| He/him | 🅱️ay | Chrome PGR my husband | Resident NPCFucker | I believe in catboy supremacy | My Posts | Sketches and Art and Whatnot | Cursed Twitter Account
In 2026, the chicest thing a gay actor can do is never explicitly come out as gay but also make it abundantly clear that he is. Coming out is too modern. Staying closeted is too old fashioned. But this method merges contemporary freedom with Old Hollywood glamour and allure, and it weeds out the dumbest people who truly don’t get it. I call it the Pascal Method.
You clearly don't go here or to queer history and signaling, or both, enough to have this conversation and I'm not going to explain it to you. You could have asked questions, you could have done even a modicum of research. You didn't and you made yourself look ignorant. Goodbye.
#I'm fucking crying#this is an instant classic#this is the next meme#i can't believe I'm here to see a baby copypasta nary two hours old#I can't#lol#i laughed way too hard#iconic
I love how Zohran Mamdani is wearing a suit everywhere. And if he has anything else he puts it ON TOP of the suit. A basketball jersey. A high-vis vest. All worn over the suit. He’s like the mayor character in a cartoon who’s always dressed as The Mayor. If I didn’t know who he was and he biked past me in NYC I’d be like holy shit was that the mayor
Not to bring the serious to a very fun post, but this reaction is exactly what Mamdani is working for with his image, because in a very real way the most effective way for him to be The Mayor is if he looks like The Mayor.
This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.
Despite the fact that a mayor who wears a T-shirt and jeans might "seem more approachable" in the eyes of the average American, Zohran Mamdani knows that someone with his profile fundamentally cannot get away with that the way his White colleagues can. He has instead put in the effort to look professional and BE approachable, because not only does it make it easier for him to reach and represent his constituents, it forces everyone, including both his opponents and establishment Democrats, to engage with the work he is doing instead of judging his image. The fact that he is always seen in a suit and is recognisably The Mayor is, while also something he has fun with, a deliberate choice to ensure he is as inarguably A Professional Politician To Be Taken Seriously. The added humour of e.g. the hi-vis is a bonus, only achievable because he works so hard to Look Like The Mayor.
last day of pride month, have another essay I wrote a while back for a class lol
This one's about transgender robots and is in response to an essay by Jo Alyson Parker. It should be free on JSTOR if you're interested in seeing why I'm taking an axe to the entire essay lol: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240150?seq=1
Also if you want to read the source material, it was collected in an anthology in 2016 called Mortal Engines. Check out your local library and/or 🏴☠️ site.
Parker’s Essay “Gendering the Robot” fails to meaningfully engage with the themes of gender dynamics in a patriarchal society within Lem’s “The Mask” and instead argues within a narrow view of what constitutes gender, failing to properly understand the horror presented within the short story. Much of the essay’s argument also becomes mired in the presupposed existence of an “authentic woman” which muddies Parker’s analysis and critique of the story.
Parker’s primary argument within the wider analysis of the gender dynamics within “The Mask” is that the main character is not truly genderless, has not truly attained the status of “it,” and that instead of successfully interrogating the question of gender, Lem simply shifts towards a realm of the “neuter gender,” which Parker claims functionally equates to masculinity. The argument is complex to pick apart, because on many levels I do agree with Parker. The main character is not truly genderless, and in the historical context within which “The Mask” was written, a “neuter gender” is also unable to escape the gender binary. However, I believe that Parker has it backwards. The main character is not truly genderless: she (or it) still retains aspects of femininity. The “neuter gender” in the historical context of the 1970s is also unable to escape the gender binary: it is “not man,” and therefore aligns closer to femininity than masculinity. I completely disagree with Parker, however, that Lem has failed to successfully interrogate the question of gender. In fact, I think “The Mask,” similarly to Rheya in “Solaris,” presents a metaphor for existence as a gender opposed to “Man,” and through that metaphor reveals the horrific state of that existence, successfully interrogating gender dynamics that were prevalent in the 1970s and are still prevalent today.
The main criticism I have of Parker’s argument is that in an effort to criticize Lem’s inability to properly address gender dynamics, it has itself failed to incorporate a more comprehensive picture of gender into its argument, instead relying purely on gender binaries with no prospects of transition between either side. Indeed, the argument interprets much of the main character’s discomfort and eventual violent self-extraction purely through the lens of feminine experience under the male gaze while completely failing to also incorporate the idea that this could serve equally well (and perhaps even enhance the feminist interpretation) as a transgender narrative, the main character’s discomfort with her own body signifying gender dysphoria and her violent yet oddly peaceful self-extraction a necessarily scary but ultimately emotionally liberating experience of gender transition.
