Some NB Guy

go here and download this script and install it to your web browser. for chrome, you’ll need to open the menu and go to tools—>extensions and then you can just drag the file onto that page and it’ll install; for firefox the greasemonkey extension should allow you to install it.

go here and select “other/undisclosed”.

Stop sexualizing my body stop shaming my body stop policing my body

“Why YA Sex Scenes Matter,” Foz Meadows (via aimmyarrowshigh)

bell hooks (via queeraspie)

From Ms. Magazine Spring 2011 issue

#SafetyTipsForLadies Stay in the womb. It’s the last time you’ll have full personhood anyway.

March 26, 2013

            This is the second post in my series on BDSM and feminism. My challenge to myself was to make a list of 50 reasons why the widespread appreciation of 50 Shades of Grey is not so ideal, despite the fact that I generally think women enjoying sexually explicit material is a good thing. I thought it would be difficult to think of all those things while pointing out new problems every time, not just giving examples. I was wrong. It was really easy. 

Trigger warnings for discussions of BDSM, assault, child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, and stalking. Also, spoilers through 50 Shades of Grey and the sequels.

Part One: Problematic Treatment of Consent in the books

1.     Ignoring consent

2.     Reacting to the sentiment “no, I don’t want to have sex with you right now” by threatening to tie the speaker up, taking their clothes off, and… having sex with them.

3.     Not treating safewords as important

4.     Not treating contracts as important

5.     Joking about the importance of safewords and contracts in a D/s relationship

6.     Having a partner sign a D/s contract without telling them it isn’t legally binding

7.     Not exploring and explaining limits

8.     Forcibly preventing a partner  from learning about their limits

9.     Forcibly preventing a partner from learning about a sexual practice you are encouraging them to engage in

10.  Making a romantic relationship dependent on indulging non-mutual kinks

11.  Taking sexual advantage of someone who is intoxicated

12.  Refusing to allow a partner to masturbate

13.  Pushing someone who has never experienced any sexual interest, including maturbation, into a sexual relationship immediately after meeting them

14.  Pushing someone who has never experienced any sexual interest, including masturbation, into a kinky sexual relationship immediately after meeting them despite the fact that they have no knowledge about kink

15.  Refusing to allow that partner any trustworthy source of knowledge about those kinks other than yourself

Alright yes, I’m tired of sitting through this silently. I love MLP but it’s time to address the racefail.  And yes racism can manifest itself in something as “harmless” as children programs. That’s where our isms starts you guise. Let’s define whiteness. It’s not white people, but a lot of white people have it (it’s part of white privilege). It’s the essence of racism, of conquering, of invading the land and using it properly, of disregarding all other cultures as weird, of generalizing and isolating from cultures other than white.

First Zecora. She’s a zebra in a land of ponies. This is what she looks like. Her first appearance was in Bridle Gossip. This episode is suppose to be about how you shouldn’t spread rumors just because someone s different than you. Well here some classic feminism race fail. Zecora is suppose to represent “Africa”. She has a lovely African accent and a lovely story telling voice. She is name after what the Oromo people used to call zebras. Which is interesting and nice. But she rhymes the entire time and she’s the wise one and generally has this “Wise African” vibe about her. Is this empowering? No. It plays into an old and harmful stereotype that poc are used for knowledge. She also displays other habits and customs that are different from other ponies. This was suppose to help children understand that though she is different she deserves to be treated like everyone else. But this is what the creators of MLP did:

She is presented as just fucking weird with no rhyme or reason to her habits. She is “otherness” personified ponified. Is this respectful? No. For those of you who have never seen the rest of the episode, it involves the main characters basically breaking into her home. Tell her she is weird and that they are justified for their rumors cause she’s weird and her culture is scary. She laughs them off as silly ponies. Let me repeat that, they break into her home and disrespect her culture and she laughs it off. She is not sad, mad or even upset about any of this. This puts the expectation that poc when openly disrespected should not be angry, should be understanding and cater to the needs of white people. Is this what you want in your kids show? No.

Let’s talk about Spike. He’s a dragon who from birth was hatched and raised among ponies. He serves as an assistant to Twilight Sparkle. He often struggles with his identity because the ponies have never “studied” or interacted with dragons because they are too scary. He was so distraught about his ignorance about his heritage that he goes off to hang out with other dragons in Dragon Quest.

