another comic for class! we were given a list of paintings and told to pick one to use in a story. i used 6 paintings here, and these are all the artists in order of their works’ appearances:

even if billie joe was straight (he’s not) teenagers getting offended he used the word faggot in american idiot 16 years after the fact would still be some of the goofiest discourse i have yet to see on this website. if you were young and gay in 2004 that shit rocked your world bc we were living through one of the most powerful resurgences of blind american patriotism and anti-gay evangelical bullshit of the last three decades. i dont think most of yall understand how radical that song, that album, and green day’s overall anti-bush pro-gay stance was for the time. even though we were at the cusp of bush becoming unpopular by the time it was released, american idiot saw a fairly mainstream rock band condemning not just him, but the bigoted, ignorant american culture which created him. to remove all of this context from the song and act like green day was just throwing around homophobic slurs for the hell of it is exactly why people joke nobody has reading comprehension on this website lmao. he’s not weaponizing the term; he’s using it to identify with an alternative american society.

The lyric is:

Well maybe I'm the faggot America

I'm not a part of a redneck agenda

I don't know how to explain to kids these days what it was like to be young and queer in those days. People think I call myself queer because I've never lived in a small and homophobic town, never experienced violence or discrimination, don't know what it's like to have those words thrown at me with anger and hatred.

And it's hard to reach through the pain of those memories and say: there were no words for us that weren't slurs when I was your age.

I was 17 when this song came out. "Gay" was what the boys in my high school called anything they didn't like. "Pop quiz? That's so gay!" A (straight) girl in the drama club shaved her head for cancer and people started calling her a dyke. She didn't deny it, so her car got egged in the school parking lot and the eggs stayed there long enough to wreck the paint but somehow "nobody saw". The teachers and principal of my Catholic school didn't do anything about that, or about the abuse my gay friend put up with in the halls and every class except drama, because intervening would be "endorsing homosexuality." My gay friend got shipped off to conversion therapy by his family and I never saw him again. Conservative classmates tried to get the drama teacher fired, because she "wasn't supportive of Catholic values."

The only story I knew about gay people in a town like mine was The Laramie Project, about Matthew Sheppard's murder for being gay in a small town in Wyoming. That was the year I started but couldn't finish writing a play titled "The Lemon Tree" about two girls whose love for each other couldn't survive the homophobia of a town like mine, the same way a lemon tree planted there would be killed stone dead by its harsh winters. It was the year I decided to convert to Catholicism, because I had sincere faith and yes the Church was homophobic but having a real relationship with a woman was never going to be possible for me anyway so it wasn't like I was losing anything, right?

I didn't have access to the gay community or gay media, except through online slash fandom. A year later I found a second depiction of gay people in a town like mine: Brokeback Mountain, about two men whose love was smothered by society's homophobia until one of them was murdered for being gay.

(Now I know that kd lang and Tegan and Sara were openly gay in the 90s and come from my part of the world, although they all had to leave to be successful. Nobody mentioned kd lang's sexuality, and Tegan and Sara didn't get radio play here when I was young.)

And yes, "faggot" was worse than "gay". "Gay" just meant, you know, "bad", but "faggot" meant gay and soft and weak and about to get an ass-kicking.

So I remember those lines and when I first heard them all those years ago. I remember that I was cleaning my room and listening to the radio, and the DJ talked about Green Day's anger at cable news and the war in Iraq and played the song, and those two lines hit me, so hard I was incredulous and couldn't believe that for once somebody was on my side.

Green Day's image was tough and angry and loud, and it's an angry song—not unexpected, basically anyone left-leaning was angry about politics then—and them saying "maybe I'm the faggot" was them saying Come and get me. You can't scare me. This thing you throw out as an insult and a threat? Yeah, I'll own it, and I'll use it to lure you into punching range. You're wrong and I can fight you and win.

