The Listless Lighthouse

Reblogging like a boss. (Mostly a blog of feminism and fandoms. Probably a lot of talk on rape culture.)

[thelistlesslighthouse]

I know I never post here anymore.

But my fiancee is sick of my shit with this, so... (rightfully)

I find myself arguing online and endlessly being frustrated with a cis straight white woman who I feel like is the worst offender I’ve ever seen of performative wokeness.  She constantly posts woo language about healing and trauma and colonialism and racism, but consistently leaves herself out of the equation of needing to do any kind of meaningful self-reflection.  It feels like she uses just the right language to be deemed as an impressive leader of social justice, but a lot of it comes across as meaningless and signaling.  She came into our grad program from a high-paying job, and doesn’t seem to have had to work in the field doing the difficult on-the-ground work of social services.

And when she does oppressive stuff, she doesn’t own up to any of it.  It feels like she fakes being open to learning from marginalized groups, especially if it’s not about race (but possibly even then).  She thought it was funny once when she found out a bunch of young women in our school she saw as privileged were queer, because she was surprised.  She decided once, for three whole days, that she wanted to be called by “we”, referencing transgender identities, because she feels interconnected with others and we are all one.  it felt appropriative as hell, and no one said anything.  She argued once with me that if herbal medicine doesn’t work for someone, they should just die, because western medicine is bad, and she cited overpopulation as a concern.

I was furious at how fucking ableist it was, and pointed that out.  She argued that opposing this was colonialism, and I just wasn’t enlightened enough.  Eventually, when someone she respected more called it out softly, she maintained she was just talking about it for herself.  She still never acknowledged the harm she caused.

Today, it was her arguing that her posting alt-right Trumper propaganda video bashing Biden is good and doesn’t alienate people on the left, and that me suggesting she should use more neutral, written sources is white supremacy culture.

The biggest frustration to me is how many folks I know from school who seem to respect her.  It makes me feel like a lot of the social justice scene in town is fake as shit, and rewards manipulative posturing over critical discourse.  It makes me wonder wtf is going on with many of my colleagues that they respect her for this.

Rant done for now.

[tjkiahgb]

2.01, “Hey, Who Wants Pizza?” - You’re No Different

Maybe I’m overestimating its importance. Maybe a proclamation like this needs more time away from the end of the program to really be made. Maybe some years need to pass before you can look back on this sort of thing and decide this.

But, for my money, this scene is not only one of the defining moments of this show, it’s one of the defining moments in Disney Channel history. It matters. It matters in a way that very few other Disney Channel moments have.

If you were a gay kid like me growing up in the 90s and 2000s, watching Nickelodeon and Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, you just didn’t have representation. That was it. You had to make do with gay-coded characters, or you had to use your imagination, or you just had to do what I did: accept you weren’t going to see a character on screen that was going to tell your story. I mean, I didn’t even realize that was what I was doing. I just didn’t expect anything more. Why would I?

Gay kids had been watching Disney Channel for 30 something years like that. And then this show comes along. And this character, Cyrus. And this scene.

I love that there’s not a lot of bells and whistles to this scene. It starts on a wide shot, showing some other people in The Spoon, but eventually settles in to a series of close-ups of Cyrus and Buffy. Just two best friends, very quietly, very intimately discussing something game-changing.

The scene, through the writing and directing and excellent acting from Josh and Sofia, wonderfully captures the anxiety and uncertainty and emotion that is such a huge part of coming out for the first time. It can feel strange. It can be confusing. And it makes you want to cry. For a lot of different reasons, it makes you want to cry.

Being a gay kid can feel very isolating. Gay kids might not have friends or family that can relate to their experiences, if they feel they can even share their experiences with their friends and family.

It’s why representation is important. It’s why having a character like Cyrus, on a big-time channel like Disney, to be able to relate to, or to use to help others understand what you may be going through, or just to give you hope, can mean so much to a kid who hasn’t had that sort of thing before.

Sometimes you just need to know that you’re not alone.

