QUILTBAG


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Friday
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Friday » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:21 pm

They could just wear this star on their lapel too but for some reason there was a negative reaction to that idea
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Yoji » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:48 pm

I'm hoping from the bottom of that shriveled, black, cardiovascular organ colloquially referred to as "my heart" that that's just some stupid protest amendment. But we live in very strange and incredibly stupid times.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mothra » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:53 pm

So the only people who are actually going be to carrying around man cards are transmen.

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jul 10, 2016 10:37 pm

"Jennifer Coates": I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.

This was really good. In a world full of confused, splintered camps, all whirling around under the aegis of a million different competing yet overlapping labels, a world seemingly full of nothing but endless rants and recriminations, this stands out as a surprisingly thoughtful and readable piece.

EDIT: (The name's only in quotation marks, because I'm not sure if it is purely a single-use pseudonym).
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Büge » Mon Jul 11, 2016 12:01 am

Mongrel wrote:"Jennifer Coates": I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out.

This was really good. In a world full of confused, splintered camps, all whirling around under the aegis of a million different competing yet overlapping labels, a world seemingly full of nothing but endless rants and recriminations, this stands out as a surprisingly thoughtful and readable piece.

EDIT: (The name's only in quotation marks, because I'm not sure if it is purely a single-use pseudonym).


One thing I learned from Gender Journeys (and was reiterated subsequently on tumblr) is that everyone has their own story. If Jennifer doesn't want to come out/transition, that's fine. Not everyone can, for reasons of safety, health or finance. But I do think Jennifer is dismissing the many, many existing support networks out of hand, and this kind of attitude can be influential to those of us (who are many) already at risk of depression and self-harm. In one sense, Jennifer is shouting into the void. On the other, there's many trans*people desperate for some hope to cling to which a piece like this can torpedo. I'm not trying to discount Jennifer's life experiences, but I do think that gentleness could help the message. A spoonful of sugar and all that.

A lot of Jennifer's struggles mirror my own, although I'm trying to climb out of that closet rather than locking it from the inside.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jul 11, 2016 1:17 am

Well, I think it's worth pointing out that she's not truly closeted - she's chosen to share her own experience, and that in and of itself counts for something in terms of support. Shared personal stories from one vulnerable to another are (usually) implicitly a form of support.

I honestly couldn't say that I read any form of encouragement for others to stay closeted at all or a vote in favour of self-repression - I feel like that level of negativity wasn't there. For me, it seemed she stuck mainly to a deeply personal description of a very complex journey as well as of the decision which flowed from that. It was a story from someone who has grown up in an era where acknowledgement and even celebration of different gender experiences has exploded and yet who still could not find a label or group they felt fit perfectly, yet found a way to be comfortable with who they are. That actually seems really positive and inspirational!

There was certainly an indictment of the ongoing fanaticism for labels and attempts to form and reform little tribes, but I don't see that as urging someone that they should not be true to themselves. In fact I would say that's very much the opposite. It's possible that her message may be much more supportive for someone who's situation is closer to hers than to someone undergoing a more "conventional" (for lack of a better word) trans experience, but certainly neither experience is "wrong" and I don't think she implied the one or the other was.

I can see how an assertion that someone else would choose not to transition or be openly trans on a daily basis might make someone who has struggled hard to reach a point where they can finally transition uncomfortable, but her decision is no less valid. At the least, I would be careful not to mistake Jennifer's sharing of her own story as some kind of denunciation of your own.

tl;dr: My take on Jen's story was pretty much "Be true to yourself and fuck the h8rs". If it's good enough for an after-school special, it's good enough for me. And you should absolutely be true to yourself too.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 12, 2016 3:02 pm

A couple of friends of mine were talking about the article with the friend - who is trans themselves - who shared it with us in the first place and this was their comment:
the writer clearly didnt choose to experience gender dysphoria, but they did chose how they would respond to it. the set of valid & legible responses includes staying in the closet. cis people dont get to decide what a valid trans life is.

thats what this text is about.

I don't know if that adds anything here, but I felt like sharing their view.
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Büge
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Büge » Tue Jul 12, 2016 4:05 pm

I'm not cis, so.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 12, 2016 4:08 pm

I know that.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mothra » Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:01 am

Pope says some awful right-wing War on Marriage BS during a trip to Georgia:

"The highlight of the trip so far was off-the-cuff remarks the pope made to Georgia's small catholic community. In response to a question, Francis said, 'There is a global war trying to destroy marriage... not with weapons but with ideas.' He said the great enemy of marriage is gender theory and 'we have to defend ourselves from ideological colonization.'

"Francis has used that expression before to criticize what he says are rich countries' attempts to link development aid to the acceptance of social policies such as contraception and gay marriage."

"Beware of the new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family. It's not born of the dream that we have from God and prayer – it comes from outside and that's why I call it a colonization.

"Let us not lose the freedom to take forward the mission God has given us, the mission of the family. And just as our peoples were able to say in the past 'No' to the period of colonization, as families we have to be very wise and strong to say 'No' to any attempted ideological colonization that could destroy the family."

There’s not really any good part to this, but I guess I do like that the church keeps placing itself firmly on the losing side of history. Maybe one day they'll finally be wholly irrelevant.

Then again, the longer they keep at this shit, the worse off devout third-world countries will be, particularly those citizens unlucky enough to be gay or queer.

The pope gets a lot less palatable when you realize how much bigotry he spreads to places ripe for ideological exploitation.

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby nosimpleway » Mon Oct 03, 2016 10:01 am

And just as our peoples were able to say in the past 'No' to the period of colonization,

Georgia... Georgia... wait, little nation, right there on the Black Sea? The one who spent most of the last 900 years under the heels of Mongols, Ottomans, Iran, pre-Revolution Russia, and the Soviets? That Georgia?

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Büge » Mon Oct 10, 2016 7:14 pm

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Thad » Tue Oct 11, 2016 10:24 pm

She's okay.

For values of "okay" that include
Her prison warders threw her into solitary for a week and didn't tell her lawyers or friends where she was.


So next time anyone asks me why I'm no longer a Democrat and voted Stein in 2012...

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Büge
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Büge » Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:04 pm

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Thad » Mon Apr 10, 2017 3:33 pm

Stross has a good post about how, improbably, LiveJournal has managed to persist as the social media platform of choice for the SF/F community, but now they're abandoning it in droves because of a ToS update that bans discussion of LGBT issues (in compliance with Russian law; LJ was bought by a Russian company in '07).

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Mongrel
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:06 pm

On a similar, but much worse, topic: Chechnya now has concentration camps for gay men
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Sat Apr 29, 2017 2:36 pm



<Kelvandil> That's not someone who stands a chance of getting elected, right?
<Slearch> it's 2017, no one is unelectable
<Glocks> hard to say, the "i want to fuck gorillas" voter bloc is always underrepresented in polls
<Jack> We all know that every one of us would, given the chance, fuck a gorilla in a heartbeat. But whenever a pollster asks, cowardice triumphs over conviction and we quietly say "no." Lying to each other. Lying to ourselves.
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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Lyrai » Tue May 09, 2017 9:45 pm

That's not why people kept their dicks out.

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Re: QUILTBAG

Postby Mongrel » Tue May 09, 2017 9:59 pm

???
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