It was like a transmission from an alien planet. This was someone so much braver than I could ever imagine being. What that song said to me was that somebody was willing to stand up for me. I had viewed homophobia as an all-powerful cultural force I could either submit to or escape by hiding until I found a safe community, but pro-LGBT punk rock was what taught me that I also had the option to fight.

in this gay and age,

In the queer and now…

Nonbinary: A Zine Conversation with Maia Kobabe and Kori Michele

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Full transcript and image descriptions under the cut: 

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i’ve been reading for most of the day now about howard ashman, the lyricist for the little mermaid & beauty and the beast. he was one of the biggest creative forces behind both films, helping to shape their characters, narrative arcs, and themes as well as their music; he was also a gay man who was diagnosed with aids during the production of the little mermaid and died shortly after beauty and the beast was finished. alan menken, the composer who collaborated with him on both movies, said that beauty and the beast is heavily influenced by ashman’s experiences and perspective.

and i can’t stop thinking about it. i’ve always considered beauty and the beast to be one of the darkest films in the disney canon, as well as its most beautiful. it’s entirely about monsters, about the ways that people are determined to be wrong and dangerous: there’s the beast alone in his castle in the forest, and belle mocked and sneered at by her village, and even maurice carted off to an asylum. 

and that it was written and conceived of in part by a gay man who, according to his sister, trained himself out of “effeminate” physical mannerisms when he was young because he was bullied for them, and who as he wrote it was dying of an incredibly stigmatized illness— like, god. 

i mean when you just listen to those songs he wrote, the mob song (“the beast is] set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite / he’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free”), belle (“it’s a pity and a sin / she doesn’t quite fit in”)— and there was a cut song, human again, where the castle servants looked forward to rejoining the world.

like it’s obviously queer, but more than that, it’s the self-identification and self-validation of a man who knew this was this work was probably his last. at the end of the film, the beast is so sad, has succumbed entirely to despair and death. his society is coming to destroy him, and he can’t even be angry, because he doesn’t have anything left. but then he does. and he is still precious, and his life is still meaningful. he’s a person, and he can be loved. he can find happiness.

in the original beauty and the beast, the beast proposes marriage to belle every night and it’s her acquiescence that breaks the spell. in the disney movie, the beast only waits for belle to love him, because he cannot love himself. it’s such an unexpected blessing for both belle and the beast that they can find acceptance in each other, after both are so othered and dehumanized by their communities. their vulnerable joy in each other and themselves is so important, and their love song so wonderingly sweet. at the end, it is only when someone loves and accepts you that you stop being a monster. 

john musker, one of the directors of beauty and the beast, told this story about how ashman cried at disneyland when the little mermaid’s music was integrated into a parade and said that he was glad to know that his music would outlive him. beauty and the beast was my favorite movie when i was young and trying not to be queer, when i felt very wrong and very alone. it has been unbelievably important in my life. and so i am also glad— and so grateful— that howard ashman’s music outlived him, and that he lived at all. 

I have to tell you about the Abuela on my street.

She is nearly 70 years old, with wonderfully brown gnarled, wrinkled hands and eyes that are creased from smiling. She hand-makes all of her own clothes and sews dolls for my little sister. Abuela is very lonely… her husband already passed and her kids live far away. She misses her grandkids. Abuela comes around our place for the company almost every other day.

So this morning, my little sister and I went to visit the Abuela to return the kindness of her vegetables with some homemade soup.

It’s a funny joke we have, that if you can make a perfect posole you are wife material. I was joking around with my friend beforehand to see if I was worthy of marriage, and my little sister thinks me failing is the best thing in life, so of course she wants to ask Abuela when we arrive.

We’re wearing masks and gloves and can’t give her the big hug like we want to, but Abuela is always happy to see us. We bring the pot of soup to her table. My little sis, the little shit that she is, immediately asks, “Abuela, is Reina ready to be a wife yet?”

And Abuela immediately shifts her entire mood. Her face literally becomes this:

Abuela’s look pierces through my heart.

“Who are you trying to impress? A man or a woman?” she asks, deadly serious. We have broached the topic of marriage. It is her domain now.