Relatedly, Parker argues that the main character of “The Mask” (and by extension all other women in Lem’s books such as Rheya from “Solaris”) are somehow less than women, that they are not the “genuine article” due to their artificially engineered existence. This argument blatantly ignores how both characters’ artifice illustrates not the artifice of their womanhood (if such a thing even exists, which I don’t believe it does), but the artifice that is required in order to perform a female gender, to be fully accepted as a woman, even when your internal conception of your own gender does not match with that social performance. In essence, the artificial nature of the main character in “The Mask” signifies “woman” itself as a social construct, one that she willingly shrugs off in order to assume a more comfortable identity. The additional layer of horror, then, is that even this more comfortable identity is not something that was determined for herself. She is still bound (if only subconsciously) by social norms set out for women, namely attraction to men. Parker makes no mention of this compulsory heterosexuality that has been thrust upon the main character, and I believe that constitutes a serious omission of a full exploration of the gender dynamics present within this subset of Lem’s work, especially considering how common of an experience it is for LGBT women.
Linguistically, as well, the main character is unable to avoid gendering itself even when it begins to refer to itself with a new set of pronouns. It strives to interpret itself through language as something closer to its true gender identity, and yet it cannot properly express it, the final nail being hammered into the coffin when it begins to refer to itself as a bride, making references to its bridal gown, successfully dragging her back to a largely feminine gender, one that is compulsory, because that is how she was made. Parker has, I believe, successfully trapped herself in the same game that the King within “The Mask” has laid out for the main character: a web of gendered norms and compulsions that one cannot escape, a definition of gender so constricting that there is almost no conceivable method through which one can express an agender, gender neutral, or non-binary gender without being invariably misinterpreted and misgendered through linguistic limitations. That, I believe, is the essence of the gender horror presented in “The Mask,” something that Parker almost completely failed to touch upon in her argument and analysis.
sorry i dont believe when people say it's "just their preference" to shave their body hair as if it's an idea they came up with divorced of all social context. it's like saying art is apolitical
The idea of Mario and Peach having any kind of relationship beyond the occasional kiss on the nose and "mama mia" is like viscerally incomprehensible to me
Not like in a prude way I just can't conceive of Mario experiencing... urges. He's a character outside the scope of that. I'm not saying he's asexual either cause positioning him on the allo/ace spectrum implies that it's a dimension of his character that at least exists, that he has at some point noticed it. I think he just jumps.
#op interrogate yourself about why you think this right fucking now
So unlike Mario, who continues to be essentially a void with no internality, I actually act with thoughts and intent and already did do that when writing this post.
Mario is a mascot of one of the most sanitized corporate brands in existence. He differs from real, full-fledged ace people in that his sexlessness is not queer, not transgressive in any sense of the word, just a void left by his position as a player character. He has no queer identity because he has no identity beyond the fact that it's-a-him, Mario.
Similarly, I don’t know if Peach could comprehend the concept of sex. There is no light beyond that blank stare. She doesn’t not understand anything besides baking and being a princess
Peach lives a life that is almost entirely defined by her position as an object of other people's desire, wherein she is robbed of autonomy by Bowser and expected to reward Mario with signs of affection. I think if anyone in Mario has complex thoughts about sexuality to work through with a therapist, it's Peach.
Just called my senator and the aide said "Yeah, you're not the first person we've heard from about this today." It is 9:45 in the morning and she already had that weary tone.
fairly reliably when someone is mean and weird to you on Tumblr, you can look on their blog and all their recent posts will be about how unhappy they are in their interpersonal relationships and/or how frustrated they are that their creative venture hasn't found success. and it's like ohhhhh okay, I get it. you're clawing at other people because you're actively drowning. my sympathies, that sucks, but I'm not a lifeguard so carry on.
If a trans girl tells you that she wants to start dressing more femme and your response is "but you're conforming to gender stereotypes" then she is entitled to punch you in the face as hard as she wants
Also, if a trans girl says she wants to go on hormones and your response is "but you're still valid if you don't get hrt" then she is also entitled to punch your face as hard as she wants
its actually easy to de-enshittify your digital experience all you need to do is install this browser extension and this browser extension and this browser extension and input this custom script into the advanced box and go into your system settings and reconfigure all these options you didnt know existed and change your entire workflow and switch to this alternative operating system and this alternative web browser and this alternative chat client and this alternative word processor and this alternative- sorry that one turned out to be malware delete that one okay now double check your task manager for unwanted background processes and element block these ads and invest in a good VPN and append all your searches with AI blocking keywords and wait a few years until everything you just did becomes shitty too so you can do it all over again okay kitten. its literally that easy.