[thelistlesslighthouse]

Sometimes I feel weird being into Andi Mack as a Millennial in her late twenties, but like...

Obviously it was also a really good, groundbreaking show and as a Degrassi fan it was kind of inevitable I’d get sucked into a middle school drama...but also...

I think back a lot to being in high school when High School Musical first came out.  One friend of mine and I immediately became obsessed with it upon first promotion because of Ryan Evans, played by the awesome Lucas Grabeel.  One glance, one character description, and we were immediately like “OH MY GOSH DISNEY HAS A GAY BOY IN THIS MOVIE!!!” We adored him.

But ironically, in a musical about being true to yourself, Ryan never got to come out.  One of my best male friends at the time who was out adored Ryan, because it was some of the only gay representation we got to see.  We were all angry in the third movie when Ryan takes Kelsi to the prom with what seems like romantic intent.

As time passed after that, Lucas Grabeel, straight ally who has played several gay characters, made it clear he was frustrated with that decision.  At some point, he speculated his character could be bi or was just taking Kelsi to prom as a friend.  More recently, I saw online that he’d expressed a lot of frustration with his character not being out because of Disney forbidding it, even though the director is gay and related heavily to Ryan.

I always appreciated that from Lucas Grabeel back in 2006-2008, but it’s a space where you feel both happy for Generation Z for getting queer representation as a normal thing in a ton of their media and a little resentful of growing up never getting to see a character like Ryan, a kid our age and of our generation, fully be himself.  We’d get representation, far more than teens 5-10 years older than us, but it still wasn’t a normal part of any show.

There’s a certain appeal to watching gay representation in teen media because it’s not the messages you ever got to receive when you struggled as a kid.  (Love, Simon even helped me, as an adult in a long-term relationship, process a lot and come out to my family.)  My fiancee often says with our generation and older, we often lag behind in maturity and life stages because we never got to fully be ourselves until we were in college or older.  It was all about hiding to stay safe and being alone until you could find your people in adulthood, often not in your community of origin.

All this isn’t to erase the pain and hurt, oppression and rejection, that A LOT OF LGBTQ kids still experience today.  But it still feels like there’s already a dramatic difference between how my generation 10-15 years ago talked about and experienced being LGBTQ and how Gen Z experiences it now.

It’s nice to see Disney, the channel that refused to let Ryan be who he was, now have gay representation and a canon same-sex couple (in a great storyline).  Happy and hopeful this next generation gets to grow up with healthier senses of self because of it.

[thelistlesslighthouse]

I’m a little disappointed in the reveal of TJ’s actual name in Andi Mack, because before this it could’ve crossed over with The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton’s Jeff and Cyrus.

[thelistlesslighthouse]

Advocating for yourself when it comes to mental illness can be difficult.  Because you have to make the point that it is a serious medical condition that impacts your ability to function, but at the same time you have to argue this diminished ability to function does not make you too incompetent to advocate and make decisions for yourself, that your point of view still matters.

As someone who has suffered from abuse that was predicated on the notion that my depression made it impossible for me to process reality in any meaningful kind of way (thus justifying control and abuse somehow), I am constantly struggling between wanting to talk about my feelings and fearing I’ll be further stigmatized for speaking up now.

[thelistlesslighthouse]

This is my one tumblr post that blew up, and speaking six years later and as someone getting paid to do mental health advocacy now, I still feel this so damn hard.  Even in my workplace advocating for myself.

[buxombibliophile]

[muffled screaming in the distance] I hate myself so much it’s always a shock when people say nice things to me. Shout out to thelistlesslighthouse for MAKING ME LAUGH.

[thelistlesslighthouse]

Well it’s you, girl, and you should know it, with each glance and every little move lets you show it…

[thelistlesslighthouse]

@buxombibliophile

Going through my old tumblr posts.  Hope you believe this now.  :-D

[thelistlesslighthouse]

I kissed a lady for the first time tonight.  It was in a sketchy dance club on a gay night, as God intended.

