#don't have kids if you don't want queer and trans kids

[drmajalis]

Too good to stay on twitter

#parenting #don't have kids if you don't want queer and trans kids

[uncanny-tranny]

Having a complex, queer, in-good-faith identity that others might not immediately get is not the same thing as being a violent bigot, and frankly, I think people need to remember that just because you don't "get" an identity, that doesn't mean it is hurting you specifically. Being a bigot is harmful, being a human being with complex experiences is not. Don't equate the two.

#lesbian #gay #bi #bisexual #trans #transgender #queer #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #if you can't tell the difference between a queer person and a queerphobic bigot there are bigger issues for you than if a queer person... #...has a harmful identity #also before somebody says something no this isn't about super str*ight or people who are attracted to kids #(trying not to get this post in adjacent tags) #(i made a post about a similar topic and it was kind of upsetting how people equated it with super str*ight and being attracted to kids) #(and i really want to make sure people don't do it to this post because it's genuinely upsetting to see and i'd like to not have that) #i'm aware this probably isn't going to be read and might have tags that i was complaining about on my last post

[moinsbienquekaworu]

I don't know how I do that but I'm friends with so many trans people

#and for what!!!! #because buddy if i were trans let me tell you i would know by now #i've had years multiple trans friends of all flavours and 24/7 access to tumblr #i'd know #but here i am cis+ with just. an astonishing amount of trans friends for a cis girl #i don't know i guess it's cause i'm queer and weird?? #i'm not kidding btw there's like. what. 12 people on my list of friends right now? #okay wait let's push it to 15 just to account for the people i must have forgotten #i have about 15 friends #and like half of that have something up with their gender #it's official. i'm a magnet for people who had a shit school experience and also trans people i guess #and the neurodivergent/disabled crowd also. but i'm neurodivergent and i had a shit experience in school so. #it's both a very nice environment (cool queer people) but sometimes it's a bit hard to talk about gender #because i have trans friends who take me saying i want to wear waistcoats as me being trans. which. nope #like i am so not a guy. i wouldn't panic too much if i suddenly woke up with a typically male body sure #but like. i'm not a guy. i don't know what's going on here 100% but it's not that i'm a guy #i just want to wear waistcoats i'd love shapeshifting powers and one day i'll try binding #this is me being a curious fucker with a sense of style #if someone else implies there is an egg in me i should crack i'm going to snap #sorry apart from that it's fun having trans friends. cool people #i say that now cause we're 5 housemates total and like 2 of those are trans people #and a third has something going on somewhere near his gender i think. i think? probably. #and they're friends with more people who are doing a gender #so many trans people in my social circle.... #that and my two high school closest friends are also having fun with it #i'm the only one. i'm the only cis person of some of my friend groups! #wow i have a ramble tag now

[magentagalaxies]

gonna start a charity where any comedian who makes a joke about not understanding nonbinary kids these days has to legally spend at least an hour with a nonbinary kid these days (me) so they can actually attempt to understand it. proceeds go towards buying them some better material

#listen i don't care if you make fun of me at least know what you're saying #yes this is a vaguepost but also it's a vent that turned into a sketch idea i might actually produce #''why are you magentagalaxies volunteering yourself to be the nonbinary kid these days they have to sit with'' glad you asked #1. i think i'm good at explaining my queer identity in language old male comedians could understand #2. i don't want to put anyone else through having to explain their identity to jerry seinfeld #3. listen i'm just a fucking comedy nerd this gives me an excuse to meet some comedy legends even if they do call me a snowflake #this post isnt actually about jerry seinfeld but oh my god imagine me explaining the trans seinfeld meme to him as he looks on horrified #dream come true

[vulpinesaint]

absolutely unreasonable over this coworker that i rlly like rn. thank god i don't like men or i would have fucking Lost it by now! as it is i don't even know what has me so dkfjghsdf about him i'm just sitting there with my head in my hands going "he's so normal about trans people..."

