#but as they leave the queer community and as they enter the hands of cis queer people they become weapons

[angel-archivist]

It's so interesting and so exceedingly frustrating how agab is being utilized now within the queer community as a way to isolate and sort nonbinary and genderqueer folks into binary boxes that determine their moral purity levels, and their authority to do and write and exist.

The way nonbinary writers are being put under accusation of fetishizing gay men while their AGAB is continually brought up in a way that feels like queer-space-approved misgendering.

The way feminist circles that are supposedly trans-inclusive will use the word AFAB in a way that implicitly but intentionally isolates nonbinary people who aren't AFAB from joining. It's for women*.

The way the language is already flawed and leaves out intersex folks from the conversations while focusing on a binary of sex that isn't truthful.

The constant obsessing over whether someone is AFAB or AMAB and whether or not that gives them the privilege to join, do, write, or be present in certain spaces really really concerns me. How are we supposed to dismantle a binary system of gender if we can't even move past forcibly assigning and focusing on people's genders assigned at birth?

#and yes i understand! that agab language can in some circumstances be helpful in inclusive language and in the medical world but ultimately #is misgendering and unnecessary it should be up to the person to disclose their agab not an expectation of them to give up freely #I think that inclusive language shouldnt be misgendering in nature and agab as far as i can tell should only be used in select discussions #and certainly not as a way to frame a nonbinary writer as a “biological woman” but in a way where the queer community will nod along and sa #“oh they have a point” because you used the word AFAB instead #honestly afab is the term i see used most frequently and most harmfully towards other nonbinary people who don't identify w the label #to exclude trans women and amab nonbinary people #to frame nonbinary people as “still women” because of their assigned gender at birth #also i understand its not as simple as “not using” these terms bc they still serve a purpose and are important #but as they leave the queer community and as they enter the hands of cis queer people they become weapons #i wish i could like manifest my thoughts super clearly but i really cant bc its a difficult situation #its just another example of misogyny and bio-essentialism creeping into the queer community #because the patriarchy impacts all things including our discussions of trans oppression and gender we need to stop viewing it #as a strict binary of male female and oh sometimes we'll mention nonbinary people but we're all afab and amabs at the end of the day <3 #like flames literal flames #if you wanna like chip into the conversation just shoot me an ask or respond to the post i'd love to hear other peoples perspectives #im not infalliable so if i said anything you view as incorrect especially in regards to intersex folks and how you all would like to be #included in these discussions as im not intersex but am aware of how agab is a subject that leans into the idea of a binary of sex #so yeah rant over <3 #retro.bullshit #rant

[draculasstrawhat]

I don’t really know how to communicate how scary everything is in the UK right now. Just… that we are running on 12 years of austerity politicise, the knowledge that we don’t have a free, independent press, that given our broken FPTP system and the way constituency boundaries have been redrawn, we’ve probably *had* our last free and fair - and that it’s only going to get worse - that our NHS is on its knees, and that in 2019 a leader running on a truly progressive platform garnered mass support and a vast number of votes, but *lost* seats, and the way that this absolutely *terrified* our commentariat, so that he was persistently smeared in our allegedly unbiased and independent press until public opinion turned against him, and that meanwhile just under 50% of the population are convinced that what we actually need is something more adjacent to fascism.

The fact that during the pandemic, the government has lied, broken the law, laughed at the mass death, handed public money to their mates, sold off public assets and handed the money to their mates and that all of this is just the continuing trend of this 12 year government of liars and frauds. Some of these mates, incidentally, have alarmingly close ties with organisations like Kiwi Farms who have *absolutely* been interfering in our elections and national discourse generally.

Meanwhile, we’re having a cost-of-living crisis, wages are stagnated, and people are having to decide between feeding their families and paying their rent and heating their homes. People are literally dying of hunger after being penalised by our broken welfare system in ways that are declared unlawful which I’m sure was a *great* comfort to their grieving families. Meanwhile, we are deporting and imprisoning people fleeing international violence, and homophobic hate crimes are skyrocketing, and racial violence is only increasing. Meanwhile protest has been more or less criminalised and we are entering the early stages of ethnic cleansing against our traveller population. Meanwhile a tiny, but *very* well funded and connected little cabal of bigots have decided that trans people are to blame of all of this.

Meanwhile, let’s drape everything in the fucking flag and spend a couple of billion on the fucking jubilee. Never mind that around half the population don’t want ANY of this, but that we’re stuck here, our votes meaningless, our healthcare precarious, the very basics of our lives becoming unaffordable… All our industrial safety, food safety, environmental safety legislation is looking to be stripped - and has already taken a battering. Our unions have been rendered nearly powerless. We are looking at throwing away the Good Friday Agreement. Politicians have been touting the idea of forcing the unemployed, elderly and disabled to work in the fields. We’ve lost any real social safety net this country ever had. There is spreading popular support (presumably among the aforementioned pro-fascism contingent) for bringing back the death penalty.

And before anyone goes “lol, Britain” on this post, believe me, the people who are going to die from this will not be the white, cis, het conservatives you’re thinking of. It will be people of colour, immigrants, our Jewish and Romany communities, it will be poor people, disabled people, queer people. It will be our passionate, left wing organisers, and our political dissidents. It will be Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland, and the former ‘red wall’ of the North who suffer. Even in England… if you can get it round your heads that there are good people in the Deep South of America, who are disenfranchised and afraid - then can you please understand there are good people here, too? People who are scared and don’t have the resources available to them to leave, whose votes will never count for anything because of our broken electoral system. People who should not have to leave their families and homes because of this.

Anyway, I’m fucking terrified. I don’t know that we can turn this around. I just pray every single day that I’m wrong and try to help build resilient communities of care where I can.

