreciate this,” and pulled his shirt down to show me his supernatural tattoo. calling me a slur would’ve been easier

[ryan-sometimes]

I don’t care if one of my writing quirks is a sign of AI! I was here with my em dashes, semicolons, Oxford commas, and flowery prose before ChatGPT!!!! Why should I be the one to change? I’m not destroying an entire town’s water supply every time I write a chapter

[osmilizsarian]

TV Appreciation Week 2024  : Day 7 : Free choice → Favourite show nobody watched (Galavant)

♫ Give into the miracle that no one thought we'd get. ♫

[iphigeniacomplex]

taylor swift is a tyrant for real like value neutral judgement but you can tell in her music the specific point that caligula started visiting her in dreams

[iphigeniacomplex]

she has this 3d-printed mini desk recreation of the bust of caligula with whom she communicates daily and in order to evade football’s suspicions she told him it was jesus and he was like Niiice jesus is actually awesomesauce ❤️ Like jesus helps you with touchdowns🏈🔥 and she was like yess exactly and then asked caligula in perfect latin if he could connect her with the ghost of genghis khan so they can talk strategy

[lagtrainzzz]

i think transfems should be allowed to be good at sports.

sometimes a trans woman wins against a cis woman. sometimes a cis woman wins against another cis woman too. yet only one of them is allowed to win without facing consequences.

it's not enough to support transfems in sports if your support hinges on us being bad at them.

[parkchanwoohoo]

Genuinely evil and dark-sided to put the periods between the letters in "milf" and "dilf." Like what is M.I.L.F. that is a supervillain organization composed entirely of cougars. Whoa that's a great idea actually post canceled hold on

[dragon-in-a-fez]

niche thing to be annoyed about but when Mass Effect Andromeda came out I got an Andromeda Initiative hat as a preorder bonus and now I can't wear it because if you go around in 2026 wearing a hat with "AI" on the front in scifi letters people are going to think you're an asshole

[junglejim4322]

90% of age gaps don’t matter when you’re a grown adult as long as you don’t have a repeated pattern of dating people barely legal. I would date someone 30 years older than me if I liked them who gaf

[junglejim4322]

This entire conversation is somehow 90% people infantilizing themselves and 10% actually people talking about the issue of men who never grow out of dating 18/19 year olds. No it is not a big deal when a 25 year old dates a 35 year old please get a grip

[junglejim4322]

Honestly if you’re in your mid twenties infantilizing yourself on this level maybe you shouldn’t be dating anyone

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Chimes with a thought I've had for a while, actually; sleep deprivation might mean I explain this badly, but:

What a red flag actually means: something here is an indicator of a potential problem (but might be fine with a reasonable explanation)

What people have now decided it means: abuse

I've lost count of the number of times I've now had to read variants of "My partner takes all my money and gives me back an allowance because he says it's a man's job to control finances, but he's racking up gambling debts" being met with "Wow this man is a walking red flag" no Becky that is abuse. That is not an indicator. He is an abuser. Call the police. We have lost the concept of a proxy: a thing that indicates a more important thing. And it's relevant to this conversation because I'm actually going to go out on a limb here:

With the obvious exception of paedophilia, age gaps themselves aren't a problem at all - they are a proxy for the actual harmful phenomenon. Hea me out, let me explain

The reason we don't like age gaps is because of the implied power dynamic. If one partner, usually male, is older than other - particularly if the other is still quite young - the risk is that what we're seeing is a worldly wise predator who is exploiting the lack of life experience of a young beautiful woman by mentally abusing her until she's no longer young and pretty enough to satisfy, at which point he'll move on to the next. There have been enough examples of this in human history. It's unfortunately not an uncommon pattern. Genders can also be diverse in this scenario

We can't necessarily see that dynamic from the outside. But we CAN see an inherent element of it: the ages of the people involved. So age becomes a proxy for the abuse. And, hey, it's often correct.

But here's the thing: the ages themselves are not causing harm.

The power dynamic is. The abuse is.

