The world turned toward morning

Why X-Men: First Class has issues

Disclaimer- as anyone subjected to my blog in the last few weeks knows, I love this film. A potentially awkward amount, to be honest. This isn’t about how it’s terrible in all ways or about how you mustn’t like it.

But there are some really problematic elements to it with regards to sexuality, and race, and gender, and all sorts, and they’ve been bugging me. When that happens I figure the best way for me to deal with them is to write them, so here we are.

Now, I don’t think it’s as simple as X-Men being more problematic than most media, though I guess in a way it is. I think it’s actually more that because X-Men willingly surrounds itself in those elements it shows more.

So. Here we go. Fair warning, this is something like two thousand words long, because I am ridiculous.

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Dear: that pro-slash message going around Tumblr

Look, I appreciate the sentiment. Kind of. Sort of. A bit. Maybe. But see, you’re getting something just a wee bit… wrong.

Because some of the sentiment seems to focus on the idea that you guys are slashing because there are only shitty female characters, so you HAVE to slash men to make the relationships interesting.

Um. No.

No, no, no. There are many, many interesting female characters around. Seriously. Sometimes there aren’t as many as there should be; that sucks. Sometimes they have problematic narratives; also sucks. But you know what? This is all suspiciously ‘I like female characters, but not the ones that exist!’

THAT SUCKS.

(Please note I don’t mean you have to like all the ladies, but if you don’t like any, ever… um. Ummmm.)

This is not being pro-queer. This is being sexist, and this is devaluing female characters, and this is focusing on one queer experience: the (almost exclusively cis) male one.

You know, I slash. I slash women though, as well as men. Because I want to see myself, and canon does not give me that, because everyone in 99% of the stuff I see is straight. But see, most slash doesn’t give me that either, because fandom loves its men. So don’t try and claim you’re slashing to give us representation. Okay? You are giving ONE group representation and you are giving it with the stipulation that it’s ‘cause girls suck. Nobody wants that! We just want there to be plenty of everything canon messes up around, right?

And you know what? It does feel like YOU giving US representation, ‘cause see, a hell of a lot of those reblogs seemed like straight girls to me. And you know what, if you are self aware about what you’re doing? I have no problem with someone going:

‘I ship what I am attracted to, and because I’m straight that’s guys only, so I only ship guys!’

But you have to realise… that is what you are doing. Seriously. You are doing it because guys are hot to you. The moment you dress that up as activism, the moment you act like you’re noble, that stops being self-aware fantasy fun and starts being fetishizing. Seriously. It’s possible to be a straight girl who gets off on two guys, and to be respectful. But you need to realise: it’s not them being queer. It’s them being guys you’re caring about.

And if you are straight and you genuinely write slash to up queerness in the media: AWESOME. Thank you! Genuinely! I love finding people willing to do so.

But if you only write one kind… please at least consider why you only want to give one group of us a voice when you do so. And don’t put some of us down to help others because the queer ladies in fandom don’t appreciate it in the slightest, trust me.

Asylum for Shrouk El-Attar

deadlegsonwheels asked:

Hi :) i was wondering if you could help. My friend Shrouk is originally from Egypt.Basically,the people who know her over there have found bout her orientation and it’s illegal for her to be gay and aethiast and not a virgin. If she gets sent back to there she will get alot of abuse and be forced to marry a man and get circumsised and i really dont want her to go and suffer all that.She’s already appealled in court for a visa but it’s been rejected which is why she needs to get as many people as possible to sign the petition.Shroukie is a very wonderful person with high morals and ethics,shes got a very big heart and cares about her friends and is very smart,she is a very passionate inspiring person. She’s got a lovely personality and is very smiley and fun.Please sign the petition and get as many people you know who’d support it to sign it too.Thanks very much xx

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/40922.html

Absolutely! Posting as a text post in case anyone wants to reblog and signal boost. ♥

Listen up, certain allies of us queer folk

Here’s the thing: sometimes, I don’t want you to say a bloody thing about queer issues.

