Tumbling in 2024

30s, UK. Bi and non-binary, have Cerebral Palsy, and a powered wheelchair user. Overly-invested in historical queer, trans and deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent people and characters. They/them

[vympr]

i love reading sad books bc when your own grief is stopped up inside you like a clogged drain you can grieve for a character on a page and understand that you’re also grieving for yourself a little bit

[petrichara]

‘There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you—may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.’

-Anne Carson, ‘Grief Lessons: Four Plays By Euripides’

[crazycatsiren]

One thing most people don't realize: being disabled is expensive.

I'm not even talking about medical stuff. I'm talking about in general.

And it's not about comfort or convenience. It's out of necessity.

[cynicalrainbows]

“No, no, over and over! For anyone for whom that exhausting word is familiar, if your ears are intricately intimate with the sound of no, to you I’m saying yes! I’m shouting yes, I’m screaming yes for you! Yes you can, yes you will…If we can just quiet the world for a moment and listen within, there’s a voice guiding you, it’s yours and yours alone and until you can hear it, I’ll be it for you, and if you’ve lost your faith, you can borrow my god. She’s big enough for the both of us!”

— I Joan (2022) Charlie Josephine

[wheelywrites]

This play filled me with joy and righteous rage in equal measure. It was glorious - and I'm grateful to @cynicalrainbows for happening to transcribe one of my favourite bits.

[transsexualhedgehog]

this is a positivity post for neurodivergent folks who don’t ‘pass’ as neurotypical. if you: 

- have a full-time assistant or carer - have a speech impediment or are nonverbal - stim in public - have meltdowns in public - only talk about your special interest - can’t live alone - have an intellectual disability - can’t work or go to school - go to a school for disabled people - use AAC or a talk board - don’t leave the house - have very repetitive behaviors - can’t mask or anything else that makes it hard or impossible to mask or seem neurotypical, i see you and you deserve respect and visibiltity <3 

[bauliya]

the idea that being closeted is being a liar is a heterosexual propaganda that hates queer people protecting themselves. you don't have to come out if you're not safe.

[bisforbutch]

You also don't have to come out if you are.

[lgbt]

Yup.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay no one on Tumblr that I've seen has been talking about the wine and cheese thing, but that means no one is reflecting on the absolute weapons-grade hilarity of Boris Johnson trying to inchworm his way out of trouble by claiming that he didn't know about it

Like... that wine and cheese party was the Downing Street works Christmas do. Not just any old social, the Christmas social. There were invitations. There was music. Every single worker in Downing Street was invited, even Debbie from accounts. People who didn't work there but were important to the government got invited.

And Boris is therefore claiming that all his mates got together and had a party and DIDN'T INVITE HIM.

Not only that, but they deliberately kept it a secret from him, because no one wanted him there to ruin the party because no one likes him, and I just...

The key difference between Johnson and Trump always came down to this: Johnson wants to be liked. He genuinely does. Trump wanted to be respected and feared and obeyed, he wanted to be seen as powerful and suave and cool. But he didn't care about how liked he was. Johnson, though, really fucking does. He's a deeply pathetic little twat, and he wants people to like him.

So, his choices currently are

Tell everyone in the country that his own friends and coworkers actually cannot stand him, to the point that they arranged an entire Christmas party without him

Admit that he was there and immediately be hated by literally every single human being in the country, including his own voters (hello North Shropshire), because while the rest of us spent Christmas 2020 in a lockdown and unable to see each other and in many cases literally alone, him and his mates held an illegal Christmas party that the police are refusing to investigate

His popularity is now nosediving in the polls, and it really cannot be stated how much that will be burning him.

Also, pro-Brexit Tories are even pissed off with him now. Which is a bit like someone buying a cake called a pus cake with pictures of pus all over the box and a warning sign that says This Cake Contains Pus and Other Bodily Fluids, and then crying because when they tried to eat the pus cake they found it was filled with pus. But also really funny.

Anyway, I'm placing the bet now: we will see a vote of no confidence, OR he'll jump before he has to experience that (because it would kill him), and our next PM will be Rishi Sunak

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

And don't forget

THEY HAD THIS PARTY IN THE HOUSE HE LIVES IN!