#he's a like. fr nerd guy which i don't know if i have a value judgment for but! it gets me points cause i can pull out nerd shit too #thought he was Significantly older than me but he is only four years older than me and not the estimated six. so it's not that bad #once i'm twenty in like three months it really will not be that weird for me to be friends with people in their twenties. #YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS. HE'S NOT NERDY HE'S GEEKY. DIFFERENT VIBE BUT DEFINITELY MORE LIKE ME #like. ordered a working spiderman mask online but also likes my alt radio station. y'know #and he wants to be my friend too!!! we talk nd have similar senses of humor #and he says hi + bye to me every time he sees me AND says my name every time which i think is a like. positive sign #when people take the time to say 'hi [name]!' i think that's a like. 'i'm invested in being friendly with you' thing #AND AGAIN!!! HEAD IN MY HANDS!!!! HE'S SO NORMAL ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE!!!!!! #went 'wow. it's the ignorance' when one of the kids asked about my dead name (kid obviously did not know what being trans entailed) #and when i went 'i mean adults ask me that too' he went 'what??? fr??? people are so uneducated :/' like a little disgusted ab it #which. dude. what a fucking world. so normal about trans people that like. not being normal about trans people is a foreign concept #not EVEN transphobia just not being educated on what's decent to ask a trans person!!! NOBODY knows that stuff!!!! #except for skye my best friend skye apparently. this dude is so fucking normal about trans people #laughs at my jokes about being trans!!! consistently!!!!! is rlly cool about it!!!!!!! #made a joke about using my dual citizenship to go check on the girls who were taking a really long time in the bathroom #and he found it as funny as i did and like. that's a kind of joke u'd usually have to share with other trans/queer people... idk... #would also make that joke with my coworker who is gay. but he's also really chill about me being trans haha #anywayyyyyy i don't know if he's queer or anything (strikes me as straight) but it's. god. world-changing #AND HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND. WHO HE TALKS ABOUT A NORMAL AMOUNT. VERY POSITIVE THING #so i don't have to worry about things being weird at all :D #and he knows for sure i'm 19 and is chill about it. which. i was the only one making that a big deal but it's a relief all the same haha #asked how old i was (talking about graduating from college in a year nd a half) and gave me a FIST BUMP when i told him. #A FIST BUMP. WHO DOES THAT. #straight people. that's who. guys who are just guys. #guys who make me go 'oh so i DO want guy friends who are my friends in a 'we're both guys' way. those other guys just suck' #which i don't really want but ALSO. he's normal about trans people! so he recognizes me as a guy no matter what i look/sound like!! #my like. supervisor's supervisor made a joke about him being childish and like. girl. #idc frankly that's skye my best friend skye you can't tell me shit about him we listened to the radio while driving the kids to the beach #valentine notes

[coulsonlives]

Im so tired of feeling like I gotta label myself and every single group and subgroup I fit into on here

#i'm tired of it fam #and y'all know what happens if you don't give all that info right? yep people assume you're some demon who's hiding something lol #like if you don't explicitly say 'hi yes i'm bi trans and queer' it must mean you're a cishet and also that you should die for some reason #it's so effed #i gotta ask myself like: is it any wonder so many kids voluntarily share EVERYTHING abt themselves now?? to a scary extent?? #like do they feel pressured to do that? or is it still just they don't have the same perspective n fear of oversharing like millennials do? #so they're automatically just like 'pfft idc i'll share whatever i want' bc they can't fathom how dangerous it actually is?? #and how permanent this stuff actually can be? #idk just spitballing now #tumblr #fandom #cliques #death threat ment cw

[fullhalalalchemist]

URGENT: Congress about to pass a mass censorship and surveillance bill under the guise of "protecting children"

May 13 2023

The Senate has been in a "do something!" mode regarding children's online safety. They're using this as an excuse to push for widespread internet censorship and surveillance. The EARN IT Act, has a slimmer chance of passing with widespread opposition and some senators saying they won't vote for it. TLDR;The real threat is actually KOSA (s.1409), the Kid's Online Safety Act, which will mass censor and surveill the entire internet by giving all 50 state attorney generals the power to remove content that is "harmful" for kids, and force you to upload your govt ID online to access the internet. I'll explain how it works below the action items but it's absolutely urgent that anyone who likes having a free and open internet fights back. It's all hands on deck, because this has so much public support it's insane:

HOW TO FIGHT KOSA

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES & THE COMMERCE COMMITTEE

This is a link to the Senate Commerce Committee phone numbers and a call script to read off of. [phone] connects you to the congressional hotline

Opposition is getting drowned, and these upcoming weeks will be heavy for lobbying and they're using young people to do it. We NEED to show these senators that young people are actually opposed to this and don't want it.

