Fuck Off Get Free

vera, 27 // lesbian

[verafiedtheorist]

I know I'm not really active on here anymore, but I just (finally) have made a gofundme for my facial feminization surgery this december. I would appreciate your help so, so much, whatever form it takes - be it sharing or donating 💕

Donate to Vera's gender affirming surgery fundraiser, organized by Vera Nygren

Hello, my name is Vera, and I am fundraising for my facial feminization surgery… Vera Nygren needs your support for Vera's gender affirming

[verafiedtheorist]

goff

[verafiedtheorist]

the last 4 pics i posted of me on here was the above, 8 years ago. genuinely love how much better i look now (90% of which is knowing how to fucking dress and what haircuts work)

[friedrichstumpfiworld]

"KOSMISCHE strukturen verändern die zeit der UHREN"

[mercuryfountain-deactivated2024]

I recently saw a post with Fran Lebowitz saying, "a book isn't supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door," and it made me think about the state of "representation" discourse online. I thought back to an anon I once received from someone who claims to get "secondhand embarrassment" from "drag queens, leather daddies, and kinksters with pup hoods acting like they represent all gays." Many thought my response was too harsh, that I ought to show more sympathy to people who do not "relate" to nor feel "represented" by these modes of queer being. Blame it on online fandom, blame it on heteronormativity, but we are too concerned with "relatability." It is the sort of "relatability" advertising executives concern themselves with, or "relatability" of people who treat their online presence as a "brand." It is a notion I find alien to queer art and culture.

I have never done drag, nor do I consider myself a part of the leather community beyond befriending others who do and owning some gear. I do not "relate" to these expressions in any vulgar, literal sense, but they are still deeply resonant. And how many of these individuals truly "relate" to the images they peform? Drag artists and leathefolk are purveyors of fantasy. In their daily lives, they might not be bikers, rockstars, pop divas, or mythical beasts, but they reinvent themselves through metaphors and performances. These theatrical performances are no less absurd than the quotidian performances expected by cis straight society. Larry Mitchell writes, “The faggots act out their fantasies without believing them to be real. The men act out their fantasies always proclaiming that they are real."

This could explain why literal attempts at relatability are often less resonant than campy extravogant fantasies. I once wrote a rant about how Taylor Swift is not a gay icon, and an anon smugly told me, "Taylor makes music for everyone and not just gays." Yes, I suppose she does make music for "everyone," in the same way that the Midwestern weather reporter voice is the universal accent of the English speaking world. But diva worship was never about "relating;" rather, it's about survival through the evocation of patron saints of strength and glamor. Most celebrity or mass media attempts at "relatability" are at best clueless or at worst insulting. I would much rather participate in a campy fantasy, which is in its own right more "real." Susan Sontag describes camp as the "farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.”

I am not telling anyone to stop pushing for the recognition of diverse stories. This is crucial! But the recognition of queer stories should also come with an understanding of queer modes of resonance. When has John Waters ever produced something "relatable?" Who cares? His work resonates, in fact, more than a lot of "safe" gay media that should be all accounts be more "relatable." The "average" listener would not necessarily relate to SOPHIE. They may find her work otherwordly or downright unsettling. But she did not produce music for the "average" listener, at least not before the rest of the musical landscape dragged to catch up with her. Adam Zmith writes: "Inside SOPHIE’s words, performances and final act is the queer utopia of always grasping, always dreaming of a freer life." We are living the wildest dreams of our former, closeted selves, but we are still always grasping, never quite satiated. Queer art is not just autobiographical but aspirational. Let art be a door.

[yaque-0000]

Circuit metabolism 4

[zegalba]

Jean Vincent Simonet: “In Bloom” (2018)

“Printing my images onto plastic paper so the ink never quite dries, I then uses water and chemicals to transform the surface of the prints, abstracting and blurring them as if the scenes are melting away.”

[polkadotmotmot]

Olive Diamond - Belt of Venus, 2022

[mri-old-deactivated20231118]

CONSTRUCTOR by sec

[aeontriad]

Circuit Board Sculptures by Peter McFarlane

[sun-death]

Even the most repressive and the most deadly forms of social reproduction are produced by desire within the organization that is the consequence of such production under various conditions that we must analyze. That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?" How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: "More taxes! Less bread!"? As Reich remarks, the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike.