Yeah, seriously. And here we go. Some (only some!) of you will be staring at this right now and getting all outraged. You’ll be thinking how you’re trying to help and how rude it is of me to refuse that help. How if I want help some of the time, why would there be a time I don’t want it? How if queer people are always talking about feeling isolated and othered, it’s hypocritical to turn around and say ‘but right now we want to be alone!’

But you know, there’s more straight and cis people in the world than queer people.

If we took everyone involved and put them in a room and let them all talk at once- you’d hear more straight, cis voices than queer ones. Because if you have more of those people and everyone is always allowed to talk, there comes a point where either a) you can’t hear anyone at all or b) when you can, it’s just going to be more likely to be a straight, cis person.

And let’s face the facts: if you’re a straight, cis ally you are more likely to fuck up on these things than a queer person. And I mean, this isn’t an insult, okay, not really. It’s just something that is and we deal with it. You don’t have the lived experience we do and you don’t have the resources to draw from as a result.

So what happens if you never take a moment to sit down and be quiet is that we have to sit around knowing that everyone is listening to YOU, not US, and that sometimes you’re getting it very, very wrong.

Because you know, we don’t just want support. We want support on our terms. It’s not supposed to be about you. The fact you think you’re helping is not as important as whether we think you’re helping, because how can you know if you’re helping when you don’t have any feedback? I can’t stress enough that these aren’t your experiences, they are ours, and we know what works and what doesn’t.

Not to mention, it is actually easier to be a straight ally and get heard than it is to be queer and be heard a lot of the time. Stick a straight woman on a stage to give a speech about her gay friend, and it’ll be so much more popular than a lesbian standing up to talk about her life… put a cis woman up there and the crowds will love it, but a hush will descend if a trans woman opens her mouth in a lot of mainstream arenas.

So when you complain that if we don’t want to be isolated, if we want support, if we want people to stick up for us, that we are never allowed to say that this isn’t the time to do such things… just consider that it isn’t that we don’t appreciate the sentiment, or the desire to help. It’s just that if we have to choose between being heard and being helped, sometimes the former is more important.

And if you ever, ever pull the ‘I was gonna be an ally but you criticised me so now I won’t bother’ card- you weren’t an ally to start with, because it was never about us, it was about your feelings.

(This can also apply to, say, a queer cis ally to trans* rights for the record. You know, use your common sense in these matters; privilege needs to be checked!)

How adults can fetishize teen queer experiences

For my new followers, because I haven’t done one in a while: this is part of a series I’ve been doing on the way in which being a teenager specifically impacts on being queer.

This was inspired by a particularly trite quote on Tumblr, but really, it’s something I have been aware of for as long as I have known I was queer. I won’t single out the quote in question, but I can sum it up.

“Queer youth today do not need the labels we did! They have moved to a point where things like gender do not matter. Where people like whoever they like. It is everyday for them, and ultimately, they’re proving that the future will be accepting. That the present, for young people, is.”

I hate quotes like these so very, very much.

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Sometimes I really want to be an author

Not because I want to write, you understand. I don’t. I don’t really… want to write for a living. I probably can’t, for the record. It’d never work, I can’t plot or anything like that, I realised this when I was about eight.

But I look at the books on my shelf. And I think, none of them are queer, not really. And too many are male. And why are they almost all white? I could go on and on and on and sometimes I really just want to set fire to that fucking bookshelf, okay, and I want to just go and write my OWN books. When I want to escape I don’t get a good book and sit down to read, I make my own fucking stories up. And then I can’t write well enough to write them down but at least it’s something.

See, I reblogged a quote a day or two ago about how lonely it feels growing up and never seeing yourself in fiction? But another way to see it is that it’s not lonely at all. There’s loads of people around. Millions of them. It’s just that not one of them will talk to you. They don’t look at you. You can’t see them properly. You’re never sure what they’re thinking or doing because you have no idea why people would act like they do because they really are nothing like you. But you have to listen to them anyway.

