The Kickstarter that we’ve
spent the last several weeks preparing for is launching tomorrow
morning. I’ve been working on Pillowfort for over three years now, which
seems like a very long time. I distinctly remember the moment that I
first had the idea for Pillowfort: I was talking to a friend back in
2013 and she told me about how she’d been part of a forum for fiction
writers that had been close-knit and supportive, but that the forum had
eventually shut down and she hadn’t found any online communities since
to match what that group had meant to her. And it reminded me of the
amazing times I’d had on LiveJournal and other websites before they’d
started changing into something else and the user-base migrated
elsewhere, and how much I missed those unique experiences.
Thus
Pillowfort started out as a simple passion project: to make the kind of
site that would bring back the sense of community and togetherness that
earlier social media experiences had brought me, while still keeping
the ease of communication and global sharing that the newer sites
enabled. To simply make the kind of blogging site that I was yearning
for. But it was an ambitious project for one person; I worked on it on
my own for a few months, sometimes wondering if sinking so many hours
into this pie-in-the-sky dream was worth it. I ultimately decided to set
up an ‘official’ Tumblr account for Pillowfort and make a little
introductory post describing my ideas for the site, accompanied by some
screencaps of the site demo, and see if people would be interested in
what I was working on. I added some tags that seemed relevant and threw
the post into the ether, telling myself that if nobody responded to it
then that was that, and I’d move onto something else.
I checked the post
the next morning to see that it had somehow, inconceivably, collected
thousands of notes overnight, purely by being shared among people who
saw the post and had connected with the idea. Over the next week the
post would gather around 35,000 notes and be mentioned on other
websites. It was far more than I could have anticipated. At that point I
knew that I had something real, that thousands of other people wanted
as much as I did, and it would be a shame to let such an opportunity
go.
A lot is riding on this Kickstarter. Up until now
the project has mostly been worked on by volunteers; even I as the site
founder have had to find the time to work on Pillowfort in my free time,
but it’s become increasingly clear over the last year that if
Pillowfort is to truly grow into its potential, we’re going to need a
committed and consistent staff that can put in the hours to develop the
site as quickly as our growing base of users want it to. As proud as I
am of the progress that’s already been made, the site is still very much
in its infancy; there’s so much more that I want to do with Pillowfort,
but to make it happen we’re simply going to need the funds so that I
and my developers can afford to work on the site at least part time.
I’ve made the decision not to seek out VC investments because I want the
primary focus for expanding the site in the near future to be on how we
can make the site the best possible version of itself, not on
maximizing revenue to pay back our investors. I’ve seen the other social
media sites we’ve all used start to make decisions that were geared
more towards increasing earnings instead of improving user experience,
and the dream for Pillowfort is to create a social media site that can
stay focused on being user-friendly and efficient. It might be a naive
dream, who knows, but I’m determined to try it.
If you
can’t contribute to the Kickstarter but still want to help us out, the
best thing you can do for us is to share the link to the Kickstarter on
your other social media accounts– just spread the word, tell others how
much you like the site, and that will help us a great deal. The fact
that has always buoyed me most when working on this project got
frustrating was that Pillowfort is something most people seem to really
want, and that’s probably the biggest blessing we could have asked for.
Thank you, to all of you who have supported us this far; I’m so
encouraged by how far the site has already come and I hope that I can
realize the rest of this dream with your help.
In the few months I’ve been modding at fuckyeahasexual and touring ace Tumblr, there’s been a very. Steady. Stream of info that detail horrifically abusive situations and overall poor mental unhealth. Two a week in the inbox if I’m lucky, usually around seven-ten.
And there’s been so many, I can officially categorize all 500+ of these kinds of asks and submissions into an extensive bulletlist of Why Asexual Exclusionary Radicalism Is Incredibly Toxic And Shitty;
Coming Out To Family, Friends, And Employers
“My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”
“My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”
“My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”
“My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”
First Few Days Of Dating
“My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)
“My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)
“My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”
“I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”
Long-Term Relationships
“My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”
“My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”
“My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish – which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”
Self-Care And Self Development
“I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”
“The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”
“I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”
“I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”
“I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfish and childish.”
“No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”
Shut the fuck up about your petty beef with tumblr bloggers and youtubers and Archie comics or whatever. I literally do not care, I can’t care. I see these messages every goddamn day – this post was written and drafted a month ago, and I very easily compiled most of this bulletpoint list from scratch, just by eyeing what I see in the askbox and what comes across my dash.
‘Ace discourse’ anger is empty and so meaningless. This is what I see by being part of this one 17k follow asexual ask blog for maybe half a year. I am so Done with all the faux rage posts and all the false positivity about how it’s ok to NOT be ace and all the acephobia that falls perfectly in line with the gaslighting typical of acephobia-101 while also having the audacity to claim it not so.
This is what’s real and I want to bleed it into your goddamn eyes.
Reblogging this again, for obvious reasons
Ace ppl are not INSTITUTIONALLY OR SYSTEMATICALLY OPPRESSED BECAUSE OF THE DEGREE THAT YOU FEEL SEXUAL ATTRACTION. If ur trans ur lgbtq. If ur aro but ur gay, bi, pan ur lgbtq. If ur ace but homo, biromantic etc ur lgbt. Being ace doesnt make u lgbt by default. Does the interpersonal lack of understanding suck and should change? Yeah. But society doesnt want u dead so cishet aces stay tf out our business.
Someone read this, all this stuff about struggles of people coming out as ace, people abusing them and telling them that their identity isn’t real or is a problem to be fixed, making people feel worthless and feeling that they’re in the wrong about their own goddamn identity, and said “nah they ain’t oppressed™ enough to be in a community of people who face the same issues”
U mad huh?
Anyway….aces can’t be systematically opressed. None of those things are examples of systematic oppression
Also nice how they called it “asexual exclusionary radicalism” as if it wasn’t a cheap tactic to compare ace exclusionist to twerfs
Asexuality was listed in the DSM as HSDD (Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) until 2013, making it officially a mental illness that would be treated with therapy and medication. It is still in the DSM, except that you can ‘opt out’ if you self-identify as asexual, which is great except that asexuality is still so unknown that there undoubtedly many people who are asexual but don’t know that it’s “a thing”. This means that who knows how many asexuals have been sent to therapy and told they’re sick, then been “treated” for their orientation to try and force them to experience sexuality “correctly”.
Posts of people describing the hardship they’ve faced for their asexuality:x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
The blog @acephobia-is-real has so many submissions and examples of hatred, harassment, hostility, and abuse, of aces who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted in an attempt to ‘fix’ them, and made suicidal due to aphobia and/or their own perceived brokenness, that it would be pointless for me to try and link any. Just go and start reading. Try their suicide tag.
There may be dissatisfyingly little research done on asexuality, but there has been enough done to prove that they do face discrimination, no matter how hard some may find that to believe. But guess what? You, an allosexual person, do not get to say shit like “aces don’t get kicked out” or “aces don’t _____” any more than I as a white person get to say that things I don’t experience must not happen to black people either. Just because you haven’t experienced it personally or witnessed it with your own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. You haven’t walked in an ace’s shoes, you don’t know what they deal with. Period.
