I've been following your liveblog and it has opened my eyes to how truly inhospitable this country is to homeless people. I'm sorry you have to go through trouble on the regular.
Oh yeah I've been dealing with this stuff for years, I thought everyone knew cause it all seems very intentional. Make the native people homeless, make it so hard to live while homeless that people die or kill themselves, then you don't have to worry about who rightfully owns the land. Of course not every homeless person I meet is native, but definitely 90% or more of them are. (And of course not every native person is homeless, but the US government has the power to change that at any moment, and they have done so in the past.)
Being forced to walk to Oklahoma by the US government is actually a Muskogee tradition, I'm proud I finally get to join in the fun B) I definitely have it way easier than those who walked the first Trail of Tears, since back then most Muskogees were so destitute as to be barefoot, and the first forced march was in January. The government killed all the old people and children this way, and when the survivors made it to the reservation, they were fed rotten food and given smallpox infested blankets. I'm very lucky that other survivors in the area, descendents of slaves like me, are helping me out with money and food - our ancestors must have watched the first march and were unable to do anything to help.
this is so late renaissance early mannerism. the controversial male nudity? the lighting and value on the figure of emphasis?? him bathed in light and placed ABOVE while the police are clad in dark and BELOW?? Uh HES HITTING THE CONTRAPPOSTO??
Your post about homeless shelters calls their issues "uniquely liberal". Can I ask what you mean by that? /Gen
To me, there's nothing more liberal than a finely tuned system of bureaucracy that is hand-crafted to seem politically neutral despite still negatively impacting our most vulnerable populations en-masse.
When you enter the shelter system, you lose status as a person and instead become a measurable outcome. The nonprofit complex (which most shelters fall under) is a massive industry with billions of dollars flowing in and out. Their continued existence & expansion- which could include hundreds of people's jobs- live and die on 2 things: 1) they must constantly prove that they are socially necessary, or that there is a high/growing need for them to exist, but also simultaneously 2) proving "positive outcomes" and making it look like they are helping people transition out of homelessness with a program that works.
Whether it DOES work doesn't really matter, and in fact, if it worked that might actually be worse for their business. I mean, if there's no homeless people, what happens to the shelter? Our jobs? Our funding? But it especially does not matter to the people at the top of these orgs; a board of directors who likely will never interact directly with the staff, clientele, or even site locations at any time. All they interact with are numbers, and every decision is based on what those numbers say. It doesn't need to work, it just needs to look like it works.
I'll give you a personal anecdote to highlight what I mean.
I recently briefly worked for a very large system that runs several HUGE shelters in one of the most homeless metropolitan areas in the country. It's a very liberal company that mostly employs people of color and trans folk (which I now recognize as a massive red flag lol they want our labor for cheap). They are focused on things like *equity* and *accountability* blah blah
Success in these shelters is measured in a very prototypical way; how many beds are we filling daily, and how many people are "leaving shelter of their own accord" (i.e. not being kicked out for violating rules, and presumably leaving because they have found housing)? Essentially: how many beds are we turning over each day? And the higher that number = positive outcomes.
But here's the thing. If someone "forfeits" their bed, they can be counted as a tally under that "left shelter of their own accord" category, even if they immediately just get back on the waitlist (and oh yes, there are wait lists) to return to the shelter. So what these shelters do is they maintain a VERY strict, convoluted set of rules around what it means to forfeit your bed.
Back 5 minutes past curfew because you're visibly transgender and had 3 Uber drivers decline your ride when they saw you? Forfeit. Late for curfew because the bus' wheelchair lift didn't work and you use a power chair? Forfeit. You ARE back on time, but your partner is seemingly AWOL (because, as we discovered later, he was picked up by immigration and disappeared for several days)? Forfeit for the both of you, because this is a couples-only shelter. Sorry. You can jump back in the list as a single, and return to shelter after sleeping outside for a few days, though.
(all of these are real situations I really encountered, and you can very clearly see the type of people impacted)
Any bending of these rules requires documentation (like for clients that work late, for example, giving proof of schedule) but that documentation needed to be renewed WEEKLY. Beyond being impossible for clients to keep track of, it was impossible for US to keep track of. We were so understaffed and on top of everything, we have to keep track of 200 people's work schedules? No. Of course stuff slips through the cracks- and that's a function of the bureaucracy too- making it such a fucking chore to maintain legitimately, that people are encouraged to fudge shit and lie.
And as a result of all these policies, you get a constantly turning conveyor belt of people "exiting" shelter and then re-entering it, both of which count positively for outcome numbers. Why WOULDN'T they make that cycle part of the routine? And they did- almost every client I worked with had accidentally forfeit their bed at least once. Some clients had done it dozens of times.
