Common Myths About Bisexuality from the lovely Webcomic “Jesus Loves Lesbians, Too” by bi blogger & author Maria Burnham (writer/memoirist) and Maggie Siegel-Berele (comic artist).
I usually don’t reblog stuff like this because this is my art blog but this hit close to home and reminded me of so many conversations that made me feel like garbage.
It always makes me see red when I see lesbians (and gay men) treating bisexuals this way. I don’t think I can even type too much more without quickly reaching a point where I just smash my head into the keyboard.
ALL OF THIS.
I’ve honestly never seen anyone discuss my sexuality, which is cyclical in a way that makes no sense. Sometimes I irrationally want only women; other times all I want are men. It isn’t really bisexual in a way that is equally interested in both. “Bi” is the best fit because it is more accurate most of the time, but I fluctuate between the poles of straight and gay and as much as I love bi-centric things, I’m really not that either. I’m frustrated because I feel like the only person with my sexuality, and that I’ll never be happy with anyone because I won’t be one sexuality long enough to start to love them.
Unless the ACTUAL Creator of your Fandom pronounces that your OTP is officially sailing, canon, so very much happening, etc. etc. - IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. EVER.
Frodo/Sam is a BROTP. Sam marries Rosie. Not happening.
Legolas/Gimli is a BROTP. According to Tolkien, they’re BFF’s but that’s pretty much all he wrote. Not happening.
Bagginshield? Not happening.
Johnlock? Unless Sherlock Seasons 3 and 4 actually tell us otherwise, it’s a BROTP. Not holding my breath.
Thranduil/Thorin? Not happening.
Jacob/Bella? Didn’t happen. She still picked the sparkly vampire. Sorry, Team Jacob fans.
Methos/Duncan? All subtext. Not happening.
Aragorn/Legolas? Aragorn ended up with Arwen. Not happening.
Aragorn/Boromir? Nope, Aragorn gave him a brotherly kiss on the forehead. That’s how Tolkien intended it. Not happening.
Harry/Hermione? Nope. Harry married Ginny. Yes, I still sulk about it. Didn’t happen.
Adult!Harry/Snape? Nope. Harry married Ginny. Snape has a torch for Lily Evans-Potter. Didn’t happen.
All right, put down your pitchforks.
What’s the point of this PSA and Sanity Check?
Have a ship.
Don’t ship.
Have an ARMADA of Ships.
Revel in your OTP’s.
Revel in your BROTPs and SisterOTP’s.
Revel in your characters’ friendships, because there’s nothing wrong with a good friendship - it’s just as good as a romantic relationship.
The point is that it’s useless to ship war, to shame someone else for liking another ship, to argue and fight and squabble over the “rightness” of your ship. Life’s too short to waste over something as ridiculous as that.
The point of being in a fandom is to have fun.
Relax, people. Sail your ships. Ship who you want. Fan fic it. Fan art it. Fool around with Photoshop and GIFs and all the pretty pictures you want. Have fun. Squee. Get twitterpated. Respect each other while you’re at it.
This has been your friendly Fuzzy Blue Alien Blanket Fort Commander, signing off.
*plays with floaty armada of varied otps, brotps, sisotp, ot3s, ot4s, etc, etc, etc in the tub* Yes. Yes, indeed. This!
Image taken from tumblr.
Recently, SFF author Tansy Rayner Roberts wrote an excellent post debunking the idea that women did nothing interesting or useful throughout history, and that trying to write fictional stories based on this premise of feminine insignificance is therefore both inaccurate and offensive. To quote:
“History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.
History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.
But the forgetting part is vitally important. Most historians and other writers of what we now consider “primary sources” simply didn’t think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.
This does not in any way mean that the female contribution to society was in fact less interesting or important, or complicated, simply that history—the process of writing down and preserving of the facts, not the facts/events themselves—was looking the other way.”
