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Queer Speculative Fiction

@queerspeculativefiction / queerspeculativefiction.tumblr.com

Malin Rydén writes short stories, comics and games.

baffling how much of this site is just conservative protestantism with a gay hat

you know what i’m in just enough of a bad mood that i’m ready to nail my grievances to the church door so let’s fucking go

  • black and white morality wherein anyone who doesn’t believe/think/live exactly as I do is a dirty sinner Problematic and probably a predatory monster
  • everyone is a sinner Problematic but true believers people who activist the right way according to my worldview are still better than everyone else, and I will act in accordance to this belief in my own superiority to let everyone else know I’m better than them because I found Jesus am the most woke
  • casual and fucking omnipresent equations of womanhood with softness/goodness/purity/nurturing to remind every woman who isn’t/doesn’t want to be any of those things that they’re doing it wrong
  • aggressive desexualization (particularly of women’s sexuality, to the point where it may as well not exist at all) accompanied by pastels [not a criticism directed ace ppl having a right to sex-free content and spaces but specifically targeted at a wider problem resulting from the previous point]
  • YOU’RE VALID AND JESUS LOVES YOU and neither of these platitudes achieves a goddamn thing
  • historical context is for people who care about nuance and we don’t have time for either (see: black and white morality)
  • lots of slogans and quotes and nice little soundbites to memorize but does anybody actually study the source material with a critical eye to make their own informed analysis
  • the answer is no
  • I’ve been to bible study groups don’t @ me I know what the fuck I’m talking about
  • Good Christians™ Nice Gays™ don’t fraternize with/let themselves be influenced by non-Christians those terrible queers
  • all the media one consumes must be ideologically pure or it will surely harm the children
  • it is Our Sacred Duty to protect the children from Everything, thus ensuring their innocence/purity/etc until such time as they are idk probably 25 years old
  • literally just “think of the children” moral panic y’all can fuckin miss me with that
  • people who don’t conform to the dominant thinking WILL be excommunicated/driven from the social group, and any wrong treatment they suffer will be seen as a justified consequence of their wrong thinking
  • I Saw Goody Proctor With The Devil And She Had A Bad Steven Universe Headcanon

When I say I’m too Jewish for the way Tumblr has certain conversations, each of those bullet points is the kind of thing I mean.

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Anonymous asked:

I am turning 24 soon and I can't help but freak out. I know what I am about to say next is going to sound very trivial compared to what is happening around the world now but I can't stop thinking that there will come a time when I would be considered too old to be in a fandom. Like what would happen when I turn 35/45/55?? Won't it be awkward? Would it be creepy if I still read ao3 fics in my 60s? I don't want to go away from the fandom space. It helps me so much to cope in this world.

my advice is to block and mute anyone who makes you feel that way and enjoy posting about batman with the other well-adjusted adults who like to enjoy things on the internet

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most of the best fanfic is produced by women who are over thirty. older women aren’t just ‘still’ on AO3, they’re producing the highest-rated content. older women are the backbone of fandom and always have been: they are archivists, skilled costumers and writers, professional artists and editors and videographers and organizers. they run the fests, they code the archive itself, they volunteer, they watch out for people. they invented zines and webrings and conventions and cosplay and so many things kids just take for granted as natural parts of fandom.

mature, experienced women are hands down the most valuable resource any sphere of human activity can accrue. becoming one of them isn’t a tragedy, it’s an honor. 

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Every so often I post a fic and someone will comment on it asking, basically, “how do you do that?”

And the answer is, from the bottom of my heart: I’ve been practicing for longer than some of you have been alive. I posted my first fic online in October of 2002, when I was just about to turn 21, and I have continued writing and posting fic for going on eighteen years now, which means I am not far off from turning forty. I hope to keep it up for eighteen (and thirty-six, and fifty-four) more—and I’m guessing plenty of my readers hope the same.

If you want really good content for your fandom, you cannot chase away or shame the people who stick around long enough to get really good at producing it.

I’m 48, going on 49, and honestly not less of a gremlin than when I was 20.

There’s a lot more people than you’d think out there who are older. Just relax and breathe, nothing needs to change. The mid twenties is a scary place because it seems that you have to give up what you love in order to be an adult, but that’s an outright lie.