2. Sign these petitions

Open Letter Against KOSA

Petition 1

Petition 2

Petition 3

Petition 4

Resistbot: Text PHJDYH to 50409

3. Spread the word.

The opposition is getting absolutely drowned online. Dove has nearly 100k signatures to push for KOSA. Influencers on tiktok are pushing for this without ever having read the bill. Fucking Lizzo is sponsoring it. If you have twitter, reddit, tiktok, are in any community, SPREAD THE WORD, PLEASE.

Here is a linktree with all the above petitions for easy shargin: Link to linktree

HOW KOSA WORKS

First, KOSA pressures platforms to install filters that would wipe the net of anything deemed “inappropriate” for minors. This means instructing platforms to censor. We saw how these filters impacted websites firsthand with tumblr in 2018, with not only blocking all adult content but also sfw queer content such as suicide hotlines, art archives, wiping out entire blogs because they had queer fandom related posts, etc. Places that already use content filters have restricted important information about suicide prevention and LGBTQ+ support groups. KOSA would spread this kind of censorship to every corner of the internet. And who gets to decide what is and isn't harmful for minors? Oh don't worry, just every single state attorney general and the FTC, which is appointed by the president. You know, the same attorney generals that just banned gender-affirming healthcare under the guise that it "ruins mental health" of minors. This is why the Heritage Foundation was one of the first to sponsor the bill because they can use it to censor trans content, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is it's co-author.

Second, KOSA would ramp up the online surveillance of all internet users by forcing websites to use age verification and parental monitoring tools. Yup, that's right. Now every single person who wants to access the internet has to upload their govt ID online to third party apps that get hacked all the time. You queer in a red state? You undocumented? You an activist? Have fun getting all your online activity and metadata attached to your govt ID.  

Over 90+ human and LGBT rights groups agree that KOSA is dangerous and updates to the 2023 version won’t and can’t address the big problems with the bill. This bill has MASSIVE bipartisan support, and the authors Blumenthal and Blackburn (yes, that Blumenthal that's pushing the EARN IT Act, and who also sponsored the RESTRICT Act and SOPA/PIPA if you remember) are using the tragedy of mothers who lost their kids to online harassment and young adults who've been traumatized online to lobby for it, and got Dove the company to use a bunch of influencers to push for this under the guise it prevents eating disorders...I wish I was lying. There are already 30 co-sponsors.

It is all hands on deck. I'm dead serious when I say if this bill is passed it is the beginning if not end of the open and free internet.

#earn it act #kosa #kids online safety bill #kids online safety act #earn it bill

[vaspider]

An important definition of terms:

As far as I'm concerned, an assimilationist is someone who believes that queer people must assimilate in order to advance the cause of queer rights. An assimilationist creates a dress code for marches like the Mattachine Society did, fights against queer self-expression at Pride because "it holds back the movement," and believes that the only way for us to move forward is for all queers to live as cishet people do, but with little rainbow flags taped on.

An assimilationist is not "someone who wants the functions and institutions of cishet society to be available to queer people." It's someone who believes the only way to live is assimilated into cishet society, and anything else "holds us back." It's someone who wants Sylvia and Marsha to march at the back, and who prizes cishet aesthetic over practical liberation.

A liberationist is someone who believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity.

Let me repeat that, so we're absolutely clear: a liberationist believes that queer liberation is not contingent upon public performance of identity. ANY IDENTITY.

That means a sufficiently cishet identity and a sufficiently "respectable" identity, but it also means a sufficiently radical identity. If you actually believe in queer liberation, you don't just believe in liberation for people who look, act, and believe like you. You believe in liberation for people who genuinely want to get married, have babies by IVF and live in the suburbs as well as for people who want to live childfree on an anarchist trans commune/Llama farm.

