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lie-where-i-land · 2 years

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Transphobes other than TERFS

Writing a cohesive post about identifying radfems and terfs got me thinking about transphobes and their different faces. As someone put it to me in conversation, people miss-apply terms like terf when the person in question isn't even a feminist. She wasn't wrong; the word we use for folks like that is just "transphobe." But I've been mulling this over, and I've realized that just as many people have a general understanding that terfs are bad but can't really explain what they look like outside the most egregious examples, many people have little experience identifying what I have previously called "garden variety transphobia." More than one person I spoke to recently was surprised when I described the sort of transphobia I experience from inside and outside the queer community. I don't say this to make anyone feel bad; as I've said before, it's functionally impossible to know everything or to be invested in every problem everywhere all at once. So I've put together another post about another type of transphobia.

Keep in mind, I will be talking here mostly about trans men, and my experience as a trans man. I can't say I speak for all trans men, and I definitely can't speak for all other trans folks. I'm not trying to say anyone has it better or worse that anyone else. Other trans folks are welcome to add on about their experiences that might parallel this situation - especially trans women.

To start off, I'm going to say that I generally dislike bringing up fandom in the same conversation as other issues. I feel like saying "oh this happens in fandom too" cheapens the original message of the discussion. On the other hand, I've noticed some people acting like behavior and experiences offline are the only ones that "count" - both in terms of what you're allowed to feel hurt by, and what you're allowed to get away with. Additionally, I was prompted to write this by a fandom-related post I saw, which is adjacent in function to the terf posts I talked about previously (innocuous posts to draw people in to their blogs, and engage them in deeper transphobic conversation). See below:

I'm sure more than one of you has seen the sims gaming section, which some popular bloggers screenshotted and have been mocking. That's how the whole post came to my attention. This is why I'm bringing up fandom and media. A lot of people are talking about queer fetishization in the media and in fan spaces, and while some people are trying to do that in good faith, it quickly becomes obvious that some are not.

So how does trans-man hating connect to vent posting about fandom? I’m going to try and break down how transphobes describe and smear trans men, how they slip it into discussions of fan behavior, and transphobia lives on in the cis-gay community.

There are a group of folks on tumblr who call themselves TEHMS (trans exclusionary homosexual males) - effectively, gay guys that don’t consider trans guys to be men and don’t consider us to be gay the same way they are. Offline, we would just call these guys transphobes.

The post above is pretty absurd. But I first want to draw people’s attention to the bullet points about height and femininity. When we consider writing about gay characters, I would challenge people to think about what a man looks like. Is there any set definition of what a man is? Do men like baseball? Must he have a beard? Hair on his asscheeks? Hands that span a certain width? My point in saying this is that if you go to a gay bar and look at the people you find there, you will not find two people that look the same, sound the same, or have the same interests. I find it real funny that "short man" must mean a lady is writing a self-insert character. Look, I'm short for a man (even among other trans men). But my cis partner is not much taller than me, he is not white, and he's very much not "female coded" for being 5'5." Trying to apply these standards to cis guys shows how dumb they are, and it reeks of the same selective biases as "no fats, no femmes, no asians."

The other thing is the focus on authors like Albertalli. Albertalli is a queer author, who was forced to out herself after some extreme community gatekeeping. The language here describing her makes it clear that this fellow doesn't see her as queer, or perceives that she came out falsely as a ploy to ... idk, she hasn't shared her evil manifesto with me /sarcasm. This, in combination with a title like "straight/bi women fetizishing men" is what tipped me off that a post like this is really about having a dig at trans men.

So I hop over to this fellow's blog. My suspicions are almost immediately confirmed by the blog heading:

"actual homosexual, actual opinions." So... as opposed to the fake homosexuals with invalid opinions? Who exactly are these fake homosexuals? If we were gonna compare this to how radfems and terfs talk, using phrases like "real woman" and "actual lesbian" as a way to covertly identify themselves to each other as trans-women exclusionary, one can see that the "fake homosexuals" here are gay trans men. It gets even better, just wait.

This guy is actually pretty transparent about it. His blog is stuffed with this crap - usually, I have to hunt for it. Immediately, I find posts like this:

note how he uses "TiFs." This is an acronym that stands for "trans-identified females." Trans-identified female is a transphobic term for a trans man (TiM is the term many transphobes use for trans women). It is transphobic because it focuses on the sex we were assigned at birth, and positions our gender identity as being of lesser significance. It's misgendering to bring up the fact that our genitals and other bodily characteristics do not match cis folks', that gender affirming medical therapies may never achieve a physique like our cis counterparts, and to use a term that heavily implies that transness is the mental aberration of perverts who can never truly be or satisfy cis gays.

Other things to note about this post: the strong aversion to porn. Note the claim that porn is not realistic and doesn't portray real world social or relationship dynamics. This is technically true, but look at what he uses this kernel of truth to say. That cis gay adult actors are simply earning a paycheck by shooting scenes with trans men - that no cis gay man would date or sleep with a trans man, and that a cis gay man cannot genuinely be attracted to a trans man. Note also that he refers here to a bisexual adult actor. The assertion here is that the actor is bisexual and not gay, because only cis men are men, that gay men can only be attracted to cis maleness, and that the bodies of trans men are not male but female.

But wait! There's more. Further down I find another post about homophobia. Let's take a look.

Obviously this person is in a vulnerable position and has experienced homophobia in their community. I'm gonna start by saying that individuals are the experts on their lived experiences, and it's likely true that this person has a keen sense for detecting homophobia. However, it's not true that being cis or being white is a magical protective factor against all harm, and it's disingenuous for him to say so - when people say that being a person of color or being trans makes life hard, they mean that it has a unique impact on their lives and the sort of bigotry they face, not that it erases how other people are suffering. But looking at this tells me how this person was radicalized to think like this: vulnerable people who lack support are most at risk for radicalization (and cult-like indoctrination in general). Transphobes are good at poking around for weak links, and exploiting people's pain. They position themselves as the only safe harbor for storm-battered ships, and teach people that anyone else seeking shelter alongside them is their enemy.

I want to draw your attention now to the second paragraph. Look at how he describes trans men/ afab genderqueer folks. We're straight (and therefore trying to coerce gay men into relationships, or to spy on their lives for voyeuristic pleasure). We have bad hair and ugly clothes, and no social life (aside from our physical bodies, we must be immature and unappealing). We use "ratself" pronouns. For what it's worth, there's nothing wrong with neopronouns, and genderqueerness doesn't need to fit inside existing binaries or be a neutral third category, but it's very telling that this dude picks something he thinks is unflattering in an attempt to make us look mentally unwell. And it's worth addressing how this is ableist. Mental illness or neurodivergence does not invalidate someone's gender. How paternalistic to say that we must all be little confused girls, who should be prevented from mutilating ourselves, cured of the delusion that we're men, and prevented from sexually traumatizing ... our willing cis gay partners? make it make sense, because this sounds more like someone under the effects of heatstroke than any cohesive ideology.

In the context of writing (professionally and in fandom) how does this manifest? Well, refer to the first post about writing gay characters, and this:

Rhetoric like this is interested in finding Those That Don't Belong, and Those With Bad Intentions. I will say first that I am very much not interested in sorting the chaff from the wheat here, when the consequence is that in trying to remove the chaff, we forcibly out queer writers. And that really is the end result here. Trying to figure out if someone is writing something for the wrong reasons will only lead to picking people's lives apart. Look, I'm not even a fan of Albertalli's writing; I'm rather outside the target age demographic for high school meet-cute lit. But I think claiming a queer woman is fetishizing other queer folks fails to use Occam's Razor (forget the razor, it's a bit like trying to shave your legs with an orbit sander - why is an orbit sander your tool of choice??). Try going through some more plausible options first: her writing is good but you don't personally like it, her writing is bad and you don't like it, or she has some rather natural spots in her writing that lack the insight a gay man might have (let's face it, even with plenty of research, I don't think I could write about a Finnish character as well as someone who lives in Finland; that doesn't mean I can't get pretty close or do a respectful job researching).

What does this have to do with trans and genderqueer people specifically? Well, there are still people talking about the "plague of fujoshis" in fandom. I don't deny that there have been many fans who have behaved inappropriately. Between showing explicit rpf to actors/singers/youtubers; stalking, doxxing, and grabbing people's asses at cons; and either not doing enough research or challenging biases about sexuality/gender and how that impacts how they interact with fandom, there is plenty to talk about. But when we have been talking about bad fan behavior for over ten years now (I've been on this site a long time, I'm showing my age)...

