Gee, Isn't the Void Great!

TV Executives: “if the strike goes on, you won’t get new episodes of your favorite shows! You won’t get new movies you were looking forward to! Isn’t that terrible, what the writers are doing to you?”

Me: Bitch, that might have been an effective threat in 2007, but we have since survived a Covid shutdown and discovered ways to amuse ourselves while we waited, we can outwait this shit, too. I got a pile of shows saved I haven’t even watched yet, and a Mt. TBR waiting for me.

Compensate (and respect) your writers for their work, assholes.

And the thot plickens….

HOLY FUCK

SAG-AFTRA = Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists

More info:

- The actors walk off at the end of June if the studios don’t sit down with the writers

- Rumor is directors will follow. This will grind everything to a halt.

- Nobody is asking for a boycott. Neil Gaiman has pointed out that making Good Omens S2 a huge hit actually puts more pressure on Amazon to negotiate with the writers

- This implies it’s okay to catch up on old streaming content without breaking the line too

- This is a screenwriter strike; books will keep coming out.

- Movies already made will keep coming out for months. Again, actors have not called for a boycott; you aren’t breaking the line if you go see a movie.

- I don’t know where this puts podcasts but none of them have studio funding or platforms so they’ll probably keep going.

- Substack/Tumblr book club are all public domain works and will keep going. In addition to Dracula Daily there’s Whale Weekly, Dickens Daily, My Dear Wormwood (The Screwtape Letters), Letters from Watson (Sherlock Holmes) and more.

- Your local library always needs love. With the Libby app you don’t even need to physically go there.

I wanna emphasize "nobody is asking for a boycott." A thing that's happened a lot in the last decade or so is that workers will pursue a particular action, and as it starts to go around online, the internet game of telephone expands and expands the actions called for and who's expected to take part in those actions.

The problem with this is that what makes organized action effective is that it's decisive, specific, and clearly bounded. That's because it has to be extremely legible to the targeted institutions that the losses taking place directly correspond to the demands of the workers. When workers are striking, and some people are boycotting, and starting and stopping on different days, that's not expanding the impact of the strike. It's making the contours of the effects of the strike blurry, and therefore debatable. At the negotiating table, the bosses will interpret that blurriness as favorably for themselves as possible. This functionally diminishes the power of the strike.

The "organized" part of organized action is essential. 21st century corporations are designed to absorb the impacts of disorganized action against them. This is why "voting with your dollar" doesn't work: the market is not a democracy. In order for conscious consumer behavior to matter, it has to be sudden and dramatic.

When you hear about strikes, check whether they're calling for a boycott. If they are not, don't boycott, and don't tell people to boycott. It's actively harmful to muddle the messaging like that.

i swear to god i regret reblogging that estrolabs post because absolutely no one is focusing on the actual issue, which is that it's a phishing site very clearly run by malicious people and giving them any information on yourself could fuck you over big time

their ashwaganda "estrogen replacement" would be useless at best and extremely dangerous at worst, if it actually existed. however the products on that site almost certainly do not fucking exist and never have, and they have zero intention of actually producing them. the listings for the "supplements" aren't on the site anymore.

when scams like this pop up suddenly, they're not legitimate to even the slightest degree. there was never a real product, they were trying to get your money or your card and contact information either to doxx you, harass you, or literally steal from you. it's a PHISHING scheme, not a "making a shitty product to Literally Kill People" scheme. one of these things is far cheaper and far easier for a layperson to do.

while the information on the function of ashwaganda was definitely useful generally, it was/is not the most present danger of this estrolabs/queerquirk situation and people need to be aware of the actual threat these kinds of sites and situations pose.

as i was writing this estrolabs has been taken down, but queerquirk is still up and still advertising it's fake products and has a contact us page. do not give them your contact information, even to send hate. it is not worth getting phished to epicly own the dumbass behind this scheme. report the site and move on.

This site has been going around Twitter trans accounts quite a bit lately, so just pointing out here too that it'll do fuck all, they're exploiting trans people at a time when hrt is particularly hard to access and please don't give them your money

fuckin exploitative bullshit marketed in the worst way imaginable

literally selling laxatives as weight loss supplements

Reddit post by Dr Will Powers

No actually, this needs to be in the body of the post.

