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1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt · 1 year

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Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

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lais-a-ramos · 2 years

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on the first kill cancellation and what it tells us about representation in media

the most heartbreaking part about the first kill cancellation is that it’s an evidence of this trend in audiovisual media big corporations to profit over claims about representation, all while delivering the most sanitized and harmless to the consumption by the cis het , white, able-bodied etc people form of representation they could possibly offer.

because, that’s the thing, back in 2016, when lexa from the 100 and plenty other lesbian and queer characters in general were killed off of shows and it sparked a whole conversation over the "bury your gays" trope, our biggest hope was that having more people from marginalized groups making the decisions in the writers’ room and as showrunners would result in better representation for us.

and, the thing is that, while lots of people were concearned about shaming the show for having CGI problems – problems that are perfectly explained by the very low-budget the show got from netflix --, the truth is that first kill actually achieved a lot in the “representation on behind-the-scenes” front.

the author of the short story it’s based on, victoria “v.e.” schwab, is queer, identifying as gay and using she/they pronouns, and also signed as showrunner, inspite having an adviser role. Not only that, but victoria declared in interviews and even penned an article talking about how they wrote the short story and the pilot for the show in an attempt of giving to the new generations the representation she needed as a teen and longed for when she watched sci-fi/fantasy shows like buffy the vampire slayer.

the “the facto” shworunner, felicia d. henderson, is not queer, she is a cis het woman, but, she is still a dark-skinned black woman with a long and successful resumé in the show biz, with classic shows hailed by the african american community like fresh prince of bel-air and moesha under her belt, and who also worked for DC in their comics’ division (yeah, THE DC Comics) and worked on marvel’s the punisher, in other words, one of the best people you could possibly ask for to work on a sci-fi/fantasy show in which a huge part of the main cast is comprised by black people – actually, to work on sci-fi/fantasy shows in general.

both felicia and victoria have mentioned plenty of times on social media, interviews and so on about how diverse the writer’s room was.

not only that, but they also talked about how there was representation on the production crew as well . people on the camera crew, make-up crew, wardrobe crew, the cinematography crew etc, were all comprised by black people and queer people , an information that was also shared with pride and enthusiams by the leading actresses sarah catherine hook and imani lewis on their interviews.

so, the representation on FK wasn’t just on the characters on screen, it was on the entire production chain.

and, yet, it wasn’t enough for preventing us from losing the representation, because the show got cancelled.

this is not to say that we should give up on trying to get more people from marginalized groups working on behind-the-scenes or anything like that, especially because, I things are hard enough when we try to occupy these spaces, if we stop fighting for space, then that’s when things will not getter better AT. ALL.

but we should definetely stop to think about what do we mean when we say we want more representation and what kind of content we praise or not.

back in 2018, under the release of love simon on movie theatres, buzzfeed news published an article written by contributor john sherman titled “Popular Gay Media Is Still Focusing On Straight Acceptance, Rather Than Celebrating Queer Difference”, inspired mostly by the new york times article by queer and non-binary activist, writer, producer, television host and actor jacob tobia, “Does Gay Hollywood Have Room for Queer Kids?”, and both articles pointed out how the movie’s entire narrative was structured around the Idea that simon was just like another guy, except that he was gay and reinforces the discourse that it’s ok to be gay, as long as you’re “not TOO gay”, especially considering the way the narrative uses feminine, gender non-conforming, flamboyant and campy gay ethan as a prop for masculine, straight-passing gay simon’s story, using the bullying ethan goes thru the entirety of the movie as an excuse for simon to not come out all while never really having simon acknowledging how he was embarassed by ethan because he was struggling with his own internalized homophobia.

four years later, and these articles are actually more relevant than ever.

because here is the thing: the discourse revolving around the need for more “wholesome” queer representation, while completely valid when it comes to defend the production of more LGBT+ content aimed at children and pre-teens, oftenly gets mixed up on the internet with very conservative opinions about LGBT+ sexuality, gender expression and lifestyle choices.

that is what is problematic about the heartstopper vs first kill debate, that started really as soon as the first teaser trailers for FK were released and people begin to make assumptions about how FK was gonna sexualize women and cater to the male gaze, and now took another turn after the cancellation news when FK fans, lesbians in general, BIPOC in general and so on started to point out Netflix’s and the entertaiment industry’s double standards when it comes to the representation of the LGBT+ community, favoring cis White queer, able-bodied, slim, masculine men over all the other groups in the community .