[happysadyoyo]

The reason transmascs leave trans communities is NOT because they suddenly blend into the world as a cis man but because many communities treat them poorly and the FIRST experience many have of transitioning is cutting oneself off from groups who claim to have their best interest in mind and be protecting them but are in reality treating them poorly for being themselves

This is a quote from @brain-depositary ‘s excellent post I reblogged here. The whole thing is worth a read but this sparked something specific in my mind that I’m going to float out here and see what people think.

So. It’s generally accepted that men support systems are extremely lacking. There’s this need to grin and bear it, or bury it down until you explode. I’m not saying this is an universal truth in every single instance, but I think we can generally agree that men and people who at one point might’ve identified as men are coming from a world with little support. 

The same cannot be said for women. There is the sexist belief that all women are more social and nurturing and because of the history of abuse that women have faced, there’s also more resources for women, like say, abuse shelters for women fleeing domestic violence. 

This is actually important because if a man is fleeing from domestic violence, they’ll find themselves shut out because these shelters are protecting the women inside from men. 

Anyway, when someone is transitioning -- again, this is a very general thing and why I need feedback to fix my wording/tweak what I’m sort of coming off the dome with here -- you end up shifting in what ways you can get support.  As brain mentions, trans men and people who no longer identify as women are leaving support spaces. The more and more you come into some sense of masculinity or leaving your supposed womanhood, the more hostile these spaces can be. 

And if you’re someone who is entering and embracing womanhood, you’ll find that yes, there are going to be many support systems that are hostile to you, especially if you are early in transition or don’t want to transition visually. But there are still support systems that do embrace and validate you. Like many queer and specifically trans friendly circles. 

So trans women and femme leaning people will be more welcomed, and trans men may be less welcomed (and neutral people just ignored. Because let’s be real, support groups struggle with the idea there are more than two boxes people fit into). Especially with how hand and hand queer and feminist ideology can be, there’s this sort of hostility I’ve noticed that encompasses masculinity and masculine people who do not identify as female (I cannot speak for female butches or dykes as while I do consider myself a dyke, I’m decidedly not female). 

Idk, like I said, this sparked something. The idea of trans femme people coming into support and trans masc people leaving support because they’re not welcomed anymore, the idea that the world expects people to be like themselves and that’s why conservatives can’t imagine liberal and left leaning parents aren’t actually forcing their kids to transition. That sort of thing. It’s a thought but not a well thought out one

[rametarin]

I didn’t want to reblog another long post, so I’ll just say my own thing here.

Gatekeeping fandom is good, ackshully.

Especially since we have a certain pattern of person, call them, “SJWs” if you want, that deliberately creep into a fandom with their values and shamelessly, deliberately, use it as a platform. They CONSCIOUSLY do this. They DELIBERATELY do this.

And then they have the audacity to see false positives and imagine dog whistles everywhere of things outside THEIR orthodoxy in the fandom being -isms, or -gnies. Accusing the people already there of being “out of date” and “toxic”, when it’s neither toxic nor uninclusive- it just isn’t rearranging itself to accommodate Intersectional Feminism or giving Intersectional Feminists voluntary control over everything from how something works to how it’s defined.

That to them is tantamount to being Nazis. And that’s kind of how you can tell they’re the same sort of daft, disingenuous fucks that wrap up socialist or ancom shit in supposed social progress. And if they could they’re reshape EVERYTHING to match their sensibilities, because their sensibilities are, “our way or you die.”

If you spend enough time peeking through academic papers and colleges you even learn there’s a thing many of them do. Which is, “Queering,” characters on purpose, to make them unpalatable or untouchable to cis/het people. That’s culturally like raising a flag on something to annex it and landgrab it.

And if you say, “hands off, this character isn’t gay?” They pivot and declare you’re just a homophobe whom is afraid of change, tell other people that and then talk in the broad bruckstroke about, “society is really so homophobic/afraid of new ideas. :c”

These people don’t even want to be part of that fandom for the sake of being in the fandom. They just want it because they want the fandom to perpetuate their values and parrot their beliefs and spread it to everybody else that wants to participate in that fandom. Do you like this popular thing? Okay, you can have popular thing, but only if you hug this Courtney Love doll and buy it and pet it and love it as part of the package deal!

And as part and parcel of the demanding to not just define the fundamentals and parameters of a fandom, they also demand to reinterpret the history of said fandom based on how out of orthodoxy to their values they find it to their own beliefs. So, was the hobby primarily done by white men in the past? Then naturally they’ll automatically paint it with a broad brush and say, “this hobby was very unwelcoming to non-whites and women in the past because of icky homophobic and misogynistic men!” Regardless of how many authors were beloved by the fandom that were female, regardless of how many women were equal fandom members before- they weren’t the Intersectional Feminist types of fans, so clearly they were “closer to the Daughters of the Confederacy than real people,” right? That’s how that works, apparently.

So yes. We had a taste of this in the 90s, but the feminists/radfems at the time weren’t trying to infiltrate the fandom and take it over to be about feminism. They were shaming boys and other girls for liking the big booby comic book girls as sexist and objectification and trying to get comic fans to abandon comics in order to pressure the companies economically into changing.

“These comics are written and drawn by MEN! MAAAAALE GAAAAAAAAAZE!!! Sexualized girls are only okay when WOMEN are drawing them and writing them for the authenticity!” And there were not many women that either liked comic books or wanted to BE in them, so they’d maintain that impossible standard to try and coerce the boys to FIND women for the sake of having a woman on staff, just to assauge their, “icky boys aren’t allowed to do this without me declaring it wrong” qualm.

