So @star-anise as an account A Lot to deal with these days. I have a lot of old text posts on contentious topics (feminism, queerness, bisexuality, mental health etc) and a routine part of my week is seeing really hateful people popping up in my notes. I block them when I can, but it’s a perpetual game of whack-a-mole. I don’t want to delete my blog, though, or make my posts hard to access at their usual URLs, or completely lose touch with it.

Therefore: I’m going to do a lot of my blogging for now out of @beyondthisdarkhouse (or my fannish sideblog for The Untamed/The Old Guard/Murderbot/Zen Cho, @with-my-murder-flute). My askbox is going to stay closed for a bit and I’m going to be slower and more thoughtful about what I post here.

I never did and never will provide therapy via Tumblr, but but if you’re looking for support, I’d suggest finding a local mental health or crisis line if you need to talk or if you want to know where to access affordable counselling near you, or trying Scarleteen for questions about sexuality and gender.

Pinned Post#staranise original #this message will self-repeat

beyondthisdarkhouse

I feel awkward about asking the Internet for money so often, so in memory of former frolics about knightly homoeroticism I've been working on making merch designs of this medieval tile:

It is said to depict King Mark of Cornwall bidding Tristan farewell as the latter sets out for Cornwall, and doesn't THAT just add a fun and special twist to their story! (Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe that's just feudalism. Maybe they're just being bros.)

Then I'll be able to reinfect everyone with my ear-worm:

Is it gay or feudalism?

We still can't crack the code...

Sadly, however, the merch isn't ready yet, and I'm asking for money anyway, since a) I have officially run out of money for the first two weeks of September with my phone bill and credit cards unpaid (and still do not have a steady job), and b) I just got hit with a chest cold that has reduced me to eating popsicles in between naps

If you can't give anything, please don't! If you can and just don't want to, I respect your choices! And if you can and feel inclined,

here is my paypal

#asking for money #donation post #staranise original #does anyone even follow me for medieval hijinks anymore #or a three-week obsession with the potato...

probablyasocialecologist

In fantasy, medieval life is depicted as all sexual violence and squalor. It's not that simple

Whenever a fantasy series such as "House of the Dragon" treads deeply into gruesome violence or plain old human exploitation, storytellers like to say it's historically accurate. But while sexual and reproductive violence is somewhat accurate for the medieval age, so are myriad other things that seem to fall off the storyboard when it's time to add authenticity.

edition.cnn.com|AJ Willingham, CNN

“The desire to be ‘accurate’ suddenly disappears when sex isn’t involved and it is actual interesting day to day minutiae,” says Eleanor Janega, a medieval historian who teaches at the London School of Economics. “If the (‘Game of Thrones’) world was historically accurate, why isn’t every single noble house or castle absolutely covered by huge gaudy, colourful murals? Why is it that this form of historical accuracy isn’t important, but showing rape as endemic is?”

Other historians point out that, as prurient and gasp-worthy as something like a crude C-section death is, such butchery wasn’t as prevalent as storytellers would have you believe.

“They were very keen on protecting mothers from harm,” medieval history scholar Sara McDougall told Slate.

Texts from the time indicate that such extreme measures would usually be performed on women who had already died – not, as in “House of the Dragon,” a fully awake and alert woman with no clue what was about to happen to her.

[…]

Janega points out that, while medieval times were certainly not overkind to women or anyone else who wasn’t rich, powerful and male, they weren’t the burlesque of suffering we’re so used to seeing on screen.

“'Accuracy’ is always focusing on the distasteful aspects of a society, but never the pleasurable ones,” she says. “(It) somehow always encompasses sexual violence and never things like, for example, the three field system, or fishing weirs. They don’t really show how women other than the nobility are a dynamic part of the medieval workforce. Women are found in pretty much every facet of medieval work: as blacksmiths, running shops, brewing beer, in cloth production, running bath houses or in trading delegations addressing the court.”

star-anise

Dr. Janega also recently wrote a really good blog post on the topic, which doesn't skirt around the reality of sexual violence in the middle ages, but points out some specific complications.