Didn’t feel magical, which threw me into a tailspin on my sexuality, but it was still cool and she was a cool lady who was pretty chill about it.

That feels ridiculous that this happened just shy of me turning 24, but here we are.  (First time a girl kissed me was that same sketchy dance club on gay night a year and a half ago, but I didn’t kiss back so it didn’t count.)

[thelistlesslighthouse]

I am literally going to marry this “cool lady” in one year.  I read this out to her tonight, and she laughed at me about the “who was pretty chill about it” part.  Like, what was she going to do, demand we move in together that night?

I decided to go on a date with her because she was planning to move back to Canada and it seemed low-stakes.  Four years later, she’s still in Texas with me.

[bisexualoverlord]

I’m gonna put this here because it made me have feels

“However, I used to date men. A lot of men, actually. I slept with a lot of guys, too, and felt genuine attraction towards them and, often, real romantic love. I’ve also had some borderline traumatic experiences with men and I know that has contributed to how I feel about men now. (But I’ve also had traumatic experiences with women that didn’t impact how I feel about women! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, PENELOPE??!! WAS I A REPRESSED LESBIAN ALL THIS TIME?) I also had some serious self-esteem issues that tempt me to write off that whole heterosexual phase as a result of my insecurity and desire to prove my self-worth through being desired by men. WHO KNOWS? At this point, I cannot be myself and also be with a man. Is that a choice I’ve made after living the life I’ve lived? Or is it a reflection of an innate absolute biological preference of women over men? I’ll never know, I guess, but I think that’s fine.”

This is what Riese on Autostraddle had to say in regards to those of us trying to find the right label. I identify with this so much, it hurts. I’m so glad that these words exist– she put it so well. 

[huffylemon]

[blackarachnya]

happy birthday gay people

[spaceotter42]

Luke getting lost in Josh’s discussion.  Another clip from last Friday’s Instagram Live. 

[sir-silent-screamer-deactivated]

[guy]

at least i tried

[thelistlesslighthouse]

I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and all, I liked him as a candidate.

But I really hate Berniebro types.  I think a lot of angry, privileged young white man hang on to the arguments of genuine Sanders supporters in order to hide their serious misogyny.  Someone I know would flip his shit about being accused of sexism, but argued that Clinton was bad because someone on her campaign wrote something supporting rape survivors.  A lot of Berniebros would argue that women and POC just didn’t know what was best for them.

I don’t even think you have to like or trust Hillary Clinton to acknowledge that sexism is a thing in politics that shapes the way we view female politicians.  A male politician wouldn’t be told all the time that he should smile more, or that he’s just “not likeable”, but also slammed for every effort made to be likeable.  And it’s irritating as hell to watch smart young feminists ignore and sometimes even defend misogynistic assholes for the sake of a “movement”, and to see them too promote sexist arguments against Hillary Clinton.

I’m voting Clinton in the general election.  I feel like there are plenty of actual reasons to not like her and want to vote third party.  I’m not going to accuse all anti-Clinton folks of disliking her for purely sexist reasons.  But I also feel like that sentiment strikes me as far less genuine when it completely ignores sexism within the movements it supports, and it ignores a lot of the bullshit critiques of female politicians.

[kymbakhan-deactivated20181203]

#BernieBros don’t represent ANYONE - they’re assholes

Pretty pissed off that a bunch of #‎BernieBros‬ attacked the people running the process (okay they called up a woman and left her abusive, threatening, vicious, sexist, bullshit messages) instead of doing whatever they could within the process to change it. They’re a bunch of giant man-babies throwing shit at the walls when they don’t get what they want, it’s the worst of “white men not being heard” that usually results in other people being at BEST frightened for good cause and at WORST other people being harassed, injured, and murdered. DON’T GIVE THEM A PASS because they’re using their abusive energy *allegedly* toward a goal that seems admirable - How socialist can they be if they’re sexist asshats, hurling hate and abuse, doubling down against female targets?