I hear people use the term "Assimilationist" and "Assimilationist Victories" to dismiss as meaningless those victories that are insufficiently radical for their tastes, and that to me is only proof that those people are not actually liberationists in any meaningful way. In liberation, there must be room for people who actually do just want to get married and live quiet, content lives going to their kid's baseball games.

The difference between Assimilationist thought and Liberationist thought cannot be simply replacing "we need to blend in" with "we need to stick out." It cannot simply replace "we must be integrated into cishet society" with "we cannot ever integrate into cishet society and anything which permits us to do that if we so choose is insufficiently liberationist." That's the organizational equivalent of yelling YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD, and I'm fucking over it, y'all.

My liberation doesn't have to be your liberation. Your liberation doesn't have to look like mine. What matters is that we are helping each other up the mountain and making long-term plans to get to where we can, and that we recognize that every choice we make is going to leave someone behind, and we account for that and plan for that so we don't leave them behind forever.

We cannot regard gay marriage or gays in the military or instituting a nationwide right to transition or any of our future goals as an endpoint. They are only goals part of the way up the mountain.

We don't get to the top until we are all free to live as we choose without government or societal interference or sanction, and without having to perform an identity for those rights and respect. The freedom to be ourselves must include the right to "blue hair and pronouns" but it also must include the right to "your kid's school plays and a duplex in a suburb." The latter is not an assimilationist lifestyle unless you try to enforce it on everyone.

I'm so, so tired of people acting like they're radical thinkers for poo-pooing the civil rights advances that the community has achieved through literally decades of work as "assimilationist victories." That's not clever, cute, or correct. Every. Single. One. Of those victories is written in tears and sweat and blood. Every single one is wrapped in the funeral shrouds of people who died fighting for it. Every single one was achieved not by assimilationists alone, but neither by people who think the only true victories are the ones sufficiently pure in their leftist credentials.

It is extremely possible and indeed likely that if you judge queers by their aesthetic, you will miss partnering with some of the most radical people and shackle your movement to people who cloak regressive politics in radical language. I've heard some truly noxious words come out of mouths framed by snakebites, and I've known extremely radical thinkers who look like your grandma. And I gotta tell you, in those local elections which keep school boards free from Moms For Liberty? The latter are useful people for liberationists to know and have in our camp, those people who think like liberationists but look like your grandma or your auntie.

Enforcement of aesthetic as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It doesn't matter if the assimilation is to pink hair and tattoos or polo shirts and khakis - enforcement of aesthetic and philosophy as a condition of liberation is assimilationist thought. It's just replacing one kind of demanded conformity with another, and when we say "none of us are free until all of us are free," that also means free to be fucking boring if we want to, full stop.

We talk a lot about how much work goes into being disabled, how much work we have to put into making appointments, and fighting bureaucracy, but this is also true of queer life. Freedom comes with ease, with being easily able to update paperwork, with being easily able to find employment and housing, with being easily able to create the family structures we want to live in. When all of us can wake up in the morning assured of security in our beds, food in our bellies, meds in our med trays as needed, and a day ahead of us filled with chosen purpose and chosen meaning, which ends with us back in the bed of our choice at the end of the day, fulfilled in purpose and secure in our homes and chosen families, then we are free, and not before.

You may notice a seeming contradiction in this, in that my liberationist philosophy has room in it for the very people who are currently annoying the fuck out of me by demanding allegiance to a leftist aesthetic over practical liberation (that is, a movement based in harm reduction and long-term strategy over adherence to leftist purity of thought).

This is not a contradiction.

