Oh man thats Queer

I'm finding out what Queer art means to me! and where I fit in as a queer artist. 25/ftm/Aus

[itsthesinbin]

I have a VERY hot take for you all:

Straight people should never be regarded as LGBT icons.

Beyonce, Ariana, Taylor Swift, ect…. They’re not gay icons. They’re not gay. They shouldn’t be regarded as gay/lesbian/bi icons.

If their music resonates with you and you’re lgbt- cool idrc. But I hate that, like… they’re regarded as The Best Gay Icons when they’re not gay.

Lady Gaga? Actually a gay/bi icon. Janelle Monae, Freddie Mercury, ect. They’re LGBT icons.

Shut the fuck up about Ariana and Taylor Swift being gay icons.

[lookingforanepiphany]

Keith Haring in 1989: “Unfinished Painting”. Haring died few months after and this is his last painting. This is supposed to be a self-portrait. Haring knew he wouldn’t have enough time to finish it. This is one of the saddest but certainly the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.

[auntbutch]

to clarify: this is a finished self portrait. haring did know that he would be unable to continue to work; this “unfinished” painting refers to that self-consciously as a visualization of how the aids crisis and government neglect robbed him of his life and future career.

i feel like this distinction is important? there are many artists who died due to hiv/aids and left unfinished work, but haring made this specifically to comment on his impending death. i feel like stating that it’s actually unfinished takes away some of his agency as an artist/activist/pwa and the political power of the work. 

[jeffreycombs]

“In a hundred years of movies, homosexuality has only rarely been depicted on the screen. When it did appear, it was there as something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear. These were fleeting images, but they were unforgettable, and they left a lasting legacy. Hollywood, that great maker of myths, taught straight people what to think about gay people… and gay people what to think about themselves.” (The Celluloid Closet, 1996)

[dannyrandy]

“twisting classical characters like dorian gray into a homosexual”

i’m fucking crying

[greencarnations]

TWISTING CLASSICAL CHARACTERS LIKE DORIAN GRAY INTO A HOMOSEXUAL

[personalmephistopheles]

Son, you might want to be sitting down for this one.

[mashedpotatoturtle-deactivated2]

Dorian Gray was so gay the book was literally used as evidence in the author’s trial for sodomy. 

[transgirlnextdoor]

my Patreonis: patreon.com/kyliesummerwu

[makingqueerhistory]

I would like to invite you all to embrace the ancestors you never knew. 

As members of the queer community, we are in a unique space in that our marginalization is not always shared with our biological family. So we are often left with a feeling of separation to our community and our history, and I want to take a moment to encourage you all to try and bridge that gap within your minds. Think of the queer people who came before us as your family, because so many of them lived their lives so that yours could exist in the way it does.

Think of Oscar Wilde standing in court admitting his love and rejecting the idea that it was shameful in front of his peers. Think of Magnus Hirschfeld collecting data and research so that he could find a path to freedom paved with facts. Think of Marsha P. Johnson, giving out cookies to other sex workers and transgender people on the street and her rage as she threw that shot glass and ignited a revolution. 

These people are your family, they are your history, and they built a world so that you could live in it. You may not be related by blood but you are related by history, their lives are irreversibly connected to ours and I encourage you all to take time to hold that in your minds as you move forward today.

[hooktongued]

A little personal piece about scars.

[empermoth]

Every breath a trans person takes is an act of revolution …So keep breathing

Short one page comic to help remind you to breathe even when you feel like you’re suffocating.

[the-queer-feminist]

A piece of the abundance of graffiti on the walls of my favourite place.

[giveusmoredetonation]

I find it sooooo funny (aka annoying) that straight people will never truly understand the real goals of the gay community

Like they think all we want is to be treated like everyone else. To not be ostracized for being who we are. And they’re right.

But then they take this goal they think we have and somehow in their tiny Het brains it translates to “they want to be seen as straight people, they want to conform, they want gay to become a meaningless label”

So then ally culture becomes “I don’t see gay people as any different, I don’t care about sexuality, the only difference between us is who we love etc.”