It’s not that heartstopper is bad or awful or that it should have been cancelled like first kill was, that’s definetely not the point.

heartstopper as a franchise is actually far bolder than love simon ever could, with the comics talking about topics like bullying and mental illness, shining a light in some topics not so talked about in media like anorexia and body dysmorphia in young boys, storylines that the fans hope to see in the new seasons of the show .

on top of that, it did a great job at portraying Nick’s realisation about his bisexuality and ditching the “bisexuals are traitors and manipulative” trope by contrasting nick’s honesty about his sexual confusion and his loyalty to charlie to the toxic and abusive way Ben treated charlie during their secret relationship.

still, it is a show that is centered around two cis White boys and that has lesbians, trans people and people of color as side characters at most, being in the background of the cis white boys’s love story, like a book footnote.

and the thing is, most people don't care about the book footnotes.

tao and elle, the straight couple formed by a cis chinese british boy and a trans black girl of egyptian descent, is still on the background, not the fore front.

and while tao defying gender norms about cis het boys is a very welcome change, nick and charlie, the main characters, are still pretty much very masculine, straight-passing boys. also, the fact that, from all the boys, it is the asian guy who is the less traditionally masculine when we consider the way western culture desexualizes and mock asian men

yes, charlie is bullied by the school’s rugby athletes for not being masculine enough, but, in spite of being gay, he is not much different from the same old cis het nerdy white guy in coming of age movies and indie movies, who is sensitive and listens to indie bands and is some sort of “cool loser”.

and nick nelson is still the very stereotype of the masculine jock, except that he is the “gentle brute" type.

it’s important to note that not only non-binary bisexuals do exist, but also that gender non-conforming cis bisexuals exist as well. there are bi guys with a gender expression that is affeminated, and also there are bi girls with a gender expression that is masculine.

when it comes to the lesbian interracial couple, formed by masculine white girl darcy and more feminine, dark-skinned black girl tara, they are side characters in nick and charlie’s story like tao and elle, having a smaller role than taoelle.

i actually remember reading somewhere that one of the changes the show made from the comics was to actually give a bigger role to tara and darcy, with the storyline about how their school reacted when tara came out actually being exclusive to the show, which means that their roles were even smaller.

and while it’s true that these side characters are still more rounded than your typical side characters, they’re still, guess what? Side characters.

people like tara and darcy, tao and elle deserve to be the main characters in their own fictional stories too, much like they are the main characters in their stories in real life.

people like calliope and juliette deserve to be the main characters in their own fictional stories too.

especially in a genre like the sci-fi/fantasy one, that is beloved by queer people and people of color for its fantastical elements and adventures and themes that flirt with the weird, unusual and that these and marginalized groups in general find comfort in because the social outcasts relate to the weirdness of it all.

so, it’s very important that we have shows like first kill and main characters like juliette fairmont and calliope burns, out and proud lesbians who are comfortable in their sexuality and whose biggest conflict with their families is not about their queerness, but because one is a monster hunter and the other is a vampire; who never get to face homophobia; and get to be the main characters and kick butts on screen and be the heroes just like cis het white abled-bodied people, mostly cis het white abled-bodied guys, get to do.

all this talk is because we have to question what has been sold to us as diversity and inclusion.

because diversity and inclusion don’t involve people from marginalized groups forcing themselves to fit into the standards of the dominant groups just to be accepted and be treated with basic human decency.

Queer people shouldn’t have to repress their sexuality and gender expression to be accepted, much like autistic and neurodivergent people shouldn’t have to supress their quirks like stimming or the way they react to sensory overload to be accepted, or like fat people shouldn’t have to lose weight, or indigenous people shouldn’t have to abandon their cultures to fit in, or like people with disabilities shouldn’t have to display some form of productivity to be accepted and so on.