It is not a bug. It is a feature. My liberationist ideals mean that people have to have the right to be wrong without their liberty hinging on being right, that's all. :)

#and fucking obviously there is no room in liberationist thought for fascism #so don't start #spider's essays

[daughter-of-sapph0]

I said it before in a previous rant, but I feel like this story needs repeating for no particular reason whatsoever.

my middle school was very small. there was only one class of 18 kids in the entire 6th grade. we had to deal with each other every single day. I only started this school in 6th grade, but some of these kids have known each other since pre-k. so when I joined, I was a stranger, an outcast, someone different. and having undiagnosed autism did not help at all.

one of my classmates was named Jacob. he was the only kid shorter than me. but he was an aggressive bully. every day, he'd grab me, slap me, pull my hair. he'd torment me physically, call me names, the whole shebang. typical bully stuff. there was never a reason for this, other than I was a new kid. I was a faggot. I was a downey. I was a retard. I was a sissy. I was a pussy. I was "the other". I think Jacob somehow knew I was trans and queer about five years before I did, and treated me as you'd expect.

every single day, I'd complain to my teachers and the principal. "Jacob is bullying me. he's hitting me, calling me names, harassing me, even after I tell him to leave me alone". and the responses I got did not help.

"just leave. walk away" gee, thanks. I'd love to. unfortunately I'm stuck in a classroom with him all day. unless you're gonna let me go home early, your advice is worthless.

"stop being a tattletale" and just let him continue to bully me? wow, thanks for being a supportive adult figure in my life...

and I'll never forget what my hardcore conservative catholic principal said to me. "if you don't want him to call you a faggot, then stop being a faggot".

in all of these situations of begging for help, not once did Jacob ever face consequences for his actions. even when I showed them the bruises and horrible notes he gave me. even when the harassment happened right in front of the teachers. the most he would ever receive is "hey, both of you, stop fighting!" even though it was always one sided and I never fought back.

until one day on the bus. he was in the seat behind me, poking my head, slapping me, trying to get my attention. I was already pissed that day, and Jacob was only making things worse. I told him to stop. repeatedly. to just leave me alone. but he didn't.

without thinking about it, I tried to swat away his hands. but I ended up brushing my hand against his face. he interpreted this as a slap. he immediately got off the bus at his stop and ran home crying.

that afternoon, my mom got a phone call saying that I was at risk of being expelled. apparently, Jacob had told his parents that I had beat him up, and his parents called the school.

in the end, because of my accidental unintentional "slap" that I had only done because I was angry and wanted to be left alone and stop being bullied, I was suspended for a week, forced to write a handwritten apology note to Jacob, and fell behind in my classes.

Jacob was never punished. he never faced consequences for his actions. he was always seen as the victim by adults. I was the aggressor since I was mad and complained about being bullied.

soon after this, I attempted suicide. I backed out, thankfully. but I can't stop thinking about how my life almost ended because no one cared about the harassment I faced.

being harassed, and having no one do anything about it, which causes you to get angry until you act a tiny bit irrational and upset, and suddenly you're punished much harder than your attackers ever were and ever will be.

I'm saying this for no reason at all. it totally doesn't apply to any real life situations happening right now on tumblr.

#dostxt

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

It frustrates me whenever people hear conservatives say "Gay/Trans/Queer people will confuse children" and then show kids accepting queer people as a 'gotcha'. That's not what they mean.

To a conservative, 'confusing children' means:

"Children might mistakenly believe being queer isn't bad"

"Children might get the idea in their heads that gender is a construct and not an innate immutable fact"

"Children might be tricked into having empathy and understanding for others"

"Children might be led to believe that being queer is an option for them"

"Children might be fed the lie that their religion- or worse, their parents- can be wrong"

Conservative parents believe they own their children, and any attempts at free thought past the status quo they've been taught is a rebellion. Rebellion must be quashed, but beyond that, rebellious thoughts must have been learned from someone beyond them. That's one reason they're cracking down on queer media in schools and pushing for homeschooling. They don't want their kids to be "confused" into rejecting their brainwashing.

(If you tag this as q-slur I'm blocking you. If you don't like it leave me alone.)

#my posts #lgbt #queer #50 #100 #500 #1k

[moe-broey]

Man.........

