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hard--headed--woman · 11 months

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3rd day of Pride Month - 2nd LGB history 🏳️‍🌈

Today is the second day of my "post about one lgb icon/story everyday" thing for Pride Month, and I am gonna talk about the first lesbian wedding in Spain !

It's a quite famous story, but I wanted to talk about it anyway.

Here's the story of Elisa and Marcela !

Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga got married on June 8, 1901, in A Coruña, at Galicia, in Spain. Their marriage was the first homosexual marriage in Spain since the Roman imperial era (though some documents were found, proving that two men got married in Spain in 1061, I'll talk about it in another post !) and happened more than 100 years before the country legalized homosexual marriages !

To achieve this, Elisa disguised herself as a man, and adopted a male identity, Mario Sánchez, which is the name on their marriage certificate. Their lie was later discovered, but their marriage was never annulled, and they remained married for the rest of their lives.

Here's a picture of them after their wedding :

There is a very good movie on Netflix, called Elisa y Marcela, that tells their story. I watched it and liked it a lot, though there are some little criticisms to be made, and if you're interested, you should watch it too! I really enjoyed it and will probably watch it a lot of other times.

Note that there are some differences between the movie and the real story, and if you watch if, I think you should also read their true story, like reading their Wikipedia page. But the biggest part of the movie (except 1-2 details and the end) is pretty accurate, so if you want to watch it and to discover their whole story like that, don't read the end of this post ! I'll tell their story in details here. Keep reading only if you don't want to watch the movie/don't care about already knowing the entire story before watching it.

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The two young women meet at the Teacher Training College in A Coruña, where future primary school teachers are trained. Eighteen-year-old Marcela is studying there, while twenty-three-year-old Elisa is working there after completing the same course. They become friends, and then lovers. Marcela's parents, fearing scandal, send their daughter to continue her studies in Madrid, but it's not enough to end their love story. Marcela is appointed teacher in Vimianzo, in the village of Calo, while nearby Elisa works as a temporary replacement in Couso, a small parish in Coristanco in the province of A Coruña. They decide to live together in Calo, until 1889, the year in which Marcela leaves to teach in Dumbría while Elisa stays in Calo. The two keep in touch, writing to each other, until Elisa joins Marcela.

They live their love for years, hiding their relationship, until they have had enough, and decide to hatch a plan to get married.

In 1901, Elisa adoptes a masculine appearance and applies to the College of Education under the name of Mario. She creates a past for herself based on a cousin who died in a shipwreck, claims to have spent her childhood in London with an atheist father. She gets baptized as Mario on May 26, 1901 and gets her First Communion under the same idendity.

The couple gets married on June 8, 1901, after publication of the banns. A short wedding ceremony is performed before witnesses, and the couple spends their wedding night in the Corcubión guesthouse on Calle de San Andrés - Elisa and Marcela are officially the first spanish homosexual couple to get married since the Roman imperial era, their plan was a success.

Unfortunately, the villagers begin to have doubts, and realize that this marriage is what they call "a marriage without a man".

The Galician and Madrid press reports the case, the two women lose their jobs, are excommunicated and placed under arrest.

Here's a picture of them after their arrest :

Elisa tries to pass herself off as intersex (using the term hermaphrodite at the time) when a doctor checks whether she's male or female, to no avail. Despite this, and the Civil Guard's attempts to prosecute them, their marriage was never annulled, and the two lovers manages to escape. Their story becomes famous in Spain and many other European countries.

(Un matrimonio sin hombre = a marriage without a man)

After that, we don't know what happened to them. The last thing we know fore sure about them is that they embarked on a ship bound for South America - perhaps Argentina, like so many other Spaniards of the time, where they spent their honeymoon and settled.

But in 2008, a book, Elisa e Marcela – Alén dos homes (Elisa and Marcela – Beyond men), by Narciso de Gabriel, was published in A Coruña, and tells their story from 1901 to 1904. It narrates the events in Porto, Portugal, where they were imprisoned, tried, and later released. They fled to Argentina after the Spanish government demanded their extradition from Portugal. The book tells that before leaving Porto for the Americas, Marcela gave birth to a girl - I couldn't find any other information about that. It also tells that after they landed in Buenos Aires, Elisa (under the alias of Maria) married Christian Jensen, a wealthy immigrant from Denmark 24 years her senior, in 1903 and that Marcela, under the alias of Carmen, pretended to be her sister and stayed there with her daughter.

Elisa refused to consummate the marriage with Jensen. He grew suspicious and tried to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that Elisa wasn't, in fact, a woman. This claim was never substantiated: Three medical examinations confirmed that Elisa was a woman.[11] Since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After this time, there is no further record of Marcela and Elisa. Still according to this book, Elisa refused have sex with Jensen, who grew suspicious and tried to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that Elisa wasn't, in fact, a woman. It didn't work : three medical examinations confirmed that Elisa was a woman, and since the marriage was between a man and a woman, and therefore valid, no charges were brought against Elisa. After this time, there is no further record of Marcela and Elisa - though some sources claim that Elisa killed herself in 1909.

I'm sorry if some things aren't very clear - sometimes the sources I've found contradict each other, and there are differences in information between French (I'm French), Spanish and English sources. Sometimes even the same source says two different things. I've done my best, and I hope what I've written isn't too far from the truth.

This is a very interesting sorry, that is very, very important in LGB history, and I encourage you all to do your own research, read the book and watch the film! Personally, I'm very happy to have discovered this story, which I like very much.

See you tomorrow for another story/lgb icon :)

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elipheleh · 8 months

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Section 28 & Henry

So I wrote a series before the film was released where we learnt together about things from the book. I’ve been seeing some things about Henry growing up & not necessarily having the queer visibility available to him in the same way Alex did. Someone was writing about Henry at school, or mentioned it in passing - I can’t find the post now - and it reminded me of something that non-UK folk (and even perhaps the younger UK folk) wouldn’t be aware of, but would have been a part of Henry’s schooling if he had been at school, both as book-accurate age but especially as the aged-up film version. (Alex is aged up to 27 so im putting Henry at a similar age.)

This post will talk about the history behind Section 28 & its legacy, and then some personal anecdotes that will contextualise what it might’ve been like for Henry, under the premise of the real world being comparable to the RWRB universe.

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Section 28 was part of a wider Local Government Act, and was enacted in May of 1988 by a Conservative government under Thatcher. ‘The amendment stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".’ (source) In simple English, this meant that teachers - and anyone on staff - couldn’t talk about or make reference to anything that wasnt cis-heterosexuality, nor could they be openly queer. Student support groups for queer teens also had to either close or self-censor, and many teachers worried that stepping in to stop homophobic bullying would result in censure & so didn’t speak out.

Section 28 was repealed in Scotland in June 2000 and in the rest of the UK in November 2003 (under a Labour Government), but the shadow of it was present for years after - and arguably still to this day to some degree.

It was enacted for a number of reasons, but predominantly due to moral panic resulting from a negative shift in opinion about non-straight sexualities & the AIDs epidemic. Alliances between labour unions & LGBT groups (for example Lesbians & Gays Support the Miners and the National Union of Mineworkers - if you’ve seen Pride, this is the two groups featured there) caused the introduction of a resolution at the Labour Party Conference in 1985 to criminalise discrimination against LGB people. During the election campaign in 1987, then-Prime Minister Thatcher & the Conservative Party ran a smear campaign that suggested the Labour Party wanted to teach young children about explicit queer sex in schools (they didn’t).