The relevance of this statement to the creation of SFF stories cannot be understated. Time and again, we see fans and creators alike defending the primacy of homogeneous – which is to say, overwhelmingly white, straight and male – stories on the grounds that anything else would be intrinsically unrealistic. Contrary to how it might seem at first blush, this is not a wholly ironic complaint: as I’ve recently had cause to explain elsewhere, the plausibility of SFF stories is derived in large part from their ability to make the impossible feel realistic. A fictional city might be powered by magic and the dreams of dead gods, but it still has to read like a viable human space and be populated by viable human characters. In that sense, it’s arguable that SFF stories actually place a greater primacy on realism than straight fiction, because they have to work harder to compensate for the inclusion of obvious falsehoods. Which is why there’s such an integral relationship between history and fantasy: our knowledge of the former frequently underpins our acceptance of the latter. Once upon a time, we know, there really were knights and castles and quests, and maps whose blank spaces warned of dragons and magic. That being so, a medieval fantasy novel only needs to convince us that the old myths were true; that wizards and witches existed, and that monsters really did populate the wilds. Everything else that’s dissonant with modern reality – the clothes, the customs, the social structure – must therefore constitute a species of historical accuracy, albeit one that’s liberally seasoned with poetic license, because that vague, historical blueprint is what we already have in our heads.
But what happens when our perception of historical accuracy is entirely at odds with real historical accuracy? What happens when we mistake our own limited understanding of culture – or even our personal biases – for universal truths? What happens, in other words, when we’re jerked out of a story, not because the fantastic elements don’t make sense, but because the social/political elements strike us as being implausible on the grounds of unfamiliarity?
The answer tends to be as ugly as it is revealing: that it’s impossible for black, female pirates to exist anywhere, thatpixies and shapeshifters are inherently more plausible as a concept than female action heroes who don’t get raped, and that fairy tale characters as diverse as Mulan, Snow White and Captain Hook can all live together in the modern world regardless of history and canon, but a black Lancelot in the same setting is grossly unrealistic. On such occasions, the recent observation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz that “Motherfuckers will read a book that’s 1/3rd elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they (white people) think we’re taking over” is bitingly, lamentably accurate. And it’s all thanks to a potent blend of prejudice and ignorance: prejudice here meaning the conviction that deliberately including POC, female and/or LGBTQ characters can only ever be a political action (and therefore an inherently suspicious one), and ignorance here meaning the conviction that the historical pervasiveness of sexism, racism and homophobia must necessarily mean that any character shown to surpass these limitations is inherently unrealistic.
Let’s start with the latter claim, shall we?
Because as Roberts rightly points out, there’s a significant difference between history as written and history as happened, with a further dissonance between both those states and history as it’s popularly perceived. For instance: female pirates – and, indeed, female pirates of colour – are very much an historical reality. The formidable Ching Shih, a former prostitute, commanded more than 1800 ships and 80,000 pirates, took on the British empire and was successful enough to eventually retire. There were female Muslim pirates and female Irish pirates – female pirates, in fact, from any number of places, times and backgrounds. But because their existence isn’t routinely taught or acknowledged, we assume them to be impossible. The history of women in the sciences is plagued by similar misconceptions, their vital contributions belittled, forgotten and otherwise elided for so many years that even now, the majority of them continue to be overlooked. Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie are far from being exceptions to the rule: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Leise Meitner and Emmy Noether all contributed greatly to our understanding of science, as did countless others. And in the modern day, young female scientists abound despite the ongoing belief in their rarity: nineteen-year-old Aisha Mustafa has patented a new propulsion system for spacecraft, while a young group of Nigerian schoolgirls recently invented a urine-powered generator. Even the world’s first chemist was a woman.