Not even other aces can tell asexuals that their experiences aren’t real or aren’t valid. Different people can deal with different amounts of oppression, that doesn’t mean the lack of oppression is the default “truth”.
Nobody is trying to say that asexuals have it “as bad” or worse than gay or trans people, but we don’t HAVE to “have it worse” to beincluded and for our experiences to have merit without being compared to anyone else’s. Let me say that again: our experiences have merit without being compared to anyone else’s.
Told asexuals to die: x, x, x, x, x (tbh this is only a tiny sample and I don’t have the heart to go digging for more)
Are all aphobes this vile? Maybe not, but this is still the disgusting, hateful attitude festering in the gatekeeping community, and it stinks like shit. The examples I have provided above are only a fraction of the harassment and abuse that is perpetrated on a regular basis.
“Het aces/aroaces are straight”
Some het aces identify as straight. Some het aces don’t identify as straight, they identify as asexual, and it’s not your place to label them against their will. There is no world in which aroaces, people who experience no attraction to anyone, are straight.
“We accept SGA (same-gender attracted) and trans aces”
Firstly, SGA (same-gender attraction) is a term that was used and is still used in Mormon conversion therapy, so as one can understand,a lot of people are very uncomfortable being labeled with this description. Secondly, it enforces a gender binary of “same” and “opposite” gender that leaves a large number of nonbinary people out in the cold. Is a genderfluid person only “same-gender attracted” if they’re attracted to other genderfluid people who are genderfluid in exactly the same way? How about agender, intergender, demigirl/boy people? And before the argument “well they’re included as trans” is made, there are plenty of nonbinary people who do not identify as trans. I’m one of them.
The standard of “SGA and trans” as requirement for entry to the LGBTQ community is used nowhere outside of aphobic tumblr, and it seems crafted specifically for the purpose of excluding aces, aros, NBs, intersex people, and others not deemed “gay enough”.
The modern American movement was first known as the “gay community” when cis gay men refused to even accept lesbians, then the “gay and lesbian community”. (Good reading on the subject.)
“After the elation of change following group action in the Stonewall riots in New York, in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, some gays and lesbians became less accepting of bisexual or transgender people. Critics said that transgender people were acting out stereotypes and bisexuals were simply gay men or lesbian women who were afraid to come out and be honest about their identity. Each community has struggled to develop its own identity including whether, and how, to align with other gender and sexuality-based communities, at times excluding other subgroups; these conflicts continue to this day.” (source)
“From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. Not until the 1990s within the movement did gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people gain equal respect.” (ibid)
Insisting that LG people have always been accepting of bi and trans people is incredibly revisionist and does a great deal of injustice to those who have been excluded.
Despite the fact that bisexual and transgender people have always been around, and have done great things for the community, they have faced a great deal of lateral oppression from the LG part of the group that did not want to see them get an equal share of attention, support, or legitimacy. This post is not about proving LG transphobia and biphobia, but it’s so rampant that I don’t feel like I need to provide sources whatsoever. Nevertheless, here’s a collection of biphobia, and the blog@terf-calloutdocuments some of the violent transphobia on this site, particularly in the lesbian community. This post is an example.
“The A stands for Ally so that closeted people can be the community without being outed”
No one is saying that we don’t care about closeted people, but a) even if you’re a closeted L, G, B, or T, you are still a L, G, B, or T. Allies do not need to be part of the acronym to be intrinsically welcomed. As someone said, this is like saying the ‘B’ in BLT stands for ‘bread’. We can pretty much safely assume that a sandwich is going to include bread, we don’t have to go of our way to give it a letter. Either you are outing every “ally” as a closeted queer person, or you are giving 100% cis straight people an LGBTQ member card, the very thing you are arguing against by trying to exclude asexuals.
Furthermore, this puts forth the argument “I’m willing to let cishet straight people into the community for the sake of a few closeted people” while at the same time stating “I’m not willing to let the A stand for asexuals because I don’t think letting cis heteroromantic asexuals into the community is worth giving all asexuals representation and support”. Which says that you consider asexuals less valuable and more of a threat than cis straight people.
“I have proof of an asexual being homophobic/transphobic/racist/a terrible person”
Of course there are asexuals who are terrible people. There are legions of gays and lesbians who are racist and transphobic. Does that make them not gay/lesbian? Does their bigotry invalidate their sexual orientation, or remove the L and G from the acronym? No, I don’t think so. Some asexuals being bad people doesn’t justify you trying to invalidate all of us.
“’Allosexual’ is a bad word because ____”
I actually have an ‘allosexual’ tag just for posts about why ‘allosexual’ is a perfectly fine word: x, x, x, x, x. x
“The split-attraction model is homophobic”
What we call the split-attraction model was first described by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a gay advocate from the 1800s, as “disjunctive uranodioning”. (source) (credit to this post)
“The term ‘corrective rape’ was coined by South African lesbians and should only be used by lesbians”
No one means any disrespect to lesbians or other victims of corrective rape, but this is not a correct statement.
“We’ll Show You You’re a Woman” describes the violence directed towards LGBT people in South Africa, stating, “Negative public attitudes towards homosexuality go hand in hand with a broader pattern of discrimination, violence, hatred, and extreme prejudice against people known or assumed to be lesbian, gay, and transgender, or those who violate gender and sexual norms in appearance or conduct (such as women playing soccer, dressing in a masculine manner, and refusing to date men).” It goes on to say, “Much of the recent media coverage of violence against lesbians and transgender men has been characterized by a focus on “corrective rape,” a phenomenon in which men rape people they presume or know to be lesbians in order to “convert” them to heterosexuality.”
The Wikipedia article on corrective rape in South Africa states that, “A study conducted by OUT LGBT Well-being and the University of South Africa Centre for Applied Psychology (UCAP) showed that “the percentage of black gay men who said they have experienced corrective rape matched that of the black lesbians who partook in the study”.”
It is not only lesbians, but also bisexual women, transgender men, gay men, and gender non-conforming people in South Africa who experience corrective rape. This is not in any way meant to minimize the horror of the epidemic or shift attention away from lesbians, but other victims, including asexuals, deserve attention as well. Do not silence or speak over victims of rape by policing their language.
“Aces are valid, they’re just not queer/LGBTQ”
You cannot in one breath say “Asexuals are valid” and in the next deny their experiences. Spend five minutes in the community and you will see testimony after testimony from aces describing their abuse, their sexual assault(s), the countless times people have called them confused, broken, wrong, mentally ill, inhuman, sinful, and how these experiences have left them feeling hopeless, alone, alienated, subhuman, depressed, and suicidal. Almost every asexual out there will tell you a story of how their orientation has caused them pain and struggle, and you can’t call them valid while at the same time calling these experiences invalid and nonexistent.
“Aces take resources from other LGBTQ who need them”
I’ve seen some pretty wild claims about this one, insisting that asexuals “steal” things such as scholarships, beds at homeless shelters, food and space at pride events, suicide hotlines, and so on, yet I have never seen any actual proof that any “stealing” has ever taken place. For one thing, I thought “you’ll never get kicked out or fired for being ace”, “no one is suicidal because they’re asexual”, so why would you think aces need these resources? Either we don’t need them or we don’t use them, you can’t have it both ways.
