#NOTE: i am not an expert on queer history

[spacedykensfw2]

Could you speak on the oppression in the kink community? I’m trying to talk to my friend about it and they keep shutting me down, I feel like you could explain better

I am SO sorry it took me so long to respond to this. This is an amazing question, and I'll do my best to answer it.

There are a couple ways to look at this, I think: intra-community oppression (the call is coming from inside the house), and oppression faced by the community as a whole.

I don't think it's surprising to anyone that there are shitty people in the kink community. There are (real) sexists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, etc etc etc. Right? And I think a lot of this shows up in the forms of what roles are acceptable for which people to take on, the fact that kink spaces tend to be very, very, very white, and the unfortunate prevalence of typically middle aged white men trying to use kink as an excuse for them to take advantage of new, young, typically female, subs (this is particularly noticeable in online spaces). I'm not going to go too deep into this because this takes the form of so many issues I'd be here for the length of a novel if I tried to tackle all of them, but I don't think this is what you're really asking about anyway, and beyond that I'm not going to be the best person to talk about certain issues because I am a white, afab sub. There are other people on this website who are going to be much better suited to speak on issues such as racism, or the homophobia/biphobia associated with male subs--that kind of thing.

As for the oppression the community faces as a whole. For this, we have to look at a handful of things: the completely inseparable entanglement of kink with the original pride movement, societal views towards sex as a whole, how those views impact how society views the non-sexual aspects of being queer, the stigma associated with mental health struggles and trauma, and probably a bunch of other things I'm forgetting.

There's a reason there's a leather pride flag.

Society, particularly conservatives, views queer identities as "a weird sex thing" even when that is not inherently the case. To conservatives, being gay, being trans, being into BDSM, and being a groomer/pedophile/rapist/etc are all the same thing. We saw this decades ago with gay bars being raided thanks to public indecency laws, we see this now with the attempted eradication of trans people and outlawing of drag queens (and some gay bars being raided thanks to public indecency laws). (Side note, these people do not see a meaningful difference between being trans and being a drag queen. While you can be both, of course, they do not mean the same thing, but conservatives ultimately see being a drag queen as a form of adult entertainment, and therefore a weird sex thing, just like being trans. Even though there is nothing inherently sexual about either of these things.)

Because the persecution of queer people in recent history also ended up taking the form of persecuting non-queer people over kinks and fetishes, the two communities formed a very strong bond, and most kink spaces at this point are very queer-friendly, if not full of queer people in the first place. (This is not to say that at any point there weren't queer people in kink spaces or vice versa--there absolutely were! This is just a simplification of events because I'm not an expert and if I try to do all the research to do an extremely in-depth explanation, we'll be here all day.)

I'd say the most obvious way this overlapping oppression takes place today is the whole "no kink at pride" thing. Like I said earlier, there's a reason there's a leather pride flag, and you cannot untangle the pride movement from the kink community. Other ways this takes form: there are still anti-sodomy laws in fourteen states in the US, there are laws regarding how many sex toys someone can own in Texas (and possibly Arizona?), Mississippi, Virginia, and Alabama all have laws on the books banning the sale of sex toys entirely, and frankly, the entire legal battle over access to reproductive healthcare, abortion, and birth control overlap with this as well--basically, if you aren't having extremely boring, basically chaste sex for the explicit purpose of reproducing, someone is coming for your right to do that in some way.

Anyway, this was kind of a broad swing at this, but if you have any more specific questions or topics you want me to get into, I'd be happy to do that!

#asks #anonymous #meta

[junebugwriter]

Galatians 3:28 is Transgender Affirming, Actually

An exegetical exploration of the text

I used to be a pastor. That occupation affords a position as a lot of things within the church, an opportunity to be “all things to all people” as Paul would say. 1 Perhaps the one that I was most well suited to and excelled at was being the neighborhood theologian in residence and academic in practice. Now that I am an academic full-time in my graduate studies, I am practically drowning in research, but remarkably, little of it is explicitly biblical in nature. This is something I quite miss, and so I began this blog partly to fill that missing piece of my former life, because I believe that as a Christian, drinking deep from the well of scripture is generally good practice and ideal to work towards.

So, call me surprised when a few weeks ago, I heard a murmur of a discourse on the site formerly known as Twitter, discourse revolving around Galatians 3, specifically Galatians 3: 28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now, let me say this up front: this passage has meant a lot to me most of my life. It is a message that is designed to unify, to build community, to embolden us to set aside differences for the common good of the Christian community. But also, it has meant a lot to me personally, as it signaled to me that God simply does not regard my being transgender as something to be used against me, that in the end it does not matter to God, because God is beyond all of the binaries and dividing lines we might draw here on earth.

However, this is not exactly consensus. (Not that Twitter is at all an engine for consensus-building—in fact it was engineered to be the opposite!) For every person who argued that Galatians 3:28 was an affirming passage as regards people of the transgender experience, there were perhaps dozens more who said that interpreting it that was robs the passage of its context, and goes against the sacred word of Paul of Tarsus.2

This naturally got my pastor engine burning, because to me, it seems obvious, even with context, that Galatians 3 would be affirming for transgender people. Yet, most likely, there are many that would not see it so. Therefore, allow me to make my case for a queer, trans reading of Galatians 3.

(Note: though I am a trained pastor and theologian, I am NOT an expert in New Testament studies or biblical Greek. Additionally, though I am a queer theologian, Queer Theology as an area of

focus is not my exact specialty, not as much as disability or ethics is. This is my own exegesis and interpretation, make of that as you will.)

The Text in Context

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is a text with a fraught history, which makes sense considering the letter was written to a problematic church. If Paul was going to write to a church, there was usually a significant enough problem at stake for the foundling churches of Asia. Moreover, if the letter was to be included within biblical canon, it meant that the issue was significant enough for the leaders of early church to have found it essential for the spiritual formation of the church itself. That issue was nothing less than a question of inclusion and discrimination within the church.

Paul was faced with the question: Who is to be included within the church? Who is to be given salvation? It’s a soteriological question with social implications, and to erase the second facet is to do a disservice to the first facet. Paul relates as much in his discussion in earlier chapters regarding his disagreement with Peter, Cephas, and James. To be a follower of Christ, did one need to be a Jew first? They had agreed, and sent Paul with their blessing, that the correct answer is no. One did not need to be a Jew in order to be saved through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. One could be a Gentile or a Jew, and this pivotal decision set in motion the course of the church for the rest of history, one which would ultimately spell final division with our Jewish siblings.

But I digress. The point was, there was confusion among the church as to who was included in the family of God, and Paul emphatically declared in Galatians that this entire line of questioning was out of order. Paul was of course chiefly focused on the Jewish/Gentile divide, but he was not blind to the hierarchical realities of the society in which he lived. The statement he makes in 3:28 is a threefold formulation, one that approaches the chief dividing lines in society as he saw it: Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female.3 This entire letter was birthed by inequality and division occurring socially4, and Christian communities are reflections of their societies and communities. Jim Reiher puts it like this: “...human ‘horizontal’ relationships were not reflecting the ‘vertical’ equality we all have in Christ with God.”

Thus, in response to these divisions among the people of the church, Paul’s response is that it is in the waters of baptism in Jesus Christ that we are given common salvation. Jennifer Slater states that in a post-Christ paradigm, “both men and women share equally in Christ and so become equal members or participants of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.”5 This is not in ignorance of the realities of division, nor a collapse of identity. People remain distinct, and so do identities within the church. To ignore such would

be to ignore reality. Rather, it’s instead not a dissolution of distinction, but rather a negation of difference as a basis for exclusion. 6

In Paul’s day, and in ours, it would be the height of foolishness to state that difference did not exist. Yet despite that, we as the church are called to not necessarily bless the structures that divide us in our society, but reflect a different reality in which those differences do not deny any of us citizenship in the Reign of God through Jesus Christ. Christ did away with those when he took on human flesh and was resurrected from the dead. When we undergo the waters of baptism, we are initiated into that reign, that new reality, and offered salvation through faith.

That Paul knew what he was doing here seems obvious. There was a very strict codification of gender binary within Roman society in that time, with a clear advantage given to men over women. Women had less social status than men, often could not hold property, and even were seen as property of men in every arena. To state “there is neither male nor female” is a direct contradiction of the social order as it stood, and different gender roles were proscribed by society. As such, this disregarding of gender as it affects life in the church is a radical statement indeed, and thus worthy of modern interrogation.

Queering the Text

This is, of course, where the fun begins. I needed to get through that background to get to the question at hand: how is Galatians 3:28 a trans affirming passage?

I am going to state here that queer theory and queer criticism is a relatively new field of criticism, doubly so for theology. Though the interrogation of the text as a gender-inclusive statement can be seen to go back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, queerness as a subcategory of theology can only go back a few decades. Therefore, the scholarship is scant on the matter of Galatians 3:28, but not impossible to find. For a more in-depth analysis, I’ll recommend an excellent paper by Jeremy Punt, full citation in the footnotes.7 His work is excellent, yet it is mostly focused on establishing a basis for a queer reading of Galatians 3, not as much the specific queerness that being transgender poses.

In claiming that in Christ there is “no male nor female,” there is an androgynizing effect to the passage that poses a danger to the male audience, much more than the female one.8 Men stood to lose much in the categorical collapse of gender: social status, privilege, and legal rights. In the bargain, women stood to gain much more than men would lose, and thus this was a radical proposal for 1st century church members. Yet, one could argue that this collapse was potentially less dangerous than the difference collapse between rich and poor, slave and free, and most especially for Paul’s interest, Jew and Gentile. The presence of salvation through the work of Jesus Christ was a radical proposition, and to separate social reality from soteriological would be folly, especially since the social aspect seemed to be the chief problem that was being posed to salvation.

