Many people like to (correctly) point out the hypocrisy of religious extremists claiming to "protect the children" by restricting their access to information. As has been proven time and again, knowledge protects children from harm, helps them to identify abuse, and teaches them ways to protect themselves proactively. An "innocent, pure" child is a euphemism for a child that is ignorant, kept in the dark about things that could harm them. No amount of distress brought on by learning disturbing information could endanger a child the way that information control can.
The issue with this criticism is that it misunderstands what conservatives mean by "protecting" children. They don't think of children as independent beings who deserve dignity and respect. They think of them as future investments, cultural tokens, and blank slates to pour their dogma into. A church wants to "protect" children from information that might make them leave the faith, even if that information could improve the child's life. A conservative parent wants to "protect" children from information about abuse, religious coercion, bodily autonomy... anything that could loosen the parent's power and control over the child. What these groups are really "protecting" is their investment. They see children as property that they are entitled to groom and manipulate to whatever purposes they see fit, and they attack anyone and anything that suggests otherwise.
A lot of what I really dislike about Willow post-s3 comes down to the fear she has in Restless. Sheâs so ashamed of people finding out she was âuncoolâ once that she constantly lashes out and plays the mean girl. Itâs a really interesting insecurity that the show doesnât seem to have the capacity to actually deal with with any kind of nuance.
When a space cares a lot about making sure its members are queer enough to participate, you get a space that aggressively polices the queerness of its members. There's no way around that, it's pretty much tautologically true. Only by paradoxically not actually caring if you're queer or not can a group really accept the full range of what queerness can look like.
Also, a space that has room for a cis straight guy who means well and wants the best for his friends has two crucial things going for it.
1) it has space for people who are learning and might fuck up a bit while they figure things out, and that learning process is probably not so godawful and unpleasant that a guy with other prospects would have to be a fool not to go find some nicer friends. This is nice because it is very difficult to personally embody the entire alphabet at once, and learning how to be good allies to one another is a crucial part of queer solidarity. It's nice for that process not to be painful.
2) it has space for people who aren't yet willing to or comfortable with presenting an externally queer label to continue to exist and soak up the queer vibes and information, which means it's welcoming to actual questioning people rather than the theory of questioning people. Probably it therefore has more interest in actually doing things rather than hierarchy politics.
3) it's probably not a radfem tar pit interested in weaponising you against people they've decided to hate in a social smear war that benefits nobody and nothing but their need for a power trip
Oh itâs even more than that! The cis straight guy is very often a ride home, dad or husband. Or a Bob which I will explain in this essay is a signifier of a healthy ecosystem, like frogs are.
This is a 3 am take so consider this a blanket apology and a readmore but if you hate this post you were warned.
If heâs someoneâs ride home, then his presence enables queer people to show up. Note this importance in, say, rural America or where the person might use a wheelchair or need care or canât drive. Or where the meeting place is generally awkward.
If heâs someoneâs dad, his presence enables kids to show up. I know a 5 year old trans kid in real life. I know a nonbinary teen in real life whoâs allowed to do a lot on their own, but their parents worry, and if theyâre hanging out with adults the parents want to attend and meet the adults. Teenagers are so liminal with this.
If heâs someoneâs husband, thatâs a perfectly common accessory for a bisexual, nonbinary, or trans person. I think it adds a delightful dimension to queer spaces. I think itâs great that thereâs a whole class of sexuality thatâs âbi wife energyâ or âstraight except for loving this personâ or âstraight since I think nonbinary people are considered a different gender to my own - actually Iâm completely lost about whether thatâs true but weâve been married ten years?â or âstraight except for the fact that my partner transitioned, and weâre still married, and itâs none of your business.â At this point theyâre so common that theyâre their own subspecies. I think all spaces should have a slightly bewildered guy in his late forties who owns a set of good screwdrivers. I am bi and have one myself; it is a common pairing. âWhy would your husband come to your social thingâ idk this is a genuine thing people do sometimes in non-tar-pit spaces. They stop by. Itâs almost like birds. You meet this incredible ornate, splendid older queer person and then they introduce their husband Professor Robert âBobâ Kevinsworth, whoâs just this extremely straight old big fat Linux geologist in a 90s t-shirt with a trout on it, theyâve been married 45 years. Evolutionary pressures mean that the Bob must be relatively drab in order to camouflage themselves on the nest or something; if you want to attract the flashy half of the couple to your garden, then you have to provide habitat for Bob. idk itâs 3:46 am right now. But itâs like frogs; the presence of Bobs indicates a healthy and established ecosystem, like Grison and Derin indicate. Because frogs, who absorb environmental toxins readily through their skin, are an indicator species for pollution and biodiversity; a Bob means there is going to be less toxicity and more diversity.
