cat robot

1. borrowing misery from future

2. carrying grief of the past

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

I visited Stige Island today. It’s not really an island because it is connected to the mainland by a small road but the name stuck.

It is an artificially constructed island that was turned into a dump which made it grow bigger and bigger as more trash was piled on top.

Eventually the dump was closed down by covering it in a thick layer of dirt which is why the island is full of hills and bumps. A web of paths were created and the landscape was dotted with playgrounds and picnic tables and today it’s an incredibly popular place for the locals to relax.

Unfortunately most photos online show the island in its early sorta barren state because today it has become a haven for all sorts of plant and animal life skittering around in the dense bushes. It’s a wonderful place to go birdwatching, fishing or pick berries.

But the trash is still down there creating methane gas. What did the city do about that? Harvest it for energy of course! So when you walk around the island you’ll see pipes and what appears to be manholes that are part of this sophisticated system.

Danny Siplin was 33-years-old, he was a community builder, a dedicated son that drove his mother to work every morning, and he loved the snow.

He was found dead near his car on a bridge in Rochester. Police have alleged there was no foul play involved in his death, but details of his death have not been released to the public. The media reporting his death misgendered him on TV and in articles. He was described by his mother as someone who "give the shirt off [his] back,".

Sam Nordquist's body was found almost a year ago, also in New York, also after he had gone missing. Sam Nordquist was de-gendered by the New York Times, which initially had correctly referred to him as a trans man before changing the language to "person". Sam, a 24-year-old Black trans man, had been tortured and raped for three months before he was killed and his buddy dumped and dedicated. The media also failed him, not just by misgendered and de-gendering him but also by using photos of him pre-transition. Something that his Wikipedia page has also done.

He was described by his mother as someone who "give the shirt off his back,".

It has also been almost two years since the murder of TK Hill, a 35-year-old Black publicly transgender man, who was shot and killed in front of his home at the start of 2024. TK had been a community organizer and an LGBT salon owner. TK Hill was also described as someone who would "give the shirt off his back,".

"God I want you In some primal, wild way Animals want each other: Untamed and full of teeth.