So I’m going to be bitter and old here for a minute.

The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.

This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.

It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.

Like, fuck off?

Fuck off.

I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.

And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like

Fucking, why would I ever.

Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?

I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.

I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.

The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.

So yeah.

Queer as in fuck you people in particular.

And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.

I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.

My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.

but it’s fuckign not.

We spent decades pulling the danger out of it.

And ‘m not going to let it sneak back in.

Every time someone says “queer is a slur, you shouldn’t use it” I feel like they’re trying to fucking gaslight me. Like, I was there when it got reclaimed. I read “Queer Science”, I saw the “Queer Studies Departments” in college and the majors in Queer Theory. Kids do not get to invalidate my life out of ignorance. And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with, because how would the kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about know to invalidate that word?

You go. Reclaim that reclamation. I’ll probably use LGBT+ and queer interchangeably, like I always have, and if some kid tries to lecture my 47-year-old ass on the matter I’m just going to have to look at them over my imaginary librarian glasses and tell them “no. you’re wrong. Go back to school, kid, you need to remember you’re sharing the world with adults and there is a consensual reality you have entered into. You don’t get to make it up from scratch any more than I did.”

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rhodanum

@alarajrogers hit the nail on the head with this: 

And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with

Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs. 

That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question: 

  • what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines? 
  • and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?

The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride. 

So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles). 

If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.   

I’d laugh and clap at the ingeniousness of it all, if it didn’t involve obliterating decades of community history, solidarity and reclamation efforts. 

People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.

But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.

Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.

It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.

Nobody is immune.

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koge33

So you’re saying that The Clown wasn’t always… outright evil?

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the-angry-ship

No one is born evil

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koge33

Well…

Good point, but prejudice is best installed at a young age. Why is why I assumed the said Clown was just evil since some early part of their life.

What I’m saying is that JKR, like so many average people, very likely started off in a place of well-meaning ignorance. Then she started exploring new and different ideas being shared online. Some ideas resonated deeply with her experiences as an abuse survivor, so she began exploring them deeper. Then, wham, public backlash. Her trauma is triggered - but so is her curiosity. After all, if something she did or said set people off, maybe she’s onto something. So she starts exploring more. Starts asking more questions. And when she does this in public, there is always backlash. Meanwhile, however, in private, her new friends are telling her “See? This is proof we’re right. This is proof that the world wants us silenced, because they’re scared of the truth, and they really hate women that much.” And what do you know, what they’re telling her starts sounding more and more reasonable, especially since the outside world is becoming more and more hostile.

And round and round it goes, until you have a radical.

This is absolutely how radicalization works. I started out “I could never be a feminist, they hate kinksters” (yes, this was a massive oversimplification) and within, oh, i think two years? i was saying “well, i don’t like the overtones of ‘radical feminist’ but what’s so wrong with saying you’re a radical AND a feminist? we need to make sure there’s space for traumatized women who really do legitimately hate and fear men.” When you become an extremist, you become UNRECOGNIZABLE even to YOURSELF.

There is also this….revisionist tendency to say that JKR has always been a closet bigot and conservative and right-wing since she got famous, but that’s not even entirely true. One of her first major political stirrups was criticising Tory austerity measures and David Cameron, (she also once said “people who send their children to boarding schools seem to feel that I’m on their side. I’m not.”), donating to Labour and being openly supportive of the British welfare state. She has, in at least one interview (from 2000) self-proclaimed to be left-wing. As early as 2003, she claimed that one of her biggest writing influences was a Jessica Mitford, who Rowling described as a “self-taught socialist”

This isn’t to apologise for her behaviour or rehabilitate her into some former activist who is still worthy of saving; it’s to contextualise her recent descent into TERFdom compared to her previous political stances she’s openly held. She was probably never going to be a staunch ally for equality and diversity, and yes, a lot of the HP series were very problematic in retrospect, but she could very easily have gone the other way and at the very least turned out to be less of a bigoted shitbag she is now. The fact that her politics in late 2000′s/early 2010′s were similar to so many people who are now activists and organisers for queer, BIPOC and vulnerable communities should tell us to be all the more careful about radfem ideology and transphobia in progressive spaces. 

