#the dangers of infighting...🤔🤔🤔 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

firespirited · 5 months

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I think it's a slightly amusing coincidence that the guy with a Nazi fetish was collaborating with a man named Herr Gott.

At this point I'm not ruling out Herrgott being a pseudonym or him writing all the 'vibes-based' junk since James was the one doing 'research' (to his credit he was somewhat good at collecting smart people's work).

But I'm hijacking your ask to clear up two misconceptions that have been bothering me:

(big mess of sources and further reading under the readmore)

1- The nazis and fitness essay (one I actually watched and disagreed with) cites multiple sources and is an attempt to retrofit current "masc for masc" grindr culture onto AIDS era fitness "healthy" gay culture (see Gaston as a stereotype) onto multiple a-historical "gay nazis" revisionisms including The Pink Swastika book and a columnist

I think they got the nazi and fitness nonsense from a scholarly sounding source who's just an oxbridge columnist who's into reclaiming nazis. They're famously good at making nonsense sound like a thesis - see Boris Johnson's upcoming book about Shakespeare and his time as a columnist, see the entire Telegraph and various Terf Observer columns: fully trash but written in academic lingo, even queer academic lingo!

and... here's the source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150324-hitlers-idea-of-the-perfect-body it's the BBC oh look, what's this "Alastair Sooke is art critic of The Daily Telegraph". 🤔🤔🤔

There's a case that the "no fat no fems no chocolate no rice" gay dating culture could possibly be tied to the healthy vs unhealthy infighting during the beginning of the AIDS era but that's a nuanced take that gets smashed to smithereens by lumping it in with gay nazi myths. It also needs to be examined with the attitude to dating apps in general and dating by physical preferences instead of letting chemistry happen by finding people whose goals and outlook match your own.

Terrible essay, terrible premise, some pull quotes from interesting places. Here's an essay about desirability in men, googling "masc 4 masc culture" will get you plenty of articles, you definitely want to look for asian and black writers here because woof they face a lot of racist nastiness under the guise of 'just preferences'.

youtube

and here's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland (he's a very important gay artist, he also did some gay erotica with nazi uniforms whether you think that's an act of defiance, reclamation, tasteless or evil is up to you. art is not always as straightforward as it might look, we'd have to ask him what his intent was.)

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2- The second is "the exciting gays died of aids" concept, good vs naughty gays concept. Again, we're dealing with a mishmash of both modern rewritings, quotes by survivors taken out of context, and gay infighting at the time, which included some spicy takes about dangerous sex by gay men fighting to save gay men.

The lack of research and public education led to chaos, the grief led to anger. Beautiful people said some vicious things. There are several older gay men alive right now who don't have sex not because they're asexual but because there's trauma. It's worth unpacking quote by quote because expanding on it without original context was terrible reading comprehension and reckless rewriting of history, and to be honest, a little defamatory. I can't find a bibliography of the video(s) yet so not sure what to debunk).

There are plenty of tumblr posts railing against out of context quotes which is taking James + Nick's bad reading at face value instead of seeking out the source. Outrage at a thing James and Nick made up which was never a real take.

to paraphrase "My well-known exciting boundary-breaking gay friends are dead and the art world hasn't bothered to seek out more undiscovered talent to replace them, choosing the safe classic establishment folks who may also be gay given the field. I'm pissed you didn't care about saving them, I'm pissed you didn't care about finding a new crop of people who push the envelope." that was the sentiment behind this sort of quote even if folks became more conservative (or got into legal messes later)

I'm going to track down the various quotes and give you the full context because this matters. Again: beautiful minds saying horrible things, fighting between gay activists on how to survive or how to live under the gun. This is something that cannot be flattened to "boring gays survived" and it's an insult to the people who said things in grief and fear. I have not watched this essay (or maybe it's two that use this boring vs danger gays concept) but I have a good idea of what out of context quotes might have led to it, this is my wheelhouse. but TL;DR would be my faves are problematic because activists are passionate messy people. They outed people, they said outrageous things for the press, they screamed murderer and got restraining orders against them, they made taboo art, they mingled with nasty people.

