#there’s a lot of internal community love for men but like. rarely (in online spaces) do I see love for men from gals you know???

[redheadbigshoes]

I think it’s interesting what a lot of people are sharing right now. I remember seeing someone’s blog saying “people who support the split attraction model dni” on the basis that it was “harmful and confusing to queer youth”. I was sooo confused because the split attraction model was very widespread when I entered online lgbt spaces and nobody would say anything about it.

So I started to do some research and I learned that the split attraction model was initially created for the aro/ace community and sort of spread into the rest of the lgbt community. But the truth of the matter is that not all people view their attraction through that model, even if they might be, for example, homoromantic and homosexual. But I thought everyone needed to view their attraction that way and I never questioned it, even though it got me confused.

When I was in the process of accepting I’m a lesbian, I used to think I was maybe biromantic homosexual because I believed that maybe, even though I did not experience attraction to men, I just needed to fall in love or “meet the one” in order to actually like men. I thought I just “hadn’t met the right one”. I also believed I was being difficult and picky and that’s why I didn’t like men, not that I was simply just a lesbian. All this did was confuse me and make it harder for me to accept that I’m a lesbian because I kept trying to find “a way out”.

I’m not saying that the split attraction model is problematic and nobody should use it. But I think people should keep in mind that that model is not the best for everyone. I get that it’s useful for the aro/ace community (it was made for them after all), but if it’s causing someone too much stress, then it’s best not to use it and understand their attraction through what feels most natural to them.

I personally don’t use the split attraction model to describe my sexuality anymore, even though I’m homosexual homoromantic. I don’t believe my lesbianism could be explained away just like that. To me, being a lesbian is more than that. It is the way romantic and sexual feelings can coexist and form something greater, not something I can just split in half.

I agree with you. I don’t think the split attraction model is problematic actually, only if used like “bi lesbian” or “bi straight”. I think it can confuse a lot of people though. Everyone should be aware that it was initially created for the aro/ace community, and that (this is just from my experience, I could be totally wrong) I have yet to see someone that actually fits the split attraction model that is not aro/ace. Everyone I met that had a different sexual attraction from their romantic orientation turned out to be lesbian.

At least I think it’s very rare someone that has different orientations (not counting people in the aro/ace spectrum). And usually when someone is like homoromantic and bisexual (or biromantic and homosexual), it’s usually because of internalized homophobia and comphet or misogyny so it’s harder to fully accept yourself as homo-oriented. So in cases where the person is not aro/ace I think using the split attraction model is only more confusing in terms of figuring out your identity.

And I totally relate to your experience when figuring out my identity, though we used to identify as different things. I used to think I just had very high standards and was picky when it came to men. And in my case the split attraction model only confused me even more and made it harder to realize my identity.

The split attraction model definitely does not describe my identity because, though technically I am homosexual and homoromantic, those two identities coexist in a way they’re the same for me. So it’s not useful using both of them to describe myself. And yeah just like you said, my identity is not just something I can split in half.

#stephanie answers #anon #long post #‘bi lesbians’

[laniidae-passerine]

listen I love my friends and I get that a big stage in accepting being a lesbian may be absolute rejection of men and thus saying stuff like “men are gross” “ew who would be attracted to men” “kinda lame to be a man” but it does leave a sour taste in my mouth. And maybe it’s because my gender questioning gets a little louder everyday (I’m not a guy but. I’m not not a guy???) but also it’s because I love men. I adore men. All of them, amab or afab, regardless of physical characteristics or anything, I love men. I love all the guys who aren’t exactly men or always men, who are still figuring out if they are guys or not, because you’re valid as fuck and I love you too. And especially queer men of any kind, you’re fucking fantastic. Don’t care if it’s romantically or platonically or familial or just in that appreciative sense that you’re out there and you’re great, I love men and I want them to know that. You’re amazing.

#there’s a lot of internal community love for men but like. rarely (in online spaces) do I see love for men from gals you know??? #like if you’re a queer girl on the internet you’re kinda expected to renounce men. I refuse #there is a power in being a bisexual girl who loves men because this love is different no matter what form is takes and this love is real #‘what about guys who aren’t attracted to women?’ great!!! love you too hope you’re having a great time out there #and for all the guys who do like women I hope you find the one #all the aspec/aro guys out there you’re gonna find love too! friends and family and even a lover if you want one!!! #but also like from a girl: queer men are sexy as fuck #and not in a ‘ordinary’ way I mean openly queer men are sexy as fuck. gnc men are fucking amazing #and oh my god trans guys <3 I appreciate friendship and family bonds I do and they’re as important as anything but… yeah trans men are hot #bc they’re guys! because they’re men and they’re amazing and I love them! #the more my friends eschew guys the more I dream about kissing one in the moonlight. lord I love them like crazy #bi girl talks about men because she’s crazy about them more news at ten #men #men positivity #idk!!!! I can’t verbalise it well it’s just 💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

[aphroditeslesbian]

hi

I was also raised 7th day Adventist and I’m a closeted lesbian. I don’t hate my religion..because I personally didn’t have a bad experience with it in my childhood, but it clashes a lot with my beliefs and well parts of my identity. I’m feeling a bit helpless because this religion has been a big part of my life, a lot of strong women I look up to in my life are sda, and my local sda community is very wholesome. And by now you can sense my reluctance in letting it go. I’ve been coping by thinking I should find a gay-friendly sda church once I move out.. if I ever get married. What’s your journey been like? 🪴

Hey! I don't meet a lot of sda online, it's interesting to hear a different perspective. I'm gonna go into everything, bc my experiences with sda really shaped me, and yeah, it's been a wild, not so fun ride.

Basically I was baptized catholic as an infant, but my family isn't practicing catholic. My mom is very religious, and wanted me to have a good education... In Brazil, we have very poor public education in primary and secondary school, and the best schools are the private ones... Which are also religious schools. So I wound up studying in a sda school from kindergarten to highschool graduation.

So from a young age (4 yo) I was raised on my school's religious beliefs. I was really involved, and my childhood best friend was also sda, she lived a couple floors down from me and we'd hang out often, and her family would bring me to church on Saturdays (there was a sda church across the street from the apartments we lived in). I was the staple Christian child, I prayed every night and every morning, apart from all the prayer at school ofc. At 8yo they did a talk at school about the importance of baptism, and I asked my parents to allow me to be baptized as sda. My mom surprisingly didn't want me to be baptized again, not so young, but my dad said I should do what I wanted, so I was baptized again at the school's church. Literally the school had an auditorium for our weekly religion-related classes, which we called "chapel", and was basically like going to church – but mandatory, as it was during school time. This specific school also had a church built on the side, so yeah.

During my early childhood through preteen years I had no issues with the school's teachings and sda ideology. It was all I had ever known, my family encouraged religion and we'd also sometimes (rarely) go to catholic church. I honestly didn't even realize people could not believe in god until I was 12/13.

I had never really heard much about being gay, or being anti gay during primary school - I may have forgotten having ever heard it from teachers. I only heard about homophobia from peers, and so I knew that being gay was a bad, evil, gross thing.

When I was around 11/12 we moved to a smaller town, and I started at a smaller Adventist school. I was the only one in my small newly found friend group who was baptized, and moving was very traumatic for me, so I started becoming less active in church. I became severely depressed because of the move and other stuff at home, and turned to the internet for a distraction.

I first heard about atheism from a youtuber, and he was known for his controversial takes (he's pretty nasty, it's only gotten worse with time but anyway). I guess a mixture of depression, becoming a teen, having my rebellious phase, I started researching into it.

