I was asking myself just now why they have “16 and pregnant” but not “16 and impregnated a girl” but I realized it would be pretty boring to watch a 16 year old boy play video games and go to school and live life as normal
I suffered from really bad chronic nosebleeds when I was a kid and one time i had one so bad it covered my face and chest and shirt. i mean it was everywhere i looked like i’d just eaten someone. so i go to my mom and tap her awake and she opens her eyes to see a blood soaked child leaning over her in the dark saying ‘please help’ and to this day and can still hear her screaming
“The pay gap does not affect all women the same way.”
Aug. 23 is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, which marks the additional time it takes for black women to earn what white men earn in a year. To put it simply, it takes 20 months for a black woman to earn the same wages as a white man earns in 12.
According to the Center for American Progress, black women earn about 60% of what white men earn. The percentage is strikingly low in comparison to the 79% wage difference when grouping all women together.
I’m getting weary of the all-or-nothing fallacy. You know the one.
“Science fiction and fantasy doesn’t have lynchings and cross-burnings, so how can you say there’s racism?”
“Hijacking a panel? That’s ridiculous. It’s not like he went in with guns and explosives!”
“I’ve never physically assaulted someone for being gay. How dare you call me homophobic!”
Refusing to acknowledge anything but the most extreme is an excuse to ignore a huge range of hurtful, hateful behavior.
It’s also a common way for us to justify our own behavior. “I’m not part of the KKK, so I’m not racist. Yay, me!”
I often see people mocking the term “microaggression.” Because how can an aggression be micro? It’s all or nothing, right?
Or maybe we’re supposed to believe that nothing short of the extremes matters. That which does not kill you, and so on.
Tell me, would you prefer to get one shot with a large needle or a thousand with smaller needles?
The smaller needles might not hurt as much, individually. But that doesn’t make them painless. And the effects add up quickly.
The all-or-nothing fallacy is lazy, simplistic thinking. It often betrays an arrogant unwillingness to listen or understand.
You don’t want to listen? Whatever. But stop pretending problems don’t
exist just b/c they’re not the Most Extreme Example Ever.
Microaggressions can be even more dangerous, because of how they pile up over time, too, and all the while you don’t know whether or not this is a Big Enough Problem until it’s too late.
At least with the “large needle” example it’s clear-cut, but with the smaller needles you worry about overreacting, and with that comes self-blaming…
how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.
Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.
Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.
According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone.
In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of.
(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)
the beauty of archival research *sigh*
i went to a building that is a “fan recreation” of one of the buildings from Hongloumeng and my like bitter, angry, never smiled once 78yo male teacher was like squeeing and giggling and kept sitting down and fanning himself and posed dramatically for photos
this guy was like the voldemort of staff, a man of legendary terror-inspiring mien. swooning.
A more recent example of fandom in history is the original Sherlock Holmes fan base! It’s one of the earliest coherent models we have that closely represents the fandoms of modern media.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s first two Sherlock Holmes novels weren’t hugely popular, but when he began to write stories for The Strand magazine involving Sherlock Holmes, the public basically went absolutely mental. He used to get fan mail - predominantly from women, apparently - addressed directly to Sherlock Holmes, some women even offering to be his housekeeper.
He eventually got so fed up of writing stories about a character he didn’t really like (he considered Sherlock Holmes to be an irritating distraction from his ambition to write historical fiction, once saying “he takes my mind from better things”) that he took measures to end the series once and for all. First, he raised his fee for writing the stories to an extortionate amount, hoping that the magazine would refuse to pay it and fire him. However, there was such a demand for new Sherlock Holmes stories that the magazine just agreed to pay his ridiculous fee. So, he killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 in the Reichenbach Falls, and when he did that, shit hit the fan. People reportedly placed Sherlock Holmes obituaries in newspapers. Many of them cancelled their subscription to The Strand, and wrote angry letters to Arthur Conan Doyle explaining how he’d broken their heart. To fill the gap left by the death of their bb, some people wrote fan fiction and shared it in literary groups and book clubs.
Conan Doyle caved to pressure in 1901 and wrote Hound of the Baskervilles, partly because the fan fervour never really died down, and partly because cash dollah. You know how fans lobbied for the return of Firefly, and ended up getting Serenity made? The original Sherlock Holmes fans totally got there first.
You forgot the bit where Holmes fans wore honest-to-god *mourning* attire after the death of their fave. Men wore crepe armbands in the streets for Holmes. It was redonk.
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.
Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”
The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”
Heroes: “… no~ but…”
The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”
Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.
The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”
Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”
Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”
The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”
Villain: “Indeed.”
Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>
The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”
Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>
The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”
Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”
The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”
Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”
Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”
The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.
But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.
Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.
My first official deadpool headcanon is this. This this this.
Okay but this whole concept actually makes a lot of sense, because villains are a lot more likely to be disfigured/disabled/use adaptive devices (bc ableist tropes), so of course, say, a child amputee is going to be more interested in the villain with a robot arm who almost destroyed New York than the heroes that took him down.
Also, imagine one of the kids gets better, and a few years down the line becomes a villain themself, except their crimes are things like smuggling chemo drugs across the border for families that can’t afford treatment, or stealing from corrupt businessmen to make donations to underfunded hospitals (idk this turned into a Leverage AU or something) and every time the heroes encounter her, they’re like “oh no. she’s getting away. curses. welp, nothing we can do.” Though it isn’t that she can’t take them on; bc of course once the villain from way back when found out what she was up to, he started helping/training her.
“I thought they just hired someone to dress up and pretend to be you,” she says, amazed, when he reveals himself. “I didn’t think they actually got the real you!”
Every year the Villain Wrangler gets a very expensive gift basket from the pair.
and for the kids who don’t get better the villains are there too, they show up to every funeral, they bear too small coffins on their shoulders and the heroes stand aside
they are fierce with grieving families assuring them that their child will not be forgotten, and they don’t balk at negative emotions, they don’t tell people to be strong or “celebrate their child’s life,” because these parents have every right to their grief and anger
and the lost children are never forgotten. flowers appear on graves during birthdays and anniversaries, heroes find pictures of those kids and they carefully take them down and ensure they’re delivered to the villain’s cell, and a few villains can be seen with friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists the cops have learned not to try and take them off
And then one day, one of the evil geniuses who happens to specialise in inducing bizarre genetic mutations meets a young fan who was born with a rare genetic disorder that is slowly killing them, and realises that they can help.
Another, who created their own exosuit, talks to a young fan and suddenly understands how much the technology that they have built for themselves could revolutionise quality of life for people with muscular dystrophy, or paraplegia, or other disorders that confine people to wheelchairs with little mobility.
A third thinks of a way that their nanobots could be used to detect and remove cancer cells when their fan, who had been in remission, writes to say that the doctors have found a new metastasizing tumour.
Then shortly after, an evil genius specialising in cloning is contacted by an old colleague asking if a suitable heart couldn’t be grown for their young fan with a congenital heart condition who needs a donor.
Suddenly, a pattern of villains offering (and marketing) their insights and resources to improve medical science starts to arise. Many who had previously been operating on society’s fringes are shocked to receive public accolades, research grants and job offers from major companies because of their work.
A grassroots movement arises advocating for imprisoned villains with appropriate qualifications and/or experience to have access to resources to conduct research for the public good. The Second Chance Rehabilitation Project launches.
(It is an open secret that only people who have been vetted by the Villain Wrangler are allowed to join, because the Villain Wrangler has by now a meticulously set up method and intelligence network to run background checks and character references through ensure that none of the children wishing to meet their role models get hurt.)
Being able to say that one is involved with the Project begins to look really good in parole hearings. The Villains involved perform their own quality checks on one another, because if one of their kids got hurt, then all of their kids could potentially lose out, and the ones that are serious about the Project are not having that. (Also, the ability to collaborate with other geniuses is the most interesting thing to happen to most of them since losing to various heroes, and most consider the intellectual stimulation to be worth putting up with the ridiculous egoes and inevitable personality clashes that arise.)
Reformed Villains come out of the woodwork to advocate about better mental healthcare, and support systems. Savvy universities and private labs quietly take their advice, setting up better mental health supports and laboratory safety standards to prevent the Brain Drain caused by losing their less stable scientists to the Costumes.
The Villain Wrangler watches all of this develop with a smile.