For another, how heartless do you have to be to tell asexuals that they can’t use suicide hotlines? Do you realize that you’re saying that asexuals should be denied life-saving services? That, in essence, asexuals are suicidal due to their orientation, but you think they’re not “queer enough” so they deserve to die? Because that is the logical progression of refusing someone suicide prevention, and that’s the message aces receive when you tell them they are “stealing” suicide prevention.
Lastly, do you not realize we are alsoPROVIDING resources? We are bringing bodies and minds to the community, we are here to be voices, to volunteer, to bring encouragement, information, and support. We earn our keep. You just have to admit that you don’t WANT us here.
(Thanks to @livebloggingmydescentintomadness for these)
My own contribution:
Living in a world where the media is overflowing with sexual imagery and where society constantly puts value on sexual intercourse, virginity, and related topics – who can forget the phrase ‘sex sells’? – men and women who do not experience sexual attraction (the definition of asexuality) and who are sex-repulsed or masturbation-repulsed (as many asexuals, myself included, are) feel alienated and ‘broken’. We also face erasure in terms of representation, being either grossly underrepresented or represented as cold, harsh, and ‘synonymous with celibate’ people. Let’s not forget erasure from LGBT spaces – I have many times been told that asexuals do not belong in the acronym or in “our spaces”, even though asexuals have the capacity to be homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, etc, as well as transgender or nonbinary. And, if we don’t belong in LGBT spaces, and we clearly aren’t heterosexual, what do we belong? Nowhere, it seems. Of course, the argument also drifts to “asexuals don’t experience oppression”, which is false.
Also, I didn’t see it mentioned on here but so many asexual people i know have this story:
“My partner is using their sexual needs to guilt, shame, coerce, or manipulate me into sex or sexual acts I didn’t want / straight up forced me / accused me of abuse for not wanting sex”
and/or “my partner cheated on me and told me I should have expected it, that I deserved it, or that they couldn’t help themselves”
I reblogged this like a year and a half ago and IT CONTINUES!?
ITS BACK OMG
Omg it’s here!
THIS CUTE I WANNA CONTINUE IT
Ok I tried because this is so cute
OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDFFDFF
IT GOT EVEN BETTER OMG
This has to be the most adorable thing I’ve seen today.
This gave me so many happy and cute feels
every time this circles back there’s always more, I love you all
this warms my heart on so many levels ❤
ITS BACK
I’m just sitting here
Hitting my knee
Squealing and smiling omfg
this is now a tumblr web comic, who knows when the next upate is, all we know is its gonna be fucking amazing when it happens
best thing ever
Traditional style (Sorry the picture quality is really bad) but here is my (super short) update!!
(The text says : Movie? I won’t be late!)
my contribution!
This is beautiful
Love it
OMG I REMEMBER THIS!!! AND THIS IS SO LONG NOW AND SO ADORABLE!!! I LOVE ALL THE DIFFERENT ART STYLES!!
I love this so much. For multiple reasons. One all of the different art styles. Two I have been seen this post around Tumblr ever since I first came here. And three ever since I first came it’s been getting longer and better ever cents!
This is some cute shit
This has been here since the start of my blog and it’s one of my favourite posts that I had on my dash and it still is
Even after all this time I’m so invested in this
I
I AM SPEECHLESS
I love this so much😭😭😭
thiS IS THE ABSOLUTE MOST ADORABLE THING EVER XD
THIS IS SO CUTE I’M ACTUALLY SCREAMING
I’M SCREAMING
I’m crying and dying and screaming how is this possible
GOD I’M LITERALLY SO SORRY TO BOTHER ALL OF YOU GUYS BUT YOUR ART STYLES ARE NOTORIOUSLY AMAZING AND IF ANY ONE OF YOU WERE ABLE TO MAKE A CONTINUATION OF THIS I WOULD DIE HAPPY
It’s gotten so fashionable on tumblr to hate on The Beatles but who else is going to eat rotten wood and contribute to soil fertility in complex forest ecosystems?
This is very funny, but can we also just talk about the strange irony that lies behind The Beatles pushback? Because it mostly has to do with sticking it to obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon that makes them superior to the populace at large, especially when it comes to all those foolish young women who only listen to popular, music-industry garbage. Except, they’re totally unaware of the fact that when the Beatles first became popular, they were massively reviled by…obnoxious, self-important men who believed their appreciation for folk music made them superior to the populace at large, especially when it came to all the silly teenage girls who only listened to popular, music-industry garbage, and acted like fools screaming from their stupid Beatlemania obsession.
Like, the Beatles have effectively been put on a pedestal but the same people who hated them for being teen girl music in the early 60s, and it’s weird AF.
They literally changed the relationship of British culture to the working class and class markers such as accents. They were innovative and had an incredible understanding of music, despite not having any formal training of musical education, which set a new standard for what was expected of modern musicians and opened doors for others. And while the frustration at four British white dudes becoming the poster boys for a genre invented by black people is absolutely legit, that frustration is more about the culture that posted them as such. They weren’t co-opting, they idolized both Elvis and who HE took from, without an understanding of race relations in the U.S. or what it even meant that Elvis rose to success on the backs of men who never got recognition. There’s a story about Paul McCartney, and how he was floored to see a black woman forcibly removed from a whites-only space when they were on tour in the U.S. His reaction? The band refused to play any venues if they were segregated, forcing Southern venues to sell integrated seats.
I have a lot of feelings about the Beatles, and I usually let posts on this site go by when they throw vitriol at them, because I don’t have the energy. Yes, John Lennon was abusive. He also actively worked on changing, not just his behavior, but his relationship to the world, his relationships, and to fix the core of the problem, not just the symptoms. Which is ultimately what we want from our abusers, isn’t it? Being publicly shamed, taking them down a peg, getting revenge on them – it’s satisfying, but ultimately unfulfilling and perpetuating the cycle they began. To see them change, work on themselves, challenge themselves – that leads us to feeling safer. Which is all we wanted in the first place.
Every shitty opinion of the Beatles I’ve heard seems to be a reaction to how other people see them, not the band itself. Fine, you don’t like their music, but if that’s an integral part of your identity, that it somehow makes you cooler or better than others, then you’re trying too hard and you’re just kind of annoying. I think Oasis is garbage but I don’t shove it in people’s faces who love them, because it’s a subjective argument and all I’ll do is make people feel shitty, which, why would I want to do that? You can think the Beatles overrated, but the gazillion bands you DO like who were inspired them probably disagree with you. You can see them as privileged white men, but in their own time and place that context isn’t what it is now.