This isn't someone looking to make a quick buck off the backs of desperate trans women.

This is someone who is gathering a hit list. This person may use your info for active swatting, but not just that, this product will kill you.

This product is outright dangerous. This dose of ashwagandha is ASTRONOMICAL. It's anxiolytic - meaning that it causes agitation and anxiety - and if you take this dose every day you'll be developing serotonin syndrome within 4-6 weeks, and an ER trip/death within 8. And if you're on medications that interact (SSRIs, antipsychotics, most kinds of opiates) or alcohol, this risk is magnified.

This person wants to KILL YOU.

Also the photo they're using for the founder is AI generated. The easiest tell is the neck tattoo seemingly merging with the collar of the shirt, and none of the locs actually having an end that connects them to the scalp.

There's a terf in the comments screeding about how this totally isn't a rightwing psyop and it's asian fetishizing trans ppl obsessed with anime doing this, so here's some irrefutable proof that it is, in fact, a right-wing dox honeypot!

If you go to any post by TheQueerQuirk on Twitter and replace the username part of the url with transaretr8ors it will redirect you to the same tweet with the new username, indicating that TheQueerQuirk's old username WAS in fact transaretr8ors. You can test this yourself.

They're also stealing images from r/transtimelines for fake reviews.

Their domain name was registered on June 2 and the address marked is a common scam address (seemingly of the Icelandic Phallological Museum).

THIS IS A HONEYPOT. THEY'RE COLLECTING ADDRESSES. YOU COULD BE SWATTED, HAVE YOUR IDENTITY STOLEN, OR AT THE VERY BEST RECEIVE A PRODUCT THAT WILL CAUSE SEROTONIN SYNDROME.

SPREAD.

The website’s down now, but they went mask off before shutting down their store

The guy running the site also got ID'd due to accidentally leaving his name on a PayPal form that shows the owner as "Kevin Lowy", the name of a Patriot Front member

In case anyone still needed confirmation it was an obvious attempt to cause real harm to trans people

sunscreen / SPF is for EVERYONE

it’s true that gingers like myself are more likely to acquire skin cancer from sun exposure

it is ALSO true that people of color are more likely to DIE of skin cancer (a very survivable cancer) due to late diagnosis, medical racism, and lower levels of access to care

pls take care of your skin. it’s your biggest organ

How to self-screen for skin cancer for people of color & some statistics & images of skin cancer

We need kink at pride because “kink” isn’t just kink. “Kink” is:

No we don't. Respect ppls boundaries. If respect isn't normal anymore what will be normal then? Anything, no matter how it impacts or scars other peoples lives? Kink doesn't belongs to pride.

Look around you. Do you see where “No Kink At Pride” has led? Being transgender is illegal now. Exactly what people said would happen. You know what’s going to be next? Being gay is going to be illegal. Because being gay is not “respecting straight people’s boundaries”. They don’t want to see you. They want to kill you.

In support of the OP, let me clue the reply poster in to some of how the worldview of conservative bigots works:

If you are trans you are a sex pervert

If you're gay you're a sex pervert.

If you're the world's most chaste and godly nun praying in a convent, who has a lesbian thought once while delirious from a fever, you are a sex pervert.

If you're a family with a white picket fence house, a breadwinner, a stay-at-home parent, two cars, a dog, and whose politics are right wing... if you happen to be a same-sex couple, you're sex perverts and probably pedophiles.

If you're a closeted, self-hating, self-hurting, self-repressing queer going through every torturous form of conversion therapy, who condemns the other queers, who screams at the people who seek abortion help outside Planned Parenthood... you are a filthy, irredeemable sex pervert, a danger to children, and the most sympathy you deserve is transient pity if you admit to struggling.

There is nothing you can do, no behaviour you can engage in, no thought you can have, no clothes you can wear, no existence you can lead that is not an unacceptable sex perversion in the minds of these people. Your existence is kink, and you cannot appease them into thinking otherwise.

The bigoted conservative mind cannot conceive of queerness except as perversion, except as hedonistic degenerate thrill-seeking. They don't know another reason to do any thing, except as an exercise of power over someone else. Their entire world revolves around this idea. Everything is power, everything is control.