Treasure watched as Dr. Inferno began to unpack the small basket she had been carrying. She had assumed it would be bioweapons and technology but instead it contained bread, fruit, cheese, jam, and all the ingredients of a pretty nice picnic. “Um…” she said, looking around the vault “Is this really the best place for this?” Inferno shrugged. “Kid, I said I would do this. I did not say I would let it slow down my work. Do you know how to work a matter destabilizer?” “Um… no?” “Well, time to learn.” She passed Treasure a small rectangular object, with a hole on one side. “Do you see box 43?” “Yes…” “That’s the one with the microchip I need. Put the destabilizer against it. Plasma end towards it.” Cautiously, Treasure placed the object against the box. She couldn’t help feeling a slight surge of pride as Dr. Inferno nodded at her. “Now twist it,” she continued. Treasure did so, and there was a sudden flash of light and a smell of electricity. And, as she pulled the device away from the vault, she saw there was now a neat hole in it. “Wow…” she said, setting it down. “You built that?” “Oh, definitely,” said the doctor, reaching in and removing a small, black box. “Totally untested, though. I figured you wouldn’t mind seeing as you’re…” She caught the child’s expression. “But it was theoretically safe. Uh, want some food?” Treasure nodded, sadly, and sat down. Resignedly, she tore off some bread and started to spread jam on it. “So, kid,” Inferno said, sitting down opposite her, “can I ask…. why you picked me?” Treasure shrugged. Inferno continued. “It’s just…. No one’s ever really chosen me. That’s uh… I mean that’s kinda the point. When I first started my work, everyone thought I was… yeah, anyway, that was the start of this whole thing. So… what’s your angle?” “No one thought you were gonna make it, but then you did,” Treasure said, swallowing. “Huh. Thanks, but what does that have to do with-” “No one thinks I’m gonna make it either.” Inferno bit her lip. All of a sudden, she got it. “Frickin’ doctors, huh?” “Frickin’ doctors.” “Hey, kid. Say it with me. The fools.” “The blind fools…” “I’ll show them!” “I’ll show them all!” Dr. Inferno patted her on the back. “That’s right. You will. The two of us together, kid. We’ll show them.”
I don’t care if they got a body like Nicki Minaj with their boobs pushed up to their chin and wear more pink and ruffles than a unicorn in a tutu. If they tell you they’re nonbinary, then they’re fucking nonbinary.
I don’t care if he’s got the highest, prettiest voice and wears dresses and pink glittery nail polish and high heels. If he tells you he’s a boy, then he’s a fucking boy.
I don’t care if she looks like the Hulk and talks like Morgan Freeman and has a beard to rival Thor and the hairiest chest and legs ever and wears a suit. If she tells you she’s a girl, then she’s a fucking girl.
Deal with it.
Riding public transit shortly after Caitlin Jenner introduced herself to the world, I heard two men in their sixties with thick Southern accents turn conversation to ‘this whole Jenner business.” I braced myself for something ugly and considered moving further down the train; I’m glad I didn’t.
“I just don’t get it, ya know?” one of them began, shaking his head. “I mean, you bump into somebody in the supermarket and you say, ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ and hear back, ‘actually, it’s ma’am,’ then you say, ‘so sorry, ma’am; my mistake’ not ‘I’LL CALL YOU SIR IF I DAMN WELL FEEL LIKE IT!!!’” More head shaking. “What’s the matter with some people? They just got no manners.’
This one happens to me when I'm in different emotional states. If I say something when I'm upset, I will completely lose access to the memory of saying it once I've calmed down again.
I will trade you one terrible memory for a memory I have of a young pine tree covered in butterflies.
A hundred monarchs resting on their long flight have lit here, on these green needles. You reach out. The tired creatures crawl onto your arms, wings slowly parting and closing, parting and closing, as they breathe. They rest, covering you in magic. You spin in the sunlight, laughing. You are very small, and they glow like candles behind colored glass.
I will trade you one awful, inescapable thing for this one golden moment in time, this moment of honeycomb light and a warm autumn day tapering to endless evening.
Look, you have made the trade. You can take your memory back anytime, but you do not need to bear it always. Now I will hold it for you so that for a while it can be smaller and further away.
one of my coworkers said something like this and it made me think about married culture in the US. his wife had been out of town for the week and he was really excited to go home and see her and we asked if they were doing something special, and he was like “No??? I just missed my best friend.”
the comment above is the cutest thing in the world
just wanna remind everyone it’s canon that Lisa is queer
just wanna remind everyone it’s canon that Lisa is queer
A lesbian. Lesbian. LESBIAN. Thanx
THIS ^^^^ LESBIAN NOT QU*ER TYVM. STOP THIS LESBIAN ERASURE.
… She likes men as well though. She marries Millhouse and dates other men as well (after this image, I know many lesbians have past relationships with men). She’s also polyamorous- the following year she has two girlfriends.
She’s queer. She dates men and women. And is poly.