My religion teacher (we had "religion" classes, but they should really have been called "7th Day Adventism classes") was much harsher than the one I had at my first school. This was around the time that Twilight was a big deal, and I read those books sooo many times for comfort, I got into Harry Potter etc. Not long after I moved to this school, we had a religion class about how Harry Potter was inspired by the devil. My books were often confiscated during class, even if I had already finished my assignments and was reading quietly, even if they were just on my desk. Being super depressed and introverted, with very few friends, books were my refuge. Having the teachers look down on them and literally say they were devilish and evil really started to shift my view of the religion. I knew these were good books, I loved them. So how could they be evil?

I have a very strong memory of praying and praying once and begging Jesus and god to help me, to give me a sign, because I was terrified of losing my religion, of losing god. All I had learned my whole life was that god is good, god is love etc. How come god wasn't helping me, my family, through some of the worst times? How come I was alone?

At around 12/13 my cousin came out to me as bi, and soon after another cousin came out as gay. I barely fully understood what that meant, and the internet was again where I researched about it. I realized I liked girls at the time, but I never understood you could even be married to a woman, as a woman. Even though I knew I liked and was attracted to girls, I never let myself think too much on it. The school was pretty obvious about how marriage is between a man and a woman, our "sex talk" was a class with our religion teacher. Bio talk was split, the boys left the room so we could learn about female anatomy and stuff, and then the boys had the room, etc. Our religious teacher was very adamant about how one shouldn't have sex before marriage, and marriage was between a man and a woman so...

Honestly the basework they laid was to erase homosexuality. I didn't even grasp that I could be anything but attracted to girls, I didn't realize I could do anything about it.

And then in highschool, I guess bc we were old enough, they finally started being outspoken about their hatred of gay people. There would be snide comments from the Portuguese/Lit teacher, a disgusting talk from the History teacher about how gay men's sexual activity leads to anal incontinence, the Religion teacher saying it was wrong, comparing it to criminality, the school's vice principal giving us a lecture and making sure to hammer in the worst thing anyone could turn out to be was homosexual.

At this point I thought I was okay with my same sex attraction, I thought these things weren't getting under my skin. But then I learned about being trans, and I came to the conclusion that since I was into girls, I couldn't be a woman. I identified as trans from around 15-19. That was internalized misogyny and homophobia, that was me actually letting all the snide little comments settle deep in me, and shape who I was.

Anyway, at around 14 I was done. School was teaching us that bastard kids aren't blessed by god (me and my siblings are all "bastards" as my parents were never married). They told us couples who lived together and we're never married were not blessed by god, and implied they were bound to have issues for their sin.

I was a teenager living in a broken home, my father was emotionally abusive to me and my mother, and honestly at the end of the day I had to choose if I wanted to believe in a god who was supposedly love itself, yet didn't protect me and my young siblings and my mom... Or not believe in god at all.

Leaving the church and coming to terms with not believing in god was one of the toughest times in my life. My depression was in the gutter, I was self harming, I was struggling. I remember thinking of my cousins, whom I was very close with growing up, and knowing they were good people, so how could god not love then? I remember thinking of myself, of all I had done for the church, for god, and wondering how could god not accept me.

For me, the church was poison. I only saw hypocrisy, I saw people who judged each other, who cared more about their own concepts of right and wrong than being mindful of others. I saw my teachers who preached being kind, but ridiculed and laughed at other religions and those who believed them. When I was questioning religion, I always had sooo many questions for my religion teacher and so often she just told me that some questions were too big for us to understand, that only god could fully comprehend himself.

I'm proud to have come out the other side, but I won't lie. The community that church represents does seem so lovely and welcoming. I wanted to be a part of something, and church offered that.

But at the end of the day, there's no space for me, a lesbian, in there. They don't believe gay marriage is okay, they don't condone our "lifestyle". They think this is a choice we're making, and a bad one at that.

The childhood friend I mentioned earlier, who I used to go to church with, actually came out as a lesbian a couple years ago as well. Her sda family is giving her a really hard time. She's left the church, last I heard.

Honestly, my advice would be to find other community. Find community with other lesbians, people who can accept you unconditionally, who can offer you support without small print. That's what I'm trying to do.

I personally am against christianity for a lot of other reasons besides my very negative experiences. Maybe that's not you, and in that case I guess finding a church that is LGB friendly can be the answer. I couldn't judge anyone for choosing to stay, because like I said I really understand how nice it can feel, how it's like you belong in this community, how it can feel like the church is family.

But I really suggest deep soulsearching, because in my experience all they ever did for me was suck all my energy, all my devotion, and spit me out when I was never going to be the heterosexual good girl they expected me to be.

Sorry for the super long answer, I hope this helps some? If you wanna talk more in private you can hit me up through DMs, I'm very willing to listen and talk about it.

#anti religion #sda #august rants #homophobia #lesbophobia #misogyny

[himboskywalker]

I love reading obikin fics but sometimes i get hit with guilt that i enjoy it... Is it wrong as a girl to enjoy gay content like this? I dont exactly know how to explain what i mean, its just a feeling of wrong i sometimes get. Maybe it would only be wrong if someone was homophobic and still enjoyed reading it. So i might be worrying for nothing but itd be interesting to read your thoughts as a writer about this. Maybe you can help relieve some guilt lol

I’ve heard similar things from some others and I think the problem is people see posts or stuff online about women fetishizing gay men and it being gross and wrong and then you’re like,holy shit is that me???So what people mean by fetishizing gay men is when you get the exact same thing when straight guys will fetishize lesbians but are super homophobic and think gay men are gross. The problem is when you go to content for sexual pleasure but then dehumanize the group or are homophobic to say,lesbians while getting off to gay men. I’ve most often seen this manifested in women online talking about loving their mlm fanfiction as “sinning” or I love my “sinful content” implying that even though you’re aroused or into the content,you still think that them being gay is morally wrong.

I hardly see that anymore,honestly that feels like very much a thing of fandom before gay marriage was legalized and the massive cultural shift that has happened towards the lgbtq community in the past 10 years. And of course it’s still around and of course you still see homophobic people in fandom spaces enjoying mlm fanfiction,but I rarely see the same language anymore,and if I do it’s by the same group that many of us were,teen girls (or teens boys or just teens) who aren’t educated or informed and don’t know better. I did the same thing in middle school and early high school,I grew up uber Christian and conservative in the south and though I was always immensely intrigued by gay men from a very young age I had a lot of internalized homophobia. It was perfectly fine for other people to be gay but not for me,because it felt like the ultimate sin line to cross. People grow and learn and realize that their language and ways of thinking are wrong. I went to college and realized I was bi and retrospectively of course so much of my squirming discomfort made quite a bit of sense.

So no,I don’t think it’s wrong for you as a woman to like mlm fanfiction whatsoever. What I would think requires some moral introspection is if a woman liked mlm but found wlw disgusting,or if a person enjoyed it but felt some internalized shame for it,thinking it sinning or sinful because it’s gay. It’s something a lot of us have gone through and it doesn’t make you a horrible person. For a lot of us it’s breaking past religious upbringings and how we were raised. Ignorance,especially when you’re young,isn’t evil. We learn from it and we grow! It’s the dehumanizing aspect that people find issue with,for individuals to turn to content secretly but then think that group is morally wrong or disgusting in real life. We see the exact same problem with the trans community,their hyper sexualization but also societal condemnation in the same turn. People sexualize and then hate the individuals they sexualize and they hate themselves for liking what they perceive to be wrong.