Therefore you can never appease them. Your mere existence is to them a totalizing threat, to their worldview, to their sense of normalcy, to their positions of social power, to their patriarchy, to their holiness. The only thing you can do that will ever satisfy them is die.

Which leaves us with this:

Either we have solidarity with our queer siblings - yes including the ones you don't understand, yes including the ones who have that weird sex that you think is fucked up, yes including the cringe annoying ones who "make the rest of us look bad," yes including the fucked up problematic ones who need to change and make amends, but who deserve their human rights whether or not they ever do that.

Because to the bigot, to the conservative, you're every bit as much of a pervert as Jenny Piss Kink and their polycule of submissive puppy-masked gender sluts. You throw your bricks when they come for Jenny, because when they come for the Piss Puppy Polycule, they're coming for you too.

Some people say "no kink at pride" and they mean, don't fist each other in public. Which is a thing thats never happened and that no one is advocating for.

Other people are saying "no kink at pride" and they mean no collars, no leather. Things that have always always been a core part of pride. If youre not okay with those things, go throw your own event instead of co-opting one of the ONLY fundamentally sex positive movements in the United States. Sex negativity isnt welcome at pride because pride and shame cannot co-exist.

Just thinking about how republicans are going after normie sex shit like "internet porn" and "dildos" now

we fucking told y'all

to be clear: the right views any sex that isn't purely procreative as deviant. it's not just kink, or queer sex they find abhorrent. And they genuinely believe that the better educated you are about sex in general, including about gender shit, the more deviant you are. they're legitimately trying to claw everyone down to hell with them.

Now? Before 2003 it was legit technically illegal in some states for even straight couples to have oral or anal sex, and there are still laws in some states restricting how many dildos you can own etc.

I don't really know what the goal is with putting a numerical limit on dildos, but with republicans the answer is usually "There isn't one. Die."

This is your periodic reminder that it is currently right now illegal in the united states to own porn that the average person in your community would be offended by. That's the legal definition of obscenity (a piece of media that 1. Exists to turn people on 2. has no other "redeeming" purpose and 3. would be offensive to most people in your jurisdiction) and you can theoretically be arrested and go to jail for owning "obscene" media or giving it to other people.

"But that's ridiculous," you say, "porn that the average taxpayer would think was ~offensive~ is absolutely fuckin' everywhere, on the internet and in real life, and nobody gets in trouble for it." And you'd be right about that. Realistically, this is a law that cannot be enforced: it is way too easy to break, way too hard to track, and way too many people are interested in breaking it.

Same with the pre-Lawrence v. Texas laws against "sodomy" that headspace-hotel is talking about. Yeah, it was illegal to give a blowjob in the privacy of your own home. But of course most people who like blowjobs never even thought twice about those laws, because it's usually pretty easy to Not tell a cop what you do in the privacy of your bedroom with your spouse.

"So if laws like this don't actually stop people from doing whatever sexual things they want to do, why are you concerned about it? You just said these laws don't hurt anybody, right?" Here's the thing. The purpose of laws like this is to create an atmosphere where you can get away with doing ""deviant"" things... if you hide it from polite society, if you keep it secret, if you know your place.

What you can't do is go out in public and say that actually gay people can have happy relationships, or that masturbating sometimes doesn't make you a depraved sex addict, or that it's okay to want to enjoy having sex and not just do it as your Duty To Your Husband.

You can get away with doing what you want in private if you never challenge the dominant cultural message that what you're doing is gross and immoral and people who do it are disgusting freaks. If you dare to speak up and point out that your ""shameful secret"" is actually normal, off you go to jail.

That's the purpose of laws like this. To make it impossible to challenge the rhetorical stranglehold of conservative christianity on society. To shift the Overton window once and for all to the right. And that's why we need to fight laws like this with all our strength, every time the right tries to push them forward, even when the specifics are stuff like "you can't own more than five dildoes" that might seem like a silly thing to go to war over. It's not about the specifics. It's about limiting everyone's speech to things a conservative preacher would say from the pulpit.

The other thing laws like this are good for is giving the police excuses

Younger Americans NEED to understand why Lawrence vs Texas went to the Supreme Court.