The resulting response after the enactment of Section 28 was that of increased homophobia alongside an spike of action by the British gay rights movement. One of the UK’s leading queer groups, Stonewall, emerged from the response to Section 28, and Ian McKellen came out as a gay in 1988, whilst arguing against the legislation. However, as I mentioned previously, the shadow of Section 28 is still felt now. In 2014, 10 years after its full repeal, 29% of secondary school (age 11-17) teachers weren’t certain that they were allowed to teach lessons about LGBT topics. In 2016, it was found that school libraries still had very little queer literature or support from librarians for queer students, and 3 years later there were still British librarians who assumed Section 28 was still law - a full 16 years after full repeal. A 2018 study found that teachers who had worked under Section 28 were still cautious about being openly queer, in contrast to those who were trained as teachers after 2003.

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for context, i am 30 & was schooled in England specifically. i did go to a same-sex high school (secondary school) but i did not go to a private school (as Henry would have, were he real!) so some things will differ but it would not have been better for Henry than my experiences.

On a more personal note, I started school in 1997 and left in 2011. Throughout my schooling - my entire secondary/high school experience was once Section 28 had been repealed - I can count on one hand the number of times I encountered anything that was positive about queer people, and even less if you limit it to being ‘approved’ information. My most common exposure was hearing someone being accused of being attracted to the same sex, usually with slurs, and I use ‘accused’ here intentionally as it was meant to be insulting. There was no-one openly queer in my school - my friend was trans, but we didn’t ever call it that. I just knew from their reaction that their very-gendered birth-name made them uncomfortable & the neutral diminutive was preferred (as an example, Alexandra and Alex - this isn't their name). I don’t know if they knew the word for it then, I certainly didn’t. We didn’t learn about sexuality in PSHE (Personal, Social, Health Education), and we definitely didn’t have openly queer teachers. Straight was the default & the only option.

I talked to my friend about their experience - they’re 22 so Henry’s schooling would fall in between mine & their's in both book & film - and realistically there was not much difference. They were at a mixed-gender school, and had a couple of mentions of ‘gay’ in classes (e.g. one reference to ‘g is for gay’ in an alphabet song) but were also expected to debate if being gay was wrong in RE (religious education). Being queer wasn’t ‘okay’ but it wasn’t necessarily inherently terrible in the way my experience implied it to be. They also didn’t have any lgbt/queer clubs in school.

Another friend a similar age to myself had no positive mention of queer sexuality until they were at university, but instead was surrounded by constant slurs, was accused of being a lesbian, and heared queer (as a slur) & the f-slur thrown around on an almost hourly basis, with teachers ignoring it.

From my understanding & perspective, Henry would have had a more repressive existence than our experiences. Private all-boys boarding school, especially Eton (the school of choice for the male British royals!), would have had much more negativity surrounding being gay, and I doubt the repeal of Section 28 had much impact in such a conservative setting like that. There are open letters from former students of Eton, some of which lay out their (predominantly negative) experience with being queer at school. I've linked them below.

Sources/Additional Reading: Wikipedia - Section 28 BBC - Section 28: What was it and how did it affect LGBT+ people? Tribune - The Long Shadow of Section 28 Attitude - How Section 28’s painful legacy is still being felt three decades on - cw for homophobic violence, addiction, suicide Metro - Section 28 was repealed 15 years ago but I can’t forget the impact it had on me so easily - cw for homophobic violence, mention of grooming, suicide & addiction Guardian - Section 28 protesters 30 years on: ‘We were arrested and put in a cell up by Big Ben’ LSE - Section 28, three decades on: the legacy of a homophobic law through the LSE Library’s collections Daily Beast - I Was Eton’s Only Out Schoolboy Pink News (in response to the above) - Comment: Yes, there is homophobia at Eton Huffington Post (similar as above, more information/context) - Former Eton Student Jamie Jackson's Open Letter Proves There IS Homophobia At The College

#a series of learning about things that are referenced in the book #i probably should have a better tag #a series of learning #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb henry #red white & royal blue #elio’s #and we wonder why i didn’t realise my queerness until the point i did. hmm i wonder (/s)#long post

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sebcosmothetransguy · 28 days

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Introduction Post

Hello there, my fellow peeps/creatures. My name is Seb/Cosmo/Mars/Newt.

I made this blog, because I want to get my thoughts out there, be a part of my communities, and just for fun.

DNI if you are: homophobic, transphobic, queerphobic, acephobic, arophobic, racist, sexist, ableist (against ALL parts of the neurodivergent and mentally ill and disabled community, nothing and no one is excluded), TERF, LGB without the T supporters, nsfw, are against self-diagnosis, are against alterhumans, nonhumans, and otherkin, anti-age-regressor, anti-pet-regressor, anti reality shifters, anti-systems, and anti-endos, or are just a total jackass. Or I will block.

Identity And Orientation: I am a genderfluid genderflux non-binary guy. Ask me what I’m feeling like at the moment. I am aroace (aromantic and myrsexual [neuroasexual, nebulasexual, merosexual, and placiosexual]), and have several other attraction labels along side of it; homoalterous, panexteramo, omniqueerplatonic (the way I define the queerplatonic relationship is based on the gender of the person), panaesthetic, and pansensual. And I am ambiamorous (comfortable with both monogamous and polyamorous relationships) and I do not have a preference.

Pronouns And Terms: I use he/it/xe/ne/they/love pronouns + any/all neopronouns. I like masculine, neutral, thing, and fae terms (i.e. boy, person, that, a fae). Ask me which one I’m preferring at the moment.

Current Hyperfixation(s): Neurodivergency, Reality Shifting, and Psychology

Special Interest(s): Wings Of Fire; Harry Potter; Dragons

Books/Movies/Series I Love/Enjoy: Six Of Crows, Fourth Wing, How To Train Your Dragon, The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings, Twilight, Wrinkle In Time, and Every Day.

Hobbies (that I barely do anymore, but I still count them as my hobbies): Writing, reading, drawing, and painting.

Mental Illnesses/Neurodivergency: All self-diagnosed anxiety, depression, social anxiety, OCD, probably PMDD or PME, probably some form of PTSD, and some other fun stuff that I’m still not sure about/am still researching.

Fun/Random Facts:

I’m in a long distance relationship with @ghoulishdarcy. He is the love of my life, and my bestest friend. I love it so much.

I’m otherhearted, with a fictionhearttype and a dragonhearttype.

Dragons are my absolute favorite ever.

I am obsessed with psychology and neurodiversity (a little too much).

I enjoy Greek mythology (I researched it heavily for a few days and I now know way too much)(it was a past hyperfixation).

I am a wolfstar shipper and Jegulus shipper.

I totally believe that Qibli, Moon, and Winter should’ve ended up in a polyamorous relationship. Or at least, that Winter and Qibli would get over Moon, and confess their undying love for each other.

I am agnostic, but totally respect (and am very curious and interested in) all religions!

I’m a minor.

I make bracelets and rings (usually just for my partner and I).

I have one sibling, @belles17 @fuckthisclubup, they are the coolest ever. Love them lots.

I’m a very lazy reality shifter. I try to shift when I feel like it. I have a million DR scripts, some half-finished, some fully finished. (If anybody wants to see em, just let me know.)

I have a side blog, @theultimaterealitysurfer.

I am a maladaptive daydreamer. Used to do it a lot, but not as much anymore. Still in constant dissociation, though.

My Tags Are: seb/cosmo posts, seb/cosmo asks, seb/cosmo/mars/newt posts, newtposts, sebposts, mars posts, etc.

About My Blog:

I reblog a lot of stuff, and post my random thoughts and experiences, and occasionally art, as well as some sprinkle of other random stuff. You will see a lot of queer and neurodivergent stuff, though, that’s for sure. And I will sometimes post stuff dedicated to my partner.

Asks are very welcome from all my followers, mutuals, and random people. You can share stories or ask me random questions, and I will get around to answering them sooner or later.