We shouldn’t have to water ourselves down, it’s society that should create a safe space so we can live on it according to our experiences.

and that’s why the discourses revolving around normalcy are so tricky and can get problematic very easily, because while it was useful in the past, as the buzzfeed article points out, it also reinforces the Idea that there’s something naturally wrong with being different from what society says it’s the norm.

and we can see the wa ythis mindset is spreading around the internet, even amongst teens and twenty-somethings, as we can see by the whole discourse against the use of the word “queer”, even if it was historically reclaimed by the LGBT+ community.

or the way we can see people on tumblr spreading the "the kinky community shouldn't be at pride" discourse.

“queer” is precisely about celebrating the differences as they are what makes the experience of being yourself so unique, and it’s also precisely a reaction about the way the narrative about LGBT+ activism was historically centered around the experiences of cis het gay men and cis achilleans in general.

so, when we see society being more receptive towards the boys from heartstopper and not towards the girls from first kill, it doesn’t happen by accident, it's a part of an entire social structure.

the same goes for the topic about femininity and sexuality. traditional social conventions about sexuality basically censor and shame woman and transfeminine people for having any interest in sex and , something that, combined with the conventions about queer desire and attraction being wrong or predatory, creates a scenario of intense sexual repression in ways that it doesn’t happen with cis white men -- except for, maybe, the disabled ones.

the way people reacted so negatively against the calliette make out scenes wasn’t an accident, it was part of this structure that shames female pleasure, interracial sex, lesbian sex and acts like girls and women are uncapable of enjoying sex, having sexual desire and having any interest in the matter.

that’s the kind of nuance that usually escapes from conversations about fetishization of women: it’s not that we are uncapable of sexual desire, it’s just that most of the narratives put us in a position of objetcs instead of agents. that’s what the male gaze is about, taking our agency and input on the matter from us to cater to cis het men’s fantasies of power.

and male gaze is not what happened in first kill, a show in which felicia, the showrunner, made sure to ask for the lesbians and sapphics on set for their advice and input over the calliette scenes to make sure the final product were true to the lesbian and sapphic experience rather than the assumptions of a cis het woman about the lesbian and sapphic experience. not only that, the show hired an intimacy coordinator, named dr. tiff, that, if I’m not wrong, is a queer woman as well, to help the actresses feel comfortable even with the smallest of touches, like a hand on a shoulder or a hug, and it was discussed amongst said intimacy coordinator, the directors, the showrunner and the actresses how to portray the scenes between calliope and juliette without sexualizing the teenagers too much, how to find a balance between showing the interest of non-asexual 16 year-old girls on sex and not oversexualising them . one can’t be further from the male gaze and fetishization as that.

still on the topic of sex, it’s not a coincidence that the general audiences were so receptive of heartstopper, because the show is almost devoid of sexual scenes.

of course, this isn’t a problem on itself, especially because it seems like the show is aiming not only at teenagers, but at children as well.

but it gets problematic when people begin to defend that all types of LGBT+ media representation should adhere to these standards even if they’re not aiming at children and pre-teens as their target audiences.

especially because it’s not just lesbians and sapphics, or just trans people in general, who are shamed and have their sexuality treated as inherently wrong and predatory, it happens with cis gays and achilleans as well.

again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, there is nothing wrong with heartstopper.

there’s nothing wrong with LGBT+ media that is fluffy, family-friendly and PG-rated.

the problem is that LGBT+ fiction, and fiction about marginalized groups in general, shouldn’t have to be forced to adhere to the fluffy, family-friendly, PG standards to have a space in media and not get cancelled by networks and streaming services; and that media companies are imposing these conditions for LGBT+ content because they know these standards are seen as harmless by the cis het white audiences, and, therefore, these media companies are profiting over a serious cause like that of diversity and representation all while continuing to treat the cis het, white, abled-bodied, skinny etc audience as the only valuable one.

this is not about fandom wars, and some people are right when they say that there is space for all types of queer shows, for shows like heartstopper and for shows like first kill alike.

the important question here is why is it that we from marginalized groups are forced to adhere to all these respectability politics to be accepted when cis het, white, abled-bodied, skinny etc people aren’t.

don’t know whether first kill can be saved by another network like it happened with one day at a time, or what the future holds, but, that is the important question that we all should take from this mess.

and, most of all, we got to remember that we can and deserve to have so much better than what companies are delivering to us, and we don’t have to settle for less, in pop culture and in any other area of society.