For example, the Latin word "raptus", which is commonly translated into English as "rape" or "rapine", can often be more accurately understood as "abduction". When it first emerged as a concept, it was about taking a woman out of her father's house without his permission. That was often assumed to mean sexual assault, but that's not the element that's in focus here. If a woman wanted to go with the man in question, but her father didn't like the idea, she might sneak out and elope with her lover—and legally, would be "complicit in her own rape." The important element is not her assault, but her father's loss of control of her.

Thus, "raping and pillaging" doesn't necessarily mean the Vikings had a blood-soaked orgy as the village burned. Not to say it couldn't, because bad shit still happened, but it could equally mean that they took women and children as prisoners, maybe hostages or slaves, because they needed their labour or to ensure compliance from the community they came from. And that in itself was bad, but it's also a lot less titillating on your TV screen.

It was during the early and high middle ages that the Church shifted the legal perspective of "rapine", away from the legal rights of the father and onto the perspective of the victim. Instead of punishing women who made marriages their fathers disapproved of, the Church held that adult women had the right to assent to their own marriages, parents be damned, so if a woman willingly left her father's house and pledged to marry the man she left with, she was married and her father could eat it.

Thus in the middle ages we see the differentiation between concepts like "rape" (unwilling victim) and "elopement" (willing participant). And medieval society was still tough on victims of rape, but on the other hand, they weren't very lenient on rapists either! (Slavers, unfortunately, were still okay.)

Game of Thrones is imagining this fantasy world where sexual violence is unashamedly celebrated, and women have extremely limited power to fight against it. This is really clearly because it's something that meets the emotional needs of many people (not just wish fulfillment, but a broad canvas on which to work out cultural anxieties about sex and violence and masculinity and swiftly changing social norms).

Because it sure as hell ain't medieval.

#gore tw #sexual violence tw #medievalism #sexual assault tw #let's go mainblog let's go

edwad

stop taking marx as gospel. i don't know how else i can explain this. he can be wrong. he often was. he was literally just some guy. i don't care that he said XYZ, that is not a proof of anything. make your own arguments. you can refer to him, sure, but a quote of his can't be the basis of your argument, you need to actually justify it in a meaningful way. marx is not a substitute for thought.

star-anise

Marx was fundamental to the establishment of fields like sociology and historical analysis based on class, but the downside is

he didn't have any fucking sociological or historical research to consult

because it didn't exist yet

so he frequently said DUMB-ASS SHIT because before him people weren't asking these questions in any sort of systematic ways! And we need to admit that, and not do the Communist State thing of, "These historical facts/economic conditions/political events contradict Marxism.... so the answer is... they didn't happen! Hide the evidence! Shut the fuck up! All hail Marxism!"

You can admire Marx and also see him as a human being in a particular historical context, with all the limitations that entails. He was the beginning of a conversation, not the end.

#putting this on mainblog so I don't have to deal with tankies in my off time #communism tw #Marxism tw #dogmatic thought ahoy

You NEED to see how my cat just decided to cuddle me

A purr in her heart and a look of furious determination on her face. A girlboss. A complete sillybean.

It looks ridiculous but it's honestly one of the best things you can do for a social media site's longterm health.

If sites make their money off ads, they need you to see as many ads as possible. They don't care if you're tanking your mental health or ruining an innocent person's career in the process; they just need you to see more goddamn ads. That's why Twitter is such a fucking cesspit: enraged users are engaged users who see more ads. Literally. Twitter could make changes to its site that prevent misinformation, pile-ons, and harassment campaigns, but they don't, because those things keep people glued to Twitter longer.

If you pay the site a specific amount of money every month, they don't need you to be any more engaged. They just need you to keep paying them. They're perfectly happy for you to open the site, look at things you enjoy from people you like, chuckle sensibly to yourself, share something pleasant with the universe, and close the site for the rest of the day.

The economy of social media is so fucked up we don't realize just how much sites exploit us and make us crazy just to turn a profit. I'm not saying Tumblr isn't still a for-profit entity that's willing to fuck with us. I'm just saying it's really refreshing to see someone say, "If you give me $5, I will materially reduce the amount I am fucking with you."