Look. We have got to address bad behavior on a case by case basis. Because making sweeping statements about "Why People are Really Writing This (It Must be For Fetish Purposes)" only ever leads to Becky Albertalli situations. We are asking people to out themselves, or be labeled a fujoshi. And here's the thing about calling people fujoshis. That term has been totally co-opted by TEHMs like the guy that wrote the posts I've been examining to insult trans men. Why? Because fujoshi is an unflattering term for a straight slash fan. And to transphobes, trans men are straight girls who are sick in the head, fetishizing real gay men and traumatizing them by forcing ourselves upon them:

I'm not saying anyone who says "look, X gives me bad vibes" is being transphobic. I'm not saying we should not be discussing how to be more respectful to queer and genderqueer folks online and offline (I am the (gender)queer folks we're talking about). However, I want people to be aware that even if you haven't personally seen it, this is a line of rhetoric that has old deep roots in ridiculing anyone who violates cishet norms in their personal or fannish life. And look, I used a fandom/writing post as an example because that's what came across my dash first, but there are legitimately people calling gay trans men "fujos" for loving other men. This is not just a fandom issue, but the least we can do is not give it fandom airtime.

I'm blurring out usernames and the like because I don't know this guy, he seems like the sort of asshole I don't want on my blog, and I'm not writing this as a callout or something. I'm writing this to illustrate how people (even people inside the queer community) talk about specifically trans men, so that people can be more aware of falling into prey to certain logical fallacies or lending power to transphobes.

[good to reblog]

#transphobia #trans #queer #transmasc #trans men #gay #good to reblog #trans tolkien

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shadowfae · 3 years

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We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea.

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers.

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

#luteia laments #otherkin #fictionkin #alth #alterhuman #asks #anonymous #long post //#discussions #on community history #on politics #on public relations #commentors feel free to add your own thoughts!#Anonymous

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asleepinawell · 3 years

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How has poi changed your life? Genuinely curious, I love this show

I got this ask in May '20 and am only now answering it. :')

part of the problem with answering it is that half of the answer would be to the question of 'how has fandom changed your life' where poi is the fandom I've been the most active in and where fandom made the most difference. and that's a long story

my first draft of this was over 2k words long, and went back much further in time explaining how i had and hadn’t fit into queer spaces and fandom throughout my life. I edited it way back but it’s still long-ish, so you can read it below the break

many years ago, when I got my first full time job in my chosen industry my senior year of college I was so busy that I couldn't function. massive unhealthy amounts of overtime and a toxic work environment. (don't work at tech start-ups, kids!!!) my social life vanished. strikethrough on livejournal happened right then too and fandom, which i’d only been a silent participant in at that point, kind of went quiet for a while and by the time it started regrouping I was so busy that I didn't know about it. several awful years later I quit my job, spent several months in my room in my parents' house trying to recover from massive burn out (see my comment about tech start-ups), and then got a job on the opposite coast and left behind my whole circle of friends some of whom made up my entire connection to the queer community at that time.

making friends after college is very hard when you're an introvert and just generally don't like socializing that much. making queer friends can be even harder since there's fewer places to meet them and there's often an underlying question of dating/sex that hovers around awkwardly when sometimes what you want is just an absolutely no romo/no sex friendship. so while I did make a few queer friends eventually, I didn't have that same sort of community I did before I'd moved and I missed it

(I would be remiss in not saying that the queer friends i made in this time are all amazing and wonderful and some are still my close friends and very important to me. The thing I’m highlighting here was the lack of feeling like I was part of a larger queer community).

fast forward a bit. I get sick. like really really sick. I'm in and out of the ER, I'm missing tons of work, I'm mostly bed-ridden. I think after the last few years people can more easily appreciate how intensely lonely and surreal being stuck at home by yourself non stop can be when you're not used to it. sometime right before that I'd joined tumblr for the sole purpose of looking at cat pictures on my phone during boring meetings. I wasn't really aware that this was where fandom had migrated to (it was in fact possible to use tumblr without intersecting with fandom). but stuck home alone with time to kill I started looking for art and gifs of the tv and games I was consuming and stumbled into fandom tumblr and specifically queer femslash fandom.

I kind of poked around the territory and eventually fell into the carmilla fandom which became the first fandom I actually created content for. a few of my fics had a decent audience and while I was never part of the central core of the fandom I made some good friends there. some of y'all probably followed me back then. I eventually drifted away from carmilla for a lot of reasons I won't get into and stumbled right into poi. this would have been between seasons 4 and 5, late 2015-early 2016.

my health problems get more exciting and I end up in the hospital. I have vague memories of watching poi on my laptop in my hospital bed (vague because I was on a lot of morphine). I actually posted some fic while I was in the hospital (would have been the end of my carmilla run still).

and I get out of the hospital (early 2016) and am somewhat better but it's pretty clear that I'm going to have chronic health issues probably for the rest of my life. my social life, such as it was, was mostly dead, a lot of stuff I used to do for fun was much harder to manage. I'm still spending a ton of time at home (not even counting covid) and I have bad days where I feel terrible and can't do much. but I'll come back to that

I think most of us remember 2016. the year tv show runners fully embraced the bury your gays trope (and sometimes the fridging trope at the same time as a bonus!) and, by autostraddle's tally, 30 queer female characters in tv shows died. and then on top of that we had the actual real world tragedy of the pulse nightclub shootings. it was a massively depressing time all around for queer people

s5 of poi aired that year. I know people have different opinions on s5 of poi, and that's valid. I hated it. and I really intensely hated how it treated root and shaw. there aren't enough words to express how fucking angry I was after s5. or rather, there are 319,678 words.

I wrote a fic many of you may have read called sliding towards chaos that rewrote the entirety of poi from mid-s3 onwards. it got pretty popular lol. I put so much into writing it, too. it was basically a second full time job for me and a great way to take my mind off the fact I was still having health problems and all the crazy shit going on in the world (we had a presidential election in the US in 2016 :)))) it did not go well!)

i'm very proud of writing stc, and even if I think it isn't my strongest writing (which is good! improving over time is good!), it was what really connected me to a lot of other people in the fandom. I felt part of the fandom community in a way I hadn't with carmilla and it was an intensely queer community built around shared interests

one of the problems with finding queer friend groups out in the 'real world' is you're often gathering to meet based on the uniting factor of being queer, and your interests may vary greatly. fandom is amazing because it lets you find queer people who you share all these interests with and who you can bond with over them and collaborate with and that's just so so important. does fandom have a ton of issues and toxicity and bigotry? yes, absolutely. but it also has so much good to offer

through stc and later fics I became close friends with some really really cool people in the fandom (including my favorite writer and my favorite artist). these are people I'm still very close friends with. some of them I've hung out with offline and the ones I haven't are mostly because they live too far away. after years of not having my own queer circle of friends I have found one again and one I can usually participate in even with my health problems and that is such an important thing to me

on a creative front, the fic writing and the gif making I've done have both taught me an enormous amount and been a very positive part of my life. working collaboratively on comics has been one of the coolest things I've done. there is just so much good that came out of me seeing one shoot gif on tumblr dot com years ago and being like hmm looks gay I'm in

and in terms of the actual content of the show, I think a lot of the reason I was drawn to it (other than my lingering crush on fred from angel) was that root and shaw felt so uniquely and wonderfully queer in a way few f/f ships I'd seen had before. shaw being bi and reading as aro to me (I've talked about that here) and root being a chaotic computer nerd just felt so relatable to me and their relationship with each other made sense to me in a way that few others had. and the specific draw that they had for some fans probably has a lot to do with why I found friends in this fandom who I really clicked with

so yeah. I don't know how to sum this up. fandom can be a great way to find your people and engage your creativity and I think that's very sexy

#mp #asks #I added the read more line on mobile so I hope it actually works #personal

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ofcloudsandstars · 3 years

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Slowly Returning.. but not quite yet

Hey everyone!!

I said I may come back by September/Virgo season but I still feel like this summer hiatus may stretch on a little longer.. However I am slowly going to make my return!!

I feel like saying that I have grown in this time period is an understatement haha. I am not the same person from since I left. I felt since Spring Equinox I was transformed in some fire of the light part of the year, discovering new dimensions of myself in new scenarios, chaos, adventures, disasters and now as the summer is waning I am retreating into myself to reflect but as I am at a new understanding of myself I am not sure what I want anymore, in terms of habits I used to entertain when I was more isolated and not doing much with myself on a tangible plane.

I am someone who thinks way too much. Like I can spend a whole day inside daydreaming sort of 'too much'. And I really enjoy having a platform to share ideas and think more and speculate but I just wanted to experiment with life in a different way and see what its like to start doing shit without thinking and let a bitch (me) 'find out' (there was a lot of chaos in this process) and life granted me a crew of bad ass fiery afro queer witches that made this the most insane summer of my life to date. Anyway as I really miss having a space to share ideas I do want to come back but I also spent wayy too much time giving to the online void as it felt like a place of anonymous safety instead of cultivating the things I liked on a tangible plane with people that appreciate doing the same things. So I am kind of in a crossroads of figuring out how I can take everything I've practiced, created, shared and start weaving it in a new level of my life where it can become something further integrated within my community both online and offline.