If you’re straight you don’t have to be interested in wlw content for it to be “fair” or not fetishizing . The emphasis is just that,people in the lgbtq community take issue with being hyper sexualized or fetishized and then called “sinful” in the same turn,as if the simple act of loving and existing is wrong. But darling don’t feel ashamed for reading and enjoying fake characters that love one another or find pleasure in one another! I very much think fanfiction and online communities exposed me to a lot of empathy and it can reveal us to ourselves and sometimes it’s just a wonderful escape from the world.

#fanfiction #fanfic culture #lgbtq in fanfiction #lgbtq online spaces #lgbtq #anons #ao3 fanfiction

[gendercynicalgrantaire]

A little bit ago I saw you make a comment about how radfems fail to realize there are trans normies. I've been thinking about it and I wanted to ask, other than yourself, do you know very many trans people irl who are normies who don't have any explicitly homophobic or misogynist ideas about gender and sexuality? I know they exist. But I've been disappointed by more than 1 transman who I thought cared about me and respected me as a lesbian when we really got into discussions about sexual orientation. Like I try not to become jaded but its really hard when I have trans friends I trusted for a long time and then they tell me same sex attraction is harmful or that gender roles are innate (ie: "I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise". I don't think every trans person is a actively toxic or anything but I feel like homophobia and misogyny is so rampant and explicit from the trans community in current year it's really hard not to be jaded as a defense mechanism.

Hi! So I found the post you were talking about. The intention I was trying to communicate wasn’t so much that normie trans people are unproblematic in their views of gender, but more so that there are trans people out in the world just trying to live their lives who aren’t narcissistic manipulators like a lot of internet TRAs might come off as.

When I call trans people “trans normies,” I’m defining that as trans people who are mostly not online and mostly not involved in trans discourse. And trans normies, like other kinds of normie, sadly tend to have some unexamined assumptions about how things work based on the dominant culture they were raised in.

Most of the trans people I know irl fall into one of two categories: the ones I meet at PFLAG meetings or trans-centric spaces, and the very rare ones encountered out in the wild. I’m going to hazard a guess that most trans normies are the latter-- they tend not to run in circles with many other trans people, and they also tend to be more interested in passing to blend in, both of which make them more difficult to find. They, like me, tend not to really run in the “trans community.” And admittedly, it’s even rarer that I meet a visibly trans person in the wild that I grow close enough to that I learn all about their gender philosophy, because I too have internalized assumptions about other trans people’s feelings that make me jaded against them (I’m trying not to fall into the idea that I’m “not like other troons” lol), and I’m trying to work through it to find and see if there are ones who have gender philosophies I can vibe with.

Most trans people whose gender philosophies I have heard, then, are the ones I meet in PFLAG and trans-centric groups. So probably a little less normie, but there are still normies mixed in there. And I’m not gonna lie, some of the ideas I hear make me cringe a little or feel like they would quickly fall apart if poked at. I don’t know if there’s a single trans philosophy out there that’s going to satisfy the gender critical community. But what I can say for trans people is that the vast majority of them that I have met irl believe in the following (paraphrased):

- If someone’s sexuality/dating pool excludes me, that’s their business. It can be a little disheartening knowing how small my dating pool is, but trying to convince people who don’t want to date trans people to date trans people is not a solution. I want a partner who loves me for me, not one who pretends to love me for woke points.

- XYZ stereotype does not mean that someone is a man/woman/nonbinary. (Insert just about anything in the XYZ. The trans and nonbinary people I meet in real life are also some of the most pro-gnc-cis-people people I know.)

- I am consciously aware of how I make cis people uncomfortable, and I make a conscious effort to mitigate that discomfort to the best of my ability while still living authentically and keeping myself safe.

- Cis women can have their own spaces. It doesn’t concern me.

- Obviously there are issues that only impact natal females and ones that only impact natal males.

- I understand that I have the biology of a certain sex. I might be uncomfortable with having a body of that kind, maybe even to the point where I don’t like to use the anatomical terms to describe my body in contexts where I can avoid it, but I’m obviously different from a [cis man/cis woman]. If I didn’t understand that, I wouldn’t be calling myself transgender.

I make these points because of their relationship with gc discourse. It’s inconvenient for gendercrits and radfems to acknowledge that there are trans people who feel this way. It’s even more inconvenient to know that the number of trans people who feel this way is not insignificant and thereby easy to dismiss.

In particular, I want to focus on the second point: stereotypes do not a gender make. Because honestly, most of the trans women at the PFLAG meetings aren’t talking about how they played with dolls as kids or how they just love being expected to wear make-up (often in an effort to pass, because unfortunately our gendered society does turn make-up into a tool for reading as female), and the trans men there run the gamut from hyper-masc to fairly feminine. There are a variety of trans philosophies I’ve listened to that stray away from the idea that simple gender stereotypes make a gender.

More often the story is one of alienation -- alienation from one’s body, from one’s appearance, and/or especially from society. And this alienation usually disappears (or at least fades into background noise) once transition has been undertaken. The trans person in question might not always have a satisfactory explanation for why that is -- and again, I don’t think any explanation fits the radfem/gc ideal -- but it is distinct from the rhetoric “wigs and dresses don’t make you a woman,” “lack of those things doesn’t make you a man,” which trans people are generally well aware of. This is what I hear most often from other trans people regardless of sexuality, mental health history, class, or any other dividing lines that gendercrits like to use to explain trans people away as simple, easily dismissible categories (think Blanchardianism).

Hmm...I hope that answers your question? I know I probably went off the rails there. Again, I can’t claim that trans normies can’t be problematic, or even that most of them aren’t problematic. Most normies in general are problematic because they tend to live less examined lives. But I also know there are trans people out there willing to listen to and calmly discuss the other side of things, especially if their viewpoint is just parroting what they’ve generally heard from the mainstream side of trans discourse.

In that regard, you’ll have the most luck with passing trans people and trans people who’ve been settled into their identity for a while. Non-passing and newly-out trans people tend to be defensive and self-conscious in a way that more seasoned and socially integrated trans people just aren’t. That’s another post in and of itself though. If a trans friend of yours says something along the lines of “I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise” (if they use that wording -- not sure if that second part is what they actually say or just the implication you’re picking up on, but chances are they don’t think every woman vibes with it and just need that pointed out) but they also seem like a chill person and you feel safe doing so, don’t be afraid to calmly and casually bring up a point of disagreement. It might not be something they fiercely cling to or have even really thought through all that much.

#i also know multiple exclusively-female-attracted trans women who just don't label their sexuality because they know they're not lesbians #so maybe this is just to say that trans people's conceptions of themselves and transgenderism run a really wide spectrum #and there are bound to be ones with bad takes but those takes can't be applied to the whole of trans people #okay i'll stop now lol

[drukhari]

How do I get more comfortable with my outer appearance and sexuality? I’m a lesbian femme and only men try to hit on me. Had a fade for a while and still only men would want to talk to me, it makes me feel like I’m not gay enough. Honestly, at times it makes me give in to men because it’s so fucking rare to find a girl who likes me. I’m so tired of feeling like I have to fight so fucking much to be acknowledged as a queer woman. How do I stop seeking that queer validation from others?

Not feeling gay enough is a common feeling that a lot of us struggle with - but I promise you that you are. A lot of times we're drawn to compare ourselves with others and look to establish these sort of benchmarks in our minds that we then push ourselves to live up to (or surpass), but there's no "you must be this gay to ride" bar out there that you ever need to measure yourself up against.