I love and care about my mutuals and those I follow dearly, even though I do not know all of them personally or very well. This is a safe place for you mutuals (and even you anons!) to talk about things, whether that be experiences, struggles, or otherwise!

This is a silly, goofy, and “cringe” safe place, where we can simply be ourselves with absolutely no judgment whatsoever.

I don’t mind following blogs and having mutuals with blogs that contain NSFW stuff, but do not send me an ask that is specifically NSFW, or I will block.

I think that’s all. Have a good morning/day/night, peeps/creatures.

#new intro post #intro post #seb/cosmo posts

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laura-the-locust · 11 months

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I've been doing some thinking about xenophobia, and the limits of tolerance. For the purposes of this post, I'll define xenophobia based on its etymology: it is the fear/distate/hate of otherness.

I have broadened the scope of the definition, because in the end racism, queerphobia, ableism, and many others boil down to one basic concept: "someone is existing in a way that's foreign, and I don't like it."

[The rest under the cutoff, this balooned into an essay]

What is interesting to me, is that there are lots of people who recognize the issue with xenophobia, only to turn around and do it to somebody else. From people who loathe racism, but are homophobes, through LGB folk, to queer people who are disgusted by polyamory. In the end, it seems that they value tolerance, but only up to a point, and the difference is mostly where that border lies.

And on every layer,* there'll be people who point out the similarities: poly people are otherized in the same way trans people are, who are otherized in the same way non-straight people are, et cetera. Because, again, it's all the same thing. Different people have different cutoff points for what they are willing to tolerate.

Or is it really tolerance? Or merely sticking out for yourself? Internalised whatever-phobia aside, a trans man isn't reluctantly allowing for the existence of trans people, he is trans, and has a vested interest in trans rights.

Tolerance is, at least to me, when you don't participate/are something, and maybe it even disgusts you, but you allow for other people to do/be it. For example: my dad is straight, and thinks I'll go to hell for being gay, but he tolerates it, and doesn't bitch and moan that gay people ought to be thrown in jail. He doesn't tolerate me being a trans woman, so he thinks I'm gay when I'm with a guy, and deadnames me.

In my opinion, tolerance requires you do not like the thing you are tolerating. Another example is how one responds to "cringy" behaviour. Are you part of the mob that makes the weird kid from a tiktok the Twitter's main character for the day, or do you simply cringe, shrug, and move on? The latter is tolerance. And the best thing, is that tolerance can be learned! You can train yourself to walk away, even if internally something disgusts you.

So let's bring up the "weird kids" you may have come across on the internet, especially on Tumblr: Xenogender people. Otherkin. Tulpamancers.

A warning light just lit in some of you's heads. "Is she gonna defend them?" First of all, you are the person this post is about and aimed towards, glad you're still around. Second of all, yes and no. Well, yes to xenogenders.

My point is, is that those communities are one of the most controversial, at least from what I saw in the little echo chamber in which I live. I don't really seek them out, they just pop up occasionally when I use the web. But I have seen tons of ridicule come their way, from people at any stage of the tolerance ladder.*

(For this next part, I will assume we all believe xenophobia to be unethical. If you do not, consider this: if punishing Otherness is okay, or even desired, unfortunately for you, you and everyone you love are Other in some way to the Majority. Yes, yes they are. Bigots are extremely good at finding differences to hate, it's their whole thing. Good luck.)

So let's go over what some of those criticisms are:

"Those people believe in something that's unproven, or provably incorrect!" Okay, reddit atheist (not ad hominem, just an insult). While I find the project of encouraging rationality to be important, being wrong isn't a crime, nor should it be. The only circumstances where ignorance should be forcefully fought against, is when it causes the ignorant to do harm. You know, like thinking gay sex causes AIDS.

"But those people are harmful!" Are they? Or does their existence simply make you uncomfortable? You know, like some people don't want black folks around their neighborhood. As stated previously, lack of tolerance is a skill issue on your part.

"But they are harming themselves!" Aha! A valid concern! Let's stop here for a moment.

This sort of starts another topic: what should be the limits of tolerance? Because "being weird" isn't it. Harming others is obviously not to be tolerated.** But with harming of the self, we are going into autonomy territory.

First of, bodily autonomy is, broadly speaking, good. Pursuit of freedom is one of my axioms, and if you think maximizing freedom is not desirable, I cannot have a conversation with you.

But what, if any, should its limits be? Self harm is bad, right? But... why? Well, physical self harm can and often does follow the same mechanism as an addiction, especially when used as a coping mechanism. This means escalation, which may result in permanent injury (which lowers quality of life) or even death (the utility of which is zero at best)(Yes, I am a utilitarian).

Okay, so if self delusion doesn't result in bodily harming yourself or others, it's fine, right? Sure, it's upsetting to think that someone is wrong on the internet, but is it really worth fighting over?

I'd argue that every time you go to someone that has "ghe/ghem | I am the reincarnation of Winston Churchill's cat" in their bio and tell them about how much they are not that, and reincarnation isn't real, or whatever, you are actually doing more harm. That catkin is not changing their mind. Do you honestly think that you are the first person that informed them that gheir views do not find evidence in objective reality? Obviously not! Ghe heard that already most of the times ghe spoke about it to anyone outside gheir community! And all you're doing is adding on to a pile of hate that gathers dust in gheir inbox, and possibly pushes ghem one step closer to doing something really inadvisable, even suicide.

"So what, delusions are okay, as long as you don't harm anyone?" Delusions are something one should work through with one's therapist, not with a NEET*** from Utah who has his own religious trauma he should be dealing with instead.

In conclusion: leave "weird people" alone, don't yuck other's yum if it doesn't influence you, and get a therapist. We all need one these days.

Footnotes:

*People don't always support minorities according to the steps I've laid out, but they usually do. Your non-binary mutual probably isn't racist.

**the specifics on when violence is permissible are a whole doctorate thesis on their own, but the general sentiment stands. Violence usually results in suffering, which is axiomatically bad.

***not hating on NEETs, I'm one myself. But you wouldn't have enough time to hate on christians on reddit if you had a job.

#trans #queer #mental health #in this essay i will #xenophobia #racism #queerphobia #transphobia #otherkin #neopronouns #cringe culture is ableist #ableism #polyamory #this is the most tags I've ever used but this shit is long already so whatever

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it-is-the-female-federal · 11 months

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so i'm a detrans radfem (detrans'd back in august) and the past few weeks i've been really examining my attraction to others for the first time since i came out as bisexual years ago. and im starting to think that maybe i'm heterosexual and i just. don't know how to cope with that. being part of the 'queer' community was such a big part of my identity for years, and then even after i detransitioned i still was proud to be a bisexual woman and part of the LGB community. but really i can barely remember any specific times i was sexually attracted to women except when i forced the feeling while very briefly dating a girl back in high school. i just had assumed i was bisexual bc i like hanging out with women a lot and theyre objectively rlly pretty and i would love to find a female life partner but. theres just this strong sexual desire i get with men and not women and i'm finally realizing that but i hate the idea of being a straight woman, especially as someone who has made the choice to not date men for political and safety reasons. on top of that, all of my friends are bisexual and with how many jokes we've made about heterosexuals in the past, i'm worried i wouldn't fit in as much. sorry for the rant i just felt upset and needed to get it off my chest

Sweety, I am glad you found a way to get it off your chest, and if you want a bigger conversation, my dms are open.

