Tag: actuallyqueer

The importance of Autoboyography – a personal perspective

I’m from the position where I didn’t grow up in Provo or a town like it, I grew up in Australia, where Mormons are a Christian minority, but that separateness still dictates everything. Everything is about us and them and the line between. I don’t think I had a single teacher that my mother didn’t make me give Books of Mormon to. Every friend that visited my home, my mother pressured me to bring to church. LDS members buy from other members, hire other members, socialise with other members, and glory in that isolation. But at the same time, there’s the incredibly toxic fishbowl of church culture. If your parents separate, for example, shunning is a very real thing. I had mothers refuse to let me touch their babies, as though family dysfunction was catching. And I was a child at the time.

Nothing was secret, either. I was abused, and all my school teachers were quietly informed, so that I was given an easier time of things. All but one. Why? He was a church member, and my mother knew that if he knew, his wife knew, and if his wife knew, the ward and even the stake knew. Anything told to the bishop was told to his wife and circulated through the congregation. Women, in particular, were ruthlessly policed, not only by the men but by each other. Anyone who couldn’t keep up with church callings, work, home and family while keeping a permanent smile pasted in place was obviously sinning somehow. All you had to do was trust in God, and that was easy, right? I read somewhere that Mormon states in the US have the highest per capita anti-depressant use. I don’t know how legit it is, but I believe it. I was medicated by sixteen, and no matter how hard I tried, I was never enough. We had one pregnancy in my high school in my age group, out of 150 kids. Our young women’s group, 25 girls aged 12-18, had about a 50% teen pregnancy rate. Hypocrites and liars and smile, smile, always smile.

And that isn’t even touching on the unspoken spectre of what would happen if you were anything but cishet/straight. In Australia, there wasn’t Evergreen, but there was always the understanding that kids who were wrong went somewhere to be fixed. I read Saving Alex last year, and all I could think was that this was what the new face of cure culture was. I knew someone online years ago who’d been through Evergreen. Out of the dozen or so who were there at the same time, he was the only one who hadn’t yet killed himself.

I read Josh and Lolly Weed’s divorce post today, and there was a part where he said,

“For me, though, it all came down to the people I met with–the actual human beings who were coming to my office. They would come and sit down with me, and they would tell me their stories. These were good people, former pastors, youth leaders, relief society presidents, missionaries, bishops, Elder’s Quorum presidents, and they were … there’s no other way to say this. They were dying. They were dying before my eyes. And they would weep in desperation—after years, decades, of trying to do just as they had been instructed: be obedient, live in faith, have hope. They would weep with me, and ask where the Lord was. They would sob. They would wonder where joy was. As a practitioner, it became increasingly obvious: the way the church handled this issue was not just inconvenient. It didn’t make things hard for LGBTQIA people. It became more and more clear to me that it was actually hurting them. It was killing them.”

And yes, that’s what Church policy is meant to do, it’s what it’s always been meant to do. It’s meant to kill us. If we die, then we’re a sad story, designed to spread a message. We were weak, God meant for it to be, and isn’t it better this way?

The only way to win is to stay alive. Eat your anger and let it burn in your belly. Stand in that field without walls and scream long and loud, and don’t smile for anyone else’s comfort. Wear rainbows like armour and love like you’re throwing grenades. Survive, and seek happiness, and prove the bastards wrong. And that, that is why this book is so important. It’s a story so normal, so sweet and simple, about two people finding love and finding themselves, and the happy ending isn’t the one the church says is the only way. There are many roads to happiness. You might have to look long and hard to find them, but it isn’t one-size-fits-all. It isn’t predetermined. It’s individual, and unique, and beautifully, wonderfully average. That’s what the church doesn’t want queer kids to know. That’s what this book reveals, so beautifully. And I’m just so blown away that it exists, in my lifetime, and that I got to read it. It’s wonderful.

kyraneko:

jenroses:

brinconvenient:

dani-kin:

quarterinthequeerjar:

fairytale-villain:

A good thread on whether “queer” is a slur and if it should be used or not.