And they completely miss the point that we loooove being gay. We love pride, we love talking about our sexuality and how it affects us (if we’re safe to do so) we love having a sense of community and belonging.

What’s gross about this mindset is it stems from the fact that straights cannot even fathom treating gay people like their equals without erasing our identity and forcing us to conform. “I don’t care about your sexuality, I still love you” is false allyship, and in the long term does more harm than good. What gay people truly want is “I see your sexuality, I recognize that your struggles and goals are different than mine, and I’m still going to treat you like a human and give you the rights you deserve”

If you can’t see me as your equal while also recognizing that I’m a lesbian, you are not an ally.

[mayanangel]

The History Of Queer Dance by Eugene Lee Yang

[a-for-effort-f-for-execution]

pure choreography version:

music is ‘gon blow ft rye rye’ by cakes da killa

[ribbitbunny]

just playing the new spider-man game when something caught my eye…!!!

[italofobia]

no cops at pride just spiderman

[hardytoms]

Love, Simon (2018) dir. Greg Berlanti

[fairytale-villain]

A good thread on whether “queer” is a slur and if it should be used or not.

[quarterinthequeerjar]

“If I am unashamed of being queer, you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur.”

[dani-kin]

you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur

[brinconvenient]

EVERYBODY WHO CAME OUT BEFORE YOU HAS TAKEN THE ROCKS AND BOTTLES AND MADE THEM INTO SHIELDS AND WINDCHIMES

Holy motherfucking shit. Don’t fucking come at me about Queer is a slur. I FUCKING KNOW IT IS. It was hurled at me like a fucking spear all through my youth. I know it’s a god damn slur. And it’s mine. You don’t get to take it away from me because you can’t take also away the scars it gave me while I was standing in front of my younger queer siblings in this community. 

[jenroses]

always, always reblog this one.

[kyraneko]

If my enemy swings a sword at me and I take that sword away from them, it’s my sword now. And the person telling me I can’t use it because it belongs to my enemy and I have to give it back to them sounds quite a bit like an enemy themselves.

[excalibelle]

^^ god that analogy

[sgeoffa]

The Impact of Aids on the Artistic Community

September 13, 1987

[qjusttheletter]

[ID: scan of an article on the AIDS crisis by Fran Lebowitz - text below the cut]

Keep reading

[nowletsfixthismess]

The thing about being LGBT+ is, at some point in your childhood, no matter how accepting your parents are, at some point, you have to question: “do they love me unconditionally?” And then you have to plan for the possibility hat the answer is no. And that fucks you up. Straight cis people never have to question that.

[sevenknotwind]

(Heather) Cassils — Becoming an Image

“Our bodies are sculptures formed by society’s expectations. I am a visual artist, and my body is my medium.”

“In terms of pronouns I prefer he but I’m okay with she. I prefer to be called Cassils but don’t mind if people call me Heather. I state it because I know it is not obvious." 

(Cassils)

In total darkness, Cassils perform his attack upon a 2,000 pound block of clay. In the beginning his hands and breasts are each bound in preparation for battle, an epic reshaping a transformation mirroring his own. Over time and with much effort, the artist has transformed, sculpted and changed his own  female form, reshaping it, dissolving binary gender boundaries understood through the exterior forms and contours of a body. The wet punches and short breaths are being captured via an audio recording, flashes of light punctuate the assault upon the clay block— images captured via a camera and the live witnesses to this performance see the action before them the way the camera sees, fractured, disassociated from its linear narrative and bathed in the harsh, cold light of the flash. The viewers gaze akin to the media’s gaze, but also to the photographer’s/artist’s gaze. What they see (and we see after the fact in the still images) is a violent scene, a beating, the physical imposition of will acted out as a force. If as Cassils suggests that “our bodies are sculptures formed by societies expectations” then this sculptural performance reclaims the act of shaping. In this instance the one doing the shaping is the one previously shaped. It too reclaims the acts of violence committed against the trans community. Force met with force, strength met with strength, action captured in an image and an object— and so the work not only reclaims the act of shaping but also the act of image making, wresting a degree of power away from the media…