He's trying to claim that all his friends and colleagues hosted a party IN THE HOUSE HE LIVES IN while he was upstairs apparently totally oblivious!

He really thinks we're that stupid to believe that a party could be happening literally TWO FLOORS BELOW him and he not know?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Omg omg I forgot that part and you are so right

They had a secret Christmas party that was so big that they were sending out invites to non government members which they didn't want him at, so they... what, had his mistress drug him with hefty amounts of antihistamines? He went out for the evening (also illegal at the time) and they partied hard on cheese and wine for precisely two hours and 46 minutes, then everyone went silent and snuck out when he came back?

A whole team of cleaners had to tiptoe about for four hours so they wouldn't wake up the clown upstairs.

What a cover story.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay well this story has... Wow.

So, let's update for those who don't know. Bear with me, I may get a couple of dates slightly wrong. First, shout out to the incredible investigative journalism and absolutely chessmaster-level shrewdness of Pippa Crerar for both digging up this story and for picking precisely the right moments to release it, morsel by morsel, to bring down Boris Johnson and possibly the whole damn government.

So after Johnson claimed he didn't know about it, then the Mirror published photos showing he was there and hosted a quiz. So, undeniable, Boris was at the Christmas party.

The Metropolitan Police declare that, even though they are investigating and fining people up to £12,000 a pop for lockdown parties, and doing so is literally their job, they will not investigate the government because "there isn't enough evidence". ACAB etc

Then, the Guardian reveals photos of Boris Johnson, his mistress, and Dominic Cummings eating cheese and drinking wine in the sun (with others around them) in the Downing Street garden, not allowed at the time (we were literally not allowed to leave home at the time). That day, Matt Hancock urges people not to have cheese and wine parties in their own gardens in spite of the nice May weather.

Then the Mirror reveals that there was actually another whole ass party - in May 2020, where 30 gathered in the garden of Downing Street (at the time we were not allowed more than 2 households meeting outside). Boris denies that it was a party, and claims it was merely a weirdly well catered work event that included his gin-drinking mistress and baby for some reason.

Then, the invites to the party were leaked by ITV. Turns out, 100 people were invited "to make the most of the lovely weather." It also told attendees to "bring their own booze."

Then an inquiry begins, carried out by Sue Gray. She is in fact a member of Number 10 staff, but no idea how independent she'll actually be one way or the other. Either way, the police are still literally refusing to investigate so lmao that's what we've got. She did get Damien Green fired for that porn thing, though, so that's encouraging.

Then this week, Johnson goes on Prime Minister's Questions. He sort of apologises, and claims that he was only there for 25 minutes but implies he then left because it felt more like an illegal social than the work event he was expecting, which is interesting, since his mistress was necking gin next to him the whole time. He should have just asked her, like. She could have clarified.

Then the Times reveals a source at the party who says that no, Boris stayed WAAAYYYY longer and spent his time wandering around and 'gladhanding' people (side note, posh people have weird words).

Then yesterday, even though we now have evidence and a confession of criminality, the Met Police announce that they will not investigate unless/until the Gray Inquiry finds evidence of criminality, which is just...an astonishingly open display of corruption, really. A real quiet-part-loud moment.

THEN, within hours, it's revealed that there were ANOTHER TWO PARTIES, except... Okay you're going to want to sit down, because shit hit the fan yesterday.

These two parties happened on the day of Prince Philip's funeral last year, aka Put Philip In The Floor Day. At the time, restrictions meant just 30 people could attend that funeral.

Which means, the Telegraph ran this headline and image:

I know we all hate the royals on Tumblr, but you have to understand just how hard that headline, and that image, and that message, hits British society. The Queen, beloved monarch, "forced to grieve alone" while the government danced and drank the night away. You cannot imagine how much power that image holds. You cannot begin to imagine the social power of it.

Boris Johnson can. He was polling only one point above Theresa May's all time low within the hour. That is a devastating popularity drop for the man who needs to be loved, who came to power on a cult of personality.

So, he went on PMQs again, to apologise to Lizzie Two. It's a really funny apology because he kind of can't apologise without admitting it and there's an enquiry going on so it's real vague, but he does cop to the parties on Put Philip In The Floor Day. Keir Starmer, in a rare display of actually providing some opposition, put the boot in quite nicely:

Well, there we have it. After months of deceit and deception, the pathetic spectacle of a man who's run out of road.