They are presented as uniformly loud, obnoxious, violent, mean and crude. And after a horrible raid of phoenix eggs. Spike and the ponies have decided that he can be himself (effiminate, nice, kind, generous and amiable). And to top it off he repeats the cycle of uprooting someone from a culture by taking an unhatched pheonix egg. His good attributes come only from being raised among ponies (which can be synonymous with white at this point). Let’s break this down. The creators have presented dragons —a creature culture that has had little interacting with ponies— as harmful, crude, and terrifying. They are also seen as greedy and selfish in Secret of My Excess; in this episode Spike goes through a growth stage where he displays “greediness”, hoarding, and hostility, all characteristics of normally associated with dragons

None of the ponies know why he’s doing this. They think he’s just being “greedy”. However, Spike displays the signs of any predatory animal. They never stopped to considered that his hoarding is meant for jewels which is the main diet of dragons. The hostility could be because dragons deal with, well other dragons who will take their food. A survival technique. But this is reduced to a battles of morals and dragon culture and habits are reduced to just being plain ol’ mean. If you think I’m being excessively intricate you have never seen MLP; it prides itself on consistency and intricacy.

The ponies are considered the opposite , even though they have gone through their own history of crudness and selfishness as seen in Hearth’s Warming Eve. In this episode, the ponies are divided and are, gasp, hateful. But this does not become a defining factor for them. They grow and their society becomes more peaceful.

How come the ponies are allowed to grow but dragons are always seen as terrifying and undiplomatic, and thus not worthy of becoming friends or at least form an acquaintanceship with pony society? How come Spike must give up his dragon heritage (evil, scary) and embrace being a pony (kind, reasonable)? Why was he given as an assitant at birth? Why can he not learn his heritage and still be a part of Ponyville? 

Now how does this relate to race? Spike is basically a representation of poc. Uprooted from his culture, he is placed into the dominant culture, denied any knowledge of his heritage, and all his good attributes are claimed to come from the dominant culture. Whiteness has settled quite nicely in MLP, as the ponies are considered “reasonable”, “make use of the land”, and encroach on other peoples’ creatures land and insult their respective cultures.

How is this even a thing? I’m a dude. I get it. Girls can be scary. They look just like humans, but they make Weird Things happen in your pants-area. It must be magic. They are the Gargamels to your dick’s whatever-Smurf-your-dick-is.

(Sidenote: the makers of The Smurfs meant for each Smurf to represent a different kind of dick. There are 99 dick archetypes. Mine’s Vanity Smurf because it’s so god damned beautiful. Yours might be Baby Smurf because it’s so tiny or Fakir Smurf because it’s racist as hell.)

Actually, none of that is true. Girls are normal humans, and I’m pretty sure Smurfs aren’t dicks, though the hats are suspicious. The problem is that when you see a girl your body goes all Breaking Bad and starts manufacturing chemicals that Jack You Up. That’s scary. I know. I overdosed on PCP once.

Before I launch into this I need to say that if you’re a high school kid, and you’re getting “friend zoned,” I do not blame you for being an idiot. You’re going through a lot of bullshit right now, and your body is more like season 4 of Breaking Bad where for a grown man it’s more like season 1 or 2. But read this article and become wiser than your fellow dweebs. Stop fearing girls as capricious and devastating forces of nature and start seeing them as people who are EXACTLY LIKE YOU except with different pants-parts and, in many cases, different shirt-parts.

If you’re a grown man (read: 19 or older, and I’m cutting the 18 year olds a fucking break here) and you get “friendzoned,” then the following words are for you, Friendzone.

Stop it. How is this even happening? What are the events that are occurring? This is what I imagine:

You become attracted to a woman.

You are friendly to that woman in the hopes she will show you her vagina.

She mistakes your friendliness for friendliness and befriends you, neglecting to show you her vagina.

You act like a butthurt little asswipe, forever placing yourself firmly outside of the circle on the Venn diagram of dudes she will ever show her vagina to.

You complain about it on the internet, and 1000 other maladjusted bro-dudes go, “I know that feel,” and you are validated in your misogyny.

We’ll call that Scenario 1 because there is a second scenario I imagine where “friendzoning” may occur. We will refer to this as Scenario B. (Did that throw you off, Friendzone? Keep on your toes. I am the ninja master in your training regimen to stop being a douche bag.)

You become attracted to a woman.

You befriend her in a passive-aggressive, it’s-us-against-the-world kind of way.

She tolerates that because she’s too nice to tell you, “fuck off, you creep.”

She dates an actual interesting guy with an actual personality.

They break up, and she hurts.

You offer your shoulder to cry on.