This is not new to me. I have known people did not care about me because I use the word ‘she’ and not ‘he’ since I was what, nine? I have known I was queer since I was twelve?

I have never in my life wanted to be in the comic industry but I read comics and I want nothing more than to write for them, not because I would enjoy it, because I wouldn’t, but because I think- betcha there’s someone out there who would enjoy it when I wrote a comic where nobody, nobody, was white and straight and cis and able-bodied and male and I could go on and on and on and then, right, I feel really guilty. REALLY guilty. Because I could be doing this. If I wanted to I could go and I could force myself into this, and I am not joking, I could. But… I’m not going to. I mean, I’m going to Uni to study English Language and god knows what I’ll do with that but this won’t be it and how is that OK of me to do?

Because I don’t… get tired. I have friends that get tired, facing all the shit they face. I know why they do. I sometimes almost wish I did. I just get angry. I am angry all the time. I have spent, literally, six months in perpetual anger, I have not had a really perfect day in that long (and remember, this is the girl who systematically isolates herself from her heterosexual/etc. peers). Did you know I shake when I get angry? I have a reaction, physically, akin to nervousness. Six. Months. I don’t get upset because I don’t personalise; don’t take that as a coping mechanism, for what it’s worth, I just get angry impartially because it’s who I am. But what this means is that I just never… stop. Take a break. Stop feeling like I should this and should that.

I don’t even know what this post is but just… I feel better now. So now I guess I can go look for something to be angry at again. But hey, I’m just That Angry One, right? Everyone always has a great laugh at the expense of That Angry One. :|

And one more thing for the list of ‘what feminism can be bad at’…

I’ve been reading a lot of excellent posts on privilege and bigotry in the feminist movement recently- things about, say, the racism that feminism is built on the back of and the subsequent reaction of the womanist movement starting; the transmisogyny and essentialism that pervades it, and people’s unwillingness to admit the problems in that; the ableism; I could go on. All of these are things that need to be discussed so much more than they already are, but, uh, Iiii’m not the one to do it right now, let’s be frank here (so instead I’ll just say that if you hadn’t thought about these things before this moment, go think about and research them now, please, because it is very fucking important).

But one thing that I am qualified to talk about is heterosexism in feminism, and since I’ve seen nothing on that, let’s have a bit of a ramble on, shall we?

Now, this isn’t something that gets brought up a helluva lot and I’ll say right now that it’s not, in my opinion, remotely as big a problem as the issues above. For a start, I’ve never felt my legitimacy as a woman doubted by feminists for being polysexual; I’ve never been told I can’t make my own decisions, as many white women try and tell non white women. But a few things have recently begun to bug me.

• “Political lesbianism”- which is to say, “I’m adopting lesbianism as a political statement because I support women!”. No. No. No no no. OK, here’s the thing. First? The entire concept of political lesbianism tends to systematically equate an attraction to women with lesbianism. This is monosexist, as in, it assumes everyone (or everyone worth mentioning) is monosexual; homo-or-heterosexual. This is BS. Secondly, it assumes that non-binary people do not deserve feminist support (hey, so this actually ties in with that cissexism mentioned above); also BS. But finally? It takes people’s actual experiences- experiences people did not choose, experiences people have to work to survive in many cases, varied experiences, real experiences… and reduces them down to a label you appropriate because you think it’s a totally cool label for you to ~show your support~ as a person who could drop it easily whenever they like if it became inconvenient. THIS IS APPROPRIATING. It is not good feminism. IT IS AWFUL.
• In general, the feminist movement is monosexist. Yeah, I said it. The fact is, the feminist movement is no better than the rest of society, IMO, at realizing it’s not a one-or-the-other(-because-there-are-only-two-right?) matter. Intersectionality still exists. Being reasonable with one social justice cause does not make you flawless.
• Gender presentation. Guys, calling those of us that are less-than-totally-gender-conforming queers ‘better’ or whatever is insulting. Quite aside from the fact that for me personally those two things are not actually linked? It’s condescending for straight feminists to gush about us like we are precious flowers. Likewise, and I haven’t seen this recently but I’ve seen complaints about it: don’t harsh on the femme queer chicks. I fucking mean it. If a girl likes girls and wants to have makeup and a nice skirt and spend an hour on her hair, that does not make her less ~authentic, or ~brave, and you are not a feminist for talking about ‘real’ queerness like you get to decide that doesn’t count.