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dear-indies · 1 year

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Ooh could you name five movies and or tv shows that you want people to see that include disabled characters, preferably played by disabled actors. Pleaseeee i need more inspiration for resource making.

Because I mentioned disabled shows by disabled people:

Ryan O'Connell (1986) - he has cerebral palsy and is gay, adapted his memoir into a series called Special (2019-2020) according to IMDb he's in 16 episodes.

Josh Thomas (1987) - is Autistic, has ADHD, and is gay, is in Everything's Gonna Be Okay (2020-2021) which he's also an executive producer on, and according to IMDb he's in 20 episodes and also Please Like Me (2013-2016) 23 episodes!

Tim Renkow (1989) Mexican Jewish, he co-wrote Jerk (2019-2021) and according to IMDb he's in 8 episodes.

Unfortunately, there are not many disabled media by disabled writers but I can list disabled actors who have notable tv roles:

Daryl Mitchell (1965) African-American - is paraplegic - is in Fear the Walking Dead (2018-2023) and according to IMDb he's in 21 episodes, also NCIS: New Orleans (2014-2021) and according to IMDb he's in 143 episodes.

Selene Luna (1971) Mexican - has dwarfism, is in Mayans M.C. (2022) and according to IMDb she's in 5 episodes.

Cherylee Houston (1974) - has Hypermobility Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, is in Coronation Street (2010-2023) and according to IMDb she's in 762 episodes.

Callan Mulvey (1975) ¼ Maori, ¾ Scottish - is blind in one eye, has been in a lot of things including Last King of the Cross (2023) according to IMDb he's in 10 episodes, Firebite (2021-2022) 8 episodes, Till Death (2021), Mystery Road (2020) 6 episodes.

Kurt Yaeger (1977) - is a leg amputee, is Another Life (2021) according to IMDb he's in 8 episodes.

Rana Daggubati (1984) Telugu Indian - is blind in one eye, is in Rana Naidu (2023) and according to IMDb he's in 10 episodes and according to IMDb he's in 10 episodes.

Savannah Welch (1984) - is paraplegic, is in Titans (2021) and according to IMDb she's in 10 episodes, also The Good Doctor (2022-2023) and according to IMDb she's in 8 episodes.

Ali Stroker (1987) - is paraplegic and bisexual - is in Echos (2022) and according to IMDb she's in 7 episodes, Only Murders in the Building (2021-2022) 4 episodes and Ozark (2022) 7 episodes.

Madison Ferris (1992) - has muscular dystrophy, is in Panic (2021) and according to IMDb he's in 5 episodes.

Eric Graise (1990) African-American - is a bilateral amputee, is in Black Mafia Family (2023) and according to IMDb he's in 3 episodes and Step UP: High Water (2018-2022) 29 episodes and Locke & Key (2020-2022) 9 episodes.

Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (?) African-American - has ALS, is in The Sex Lives of College Girls (2020-2021) and according to IMDb she's in 13 episodes.

Ben Mehl (?) - is blind, is in You (2021) and according to IMDb he's in 9 episodes.

Danielle Perez (?) Afro-Dominican, is a double lower leg amputee and is queer, is in a bunch of short things somebody could make a mini pack of!

Gloria May Eshkibok (?) Mohawk, Ottawa, Irish, French - is Two-Spirit (she/her) and has one eye - is in OChiSkwaCho (2018).

Matthew Jeffers (?) - has dwarfism, is in New Amsterdam (2018-2023) and according to IMDb he's in 32 episodes.

and then more suggestions from the amazing @olivaraofrph: Everything's Gonna Be Okay - has Kayla Cromer (an Autistic actress) and Not Dead Yet - has Rick Glassman (an Autistic actor) playing an Autistic character.

Not for faceclaim recommendations but I highly recommend everybody watches Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution too! As always, I cannot limit myself to five!

Let me know if you'd like more specific suggestions!

And I have a masterlist of disabled faceclaims here too!

#fc help #rph #rpc #disabled fc

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dreamhot · 11 months

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Hello! Happy June! It's Pride and I have another question (3/30)

Today's piece of history comes in the form of a film/documentary recommendation of "Paris Is Burning".

