Tag: lgbtq

tinytrees:

people need to stop pretending they care about infants and children being given proper care based on their sex while simultaneously insisting there are only two sexes

intersex people exist and you ignoring them + the fact that they are more often than not medically mistreated because of their sex makes it clear you are not interested anyone’s wellbeing, just in the continued propagation of the sex binary

which makes you a piece of shit

bi-privilege:

bubblegum-tremens:

bi-privilege:

the universe did not converge in the series of improbable events that ended in your existence on this flying rock in the middle of space so that you could discredit the identity of teenage bisexual girls

This statement would be perfect if it didn’t discredit the identity of every other being on this flying rock.

this just in: i can in fact encourage people to support bi teenage girls, who experience some of the lowest levels of social support from their friends and family and some of the highest prevalence rates of mood and anxiety disorders and suicidality without discrediting everyone else’s identity, similar to how i can say ‘save the whales’ and not mean ‘and let everything else die.’

scottyottyotty:

grizzlykurtz:

witchesbitchesandbritches:

lifeundefeated:

Yea it’s clearly our “generation that’s making homosexuality a trend.” Seriously, pisses me off when people say that. look at this! It’s always been around, it’s not a trend, it’s real. It’s beautiful.

These are really beautiful images.

History Lesson: In America from about 1700-1920 there was a social rule that said that women did not have a sex drive. According to men, all women ever were asexual and only ever had sex because their husbands wanted it and as a good doting wife they would open up for him. That said, lesbians flourished in this time! Because it was believed that women did not have sex, when two women would share a house and finances together (called a Boston Marriage, look it up!) nobody thought anything of it. Because clearly they werent homosexuals since clearly women were incapable of being independently sexual. The more you know!

Wow

artsyflight:

seerofsarcasm:

persystella:

groot is probs assumed to be male but tbh i figure groot is a lil genderless being. who needs the gender binary when you’re a celestial tree creature. riddle me that.

“Are you a boy, or a girl?”
“I am Groot.”

But like, didn’t Groot accidentally grab Gamora instead of Peter at the beginning? And Rocket was all “Learn genders already!” So like. Groot has no idea what gender is. Seems pretty canon to me?

What about our fans? Are they privileged? Let me tell you about Anders. He was one of two male love interests in Dragon Age II, and the only one of the two that would actually make his intentions known to the player without the player expressing interest first. If you were nice to him, he would make a pass at you, and you could turn him down, and that would be the end of it. And some fans REALLY did not like that.

Some of them asked for a gay toggle; because in a game where there’s mature themes, slavery, death, and none of which we offer toggles for, encountering a gay character? OOH, beyond the pale. They didn’t want to be exposed to homosexuality.

And this one fan on our forums posted that he felt too much attention had been spent on women and gays and not enough on straight male gamers. For all of whom he personally spoke, of course. ‘It’s ridiculous that I even have to use a term like Straight Male Gamers, when in the past I would only have to say fans.’ The purpose of the romances in Dragon Age II was to give each type of fan an equal content. Two romances whether you’re male or female, straight or gay.

How upsetting for this particular Straight Male Gamer to realize he wasn’t being catered to. This was not equality to him, but an imbalance; an imbalance of the natural order. He did not want equality, he’s not interested in equality. To him, from his perspective, equality means he’s getting less. Less options? Actually, no, the number of options we had in that game was actually the same number of options that he would have received earlier. What was his issue was the idea that there was attention being spent on other groups, which SHOULD have rightly gone to him.

Do ALL straight male gamers feel exactly the same as he does? Absolutely not. In the thread where this came up in fact, there was quite a few guys who came in and identified themselves as straight male gamers and said ‘I actually don’t have an issue with that, as long as I receive an experience I enjoy, I think other people should be able to enjoy that too.’ But if you think that Straight Male Gamer Dude is an outlier among our fanbase, you were not paying attention.

This is Anita Sarkeesian, she’s the author of the Feminist Frequency, a blog which examines tropes in the depiction of women in popular culture. You’ve probably all heard about this, it’s a matter of public record, she announced a Kickstarter to start a web series to look at the tropes in video games and she was subjected to a campaign of vicious abuse and harassment by male gamers. Why? Well, because she represents to these guys the loss of their coveted place in the gaming audience. Never mind that well all know Goddamn well that they’re still at the top of the totem pole. What they see themselves losing is sole proprietorship over their domain. That’s what it is.

Everything that is changing about the gaming industry to accommodate these players, to them, is diluting the purity of gaming which has belonged solely to them. That’s what this is all about. And here’s the thing, I’m pretty certain that our industry fears the scrutiny of those guys way more than the scrutiny of everyone else. Because those are the guys that scream at the top of their lungs, they spend their time on every internet forum, they spend their time making Metacritic reviews. Infuriate them, and you become a target. It’s so much easier to say “Well, that’s what our fans are like. There’s nothing we can do.” And that’s bullshit.