But to be perfectly honest, the thing that bothers the most about Beatles lore is the bullshit about Yoko Ono breaking the band up. George Harrison was bailing and wandering off on his own for months at a time way before she and Lennon started dating, and the biggest turning point for the band was when – after they had been fighting for weeks – they took a two week vacation during which McCartney hired his father in law as the band’s new manager, even though everyone else had told him a dozen times they don’t want this guy as their manager. And within like ten seconds the guy sold off half the band’s catalogue, which is how Michael Jackson eventually ended up with all their songs (and left them all to McCartney in his will). The band broke up because they started playing together as kids and now they were 30, and also because Paul was kind of a dick. And Yoko Ono got blamed for it, because she was too avant-garde for the mainstream, she was too Asian and female without trying to look like Brigitte Bardot, and she was too present alongside John Lennon when people wanted him to be the person they projected onto him. She challenged his abusive tendencies and pushed him away when she wanted to, and helped him and empathized with his pain, which is an admirable act of kindness, admirable only because she maintained boundaries for her safety and well-being. She challenged him to be a social activist and helped him educate himself, and even though he fell short sometimes, he literally strengthened important social movements. The FBI didn’t keep a file on him because they thought he was helping their white supremacist agenda in the 70s. People still hate on Yoko, still make jokes about her, the same “obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon” as tikkun put it, without realizing that most of his work that they love was inspired by and helped along by her.
And finally, a sidebar: George Harrison put on the first charity aid concert, not only making them a thing, but also establishing a standard that celebrity visibility could and should be used to bring attention and support to issues like famine. And the did it by listening – not by barging ahead and deciding that he knew best what was needed, but by listening and acting based on learning from someone close to the problem.
I had never heard that story about the Beatles and segregation before, despite having done some reading about both the Beatles and the Civil Rights Movement, so I followed up on it–and, I’m pleased to say, it’s true.
Here’s a news article describing a primary source (a performance contract) that stipulates that they will not perform for a segregated audience. The particular contract discussed is for a concert in California, where segregation was unlikely to be an issue, which suggests that they chose to make this requirement part of the standard language of their contracts.
The first article also mentions that the issue of segregation arose with a concert they gave in Florida the previous year, which led me to this article about an interview they gave at the time of the Florida concert. A quote by George Harrison suggests that their refusal to play segregated venues was well-known, and indicates that they also objected to being booked into a whites-only hotel (though they did not say publicly that that was why they ended up staying elsewhere).
And here’s a piece by a black fan who attended the Florida show–the first time she interacted with whites in a place of public accommodation.
Finally, this all happened in 1964-65, when segregation was a hotly-debated issue, and the Beatles were merely a somewhat popular musical group, not the icons they would later become.
a due south thought to develop: today while despairing of my attempts to rhyme (my current paid work involves rhyming and i am bad at it) i was watching some old due south interviews/documentaries on youtube, and… paul gross talks a lot about the show as a modern fable, and he stresses that it’s obviously not realist, or meant to be taken literally as something that could happen. which is fine; i think realism is an overrated mode anyway.
it does make me think a bit of they eat horses, don’t they? – and this bit of dialogue:
RAY: You know what really annoys me? Why am I covered in crud and you look like you just got back from a hand laundry? FRASER: I don’t know. I’ve always been this way.
and the way that fraser is this total nexus of weirdness. he’s a reality-warper; he’s a supernatural being dropped into a world that operates on a different level of reality. sarah monette talks about pararealism vs contrarealism and i don’t really understand the terminology, which is a shame – i think the levels of reality at which characters operate is a key thing at play here, and throughout the show.
and also, if it’s a fable – the show has lots of morals that it’s illustrating, and sometimes they’re tough and sometimes they contradict each other, which is in part why i think it endures. but why else? well, i think the strange ending – the strange varieties of ending. the show neither ends at a point where we can imagine all of the characters happily continuing their lives in the same manner, nor in such a way where we understand easily what the ultimate “moral” or message is. it’s a kind of mystical, mysterious thing – except that i guess we know it’s about change, and love, and accepting that things always change and end.
there’s also something about fraser as this archetypal stranger-comes-to-town figure, a magical kind of fish out of water… who changes everyone he comes into contact with. this is both a key part of how fraser operates – he makes everybody better – but it’s also true about how the show ends. we see all these characters who gain something that they originally lacked (except, i guess, harding welsh, who was pretty satisfied at the start)… and you don’t have to like where the characters end up to see the weird epilogue as a kind of odd series of wish fulfillments or characters that have somehow been mystically changed, that have been through trials and come out – with some kind of reward. whether or not you think they work particularly well as rewards, i think that’s how they’re supposed to function. they’re silly because they’re magical. if they were less silly, it would be less clear.
and then, because this is me, we get to the ending for fraser himself. fraser starts the show as a lone stranger in a strange place – and he ends it as a partner, acting as a guide to his partner, in a familiar place which is made strange through another’s eyes. the roles are reversed. and while fraser started out alone, he was never unsure of the place around him, the place he wanted to be. in a way his story is about personal growth/learning from other people in order that he can go back. and he learns and changes in different ways throughout the show – he learns how to be a friend, how to work with other people… and in the arc with ray kowalski, he learns about partnership and trust. so fraser, who starts out alone, ends with a partner. he’s back where he started physically, geographically, but everything has changed personally.
whereas ray kowalski’s story is about being unsure of himself and everything around him, the stuff that makes up his life. he’s a loner, his identity has been pinned to a lot of signifiers that have changed, that have been pulled out from under him. when we meet him, he’s lost. and in only the second episode he’s in, he has the big… symbolic rebirth moment. but he also can’t help going back; there are multiple episodes where he fixes mistakes he made in the past or has to confront what he can’t fix and has to move on from. chicago is a place full of baggage for ray; in orde to move forward, we get the sense that he might have to go away, or everything will keep getting dredged back up.
so what does he gain from his trial by fire, from working with fraser, the reality-warper? he gains a partner, and a place with him – a place in his life, but also a diferent place, a different journey – physically, and geographically, as well as emotionally. this is part of what i think the metaphor of their search for the hand is about; it’s about purpose and rebirth as well as adventure.
I’d be curious to know what you thought of the originally scripted ending in which Fraser returns alone to the north? (http://lipstickcat.livejournal.com/446602.html, though the pics have died, damn. I have ‘em somewhere)
omg so i have seen mention of a different scripted ending existing before, but i didn’t realise that fraser went BACK HOME ALONE. ok so the ending with fraser & ray kowalski going off together is very important to me, granted, and the images aren’t there so i haven’t read how it plays out, but just the idea of it severely hurts my feelings.
i guess to me the idea of having it end with fraser and other characters almost back where they started totally changes the nature of the show – which to me is about a kind of mystical transformation through closeness with others. through love and trust, i guess.
. and also i like thinking about the show through this angle so i find it interesting that this ending was written but then changed… that they thought of leaving fraser relatively untouched by his adventures in chicago, but decided against that.
anyway this is just based on your comment above & the discussion at the lj post – not the script. if you do find the images, please send them my way! i would love to have my feelings further hurt by this.
(Pics from lipstickcat’s LJ, borrowed only to save them from oblivion)
So these took some finding – and I don’t want to re-read them because it makes me sad to think of Fraser having learned nothing/thrown away whatever he *has* learned about partnership and the value of cooperation and the inherent problems of isolationism. (And treating RayK and RayV equally badly isn’t a plus point, imo). I’d love to know at what point the ending was changed and by whom.
This straight guy, who we’ll call Mike, has been roommates with Alex for a year. When Alex told Mike he was gay, he was absolutely fine with it. But then when Alex started to bring guys home…he started getting annoyed, resentful, disgusted.
