Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.
A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”
This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:
1. Everyone does not already know.
2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.
Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.
I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.
I get that it can be frustrating to feel like your identity is being reduced to facts and figures for the benefit of red tape. But trust me, the researchers aren’t your enemy here. Most of us are queer too. All of us are just as frustrated by this crap as you are. We are doing our best, and I swear to you this work really is making a difference. Please don’t sabotage it.
I’m reblogging this because it only has 9 notes, and it should really, REALLY have a lot more.
Also, given the current US administration’s plan to stop collecting data on LGBTQ identities as part of the census, we are in need of accurate, useful data now more than ever.
Plus the ability to cite peer-reviewed evidence of these sorts of things and quantify the extent of “obvious” effects can be pretty important to researchers who are working in adjacent fields that don’t produce the sorts of headline soundbites that get mocked on social media.
And often headlines and summaries are misleading and reductive- a study about wage gaps across a variety of demographics might get headlined “Women Still Make Less Than Men, New Study Shows” when the bulk of the paper is about the intersection of race and gender identity, and I’ve seen people on Tumblr mocking a study about the flavor compounds in food across the Indian subcontinent, conducted by Indian scientists at an Indian university, as “LOL white people don’t know how to cook.”
And to add to this– it’s also important to be able to point to something and say, no, the problem is not that these people aren’t straight. Being able to point to actual science that says, “no, it’s not us, it’s you and how you treat us”– well, that’s a a good thing.
There are a lot of people out there who genuinely believe that being any
flavour of queer is intrinsically harmful to you. That unhappiness is a
natural result of being gay, that to be trans is to be mentally ill,
that bisexuals are confused and troubled. There are people who believe that you cannot be happy or well if you’re queer, and not all of those people are bad people. Some of them have what they perceive to be your best interests at heart, and they want you to be happy, to be well, to be physically, emotionally and mentally safe. And they still act in a way that causes harm, that damages lives, isolates kids and tells them that pain is what they should expect for being who they are.
It’s important to be able to say, “these policies kill kids”, to say, “no, this wouldn’t have happened anyway”, to say, “yes, it does matter what you do.”
It’s also important for court cases. Challenges to, say, laws forbidding people in same-sex relationships from adopting need and use studies finding that children for those households fare no worse than any other. The court won’t be persuaded by anecdotes. The state supreme court of Maryland accepted having civil unions instead of marriages for same-sex couples on the condition that that studies documented whether the same rights under a different name produced equal outcomes. When it was found that they did not, the court ordered the state to allow marriage equality.
I literally just signed up on the website and bras go higher than DDD and undies go up to 3XL so yeah guys it’s more inclusive than VS, the article is inaccurate
Hey everyone, I just wanted to say that for my capstone in my undergrad, our class ran an ad campaign for VS. So, of course, we got to talk to a ton of executives for the company. One of our goals for them was to figure out how to make VS appeal more to the younger generation. The girls in my class (which was about 98% of my class) immediately jumped on the “body inclusivity” train. Why not start hiring plus-size models to be angels? Why not start including bigger sizes?
The executives immediately took it off the table. Their words were “We are interested in selling the fantasy of the supermodel” in layman’s terms that equates to “no fat chicks” and we spent the rest of the meeting with the ladies in my class (myself, included) questioning the executives and essentially jumping down their throats.
Victoria’s Secret is not interested in body inclusivity. They don’t care about appealing to a wider audience, despite their failing sales. They’re seriously a bunch of older, out of touch people who don’t understand that times are changing and they will very soon get left behind. We gave them facts, statistics, and survey results that we collected that PROVED that people aren’t interested in VS anymore and that’s exactly why. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about improving their own image. They just don’t care about their own consumer base.
I hope somebody besides me reads this. Because I want more people to know what narrow minded scumbags the executives at Victoria’s Secret are.
HIGHER THAN DDD YOU SAY? ME AND GIRLS ARE ACCEPTED!!
We’ve been kicking around (hah) the idea of kickstarting enamel pins, specifically of our Pride Raised Fist & Pride Animals. It’s the most requested item that we don’t currently carry, but it definitely requires a Kickstarter to put that together.
But! Before I start putting together the Kickstarter, I’d like to get an idea from y’all: would an enamel pin of the raised Pride fist (with stretch goals to add flags) be something you’d be interested in? If you really super wanted a Pride Animal, which one would it be?
For reference, the Pride fist is this graphic:
Hi friends! An update on the hopefully-upcoming Kickstarter, with a FAQ!