I know that what helped me to finally internalize that and grow more comfortable with myself (both in terms of appearance and sexuality) is that I took stock of the kind of media and online content I was interacting with on a regular basis and made a conscious effort to break away from anything that made me feel like I wasn't measuring up in either area. Once that was done, I did some looking around to try and rebuild my spaces so that I was surrounding myself with people, media and other content that promoted self love and acceptance (most often these were lgbtq+ individuals and pages, since that was the main part of my life that was sorely lacking in positivity!)

It may not sound like much, but the effect of curating the kind of content I was regularly interacting with such that I was actively refusing to engage with content that reinforced negative self thoughts was that it became easier over time for me to reject my that extremely negative thinking that I used to get stuck in, because I no longer felt like there were other forces pushing that narrative beyond my own mind.

When I surrounded myself instead with positive content that emphasized self love and self validation of my sexuality, and other people in the lgbtq+ community who loved themselves for who they are, I found that negative inner voice start to become easier to debunk. When I'd feel like I didn't look "gay enough" or didn't fit into a mold of what a lesbian "should" be/look like, I'd be able to challenge that thought more easily by countering that I never found myself thinking this of anyone I was interacting with, and they didn't express thoughts like that about each other - so what then made me the exception? It became easier and easier over time to feel that validation coming entirely from within, instead of relying so intensively on getting it from others.

It can feel like a slow process to get to that point sometimes, but every little step of progress is worth it. Be patient with yourself and try to focus on treating yourself the same way you'd treat a loved one facing the same kind of struggle - you deserve to be happy and comfortable in who you are and you don't ever deserve to feel less than anyone else in this community 💙

[sociologicallyinsignificant]

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking about my identity as a womanhood, and it was pretty easy for me to see how rabidly I had internalized misogyny. Pretty typical stuff: I was a self-identified “tomboy” and “one of the guys”; didn’t have very many female friends; liked it when I was told I “wasn’t like other girls.” None of these are particularly unique. It was after my rape in 2010 (and mostly through my healing process the next few years) that I really began to see the transformative power of female friendship, the importance of supporting other woman rather than seeing them as competition, to love and nurture my own identity as a woman. yadda yadda yadda But lately I’ve been thinking more about how I perform femininity - separate from my identity as a woman, though definitely connected.

 I got called a lezzie and a dyke through high school and college. Comes with the territory of being a tomboy who wears birkenstocks and plays softball, I guess. It bothered me far more in high school than it did in college. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with being gay and had even off/on described myself as bisexual. But I resented the assumption of my sexuality based on how I performed femininity or embraced my womanhood. I mean, part of my pushback/discomfort was probably because my sexuality still felt very amorphous, combined with a lot of (also internalized) biphobia. Actually, yeah it probably has a lot to do with the how there would be a conversation around sexuality, and I was say that Yes I was attracted to women as well as men, and guys would respond with the usual “that’s so hot” response. So I guess I hated the connection of my appearance with my sexuality -- because I would correct people that I was attracted to multiple genders, and then would get weird sexualized, fetishizing responses. (This makes more sense as I type more - wow, it’s almost like that’s the point of journaling.)

Anyway. The last two or three years I’ve really embraced more conventional expressions of femininity, particularly wearing make up. I’ve always worn mascara but only rarely dabbled in anything else beyond that. I felt awkward because I didn’t know how to do it, felt like it looked weird on my face, felt like a fraud, etc etc. My best friend looooves make up and has always insisted on doing mine before we would go out together. The first few years I tolerated it; then I enjoyed it when she did it and eventually asked her to teach me some techniques; and then looked forward to seeing her because I would have an excuse/felt comfortable putting on more makeup than my norm. The last few months I’ve found myself more regularly putting on make up with more intention. Really looking at my face in the mirror and taking time with it. And enjoying the process. Experimenting. 

Now obviously some of this has to do with challenging my internalized misogyny.  But more lately I’ve been thinking about this shift in relationship to my sexuality. The time when I really embraced my womanhood was also right around the time that I firmly claimed the labels of bisexual and queer. (I’ve still struggled with feeling like I am ~not queer enough~ and have thought about my appearance could signal my sexuality to other queer women - ya know, something that I had been told I did when I was younger - particularly as I began dating in a city without a large queer community.) And this is where my thoughts get messy - because I start to think about my place in the queer community. My identity is still frequently erased, even among my lesbian or gay friends. I am sometimes viewed as an undesirable romantic partner for all sorts of biphobic reasons. I get all sorts of vile fetishizing messages on online dating sites. I’ve hated feeling that I had to (again) eschew a feminine presentation if I really wanted to embrace my queerness. And more recently I’ve been feeling a lot of “fuck that” and presenting a way that was definitively ~femme~ and enjoying the ambiguity of simply saying I’m queer without explaining more to people. I don’t know at all that I’m adequately expressing my thoughts. I’m just really loving this reconciliation of different parts of my identity - and finding space for all of them. 

I feel like being bisexual (as opposed to being only same-gender attracted) plays a role here - especially with all of the biphobic tropes floating around both the straight and queer communities. Maybe that it’s more important for me to present in a “queer” manner to validate my sexuality since bisexuality is so often questioned or denigrated?  I think it’s something I need to think about more. Ditto for learning more about the queer history and butch/femme identities. 

yadda yadda yadda

**not saying that presenting as femme or embracing normative femininity are particularly radical or controversial modes of being. Mostly just reflecting on my own evolution of identity

#personal

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Battle Tech, Manly Wade Wellman, Savage Heroes, Space Force

Science Fiction (Tor.com): Anyone who has played Traveller (or even just played with online character generation sites like this one) might have noticed that a surprising number of the characters one can generate are skilled with blades. This may see as an odd choice for a game like Traveller that is set in the 57th century CE, or indeed for any game in which swords and starships co-exist. Why do game authors make these choices?  Just as games mix swords and starships, so do SFF novels. The trope goes way back, to the planetary romance novels of the Golden Age. Here are five examples.

Fiction Review (Legends of Men): Savage Heroes is a sword & sorcery anthology that’s pretty rare in the U.S. That’s because it’s a U.K. publication. The first S&S anthology I reviewed was Swords Against Darkness. It’s a great anthology that came highly recommended by an expert scholar in the field. Savage Heroes is better though. It captures very well the combination of historical adventure, lost world fiction, and cosmic horror that makes Sword and Sorcery unique.

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): Hard-boiled noir is an interesting subgenre. It’s mostly remembered in the mainstream, if at all, for cheesy parodies that family sitcoms and cartoon used to do back in the 1990s. What it is remembered for is as a genre about hapless detectives in black and white 1930s settings having to find a killer among a cast of twelve or so shifty character archetypes. Plenty of fun is poked, but they hardly take the genre seriously.

Science Fiction (Scifi Scribe): We’ve all seen the memes, right? The minute the world started talking about the mere idea of a United States Space Force, we were all instantly greeted by “LOL, Space National Guard/Space Force Reserves!” All joking aside, the irreverent interservice banter and, shall we say, “robust,” back-and-forth on social media reflects the very real, and very important, national-level discussions about creating a new military service branch.

Cinema (Jon Mollison): The birth of Dungeons and Dragons is a strange and fascinating story of how creatives can draw forth order from the froth of chaos. I went into this film expecting a lot of defensive snark about how Gary Gygax was a Johnny-come-lately who yoinked the idea of RPGs out from under Dave Arneson’s nose.  A fraudulent Edison to Arneson’s Tesla, if you will.  And there are hints of that within this film, but only hints.