In 2003, police raided the private home of two gay men and charged them with sodomy. I cannot emphasize enough that THEY WERE NOT CURRENTLY HAVING SEX AT ALL when the police raided them. But the cops had “probable cause” to believe that they had, at some point, had non-procreative sex, which was illegal under Texas’s sodomy law, so they were charged with a crime.

Ultimately, the SCOTUS ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional because US citizens have a right to privacy: what consenting adults do in their own homes is their own business.

What you need to know is that in four states, including Texas and. Missouri, sodomy laws are still on the books. That means that if SCOTUS strikes down Lawrence vs Texas, these laws immediately go back into effect, and more states can add their own.

What would that look like?

If you’re on Tinder and your profile says you’re gay or bi, the police can subpoena your profile and use it to arrest you.

If you’re on Scruff or Grindr, the police can subpoena your location data and messages and use them to track down and arrest you and all your hookups.

If you’re in a same-sex marriage, the police can subpoena a list of same-sex marriage certificates and arrest every single couple—even if they’re widowed or divorced.

If your school has an LGBTQ club, the police can subpoena a list of members and arrest kids & college students.

They could subpoena data from FetLife and Facebook and Twitter and, yes, if they thought to do so, Tumblr. Rainbow flag in your profile? They’re drawing up charges.

And all of these people getting arrested and charged with sodomy, when convicted, will not only have their lives ruined by jail time, but will also likely be labeled sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

This is not ancient history. This was not “back in the day.” I WAS IN COLLEGE WHEN THIS HAPPENED.

And the Republicans are frothing at the fucking mouth to bring these horrors back.

Hey trans friends in the US, has your state made it difficult or next to impossible to get the healthcare you need? Can't afford to leave home and/or want to stay and fight? Yah me too.

Well I know of many, many sky friends spread throughout the us who would like to go on a free little weekend sky adventure. :]

Check em out and chat about em with even more friends.

Ps: they also help those with uteruses go on a safe vaycay too ✨️✨️

The pilots giving a hand are highly experienced professionals(unlike me, I'm still a newbie😅), most who fly the big planes for work also own little planes either for fun &/or to keep up their skills. Pilots often use their little birds to hop around to visit friends far away anyways, so what's a few more flights to a friend in need?

I literally had my pussy sewn shut I deserve k cup tits as compensation

right forgot most of my followers wouldn’t know this so

TW for medical trauma and child abuse

when an intersex baby is born and they have what’s called “ambiguous genitalia” aka they have an intersex condition which causes them to develop a mix of traits from both male and female genitals, doctors will just pick which one it’s closest to and without consent from the parents and obviously without consent from this living human person that just got born, perform a permanently scarring cosmetic surgery to force the baby’s genitals to align with societies perspective of either male or female genitals. these surgeries cause lifetime medical issues and sexual dysfunction and are only performed because our medical understanding of intersex people was written by a bunch of bigoted genicidal monsters. And yes it’s genocide they are removing our ability to conceive children in almost all cases of these surgeries, on top of generally erasing us from public view by hiding our own existence from everyone Including us from birth. these surgeries aren’t well known about because parents literally aren’t told (my mom only managed to figure it out cuz she overheard the doctor talking to a nurse about it when she came down off her painkillers) and scientific literature on it is not only hard to read it sounds like fucking nazi shit so obviously most medical establishments don’t want it in public view. I had one of these surgeries performed on me, I literally don’t even know exactly what it was cuz it’s not on my medical records anymore but I have the scarring and still have uterine tissue so in compensation for our current human society systematically mutilating my body and genociding people like me I think I deserve some banger bazhoingas i think that’s fair

I hope you don’t mind me adding this @werewo1fbutch I wanted to offer resources in my original post but I’m still looking for my own so this is really appreciated

