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splathousefiction · 1 year

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Editorial: The Othering

Note: This was started in february, well before the recording of Long Live Lacroix. I still firmly believe the written aspect of this has value, and decided to proceed forward with finishing this work.

The best place to start is with the truth, I suppose.

Hi folks, I’m trans. As to what flavor or label of trans, I’m unsure. But I’ve known nearly my entire life. I’ve lied to and denied myself that fact for as long. Though I’ve slowly begun to open up about that over the last year I’ve never come out publicly and stated it. Patrons first heard about it months ago on my series The Workshop, where speaking it aloud felt safe. There were fewer people there and they were folks I by and large trusted immensely.

This is my first time talking about who I am in full outside of my circle.

I think I was scared of doing that for a long time. But I’m getting too old, tired and angry to give a shit anymore. I’m trans. I’ve known my entire life. Though I may not have dared to type that word or talk about it until now, I’ve been open about it in my own way for seven years.

I did so with a face you all know and love. Someone many of you have written in and expressed immense admiration for. Someone that I’ve said on several occasions had the fates been kinder to me, you’d be addressing as Jen rather than Jack.

Jen, for lack of a better way to put it, is just me in a wig with a chest plate. Her words, ideas, thoughts and dialogue have always been my own behind a thin veneer of vocal effects. Jen wasn’t my first experience revealing this side to myself either-as I was a woman to an entirely different circle of people called Jacklin for nearly five years in my early twenties.

Surprise, or not, depending on who you are and your capacity to read intent.

I’m Trans.

And I’m tired of fighting you all about it.

I write today not only in hopes to firmly establish my identity outloud, but to also proclaim that the community at large (specifically its online component) has done a shit job at acknowledging people like me. We’re the lost folk of queerdom, and there’s not a single day that goes by that I feel safe either out in the world or with my own kind. Our experiences are outliers to the gender binary, something many of my siblings adhere to despite openly protesting it. While I am by no means unique in my perspective, I find the voices of my kin stifled every time we try to say something. Moreso if they’re minorities.

Queerdom and being queer isn’t a radical idea or position to take. There’s no “right” way to queer or trans, but the beauty of the spectrum is held in check by the dead weight of deeply rooted gender binary concepts, misogyny/misandry and racism. The online queer community has been placed in high chaos, violent times with unprecedented access to resources which allow us to draw attention to the suffering of our siblings.

Instead, they’ve used it to align themselves with the boots of fascist policies which are quickly running through the respective houses of government in the US and becoming law. The serpent inevitably eats its own tail, et al. Instead of using widely available technology to enable the greatest mutual aid network our species could conceive, I see it squandered by and large on intra community squabbles which invariably boil down to gossip and overblown popularity contests. Specifically at fault are the white queer americans, who have used their positions to preach to the rest of us about how we should be.

Which, before I go any further, I’d like to say the following to these types: There is no amount of gladhanding or appeals to law enforcement, government officials or religious leaders that will keep you out of the mass grave we’re on track to be buried within. The killing and curling of our kin is already happening. You directly aided that by thinking being “one of the good ones” would save you. You ignored the teachings of those that sacrificed themselves so that you could draw breath right now. Because of your efforts, here we are again with people denying Stonewall was a riot. With cops at Pride. With puritanical ideas running rampant once more, infecting the youth and the old with fascist, genocidal ideals.

And so the serpent eats it’s tail once more. But I digress.

I feel neither masculine nor femme, but another option entirely. This is popularly referred to as “non-binary”, but adhering to labels at all limits the beauty, depth and nuance I and others like me have come to find with our existence. Instead, we get wrote off in a thousand different ways under a thousand different names, which ultimately do nothing save fracturing the community and our identity further. The most damning thing is that this is often done without our consent, by people who think they understand us.

I’ve been called a “demi-man” simply because I’ve a five o’clock shadow one day. A “queen” simply because I took photos in a skirt. Despite going from “they-them” to “any pronouns” in a desperate attempt to assert myself, I still get called a man by my own community-often by well meaning queers as afraid of asking me to explain as they are of upsetting the Straights. It’s a means of silencing discussion and the human experience ingrained in us from birth by a culture that swallows propaganda daily.

