A small turtle 🐢❤️

What an adorable duck 😍 

(via)

Creative & DIY

SO THAT’S HOW THEY FUCKING DO IT

Okay, I’m sorry but I just feel so restless about the bushfires, I made a mini-comic. Maybe it will get a few more people to donate. I wish I could do more.  Please see http://wires.org.au if you want to help. :(

Short comic, while I work on something bigger on the side. It is nevertheless a very important topic. A lot of seabirds die because they eat plastic. They feed their chicks with the waste. It’s really tragic.

If I were a Pokemon, which Pokemon would I be?

bonus points for why

i love how you guys talk shit about cartoon style and animation but what the fuck is with this phineas and ferb obsession, The Ugliest Childrens Show Ever Animated.

Fun fact: In one interview the creators mentioned that one reason everyone’s heads are shaped like really recognizable shapes (Candace is the letter p, Phineas is obviously just a triangle) is so its way easier for younger kids to draw them. Not being able to to draw your favorite characters when you’re little can be really frustrating and kind of put you off drawing all together.

I got to speak with the creators in their studio years ago when P&F was still being created and they said at dinner one night they challenged themselves to design a character with a triangle shaped head. Right there on the paper tablecloth (the kind restaurants provide with crayons for kids to draw on), they drew the very first Phineas, then realized he needed acompanion, and thus with a rectangle, they drew the first Ferb.

Dan & Swampy are incredibly kind men who wanted to create a show that was easy for kids to recognize and participate in, while having fun antics for anyone of all ages.

It’s not even that ugly, it’s got funny shapes sure, but the colors and character designs are bright and fantastically fun, and the show’s writing was completely clever.

I detailed in a long post once how they left most of the dialogue up to the animators: they had a basic outline of how each episode would go, and as the animators would draw it out (they didn’t use puppets folks, they used cintiq tablets and drew everything, I saw it first-hand) and as they were drawing they’d think “what would this character be saying while making this gesture?” and that’s how the dialogue was created. The animators also worked in pairs, so they always had a companion to talk to, work with, and help with dialogue as they went. This is how most of the jokes were created, and as they had multiple animator teams, they were able to keep jokes and dialogue very fresh so the show never stagnated from using only the same couple of writers like most shows do.

For the songs Dan & Swampy themselves would pull a guitar off wall, go into the meeting room and gather anyone around, and just come up with songs on the spot right there. They would sit for a couple of hours messing around gathering input from anyone and everyone. This kept the songs fun and fresh and also kept them from stagnating or becoming boring.

Phineas and Ferb was made in a very rewarding, fun environment. Everyone who worked in the studio seemed very happy, and they loved having visitors and getting to show off and explain every aspect of the show. Everyone was kind and fun and just loved their job. I genuinely can’t accept seeing anyone saying negative things about a show that was intrinsically meant to be gratifying, fun, and wonderful for kids and adults of all ages, and stuck to that mindset throughout its entire creation process.

Edit: I forgot to add one of my favorite parts! The creators knew their animators so well that they could tell who designed which episode! To each person watching, it’s difficult to tell differences in style since it’s meant to all look the same, but the creators looked at some clips in front of us and guessed which animator pair did the clips and then they double-checked it and were correct, pointing out extremely minute details that were recognizable trademarks for each team. Clearly they had a very kind and caring and friendly environment!

post your stupid as hell animal pics

My fat idiot son who I love got stuck under a couch

fantastic. bless his heart. let me see something even stupider

He got stuck between the screen and the window :(

i fucking live for this

Me anytime a sex scene takes place in a show/movie: This is literally the most unnecessary thing can we not

Me:

theres this cat on twitter named luna i cant stop thinking about because her resting face always looks so distraught and anxious i love her

these are the eyes of someone who has seen too much i wish this poor soul the best

Thinks about how a guy got paid to say nothing but radda radda for the entire run of chowder

Remember that Harley Quinn is both

Bisexual and Jewish

CAN SOMEONE FIND WHERE IT'S STATED SHE IS JEWISH?! I NEED THAT!

And a personally fav

Fun fact: Harley was originally a one-off character/pseudo-walk on role that Paul Dini made for his friend Arleen Sorkin (Harley's original VA). Harley is loosely based on Arleen, including her being Jewish. So this isn't something that was added later by another writer, but rather an aspect of her that was part of her character since day one.

Not that it would make her any less Jewish if it was added later, of course, but I think it's important to know how it was always part of her character, especially since a lot of folks don't seem to realize she's Jewish at all, let alone that she was from inception.

do you ever wonder if anyone reads your blog like everyday just to check on you 

pls give me 1(one) reason aces have ever been oppressed, and 1(one) example of aces being a part of lgbt history(before 2004 at least) and then maybe i’ll consider the idea that aces belong in the lgbt community lol

Proof of the existence of asexuals in LGBT+ communities before 2000:

The Golden Orchid association (1644-1949) - a group of women in China that included lesbians, bisexuals, and “women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership” that today we would call asexual or aromantic. 