This naturally leads to a significant question for the interpreter: what do we mean by salvation? Is salvation simply something that happens in the great by and by? Is it simply a reality relegated to existence after death? Or does salvation mean something in the present, the here and now? I would argue that for Paul, it absolutely matters. Salvation was a social issue, because the material reality with which the church was faced was affecting their theological prejudices and division. Thus, when Jesus saves, Jesus does not simply save us for later, but saves us right now. When he first speaks in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”9 That’s not a promise of the reign in the future, in some far away time or place that is immediate and urgent. Thus, salvation only makes sense if we frame it in the present, material reality of the listener.

Jeremy Punt wisely stated that “...queer theory is not so much about bestowing normalcy on queerness but rather queering of normalcy.”10 If one takes that task seriously, it is then a very queer thing indeed for Jesus to have proclaimed the arrival of the Reign of God. It very much queered the normalcy of the people he preached to, and Paul is very much queering the normalcy of the people of Galatia in this broad, unifying pronouncement. He is blurring the divisions between ethnic groups, economic groups, as well as gender groups, something that is usually believed to have been an unreconcilable divide. After all, did God not create the two genders in the Garden of Eden? ”Male and female, he created them?” Yet in Christ, we see that this division need not be maintained so strictly, because the things of heaven, the Reign of God, does not seem to care about these divisions all that much.

The case for gender inclusion in Galatians seems straightforward, then. Women ought not be barred from anything within the church itself. The social dimension directly affects this salvation issue, and God is freeing us from division within salvation and society. But this leads to the crucial question:

Does this include transgender people?

The T-shaped Hole in our Text

Our beliefs and understanding about gender, sex, and the social constructs around them have changed in the intervening millennia between our us and our text. There was no way for Paul to have talked about what we now understand as transgender people, because that category did not exist for him in that context.

That does not mean that we did not exist back then, mind you. The existence of transgender people in history is being uncovered on a daily basis. Our journals, our records, our stories exist, but on the margins of social consciousness. The truth of the matter is, we did not simply appear in the last few years, when people started making more of a fuss about us in the public sphere. We simply have learned more about how gender works, and that is a concept and topic that is expanding each day. So, while Paul did not consider transgender people in his writing, that does not mean that we did not exist in his day and age, and that does not mean that this text doesn’t have something to say about us.

If one had to boil down the entire text of Galatians to a single point, it would be that our divisions do not stop us from receiving the love of God through Jesus Christ. Quite the reverse. Jesus

Christ does not care about our divisions. God’s love does not end at an arbitrary dividing wall of our own creation. That love is shared among God’s children equally; how could you make a holy parent like God choose among their creation? Likewise, God does not contain within themselves division. God may be triune in nature, but that triune aspect of God only heightens the communal aspect of love, and the love that God shares within God’s selves is only stronger when it is shared with God’s creation.

When I was a child, I was baptized into the life of the church. There is not a day that goes by where I did not know God’s love for me. It has been a constant throughout my life, and I cherish the fact that I have always had assurance of God’s love for me. God does not suddenly stop loving someone like me when I learn more about myself, about my mind, my identity, and my manner of expression. If, as Paul says, “There is no longer male and female,” then why get hung up on whether or not God’s love is extended to transgender people? You can hop that binary divided at any point, and God’s love for you would not change. You can ride that line all day long if you want! You may say, forget the line! Because the line is only there because we say it’s there.

In the end, male and female are simply categories, and if God is any indicator, categories are meant to be defied. God does not have a gender, because God is beyond the binary. God is beyond every binary, in fact. This isn’t a controversial statement, it simply has been the understanding of the church going back to antiquity. That we call God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and use predominantly masculine pronouns is because of how language works, and how God through Jesus Christ revealed themselves to us. That is the language they used, but any language we use is provably lacking when talking about the divine, because it is a construct of human making, and therefore flawed and fallible. Our understanding of biology is simply what we have so far observed and tested, backed up on documentation, and is liable to change as more information is gathered. Furthermore, gender is different from biological sex, and while both are important—fascinating, even!--they are also more malleable than we might imagine.

Christians are also a people of change. We believe that Jesus came to change the world from how it is to how it will be under the Reign of God. Jesus calls us to repentance, to change ourselves, and be transformed by the love that God has for us. You are changing every day in small, unnoticeable ways. Transgender people are just people who have observed an interior discrepancy in how we are perceived by the world, and work to change that in our lives to better reflect the person that we always were inside. That’s not dishonesty or delusion, it is simply how humans work! It's the height of honesty to be transgender, because the most intimate part of ourselves, our identity, is important, and God honors that. Because of that, God does not really care if we transition. Because God shows no partiality. Man, woman, something in between, something outside the binary completely—there is no longer any division, because all are one in Christ our Lord. If you belong to Christ, you belong to the promise that God will always love you, no matter what.

Conclusion

To me, a theologian and one deeply called to teaching the truths of our faith, are deep truths that cannot be denied. Paul does not want there to be any division among us, as division only sows injustice, infighting, and chaos. Jesus came to both men and women, slave and free, rich or poor, Jew and Gentile. This is a text that is designed to free us from our interior divisions, to work towards a reality in which those divisions do not matter anymore.

The context of the text recognizes the social reality of our world, and then subverts it. The message of Jesus Christ, then, is a revolutionary attitude of inclusion, love, and support. It goes beyond gender divisions, to the very cores of our being. God loves us, God includes us, God celebrates us. God wants us to live in truth and love with one another—and being transgender is a truth that should not be denied.

Look, I have tried to deny it for decades. I tried to be what I was assigned at birth, and have found so much freedom in acknowledging the truth of who I am inside. Ask any transgender person, and they will tell you the same. If it could be denied, we wouldn’t be honest with ourselves, or with God. God wants us to be free, loved, and honored in our communities, especially in the church.

So yes, Galatians 3:28 is a transgender affirming text, actually. It is a text that unbinds us to binaries and reveals a vision of a community that has progressed beyond division to true unity, solidarity, and love. Go therefore and act like God has freed you from your interior divisions. Live in truth, and the truth shall set you free.

______________________________________________

Footnotes:

1- 1 Cor. 9:22 (NRSV).

2 -I quite like Paul, by the way! But he was a human being, and as a human being, his words bear the stain of human frailty and fallibility. Therefore, it is more than acceptable to criticize and/or examine his work as such. He was an excellent writer and theologian, and demands that his work be taken seriously as an academic; I imagine he would want nothing less

3- Slater, Jennifer. “'Inclusiveness’ - An Authentic Biblical Truth That Negates Distinctions: A Hermeneutic of Gender Incorporation and Ontological Equality in Ancient Christian Thought.” Journal of Early Christian History 5, no. 1 (2015): 116–31. Pg. 118.

4- Reiher, Jim. “Galatians 3: 28 – Liberating for Women’s Ministry? Or of Limited Application?” The Expository Times 123, no. 6 (March 1, 2012): 272–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014524611431773. Pg. 275.

5- Slater. Pg. 119.

6- Ibid. Pg. 122.

7- Punt, Jeremy. “Power and Liminality, Sex and Gender, and Gal 3:28: A Postcolonial, Queer Reading of an Influential Text.” Neotestamentica 44, no. 1 (2010): 140–66.

8- Punt. Pg. 154.

9- Mark 1: 15, NRSV.

10- Punt. Pg. 156.

#transgender #theology #christianity #exegesis #bible #scripture #lgbtq+

[ancientpersacom]

I finally caved and made an art blog. My art Insta is @ lawlipopsart, but Insta butchers the quality so I’m posting here too! This is also low key a fan blog… so uh… yeah.

I’m Astro, I’m 21, an AutiADHD non binary host of a system ( @strawberryeyebags ) and (hopefully I get in) ancient history student. Art is my side thing so here I am.

I mainly do fanart but I have OCs and stuff too. (My original story and OCs are on @izroulia ) Fandoms I draw for include: Death Note, Chobits, Black butler, Miraculous, Night at the Museum, Sanrio, Hades game and Monster high.

Been drawing since primary school, even did an after school art program. But I’m no expert, I suck without a reference picture. This is all just for fun.

DNI:

Proship, l*wlight and s*baciel weirdos, racist, sexist, queer phobic, TERF, MAP, l*li/s*ota con.

#artists on tumblr #art #anime art #fanart #digital drawing #digital art #digital artwork #animecore #fandom #kawaii art #kawaiicore #kawaii

[jeannereames]

Hi, Dr. Reames! How do you handle the responsibility of being a woman writing MLM love stories? There's been a lot of harsh critics towards women writing BL lately, I've been wanting to write one myself but as a woman it now feels kinda wrong. I thought of using a pseudonym, but that feels somehow even more wrong, like cheating or something. What do you think about his problematic? How can we make it better or surpass it?

In my original attempt to answer, I dove into a discussion of fair representation among fiction authors, Big Publishing’s perpetuation of bias, and the problem of appropriation vs. authentic subaltern voices in fiction. IOW, an academic-ish essay. All those things are worth discussing, and maybe I will at some point. And perhaps the seriousness of the question deserves it.

Yet there’s a simpler answer to this question. Perhaps it's a bit…sassy, but may be more helpful in a bank-shot sort of way.

I’m not a woman author of M/M Romance.* I’m not a Romance author at all, in fact, and I do happen to be queer. Fwiw, the complaint is usually about [white] cis-het women writing M/M Romance.

