#queer resilience

[obviously-im-a-boyo]

“They were always gay!” laughs Alan Jones. “Braces! Even then it was a gay code.”

“The triangle continues to figure prominently in imaging for various LGBTQ+ organizations and events”

“A rose and dagger tattoo symbolizes the balance of love and pain”

“The early gay liberation movement shared many [...] philosophies with anarchist movements in the mid 20th century”

Louis Tomlinson & Queer Resilience. Sources: 1 2 3 4

[qrzines]

Our 2024 Pride Zine Applications are open!!!

This years theme is Queer Resilience/ Resistance! We are accepting all mediums including video, photo, writing (poems, short stories, etc.) along with traditional art mediums like drawing painting and digital! AI is not accepted!!!

To apply:

•Be queer or LGBTQIA+ identifying!

•Be an artist!

•Email your queer resilience/ resistance themed work to [email protected]

•In your email please include your name, pronouns, and if youd like a short snippet about you and your work!

•Thats it!

Applications close May 20th!!!

We cant wait to see what you come up with!

As always the zine will be published digitally to our blog and here on instagram!

[thiscountsascoping]

This Counts As Coping: An Introduction . . . kind of.

I didn’t mean to start a blog. I just hit a point where there wasn’t anywhere else to put all of it.

I’ve spent most of my life collecting words I never said. Half-written notes in my phone. Thoughts I rehearsed but never said out loud. Memories I only let myself think about when it’s late and quiet and I can pretend no one’s watching. Eventually, I needed somewhere to put them. Somewhere outside my body.

This blog isn’t polished. It’s not curated. It’s not full of advice. I’m not here to teach you how to cope. I’m here because I’m trying to figure out how I do.

I’m trans. I’m autistic. I’m ADHD. I’ve been through addiction. Eating disorders. Shame. Church. Self-harm in a dozen different forms. I’ve masked so hard I forgot who I was. I’ve unraveled on purpose just to see if anyone would notice. I’ve built entire lives around being who other people needed me to be. And when those versions couldn’t carry it anymore, I burned them down and started over.

I’ve worked long hours pretending I’m okay. I’ve come home and laid on the floor and dissociated for three hours. I’ve sat in cars outside of houses I couldn’t walk into yet. I’ve folded laundry like it’s proof I still exist. I’ve eaten nothing for days. I’ve eaten everything in sight. I’ve stared at the mirror and tried to find something to love. Some days I’ve found it. Some days I haven’t.

There is no moral arc to this blog. No happy ending. No “and then I got better.” I write this as someone still in it. Still tired. Still trying. Still crawling out of shutdowns and back into my body. Still learning how to ask for what I need without apologizing.

I called it This Counts As Coping because I’m done trying to make my healing look palatable. Sometimes coping looks like routines and boundaries and journaling. And sometimes it looks like sarcasm and stubborn survival and taking the damn day off. Sometimes it’s saying “I’m fine” and knowing I’m not. Sometimes it’s staying alive out of spite. Sometimes it’s crying over nothing and calling that release.

If you’re here, it’s probably because something in you is still fighting. Or hiding. Or exhausted. Or just wants to feel a little less alone.

I don’t have answers. But I do have honesty. And I have space for the parts of you that haven’t found a home anywhere else yet.

This is where I put the things that don’t fit anywhere else. The pieces of myself I used to think I had to hide.

If that sounds familiar, welcome.

This counts as coping.

[chronicallycouchbound]

Unhoused Joy: The First Date

We were in our teens and I held him so tightly as he slept soundly in my lap alongside a trail where we hadn’t yet been called slurs too many times to count. But I knew this trail and I felt safe here, so I knew he would be safe here. I slept here through freezing temperatures, and I liked it better than the shelter or downtown. If I looked at the right angle I could see the bottom of lover’s leap. I twirled my pocketknife in my hand, and even closed it made me feel more prepared. I leaned over him, shielding him from the sun and the world with my body. Birds chirped around us, the river bubbled softly nearby, the leaves above us glittered in the afternoon light. My love was innocent in front of me.

[pantone-palette]

I cried.... many times watching Brokeback Mountain

M A N Y T I M E S

[nonbeans]

Just ignore the bigots! Just be yourself, it gets better! Just keep being you!

Being my best, full nonbinary self doesn't make all the bigots disappear. And sometimes it feels like some folks in the Lgbtqia community, embrace that toxic positivity of (if we're just above them, then we won't get hurt). And that's just not true.

I know that we need to teach resilience, especially to the younger of us. But lying to them is not teaching them resilience. Training themselves on being an active bystander and calling people out, and being ready to intervene in some way if someone is being harassed. As well as sharing your experiences with others so they know better and maybe they don't make any mistakes or are ready to come back harder against bigots.

That is what resilience is. Resilience can be joy but it's also the will to fight the actual bigotry. It's the ability to say, I will be myself and you WILL respect me. Otherwise you don't deserve to be around me, or should even be in public. Cause you clearly don't understand that you live in a society. One that happens to have queer people in it whether you want there to be or not. And we have to let. Them. Know that. Online. In person if we are able. We have to make them know. Do what they always said we do and force the perspective that we are people too. Just that.

We are not disappearing anytime soon. Just like they aren't.

It gets better because we will make it better together.

[weirdstrangeandawful]

I made a thing for a zine that my local pride group does! This isn't fully rendered compared to most of my work but I didn't really care too much. I just wanted the sentiment down on paper.

Full descriptions in alt text but the plain text is:

there's a hole in my flag… I don't know where it came from.

was it there when I bought it at my very first pride parade?

did someone step on it at the next?

did I snag it in my suitcase when I flew home to safety?

did something happen when I lent it for a protest?

I'll never repair it. It's where the love lives!

[yourplasticpal]

The world is a better place because you're in it, precisely because you are who you are. Don't you ever let that orange dipshit and his minions make you feel any different. Don't you dare.

As much as it fucking sucks and you shouldn't have to deal with it and I'm so fucking sorry, having that creature as your enemy is a stellar indicator of your character, and you continuing to breathe is among the best possible ways you can tell him to go fuck himself.