Another Golden Orchid association link (which, interestingly, describes what appears to be a poly relationship). 

Personal experience of a queer-identifying person noting that aces were part of the bi community in the 80s and 90s.

A book published in 1999 supports the previous link of someone’s personal experience, and notes that asexuals could be considered part of Kinsey’s “Group 3″ (the bisexuals) because they were “about equally homosexual and heterosexual” and “have no strong preferences for one or the other” just like bisexuals. 

Another book that supports the personal experience source by noting that asexuals were considered part of the bisexual “Group 3″, which was published in 1999.

Another post of someone’s personal experiences of asexuals being part of the LGBT+ community in the 90s. 

A source from 1999 noting that, while some female-female relationships in the early to mid-twentieth century were obviously lesbian relationships, not all of them were, but that it would be a mistake to label them all “friendships”. It specifically notes that asexual partnered relationships also existed. 

This book describes a series of interviews done in 1990 by Catherine Whitney who interviewed heterosexual women married to gay men, and found that they were often asexual. It also describes how, in 1990, Ann Landers (a very popular advice columnist) asked her readers if married couples could enjoy a full life without sex and was flooded with 35,000 responses from people of all ages who had little or no sex and didn’t miss it. It also describes how “Boston marriage” was originally coined with a not-necessarily-always-accurate implication that such a relationship between women was nonsexual, but that later on the assumption was reversed to imply women in a sexual lesbian relationship, and how that caused some women involved in such relationships to hide the asexual nature of their relationships for fear of being called frauds by the larger lesbian community.

This 1997 book that states “To be a Kinsey 3 (bisexual) is to be equally attracted to men and women, i.e. completely bisexual…it is also to be equally unattracted to men and women, i.e. completely asexual. Bisexuality is never about two, only about one – asexual, or self-fulfilling – or three – continuously and equally attracted to both men and women”.

Proof of asexuality being considered as a concrete, distinct orientation before 2000:

One of the first online posts about asexuality in its current use, was made in 1997. 

A study on anorexia and bulemia in gay and bisexual men done in 1999 found that 58% of anorexia patients were asexual. 

The 1997 Australasian Gay & Lesbian Law Journal mentions asexual as a “relevant sexual identity”.

A 1983 issue of the Journal of Sex Research studied the Mental Health Implications of Sexual Orientation among heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual people. 

The article “Asexuality as Orientation: Some Historical Perspectives” describes different historical studies on asexuality, including a study from Johnson in 1977 where the word asexual was used to describe women “regardless of physical or emotional condition, actual sexual history, and marital status or ideological orientation, [who] seem to prefer not to engage in sexual activity”. It also describes a 1980 study by Storms who included asexual as one of four orientation categories when mapping out sexual orientation. It also describes a 1983 study by Nurius that found out of 685 participants, 5% of males and 10% of females were asexual. It also describes a 1990 study by Berkley et al. that included questions “related to homosexuality, heterosexuality, and asexuality” and included four items (out of 45) that were specific to asexuality. 

This book published in 1922 contains a lot of what I personally would describe as narcissism and pseudo-science, but acknowledges asexuality nonetheless: “In addition to the ordinary distinctive males and females, we have asexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and old women of both sexes.”

This book from 1996 that notes “A transsexual may have a heterosexual orientation, a homosexual orientation, a bisexual orientation – or an asexual orientation” and clarifies that “a very small number – are asexual or bisexual.”

This book mentions a study by Malyon in 1981 that noted the options available to gay and lesbian teenagers choosing whether, or how, to come out by “[describing] three possible modes of adaptation in adolescence: repression of sexual desire, suppression of homosexual impulses in favor of heterosexual or asexual orientation, or a homosexual disclosure.”

Kinds of oppression that asexuals face:

Eunjung Kim wrote a chapter titled “How Much Sex Is Healthy? The Pleasures of Asexuality” that describes how “the absence of sexual desires, feelings, and activities is seen as abnormal and reflective of poor health” in Western contemporary culture “because of the explicit connection between sexual activeness and healthiness” and argues that “medical explanations of asexuality as an abnormality that has to be corrected constitute a large part of the stigmatization and marginalization experienced by asexual people.” It also discusses the ways in which some groups, specifically Asian American males, that are desexualized can erase the space for asexual Asian American men to simply exist.

Asexuals also face sexual harassment, rape threats, corrective sexual assault, and corrective rape (which, no, is not a lesbian-only term according to actual South Africans) specifically because they are asexual. 

There was a recent study by the AAU to identify sexual assault on college campuses, and broke down the responders to their survey by sexual orientation, including asexual. The results clearly show that asexuals are not immune to unwanted sexual contact, stalking, intimate partner violence, or sexual harassment.