I am a historical fiction author, and an SFF author. I wrote a lit-fic coming-of-age historical about Alexander the Great and Hephaistion; I plan to continue that story at some point. In addition, I have an epic fantasy that’s 4-of-5 books finished, and another contemporary fantasy that’s 1.5 books of 3. None of those is a Romance. All do have love stories as part of a much bigger plot, and all have queer characters. In two, queer characters are the chief protagonists. In addition to those three series, I have a solid idea for two more stand-alone books that I’ve written only the opening for, one contemporary SF, one time-travel.

The ONLY (true) M/M Romance I’ve toyed with writing would be an anti-Sparta manifesto wherein my main characters are a helot slave and a member of the Perioikoi. I’m sure that would go over like a lead balloon because my entire goal in writing it would be to showcase how godawful ancient Sparta actually was, and poke hella lot of holes in the Spartan Myth perpetuated in M/M romance and historical fiction generally. (Ergo, I will [probably] never write this thing because the Haters would come out of the woodwork, and I’d rather spend time on stories I like.)

Anyway…

What qualifies or disqualifies an author with regard to a story depends largely on what the book is about—it’s focus.

I’m not writing a gay man’s experience in the modern world. If I were, not being a gay man would matter. It wouldn’t disqualify me from writing said-novel, but it’d create a steeper climb.

Yet being a gay man doesn’t qualify someone to write a historical novel about Alexander the Great.

Being a (published) expert on Hephaistion, Alexander, and ancient Macedonia matters rather more, as does being a (published) expert on ancient Greek sexual morēs, and an expert in ancient Greek social history.

It also helps if I can develop 3D characters and form a coherent plot arc, not just vomit my research notes all over the page. (E.g., the PhD in history is great—but so is the BA in Creative Writing.)

That’s what qualifies me to write the novels.

If a gay guy had those same qualifications, or at least a lot of them/did thorough research, he could write a novel about Alexander too. But tbh, just being gay might get in the way more than help. Why? Modern gay experience is pretty damn different from ancient Greek, and writing modern gay men in chitons or togas would piss off gay male historians of the ancient world just as much as it’d piss off me.

This is a problem with M/M Romance set in the ancient world—maybe more of one than being a cis-het woman. I’ve attempted to read a few. Two were okay; I wouldn’t especially recommend them but finished them. One I like: A.J. Demas’ Sword Dance, although hers isn’t historical romance so much as historical analog based on the middle Roman Empire. (Not unlike what Guy Gavriel Kay writes.) She’s also got a PhD in history. (I have good hopes for the rest of the series, but other novels to finish first.) The rest of the M/M ancient historicals I tried were varying degrees of Yeah-no to stab-my-eyes-with-a-spork. It doesn’t help that the relationships in them seemed equally unrealistic.

But that owes to the fact I’m not really a Romance reader. I very much enjoy a love story embedded in the larger plot, but that’s a different animal from a Romance, capital R. Which is almost certainly why some of the biggest complaints about Dancing with the Lion among M/M readers is that the romance isn’t central enough and the sex isn’t hot enough. Well, no. That’s not what I was trying to write in the first place.

There are a couple (at least two that I know of) self-published M/M Romances about Alexander and Hephaistion. The little bits I read of each were worse than the worst of the professionally published M/M ancient history Romances—which is probably why they’re self-published. No, I won’t name them; that would be crass. Yet I mention them because, near as I can tell, both were written by gay men. This only underscores my point that being gay does not magically confer talent to write about Alexander (or anything else). The books are bad not because the authors are gay, but because the authors can’t write. Amazon (et al.) is rife with badly written self-published novels by people of all backgrounds and walks of life.

Anyway, it takes a lot more to write well about Alexander the Great than having a dick and liking dick. If it’s only about personal experience, not being Macedonian, and not being born in the 4th century BCE would be equally disqualifying. Then nobody would be eligible to write about him.

-------------

*MLM makes me think “multi-level marketing” not “men love men.” 🙃

#platforms #asks #M/M Romance #MLM Romance #authentic voices in fiction #historical romance #in writing #Alexander the Great #Hephaistion #Hephaestion #Dancing with the Lion #DwtL #bad historical romances #bad ancient historical novels

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

So i feel like the discussion about whether Tolkien/Lord of the Rings is queer is maybe the wrong question? And unanswerable?

I'm not an expert but here's how i look at it from my perspective as someone who's done ✨a bit✨ of reading on queer history, and on friendships and other relationships in the 20th century.

Queerness OF COURSE existed in Tolkien's time but it was very distinct from the modern framework for understanding and defining queerness. That being said, relationships IN GENERAL were totally different. From what I've read, it seems like normal, regular relationships between same-sex friends would probably look to us on the outside like queer relationships, in that the level of closeness and intimacy friends were comfortable with at that time is not part of the realm of what friends are typically comfortable with now--especially for men.

I'm not saying this to look at actual historical queer couples and say "they were just 💕 good friends 💕," but i AM saying that people were more likely to be *platonically* physically intimate with their friends (holding hands, sitting close to each other, hugging, offering comforting and comfortable nonsexual touch) than they are now. What I'm saying is that the kind of physical and emotional intimacy that was normalized in friendships in the 20th century has now been largely locked away behind the door of "romantic relationships."

(side note: also if i understand correctly - I'm not sure whether this was the case in 20th century great Britain, but - in other times, normal same -sex friendships/relationships sometimes did include sexual activity, even when the parties involved self-identified as friends. It's just people drew the lines differently as to what was considered "normal" vs outside of the norm. That's some fascinating history but I'm not as well versed in it so idk).

I guess what I'm saying is this. It's difficult to accurately ascribe modern queer identity onto characters that emerged out of a mind from a different time with a different ethos, especially as it relates to queerness.

That being said, i have absolutely no issue with people finding relatable identities in Tolkien's characters. It's not wrong to interpret literature in a way that makes sense and is relatable to you now! Especially when it's great literature but it's very old!

Personally, i don't really care whether Tolkien was bisexual or not or whether he meant for Frodo+Sam or Gimli+Legolas to be anything besides best friends. What i do love is the tenderness of it. The sweetness and intimacy of these relationships. That's a relic from another time and it's a treasure, especially as the divides between queerness vs cishet experience and between friendship vs romance get wider.

Lord of the Rings is such a blessing.

If you know more about this stuff than i do feel free to add on or correct anything i got wrong! :)

#lord of the rings #lotr #tolkien #queer lotr #frodoandsam

[pashterlengkap]

In touching speech, Oprah Winfrey discusses brother who died of AIDS

Media legend Oprah Winfrey recently spoke about her younger brother Jeffrey who died of AIDS. She spoke of him while accepting a Vanguard Award from the queer media watchdog group GLAAD. GLAAD presents the award to allies who have made a significant difference in promoting acceptance of LGBTQ+ people and issues. “Many people don’t know this, but 35 years ago, my brother Jeffrey Lee passed away when he was just 29 years old, from AIDS,” Winfrey said near the start of her speech. “Growing up at the time we did, in the community that we did, we didn’t have the language to understand or to speak about sexuality and gender in the way that we do now. And at the time, I really didn’t know how deeply my brother internalized the shame that he felt about being gay. I wish he could have lived to visit these liberated times and to be here with me tonight.” Related: Oprah Winfrey advocates for LGBTQ+ rights in Tennessee State commencement speech She said these words in a state that has passed a ban on public drag performance and has outlawed gender-affirming care for minors. “I wish my brother Jeffrey could have experienced a world that could see him for who he was and appreciate him for what he brought to this world,” she added. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Daily * Weekly * Good News * During her speech, she mentioned that The Oprah Winfrey Show — her televised talk show which ran from 1986 to 2011 — worked during the AIDS crisis to correct “rampant misinformation and misguided fear” about gay men. In 1987, she brought her talk show to Williamson, West Virginia — a town that had shut down a local pool after an HIV-positive man was found to have swam there — to hold a town hall where medical experts explained how the virus is transmitted. “We brought the facts and tried to erase some of the biases,” Winfrey said in her speech. “And then we went back, 23 years later, to revisit it and help people to confront their beliefs around homosexuality, and saw both the personal growth and the lack of personal growth that had taken place.” Her show also commemorated National Coming Out Day in 1988, the same year that the observance was first created, to have people publicly come out to their parents on the air — though she admitted that she required all participants to come out to their parents before the show aired because, “Really, I don’t want your mom to come after me.” “I wanted to create a safe space to bring the lives and the background stories of the LGBTQ community front and center to our audience,” she said. “And what I’ve learned over the years of interviewing over 35,000 people one-on-one… is that every single person wants the same thing, and that is the desire to feel seen and to know that what we say matters and to know that we matter.” She noted that, since launching the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2011, she had helped air documentaries on transgender people, including Becoming Chaz, about Cher’s son Chaz Bono, and I Am Jazz, about young trans youth advocate Jass Jennings. Related: Oprah & Gayle King try to define LGBTQ slang terms & they don’t care if they’re wrong “I’ve never heard this from any gay person,” Oprah said of a particularly difficult expression. Even today, Winfrey continues to use her platform to foster understanding towards the LGBTQ+ community. In 2021, she spoke with actor Elliot Page about the “joy” transitioning brought him; in 2016, she spoke with Connie Johnson, wife of retired NBA superstar Magic Johnson, about how she reconciled her Christian faith with her son’s homosexuality; and in 2015, she spoke with gay former-child actor Danny Pintaro about his meth addiction. Oprah also played the role of a therapist in the history-making 1997 episode of Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom Ellen, in which DeGeneres came out. Oprah and Ellen have… http://dlvr.it/T4Ypq9

[modernmutiny]