And true to form for Progressives, give an inch and within a short period of time they just want more, and declare what was offered before was just to mollify or patronize them. “Oh so women can tidy up and do the low work. Why no female CEOs in the company yet? Why not Editor in Chief?”

But the way the Intersectionals do it is new. Rather than just stay outside the fandom because “yuck it offends my sensibilities, it shouldn’t exist,” they try and appropriate the fandom and then contribute rules and policies for it.

We saw this in the years leading up to Gamergate. The Subverters infiltrated video game journos, got incestuous and buddy-buddy with both Triple A industry people and independent game creators and traded favors, financial, sexual and other, for good reviews. Folks like Anita Sarkesian trying to make a name for themselves by already being insiders and getting plugged by the conspirators to LOOK like she was anything more than a plant for that cause, using other peoples video game playing footage in her critique videos, styling herself a holistic “girl gamer” and waxing poetic about “those awful neckbearded dudebros questioning my gamer cred! Tch!”

And so that romantic boogyman became a thing that they perpetuated. “The gatekeeping, woman hating, manbaby Gamer.” Where they then added in racism and male chauvinism and traditionalism and transphobia because you know you can’t just leave it at “misogynist.” Not, “in this society.”

Gamers protesting and demanding that game journalist magazines state their relationships to the creators for full disclosure got them retaliating asymmetrically, though. The FBI investigated all those, “threatening and trolling social media messages” that supposedly got Zoe Quinn and Sarkesian to leave their houses, “for fear of an attack,” and they got nothing. A few of them were caught doxxing themselves on purpose on 4chan. Quinn herself being part of the SomethingAwful’s Crash Override forums, where they’d do shit like this to troll and harass people for fun. They KNOW how to false flag and make it look like a bunch of angry dudebros did it.

Statistically the number of harassing egg names was far lower than the messages either girl received that was NOT harassment or threats, merely replies they didn’t agree with or didn’t appreciate. And yet they still ran around screaming about “all those misogynistic dudebro gamers” that were “harassing and doxing them.” And that boogyman became the party line. That Gaming and Gamers were full of toxic, misogynistic, racist manbabies SOooOoOooOO intimidated by, “women finally in what they feel are THEIR spaces,” that they’d try to run them out.

That’s how they interpreted it and that’s how the history books they write will repeat it.

They try and make a great big public show about “entering this toxic space” to flip it and civilize it, but what they’re really trying to do is officially own it. As a fandom, as a space and as a culture. And that entails being able to say what goes, what’s acceptable and what’s not, and set the tone and culture for that space. Meaning, to be able to gatekeep the product.

Rather than just decry the product, they decide they’re just going to mutate the product by slow assimilation, until the product doesn’t even resemble the original product anymore. They do this shit with comic books, videogames, and now they’re working on doing it to beloeved novels and their fandoms. It’s like forcibly marrying them to terrible people, so you can never have a fandom WITHOUT those people in your space trying to insist their interpretations of things are original canon, ever again.

And the sickest part is, these people DO NOT stop at fiction. That’s why this shit is called Cultural Marxism. Because it’s not much different from the way communists and socialist guerillas act and operate when it comes to land, resources and industry. They take over public spaces and forums and use a combination of instittional corruption, terrorism and violence and vandalism in order to destroy or silence competition.

They’ve even infiltrated the Linux community and taken over most of that, via Linus Torvalds’ daughter. You can’t have ANYTHING around these people, because they just sit and wait and conspire to come in and make even a simple community mural to revolve around whatever social issue and specifically their philosophy’s take on it being THE only valid take on it that everybody else must now interact with, good or bad, but they can’t ignore it anymore.

This is, also, partially why they hate it when fandoms are gatekept by singularly powerful individuals. Like say, authors of their own works. They don’t like singular owners of enterprise and property, because it prevents the mob from taking them and then dictating TO the creator, “this is the PEOPLES property now. WE decide, as the most powerful clique, what is true and real with it and what isn’t.”

Because like what happened with Frank Oz of Jim Henson Studios. An activist gay writer declared that Bert and Ernie’s relationship was “canon gay,” because he wrote them as canon gay lovers. There was a great big information cascade as all these affiliated journo companies published articles about how “happy they were to see Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop as representing LGBT people in public!”

Frank Oz spoke up, set the record straight, “These characters were made by me and a friend and were meant to depict a platonic male-male relationship. They aren’t gay but I’m glad you could identify with them.”

That poor old man caught so much shit. They called him a homophobe, said he was, “stealing Bert and Ernie from them,” that he should just shut up and “let people have this.”

No. Fucking no. These people are fucking conspirators, believe wholly in dominating and taking shit over by moving their people into a thing until they have the warm bodies and the institutional authority to crowd out oppositional voices, then have the audacity to SCREEEAAAAAAM bloody murder about the dangers of anybody else organizing to contest them because, “The Nazis are gathering to attack us poor innocent minorities!!” Counting on the ignorance and unsuspecting nature of people to not know such a thing is fake or the totality of the situation.

That’s why they’ll keep this shit on the downlow and call anybody that accuses them of doing shit like this a liar or a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Demanding evidence, in bad faith, knowing there’s little to no way to PROVE any of this UNTIL they’ve done it, and then declaring you to be invalid since you can’t prove the conspiracy.

Because if you can’t prove it with evidence, they’ll simply say you’re a Nazi trying to smear “good people.”

[anicegaystory]

established 1989

My personal journey over the past 30 years is by no means incredibly memorable, nor is it overly exciting. It wasn’t that easy, but it also was not that difficult. I certainly could have experienced more support in the community I was raised in, and I was 100% damaged by a handful of situations where I was supposed to feel safe, but I am not at all in search of your sympathy.