And nor is female achievement restricted to the sciences. Heloise d’Argenteuil was accounted one of the brightest intellectuals of her day; Bessie Coleman was both the first black female flyer and the first African American to hold an international pilot’s licence; Nellie Bly was a famed investigative journalist, not only travelling around the world solo in record time (in which adventure she raced against and beat another female reporter, Elizabeth Bisland), but uncovering the deplorable treatment of inmates at Blackwell Asylum by going undercover as a patient. Sarah Josephine Baker was a famous physician known for tracking down Typhoid Mary, tirelessly fighting poverty and, as a consequence, drastically improving newborn care. And in the modern day, there’s no shortage of female icons out fighting racism, sexism, homophobia and injustice despite the limitations society wants to impose on them: journalistMarie Colvin, who died this year reporting on the Syrian uprising; Burmese politician and activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent some 15 years as a political prisoner; fifteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban for her advocacy of female education; and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman, who jointly won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for their work in support of women’s rights.
But what about historical women in positions of leadership – warriors, politicians, powerbrokers? Where do they fit in? The ancient world provides any number of well-known examples – Agrippina the Younger, Cleopatra, Boudica,Queen Bilquis of Sheba, Nefertiti – but they, too, are far from being unusual: alongside the myriad female soldiersthroughout history who disguised themselves as men stand the Dahomey Amazons, the Soviet Night Witches, thefemale cowboys of the American west and the modern Asgarda of Ukraine; the Empress Dowager Cixi, Queen Elizabeth I and Ka’iulani all ruled despite opposition, while a wealth of African queens, female rulers and rebels have had their histories virtually expunged from common knowledge. At just twenty years old, Juana Galan successfully lead the women of her village against Napoleon’s troops, an action which ultimately caused the French to abandon her home province of La Mancha. Women played a major part in the Mexican revolution, too, much like modern women across Africa and the Middle East, while the Irish revolutionary, suffragette and politician Constance Markievicz, when asked to provide other women with fashion advice, famously replied that they should “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver.” More recently still, in WWII, New Zealander Nancy Wake served as a leading French resistance fighter: known to the Gestapo as the White Mouse, she once killed an SS sentry with her bare hands and took command of a maquis unit when their male commander died in battle. Elsewhere during the same conflict, Irena Sendler survived both torture and a Nazi death sentence to smuggle some 2,500 Jewish children safely out of the Warsaw ghetto, for which she was nominated for a Nobel peace prize in 2007.
And what of gender roles and sexual orientation – the various social, romantic and matrimonial mores we so frequently assume to be static, innate and immutable despite the wealth of information across biology and history telling us the opposite? Consider the modern matriarchy of Meghalaya, where power and property descend through matrilineal lines and men are the suffragettes. Consider the longstanding Afghan practice of Bacha Posh, where girl children are raised as boys, or the sworn virgins of Albania – women who live as and are legally considered to be men, provided they remain chaste. Consider the honoured status of Winkte and two-spirit persons in various First Nations cultures, and the historical acceptance of both the Fa’afafine of Samoa and the Hijra of India and South-East Asia. Consider the Biblical relationship described in the Book of Samuel between David and Jonathan of Israel, the inferred romance between Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, and the openly gay emperors of the Han Dynasty - including Emperor Ai of Han, whose relationship with Dong Xian gave rise to the phrase ‘the passion of the cut sleeve’. Consider the poetry of Sappho, the relationship between Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, the tradition of normative, female-female relationships in Basotho, and the role of the Magnonmaka in Mali – nuptial advisers whose teach women how to embrace and enjoy their sexuality in marriage.