His defence, that he didn't realise he was at a party, is so ridiculous that it's actually offensive to the British public. 

He's finally been forced to admit what everyone knew that when the whole country was locked down, he was hosting boozy parties in Downing Street. 

Is he now going to do but decent thing and resign?

Which brings us to today! How is the Prime Minister coping with the situation?

Well, according to a leak from the Independent, he literally spent today working out which senior officials he can force to resign and take the blame in order to save himself in a move that he, a grown man who has fathered six or possibly seven children who is Prime Minister of the country, is without irony calling, and I am not making this up...

Operation Save Big Dog.

Big Dog is him. He is Big Dog. He has called himself Big Dog. He chose to call himself Big Dog.

Except, the Independent leaked it, as I say, so now he looks EVEN WORSE.

And Then

The Mirror's front page for tomorrow is revealed.

They have a photo of a wine fridge (capable of holding up to 34 bottles of wine) being delivered to Number 10.

Because, they reveal, these parties were not special events only.

Downing Street has been holding what they called Wine Time Fridays every week during the pandemic. They used to hold them before as well; but apparently, they've been particularly popular during lockdown.

Current polling as of 14th January 2022:

Labour 41%

Tories 27%

Those figures would translate to the Tories losing over 126 seats. Labour's largest lead since Tony Blair.

Side note to finish off for now:

Interesting how we now know a good 100 people who was at those parties, complete with photos, and yet Rishi Sunak is not in any of them. One might almost call it suspicious. And wonder at who the main source is.

[goldxnfemme-deactivated20241112]

if you must think of me, think of me like Janet from the good place, may malfunction, not the best with social skills, well intentioned, not a girl.

[metamorphesque]

— Sylvia Plath

[wheelywrites]

[ID: A quotation typed in black font and attributed to Sylvia Plath, which reads: Please, I want so badly for the good things to happen.]

[teashoesandhair]

Stellar conversation on BBC Wales today

[teashoesandhair]

Caller: I live in America now, since the ‘80s, but I’m visiting family in Wales this week, and I thought I’d ring in.

Host: Why did you move from Wales to America?

Caller: I actually moved because of a woman.

Host: Who’s the lucky lady?

Caller: Margaret Thatcher.

[wizardsisananimal]

hearing people hijacking posts made specifically about being deaf/hoh are like. "also this applies to neurodivergent people too !!"

guess what, i know there are overlaps in these experiences because i am ALSO neurodivergent ! but i was explicitly talking about my own disability on my own post. i get that there is an overlap because i actually experience both of these things, but ONE of those things makes it physically impossible to hear and the other. doesnt <|:•) and that's ok alright ?

nuerodivergent people who are able bodied/sighted/hearing etc, i need you to understand that it is ok for the conversation to not be explicitly about you even if there is an overlap in our experiences. lift up your disabled siblings instead of minimizing us. by making our experiences out to be universal you make it about YOU and therefore co-opt and remove us from our own experiences. this is not an attack and this is not a competition, there is space for all of us please

you need to unpack your knee jerk reaction to feeling excluded when you see someone talk about having a disability or experience that is not your own

[serendipitous-magic]

Is anyone else ever genuinely shocked when you find out you have an impact on someone’s life? A coworker can be like “I’ve missed seeing you” and I’m just like “???? you?? missed me????? My presence has an effect on your daily experience???? I affect things??? W h a t ? ? ?”

[greysfields]

we put so much importance on romantic love in queer spaces that i think we can forget about how important queer friendships are. having queer friends makes it so much easier to accept yourself and learn to accept others. queer friendships have so much love stored in them

[mylordshesacactus]

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[thejollywriter]

wow okay i’m crying now

[girlwithakiwi]

“And even as he watched the rescue unfolding that morning, he would have understood that for the living, everything which could have been done had been done: not a single survivor was lost or injured being brought aboard the Carpathia. For those who had gone down with the Titanic, save for reverencing their memory at the service later that day, there was nothing more that he or anyone could do. Rostron’s duty now was as he always saw it: to the living.”