On the contrary, I would like to share my experiences to help others get through their own situations knowing that things absolutely get better. There are MANY people out there experiencing much worse than I have.

On the flip side of that, I have also encountered many people who have made this adventure one of a kind and I consider myself truly blessed for the lessons and kindness that they have shown me.

Tbh, I’m just your regular, run of the mill, cis-female lesbian on the edge of 30 years old wondering where the time went and stressing about the connections I have lost.

My given name is Jessica Dawn Duffy. Born in August of 1989 and raised in Prince Edward Island, Canada. For those of you who do not know where PEI is, it is located on the far east coast of Canada, nestled in the Gulf of St Lawrence, shielded from the rest of the world by New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and being forgotten from the map of Canada by some cartographers. (ahem.. Hilroy scribblers)

Recently, I was telling a new friend a funny story about an eventful day I experienced in Amsterdam in 2011 only to have my cousin, Brett, say that I have a lot of fun stories from my travels in Europe and that got me thinking about my life, about how right he is. I DO have a lot of fun stories. I also have a lot of not so fun stories, but not just about my Euro travels.

After this, I started revisiting old photographs, thinking about the many memories each one holds, and I thought about that saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Then it hit me, I decided to start a passion project where I would take one photograph from my life and accompany it with a one thousand word story, essay, article, etc. and post it.

This is my first real blog and since I’m not here to sell anyone some snake oil or skinny tea and since I am already familiar and comfortable with Tumblr it seemed as good a choice as any for this blog. Maybe one day I will move to a Wordpress, only time will tell I guess.

After many nomadic years, I am currently settled back on PEI, in a tiny house, with several dogs and cats with my wife, Olivia.

Can’t complain too much about life at the moment, I have health, love, a full time job, wonderful friends and a fantastic family.

So, HELLO!

My name is Jessica Ramsay, most people call me Jessie, sometimes Jess depending on when I met them in life, but we’ll get into that in another post, and usually just my family calls me Jessica, but honestly, at this point, call me whatever. I married the love of my life in July 2018 at Halifax Pride, I love to laugh almost as much as I love making people laugh, I won’t take your bullshit, I’m very protective of the people I care about, I love tattoos, horses, travel, unplanned adventures and I truly believe that most people are good, or they at least believe that they’re doing good.

Professionally, I am a leader, I’m proud of my work and I just want to help people do the best they can in their position.

As for this blog, I apologize as I can’t seem to slap a real “niche” on it. There will be posts about my coming out process (lengthy as it was), about experiences in life as a member of the Queer community, about being female, my travels, love and relationships, friends and lost connections, the list goes on. Hopefully some wonderful humans will feel some type of connection with certain facets of my story and we can ideally create a beautiful, safe, uplifting group where we can support each other. A sort of, come for the stories stay for the community, type of thing.

I guess I’m writing for the people who had well meaning parents who accidentally caused some trauma; for the people struggling with finding themselves, learning who they are and unsure of where to go next; for the people who experienced love, loss and abuse; for the travel lovers; for the Queer community; for the fighters; for the risk takers; and for the 29 year olds who are hella anxious about leaving their 20s.

I don’t have a post schedule. This is all going to be very personal for me to relive and by times quite difficult, so I do not want the added stress of deadlines. That being said, my goal is to be consistent and stick with it.

I turn 30 in August and I would like to have built a solid support system of mutuals and enough posts to read on that day to make me feel like my life was special up to this point. Aiming to enter my 30s with more drive to succeed while maintaining my sense of youth.

As for y’all. I’m hoping to see a following growth of 100%, should be easy since I currently have one follower and it is myself (anicegaykid.tumblr.com). But I’m not just here for that, I want to connect. I want to experience, for the first time, strangers reaching out to me, getting involved, commenting, reblogging, asking questions, sharing their stories, suggestions and opinions.

I am a very open person, I like to help people, I’m honest and this is something that I am feeling quite passionate about so let’s dive in shall we?!

#1000words #anicegaystory #firstpost #blog

[i-will-not-be-caged]

Social Contract Theory and Fandom Libertarianism

An essay in which I finally get to put my political science degree to work

So I was out walking my dog this morning and ruminating over why I have such a hard time with the conversations in fandom that seem to assume that the only two options when it comes to content are “all fan works must be pure vanilla innocence” and “all criticism is policing and evil.” To be clear, I think both extremes are, well, extreme and lacking nuance. But since I don’t actually see a whole lot of “no one can write characters doing anything wrong” in my corner of fandom (although I’m aware that plenty of it exists other places), I was much more interested in trying to figure out what bugs me so much about the “policing is the greatest evil in fandom” side of things.

Here’s the epiphany I had — people on that extreme end of things bother me because they sound so much like libertarians, much like a lot of us see echoes of fundamentalist purity culture on the other end. And then I got excited because once upon a time I was a political science major and now I get to take my epiphany and my degree and talk about social contract theory like the giant nerd I am :)

Strap in, folks; this got crazy long.

(This is, obviously, going to be pretty U.S.-centric. I’m assuming libertarianism exists in various forms in other countries, but I’m most familiar with the U.S. version, being an American and all, so that’s the lens I’m working with.)

The Libertarian Party in the US is all about “minimum government, maximum freedom.” Their website claims that they are the “the only political organization which respects you as a unique and responsible individual.” They “seek a world of liberty — a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values.”*

Sounds pretty good on the surface, but when you start to look at the practical implications, well, there are a lot of problems.