And then there’s the twin, misguided beliefs that Europe was both wholly white and just as racially prejudiced as modern society from antiquity through to the Middle Ages – practically right up until the present day. Never mind that no less than three Arthurian Knights of the Round Table – Sir Palamedes, Sir Safir and Sir Segwarides – are canonically stated to be Middle Eastern, or the fact that people of African descent have been present in Europe since classical times; and not just as slaves or soldiers, but as aristocrats. The network of trade routes known collectively asthe Silk Road that linked Europe with parts Africa, the Middle East, India and Asia were established as early as 100 BC; later, black Africans had a visible, significant, complex presence in Europe during the Renaissance, while much classic Greek and Roman literature was only preserved thanks to the dedication of Arabic scholars during the Abbasid Caliphate, also known as the Islamic Golden Age, whose intellectuals were also responsible for many advances in medicine, science and mathematics subsequently appropriated and claimed as Western innovations. Even in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds, it’s possible to find examples of prominent POC in Europe: Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, was of Creole descent, as was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the famous British composer, while Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole was honoured alongside Florence Nightingale for her work during the Crimean War.
I could go on. As exhaustive as this information might seem, it barely scratches the surface. But as limited an overview as these paragraphs present, they should still be sufficient to make one very simple point: that even in highly prejudicial settings supposedly based on real human societies, trying to to argue that women, POC and/or LGBTQ persons can’t so much as wield even small amounts of power in the narrative, let alone exist as autonomous individuals without straining credulity to the breaking point, is the exact polar opposite of historically accurate writing.
Which leads me back to the issue of prejudice: specifically, to the claim that including such characters in SFF stories, by dint of contradicting the model of straight, white, male homogeneity laid down by Tolkien and taken as gospel ever since, is an inherently political – and therefore suspect – act. To which I say: what on Earth makes you think that the classic SWM default is apolitical? If it can reasonably argued that a character’s gender, race and sexual orientation have political implications, then why should that verdict only apply to characters who differ from both yourself and your expectations? Isn’t the assertion that straight white men are narratively neutral itself a political statement, one which seeks to marginalise as exceptional or abnormal the experiences of every other possible type of person on the planet despite the fact that straight white men are themselves a global minority? And even if a particular character was deliberately written to make a political point, why should that threaten you? Why should it matter that people with different beliefs and backgrounds are using fiction to write inspirational wish-fulfillment characters for themselves, but from whose struggle and empowerment you feel personally estranged? That’s not bad writing, and as we’ve established by now, it’s certainly not bad history – and particularly not when you remember (as so many people seem to forget) that fictional cultures are under no obligation whatsoever to conform to historical mores. It just means that someone has managed to write a successful story that doesn’t consider you to be its primary audience – and if the prospect of not being wholly, overwhelmingly catered to is something you find disturbing, threatening, wrong? Then yeah: I’m going to call you a bigot, and I probably won’t be wrong.
Point being, I’m sick to death of historical accuracy being trotted out as the excuse du jour whenever someone freaks out about the inclusion of a particular type of character in SFF, because the ultimate insincerity behind the claim is so palpable it’s practically a food group. I’m yet to see someone who objects to the supposed historic inaccuracy of, for instance, female cavalry regiments (which – surprise! - is totally a thing) raise similarly vehement objections to any other aspect of historically suspicious worldbuilding, like longbows in the wrong period or medical knowledge being too far advanced for the setting. The reason for this is, I suspect, simple: that most people with sufficient historical knowledge to pick up on issues like nonsensical farming techniques, the anachronistic presence of magnets in ancient settings and corsetry in the wrong era also know about historical diversity, and therefore don’t find its inclusion confronting. Almost uniformly, in fact, it seems as though such complaints of racial and sexual inaccuracy have nothing whatsoever to do with history and everything to do with a foggy, bastardised and ultimately inaccurate species of faux-knowledge gleaned primarily – if not exclusively – from homogeneous SFF, RPG settings, TV shows and Hollywood. And if that’s so, then no historic sensibilities are actually being affronted, because none genuinely exist: instead, it’s just a reflexive way of expressing either conscious or subconscious outrage that someone who isn’t white, straight and/or male is being given the spotlight.