Anyway, it is normal to feel confused as a teenager and if you are surrounded by a certain group you want to fit in. I think all the women are pretty, so of course you should be attracted to them muddied the water of the conversations around attraction. Aesthetically pleasing and attraction/desire are different things, and people need to accept that yeah, sometimes you happen to be straight. My test whenever I doubt my attraction is, can I envision myself having sex with a woman and enjoying it. My answer is always yes, but it has helped me make my feelings clearer. I think you have had a similar train of thought and came to the conclusion of being straight. It is difficult to accept parts of yourself that you put away, but if they are truly your friends, they will support you. Especially if they hung arpund after detransitioning. That is not easy to accept, maybe in q**** spaces, but they stood by you as you found more of yourself. Sexuality is a part of you, but it isn't you nor your identity or personality. You are more than the sum of your attributes, and the defining characteristic shouldn't be your sexuality, but your compassion or kindness or passion. I wish you lots of luck on this journey of self-acceptance, and my dms are open. Hopefully, you got something useful out of my response. I want to wish you the best of luck anon❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

#radfem #radical feminism #nicoles asks #anon #nicoles ask #detrans experience #sexuality

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hjellacott · 5 months

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"Inclusivity" is not what people claim it is (for their own personal gain)

Lately I'm hearing a lot about inclusivity because people claim that is a good reason for the term "women" or "woman" to disappear from medical pages about female-only health things (while ironically the same thing does NOT happen to men stuff) in favour of being more "inclusive" and "including" trans people. I'm also hearing this a lot in classrooms (I was a teacher and many of my friends still are) when it comes to the inclusivity of people with learning difficulties in normal schools that aren't adapted for learning difficulties. So I thought I'd get some heads out of arses by reminding everyone that is NOT inclusivity.

Let's start by analysing this definition carefully, coming from Cambridge:

Inclusivity is the fact (as in, a thing that is done) of including (grouping together) all types of people (regardless of colour, sex, nationality, sexual orientation, age and so on), things or ideas and treating them all fairly (with fairness) and equally (in the same manner).

Obviously, in real life it gets applied a bit differently, and with limits. We include both girls and boys in a party, but perhaps we set an age limit, we include people with learning difficulties in a classroom where other kids don't have learning difficulties, but we limit the seriousness of those difficulties, and so on. Still, as a general idea, in our society:

Inclusivity is putting both boys and girls in the same classroom, with the same teacher, learning the same things at the same time and treating them equally.

Inclusivity is including (hence the word) LGB under the umbrella of same-sex attraction, as opposed to just saying "gay" and forgetting the rest.

Inclusivity is using the term POC as opposed to simply "black" to include all kinds of people of colour, regardless of whether their actual tone of skin is pitch dark, or whether they're of African descent or another.

Inclusivity is including disabled people into your place of work and helping them to be able to do the same work as their peers.

Let's now pause to think about the part of "treating them all fairly and equally". Notice that "fairly" is put first and given precedence. This is to stress the fact that fairness goes first, and equally refers more to the fact that the fair treatment should put everyone in an equal level of advantage or disadvantage, without giving anyone extra privileges.

Example 1: You've got several children of different heights trying to see over a tall fence. Treating them just equally would mean giving them all the same stool to climb on to look over the fence, even if some kids are already tall enough to see without help, and others might need an extra tall stool. It'd be equal but it wouldn't be fair. But treating them fairly first and equally second means analysing their individual difficulties and giving them each a taller or shorter stool so that in the end their heads are all at equal height over the fence. That way the children end up being treated fairly and being in equal conditions.

Example 2: You bring children with learning difficulties into a school that is not equipped to deal properly with learning difficulties, and where all of the classmates don't have learning difficulties and the teachers aren't trained for them. Sure, it might seem there's inclusivity, because all of the kids are going to the same school regardless of sex, problems, conditions, age, and so on, right? But it isn't, because it isn't fair to the kids with learning difficulties, who will have to reach the same level as their peers without the extra help they need. In this case, they'll also be treated equally, but once again, not fairly. For inclusivity to be done right, you can't forget the fairness, therefore the kids with learning difficulties should be having some accommodations made for them, so that they can be at equal level with their peers, in a fair situation.

Inclusivity is frequently done wrong in schools, hospitals, prisons and all over the world because the principle of fairness gets constantly forgotten, so that we give stools to people who don't need them just because everyone must have one, if you see my point.

Now, ideologies aside, you can't claim inclusivity to remove women's only spaces. A previously "women's only" prison, locker room, bathroom, etc., gets turned into an "everybody" place just for the comfort of trans people, and there is no inclusivity there because it's not fair to anyone and it's not equal to anyone. Think about it. Before each got to have a place of their own, now nobody does, and the reason why there was a division for sex in the first place, which was safety, gets forgotten. Therefore not only there is no fairness and equality and everyone loses a privilege and is forced to be crammed together, but also, it's a total disrespect and slap on the face to for instance victims of sexual assault, whose valid concerns are being disrespected and ignored, and who are being forced to share intimate spaces with people that look like their aggressors, putting them in situations that can be heavily triggering and harmful for their mental health, unfairly.

Why should some people's feelings of safety, fear, concerns, be more valid than others? That's not fair. You want inclusivity? Give them all a private space they don't have to share, where they can all feel safe.

Similarly, there is no inclusivity in removing the term women so that trans women feel better, specially not in medical websites where the term "women" (or its singular, woman) is absolutely essential because all kinds of medical issues, from cancer to heart attacks, can look extremely differently depending solely on biological sex. Because guess what? your health and your body don't give two shits about your gender identity. Neither do medical issues. You can tell yourself you're a woman all you want, but if you were born a boy you won't ever fear cervical cancer, you'll fear prostate cancer, and a heart attack will look different in you than in biological women. And biology cannot be changed no matter how many surgeries you undergo and how many medicines you take. Keeping the terms women and men in medicine and other scientific contexts, to put this example, is for everyone's safety, including yours. And it's inclusive to keep it and exclusive to remove it. Yes, you hear it right, what you've called inclusivity, is actually exclusing half the world's population (women).

And when you hesitate, think about LGBTQ+. Why do we have so many letters? Because inclusivity. The same way you wouldn't want your repressentative letter to disappear from that, because it'd make you invisible, women don't want their noun to disappear from places, because it makes us invisible. And women have historically been invisible long enough.

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maslows-pyramid-scheme · 11 months

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Thank you for your answer on the Pride question. I feel much the same way in terms of it not being a productive space for me to engage with my full sexuality, which is not to knock on people for whom it does fulfill that need — it’s just not for me. Aside from that it’s been overrun by gender nonsense!

I’m interested in what you said about Pride not being a useful tool for the West anymore in terms of asking myself, “Is this actually working to gain us safety and acceptance?” For the place where I live, we’re at a point in time where coworkers or acquaintances point-blank ask me, “Are you gay? Are you part of the rainbow brigade?” but it’s not actually fully safe to answer. There are other LGB people at my job and I know what people are saying about them specifically behind their backs and I know what people are saying about the community in general when they think no LGB people are in the room. In contrast to that are seminars and workshops and inclusivity training around LGBT (but mostly T!) issues that don’t seem to be changing these mindsets at all or are even making it worse, even if they are well-meaning. And I wonder what the solution is for us as an SSA community. I feel at quite a loss in an environment where it’s socially acceptable to ASK someone such a personal question as their sexual orientation but it’s not actually socially acceptable to *be* LGB.

I'm sorry to hear about your workplace, what sort of things do they say when they think nobody's around?

My workplace awkwardly dances around sexuality and gender identity. My boss keeps hiring upper middle class 'diversity experts' to come and explain how to gender people correctly to my upper middle class colleagues, but nobody is actually interested in learning anything - they don't get it, they don't care, and they're just ticking the boxes.

(One of them once said to me that bisexuals are lucky to be included in the Club. We don't have any real problems, did you know?)

It's just so... meaningless, to have visibility without respect or meaningful social inclusion.

