Starting Where I Am...

tumblr is probably gonna destroy the quality, but here’s a quick little comic i came up with last night! an asexual child of aphrodite asks for some guidance from her mom. 

(ACE EXCLUSIONISTS DO NOT INTERACT, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU)

my writing is a little bit illegible, so there’s a visual description with text under the cut: 

Styne Lane @StynaLane 

It’s disability pride month, and did you know disabled people in the US with Medicaid are not allowed to have more than $2 000 in money and assets combined, or else we’ll lose our often life-saving health insurance? [upside-down smiley face] Don’t fucking tell me forced poverty isn’t A Thing™

Did you know disabled people in many countries (including the US and UK) can’t get married or often even LIVE with their partner because it causes a massive decrease (or removal entirely) of their disability benefits? Which should only make sense to you if you’re a eugenicist? [smiley face]

Did you know it’s still 100% legal to pay workers with disabilities less than minimum wage? [smiley face]

Did you know disabled people with COVID are dying because they’re being denied care to save resources? A disabled man in Texas was denied care (and FOOD) in hospital for SIX. DAYS. Doc told his wife that, since he was disabled, he didn’t have a quality of life WORTH saving...

Did you know that disabled people fought for ages to get accessible accommodations for work, school, medical care? Did you know we were told it was IMPOSSIBLE to work from home, IMPOSSIBLE to attend school from home, IMPOSSIBLE to have telecom doctor appointments? ...

...Did you know these were all sorted and made available within a month of abled people needing them after the onset [of] the pandemic? Did you know now that states are opening back up, these accessibility accommodations are being revoked for many? [smiley face]

Pahichan by Sujata Gurung

Pahichan is all about looking at Nepalese female identity.

And UCD reportedly payed $175,000 for this image to not appear when you search it on google:

You don’t owe anyone for your recovery or survival. It was you who woke up after your worst nights, it was you who made the choice to change. It was you who saved yourself.

All of these books are queer, but they all have back blurbs that don’t say they’re queer. While this can be a pain if I’m scouting for queer SFF, it can come in handy for people in a situation where they don’t want to be reading queer books openly. 

Please do note that I don’t have hard copies of the books on hand so it’s possible that an author quote or something mentions one being queer (I feel like this isn’t super likely, but I don’t want to rule it out). Some might also have author biographies mentioning that the author is queer. Also, some may be shelved as LGBT on Goodreads or categorized as queer on Amazon. So if you’re planning on asking for any of these as holiday gifts, I would suggest going to the Amazon page or where ever your relative is likely to buy it from and double check that it’s something you’d be comfortable with sharing openly. 

I wish I had more pansexual books, but the ones I know of tend to mention queerness in the back description. 

With the exception of The Spy with the Red Balloon, these are all books I have read or are currently reading. If you want to recommend others, feel free to do so in the replies!

You can find my other queer book recommendations here.

Links to the queer books database (or Goodreads if the book hasn’t been added yet) are available below the cut. You can find information on content warnings there.

Sci-fi, set in the distant future where space travel works by travelling through sort of tunnels through space that are so complicated that only one species even knows how it works, because they have the ability to see in dimensions humans can’t.

It’s now super cheap and easy, and people travel through space and hang out with other species all the time, but in order to do that, the tunnels have to be predug first. Enter our protagonists, who are a travelling to a distant planet the long way, so as to dig a tunnel when they get there.

I can’t remember whether the main character is gay or bi, but she’s definitely wlw. The reason I can’t remember this is because the book doesn’t actually use labels, instead revealing this by having her just fall in love and start dating another woman, treating it just as casually as if her partner were a man.

We’re also told within the first few chapters that this is a society where using ‘they/them’ pronouns until you’ve worked out someone’s preference is not just accepted, but is now a social norm to the extent that doing anything else is considered impolite.

There’s also a race of aliens who are all polyamorous, have no social norms around being ashamed of sexual behaviour, (and yes, I know how that sounds, but I promise it’s done really well and doesn’t come across as fetishy or pornographic at all) and don’t give a shit about the gender of their partners.

Plus a species where biological sex changes theoughout their lives (it’s not 100% explained how gender works for them iirc) resulting in kind of reversed gender roles. Eg. Fighting in wars is automatically a female thing, just by virtue of the fact that everyone young and fit is female.