"Paris Is Burning" was released in 1990 and it provides a snapshot of New York City in the 1980's through the eyes of the city's African American and Latinx Harlem drag and ball scene. The title itself refers to an annual ball held by the artist Paris Dupree, who is featured in the film, and the film explores the elaborately structured ball competitions, where the contestants are judged on their dance talent, the beauty of their clothes and their ability to adhere to the categories.

The focus is on rival fashion "houses" (a term coined by legend Crystal LaBeija, and her successor of the Head of the House of LaBeija, Pepper LaBeija, is featured prominently in this film), showing us their competitions, the House "Mothers" and the experiences of being both queer and POC during the AIDs crisis.

It features legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women of colour - the main figures and fights for queer rights, and people that we, and especially US Americans, owe a lot to.

I think this film is a great starting point for an introduction to the people who helped build both the ball scene and the drag scene to the absolutely phenomenal standard it is today. It's also just ICONIC.

As for my question, something that is talked about a lot in this film is the ability to/act of "throwing shade" and the skill of "reading", both of which are terms coined by the black queer community and refer to subtle and/or clever ways of insulting or conveying disgust with someone or thing. So, and this is only tangentially related, what was your favourite line from Larray and Issa's "Cancelled Remix"?

(yeah, yeah, not as related as usual, however, I wanted everyone to be able to answer at least one question because my other question is:)

Have you seen this film? And if so, what did you think of it? (if you haven't seen it and end up watching it from this ask, please tell me what you think!! xx)

Happy Pride 🌈 🎉

okay i am going to try to catch up on these today . or at least answer a few I'VE BEEN INATTENTIVE !!

i've not seen this movie but i'm pretty bad in terms of having missed a lot of the more seminal queer works u_u save for um. brokeback mountain. like i really wanna see 'but i'm a cheerleader' but i just gotta make myself Remember and do that sometime smh

as for your question ... it's not even a line from the actual proper song and it's not shady but the part in the video where larray is like WHO THE FUCK TRYIN TO NUT IN MY BUTT was on loop in my brain for like 48 hours so unfortunately (?) i feel like i have to pick that one

#smile.ask #anon

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simplepotatofarmer · 11 months

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Hello! Happy June! It's Pride and I have another question (3/30)

Today's piece of history comes in the form of a film/documentary recommendation of "Paris Is Burning".

It features legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women of colour - the main figures and fights for queer rights, and people that we, and especially US Americans, owe a lot to.

(yeah, yeah, not as related as usual, however, I wanted everyone to be able to answer at least one question because my other question is:)

Have you seen this film? And if so, what did you think of it? (if you haven't seen it and end up watching it from this ask, please tell me what you think!! xx)

Happy Pride 🌈 🎉

i have seen it!

it's actually a really great movie, i watched it in college as part of a movie club and then one of my close friends is actually a drag king so i've seen it more than once.

as for the cancelled remix, i like the purge line. one, because i'm just a horror fan and actually the purge series is amazing, but also because yeah. i'm sorry, dream, but there's a reason the mask lends itself to horror so easily. which i think is a great thing, honestly.

#loyal answers things #pride month anon

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asiogie · 11 months

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Hello! Happy June! It's Pride and I have another question (3/30)

Today's piece of history comes in the form of a film/documentary recommendation of "Paris Is Burning".

It features legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women of colour - the main figures and fights for queer rights, and people that we, and especially US Americans, owe a lot to.

(yeah, yeah, not as related as usual, however, I wanted everyone to be able to answer at least one question because my other question is:)

Have you seen this film? And if so, what did you think of it? (if you haven't seen it and end up watching it from this ask, please tell me what you think!! xx)

Happy Pride 🌈 🎉

honestly larray calling george a twink bottom bitch that sleeps in dreams bed was refreshing and needed

ive never seen that movie but ill add it to my list!!

