Anyone here use Dreamwidth? I’m starting to use it again. How I missed actually being able to have conversations with people, in semi private gathering.
The parallel megaphone screaming of Tumblr have left me forgotten how nice it could be.
I’d swap 1000 reblogs and likes for a single good personal dialogue.
Throw me a PM if you do. I miss that kind of interaction.
I’ve been thinking about misgendering trans* people lately. Specific type of misgendering, the ones where we’ve met the person prior to them coming out, and then we make mistakes out of lazy momentum.
I think for me, it takes the time I know the person in their assigned gender, divide by 4, and that’s how long it takes me to intuitively default switch.
I don’t know if it makes things better to know that more likely than not, the misgendering has absolutely nothing to do with not passing, and everything to do with that lots of people are just really slow with changes. The same inertia laziness that people would press the snooze button and woke up at 3pm.
It’s our problem.
Everything works better with practice. Try this. When you have a spare moment, Think of the person. Try to practice their correct pronoun when their face flash. Every time you see them post something, practice the correct pronoun. Every time you associate something with them, try to practice the right pronoun.
We will still make mistakes because this is what people do. But this really isn’t that much effort and we got to remember that, despite it’s our problem for getting things wrong, chances are we are not the ones ended up feeling invalidated and humiliated.
When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?
Yes. Genetically speaking, it is no different from heterosexual, non-incestious offsprings. Your bigger concern should be how incest isn’t a cool thing among royalty anymore.
It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not? Why shouldn’t a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn’t two elderly sisters living together marry each other?
Sorry Mr Norman Tebbit, you need to divorce your daughter first before marrying your son.
While there are some cases that pandered to the celebrity culture, overall I’m very impressed with the people selected for NZHerald New Zealander of the Year. Stephen Swart is quite a David and Goliath character, and I do think that the sporting world is cleaner because of him.
The 2009 winner, Lenny Holmwood, is forever going to be the most badass of all badass in the history of badass to me. He deserves his own gushing post one day.
Did the station just played piano acoustic Eye On Me as the elevator music of choice?
I approve.
“Lee broke into a run” rather than “Lee broke into a ran” as “broke” is already past tense right?
But then it’s, “Jamie felt depressed” rather than “Jamie felt depress” because
Fuck you English language.
I want to read this book but I don’t want to buy it because by paying for it I’m essentially screwing over the writer, who I’d like to support.
This is a new one.
When I write experiences, feelings and record of my own, I am a narcissist.
When I write experiences, feelings and records belong to others, I am an overstepper.
Somehow my work on the visual novel turned into a side project of (lol) autobiographical Twine game. I don’t know if I will be brave enough to release it. Hint, it’s as whingey and self-obsessed as you can expect from me making an autobiographical Twine game.
Someone else identifies as heterosexual transman does not disqualify your identity as homosexual ciswoman. The transman’s confusion and journey upon his identity is not a challenge to your sureness of yours.
There’s enough love going around. Transphobia wins you nothing, but we all lose something along the line.
Then turned out 90% of the places I’m applying to have mandatory photograph policy, or we are disqualified on spot.
Well.
I’m actually really cute. Tall, really skinny and blonde. This is me. Please hire me. Etc.
I do have some extremely embarrassing wish-fulfilling.giggle giggle this-is-my-fantasy-ideal-life-that-will-never-happen thoughts. Sometimes I indulge in them. I’m content with that they are nothing more than fantasy and will never happen.
Reading about this clusterfuck is a great way of putting a foot through that fantasy.
Hey Mythbusters will you hire Kiera Wilmot? She’s clearly too amazing for her school to handle.
Homer Hickam approves her. That means something.
Went to a Beijing GBLT event today, with the theme of online hatespeech.
It is absolutely amazing. The forum itself did occur in a confrontational, perhaps even a bit triggering type of way, but I thought it was necessary given the topic. It makes sense here. Being abrasive is our national sport. Even I’m scared of the Chinese internet.
There was a planted mole who was there to throw regurgitated homophobic arguments commonly seen on the internet. There were quite a few people who didn’t realise the moleness joined in the debate. It was spectacular. Spontaneous it may be, I am in utter awe of just how much so many of the people know. No tables were flipped, I’m not going to say if it was close.
Some of the Chinese specific queer issues:
- Confucius philosophy and its effect on the culture. (This deserves its own topic, consider I have so, so many more issues with Confucius philosophy and quite frankly I take issue with people who tried to claim that it’s a historical pride point. I see Confucius as our cultural shame.)
- The societal attitude where marriage and having biological children are seen as mandatory
- Sexism. The way women are seen as commodities, hence lesbians are treated with more hostility than male queers. (i.e how dare another woman who should be a man’s property tries to take the property that should belong to another man?
- The layperson’s scientific understanding appears to be weaker than some other parts of the world
- The general discomfort with sex for pleasure.
- Huge emphasis that family is more important than an individual: if your mum wants you to be heteromarried, you are selfish for not doing it.
Some Chinese specific queer strengths:
- Homosexuality was never illegal.
- The dominating religions in China are nowhere near as hostile toward homosexuality compared to Christian based countries. Taoism is pretty much whateves, while Buddhism shakes their disapproval toward any kind of pleasure seeking yet without the degree of hatred. I’m not particularly familiar with Chinese Islam’s take on homosexuality, certainly not seeing anyone running around with Homophobia For Allah signs ever.
- The sheer speed of change of attitude here amazes me. There are still plenty of hostility, but just comparing the general societal attitude every five years and I’m rolling in warm fuzzies.
Despite of having GLBT rather than GLBTOMGWTFBBQLOL type of acronym, this is the most inclusive major queer activist group I’ve ever seen. There is a strong push for fighting for all disadvantaged classes. Just within the room decoration, there were posters against family violence, against sexual assaults, pro religious diversity, pro accessible health care, huge visible trans/intersex encouragement.
Then during the event itself, the topics touched upon included need of sex-positive education, sex education in general, age discriminations, mental health ableism, discrimination based on physical attractiveness, areal discrimination, poverty. At one point it deteriorated/elevated into an academic discussion regard to evolutionary mechanisms efficiency, only to be side tracked by an academic discussion regard to anthropology of Naxi family structure.
I’m so boiling with happy hot red blood right now I’m basically a cheerleader on Ouendan. Even if I did end up missing my train and had to take a taxi back.
EDIT: I did wish that I could raise the issue regard to pick our battles and block the trolls, but I’m kinda lazy like that so I guess it’s a good thing we ran out of time.
One way of functioning on auto-pilot based on the inertia of how your body runs.
Sometimes it makes mistakes.