Baby sister called me up earlier bc she needed help writing a play and she was looking to add more interpersonal conflict between her characters that were lesbian activists in the 1960/70s

AKA I legit got called up and asked "give me the cliff notes on queer infighting through history" bc I am legitimately an expert on the topic so this whole thing was amazing and took 2 hours just to scratch the surface. My legacy is that I can correctly reference and cite ✨Gay Drama✨ from 50 years ago 🫳🏻

#teddy talks #personal #baby sister saga #thats gonna become a tag i feel #shes doing it on the Radicalesbians that branched off the Gay Liberation Front #taking inspo from like Martha Shelley and Rita Mae Brown and such #and she was like 'this is a 40 min play i have the plot now i need them to fight' and i said BET

[dracotheocracy]

there’s still half of a horse to beat to death. continue talking about james bond

you got it james since i got two asks about this i'm gonna divide my new content into two posts: this one is gonna be mostly an expansion on what i'd already touched upon in the first post, and then i'll answer another ask that goes into the thing that wasn't as prominent in the first 10 chapters

second post here

some housekeeping first- i made a typo in my first post. From Russia, With Love is 28 chapters not 38 and there was a big bit in chapter 9 i conveniently forgot about when writing the first post because idk i started writing that one at midnight or something surely one can forgive a supermassive oversight if i correct it in a later post. i'll get into it under the cut

my recommendation to anyone interested in reading james bond is that it's best enjoyed if you're a hater. or you could just turn your brain off but ian fleming shows his and more broadly postwar england's whole ass in how he writes about... a lot... so i don't think you can do that unless you're like 12, in which case i politely ask you to not read james bond until later because i think that's like watching the anime kill la kill at the same age (<- note: op did actually watch kill la kill when he was 12. nothing bad happened as a result or anything but i generally consider it a bad decision because some of the things that flew over my head originally i really should've been able to recognize before watching it)

i think i'm gonna do a lot less quoting in this one because i'm pulling from just under double the amount of chapters

tw misogyny queerphobia

let me begin by correcting my oversight. i think rosa klebb might be ian's idea of a lesbian, actually, though i could still see her being bi or ace or aro... (she feels like all of them at once, honestly). i feel like you could show how the time period's brand of queerphobia (1950s for reference) really tended to conflate basically every form of queerness together and label it all, simply, "sexual deviancy," and villify that, using james bond as a case study. from my point of view there are a lot of probable interpretations of rosa klebb and none of them are straight, and these traits really were only tacked onto her character for the purpose of othering her more. far am i from an expert on queer history though, i am just some english major, this is an observation i'm making about the time based on the books as opposed to the opposite way around- i would advise you to take my extrapolation here with a grain of salt because i could do with grounding it in more evidence first

see i in my "it's currently 1am and i have class at 10am tomorrow" concern actually left out a portion of chapter 9 that i think bears mentioning. context for this scene: our novel's bond girl, tatiana romanova, has been called to the office of the head executioner of the russian secret service (who happens to be klebb) to be given her assignment ("seduce james bond so you can spy for us in london")

"With a squeak of pleasure, Rosa Klebb threw herself down in the caricature of a Récamier pose. She reached up an arm and turned on a pink shaded table-lamp whose stem was a naked woman in sham Lalique glass. She patted the couch beside her."

'Turn out the top light, my dear. The switch is by the door. Then come and sit beside me. We must get to know each other better.'

tatiana turns off the light and runs out of the room in terror after this. should be noted that klebb is wearing a nightgown at this point and has put on makeup, where she started the scene in her military uniform and then changed into all this at the end of the chapter. now i don't think it's difficult to guess that the intention in this scene is that, for whatever reason, klebb is trying to get romanova to have sex with her. i'm not sure how much i can continue to beat this particular dead horse but i'm sure i can write another 5 sentences on it- this is lesbophobic. it's very much a portrayal of lesbian sex as wrong and unnatural, because rosa klebb as a character is very much portrayed by the narrative as wrong and unnatural. if tatiana romanova is everything a woman should be (submissive, beautiful, heterosexual, prudish, naive/innocent), rosa klebb is the exact opposite (domineering in that she's a very high ranking officer in a particularly violent position in the russian secret service as well as the one that initiates this scene, ugly, queer, promiscuous, cold and calculating). regardless of how you interpret klebb's sexuality the message is fairly clear. women are supposed to have sex with men and be virginal in demeanor otherwise, there's no room in this ideal for female sexual freedom which is an expression of misogyny more broadly, but the allusion to lesbian sex makes this scene lesbophobic on top of just plain misogynistic

shoutout to ian for also describing her in this scene as "the oldest and ugliest whore in the world" also, that's a real quote. just reinforcing that aesthetic appearance is directly linked to morality in the james bond universe, because that will become relevant again in another post.

in the meantime ian is 1000% a tits guy and this is my proof

i read From Russia, With Love on the project gutenberg canada site which displays the entire novel on a single page. 13 results for "breasts" in 28 chapters so this is just under one mention of breasts every other chapter, and i read around for the context just to make sure- the one time he is not explicitly talking about a woman's boobs he's actually comparing the domes of mosques in istanbul to them i'm not joking:

"[T]he old European section of Istanbul glittered at the end of the broad half-mile of bridge with the slim minarets lancing up into the sky and the domes of the mosques, crouching at their feet, looking like big firm breasts."

i don't even know what to say about that really i just thought it was funny.

using this as a broader commentary on misogyny in the novel, three of the 13 mentions of the word breasts are used in reference to tatiana romanova- there was when he described her breasts in the chapter she was introduced in which i already pointed out, and then twice afterwards when bond saw and met her for the first time. ian made all of his male pov characters think about womens' breasts, first it was kronsteen with rosa klebb and then it was this:

"Had that been the prudery of a virgin? Bond thought not. There was the confidence of having been loved in the proud breasts and the insolently lilting behind--the assertion of a body that knows what it can be for."

dude is like 10 inches away from writing a character breasting boobily down the stairs i swear. i think it's a little bit telling how often romanova's sex life comes up- ian makes a point of telling the reader that she's not a virgin in the chapter where she's introduced, and later when rosa klebb gives her the honeypot assignment rosa klebb asks her point blank if she's a virgin and if she would list the names of the men she's had sex with and at what points in her life. which isn't creepy at all btw, and of course when bond sees her for the first time two of the things he thinks about first when pondering the situation are "man she has nice tits and ass. she's definitely not a virgin." i think it speaks to the objectifying way the novel looks at women- romanova's role in the story is limited purely to falling in love with bond and having sex with him a few times so he falls in love with her too. she's a total pawn in the broader scope of the story and doesn't really have any agency- she encounters donovan grant at the same time that bond does and it's unclear whether or not she recognizes him but i think it's implied that she does and that she isn't at all comfortable with his presence. and she doesn't have to do anything about it but her just submitting to bond when he brushes aside her concern about him is. eh. it's in character but i think the fact that that is in character is emblematic of the fact that as a woman in a bond novel if you're not there to essentially sit there and look pretty you're a queer russian with a penchant for torture and you will be othered by the narrative

now being able to discern the wildest shit from peoples' appearances is a pretty well established james bond character trait- when he later encounters donovan grant he catches on pretty fast to the fact something is Wrong With Him and when he figures out grant is a russian spy he immediately goes "oh you're manic depressive aren't you tell me does the full moon make you act weird?" i guess manic depression just functions like that in the james bond universe- it's a mental condition reminiscent of the menstrual cycle in function, but instead of your own blood spilling someone else's does. referencing back to my first post when i talked about donovan grant, despite sexualizing him in the first scene i think between him being asexual and pretending that's what manic depression is, ian is attempting to emasculate the character. i mentioned that rosa is the opposite of the feminine ideal- donovan grant is the opposite of the male ideal, and inherent to ian's male ideal is a sex drive and a more dominating disposition, which donovan lacks because he's really just a henchman at the end of the day, follows his orders efficiently, also has to kill people every full moon, which is werewolf-y yes but i think the parallel to periods should've been mentioned in the first post too

that mostly wraps up any expanding i could do on the criticisms i already talked at length so sneak peek of my next post that i will spend 2-3 hours on: ian fleming is so normal about eastern europe :)

#but maaarrrsss! #trashfire media containment breach

[myemoreligion]

Discussing Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory by Virginia Held: A trans non-binary perspective

<Name Redacted>, 2022

In Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory, Virginia Held (1990) lays out a feminist overview on moral theory until the modern day. She explains where traditional moral theory has been lacking in discussing areas of morality which were female-dominated or strongly associated with the feminine, such as the interpersonal realm of morality. Not only does she discuss philosophical ethical history, she also discusses different theories and perspectives from the modern day, including that of psychologists and legal experts.

However, one thing becomes clear while reading the paper: the trans, and broader queer perspective, is lacking. Many of the discussed findings still rely on some sort of gender essentialism, although it is noted by Held that “One should not equate tendencies women in fact display with feminist views, since the former may well be the result of the sexist, oppressive conditions in which women’s lives have been lived” (Held, 1990, p. 331). Although this quote acknowledges that tendencies in women as a whole could be conditioned, the paper does associate certain types of behaviour with women and femininity. This often assumes a heterosexual monogamous role for women, one where they are nurturing children. Like the paper states, just including the “female” experience in moral theory is not enough. Morality as merely a public, rational matter should be thought out completely differently. However, where the paper stops here, I wish it then deconstructed the gendered assumptions to begin with. Certain realms have been excluded, and it is correct to assume that this is because of their association with femininity. To just include them but keep the gendered association is merely levelling the playing field, but still forcing people in their roles, which is still oppressive. It is not enough to call female experience just as worthy as male experiences of being seen as ethical.