When it comes to nonprofits I always keep this saying in the back of my head; if you're not paying for a product, you are the product. Assume that bureaucracy will always bend in favor of the industrial complex, because you're just the product. You're just a number. You're just an outcome. And if that outcome doesn't look pretty for their bottom line, they'll force it to. All while smiling and preaching equity. Really, what's more liberal than that?
an underrecognised tragedy of AI slop isn't just that any piece of contemporary art could be AI, any news reel could be AI, it's that now just any video of something vaguely nice and whimsical happening in the world could be AI
"lol if you just look closely you can tell when somethi--" silence nerd, the problem is that i don't want to have to approach everything nice wondering if the devil is trying to deceive me
As Steam and Itch.io join the mass purge of LGBTQ content, we must document our past and ensure a shared future.
The writing has been on the wall for years, but now it’s in the boldest of fonts: if there is porn that you like, games with even remotely adult or queer content that you enjoy, queer art you appreciate that features nudity or discussions of bodies, works of fiction that you love that features controversial subjects or themes, or any queer historical records that you think should continue existing, now is the time to build an archive of them. If you are panicked by the growing libricide of LGBTQ and NSFW records from the internet, this is one very impactful thing that you can do right now to help.
Download the files, store them on an encrypted drive, upload them to a protected server, and communicate with other lovers of sexual art and queer records, so that you can help build a library of it that is accessible to us, and those that come after us in the future. If you have the capability, keep meticulous records of what you have collected — where you found it, who originally made it, what year it comes from, the spaces and communities it was associated with, the names of the people who brought it into existence.
As the burning of the Hirschfeld archives and the catastrophic losses of the AIDs crisis taught us, queer history evaporates quickly when there is no one around to keep circulating it. But you can be a part of what keeps our stories flowing, the blood moving through us that keeps us animated and alive. And you do not have to be a trained historian or especially skillful with technology, though now is also a wonderful time to learn how to be a better archivist. Just begin doing something. Save and document all that you can — in a private space that you control, and that technology companies cannot purge.
It is also important at this time to understand how LGBTQ content bans happen on a tactical level, and resist in kind. Collective Shout pressures platforms into removing NSFW content by contacting payment processors, such as Visa and MasterCard, and convincing those companies to not process any transactions involving sexual works. Collective Shout claims that it only took about a thousand phone calls to get the companies to enforce a NSFW ban. We can also call them in large numbers, and demand that adult & queer content gets put back.
If a game that you paid good money for on Steam or Itch.io has been removed in the NSFW ban, you have grounds to demand a refund.Give your payment processor a call, make a complaint, and get them to issue you a charge back. This may help place pressure on both payment processing companies and game platforms to revise their policies.
It is also important during this time to study the recent history of LGBTQ & NSFW censorship on the internet, and learn from communities that have been able to resist it successfully. One of the very first groups to be targeted by efforts like these was actually the hypnosis kink community, back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. During that time, an avid porn site user reportedly disputed hundreds of dollars in charges, alleging that he had been hypnotized into giving his credit card information away against his will. To avoid future such cases, payment processors like Visa and Mastercard refused to honor any transactions for any content involving hypnosis or mind control, and this has remained their policy ever since.
In spite of harsh repression at the hands of credit card companies and digital platforms, the hypnokink community has continued to thrive, and even grown in popularity and public acceptance in recent years. As many of you know, I am a long-term member of this diverse & queer-affirming community — I spent all of last weekend at an in-person erotic hypnosis convention, which I blogged all about on Instagram — so I know a bit about how we have managed to cope with being attacked and have come out stronger and healthier than we were before.
I think that any of us who are concerned by the stripping of queer and sexual content from the internet can learn from how the hypnokink community has responded to similar censorship over the years, and adopt some of their strategies.
One of the first things that the hypno-kink community learned once it was under attack was not to self-snitch. When we got banned from mainstream porn sites, we found the seedy, poorly regulated platforms that were not as likely to enforce payment processors’ ban on hypnosis content. On sites like Pornhub and Patreon, we learned to use terms like mesmerized and other euphemisms instead of hypnosis or mind control, or to merely reference media properties where hypnosis is featured without saying it outright.
We became data hoarders, snapping up copies of every porn video, erotic audio file, animated gif, and illustration featuring hypnosis that we could find, and then sharing it on forums with our fellow fetishists. We learned to make and share our work in private — in chat rooms, on password-protected servers — and began hosting hypnotic content on shared drives and websites we didn’t widely advertise.
Rather than allowing outside groups to censor us, we took community responsibility for maintaining standards of consent and safety, and gave no quarter to predators. At conventions, we require attendees to complete consent quizzes, and provided dungeons with consent monitors. We offer classes on consent, safety, and developing agency as a hypnotic subject. Many of our events ban the use of substances and require COVID vaccinations and KN95 masks in order to reduce risk. We continually debate how best to navigate riskier kink practices and negotiate encounters with one another.
We have continued gathering in person, and in small virtual conferences, because there are conversations about our shared passion that require an in-depth conversation among people who are at a higher level of understanding. We discuss more complex, nuanced topics in rooms where people are prepared to have them, and we understand that every rule has the power to cause exclusion and damage — and appreciate that even the best guidelines need to be broken sometimes. (For example, plenty of people still benefit from using substances for their mental health, even at a “substance-free” con).