#i love the little history blurbs #ask

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rabbitcruiser · 1 year

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Save The Rhino Day

Save the Rhino Day, celebrated globally on May 1, is a day centered around raising awareness of the rhino’s plight in the world, and highlighting ways to help this incredible animal. This day is especially important given the current devastating statistics — on average, one rhino is poached somewhere in the world every 22 hours. On this day, various animal rights organizations, non-profit companies, zoos, animal activists, and other concerned groups provide opportunities to encourage more rhino conservation efforts from people around the world.

History of Save The Rhino Day

To trace the origins of the Rhinoceros, we’d have to go back some millennia — almost 56 million years ago, to be precise. That’s when the first ancestors of the modern Rhinos roamed the planet. They were more horse-like in structure and had no horns. Old rhino bones found from this period in North America show a gradual evolution from this old horse-like structure into one more aligned with today’s rhino. Over these years, there were three distinct species that scientists think might be the ancestors of today’s rhinos. One of these was called the ‘running rhino,’ which was adapted for speed.

Another was more aquatic and resembled today’s hippopotamus. The last, most direct ancestors to the modern rhinoceros appeared approximately 25 million years ago and had multiple sub-species in their families. Of these, the wooly rhinoceros was one of the largest subspecies, weighing in at almost four times the size of the average African elephant, and boasting one-meter-long horns. This species inhabited a large area, from Siberia to the British Isles. These plant-eaters lived alongside the wooly mammoths, and have been found fossilized in ice and in cave paintings made during that period.

These rhinos only lived in Asia initially but began traveling to other places around 25 million years ago. Over time, these rhino ancestors roamed the continents, primarily living in Eurasia (Europe and Asia combined) and North America. However, the American rhinos went extinct sometime between 5.4 and 2.4 million years ago.

Rhinos have also featured in many Asian and African legends — they are the fire-stamping heroes in many stories from Burma, India, and Malaysia. According to these stories, rhinos appeared every time a fire was lit in the forest and would stamp out the flames. So popular is this tale that it even featured in a popular 1980 South-African movie named “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”

Unfortunately, these once-abundant creatures have lost out to human activity. Hunting, and now, poaching and habitat loss, have drastically reduced the number of rhinos across the world. Rhino horns are also integral to traditional medicine in many parts of Asia, with people believing it has mystical powers. Since 2007, there has been a sharp increase in poaching activity and illegal trade of rhino horns, to the extent that many subspecies of rhinos have been declared extinct and the entire rhino population is listed as ‘endangered’.

Save The Rhino Day timeline

1973 A Symbol of Queer Identity

Two Boston artists, Daniel Thaxton and Bernie Toale create a lavender rhinoceros as a symbol to increase awareness of gays and lesbians and put it in a series of subway posters.

2011 No More Black Rhinos

The Western Black Rhino — which used to live in Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and South Sudan — is declared extinct because of excessive poaching.

2012 A Ray of Hope

For the very first time, a Sumatran rhino — the smallest of the rhino family — is born in captivity in the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia; this miracle repeats in 2016, and then in 2022.

2018 A Sad Farewell

The world bids goodbye to the last known male northern white rhino; only two females survive to this day.

Save The Rhino Day FAQs

What day is World Rhino Day?

On September 22 each year, the global community celebrates the rhinoceros and explains what people can do to help them.

How many rhino species are there?

At present, there are five species of rhinos in the world — the white rhino and the black rhino (both found in Africa), and the Indian, Javan, and Sumatran (all found in Asia).

Are rhinos endangered?

The black, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos are still listed as ‘critically endangered,’ while the entire species is classified as ‘endangered.’

How to Observe Save The Rhino Day

Learn about the rhinoceros

Visit a rhino

Help save the rhino

Uncover more interesting information about this magnificent animal. Watch documentaries featuring the rhino, read books and other literature about them, and discover more studies and research that show just how the rhino lives.

Why not go see a rhinoceros in real life? Check out rhinos at a local zoo or plan a trip to visit rhinos in the wild.

Research the efforts various groups make towards saving the rhino, and check out what you can do to help. These could include online volunteering services, donations of funds, and more.

5 Fun Facts About The Rhinoceros

The rhino communication method

They don't have 20-20 vision

How the white rhino got its name

Their horns are like our nails

And still, people steal their horns

Rhinos make funny sounds — like snorting, sneeze-like sounds, and even honking — and use their bodily waste to 'speak' to other rhinos.