My craft has grown tremendously in this time. My understanding of myself has evolved. There were a lot of forces astrologically encouraging us to evolve and change and it definitely was the themes of this summer. I have also been following the lunar cycles more and that's helped me on a personal level. I've also been so involved with various witches of color, queer witches all similar ages that share the same animistic energetic-based understanding of witchcraft and magic that I feel like I should put even more effort into making a community that does shit together. I also notice I have a bit of a giver personality so without thinking I can easily give too much to spaces and prioritize them instead of doing stuff for myself which gets my limited free time with full time work wrapped up in stuff that doesn't help me move forward. (An example of this is my alchemist friend has returned from Greece and is hosting a foraging picnic this Friday and though its going to be beautiful and I will be surrounded by knowledge of native plants and making it into food, it's going to be a full day of servitude on one of my limited days off on a full week of work so I hardly get time to work on personal stuff..)

I will definitely be posting stories of my hot witch summer on here but probably sporadically. They are all pretty long. Like the time we hosted a Solstice forest rave. The time we tried to have a full moon forest rave but the fucking police busted us lol. The time I did a love/hookup attraction spell on a new moon and the fucking lost boys sound track came on accidentally on the shuffle, but then the next day I saw a guy on the street while the same song was playing on my ipod and he has the moody alt aesthetic with long hair, tattooed sleeves and piercings and we hooked up twice and he lives 15 min walking distance from me. The lavender harvest!! Just the summer herbal walks/harvests in general and the witch picnics with the smoking blends. Lions gate at the most chaotic, evil fucked up music festival I have ever been to ft. seeing the abyss while being too high on a pill. All the times my witch friends have DJed at parties and their sets are so good I have danced into trances. Summer Solstice feast! Lughnasadh picnic in Kenwood Gardens. Co-hosting soundbaths at the chapel (and the rich london Goop type bitches that attend omg), I feel like I am missing things but yeah it's been eventful!!

#also I dunno there's a part of me that really wants to share all of the spells I've done and how my craft has grown but its really personal #I do want to share stuff about my craft in art magic though but its also the labor of putting together all the info #and then it's a punch to the gut when you see someone repost your work like they came up with it lol #I dunno I think I am reaching the boring age of wanting to be paid for my time #but thats cause at a certain point everything depressingly becomes about money #like when I was a teen/young adult I spent so much endless time online just... creating.. cause I had no worries #now my free time is so fucking limited it's like..#I could spend the hours after work doing something magical or relaxing or.. spending 3 hours writing the astro forecast #its really this lifestyle which can make you more selfish but I do want to still have an online platform to connect with people #but you do have to admit that tumblr is very isolating.. it feels like a coocoon in a way #like a safe space where people can anonymously shout ideas and test them out like some nuclear destitute site #but you can't connect on a more personal way sometimes.. at least I don't feel like it #I think I just want something more tangible for the time I put in and I guess that is the real crossroads here #personal #long post

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kny111 · 4 years

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I’m Living Under Government Watchlist for doing ProBlack + BLM work

I’m not sure many of you know this and with what I’ve seen I doubt this will get attention considering how deeply sabotaged tumblr has become. But I’ve been doing activism for about as long as we’ve been yelling things like “HandsOffAssattaShakur“ to protesting what I thought was religious corruption when we did so against scientology to #OccupyWallstreet. I’ve been protesting and doing activism online and offline depending on my mental and physical health which has limited me as time goes by. It’s finally got me burnt out, not from the protesting and activism, but from those whose job in the past and present been to sabotage and destabilize Black lead/ Poc led movements. I’m in a continuation of this. Don’t let my lack of energy in speaking out fool you into thinking I gave up. I have just gotten worn out by them.

The things they’ve done to my mind and body while in this area since moving. They’ve been surveilling me since before I could even remember. Every single day that goes by they’ll have some way of making their presence on my health in a debilitating way. They’ll mess with the internet, phone, my contacts, infiltrate them, infiltrate my family, they’ve messed with the job search process and made difficult for me to enter any job without said job making some offhanded comments showing their solidarity to the corrupted country I protest. They’ve had people I trusted right here on tumblr infiltrated my circles of friends and myself and make it very well known that they feel beyond reproach.

This has all been in coordination with the NYPD and other government agents of defense. They’ll make themselves present in just about any space I try to go. From the forest, parks, to just a simple walks outside. I basically was lead into an area of Manhattan that is mad pro-cop, pro-surveillence capitalism, pro-militarized. Any time I make blog posts or whatever that don’t put em in a good light I get some kind of mental or physical health debilitating action against me like they’ll have mad loud noises at timed intervals like what the agent upstairs does all the time which messes with my breathing due to social anxiety and depression. They’ve had cars roll dangerously close to me, whether im biking or not. They’ll have people walk mad close to me during social distancing measures. I know it be them because they tend to use sensitive information they got through surveillancing me all day and night. Like fam I could be trying to take a piss in peace at like 3am and they’ll still be bumping away and making all types of sound to give the impression that they’re always watching. And they are. And I think the fact that those UFO/UAP objects appeared on my 17th (11/10/2004) birthday added to their obsession with me. The other fact that I ended painting a similar craft under the context of destroying colonialism I believe gave the government more understanding on what they’re really here about. I think that being the end of these oppressive regimes that have made so much out of us. I don’t want to sound superstitious but since then I’ve felt a connection with those UAPs that I only learned to name recently. I no longer think it’s coincidental that about a month or so AFTER I painted those native, queer sisters dancing to bring forth help from their future descendants, the navy posts those videos of the UAP that become well known. They’ve never done that, and yet just a few weeks after I painted this, not only does the gallery I exhibited this in Harlem catches fire unexpectedly, but these things become a topic of discussion in ways we’ve never seen before. I think them UAPs are here for our freedom. But that’s for another post. Too much to unpack into this. I’m just letting yall know what they know of me. So now imagine. This nigga aka me, tied to UFO, fortelling the future (I know what I sound like, but believe me, I can definitely tell the future) AAAND fighting for black lives? Of course they gone be on my ass like a probe. In fact, I think one night they even broke into our apartment (not the first time they do so) and did things against my will as I slept since I woke up feeling violated. Waking up with strange markings and having objects in the crib go missing. But I’ll leave that there. There’s so little ya’ll know about what they’re doing to BLM activists. So much I’ve omitted from here for my own sanity and to process things. This has caused my body a lot of debilitating stress down to my breathing having been shortened. I’m lucky if I have the will power to eat more than 2 meals. I don’t even bike anymore. I can barely run anymore. I can barely speak like I used to anymore. They stole so much more from me than they’ll ever imagine. Even saying all this to yall, whomever listening, feels pointless. Why? because they’re very good at making it seem, even if and when it aint true, that your people don’t fuck with you no more except for those they deem acceptable. As you figured, this would have anyone under 24/7 watch. The government be lookin at me and them UAP and the lands and non government natives as a force they don’t wanna reckon with, so they’ve put a lot out to shrink me as they do to so many of us who choose to fight for the rest who can’t. And this has all been while trying to raises my baby Quinn with my partner. So we’re all dealing with the state and federal terrorists in one way or another. If they not trying physically fuck with me, they’ll be running psych warfare on me, shit thatll have me doubting myself despite the facts. Luckily a nigga still bout that scientific literacy so it’s helped me a lot in spotting them and trying to keep some semblance of a distance. But again because of what I’m tied to: bday 111, UAP/UFO, native resistance and the spirits of the land and those this country murdered for white supremacist ventures, predicting/ESP type of abilities on the daily while telling them how useless their surveillence capitalist tools are knowing we can do this has likely mad them other me, dehumanize me and made me feel less human. Since then I’ve noticed they’ve been limiting my posts and activities on just about any site that has favored white supremacy, neocolonialism and capitalism in some way or another. They’ll mess with my facebook feed, who my posts get seen by, they’ll mess with my IG, they’ll mess with my tumblr especially. Basically any way they can limit who I may say this to and wear me out from even speaking about this and bringing yall hope like that. And remember, the information that they share amongst themselves as surveillance capitalist is the same information hub/database that infiltrated white supremacists and antiblack/antibrown folks in governments tend to us and share with their own hateful ass people. With this in mind, I really think they look at me as some would be leader to those movements since I’m queer and nonbinary so not as easy to trick into the outdated oppresive politics they try to have me on. Since I haven’t shown interest in being with them in any real way and have stuck to my activism and abolishing these systems they’ve continue to in a way torture me. Through sounds, denial of physical services, or when I go out to eat in places that have ties to law enforcement or government agencies, they’ll mess with my food, just about anything you need they’ll fuck with. What would that do to you if you experienced that? Hence why my bloggin changed a bit, not as attached due to energy fatigue and their constant harrassment and obsession with me. Many times, even with the fact that I may be linked to those UAP in some special way I still be feelin like dyin to not be around em anymore.