[And also itâs none of our business but there are an awful lot of queer Bobs (Bob himself, again, possibly being queer) and itâs really none of our business. Sure, maybe that person looks like a straight grandpa. A lot of people do/did. I have always hated the idea that you can âspotâ a queer person by their haircut, clothes or youth (largely because I donât look very unusual or amazing myself.) the oldest nb person I know is a sort of Bob with a big white beard and grandchildren, and Iâm sorry but at their age they are NOT going to be getting a different haircut! Let alone pink Shein dungarees and black circle sunglasses to signify their queerness to gatekeepers. A lot of people seeing them would assume they are cishet. Nope! Just old, fat and unfashionable.)
So a space that doesnât have room for a cishet guy is a space that has made decisions about children, non-drivers, a large proportion of bi and nonbinary people, straight trans women, dads, and so on.
Which is fine in itself I suppose, but what theyâre clearly kinda selecting for is a population of able twentysomethings who can all have sex with each other. and the thing is that thereâs often a vibe they feel annoyed by seeing people they donât want to fuck (children, middle-aged people, unfashionable queer people, people unironically wearing trout t shirts).
So in my admittedly highly limited personal experience, the exclusionary âqueer spacesâ just tend to be an elaborate drama-production exercise for twentysomethings to date each other, the rituals are intricate etc.
And all the rest of the weird queer people are just. at the seed swap.
im honestly surprised (not really surprised considering what website this is) that i haven't seen anyone on here talk about Lil Nas X getting violently arrested after suffering some kind of mental health episode. I wish he was getting more attention and support.
Opinion: Mental illness in Black people is criminalized, and Lil Nas X being thrown to the ground and arrested is no laughing matter, Mey Ru
good article explaining what happened and why the response to it, which is mostly people chalking it up to a joke since they never took Lil Nas X seriously as a real person, is so sad to see
do you think that a certain genre of queer person is so obsessively weird about pride flag discourse becuase their flags fill the gaping hole in their personality where a hogwarts house used to be
Personally I don't want to have my eternal punishment defined by any futile boulders for kings because I have a three-dimensional sense of eternal torment,
Honestly, y'all, I'm begging you. Take the time to think and learn for yourself. Even if it's just something casual like knitting or cooking. Exercise your brain. It's important.
oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!
That first image is an edit of HUGZzz by Irene Strychalski. Sheâs improved tremendously in the past nine years, and you can see her current work on her tumblr, reniedraws! She has done backgrounds for Archer and Unsupervised, backgrounds and character designs for Chozen, and pencils and inks for issue #1 of Deadpool Family. Sheâs currently making a webcomic called Shaman Child. Hereâs some of her current art:
[girl with scarf] [deadpool] [wedding commission] [hair and water]
As for the anime girl in the plaid skirt, I braved the hellscape that is early â00s anime websites, exploring endless gif-covered Gaia pages and vampire-filled roleplay forums, traveling across seas of unsourced DeviantArt edits and low-res hentai, to discover that she is an original character by Hiro Suzuhira. She has done work for Shuffle!, Ef: A Tale of Melodies, Akikan!, Phantom Breaker, and We Without Wings, among many others, and she is also a prolific freelance illustrator. Here are some examples of her art:
She's also publicly stated that she believes that anyone who reads her books or watches her shows and films does so because they explicitly agree with her political views.
There's no "agree to disagree" with her work. Every time you pick up her work or talk about it you are saying to her "I agree with you Joanne" whether you like it or not.