Rhino eyesight is notoriously poor, so much so that if an animal only 100 feet away — in an open space, too — stood motionless, the rhino wouldn't be able to spot them.

This rhino isn't actually white — English explorers mistook the Afrikaans 'wyd,' which refers to the huge girth of this animal, as 'white' and the name stuck.

Rhino horns are made up almost entirely of keratin, which is also the protein found in human hair and nails.

Even as rhino horns are proven to have no health benefits, signs in museums — like the National Museum of Scotland — notify visitors that the horn on display is a replica, as the real one has been stolen.

Why Save The Rhino Day is Important

It helps increase awareness

Creating safe havens for rhinos

Building a rhino-loving community

Rhinos are becoming increasingly rare in the wild, and only continuous efforts to raise awareness, like celebrating Save The Rhino Day, can help this endangered species. Do your bit today to support rhinos.

The spike in awareness such days provide also subsequently raises the amount of help being offered to save the rhinos. These increased efforts could help secure various safe and protected spaces for the rhino to survive and thrive.

Conservation efforts have had a significant impact in the past — various subspecies of rhinos have seen their numbers gradually increase over the years as a result of these activities. After these celebrations, we are left with a passionate and motivated global community that wants to see the rhinoceros flourish in the decades to come.

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someunspokenthing · 2 years

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Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss: An Analysis on White Feminism and its effects on Modern Society

[This post is a requirement for my college class, Philosophical Anthropology. The aforementioned post is a thought-piece on the 'Feminism is for Everybody' by Bell Hooks]

Before delving into the actual theory of feminism, one’s general definition or outlook of it would be ‘the fight for equality amongst men and women’. And while it is indeed a fight for equality, Feminism has many layers and types surrounding it. One of the types of feminism is the White Feminist.

White working-class women recognized that besides the inequality they have faced as women, class struggle is also present in the Feminist movement. As the movement progressed, more and more privileged groups of White women began to achieve the same class power as their male counterparts and thus, they deemed the class struggle within the movement unimportant. It was a recurring theme in Hook’s book that white women who were now considered ‘equal’ as their white men would abandon the movement as they see it as useless now that they have achieved their goal. But this cannot be said to the Poor Women, to the Women of Color and to the Queer Women. White Feminism is essentially White Women forgetting that the fight goes beyond gender and they fail to acknowledge the fact that race, class, and sexuality play a bigger role in the struggles within the Feminist Movement and other movements against discrimination.

White Feminism can be found in media and although Hollywood is producing more progressive and diverse movies, many of so-called ‘feminist classics’ are films centered around white women. Another theme in Hollywood movies that stem from White Feminism is the ‘White Feminist Savior’ trope, wherein a white woman is the center of a feminist plot even though the conflict of the story is experienced by a person of color.

Moxie (2021) dir. by Amy Poehler

An example of this trope in action is the 2021 Netflix film ‘Moxie’ directed by Amy Poehler. Wherein main character Vivian starts an anonymous zine calling out her school’s misogynistic administration and students. My main issue with the film is that Vivian only realizes that the blatant misogyny she receives from schoolmates and teachers are wrong through a African-Latina friend who experienced the harassment firsthand. Her feminist ‘awakening’ was at the expense of a woman of color and yet she is the main character (and focus) of the film. White Feminism is also evident in modern Hollywood award shows. An example of this is during the 2018 Awards Season, up-and-coming director Greta Gerwig was nominated for best director. The media dubbed the selection as ‘Greta Gerwig versus four men’ and she was praised for it, undermining the fact that two of those men were people of color, who had struggles of their own during their directorial journeys in the industry.

To quote the late Bell Hooks, “A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.”

True feminist politics acknowledge that the fight goes beyond the politics of gender. And a true feminist recognizes the struggles of the masses regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, and class.

#feminism #thought piece

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morebedsidebooks · 2 years

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Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye

Important to note Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye has after its publication been banned in some US libraries. Because of this I decided I should share this review I’ve been sitting on for way too long because of different controversy the title has been involved in.