Gilles Deleuze & Feliz Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane)

[polkadotmotmot]

Muramuzi JohnBosco - The Front City View, 2022

[proustiansleep]

“Slime molds have things to teach us. That a being can change but at the same time remain itselves—to use Octavia Butler’s phrase. That there is life and beauty in rot, in decay, in decomposition, in the ashes. That a hallmark of life is evanescence and ephemerality. That our limited, Romantic understanding of the world—“ew, slime”—is outdated. That nonhierarchical, nonbinary being is part of the reality of the world.”

— Lucy Jones, Creatures That Don’t Conform

[prohaloplayer-deactivated202601]

[verafiedtheorist]

its giving off burroughs vibes

[xenosagaepisodeone]

the elephant in the room when it comes to the “we must protect our children” objections by conservative politicians is that they are not referring to living, breathing children, but a platonic concept of “a child” that children are coerced into emulating through abuse kneaded by both the state and their parents. The lack of rights children possess is to render them unable to object to what adults claim to do for their own good, which oftentimes are merely just means to maintain them as property than help them as people. The idea that teaching 6th graders very basic, very clinical sex ed is child abuse stems from the fear that their parents lose some control over their child’s autonomy by having the child know things (which, statically, also makes them more likely to tell someone when they are being abused by an adult. Interesting) that the parent has not sanctioned as a part of their person. Conservatives accuse everyone else of child abuse not because they care that a child is being hurt, but because hurting children is only their god given right.

[soul-hammered]

one big aspect of the christian homeschooling movement has been a focus on ‘parental rights,’ which, more often than not, are used to hide hideous abuse/reduce parental accountability. to the point a bunch of survivors had to band together to try and stop it.

for first-person accounts of this phenomenon, i recommend the podcast ‘kitchen table cult.’

[bananapeppers]

the Citations Needed podcast recently published an episode titled “How the ‘Parental Rights’ Rallying Cry Has Been a Right-wing Stalking Horse for Over 100 Years” featuring guest Jennifer Berkshire (February 8, 2023), which brings child labor into the picture of “parents’ rights” discourse. the involvement of child labor was news to me! transcript at link.

[daloy-politsey]

“The Child, of course, has very little to do with real children. Like all people, children are enslaved under the political order of the state and capital, expected to bear the burden of being the innocent beneficiaries of political initiatives. No, rather the Child is the fantastic symbol for the eternal proliferation of class society. The Child represents the succession of generations and the continuation of this society beyond the lifespans of its living members. All politics, being concerned primarily with the Child, then reveal themselves to be only ever a process by which to manage and secure the continued existence of society. As enemies of society, we are also enemies of politics.”

baedan

baedan baedan summer 2012

[verafiedtheorist]

I recommend Sophie Lewis' "Abolish the Family" on this subject aswell.

[finalfantasyx3-deactivated20240]

it's nothing new of course but is striking how clockwork-like the right is able to use Concerned Parents to mobilize for fashy shit, from "critical race theory in our schools" to drag shows to trans kids, but parents-as-a-group never seem to mobilize with such fervor for like expanded child welfare programs or anything that might actually have a net benefit to their kids (at least in the us i don't really see this happen), almost like a lot of parents are far more concerned with maintaining their presumed absolute sovereignty over their kids, down to the thoughts in the kids' heads, over anything to do with their kids' actual health or well-being.

[skvoreshniki-deactivated2023020]

“The dream of those who are dreaming concerns those who are not dreaming. Why does it concern them? Because as soon as someone else dreams, there is danger. People's dreams are always all- consuming and threaten to devour us. What other people dream is very dangerous. Dreams are a terrifying will to power. Each of us is more or less a victim of other people's dreams. Even the most graceful young woman is a horrific ravager, not because of her soul, but because of her dreams. Beware of the dreams of others, because if you are caught in their dream, you are done for.”

—Gilles Deleuze, What Is the Creative Act? (tr. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina)

[dadsmell]

trans women developing increasingly esoteric vocabulary online call that Tower of Baeddel