#I wish i had an answer for you re what to do #we need to separate gender identity discussions from sexuality discussions (even though so many LGB people are gendies)#i haven't been ignoring this i've been mulling it over #anon

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dathen · 4 years

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I cannot emphasize enough how much exclusionism harms LGBT ace and aro people. There is no such thing as “well those aces are allowed, I’m just worried about straight infiltration” because they’re not actually doing shit to include even the aces that they give their free pass to!

I am asexual, aromantic, and agender. While a lot of people would say that being nonbinary/agender doesn’t count as trans, but for the sake of theory let’s say it does. By supposed exclusionist theory, one of these identities allows me to be included in queer spaces--my gender identity. By their logic this should mean I have nothing to worry about, right?

Except I can’t check my asexual and aromantic identities at the door. I may have three separate words to define myself, but in reality they’re so intertwined I can barely tell where one ends and where another begins. I was best able to explore being agender when around other aromantic and asexual people, who had similar experiences as me. I can’t put into words how beneficial this was in a very dark time in my life.

LGBT aces are not accepted by exclusionists in any real sense of the word. We constantly see your mockery and your ace cringe compilation posts, we constantly see the “I hope ace people have a bad day--gays and lesbians only!” shitposts. We’re told that half of our identity is embarrassing and childish and humiliating, don’t talk about it, pretend it away, only hype the attraction we do have (if any). If you’re a trans aroace person like myself, you’re completely out of luck--it’s difficult enough for the community to remember that trans people exist and don’t also need to justify their place in the community with LGB attraction. Hell, I remember seeing some using the term “queer trans people” to separate them out from straight and aroace trans people, to make sure the rest of us know we’re not welcome.

It erases the extremely important space to talk about the intersection of being ace and LGBT. People shouldn’t have to talk about their sexuality while bottling up how being ace or aro affects it. People shouldn’t be made to think that being ace or aro makes them a diluted form of queerness. I shouldn’t have to untangle the jumble that is my identity, peel away and discard the threads of asexuality and aromanticism and how those have affected my life, and somehow try to talk about and relate to my gender as a stand-alone thing.

This is NOT “acceptance.” This is NOT “oh we’re just trying to keep straight people out.”

When I first started considering I may not be straight, the first resources I found were LGBT blogs that said that asexuality was just people with so much internalized homophobia that they couldn’t accept their own attraction. I tried forcing myself to have attraction, training myself to warm up to the idea of having sex, and just traumatized myself further. I still don’t think I’ve recovered from this almost ten years later, and I think the extent of my sex repulsion came from these self-corrective behaviors. While I’ve seen people who formerly identified as asexual later decide a different identity fits them better, stating this is fact for everyone who doesn’t experience attraction is unspeakably harmful.

I’ve been in this game for a long time, well before the backlash that caused aspec resources to vanish, back before “discourse” was even a commonly used word. I used to try to play along with what everyone told me to do to be a Good Little Ace. Avoided calling myself “queer” because only people with attraction can call themselves that, right? So if I made a post about the struggles I had with self-worth and suicide ideation as an asexual person, in hopes to reaching other asexual people with similar struggles as me, I was still staying within the lines! No mention of being part of any community or calling myself “queer” or “LGBT” or anything! It didn’t prevent me from getting so much harassment I had to deactivate my blog, half of involved accusations of “you’re just pretending to be oppressed so you can infiltrate the LGBT community!” even though I hadn’t said a word about it in my posts!

I am so discouraged by young people who are already so deep in exclusionist rhetoric, and who would rather swallow up and parrot unquestioned hatred rather than think about the harm they’re doing. If your attitude is “I’m not an aphobe, I’m just an exclusionist,” please stop and think of the actual effects of your beliefs. Listen to the people this affects, listen to how this has affected our entire lives. This isn’t an announcement that we’re more oppressed than you, this is a call to recognize we’re with you and that giving us space and companionship and support can be literally life-saving. I am begging for people to listen to each other’s experiences, see and hear us as people, rather than just a jumble of letters to unfeelingly sort.

#asexuality #aromanticism #aphobia #acephobia #arophobia #LGBT #I highly encourage allo people to reblog as well #sorry for the length but I cannot shut up #I know this post is limited in scope but if I include my rambles on including cis aroace and straight aces it will be ANOTHER FOUR PAGES

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nerdygaymormon · 3 years

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Mel Dahl - Friend of Dorothy

Homosexual activity has been has been a reason to be discharged from the US military since the Revolutionary War. As the USA prepared to enter World War II, the military, in addition to its regular efforts to find gay, lesbian and bisexual service members and boot them from service, added processes to try to identify “homosexual” recruits and prevent them from joining,

During his campaign for the presidency, Bill Clinton pledged to lift the ban on gay troops, but faced opposition from senior military personnel and powerful Congressional leaders.

The compromise they reached and implemented in 1994 was the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which meant the military wouldn’t actively search for gay, lesbian or bisexual personnel nor ask about a person’s sexual orientation, but if the military discovered someone is LGB, they could be discharged. Thus as long as the LGB individual didn’t share about their personal life at work or with military colleagues while off base, they should be able to serve. A truly imperfect and problematic policy, but a step forward.

This “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy remained in effect for 17 years, until being repealed by Pres. Obama. Openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people have been allowed to serve in the US armed forces since the repeal.

—————————

When Mel Dahl enrolled in the Navy in 1980, a military doctor asked the standard question of whether he’s gay, and Mel admitted he was. He completed basic training and applied for clearance to be a cryptographer. As part of that process, he again was asked if he is gay and his truthfulness got him a dishonorable discharge.

He fought his discharge in court, even walking coast-to-coast in 1981 to publicize his case. It took 13 years of court battles, but in 1994 a judge finally ruled his dismissal unconstitutional and the Navy agreed to pay him 4 year’s worth of back wages. During the media interest early in the legal battle, Mel told a reporter that a great many gay men served at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center where he was stationed.

A witch hunt for gay sailors at the Great Lakes base ensued. The Naval Intelligence Service launched a full-scale investigation to identify a presumably massive homosexual network. They followed Mel Dahl and would secretly go through his possessions trying to find clues.

Naval intelligence discovered and infiltrated a gay Christian group that tried to worship weekly on base and everyone who was participating was discharged.

The Navy sent investigators to gay bars in the Chicago area to discover gay sailors. Investigators were paid to pose as gay men, to drink and dance and introduce themselves to other patrons, trying to identify who might be in the military.

During these trips to the gay bars, they noticed that many gay men identified themselves as “a friend of Dorothy.” The Intelligence Service figured that “Dorothy” must be a woman who organized a city-wide ring of gay servicemen. If they could find her, they figured they could “convince” her to talk, perhaps outing many gay navy personnel, who with a little pressure could be persuaded to identify many other gay men in the Navy so they all could be booted out.

The key was to find Dorothy. The NIS sent investigators to the gay bars to ask questions about this mystery woman. At one point, someone managed to convince them that a real-life woman officer named Dorothy was who they were after. She was very religious and anti-gay and this was a way of getting back at her for her bigotry. Spies followed her for months, never finding any associations with gay people, and concluded they had the wrong Dorothy.

They never found Dorothy

—————————

An interesting aside, while this investigation, and many others, focused on gay men, in the late 1980s there was a perception that the military was unfairly not working so hard to discover lesbians in the ranks.

Vice Admiral Joseph S. Donnell sent out a memo urging his subordinates to ferret out lesbians in the Navy. His memo included this helpful tip for identifying lesbians:

“Experience has shown that the stereotypical female homosexual in the Navy is hard-working, career-oriented, willing to put in long hours on the job and among the command’s top professionals.”

Wouldn’t want their kind!

Military records indicate that in the 1990′s, being a woman who was also a member of a naval sports team, like softball or basketball, was enough to get the person onto the “potential lesbian” list, with Naval Intelligence scouting the games and taking pictures of the players to add to their investigation files.