But Wait, There's More! everything i'm about to say is secondhand experience from an intersex friend i have known for years, who i will not be identifying for safety reasons. not only can they just completely remove it from your medical record, many hospitals are in practice of straight-up lying to the parents to excuse why they're taking the baby in for surgery. an extremely common excuse is saying the baby has a heart condition. if you or a loved one were taken into surgery for a heart condition at birth and the parents had no idea anything was wrong until said birth, i HIGHLY recommend inspecting your genitals for scarring and speaking with a gynecologist or urologist(depending on which you usually rely on) if something seems fishy. they can also mark you as the wrong sex on your birth certificate because of this, which can barr you from treatment you are legally entitled to! worse than that, getting that corrected is extremely difficult. even if the doctor who edited your birth was LITERALLY THROWN OUT FOR MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, the hospital - and state - will continue to refuse acknowledgement of the mistake and no correction will be made. this is a very notable issue in the UK, especially if you were wrongfully marked Male. another thing people are often unaware of is the rampant issue of medical CSA that occurs if an intersex child is decided Female. There's a medical procedure called Dilation where a hole is carefully stretched wider over a period of time for various reasons; on its own, this is not a bad thing, and can be necessary for several reasons. however, many "female" intersex children are put through Vaginal Dillation at a disturbingly young age. the idea is that because their vaginas are shallow or more closed off, it's better to stretch them for a few years so that they'll be able to have sex properly when they get married. the thing is, there is no wrong time to start dilation. if you start at 18, there is no drawback; in many cases it would actually be safer, and it only takes between 1 to 3 years to reach a desirable state, depending on the person. and yet, this is often done to children FAR below the age of consent, explicitly with the future marriage reasoning in mind. this is sometimes started at infancy. let's really think about that. a young girl who is too young to consent and may not get any say in the matter is taken to a doctor over and over again to have her vagina stretched out because it is expected that when she's older she'll marry a man and have sex with him. there is no non-creepy way to put that. there is no way to explain this that is not BLATANTLY sexual assault on a fucking child. and the worst part is, this is not legally recognized as SA or abuse in the majority of juristictions. and ALL of this should be given the extra consideration that a large chunk of intersex children begin to identify differently than they were assigned at birth, often BEFORE hitting puberty. intersex people make up roughly 2% of the world population by modern count. that's twice as many intersex people in the world as there are redheads.

i know this is long, and i'm not going to guilt anyone into reblogging; you're not a bad person for keeping upsetting stuff off of your dash. but if you're able, i do gently request that you reblog this. it's important that more people know this is happening. stay safe all, and i wish every intersex person loads of moneys and whatever body they wish for.

It’s been so long since i said it but if you live with homophobic/transphobic parents no matter if you’re a minor or a young adult don’t come out <3

I don’t care if you guys do it to feel validated by other young gays, your comminity doesn’t want you putting themselves in harm’s way just to “live their truth” we want you alive

“It’s 2022 it’s not that big deal anymore!!” If your parents are biggots it matters, 2022 is not discriminatory free, if you’re able to hide it from them don’t think it twice and risk it all because your gay friends told you you weren’t really gay if you hadn’t come out

I’d honestly argue that - regardless of your age - if you would be in danger from people you live with or your well-being would be threatened, don’t come out to them. (Especially when various older people have had to move back in with parents because of the economy/COVID/etc.)

Homophobic parents paying for college? Hang in there and get your degree. Setting up your awesome new life and living on your own will be a whole lot easier if you can avoid having to deal with student loans.

you do not owe anyone a truth they will hurt you for.

sorry but it’s actually so horrific how little of a sense of community people have, how little regard they extend towards the other humans around them. killing people for being loud on the subway or turning around in your driveway. loading your gun and waiting at the door because a child ran your doorbell unexpectedly. ring cameras, neighborhoodapp, community watch group Facebook pages. you’ve assigned yourself the role of the one true peacekeeper and casted everyone else around you as a threat to be controlled. there’s no connection or love or compassion. just a deep distrust and hatred.

and the people who face the most significant consequences from this are the ones who are already deemed as outsiders. people of color, especially Black people, disabled people, people with mental illnesses, homeless people.

and so many people are willfully promoting this complete alienation from each other. the obsession with true crime, the hatred directed at children for existing in public spaces, the policing and controlling of where homeless people are allowed to be / what they’re allowed to do, the constant fearmongering about public transportation. you are building a society of FEAR. you are conditioning yourself to distrust everyone around you. you need to make an active, conscious effort to engage with the world and the life around you in a healthy manner.