I and others like me are out, but we’re not free. We’re seen but we’re not heard. The only time people do listen is when we yell, and then they give us as much space as their sensibilities as allies and siblings will allow. Because they seriously, genuinely thought slapping an enby flag on our forehead solved our problems instead of creating another form of pseudo-nationalist rhetoric.

The only time I felt liberation from the expectations of labels was within the trans community. It has faults of it’s own, bad actors and no shortage of those that want us dead. Speaking comparatively in my personal experience however, it by far aligns closer with my concept of identity than others. I feel more at home in the arms of my brothers, sisters and others than I ever did attempting to placate the rhetoric of the rest of the community.

A non-zero portion of the rest of you would be happy if we all just shut the fuck up though. The shackles of binary ideals muzzle what you know to be the truth-that we’re all queer uniquely, and I dare say “trans” by concept of stepping away from those binary norms.

It scares you. A lot. Because it upsets the comfort and protections you’ve secured by appealing to the same powers that want us dead.

Which is why it’s fine to have sacrificial lambs.

The Binary: An Anti-Humanist, Species Destroying Concept

Nothing is inherently gendered.

Absolutely nothing.

“Gender” as a concept is so inherently nebulous, so vague and general in so much that it’s applied to overlapping experiences and marketing. In of itself however, it is simply a word with no basis in physical reality. The concept of what’s a “man” and “woman” is ultimately a dialectic concept, conveyed through the equally nebulous concept of intention. Gender, in theory, should be “whatever the fuck I individually make it to be”.

Yet right now, there’s laws being pushed through congress and the senate that allow for the active genociding of anyone challenging the idea. As of this writing, there was a trans girl who was stabbed to death in the UK for expressing her identity.She won’t be the last of us killed just this month, nor is she alone in being a minor murdered for this. There’s thousands of years of historical precedence justifying our existence, yet that’s ignored so we can die by the hundreds every year at the alter of American conservatism and evangelical values.

For something that ultimately doesn’t exist. For a concept that should be treated with the same derision people have for organized religion or the idea of incorruptible governments.

Queers treat the gender binary as a yardstick with which to measure their human value. We talk of “passing” and “boy/girl moding” as beasts we have to satiate simply to piss where we want. Should any of our siblings not adhere to these ideals and concepts, we feast upon their being like a multi-course dinner. First comes the polite suggestions, the ribbing. The advice never requested about fashion, hair removal and more. When those fail we exile them, ostracize them. For desert, we use them and their existence as a boogeyman style warning to others.

“Hey, you don’t want to be like them right?”

The fact of the matter is, this is an abused, marginalized group perpetuating the abuse that was given to them in a desperate bid to hold power totally unavailable by any other means. We’re politically under-represented, out gunned and out matched by our oppressors everywhere else. So of course a section of us will use the same tactics to beat down anyone that doesn’t conform to some contextually sensitive, puritanical idea of what a “good queer” looks like.

The truth of such movements however is that they ultimately serve white supremacist, cis-het christian ideals. You can see the proof of this via the “LGB remove the T” movement, which recently has opted to remove/invalidate bisexual people as well. They’re perfectly fine with allowing members of the same struggle to die so long as their white, cis-het approved comfort is perpetuated. You’d think any level of awareness of our history whatsoever would show them what a dangerously deadly idea this is.

Yet, their goals aren’t simply exclusion/exile from the community-but rather to alter it’s trajectory as legitimate and established. Doing so allows them to control the narrative of the struggle, and therefore it’s history both backwards and forwards. Just like the very people that were content to send us to death camps during the 1940s. I’ve often called such people “casually evil”, and I can think of no better term to illustrate the mindset of white queer americans towards the struggles of anyone who isn’t them. The total disregard for inequality, human life and the voices of others is committed with the same casual disdain they give receiving a work email. BIPOC people and gender fuckers are a nuisance to their existence, as we’re a threat to the power grip of white american politics.

Adherence to the gender binary will be the death of all of us. Assuming that our identity is solely tied into how well we pantomime, how well we fit our clothes, how well we can shuck and jive will be death of us. Adherence to an outdated, static ideals that we fail to realize are a kinetic concept and always have been will be the death of us.