“If I am unashamed of being queer, you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur.”

you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur

EVERYBODY WHO CAME OUT BEFORE YOU HAS TAKEN THE ROCKS AND BOTTLES AND MADE THEM INTO SHIELDS AND WINDCHIMES

Holy motherfucking shit. Don’t fucking come at me about Queer is a slur. I FUCKING KNOW IT IS. It was hurled at me like a fucking spear all through my youth. I know it’s a god damn slur. And it’s mine. You don’t get to take it away from me because you can’t take also away the scars it gave me while I was standing in front of my younger queer siblings in this community. 

always, always reblog this one.

If my enemy swings a sword at me and I take that sword away from them, it’s my sword now. And the person telling me I can’t use it because it belongs to my enemy and I have to give it back to them sounds quite a bit like an enemy themselves.

Hooking my way into 2018. Going to the yarn store yesterday 20 mins before closing was a GOOD IDEA because I’m no longer destroying my hands and I’m 22 rows into Mini Rings of Change (which may turn into the massive paid version if my yarn stocks and patience hold out). So yeah, starting 2018 by redirecting self-harming stims and crocheting a massive fuck-off rainbow doily that may in the end cover our whole double bed.

*devil horns* I know how to ring the changes, peeps. Rock on.

I get that you’re young, but queer isn’t a slur and don’t reblog my damn posts with “q slur”, please. My identity is not a slur. Thinking queer is a slur is ahistoric bullshit.

kinasty:

vaspider:

lauralot89:

deepfriedfuckpotato:

onioncourse:

deepfriedfuckpotato:

outpace-and-outlive-you:

Lmfao what the fuck are you on?? Q*eer was originally used to refer to trans and sga people BY CISHETS to refer to us as abnormal and wrong. It’s a fucking slur. If you choose to use a slur as your only personal identifier then yes, your identity is a God damn slur. This is so disrespectful to every lgbt person with trauma surrounding that word, and you’re the one who’s being ahistorical. Asshole.

I’m on education that came from somewhere other than tumblr, my dude.

We’ve been calling ourselves queer since before WWII. It was not originally used “by cishets”. It was used by us. To describe us. Interchangeably with gay, which was used by all genders.

Ten years before you were born, Queer Nation was fighting for rights you now enjoy, marching in the streets. Queer Nation was founded by members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an organization for AIDS advocacy, because we were literally dying in the streets. Which is where die-ins came from, by the way – during the AIDS crisis when hospitals wouldn’t touch us with a ten foot pole, people protested by literally dying in a place inconvenient for the powers that be.

Whoever “taught” you that queer is a slur and always has been lied to you.

We’re still here, we’re still queer, go educate yourself.

If you can’t give me sources on q*eer being used by lgbt people BEFORE they reclaimed it from cishets using it as a slur i really don’t care what you have to say

Wow sorry about your inability to use google. If the internet is too hard, you could try picking up a book at your local library!!!! Like, how about My Queer War by James Lord or 

Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II by Allan Berube?

From  George Chauncey, “Gay New York,” page 10

This is so painful to read, honestly. 

Kids, learn your own queer history. Our identity was our word first. 

must be nice to be 17 and know absolutely everything about queer history ever

@kinasty As a seventeen queer-questioning kid I was mad at the world and society and ready to burn shit down out of ignorance, too. We can’t blame children for parroting the ignorance and bigotry of people they should be able to look up to as elders of our community but who are instead are crafting a TERF agenda and deliberately using children as mouthpieces and soldiers to keep their hands clean. We CAN choose to educate. The moment we resort to ‘kids today’ bullshit we sound like every other adult that we despised when we were that age. Yes, cite sources for our history and correct assumptions, but don’t act like a tool about it just because age and education have given you that wisdom. Look back in twenty years and you’re going to be thinking, ‘shit, I was such a smug little asshole at thirty, smacking down actual children looking for meaning and culture and identity on that hellhole website’. Be a guide, not a gatekeeper.