Because the kink we are playing with can be psychologically very risky, we emphasize the importance of being in community with one another and vetting play partners, and speak about our experiences so that we can better understand what we’re going through and what we need. We do what we can to unlearn our shame and stigma, and to bring our feelings and needs out into the open — but not in front of corporations and social media platforms that will only punish and censor us.
We come out to one another, and commune to build better art, more responsible and effective hypnotic files, to write hotter smut, to have better scenes, to be able to play at the edges of consent and consciousness with intention and responsibility. This does not erase all of the risk, but it allows us to be informed of it, and to accept what difficulties and costs we take on. Nearly everyone finishes a scene by asking who needs aftercare. We prepare for the emotional drops of having seen and experienced intense shit — and for the most part, we are grateful that we get to dive with such strong parachutes.
It is this combination of privacy, technological shrewdness, dedicated archival and resource-building work, and loving community responsibility that has made us robust. Though so many outside forces have attempted to silence us and portray us as a group of perverted predators, we’ve continued spreading the truth about who we are and helping people who share our desires to find one another, and revel in our passions as safely as we can.
We have escaped the fear mongering and corporate pressure, and made something completely our own. All queer people and all makers of sexual or erotic art can do the same. We will get through this, but we will have to be more than just passive consumers of content.
We will have to become archivists, librarians, developers, community stewards, consent monitors, peer educators, advocates, organizers, and creators in our own right. And we can do it. Queer people have been producing creative work about our identities and inner erotic lives for as long as we have existed, and we have always been able to find one another in the back rooms of bars, in small bookstores in cities, in veiled language in personal ads, and everywhere else that we have tricked our enemies into not looking.
I wrote all about the suppression of queer & erotic art on the internet, and how the hypnosis kink community provides a case study in how to properly resist it. You can read the full piece for free on Substack.
"Sometimes entertainment is an overrated function of art. Sometimes being made uncomfortable is the point. Sometimes being repulsed by something is the point."
My passion project that has consumed me these past few weeks, my Kitten Burst propaganda Fanzine! Sorry for being sincere on main, I just am overwhelmed with love for this little game. ;-; I'll be handing printed copies out for free at my local zine fest later this year, as well.
I don't think people understand the degree to which society is kept alive by the labor of the least well-regarded professions. If sewage technicians and sanitation workers and their expertise and knowledge were to disappear tomorrow, the streets would pile high with bodies in every city. We live in a world where we get to be blessedly ignorant to just how fast, how brutally and how violently cholera can rip through a community. How many babies it can kill. How many elderly bodies it can devour alive. You've never seen what it's like when typhoid takes root.
"Oh but we have modern medicine" if you don't have clean drinking water and a way to dispose of your piss and shit and trash you are going to fucking die. No if or but or maybe, you are dead, and so are half the people you know.
Having experienced a lot of it in my 20s, I think some of the worst, pettiest, most straight up this-is-just-bullying-you're-passing-off-as-praxis incidences of Queer Infighting endemic to young people can be best understood as attempts to exercise power by people with very little power.
Like you're 22, you're queer, you've just become a Marxist, the scope of World Suck is overwhelming and you have $30 in your bank account. What can you do to feel like you have any power? Well, you can try to get your frenemy cancelled for cosplaying a character from a problematic show. You can write a public callout post over someone's obviously friendly use of a slur you don't think they technically have the right to reclaim. Doing this stuff can make you feel like you have power and your actions have an impact. Unfortunately the impact in question is a negative impact on other marginalized people. But that often takes some maturity and self-reflection to notice.
men lose their masculinity (the social reward for correctly performed manhood) through advocating for, sympathizing with, or doing labor that is allocated to women.
(and I'm not talking about some innate, spiritual, or psychological masculinity. I mean social masculinity--being regarded by higher ranking men as masculine.)
you genuinely do lose your current standing if you meaningfully and consistently object to the economic, legal, and interpersonal status of women, especially in ways that implicate men around you.
many men believe that if they are willing to do this, occasionally, then they are owed a recuperation of their masculinity through some other means.
if they are sacrificing masculinity through advocating for women politically, then they expect to bolster their masculinity through receiving expressions of gratitude and adoration by women ("feminist men are so hot" "consent is sexy" "pro-choice men get laid more" etc.) or they expect to bolster their masculinity through emasculating other men by asserting the standards of masculinity they adhere to are the "real" masculinity ("real men support women" "sexists are immature boys, I'm a man" "I'm secure in my masculinity and they're insecure" etc.)
to dismantle patriarchy, you need to be able to advocate for women even when it means losing gendered status. other men mostly will not respect you, and many misogynist women will not respect you either. it might not get you laid or praised or validated. in fact, it will probably subject you to increased scrutiny and criticism (because feminized subjects are always subject to such, and if you lose social masculinity, you too will experience this to some degree).
will you still advocate for women even if there is no social benefit and only social cost? do you have principles, or do you just want the fantasy of being a benevolent ruler?