OKAY, incoming link dump:

here's a 6 minute short on act up

youtube

here's a full doc: United in Anger:

youtube

Larry Kramer, Shulman, Fran Leibowitz and many others deserve to have their views examined with full context, not turned into crappy tweet sized quotes.

basic sources from wikipedia:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/nyregion/larry-kramer-and-the-birth-of-aids-activism.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/13/public-nuisance

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/fran-lebowitz

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/13/arts/the-impact-of-aids-on-the-artistic-community.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wojnarowicz?useskin=vector

youtube

https://archive.org/details/losswithinlossar0000unse

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781849352857

http://didierlestrade.blogspot.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tatchell

https://archive.org/details/womenaidsactivis00banz

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Thankyou to

DHLawrence_sGhost's thread https://www.reddit.com/r/hbomberguy/comments/18biiof/comment/kc9qa6p/

and TerraJRiley's transcript archive https://github.com/TerraJRiley/James_Somerton_Transcripts

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I'm going to allow reblogs on this again with the disclaimer that I don't have the full works stolen for these particular essays but the perfect body in gay culture and the good vs bad gays concepts have precedent that got flattened in those video essays and deserve quite a bit more exploration and that includes controversial sources. You will have to do some dialectical reading (agreeing and disagreeing with an author and figuring out how to weigh up the pros and cons of their individual arguments even though they get some things horribly wrong, deciding what was 'of a time' or reading the work of people who became reactionaries later in life).

#james somerton #Nt herrgott #Exciting gays vs boring gays #Saf

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silviakundera · 2 years

Text

Luoyang episode 1 watch notes

(there's spoilers u guise)

First episode is on YT let's gooooo

the opening backstory monologue: fictional historical set w empress in charge instead an emperor? I am intrigued. First time for me in CN palace dramas. I honestly don't know anything about this empress' reign, so I'm going in completely cold here.

Ok, it so so fckin pretty like YES YES sumptuous colors and vibrant city feels

Good intro on the 3 mains. The female inner guard character is immediately appealing. Mr Scraggly Hair is appropriately mysterious. Scholarly official boy is less immediately interesting, except his fussy but practical officialness and intensity about food reminds me of Tang Fan from Fourteenth Year of Chenghua. and I LOVE that character, so I'm inclined to like him. (Also interested to see if this actor can do more than Lan Wangji.)

Enjoying the little touches of how this isn't exactly the standard ancient china drama: first royals we're introduced to are empress, princess, crown princess; there's a character reluctant to marry (likely to maintain their independence) but being forced to by their parents, but this time it's a son, not the daughter. There's a palace guard with doubts who you just know will get wrapped up in dangerous politics, but this time that guard is a woman.

It's just these subtle differences. No intentional gender play; writer is just telling a story and the story is comfortably familiar in many ways, but just w a slightly different flavor.

Hmmm inner guards vs judicial review infighting drama!!

And Scraggly Man of Mystery is like a coroner for Court of Judicial Review?? And also a masked man who sneaks into prisions to whisper mysterious things to prisioners and murder them for...? the mystery? 🤔

Love the ominous music and serious face of mysterious murder dude. He really has a whole VIBE.

'I've already tortured, er INTERROGATED 12 of ur buds. You are #13. Don't worry, I only stabbed u three times, nbd. I'll be back.'

asdfhjkj who is this man? Why is he so extra in everything he does? Why does his hideout look like the lair of a serial killer lmao

Inner guard really likes throwing around the empress' name, hope she can back it up. Otherwise, seems unwise.

I can't get over how gorgeous these settings are. Applauds, applauds to the set designers and director.

Fussy rationalist official boy Baili has a really pretty house and not much going on so far. I'm rooting for you to join the plot gege! u can do it!!!

why tf does this man have a crowd around him every time he eats. he has an active queue lmaooooooooooo

also noted: liking the relationship btw inner guard and her more politically savvy superior. Really hope he doesn't turn out to be evil

then Scraggly Man of Mystery goes all S1 Angel on Buffy at our local food critic !! He's joined the plot! sort of. Look, Sir Scraggles, you are not actually a 200 year old vampire and thus perhaps you could be a little more helpful????

And then he publically confesses to murder because cliffhanger.

#luoyang #luoyang watch #i did not need another show #gdi #cdrama

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