#this blue hellsite

dingdongyouarewrong

not to be an edgelord but sometimes i see tags like this and i wonder if i’m some kind of fucked up joker guy. like this is for real and not a bit? the hunger games was too dark for y'all at 12-16? at the target audience age it was written for? seriously?

dingdongyouarewrong

maybe i’m just being edgy or something but i think getting to read some fucked up murder shit as a kid is good for you and i think adults trying as hard as they can to keep that stuff as far away from kids as possible are lame

hacash

#where’s that post abt if you only read *wholesome* stuff#you don’t get practice at approaching darker things#relatedly will & I were talking abt books we were into as kids#and he said he’d never read any jaqueline wilson bc it looked like girl stuff#and then I told him some of the lssues they cover and he was#:o :o :o (via @sweetlyfez)

This reminded me of one of the biggest ‘this book changed my life’ moments of my childhood, because like fez I was pretty into Jaqueline Wilson as a kid.

For those of you who never read her work - and you really should - Wilson covers seriously heavy shit (divorce, mental health issues, homelessness, blended families, homeschooling, parents dying, the works) while still managing to stay pretty kid/YA appropriate. I devoured a lot of her stuff and, being a fairly advanced reader, one day stumbled across ‘The Illustrated Mum’ at the school library.

This is definitely one of her best works: a girl called Dolphin lives with her sister and her tattoo-loving single mother Marigold, whose struggles with untreated bipolar disorder means that more often than not both girls end up looking after her. The emotional crux of the book comes when, after her older sister moves in with her dad, Dolphin comes home to see her mother in the middle of a heartbreakingly-written breakdown, and makes the painful decision to call social services.

It’s an incredibly good book - deep, dark, painful, gut-wrenching, damn near harrowing. And, considering most reviewers agree it’s suitable for ages 10 and up, possibly not something I should have been reading unsupervised at the age of 7.

I remember being horrified when Dolphin comes home to see that Marigold, convinced her tattoos are what’s stopping her from having a lasting relationship, has painted herself in white enamel paint and is disassociating naked in the bathtub. I was listening to one of my Mum’s CDs at the time and over, twenty years later, when I hear a particular song (Runaway by Cher, if anyone’s interested) I still remember how I felt when I read that chapter. After that scene I hid the book under my bed, I cried, I couldn’t bear the thought of reading any further.

And you know what? I was fine. I wasn’t traumatised for life. I told my parents about it, and my dad read the book and wrote me a long, lovely letter about how Marigold was a good person who just needed help, that Dolphin shouldn’t have had to look after her mum when she was only a kid herself, that the two girls deserved a stable home life. We talked a lot about people who struggled with mental health issues (this was in the 90s before it was cool) and kids who don’t get the stable home they need; my parents asked if I wanted to finish the book and I said yes. (Spoiler alert: Marigold gets the treatment she needs and is reunited with her daughters.)

Now, if my parents had known I was reading a book marked specifically for older kids and up, they would probably have tried to have an ongoing conversation with me as I was reading to make sure I understood everything and to see if I had any questions. (They would definitely have told me not to read it just before bed.) They might have told me not to read it for a couple of years - but certainly not to hold off beyond the target age. And the point stands, it was a dark book written for older kids, and reading it didn’t ruin my entire life - instead it opened my eyes to a reality that I had never been introduced to before.

And crucially, I was able to be introduced to that reality when my parents got involved in my reading material and, rather than censoring it, talked me through it and explained the hard stuff to me. I wonder if so many parents clutch their pearls about unsuitable reading material because they don’t actually want to be bothered talking with their kids about difficult topics.

mihrsuri

All of the above is a billion percentage points of truth but I also wanted to add -as the child who had the Traumatic Backstory it really did matter when I felt seen and not as though I was too tainted, too awful to actually exist which was a lot of the feeling(s) I had when hearing how ‘kids shouldn’t read’ because I lived it, I was those characters and didn’t that therefore make me too upsetting to exist? It was real.

star-anise

Some stories are hard, but life is much harder. And sometimes stories are the things that make life bearable.