There is probably more I have missed. I mean, this is nowhere near an exhaustive list. But just in case anyone ever felt like going ‘OK, so the movement has issues with trans* people, and racism, and ableism- but at least we got people that aren’t straight down pat!’, nnnnaaaaah.

The problem with redefinition.

Context: this was written by a bi/polysexual girl.

This is inspired by this post, by the way; I felt I had more to say. I’d also like to say that this post is an excellent one on why many attempts to talk about bisexuality wilfully forget that yes, no matter what you want it to mean now, the original meaning is two.

OK, so the gist of that post is: someone posts a macro complaining about the use of the word ‘bisexual’ to mean ‘polysexual’; i.e. a word that means ‘two’ re: gender to mean ‘many’. It basically points out that this plays into the historical ideas that you have two genders and that’s it; points out that if you claim to be bi with no qualification and attracted to, say, agendered people, you’re being very erasing.

There’s then a hell of a lot of ridiculous complaining by people who seem to identify with the term ‘bi’ as I do (because I do in fact associate with it and have done for a long time; and from the outset, this post is not in any way to tell people that you should not use the word bisexual, associate with it, or that you are bad for doing so!) in the commentary; i.e. using it more to mean two points at the ends of a spectrum? Anyway, this isn’t a direct response so that’s not important, but this is how I personally use it.

But here’s the thing: that is not what the word originally meant.

OK, let me put it this way. The argument essentially goes that because a lot of us have changed the way we relate to the meaning of the word, nobody can complain about its usage; that’s identity policing.

This is very fucking ridiculous. You know why?

BECAUSE EXPECTING PEOPLE TO BE PSYCHIC IS STILL NOT OKAY.

Sorry, but if you seriously think it would be okay for me to expect a non-binary person to somehow magically know that no, I am NOT one of the vast majority who use it because I think only two genders exist, I am one of the minority that have recently changed the word’s historical, well-established meaning to mean something different? If you think it’s OK for me to just decide that the baggage from that original meaning of the word isn’t allowed to exist for non-binary people any more?

Get your head out your arse.

Seriously. All it takes is ‘I’m bi, but not in the two-genders way’. Yeah, it’s a pain explaining yourself every time; no, you don’t always have to do it (as the original macro points out). It’s not your obligation to be an educator, after all. But it is likewise NOT on non-binary people to sit there and give you the benefit of the doubt when 99% of people don’t deserve it.

One thing the queer community is rightfully big on: words have meaning. They have baggage. And yes, they can take on new meanings; but you are not allowed to just dismiss the old ones, or their damaging effects, just because you feel like it. If you want to redefine it for yourself, fine. But for god’s sake, don’t forget the impact it has had and will therefore continue to have on other people.

I mean, this is not so far away (well okay, yes it is, and I am NOT comparing these two things really; I am just saying that a vaguely similar principle is taking place, I cannot emphasise this enough, etc.) from straight people going ‘but when I use gay to mean bad, I don’t MEAN gay people! I mean the new meaning!’- not nearly as bad because yes, it is justifiable to redefine bisexuality, whereas a straight person using gay as an insult is… never, ever justifiable to say the least. But the principle is strikingly similar. ‘I changed the meaning so you can’t get offended!’. You don’t just get to decide that for other people!

I am bisexual (as well as polysexual). I am aware there are more than two genders. I am attracted to more than two genders. And it is nobody’s responsibility but mine to make sure I articulate that in a way that is not offensive. And yeah, it sucks that our queer history is so full of cissexism I have to; that it was offensive in the first place. But I suck it up, and I deal, because yeah, some of our history sucks and I can’t just pretend it doesn’t because it inconveniences me.