happiness at least

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

S7E7 "In Love and War" / S11E16 "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"

ME: flowing water, still rock. a sunlit meadow and a gentle breeze

GRUFF INMATE: she's one o' them poets! get 'er, lads!

[I swiftly dispatch them with a flurry of blows]

ME: what's it to ya?

WAIFISH INMATE: she's but a crude warrior! baffle her with poetry!

[I swiftly trounce them with graceful eloquence and beautiful prose]

Yooo tear them a new asshole. I hated her for her transphobia and racism and how dirty a player she is. You're telling me I wasn't hating her enough????

...but also for actively campaigning against the LGBTQ+ community while representing anti-Trans, anti-abortion organization FIERCE Athlete. She joined FIERCE Athlete after apologizing for anti-Trans comments she made online, and liking several racist and homophobic Tweets...

And what's this???

Curl-Salemme's active participation with FIERCE Athlete, which openly calls members of the LGBTQ+ community "disillusioned" and referred to art forms like drag as "disgraceful," a "mockery," and "sexual hedonism," is recent, and came after her transphobic comments, and a subsequent apology. For Curl-Salemme's promotion of FIERCE Athlete, the PWHL permitted video to be taken used for FIERCE Athlete and Curl's collaboration on ice, on the bench, and during games. The PWHL has refused all comment on why they permitted video to be taken on the ice and on a PWHL bench for the explicit purposes of an anti-LGBTQ+ campaign involving Curl-Salemme.  FIERCE Athletes primary goal however, is to bar transgender athletes from sport, which Curl-Salemme has continued to support in online comments and her endorsement of the organization.

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes of amatonormative culture, we aren't doing anything. Adults are supposed to do things. That's how you become a member of society.