Because ultimately, these are SFF stories: narratives set in realms that don’t and can’t exist. And if you still want to police the prospects of their inhabitants in line with a single, misguided view of both human history and human possibility, then congratulations: you have officially missed the point of inventing new worlds to begin with.
if you go to condomusa.com you can get free condoms
this has been a psa don’t be silly wrap your willy
Signal boosting the hell out of this.
Signal Boosting this PSA! There’s a lot at stake, play it safe with that trouser snake!
(I am so lame, I giggled way too much when this popped into my head: ‘Unless you’re going to fap it, you really ought to wrap it.’ I’m so sorry.)
Hi Sherlock fandom! I love you! I promise I’m here to help, no judging, I swear (see FN). Please excuse me for being That Asshole just this one time, because this is slowly killing me.
I don’t know why our lovely fandom in particular seems to struggle with these two distinctions - is it generational? My last fandom was older on average - but they’re important!
Of the examples in the link, the main problem I see in Sherlock fandom with averse/adverse is the use of “adverse” to replace “averse”. One is not generally “adverse to” something; one is “averse to” it.
With complement/compliment it’s replacing complement with compliment. Clearly my fellow Sherlockians know the meaning of “complement”, but some people don’t know that it should be spelled with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘i’ when you’re using the word to mean “goes well with/brings out the best parts of.”
And that is all. Please return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.
FN1: I have to look up poured v. pored every time. Every. Damn. Time.
I’ll add a few:
bare/bear — It bears repeating:
BARE is only used to refer to ‘bare naked’ and to ‘bare one’s soul.’ BARE is about nudity, exposure, vulnerability. Use this spelling with caution, especially in fics where we might expect someone to get naked (but perhaps not so soon as is suggested when someone writes ‘Bare with me’).
BEAR, on the other hand, is a bit more versatile. There’s the furry creature, the grizzly bear. Then there is to ‘bear one’s burden,’ ‘to bear with me,’ ‘I can’t bear Sherlock’s poor behavior,’ etc.
reign/rein — this one I struggle with
REIGN is a kingdom, or to rule over one. ‘During the long reign of Queen Elizabeth…’ ’In 221B, Sherlock’s will reigns supreme.’
REIN refers to the straps that a rider uses to control a horse. But it is also used metaphorically to refer to controlling someone, as in ‘Sherlock was so excited about the murder, that John had to rein him in.’
Two more:
flaunt/flout
I see people get this one wrong allll the time (so if you do it, it’s far from just you), but these are practically opposites of each other. To FLAUNT something means to show it off. To FLOUT something means to reject it (particularly with glee and flamboyance). Sherlock likes to flaunt his coat, his cheekbones, and his brilliant intellect. He flouts social conventions and, now and then, the law.
And the killer one I keep running into:
deduce/deduct
DEDUCT is not the verb form of ‘deduction!’ To deduct means to subtract or remove. What Sherlock does is DEDUCE things. If your Sherlock is deducting things at a crime scene, then either he’s become an accountant without telling anybody or somebody needs to talk to him about his pickpocketing habit. But remember, he says it himself: ”I observe, and then I deduce.”
I don’t know if I do any of these, but it’s always a good reminder.
mer·e·tri·cious
: of or relating to a prostitute : having the nature of prostitution <meretricious relationships>
2a : tawdrily and falsely attractive <the paradise they found was a piece of meretricious trash — Carolyn See> b : superficially significant : pretentious <scholarly names to provide fig-leaves of respectability for meretricious but stylish books — Times Literary Supplement>— mer·e·tri·cious·ly adverb— mer·e·tri·cious·ness nounvia Merriam-Webster online dictionary
WORD! (s)
If you find that any of your links to former posts of mine don’t work, substitute ‘random-nexus.tumblr.com’ for ‘tentacle-monster.tumblr.com’ or vice versa. Sorry, unintended side-effect of the tumblrween costume.
*slithers away in embarrassment*
Oh my god, this is so tremendously beautiful. Everybody should see this.Irish advertisement against homophobic bullying.
Beautiful.
