This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson

So, pretty much, don’t read this? I started out reading it and thought, wow, this has not aged well, and then I read the verso, which said the date of publication was… four years ago. Which was pretty much when my internal voice went, ‘Oh… no. This is going to get worse, isn’t it?’. Spolier: it did.

Did not finish. Really exclusionary of pretty much anyone but cis gay males, pretty much every quote on bisexuality is about not liking labels or actually identifying as something OTHER than bi, either because of being being mislabeled or discriminated against (page 27-28), gender essentialist ‘lesbians like vaginas’ ‘gay men like… big hairy men with big willies’ ‘penis? check! …gay men are.. male’(page 51), ‘lesbians like vaginas’ (page 67), transphobic (so many pages), ‘intersex is not so much an identity, as you can’t really choose it’ (page 37), conflates homophobia and transphobia as basically the same thing without mentioning the transphobia rampant in the broader queer community (pages 72-92). Noped out after genuine anti-semitism on page 111 ‘Not being funny, but these guys (Jewish people) kinda started it’ (about religious homophobia).

To eliminate any confusion bout the author’s name, the author came out as transgender after publication, so the first name on the cover is one that shares the initial J with the author’s preferred name, Juno. My reaction to discovering this development was thinking that I really hope Juno works through the utterly pervasive transphobia that is inescapable in this work. Carrying that is toxic. But the fact that the author has come out as transgender doesn’t make this work any less transphobic. In fact, it’s worse, because it makes it harder to argue the damage this book can do when it’s coming from a now-out transgender person, something I will be doing with my library system shortly.

In summary – this book would have been revolutionary ten or fifteen years ago, because nothing like this existed. It still would have been toxic. Time and correct terminology has moved on, but at its core, this would have always been a work that placed more emphasis on trying to be crude and cool to appeal to young people, which is a tragic mistake. Anything that tries this hard is never going to be cool in the eyes of a teenager. Add to that the spadefuls of misinformation, glossing over of history and hate crimes, erasure, exclusion, and casual super gross misogyny for the sake of jokes (‘Lesbians like vaginas. They don’t even want blokes watching. I KNOW, how INCONSIDERATE.’ – page 67), and this is a book that doesn’t even come close to matching the promise of its beautiful, bold, inclusive, balanced cover.

Unwatchable

I have spent the whole of Doctor Strange only glancing at the screen maybe once every couple of minutes and then only for a few seconds, and even so I’m pretty sure the nausea I’m feeling is motion sickness. And I’m sitting in a lightened room with a medium sized television. How on earth did anyone sit through this in a cinema?

Decluttering

I’m a chronic multiple tabber. And I’m not talking five or ten or twenty. This evening, I looked at my browser groaning under ninety odd tabs and decided EVERYTHING MUST GO. The tumblr posts I’ve been meaning to reblog, the fic I’ve had open for over a year…. all of it.

So for the last five hours, I sat and did that. All the tumblr links are in a txt file, I’ll get to them maybe. All the fic, I also saved the links of, but saved a download of each story, too, in case of author deletion. I didn’t count, but it’s in the hundreds.

Now, I just have social media, email, a short story, and four ravelry patterns I’m tossing up between for my holiday project.

I feel cleansed, but also like I’ve just run one of those army survival courses with obstacles and booby traps and also maybe occasional gunfire.

It probably doesn’t help that it’s 5am, but I couldn’t sleep and this was the only quiet time I’d had in weeks where I actually had the focus to do it, so.

meimagino:

bpdkageyamatobio:

I hate how asking “am I annoying you” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

literal actual pro tip, because i used to do this, along with “are you mad at me?” (which, as you know, results in people getting mad at you.)

try asking instead “how are you feeling?” or “i know you’re probably not [x emotion], but i’m having a rough day, could you reassure me that we’re cool?” that way, the focus is on either finding out how they actually feel in that moment, or on the fact that you need reassurance. they shouldn’t get upset that you’ve “assumed” (i know we don’t have control over it!) how they are feeling, because you haven’t said anything of the sort! you’ve only asked how they are feeling or if they can reassure you.

the trick here is making sure you’re surrounding yourself with people who are willing to be honest about how they feel + provide reassurance. (people who are not willing/able to do this should probably not be your close friends, though. idk about you all, but friendships like that are full of doubt and anxiety for me.)

As an autistic/adhder who struggles with reading vocal tone and expression, I rely on ‘am I annoying you’ and ‘are you angry’ on a regular basis because I genuinely need to know this information. ‘How are you feeling’ is useful if I actually want to know the other person’s general state of mind but the former are NEEDED because they are specific and to me, bored, thinking about something, tired, in pain and annoyed ALL LOOK THE SAME. Unless I ask, I am uncertain, and I might make my partner annoyed by misreading a situation. ASKING COSTS NOTHING and she answers me honestly. It saves time and stress on both our parts. I need specifics. Generalities might work for others, but for a lot of ND people, brutal, truthful nonambigious honesty is so, so much better. YMMV, but that’s my personal preference. I understand puns and idioms, but NT doublespeak? Why don’t NT people just say what they meeeeean? Seriously.