Art (Mutual Art): Theron Kabrich quietly gazes at Roger Dean’s watercolor, The Gates of Delirium. He has been Dean’s friend and representative at the San Francisco Art Exchange for thirty years, selling his paintings, drawings, and prints to an international audience of collectors. Millions of copies of the image have been made. If Tolkien’s timeless classic inspired Dean’s enduring fascination with pathways at the beginning of his career, it is Robert McFarlane’s writing about wandering journeys along the ancient tracks twisting through the British landscape that have his attention in the present.

Art (DMR Books): Stephen  Fabian, as I’ve pointed out before, is a living legend in the fantasy art community. His output from the 1970s to the 2000s—both in quality and quantity—can only be called astounding. I covered some of that in my three-part series on his Robert E. Howard-related art. However, a friend of mine recently brought Fabian’s artwork for In Lovecraft’s Shadow to my attention. That book, in some respects, may be Stephen’s greatest sustained work. In Lovecraft’s Shadow was a collection of August Derleth’s Lovecraftian fiction published in 1998 through a joint venture by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box and Mycroft & Moran.

Review (Tea at Trianon): I remember as a twenty-two-year-old being excited when I saw a new book called the The Mists of Avalon by an author called Marion Zimmer Bradley. Mists was presented as the retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women of Camelot, which I thought was a thrilling idea. However, I found the book heavy on paganism and morbid, explicit sex scenes, but light on romance, heroism, chivalry, mystery, faith and all the qualities I had come to love in the Camelot stories. This brings us to Moira Greyland’s recent book, The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): I’m going to look at three of his stories that feature the same  character, Sergeant Jaeger. First is “Fearful Rock”.  Originally published in the February 1939 issue of Weird Tales, the central character of this novella is Lt. Lanark. He and Jaeger are leading a cavalry patrol in Missouri during the Civil War, looking for Quantrill. What they find is a young woman being sacrificed by her step-father to the Nameless One in an abandoned house under the shadow of a formation known as Fearful Rock.

Fiction (DMR Books): Tanith Lee was a force to be reckoned with in the ’70s, ’80s and on into the ’90s. She exploded onto the SFF scene with her debut novel for DAW Books, The Birthgrave. That book was labeled at the time as being “sword-and-sorcery”. I would probably call it heroic fantasy, but it remains a minor classic regardless of specific sub-category. During her forty-plus-year career, Tanith published ninety novels and a myriad of short stories. Her prolificity was on display right away. She quickly followed up The Birthgrave with more notable books like The Storm Lord and Volkhavaar, along with short stories like “Odds Against the Gods” published in Swords Against Darkness II.

Science Fiction (Men of the West): The book. Not the movie. If you can even call Verhoeven’s bastardization “Starship Troopers” at all. Robert A. Heinlein is an increasingly controversial figure in recent years, moreso than he was in his lifetime. This, of course, is due to his dubious content in his later career. But he was nothing if not influential on the genre, and his early works, such as his juvenile novels (of which this was the last), remain worth a read. We may go into Heinlein’s other works later, but the focus is not so much on the man as on the book.

D&D (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): I think Gygax is pretty clear about how initiative works in the DMG. (His surprise rules do make a bit of static, though.) Here’s my take on it: 1) DM decides what the monsters will do. Check reaction and/or morale if need be. 2) Players declare their actions. If they want to win at rpgs, they will advise a high t caller who will then speak for group.

Cthulhu Mythos (Marzaat): “Bells of Horror”, Henry Kuttner, 1939. This is a fairly good bit of Lovecraftian fiction from Kuttner. He uses a typical Lovecraft structure. Our narrator opens by mentioning a weird event then gives the back story of what led up to it and concludes with a not all surprising event. (Sometimes Lovecraft managed to surprise with his last lines, sometimes not.)

Authors (Goodman Games): While all of Wellman’s oeuvre is worth reading, it is his Silver John stories that most impacted the world of fantasy role-playing. Wellman is one of the names on Gygax’s Appendix N roster of influential authors. Although no specific title is listed alongside his name, it’s been suggested that the character of Silver John influenced the bard class in D&D—a wandering troubadour who uses song, magic, and knowledge to defeat supernatural menaces. Stripped of the pseudo-medieval trappings of D&D, the bard and Silver John become almost indistinguishable from one another.

Pulp Art (Dark Worlds Quarterly): It shouldn’t be any surprise that the artists that illustrated Short Stories would appear in Weird Tales and vice versa, though to a lesser degree. Fred Humiston is a good example. For many years, he illustrated half of each issue of Short Stories along with Edgar Wittmack.

Cinema (Film School Rejects): Most movie fans associate Martin Campbell with the Bond franchise and other blockbusters. However, before he became one of Hollywood’s A-list directors, he helmed Cast a Deadly Spell, a genre-bending TV movie that originally aired on HBO back in 1991. It isn’t the most known movie in his oeuvre, but it’s easily one of his most entertaining and rewatchable efforts.

Tolkien (Monsters and Manuals): I have no idea what Tolkien had in mind for the geography of Rhun and the peoples within it. But it seems to me that, while one shouldn’t think of Middle Earth as being too closely paralleled with the real world, there is a case to be made that its character is roughly akin to the Eurasian steppe this side of the Urals – more specifically the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea (with the Sea of Rhun here being a bit like the Black Sea).

Gaming ( Walker’s Retreat): The other day I posted a new BattleTech lore video. I mentioned that the channel posting that video did more to promote BattleTech than anything that the current owners of the property–Catalyst Game Labs–have done. All of the other lore channels and battle report channels contribute to this effort, and it helps that Harebrained’s adaptation is very close (but not identical, which it should have been) to the tabletop game, but there’s sweet fuck-all for marketing from the company itself.

Sensor Sweep: Battle Tech, Manly Wade Wellman, Savage Heroes, Space Force published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[sentrava]

What’s On in Copenhagen: November 2017

It’s dark, cold and all-round miserable outside. But the Christmas markets open this month, so in our books that makes everything all right! Plus, you can satiate your inner nisse (elf) with J-dag, gløgg-brewin at Torvehallerne and heaps of other fun things to do like exhibitions, gigs and club nights.

Here’s what’s happening in Copenhagen this November:

Wednesday 1st November

International Vegan Day

A global celebration of all things vegan down at Kultorvet; free tastings, take-home recipes and the opportunity to learn what veganism is all about.

    Thursday 2nd November

Artist Talk with Christina Capetillo

Architect and photographer Christina Capetillo, whose focus is on changing landscapes and places characterized by human interference, discusses her work.

    Friday 3rd November

J-dag

The very evening that delicious, liquorice-infused Christmas beer hits bars and bodegas all over Denmark, accompanied by cheeky nisse (christmas elves). Don’t sleep on this special Jul tradition, it’s only around for ten weeks each year! Go and grab some Christmas cheer(s)!

    Friday Night Delight

Kick the weekend off right at Absalon’s club night with a candlelit meal, live music and lots of cocktails! Perfect for the more refined pardee animals.

    Saturday 4th – Sunday 5th November

FindersKeepers Market at Lokomotivværkstedet

See some of the best handmade design around at this beloved market, including ceramics, jewellery, furniture and more. Tickets are only 40 DKK for the day and 70 DKK for the weekend if you order pre-sale here. This year there will also be a kids design section, so you can find everything you need for the little ones, too.

    Saturday 4th November

Singalong at Huset’s Biograf

Belt out tunes from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. Cinemas are shadowy places, so no holding back on those top notes plz.