————————————————————

The phrase “Friend of Dorothy” first popped up in the 1940’s, and for many decades was a way for gay people to indicate someone is gay. The “Dorothy” in question is the main character from the Wizard of Oz.

At a time when it was illegal to be gay and society was strongly homophobic, it was handy to have a phrase that allowed gay men to identify themselves to each other without actually saying they’re gay. When meeting another person, the gay man could say, “I’m a friend of Dorothy,” and if the other man were gay, he likely understands exactly what is being said. But if he isn’t gay, he’d probably think the individual thought they had a mutual friend named Dorothy.

Some believe that the phrase is derived from book The Road To Oz (1909), a sequel to the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In that book, Polychrome (Oz) says, “You have some queer friends, Dorothy.” She replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends.”

The movie The Wizard of Oz delighted audiences and was so popular that from 1959 until the 1990′s, it was broadcast annually as a television special on American television.

Dorothy’s journey from Kansas to Oz mirrored gay men’s desires to escape the black-and-white limitations of their small-town life for the big, colorful cities.

The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion are misfits who don’t conform to the roles society has given them, and yet Dorothy immediately accepts them. The Tin Man is constantly getting emotional and crying and needing to be lubed up. The Scarecrow can’t frighten a crow nor anything else. The Cowardly Lion identifies himself as a “sissy,” says “there’s no denyin’, I’m a dandy lion,” and behaves in a stereotypically effeminate way.

Gay men are often accused of being less masculine than straight men and could see themselves in these characters. Dorothy meeting & accepting them is often interpreted as her meeting & accepting gay men without question. It didn’t matter to Dorothy if others were different, it was their character that mattered.

The phrase “Friend of Dorothy” isn’t nearly as widely known nowadays in the LGBT community thanks to the changes in the law and societal attitudes.

—————————

I learned the British equivalent of “Friend of Dorothy” is “Friend of Mrs. King” (aka, Queen, as in a "gay man"). “Do you know if Nigel is a friend of Mrs. King?”

#Mel Dahl #Friend of Dorothy #hahaha #the US Naval Intelligence Service couldn't crack the simple code #shows how effective it was #gays knew it and straights did not #queer history

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vampish-glamour · 3 years

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Please help I just read the syllabus of my senior writing class and it's so cringey woke it makes me squirm. Here's some highlights:

"Land Acknowledgement" clause where the professor pretty much saying "sowwy our campus is on native land"

"Ironically(?), academic writing has historically been a tool for oppression. It has encouraged standardization from a "Western", often colonized (and racist) lens."

"Commit to consistent training from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and marginalized scholars that combat oppression & white supremacy"

"Standardized Western English (SWE) has historically been a tool of colonization and oppression; code-meshing is one way to combat that. "Grammar" will not be graded in this class. Instead, it will be lightly critiqued for clarity and consistency."

"For example, a Latinx/e woman and a Latinx/e disabled woman will both experience marginalization as women, and as Latinx/e women. But the intersecting/additional identity of “disabled” will significantly impact and add layers to the experience of the disabled woman in ways that won’t happen for the other. Further, the intersecting identities of a Black Queer man means he will have different experiences than a Black heterosexual man, even though they are both Black men."

And finally, these words are in the class glossary with very woque definitions: BIPOC, QTBIPOC (awful), micro-aggressions and micro-affirmations (?), nonbinary/two spirit, and whiteness: "The ideology of white culture, privilege, and supremacy; and a source of systemic racism/injustice. Whiteness is not “being white” – it is the normalized and standardized ideologies that make white culture dominant. Whiteness is a standard other ideologies are measured against. A person could be non-white and support whiteness; or a person could be white and oppose whiteness."

Sorry for the long ask but this was so cringe I had to share.

The Land Acknowledgement thing is very common in Canada, or at least where I am in Canada. There’s a little blurb that has to be said at every public assembly, there’s plaques that get hung up, all that. And while I get what they’re trying to do, it seems to be up the alley of virtue signalling or performative activism. It just doesn’t seem to be doing anything productive.

But thankfully I haven’t ran into any of the other stuff on the list. That sounds like hell.

I can’t believe you’re in a writing class and grammar isn’t being graded. And I can’t believe it’s considered not racist to basically say “expecting people in a writing class to write with proper grammar is bad because the coloureds POC can’t use proper grammar”. Which I’m assuming is what they’re getting at since I’ve heard that sentiment before and I’m always shocked at the sheer racism of it.

AHHHH the calling people slurs omg 😭

“QTBIPOC” I want somebody to play dumb with this and ask why the syllabus specifically mentions “cutie bisexual people of colour”.

I hate the acronym “QT” though. Because is the Q supposed to lump LGB together?? Why are trans people allowed to not be called a slur? Or is it just “queer and trans” because for some reason trans people seem to get all the attention?? I hate it either way.

The bit on whiteness is just so stupid omg… wanna bet that considering the grammar part, they’d say a black person who uses proper grammar is “supporting whiteness” lmao.

I find myself hating most terms that end in “-ness” tbh.

Anyways… I’m sorry you’ve gotta deal with that, it sounds absolutely fucking insufferable. Especially for a writing class of all things.

#asks #anon #hell world!!! it’s hell world I tell you!!!

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olddominionrailways · 25 days

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DCC Sound Decoders: Capturing the Essence of Locomotive Symphony

Old Dominion Railways: Enhancing Your Model Railroading Experience with DCC Sound Decoders and ESU DCC Decoders

#lgb train #lgb train engein #esu dcc decoders #lgb train parts #toy train

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thatdiabolicalfeminist · 4 years

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In our culture the politics of desire run along kyriarchial lines. People in oppressed groups are not “supposed to” approach people with power over them - the person with more power is the only one socially allowed to initiate a relationship with someone with less.

If someone in an oppressed group is bold enough to proposition someone with more power for a date or even a friendship etc., they are generally seen as either pathetic or predatory. Those with less power are not supposed to be the choosers, they’re supposed to just be grateful for ever being chosen.

However, if you approach someone age-appropriate (who isn’t your student, employee, barista, etc) in a respectful way to ask them for a date or just to hang out as friends, you’re not being predatory OR pathetic just because you are oppressed in ways they are not.

And if someone approaches you and your knee jerk reaction is to be offended or feel threatened or disgusted not because of how they behaved but because of who they are as part of an oppressed group, you need to reevaluate how you think of people in that group.

Not by forcing yourself to date or befriend them - that would be a bad situation for them, who wants to be friends with someone who thinks of them that way! - but by spending time with self reflection and by learning more about that group, seeking out resources about them and consuming media not just about their struggles but about their lives. You need to train yourself to see these other people as human beings who are just as worthy of care and respect as you are.

Despite everything media and our sick society has taught us...

Fat people are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing thin people.

Women are not predatory or pathetic for actively pursuing men instead of waiting to be pursued.

LGB people are not predatory or pathetic for mistaking a straight person for one of us, or for wanting to be friends with straight people.

Trans and nonbinary people are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing cis people.

People who are racialised where they live are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing people who are white or who are not racialised where they live.

People with any type of disability, however visible, however debilitating, are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing abled people.

Sex workers are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing non sex workers.

Poor and/or uneducated people are not predatory or pathetic for pursuing people with money and/or education.

You are not inherently more deserving of care and respect than anyone who is oppressed in ways you are not.

Someone with less power asking for a date/relationship/friendly activity in a respectful way while being willing to accept a “no” graciously is not an insult or a threat, it’s them treating you as an equal instead of a superior.