Posting on Reddit, he said: ‘First things first, let me say that I’ve never thought of myself as being discriminatory before. I had a gay friend in high school and we made it through some tough times together, I never felt weird about him dating a guy. So all of this is coming out of nowhere.
‘”Alex” has been my roommate for one year, and I pretty much knew upfront about him being gay. At some point we became friendly enough with each other that we could even joke about it, as in, sometimes he’ll pretend to flirt with me and I’ll pretend to flirt back. I’m straight and he knows that, but I don’t feel threatened by him flirting with me and he says most straight guys do.
‘The problems started because of this: Alex brings guys home sometimes. At the start I thought I was okay with it, since it’s really not my business who he sleeps with. He’s usually discreet enough about it that I don’t see/hear anything I wouldn’t want to see/hear from anyone else, but for some reason I’ve started feeling weird if I even see him with other guys.
‘I don’t know when it started but one time that really sticks out to me is when I came home and saw him and some guy making out on the couch. I don’t know how to describe what it was like to see that, except that for a moment I felt so bad I thought I was going to throw up. Alex was embarrassed (he didn’t think I’d be back for a while), but I told him it was okay since I was embarrassed too.
‘I felt bad for being as disgusted as I was, since there’s NO good reason for me to have a reaction like that. I thought maybe they just caught me by surprise and that’s why I reacted so strongly, but it turned out it wasn’t a one-time thing. After that, every time he has a guy over (not that often, but every once in a while) I just start feeling like shit and wishing that guy would leave, and I can’t stop thinking about what these guys might have done to him even though I don’t want to imagine that. It makes me really uncomfortable and grossed out. And these are just guys he fools around with, I don’t know what I’d do if he ends up getting an actual boyfriend.
‘Alex has started to notice and it’s affecting our friendship. The other day I came home right when some guy was about to leave, and the guy tried to be polite to me but I ended up being rude to him (don’t remember what I said, but it was really obvious I was pissed). When the guy left, Alex asked me why I was being an asshole. I didn’t know what to say, but then he asked if I had a problem with him sleeping with other guys. I said no. For some reason that pissed him off more and he said I can’t complain since I used to bring my fuckbuddy over and he was forced to see me being affectionate with her sometimes. (I was in an FWB situation with a girl in the early days of me and Alex living together, but I broke it off after a few months and I haven’t done anything with anyone since.) I agreed with him and told him I was just having a bad day and I don’t care who he sleeps with, but he looked more upset and told me he’s going to a friend’s place to cool off. I said okay. When he was leaving for some reason he casually said, “and you’ll be okay if I sleep with him as long as I do at his place and not ours, right?” Or something like that. I told him it’s none of my business what he does at someone else’s place, but when he said that I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
‘He didn’t show up later that night even though he was supposed to hang out with me and my sister. He’s never blown me off before and it made me feel like shit, but part of it was my fault since I made him feel like I was judging him for sleeping with guys. Now he’s acting like nothing happened but I’m worried I might mess things up if it happens again. I want to keep him as a friend, but he’d be hurt if he knew that whenever I think about him with other guys it disgusts me.
‘How do I deal with this? I’ve never been homophobic but I’ve suddenly developed some kind of homophobia where just the idea of my roommate’s sex life makes me uncomfortable. And I don’t react like this to other gay people either, it’s just Alex. I don’t know if this means I’m only okay with gay people as long as I’m not living with them or what. Does anyone else have experience with this? I want to get over myself and stop whatever this is, but if I can’t I’m going to have to leave since the last thing I want to do is hurt Alex, and if I stay here and keep automatically judging him for his lifestyle that’s what’s going to happen.
‘tl;dr: Roommate is gay, I am not but I thought I was okay with him being gay until I realised I feel crappy when I see him with other guys and it’s started to affect our friendship. How to deal with this/stop being such a dick?’
One Redditor asked: ‘Are you sure that weird feeling isn’t jealousy…? i mean, this only seems to revolve around Alex specifically.’
And Mike responded: ‘I thought about that, but I don’t know what I’m meant to be jealous of. He definitely has a more active sex life than I do, but reacting like this to something like that seems really strange and irrational.’
The Redditor responded: ‘Yeah i thought maybe you don’t like seeing Alex with other people because you want his attention to yourself?’
‘The day I made the post, I met up with my sister Laura [24F] and I showed her the post. She read the whole thing and called me an oblivious walnut and said it sounds like I have a crush on Alex. The same conclusion some of you came to in the original post.
‘Anyway, she talked me through it and we confirmed I’m not as straight as I thought I was. She also pointed out something in my original post, where I said the more I tried to reassure him I didn’t mind who he slept with, the more he got upset. Also: how he brought my old FWB situation into it. I just thought he was understandably mad with me for being an asshole, but Laura thought it sounded like maybe Alex wanted me to be jealous? We moved on from that topic pretty quickly, though, since I couldn’t really handle the implications of that when I’d JUST started to understand that I like this guy.
‘The next few days were mostly me sitting on my ass trying to wrap my head around everything. I was scared of messing up our friendship and losing him, but I was even more scared that I might just let this pass without saying anything and then he gets a boyfriend and I have to see him with another guy…etc. Because if that happened I would probably have to end it anyway, since as we’ve established, I’m not great at dealing with him being with other guys.
‘Probably could have planned it better, but I told him. Right after a Tarantino marathon, if anyone’s interested, since nothing says romance like graphic violence. I told him I’ve been such a dick because I was jealous. I don’t think he got what I was getting at because he just laughed a little and said I didn’t have to be jealous since it wasn’t like I’d have any trouble finding people to sleep with me. No clue how I explained, it’s a blur. Luckily he saw how nervous I was so he knew I was serious.
‘We talked. Long story short: all that flirting was real, but Alex didn’t have any hope of it going further because of me being an oblivious “straight” guy. So he’s been trying to get over me. He laughed really hard when I told him about how I mistook my jealousy for homophobia, and he teased me by saying he’d never expected me to be the jealous type. Then again, we both ended up laughing a lot of out of nervousness and awkwardness. I’ve never seen him like that before since he’s usually pretty confident. In the end we agreed to maybe try something out, and we kissed. Never kissed anyone with a beard before, so…interesting experience, but also really good. (Plot twist: it turns out I don’t have any problem with Alex kissing guys if it’s me he’s kissing.)
‘Since then we’ve kind of been easing into the whole dating thing, I guess? I know this place is wary about roommate relationships and I get why, but it’s been great so far. We had our first proper date last weekend and it was incredible, though a bit weird since we’ve done that a thousand times already and this time there was a new context. At home we still do our normal thing, but sometimes we get distracted. Last night I almost burned dinner because I had to kiss him and we got kind of carried away, haha. We’re taking the whole sex thing slow though since I’ve never done anything with another guy before.
‘I’m a little worried about coming out to my family and my other friends, especially since this is almost as new for me as it would be for them. My parents are very openminded and my mom especially loves Alex. But I have some more conservative family members on my dad’s side, and I can already imagine them blaming Alex for turning me gay. They can also be pretty racist (Laura’s boyfriend is Latino so she knows all about that) and Alex is mixed. It’s something to think about in the longterm, I guess. Alex has said he doesn’t expect me to jump out of the closet right away, but if we end up calling ourselves a couple then I’m not going to keep him a secret or anything.