Why do my interests in canning, couponing, and homesteading overlap so often with blogs with titles like ‘The Obedient Housewife’? 

Like, I’m like, “I want to learn to make soap and farm,” and suddenly I see 500 “traditional family” motherfuckers like no you are mistaken. I am just a simple lesbian anticapitalist looking to limit my consumerism as much as possible.

‘these fun crafts will keep your kids occupied until your husband gets home!’ no i want a clothespin crown for me

As a nerd who homesteads, let me share the data I have gathered!

First is my megalist of homesteading-related links I’ve gathered over the years. I’m a mod over at r/homesteading and this is where I’ve put a lot of good sources (not all, admittedly some are still sitting in my bookmark folder waiting to be added). The search function at reddit is wretched, but there’s also been lots of good things I’ve shared there too. Please note that many of these sources are not actual webpages, but PDFs. That’s not an accident, PDFs are where you find the really good in-depth stuff.

Many of my sources are from the Extension Service. They won’t try to relate to you based on your lifestyle or sexual identity or religion or whatever, but due to that, they also won’t be alienating you either.

The Cooperative Extension Service (US only) exists in all 50 states and in most counties. It is taxpayer funded. The Extension Service exists to help people become more self sufficient, for farmers to be more successful, for people to be healthier, for kids to be well adjusted, to figure out how to grow the best plants in your area, etc. Some county offices even offer cheap classes in things like gardening, canning, soap making, and they’re taught by people with training in these areas (I once heard a great talk on composting from a soil scientist that way). Do you want to know what type of plant something is? Do you need help figuring out a plant disease or pest issue? You can now contact them online and get great info.

I HIGHLY recommend checking out your state’s extension service website, because they do offer different types of information, depending on what is grown/raised where you are (and how well funded they are). My county extension puts out a monthly gardening newsletter, which includes a helpful ‘this is the time of the year to do —-’ part.

Here’s an example from North Carolina - check out that left sidebar

Here’s an example from California - this website is HUGE so dig around

Here’s an example from New York - they have a calendar at the bottom, showing how they have things like hydroponic and urban agriculture workshops coming up.

Interested in raising animals? Penn State Extension is really really good. They have tons of free materials and courses available online, some I pulled for my megalist at the top of this.

National Center for Home Food Preservation - they cover the important aspects of food safety, and also have some recipes. Many state Extension Service websites will have lots more recipes.

If you have kids, check out 4-H programs for them. It’s part of the local public school system here. If you’re homeschooling, you can also purchase their science-filled educational and self sufficiency materials (materials are divided by age ranges - Cloverbud Member: ages 5-8, Junior Member: ages 9-13, Senior Member: ages 14-19). One of my coworkers is in 4-H, she’s still in high school, and last year she raised an award-winning heifer.

Congress grants the money for funding these programs, and they’re connected with various universities. There’s a level of cutting edge scientific knowledge and academic rigor you don’t find in blogs or even most books. There’s LOTS of homesteading books filled with outdated information like ‘till the earth every year’ hell I still have older coworkers who do it and I’m trying to figure out how to gently tell them that they’re destroying their soil that way, and that there’s better methods now, methods grounded in science.

Knitting - try this youtube series

DIY Crown - here’s a youtube video on how to make a mermaid crown

Hope this is helpful to someone out there.

HOLY FUCKIN SHIT BLESS

every time i see discourse about pedohysteria amidst a trans genocide i think about that news article from 2016 about the mexican immigrant who voted for trump because trump said he’d get rid of all the “bad hombres” from mexico, only to be deported himself because it turns out what trump was really saying was that he wanted to deport all mexicans, not just “the bad ones”

not just him, but there were many other examples too, like white conservatives who have mexican immigrant friends and family or people in the community important to them who were mexican immigrants, and they voted for trump because they thought trump was just getting rid of “criminals”, and then they regret it when their families and communities get torn apart by deportations of their spouses, their friends, their favourite restaurant owners, etc.