Libertarians believe that people should only pay taxes if they want to, which sounds nice if you don’t like paying taxes, but also means there would be no government-provided social programs to help people in need. No WIC, no EBT, no unemployment assistance, no libraries (at least none that weren’t privately owned).

They believe that an unbridled market, free of government interference, will lead to greater prosperity and equality for everyone. Except their version of government interference includes things like child labor laws and environmental protections and product safety regulations.

They support civil liberties for everyone, claiming that “other political parties prioritize the rights of some, but not others.”* Again, sounds good, but when combined with their emphasis the free market, in practice this means that most libertarians end up supporting business owners’ right to discriminate rather than protecting customers from being discriminated against.

And don’t even get me started on school choice.

From the many conversations I’ve had with libertarians over the years, I’ve learned that what it boils down to is basically libertarians wanting all the benefits of living in a society without any sort of responsibility for their fellow community members. They don’t understand just how much of their life is a benefit that comes from the work other community members have done. They believe that everyone should just take care of themselves and leave everyone else alone, which can sound appealing, but breaks down as soon as you add in the existence of history, inequality, and injustice.

“Responsible individuals” who are “sovereign over the own lives” thinking everything would be best if we all just did our own thing and ignored everyone else…starting to sound familiar?

Fandom libertarians, then, would be the people who insist that if everyone just did the fannish things they wanted to do and stayed out of everyone else’s business, we would all have a great time in fandom. And just like with political libertarianism, that sounds pretty good on the surface.

And here’s where we get to social contract theory. Because in addition to thinking libertarian politics would be ineffective, I also believe they violate the social contract underpinning American society.

Social contract theory has existed for basically as long as Western civilization has existed (and probably arguably even predates that, although that’s out of my realm of expertise). There is a lot of nuance and a lot of variation, but for the purposes of this essay, I’m mostly concerned with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s version.

Rousseau interpreted the social contract not just as an agreement between individuals and a ruler for the sake of protecting oneself from the State of Nature and death (the more Hobbesian view), but rather as a form of reciprocity between individuals and a ruler as well as between each individual. Rousseau believed that people could not both determine for themselves whether to fulfill their obligations to society based on their own interests and be allowed to reap the benefits of belonging to that society. This is basically the argument a lot of people use with libertarians — you don’t get to use roads, fire trucks, and other municipal services and refuse to pay your taxes.

One thing I (and many political theorists) would add to Rousseau is that in the 21st century, the social contract is not an opt-in contract. Unlike legal contracts, which you can choose to enter into or not, as soon as you are born into a society, you are part of that contract. As much as we might like to erase what we’ve got and start from scratch building society, we’ve got to start with where we are now (Even Rousseau talks about the impossibility of returning to the State of Nature in his work).

You can want it to be voluntary, you can argue that it should be voluntary, but ultimately, it’s not. Even if you have the ability to relocate and join a different society, you will then be a part of that society’s contract. We are all part of human society and that comes with certain responsibilities and requirements. There’s a lot of debate about what those responsibilities and requirements are, but only libertarians seem to think they shouldn’t actually exist.**

Fandom, on the other hand, is an opt-in community. You can choose whether or not you want to participate. Which is awesome! We all like having choices! And as many fandom libertarians will tell you, if you don’t like what’s happening in fandom, you can leave. Which is true.

However.

I would argue that if we choose to participate in fandom, we are also choosing to have some measure of responsibility for our fellow community members. If we don’t want that, we can opt out - we can make our blogs private, we can create a private subscription list for our fan works, etc. But by posting our fanworks in a public forum, by engaging in fandom activity openly online, we are agreeing to be a part of a community and all communities have guidelines and responsibilities.

Of course, we have a hard time determining what those responsibilities are even when we have laws and constitutions and things, so it’s not like something as fluid and unwieldy as fandom is going to have a codified list of rules and responsibilities outside of the terms and conditions of the platforms we use. But it boggles my mind that some people would then argue that they have no responsibility for the well-being of other community members at all.

And this is what bothers me about so much of the “Do whatever you want! People are responsible for their own experience!” side of fan culture. Yes, we can write/draw/do whatever we want. Yes, people should do what they can on their end to protect themselves. But we should also do what we can to help our community members protect themselves.

When someone claims they shouldn’t have to do that, all I can hear are the people who complain about paying taxes that they don’t benefit from or whine about having to include wheelchair ramps in their building plans or say that poor people should just work hard and get a good education. When fanwork creators call any and all criticism “policing,” all I can hear is people screaming “taxation is theft!”

And just like those people, when we refuse to make reasonable accommodations for our fellow fans — like tagging posts and fanworks accurately, avoiding racist/homophobic/transphobic tropes in our writing/art, listening when marginalized groups say something is harmful, etc. — we are actually harming our community. No one is advocating that we require people to have every single thing they create approved by a panel of judges, just like no one who wants single-payer healthcare is advocating for “death panels”. We just want to be a part of a fandom community that prioritizes minimizing harm to its members and freedom of expression.

I can already hear people screaming, “But who gets to decide???” And you know what? I don’t know the best answer to that. Here’s where that nuance that I talked about in the very first paragraph comes in. I believe that fandom communities have the capacity to navigate these gray areas respectfully and usefully without resorting to attacks or falling into the trap of fundamentalism. Maybe that’s overly idealistic of me, but well, my idealism is hard-won and refuse to give it up.

But I would also encourage us to remember that when it comes to issues of racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism — anything outside the realm of personal preference — fandom is not immune from the power differentials that exist in the broader world. Which means that the burden is on those with more power — white fans, straight fans, cis fans, abled fans, etc. — to work to make their own positions more nuanced before demanding it of fans with marginalized identities (and to remember that people exist at the intersections of all of those identities as well, so that I don’t use my queer, mentally ill identity to excuse myself from doing the work my whiteness requires).