1) Why start with the raised fist? We’re Socialists, and pro-labor, and the raised fist started as a symbol of pro-union movement in 1917, carried through to 1948 when the stylized version used by Socialist parties around the world came to be, and has been used consistently through to the present day. When we designed this symbol (which has been available on our patches and shirts for a while), we took a few things in mind – a) we were very conscious to style ours after the Socialist fist and b) we used a left fist both because we are leftists and to avoid cross-confusion with the BP salute (right fist) and 1960s/70s feminist icon and c) left-handedness was long associated as a ‘sign of secret gayness’ and so it packed even more symbolism in with us.
2) Are you going to offer the More Color More Pride version? We are actively working with a pin maker now in an attempt to not just do that but do it right. Going from 6 colors to 8 on a 1.25" pin is a not-insignificant challenge and price increase, and we want to be sure that whatever we do looks GOOD. If we do a MCMP pin and it looks like ass, that just sucks.
3) What about other flags like trans, bi, pan, nb, etc.? Our intention is for those to be stretch goals, since each one is a separate pin with separate costs.
4) Who the heck are you, anyway? Why you? We are a family of queer disabled artists (2 adults, one teenager) who run NerdyKeppie and make nerdy, punk, and Pride Judaica, shirts and accessories. This is our full-time gig and keeps a roof over our head and a charge in Mandy’s power wheelchair. And if not now, when, if not me, who?
5) How much? Still waiting on final pricing. It looks like early-bird with shipping will be $13. We intend to do ‘sponsor a pin for someone who can’t afford one’ as an option as well as ‘pick it up from us at a local show so you don’t have to pay postage’ if we can. I don’t know what those will be yet, we’re still trying to make sure we have enough people interested that we CAN do it.
6) Are you using a fair trade pin maker? Our pin manufacturer is a small business dude in the US. We are not importing our pins from overseas and no sweatshops will be involved in their creation. That’s super important to us. See also: we’re fucking socialists. This also means the pins will be a bit more expensive, but, like, we try to live our values.
Uh. I think that’s everything I’ve been asked to this point. Please feel free to share this version of the post – the more folks we have saying ‘yes we’re totally down to do this,’ the better our chances of success.
Chynara Madinkulova (long hair) and Aida Akmatova (bun) compete in the “Traditional Archery” category at the World Nomad games in Kyrgyzstan, which concluded last week.
Said games also include eagle hunting, horseback wrestling, and setting people on fire. Also this game where you chuck javelins at people to knock them off their horse.
I’m a survivor of CSA. I couldn’t consummate my marriage on my wedding night because I needed to have surgery first to repair some internal damage. I spent a year, beginning in summer 2016, in physical therapy, pelvic floor therapy, because even after the surgery the physical scar tissue and phycological scars (subconscious discomfort means I could never relax those muscles, not even to wear a tampon or have exams that I needed to have because I have PCOS). I blogged about it. It’s under my recovery tag. I’m in therapy, and DBT.
And I’m learning to manage my triggers, but I really really really wish people like you would not insinuate that I wanted what happened to me.
“Call Me By Your Name” is an award winning novel, which won the 20th Lambda Literary Awards for gay fiction.
Reviewing Call Me By Your Name for The New York Times, Stacey D’Erasmo called the novel “an exceptionally beautiful book”.[1]Writing in The New Yorker, Cynthia Zarin said, “Aciman’s first novel shows him to be an acute grammarian of desire”.[2] In The Washington Post, Charles Kaiser said, “If you have ever been the willing victim of obsessive love—a force greater than yourself that pulls you inextricably toward the object of your desire—you will recognize every nuance of André Aciman’s superb new novel, ‘Call Me by Your Name.’
The novel is by a Jewish POC author (he was born in Egypt, fled to Italy, and is now an American and a Proust scholar – so it’s fair to say he knows queer lit).
The book has been adapted into a Film by Italian director Luca Guadagnino and written by James Ivory who are both gay men.
So this is a film written and directed by gay men, telling a gay love story about a Jewish gay boy, based on a book by a Jewish POC author.
The story is about a 17 year old who falls in love with a 24 year old student over a summer. It is not, as mischaracterized by @socialisttexan, a story that ‘normalizes grown men preying on teenagers’
A 17 year old character becomes friends with a 24 year old student and has a crush on him. The 17 year old brags about having sex with his girlfriend to see how the 24 year old will react. He sneaks into the man’s room while he does there and does creepy things (you can read the summary yourself, it’s on wikipedia). He tells the 24 year old he has feelings for him, and the 24 year old tells him no. The 17 year old later kisses the 24 year old without his consent, the 24 year old stops him and says they can’t do more. They stop being friends, but after a few days of distance, the 24 year old admits that he likes his friend too and they sleep together.