    Sunday 5th November

Fleamarket at Student House

The summer flea markets might be over, but thankfully the Student House is here for your bargain hunting fix. Clear a space in that closet.

    Tuesday 7th November

Sci-fi Evening at Tycho Brahe Planetarium

Calling all conspiracy theorists and sci-fi geeks: this is your dream evening! Attend a lecture examining what might happen if we did get a little visit from some tiny green men. Well-known sightings and areas of paranoramal activity like Area 51 and Roswell act as a guide for the evening’s speculations, followed by a sci-fi flick.

    Wednesday 8th November

Feel Freeze x Sweet Sneak

Dreamy electronic duo Feel Freeze are joining up with food studio Sweet Sneak to bring you a concert of sensory and music delights.

    Thursday 9th November

Design with Nature

A talk looking at the various projects working to integrate building, urban space and nature to enrich community spaces. The lecture will be held by Rasmus Astrup, partner at urban development consultancy SLA, along with Flemming Rafn Thomsen, partner at Tredje Natur architecture firm.

    Friday 10th November

Gin Cocktail Workshop

Go beyond the usual G&Ts and master the art of some fancy, gin-infused cocktail recipes at this boozy workshop.

    NYHAVN CHRISTMAS MARKETS

Christmas is coming early to the quaint streets of Nyhavn when the markets open up from now and throughout December. Cash in early and get your decor going for the festive season.

    Sunday 12th November

European Outdoor Film Tour

Inspiring stories told against breathtaking backdrops from around the world.

    Monday 13th November

Improv Workshop

Fancy yourself a bit of a comedian? Get out of your comfort zone and test the waters at this fun Improv Comedy workshop.

    Tuesday 14th November

Perfume Genius at DR Koncerthuset

Seattle-based singer Mike Hadreas, a.k.a. Perfume Genius, plays songs from his emotion-infused pop-rock album No Shape that dropped this year.

    Thursday 16th November

Bingo Banko at Absalon

Everybody loves Bingo right? But no one more so than the Danes. It’s a great way to hang out with the local community and win ALL the prizes!

    Friday 17th November – Saturday 23rd December

JULEMARKED: HØJBRO PLADS

Homemade glühwein, bratwurst and REINDEERS down at Højbro Plads German Christmas market. The perfect post-shopping spot to bulk up on Christmas sparkle.

    Saturday 18th November

Historic Drug-Scare Cinema at Huset’s Biograf

A mix of fascinating shorts, trailers and outtakes spanning 60 years of American drug-scare movies. The captivating footage demonstrates how far moviemakers went to shock-scare their audience into saying no to the doobie (spoiler: it didn’t work).

    Sunday 19th November

Gløgg at Torvehallerne

Come and warm your cockles with Torvehallerne’s gløgg brewing afternoon. Gløggologists will be doing their best to impress passers-by. Fingers crossed for lots of free samples.

    Tuesday 21th November

Cult Film Quiz

Movie buffs assemble! This is the night to prove your worth at Huset’s Cult Film Quiz. Come and test that obscure knowledge.

    Wednesday 22nd November

Science & Sustainability

An open discussion on climate and sustainability, led by Copenhagen University professors Katherine Richardson and Stanley Johnson. No scienctific knowledge is required, just bags of curiosity.

    Thursday 23rd November

Queen-themed Bingo

We’re not exactly sure how this works, but basically it’s BINGO sound-tracked by QUEEN. That’s all you need to know, really.

    Friday 24th November

Black Friday

Save some dollah and treat yourself to all the discounts online and about town; it’s been a looooong old year!

    Saturday 25th – Sunday 26th November

Copenhagen Latin Festival

Dance workshops – including Afro Cuban, Rumba, Rueda, Salsa, Reggaeton- as well as shows later on in the evening at Støberiet. Get your one-two, cha-cha-cha on.

    Monday 27th November

The Horrors at Lille Vega

English indie rockers, The Horrors, went uncharacteristically quiet for a couple of years. But now the ghoulish guys are back with new material: Something To Remember Me By, already being hailed their best album yet by the Guardian.

    Wednesday 29th November

Museum Lates

Explore the Zoological Museum after hours on a unique guided tour. Say hej to the giant Misty and hang out with the whole stuffed animal crew.

    Thursday 30th November

Sleep Party People at DR Concert House

The Copenhagen-based brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Brian Batz, Sleep Party People is dreampop at its finest.

    Ongoing in November

Crossing Borders at SMK

Artists have always crossed vast distances looking for something undiscovered and original, and on occasion, sometimes for just pure adventure. A selection of works from greats of the European art world between 1300 to 1800 focussing on those that went in search of their inspiration. Highlights include: Andrea Mantegna, Peter Paul Rubens, Corbelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts and Rembrandt van Rijn and much more.

  Micheal Kvium Circus Europe at Arken

Visual Danish artist Michael Kvium is setting up his circus of the absurd at Arken. The exhibition centres around the European identity and community in a time governed by xenophobia, fear and tension. Kvium takes the political and social scenes of life in contemporary Europe and places it under the big top for all of us to gawk at.

      Stanley Kubrick – The Exhibition

The Kunstforening GL STRAND presents the first exhibition of its kind in the Nordics, an exclusive look into Kubrick’s visionary workroom. Constructed from movie excerpts, interviews with Kubrick himself and colleagues, as well as old archive material, get a glimpse into the movie master at work.

      Masterpieces. From Degas to Hammershøi at Ordrupgaard

A wonderful opportunity to experience the works of some of the greats from Ordrupgaard’s Danish and French collection, including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Vilhelm Hammershøi and several others.

There will also be the opportunity to view the galleries extensive collection of pastels, rarely exhibited previously. These include Degas’s ballerinas in the rehearsal room and portraits by Renoir and Manet of life in Paris.

  Don’t forget: all the 2017 Holidays & Flag Days are here.

If you’re a business or organisation that would like us to add your event to next month’s calendar, please contact us at hello [@] scandinaviastandard [dot] com. Thank you!

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  What’s On in Copenhagen: November 2017 published first on http://ift.tt/2gOZF1v

[corneliussteinbeck]

Let’s Talk About Black Female Representation in Fitness

I have been in the fitness profession for approximately more than six years as a Pilates instructor extraordinaire who also cross trains in a lot across different modalities. I am a Black woman with two adult children who are both athletes.

Over the past several years, the reach and influence of social media have grown tremendously. For many of us, these platforms are not only strong marketing tools, they also provide our audiences with a look inside our everyday lives. Fitness magazines, too, have increased their online presence on these channels as well, granting broader and easier access to their content. In fact, never before has so much information been available at our fingertips, often in real time. You can see live footage from conferences and workshops directly on your computer, tablet, or phone.

While platforms such as Instagram have made it possible for more Black female fitness professionals to increase their visibility via their personal pages, what I have not found on any of these platforms is a broader representation of Black female fitness professionals featured as models or as experts at conferences, workshops, advisory boards, and so on. So, the question I ask as a Black Female fitness professional is: where am I, and why am I not represented?

What does “fit” look like?

What is considered the most common “fit” body type? I did a search for “fit woman” and here is what I found:

After scrolling for quite some time, I found two pictures of Black women. One was a viral photo of a Black woman with a very muscular man. The other was a picture of a Black woman who appeared to be photographed during a bikini competition.

While sitting at a bookstore recently, I looked through all of the fitness magazines I chose to read and noticed that all the cover models were White, lean, and sometimes muscular, depending on the type of fitness magazine. So is that what a “fit woman” looks like?