anyways, i hope young queers, trans people esp, understand that when conservatives talk about “pedophiles” and “groomers”, they’re not talking about actual child abusers, they’re talking about all queer people. they’re talking about all trans people. it’s why in florida, they’re categorizing “drag” as a child sex crime, and making sex crimes against children punishable by death. they’re trying to execute every single trans person, and that’s just the rhetoric they’re using

so stop buying into the pedohysteria. it’s easy to think “well, i’m not a pedophile, so i’ll be safe” when you don’t realize that in the eyes of conservatives, every single queer person is a pedophile and deserves death, and contributing to their rhetoric by trying to figure out which trans woman is a pedophile is just accelerating your own march to the gallows

The epidemic of young queers ignoring or cherrypicking queer history is really biting us all in the ass because Montana just tabled the bill that banned trans and gay panic, and many of the younger queers I’ve come across have no idea what gay panic really is, or what that means.

All they know about gay panic is the “Oh my gosh! I talked to a pretty girl/boy and I’m a girl/boy hehe so flustered” that at some point replaced the actual meaning of gay panic. Do you know how dangerous this is, that they don’t know of the dangers of trans and gay panic? It’s lethal.

As things in the US become more dire for the queer community, I’m begging the young queers: read up on queer - our, your - history. Talk to your elder queers. Really look into current politics surrounding the queer community. Don’t get all your info from social media, and absolutely do not take what you see on social media at face-value. Get yourself educated and prepared for what’s to come. It’ll save lives, I promise you. 

for context, gay panic was a common legal defense used first in the mid-1800s and became a “mental condition” or some such nonsense in the early-1900s.

it could be used to justify assault and went as far as murder if the defendent said they found out the victim was gay and went into some primal rage.

the trans panic defense is the same concept but against trans people and i’m pretty sure it was most often used with cis men against trans women after or during sex.

basically a horrific but legal way to say that it was the queer persons fault for being queer and that justifies violence against them.

please let me know if any part of this is wrong and add stuff i left out!

I keep having to tear down extremely predatory/misleading Scien.tology flyers in my school's art building. This is the third fucking time I've ripped the fuckers up and I'm getting Real Fucking Tired of it.

If you see shit like this DO NOT call the number, do not do anything to interact with these fucking people. Take down the posters if you're able to. They do NOT want to help you. They are a literal fucking cult who openly despise psychology and any actual proven mental health science, and are actively trying to trick mentally/emotionally vulnerable people into joining.

The red flags here are "Hubbard," the name of their founder, and "dianetics," the crackpot theory they teach for "auditing" your sins from your past lives.

tbh y'all get too caught up in the idea of like. whether someone is ""genuinely"" experiencing a certain -ism or -phobia aimed at them if they are not genuinely part of that group. as if it matters. as if a guy getting attacked for holding another man's hand has actually ever had sex with another man or if he actually is married to a woman like it literally does not make a difference. he is a victim of homophobia in actual reality in the actual world. stop being pedantic and drawing little circles around words and realize that people are getting fucked over regardless.

A non-gay example: my dad would always get targeted for extra TSA security measures because he looks middle eastern. He’s not though, he’s Puerto Rican, but the TSA isn’t asking “are you middle eastern” before they discriminate against someone. I know a black woman who went through the same thing as my dad.

This is why the ADA covers you if someone discriminates against you for a disability you don't have

the person doing the action determines the motive for that action, not the victim! if the person doing the violence was doing it for homophobic reasons, it's homophobia.

Someone replied to one of our recent posts:

“Agree with most of this but would like to point out that a part of the push to make Pride less sexual is to make it a safe space for queer children and to help straights realize being queer isn’t just about fetishes.“

(The person is not tagged because I don’t want to send any hate to them, and the reply isn’t being responded to directly because Tumblr has made that near impossible)

When I came out, my mom told me I couldn’t tell my little sister because it was too sexual.

Later, I moved to the “Big City”, what I hoped to be a haven for queer people. I was with one of the first queer friends my wife and I had made in the city, we had just watched their wrestling debut, and had gone to their apartment afterwards with a group of strangers. Some this group our friend had told us behind the scenes were much more right wing causing our friend to keep parts of their queer identity under wraps.

Our friend suddenly turned to us and began scolding us, telling me and my wife that one of their coworkers at the city Pride Centre had approached them and told them that she had seen me and my wife kiss, and we needed to cut it out with the PDA.