It behooves me to mention very specifically that the “LGB without the T” movement was started by two people that aren’t even queer. Bev Jackson and Kate Harris of the LGB alliance, aside from their hate/fear mongering rhetoric, ultimately seek to “redefine homosexuality” and thus retroactively invalidate all historical precedence for what is ultimately elimination of queer voices from public spaces and history. They boldly claim that queer children don’t exist among other things.

Hey, Bev and Kate-I was in the closet from the time I was ten. Literally nobody knew anything about my sexual identity or preferences until I was twenty-five. I masked a majority of my life if for no other reason than the threats to my young life were incredibly real. I know for a fact based on empirical evidence and conversations with others in this community I’m not the only one by a wide margin. We see what you’re doing and we’re wise to it. That’s why we fight you so hard, you daft, absolutely hideously evil cunts. Denying the existence of a marginalized group does not make us magically go away. There’s no amount of hand-wringing, whataboutisms and denial that can snap an entire group of people out of reality no matter how much you direly pray for our deaths.

Charity status doesn’t mean you’re not a hate group.

One legacy will significantly outlive the other.

Besides, don’t you have a court date to prepare for?

Wad Of Flesh, Slab Of Iron

I’m trans.

I have zero intention of getting on hormones.

I don’t care if I pass. The very concept of needing to do so makes me laugh.

I am stuck in a body I didn’t ask for in an existence I didn’t consent to on a planet that wants me dead.

I’m trans, and given the above, I will work with what I have.

I will take this heap of flesh covered in coarse body hair, this booming bass voice and I will pound away until it’s hard as iron. Until my shirt stretches across the flat-breasts that Gendered Society calls “pecs”, until I cry out in pain on the weight bench and beg god to kill me.

Then I’ll do another set. And another.

If I will be considered undesirable by the straights and othered by my own siblings, then I will lead by example. I will mold my body and torture my flesh into an ideal I can feel comfortable in, damned the consequences and pain it inflicts upon me.

Because nothing can hurt me more than you already have. Nothing can kill me in any meaningful way more than being given a smirk by people I thought were my found family, followed by the off-handed remark of “are you sureeeee you’re trans?”

Nothing I do to myself and my body will hurt anywhere near as much as the things you people have done to me, to people like me and to our BIPOC siblings.

I will do all of this because long after your ideals of what a queer should be have been defeated, be it by your own in-group fighting or the reality of existence, after you’re dead and quiet at last, I’ll still be here. Right alongside all the other “ne’er do wells” like me. It’s gonna be a hard road for all of us, and I’ve got to be strong enough to carry it with them. I’ve got to be strong enough to keep fighting all the others that tell us we shouldn’t exist, too.

I’m trans. I’m not unique in how I trans. There’s a lot of people like me.

There’s always been trans folks like me.

There will always be trans folks like me.

And some distant day, maybe in a world that looks like ours (or perhaps will be kinder), I hope to sit down in my old age with my siblings. I hope we can laugh and smile and the pain of the here and now is distant.

But until then.

I will lift.

I will fight.

I will grow stronger than you ever could have imagined I and others like me could be.

Because we’re trans, and we are powerful.

As for what to call me:

I’ve long since given up the struggle of being recognized.

Call me anything, I don’t care anymore.

But acknowledge me. Realize I exist.

Realized we exist.

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apriceonemotion · 4 years

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Harries vs. “Sexualizing” Harry

There seems to be an issue within harries on Twitter where there’s a divide in opinions, which happens with most things in this fandom really – with song and suit preferences and sometimes even his personal relationships. But when it comes to fans using his own words against other fans to make them feel bad for feeling a certain way, that’s when it gets a bit more serious. Some fans get really angry and aggressive when it comes to others expressing their sexual attraction to him and it has become a huge issue as it is mentioned almost daily now. When discussing the sexualization of Harry Styles, we need to step back into time to really dig deep into why it’s such a huge issue to some people.