So I’m on chapter 8 of Into the Drowning Deep, and I have a question: did you mean to code Olivia as autistic? I’m autistic and I see so many of my own little ticks and quirks in her it’s astounding.

seananmcguire:

ladyrpgr:

seananmcguire:

I didn’t mean to code Olivia as autistic, no: Olivia is autistic, full stop.  She says as much a little later in the book, when she’s talking about her relationship with her parents (mostly her father) and some assumptions they made about her future before she was old enough to shut that shit down.

Excuse my ignorance – what’s the difference between somebody being “coded” and actually being it? I was under the apparently erroneous impression that they were basically the same thing, only coded being used exclusively for fictional characters showing real life disorders/sexualities/whatever. 

Frequently when a character is “coded” one way or another, it’s to get the schema of a group of people without actually having to commit to the realities of fictional diversity.

Example: Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory is coded autistic.  He does things that are stereotypical “autistic behaviors,” as interpreted by the mainstream media; he talks in the “ha ha funny” way that is often used for neuroatypical characters.

But.

The creators will not say that Sheldon is autistic, because then the fact that much of the show’s humor (”humor”) is at his expense would be visibly and blatantly cruel.  Look at us, mocking an autistic person for being themselves, aren’t we swell people ha ha ha oh wait.  So they basically say “no, he could be just like everyone else, he could be ‘normal,’ so when everyone is awful to Sheldon, he’s bringing it on himself,” while still writing the character using a set of schema and narrative shorthands that makes it very, very clear that we’re supposed to laugh at people mocking an autistic man.

(Sheldon is also an asshole.  You can be autistic and still be an asshole.  But consider how hard it is to have conversations like “knowing what dinner will be at 9am is important for my mental health because I have food insecurity” if you’re not allowed to say the words “mental health” or “food insecurity.”)

I saw something earlier today that pointed out that mocking people for behaviors we code as autistic–special interests, stimming, etc.–is an asshole move whether they have a diagnosis or not, and that is absolutely true.  But mocking the “weirdo” is still considered socially acceptable in so many circles, and that means that characters get coded as autistic, or OCD, or queer, or Jewish, and then never actually given that identity, all to make them “other.”

It’s the acceptable face of bigotry. It’s also why you have a lot of really intense same-gender relationships in mainsteam tv shows (Rizzoli & Isles, White Collar, etc.) that never turn romantic or sexual, because they want the numbers queer viewers bring, but they don’t want to lose conservative viewers. Before you think, ‘oh, but they’re just really good friends!’ remember that any relationship on tv betwen opposite-gender people is all about ‘will they/won’t they’ from day one (The X-Files, Castle, Bones, etc.) If you think this is an exaggeration, consider the amount of shit Elementary has gotten from trying to keep Sherlock/Joan platonic. It’s only okay to have queer-coded dynamics if you never intend to pay them off with actual representation. Some shows try to do this right, but are actively stopped by the network (Leverage) and others give representation, but then invoke the Bury Your Gays trope as the endgame (Buffy). Things are slowly improving. Both the Librarians and Brooklyn 99 have given us bi representation in the last year. But there’s a long way to go.

On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis

Dear Corinne,

I got so excited when I found out that there was a book in the sci-fi/fantasy genre with an autistic character, written by an autistic person. You have no idea. The moment Otherbound hit my radar, it was on my wishlist, an eventually, I managed to snag a copy. It’s on my shelf, waiting, and I’ll get to it, too, but I haven’t quite yet. I wasn’t expecting that I would read On the Edge of Gone so soon. I have serious anxiety comorbid with my autism, and end-of-the-world/apocalyse scenarios are a trigger for me sometimes. It’s a hangover from being a child of the time before the Berlin Wall fell. There’s so many books from the Soviet era that are all about what happens to a kid after the bombs fall. It was so normal that when someone a few years back asked for recs for this subgenere, I came up with about thirty books. We were brought up in the shadow of our imminent extinction. Let me tell you, the current POTUS isn’t helping that.