It’s comforting to say “we should have known in hindsight that she was always going to become a TERF, the early signs were all there!” but that’s also not true. We have to recognise that the toxic ideology, the active harm she chooses to participate in, was a deliberate choice; this was a path she chose to go down, not one that was pre-determined for her. It’s also an easy way to separate ourselves from being critical of radfem influence; “JKR was always a right-wing bigot and that’s why she became indoctrinated with radfem bullshit. I’m not a right-wing bigot, therefore unlike her, I will never fall for radfem bullshit.” 

People who become radicalised, including those to become radfems, were not always irredeemable right-winger proto-Conservatives doomed for extremism and hatred, and that’s the point. The revisionist idea that she was always beyond salvaging erases how TERFs recruit people (especially vulnerable, impressionable people) in queer, progressive and liberal circles and how easily their dogwhistles can go undetected. The idea that JKR was already a closet right-winger from the get-go and therefore could never have been a good person is ultimately unhelpful because all it does it separate from the reality of how radfem doctrine spreads. TERFs sell their own toxic, harmful views packaged as progressive ideas as part of their strategy and that’s why their ideology is dangerous and requires constant vigilance to drive out. 

You are not immune to radicalization

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crownshrine
Anonymous asked:

I dont know who the hell the B stands for but god its disgusting that you ship anyone with Dib. Thats a whole ass child, freak. Wanted to follow for the Pokemon content but you're out here shipping whatever the fuck badr is. Dont fucking ship the kids with irkens jesus christ

Anonymous answered:

HUH????? BADR IS MY NAME ITS A NAME IN ARABIC I DON’T EVEN WATCH ZIM DUGDHBCHBVHJVFH WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ON

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armorgaa

this is what you guys get for naming ships in your show in such a stupid way

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x2die

same energy

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engloid

holy trinity

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uwunicron

The fourth horseman

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bewizard
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wondertainment

Here’s another for yall

Klubb deserves a mention

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aven-rave

Tumblr gremlins lack any form of reading comprehension and misunderstand literally everything, more at 11.

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psyeyeonyou

This is what happens when you’re addicted to outrage.

Have a hammer? EVERYTHING looks like a nail!

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katiethetransbian

we got a new one

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otomeman

Hahahahaha

Hahahahaha hahahahaha hahah

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existential-pasta

W

What

No note post

this post is broken in every way possible

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Yay it me

donate to black trans groups

the following organizations accept donations via Venmo, PayPal or Cashapp:

  • Homeless Black Trans Women Fund: supports Black Trans women that live in Atlanta and are sex workers and/or homeless
  • Trans Justice Funding Project: supports grassroots trans justice groups run by and for trans people, focusing on organizing around racism, economic injustice, transmisogyny, ableism, immigration, and incarceration
  • Trans(forming): membership-based organization led by trans men, intersex, gender non-conforming people of color, to provide resources and all around transitional support
  • Black Trans Men Inc.: the first national nonprofit social advocacy organization with a specific focus on empowering Black Transgender men by addressing multi-layered issues of injustice faced at the intersections of racial, sexual orientation, and gender identities
  • Kween Culture: provides programming towards social and cultural empowerment of transgender women of color
  • Heaux History Project: a documentary series and archival project exploring Black and Brown erotic labor history and the fight for sex workers’ rights
  • Tournament Haus Fund: mutual aid fund for protesters and trans/non binary BIPOC in the ballroom scene in Portland/Tacoma/Seattle
  • Black Excellence Collective Transport for Black NYC LGBTQ+ Protestersraising funds to provide safe transport for Black LGBTQ+ protesters (NYC)
  • F2L Relief Fund: provides commissary support (and legal representation & financial assistance) for incarcerated LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit POC in NY state
  • Trans Sistas of Color Project Detroit: uplifts, impacts and influences the lives and welfare of transgender women of color in Detroit
  • Black Trans Protesters Emergency Fund organized by Black Trans Femme in the Arts Collective: supports Black trans protesters with resources like bail and medical care
  • Black Trans Travel Fund: a mutual aid project developed to provide Black transgender women with the financial resources to self-determine safer alternatives to travel, so they feel less likely to experience verbal harassment or physical harm
  • Reproductive Justice Access Collective (ReJAC): a New Orleans network that aims to share information, resources, ideas, and human power to create and implement projects in the community that operate within the reproductive justice framework

the following organizations can be donated to individually or all-together via this split donation form that will split your donation amount to equal parts:

