general psa:
freedom of speech means that the government is not allowed to tell you to shut the fuck up. it doesn’t mean that i am not allowed to tell you to shut the fuck up.
I can’t believe this has to be said. But this totally has to be said. (And this totally has to be said to my uncle)
Later this month, people all over the country will remember the June 1969 Stonewall rebellion in NYC, when queer people, led mainly by black and Puerto Rican drag queens, physically defended themselves in the streets against police repression. The history of Stonewall is closely associated with the figure of Sylvia Rivera, Latina transgender activist, organizer of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and member of the Young Lords, the revolutionary Puerto Rican organization.
This month is also a time to commemorate the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria rebellion in San Francisco, which predated Stonewall by almost three years and was the first militant transgender uprising of the 1960s. During the rebellion, people who were part of the heavily multinational queer community in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District responded with street-fighting when the regular brutality they suffered at the hands of the San Francisco Police Department reached a breaking point. It is an event little-known today.
Here are photos of a mural located in Clarion Alley of San Francisco’s Mission District on the subject of the Compton’s Cafeteria rebellion.
For more on the Clarion Alley Mural Project, click here.
Via Bohemian Arthouse
Please understand that I can’t spend all of my energy trying to get well. With a short-term illness like the flu, you can afford to put life on hold for a week or two while you get well. But part of having a chronic illness is coming to the realization that you have to spend some energy on having a life now. This doesn’t mean I’m not trying to get better. It doesn’t mean I’ve given up. It’s just how life is when you’re dealing with a chronic illness.
–An Open Letter To Those Without An Invisible Disability Or Chronic Illness
(Source: thoughts-thatfly)
Via constantIf you don’t think Corgis are one of the most adorable things on the planet you’re wrong
Via got your grandpappy on my dick
18mr:
A lot of folks are posting about the Tiananmen Square massacre today, of course. I thought we should share it too, but I wanted to write a little bit about what was explained to me about what happened in the spring of 1989 that the western media often overlooks.
I am a 1.5 generation Chinese American leftist. I was two when the massacre happened. My sister had just been born. My father, who immigrated from China to Hong Kong when he was a toddler to escape the Cultural Revolution, and then Hong Kong to the United States to go to college, tells me he was seeking work in China around this time.
Several summers ago, when we were traveling together in China, he told me about what he understood about Tiananmen Square from his perspective as a young, newly naturalized American citizen who still had deep ties to the motherland. He told me the sense of unrest was not just about state control of the media and politics, but a sense that the state was also imposing capitalist reforms on the Chinese economy without input from the people, and with clear preferential treatment for party cadres and others who had an “in” with the powers that be. Students were upset and anxious about what looked like unilateral decisions about the future that weren’t just about opening markets, they were about neoliberalising the country.
When I think about what’s happening in Istanbul, Turkey, I can’t help but think about this. When we remember Tiananmen Square, I hope we remember that this wasn’t necessarily about the struggle of democracy versus Communism, but that it was about people who wanted to take part in determining the future of their country, and who rejected nepotistic neoliberal reforms. Just like with the media narrative around Gezi, American audiences risk being turned around. A million people don’t turn out and go on hunger strikes against their own self-interest. There’s more to this story than meets the eye.
Remember Tiananmen, but remember it for what it was: young Chinese students and workers resisting their country “modernizing” in the age of Reagan, the godfather of neoliberalism. This is the same ideology that young Turkish students and workers are resisting in Istanbul. It’s the same ideology that has decimated the U.S. economy and that we resist when we say “another world is possible.”
When we ask why the Chinese government still hasn’t admitted that Tiananmen even happened, we should remember that China today is just as cutthroat and capitalistic in some ways as the United States is. They have delivered on neoliberalism, but in the style of an autocratic state, where nepotism and party connections had more to do with business success than anything. Students and workers in China in 1989 were emphatically saying no to this system.
I feel like every man who has ever tried to convince me to take some rando shouting “Hey girl, nice ass” at me as a compliment sees it this way: You’re sitting outside some Italian café in a Betty Draper dress sipping a prosecco when all of a sudden your dainty neck scarf flies off in the light breeze. Joseph Gordon Levitt, wearing a linen suit with a pocket square and no socks with his penny loafers, steps off his Vespa and hands it to you while saying something witty about how it’s almost as beautiful as you are. You then both ride off into the sunset, laughing as Dean Martin plays in the background and the director yells cut on the espresso commercial that is your life.