‘So…we’re trying. And I am not a homophobe, and nobody needed therapy. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I was this happy, and I never would have expected this when I made that first post. It’s a good thing some of you picked up on the actual problem and tried to get it through to me despite me being an oblivious walnut, so…thanks, guys.’
Funniest self-realization in the world? ‘Plot twist: it turns out I don’t have any problem with Alex kissing guys if it’s me he’s kissing.’
A smattering of memes making fun of student athletes
Finishing song lyrics and that picture of Meryl Streep shouting
“yeah can I get a fucking uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
“some people??? [do things]??? to cope?????”
The shutdown of Club Penguin
Tumblr’s April Fool’s joke this year was just a horse tamogatchi and people seemed to genuinely enjoy it
A sudden call to arms to make McDonalds bring back some sort of Szechuan dipping sauce
“Come visit the Jungle we’ve got [weird names for stuff]” powerpoint slide thing
Those ditty.it videos where you type in a phrase and a robot voice sings it to you
“Bitch I lived”
? Do fidget spinners count as a meme?
Editing panels from Erica Moen comics (e.g. the infamous Cuck Comic)
“In case you haven’t noticed, i’m WEIRD. I’m a weirdo. i don’t fit in. and I don’t WANT to fit in. Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? That’s weird.”
Bone-hurting juice
“I confessed to my crush through a Spotify playlist”
Wendy’s mascot as a smug anime girl
Fyre Festival
thanks! I hate it
Okay we’re literally FIVE WHOLE MONTHS into 2017 and I still see so much talk about vore on my dash. Seriously? Why y’all gotta be so fixated on vore? It’s ruining my health and needs to end
“thrussy”
.
okay nvm I preferred the vore
Regular People vs. Creative People
Bill Wurtz back at it again with the history of the world
Mocking people with the Spongebob chicken image
“[X] is dead and replaced with a lookalike: a conspiracy thread” (more of a twitter thing)
mood & big mood
“sir you’ve been in a coma for [X] years”
“do you take constructive criticism on your posts”
respecting women
a post stopping mid-sentence and somebody else comments “[X] killed them before they finished”
cracking open a cold one with the boys….or something
BEGONE, THOT
covfefe
Saying you love [X] by saying “I’m love [X]”
I keep seeing this CGI anime girl with a pink bow and a pink streak in her hair and I have no idea who she is
The Babadook as a gay icon
“This Post Can Be Reblogged by Anyone” (also, “[X] do not interact”)
A cat photo with a caption in Russian, which someone else then plugs into Google Translate
“The floor is [X]”
Nothing but respect for MY president
Some sort of Woody the Cowboy rp collective that takes over old accounts of toxic people??
Tumblr fucking things up with their “““Safe Mode”””
“How to Talk to Short People” comic but it’s been altered
Crash Bandicoot goes “WWOOOWOWOWOOWO”
“Swear Jar” vs. “[X] Jar” that has more coins in it
“she protec but she also attac”
Powder that makes you say [X]
A bunch of memes heralding the sudden revival of Owl City’s “Fireflies” (most notably the ‘you would not believe your [X]’ meme)
A 3×3 grid of (usually anime) characters with a “thank you” message written over them except the one in the middle usually says “not you”
“Sometimes…things that are expensive…are worse”
oh worm?
Something about……piss in jello….?
just the phrase “piss yourself” in general has become very popular
Using cutesy language like “hewwo”
Pennywise in the sewer
Textposts made with a weird cursive font (I still don’t know how to do that)
I know the “Who would win?” meme predates 2017 but an honorable mention to its revival
Not really a meme but everyone banding together to combat the hurricanes/other freakish natural disasters was so uplifting
that guy who’s with his girlfriend but ogling the girl in the foreground
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty
While we’re on it, turns out the whole Szechuan thing was a Rick & Morty stunt and it didn’t end nicely
“then perish”
Neo Yokio
Overlaying a picture of a monkey getting its hair cut on photos
Mario and Luigi walking into places?
that’s pussy, babe!
kin drama
Edits of the Griffin McElroy Roundabout vine (“I don’t understand [X] and at this point I’m too afraid to ask”)
The overwhelming urge to eat detergent pods
Screaming seagull
“My bike got stolen recently. I was pretty bummed about it“
incels and chads
“omae wa mou shindeiru”/ “I diagnose you with dead“
haiku bot
People reacting to outrageous comments in a double-take-style “you WHAT”
Anderson Cooper saving a boy in Haiti during a shooting. A slab of concrete was dropped of the boys head.
Anderson fucking Cooper, everyone.
Some journalists like to be strictly observers. they don’t intervene, they don’t participate. they just document what they see, even if what they see is terrible. But the way I see it, journalists don’t exist in a vacuum. They are human beings, living and working in a very human environment. And that humanity is essential in relating to their stories. When you lose your humanity, you lose any kind of journalistic integrity you have left.
#nevernotreblog
this is the guy who found out one of his ancestors was killed by one of his slaves and was like “he had it coming”
Every now and then I run across this post, and every time I do, I feel the need to say something, especially since @flowers-without-reason felt the need to speak on behalf of a massive career field that he/she is not part of.
It’s really easy as a bystander to pass judgment on how/why journalists do things. I will not presume to speak on behalf of all journalists, but I was one and I can explain the “strictly observer” thing from at least one perspective.
You see, any time you are not actively observing – ie, taking photos/videos/recording observations – you are missing the story. When you miss the story, you miss the opportunity to tell the story.
Since we live in the digital age, it’s easy to forget that 1) we didn’t always have the ability to record, transmit, and view information across the globe instantaneously, and 2) not everyone has access to that utility now.
In 1992, James Nachtwey took this photo:
Because he took this photo (among the other equally horrifying and heartbreaking images he brought back from Somalia) and it was published to a large Western audience in the New York Times, The Red Cross received the largest influx of donor aid since WWII, and they were able to save 1.5 million people. Representatives from The Red Cross have directly cited the Nachtwey photos as inspiring that flood of help.
These photos helped save more than a million lives.
It is easy as a bystander – someone who isn’t a journalist, who probably hasn’t been in a war or famine zone – to make sweeping judgments about what journalists should or shouldn’t be doing.
Like this photo from the Sudan by Kevin Carter:
Hundreds of people contacted the paper questioning whether the little girl had survived to which the paper responded through an unusual editor’s note saying that the girl garnered enough strength to walk away from the vulture but her ultimate fate was not known. It was a rule for the journalists in Sudan not to touch victims of the famine, to avoid the risk of transmitting diseases. Carter though came under a lot of criticism for not assisting the girl. The St. Petersburg Times wrote this about him: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”
He chased the vulture away after taking this photo. Note that journalists in the Sudan were not supposed to touch the famine victims to avoid the risk of transmitting disease.
You’ll be pleased to know he committed suicide in 1994, shortly after winning a Pulitzer for this photo, leaving behind a note that talked about the horrors he saw and photographed.