  • Okra Project/Tony McDade and Nina Pop Mental Health Fund: provides Black Trans people with quality mental health & therapy and addresses food security in Black trans communities
  • For The Gworls: provides assistance to Black trans folks with travel to and from medical facilities, and co-pay assistance for prescriptions and (virtual) office visits ⁣
  • Third Wave Fund: an activist fund led by and for women of color, intersex, queer, and trans people under 35 years of age to resource the political power, well-being, and self determination of communities of color and low-income communities; rapid response grantmaking, multi-year unrestricted grants, and the Sex Worker Giving Circle
  • Unique Womens Coalition (Los Angeles, CA): supportive organization for and by transgender people of color, committed to fostering the next generation of black trans leadership through mentorship, scholarship, and community care engagement work
  • Black Trans Women Inc.: a national nonprofit organization committed to providing the trans-feminine community with programs and resources 
  • SisTers/Brothers PGH (Pittsburgh, PA): A transgender drop-in space, resource provider and shelter transitioning program
  • Love Me Unlimited for Life: helps transgender community members reach their goals and fulfill their potential through advocacy and outreach activities
  • My Sistah’s House Memphis (Memphis, TN): designed to bring about social change within the Trans Community in Memphis by providing a safe meeting space and living spaces for those who are most vulnerable in the LGBTQ+ community
  • Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project: builds and centers the power of Black LGBTQIA+ migrants through community-building, political education, direct services, and organizing across borders; provides cash assistance to Black LGBTQ+ migrants and first generation people dealing with the impact of COVID-19
  • Taja’s Coalition at St. James Infirmary (San Francisco/Bay Area): navigating housing, medical services, legal services, and the workplace, as well as regularly training agencies
  • Marsha P. Johnson Institute: helps employ black trans people, build more strategic campaigns, launch winning initiatives, and interrupt the people who are standing in the way of more being possible in the world for black Trans people
  • Black & Pink Bail Fund: national prison abolitionist organization dedicated to dismantling the criminal punishment system and the harms caused to LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by the system 
  • Black Visions Collective (MN): healing and transformative justice principles and develops Minnesota’s emerging Black leadership, creating the conditions for long term success and transformation
  • Middle Tennessee Black and Indigenous Support Fund (Middle, TN): a community fund for Black and Indigenous queer and trans folks to foster wealth redistribution in its larger community, direct the funds to Black and Indigenous community members, and build the leadership of Black and Indigenous community members
  • SNaPCo (Atlanta, GA): a Black, trans-led collaborative to restore an Atlanta where every person has the opportunity to grow and thrive without facing unfair barriers, especially from the criminal legal system
  • Brave Space Alliance (Chicago, IL): created to fill a gap in the organizing of and services to trans and gender-nonconforming people on the South and West Sides of Chicago
  • House of GGa nonprofit, founded trans activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, that is raising money to build a permanent home for Transgender people  and be part of a growing network of Southern trans people who are working for social justice
  • TGI Justice Project: a group of transgender, gender variant and intersex people inside and outside of prisons, jails and detention centers challenging and ending human rights abuses committed against TGI people in California prisons, jails, detention centers
  • Trans Women of Color Collective: creates revolutionary change by uplifting the narratives, leadership, and lived experience of trans people of color
  • Youth Breakout (New Orleans, LA): seeks to end the criminalization LGBTQ youth to build a safer and more just New Orleans, organizing with youth ages 13-25 who are directly impacted by the criminal justice system
  • Translash: a trans-led project uses the power of individual stories to help save trans lives, shifting the cultural understanding of what it means to be transgender, especially during a time of social backlash, to foster inclusion and decrease anti-trans hostility
  • TRANScending Barriers:  empowers the transgender and gender non-conforming community in Georgia through community organizing with leadership building, advocacy, and direct services