#unfortunate but true. i may have to trim my split ends. #i'm like. legitimately sad about it lmfao???? might sound silly but my hair is like extremely important to me #something something gnc trans person ect ect. you get it. #i'm like!!!! so so sooo excited that my hair is now longer than it ever has been since like i was a kid #like it's so funny to me actually. when i was trying to be 'a girl' i always had short 'cute enough' hairstyles. never past my shoulders. #the lower part of my mullet is like well past my collarbone now. it's SO sick i love it SO much #which is like..... why it feels so painful to consider even trimming it...... it's so powerful......... #but. i did some reading and apparently having split ends can fuck up everything more than just being scraggly and shit #so if i want to keep growing it out. sacrifices may be in order. 😔😔😔😔😔 #i also love when sites are like 'nooooo don't cut your hair yourself you should go to a salon 😰😰😰😰' #'but if you REALLY wanna do it yourself you should REALLY have the right supplies 😣😣😣😣' #like thanks for the concern babygirl but i'm queer. i've been cutting my own hair w fabric scissors for years now! #i literally do not trust anyone else with it.

[variousqueerthings]

me like: do I watch 3 generations and a kid like jake in order to really get the full experience of cis creators fucking up stories about trans/gnc youth so I can write about it.......

#siiiiiiiiiiiiigh slim pickings indeed....... #why dont you rewatch billy elliot and maybe you'll calm down #fuck i need to go do something that isn't writing an essay about how much tomboy sucked......... #queer stuff #queer media #trans stuff #trans media #me at all of these movies that want to create *ambiguous* identities for kids because they don't have any fucking backbone: #SHUT UP YOU'LL NEVER BE WE THE ANIMALS YOU'LL NEVER BE WE THE ANIMALS!

[direquail]

You know the point of "protecting the children" dogwhistles, right? It's a reference to the idea that all queer people are child abusers. Super common belief among homophobes and transphobes, including (sometimes especially) gay ones.

It's also not just "a dogwhistle". When pressed to explain what exactly they want to protect children from, it's a ready-made emotional appeal to something that has broad social support. Most people, even if they don't like being around kids, are also not pro-child abuse. That's why conservatives go out of their way to invent (even if it's completely fictional) "reasons" why acceptance of gay and trans people amounts to child abuse. It helps them create an emotional connection with their target audience, and can be leveraged into logically ridiculous arguments like "well, if you don't agree with my platform, you must be pro child abuse, because I'm on the side of The Children".

"Protecting the children" is also super appealing to parents in particular, not because all parents are secretly authoritarians, but because it's super common to have a child and realize "Oh shit, I brought this person who can't defend themselves into the world and the world kind of sucks", and to feel horribly, horribly inadequate in the face of that.

I get very tired of people who mock, scorn, and ridicule people for falling for these rhetorical traps, or being snared by something that seems common-sense but disguises something ugly underneath. They are traps. That is what they're meant to be. That is why there are gay people who fall for anti-queer rhetoric, and get pulled into exclusionist or violently reactionary circles. We all have things we are vulnerable to, whether that is a history of being abused or a deep fear that we cannot protect our own children, who we brought into the world and are responsible for the protection of. And we gain nothing by mocking the latter.

I'm sure it makes some people feel great to say "well if you were really who you claim to be, you wouldn't fall for this shit", but frankly, that's a stupid-ass take. It misses entirely that these messages are carefully crafted by the people who hate us! They workshop these statements! They spend months or years trying to find the right message and when they find it they use the hell out of it, because it works. Because they are listening to the public conversations people are having online, and it doesn't take any level of basic agreement to be capable of regurgitating the party line word-for-word.

I am so sick of people who look at a deeply-embedded struggle over social and political ideals and think that this fight won't demand our whole brains and hearts and souls and yeah, we might fuck up because we care deeply and sometimes, people with bad intentions prey on that. On our grief and our fear and our rage.

And I'm frankly a lot more nervous around people who refuse to be aware of that, especially when they loudly mock the people who are willing to acknowledge their own fallibility and explore how they got ensnared in something. People are not moral machines, they are people.

#that post was pure moral purity police and it was so aggravating #the WHOLE point of that post was to shame every single person who saw it for being fallible and the net effect will not be to make us bette #it will be to make us less willing to interrogate ourselves and whether we're on the right track

[kookygobbledygook]

Some people have been saying this, but I don't think it's been said enough and I'm just going to add my voice to the mix.