As a non-binary person, the association of traits with the feminine or masculine makes certain feminist critique lacking. Gender-neutrality, as opposed to gender abolition, does nothing for trans and gender-noncomforming people, because it still assumes experiences based on gender, or worse, assigned sex at birth. Where is my position in this whole story? Do I simply exist outside of gendered issues? Am I taken to be a woman based on my assigned sex at birth? Neither of those are great, which is why a non-binary perspective on feminism within ethics is necessary.

For one: there is no one “female” experience. Although Held does mention that different feminist think differently about this, including nurturing children as part of the “female” experience can come across as generalizing this across all women. There are many women whose experiences don’t include nurturing children, and many non-women who nurture children as well. Associating this with a “female” experience reinforces the idea that these things are inherent to being a woman- they are not. Although it is a matter of fact that many women are, whether forcefully or by their own account, primary caretakers of their children, many are also not. Besides this, some women are queer, and date and marry other women. Those experiences are also relevant within moral theory, but are probably very different from your average heterosexual woman. Not mentioning that the “female” experience she is talking about is a largely heterosexual, alloromantic and allosexual, cisgender experience, is queer erasure.

Besides this, many people grow up to realise that they don’t identify with the gender that they were forced into from birth. Some of these people end up being women. Trans women have wildly different experiences from cis women. Pregnancy and child-birth are not experiences trans women usually can go through for example, but that does not make them any less women. Including these experiences as female ethical experiences, for example, would be almost defeminizing to those women, cis and trans, who cannot get pregnant. The other side of that is when trans men get pregnant- their experiences often get associated with being female, and this is transphobic. When talking about gendered issues, also within ethics, you cannot omit the trans perspective. 

It gets even more complicated when including non-binary people, such as myself. Non-binary people don’t identify with either of the gender binary, which makes discussing their experiences from a cis feminist point of view almost impossible. The nuances it takes to understand that some will experience female oppression regardless of identity, while not minimising this identity as a whole, is something not a lot of cis people are capable of, because they lack the lived experience. Just how many cis men are not great at discussing (cis) women’s experiences at all, the same can be said for cis feminists on trans and non-binary experiences.

Not only does the paper miss the trans and non-binary perspective, it also does not include any other intersections. Women are such a vast group, which such vast histories, that you cannot approach feminism without going into its intersections. Focussing on a “female” experience that you perceive as the most common, will always include your biases as someone from a white supremacist, cisheterosexist, ableist society. Although the paper does mention that some feminists believe there is no “female” experience, it then concludes that there are still important focal points that are shared among feminist theorists. Leaving out the complicated differences between intersections however makes this seem not as a universal feminist critique, but a specific white allocishet one.

Another important addition to Held’s piece is that traits associated with the feminine are not just things that women experience, but go beyond them. It is easy to argue that a queer man or masculine person, cis or trans, also gets excluded when the typical “female” experience is seen as inherently not relevant for morality, as queer men are more likely than cishet men to internalize femininity and its associated traits from society. Therefore, the moral exclusion of “female” experiences seems to exclude many more people than just women. 

References

Held, V. (1990). Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50(1, supplement Fall). 321-344

[hello-yue-here]

are u a fucking idiot lol do you think queer like used to be a slur and..isnt now? bc everybody reclaimed it or something? if i see you and your friends and go look at that band of queers am i being inclusive❤️

hey anon does it ever get boring being so obsessed with me?? like im sure it doesnt because im so interesting and fun and sexy and queer and popular and amazing and hot and all. like period thank you for sending me anons calling me dumb so you get attention. im happy to give you the attention you so desperately crave but you dont need to hide behind anon and get pissy w me about the word queer and the fact that i literally identify as queer. like you can just ask for attention next time babe.

BUT WHILE WERE HERE

did u even read the full post i reblogged ab this

like did u

because all the questions ur asking me can be answered w that post. the history behind the word queer is there. the letter q in lgbtq+ stands for queer. the fact that terfs use the “queer is a slur” claim as a way to divide the QUEER community. ppl who use queer as a label arent the enemy booboo. the people who divide us are. so quit calling me an idiot and leaving anons on my blog and actually think about what the real issue is here. because it sure as hell aint one lil avatar fanblog who identifies as queer. there are bigger fish to fry and bigger issues in the queer community than the meaning behind the word queer.

for example:

https://harvardcrcl.org/americas-war-on-black-trans-women/

black trans women are being murdered at very disproportionately high rates. but lets talk about how the word queer is such an issue.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgxm5/bbc-expected-to-quit-stonewalls-lgbtq-diversity-programme

the BBC is expected to end their involvement with an organization that upholds lgbtq+ rights for workers which is very appalling. but go ahead tell me why im the bad guy for thinking that queer isnt a slur. clearly thats the biggest issue here.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/17/middleeast/afghanistan-lgbtq-evacuation-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

just look at the headline.

this is just the tip of the iceberg anon. “queer is a slur” is terf rhetoric to divide us and keep us from uniting to fight the real obstacles facing the community. arguing over the word queer is pointless and helps no one.

‼️if anyone has any links to donation pages, paypals, cashapps, etc. to help out queer people who are struggling, please feel free to add them to this post or send them to me so we can signal boost them that would be wonderful.‼️

#NOTE: i am not an expert on queer history #i am a college student and a baby gay #but im always open to learning and trying my best to help #cuz like cmon yall #arguing over a word is pointless when we can be working together to protect our own #tw: transphobia #tw transphobia #tw homophobia #tw homophia mention #tw queerphobia #queer is not a slur #lets stop arguing ab that #im here im queer get used to it #also if u rlly hate that word so much #just block it. #like just block it babe #also general content warning for the articles i added #read at ur own caution cuz there is some stuff in there that is unsettling and can be triggering as well

[centrally-unplanned]

So I am going through these notes on the CCP’s new guidelines around video game censorship and regulation, and it has some amazing stuff in it.

First and most importantly, Venti from Genshin is confirmed a femboy, who “you cannot tell is male unless you look at their lore” according to the CCP reviewers. Behold the face of gender-corruption!

(honestly, you can’t tell that he is male? Watch more anime normies or gtfo)

Anyway, first we gotta lay out our credentials:

Don’t be silly and think we don’t know games. Many experts here know more about games that you, developers

CCP confirmed True Gamers, get wrecked scrubs!

Anyway, what is great about these notes is, since the people in the CCP are not evil minions but real people, they actually aspire to make video games better. So in between all the rampant homophobia and history censorship, are some legitimate complaints. Our ideas include:

You cannot force players to spend money, and gate rewards behind lootboxes & other opaque mechanics

Totally valid, hell yes CCP

No misleading advertising baiting gay couples when they are not actually gay

Wokeness confirmed, fuck the queer-baiting

Wuxia style games are boring as they are so similar. Many companies ignore good storytelling and just bank on art design & aesthetics

They are right and they SHOULD say it, fucking savage.

But the *best* parts are where they just run into the weird shit that is just...part of gaming now, which with this new initiative you have to somehow regulate:

We forbid attractive character designs based on war criminals

Azur lane gets *specifically* called out, have waifus gone too far??

No ascending into god-hood; humans cannot beat a god

CCP confirmed *extremely* concerned that a plucky band of spike-haired protagonists will grind their way up the ranks and challenge Xi Jinping for the throne, its not possible everyone stop getting ideas!! Seriously they mention “no ascending-to-godhood” style plots like four times, this is priority number 1.

Lots of stuff in there that I didn’t cover, hopefully could be some fun highlights. I recommend checking it out, as I don’t imagine a major game around will be unaffected by this new initiative.

#CCP censorship

[formulatrash]

I really love that you’re so active and open on here because I always wanted to work in sports journalism or similar and I always felt like I had to tone down my involvement in fan spaces sometimes because it seemed maybe like it was considered by some as unprofessional or that I couldn’t do both but I love seeing that that’s not really true

I think it's a case of looking critically at what we think of as "fan spaces."

The entire sports press is a fan space, all sports coverage is because people are fans of it and a race report or interpretation of an interview is a fanwork just in the same way a gifset or edit is. One is a legitimised industry, the other we tend to self-police into being regarded as lesser, shameful in case the boys come and make fun or whatever.

I've always participated in loving the things I love in a more traditionally female/queer fandom way. Obviously there are plenty of men in Tumblr-style fandom and I think the gender divide is less clear either way; there are plenty of women on Reddit, after all. But there's a history of either side being dominated by one gender and for the external perception to be Reddit bros vs Tumblr girls.

Autosport is fandom, curated and presented in the way it's expected to be; the same as fandom is curated and presented on Tumblr. We think one is legitimised and one has to be hidden because of respectability points scored against each other, not because there's anything particularly more inherently intellectual to a formally-written report on 750 Motor Club's race weekend than to a beautiful edit.

~Fandom~ spaces lack the validation of access. The reason people are desperate to put "FIA accredited" in their Twitter bio is because it gives you a weight of validation when like, it's Literally Just A Lanyard. The FIA don't check whether your takes are bad or else there'd have to be a sharp drop in accredited media.

I used to work in music journalism and cis, white, mostly posh, straight men who followed bands around got lionised as the pioneers of the field. Same as in motorsport - guys who went to tens of Grand Prix just because they were obsessive fans turned into journalists and were lauded for it. Their merch collections and old models are considered a valuable museum.

That's not particularly a criticism of them: they're just fans, expressing their genuine fandom and turning it into something that they share with other fans, that they bring greater illumination to the sport through. That's, after all, what we are all doing. And there's nothing dismissive or derogatory in describing it like that.