Of course, this post assumes that most of the people in fandom agree with me that libertarianism generally turns people into arrogant assholes who don’t give a shit about others. I might be wrong about that; maybe fandom is full of libertarians and think it’s absolutely right and good to bring libertarianism into fandom as well. I just wish libertarians, both in fandom and outside of it, would stop insisting that people should have complete freedom without any acknowledgement that 1) that freedom has the ability to hurt someone else and 2) not everyone has the same access to that freedom.

*Quotes are pulled directly from the Libertarian Party’s website

**Note: there are a lot of criticisms of social contract theory, often through a feminist and/or race-conscious lens, that believe the idea of a social contract is inherently flawed; those criticisms, however, have more to do with acknowledging the ways in which people other than straight white men have been excluded from these contracts, and actually argue for greater responsibility for other individuals in society.

#fandom #fan culture #i tried to bold some of the main ideas #just in case you don't have time for 1800 words of political theory today

[sweettasteoffailure]

Alex and Lectures

this is from an ask that @queercapwriting got. here. Cap, thank’s for the inspiration from your lovely anons, I love them so much. I hope I did Alex justice and Adrian was stubborn but he at least had a few bites of veggies. Okay, here we go...

On the drive there, Alex can’t stop wiping her hands on her pants and off the steering wheel at every light, every stop because, what if she can’t help these kids? What if they laugh at her stories? But Maggie had told her that she was going to do great, and that is what she would do. Entering the college, Alex signed in at the front desk, pinning her visitors pass onto her shirt. There were people walking in all different directions, going from one lecture to another, getting food to eat, meeting up with friends, and, hopefully, going to Alex’s talk. Adrian’s college was the first place that Alex had ever gone to lecture anyone on anything. At first it had been on science, encouraging people to pursue this amazing field, but with encouraging from Maggie and Adrian, she had started to do talks on LGBT+ topics, coming out, acceptance and heaps of other things that she thought would help these kids.

Alex would never forget her first talk that she had done, Maggie had come with her and she had held her hand walking to the hall and she had kissed her before letting Alex walk up to the stand to talk to these open eyed queer kids with tears in their eyes because finally, they were safe in this hall. Safe with this woman who talked with such experience that it could only mean that, maybe, just maybe, she was queer too. And Alex had proven these rumours true when she had stepped down from the microphone and Maggie had run up and hugged her. Which, of course, had turned into a kiss. Which of course, had caused the whole room to erupt in cheers.

Alex smiled at the memory and walked into the hall, hands still shaking even after all the times that she had done this. Every time was different, different kids, different topics because “no way am I going to have palm cards, Maggie,”

There were so any amazing kids with so many different styles sitting in front of Alex. On some of their wrists were different coloured bands, most of them being rainbow. But others had trans colours on their wrists as well, asexual, non binary colours, so many different identities coming together to hear Alex speak to them. They didn’t know exactly what Alex was going to say, the flyer had just said an LGBT+ talk, but that had been enough.

Alex cleared her throat and smiled at a certain dapper young man sitting in the back of the room, smiling back at Alex. Adrian waved at her subtly and gave an encouraging nod. He looked so comfortable and Alex felt a surge of love for Adrian, proud of how far he had come since Maggie had found him. Pulling the microphone on the stand towards her, Alex cleared her throat.

“Hi everyone, my name is Alex. My pronouns are she/her,” There were a few tentative head lifts at Alex’s mention of pronouns.

“Being LGBT+ is hard, I’m not going to lie. Finding out that you’re queer, coming to terms with that. It’s hard. And it will be hard for many of you to accept that about yourselves. But I’m not saying this to make you feel bad, or ashamed. I’m here to help you,”

“I want to tell you one of my favourite quotes that I once read. “Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons are real, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten,”” Alex dried her hands on her jacket and continued.

“We all face our own dragons, and I’m sure that everyone in this room has faced their own. But I want you to know that you are not alone. Ever. I mean,” Alex spread her arms, “Look at this room, look how many people are in here. We are all here to fight the same dragons. Being queer is hard, but it is never something to be ashamed of, it is never something to hate. We are so lucky that we have this community of amazing people to support us. And I know, that you can feel alone sometimes, you can feel like there is no one to talk to. But I am here for you. I’m here for you now to help teach you guys about things that this heteronormative, cis, college can’t,” All eyes were on Alex now and she could see Adrian in the back, beaming like it was christmas.

“So,” Alex said, “What do you guys want to know?”

Almost as if coordinated, every hand shot up straight (A/N haha) in the air, which led to giggles spreading through this group of ragtag kids who, they hoped, had finally found a place where they belonged.

After the lecture, Alex had taken Adrian to meet up with Maggie at a diner near the college. They sat in one of the corner booths, laughing and sharing funny stories. Adrian squealed when Maggie placed her vegan salad in front of him and made him eat at least a few bites because “you don’t know if you don’t like it till you try it, Adrian, and I’m pretty sure you live off of Jessie’s pizza, so no complaining.”

Adrian mock frowned, “Fine, Sam-I-am. But just so you know,” he put a bit of the green leaves in his mouth and grimaced, “I most definitely do not like green eggs and ham.” Maggie laughed and took her food back, digging into it, leaning against Alex happily. Adrian laughed along with both of his queer mums as he ate his, most definitely not vegan, meal.

As Adrian walked back to his dorm room, he saw a group of kids from the lecture walking through the quad, laughing and having fun. Adrian smiled, putting his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and kept walking, glad that these kids had found a place where they could be happy. He would have to ask Alex to come back again soon…

A/N I might be coming back to this for a second parter where Maggie comes and helps with a struggling queer kid.