  • My Sistah’s House: a trans-led nonprofit providing first hand experience and field research to create a one-stop shop for finding doctors, social groups and safe spaces for the trans community, providing emergency shelter, access to sexual health services, and social services
  • TAKE Birmingham: focuses on discrimination in the workplace, housing advocacy, support for sex workers, providing trans-friendly services, and working to alleviate the many other barriers that TWOC face
  • Dem Bois: provides charitable economical aid for female to male, FTM, trans-masculine identified person(s) of color ages 21 years old and older for them to obtain chest reconstruction surgery, and or genital reassignment surgery
  • G.L.I.T.S: approaches the health and rights crises faced by transgender sex workers
  • Emergency Release Fund (NYC): aims to ensure that no trans person at risk in New York City jails remains in detention before trial; pays cash bails
  • HEARD: Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities: supports deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, deafdisabled, and disabled people at every stage of the criminal legal system process, up to and including during and after incarceration
  • Black Trans Advocacy Coalition COVID-19 Community Response Grant: works daily to end discrimination and inequities faced in health, employment, housing and education to improve the lived experience of transgender people
  • Princess Janae Place: provides referrals to housing for chronically homeless LGBTQ adults in the New York Tri-state area, with direct emphasis on Trans/GNC people of color
  • The Transgender District: aims to stabilize and economically empower the transgender community through ownership of homes, businesses, historic and cultural sites, and safe community spaces
  • Assata’s Daughters (Chicago, IL): Black woman-led; organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, mentorship, and revolutionary services
  • Collective Action for Safe Spaces: A grassroots organization that uses comprehensive, community-based solutions through an intersectional lens to eliminate public gendered harassment and assault in the DC area.
  • The Knights and Orchids Society (TKO) work for justice and equality through group economics, education, leadership development, and organizing cultural work throughout rural areas in Alabama
  • The Outlaw Project (Phoenix, AZ)prioritizes the leadership of people of color, transgender women, gender non-binary and migrants for sex worker rights
  • WeCare TN (Memphis, TN): Supports trans women of color 
  • Community Ele'te (Richmond, VA): provides safe sex awareness and education, linkage to resources, emergency housing assistance
  • TAJA’s Coalition (San Francisco, CA): ending violence against Black Trans women and Trans women of color 
  • Black Trans Task Force: intersectional, multi-generational project of community building, research, and political action addressing the crisis of violence against Black Trans people in the Seattle-Tacoma area
  • The Transgender District: stabilize and economically empower the transgender community through ownership of homes, businesses, historic and cultural sites, and safe community spaces
  • Black Trans Media (Brooklyn, NY): #blacktranseverything storytellers, organizers, poets, healers, filmmakers, facilitators that confront racism and transphobia
  • Garden of Peace, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA): for black trans & queer youth, elevates and empowers the narratives and lived experiences of black youth and their caretakers, guides revolutionary spaces of healing and truth through art, education, and mentorship
  • House of Pentacles (Durham, NC): Film Training Program and Production House designed to launch Black trans youth into the film industry and tell stories woven at the intersection of being Black and Trans
  • Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition (Minneapolis, MN): committed to improving health care access and the quality of health care received by trans and gender non-conforming people through education, resources, and advocacy
  • RARE Productions (Minneapolis, MN): arts and entertainment media production company for LGBTQ people of color that promotes, produces, and co-creates opportunities and events utilizing innovative artistic methods and strategies
  • Baltimore Safe Haven (Baltimore, MD): providing opportunities for a higher quality of life for transgender people in Baltimore
  • Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts: recently helped organize a Trans Resistance Vigil and March through Boston, in place of the Boston Pride Parade that was cancelled due to COVID-19
  • Semillas: in Puerto Rico, the trans, gender non-conforming and queer communities are facing many obstacles to survival
  • Street Youth Rise Up: change the way Chicago sees and treats its homeless and street based youth who do what they have to do to survive