A chapter of “Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives” that notes the specific way that asexual people are talked to/about: “Because asexual difference cannot be iterated in the linguistic field where sex and a sexed position dominate the discourse of sexuality and desire, the asexual subject is linguistically and visually dismantled and reconstructed in the position of a fetish object. This fetishistic conversion happens because the asexual person is made into an image, or spectacle, for consumption.” and “The difference between the unassailable asexual (someone who lacks all of the traits commonly blamed for asexuality such as past history of abuse, disability, etc.) and the spectacular asexual is that while the unassailable asexual allegedly makes asexuality digestible for a skeptical public and presents an accessible image, the spectacular asexual is always consumed as a fetish object, regardless of mental health, ability, and gender.”

The study “Intergroup bias toward “Group X”: Evidence of prejudice, dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination of asexuals” is exactly what it sounds like. The article’s abstract states: “In two studies (university student and community samples) we examined the extent to which those not desiring sexual activity are viewed negatively by heterosexuals. We provide the first empirical evidence of intergroup bias against asexuals (the so-called “Group X”), a social target evaluated more negatively, viewed as less human, and less valued as contact partners, relative to heterosexuals and other sexual minorities. Heterosexuals were also willing to discriminate against asexuals (matching discrimination against homosexuals). Potential confounds (e.g., bias against singles or unfamiliar groups) were ruled out as explanations.”

The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality describes many issues that asexuals face, including: how asexuality is seen as “invisible” and lends to people thinking it does not exist, how asexuality is actively erased as “unimportant” or not its own identity, the explicitly and implicitly negative messages associated with a lack of sexual attraction, the fear asexuals face when they believe there is something physically or psychologically wrong with them for being asexual, the belief asexuals face about how they must be deeply flawed since they do not conform to other sexual identities, how asexuals face cultural ideologies that sexuality is biologically based and ubiquitous (that all humans possess sexual desire) and that don’t acknowledge asexuality, that to describe oneself as asexual is a statement of moral superiority or purity or failure to find a suitable partner, that asexuality is an immature state they will “grow out of”, that asexuality is a description of action or a preference, that asexuality is unnatural or unhealthy or has to be a symptom of something else, etc.

Asexuality has been shown in the media in a negative light for decades, reflecting the idea that (for various reasons steeped in classism and racism) any woman who wasn’t willing to marry and procreate was a threat to the status quo, as seen in this 1955 book that notes: “Women who did not marry incurred political and social scorn for another reason. The influx of eastern and southern European immigrants in the United States pushed the question into eugenic terms–the wrong people were reproducing. Educated women came primarily from white middle- and upper-class stock, the most desired element by dominant social norms. When these women refused to marry and reproduce, they forced a new concern into the public discourse. it is not a coincidence that the stereotypical asexual unmarried older woman emerged at this time as a source of popular humor.”

Some people in some religions are very explicit about hating asexuals specifically because they are asexual, seeing asexuality as “a perversion akin to homosexuality and bestiality”. 

Other religions see asexuals as actually sinful if they choose not to have sex with their spouse.

While not every member of every religion looks down on asexuals, many people in portions of various religions choose to view asexuals negatively. 

Some people even recommend asexuals avoid being in a relationship with non-asexuals and assert that “promoting and trying to spread” asexuality, or behaving in an asexual manner, is wrong or unhealthy. 

Because of these religious beliefs about asexuality, that also opens up asexuals to discrimination in various legal ways, including (but not limited to) things like the new adoption bill in Texas. 

Asexuality was implicitly pathologized until very recently, and even now, the DSM-V states that a diagnosis of HSDD may not be given only if the patient has a preexisting knowledge of asexuality and chooses to ID that way.

TL;DR: 

Asexuals have long been considered part of the bisexual community. When people used to talk about bisexuals, it included asexuals because asexuals were the bisexuals too. Bisexual history is asexual history.

Asexuals have also long been considered as a stand-alone orientation that was part of larger non-straight communities and could be studied in comparison to other sexual orientations. 

Asexuals face many of the same issues that other marginalized orientations face as well as issues specific to their orientation. These include erasure, medicalization, misidentification, harassment, rape specifically targeted at them for being asexual, and religious intolerance, to name just a few.  

None of this is exhaustive. There are more sources to be found and studied. 

“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, "Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a "sinner" and already dead to her, and that she wouldn't even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, "Oh, momma. I knew you’d come", and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, "I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family's large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, "They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here'd come the money. That's how we'd buy medicine, that's how we'd pay rent. If it hadn't been for the drag queens, I don't know what we would have done", Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family's plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.

For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the 'Cemetery Angel'.”— by Ra-Ey Saley

She’s 60 now, she’s still doing activist and advocacy work, and working on a memoir.

road work ahead

the other day i was in a car with like 5 of my friends and we passed by a road work ahead sign and EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of us said the vine it was such a gen z moment

if anyone was wondering what the gen z kids are up to

they’re gathered by the fountain and all screaming “MY LEG” from spongebob