To add to what I said on how corporate own websites like tumblr have joined them; After having spent a good amount of time blocking my posts and blaming their algorithm. From blocking drawings of normalizing fatness to pro LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter posts like the Eric Garner videos I uploaded. For a few months now I’ve noticed my scinerds blog has been inaccessible, in a way sabotaging my communication with yall. And they would fix my blog posts by limiting who sees my posts, so now most if not all of my posts on this website and few others have been. When I try to use it I’m not allowed, but I’m still able to reblog, so I’ve been reblogging there less science and more activism as a way to protest the racist, white supremacist of tumblr. Be they black or not, they still acting the same. I’m mostly posting this for a future people who understand me and believe me. I get the sense that this post will also be sabotaged or muted in some way. Thanks for reading, in case we don’t link.

#blm #black lives matter

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princepestilence · 4 years

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Hey Samson, I'm very much a homebody and I wanted to know if you had and tips on where to meet cool queer people?

Hello there! I’m honestly very flattered that you thought to ask me, because that makes me feel like I must look like I’ve got my stuff sorted out and am living that #queer community dream–but that’s not actually entirely true and I sort of want to preface anything else I say with the fact that I am still very much in the process of trying to find more cool people to bring into my life myself, because I’m not where I want to be on that front yet. I’ve been super lucky so far, but I don’t want to give the impression that I’m done meeting cool queer people. There’s a lot of friends I’m still out looking for and a lot of connections I haven’t made yet that I’d really like to, so yeah! Happy to share my thoughts but I am not an expert.

For me, there’s kind of been three major sources of finding My People so far, and those have been: work/university (which count as the same for me, since I was once a student and now I teach students and have cool queer colleagues and they know cool queer people, so it has a run-on effect), the internet, and creative art spaces.

I think being a homebody can be a bit of a disadvantage if you want to meet cool queer people, mostly because I’ve found online queer spaces and offline queer spaces to have… very different vibes and values. Not always! I’ve definitely experienced first-hand some weird vibes that I didn’t want to tangle with in offline queer spaces (thinking specifically of the queer collective at my university). But broadly, I’ve enjoyed offline queer spaces a lot more, and found more connection with other people, and experienced more genuinely restorative and healing and positive vibes in those spaces than here on tumblr or elsewhere online.

So that’s kind of my first piece of advice: see what’s happening in your local area regarding queer and/or artistic events! I don’t use Facebook, but there are a lot of local groups that use Facebook to organise and announce events, so if you have that, that can be a great way to keep in touch with that’s going on and see if anything strikes your fancy. For me, I go to the poetry slam every month I can make it, which is something I adore and always an experience of big queer solidarity, because it’s a bunch of creative (often queer or non-norm) people in a space that has a strongly upheld belief in the respectful spaces policy–i.e., be excellent to each other, no bigotry allowed.

I’ve definitely lucked out with my local slam (maybe I’m biased, but it is the best one around) but a lot of events like that are places where you can walk in, sit down, and not have to really talk to anyone if you don’t want to, and get a sense of the place and the people and I’ve definitely found these spaces to be more welcoming and respectful than more… mainstream (?) events, so that can be a cool place to go. Similar things like pop-up art exhibitions (especially if they have talks or workshops) count, especially if you see anywhere that they’re LGBTQ+ friendly and/or make a clear statement of intent re: supporting grassroots or marginalised creators, etc.

Alternatively, I can recommend queer book clubs! Sometimes these groups are specifically about reading queer lit., and sometimes the reading is just a way of bringing queer people together, and either way, that’s a good place to at least go along and suss out. If there’s none around, a great option is to actually start something like that yourself–as intimidating as that might feel. Submitting a call for interest on a queer Facebook group, for example, can help put you in contact with people who might be in your exact same boat of wanting to build community but not knowing where to start, or not yet finding the right kind of space for them.

I personally feel book clubs (or a similar hobby exercise) are a good way to do this, since it 1. brings everyone together in one place on a regular schedule, which is good for getting to know people, 2. isn’t necessarily a huge time or energy or financial investment, which means it’s more inclusive than many other events (although obviously requires some planning and also consideration re: which books and book costs, travel costs, access to libraries etc.), 3. is overall a relaxed space that can be hosted in the daytime, away from alcohol, in a public venue such as a cafe, which for many people is more approachable, and 4. gives everyone something to talk about when they get there and for the duration, so it’s way less awkward than sitting in a circle being like, “hi, I’m gay, are you my new best friend??” or feeling obliged to generate personal conversation the whole time. If it doesn’t work out or it’s too much effort to continue, you can discontinue it at any time, so it’s a pretty low stakes approach, I feel.

Edit: totally forgot, but sometimes [hobby or passion of yours] + “queer” into search bars can show up good results! For example, sometimes there are particular gatherings or small conventions, regular gaming events, forums or talk-sites, so on. I definitely know of Ace & Aro Teatimes that are held, specifically as a way of catching up, and you might luck out and discover something like that, which is particularly great because it means you will already have an interest or hobby in common with the people you meet there.

Off the top of my head, that’s kind of it for offline spaces. You can probably check out if your local university has a queer collective, because even if you’re not part of the university body, sometimes they will have events open to the general public etc. Like I said before, that’s not my scene, because I’ve personally found the local university queer collective to be… more similar in personality to the online spaces and also just a little more intense than I’m looking for. But! That’s not to say they’re all like that.

As for online spaces, I met a lot of my queer friends by the sheer bizarre wheel of fate that brings people together in the disgusting blue sea of tumblr. I know that’s not helpful at all, but the piece of advice I have to offer there is that I met all these people by doing what I loved, first and foremost. I was doing my own thing, however weird, and they were doing the same, and we saw each other and went “oh cool,” and we were both queer. To a certain extent, I think this is true in all things: have fun, be yourself, and trust in queer pack magic to bring cool queer friends into your life.

I am someone who’s very forward, I guess, and very proactive socially (and in general), so I am usually the first person in a new friendship to walk over and say, “hey! you’re cool, I love your you, tell me about yourself,” [paraphrased] and honestly that’s worked pretty much every single time. I admit my charisma rolls tend to be high (I sacrificed constitution and wisdom for them, so they better be) but I do believe that you miss all the shots you don’t take, so it’s worth reaching out. So if you come across someone that seems cool, remember that you’re also a cool person worth knowing and a good friend and give that person a chance to find that out for themselves by saying hello, because a lot of the time, the other person isn’t going to have that courage and if you wait for them, it might never happen. Easier said than done for many, I know, but it’s that whole thing with lesbian sheep (wool-oo-wools, if you will): you can’t stand there and expect someone else to know that you standing there still is a sign of how much you like them.

I have no idea if any of this is going to be helpful to you, but I wish you so much luck in finding your people! If there’s anything I’ve said that’s not clear or needs more detail or anything, please let me know and I’ll be happy to do what I can to help. I think finding community is one of the most important things in life for queer people to do, in whatever form that takes, so I am absolutely always down to help with that in whatever ways I can.

#not a sonnet #queer up #as far as online resources/forums etc. i really don't have any advice but if anyone else does please add to this post!#if you've got advice i've missed please do say so.

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inevitably-johnlocked · 5 years

Note

Hi Steph! I would like to read metas about ASIP. Could you give me some?

Hi Nonny!

Sure! I lost a lot of the ones I initially filed ages ago, so I’m just perusing both the offline list I’ve been making and my ‘asip meta’ tag

MY META (UAP)

Why Did they Never Air the Pilot?

Sherlock is so Smol

The Gay Porno Music

It Will be Heard Again for the Johnlock Kiss

The Beautiful Sexy Music

The Cinematography of the Pilot

John’s Missing Wednesday

MY META (ASiP)

What Are John’s Nightmares Actually About? (Does John Have PTSD?)

Title Card: Heart In the Pills?

Phones and Hearts (Community Meta)

This Is How Sherlock Handles John’s Heart

How Old was Sherlock in ASiP

Gay Since the Beginning

Does Lestrade Know He’s Gay?

Smug Mike Stamford

Any Anthea Meta (mini masterlist)?

Mrs. Turner’s Married Ones

Did Sherlock Return Because He Heard John?

Why Didn’t Sherlock Put on the Anti-Contamination Suit?