“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”
Now that we just blissfully assume everyone has both a smartphone and access to unrestricted internet, I guess it’s safe to feel critical of the people still putting themselves in the trenches to tell these stories.
These people told stories, and they are continuing to tell stories, that need to be told. We talk about silencing and rewriting history, then criticize the people trying to document it.
When people talk about immigration and refugees, you can show them this picture of the actual human beings sent to their deaths when we turned away the St Louis:
If you want to talk about the violent militarization of law enforcement, you can show someone this photo from the Kent State shootings:
Or maybe the horrific futility of war:
Or maybe the impossible way we connect with each other:
Or you want to showcase dignity:
And bravery:
I won’t disagree that “when you lose your humanity, you lose your journalistic integrity,” but I will disagree that intervention is a key component to maintaining journalistic integrity.
Journalistic integrity is telling an authentic story.
The social justice corner of Tumblr often discusses what one person can do to make a difference in the world, yet posts like this get 700,000+ reblogs crapping all over one of those things a single person can do to make a difference.
Net neutrality in the US is on the chopping block and states are debating the ethics of lying in history text books. I’d dare say that the journalists who are out there documenting the world as it exists are doing a job that is as important today as it was in WWII when a single photo from Iwo Jima helped turn the tide of the Pacific campaign.
We’re in a time and place where filming police officers in public is an arrestable offense. So yeah, documenting is an act of intervention and resistance. It’s you saying, “I am not going to let anything stop me from telling the truth.”
Dairy industry is as evil as meat. No less harm for animals. Does it look natural that calf can’t drink milk so you can taste your piece of cheese?
GO VEGAN.
WRONG
That calf is wearing a nose tag. Nose tags are put on calves so that they are able to stay with their mothers longer, but are unable to nurse. They don’t NEED to nurse as they get older, they just get greedier and pushier and will bash up the cow’s udder and bruise it with their noses.
This nose-tag is so that calves can stay with their mothers, their mothers can remain pain-free and healthy, and nobody is stressed.
Educate yourselves you ignorant fucking tarts.
…really? You don’t think it might have anything to do with the milk being stolen for human consumption? At all? Not even a tiny bit?
Militant vegans can fuck right off
Based on fur texture and face shape, that calf is at least six months old, probably older. Calves can survive without actual cow milk even at three months, though older is better (calves weaned that early are usually fed a sort of formula for another couple months).
Also, nose tags like that one don’t go through the cow’s septum. They basically work like those fake septum rings for humans.
In addition to weaning the calves, another use for nose tags is protecting non-lactating cows. Sometimes weanlings or even adult cows will suck on themselves or other non-lactating cows; this can cause internal teat scarring bad enough to prevent that teat or teats from ever working. I’ve seen this happen, and it’s ugly, probably at least somewhat painful, and, if bad enough, would lead to the cow being slaughtered at a very young age because she can’t produce milk, has chronic mastitis, and/or can’t be milked with automatic milking equipment. So, nose tags actually prevent animal cruelty.
Also, calves will suck on anything remotely oblong (and attempt to eat literally anything), even if they are being adequately fed or overfed. Often they will suck on other calves’ ears, and, since ears are longer than teats and cows have upper as well as lower teeth in the back of their mouths, many calves get bites on their ears, which often become severely infected. I’m not sure if nose tags would work there, because physics—a non-toxic but bad-tasting ear paint would be better—but yeah, letting a calf put anything it wants in its mouth is not always a good idea.
reblogging for educational purposes.
reblogging for people being schooled
This was the funniest argument about false cruelty I have read.. Thank you.
I love this for 2 reasons: Most people don’t realize that in farming areas agriculture/horticulture/animal husbandry is part of public school education from as early on as 7th grade. (Though I remember dissecting cow eyes in 4th grade science sooo) I assure you fifteen year old farm kids know more about what constitutes animal cruelty in farms than thirty year old vegans with, or without an agenda.
Also that if you really want good quality beef/pork/eggs/milk/etc you don’t abuse your animals. Ever. That’s not the point and if you want to make any kind of money off your career choice, you are going to treat those creatures better than you treat yourself. You’ll call a vet five times for an infection in your herd before you visit the hospital for a missing foot on your own leg.
So. Yeah. Watch out, because we’re getting internet access these days. We’re on tumblr too.
P.S. The immigrant workers farming your supermarket produce have no health care or legal protection, and the Bolivians farming your 365 Organic Quinoa can’t afford to eat it. But PLEASE won’t someone think of the poor baby cows who won’t get off the tit?!
Also this is a LOT nicer than what mother cows do to calves that won’t be weaned. You know what mother cows do to calves that won’t wean? kick them in the head. Now I don’t know about vegans, but I’d rather have a nose tag that discouraged me from injuring my mother (because calves that don’t wean tend to chew on udders and make mother cows bleed) rather than being kicked in the head. Source: I grew up on a fucking cattle ranch. I have seen chickens skeletonize a mouse I KNOW SHIT.
“I have seen chickens skeletonize a mouse I KNOW SHIT.”
I’m sorry, what? What??? WHAT??? you can’t just leave it there please explain @thehornedwitch
Happy to explain! See, chickens are omnivorous. They eat bugs, plants, and meatstuffs. Y’know how crows and ravens and things eat meat? Well, chickens too. Ours had a particular fondness for ham when someone accidentally put it into the bucket of good scraps we set aside for the chickens. A bucket we tried to keep as meat-free as possible, because few things are more terrifying than a chicken looking you in the eyes as it scarfs down ham. Anyway, back to the mouse. One day i was doing Chicken Chores, like gathering eggs, putting out grain, emptying the bucket of greens, etc, when a mouse runs across the pen. All at once, eight or so chickens stop dead, look at it, and SWARM. Now I’m six at this point in time and developing a healthy fear of chickens, and so do nothing. By the time the chickens are done, all that is left of the mouse is its bones. I left the chicken pen very, very quickly. Chickens crave meat. They were dinosaurs. They did not forget that they were dinosaurs. They will also cannibalize each other with reckless abandon. Sometimes we just had to remove one chicken to its own private pen away from the others because no matter what we did, that specific one always tried to eat the other chickens. We had one that really liked other chicken’s eyes. Bear in mind, our pens ensured each chicken had about five to six square feet all its own if you managed to space every chicken out evenly, we never locked them in teensy pen things, and fed them LOTS. These chickens just really, really wanted to maim. Chickens that are not Buff Orpingtons are the devil. Buff Orpingtons are sweethearts. If you must have chickens, have that kind. And never get Guineas. Guineas are SATAN INCARNATE. THEY SMELL FEAR.
Holy shit, I dont think I’ll ever use chicken as an insult again.
Holy Shit, same here that is terrifying
Will I’m using it as a compliment
I love farm animals.
“Chickens crave meat. They were dinosaurs. They did not forget that they were dinosaurs.”
If you’ve ever looked a chicken in the eye you know that they don’t just remember; they’re patiently awaiting the day they become dinosaurs again.
I have reblogged this before because watching farmers school vegans is always hilarious, but now we’re into birds, specifically fowl, and I have got stories.