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I looked up a bit about this because the post is so movingly written that when I read it aloud to my husband and mother they both wept like babies, and something else really struck me about this story.

So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.

So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.

And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.

All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind. 

I dunno. That’s just really stuck with me.

[armouredescort]

Cottam also ended up staying awake for something like 48 hours straight trying to send survivors messages and a list of survivors home, but due to Carpathia’s limited radio frequency range and with no other ships to act as a relay, this was rather patchy. However, he tried his damn best to make sure the survivor’s messages got home, and was also bombarded with incoming messages of bribes to spill the details of the disaster to the press.

Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.

He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.

In the face of extreme adversity, both men refused to do anything but their duty (and exceeding their duty) not just because Rostrum had ordered it, but because it was the right thing to do. They could have profited considerably from the disaster and they refused for the dignity of the survivors.

[duckbunny]

This is hopepunk. This is what we can be, what we are, when instinct takes over. This is what we are when we choose to care about each other. We’re not profit machines or units of production or lone fierce wolves in a bitter wilderness. We are people, and we care about people.

This is human nature. Don’t give up on it.

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

Hopepunk is best punk.

[saint-batrick]

this always leaves me sobbing. fuck.

[petermorwood]

I wrote a post a couple of years ago, wondering why there hadn’t been a documentary or docu-drama about the ‘Carpathia’ rescue run.

There are probably sound reasons why not, one of which is probably that getting yet another ‘Titanic’ project greenlit is far easier - name recognition, pre-sold property, multiple conspiracy theories to play with (all discredited, but when did that stop the “History” Channel?)

Here are a couple of stories about ‘Carpathia’:

As @mylordshesacactus has already said, her boilers and engines were rated for no more than 14 knots and, when she managed 17.5 for the only time in her life it’s said (I hate the phrase but I have to use it) that the Chief Engineer hung his hat over the main pressure gauge so no-one - including himself - could see how far its needle was into the red.

Captain Rostron, a religious man, was seen on several occasions standing privately on the exposed bridge wing with his own hat raised and his mouth moving in silent prayer, and when daylight revealed the extent of the ice-field his ship had passed without harm, he only said “There must have been another Hand on the wheel than mine…”

There’s another problem-of-sorts about a screenplay set aboard ‘Carpathia’ - an astonishing lack of that easy dramatic tool, conflict. Captain Rostron decided he was going to the ‘Titanic’s assistance, and that was that. AFAIK not a single passenger or crewman - not one - questioned the wisdom of his decision either then or afterwards, even when…

…‘Carpathia’ headed at more than full speed, in the dark, through dangerous waters where an iceberg had apparently just sunk an “unsinkable” ship.

It’s easier to write - and sell - a story about pride, arrogance, stupidity, rich against poor and lives lost through hubris, than it is to write one about people who rallied round and did the right thing at the right time, not for reward but because it was the right thing to do.

Here’s Rostron and his officers…

…the ‘Carpathia’ stewards and cabin crew….

…some of her passengers…

…and some of the people they helped.

[joasakura]

I will always reblog one of the few posts to GUARANTEE leaving me in an ugly sobbing heartfelt mess.

Godspeed Carpathia and your crew, your memories live on.

[bookhobbit]

this is sort of vague because I'm not sure if I can make it make sense but I wish more 101 nonbinary activist materials focused less on just "gender isn't binary" and more on "the fact that gender is a social construct means it is constructed differently in different cultures and is in a constant state of change like everything else about a culture"

like...it's not just about updating the gender system to recognize non-binary genders but also about recognizing that the social construction of gender is extremely responsive to time/place and this is true even for "man" and "woman" which means that there's no reason to invalidate anyone's expression or feelings about their gender, no matter what gender it is or how familiar it is to you