Harry was seen as an actual sex symbol for the beginning and even toward the end of One Direction, as he was painted as the womanizer or the attractive flirt of the group not only by the media but even the One Direction team. In X Factor they made it a huge joke that Harry flirted with every girl that was in the competition and then proceeded to poke fun at how 17 year old Harry was into older women like Caroline Flack. He was being painted into a textbook example of a womanizing player. They used the fact that fans found him sexually attractive to their advantage in marketing, as they made him the face of the group as well as giving him parts in music videos that made him even more attractive to the young audience.

When looking back at that time, you could see multiple articles being made prying into his personal relationships and making him seem as if he has sex with and dates multiple women, all because he was labeled from the very beginning as the flirty one. Whenever he had a relationship, the media was writing his life as a news story.

During this time, fans were young and the idea of idolization from these fans had a fine line between loving these boys as musicians to wanting to actually be with them sexually and/or romantically. Society constantly shames young women for feeling sexual attraction to male artists and demonizes the girls that ever expressed how they feel. Although the attraction these young fans were feeling was used against them in marketing for 1D, there was still a huge divide inside of the fandom at that time of if anyone should be expressing their sexual attraction to the boys.

Fans then and now firmly believe that showing that you are sexually attracted to one of them, that is all you see them as. A lot of this is based on internalized misogyny that young girls have embedded from older generations demonizing young women for being as vocal about sexuality as young men can. I know that most people reading this may be denying that they’re internally misogynistic but in reality, the majority of women feel this way especially in their young teen years since society has still plagued the idea that women should not be sexual beings unless they are the ones being objectified by men.

A sex symbol in the music industry is a person that is seen only for their sexual attractiveness and not their actual talent and musical ability. This term gets thrown around way too often in Twitter arguments, but when you claim that every single fan that made one tweet about being sexually attracted to him is painting him out to be a sex symbol, you are trying to generalize that all fans who see him in that way don’t like him for anything else but that when that’s not even close to being accurate. Seeing someone’s tweet for the first time and assuming that’s all they ever talk about is a stupid thing to do in the first place. Majority of fans that make those tweets do tweet other things, you just don’t care to look.

People are very complex and go from mood to mood over the course of the day. One moment they could be thinking about how attractive Harry is and the things they can imagine, but the next moment they could be talking about how much they appreciate him and his music for what they have done for them in their life. Thinking that women can’t have sexual thoughts and go about their day normally after is again internalized misogyny. Feeling uncomfortable when a woman feels sexual attraction shows that you are just simply uncomfortable with the idea of women being as sexual as men are allowed to be.

However, another point that is always brought up is how Harry was actually a sex symbol once like I stated in the beginning. In his Zane Lowe interview, he was asked how he feels when people only focus on him in that light (sexually), and the quote he gave has been thrown around in a misleading way in order prove that the past years of him being sexualized by media has made him uncomfortable of fans doing the same thing when that’s not even close to being true.

“It’s a very strange dynamic,” he says. “It’s also a weird thing to think of about yourself. The thing about sex in general is, it used to feel so much more taboo, like in the band – the thought of people thinking I had sex was like ‘oh, no, that’s crazy’ like what if they know? But it’s like… y’know. With this record, I wanted to be more free and honest.” He does keep this quite vague, as he always does, which is possibly how it’s been misread and misused. But in this quote, it’s clear that in the beginning of One Direction when he was being shown as a womanizer, he felt very weird about people knowing that he has sex and that he is being seen as a sexual being. He felt very closed off, which was very obvious in that time as he started to have his relationships more private and we as fans did not know much about his personal life. But as he says in the end, it seems as if he is trying to be more open about sexuality with Fine Line, as he feels more free to discuss the subject of sex rather than how taboo it felt in the beginning of being famous.

Nowhere in that quote does he claim that fans finding him sexually attractive is uncomfortable, however, he does state that he feels uncomfortable by being seen only for his looks instead of his talent. Him feeling this way is more rooted from the media making him out to be the good looking player of the band rather than the fact fans found him sexually attractive. It also would stem from people in his life who actually only saw him as an attractive male celebrity and based their support of his career solely on that, not fans on Twitter once in a while tweeting about how attractive he walks.