“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

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This is why the media keeps pumping out articles about plastic straws and avocados that focuses on what we, individually, are doing to destroy the environment, when really the most pollution comes from multinational corporations and the only thing that will save us is global collective action.

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Tumblr: *rolls out “best stuff first”*

My blog:

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on the one hand this is a joke post because lol i have never made a good post in my life, but also, if i hadn’t made the connection between this update and my sudden nosedive in activity, i would have been really fucking discouraged about all the shit i’ve been working on lately. i guarantee there are people on tumblr right now who haven’t made that connection, and who are trying to figure out why suddenly no one likes anything they’ve made. and that fucking sucks.

Reminder to go into your settings and turn off ‘Best Stuff First’ because my activity’s tanked a couple days ago for no reason so this stuff IS happening.

You WILL miss content with that setting on.

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i ain’t joking when i say that my activity looks JUST like this too and i wasn’t sure why

I can only find the option on the app under Settings > Dashboard Preferences.

To support content creators do us a favour and turn off “Best stuff first”. Open the tumblr app (Android or iOs) and go to “Settings > Dashboard Preferences. And please reblog this post, so that everybody will see this. Thank you very much!

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I assumed I just wasn’t writing very well, but maybe it’s not just me.

Am I supposed to pay to get my writing in front of followers now?

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled sci-fi content because this is important for app users, and it sucks. We all follow blogs because we want to see their content, not to have a crappy algorithm decide what’s best.

This blog is down approximately 80%, which doesn’t affect me other than as an annoyance (as this is a hobby and @okayto is small-ish) but the issue undoubtedly hurts others.

Below are instructions for turning it off. You have to do it individually–it doesn’t matter if a blog you follow turns it off, you’ll still be affected unless you do the same.

We don’t normally reblog PSAs, but this is very clearly affecting us, too! If you haven’t been getting your daily dose of RPG humor, this setting is probably why. Turn it off so you can see all the silly shit players say!

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Trying to reblog the versions of these instructions with the most notes, so they’ll actually show up for the people afflicted by this update.

Advice and a Pep-Talk from one Autistic Writer to Another

I’ve seen enough “how to write autistic characters” directed at allistics but I’m not sure I’ve really seen any posts directed at autistics written by other autistics that’s just general writing advice. So here’s some tips and tricks and a pep talk.

1.   Write as many autistic characters as you want. It’s totally ok for every single one of your characters to be autistic. If other people can write stories without any autistic characters, you can write ones without any allistic characters. (After all, how can you write an autistic allistic character if you’re not autistic allistic. /s)

2.   Let your characters stim! It’s a great way to include body language in a way that feels natural for us.

On the topic of stimming, try and vary the stims your characters use. This is something I generally take care of in editing. Everyone would run their hands through their hair, but when they did that, it just became a filler description, so I cut the action from most of the characters and left it for a few. At that point, the stim became theirs. (I also then got to have lines like “Den ran his hand through his hair to calm his thoughts, a motion more like his brother than him.” which is like Look, characterization!)

3.  Body language and facial expressions are hard. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve described the body language or facial expression without actually saying what the character was feeling while writing, and then in editing have no idea what they were feeling.

It’s totally OK to write something like “their eyebrows jumped up in surprise as their jaw dropped towards the floor.” It’s descriptive enough to follow the “show, don’t tell” rule, but still names the emotion the character is feeling. It also lets you use non-standard body language (aka autistic body language and stimming) in a way that allistic readers can pick up on.

Reference sheets are a great way to have some standard allistic ways of expressing emotions via body language. This is a great way to make sure that if a character is expressing an emotion but it’s not something you can state in the story (or that your character is unaware of), that it’ll still be something your audience can pick up on.

4.   It can take a while to really get a feel for your characters. I tend to only really have their characterization solid enough to keep them consistent after I’ve written the initial rough draft. This is one of the reasons my first step after completing my initial draft is to rewrite everything. It’s just the easiest way I’ve found to make sure all the characters are in character - because if I tried to go through every single line and figure out what wasn’t in character, I’d be lost.

If you’re confused about why a character is doing something because you forgot what you were thinking and are having trouble figuring it out from context, it’s ok to take that bit out and rewrite it. Sometimes it might be because a character is acting out of character, and in that case it’s a good thing you’re fixing it.

5.      The details you include in your writing because you’re so detail oriented really makes the story come alive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten told it feels like my world exists beyond the story and that my characters have lives beyond what’s mentioned on the page because I think about every little detail and make mentions of them.

Our attention to detail also tends to let us do unintentional symbolism and foreshadowing really well. We try and make every little thing relevant and tied into everything else, which is something that comes naturally to us and I’ve seen so many writers struggle with.

6.     Infodump in the rough draft as much as you want. If it keeps you writing, go for it.

You can remove (or better integrate) infodumps (because they tend to not be all that interesting to readers since they stop the story in their tracks) and any inconsistent details when you edit.