The problem is that other forms of fandom, although no less sincere, aren't treated the same. Women who follow bands around don't get interpreted as experts but obsessives and the same with sport or anything else. Queer people's enthusiasm for things is treated with suspicion. People of colour are alienated and sidelined and the more their identity intersects with any other marginalised group the worst it is.

Which is all a long way of saying: we interpret different parts of fan expression as different degrees of professional and that's almost always based on what's making money right now. Laptop stickers of fanart? Guess what teams and series are slowly getting into. Pin badges, custom merch, all the sort of things that have been bootlegged by fans - from beautiful edits on social media (and christ, have you seen the official F1 graphics? they could desperately do with someone from here) to artists getting commissioned for race posters because the brands have realised they want those social numbers.

Even all the way through to fanfiction. If a dude writes a speculative history of a fictional season (there's plenty out there!) it's called a 'what if?' and can be published on the F1 website. I have the dignity to put mine on AO3 but I don't think it's any less insightful, in the 'making things up' stakes.

Tumblr is an illegitimate platform, packed with pirated content and with plenty of feral spaces even I shouldn't look in - and I am quite hardcore about curating what I see, these days. It's less likely to be a screed against me than on Reddit but I'm aware people have the right to public comment on anything published.

I wish people had less internalised shame about what's created on here, though. Looking through the tags there's beautiful art, conscientiously-created notes and what on another platform would unquestionably be validated as journalism. There's analysis and insight and pure, unbridled enjoyment.

And yeah a few people who want to fuck the drivers but my god I can't tell you how little athletes are offended by the idea people think they are hot.

#f1 asks #i think? #work asks #maybe

[gay-otlc]

Keepers Of The Chaos (3)

Summary: Tam, Linh, Dex, Keefe, Biana, and Fitz are part of the tiny fandom for Keeper of the Chaos, and Tam and Linh’s podcast convinces some of their other friends to watch it as well. The group finds themselves strangely invested in this show, where students at Tumblr High School who work together to write about an elf named Sophia, cause incomprehensible chaos, and fight their rival Pinterest High School.

Content warnings: Cursing, religion (Jewish Vackers), and Amsterdam (just in case, I know that was stressful for some people).

Word count: 1621

Notes: Most of the episodes are just events stolen from Lynn's roundup, Dex's memes are here

(Read on AO3)

The life of an amateur meme maker on dumbles dot com was a strange one, that was for sure. After finishing xyr favorite show- Ze-Ra: Monaerchs of Powhir- for the third time, Dex had searched for another show to fill the void in xyr soul. Biana recommended this show called "Keepers of the Chaos" and described it to xem. Xe was doubtful at first, but after watching the first episode, xe was hooked.

Xe used to not have many friends at xyr school, so xe did what every neurodivergent queer teen would do- made an account on dumbles dot com. People seemed to like xem- or at least, they liked dizznee-plus's memes and edits of Ze-Ra characters. Even after Dex befriended xyr squish, Fitz, thons sister, Biana, and aer girlfriend, Sophie, xe continued making content on dumbles. Around that time, the Ze-Ra fandom started dying off, and xyr memes started getting fewer note

In a sudden, two am burst of inspiration, Dex made edits of some of xyr favorite characters, like Ref, Akki, and Rose, with their respective pride flags (all of them bi) over them, and captioned it "we must be gay." The post blew up, or at least, what could be considered blowing up in Keeper of the Chaos's tiny fandom, and that was how Dex found xyr calling as an amateur meme/edit maker for KOTC.

History had been repeating itself, with the KOTC fandom starting to die off, until it was revived by an announcement from creator Saturn Nolastname- a season two would be released soon. Frantically, Dex made a meme about season one episode two, with the car salesman meme. Xe edited "chaos keepers" onto the car salesman, "the rarelynoticed" on the car, and "this bad boy can fit so many stripper outfits into it."

That had been... an interesting episode, to say the least. The chaos keepers had been talking about the antagonists of "Sophie and the Dark Duck"- a rebel group called the Rarelynoticed. In the information packet they'd been given, it was confirmed that the Rarelynoticed wore black cloaks and armbands, but no other clothes had been mentioned. Somehow, the chaos keepers came to the conclusion that the Rarelynoticed really wore neon pink leotards and green stripper heels, then drew this idea.

Needless to say, the Tumblr staff did not let them write that into the book. Nor did Lynn, the unofficially chosen leader of the group. Unfortunately for her, this didn't stop the chaos keepers from drawing more of these- or the fandom from making a ton of memes. In addition to the car salesman meme, a post with Drake saying no to "wearing normal fucking villain outfits" and yes to "leotards and stripper heels" gained popularity within the small fandom.

Though nothing could match the absolute shock of seeing the Rarelynoticed stripper outfit for the first time, Dex decided to rewatch the episode anyway- it was funny to see the chaos keepers freak out, and maybe xe could get some good screen captures. The good Saturn Nolastname indulged xem, and xe captured an excellent scene of most of the chaos keepers either laughing or screaming at the Rarelynoticed stripper outfits, with Kimber- one of xyr favorites- sitting on the side, explaining to Juno and Kaitee why Bianca Cracker was bisexual.

Xe went over to dumbles, posted the picture, added an image description, and captioned it "Live photo of me not caring when my friends talk about sex/romance." Xe chuckled to xemself- this really was how it felt to be aroace. Xe tagged it as aromantic and asexual as well, since dumbles added flag colors. Smiling, xe went to go check xyr notifications.

Xyr jaw dropped when xe saw that @lordofthesnuggles- Fitzroy (Dex didn't know thons middle name) Vacker thonself had liked and reblogged all three of xyr memes, even adding compliments in the tags! Xe'd had a bit of a platonic crush on Fitz for... a really long time, but xe always felt too awkward to talk to thon, so it was nice to see that thon appreciated xyr humor.

Feeling energized- and excited to procrastinate on xyr math homework- Dex went to watch the next episode: Dark Duck Is Jewish Now. Being Jewish xemself, this was a really funny episode to xem.

Lynn had been writing a sort of spinoff- it would be called fanfiction, but it was for her own story- about some of the Dark Duck characters celebrating Christmas, and added a throwaway line about Bianca and Finn Cracker celebrating Hanukkah. Then, her fiance, Shai, had taken that idea and run with it, writing a list of ideas about what would happen if the Cracker family was Jewish. Hir friend Sam had jumped on the idea, and soon they had abandoned writing the actual Dark Duck in favor of writing a story about Jewish Dark Duck characters. Some of the other Jewish chaos keepers, like Ref and Cat, helped out.

To be honest, it kind of surprised Dex that no one had made a joke about the Jewish Crackers just being matzah, so xe supposed xe would have to be the first.

Xe posted that observation, quickly getting a like from Fitz- which made xem smile. After a few minutes, Dex posted another meme: Shai and Sam standing in front of a door with a sign that read "elves don't have religion," and them saying "This sign won't stop me, because I can't read!"

It was accurate.

While that episode was great for Jewish representation, and funny, the Banana Noir episode was just plain weird.

It focused less on the Dark Duck than most of the other episodes, and was more about the crazy interactions of the chaos keepers. The episode was named for Banana Noir, who was really Cat Noir, but in a banana suit. Banana Noir was the son of Mellie, who looked like a shark, and Nora, who had platonically married faer. The mothers tried to arrange a marriage between him and Akki, who loved the side characters of the Dark Duck series. However, Akki wanted to marry Amelia. After a lot of shit that basically no one understood, Banana Noir's attempts were thwarted, and Lynn officiated the wedding between Akki and Amelia.

Yeah, Dex had no idea what the fuck was going on either. Xe'd watched an episode of Twins of the Chaos and a youtube video by arsonpog analyzing the Banana Noir chronicles, as it had been dubbed by the chaos keepers, and both expert opinions seemed to agree that Saturn Nolastname and the rest of the writers had probably been on crack when they made that episode.

The next episode made slightly more sense, though it was a low bar. After taking a break from the "official" Dark Duck story, the chaos keepers began collectively writing a Cinderella story about the characters Sophia and Bianca. People weren't allowed to be queer in the official story, but the chaos keepers still wanted to have fun with their obviously gay characters.

Even to the viewers of the show, who only received secondhand information about the Dark Duck characters, knew there was no way any of them, let alone all of them, were allocishet. The exact identities weren't entirely clear- when Dex had made edits of the characters' official art and xyr headcanons for their pride flags, a few people had disagreed- but both the chaos keepers and the fandom knew that despite what Shannon said, Sophia and Bianca were in love, and their Cinderella story should have made it in to the official Dark Duck story.

While excerpts of the Cinderella story were quoted in the show, most of it was left unclear, so Biana had taken it upon aerself to write aer own version of it. Dex was expecting an update later  that day, actually, or maybe the next. Ae wasn't always 100% reliable with aer update schedule. Still, Dex looked forward to when it eventually did come.

After the brief calmness from the Sophianca Cinderella episode, season one episode six, Amsterdam, exploded back into chaos. A few of the chaos keepers decided to discuss a fake scene in the book in which crazy shit went down, with the scene supposedly being located in Amsterdam. It had never been written and was never going to be, but everyone discussed it like it was real. Some of the highlights involved all the Dark Duck girls having swords (and the chaos keepers being gay for them), and a speedboat chase scene through the canals. Fitz had a popular theory that the chaos keepers would actually travel to Amsterdam in order to commemorate this crazy part of their lives. Almost as popular as that was a meme Dex made, with a man labeled "chaos keepers discussing amsterdam" and gesturing feverishly to a wall covered in papers and red string.