Based on typical online search results and what tends to make it onto the covers and pages of the most popular fitness magazines, one would be led to believe that “fit woman” is lean, blonde or brunette, and White. Can we just call a spade a spade here?

The typical “Pilates body” is described as long and lean, like a dancer. I am not a dancer. I am lean, but not long. I am also not White. In my experience, the majority of Pilates instructors appear to be white females with the aforementioned “Pilates body.”

So, if I don’t look like that, does it make me less credible? Does it make me less likely to be a great instructor or expert?

Teresa E., a Pilates and Barre, personal trainer in Oakland, California stated, “Once someone said, ‘That was actually good.’ It was as if because I’m Black and curvy, I wouldn’t know how to teach the class.” While I haven’t had a similar experience, I’ve often wondered what most clients are thinking about me during their sessions or classes.

Who gets to be on the cover of a magazine?

Why does it seem like White women dominate the covers of magazines?

The typical reason most publications give is that they are simply catering to their audience. This demographic tends to be White women within a certain age group. That sounds fair… but is it, really? According to an analysis and report from The Fashion Spot which looked at a year’s worth of covers from the top 48 international fashion publications, “In 2016, 29 percent of cover models were women of color, a fairly respectable 6.2-point increase from 2015. For context, racial representation on magazine covers rose by 5.4 points between 2014 (17.4 percent) and 2015 (22.8 percent).”

Before 2014, the likelihood of a Black female gracing the cover of a fashion magazine was even lower. As of today, we are on a little more than 25 percent of the covers. The other 69 percent are still White women. That is still a large percentage, and it cannot be because of the demographic. Our overall presence inside a magazine, as a feature or model, is even lower. Speaking of lower numbers, keep in mind that this report analyzed fashion magazines specifically. If we take a look at fitness magazine covers exclusively, that number is even lower for Black women and women of color.

“If a Black female is featured, she typically does not have a dark complexion or features closer to African descent, like natural or texturized hair,” said Bianca R., a barre and Pilates teacher and personal trainer in New York and New Jersey. “I’d love to see me in the magazines, speaking both literally and figuratively.”

A very popular strength magazine for women, once posted a picture of all of their covers on their Instagram account. All of the models were White women. I stopped following them on all platforms that day because I saw no one who looked liked me. So many Black women could grace their covers but unless this topic is addressed, it will never happen.

Why is the Black female fitness expert almost non-existent at retreats and workshops, and on advisory boards?

I regularly receive marketing emails for fitness conferences, expos, and workshops, and I see posts and ads on my social media news feeds. Many of these events appeal to me initially, and I’ve attended a few, but when I look at the list of presenters, I might see one Black person — and rarely ever a Black woman. I am also not aware of there ever being Black female representation in the Pilates Method Alliance. Even magazine advisory boards have almost no Black female presence. It can’t be because we lack expertise or education.

Amira L., a fitness professional in New York City, shares: I do feel there is a ‘bros’ club, especially in the personal training space. There are cliques of presenters who travel doing a series of smaller conferences and workshops. There is always a social element to these, which is where important connections are often made.”

Based on the evidence, not only does it seem like we are excluded because we are Black, we are also often excluded because we are women in certain spaces. It goes back to demographics. An event or organization’s audience represents what they cultivate. If an audience predominantly consists of White men or women, then the presenters will likely be a reflection of that. How and where an event or organization markets is also a factor. Is there a lack of Black females presenters and experts in the fitness space? No. But if no one is looking for us, and if we are not regularly included in a significant way, it certainly appears that way. Events and organizations that want a more diverse audience have to expand the way they market and the diversity of the people they’re trying to reach.

But why should we have to ask for a seat at the table? Why do we need to ask to be included? Inclusion requires deep work to find out why Black women have not been given seats at the table thus far, and the fact is that few people truly want to do it. What is this deep work? It is acknowledging and addressing institutional or systemic racism, which is defined as “the pattern of social and political systems discriminating against a group of people based on race.”

Mia Mercado writes on Bustle.com: “If you’re wondering how a school or a bank or any ‘thing’ or ‘system’ can be racist, ask yourself who runs those ‘things’ and ‘systems.’”

With few exceptions, unless we as Black women are running it, we will typically be left out of it. We then bring our own table, with our own seats and our own audiences. That is exactly what I did with Black Girl Pilates. We had few if any seats at the table with these organizations and conferences.

Building our own spaces is all well and good, but to truly eliminate institutional racism, these organizations must make a genuine effort to broaden the color of their experts and audience.

What can I, as a Black woman, do to make sure I am represented in these areas?

Take charge, that’s what!

Almost six weeks ago, I started the Black Girl Pilates community. At the writing of this article, we are 117 members strong, representing six countries. Our mission is to provide a space where Black/Afro-Latina women who teach Pilates can share ideas, successes, and struggles as instructors and teachers within the business of the method. We also aim to identify and dismantle areas that exclude us, such as magazines, social media, conferences, and training seminars, and confront those entities regarding the lack of Black women in those spaces.

We have a very active Instagram presence as well as a Facebook support group. Our first meeting will take place October 13–15 in New York City, where Chris Robinson, a very successful Black male Pilates Instructor to celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, will teach a mat class. I am also in discussion with an online Pilates platform about increasing the presence of Black female teachers and students.

In addition, I have personally written to fitness magazine editors and the organizers and leaders for various conferences expressing my concerns.

What You Can Do to Improve Black Representation in Your Fitness Spaces

How many Black female fitness or wellness businesses owners do you know? According to the National Association of Education Statistics, black women are the most educated segment within the U.S. population. We are also the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States, according to a study published by Digital Undivided. So it can’t be that difficult to find us, right?

Right. Yet, comments like this one from Amina B., a fitness professional in Kansas City, Missouri are common in across the country: “I’ve never seen a Black female expert at any expo or workshop in [my] area. I’ve been to one 5K that was sponsored by a Black female gym owner.”

Here are a few suggestions for ways you and your organization can increase representation of Black women in your fitness network in a respectful and sincere manner.

Make space for us.

Offer us several seats at the table in your events, in your organization, and in your leadership. Early this year Self Magazine published a List of the Top 28 Black Fitness Pros to Follow on Instagram. That is only a small percentage of us and what we bring to the industry.

Avoid tokenism.

Make a genuine effort reach out to your Black colleagues and peers. We know when an agenda is really about making it appear as if you want to break down those walls. Be honest about what you are trying to do.

Ask for help, and then listen.

Ask how we can help make your conference, workshop, classes more inclusive. Listen to what we suggest, and do it with our guidance and leadership — without “policing” what we have to say.

Read and listen to what we’re sharing about our experiences in the fitness industry.

Read articles to better understand how we are really feeling. Check out Chrissy King’s recent blog post and listen to The Chocolate Bar podcast about this very subject (courtesy of me).

I am convinced that the more awareness we all bring to this issue — along with an honest examination of the systemic racism at its root — the more we can break down these walls and create truly inclusive spaces.