She cries on your shoulder.

She dates another interesting guy.

You go, “What the fuck? You cried on my shoulder! Show me your vagina!”

She reacts something like, “I thought we were friends, you creepy-ass, fucking creep!”

You tell the internet you’ve been friendzoned.

The internet validates your misogyny.

So, what’s wrong? You’re a nice guy, right? Why aren’t theses Stupid Whores showing you their vaginas? Probably because you’re too nice. You should be a douche bag like that guy she dated who had interests besides pretending to be her friend while simultaneously trying to eye-laser her pants off. Well, good news: you ARE a douche bag!

Consider something for me. Imagine that I, an incredibly good-looking, nice, eligible man, was walking into a shop ahead of you. As I reach the door I stop to look behind me, and I see you there only a few paces away. So I wait and hold the door. Maybe you say something like, “Thanks, bro. That was really nice.”

To which I respond, “Yeah, it was. Now you know what you have to do, right?” And I take my dick out.

Would that be uncomfortable for you? Would it be unpleasant for you to live in a world where, if a man was nice to you, it meant he expected you to pleasure him sexually? Guess what! That’s uncomfortable for women, too. Isn’t that weird? It’s almost like they’re the same kind of person you are. WEIRD!

No, actually. It’s not weird. It turns out they are the same kind of person you are, and having unwanted dicks around is as horrifying to them as it is to you. So, stop. Stop it with your unwanted dick.

Here’s the hard truth, Friendzone. You’re not a nice guy. You are a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who’s too afraid of rejection to just tell a woman how you really feel. Your anger when she doesn’t psychically glean your unspoken desires and automatically reciprocate them is actually just you externalizing the disgust you feel for your own cowardice. You think pretending to be friends with a woman will get her to have sex with you because women are sex-objects to you. You can’t imagine a non-sexual friendship with a woman being rewarding in any way because you don’t think of them as whole, real people. It doesn’t occur to her to date you either because your pandering comes of as unchallenging and uninteresting or because your creepiness is obvious and unnerving.

How can you stop being such a douche bag? Well, I suggest forming a friendship with a woman. You’re going to need to find one who can put up with a lot of bullshit, because that’s all you’ve really got to offer at this early stage. A good indicator is if she’s been married a long time or has raised children. Invest time and energy in this relationship WITHOUT thinking about your constant loneliness-boner. Once you have internalized the knowledge that your new friend has thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, AND breasts, take a look around you. Look at the world. Look at all of the people with breasts. Those people are just like her, just like your friend. They, too, have thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Even the ones you want to fuck. Isn’t the world magical?

Give the above number (0450 352 004) out to men or anyone who doggedly persists in trying to get your number even after you’ve already said no.

SAVE THIS NUMBER IN YOUR PHONE FOR EASY RECALL! 

We have all had the experience of enjoying ourselves whilst out, minding our own business, when a strange man will bail us up with unscolicited attention in the effort to convince us to go out with him. These men will not take no for an answer, but will hound us with “kindness”, attempting to wear us down through the sheer force of their persistence even though we communicate a lack of interest. Such men will often become resentful and indignant when spurred because they believe themselves to be “nice guys” just trying to show us appreciation, despite the fact they cannot respect our boundaries and our wishes. They behave as though they are entitled to our attention and we owe them our time just because they decided they thought we were beautiful.

Often times, this degree of unwanted attention becomes a type of passive bullying, leaving us feeling unsafe, insecure and uncomfortable without any sure ways of getting out of the situation because the man in question is trying to set it up so the only exit is giving in. Women are groomed to be nice and pleasant always in social interactions and because these guys don’t use any obvious nastiness it leaves us more conflicted about being assertive.

DON’T PUT UP WITH IT ANY LONGER!

GIVE THESE DISRESPECTFUL MEN THIS NUMBER:

0450 352 004

WHEN THEY CALL IT, THEY WILL HEAR THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:

Hello. If you have been given this number, it means that you have made someone feel uncomfortable, unsafe, perhaps even threatened. Most likely you have pestered a woman for her phone number, even after she said no. Maybe even said no repeatedly. You put so much pressure on this woman she had no choice but to give you this number in order to get you to leave her alone. If you want to have more success with women in the future, learn to respect our boundaries and our autonomy and accept that we don’t owe you attention. No means no, even when you’re not about to stick your dick in someone. If you would like to learn how to be more respectful towards women, please visit ialreadysaidno.tumblr.com

SAVE THIS NUMBER IN YOUR PHONE FOR EASY RECALL! 

