lydia

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989)

dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Navajo Relief Fund: http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nrf_index

Navajo Water Project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/

We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love, and everything is perfect on the outside, when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20s, we’re so terrified. We’re so trying to be an adult, that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw piece, and just fucking jam them into our jigsaws anyway, denying that they clearly don’t fit.

I’m gonna fucking force this fucking person into our lives, because we’d much rather have something than nothing. People are more in love with the idea of love than the person they are with. 55% of marriages end in divorce. 90%. Nine Zero. Percent of relationships that started before they are 30 end. If those were the stats for surgery, none of us would fucking risk it. But because it’s love and we’re stupid, we just lie on the operating table like, “Maybe this time I won’t die inside.”

9/11 changed that in one fell swoop.  Almost overnight, I went from listening to, and buying, a LOT of country music, to feeling alienated and frightened by it.  The aggressive, jingoistic, and very, very masculine wave of post 9/11 country music swept away a lot of excellent artists, and left us with the ‘bro country’ that we’re still dealing with today.

Becoming Anti-Racist by Dr. Andrew M. Ibrahim

Fear Zone:

I deny racism is a problem.

I avoid hard questions.

I strive to be comfortable. 

I talk to others who look and think like me. 

Learning Zone:

I recognize racism is a present and current problem

I seek out questions that make me uncomfortable.

I understand my own privilege in ignoring racism.

I educate myself about race and structural racism. 

I am vulnerable about my own biases and knowledge gap. 

I listen to others who think and look differently than me.

Growth Zone:

I identify how I may unknowingly benefit from racism.

I promote and advocate for policies and leaders that are Anti-Racist. 

I sit with my discomfort.

I speak out when I see racism in action.

I educate my peers how racism harms our professions.

I don’t let my mistakes deter me from being better.

I yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized.

I surround myself with others who think and look differently than me. 

but i’ve been on twitter recently and there is a fucking DELUGE of people promoting the idea of “bisexual lesbians” (never bisexual gay men but like… that’s a tangential dialogue for another time). this idea that you can be bisexual and a lesbian at the same time is a direct product of the split attraction model.

this is the EXACT shit i was talking about when I said rhetoric from ace community is not compatible, at all, with the LGBT community.

sexualizing the -sexual suffix so “bisexual” SOLELY means “SEXUALLY attracted to the opposite gender” so someone can be bisexual and “homoromantic” is ACTIVELY harmful to lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. it sexualizes bisexuals without consent and COMPLETELY redefines what gayness is so it can include attraction to the “opposite” gender.

and this is just one example of how ace inclusion–not just the inclusion of cisgender, straight aces but also the prioritization of ace ideals–hurts the LGBT community. the rhetoric that you can have sex with people you aren’t attracted to to “make it work” romantically is conversion therapy rhetoric. Ace inclusion makes it seem like the LGBT community is about our relationships to sex when that just isn’t true. Ace inclusion means “desexualizing” LGBT spaces so as not to upset asexuals. All this shit AND MORE is happening in real time and I’ve watched it get worse and worse, hand in hand with the commercialization of LGBT pride and the liberalization of LGBT activism.

ace rhetoric is eroding LGBT identities. the idea of the “bisexual lesbian” and other mogai microidentities where you parse every single aspect of your identity into a different label is actively harming vulnerable LGBT people.

and, no, this isn’t me saying “even LGBT aces have to go,” but this is me saying that putting ace identities at the forefront of ANY LGBT discussions leaves a lot of space for harm for LGBT people. and that any fucking ace rhetoric besides “it’s okay to not feel sexual attraction or want to have sex” comes at the expense of LGBT identity.

genuinely, the concept of “bisexual lesbian” is a direct product of the ace community and it has caused lesbians and bisexual women irreparable harm. and aces should be ashamed of this because this is what they have been defending for years.

this is the EXACT shit we said would come out of the split attraction model and now we have TEENAGERS telling strangers and adults “i’m sexually attracted to [x genders] but only romantically into [y]” and y’all think this is okay. even if it weren’t fucking INSANE to say lesbians can be attracted to men or that bisexuals can be half gay or half straight, you’d STILL be out of fuckng line having KIDS center identities around SOLELY sexual attraction.