Of course, episode seven (Dark Duck Disney) was chaotic too. Everything was chaotic with this group, it was in the title. Shannon announced that the winning Dark Duck story would be adapted into a Disney movie. After past experience with terrible book to movie adaptations, the chaos keepers panicked. They panicked so much that it became major news within their school, which until then, had been largely ignoring the chaos keepers. Once the discussion about the movie settled down, they talked a lot about how in awe they were that their Dark Duck shenanigans were trending within the school.

But of course, none of that compared to the last episode of the season...

Dex changed xyr profile picture to include an ominous pair of teal eyes and sighed.

#tumblr kotlc fandom fandom #keepers of the chaos #shai types things #shai's writing #hehe like the ze-ra reference

[compo67]

Are you still working on the time travel AU?

Hi, anon!

Oh my goodness, thank you for asking. The short answer is yes. The long answer is below the cut.

Letter to Follow is a J2 AU fic I've posted on Patreon as part of bonus content. It will be housed on Patreon until completed in full, where it will then transition to AO3, just like any other bonus Patreon fic in the past. It's at about 30,000 words and 50% finished, so it's a long fic, slow burn.

LTF takes place in Naples, Italy, 1985, where Dr. Jensen Ross, Distinguished Professor of Physics, works at the prestigious University of Naples. Jensen is a respected faculty member and expert in his field, and he specializes in particle physics. He often works with his colleage, Dr. Haji Siqqidui. She keeps Jensen balanced and integrates him into her family. One day, Dr. Jared Padalecki, of New York City, shows up, ready to start his sabbatical and write a book about the history of physics and engineering in Naples. Jared holds two PhDs--engineering and history--and teaches at NYU. At first, Jensen dislikes Jared's outgoing, "American" personality. But the more time they spend together, the more they explore Naples, the closer their bond. This fic takes into account everything going on in/around 1985, including the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the stigma of gay/queer identities/culture, and pop culture. The fic also incorporates pictures and media throughout, sort of like a photo journal. Jensen's working on something new, on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery--but is it really in the name of physics? Or is he working on something more personal?

I love this fic. I love it because it taught me so many new things. I discovered a love of physics. In high school, I was so good at chemistry and math, but only if I had the extra help/guidance. Since I was better at English and the arts--read: it was easier to do--I put all my focus on that. Then I think of the plot to Letter to Follow and wow! All my love for science came rushing back. Let me tell you, dear, that I put so much time and effort into learning and understanding the concepts that Professor Jensen is (madly) in love with--I spent so many hours writing on white boards, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading textbooks, and taking notes. I can tell you how a particle collider works. I can map out the Standard Model of Physics.

But.

I can't tell you how time travel works.

And *that* is what I ran into--head first. Ouch.

I thought I could write it away. Every time I worked on LTF, I thought about that Simpsons quote, where Homer wants to make a movie: "It's about a killer robot driving instructor who travels back in time for some reason. His best friend is a talking pie."

D'oh! How the fuck can it happen? I wanted to go with neutrinos, but then ran into problems there. I thought, okay, let's switch to dark matter. Nope. God particle? Fine. Particle accelerator. Right, but exactly what particles? And how would Jensen access a particle accelerator on par with CERN? Then I read the news about muons and thought--AHA! I gotchu now, physics!

And then my personal life crashed and burned. This is back in September, when I stopped working, went into IOP, and struggled to function. I was also taking a class for grad school and that needed/used up all my attention. From October to November to December, it was hit after hit after hit. I'm only now just standing up, shaky, but there. I thought losing my beta would result in not being able to write anything. But it turns out, wow, I /can/ write on my own. I wrote on my own for years before getting any betas (okay, some of that shows, yikes). Am I always perfect with grammar? Fuck no. Do I always get continuity right? Nope. But do I approach these verses and characters with enthusiasm and love? Hell yes, I do.

For a while, I thought LTF wasn't worth finishing because... it's different than any other fic I've written. There's no a/b/o or mpreg. Not a lot of smut and it's a slow burn. Jensen is very dry in this verse, and increasingly affected by the stress of his work.

But I found the answer: Jared. I'll be switching the POV to Jared going forward. So the first half of the fic will be Jensen's POV--extremely necessary and sets us up well with physics content and side characters. The second half of the fic will be Jared's POV--extremely necessary and sets us up well with the engineering side of physics and the modern era.

This way, dear anon, I do *not* have to figure out the specifics of time travel and I get to play to my strengths with content about engineering, HIV, and culture. Jared is a pip in this verse. He compliments Jensen very well. I can't believe the answer was there this whole time. Now, I don't need to stress over the fact that it's actually really hard to come up with a plausible approach to time travel. Like, really, really hard. I reached out to two particle physicists and even with their guidance, could not put the puzzle together in a way that made a stronger argument/sense.

I know it might sound silly that I expected myself to solve time travel or come up with such a detailed, plausible explanation for it, just for a fic. But that's the kind of writer I am. That's the kind of person I am. The pandemic hit just as I had booked a visit to the Fermi Lab. It's still not open to visitors. I wanted to create something that wasn't "a wizard did it" or "black holes! lolololol." (Please, don't ever attempt to time travel through a black hole. Yikes.)

I did this kind of thing with It Takes a lot of Water and wanted to improve upon it. But I had a lot of self-doubt: did people even like this fic? Are my readers interested and engaged? Is Jensen too dry? Too boring?

But the more content I've consumed surrounding physics--and the more physicists I've spoken to--I understand that this narrative is actually pretty accurate.

So. There you have it. Short answer yes. Long answer yes, I just need to come back to it. I need a reread, a refresher, and a walk through of my notes. I need to believe in myself again that I can balance more than one WIP.

Thank you for the interest, anon. You've re-lit my engagement with this fic and I appreciate that so much. <3

-Cal

#compo67 #authorial rambles #j2 au fic #letter to follow fic #time travel fic #long post #cal answers

[itsfunorwhateva]

Sweet Creature

Hi! I’m back with some more of an analysis type post! I hope this helps with a deeper understanding. I’ve provided sources where I got my information. I really tried to set this up and write this in a very informational/analysis way so it isn’t strictly an opinion. Also I want to say I haven’t read the entirety of Othello, but I have read some scenes and read complete analysis of the play to write this. Without further ado... Sweet Creature. 

While it seems that some people have a general understanding that Sweet Creature by Harry Styles references the tragedy, Othello written by William Shakespeare, most people don’t get why that is huge, not only in terms of Harry making this decision, but also in support of Sweet Creature being about Louis Tomlinson. 

So I’m going to break this into three parts to help make this make the most sense. 

1. The reference Harry Styles makes in his song, to the play Othello

2. Why an Othello reference is huge; more on the play

3. William Shakespeare and his sexuality/coding in other works

These will make more sense with further explanation(duh), but I’m hoping this will connect the dots. Also, a quick disclaimer before we begin, this information is coming off of google searches, and analysis that I’m reading, and some from information I researched for a research paper on William Shakespeare. I am in no way an expert on song analysis, literature analysis, or on William Shakespeare and his personal life. I really just hope to give people a base to start themselves on more research, and understanding of the topic. Happy reading!

1. The reference Harry Styles makes in his song, to the play Othello

Now there is not much to dig up or uncover here as the reference is actually pretty obvious. The term Sweet Creature, in which the song is titled, is said to have originated from the play Othello. Act 3, Scene 3, specifically is where the term of endearment (this is important to note, Sweet Creature is used as a term of loving, endearment) is first seen. 

“In sleep I heard him say ‘Sweet Desdemona, Let us be wary, let us hide our loves.’ And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, Cry ‘O sweet creature!’ and then kiss me hard“ (Othello III, iii ,428-432). 

Some context for these lines of dialogue Act 3, Scene 3 is Iago telling Othello about his wife cheating on him. The scene has multiple instances of Iago expressing love for Othello, basically saying how Iago would not be telling Othello this if he didn’t love him so much. More on that for our next section. This first appearance of the term “sweet creature” is Iago telling Othello what he heard a man speak to Othello’s wife while the two were in bed together, all in a dream. Now the idea of cheating is not something to be too hung up on, but this is the context in which sweet creature first appears. While the term, Sweet Creature, is said form man to women - it is revealed to the husband from another man. Iago in which it is said may have homosexual desires/feeling towards Othello in this play. Personally I believe that Iago almost uses the term as a way to convince Othello that his wife is being loved by someone else, and maybe Othello should leave her to be with someone, like Iago, that could love him better. 

Sources for this section!

Harry Styles References Othello in new Single, Sweet Creature

https://genius.com/a/harry-styles-references-shakespeare-s-othello-on-new-single-sweet-creature#:~:text=The%20song's%20title%2C%20%E2%80%9CSweet%20Creature,originate%20in%20William%20Shakespeare's%20Othello.

Othello play

https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/othello/page_166/

2. Why an Othello reference is huge; more on the play

Deeper meanings behind the characters and the play obviously take a bit more time and effort to really understand. Depending on what angle and the kind of understanding you have about the characters and situation in Othello you’ll think one way or another. Othello is partially about homosexuality (in a way that it is not the whole plot, but it does play a major part if you understand the context/characters). Not everyone thinks this and it’s normally not brought in class discussion/normal educational settings, but the fact remains. 

There are a few things throughout the plays that hint towards the characters sexualities. When looked at in the right light and context it can help make sense of not only Harry Styles’ reference, and way choosing Othello to reference is kind of a big deal, but also a better understanding of the play. One article writes, “In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice Shakespeare leaves the character of Iago’s sexuality to be questioned. Although Iago has a wife, he drops slight hints throughout the play that he has homosexual thoughts or feelings toward other characters, but he uses his position in the military and his fear to suppress these feelings. These “hints” are shown through his wildly questionable story about Michael Cassio, his word choice when describing Othello, and his discourse with Rodrigo” (Homosexuality in Othello). 