How Did Mycroft Know About John’s Therapy?

John Doesn’t Deny His Attraction

Are Mrs Hudson and Angelo Implying John’s His Date Because they Know?

Where Is Angelo’s (Is It In Soho?)

Is Sherlock Using During the Drugs Bust?

Five Years and Sherlock Doesn’t Consider Lestrade a Friend

Was the Cabbie a Proper Genius?

Bitterness is a Paralytic

Did They Do Any Cases?

Why Didn’t Sherlock Test The Pill?

How Did Jeff Know Sherlock?

Why Did Sherlock Omit John from Cases After ASiP?

ASiP vs. HLV: Love is a Vicious Motivator

Orange Pips: Was Mary Involved Since the Beginning?

OTHERS’ META

UAP: Removing Trash for More Trash

UAP: Unaired / Deleted Scenes Play On Sherlock’s Sexuality

A Series of Five(s): ASiP is the Whole Show

OPENING TITLES: Anteros Statue

Additional Thread

Sherlock Dug John Out of the Trash (Silly Post)

“Don’t Commit Suicide”

Closted John Watson and the Introduction of BBC Sherlock’s Queer Theme

Upside Down

Between My Legs

Sherlock is Gay Immediately

Bi the Way

Sherlock and John: Their First Meeting

“Bit Different From My Day” (ACD’s John Watson Travels to our Time)

Sherlock Fell In Love Since the Beginning

What Was Sherlock Thinking About?

John Watson: Not the Sitting-Down Type

Mycroft Kidnapping John: Take Care of My Brother (Silly Post)

A Study in Subtext: Amazing

“Harry’s Short for Harriet”

Besotted From Day One

Cleaning Three Things

Desperate To Keep John

The Moment Sherlock Nearly Disliked John

ANGELO’S

Reserved Table

Answering Too Quickly

French Translation of the ASIP Dinner Scene

Angelo’s Relationship to Sherlock: What is the Backstory?

Sherlock is Gay - Analyzing the Convo at Angelo’s

So You Got a Boyfriend? (Short Analysis John During The Conversation)

Sherlock Realizing John Is Hitting on Him

Sherlock’s Face

They’re Very Expressive

Discussion About Lighting in the Series

CHASE SCENE

“Welcome To London”: John Surprises Sherlock

Subversion in Sherlock: Post-Coital

DRUGS BUST SCENE

Sherlock’s Terror When Lestrade Reveals His Drug Past

Sherlock Regretting His Words To John

“Not Good?”

Jennifer Wilson & the Phone/Heart Metaphor

The Birth of Jealous John

Good Man From the Beginning

CLIMAX

3 Pills vs. 1 Pill: Why Did Sherlock Only Get One Pill Per Bottle?

Did Sherlock Choose the Wrong Pill?

Sherlock Check’s John’s Hole (Silly Post)

FINAL SCENE

Thought Process of Sherlock Upon Finding Out It Was John

Why Was Mycroft at the College?

Sherlock is the One That Asks John to Dinner

It’s A Rom Com

PARALLELS

TSo3 vs. ASiP

ASiP vs. HLV (Killing for Each Other)

ASiP vs. HLV – Mind Palace Staircase

ASiP vs. TAB Trailer

They Are Each Other’s Drug

MIRRORS

John vs. Molly

The Difference in Sherlock’s Relationship to Both

Sherlock’s Reaction to Each of Their Flirting

#steph replies #sherlock meta #meta masterlist #asip meta #Anonymous #meta masterpost #asip #uap meta #uap

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andranikolayi · 4 years

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Gxrls Can’t Mix - misogyny and discrimination in the electronic music world

originally appeared online in Romanian for Revista Cutra

A brief note about this translation

I initially wrote this text in July for Romanian intersectional feminist mag CUTRA and they published it mid September. The focus was supposed to be on events that did take place locally, however, this summer there’s been a constant stream of tweets from female-identified and enby djs/producers about their horrendous Boiler Room experiences.

I wanted to shine a light on that and the endemic kind of sexism that boiler room is constantly facilitating and refuses to take any responsibility towards, as well as share some of the horrors from the Romania scene that nobody wants to talk about because we still live in a very homophobic, racist and sexist environment. As a local queer artist myself, I do believe it is our duty to speak up on these issues even if it may negatively affect our social/professional life. The local community leaders do know what they need to do in order to create safer, more inclusive spaces yet prefer to use a superficially woke discourse that looks good online, yet they would never take direct action or present an unpopular opinion.

Having spoken to Ceci after their Boiler Room and their scary bad experience (including receiving multiple death threats), it became increasingly clear that this text needed to exist in the world. Also running into Lakuti last week in Berlin and hearing how traumatized she still is after her experience playing in Romania, I was all the more motivated to translate it into English and make this available for everyone.

It may be sprawling at times, but I think it’s important to present a translation of the original published material, as it appears on the CUTRA website. Please keep in mind that CUTRA is not a music/dj-specific publication so certain aspects of the industry come with very ELI5 explanations.

First I thought she was just messing with us, but now i m starting to think that this girl doesn’t know what she’s doing

This is boring room not boiler room

Are they trying to put us to bed and broadcasting Schumann resonances?

She would have been better at spinning pizzas than records

Go back to the kitchen!

These are just a select few from the over 2000 comments of the very first Boiler Room live stream taking place in Romania. Said comments appeared on the initial Facebook live post. The event took place in July 2016. At the time of writing this article [na – july 2019], all the comments are still publicly visible on their page.

I could probably write a thesis on misogyny in electronic music, but for this particular piece I’d like to focus on the following question: why do we saying that gxrls can’t mix?

I would also like to ask the follow up questions: should we be surprised that colleagues from the Romanian club industry would say that a female-identified person is a sick DJ but „a little too homely” to play a certain club? Or that another person I used to consider a close friend would tell me during a b2b set that because he just took some MDMA I looked like „a juicy piece of meat” to him? Or how when Electronic Beats Romania did their first feature on local producer Admina and they didn’t even know who to contact from the magazine to moderate the deluge of hateful comments? Or how nobody even bats an eye at the way industry men here always tend to grab you by the lower waist when talking to you in the club as if it were the most natural thing in the world? Try to explicitly say something and you would be instantly labelled an „unchill bitch”.

The answer is a resounding yes. We should be surprised, as well as angry and concerned enough to start actively doing something about this.

Miss I’s Boiler Room

On July 6th, 2016, the promoters behind the Interval event and festival series put together the very first Boiler Room in Romania. For those of you less familiar with the club world, Boiler Room is a platform that organizes events specifically designed to broadcast a live video stream of the club experience. Think DJs mixing or musicians doing live sets, while also making a point in filming the audience and their reactions to the music. Since its inception in 2010, Boiler Room has become a global phenomenon, with immense pull in the industry. The project is equally revered and reviled to the point that there are parody YouTube channels (see People of Boiler Room). For most artists, being on Boiler Room is a make or break moment, sort of like a calling card highlighting your skill as a DJ.

Promoters, fellow DJs, agents and ravers all follow Boiler Room religiously. The platform’s increased popularity and growing volume of videos produced per week may have slightly decreased its influence due to sheer oversaturation, being on BR is still the highlight of many up-and-coming artists’ career. Unlike a mix, the BR videos don’t just physically show off your mixing skills, but they also document the audience’s reaction in real time. Oh, and as a DJ you only get 60 minutes to give it your best. Or, as with Miss I in the following example, you’ve just been asked to open the very first BR broadcast ever from your country. Miss I is one of the most beloved local female DJs, also responsible for opening the first vinyl only record store in Romania and highly appreciated in the minimal/deep house scene, so you know there’s gonna be eyeballs. But no pressure, u do u grrrrl.

For every Boiler Room event, the broadcast is livestreaming on their website and Facebook page. Reading the live reactions on the chatroom and Facebook comments is intricately related to the experience. On that humid summer afternoon in a rooftop garden in Rahova, the comments that started pouring just a few minutes into her set were absolutely shocking. The level and volume of vitriol had greatly surpassed the BR staff’s expectations. About 40 minutes in, the host publicly posted a call out comment.

However, while researching this article, I was surprised to discover that most of said harmful and sexist comments were still up online. There were no attempts on behalf of the BR team to warn or ban users. Hell, there was no moderation. But maybe there should have been.

The Boiler Room Effect

Part I - San Francisco Pride, 2019

This story took place in 2016. We could easily justify what had happened by claiming we don’t like to talk about gender politics at the club or how, generally speaking, the Eurominimal/tech-house scene the event was catering to is notoriously populated by aggro cishet bros who worship Villalobos. Unfortunately (surprise surprise!), this has not been the first, nor the last online scandal Boiler Room has been responsible for.