If you want to avoid just infodumping in the story itself, write down EVERYTHING about your characters, your world, your plot, everything you want to explain and anything that is relevant to know for the story in a separate document(s). For me, it gets the urge to explain EVERYTHING out of my system and helps me include only what’s needed when I’m writing. (Plus it makes a GREAT reference material for when you’re writing.)

7.      If you don’t explain something well enough, that can also be fixed in editing. This is where beta readers are useful since they can let you know where they’re confused and where more information is useful. This is also where taking a break between writing and editing can help, since if you’re confused it’s likely a spot where you need to include more information

(Again, this is advice for autistic writers from an autistic writer. Allistics and Writing blogs are encouraged to reblog this since this is writing advice, but unless you are autistic, please do not comment.)

The first pride was a riot, more specifically a riot against police violence. Trans women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson paved the way for the celebration of pride today. You cannot celebrate your pride this month, or any month if you aren’t also supporting Black Lives Matter and the riots going on against police violence right now. Us white LGBTQ+ need to stand up for our black siblings and their rights, their struggles. We need to amplify their voices and show any support we can.

soappppp

yall I fucking bled for this peice of trash pls like it 

oh. I thought it was a photo.

Damn it took me 5 minutes to figure out why you wanted people to like a picture of soap. You did such a good job people think you are just posting random pics of soap.

this isn’t the fist time this has happened, I painted lube and everyone was confused that I posted a picture of lube 

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celticpyro

This is such a Monkey’s Paw kind of talent. Being so talented at hyperrealistic art that people just think they’re photos and don’t care.

The shine on that lube is SO good tho kudos

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cakeandrevolution

Damn that’s impressive!

Anyways for the kids who are getting themselves really riled up abt this pr*defall stuff:

4ch.an does this like every year and to anyone who’s been in the community for a while it’s old news. They’ve called it by various names but it’s the same shit. It generally just boils down to a few incels posting somewhat vulgar shit in the pride tags for a day or two and then getting bored/banned and stopping.

If you’re really concerned, maybe private your blog/turn off your ask boxes and submissions and avoid tags for a few days, but don’t send yourselves into a panic attack over it. There’s a reason older folks aren’t as bothered as you guys are. This is practically a routine occurrence by now.

The main goal of it isn’t even usually to actually post things. It’s to make sure that their post about it travels about a shit ton so they can watch a bunch of kids get anxious about it. Pls don’t stress yourselves out over it.

why are birds so cursed

A Non-Comprehensive List of Birds That Piss Me Off

1. Dracula Parrot. This thing pisses me off like, a bunch

2. King Vulture. the felted craft project equivalent of a haunted ventriloquist dummy

i will never not resent this bird 

 3. Jacana Bird. This is the most unnecessary cursed nonsense. i deserve an apology for having to look at this. I can feel its fingers stroking my ears

No it does not have SIX FREAKING LIMBS. it’s carrying its stupid creepy spawn under its wings. A+ parents but still, piss off. even the normal 2 legged version isn’t much better

put those AWAY.

4. The Shoebill, which i’m sure we’re all sick of hearing about. this thing is the epitome of a crappy photorealistic cgi disney villainy. i despise this bird.

also this is what they look like standing up. i just feel like i shouldn’t have to deal with that, i really do.

5. Inca Tern. truly, hipsters ruin everything

6. Tragopan. it looks like a star wars species, which i dislike on principle 

7. The Secretary Bird. it wears yoga pants.

also i’m uncomfortable with the length of its eyelashes

8. finally, i really dislike this one specific parakeet

in conclusion, these birds exist to haunt me and this knowledge is a burden. birds exist to observe our sin; always watching, they are filled with malice. flee from them

Reminder that Stonewall wasn’t about marriage equality. Stonewall was about police brutality. It was about systemic abuse and subordination. Stonewall was spearheaded by black trans women. As we celebrate Pride 2020, within the context of the Black Lives Matter riots, it’s imperative that we remember that.

Riots in protest of police brutality are the reason that we have more rights today. Do not forget your roots.

You can’t celebrate Pride while simultaneously condemning the Black Lives Matter riots and protests that are happening right now. Know your history.