This is not an older man who sought out a younger man in order to use his youth or inexperience to coerce him into sex. This is a man who became friends with a younger guy while staying at the guy’s parents house, working for his dad, and was pursued by the younger guy.
Rape is sex when there’s not consent. Preying on someone is manipulating or coercing someone to do something they do not want to do.
This novel features sex between a 17 year old and a 24 year old that is consensual, and the only one who did anything wrong was the 17 year old (who acted creepy, and didn’t take no for an answer).
In comparison, Roy Moore is a real a person who hurt real teenagers. He sexually harassed them. He was in his 30s at the time, not a peer or a friend. He met one victim after her mother asked him to watch her while she went into Court to testify, thinking she could trust her daughter with the assistant DA (the lawyer in charge of prosecuting criminals). Roy Moore explicitly used his position of power to force himself on his victims.
“You’re just a child, I’m the district attorney; if you tell anyone about this no one will ever believe you.”
If you don’t see any difference between defending a novel and film depicting a consensual relationship with a age gap and a rapist forcing himself on teenage girls, then you don’t understand why rape wrong.
As a rape survivor, lawyer and advocate, let me give you a hint: IT’S BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT THEM TO TOUCH YOU.
Because you’re too young to ever understand what they’re doing. Because you don’t want to be touched like that and they’re hurting you. And you want it to stop, but you can’t stop it. And you blame yourself for not stopping it and still wonder ‘maybe I did something wrong?’
And look at old pictures of you as a child, posing for pictures, and wondering if maybe you acted too sexy, maybe you did something wrong. Because maybe that’s less scary than the truth that there was nothing you could have done to prevent it. Because the worst feeling in the world is to be helpless.
And then you deal with people telling you that you support child molestation and rape and that voice that says ‘your fault’ is there again.
I like books about people falling in love and wanting sex, because I could never have that when I was 17 – I’m too damaged, but I like seeing sex presented as something that can be good, and consensual and not about hurting you.
And I like books in general. I have an English degree with a specialty in Fiction Writing. And I’m anti-censorship in general, I was vice-President of my law school’s ACLU chapter. And I don’t believe that books can only exist as moral guidelines and examples of healthy good behavior. Fiction isn’t instructional, you want the non-fiction section for that. Fiction tells stories.
And you don’t have to like every book or read every book or see every movie, but maybe stop attacking gay works and holding them to this standard of only 100% morally right, especially since so much of the gay rights movement has been a fight for the right for gay media to be just as sexual and amoral as straight media.
Because it’s hard enough for gay works to get published and get adapted into movies. Publishers don’t like gambling, and it’s already seen as a gamble because it’s ‘gay’ – if making it gay means a higher chance of backlash, then that’s not incentive to publish gay works.
Hi! Just as a warning, if any of you all plan to see Deadpool, there are some pretty heavy suicide themes to the film. They are NOT treated as a joke in any manner, in fact it’s taken (for a Deadpool film) quite seriously, but I wanted to warn you all in advance that there is a scene in which a character attempts suicide and makes references throughout the film about wanting to die. I do think the movie is very much worth seeing, but I wanted to share because this matter is quite upsetting and triggering to many and I thought a warning was in order.
my primary reaction to infinity war is like…. wow. under hypercapitalism we literally can’t imagine any other fables about resource scarcity, huh?
i’m not even talking about only thanos. every time thanos said his plan to kill half the galaxy (because it’s “finite,” lol ok one-semester-of-econ guy) the other characters were like “no!” or “you can’t!” or “that’s madness!” instead of… counter-arguing, or saying anything like “couldn’t you just… double the resources with a snap of your fingers?” obviously, nobody wants thanos to murder all those people, but it’s also as if everyone tacitly accepts his framing of the problem. “i want to kill half the universe because of resource scarcity,” he says, and everyone says “no, that’s too cruel!!” instead of “wait… wait just a fucking second there, paul ryan.” they don’t even have a line like that even when they’re talking amongst themselves, just musing at how twisted his worldview is, that he can only imagine infinite power as an infinite power to kill. no time is spent imagining an alternative.