They didn’t set the tone, did they? We set the tone. What we put out there, what we permit, whether it’s on our forums, whether it’s on Xbox Live, the things that we permit we are in effect condoning. What happened to Anita, we the industry, are partly responsible for. We’re in part to blame. And if the idea of moral responsibility doesn’t phase you, consider the idea that the time will probably soon come that this will also amount to legal responsibility.

BioWare EA Writer David Gaider speaking on sexism and sexuality in video games. (via lolitsgabe)

also known as “Why I Love And Support BioWare Games”

(via optimisticduelist)

Bioware ain’t perfect, but good gosh it does give me the warm fuzzies when one of their crew knocks it out of the park.

(via northstarfan)

Some ways in which gay and lesbian people benefit from monosexism

bidyke:

First – some background:

  • I’ve been seeing more and more people on tumblr arguing that monosexism can’t exist because gay and lesbian people don’t benefit from the oppression of bi people
  • This is a rebuttal of this argument
  • However, monosexism isn’t about gay and lesbian people
  • Seriously, read the links
  • No, SRSLY
  • Pulling the discussion that way DERAILS IT YET AGAIN and draws attention away from the real issue – centering it around gay and lesbian people when it’s supposed to be about bi people and our oppression
  • image
  • I’m posting this anyway because JFC already

Now, some statistical facts (sources are linked):

Social benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):

  • Bisexual erasure stabilizes the heterosexual/homosexual binary. Acknowledging that it exists would insinuate that sexuality is changeable, making it impossible to argue that gay people were “born this way”. So monosexism makes it easier to legitimize homosexuality.
  • Bisexual erasure makes it possible to create (usually binary, cissexist) gender-segregated gay and lesbian environments. Because bisexual people always carry the “threat” of being with “other genders” and then “bringing them into the community”. So monosexism makes it easier to organize and maintain gay and lesbian communities.
  • Bisexual erasure makes it possible for gay and lesbian people to use respectability politics with regards to sex. Because bi men are viewed as closeted men who sneak out to have unsafe anonymous sex behind their wives’ backs, and because bi women are viewed as sluts who make lesbians look bad because they’re “sexually available to men”. So monosexism makes it easier for gay and lesbian people to appear sexually “moral”.
  • These are all points made by gay scholar Kenji Yoshino (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.

Material benefits (all elaborated in my book please just read it if you want to know more, I promise it’s all in there):

  • Gay and lesbian people benefit from the work that bi people put in promoting and being active in queer movements/communities without having to credit them or give anything back to them.
  • Because bi people are excluded from leadership in these movements/communities, gay and lesbian people are the leaders and decision makers. That means they control communities’ agenda, money and resources.
  • Since internalized monosexism often makes bi people believe that bisexuality isn’t important enough to organize around, many contribute most of their activist time and energy to promoting gay and lesbian issues – again meaning queer movements benefit from the work of bi people at the expense of bi people and movements.
  • And of course there’s the part where (as stated above) almost all LGBT money goes to the GGGG part of it, and that bisexual people actually earn less money than gay and lesbian people.
  • These are points made by bisexual scholar and activist Miguel Obradors (and elaborated by me in my book). Go read his article.

And then there are other side privileges…

Then combine all this with the fact that bi people are DISPROPORTIONATELY WOMEN, PEOPLE OF COLOR AND TRANS PEOPLE. Then do the math.

Want to know more? Follow the goddamn links.

Now –

image

[Image: Samuel L. Jackson from the movie Pulp Fiction aiming a gun towards the camera looking angry (Say What Again meme). Top text: “SAY MONOSEXISM DOESN’T EXIST”. Bottom text: “ONE MORE TIME”]

LOOK: We Asked Trans People To Send Pics Of Themselves And The Results Are Beautiful

Even though queer people are gaining more and more visibility in mainstream media and society, that doesn’t mean that the images we’re presented with are always accurate or fully representative of who we really are and how we live our lives. And sometimes we’re still disappointingly absent, especially when it comes to certain subsections of our community.

When it comes to transgender people, the past year has been an incredibly historic time for the community. From Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine to Janet Mock taking on Piers Morgan, trans people and issues have never received more attention or visibility. However, there is still much work that needs to be done to educate the general public and members of the queer community about what it means to be transgender. What’s more, we’d love to see more trans people — especially those who don’t normally or necessarily have the spotlight — featured and celebrated in the media.

So, thanks to the Twitter hashtag #WhatTransLooksLike, we’re sending a little love to our trans friends who proudly shared their photos with us when we put out a call earlier this week. Feast your eyes on the beautiful folks who chose to take part in this campaign and if you want to be part of this stunning group, tweet your own photo using #WhatTransLooksLike and we’ll add it in the coming days.

LOOK: We Asked Trans People To Send Pics Of Themselves And The Results Are Beautiful