#fandom purity culture tw

annieisyourfavourite

once you understand that a vibrator is an accessibility tool, your understanding of disabled issues and of the world really widens

annieisyourfavourite

most people only think of accessibility tools in a barebones kind of way. a ramp is needed to physically enter spaces, a cane is needed so i don’t fall over while standing, captions are needed to literally be able to understand words being spoken.

some people go a little farther and understand them in terms of daily life functions, like adaptive clothing, or pre-cut food. still, these things are only seen as needing access tools because they’re baseline human functions. eating. walking. wearing clothes.

my vibrator is an access tool. because of my conditions, i can’t hold my hand where it needs to be long enough to masturbate. masturbating isn’t a necessary human function. i will not die if i don’t do it. i won’t lose my job if i don’t do it.

but the thing about a vibrator, is that it makes an aspect of life that i want to enjoy possible. disabled access is not only about the barebones basic necessities to literally be alive. if someone wants to have orgasms, a vibrator is an important tool to a pleasurable life. food delivery makes eating delicious food possible. sensory friendly live performances makes enjoying theatre and music possible. shower seats mean people can sit and enjoy a long shower that otherwise would have exhausted them. service dogs let people go out with their friends when they wouldn’t have otherwise. my cane doesn’t just help me walk, it helps me keep balance while i’m dancing at the club.

disabled people deserve so much more than to just get by. we deserve to have full, pleasurable lives, to experience all the kinds of things that able-bodied people get to experience too. access tools are meant to help us not only survive, but to really thrive too

vaspider

I literally said “YES!!!” out loud and then started reading this post out loud to my wife, and by the time I was finished reading it, I was crying, because this is it. This is the shit. This is the truth.

There is a sort of punitive mindset when it comes to disability – you cannot ask for accommodations if you don’t really need them, it has to be for something essential, something you can’t live without, can’t do your job without. I think this – in the end – comes from the very ableist idea that people aren’t disabled unless they have somehow failed to not be disabled. The Puritain mindset which says that disability is a punishment for failing to be good – somehow – and that it is a punishment for sin – somehow – informs this particularly noxious bit of garbage.

If you want help, you have to suffer for it, because you wouldn’t be in this situation at all if you didn’t deserve it somehow – and that goes double if the help that you need is disability payments or Medicaid/Medicare or something else that’s an ‘entitlement’. If disabled people aren’t in sackcloth and ashes, they can’t really need help.

And like, fuck that, actually, and fuck the idea that only ‘good’ disabled people deserve accommodations? Even if my disability was the result of having driven my car recklessly and crashed it into a tree, I don’t deserve to never know joy again. Even if my diabetes were because I had eaten nothing but spoonfuls of confectioner’s sugar for three years, I don’t deserve to suffer.

Fuck the idea that only ‘good cripples’ who didn’t ‘do this to themselves’ deserve accommodations, and fuck the idea that disabled people don’t deserve the full experience of human life with all of its joy, all of its dancing, and yes, all of its orgasms.

#disability

starlightomatic

that post that’s like “if you have a crush on a friend you don’t need to act on it, be respectful and mature. not all feelings need to be actions, have self control”

there is literally nothing wrong with dating a friend. it’s not disrespectful or immature to want to. jfc

starlightomatic

on that note I’ve started to see the word “sexualization” tossed around to mean sexual attraction and framed as a bad and disrespectful, bordering on nonconsensual, thing.

recently in a sapphic group I’m in, a teenage lesbian mentioned that she’s attracted to her friend and and keeps getting distracted by her boobs. she was immediately dragged by dozens of grown ass adults telling her this was gross and inappropriate

it would have been one thing to tell her not to stare (she already wasn’t tho tbh), but the general gist of the comments was that seeing someone’s body and feeling attraction is *inherently* inappropriate and unethical

it’s totally fine to be attracted to someone. and you know what, a lot of people like boobs and that’s also fine

basically i just keep seeing stuff cropping up in the queer community with the message that sexual (and i guess now romantic?) desire is bad

and that’s uhhh what’s the word, fucked

on the other hand people are chill with tinder and hooking up and there are a ton of “normalize having sex with your friends!!” posts

people are cool with sex but they are not ok with desire

tinder, i think, feels fine because it’s really not about attraction. it’s about fulfilling a general need for sex and isn’t about the person at all.