And I, Rei, gay as the fourth of July, cannot believe that either Abuela clocked me instantly or that she could possibly have a fascinating past of her own. 

I thought about lying, but my little sister was there and I don’t like to lie in front of her. So I was honest and said I was trying to impress a woman.

Without a response, Abuela carefully tries the posole. The room is silent.

“For a man, it’s good,” she says after a moment. “But, you’ll need to work harder to impress a woman.”

All I can do is politely nod. I have so many questions.

Now Abuela is tired. She wants to eat and relax in peace, so she waves us away. We make sure she’s settled, and then my sister and I go home.

I can’t believe my 70 year old Abuela said BI RIGHTS

this is the funniest fucking thing ever

not only did the grandma say bi rights but like

she had two separate scales of food judgement for men and women AT THE READY and there’s something inherently hilarious in “FOR MEN IT’S FINE, FOR WOMEN DO BETTER” 

I theorize that queer people might love the italicized “oh” moment in romance novels and fanfics because we experienced it in real life, when we realized we were queer. We’ve had that moment where all the pieces clicked together and suddenly everything makes sense. We’ve stood dumbfounded as a ton of little things suddenly stand out blazing in hindsight. We’ve realized how obvious it’s been, all this time, and suddenly everything seems different and terrifying and wonderful. We’ve had that seismic shift, learning something that can never ever ever be unlearned. And genuinely, the only thing you can really say is oh.

It’s part of our love language. I will use it in every fanfic I write until I die.

I call this trope the “oh homo”

Elsa and Honeymaren taking a romantic stroll through the fields 💕

So I saw this meme and-

I keep forgetting that I have a tumblr,, literally just created for posts like this,, hope y’all enjoy!

The rest of it!!

Diana, be careful kissing supervillains who are that close with Isely.  It’s an easy way to get poisoned.

when you hit on her but try to pass it off as a joke because your BPD makes you absolutely terrified of rejection but then she goes for it anyway and you suddenly remember every gay thought you’ve ever had in your super gay life:

@thefingerfuckingfemalefury IT YOU

IT TOTALLY ME :D

Harley is like: “I’m so happy to be lesbian”

Happy to be bisexual you mean, Harley loves all genders <3

Lest we forget in Harley’s Little Black Book she’s a literal WW fangirl with an actual helga pataki closet shrine to Wonder Woman lol

First of all: I love the term “Hela Pataki Closet” to describe a smitten and lovestruck shrine like the one Harley has to Diana

In the words of Steve Rogers: I UNDERSTOOD THAT REFERENCE

And second of all yassssss Harley is indeed just

THIRSTY AS HECK

For Diana

Like

Even more than she is for Power Girl which is saying something

Harley wants Diana to teach her those Many Binding Games that the Amazons play :D

Harley loves the buff ladies of the DCU and will do anything to get them

IT IS A NOBLE AND IMPORTANT GOAL :D

It’s not just their arms Harley’s thirsty for…

Diana I think u broke her <3_<3

Harley.OS is currently too gay to function. Please try again later.

And let’s be honest, we all want Diana to break us >.>

THE BLUE SCREEN OF GAY <3

And oh my gosh YES

YES WE DO :D

Diana: “I will break you.”

Villainess: “I understand.”

<3_<3

“YES PLEASE”

A small detail here I really like is that the lipstick is smeared in the last panel. That was not a gentle kiss.

Manga Adaptation of Celebrated Yuri Fantasy Series ‘Roll Over and Die’ Licensed For Western Release

On April 22, Seven Seas Entertainment announced its new license the manga adaptation of Kiki’s light novel ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword! (Omae Gotoki ga Maou ni Kateru to Omou na). The manga is illustrated by Sunao Minakata (Akuma no Riddle).

The publisher describes the manga:

Seven Seas announced it had licensed the original light novel on February 2020 with plans to release it on October 27, 2020.