“Why I don’t like Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project as a response to bullying

(Ten Points, in order of appearance)

1. The video promotes metro-centric and anti-religious sentiment. By aligning their bullying with the religiosity and “small-town mentality,” Dan and Terry tacitly reinforce the belief (especially rampant in queer communities) that the religious and the rural are more bigoted.

2. The message is wrong. Sometimes it gets better– but a lot of times it doesn’t get any better. Emphasizing that things will improve upon graduation is misleading both to young folks struggling and also to people with privilege who are looking on (or looking away).

3. Telling people that they have to wait for their life to get amazing–to tough it out so that they can be around when life gets amazing– is a violent reassignment of guilt. Dan Savage telling kids that if they don’t survive their teenage years they’re depriving themselves? What kind of ageist garbage is that? This quietly but forcefully suggests that if you don’t survive, if you don’t make it, it’s your own fault. It blames the queer for not being strong enough to get to the rosy, privileged, fantasy.

4. Stories of how your mom finally came around, over-write the present realities of youth. Arguing that in the future, the parts that hurt will be fixed, not only suggests that folks shouldn’t actually inhabit their own suffering but it also suggests that the future is more important. For a lot of folks, it doesn’t matter if your mother might come to love you and your spouse. It matters that right now she does not love you at all.

5. The rhetoric about being accepted by family, encourages folks to come out– even when coming out isn’t a safe idea. There is no infrastructure to catch you when your family reacts poorly. There is no truly benevolent queer family, waiting to catch you, ready to sacrifice so you can thrive. For a lot of folks, coming out doesn’t only mean that your parents will promise to hate your lovers– it means violence, homelessness, abuse.

6. Bar story: vomit. It’s no coincidence that this is the first place where Dan and Terry mention queer space. Codified queer-space, restricted to 21+, w alcohol? Try again.

7. We shouldn’t be talking, we should be listening. Telling our own stories from our incredibly privileged positions, overwrites youth experience.

8. Stories of over-coming adversity: no thank you. Narratives of how life was hard and but now is good, belittle lived pain, imply that a good ending is inevitable, and also undermine the joy and happiness in even bullied kids’ lives.

9. There is actually no path to change in this vision. Promoting the illusion that things just “get better,” enables privileged folks to do nothing and just rely on the imaginary mechanics of the American Dream to fix the world. Fuck that. How can you tell kids it gets better without having the guts to say how.

10. Then we get a baby and go to Paris? WTF? This is a video for rich kids for whom the only violent part of their life is high school. It’s a video for classist, privileged gay folks who think that telling their stories is the best way to help others. Telling folks that their suffering is normal doesn’t reassure them– it homogenizes their experience. It doesn’t make them feel like part of a bigger community, it makes them feel irrelevant.

Plus three (with a little help from my friends)

1. When we treat campaigns like this like they’re revolutionary, they undermine all the really amazing work that the youth already does for itself. Too often in the LGBT world, we are asked to thank our brave queer activist ancestors who made the world safe for us. That does have its place. But queer youth take care of themselves. They nurture and organize and love in order to save themselves and each other. Making famous messages legible as THE messages makes youth-work look minor, haphazard, or unofficial.

2. Campaigns like this lump everyone together. It doesn’t honor or respect the individuals. It turns them into icons. It sends confusing messages that we only attend to folks when their dead– when giving care doesn’t actually take anything out of us.

3. Broadcasting your story into the world, or congratulating others for broadcasting theirs is an anesthetized, misguided approach to connecting. We should help folks feel seen— by trying our hardest to see them.

It has been my experience that people are ashamed to help the folks they see as destitute. They are willing to let someone crash on their sofa for a night if they know that they have a back-up bed, somewhere else. They are happy to provide dinner, so long as they know you would be eating even without their generosity. It seems that if you’ve never been homeless or lost or hungry, if you don’t know what that feels like, is too embarrassing to give things to people who might die without them– it is humiliating to hand someone the only food they’ve had all week.

No one is skittish about giving things up so that others can live comfortably. But they are unspeakably afraid of giving away something so someone can merely live. Campaigns like this exacerbate these realities by dehumanizing the people they address, turning them into a depressing mass, ready to be farmed for beautiful tragedies, and transformed into class-passing, successful adults.