During the writing process for this material, initially meant to focus mainly on Romanian issues, I started paying attention to the comments on recent BR livestreams. This process, coupled with the increased number of artist friends talking about the backlash in the comments following their BR streams I was seeing on Twitter lead me to believe in the dire necessity of live moderators for the entire BR social media. These comments are not just mean spirited or unfunny trolling, they can be incredibly harmful and have a lasting negative effect.

On June 1st 2019, Boiler Room organized a Pride-related event in San Francisco where an artist I not only appreciate but happen to occasionally work with made their debut. Ceci aka CCL is a DJ, producer, co-founder of queer collective TUF and [at the time of publishing] agent working for Discwoman, an NYC-based talent agency created to boost womxn and non-binary artists. CCL identifies as non-binary and uses only they/them pronouns. Being AFAB and feminine presenting, they are often misgendered due to their presentation, even after clearly stating their preferences.

In the beginning of the video, the host does use their correct pronouns, but most people in the comments were still referring to them by using she/her pronouns. This might seem like a minor inconvenience compared to the bulk of the discourse happening below the stream, mostly comprised of people complaining about the music, ranging from how weird the selection is, whether or not that sound is a faulty cable and how bad their technical skills were. Later Ceci confessed they even received actual death threats. All this was happening at a Pride-related event in one of the gayest cities in the world and with a line-up specifically tailored for the occasion.

Being misgendered is always a bad experience, but when it happens during what is supposed to be a career-defining moment, the effect is even more traumatic. Besides, a torrent of sexist and negative comments cannot have a positive effect on anyone, regardless of their gender or sexual identity. Especially with BR, this only seems to happen when female-identified or non-binary artists are concerned. In CCL’s case, the misgendering may have not been the most atrocious part of the online response, however we do need to start implementing such habits as not assuming one’s gender or choice of pronouns. It may seem like a small step, but it does make a world of difference.

What Boiler Room continuously refuse to do is acknowledge the influence it carries in the industry and the responsibility that comes with that. BR could have avoided causing a lot of damage by simply adding a little blurb about the artist’s preferred pronouns in the description of the Facebook live video, for the users tuning in later or not familiar with their work.

It’s this kind of thoughtfulness and concern for the actual scenes they feature that is consistently lacking from their approach.

Part II - The Sherelle Incident

In March 2019, a different incident took over both the online and offline music discourse – for approximately two whole weeks, all you could see on Techno Twitter were reactions to Sherelle’s Boiler Room. In short, there was clip of a POC female-identified DJ from the UK playing bass and jungle to a packed room going totally berserk until someone from the audience touches the CDJs and the music stops. This unwanted intervention coming from an unidentified hand created a meme-worthy WTF reaction. To nobody’s surprise, this snipped was the one Boiler Room chose to use as their preview advertising her set online. All of a sudden, her startled face in the clip was all anyone could think of, not the incredible atmosphere she created. Yewande Adeniran wrote a thoughtful piece on the implications and how said “accident” took the discourse away from a moment that was supposed to be just about Sherelle and her skills as a DJ.

Following the incident, the Twitter community managed to ID the person who caused the hubbub, who turned out to be infamous UK DJ Riz la Teef, who was also playing the event. Online, he’s been bombarded with accusations of racism and misogyny to the point of having to delete his account. However, a wave of reputed DJs and producers jumped to his defense and justified his action. Keeping in mind that most of what we call Techno Twitter is comprised of people from/who live in North American, their argument was that his unwarranted intrusion was in fact a very common practice from the UK grime/bass culture.

Known as a wheel up or to turn up, it consists on moving the jog (the little CDJ wheelie thingie) to rewind the track playing and increase the hype. It’s traditionally considered a sign of appreciation and supposed to be very flattering when your friends/fellow DJs perform it. Think of it as a hands-on rewind. Only in this case his attempt failed and the only thing he managed to accomplish was create a whole lot of confusion. Plus, they were friends and earlier in the clip you can see him come say hi and hug her. In true Internet fashion, think pieces from major publications followed, educating the poor American kids on the wheel up, as well as photos with the two hugging and making peace, telling everyone it’s time to chill out. As for Sherelle’s part, I’m actually curious what else was she supposed to do than say something along the lines of “OK, fine, let’s move on”? It’s already hard enough to break through in the industry as a queer black woman, the last thing you want to do is be that unchill bitch who can’t take a joke.

Our Daily Misogyny

Going back the shitty things that happened in Romania chapter, I want to talk about an incident that happened in October 2016 at a Queer Night party in Guesthouse. To give you a little context, Queer Night is a series of queer parties, the first of its kind, co-run by local choreographer/dancer Paul Dunca and DJ/singer Cosima von Bulowe for over a decade. Guesthouse is a club mainly associated with the Rominimal/tech-house cult, with a pretty cishet, homophobic audience. However, they occasionally host the odd underground event, like DJ Stingray or Lena Willikens. This particular event was a collaborative effort between Queer Night and the Interval (the people responsible for the Romanian Boiler Rooms – na) curatorial teams, who invited queer womxn DJ couple Lakuti and Tama Sumo to do an extended back to back set. Lerato Khathi aka Lakuti is an incredibly talented DJ from South Africa, who also runs the label and talent agency Uzuri and Tama Sumo has an extensive DJ career and also books for Panoramabar.

As Lerato was mixing, a guy standing in front of the booth reaches towards the turntables and touches the record that was playing and the music glitches. Lerato simply froze for a second but continues to carry on mixing. A few minutes later, said guy suddenly appears behind the booth (access to the booth and the backstage area requires a separate bracelet) and tries to get her attention and starts touching her. In that moment, Tama rushes in and extracts the person from the booth. In spite of his highly inappropriate conduct at event that promotes safe spaces, the security staff refused to kick him out of the club for a fuzzy array of reasons – friends with the owner, being a “house regulars” and my favorite “he didn’t beat up anyone” line. Considering the organizers’ credo and position as community leaders, they could have done more than simply trying to minimize the incident.

The rest of the night went well and their set was lovely, but talking to them the next morning, the entire experience didn’t sound like just a minor incident of a someone being an asshole: Lerato confessed that even though she traveled and played all across the globe, she’s never experienced anything remotely similar.

I’d love to be able to say that these stories are just rare occurrences. Unfortunately, being in the music industry reflects a much more grim reality of endemic sexism. Let me suggest a little exercise – take for example any Boiler Room video on Youtube where there are female-identified performers and within the first dozen comments you might something along the lines of “she can’t mix”, “great selection but her technique is lacking” or “X guy did this so much better in the ‘90s”.

Perhaps we all know by now that commenting on a womxn’s appearance is a no-no. Yet I still constantly hear various industry men making comments that womxn like Peggy Gou or Jayda G only got where they are now just because they’re hot. (How come nobody calls out Marcel Dettman for looking like a model I ask you?). Unlike jabs at someone’s looks which are easy to dismiss as harmful, commenting on someone’s “skill” and “technique” are seemly OK because they refer to an objective (they say) variable, easy to judge and quantify. I ask you this – doesn’t this all sound terribly familiar? Perhaps using the same arguments as those right wing Youtube personalities that post videos with titles such as „X DESTROYS feminists with FACTS and LOGIC”?

Consequences of the systemic sexism are starting to pop up everywhere, from Resident Advisor closing down their comments section due to the amount of harassment related to their recent focus on female artists to the petition against Giegling’s Konstantin. For a quick reminder, German DJ Konstantin used a bunch of “biological determinism” arguments in an interview trying to explain why he believes women don’t have the right kind of brain for mixing. In 2018, Konstantin was booked to perform at three major parties during Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE), a key annual gathering for the electronic music industry. A petition signed by thousands of fellow DJs, music journalists and electronic music artists circulated online to have him blackballed due to his comments and half-assed apology that followed. Unfortunately, the only result was the ADE organizers offering him even more exposure by inviting him to talk about his actions on a live panel.

This kind of discourse is very dangerous, as by accepting and normalizing it we’re offering it unwarranted legitimacy to the point that opinions such as Konstantin’s start being reiterated by the press. After this year’s Movement festival in Detroit (the birthplace of techno), a journalist in a local newspaper writing a piece on the women’s rising visibility in electronic music, cited a “veteran DJ” who claimed women lack the technical capabilities to mix and rely on laptops and software in order to do their job. Despite this not being the author’s argument, he chose to offer a platform to a blatantly misogynistic opinion. These positions are not just wrong and should be called out for their obvious sexism, but perpetuating them in the press further increases their destructive power. The more we will continue to validate them, the more present they will become.

And still, why do we keep saying gxrls can’t mix?

Are girls really all lacking in the rhythm department? Commenting on one’s ability to mix is still one of the most widespread forms of criticism that AFAB and female-identified persons get. Why is it so widespread?