Plenty of age gap relationships are loving, healthy and steadfast. Two people met and genuinely fell in love regardless of the outer packaging, and have a relationship with all the highs and lows and challenges and rewards as any more traditional pairing. This happens all the time

Is the age gap a red flag? Sure! It indicates a potential issue.

Is it inherently abusive? Absolutely fucking not.

OP is right - we need to stop focusing just on the numbers and twisting the facts to fit by infantilising the younger partners, and start focusing on the actual harms. The DiCaprio Pattern of only dating under 24s repeatedly is itself a proxy, too, actually - but a much stronger one than the simple presence of an age gap.

(Even so, in DiCaprio's case, until any of his former partners come forward and describe him as abusive, actually, even that is up in the air - my personal interpretation, given how strong a pattern it is, is that he's a loser who views women as trophies (consciously or not). If any have come forward and I don't know about it, of course, fair enough. But those women were adults capable of making their own decisions, even if they might later come to regret it. And regretting poor decisions is part of life! That's how it goes, particularly with relationships. As long as they weren't abused, there's no biggie. And just as he was looking for young-and-beautiful, there's no way they weren't, on some level, looking for rich-and-famous; it goes both ways.)

Also, another element of this: I think a lot of modern extreme puritan discourse on this is actually ironically down to the age of those taking part. Up until your late 20s, ten years is actually a huge span of time to you, because in your own life you were in a completely different developmental phase ten years ago (teenager), and a completely different phase again ten years before that (child). That skews your sense of what a ten-year gap means. Whereas once you're in your 30s and beyond, ten years is like. Yeah I was an adult ten years ago, and I still am now. That's two adults. Who cares.

(Anyway I am hoping and praying I explained that well enough, and also that Tumblr's famous reading comprehension skills are solid enough to follow)

[theoutcastrogue]

The power dynamic in itself isn't causing harm either. I am BEGGING you people to realise what you're asking for here. Like, what's the alternative? Only date people within your wealth/status bracket? Do you want castes? Because that's how you get castes. By this logic, surgeons shouldn't date waiters, lawyers shouldn't date construction workers, lauded actors shouldn't date lowly techies, and employed people shouldn't date unemployed people. Rich people should only date other rich people, poor people should only date other poor people, and no one should date anyone significantly more or significantly less educated that them.

Does that sound right to you? Do you think it would work, do you think we should try to make it work, and do you think that if it did work, it would magically make abuse disappear? COME ON.

[redstonedust]

we all know adult humans dont get enough enrichment but the other day i was walkin home past an empty playground and impulsively ran over to spin myself on this zipline merry-go-round contraption for a few minutes and it really did feel like it unlocked some neglected part of my brain. like damn we really should all go outside and play more. fuck. they werent kidding with this play time thing. have you guys heard about play time. it could be huge.

[zoctopode]

can you imagine being a parent in the pokemon world and your kid comes home with one of those straight up basically human pokemon. i know those motherfuckers can talk.

its morning. i see my childs Throh getting some oj from the fridge. 'morning', i say. he doesnt catch himself in time and says 'morning' back. he freezes and we both stare at each other knowingly. 'throh,' he says, but its too fucking late

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[flowerbleedme]

Well as a "fan" I would be "serviced" by some THEMES AND MOTIFS #themesandmotifs #artwithmeaning

[miggylol]

Spin the wheel. That's who's trying to kill you.

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

Are you safe?

Absolutely not. I'm dead. 100% dead.

I might stay alive, but it'll be a really close thing.

I'll take some hits, for certain, but I should be okay in the end.

A few attacks might get through, but nothing concerning.

The attacker might be able to get in one lucky hit. If that.

I am the opposite of worried. I'm 100% safe.

…Look. I've tried picturing this. But I honestly don't know how to answer.

Remaining time: 4 days 4 minutes

(I've run this poll twice before, expanding it significantly for the second run. With about a year passed since that second run, I thought it was time to add another couple hundred names to the list and have another go.)