I love this. I want every student to see this - no matter what age.
Can I just say how genuinely this 4 min advert sends a message instead of a 4 sec ad?
SERIOUSLY, JUST STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WATCH THIS. It’s amazing.
Tears.
This is beautiful.
:3
I love this.
this..
is truly amazingSo many tears. This is so beautiful, amazing, and beyond words. PLEASE WATCH.
I got chills, this is beautiful <3 !
This made me cry.
This! Well worth watching! *applauds*
I probably have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding this dog, but here goes.
If any TumblrPeeps are in or around the NYC/North Bronx area, then please keep your eyes out for my 8yo intact male Beagle (tri color approx 12.5” and 24lbs) who responds to the name ‘Indy’. He’ll also come to other, less flattering monikers, but I digress. He is microchipped, but escaped through an open door, so was not wearing any collar or other visible forms of ID. We are worried - he’s an older dog and has had issues with hypoglycemia in the past, which can and has caused minor seizures in the past :(
Indy is too friendly for his own good. This is a major problem when you lose a small dog in an area where localized dog fights have been known to take place. If you, by some miracle, have seen this dog, please send me a PM via my LJ: http://autumnatmidnite.livejournal.com/
Omegle now has a feature where you can say what you like and start a text chat
so you can type in ‘sherlock’
and find sherlockians
JUST SO YOU KNOW.
It’s like it was made SPECIFICALLY WITH US IN MIND.
Wait, what? What is this…
USE VATICAN CAMEOS - TOTALLY TOO AWESOME NOT TO! \o/
Reblog if you care.
Always.
It wont kill you to have this on your tumblr.
Signal Boost.
Bullying is wrong, full stop.
I am enjoying the amazing power of this fandom, of how we’re everywhere and so diverse while sharing a love of the same thing. This “I Believe In Sherlock” movement - and it really is one - is awesome.
While I enjoy the heckabetsy out of seeing these incredibly cool signs of us rolling along my dash, I’d still like to ask my followers for a favor. If you indulge in sending out that message, in whatever creative genre works for you, please don’t deface anyone’s property. Tape things in places, pin to bulletin boards, electronic media the craptarts out of it, but if you really must use paint or ink - make it water soluble, would you? It’s just that I don’t think it’s fair to make someone else’s life difficult for our fun.
I’ve honestly found this fandom, in general, to be one of the most intelligent, kind, and generous fandoms in which I’ve participated. You’re all wonderful.
So, in summation: I’m not pointing fingers, bitching, whining, or complaining. I’m encouraging you to play, encouraging you to enjoy, and encouraging you to be considerate and kind.
Thanks, my friends.
Now, go be amazing.
UPDATE #2: I’ve gone and put in some prompts, as well as scoping out some for possible ficcing. I encourage all you talented ficcers to participate! ;D
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update: The Prompt Post is now open!
Oxoniensis’ Multifandom Porn Battle XIII (On LJ)
“Lucky Thirteen”
Prompts: Sunday 29th January - Thursday 2nd February 2012
Battle: Sunday 5th - 19:00 UK time Monday 13th February 2012I have participated a couple of times in this Porn Battle and it really is fun. So much creativity and lovely, lovely hot and spicy porn—although some of them aren’t as porny as they are just plain ol’ good—and it’s all from prompts the participants (and others, of course) submit. I highly recommend participating, if you’re of the ficcer sort, or simply reading and cheering on if you’re not.
The results of all the previous battles can be found archived here: Oxoniensis’ Porn Battle Site.My previous contributions:
Handy Man [Hot Fuzz] (First time in the battle & first in that fandom)
Cœur Sauvage [Addams Family](Most recent battle & first in that fandom)
The Alternate Version Of That Last Chapter In The Book [Fairy Tales/Beauty And The Beast] (Most recent battle & first in that fandom)
What To Get The Man Who Runs Everything [Sherlock BBC]