Through mixing, the art that defines the modern dance music DJ, most people understand creating a story through a continuous body of variegated music but particularly having no pause between the tracks. When industry people talk about mixing, they usually refer to beatmatching, which is usually means blending two or more tracks, often of different tempos or keys. The overall tempo of the DJ’s mix can remain constant or experience subtle increases across their set. This style of mixing, using long transitions, no tempo changes and working within the same musical subgenre throughout is particularly appreciated in Eurominimal and tech-house, which is also the most lucrative part of the industry in places like France, Germany and Romania. As many talented DJs have proven over the years, from legends like Larry Lavan or David Mancuso and their cosmic or loft deeply personal, eclectic styles, the perfect blends same tempo school is by no means the only “right” way to think about a dancefloor.

At a time when dance music has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry, the “perfect mix” paradigm became the dominant style. In this climate, to be a DJ is synonymous with knowing how to mix, otherwise you don’t exist. Or at least that’s the androcentric perspective. And once you frame things like this, the comments on womxn’s “technical skills” stem from the same sexist pool as saying womxn are not good at math/science/driving or other “men’s” activities. After all, they’re just being objective, right? “Oh my god it’s not like I said she was fat or something!”

Mixing is a learned skill that requires practice to be perfected. The portion of the population who is encouraged to learn skills that involve music and technology, who is not discriminated against and has access to often costly equipment (be it controllers, CDJs or turntables) is overwhelmingly cis, straight and male. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the “I don’t have a mix online/nowhere to practice because my ex bf had all the equipment” story. Or gxrls saying they never learned how to mix because they didn’t have access to equipment. Or the supportive “nice guy” story who invites you over to “teach you how to mix” but quickly loses his interest once you reject his sexual advances.

It’s refreshing to see groups like Room 4 Resistance, No Shade or Discwoman not only organizing events, but also putting together free mixing workshops for womxn and non-binary people. People are also trying to change things in Romania, with groups like Corp. or Queer Night trying to tilt the gender imbalance locally, only unfortunately their efforts are lacking the infrastructure, institutional support and ideological consistency.

Where to Now?

We’re in 2019. DJs like The Black Madona, Josey Rebelle or Octo Octa and Eris Drew are some of the most in-demand people in the circuit. They all approach the dancefloor differently and bring unique views of what a DJ set can be. Yet straight white boys are feeling threatened by their success and are constantly looking for arguments to delegitimize their success. “Yeah, but this person is getting booked everywhere just because it’s cool to be trans now” – as if anyone would go through the intense process of forever altering your body just because queer is “in”! “Oh if I had tits I would get more gigs” – another male DJ I used to call a friend told me when I started playing more in Bucharest. I’ve heard phrases like “but why do women only book other women?” or “how can the super talented boys ever breakthrough in this environment if women are getting all the attention?” more times than I can recount.

Straight white boys need to shut the fuck up! For decades, the vast majority of people in charge of running/booking clubs were straight white men who would only book other straight white men. Yes, there we certainly do see more womxn in line ups, but just as female:pressure cares to remind us periodically, the percentage is still predominantly male. The healthiest path towards building a more diverse and inclusive music world is not having the old gatekeepers trying to educate themselves and perform acts of tokenism, but make space for marginalized people in decision-making positions, because nobody could make more informed, coherent and inspired choices than a person who is deeply involved in the community. Just see Discwoman’s Frankie miracle work over at Bossa Nova Civic in NYC. And it is very likely that with the right people running the show, incidents of abuse and harassment will diminish as well.

Womxn have been so used to be touched without consent and constantly harassed that we’ve been programmed to dismiss such indiscretions as minor inconveniences, something that “comes with the territory”. In order to see an improvement of this state of affairs we have to become more radical in our attitudes against sexism and discrimination. We absolutely need to learn to speak up whenever we encounter misogyny, racism, homo and transphobia and, most importantly, believe womxn when they come forward with a story of abuse of boundaries crossing because whenever we brush it off with things like “he was drunk”, “it was just a joke” or “there are two sides to every story”, we become complicit and contribute to this toxic culture.

The good news is that we can all contribute to changing things. And no, you don’t have to go to a march or join an organization if you want to help out. Change starts in your own immediate community by simply calling out your friends when they say something sexist, not supporting the known abusers and problematic people in the industry and just coming out to see one of the local womxn artists.

We will continue to play, to defend the DJ booth as sometimes the only safe space we might have at the club, to record our music however we can and become ten times better than all male DJs who told us we don’t know, we can’t or we “don’t have the necessary biological conformation”. But, most importantly, we’ll keep making people dance.

images, in order of appearance

queer night at apollo 111, 2017

miss i boiler room, 2016

edited screengrab from comments in the miss i boiler room facebook stream

crowd at miss i boiler room, 2016

ccl at rewire, 2019

all photos courtesy of the author

#gxrls cant mix #cutra #boiler room #sexism

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brandiamaraskyy · 5 years

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Today is 41st my birthday. Every year since 2013, i’ve been sharing my wishes, hopes, dreams, and things i’ve learned in a list as long as the age i’m turning. At 36: 36 Birthday Wishes, Reflections, And Moments of Extreme Gratitude At 37: For you – the best freebies, ebooks, wishes to ring in the New Year, from me! At 38: 38 Birthday Wishes And Extreme Gratitude At 39: 39 epic lessons on courage, trust, love & life i’ve learned in the 39 years of being alive At 40: On turning 40 — 40 Lessons i’ve learned from 40 years of living a radically creative (and rebel) life And this year … this year my annual birthday wishes wanted to be about the things drag has taught me about being a creative-based business because this past year the two have really intertwined. i realized that drag has heavily influenced how i approach business and, well, life. But when i sat down to start writing, i realized that, unlike all the other years, this birthday list had A LOT it wanted me to say. i got the first two out of 41 down and it was well over 1000 words. And that was just the first TWO!! i realized there was NO WAY that i could fit all 41 things into one post (i don’t even want to read something that long and i’m writing this shit) so i decided to turn this year’s annual birthday post into my first ever birthday series and spread out all 41 items over four weeks with a new set of 10 things coming out every Thursday. So without further ado, here is the first set of 10 of . . .

41 Things Drag Taught Me About Business

1. You are a business. Treat yourself as such.

i had been working as a professional performer for a decade before i ever thought of myself as a business. i thought i was just creating art and getting to make money doing what i loved. And i operated in that mindset for a long while. But one evening that Joe aka Jenna aka my best friend were hanging out talking drag, he said “Drag is a business. You’re a business.” And that’s when it clicked. Me, myself, and Brandi Amara Skyy were a brand and a business. And it was the first time i realized that all those things that i love — have ever loved — can be a business, can be a career without stripping away the art or my passion for it. The same is true for any other drag performer taking booking after booking, any writer who’s getting paid for their words, or anyone selling ebooks or their service on or offline. If you are exchanging your creative energy for monetary energy, you are a business and we have to shift our mindset to fit the new reframe. You have your craft, your art down. Now what you need is an equal understanding of how to run your business. That’s what these last 7 years for me have been about. Still are.

2. You are only competing with and against yourself.

At any given moment at a drag pageant, you will hear at least a dozen people repeat this mantra. Yes, it’s a beautiful saying but the stark reality is we’re always sneaking a peek at the other performers in talent or creative evening wear to see what they are bringing. We are always looking at our neighbor’s paper. i did it. But what i was peeking at wasn’t my competition; i wasn’t looking at them and thinking “okay this is who i have to beat.” i was looking and studying them to see if i could visually see my flaws in their performance so i could make any adjustments i needed before hitting the stage. Okay so that person hung out on stage right for a little too long. i also know i hug stage right a bit so i need to be conscious of that when i’m modeling. Every competitor i have ever competed against is a reflection of me in some way — as i am to them. The same is true in business. i am learning that those things that i love in my business crushes (hello, Melissa Cassera’s epic online personality!) are the same attributes that i carry in me. In the case of the Divine Miss M, i just needed Melissa’s mentorship to help foster and bring my own personality out online. And those biz peeps i don’t love as much are also a reflection of those things i’m not too keen on in myself. This is what i mean when i say that drag taught me that i’m only competing myself. Another way, i could say it (although i feel it loses a bit of its power) is: All competition is a reflection of where we are at and who we are ourselves.

