grouchy old man

| Aaron | 25 | trans guy (he/him) | artist | disabled | @solstice.snakes on ig | aarontaylorart.net | https://linktr.ee/aarontaylorart

[solstice-snakes]

i love trans people therefore i make trans art

Aaron Taylor Art provides original paintings, art prints, pins, tshirts, hoodies, and 3D work made by independent artist Aaron Hutts.

[ID: A white trans man wearing a different black tshirt with screenprinted white text in each photo. The first shirt reads "trans people fucking rule." The second shirt reads "trans people deserve to grow old." end ID]

[gaybichon]

not even funny how true this is for me

[segamascott]

[mildmayfoxe]

1) any stretching is better than no stretching

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

3) statistically you will never be the worst person at anything, there is always someone in the world who is worse at stuff than you are

[spaceshipoftheseus]

4) any food is better than no food

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

you can still be a selfless, kind, generous person and also have boundaries and say no to things

[concerningwolves]

You will never 100% idiotproof your creative work & if you try to, you will only succeed in smothering the soul out of it. btw

[thenervebible]

CONNIE PANZARINO at a pride march in Boston circa 1990

[ID: Connie is marching along in her sip 'n' puff (SNP) wheelchair. She is wearing a patterned poncho and sporting a green felt party crown on her head. She styles a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with her slicked back hair. She is smiling. Attached to the back of her wheelchair is a large green cardboard poster that reads "Trached Dykes Eat Pussy Without Comin' Up For Air!" followed by a pink upside-down triangle with a stick figure person in a wheelchair at the centre (a symbol for disabled women)].

the cyborg & the crip by Alison Kafer

[ID: “Trached dykes eat pussy without coming up for air.” Connie Panzarino, a longtime disability activist and out lesbian, would attach this sign to her wheelchair during Pride marches in Boston in the early 1990s. Shockingly explicit, her sign refuses to cast technology as cold, distancing, or disembodied/disembodying, presenting it instead as a source and site of embodied pleasure. “Trach” is an abbreviation of tracheotomy, a medical procedure in which a breathing tube is inserted directly into the trachea, bypassing the mouth and nose. Someone with a trach, then, can, in effect, breathe through her throat, freeing her mouth for other activities (another version of this sign is “Trached dykes french kiss without coming up for air”). From a cyborgian perspective, this sign is brilliantly provocative and productive. It draws on the pervasive idea that adaptive technologies grant superior abilities,not merely replacing a lost capacity but enhancing it, yet it does so in a highly subversive way. The message here isn’t about blending in, about passing as normal or hypernormal, but about publicly announcing the viability of a queer disabled location. It’s disnormalizing, adamantly refusing compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory able bodiedness, and homonormativity. As Corbett O’Toole argues, it challenges the perceived passivity of disabled women, presenting them as actively pleasuring their partners, thereby graphically refuting stereotypes linking physical disability with nonsexuality.]

[siinonn]

[literary-sparks]

“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid

[thydungeongal]

Every once in a while I will feel compelled to check up on the "people who think call-out posts are a form of justice" side of this site and sometimes I'll bear witness to something like. Oh, one of them is having their face eaten by leopards now, because these people are extremely trigger happy and constantly monitoring not only their targets but each other for any sign of moral failure.

One would think that maybe these experiences would teach these people that "hey we're perhaps fostering a really bad culture that is bound to destroy itself because everyone is constantly having to be hypervigilant about their own and each others' behavior" and that maybe they should stop doing this but in fact what happens is that the harassment fandom has now fractured into two different cliques of harassment fans. And of course under the perverse sense of justice these cliques cultivate, of course it's the other clique who are wrong and unable to see the truth (it's because there is absolutely no sensible standard of "justice" to these people, because their behavior is largely in line with "coming up with a crime to accuse someone of after the fact").

[thydungeongal]

My former compatriots have unfairly painted me as one of the freaks that should be harassed to death. They are, of course, wrong. Will this make me reconsider my policy of "some freaks deserve to be harassed to death?" On the contrary, my faith in the system of "harassing freaks to death" remains unflinching and this is simply an issue with individual bad actors.

[butch-king-frankenstein]

Putting the term "male gaze" on top of the fridge until everyone remembers that it refers to a cinematographic trend and not the act of looking at things while being a man

[assaultmystic-archive]

reaching up to get it off of the fridge and the big tshirt im wearing as pyjamas rides up and the reader sees my panties

[creatingblackcharacters]

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

Anyway I miss him and hope he's doing better with his mental health 🙏🏾

[creatingblackcharacters]

Like say what you want about "bad queer representation", but this was the song that made me openly and happily accept that I was bisexual. To see him up there Black and beautiful, making music that I love, absolutely killing it? Yeah. You couldn't tell me shit. This man made me proud to be out. "This will make them think we're evil for being gay" hey newsflash dawg-

[krasnoarmeyets]

i bet it feels good as fuck to intend to do something and then actually do it

[ilostmygh0st]

[magnhild]

it's midnight on the 1st of june aest

[lestatfag]

STAY SAFE!! [ID: the Gilbert Baker pride flag with the words “Happy pride to all those who are unable to celebrate openly and safely. You are loved and seen!” in all-caps black text over it. /end ID]