Your blanket lack of interest in people oppressed in ways you are not is about you and your prejudices, not about them and their worthiness. And if your knee jerk reaction is to be upset someone oppressed would dare to treat you as an equal, that is a deep-rooted prejudice you need to confront.

#politics of desire #dating #relationships #feminism #thatdiabolicalfeminist #friendship #how to not be an asshole

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skyfire85 · 3 years

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-An AV-8B from VMA-163 takes-off from USS Makin Island (LHD-8). | Photo: National Museum of the U.S. Navy

Flightline: 70 - McDonnell Douglas/BAe AV-8B Harrier II

The AV-8A was operated by the USMC beginning in 1971, but the Marines quickly found that the Harrier was less powerful than hoped, only capable (with a standar takeoff, no less) of carrying a smaller payload than an A-4 over a shorter range. In 1973, a joint US/UK team began work on a project to develop a new Harrier, powered by a redesigned Pegasus 15 engine. This aircraft, dubbed the AV-16, would have double the AV-8A’s range and payload, and would replace the Harrier GR.1/3 in RAF service and the AV-8A and A-4 Skyhawk in USMC roles. The UK pulled out of the project in 1975, owing to rising costs and decreased defense spending, and the US, unwilling to foot the costs alone, canceled the program. McDonnell Douglas and Hawker Siddeley continued work on upgrading the Harrier, and in 1976 began modifying two AV-8As with new wings, revised intakes and nozzles, and other aerodynamic changes. These mules were designated YAV-8B.

-One of two AV-8As being modified into YAV-8Bs. | Photo: U.S. Navy Naval Aviation News

The results showed greater than expected drag, but positive test results in other areas, including payload, range, and V/STOL performance, led to the award of a development contract in 1979. In 1981 BAe (formed by the nationalization and merger of British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley Aviation, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics and Scottish Aviation) rejoined the program in 1981, enticed by the more affordable path McDonnell Douglas was forging. The MoU stipulated a 60/40 split between the US and UK companies, with airframe production taking place at McDonnell Douglas’ facilities in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, and BAe’s Kingston and Dunsfold facilities, and engine production split 75/25 between Rolls-Royce (which had previously absorbed Bristol Siddeley) and P&W.

-Illustration: McDonnell Douglas

The AV-8B Harrier II was extensively redesigned from the AV-8A, with the forward fuselage extended and the cockpit raised by ten inches, providing better pilot visibility. To compensate for these changes, the rear fuselage was lengthened by a foot and a half, and a taller tail, based on that used on the Sea Harrier, was fitted. The biggest change was the new supercritical wing, which was larger than the one used on previous models (the outriggers on the AV-8B are in the same place as on the AV-8A/GR.1/3, giving a sense of scale), and had a higher aspect ratio and decreased sweep. The new wing also had leading edge extensions, all of which grants the Harrier II a 6,700lb increase in payload with a 1,000' takeoff roll. The AV-8B was the first combat aircraft to feature carbon fiber composites in its construction, with the wing and forward fuselage being almost exclusively carbon/epoxy construction, leading to the Harrier II being almost five hundred pounds lighter than if it had been constructed from metals alone.

-An AV-8B from VMA-331 in 1991 during Operation DESERT STORM. The squadron eventually dropped 256 tons of ordinance during the war and became the first attack squadron to operate from an amphibious assault ship. | Photo: U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation

The AV-8B completed operational evaluation (OPEVAL) in 1985, and entered service with the USMC starting with USMC squadron VMA-331 (“Bumblebees”). In 1990 Marine Harrier IIs were deployed to the Persian Gulf on the amphibious assault ships USS Nassau and Tarawa as part of Operation DESERT SHIELD, flying training and support sorties. Despite plans to hold the AV-8B in reserve during the initial phases of DESERT STORM, Harriers were pressed into service on 17 January in response to a call for close air support from an USMC OV-10 Bronco against Iraqi artillery positions. The next day, AV-8s began strike missions against Iraqi targets in southern Kuwait. During Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM, 86 AV-8Bs amassed 3,380 flights and about 4,100 flight hours, with a mission availability rate of over 90 percent. Five AV-8Bs were lost to enemy surface-to-air missiles, and two USMC pilots were killed. After the end of the war, Norman Schwarzkopf included the AV-8 along with the F-117 and AH-64 in his list of weapons that played crucial roles in the campaign. Marine Harriers remained in the Gulf region during Operation SOUTHERN WATCH from 1992 to 2003, operating from ‘phibs in the Gulf and from forward operating bases such as Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait. Marine Corps Harrier IIs were later flown during Operation ALLIED FORCE over Yugoslavia, ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan, and the 2003 Iraq war.

-An AV-8B Harrier aircraft hovers above the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) as the pilot makes a vertical landing. The Bataan was dubbed “Harrier Carrier” during Operation Iraqi Freedom. | Photo: Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Jonathan Carmichael - USN

Two major variants of the AV-8B were produced: the Night Attack Harrier and the Harrier II Plus. First fielded in 1991, the Night Attack Harrier featured a FLIR camera on the nose cone, a wide-angle HUD, provisions for NVGs and a digital moving map. The Night Attack Harriers are powered by a Pegasus 11-61 (aka the F402-RR-408), which produce 23,000lbf of thrust. The Harrier II+ is also powered by the -408, and is fitted with a APG-65 multi-mode pulse-Doppler radar, taken from early model F/A-18s during their own upgrades to APG-73 radar. This allowed Harrier II+ to carry AIM-120 AMRAAM, as well as AGM-65 Maverick and AGM-84 Harpoon missiles, though the angle-rate bombing system was removed. Upgraded AV-8Bs are also capable of carrying a LITENING targeting pod, allowing the employment of PGMs.

-An AV-8B Night Attack Harrier, showing the FLIR camera mount on the nose. | Photo: Dick Wels

-An AV-8B Harrier II+ hovering. | Photo: D. Miller

The Italian Navy ordered two TAV-8B trainers, followed by a further order of 16 AV-8B+ to operated from the carriers Andrea Doria and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Italian Harriers were part of the nation’s commitment to the NATO campaign over Kosovo, dropping conventional and LGBs. An additional 7 aircraft were ordered in the early 200s to serve on the new carrier Cavour, with existing aircraft also upgraded to carry AIM-120s and JDAM guided bombs. Italy has ordered a force of 15 F-35B Lightning IIs to replace its Harriers.

-An Italian AV-8B+ launching from the carrier Cavour’s ski jump. | Photo: Aldo Bidini

Already an operator of AV-8A Matadors, the Spanish Navy was the first international operator of the AV-8B Harrier II, ordering 12 of its own variants, known as the VA-2 Matador II. The Matadors operated from Príncipe de Asturias beginning in 1989. In 1993, an additional eight VA-2+ (the equivalent of the AV-8B+) were ordered, along with a TAV-8B trainer. In 2000, Boeing (which had absorbed McDonnell Douglas) signed a contract to upgrade a number of early model VA-2s (the number varies from 2-11) to Harrier Plus standards, allowing them to carry AIM-120 missiles. Due to budget constraints, only five of the original Matador IIs were upgraded. The Matadors were part of Spain’s commitment to Operation DENY FLIGHT, enforcing the UN’s no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the Asturias was decommissioned in 2013, the Matador IIs operate from the amphibious assault ship Juan Carlos I. Spain was interested in replacing the VA-2s with F-35Bs, but has instead settled on extending the Matador’s service life, citing the cost of replacements.