Blaming an entire fan base on his lack of activity on social media just because a few fans are sexually attracted to him, as well as attempting to make them feel lesser for feeling that way toward him, is actually very damaging. Harry has said himself that social media is bad for his mental health, which research shows that social media is bad for anyone’s mental health as it holds high standards for a good quality of life for a typical human. Putting the blame on fans is basically saying these people on Twitter are the main reason his mental health is bad when he gets online, which is a huge burden to put onto someone as mental health is not something to use against people. You are making it seem that this random person on Twitter is one of the main reasons he doesn’t like social media, when in reality, he probably doesn’t even see it since he doesn’t get online much.

Harry has gone through social media abuse from the media and crazed fans all of his life, most likely more damaging words have been said to him than the ones you are mad at. Viral tweets are made about him that criticize what he wears all of the time, a lot of them are borderline homophobia or even denying the fact that he is as queer as he says he is. People on social media critique his entire life, it’s always been that way since the beginning of 1D. I really doubt that someone giggling about how Watermelon Sugar is clearly about eating a woman out is going to bother him as much as that.

I’ve always been told that Harry would be upset to see the things that people say but we all do not know him personally and he has never said that anyone finding him attractive has made him uncomfortable. I feel like the only thing he may find strange is the idea of himself being attractive to other people, which is more of a personal reflection of himself. The transition of becoming famous and having girls find you attractive must be strange if you have always believed you weren’t. It has nothing to do with ‘thirst tweets’ being made about him.

Now, let’s all keep our internalized misogyny to ourselves and instead learn to accept sexuality in its many forms so you don’t demonize young women for ‘thirst tweeting’ about Harry Styles’ hands.

#harry styles #watermelon sugar #harries #harrystyles

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theloosecannonbuchanan · 7 years

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The Evil of Gay “cures” in Russia

The sordid history of pathologizing homosexuality has many dark chapters. For decades men, women and children were electrocuted, poisoned, drugged, castrated and even lobotomised by Frankenstein-like Freudians and money swindling quacks. All this torture and nonsense, labelled Gay Conversion Therapy, was an attempt to “cure” the “disease” of homosexuality. The motivations of people for seeking it were varied.Children obviously can be forced by their parents or church leaders. Adults are bending to social pressure ranging from placating their families, avoiding prison or out of actual fear of being murdered. This is where the current situation in the former Soviet Union comes in.

Russia is experiencing a disturbing boom in those seeking or being conscripted in to conversion therapy. This snake oil mainly comes in the form of hypnosis and bizarre varieties of religious cleansing, analogous to a Catholic exorcism. There’s money to be made by these quacks and conmen too. Multiple costly appointments and more than a little blackmailing to keep the patient list private. To clarify, homosexuality is not officially classified as a mental disorder in Russia. Being gay was taken off the list of recognised psychiatric conditions in 1999.Yet demand in the gay-hostile environment is soaring.LGBT people are being subjected to cruel Pavlovian response sessions and the malpractice of cognitive behavioural therapy; associating arousal with pain and nausea. Imagine a cross between Clockwork Orange and some Orwellian nightmare.

A recent BBC investigation into the rise of conversion therapy there interviewed psychotherapist Yan Goland .He claimed he "cured" 78 gay men and 8 trans people using a combination of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy and pressuring the patient/victim in to having heterosexual intercourse. And there are hundreds more charlatans, extortionists and well-meaning homophobic professionals.As well as the men in the white coats there are the ones in the funny hats and dresses. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoys levels of power in Putin’s Russian unseen since the time of the Czars. Homosexuality is something these highly respected clergy views as a cancer in Gods creation. Also, Protestant pastors run an organisation called "Vosstanovleniye" the Russian for “rehabilitation/resurrection" using similar medieval mumbo jumbo. Gays are hit with canes, saturated with cold water and made to swallow holy water. They are locked in solitary confinement religious cells, screamed at with biblical verses and sleep deprived. All classic examples of brainwashing and psychological torture used to extract false information. Those exposed to these medieval rituals are inevitably left mentally broken, self-hating and suicidal.