being attracted to someone, though — looking at or thinking about a specific person who’s already in your and wanting to have sex with them — that’s what it seems a lot of people aren’t ok with

there’s a level on which i get it. the person is just existing, they didn’t specifically and intentionally put themselves in a space for sexuality like tinder

but, y’all.

this is how attraction works. you spend time with people, you do things alongside them, you get to know them… and maybe you start thinking they’re hot. maybe you want to fuck them or kiss them. this is literally so totally fucking fine.

the thing that’s disrespectful is when you actually do shitty stuff! don’t say vulgar things to them. respect their boundaries. don’t make them uncomfortable. if you approach them for sex or dating and they say no, accept that. etc

but there’s literally nothing wrong with wanting to fuck someone or wanting to date someone. yes even if they’re you’re friend!!!

your-url-is-problematic

this also plays into something I've seen lately, of people thinking "objectify" means any instance of physical attraction. we're people! humans are physically attracted to one another sometimes! as long as you're not reducing the person you're attracted to to a sexual object, you're almost certainly just fine.

star-anise

People also forget that "subject" and "object" are grammatical terms. It's about which noun is attached to the verb. It's about "dog bites man" vs "man bites dog".

The concise explanation, in technical terms: Objectification is the refusal to let someone occupy the subject position.

In the phrase "I am in love with Jane", Jane is the object of the sentence. Technically speaking, she is the object of my sexual desires.

This is FINE. It's literally totally okay! I can feel what I feel! It's okay for me to ask questions where Jane is the object of the sentence, like "I hope I see Jane today" and "I want to date Jane" and "I find Jane really sexy."

That's only objectification if the conversation ends there. If the entire point of Jane is to be a person I lust after, so she never gets to be the subject of sentences like that herself.

Jane can have her own subjectivity. Does Jane hope she meets me today? Does Jane want to date me? Does Jane want me to find her sexy? Does Jane think I'm sexy?

These are questions many shitty people never think about when pursuing their object of desire, and THAT'S the problem. Many people are socialized to think asking those questions about themselves—what they sexually think and feel and want to do—is innately wrong, and therefore don't develop the muscles needed to easily become the sexual subject of their own desires; they only know how to be the object of somebody else's. THAT'S the problem.

But guess what! SURPRISE!!! Many people want and enjoy relationships and sex, and would be very happy to find someone who's attracted to them.

It's very hard to spot and police failures of empathy and moments you're not paying enough attention to someone's internal subjective state, so we focus on the things we can spot, like sexual desire. But the desire is not the problem. The problem is failing to think enough about what the other person might want or need and adjusting your plans accordingly.

And sometimes? Other people might want sex right back atcha.

#sex ed #lgbt discourse

genderkoolaid

So this post was reblogged by someone I follow.

At first, it seems pretty fair. We all hate tiktok, and the idea of plastic surgeons going on to young girls' pages to tell them to get surgery sounds awful.

But two things made me uncomfortable: For one, the "first against the wall after the revolution" comment. Advocating for blind revolutionary violence doesn't do it for me (read Against the Logic of the Guillotine).

And two, "plastic surgeons" and "teenage girls". I'm not on tiktok a lot, so I haven't seen anything related to this, but it occurred to me that the "teenage girls" in this situation could actually be transmascs, and "body image issues" could be code for "dysphoria".

It sounds like "plastic surgeons are telling young girls to get nose jobs." I had a suspicion it might be "doctors are trans allies and supporting transmascs' desire for top surgery, something shown to decrease body dissatisfaction, improve quality of life & has a 94% satisfaction rate, including in minors (x, x).

So I looked further.

First of all, the notes are dripping red on shinigami eyes. That's not a good sign.

The "Blogs like this one" has several TERF blogs.

aaand OP's a radfem. Not a particularly aggressive one, but a "reasonable" one. Perfect for people with very little understanding of TERF rhetoric to be drawn in to TERF rhetoric.