-A Matador II+ over RIAT in 2019. | Photo: Airwolfhound

The first RAF Harrier II, known as the GR.5, entered service in 1987, replacing earlier GR.1 and GR.3 variants. The GR.5 differed from the AV-8B in that it had stainless steel leading edges to meet RAF bird-strike requirements, as well as in avionics and weapons. The RAF’s GR.5s were considered too immature a system to be deployed for the 1991 Gulf War, though several were dispatched to patrol the no-fly zones in 1993. Beginning in 1990 BAe began testing an upgraded Harrier II GR.7, which was broadly similar to the Night Attack AV-8B. After a successful test program 34 GR.7 were delivered through 1991, with the existing GR.5s upgraded beginning the same year. The GR.7s, hastily modified with GPS navigation, were deployed with NATO forced to the former Yugoslavia, and carried out recon and strike missions, often dropping LGBs on targets designated by SEPECAT Jaguars. Later, GR.7s were part of the UK’s commitment to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Beginning in the middle 2000s, BAe began development of the GR.9 upgrade, which would improve communications, ground proximity warning and navigation systems, followed by the integration of the AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missile. The GR.9 upgrade also included replacement of fatigued airframe components. GR.9s were deployed to Afghanistan in 2007, allowing aged GR.7s to be withdrawn. The stresses of war and advancing age of the fleet caused the wholesale retirement of the RAF’s Harrier IIs in 2011, with their tasks being assigned to Tornado GR.4s until delivery of the F-35B Lightning.

-A Royal Air Force Harrier GR.9 conducts a combat patrol over Afghanistan, equipped with a laser-designator pod and armed with Paveway guided bombs. | Photo: USAF

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azurowle · 3 years

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@itsjustwokehomophobia Transcribing this post based off of our conversation this morning where you requested an image ID. This is my first time doing this, so my apologies if it’s not the greatest.

(@itsthevioletqueen if you would like me to add this transcription to your post let me know, and I apologize for accidentally posting it earlier - I’m not used to using Tumblr on my desktop. If you don;t want me to that’s fine.)

I decided to censor any slurs I found. I was initially not going to, because (a) this was the words of the 4channers, not me, and (b) I think ultimately censoring them would ruin the impact of what this is saying for itsjustwokehomophobia, but honestly, I really think that if the parts where they’re strategizing how to spread this don’t utterly disgust you, then the slurs sure as fuck aren’t.

Nevertheless, HUGE HONKIN’ TRIGGER WARNING FOR TRANSPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, ANTI-SEMITISM, RACISM, AND FASCIST LANGUAGE UNDER THE CUT. IT’S 4CHAN, FOLKS, YOU KNOW HOW THIS GOES.

[Image ID: A series of five screenshots. The first is a screenshot of Twitter user @bluemoth5, sharing a series of screenshots from 4chan.

bluemoth5: Anybody that thinks #superstraight is a real thing, fuck off.

itsthevioletqueen: 4chan is at it fucking again

itsthevioletqueen: tw: transphobia and slurs v

The v points down to a “Read More” link.

Below the Read More are four screenshots taken from 4chan, from a thread titled “/SS/ super straight general.” The four screenshots depict a conversation started by an anonymous user with the ID “bjG0EDki.” The thread is as follows, using the anon IDs to differentiate who’s speaking:

bjG0EDki: >Making this thread before the other one hits the bump limit GOALS >drive a wedge between tr*nnies and other f*g groups >Redpill zoomers >Use the left’s tactics against themselves, call them bigots for not accepting super straights >Shitpost on social media >Hit mainstream status

WHAT THE FUCK IA HAPPENING

>zoomer on tiktok makes a new sexuality called “super straight” meaning one is only attracted to the biological sex, meaning no trannies >Countering the tranny logic that tr**ns are “real women

WHAT DO I DO

>spam this shit all over, make memes, retweet SS agents on twitter, post on every site imaginable

(The post contains a picture of an SS flag, with half of it black and half of it orange. The orange “S” is on the black background, and the black “S” is on the orange background.)

bjG0Eki: Kiwifarms already found out about this, contribute there too (URL not included to discourage others from going there)

Gdf7IUBH: bump

User whose ID is unknown: >hate tr*nnies for stealing their thunder. I think >Hitching the T wagon to the LGB train, and demanding it runs through equality station and all the way to nonceville. cover it better, but I get the gist

5nvQLkOk: Just spitballing my earlier concept

(The picture includes a half-black, half-orange flag with a stylized “S” that is half-orange, half-black.)

0bAuFtXq: DON’T FUCKING USE THE SS SYMBOLS JESUS CHRIST YOU STUPID N*****S THIS WILL STOP THE MOVEMENT SO FUCKING HARD STOP IT YOU ABSOLUTE R*TARDS USE SAFER AND F*GGOT-IER SYMBOLISM TO GET MORE AND DON’T FUCKING BE R**ARDED ACT HOW THEY ACT

User whose ID is unknown: >THIS WILL STOP THE MOVEMENT SO FUCKING HARD That’s why (((they))) are using it in the first place, goy

nJSj8C7f: (next to a simple half-black, half-orange flag) Just stick with this. We don’t need any stupid designs. It’s fine the way it is. This goes for everyone too. Quit it with the different variations and the cringe Nazi shit. If you want this to work, just leave it how it is.

QNaMStPl: don’t make it so easy, p*ta

a1VnYjBN: You fucking r**arded cockboy. You are doing this on purpose to undermine the super straight movement. Giving the tr*nnies ammunition they can use to make it seem like it is a nazi thing. They probably already have screen shots of this up on Twitter.

User whose ID is unknown: This is pretty gay equivalent of having a flag for believing in gravity, makes you look insecure.

WLTO0k0H: I know everyone’s desperate to do muh OC but shopping in the fashy symbols is r**arded you will stop this stone fucking dead r**ards saying media will call it a hate symbol anyway, yes, but AFTER it’s spread you radicalise people by not showing them radical material, but having them agree with reasonable material that is then revealed to be radical

S6ehmVhU: How do tr*nnies feel about bisexuals?

+5uv8B/s: Because you r**ards have already posted it on Twitter, poisoning the well. Any good points that may have been made by using tr*nny rhetoric against them is rendered moot because it’s all just “evil nazis behond (sp) the movement. Are you actually r**arded?

3hYo/HG3: didn’t realize that someone else already made a new thread

end ID]

#tw homophobia #tw transphobia #tw racism #tw antisemitism #tw fascism #tw slurs

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hidetothink · 4 years

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i'm not in a religious household but in a homophobic country and i only recently realized i experience internalized homophobia. even in safe places having to talk about being like that or having people refer to me like that makes me freeze. i never believed in god but in churches i feel like a spy and a sinner. sometimes i want to inflict violence on myself when confronted with the topic it feels like i'd be better off dead than gay. and i'm not even the worst. communities don't do justice to me anymore. there are people who try to help but none are ssa nor experience this themselves so their words are shallow to me no matter how wise they are. will only time help here?

I'm so sorry you're experiencing this anon. I've struggled with self-harm because of my sexuality in the past. I had a lot of shame wrapped up in those choices, so I hope you know...I get it

As for internalized homophobia, I'll be honest, that's a big fish to fry. I'm not a therapist and don't want to pretend I have training. My own internalized self-loathing as a gay man was hard to remove. Time was definitely ONE factor, but not the only thing that helps

Another is being around other LGB people, particularly your own letter. Being around gay men helped me conceptualize that homosexuals could be happy, healthy, loving people. I needed to SEE what I could really be like before I could process all the lies I was told growing up

Even if that space is something online (I don't know how much access you have to irl groups), those friendships can be incredibly important

I hesitate to self-promote a group I'm part of, but @algae-alliance is an LG community space that runs on Discord. I can't promise it's a group you're guaranteed to love, but it could be a start in finding the right group for you <3

Lastly, please feel free to message me. Talking through these things, even just to express them outside your head, has been helpful for me

Best wishes anon, you're already so brave and strong. Proud of you <3

#if anyone else has suggestions please add!#thank you in advance

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