deleted a bunch of chronic pain and chronic illness posts from blogs they’ve left (like mine)
This isn’t just about ‘oh no you can’t look at people fucking anymore’ (even though lots of sex workers are losing their means of supporting themselves). This goes a lot further, with a lot more chilling effects.
The sexualizing of things like ‘top surgery’ or declaring all ‘trans’ tagged things to be … sexual… is really, REALLY fucked up. Never mind the fact that ‘chronic pain’ had NOTHING to do with sexiness, and we’ve been given no explanation as to why disabled people were considered acceptable collateral damage.
ALSO I had a post flagged earlier today for a cartoon picture of Mario in a bathing suit. Mario, from Super Mario Brothers.
Someone else reported a picture of a cartoon scorpion with a hard hat on being flagged as pornography. Tagging things as ‘queer’ or ‘gay’ gets them flagged NSFW. (Hey, guess what I’d been tagging my t-shirts, because they’re pride stuff? Oh right. Queer. Gay. Pride.)
This is a fucking problem, let’s not blow it off.
I know some people are too young (or simply weren’t involved in fandom back then) to remember what went down with livejournal and a couple of other sites “back in the day”, but it all started out as “it’s okay, we’re just removing the nasty porn”, and then “okay well, just make sure you put your porn behind a cut, no, wait jk you need to host it externally, a link is fine, maybe” and pretty much devolved swiftly into “actually sweety, LGBT content is inherently NSFW by default because it might make the kiddies gay if we expose them to it, so y’all need to leave now byyyeeee”.
Like…that happened. And it took nearly a decade for the fandom spaces to recover and stabilize and to get to the point where LGBT content creators could host their content without being told “you’re not welcome here” and I’m just sitting here, watching as youtube demonetizes LGBT content creators, and Facebook flags up LGBT ads as “inappropriate” and now tumblr is going through the queer and gay tags and just mass blanketing it as inappropriate, while actual pornbots and nazis wind up in my recommended feed.
Like I am uncomfortable y’all. I am looking around at everything I’ve built and all the friends I’ve made and I know we’re all looking for the next safe space to jump to while hoping we don’t lose each other overnight like “the olden days” where you’d wake up and your fave blogger was just gone.
And usually it was because they’d drawn or written something as simple yet explicit as a kiss. It was just the wrong kind of kiss.
So yea, the sky is not falling, but the ice under our feet sure is making worrying sounds.
bu-bu-but I need my spoonie spaces, it’s the only place left where I get support and advice and feel less alone in the world… ughh…….
It ain’t over till it’s over, and this bisexual spoonie will be here until the lights go out. They’re going to have to come to my house and pry my phone out my hands to get me to stop shitposting. And hey, by then there will likely be new spaces to branch out into and cling to each other. It won’t be the exact same mind you, but fandom spaces and online communities have always been migratory in nature. We moved from fanzines swapped around in coffee shops, to coffeeshop AUs online. We’ll survive whatever the next jump is.
It’s just bullshit that we’re being forced to prepare to make the leap at all. But that’s what happens with corporate run sites in the end. Sadly.
But we’re not quite at doomsday yet, and even after the changes roll out on the 17th, we’ll still have a ways to go before the site is entirely gone. Hell, even LJ is still running….
And in the meantime it’s not a bad idea to look around and get the handles/emails of the people you’d truly miss if they were gone the next day. I still have friends I think about and miss from LJ.
@thebibliosphere do you post elsewhere? I’d love to follow you on a different platform
One thing I’ve learned in life, if you act really self-assured and confident you can pretty much get away with anything.
For example, I’ve watched someone walk on to a plane with no passport. Just walked right on.
Once walked out of a dude’s house with a pair of his pants slung over my shoulder. Did all the usual eye-contact, saying-goodbye movements and noises, just… while stealing his pants. He did not notice.
I told my English teacher that she graded my final paper(I did not turn one in) and that she told me it was well written. She scrambled 3 days trying to find the nonexistent paper, then apologized to me for losing it and gave me a 96%. Confidence is key
my dad’s mate just walked out of a shop with a canoe and didn’t get questioned
Humans are like bees: if they sense you’re an intruder all hell will break loose, but if you get inside the hive they just assume you belong there. Be confident.
Bee confident
This is funny but also true, and a huge tip when traveling. Act like you belong, and you won’t be bothered like other tourists might. Especially on public transportation… do your research ahead of time and look like a disinterested commuter and you’ll blend right in.
Fun Fact about Bees: they use pheromones to communicate and the pheromone to signal ALARMisthe same chemical that makes bananas smell like bananas so if you eat a banana and then breathe on a beehive you will regret it and this seemed relevant when i started writing it
just to be clear, I’m staying here as long as this site functions. I have 0 intentions of deleting this blog, I will go down with this ship if only to see exactly how bad it gets
Big same.
Same, I’m staying until my blog gets deleted or Tumblr is obliterated.
These four examples all come from just the past five months, but there are countless additional articles and segments that share the same lessons about never giving up, going the extra mile, and taking care of others. The articles are framed to make you feel good, to illustrate the kindness of others, to show you that things can work out when tragedy hits, and yes, to “restore your faith in humanity.” These are excellent messages that we could probably all benefit from having in our lives,but there’s one thing that gets left out on an all-too-regular basis: the underlying causes.
How the fuck do you frame a little girl absolutely terrified her mum’s going to die, so she feels under pressure to fix it by desperately trying to get pocket change, and spin it as a good cute thing? Fucking hell.
we are not born to die!! what are you talking about!! do you think a book begins just to finish? do you think a song opens with a beautiful chord just for it to end? you don’t read the book to finish it, you read the book to eat up the excitement and the emotions it evokes!! to learn and to digest and to fall in love and be heartbroken!! you listen to the song to dance and dance and sing your throat raw!!! to cry and smile and swell with the harmonies!! yes, we are born with the inevitable fate of death, we are mortal after all, but that is merely the finale of the play!! the final act, the closing of the curtains – we are not born to take a bow and exit stage left!! we are born to love and be joyous and yell and move and learn and cry and feelfeelfeel!!! we are not born to die, silly, we’re born to live!!!
queerhomestuck 