See this? This is transandrophobic rhetoric by TERFs that slides under most peoples radar. TERFs are obsessed with transmasc bodies, and TERFs love the "think of the children!!" defense. You have to be more critical about the posts you see and reblog, and think: what else could OP mean by this? Could there be any hidden messages that aren't blatantly stated but implied? Train your ability to sniff out TERFs and radfems in general.

cipheramnesia

Ohhh I recognize all those names from my block list.

#terf shit #radfem shit #guillotine rhetoric #this is completely beside the point but #the 'cosmetic surgery industry' is not actually 100% evil #I've had multiple cosmetic surgeries in my life #they weren't on my face or boobs or butt!#not that those surgeries are evil EITHER but #they were necessary adjustments to my limbs that let me have a normal life #skin grafts so that my syndactylic fingers would have full range of motion when separated #amputation of the toe that didn't have any tarsals and was at huge risk of injury #cosmetic surgeons reconstruct damage from injuries #they replace the skin over burns #like it lowkey enrages me that people only focus on the work these surgeons do on 'healthy' 'abled' people #COMPLETELY ignoring the work they do for disabled people #you don't wanna see just how ugly the problems the field was dealing with when it got started #how bad the injuries were and how much hell the people with them went through living as they did #you wanna know WHY we can do facelifts?#because once upon a time people needed faces #it's amazing what feels frivolous until you don't got it

I just thought you might like

to see my cat right now

#staranise original #emily the cat

material-jew

a survey because i’m curious

if you’re disabled, reblog this post with your opinion on the term ”differently abled”

thetraumatrain

HATE

ruffboijuliaburnsides

Absolutely hate it, it feels so fucking patronizing. Like the intent was probably good, but I've only ever heard it used in ways that made me want to strangle people with my arthritic lil hands.

star-anise

I will grit my teeth and smile when a well-intentioned ally uses it in like, a talk about how diverse their workplace is because like, some older people learned about the issue in the 90s and didn't get much in the way of updates since. I've met people who use the term but are also great allies about making sure a space is wheelchair-accessible, or that an event has Sign interpreters. It's not the absolute kiss of death.

If I am asked to give any input into anything I will slap that word down so fast it'll make your head spin. If it's used to describe me, I would break the laws of etiquette to clarify that I'm not differently abled, I'm disabled, and yes disabled people can do great things sometimes, but we still have fucking disabilities.

To me it's the disability equivalent of "I just don't SEE race." It's namby-pamby bullshit that tries not to hurt my feelings about a fact I deal with every day, when what I more desperately need are people willing to admit I face systemic, physical, and psychological barriers to full participation in society, and prepared to support my struggles with them.

I would far prefer someone who uses outdated language but shows the fuck up on disability issues, to someone who knows the fine distinction between "disabled person" and "person with disabilities" but won't do shit-all to help any of us.

#ableism tw #disability stuff #language policing

star-anise

doing the right thing

@gordoodlez reblogged your post

i dont know if anyone will see this but how can i help as a minor with a not very supportive family? all that comes to mind is donating to charities and spreading the word, and i dont have much money.

This question came at a good time, as I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help with social problems, about how to learn to be an activist. Sorry for loading you down with an essay.

This is not a guide to the right thing to do right now. It’s a guide to what I think is more important, which is becoming someone who can figure out their own right thing and work towards it.

Inside:

One: Your first responsibility is to get yourself out of there alive.

Two: Learn as much as you can

Three: You also need to learn about yourself

Four: Cultivate humanity

star-anise

@star-anise / @beyondthisdarkhouse here

I’m in a tight spot financially right now. If you’re willing to pitch anything my way, it would be a real help.

After a year of being pretty burned out, I’m working at being self-employed, but that means a lot of business expenses, like fees for getting a practice license, advertising, and administrative help. This comes right at a time when my income support benefits have dropped 50%, so they pay most of my rent, but I’m on my own for everything else. I’m trying to keep the lights on, in hope that I’ll start earning more money soon.

If you want to help, here’s my Paypal.

#(gently shaking a tin can) Just trying to squeak through the end of the month without getting my tail shut in the door after me #donations #asking for money

star-anise

This is what the fight is like

Sooo, apparently the extremely tenuous and recent nature of the LGBTQ+ community's legal right to exist was not actually super widely known to a lot of people on Tumblr?