From an affluent family but with a messy home life and teased about his disdain for high school relationships, captain of the boys’ soccer team Bryson Keller is dared to date anyone from among the senior class (including underclassmen apparently would be gross) who asks him out on Monday. BUT… only for the school week. After over two months of Bryson with a parade of girls, the closeted and less than popular Kai Sheridan impulsively asks Date Me, Bryson Keller!

Kevin van Whye, a gay mixed race South African writer, in an author’s note to the book besides speaking on his own lived experiences lists several works and their creators he feels indebted to as inspiration for his debut OwnVoices young adult novel Date Me, Bryson Keller. These are Skam a 2015-2017 Norwegian teen drama TV webseries (especially season 3), two other English language young adult novels in 2014 To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, in 2015 Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, also the latter 2018 film adaptation, going way back a 1999 American teen movie rom com She’s All That, and finally a Japanese boys love comic series Seven Days written by Venio Tachibana and illustrated by Rihito Takarai. But it was concerning this last well-liked work where a nerve was touched across readers of Japanese comics and YA books.

Firstly, with accusations against Kevin van Whye of plagiarism. Seven Days features a popular first year high school student who dates the first person to ask him out on a Monday but, only for the week. Until, instead of a girl, a handsome upperclassman on a whim asks him out. For more details on Seven Days, I have previously reviewed the 2010-11 English edition. While dating with a time limit is common in the romance genre, I hadn’t encountered another title quite like it before. In fact, it was the mention of Seven Days which led me to put Date Me, Bryson Keller on my list of 2020 anticipated releases.

Secondly, the conflict involved the concept of representation and critique of the BL genre. During February 2019 the author posted a response on Goodreads. In part: “There were themes that I wanted to explore in a western setting and as an own voices writer. These were born from my own critique of the work with respect to actual and realistic LGBT culture, people and issues. I wanted to write a story for the LGBT reader, as told by my own lived experience.” Further in an interview on the YA Sh3lf blog in November 2019: “my own critique and feelings toward the manga Seven Days (and the Boy Love genre in general) definitely served as a jumping off point as far as inspiration.”

Critiques and the question of representation in Japanese BL is a decades long complex discourse. At times swinging from the more apolitical to political. Furthermore, especially fraught when involving identity politics. Which may be somewhat familiar as many other examples of queer literature from elsewhere around the globe undergo analysis, critiques, and disputes. Too movements like OwnVoices, intended to promote marginalized writers, became less helpful and after years faced demise. Unfortunately, I cannot begin to outline the parallels, differences, and nuances of these debates in this review. (Though if one is interested, I can suggest some scholarly reading.) However, it is this background which the author, who also pointed to a rudimentary TV tropes page on the BL genre, stepped right in to.

Speaking of tropes, I have a soft spot for dating tropes. Also, to include works like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. After old love letters are sent, Laura Jean Covey ends up faking dating an old crush Peter Kavinsky, which then turns into the real thing. (Also, Peter’s character most influenced Kevin van Whye with Bryson.) The concept of a dating dare is also the premise of She’s All That (itself a take on My Fair Lady, in turn adapting the stage play Pygmalion). Where soccer star and class president Zack Siler on a bet tries to make Laney Boggs, an artistic clumsy girl, Prom Queen to his King.

But heaping parts tropey teen dating novel Date Me, Bryson Keller is also a coming out story, with hardships. Grappling with the meaning of gay identity and the effects. In common with the hugely popular Simon (among several other similarities)and Skam Season 3.

Seriously, if one is well read in a genre, one knows the scènes à faire. Further if you are familiar with these works you can pick up the beats and bits from here and there, and there and here with Kevin van Whye’s book. He calls the stories “woven into the tapestry of this novel “. But, unlike some cases, these threads do make the work stand out less and feel more derivative. Even as the author specifically also talks about some of the aspects that are personal. Still, it is true as he writes in the author’s note: “I’ve always believed that more than one story of a certain type can exist. We need more representation all around. We shouldn’t settle for just one thing, because we are not just one thing. Our race, culture, geography, sexuality, and experiences make us different. These things shape our stories, our lives.”

#banned and challenged books #date me bryson keller #kevin van whye #long post #cw: homophobia outing violence injury blackmail #cw: cursing car accident racism cultural appropriation infidelity pregnancy

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