References

http://www.thefashionspot.com/runway-news/726447-diversity-report-magazine-covers-2016/

https://www.raceforward.org/videos/systemic-racism

https://www.bustle.com/p/this-is-proof-that-institutional-racism-is-still-very-much-a-problem-43610

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/14/11208710/kathryn-finney-diversity-tech

https://www.digitalundivided.com/projectdiane-report/the-projectdiane-report-2016-the-real-unicorns-of-tech-black-women

http://www.self.com/gallery/black-fitness-pros-instagram

http://chrissyking.com/fitness-thin-white-women/

https://soundcloud.com/chocolatebarlife

    The post Let’s Talk About Black Female Representation in Fitness appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

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[vileart]

More Moira Dramaturgy: Alan Bissett @ Edfringe 2017

credit: Stephanie Gibson

(MORE) MOIRA MONOLOGUES

a sequel

written and performed by Alan Bissett, directed by Sacha Kyle

Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) | 2­–28 August (not 14/21) | 7pm (1hr) | £15 (£12)

 “The most charismatic character to appear on a Scottish stage in a decade” (The Scotsman) is back! After two sold-out Edinburgh Fringe runs, Alan Bissett’s indomitable character Moira Bell, truth-teller, straight-talker, cleaner, single mum and The Hardest Woman in Falkirk™, returns in a brand new sequel to 2009’s well loved The Moira Monologues, premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe in

credit: Stephanie Gibson

August 2017.

   Moira’s a gran now – ‘can ye believe that, Babs?’ – but still telling hilarious home-truths about online dating, her estranged sister, cleaning posh people’s houses, and the return of her ex, Billy. 

With the same balance of uproariously incisive observation, brilliant character comedy and heart-wrenching emotional content as the original show, this is a post-indyref, post-Brexit Moira, switched on to politics and still blowing away preconceptions about class.

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What was the inspiration for this performance?

This is the follow-up to my 2009 ‘one-woman show’ The Moira Monologues, which was best on the experiences and attitudes of the women in my family – my sister, my aunties, my cousins – the sort of working-class women I’d rarely seen represented on a Scottish stage before.  

I figured I would catch up with the character eight years on, as Scotland – indeed the world – has changed a great deal since 2009.  Back then, we lived in a pre-indyref, pre-Tory govt, pre-Brexit, pre-austerity, pre-Trump climate.  I wondered what Moira’s take on these things would be, and where she currently is in her life, so I wrote a sequel.

credit: Stephanie Gibson

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

 Yes, I think so.  The rarefied space of the theatre allows the audience to slip outside reality – away from the barrage of screens, advertising and media verbiage we are surrounded with every day – and give themselves over to a different way of seeing. 

Also, the communal element of performance – it is literally the oldest artform, going back to fireside accounts of hunts in our prehistoric days – taps into the sort of communal and social atmospherics that late-capitalism has attempted to erode. 

We experience these things with the other people in the room, sensing their reaction to the material and letting that inform our own. All of that means a powerful space opens up to examine ideas from an angle otherwise denied to us by consumer culture.

How did you become interested in making performance?

It happened rather organically as an extension of my twin careers as a teacher and a prose writer.  If you publish a novel you get used to having to read aloud from it at book festivals, in schools, in libraries, and even in prisons.  

I’ve always felt a responsibility to make that entertaining and engaging for the audience, which meant not only ‘performing’ the material but selecting the scenes which had a strong dramatic shape and through-line and which lent themselves well to the stage.  I just refused to fritter away their attention spans with some deathly-dull recital of the internal consciousness of the protagonist.

credit: Stephanie Gibson

Also as a teacher you have to be able to stand in front of a class of, say, thirty young people – some of whom perhaps don’t want to be there – and take them on a journey through a lesson using only verbal tricks and body language, reading their responses and being able to judge what the sound (or the silence) coming form them meant. 

Fuse these things together and you get a performer-in-waiting.  Theatre felt like a natural sideways step from that.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

 The main approach to the making of the show is threefold: to entertain and to provoke.  This has been the modus operandi of myself and director Sacha Kyle since we made our first show together: the original Moira Monologues.  Most audiences will reject a show that only provokes.  But a show which only entertains is lightweight, and usually ends up only reinforcing the status quo.  

What I’m trying to get the audience to think about in More Moira Monologues, as with the original, is our attitudes towards class, gender and nation – towards Scottish working-class women, essentially – and so there are moments that will certainly make the audience feel uncomfortable.  Moira has to be a fully-rounded human being if the audience are to have their expectations about ‘chav’ culture exploded, but this sometimes mean confronting them with material which they may not be quite prepared for.  

As long as you are fulfilling your duty of entertainment towards them – arranging the narrative shape and the humour in such a way that they are pulled along with it – then they will forgive you for that and be more inclined towards giving your ideas a hearing.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

It certainly fits with the style and aesthetic of the original Moira Monologues, but Sacha and I have mainly made work that trades on my attempts to personally connect with the audience, as the writer and the only figure onstage, so as to take them on a political journey.  Shows that I have written for other actors – such as Turbo Folk or The Pure, the Dead and the Brilliant – examine ideas of Scottishness and politics also, using language and humour resourcefully and imaginatively to do so, so, yes, More Moira Monologues feels of a piece with our previous work.  

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

We want the audience to go from being rather intimidated by Moira at the beginning of the play to admiring her strength and warmth by the end.  She’s someone that most middle-class audiences will experience in their lives only as someone they’d want to avoid, but when they’re trapped in there with her, and forced to give themselves over to her worldview, my hope is that they then begin to realise working-class women – so often marginalised, patronised or made completely invisible in our culture – are as human as themselves.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We do not rely on a set, props, costume or music to try and ‘enhance’ the theatrical experience, trusting only on the writing, performance and direction to make Moira come to life before their eyes.  

For this reason we eschew the sort of drag act cliché – exaggerated femininity – which often occurs when a man is playing a woman onstage.  

The characterisation of Moira is key, exploring the depths of her personality and making her as emotionally complex as any Shakespeare heroine.  That’s our responsibility to her and to the audience.  

"Since its debut in 2009, my 'one-woman show' The Moira Monologues has proven itself to be probably the most popular and enduring thing I've ever created,” Bissett says. 

“Reviving the original show at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe revealed an audience eager for Moira's return. Scotland has changed a lot since 2009 – I kept wondering what had happened to Moira in the intervening eight years, where she was in her life now, and what she thought of such new developments as Brexit, online dating, the Kelpies in Falkirk and Donald Trump. There still aren’t enough representations of working-class Scottish women on the stage, and I can’t wait to unleash (More) Moira Monologues on audiences of old pals and people who haven’t had the pleasure of her company yet.”

credit: Stephanie Gibson

Based on the stories told by the women in his large working-class Falkirk family, The Moira Monologues, (More) Moira Monologues and the indomitable character of Moira Bell are creations of the award-winning author, playwright and performer Alan Bissett, whose novels include Boyracers, The Incredible Adam Spark, Death of a Ladies’ Man and Pack Men. Since its initial production at the Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, in 2009, the original Moira Monologues has toured the UK extensively, with sold-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe (2009 & 2016 revival), and the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, as well as performances in Serbia, Canada and China.

(More) Moira Monologues is the tenth collaboration between Bissett and director Sacha Kyle. Their other productions include the CATS-Award nominated Turbo Folk (shortlisted for Best New Play at the CATS Awards 2010), 2016’s One Thinks Of It All As A Dream (“an insightful eulogy to Pink Floyd’s wayward genius”, The Guardian), 2014’s The Pure, The Dead and The Brilliant (“a stunning piece of theatre”, TIME Magazine), Ban This Filth (shortlisted for Amnesty’s Freedom of Expression Award 2013) and of course The Moira Monologues (2009).

Sacha Kyle also directed Iain Pattison’s I, Tommy (2013), and a number of new writing productions for Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint series, and has just been named as one of the nine directors selected for the BBC’s UK-wide Continuing Drama Directors Scheme.

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