I had to give my turkey an antibiotic injection once upon a time, and she turned the needle puncture into a six inch by three inch hole in her back overnight as she attempted to eat herself because apparently turkeys find themselves to be delicious. She had to spend 3 months duct taped into a tea towel (the bandages underneath cleaned and replaced daily, mind you) until it healed because she would not stop ripping the bandages off to continue consuming herself.
Your chickens strip a mouse to the bone? Mine draw and quarter them and run around with the parts shrieking. My peacocks grab mice, beat them to death on the ground with this insanely fast back and forth head twisting motion, and then swallow them whole. You would not think an entire adult mouse would fit in their face, and you would be wrong.
I knew a guy that used to regularly post photos of the 5-6′ long Copperhead snakes his peafowl would destroy. And I don’t mean kill, I mean destroy. These venomous snakes would get into the pens and the peas would just peck them into oblivion like nbd.
Fowl didn’t just used to be dinosaurs. They are still dinosaurs.
Thankfully they are small dinosaurs
and we can just tape them into tea towels if we have to
BEGGING for a Jurassic Park reboot where farmers run the place instead of brogrammer scientists, and the raptors frequently get scolded and taped into tea towels
Y’all! This post took a crazy turn. Read it all and enjoy the ride!
y’all this post took a crazy turn read it all and enjoy the ride
^Haiku^bot^0.5. I detect haikus with 5-7-5 format. Sometimes I make mistakes. | Who do I read? | Contact | Beep-boop!
For the original ask, requesting the definition of squick, please see this post.
Squick is a fun term that was often used as both a noun and a verb. Either X was one of your squicks, or X squicked you, or squicked you out, or squicked you hard.
It was often used in fic exchanges. They would ask for a list of your squicks so that the gifting author would know not to include any hint of them. It was also used in casual conversation with fandom friends, authors, artists, etc. It could be left in comments, or as a reason you just didn’t read your best fandom friend’s latest fic. “Sorry, bff, you know I love your writing, but you have X tagged at the top, and that just squicks me out.” “Hey, no worries, best reader friend! I totally get it. Give this one a pass, but I’ll send you a note when I post my next one! I promise it will be totally X-free!”
Here’s the thing though. In your example, you explain why X is your squick with Y. But the beauty of squick was that (at least in my experience) no explanation was necessary. Not only was it not necessary, it was rarely asked for. A squick is a squick, and there doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason. In fact, why would you have a rational, bullet-pointed, well-thought-out argument as to why something squicked you out? Very often it’s a visceral reaction, and if you don’t like the thing, you’re likely not going to sit and do deep meditation on why not.
Squicks were respected by fandom. You don’t like the thing, okay, we will tag the thing appropriately, you do not have to read the thing, no judgments on either side. There was no fandom policing, only respect.
And this, I think, is super important, because fandom policing is a problem, especially when it comes to triggers. “Trigger” has become so overused, so all-encompassing, that people feel they have to defend their legitimate triggers. If X triggers you, it triggers you, and you DO NOT need to provide an explanation. But because “trigger” is so often used in place of “squick,” some people feel they have the right to “call out” those who use the word. They want explanations, they want you to tell them what that triggering concept does to you, so they can call bullshit and feel superior. You don’t have to explain either your squicks or your triggers, but using the correct word stops the fandom police from feeling as though they have the right to ask.
Bring “squick” back, people. Don’t devalue triggers, which are horrible, nasty, dangerous things.
the culture of justifying dislike on an ideological/moral basis in part one: chapter one of my novel, Let Me Show You My Issues With Tumblr Fandom. the requirement for ideological purity has become so impossibly strict, and is valued so highly, that tearing the thing you dislike from an ideological standpoint is the quickest way to shut it down. it’s a cheap, disingenuous shortcut that exploits social justice language for personal leverage. it’s not like we were free of wankery and ship wars back in ye olde lj days, god, far from it, but at least the insults we flung at each other were subjective: A is so bad for B and if you can’t see that you’re an idiot!!! B/C OTP!!! (i should also disclaim that we did have moral policing as well, it was just FAR less extensive.) leveraging social justice concepts is an attempt to gain a kind of objective superiority. “they’re a dark ship and i don’t like that” holds little power; “they’re abusive and you support abuse by shipping this” is a trump card to shut down the content you don’t like and the people who fan it. that kind of rhetoric is all over the damn place and it continues to be propagated because it works and it has created a culture from which a variety of problems like the trigger issue explained above consistently arise.
…i would go into further chapters on my novel but i am tired now
As an additional data point, as far as I know the term “squick” comes from the BDSM community, originally. At least that’s where I first encountered it, on BDSM message boards on usenet in the mid-90s – yes, I was on BDSM message boards in the mid-90s; long story. As such, the implicit lack of judgment is important to the meaning of the word; you need a word to mean “I really don’t want to do that, and I don’t want to watch you doing that, but I don’t judge YOU for liking that and I don’t mind if YOU do it … somewhere far away from me.”
I can’t really think of any other words we have for the same concept that aren’t judgmental to some extent. Anything I can think of to try to define “squick” using non-slangy words (disgusting, unpleasant, etc) have a judgy sort of vibe. And we really do need a word to talk about tropes and kinks in the same kind of way we can talk about how you like that ship and I like this ship but that doesn’t make your ship bad.
(Er, ideally we’d be able to talk about ships that way, obviously, in a perfect world … XD)
I was also thinking about how the original ask implies a very modern fannish mindset that’s just … not there, in the original fandom milieu that the squick concept came out of. Not that I’m saying fandom was better in the old days or anything, god no. But trying to explain why you have a squick, or asking someone else why they have theirs, is just not a thing you’d generally do. Squicks are irrational; that’s baked into the meaning of the word. Squicks aren’t something you explain. They just are. I mean, you could obviously try to figure it out, just like you can try to figure out why you have a particular kink, but in both cases, you don’t have to explain or justify it in order for other people to accept it as valid. I don’t need to explain that I like h/c for X and Y reasons in order to request it in an exchange. And squick functions the same way.
All of which makes it a very useful word for talking about fandom concepts without implying that someone else’s tastes make them a bad person!
My tired old soul reflecting on how ideas, concepts, sensibilities, can just disappear.
Squicks are not triggers. I have both: much better as I’m feeling these days, certain visuals can trigger my OCD. Once triggered, my OCD must be handled or it will fucking impair me.
This is so utterly different from encountering a squick. Look, dude, Omegaverse dynamics are a squick of mine. Stumbling over Omegaverse Turkfic will not force me to get my CBT and exposure practice going on. It will make me feel icky and I will stop reading and move on, grateful for all the kind souls who tag their Omegaverse fiction.
Now I live in this world where no one, apparently, should produce content that squicks anyone else, because squick=trigger, and triggering people is immoral. I can’t figure out how we landed here, as fans.
An important distinction like the difference between “squick” and “trigger” should not disappear in the name of protecting people from culture.
Squick is such a great word and really necessary. I have zero triggers, but there’s stuff that, as Judy said, makes me feel icky and I stop reading/watching.
I took a ten year long black out from fandom anything online (life happened) and when I got back, I was so confused. Bring back squick. Use it, own the expirence you want without the need to judge or demand or label what other people want from their expirence.
missionlameturtle 