Tag: queer

will5nevercome:

My super-conservative devout Mormon parents (and society in general) have made a lot of progress toward acceptance since I first came out 11 years ago, and I’m genuinely grateful and impressed. But at the same time, I still feel a lot of hurt, and anger, and frustration at how far they (and society) still have to go. Sometimes it can be difficult to find balance between those extremes. It’s been mostly anger this week.

I’m a queer woman who has been with my female partner for almost fourteen years, a whole year longer than my mother has been with her second husband. I was BIC, and pretty much all my family on my mother’s side is still in the church, and, yeah. This is really super familiar especially that first one. My mother has denial down to a really fine art. I mean, I can actually have a relationship with her now, rather than the screaming, hostile homophobia from the early years (giving the missionaries my address every time I moved was a classy act, mum), but I just know that even though we never hide that we’re a couple, I think she’s taken the sexual and romantic elements of my partnership and put them in a steel box and welded it shut. Recently (as in, in the last year, when we’re in our thirties and been a couple since age 19), she said to my partner, “You’re a really good friend to Ruth,” which I’ve accepted is the closest I’m ever going to get to her approving of and accepting my relationship, which on the one hand, is better than me having to not take bathroom breaks when I visited in case she cornered my partner and told her all about how wicked she was and how she was ruining my chance of marriage/kids, but on the other… it’s erasure. And like any kind of erasure of identity, it really, really sucks.

Johnnie Phelps, a woman sergeant in the army, thought, “There was a tolerance for lesbianism if they needed you. The battalion I was in was probably about ninety-seven percent lesbian.”
Sergeant Phelps worked for General Eisenhower. Four decades after Eisenhower had defeated the Axis powers, Phelps recalled an extraordinary event. One day, the general told her, “I’m giving you an order to ferret those lesbians out. We’re going to get rid of them.”
“I looked at him and then I looked at his secretary who was standing next to me, and I said, ‘Well, sir, if the general pleases, sir, I’ll be happy to do this investigation for you. But you have to know that the first name on the list will be mine.’ “
“And he was kind of taken aback a bit. And then this women standing next to me said, ‘Sir, if the General pleases, you must be aware that Sergeant Phelp’s name may be second, but mine will be first.”
“Then I looked at him, and said, ‘Sir, you’re right. They’re lesbians in the WAC battalion. And if the general is prepared to replace all the file clerks, all the section commanders, all the drivers-every woman in the WAC detachment-and there were about nine hundred and eighty something of us-then I’ll be happy to make that list. But I think the general should be aware that among those women are the most highly decorated women in the war. There have been no cases of illegal pregnancy. There have been no cases of AWOL. There have been no cases of misconduct. And as a matter of fact, every six months since we’ve been here, the general has awarded us a commendation for meritorious conduct.”
“And he said, ‘Forget the order.’”

The Gay Metropolis, page 47, Charles Kaiser (via bibliothekara)

Phelps tells this story herself in the excellent 1984 documentary Before Stonewall, which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube (she’s at 19:30, but really, watch the whole thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX7AxQd82H8

(via theodoradove)

This makes me laugh every time I see it.

(via thegreatgodum)

*applauds*

I’m reminded of Monstrous Regiment, which is awesome.

(via jabberwockypie)

theaubisticagenda:

kay-is-for-kookie:

robothugscomic:

New Comic!

Apparently now that I’m not in school anymore I’m all about giant long-form comics. 

Identity is a really important topic to me, and the trope of ‘finding yourself’ is almost as problematic and insulting to me as the trope of ‘coming out’. 

I want to destroy the idea that some identities are less valid than others, the condescension that comes with ‘they’re just figuring themselves out’, and the insulting dismissal of identity exploration and performance in youth as being somehow not ‘real’, or as ‘attention seeking’. Fuck all of that. 

And beyond the fact that  ’inconsistent’ identities are really challenging socially, they ALSO carry these real, actual life and liberty risks; we’re expected to use the same name, orientations, values, languages, and identities across all aspects of our lives, we are expected to have normative identities that can be quantified and qualified and trust me, TRUST ME  when a person is perceived as having inconsistent or unusual identities they are being flagged in all sorts of systems for extra scrutiny and action. I know this from experience. 

So, yeah, this ‘one true identity’, this ‘finding yourself’, this ‘who is the real you’ stuff is bullshit. We are so, so much more interesting than that, and we deserve better.

This is very important to me as someone whose identity has changed a lot over the years – and I don’t just mean gender or sexuality, I mean everything. I am a totally different person than I used to be, and the world can’t really handle that. I’m not interested in my “profession” the way I used to be, and want to do something else. My hobbies has changed, dress sense, opinions on things like piercings, smoking, alcohol. Everything changes. Get over it.

This is amazing.

KNITTING COMMISSIONS / DONATIONS

raymondhymentact:

HELLO MY NAME IS JAMES I AM A QUEER TRANS POC AND I NEED FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

so hey i’m starting college soon!!! and also getting top surgery soon!!! WOAH so many things happening. Basically I need money for textbooks,various school fees, and to help my parents pay for my surgery.

The textbooks and software I need for the engineering school are super duper expensive (altogether i’ll be spending several hundred dollars on the technology fee, textbooks, and the software bundle that I need for my classes)

Right now im worrying the most about paying for things ill need for school since my mom keeps telling me not to worry about paying for the surgery cause she may be getting a new job soon but i dont want to pressure her so much with all these money troubles

what can you do to help? well i knit and im getting lots better at it!! i would greatly appreciate it if you commissioned me

i can knit headbands, hats, arm warmers, wrist bands, gloves, dishcloths, chokers and more

you can look through my knitting tag to see some things ive knit or send me an ask if you want a specific example

send me an ask and we can talk prices if you want to buy something and i can work with you for your budget

if you don’t want to commission anything but would like to help i would be very grateful if you could donate or signal boost by reblogging this post

there is a donate button on the sidebar of my blog

every little bit counts

thank you!!!! 

As a queer person of color, I have been told all my life that I will never play the romantic lead, and that’s fucked up. When they say that, what they’re actually telling you is that your love story doesn’t exist.

Dylan Marron, SDCC 2014 (via ivory-spirals)

swift-fate:

imagine if there was an LGBT awareness day

and it was sponsored by an organization that treats non-hetero sexualities and non-cis gender identities as a disease, and that has paid for the legal defenses of parents who murder their gay children, and that promotes researching a cure that will fix us all and make us cis and straight

and most of the posts in the LGBT tag are “I am a mother/father/brother/sister of an LGBT person, and I want you to know that they’re human despite their disease.”

(posts by actual gay, bisexual, and trans* people are fewer, because there are fewer of us.)

and half of them are also about ‘the struggles of growing up with an LGBT family member’ and how ‘dealing with an LGBT child can put a strain on your marriage’

and some of them are links to ‘encouraging’ news about how scientists are close to finding the genes for gayness so you can abort your child in the womb if they test positive for gayness

when LGBT people speak up about this they are told they should be glad that people are raising awareness for them and that they aren’t, in any event, the ‘type of gay people’ the others are talking about

and now you know how I feel about Autism Awareness Day

As a queer girl who is also autistic, this is a really relevant metaphor to me.