Which clarifies some stuff in retrospect. I have so often wanted to grab people by their lapels and shout, "Stop picking on someone for not meeting your entry requirements! We need everyone we can get, you asshole! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THEY HATE US OUT THERE?"

Aaaapparently... no, they did not know. Or they knew and were a conservative psyop preparing the ground for our loss of legal rights. Fun times!

So: Look, it is bad. Shit is scary. They really do hate us out there. You're not wrong.

But: This is what we've always fought. This boat we're in with its antique fittings and strange markings on the floor is a battleship. Work has always been going on in the basements, and when shit gets tough, we clear away clutter and roll out the cannons.

I found this chart a couple weeks ago and hung onto it because it felt like the map to my first 25 years on this earth:

[Image description: A graph titled "Same Sex Marriage: Public Polls since 1988." It is from FiveThirtyEight's NYT column. It records the percentage of US Americans polled who would say yes or no to legalizing same-sex marriage, from 1988 to 2011.

The two lines begin with roughly 10% saying yes in 1988, and 70% saying no; the two lines gradually draw closer over the years, until by 2011, the percent saying finally dips under 50%, and the group saying yes makes a tentative reach for the majority. End of image description.]

After some great social change has happened, when everyone has admitted that gay marriage is very cute and Pride is a colourful parade, hooray, people like to pretend that it was just natural and inevitable and happened on its own. People just became less prejudiced! Courts just decided on a case! Governments just passed a law!

In reality, it was a vicious fucking fight, every fucking time. Every fucking where. There are a lot of people who deeply, sincerely believe that a hundred years ago, society had good rules about sex and gender and intercourse and marriage, and that changing those rules has made the world worse. They don't always agree on the specifics, but they can work together far enough to fight anyone with new ideas.

This is why we are a community. Even when we don't have the same experiences of attraction or identity, even when we don't do the same things, even when we have wildly different ideas of a good time. Because when these groups take aim, we're all under fire, and none of us is responsible for why they hate us.

In some ways I think it's a miracle that there seems to be a generation that did not grow up, as I grew up, constantly glued to news reports about What Percentage of Society Hates Us this month. I can't imagine who I'd be if my brain and heart and soul hadn't been tied up, that whole time, in the political question of whether I'd get to dream of a decent future.

I think that it will give us strength to have people who can imagine a world where no one hates us. Who believe in it so strongly they can taste it. That's my prediction: If you didn't know this was coming, you'll be a boon to us, because we have always needed joy so fiercely, in this fight, to keep us going on. We have needed drag queens and punk bands and "her wife" and safe space stickers. Parade floats and wedding days and little dogs with rainbow collars, badges and banners and meetups, because more than anything else we need to fight our own despair, and our fear that the world will never get any better than this.

It will. We know it will. We can taste it.

Look up to the history, organizations, and people who've got us this far for information on what forms of activism will actually advance our political goals. Look to the side to make sure the comrades within reach are keeping their heads above water, and that you're keeping enough joy going to stay alive. Look back to see who's more vulnerable than you are that you might have forgotten or been tempted to leave behind. Look after each other. Look after yourself.

We can do this.

To your battle stations.

elfwreck

Same-sex marriage was not even a blip on the radar in the late 80s, even in liberal minded queer communities. "Everyone knew" marriage was about some semblance of the possibility of having kids together.

AIDS changed that. Or rather, Reagan and the medical industry's callous indifference to suffering and death changed that. Suddenly, people were dying alone because their beloved partner of decades was "not legal family" and couldn't even visit them in the hospital. And then their estranged, hostile family inherited their house.

So we fought for marriage rights, knowing it would set back or sideline some of the battles, because this one was most important.

We got it; yay!

...We also got a rising wave of TERFs, and a growing number of suburban gay men who decided that the rest of the queer agenda (read: equal rights and opportunities for everyone) were no longer something they needed to push for.

And that was understandable. They were TIRED. We're all tired.

On the other hand, we also got a wave of young queer people who reached adulthood (or teen-hood) post-Lawrence v Texas, who have no memories of a world when two men kissing was literally a crime.

