Hugo Simberg, The Garden Of Death, 1896.

Hugo Simberg, The Garden of Death, 1896.

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

Limits of the Human Body

Body Heat = 107.6 F

Cold Water = 40 F

Hot Air = 300 F

High Altitude = 15,000 ft

Starvation = 45 days

Diving Depth = 282 ft

Lack of Oxygen = 11 minutes

Blood Loss = 40%

Dehydration = 7 days

since the old version of this post was flagged for ‘adult content’…

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

along with that, reblog if your account is a non-binary spectrum safe space or owned by someone on the enby spectrum!

Commercial archaeologist here. In the UK planning permission often requires an archaeological investigation. In those investigations we find all sort of artefacts: pottery, flints, animal bone, and human bone. Once these artefacts have been through post excavation, where they are cleaned, analysed and reported on, they need to be stored somewhere. The 'somewhere' where they are eventually stored are local museums. Without museums we have no where to store these important discoveries, and no way of showing and telling people about the history of their local landscapes. Museums aren't all like the British Museum full of stolen artefacts, they are small local things full of archaeology from the areas surrounding them and they are vitally important to commercial archaeology and all the wonderful knowledge that is stored in the earth. Please support museums!

a lot of ppl in the notes of the previous post are mentioning museums hoarding stolen cultural objects which is important beyond measure but museums shutting down due to lack of funding will not result in repatriation of cultural materials, they would most likely be auctioned off to private ultra-wealthy collectors to recoup some of their debt and we’d never find these objects again let alone be able to repatriate them. i understand the desire to say ‘fuck museums let them die’ for this reason but it won’t have the result you think it will, and it will also mean that all of their ethically sourced and donated materials (which for most museums are the vast majority of their collections) will no longer be cared for by experts but again, sold off to private collectors who can do whatever they want with them or deteriorate in storehouses indefinitely. this would be catastrophic for public history and collective knowledge-sharing across the globe across cultures, and museums in post-colonial and run by/for racialized or otherwise oppressed ethnic groups will fall first because they receive FAR less funding than the large western institutions. just repeating phrases and sentiments you’ve seen online as a form of performative activism without knowing anything about what you’re talking about does more harm than good and doesn’t make you look smart or clever just foolish it’s so deeply annoying and frustrating

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

Petition: Reverse the decision to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill

I want the Government to reverse their decision to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, as this legislation contains importa

hey if you're a UK resident can you sign this petition and if not please rb to spread the word

this is an official UK government petition that they have to respond to if it reaches 10,000 signatures