In reality, it’s you getting yelled at by a bunch of sweaty men standing outside a bar at eight in the morning, telling you about how fuckable you look in your sweatpants when you’re just trying to get a bottle of milk in peace like a goddamn human being. And it is the opposite of a compliment.
(Source: faganchelsea)
Via This is my designAn oppressive system often seems stable because it limits people’s lives and imaginations so much that they can’t see beyond the limitations. This is especially true when a social system has existed for so long that its past extends beyond collective memory of anything different. As a result, it lays down terms of social life - including various forms of privilege - that can easily be mistaken for some kind of normal and inevitable human condition.
But this situation masks a fundamental long-term instability caused by the dynamics of oppression itself. Any system organized around one group’s efforts to control and exploit another is ultimately a losing proposition, because it contradicts the essentially uncontrollable nature of reality and does violence to basic human needs and values.
Dan Savage at Bryant Park NYC on Bisexuality (by framboise001)
For anyone wondering if Dan Savage has given up on his bi erasing
Well this is legitimately disappointing. I gather that his stance is “since many gay men use bisexual as a temporary label, we should assume every young bisexual man is lying until time proves otherwise. Thats…. I don’t even have words for how incredibly stupid that is.
BTW I will be getting his book next week and I will try to read it as fast as I can for review here.
~ Sarah
The thing I find most annoying about this is that he bases it on what he did when he was 16, in 1980. The queer world has moved on since then. My mom is a middle school teacher. She teaches openly trans* 12-year-olds. And no one gives a shit. Pre- and early teens are far more open about their orientation than ever before. When a 16-year-old boy today says he’s bi, he’s probably been thinking about it for a long time, talking over his feelings with his friends and partners of various genders and orientations. And he feels there is no shame or disappointment waiting for him should he identify as gay. He could marry a man in 12 States, why would any gay kid feel the need to “soften the blow” by saying they’re bi? Any family that has a problem with him being gay would have an equal problem with him being bi. But most parents these days accept whatever their kids’ orientations are. But coming out as bi isn’t like coming out as gay, because most people would accept it and treat it as the end of the story. But bi people have to deal with a “to be continued” hanging over their heads as people wait to see “which one” they ultimately “choose”. And this isn’t helped by prominent queer sex gurus telling everyone to “wait and see” about bi teens’ “real” orientation.
once again Dan Savage says It gets better - except if you are bisexual … especially if you are a male-identified bisexual tween/teen or young adult … in that case your STILL just confused and going thru a phase!
also, coming out as bi doesn’t have to be easier on the parents than coming out as gay… my extremely homophobic mother told me it would have been easier for her to accept me having a girlfriend if i was a lesbian because then I wouldn’t have a choice. instead she felt i hurt her more by “choosing” to go against her values. i’ve also had middle-aged people who claim themselves to not be homophobic understanding my mothers point of view when I told them about it (“but you could choose to be with a man”)… it’s tiresomely biphobic and extremely heterosexist.
Via Bisexual/non-Monosexual & Queer Community
Shout out to girls who don’t mind being called dude and man casually
shout out to boys who don’t mind being called guuurrl
shout out to humans who don’t mind being called dawg
shout out to dogs who will let you call them anything so long as you say it in a happy, friendly tone.
Shout out to Guinea Pigs which are neither pigs nor from Guinea.
#CAN I HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOR SALAZAR SLYTHERIN
(Source: malformalady)
I’ve been told this many times throughout me life, “I wish I was disabled,” “I wish I was disabled so I could stay inside like you do,” “I wish I was disabled so I wouldn’t get detention,” “I wish I was disabled so I could get special treatment like you do.”
Let me…
(Source: inadequacy-is-key)
About me
Hello there. I'm Justine, and I'm from the internet. And since you have a tumblr, I assume you are too. I'm a white cis kinky geeky bisexual poly feminist latina organizer. I consider myself a New Yorker, though I'm originally from Florida, and for the past year have been transient.
Always trying to reflect and grow, this tumblr is another way to help me do that.
![[dear clarice]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/avatar_1d95b2af1019_30.png){kind=avatar}