3. Know how to explain what you do.

Always. But especially if what you do is different or “new” to people outside your community — hell even in your own community! Whenever i would tell someone i was a drag queen they would inevitably look me up and down, a big fat question mark expression on their face. i would tell them i was a female who performs gay male drag. They would still be a bit confused, but also a lot intrigued, so i’d break it all down a little more. How i describe what i do has changed. Has evolved. i now say i’m a drag artist. When they ask me how or say “oh you’re a drag king?” i say, “i’m more of a drag queen but drag is not about gender; it’s about queer expression and i’m more about the art of drag than the gender of it.” But i learned from the moment i stepped foot out into the world as a drag artist many moons ago, i was going to need to know how to talk and explain what i do. When i stepped out of the norm of the 9 to 5 job circuit, i knew i would have to explain why i left and what i do to make a living. i would have to find a way to tell people that i was never meant for a 9 to 5 job that it just happened and i got comfortable in the routine and the consistent paycheck. That i wasn’t just a coach for creative entrepreneurs and writers, but more specifically, a coach for intersectional, queer, and POC creative entrepreneurs and writers. Once again, i would have to learn how to explain what i do. i’m still learning and what i say is still evolving. Even if what you do is something you think a million other people are doing, you still do that thing differently. You still do it your own way and put your own spine in it. You are the only translator of your art, your work, your business. It’s imperative that you know how to describe what you do.

4. Look outside the stage.

The legendary Tommie Ross is the kind of drag performer that, as soon as the MC calls her name as the next performer, people line up to tip her before she even hits the stage! i was judging Miss USofA Diva, MI, and MI Classic with her when she asked if i could tell the lighting person that she was going to start her performance “over there.” i followed where her finger was pointing and landed on the very top of the flight of stairs to the left of the stage. i told the lighting person and returned to my seat on the panel. i was the only one there waiting for her performance. As soon as Jordan Allen announced her, the music came on, the spotlight hit, and there the divine miss T was in all her glory at the top of the stairs looking like an old Hollywood glamour movie star. She stayed on that top step for what seemed like hours before she sauntered, step by elongated step, down the staircase and eventually making her way — not on the stage — but in front of it. i was floored. And in awe. She slithered her way right in front of me and someone snapped this shot: You can see everything you need to know about how that moment affected me in my body language. It is something that i’ve never forgotten and something that i carry with me in my business. Had she started from the stage — the same place that everyone else does — i know her performance wouldn’t have been as effective or memorable as it was. She thought and looked outside the stage and in doing so created magic, energy, and a performance that was unforgettably all her own. Anytime i’m working on a project or a piece like this i ask myself, how can i enter this from outside the traditional way, the way that everyone else sees it or begins.

5. Don’t let the shade of others smolder your shine.

‘Nuff said.

6. There is no one right way to drag (or business).

i don’t think the people who say “It’s not drag if you’re not … wearing nails … wearing hip pads, boobs, a wig, contour, hose …a biological male …” are ever going to go away. Everyone has an opinion of what drag is and isn’t. Everyone also has an opinion of what a writer is and isn’t. A “real” writer has an agent … has a book in Barnes and Noble … is well known … doesn’t self-publish. Everyone has an opinion of what a business or job is — and usually, it looks nothing like what i and many other creative entrepreneurs do. Because a person with a “real job” has a boss … usually hates their job… clocks in on someone else’s timeclock …hates Mondays … doesn’t sell their products to their friends. My point is everyone has an opinion about the “right way” to do something. What they usually don’t have is the motivation, drive, will, or ability to look fear in the face and do it themselves. So by constructing rules and policing others, they still feel like they are a part of it. But they aren’t in it. You are. And the only rule you find when you actually start doing said thing is that there never was or will be one right way to do anything. Sure there is a craft or a mold to what a drag queen/king/artist is — a drag artist takes hours to don their craft; the writer sits down and writes something every damn day; and the creative entrepreneur shapes her creativity into something that can be useful to others in the form of a product or service and shares it with the world. The actual work it takes to be the drag artist, the writer, and the creative entrepreneur has a mold and shape, but the way we express that work … that is all our own. And there is no one right way to express. And therefore there is no one right way to do drag, writing, or business.

7. Tip your queens (and your bartenders and MCs).

One of my biggest pet peeves is when drag artists — who live off tips more than they do the booking fee — don’t tip their bartenders — who also live off their tips more than they do their measly hourly fee. But it’s also my pet peeve when audiences are getting their life from a drag performer but don’t reach into their pockets to give you a $1, but then a Ru girl comes on after you doing half the work and they’re busting out $20 and $50 bills. The same peeve seeps its way into my business. It really irks me that some “friends” will pay thousands of dollars to see Beyonce, Gaga, whoever, but balk when you ask them to buy your latest book, piece of artwork, online course, etc. Everyone wants to jump on a bandwagon that’s already full. And that’s their right. But there is also a movement in the drag community to support your local artists. And i’m saying support ALL your artists — your drag artists, bar artists, writer artists, and biz artists by either buying their work or tipping them via PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, whatever they have. Because when you buy a product, service, book, or good from a creative entrepreneur, you’re really “tipping” them for:

All the many hours, blood, sweat, and tears that went into creating it. It’s just like tipping your drag artist for all the behind-the-scenes shit you don’t see: getting into face, making the costumes, the wig, mixing the music, etc.

The exchange of energy. Only instead of it being from an onstage performance to you, it’s an on-the-page/product/service-performance to you.

Their commitment to their craft — and the ganas to try to make a living off it.

And who knows? They could be the next Yonce or Gaga. And you would have been there from the ground up.

8. Know your roots. Know your ourstory.

Every human should know, deeply, the roots from which they sprung. Not only does it enrich the art but it enriches the human experience for everyone. It is especially true if you are privileged (and we all are in some way) and entering into a traditionally marginalized art space. There is so much history that lives in the threads behind any given art — and really anything you want to do. And it’s important we fill ourselves up with all that backstory and knowledge so we can keep feeding our art. Whenever i’m teaching newbie drag queens, i make it a non-negotiable that they understand the social-political roots of drag. Whenever i’m teaching newbie writers, i make it a non-negotiable that they understand the role that marginalization has played in other writer’s works. Drag, and understanding it contextually and academically, has really taught me how the social-political climate influences the art and the art informs the people of the inner-workings of oppression and resistance. And that complexity is why it’s so important to your know your ourstory. So when you are trying to start and build a business, it’s important to know the who’s, whys, and what’s that have come before you. It’s important to know what’s been done, why it’s been done so you can begin to understand how you will fit within the context and how you will break free of it. But also how you are going to uplevel and grow it. i found most of the coaching industry to be void of color, class, queerness, and diversity. But i wouldn’t have found this out without doing research and taking the time to see where my people were being underrepresented. i wouldn’t have been able to see that my gift could help fill in that gap. Drag taught me how to use my art and my expression to fill in the gaps. Find a way to seal yours.

9. Be the queen you already are.

When i started in drag i thought i was searching for a character, a persona that was somewhere “out there” with no traces of being found “in here.” But the more i did drag the more i realized that “in here” was the only place from which the Brandi of the stage could have sprung from. Everything you see on stage is the same thing i carry with me onto the page, out in the streets, when i’m washing dishes, or holding hands with my partner. i am queen because my queendom lives in me not because i have a million followers or beehive of fans. i’m a writer because i write not because someone reads the day’s work. i’m a creative entrepreneur even if i don’t sell a single service that day. i don’t need anything special to be who i already am. Neither do you. We are all queens, writers, and business owner the moment we claim it — and commit to doing the work that queens do.t And the first territory we have to rule over is ourselves.

10. Once more … with feeling.

Okay so technically this isn’t something that i learned from drag . . . BUT! i did learn it from my performance life as a belly dancer and a lot of what i learned from my years of touring as a belly and Polynesian/Tahitian dancer has informed both my drag and business life. And this lesson came from my very first belly-dancing workshop in Corpus Christi with belly dance masters Amaya and Bert Balladine. While time has erased the details of the class, Bert’s words ring in my skull anytime i am doing anything. Once more … with feeling. He would say this after he would give us students a dance combination and we’d perform it for him. He was never satisfied with what we gave him. He always stretched to give more, to more feeling into every whip of our shoulder every flick of our wrist. Once more … with feeling has become a life mantra that is as automatic and required as my breath. i return to it everytime i think i’ve given it my all. i ask myself, “but have i really?” And i’ll return to whatever it is — the creation of a performance, the words of this post, a video for my clients and say to myself is my best Bert Balladine flair … Once more … with feeling.

♥

Thank you for reading and for sharing your art with the world. i love you more than you will ever know. Love, light, and birthday wishes,

xo-

PS. Time is running out to purchase my new book New Year. Best You — Make 2019 Your Best Year EVER! and get free coaching with me! Click here to find out more.

41 Things Drag Taught Me About Business – Annual Birthday Wishes Today is 41st my birthday. Every year since 2013, i've been sharing my wishes, hopes, dreams, and things i've learned in a list as long as the age i'm turning.

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