And we need your hope. Your optimism. We need your shock, the appalled "WTF?!?!?" reaction to the idea that it could be illegal to be in love, to plan to be married and share your life with someone dear to you.

Because those of us who remember (and celebrated) Lawrence, don't have it in us to be shocked anymore. We know there are people who not only hate us for being queer, but who want us dead. Who want our children taken from us. Want us fired from our jobs and kicked out of our homes. Want us forcibly raped by a cis person of the opposite sex, to "teach us" to "stop being perverts."

And what we need. Is open communication.

You younger people, newer queer people, need to know that no really, some of them seriously hate us, hate us all, want us destroyed, and no, it's not anything you did and nothing you can change. We can discuss the possible motivations and reasons and how conservative communities foster this kind of hate, but... that's not the same as having a way to change it. You need to take the threat seriously.

And we. We older people. Long-time activists. The ones who built the current communities on death and ashes in the wake of AIDS. We need your hope. Your joy. Your enthusiasm. Your belief that this is just how you are, and that the queer community should be beautiful and loving and artistic and creative and supportive, and that it can be.

Because we can't always believe that.

We can tell you what's worked in the past, and more importantly, what hasn't. We can make plans, organize groups, write template letters to share, help get people set up for voting and teach how to spot the lies and doublespeak in what looks like innocuous reports.

But we can't always know where we're going, what we're trying to reach, because we've spent a lot of time in the dark places. We know we want out, but we don't always know what that looks like.

We just know that we need all of us to get there.

#current events tw #lawrence v. texas #lgbt discourse tw #queer rights #another really good addition

christinaroseandrews

To those of you feeling like all of your internet friends are screaming at you, you are not alone. It’s a bit of a clusterfuck right now, and the future looks very bleak considering the Supreme Court. It can be very easy to slip into despair. Don’t. While some people are trying to offer help, it can feel like your dashboard/feed/whatever is one huge trauma conga line. And it is. There’s a lot of people who don’t know what to do, so they’re reblogging everything that they feel is helpful all at once, while others are venting very legitimate frustrations and fears. But it can all be so very overwhelming being on the receiving end of it.

So do your best not to get overwhelmed. Step away. Take a break. Skip posts. I’m here to tell you, you can mute or unfollow people. You can set up filters. Do what you need to do in order to preserve your mental health so that you can function for the long haul.

Because it will be a long haul. A lot of posts are going to play up urgency. But take a minute, an hour, even a few days to shore up your mental health shields. You don’t have to do everything now. And it’s important to not get so overwhelmed that you end up doing nothing. Because doing nothing is what got us here.

Remember that some people have different responses to trauma. Some fight, some freeze, and some flee. All are valid and all need to do different things.

There are lots of resources if you are looking to fight… you don’t need a list from me. Your dash/feed is probably full of helpful lists. And there’s always googling if for some miraculous reason it isn’t.

If you are frozen, step away for today. The problem will still exist tomorrow. If you feel stuck tomorrow and don’t know what to do, make a list of 3-10 options suggested by all of the reblogs/retweets/etc. and assign them a number. Then go to Random.org and randomize what ONE thing you will do. If you really hate it, you know that isn’t a viable option for you. Keep doing that until you find ONE thing that you can do.

If you need to flee, flee. Take the time you need to get your bearings. Then, when you feel safer, find ONE thing to do that you feel safe doing.

This is a battle that is going to be won in inches. And I’m going to tell you that if all of your troops are suffering from mental burnout/despair, then the other side will continue to win.

And that’s the last thing we want or need.

Okay… TL:DR over

Have a picture of Goose looking cute:

findingfeather

I’d also like to specifically articulate: yes right now there are people who should probably know better straight up writing or reblogging or retweeting things about who’s allowed to be afraid of what and how much; whose fear is legitimate or allowed and whose is….I dunno, frivolous? not allowed? selfish?

You’re allowed to be scared for you. Those people are also having a very normal reaction to fear, and anger, and feeling out of control; you’re allowed to not engage with them. You’re allowed to let that go by. The above advice is really smart and no, you’re not betraying anyone by taking it.

#us politics tw #current events tw