Nimona's nomination is being framed as an example of "Look at what Disney missed out on!" and I get it. It's a nice, tasty schadenfreude situation and we all like to see The Mouse get taken down a peg.

But I think we need to be very clear; Disney did not miss out on anything because they were never going to take that sort of risk.

Disney was never going to release anything close to the Nimona we got. It would have been sanded down until anything obviously queer or controversial was as faint and unnoticeable as possible by the casual viewer. And then they would still be too scared of any potential backlash. So they would have given the film a limited release at theatres, with no advertising, or social media or support.

Like what happened with Strange World.

You remember Strange World, right?

No?

That's because no one does.

And I believe that was deliberate, because that way Disney can go "Weeellll... obviously we would LOVEto take more risks and have more inclusive stories but that's clearly not what the public wants!"

Look at the original concepts for Wish. The evil royal couple? The peter-panesque star boy that would have made the gen zers go feral the same way millenials went feral for Jack Frost? These could have been the best things about the movie, and even they were scrapped, and replaced with something more homogenised. And those ideas are nowhere near the level of the concepts and discussions Nimona brought to the table.

Disney can barely have explicit gay people. Nimona has a gay south Asian man in a relationship with an east Asian man. As a protagonist! But more than that, you think Disney could ever come up with a relationship as complicated and difficult as Boldheart and Goldenloin's? They would never have the guts to show one love interest cutting off the other's arm in a straight relationship. Let alone a gay one! And then for them to be on opposite sides of the conflict, shifting between feelings of betrayal, and questioning each other motives? That's some adult dark shit for a kids film.

Asha as a character was forced into the quirky girl role that Disney has already flogged to death with Anna and Rapunzel. You ever think they would allow a Disney princess to be as dark and violent and nuanced as Nimona? You ever picture the titial character of a Disney film AS the third act conflict, rampaging through a city in a self destructive rage? Nimona is anti authoritarian, vengeful, bloodthirsty, a pretty explicit trans allegory, and even, by the climax, openly suicidal. You KNOW that terrified Disney.

I had a thing about the Director here too but I was shocked by how long that got so I'll have to save her for a different post.

My point is the things that make Nimona art, that make Nimona a great story, that make the film important and Oscar worthy, are all things that Disney has become too chicken shit to produce. If Disney had released a film called Nimona it wouldn't have been Nimona. I fully believe that if the film hadn't had been 90% finished it wouldn't have been shelved. It would have been lobotomised and vivisected. Everything special and vital about the movie and its message would have been removed, and no one would have known what could have been. Once again we would have gotten scraps and been thankful for them.

It makes me think about films like Wish (and others we don't know the name of, and never will) and think of what they could have been if studio's like Disney were braver and let their artists make art, instead of content.

tl;dr Disney didn't miss out on Nimona because they are incapable of making Nimona. If they had produced it the real Nimona wouldn't exist. We didn't miss out on Nimona. And that's purely by luck.

#nimona #disney critical #wish critical

[rorschachisgay]

i wish there was some nuance between "everyone has to love the word queer" and "if you don't like it you are a terf automatically". because the reality is i don't identify with the word queer and i never have. as a kid i was aware of it as a slur and as a teenager i started to understand it in an academic concept first (as in Queer Theory) but i didn't identify with it because in my mind it was like, a clinical, academic word. and then later as i got older it became an increasingly prevalent point of conflict around me.

im not arguing that terfs dont dislike queer as a group term, though speaking from a british perspective the majority of them here are very focused on removing the T from LGBT over arguing about queer as a term at all, so it doesnt really feel like a particularly important form of conflict over what is a very targeted erasure of trans identity Specifically.

and thats kind of partially why i struggle to identify with the term Queer. it is not specific. it does not describe or capture my identity. lately i have found much more identity in words like fag, faggot, transexual, which do relate directly to my specific identities and have a very long history in the community. and additionally, won't get fuckin sold back to me by coke.

like that's really all Queer feels like to me now, something that has now been packaged up as an easily marketable buzzword to be printed on t-shirts at Primark or used meaninglessly by Disney to pretend they care. it does not refer to the aspects of my identity that matter to me, it's not something that i ever claimed for myself, and now i am continually getting told that if i don't identify with it im bigoted against myself and my siblings.