The character Iago is a military officer, and it shouldn’t take a genius to understand that being in the military and being homosexual only equal no good. The American policy in the military of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was/is a more modern day policy but still shows how military personal were/are expected and required to act in regards to being homosexual. Simply speaking, don’t. Now thinking even more to Shakespearean time, an even greater restriction was likely in place for homosexuality and the military. This part of the character, Iago, is likely a huge reason people overlook any thought of the character having homosexual desires/thoughts. 

Even if you remove the circumstances surrounding Iago, and him being a military officer there are some others things throughout the play that hint towards possible homosexual desire/feelings. Iago is constantly informing Othello of his love for the other man, claiming to always be Othello’s, should he want him. Some of this can be chalked up to the language of the time, in being, love was used for both friend, and lover, but the extent in which Iago professes may hint towards something deeper. Others things include, Iago claiming to have “lay with” Cassio, another male character, and while some say this is simply in the barracks as fellow soldiers, others think this could have been to hint at being lovers. 

One other thing that isn’t necessarily the play at face value, but still supports the idea of Iago being homosexual, is that actors throughout history have chosen to play him either as a straight or gay characters. While, this could simply be a creative decision based on an actor individually, it still seems a bit huge. If nothing in the text supported Iago being gay, there would not be actors playing him this way. 

Sources for this section!

Homosexuality in Othello

https://www.cram.com/essay/Homosexuality-In-Othello/P3Z2W7LCX5Q

Is Iago Gay in Othello?

https://www.arogundade.com/homosexuality-in-shakespeare-is-iago-gay-in-othello.html

3. William Shakespeare and his sexuality/coding in other works

Final section is really just me helping you understand the feasibility of William Shakespeare writing his characters this way. There’s essentially two parts to understanding this and I’m going to try and help this make the most sense without going too overboard. One part is going to be how William Shakespeare has written other works. I’m going to focus more on his sonnets because I’ve already researched them for a paper in school, but they still stand with this point. The second part is going to be William Shakespeare’s own sexuality and why this is going to affect his written work.

Ok, so the sonnets. 

“The sonnets have a contrasting set of subjects - one set chronicles the poet's lust for a married woman with a dark complexion, known as The Dark Lady, while the other describes a conflicted or confused love for a young man, known as the "fair youth."‘ (William Shakespeare, his Life, Works, and Influence). 

So the sonnets were pretty revolutionary, exploring concepts such as love, lust, and even same sex relationships. This is observed in Shakespeare’s use of gender neutral terms and male pronouns, depending on the sonnet. This is pretty huge. When I did a sonnet analysis I chose two sonnets, which I’ll provide (Sonnet 18 and 29 - both are pretty well known and brought up in regarded to hidden messages/meanings). Both used pronouns that were either male or neutral, something that has been used forever to queer code in works, so do with that information what you will. A common analysis, is that William Shakespeare often wrote from personal experience, more so in his poems and sonnets, then in his plays, but nonetheless. 

Second part, Shakespeare’s own sexuality. William Shakespeare was married to a women, but that doesn’t exactly say much. Men were known to get married because it is the thing to do, without necessarily having any feelings or desires towards said women. 

When Shakespeare’s sexuality comes into question there a few things that are addressed. I definitely recommend reading the first source for this section, “Was Shakespeare Gay?”, it gives you a really good analysis and explores so many faucets of the question. I’m going to sum up the article and you can either read more or just take what I’ll explain. 

The article explains that when looking at Shakespeare’s works he is really good at getting into the minds of his characters, without necessarily having the experience to match the character, i.e. writing from Cleopatra’s perspective, or from a gay man’s perspective. However on the flip side of that, when Shakespeare writes of same sex experiences, he seems to have a wide variety of knowledge of very specific references and experiences, maybe leaning towards him having these experiences. People point out that Shakespeare’s sonnets are his most personal works, and imagine that, they are also the ones that reference same sex attraction and love. Now of course there is way more in the source, but here’s what I think are the most important/key points. It’s important to remember that sexuality is only able to be labeled by the person, but from different works, and cultural ideals, there are certain things to be said about Shakespeare himself. 

Sources for this section!

Was Shakespeare Gay?

https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/

William Shakespeare, his Life, Works, and Influence

https://www.williamshakespeare.net/

Sonnet 18

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day

Sonnet 29

https://www.williamshakespeare.net/sonnet-29.js

Finally

Thank you for reading and I hope this made you think a bit. I want to repeat that I am in no way an expert, nor am I claiming to be. You are more than welcome to think whichever way you want about this information and I invite you to do your own further research. I hope this helped explain the reference and the importance of said reference in Harry Styles’, “Sweet Creature”. Thank you for reading, let me know what you think, and as always TPWK. xx

#harry styles #louis tomlinson #louis and harry #harry and louis #larry stylinson #larry is real #sweet creature #shakespeare #is shakespeare gay #queer coding

[renewablenergon-main]

Garashir Tropes I take issue with...

There’s a couple of trends with depicting Garashir that I really don’t care for. I want to start by saying this isn’t intending to disparage anybody or anything like that, but by the same token I feel it is important to be reflective in our practices so that we can be the best creators we can be.

I really take issue with Bashir being depicted as unaware of Garak’s early advances and I really, really dislike it when people have Garak refer to Bashir as, “my boy.” I feel like these are both inherently disrespectful to Bashir’s character and may be unintentionally pushing a homophobic and pedophilic narrative. (Again, I am not accusing anyone of being those things, but I think it is important to think about the unintended messages behind our words.)

While I recognize that it can be funny to joke about Bashir being unaware of Cardassian customs and have the sudden realization, “Garak was courting me all along?!” I feel that this scenario is not based in how Bashir is played in the show. I have brought this up in a past post, but Bashir knows a good deal about Cardassian culture and he understands how Garak works. In the second episode that Garak appears in “Cardassians,” (S2E5) Bashir not only knows enough about how social structures work to outmaneuver Dukat, but he also feels confident enough about his knowledge to interrupt Sisko’s meeting. It is also worth noting that he is constantly reading Cardassian literature, some of which include stories focused around families (such as The Never Ending Sacrifice) which surely also feature at least some basic information about how courtship works.

You might be thinking, “But wait! Garak is the one providing Bashir with all of his information and we know Garak is an unreliable storyteller!” That’s true, but throughout the show Garak often uses stories to give Bashir clues about how to better understand him. For Garak, stories are a tool to communicate complex truths and Bashir is completely aware of this. He knows that he needs to pull out key details from what Garak gives him in order to better understand him. In fact, this is a large part of why Bashir is initially so interested in Garak—he enjoys the game of solving mysteries and riddles Garak presents him with. I really can’t think of any reason why Garak would hide this information from Bashir either. As Robinson played Garak, he was interested in cruising Bashir from their first meeting and he was not subtle about it. Surely it would be in Garak’s favor to provide Bashir with the information needed to pursue a romance.

And for anyone who is going to claim Bashir is oblivious, naive, etc. He’s not to that extent. Bashir was engaged at some point and does (gracelessly) pursue relationships. He’s experienced enough to know what slowly squeezing someone’s shoulders from behind means. He has enough points of context to see how his relationship with Garak is unique.

Another counterargument that may be brought up is that Ira Steven Behr and other writers have made comments that Bashir doesn’t realize Garak has feelings for him despite the evidence in their own show that logically he should. This is really where we get to the heart of the matter that depicting Bashir this way may be homophobic. Let’s examine what the writers are okay with:

Garak, an exiled, effeminate, foreign, alien, middle aged man who is frequently assaulted and is clearly interested in a younger man is allowed to be gay.

Any of that remind you of any stereotypes for predatory gay men? I don’t feel Garak is one, to be clear, but these are common stereotypes.

Bashir, the intended (but horribly failed) Casanova of the show, on the side of the “good guys,” and human, is not allowed to be gay or aware of Garak’s interest in him despite the writers later claiming Bashir is a super genius and the fact that Bashir is very invested in romances.

Could it be that we don’t want to send a message that someone like Bashir, someone the audience is intended to some extent to side with, could be gay?

So, as fan creators, which narrative do we want to uplift? We know that censorship of this relationship plagued these characters. We know that the actors (who I’d argue in a show that ran for 6 years are the experts on their characters as they have the most consistency and exposure to them) support this relationship and have since the beginning.

Now, with that out of the way let me very briefly explain why I don’t like the, “my boy” trope. Bashir is a full grown man, he is not a child. In addition, to my knowledge Garak never calls him this! When he refers to Bashir’s gender at all, he calls him a young man, which would be accurate. The closest Garak gets to using the word, “boy” when describing Bashir is actually when he disagrees with Bashir about him still having a, “boyish” smile. Garak has also explained to Bashir that he views aging as a good thing while giving Bashir a present for his 30th birthday in “Distant Voices” (S3E18.) This is also one of the very rare times where we see Garak genuinely confused as he realizes that Bashir is upset about what he perceives to be the end of his youth. Why would he infantilize Bashir in their romantic interactions? For goodness sake, if we think it is pedophilic and gross that the writers tried to write a romance with Ziyal, why would we turn around and try to recreate that in a queer relationship between two adults?!

In creating content for a ship with as much a history of censorship and icky writing, we need to be especially careful not to continue these harmful narratives in our well intentioned works.

#star trek #ds9 #garashir #long post