laurenfelton

fuckyeahnaturalhair:

fuckyeahsexychicks:

smooth:

wiggzweb:

(via afroholic)

Very NIce

Reason #92874198782 to wear your hair naturally :)

What not to call trans people:

projectqueer:

fuckyeahgenderstudies:

queersecretssucks:

Avoid: transman, transwoman, trans-man, trans-woman, etc.
Instead, use: trans man, trans woman, etc.
Why?: The one-word “transwoman” and hyphenated “trans-woman” imply that trans is a gender different from woman. The space indicates that it’s an adjective describing a woman, such as “Asian man” or “fat woman”.

Avoid: a transsexual, an MtF, an FtM
Instead, use: transsexual person, trans people, trans woman, trans man
Why?: These words (and all their variations) are adjectives, not nouns. Using them as a noun reduces to their identity and only their identity. The initialisms (MTF, FTM) are offensive when used as nouns because they ungender trans men and women by implying that they are a different kind of man or woman (similar to “transman” above).  Many trans men and women don’t identify with these acronyms at all (even as adjectives), while others believe that they accurately describe their identities.

Avoid: T-girl, boi, tranny, she-male, he-she, it, trap, dickgirl, cuntboy, best of both worlds
Instead use: dont’. Just, don’t.

But wait! I self-identify with these terms! Many people self-identify with these terms.  For example, some trans men and women may choose to identify as a “transwoman” or “an FtM”. Using these terms with these specific people is not offensive, but these terms should not be generalized to all people. Other terms, such as “T-girl”, “boi”, and “tranny” are very common for self-identification, but can be very insulting and triggering to others.
In summary, self identification is wonderful, but generalizing is not.

Thanks for this. As they say, live and learn: i have been guilty of the trans* one-word amalgam. Whoops. 
This is a fabulous post. Thank you. Twice. 

Yesyesyes to that last paragraph. Oftentimes, people are confused when I call a certain label derogatory, because they may know someone who identifies with that particular label. On the flip side, people will also tell me I’m being inconsiderate when I describe a particular person by the potentially offensive term they choose for themselves, not realizing that some people identify positively with these labels.

Back in high school, I wrote an essay on the word “queer” and why I identify with it, and I remember being asked over and over why I would choose such a derogatory label to describe myself, because people weren’t familiar with its use in more positive contexts (which was actually pretty depressing to me). When a word that common (at least to me) is so readily misunderstood, I can’t imagine how often some of these labels are misused.

"‎In fairness, we’ve been building ‘ground zeros’ near Iraqi mosques since March 2003."

http://twitter.com/jasonmustian/status/21337496786

projectqueer:

queerwatch:

John Bickford: I suggest going to Target, filling up a cart with stuff you would normally buy there, then abandoning the cart with a sign taped to it that reads: “This is what I would have bought today, except that Target lost my business by contributing to a homophobic politician who wants to take my rights away.”

dionnadecay asked: I don't know why I am just coming across the corrections you made for my appeal, but I just wanted to you know that I am so grateful that you took the time to help me out. Thank you so much :)

You’re very welcome! Good luck with everything :)

submission - lesbians just can’t find a man?

projectqueer:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck: Lesbians Just Can’t Find A Man

Project Queer: Thanks for sharing this!

My favorite part of the article:

Hasselbeck told viewers that lesbians link up for companionship, not sex—a claim which her co-host, Joy Behar, called “ridiculous.” “Being gay is not just holding hands and walking through the tulips,” Behar says. “Oh Elisabeth,” quips Pop Crunch, “it takes real work to make Sarah Palin look like the smartest Republican with a vagina.”

That is such a ridiculous claim. I can only hope that Hasselbeck was kidding. (I do not watch TV at all really so I could not tell you what kind of personality Hasselbeck has). Either way, props to Joy Behar for telling it like it is.

I don’t watch The View, but I watch most of the clips about LGBTQ-related issues. I typically disagree with Hasselbeck, and this is no exception, but I must say I’m pretty put off by all the criticism she and other women on the show face. They certainly make a lot of ignorant comments about homosexuality (as do the majority of people I know), but those comments are always attributed to the fact that they’re idiotic women rather than the fact that they’re not particularly well-versed in queer theory.

I don’t like what Hasselbeck is saying, but I also don’t like the fact that no one can offer an intelligent critique of what she’s saying without making a quip about her vagina. The fact is: she’s not an expert on sexuality and neither is Joy Behar. I could write an entire essay here about why Behar’s view is just as problematic as Hasselbeck’s, but because she appears to be defending lesbians, a lot of gays are blindly defending her and dismissing Hasselbeck as stupid, as a dumb blonde, as another idiotic Republican with a vagina.

I think this clip is pretty important in that these women reflect the variety of misguided views out there on sexuality — both Hasselbeck’s idea that lesbianism is about a lack of options and Behar’s idea that shifting sexual attraction is all about societal pressure and embracing one’s ‘true’ sexuality later in life. Hasselbeck is dismissing lesbianism as a last resort, but Behar is dismissing all older, recently out lesbians as women who have been suppressed their whole lives, longing for another woman while suffering though unhappy heterosexual relationships. It is possible, you know, for people to have fulfilling relationships with the opposite sex and fulfilling relationships with the same sex.

A lot of the people I know are so resistant to the idea that this can happen because they’re frightened by the idea that sexuality is fluid. Perhaps they’re worried the “ex-gay” religious crowd will use these kinds of examples to validate the idea of gay conversion therapy, or perhaps they’ve got a bad taste in their mouth from years of hearing: “it’s just a phase; you’ll settle down with a nice [man/woman] eventually.” Whatever the case, it’s a dangerous mindset to trap ourselves into. You can’t fight ignorance with ignorance. Although I’m sure there are a lot of women out there who have finally embraced their lesbianism after years of unhappy heterosexual relationships, that’s not true for everyone, and attempting to invalidate a person’s past experiences and feelings by attributing their life choices to societal pressure does nothing to advance our community. There’s really no reason to keep shoving ourselves into boxes when it comes to defining our sexuality.

Coding Media

In my psych class tonight, we were ‘coding’ for sexual content in a music video. In order to do this properly, we needed to come up with specific images to look for that don’t involve any sort of subjective judgment. The idea was to tally up the amount of times a certain image appeared so that we could come up with a number representative of how much sexual content was in the video. It actually became pretty difficult to come up with a working list, because anything too general would cause disagreement when it came to deciding whether or not the content was actually sexually explicit (i.e. listing ‘passionate’ kissing - what counts as a passionate or overly sexual kiss?).

Highlight of the assignment:

Instructor: “Alright, what else can we put on the list?”
Student: “Cleavage.”
Instructor: “See, this is where it gets tricky. We’re all going to code that differently. What is considered too much cleavage? What kind of cleavage is inappropriate?”
Student: “…women’s cleavage.”
Instructor: “Right. Okay.”

Taco C.C. Bear

I just put an entire handful of hamster food into Taco’s bowl only to watch her violently shove ALL of it into her cheeks, run up to where her wheel is located, and spit it out for later. I think my roommate’s hamster is bulimic…