Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They've been visible on my page - corrupting viewers -  for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven't learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.

In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.” 

Hey I painted something

obsessed

Apex predator

Jesus Christ

Hey I painted something

Possible commissions?

Hey guys,

Trying to get a gauge on interest so I can tentatively plan my summer workload, would there be an interest for commissions? I’m considering opening up 2-3 slots, depending on the project, to be done in the evenings/weekends.

Possible things could be:

I’m also considering some shop fill items. Would love to hear if you guys have suggestions! <3

If you want a commission from my friend I highly recommend it. Look what I commissioned her. Look at it. Bask in it. Commission my friend.

“Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content.”

This? In particular? Pisses me off. I hate it.

I hate the implication that all porn is interchangeable and devoid of cultural value, so it’s no big deal when a decade’s worth of creative endeavor produced by a vibrant subculture is destroyed, because, whatever, it’s just dirty pictures.

I hate the disingenuous inability to see a distinction between a website that is about porn only, and a website that allows people to blog about all of their interests and aspects of their lives including sex and porn because those are normal parts of the human experience.

It’s the most tone-deaf bullshit.

This post was made after the porn ban of Dec 2018. I’m reblogging because OP is still right.

i love defunctland because youll be watching a completely ordinary and straightforward video about theme park history until kevin says some shit like "nothing makes one face their own mortality more than being a wiggle" and then continues on like nothing ever happened

I went on a defunctland binge yesterday, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget him going on a minute long rant regardind an incredibly detailed explanation of the ideological debate in High Shool Musical 2’s “I Don’t Dance”, only to then completely and suddenly move on from it and continue what the video was actually about.

Something about this wave of puritanical evangelism in a progressive hat that's gripping the zeitgeist currently recently caught my attention and I think I've figured it out.

I kept seeing advertisements on Instagram about that movie Corsage, about Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The mini-trailer features Vicky Krieps, who plays Elisabeth, being tightly laced into a corset, demanding it be tighter while maids look concerned.

This is par for the course. Empress Elisabeth was famed for her obsession with her looks and her documented fear of fatness that caused both her orthorexia and her chasing an ever-thinner look. I'd be surprised if that wasn't depicted at all.

And yet there were tons of people in the comments bitching about how the movie was "depicting unsafe corseting practices" and "can't you people get anything about this stuff right?"

It gave me pause. Maybe not everyone knew about Empress Sisi. So I responded to one commenter, "but it's truthful. She really did corset like this."

And the response I got was, "Well, they're making it look like a good thing! People won't know!"

And it clicked. It suddenly made absolute sense.

The idea that depiction is equal to endorsement and encouragement is what is currently in the popular belief system.

Empress Elisabeth was well-documented as going through a well-made leather corset every few weeks because she tightlaced so severely. Her thinnest recorded waist size was 16 inches. She frantically kept herself at 110 pounds on a 5'8 frame. She would fast for days and barely ate when she wasn't fasting. She had herself sewn into her goddamn clothes just to look as thin as possible. You cannot simply overlook this when making historical fiction of her, just like you couldn't overlook Winston Churchill's rampant drinking if you wrote things about him. It is intrinsic to her identity and if you remove it you remove something very fundamental.

And because the trailer depicts this facet of her life, everyone decided that the filmmakers were condoning and even encouraging this practice in real life.

Because they cannot conceive of something just existing. Even in fiction, a depiction of something negative must be proof that the creator thinks it's a good thing. Why else would it be there?

And it was such an enlightening look into how people think. It makes so much more sense.

History, and Sisi's dangerous tightlacing, be damned.

I do want to point out another thing here that tends to be ignored by antis, which is that how you interpret a text is not universal.

Because the response to "there are upsetting and morally wrong things in life that need to be acknowledged" is always "we're not saying you can't EVER bring them up, you just can't romanticize/condone them! If you show them as good, then people will think they're good!"

