AAVSL (African American Venacular Sign Language) is wild because you really see the culture in it and if you are Black and hearing/don’t know ASL, you still understand it because so much of black communicatiom is nonverbal
Reblogging again because I didn’t know AAVE had a sign language equivalent even though now it makes so much sense.
Ocean’s Eight is like “heterosexuality? I don’t know her”
OK BUT WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT SANDRA BULLOCK CAN SPEAK A FEW WORDS GERMAN? No one takes a not at this and it drives me mad BC shsisbsj
Well, the thing is, Sandra Bullock is as German as it gets. She’s got German citizenship, because her mom was German. Actually, there’s a homage to her mother Helga in Ocean’s 8 when Debbie’s standing in front of Danny’s grave. You can see one tomb saying “Helga Meyer” The only thing that doesn’t fit is the birth date, but I think the day of her death is accurate. In Germany, children born to foreign parents were not allowed to hold two passports and were forced to choose one nationality over another between the ages of 18 and 23. That’s why Sandy had to reapply for a German passport, which she did in 2009 when law’s changed. Sandra doesn’t only speak a few words. Her German is fluent. She did a whole speech in German. She barely has an American accent. In fact, when she talks, she sounds exactly like someone raised in Southern Germany, as she speaks a Franconian dialect. It’s the purest thing ever, and I guess most people don’t talk about it, because they know all this.
National Coming Out Day is coming up (October 11) and I just want to remind everyone:
1) Please do not out anyone (even if you “think you are doing them a favor.” Trust me when I say you aren’t) and make sure you don’t accidentally do so.
2) It is okay to be in the closet. Please do not feel pressure to/obligated to come out because there so happens to be a Coming Out Day. (Do it for you if it’s what you want).
3) don’t “come out” as LGBT+ as a joke. Don’t “come out” as kinky/a furry/whatever, either.
4) Don’t force/coerce your friends and/or loved ones to come out, and do not get mad at them if they choose to stay closeted.
5) don’t come out as an ally
6) It’s okay to come out even if you don’t know for sure what you identify as yet, or if you’ve decided you don’t want a label.
7) It’s okay to come out again if your identity has changed. Coming out as gay is different to coming out as bi, for example, and coming out as trans is different to coming out as butch lesbian, and coming out as one of the flavours of queer is different to coming out as a label people have a more concrete understanding of. You are you, and who you are grows and changes over time. Doing it again doesn’t mean you were wrong or lying the previous time/s.
8) What you come out as is up to you. I use queer these days, but I have used lesbian in the past, because it’s shorthand and easier than saying ‘biromantic gender-nonconforming demisexual woman in a committed relationship with another woman’. I don’t have to lay out that though I’m probably on the bi or pan spectrum, I don’t identify as either of those because men are ‘unsafe’ for various reasons for me, and if I was dating rather than in a long-term relationship, if I was looking for a partner, I would be looking at pretty much any gender but male. I don’t have to explain that attraction for me is a fluctuating thing, and my sex drive is, too. I don’t have to explain that I don’t identify as transgender, but I feel that most of the construct of what people think of as ‘female’ doesn’t work for me either. I just say queer. And for those who don’t or won’t understand queer, I say lesbian, and that makes most people happy because I’ve put myself in a box they can understand, even if it’s not strictly true. If calling yourself a label like ‘gay’ when you come out makes it easier or safer for you, then use it. It’s a tool, not a shackle.
Petition to refer to TERFs as FARTs, which stands for Feminist Appropiating Reactionary Tranaphobe
“Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminist,” when you think about it, is a VERY kind term. To be called a TERF is for the person to admit that they still consider you a feminist.
But what kind of feminist excludes so many women from their movement? If you hate so many women for what they are, you really don’t deserve to be called any kind of feminist, radical or otherwise.
Anti-trans people: Stop calling us terfs it’s insulting
This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being “an OMG ACTUAL ADULT” calling myself ‘queer’ and using ‘queer community’.
Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s, ‘queer’ has been the accepted term to call that community. It’s a mainstream word. We say ‘queer theory’, ‘queer community’, ‘queer organisations’, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it’s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn’t been a slur at any point in my life. The only Australians I’ve ever come across who think it’s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.
I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said ‘queer’ is not a slur in their country and it’s just the word that’s used for the queer community.
This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:
1) Her experience with ‘queer’ is the same as everybody else’s
2) A small number of people having a bad experience with ‘queer’ is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community
The short of it is that it’s not acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades – it’s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it’s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like “UM EXCUSE ME IT’S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT’S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!”
like. babe. I’ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can’t tell me what language I’m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don’t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too. USE XKIT BLACKLIST. Your trauma is your problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That’s not a lack of empathy from me, that’s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I’ve always used about my own community.
It’s not the end of your world, though. You’re not doomed to read ‘queer’ all over tumblr forever. There are many many many tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.
“BUT I’M A MINOR!!”, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you’re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr’s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can’t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.
The short of it is if you’re old enough to know the word ‘queer’ upsets you, you’re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add ‘queer’ to the blacklist words. If you’re not doing that, I have to assume you’re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it’s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.
“BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT’S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!” Dude, you’re asking me to change my whole identity. You’re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It’s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that’s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you’re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by ‘queer’.
NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person’s post and start telling them anything about how to use their word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don’t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we’ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.
There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being “””””””helpful”””””””” by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don’t make it my problem.
Stephen Pollington has been writing books on Anglo-Saxon England for two decades. His many published titles include works on the Old English language, military culture, healing and herblore, runes and feasting in the ‘meadhall’. He has recorded a double CD of readings in Old English.
He has lectured widely on aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture since 1991, from local history to the details of verse metre, from theories of the origins of the Germanic runes to the handling of Anglo-Saxon weaponry.
knitting in the dark 