[maybeiwillfeelbettertomorrow-de]

Here are just a tiny portion of the victims of the Pulse Shooting, realize these were real people and they deserve to be loved, remembered and mourned. They deserved long happy lives. Please send prayers and good thoughts to their families, friends and partners.

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old -  Sotomayor was the national brand manager for Al and Chuck Travel, which bills itself as “Creating the Planet’s #1 Happiest Gay Vacations!” David Sotomayor, Sotomayor’s cousin, said Edward was a “caring, energetic man.” His friend James De La Fuente described Sotomayor — affectionately known by his friends as Top Hat Eddie because he had a signature look with his top hat — as “genuinely good. He was worldly,” said De La Fuenta, who had been friends for some time. “Diversified and fair. Honest and true. Edward really went above and beyond for people.”

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old - Eric was born in Dorado, Puerto Rico and studied at  Bayamón Central University, “He was an amazing guy. I’m sure that he’s the best friend I will ever have,” said Jose Morales. Morales and Ortiz-Rivera moved to Orlando together in 2007 from the island but Ortiz-Rivera had been living in Miami for a time. He moved back to Orlando right prior to the attacks.  “He was a very, very, very good sensitive person” Morales said. “He was very careful, he was very humble”

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz , 22 years old - Was originally from Benoni, South Africa and was a graduate of Colonia High School in New Jersey and worked at UPS

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old -  Ocasio-Capo was a dancer, that was his passion. his co-worker, Claudia Mason, wrote “He lit up any area he worked in, so sad that his life was cut so short by such an evil person! Pray for Omar’s family.” A former teacher remembered him as “a ray of sunshine every day.”

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old - Vielma was a student at Seminole State College of Florida and worked at Universal Studies in Orlando 3 hours before the shooting, Vielma uploaded a Facebook picture of himself and his friends at Disney World with the caption “True friends become family”. His friends described him as “always happy and a joy to be around.”  “Luis was by and far the best person I knew,” his friend Will Randle said. “He inherently made us all better people by simply existing around us. Part of him will always live on in every good decision I make.”

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old-  Guerrero was a student at the University of Central Florida and worked as a telemarketer, his cousin, Robert Guerrero, said "He was always this amazing person and he was  a big brother to me. He was never the type to go out to clubs, he would rather stay home and care for his niece and nephew.“ Guerrero had only recently come out to his family as gay. His cousin he opened up to his family just before the start of the year. Guerrero’s boyfriend, Christopher “Drew” Leinonem was with him at Pulse during the shooting and status is unknown.

Stanley Manolo Almodovar III, 23 years old - Almodovar was born in Springfield, MA. He worked as a Pharmaceutical technician and studied at Anthem college. His friend Hazel  Ramirez emotionally described how the young man who helped her find herself  “He made me feel like it was perfectly fine being who I was, he made me proud” The two met at the Pulse and were close ever since "You would know when Stanley entered a room,“ she said. “He can turn moods by through conversation.” His mother, Rosalie Ramos said her son was a happy man with a big heart, and his aunt Yoly described him as “an amazing person with a good soul and a promising future.” Another friend Caitlin Rodrigues, said “Stanley was one of the most friendly bright people I’ve ever had a chance to meet. He had the personality anyone could get along with.” Luis Almodovar, 24, no relation, said he and Almodovar bonded over four years ago over their shared name, and were very close. They never got the chance to meet in person, Almodovar had talked about visiting Luis in Philadelphia in the coming months. “All I can say is, he’s a really good person,” Luis said.“My heart literally broke, because he was my best friend, someone you could talk to about anything”

[revolutionarykoolaid]

signal boost

[nochiquinn]

Please do not come at me with your “good guy with a gun” fantasies today. Security at the club was armed, and 50 people still died. Another 50 were injured. With a legally-purchased semi-automatic weapon.

I am queer and I am American and I am scared and I am tired.

[revolutionarykoolaid]

police were also already present on scene at the club (as they are every weekend)