[bookhobbit]

a further thought: this is also why I don't think gender abolition is a useful goal, because, as Rikki Anne Wilchins put it, gender is primarily a system for creating meanings, and if you actually tried to totally erase the concept of any gender at all from the world, that would involve erasing a huge amount of cultural meaning, probably without actually fixing inequality tbh

on the other hand, if you acknowledge that there are as many gender systems as there are cultures, and that there are probably as many variations on even the normative genders as there are people in that culture who belong to them, then gender essentialism loses the vast majority of its power because if the meaning of gender changes across cultures (even across relatively small cultural shifts), then that means they're not inherent moral truths of the universe, they're ways of performing particular cultural meanings

and this makes non-binary genders, and nonnormative gender expressions, no less concrete than binary genders with normative expressions, not by saying "actually a non-binary gender is a concrete object with xyz characteristics" but by saying "all genders are arbitrary", which creates room for essentially infinite space and self-determination

I have no idea if any of this makes sense, I just visualize, like, a garden

[anxietyproblem]

[deadhorse77]

freddie mercury did not put that much emphasis on the "bi" in "bicycle" for you to call him gay

[another-exclus]

Everything is like “QUEER history” and “List of QUEER young adult books” or “Top 10 QUEER movies” and queer this and queer that and for the love of god please just say LGBT.

But queer is more inclusive

[a-tired-humanist]

And faster to pronounce if you are talking instead of writing.

[another-exclus]

It’s not more inclusive, and if your excuse of using a slur as a blanket term is “it’s faster to say”, GENUINELY what is wrong with you

[a-tired-humanist]

It’s called economía del lenguaje.

It’s also the respected academic term?? The acronym isn’t static and it’s usage is varied by things like generational difference, location, and knowledge of the community. Even just in the U.S. in the last few decades the common usage gone from GLBT to LGBT to LGBTQ, to LGBTQA/LGBTQIA/LGBTQIAP/etc (Which, let me tell you as someone who has given presentations in the past using these updated acronyms, are all real mouthfulls), to LGBT+.

Also yes, queer is more inclusive! Especially coming at it from an academic standpoint, people didn’t always use or identify with the terms we use now and you can’t always try to cram them into our modern perceptions of sexuality. We can argue for years about whether a famous historical figure was gay or bisexual or straight and trans or whatever, but if we can all agree that they were somehow queer then using that term allows us to move past the debate and into productive discussion. And not everybody everywhere shares the same terms for sexual and gender identity, or even the same concepts of those things, so queer really is a more inclusive term in a lot of cases.

Like yeah if you’re talking specifically about gay or trans people you can just say gay or transgender, but if you’re talking about more than one identity or someone who doesn’t conform to our perceptions of ‘LGBT,’ or a person or people whose identity you don’t know, queer is just the better word.

[jabberwockypie]

“That’s SO gay”, “Oh my god, you’re not a LESBIAN, are you?”

Your words are slurs, too. Why do you get your words, but I don’t get mine? What makes you so special?

I’m here, I’m queer, go fuck yourself.

[levynite]

queer is not a slur, stop drinking the TERF koolaid

[darthsuki]

[matronofthevoid]

every time one of you fools spout about ‘queer is a slur’ a terf laughs because their fucking plan to make that word ‘taboo’ is fucking working you dipshit.

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I did not get my degree in queer literature for you all to keep pulling this bullshit.

[moki-dokie]

baby gays,,,, i beg of you to learn your queer history and stop listening to terf bullshit

every single one of our labels has been used as a slur against us.

terfs and -phobes are always going to try and hurt us with what we identify as. but the fact remains these are OUR labels and always have been.

we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

[hyperactivehedgehog]

I don’t know if this is just because I’m not American but I’ve never heard queer used as a slur. Ever. Meanwhile gay was the insult in the 2000s here. Everything you didn’t like was ‘soo gay’. Queer wasn’t even a word most of us knew back then.

It just baffled me that people would think an identifier is automatically a slur just because someone uses it to mock someone. If we did that gay would be a slur. Stupid would be a slur. Autistic would be a slur.

The reason people are upset about the word queer is that it’s a unifying term. You can say you’re queer and all people will know is that you’re part of the community. But you can’t say you’re LGBT, you have to say you’re gay or trans or ace. They don’t want you to be ambiguously queer. They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.

[tapacamino]

yeah in the 90s and early 2000s kids would call each other “gay” as an insult. But no one ties themselves in knots over whether “gay” is a slur. So yeah, please ffs learn your history.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[rabidchild67]

They want you to say which kind of queer you are so they can decide whether you’re undesirable.