So…….queer erasure it is then!
in todays issue of ‘monosexuals claiming the very existence of bi people is gay erasure’
[picture is of a Simpsons couch gag, the one where they show shots from the future and Lisa is on the couch with her college girlfriend]
This is also the most direct individual example I’ve seen of this phenomenon.
The more I think about who uses “queer”, the clearer it is that it’s a ton of people under the bi umbrella - especially because there’s so little bi visibility that MOST bi people are afraid to claim “the B word” - and, especially, a ton of trans people. IIRC, one survey had a majority of trans people identifying their sexual orientation specifically as “queer”.
This is undoubtedly also partly because there’s such a huge overlap between bi and trans people, and because our communities have always been allies.
The more I look at who opposes the word, the more restricted it is to the various branches of the radical feminist communities telling everybody not to use this terrible slur. People outside that community pick it up because it sounds important, when you say something is a slur. Or because they personally hate the word. But that’s where it seems like it originates.
So, it’s coming primarily from a community that’s known for having an extremely anti-trans branch. And which has an overall philosophy that’s toxic to bisexuals, genderqueer/nonbinary people, and aces/aros. And which also has a pattern of wrapping abusive acts in faux-social-justice terminology - pretending that trans people invade women’s spaces, labeling any terms people use for calling them out as “slurs”, etc.
And the “q slur” meme spreads, because it sounds social-justice-y. It makes it seem like the larger community has rejected the term, instead of a subculture of a subculture being very very vocal about…
how we should ban a term that is primarily used by bi/trans people…
that is the only word many people feel safe using to describe themselves, thanks to rampant bi erasure and bi demonizing and to the pressure to fit your sexual orientation into a binary…
and that is the only word any of us has that lets us identify people like us in history without a ton of “but they didn’t have that identity back then”…
or to identify what we all, including aces/aros, have in common today, the essence of what is wonderful about all our different flavors of queerness as well as what the rest of the world…
It’s the only word we have that can build that community and hold it together, without all this infighting about terminology. (All right, I know that people can fight about any term. It’s the one that doesn’t explicitly exclude anybody that it shouldn’t.)
It’s also a word that a huge number of bi people use to identify themselves. A minority of gay and lesbian people prefer it over “gay” or “lesbian”. But in the bi community, it’s a HUGE thing for people to call themselves “queer” instead of “bisexual”. It’s so common that it’s one of the things people include when the spell out what “bi+” includes.
It’s also a word that almost 25% of trans people use to label their sexual orientation (with 52% of trans people identifying as some flavor of “bi+” including this “queer” 25%). (It’s in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which surveyed almost 2,000 trans people.)
It has seemed to me for a while that the effort to go back to the “queer’s a slur” fight of the fucking 1980s is an unconscious attempt to center things around “same-gender attraction” and push issues that are specific to being intersex, trans, ace/aro, and bi+ out to the margins. Or, anyway, farther out to the margins. Just the same as the tendency to label everything “the gay rights movement” does, or the pattern of referring to “gay and trans” issues and leaving everything else out.
So yeah.
Lisa’s queer.
“It has seemed to me for a while that the effort to go back to the “queer’s a slur” fight of the fucking 1980s is an unconscious attempt to center things around “same-gender attraction” and push issues that are specific to being intersex, trans, ace/aro, and bi+ out to the margins.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Read it once, then read it again.
I fought this battle once already–in the 90s, when we had to. Why are we still eating our own this way now?
If I didn’t know better (hm.) I’d be very suspicious of instigators deliberately trying to trigger in-fighting in order to serve as a distraction from the very real work that still desperately needs to be done. Why are we fighting about a word we took back more than twenty years ago, when our people are still dying on the streets every goddamned day?
Use that righteous energy where it will do some actual good.
*high fucking five*
This is the…third time? in my lifetime we’ve had to fight to defend the word “queer” from people either within or outside our communities. As frustrated as “the kids” make me, this is a wheel I wish they didn’t have to reinvent every so often.
“Queer” is a perfectly cromulent word.
This is why LGBTQ history is important, why we must pass it on.
The person who brought this back to Simpsons lore with “a perfectly cromulent word” is my favourite.
“Overall, Clinton has an 85 percent chance of winning the elections according to our polls-only forecast and a 76 percent chance according to polls-plus. Neither figure has meaningfully changed over the past couple of days. Looking at the polls as a whole — and adjusting for house effects — Trump seems to have gained 1 or 2 percentage points from his post-convention lows, but probably not more than that yet.”