"queer was reclaimed by everyone, it was reclaimed in the 80s". i actually don't feel like someone else gets to decide this for me? im not going to lie and pretend it was never used as part of the campaign for equality for decades and decades, it obviously has a crucial place in history, but now in popular culture it has become like. ubiquitous.

like ive said before i think words like fag and dyke can be used in a way that reflects our communal family and is a sign of camaraderie and that's also true of queer, but with those words it's extremely understandable when someone isn't comfortable with them and when someone doesn't want to identify with queer it's treated as a sign they're in the wrong.

idk this is so far from being a crucial issue it's barely worth talking about but i just really struggle with being told that i am in the wrong because i have my own complicated feelings about a word with a complicated history. in the grand scheme of things it's NOT that important but it does grate on my nerves to be told that theres zero room for any kind of debate or alternate opinion in this. like i just wish we didn't have to be so black and white as if the issue has no grey area or room for personal expression at all.

[thenightling]

Dear newbie queer kids, We appreciate the sentiment but stop "correcting" the older LGBTQ+ community. And by "correcting" I mean trying to force them to adopt your language. "Actually, it's pansexual if you're attracted to any gender. Bisexual means only men and women." (I really was told that one today.) "Actually if they're attracted to anyone despite gender and even to non-human entities in works of fiction that's omnisexual." Guys, you may not know it but what you are doing is what we'd once call bi-erasure. A little LGBTQ+ history: The word bisexual is still relatively new for a lot of people. In 1973 when David Bowie came out as bisexual, a reporter misunderstood that to mean he had both male and female reproductive organs. Even today I've stumbled upon people who think bisexual means "nonbinary." meaning "I don't identify as a man or a woman." The only connection the words have is the "bi" part so this one is painfully stupid. In the 1990s there were older queer folk who didn't even know bisexual is what they were. When Roddy McDowall was confronted by Vincent Price's daughter and asked "Why didn't you tell me my father was bisexual?" He said "We didn't know the word." In the 90s most bisexual people used the term to mean attraction despite gender. I'm fine with the use of the word "Pansexual" but it IS actually gatekeeping to tell older bisexuals that the word bisexual means "disincluding trans and nonbinary" and "attraction to the gender instead of despite the gender." I can't think of very many people who identify as bisexual who are okay with those added restrictions that they didn't agree to. For most of the older queer community bisexual means their own gender and everything else. That's the two for bi. I am certain there are some people today who don't mind the new restrictions added to the word bisexual and use it to self-identify but those that were identifying a bisexual in the 90s and early 2000s didn't have such restrictions because the options of pansexual and omnisexual were not in use yet. Pansexual was a term invented by Freud to mean "attraction to anything" (this included furniture). It's modern meaning of "consenting adults without consideration of gender" is relatively new and frustratingly this was originally how most of us were using the word bisexual. When you "Correct" someone who self-identifies as bisexual that they are actually pansexual because you want them to use the more modern language, THAT is gatekeeping. Ironically this just happened to me and when I corrected the person that was "correcting me" by explaining that older people who identify as bisexual tend to use it with the same meaning as the modern pansexual, I was suddenly accused of "Gatekeeping." So now, ironically, they're misusing the term gatekeeping while gatekeeping. Please stop doing this. The new terms are okay but don't tell us how we can use the older terms, especially when bisexual isn't that old of a term in the grand scheme of things. I sometimes use the term pansexual just to make things easier for the younger folk since they adapted to the restrictive version of the term bisexual we never asked for. Also I like its connection to mythology. But please don't "Correct" people for using the term they had for themselves since the 90s because they never added those new restrictions to it. This is rude. And that is the gatekeeping. Them telling you what the word meant decades ago is not "gatekeeping." You telling them how they have to us it now- that is gatekeeping. Sincerely, Most queer folk over the age of thirty.

#LGBTQ+ #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #LGBTQAI #Bisexual #Pansexual #Omnisexual