#sanvers #give adrian his own show #alex danvers #supergirl #head canon #fic #fanfiction #writing #lgbt+ #pride #mine #my post

[theletterformallyknownasq]

Kaja - August 22nd, 2018

Me: All right. Session 2. I'm here with Kaja Vang. Thank you for al­lowing me to interview you and hear your stories and your experienc­es of being Queer and immigrant while living and working and making home in Minnesota. Can you tell me how you received your name? Kaja: My mom said that my grandma had a dream and it was filled with a lot of fireflies. She just woke up and told my mom 'you're gonna name your kid Kab Ntsha.' That's how you pronounce it in Hmong. Kab meaning Bug, Ntsha meaning Light. And my mom was like 'OK cool.' And then she gave me my middle name which is Mindie. But my grandma basically named me.

Me: Have you ever revisited that story with your family to confirm that? Kaja: When I was a teenager, yeah. So my grandma passed this past winter, so I wish I took the time to actually talk to my grandma and figure out how did she specifically came up with my name. Because memories and words aren't always 100% what my people say. My mom is super dramatic sometimes. So when I was little when I first entered the academic world, my teacher couldn't pronounce my name, so they came up with Kaja, I just went with it. Then I was like, 'is that how I pronounce my name?' It sounded way easier. So I'm like 'OK cool whatever.'  And then when I was transitioning into my freshman year in college, I was like 'oh I really want to reclaim my name and make sure people say it right.' And then I was talking to this white boy. He's like, "What's your name?" I'm like 'It's Kab Ntsha.' He's like 'Oh, ganja like weed?' And from that point I'm like 'nope, zip, I'm going with Kaja, pronounce my name wrong. I don't give a shit.' I only correct you if I love you dearly and you're a part of my life and I want that to be a thing. But general strangers, the youth that I work with, they sometimes call me the wrong name that sounds similar to Kaja. And people always question 'Oh is that how you say your name in Hmong?' And I'm like, 'no but I'm not trying to teach you right now.' Me: How have people mispronounced your name? Kaja: They call me Kaia which is like some white European shit. It's K-A-I-A instead of the J. They call me Kesha. Me: No. Kaja: They call me Tasha. Me: Nahhhh. But The "T"?! Kaja: Right? But that's the general gist of what people call me. And I just don't want to correct them unless I really care about them. Me: How do you identify? Pronouns et al? Kaja: I identify as a nonbinary and Queer Hmong writer. I write a lot. I'm pretty gay. Me: You kind of already touched on this but where's your family from? Kaja: So they are technically from Laos. I don't know my dad's history, I mainly know my mom’s. She grew up in the refugee camps in Thailand. Thailand and Laos is where my family is from. Me: And what brought them to Minnesota? Kaja: Colonialism. White supremacy. The U.S.-Vietnam War. My mom was born in 1974, so she grew up in the middle to end-ish of the Vietnam War. My mom's the oldest in her family and she had I think two younger brothers at that time when my grandma decided to leave Laos to go to the refugee camps in Thailand. She left my mom and her younger sister behind. So my mom and her younger sister had to basically leave. Someone ended up taking them to a refugee camp somewhere. I'm not sure if it's in Laos or Thailand. My mom was like 5 or something. She found aunties at the refugee camps and every morning before the sun rose, she would exit the refugee camp and then knock on neighbors’ doors and beg for food and she would come home, come back to the refugee camp and feed her younger sister. All the aunties kept telling her that her mom didn't love her, that she abandoned her and her father left as well. My granddad left way before my grandmother left to go to another refugee camp. But eventually a couple of years later, my grandpa came back and realizes she's his daughter, tells her to leave with him. And the whole family got reunited in the United States again. Me: Wow. I’m holding that for you, that's really heavy and hard to recall. My family had a similar experience but we were never displaced from our homelands. Thank you for sharing that. And what has kept them and yourself here? Kaja: I think the hopes and dreams of living a better life. For my parents, this is what they've always thought the U.S. would be. A place you can make it on your own and have your own business and be wealthy in terms of what Hmong immigrants think is successful. In my eyes, they're super successful. They have always thrown themselves into new experiences. So I grew up in a grocery store that my mom and dad got handed down from shady ass uncles. My mom and dad just kind of winged everything and learned everything about business by themselves. And they've always pushed me to be super innovative, creative, and to make a lot of money. And for me the reason why I'm here is because I'm about community. I found people who love me for who I am, and really support me and my journey of finding and expressing my authentic self. And that's why I'm here. Me: Would you want to stay in Minnesota? Kaja: For the time being, yes. I’m pretty sure this is an excuse for myself, but my parents are transitioning from owning a grocery store and then having the state buy the land because they want to pave a highway through it and do this man-made sewage lake thing.