I nodded in front of this group of strangers and when I could no longer hold my tears back I excused myself to the bathroom, cried and waited there until it was no longer obvious I had been crying. We hurried out.

The kiss in question was a goodbye kiss, as my wife went back to campus, and I don’t remember it. I have always been rather shy with PDA and don’t think it could have been much more than a peck. The coworker later told our friend that she was going through a bad breakup and our friend later explained that this was actually the reason for the complaint.

I have never felt safe in queer spaces since. Talking to the same friend later, they asked me and my wife to chaperone the Queer Prom and without thinking I assured them we would make sure not to hold hands or dance while we were there so it would stay “a safe space for children”.

When I was a child, I stumbled into a pride parade and was shocked and upset by the men in gold short shorts. My uncle apologized for letting me see something so sexual and awful.

Every single thing queer people do is “about fetishes” to people who hate queerness. Being less sexual is not going to change that.

I had seen short shorts before. I would see them again, and no one would apologize for that. The thing I was being kept “safe” from was not overly sexual behaviour, and considering there are already laws against indecent exposure, the same is true for children now.

Keeping theoretical children safe has been the justification for the continuing genocide against queer people all around the globe, so this rhetoric is not harmless. It has been used to put queer people in labour camps and slaughter them. 

I have nothing to prove to “straights” and I was the “queer child” who was horrified by the pride parades. As an adult, the discomfort I felt at seeing queer people existing happily and authentically in short shorts, is not something I needed to be kept safe from.

This nonsense is nothing more or less than the same moral panic that has killed queer people throughout history.

There are spaces and events just for queer minors. Pride isn’t one of them. Pride also isn’t an event that is not safe for children. It just is not designed for them. If kids want to come to Pride they can. If their parents don’t approve it will not be because it’s too sexualized. Being over sexualized has never actually been anyone’s problem with queer people. Nothing about queer identity or community or events is more sexual than heteronormative society. The problem isn’t that we’re too sexualized. It’s that we are being queer in public. The same things are fine when straight people do them. Pride parades are no more sexual than a day at the beach. They’re not more sexual, they’re less straight, and that’s what people are objecting to. Wanting to make Pride less sexual is just internalized homophobia.

I think this is a great point as well, I remember someone telling me “you can’t have a safe space and be open to all”, and I don’t think Pride is a safe space for everyone, or should be. Pride is something that should make certain people uncomfortable, discomfort isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes discomfort just means growth is happening beneath the skin.

Clips from the Oklahoma House floor concerning anti-trans legislation

Okay yall, I need you to listen up. Maureen Turner is our only trans voice in the Oklahoma house, and they have recently been censured for “harboring a fugitive” (letting the partner of a victim of police brutality come down from a panic attack in their office.) it’s thinly veiled bullshit to keep them from fighting the anti trans legislation happening right now.

They’re also the first Muslim representatives in the state, and are constantly receiving threats to their safety from hate mail.

If you can, please donate to their campaign. If you can’t, consider sending them a letter of support. Gods know they could use some positive mail.

Seriously, Oklahoma trans folks are going through a lot right now. Our access to healthcare and even our right to visibly exist in public is going to be taken away from us the moment session ends in May, if not sooner. My partner and I are one of many families that are preparing to flee. And Rep Turner is one of the only people fighting for us. So please, if you can, show trans Oklahomans some support but uplifting our only voice in the house.

(Afternoon April 13, 2023) The Missouri Attorney General just used an Emergency Rule to ban all gender-affirming care for people of all ages (yes, adults) in the state.

In order to receive any care, transgender minors and adults alike will have to:

This will cut TENS OF THOUSANDS of trans people off of medical care. Please care about us, oh my god.

And this is one of the many reasons police are not welcome at LGBT pride events.

If LGBT pride events become illegal, who's going to enforce it? That's right, the police.

The Supreme Court is to make a ruling that will change the course of the Indian Child Welfare Act, known as ICWA.

Resd more about it here:

video source:

Here’s where you can donate to NICWA to help with the legal defenses, and of course, helping native families stay together and raise their kids:

https://www.nicwa.org/donate-online/