we now have to deal with puritan gay-conservative shits who donât want queers to wear their leather and kink outfits to pride anymore, because âthatâs not about sexual orientation, itâs about sex and doesnât belong in publicâ. What the fuck.Â
LGBT and queer struggle has always been deeply intertwined with the struggle for sexual liberation. Being visibly queer and visibly sexually deviant has always been two parts of the same same âfuck you Iâm queerâ to homphobes. Celebrating our sex lives and celebrating our existence has always been inseperable. The leather scene is a highly visible bit of queer culture and queer history. So much of the movement was build by these communities. So many of our heroes and queer elders wear leather. You do not get to take that away. Â
No minor at pride is gonna be scarred because they see a gay guy in chaps dancing on a float. Get real. Everyone has seen naked buttcheeks on tv a thousand times before their 12th birthday. Â
Your desire to desexualize our identities has nothing to do with protecting anyone. Itâs just internalized homophobia.Â
Those of you who have been following me forever might remember that back in 2013, the first place I ever rented away from home was broken into and my new $400 drawing tablet and $2000 mac were stolen, both of which were necessary not only for school but for posting my artwork, access to my software for editing my images, basically the lifeblood of my art career and the way I make my rent. I wasnât able to buy a new one at the time because I was saving up for top surgery, so I had been working off of my old roommateâs damaged laptop for a couple years until that crashed. This is what I was having to work on:
This year I had saved up enough to buy myself a laptop, but  a week ago it crashed too. My phone has also broken several times over the past few years, Iâve bought new batteries 4+ times and it just died again about a month ago and i gave up. Iâm using a friendâs old slow iPhone at the moment.
Iâve been managing many of my tasks by walking to the university campus nearby to use their slow and often occupied Macs which do not store anything other than temporary files, but this is no longer sustainable as I have to move in a couple months when my lease is up. Â I also wonât be able to transport my artworks to school to scan them as my bike wheel and chain were also stolen in early April and Iâm at a point where even getting my main mode of transportation up and running again isnât something I can fit into my budget.
I guess needless to say,  without a way to document and upload my artwork as original prints and as products for sale, once again how I pay my rent, I have been freaking out. I have honestly felt really disconnected working on broken, slow and borrowed equipment that canât handle the video editing that I have been moving toward making with the intention of sharing more of my life, artwork tutorials (I have requests for several already), and better serving my community. Iâm especially bummed because I have been actively planning a podcast primarily to use as a spotlight on emerging and marginalized artists to highlight our struggles and wins, but honestly nothing feels like a win when the only link left between you and your livelihood is an old iPhone 5 that doesnât hold a charge or receive calls. hereâs a painting of trans ppl in love i made recently! this is all so disappointing especially since iâve been making  really conscious effort to make paintings that give our community sweet, loving and positive images.
Any money not going toward purchasing a new laptop so that I can do my work and pay for my rent, groceries, hormones, etc. will go toward podcast equipment for the show that I want to get up and running for this year, and art supplies to draw the ugly cats that people send me on Tumblr.
I dedicate this retablo to the Virgin of Carmel because ever since I was little I wanted to be a man, in spite of being born a girl. Thanks to the Virgin I decided to leave my husband and my kids and to move to the capital where I started to work as a lift attendant in a luxurious skyscraper.
Empathy isnât just something that happens to usâa meteor shower of synapses firing across the brainâitâs also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. Itâs made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because itâs asked for, but this doesnât make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means weâve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when Iâm deep in my own. To say âgoing through the motionsââthis isnât reduction so much as acknowledgment of the effortâthe labor, the motions, the danceâof getting inside another personâs state of heart or mind. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always arise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams
(via fyp-psychology)
Inside the Worldâs Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims
The Razzouk family has been inking religious pilgrims in the Middle East for 700 years
A tiny shop, almost dwarfed by its prominent sign, lies across a quiet cobblestone road. If you didnât know anything about the incredible, centuries-long history of the family who runs this particular shop, the signâs tagline might cause you to do a double-take: âTattoo With Heritage Since 1300â it reads. Read on