The manga is currently serialized in Comic Ride. The first volume was published in 2018 by Micro Magazine. Seven Seas adaptation of Minakata’s Roll Over and Die Vol. 1 will be released on February 16, 2021 digitally and in print.

Trope where there’s one girl in a group of guys but then over the course of the series they all eventually realize that they’re trans and start transitioning and it turns out that all along it was one guy in a group of girls.

The boy comes out at the end of the second to last season after the leader of the group who’s been out the longest calls them a girl gang and he goes “Uh, actually Keisha… about that…” and she goes “Oh don’t tell me. Not you too.” and he goes “Uh, yeah I was gonna tell my mom first but what the hell I’m Caleb now.”

The first episode ends with the one who will be called Keisha saying “Let’s go boys and Steph” and in the last episode she says “Lat’s go girls. And Caleb!”

The series has nothing to do with being trans of course. It’s an ongoing joke at worst. It’s a group of teens that fight corn demons in the midwest.

There’s a pair of twins who pose together like team rocket whenever they’re making an announcement. When they come out they make sure to pick rhyming names. They’re not identical twins they’re just like that.

okay, so

based on a lot of research that I did mostly to satisfy personal curiosity, a couple of surveys I’ve run right here on tumblr.com, and this presentation, this is my stance on virginity:

virginity is a flawed concept that is difficult to apply to queer relationships, because it was not designed to account for queerness. today we largely define virginity as measuring whether or not a person has had sex, but from the get-go virginity was about whether or not a cisgender woman had been penetrated by a penis. it’s not even really about sex so much as whether or not you guarantee that any children that woman has will genetically belong to her husband or otherwise monogamous partner, which is why virginity has become so culturally prized and fetishized - it’s tied to ownership.

obviously that’s not a metric that works universally, because if we accept that virginity is only tied to one sex act, then we have to say that a lot of sex doesn’t “count” and that a lot of sexually active people may very well be virgins. (by the heteronormative cissexist definitions of virginity I’m 100% a virgin, which doesn’t reflect my actual experiences in the slightest.) 

for a lot of queer folks for whom p-in-v sex isn’t a Thing, this leaves us trying to figure out what does count as virginity loss. that automatically creates a hierarchy, in which p-in-v sex is the only thing that definitely counts all the time (historian Hanne Blank calls it the “lowest common denominator”) and other things count conditionally - for instance, multiple researchers have found that cishet folks don’t tend to think you can lose your virginity having oral sex, but that many LGBTQ people do*. some cishet women believe having anally penetrative sex preserves “real” virginity, but some gay men feel that anal sex is the only thing that counts as virginity loss for them.

what we can take away from all that is that virginity is a sliding scale with pretty much no universally applicable rules, because there’s no single sex act that counts for everyone. I’ve asked people to propose other models, all of which are interesting to think about but are also flawed. a lot of people suggest that the first time you have an orgasm with a partner should be when you lose your virginity, but that overlooks the fact that many people have difficulty orgasming, and that people with vaginas especially tend to be unlikely to experience an orgasm during their first sexual experience. others leave out the orgasm and say your first partnered experience counts, but even that leaves room for questioning. one asexual person told me that since they don’t ever plan on having partnered sex, they consider the first time they used sex toys as their moment of virginity loss. 

my conclusion on the matter is that virginity is an entirely optional identity that is best defined on an individual basis, because there’s certainly no metric that works for everyone. personally I’ve come to view virginity as yet another flawed binary that’s inherently misogynistic and queer exclusionary, and something we’d be better off dispensing altogether. everyone has the right to define and value their own virginity, of course - and I’m completely supportive of people who want to wait to have a first sexual experience that feels special! - but on the whole I think it’s healthier to conceptualize virginity and sex as a whole not as a set of yes/no boxes but as a continuum of experiences that are all equally valued, without giving any of them the power to fundamentally alter any part of our identity.

*hilariously, Laura Carpenter found that women tend to change their mind about oral sex counting after they come out as lesbians or bisexual, which tends to retroactively shift their understanding of when they lost their virginity to an earlier date than they previously believed.