But fate stepped in – my library had a copy that I found by accident on the shelf in Young Adult. Both Otherbound and On the Edge of Gone, just sitting there, waiting for me, and On the Edge of Gone was the one I didn’t own, so I grabbed it. And once I started reading it, I didn’t stop. My attention issues make it hard these days to hyperfocus enough to read a book in one sitting, but I did it. It wasn’t just the autistic character. It was the others – the queer secondary characters, that I saw a lot of myself in, too. The sister. The couple, helping out any way they could. I even saw myself in the mother, though her burden isn’t one of my own, I saw myself at my most dependant, my most weak, and I ached for her. You shone a light on the side of society that most people forget exists – the queer, the disabled, the addicted, the different, and you didn’t just make it a narrative of horrendous loss. You made it heart-breaking, yes, but you made it hopeful. You gave your characters choices that weren’t always right or wrong but were always HUMAN, and made me feel my inherent connection to a species I often feel has marginalised me for my neurotype, my gender, my sexuality. It took the common ‘they all die, obviously’ trope and turned it on its head and created something beautiful.

I still have Otherbound waiting for me, but reading it isn’t stepping into the unknown. I know now what you can do, and how you can make me feel, so I’m anticipating what it will be with excitement.

Thank you.

fullhalalalchemist:

when we say we’re tired of politics we mean that we’re tired if being scared, tired of being worn out, tired of anticipating the next hate crime, tired of seeing what shitty piece of legislation “conservatives” and even liberal people come up with next, tired of not being taken seriously, tired of our lives apparently not mattering to people, tired of so so so much.

alisso:

sebanstianstan:

sebanstianstan:

sebanstianstan:

if you’re white. being,,,not straight ,,does not give you a “poc card”. i think a lot of you think it does. like being ,,not straight,,does not mean you can seperate yourself from other white people.

@appuzzoclay nicely said

white people. you can reblog this. especially if you’re not straight.

I am both surprised that this is a thing, and, totally not surprised *facepalm*

I am queer, autistic and female and I TOTALLY benefit from white privilege. What I can do about it is USE this privilege to make noise and make room for people who are NOT white in any way I can. To listen to voices different to mine about what is needed, rather than thinking I know. To admit when I fuck up, because I have fucked up, and I KNOW I will again, not because I don’t care, but because my whiteness permeates every aspect of my experience. Being white doesn’t mean I’m not discriminated against for other reasons, but NONE of those reasons mean I know what it’s like to be anything other than white. I can listen, I can educate myself, I can try to empathise and open my narrow world view to try and imagine what it would be like for someone who is not white, but none of this means I KNOW. That only comes with living in a white supremacist society as a person of colour, and I can never be or experience that.

Is there a reason that you use the tag ‘q slur’ when your blog explicitly states it is for “LGBTQIA+ characters”? I guess what I’m a bit confused and hurt by is that you include Q in the acronym and then tag my identity as if it’s something shameful or other.

ya-pride:

Thank you for sending in this ask. Our first and foremost goal is to make sure everyone is represented and respected. While we use the word “queer” in in our acronym and posts, we heard from several followers that they found the word hurtful and triggering. Because of this, we started tagging posts with this word as “q-slur” in case anyone in the community might wish to avoid the word. However, we want you to know that we respect your identity. We’ve taken your concern into consideration, and are now going to tag posts containing this word as “queer” instead of as “q-slur” to avoid further confusion and hurt. Thank you for trusting us with this comment, and we hope that you continue to find YA Pride a safe and inclusive space. Best!

Thank you.