On Crutches

taken in 1966 by Ronald Schermer for LIFE Magazine, found in the UMass Amherst Digital Archives

On July 11, 1958, police burst into the bedroom where Mildred and Richard Loving slept and charged them with violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act in 1964. The couple were sentenced to a year in jail, each, unless they left Virginia permanently. Exiled from their home and family, they challenged the law in court. In 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and interracial marriage became legal nationwide.

The 2001 sapphic romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein to me was in many ways ahead of it's time and in others very clearly a victim of it's time. My girlfriend actually introduced it to me as a movie she had seen and really enjoyed. She thought it was funny, though the ending felt a bit disappointing. So I watched it and I felt pretty much the same. Afterwards I went on Letterboxd to log it and was surprised to find how many people absolutely hate this movie.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

I really liked it. And apparently that is a bit of a controversial take. Now, I understand that the ending of this movie can feel like a let down. It did to me too, at least a little bit. But I also think it is a very interesting look at sexuality. Not only the fluidity that is shown through both of the main characters, who have perviously only dated men, falling in love with each other and entering a lesbian relationship. But also Jessica's (to me) very apparent asexuality.

I saw people complaining about the movie setting the bisexual movement back or it making no sense for Jessica to be interested in a man at the end of the movie since she has shown very little interest and compatibility with men throughout the movie. And I do see that point. It surely is not the best bi rep we have and I'm very glad we have gotten better, more well rounded characters. But I think it's an interesting look at fluidity and Jessica potentially dating a man does not erase the very real relationship she had with Helen.

I think where a lot of us get felt irritation, at least that was the case for me, is that one sentence at the end of the movie where Jessica says that she wasn't "gay enough" for Helen and that is why they broke up. Now, I think this is exactly where the movie misunderstood it's own story and I blame the early 2000s for it. Helen and Jessica did not break up because Jessica isn't queer, they broke up because they wanted different things from a relationship. Mainly, Helen wanted sex and Jessica did not. Or at least not as much as Helen. The Problem wasn't not being "gay enough" it was not being allosexual.

We get very, very little asexual representation in media and I don't expect a 2001 movie to be part of that. But they portrayed it none the less. If intentional or not, they did. Jessicas behavior surrounding sex felt very real and relatable and close to many asexual experiences. She needs time to get accustomed to things, go step by step. She needs to feel comfortable first with Helen, try things out. But that does not mean that she doesn't fall in love with Helen. Because she clearly does. It is noticeable to everyone in the movie, even her mother (which leads to a sweet coming out scene). She grows to be happier and more confident. She finds someone who understands her and, as she says herself, they "click". They build a life and a partnership together and there are clearly romantic feelings involved. Jessica not liking sex or not wanting to have it as often as Helen, does not make her less gay. Sometimes relationships between asexual and allosexual people don't work, for this very reason. Even if they're both extremely gay!

But then again this is a movie from 2001. Jessica herself doesn't seem aware that there is such a thing as asexuality or that she might be on that spectrum. And maybe the whole movie isn't. Maybe it wasn't meant to be read as such (but oh boy it does!). Maybe they did want to frame it as Jessica just "not being that gay" at the end of the movie. But that's such wansted potential.

To me the problem was not that they broke up. Yes, it was sad and I wish they could have ended up together. But the breakup also felt painfully real. And possibly very relatable to a lot of ace people out there. At the end of the movie Helen is shown continuing to date women and Jessica maybe potentially getting back together with her ex (a man). That alone, to me, is not necessarily a problem. But it all falls with that one sentence. Jessica not being aware of her own asexuality (even though she states at one point not finding many things sexy sooo...) and not having the vocabulary for it, makes it seem like the movie is trying to erase her queerness. It can feel like the movie is trying to "correct" itself at the end by making the straight love story the one we should have been paying attention to all along.

BUT. IT'S NOT AND WE SHOULDN'T.

This is a love story between two women who are learning and exploring new things about themselves. Who fall in love and break up (very real of them to stay friends btw). If this movie hadn't been made at the time that it was it could have been a really nuanced and realistic prortrail of sexuality and the complications that a ace/allo partnership can bring. About the difference between romantic attraction and sexual attraction. And how, for many people, they are so closely intertwined they can't seperate them at all. And for others they are two completely different things. A careful portrail of a very real relationship between two queer women with different understandings and desires.

Postcard from Munkács (then Hungary, now Ukraine) with a hassidic man

people in every queer and trans community i go to set an expectation: i should ofrever abandon my muslim past, i should explicitly stop associating yourself with it whatsoever, you either get to be queer or you either get to be raised-muslim.

in reality, there's no such expectation for christianity, and none of them are ready to dismantle their "inner christian" in their heads as much as they expect be to dismantle my "inner muslim"

none fo them get to admit how most first world countries are culturally christian, because christianity is "default" to them, as well as first world, as well as white.

me having a complicated relationship with islam doesn't mean i absolutely despise every piece of it. it means i distanced myself from ummah, but won't hear islamic criticism from non ex muslims at all, because you expect us to dismantle "our inner muslims" in ways you aren't ready to dismantle imperialism and racism in you.

your expectation is us "acting white", you don't want us unless we're that, which means you don't want us at all.

a lot of people claiming to want to uplift brown queer voices and such don't procced to do anything meaningful for them, or for brown people at all. it's just virtue signaling, homonationalism. you'd only care of brown people being queer, and you want the "brown" part of it gone as much as possible.

a lot of people say they want the leftist agenda to stop being us centric and imperialist, but then it's just pretending to care about it. you already made is so little and unhearable you'd have to get out of your way to seek for us speaking. then you'd not seek or if you find us, you will just pass by. hoping someone else would amplify the voice you took from us? and that someone else would hope for that too, so what?

you want us only when we agree with everything usa says about us, you want us until our lives don't put you into too much discomfort. when they put you into too much discomfort, you don't ask why, you'll restore the comfort by banishing us again. your tolerability of us is so intricately conditional, to meet those a third worlder has to build themselves into a first worlder mindset. this is your (inter)nationalism hey.

Simple Gift - Antonia Tyz Peeples

American , b. 1957 -

"Asteroid City does not exist. It is an imaginary drama created expressly for this broadcast. The characters are fictional, the text hypothetical, the events an apocryphal fabrication, but together they present an authentic account of the inner workings of a modern theatrical production."

A ROMAN MARBLE RELIEF CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

I assume that's a more modern historian coming up with a clever characterization of army pay, but all I've been able to find is either sites talking about modern fast food wages or else a thousand articles about "why ancient roman soldiers were paid in salt"

(I had a brief moment of recognition reading that, because "opsonins" in immunology are a category of proteins that stick to foreign objects and make them tasty to your immune cells.)