Russia is certainly not the only place soliciting this damaging mental and physical hocus pocus. However, Putin's laws created a perfect storm of criminality and fear likely to force LGBT folk to submit to this sickening suffering. Other nations take a different approach to invalidate Queer identities. In Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued fatwa decades ago allowing gender reassignment surgery. The result might seem like an act of tolerance. It fact it was to eliminate homosexual men. Gays in Iran are forced with the choice of death or sexual reassignment surgery to become Trans women, regardless of their identifications. There is a disturbing cottage industry in the US which includes summer camps for kids “to pray away the gay”. One of the biggest masterminds behind the American gay cure movement is Alan Chambers whose religious quasi-cult “Exodus International” has over 260 ministries promising to rid you of those pesky fag demons for a sizable fee. Paradoxically Chambers admitted that “99% of recorded cases this cure does not work”. Amnesty International and the UN have cited a sickening culture of “corrective rape” to “cure” lesbians in Africa and parts of Asia. I think the disgusting term is self-explanatory of the process used.

Unpalatable as it sounds, is there any actual proof that sexual orientation can be altered by these therapies? The answer is a resounding no. Decades of empirical study have shown homosexuality is not a disorder and cannot be cured. Therapies are almost universally seen as unethical, unscientific and ineffective. Not to mention it is a major breach of the Hippocratic Oath. Earlier this year The Irish Council for Psychotherapy stated that “efforts to try to change, manipulate or reverse sexual orientation and/or gender identity change through psychological therapies with different theoretical frameworks are unethical ……this is usually pursued via non-scientifically proven and potentially harmful techniques.” This opinion mirrored the 2007 report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK which stated "Evidence shows that LGB people are open to seeking help for mental health problems. However, they may be misunderstood by therapists who regard their homosexuality as the root cause of any presenting problem such as depression or anxiety. Unfortunately, therapists who behave in this way are likely to cause considerable distress. A small minority of therapists will even go so far as to attempt to change their client's sexual orientation…. there is no evidence that such change is possible."

The World Health Organisation called LGBT conversion therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being - even lives of affected people”. The only accredited scientific paper which seemed to go against this trend was by Dr Robert Spitzer in 2003. However, since then Dr Spitzer has acknowledged his evidence was “fatally flawed” and his conclusions were completely incorrect. He went as far as begging the LGBT for forgiveness, saying “I owe the gay community an apology”. Other studies citing a cure and LGBT as a syndrome are discredited Freudian theories, falsified pseudoscientific results and religious dogma. The overwhelming scientific evidence points to homosexuality being a natural and constant part of not just the human species but across the animal kingdom. Advances in neurology and genetics are coming every closer to showing detectable congenital differences in the brains of gay people and genetic models showing why LGBT people are adaptive and may be a necessary part of the passing on of DNA. One uncomfortable fact must not be ignored. There are LGBT people who sincerely want to be heterosexual. Should we impede their free will to seek help? After all, we would consider it immoral to prevent a Trans person from the right to medically alter themselves to match their identified state. I would ask LGBT people who want a “cure” to ask themselves these questions. Do you feel that your own individual homosexuality is discordant with your identity or do you think all homosexuals are sick? Do you want to because your family, friends, state or religion make you feel this way? Do you want to prevent yourself being bullied or fit in better to society, marry and have children? If your answer is yes to any of these things than I would suggest that this “cure” is not really your choice. It is coercion. You are not sick, the society pressuring you is.

As unscientific as it is unnecessary, gay conversion therapy attempts to manipulate society in to a definite hierarchy putting male heterosexuality firmly at the top. Anything challenging heteronormative values is subversive and must be destroyed or discredited. Categorising being queer as a disorder is analogous to native peoples feeling their cultures were inferior to those of their colonial masters. That effect still resonates today. When the voodoo, whether it be psychiatric or religious, inevitably fails to alter sexual orientation it is the child or adults “fault”. Guilt at disappointing parents or culture, fear of angering God mixed up with all the natural confusion and self-hatred of young people frequently leads to substance abuse, self-harm and in many cases suicide. And there are serious implications in the wider culture which tolerates this butchery. If you can deceive heterosexual society into believing homosexuality is an illness or a choice then it’s a slippery slope towards coercing, criminalising and persecuting LGBT people without conscience.

#lgbtq #russia #science #medicine

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