Kaja: So then my mom and dad then purchased another commercial building a few miles away from the original one and this was a transitioning time my mom got her hairstyling license. And we bought this commercial building with the money that the government gives and my mom opened up her own beauty salon. And so right now, business has been going down and instead of renting out the open spaces in the building, my dad decided to renovate the middle space and make it a grocery store again. And so right now I'm kind of stuck helping them. Feeling obligated to be here for them still. But I mean I would like to move elsewhere and experience what life could be or how community looks like outside of Minnesota. Me: Hmm. East Coast then, maybe? Kaja: I haven't been there as an adult. I've only been to New York when I was a teenager. Me: What do you do for a living? Kaja: I work at a homeless drop-in center for youth between 16 and 23. I'm basically a social worker that stays in one spot. I don't leave the building ever, so I just do a lot of case management stuff or I build relationships with youth and provide them basic needs. But outside of that stuff that I do for a living that I don't get paid for, I do a lot of community organizing but not in terms of what the white structure of what community organizing is. I write and hope that would be something I can get paid to do one day. But I'm still trying to figure that out. Me: Next question is what gives you joy? Kaja: Gives me joy? Off the top of my head, I think puppies and babies. That gives me joy as well as connecting and getting to know more Queer and Trans folks of color as well as seeing how my parents are slowly learning and shifting their verbiage of talking about Queer and Trans Hmong people.  My mom and dad are always using the excuse that they're too old and can't learn anything new, relying heavily on their kids. Just seeing the initial moment where I told my mom that I'm Queer. She's been referring to my partner as my partner instead of my friend. Slow steps. And that's cool with me. And that brings me a lot of joy, intermingled with a lot of frustration and anger. Good food brings me joy. Eating with other people brings me joy. I hate eating by myself. Me: What does Queer mean to you? I'm going to ask you to elaborate on your definition. Kaja: Queer. It means freedom or space to invest in yourself where you're liberated from the constraints of who you should be. So before I came out or identified as being Queer, I wondered if I was bisexual, and then was like ‘nah, bisexual doesn't feel like me, doesn't feel good to me.’ And then I wondered if I’m pansexual? Am I just attracted to people's personalities? And I'm like ‘nah, that doesn't feel good to me.’ And coming across the word Queer and having a community to reclaim that word again felt right. And it didn't feel too constraining or too rigid, but rather I get to define what Queer means to me. And you might have a different definition and that's cool. I don't mind that. But to me, it just means I'm able to move freely in my journey of discovering all of my identities and how that affects me in the ways that I navigate life. Me: What do you like or don't like about the mainstream definition? Kaja: I don't like white Queers. They're terrible. I have a couple of co-workers who are white cis gay men who say stuff like, "Back in my day, the word Queer was horrible. I don't know why you young kids are using it now." And I'm like ‘ok, to each their own, whatever. Don't judge me. Don't judge anyone.’ And then to the younger Queers or Queers my age, the mainstream usage of it just seems too academic where you have to have the right definition of Queer. And there is no fucking right definition of Queer. And even if your definition doesn't match, you're shunned. Using the word Queer in the mainstream way just seems so full of privilege and whiteness and I don't like that.

Me: Amen. Affirming all of those things. How does your family's culture define Queer? Kaja: YIKES. Me: If they can? Kaja: It's like an intermix of adopting the english word 'gay' to describe all types of Queer relationships and Queerness. Using slang terms. I don't know how to say it correctly, but it's a word that people have adapted to describe Trans women in community. But that's a really negative context that they use it in. It's just also kind of not spoken about. We don't talk about it. We don't acknowledge it. We pretend that Queer and Trans Folk people have never existed before and people think you're just crazy and that you need to find yourself a good man or woman then you'll be OK. I can't describe it in words but rather like in feelings of what Queerness means to the Hmong Community. A lot of shame and guilt and a lot of gaslighting that happens. Like an out of body experience of where you're like ‘Oh am I really Queer?’ But we don't have a word for it. It's shameful. So they think I'm just crazy. So I should probably marry a man.

Me: Last question before we get kicked out of this booth! It's a lil long though. If you could address the most influential public figures and decision makers in the state right now, what would you say about improving the standard of living for someone like yourself in Minnesota? Kaja: Well I don't know the academic term, but the health care where they don't bill you separately and you never meet your deductions and so you have to pay out of pocket for your health care. Universal health care that's affordable. Affordable in terms of we're not sacrificing X Y and Z to pay off our health care bills. We need health care that is encompassing all identities and all genders and all needs so we don't always have to go to specialty doctors and having to pay more and take the chances to cover it out of pocket. Kaja: Housing. Having a more sustainable way of providing housing for folks. Because homelessness is a huge issue here and people always go 'well why don't they work? Then they can get a place. Why isn't there enough public housing?' But there is enough public housing. The thing is we don't provide support to make that housing sustainable for them and we're only worried about if they're going to make enough money on time to pay for rent. It's more than that. It also includes mental health that affects their stability in housing. It also affects what barriers do people have to go through, especially being Queer and Trans and folks of color, to get jobs that pay you well and pay you enough so that you're able to have sustainable housing and that you don't always have to move here and there. And at the end of your lease, if your rent has gone up, you don't always have to find a new place, you know? We're always being displaced. We're always being moved. We are constantly forced to choose. Choose to live in a communal space where we're sharing a house with people, like 6-8 people in one place. And it's not like I only want my own house or my own space, but instead I want that to be a choice rather than out of necessity. Where you have Queer and Trans folks of color having to pool money together, having to share the little resources that they have to be able to support one another. That shouldn't be a thing. It should feel like a choice. But we're doing it out of necessity and survival. Put more Queer and Trans people in higher positions instead of assessing their background in education and experience and them not being good enough for those positions. Or the worry or the threat that we pose as Queer and Trans folks of color when we're trying to get hired for a supervisor position. It's not a threat to you and your power for the company to hire more Queer and Trans folks of color in a higher position.

Me: Well it challenges a power structure, that's why they don't do it. Make us the public figures and decision makers? Kaja: Hell yeah. Especially if you're working with Black and Brown youth, don't you think that? Me: They would respond a little more if they recognized themselves in the people in positions of power?

Kaja: Yeah. Like, why would you hire a white person to fill a role who doesn't reflect the population you’re serving? Me: Or does it? Kaja: Oooooh. Me: On that note. I think that is really awesome. Thank you Kaja!

#interviews