And like, okay. Y'all know the children's hospital meme, right? The INTENDED meaning by whoever designed it was that it would look like someone dragging a giant red paintbrush around the floor. Fun! And there is obviously at least one person on Tumblr who focused on the theory around the color red and how it's a positive color (probably not the point of the design, but still taking it in a positive way). And then there were a bunch of people on Tumblr who were like, "Uh, it looks like blood, though?" You've got at least three different people who are all looking at the same exact thing and seeing three different meanings.

And that's just a single fucking color, not even a complex story with a lot of moving parts. I am 100% certain everyone here has at least one story with a moral lesson they interpreted differently than the author intended. (Mine is that episode of Arthur where it's supposed to be bad that he punched D.W. in the arm for breaking his model plane. BITCH DESERVED IT. PUNCH HER AGAIN.)

It's not that no story ever romanticizes a bad thing. It's that regardless of whether someone intends to portray a thing as good or bad, someone else is going to interpret it the exact opposite way. So "it's okay if you don't condone it" isn't useful, because whether the text or author condones a thing is not at all relevant to how some people will interpret the same thing. Like, this is so common WE HAVE A DIFFERENT MEME FOR IT.

Bringing it back to Empress Sisi: I am 100% certain that there is at least one person who would see a scene where Sisi is clearly supposed to be neurotic, deeply insecure about her body, and doing things so extreme and unhealthy that the other people around her are clearly judging her for it, and will be like, "Wow!! Corset pretty!!!" Some people are just going to do that.

So, "it's okay if you don't condone it" is really "you can't depict this thing at all because someone might interpret it the wrong way." Which you will note is NOT allowing people to discuss upsetting things, despite protestations to the contrary.

Ah, it’s time for me to talk about Charles Manson again!

If you don’t know the name Charles Manson, here’s the tea and I swear I am not making any of this up. Charles Manson was a cult leader in the 1960s who believed he was the manifestation of Jesus Christ, and that his purpose was to instigate an apocalyptic race war to put “the white man” back in his proper place and kill all Black people.

He believed he was supposed to do this because the Beatles wrote a song telling him so.

Now you may be thinking “okay…what?” And if you know your Beatles discography you might be thinking “Happiness Is A Warm Gun? Maxwell’s Silver Hammer? Yellow Submarine would be a stretch, but it was the sixties, everyone was on drugs.” And you would be…wrong.

It was Helter Skelter.

The song is about a children’s fair attraction in the UK.

[Image ID: a fairground attraction that reads “Helter Skelter” in fancy, old-timey carnival lettering across its front. The attraction consists of a tall cage support surrounding a flight of stairs, which lead to a children’s slide that spirals around the cage. End ID.]

This is a Helter Skelter. For which the Beatles song was written and named. It’s literally just the UK version of those giant fun slides you see at the state fair in the US.

Part of the lyrics to the song Helter Skelter say “when I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide/where I stop, and I turn, and I go for a ride/til I get back to the bottom and I see you again,” and looking at the image, you can see that’s a pretty accurate description of riding the attraction.

But Charles Manson decided that what this meant was that the white man had reached the bottom, and had to go back to the top, and this was a struggle that would continue until either white people lost the race war, or all the Black people were dead.

People will see what they want to see in what’s around them whether it’s “romanticized” or not. This dude saw an invitation to violence and incitement, ending in the deaths of nine people, in a song about how the song’s narrator feels his romantic relationship is like riding a children’s slide.

And if you want a case-in-point? Even now, someone who’s never heard of Charles Manson and the Manson Family is going on Wikipedia to look it up, seeing his mugshot, skating right past the whole he-was-a-white-supremacist-who-led-a-cult thing, and going “haha, crazy eyes! They should get Jack Black to play this guy!”

You’re not solving shit by saying “just don’t romanticize it.” Because let me tell you, the Beatles were definitely not romanticizing genocide, but somebody somehow got that from them.

strong bad would call the LGBT the L-Gibbity