How about instead of hope: change. Even if it’s really small change. Even if it doesn’t inspire anyone and no one is grateful and no one even notices. How about doing the kind of work that makes differences in peoples lives without holding them responsible—without turning them into an icon of suffering or of hope, without using their story for a soundbyte, without using their life as your proof of goodness, or of how the world is so liberal, or how it’s great to be gay. I mean money. I mean listening. I mean time. I mean giving people space that we respect and don’t enter. I mean listening to needs and finding ways to fill them.

How about instead of honoring the bravery of youth and the sadness of our times: respecting queer youth for all the incredible work they do– despite the fact that it is so rarely recognized as work, or as adequate work.

Instead of jettisoning our religion, our upbringing, our origins: a cohesive self.

Instead of narratives of suffering and then, finally, success: a celebration of the pain and pleasure throughout.

And listening– way more listening. Because telling your personal story of adversity from a place of privilege, might have a lot of applications, might be asked of you perpetually, might seem alluring because it’s so often milked from us. But it’s not the way. Saying, “I know how you feel, because I used to feel that way, and let me tell you, I don’t feel that way anymore,” doesn’t help, it hurts. You’re dwelling in the present. Don’t insist that those in pain relocate themselves to the future.”

——————————————————————————————- I really relate to the critical commentary on the It Gets Better project. I feel like my rural upbringing was in many ways a product of the gay rights movement settling down in urban areas and abandoning the rest of the country, without safe spaces, without infrastructure, and had this attitude of a binary—be closeted and rural or run away to the city and the university to have rights, be happy, and function. When we don’t return to our origins, to the communities we come from, we deprive those we leave behind of such richness of diversity and wisdom that come from experience and moreover, they fail to see the beautiful possibility of queer and trans rural youth who live, survive, and thrive, and make themselves ignorantly blessed to the continual struggles of these populations who deal with even more barriers and bigotry.

My town is a three-hour drive from San Francisco. I read the following on Wikipedia under the entry for Trannyshack, a SF-based drag venue regarding a tour they took: “Trannyshack also holds the annual Trannyshack Reno bus trip. Hosted by Trannyshack veteran Peaches Christ and held over Easter Weekend, participants are encouraged to dress and act as outrageously and/or provocatively as possible and imbibe alcohol heartily over the course of the weekend. During the ride from San Francisco to Reno, ***the tour bus makes several pit stops in relatively conservative places such as Placerville and Donner Pass, designed partially to get a rise out of small-town locals and unsuspecting travelers, all in real life scenes reminiscent of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert***. The culmination of the event is a special Trannyshack show at a Reno nightclub, followed by Easter Sunday brunch the next day at a local casino.”

I was so sad that I had missed this group of fabulous queens and kings…but also frustrated that they only came by my rural town of Placerville, in order to “get a rise” out of the ‘conservative’ population—what about actually networking with the rural town’s queer, trans, and allied populations, WHO EXIST, and are generally without resources and lack fabulously queer entertainment??? I would have loved them to perform for us, to have the opportunity to speak with them. To show them that queers exist beyond the city limits.

Beyond this note, I think that the argument that Dan Savage and crew are making about how queer life improves linearly with time ignores the experiences, past and present, of queer and trans elders/seniors, whose needs are not part of the mainstream gay rights movement’s agenda—are they really “better off” because they are no longer queer youth???

If Tumblr had a search feature within blogs, I’d find my last repost about why I DO NOT LIKE the ‘It Gets’ Better’ stuff, and why it sucks and why “We’re Listening’ would make so much more sense or ‘We’re Here For You’ or “We’re Working On It’ - acknowledging that things are BAD, and people KNOW and want to help; promoting a thin though possible network without promising the world, the moon and the stars.

It’s so damn twisted, that to my mind? People who’ve lived through abuse? Domestic, sexual, etc, who’ve lived through trauma etc, DON’T usually tell others going through the same thing ‘It gets better’. The ones who listen usually say ‘I remember when I was there. And sometimes I don’t know how I even got past it - except maybe a few people held on to me. I’m here for you.’

Seriously. Shit, even Alcoholics who subscribe to AA - that’s how it goes with them. But somehow, magically? Queer youth just need to be ‘stronger’ and then rainbows and sparkles and fairytales? Somehow magically all the assholes bullying them just disintegrate the moment they get handed their diploma? They’re no assholes in college or on the job? They’re no asshole politicians passing laws, stirring up trouble? No muck-racking journalists? No news organizations dedicated to being utter tripe?  No negative depictions in media? Adults don’t get spit on in the street or harassed? Intersections with other non mainstream status just flutter away like butterflies on the wind?

No.

Nope.