and i can’t help but think about how we in the quote-unquote “first world” treat the resource consumption of the so-called “developing world.” we, who have enjoyed the pleasures and benefits of fridges and air conditioning and televisions and cars and convenience food and all that shit for generations: we look at the growing energy & plastics consumption of the developing world and go “uh oh, they’re really running the tab up over there, we can’t let this happen, think of the…. trees!!!” we have the audacity to act like people living in poverty in the tropics wanting window fans is selfish and short-sighted for the environment, and meanwhile we use and waste all the energy and resources we can get ahold of, like a continent full of montgomery burnses.
infinity war could have taken thanos’s approach to scarcity somewhere bigger: somewhere that was useful as a parable for our hypocrisy. the way that ragnarok was brave enough to make a parable of empire; the way that black panther could explore diaspora and identity; the way that the winter soldier actually had something to say about the surveillance-terror state. but for all the moving pieces of infinity war, i don’t think it knew where its central ethic rested. certainly, its characters showed the desire to preserve and protect life. but that’s true of any superhero film.
what it comes down to for me, is that it’s not enough for this movie’s theme to be “let’s protect people, because killing people is bad!” or even, sorry steve, “we don’t trade lives.” it’s not enough. thanos basically says, “there’s one bowl of soup and one spoon and two hungry people, so one of them has to die.” so what i needed was someone to openly reject that whole proposition. not just “no, you shouldn’t kill trillions,” but “no, that is fucking ludicrous, i reject that worldview. i reject human life as a brutal competition. group survival, even in the face of scarcity or hardship, is exactly what the fuck we developed culture for.” like, we could use that message. that message, delivered palatably in a blockbuster action movie, could do some good.
but it wasn’t really in there. maybe in little bits, in pieces. maybe. so i’m sure we’re going to have to endure a bunch of “welllll, thanos was a bad guy, but he did have a point about scarcity” metas. because we’re still failing to see how asking other people to die so that the rest can enjoy plenty is itself exactly the fucking problem on this bitch of an earth
i will acknowledge that gamora comes the closest to doing this. gamora comes down on thanos for slaughtering half her planet. but!! but! then thanos gets this horrible line about how the children who grew up after his genocide got to have “full bellies” and the planet’s a “utopia” now. and what does gamora get to say back to that? nothing! she doesn’t get a line after that! she looks angry and grief-stricken, but the writers don’t give her a single fucking thing to say in disagreement!! like, how about: “growing up as a traumatized survivor of genocide isn’t very fucking utopian????” the writers couldn’t imagine that fucking line?
“group survival, even in the face of scarcity or hardship, is exactly what the fuck we developed culture for.“
Bonus: If this is about population, then what about planets where the population density isn’t a problem yet? New developing planets, planets who aren’t looking up. Imagine an iron age village who are like “Holy shit this metal is good” and half the village just turns in to dust over night cause Thanos snapped his fingers. It could destroy entire species. Just because Half The Population Must Die.
On top of that, if we’re assuming that everywhere has a population density like earth…
If you half the population at random, then it just means there’s even less people holding all the money at the top, not that it gets redistributed to the masses.
Yes, fuck, I love you. All the resources are still being hoarded by 1%, it’s just that’s only 50 people out of 5,000 instead of 100 people out of 10,000
I agree with all of the above. Capitalism is the problem, not overpopulation, because any sociologist or economist will tell you that a country’s greatest resource is its people, and you don’t kill your resources—you save them. You take care of them. That is to say, however, that you take care of them equally.
And from a meta standpoint, of course the writers / Marvel / Disney won’t acknowledge this point—because they’re part of the problem. Because they’re one of the world’s biggest capitalists, slowly making their way into monopoly what with buying all the rights from other production companies, all while their workers at the lowest level of the hierarchy don’t get paid or treated enough.
Simply put: they won’t acknowledge this point because they’ll look like hypocrites.
From the point of view of the story, in a way perhaps the characters didn’t see the point of arguing against a legitimately insane being because you can’t change their mind anyway, no matter what logic you try to put forward. (Case in point in a real life setting: the more you argue the logic that less guns equal less shootings, the more people hold on to their guns.) Cognitive dissonance. There’s no point arguing with someone like that; you just have to stop them.
Having said that, however, considering that this movie has been released globally, Infinity War completely lost the meaningful chance to have the characters stand up to that kind of twisted and insane thinking, because (as is being proven in a horrifying way) what the movie instead has done is to have the audience sympathise with Thanos and believe him.
Infinity War completely lost the chance to stand up against this mistaken belief and tell the world the simple truth: the problem isn’t having too many people. The problem is greed.
OMG I couldn’t put into words why this film bothered me so much. Thank you!
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 