Lemme tell you a gay little story about an eagle.

Our town (~9,000 people) has a couple garages, but there's a big one on the main drag. My family has been going there for decades. I drive past it every day.

There used to be a huge pine tree on the corner of their lot, but last year it became a hazard and had to be taken down.

Shortly thereafter I drive by and see they've hired a guy to chainsaw sculpt the stump into a bald eagle.

Birds own my heart, but nationalism makes me twitchy. I withhold outright condemnation of the eagle, but I'm skeptical. (The original owner—an objectively Good Dude—sold the business to a younger couple a few years ago, and I don't have any knowledge of their whole deal.)

Then it turns out someone on staff is really into making costumes for the eagle. Every holiday. Every month. Stuffed turkey, witch costume, menorah headpiece, bunny ears. These people love to dress their bird.

The changing of the eagle suit becomes a source of joy every time I drive through town.

Until June, when the eagle is bare.

Now look, maybe I'm expecting too much asking my garage to celebrate Pride. But this is a small town. Every time I drive by that stupid eagle—this thing that has previously brought me so much joy—I feel hurt. I feel reminded that there are plenty of people in my liberal bubble who don't consider my community worthy of celebration. I drive to work, I feel bad. I drive home, I feel bad. The eagle is mocking me.

Then my A/C quits working.

So I book an appointent to bring my car in—and realize what I have to do.

I pick all this up at a thrift store for under ten bucks. I print the shirt with some weird heat-transfer fabric crayons I find in a cupboard. I loop gold elastic around the sunglasses and pray they'll fit on the eagle's head. (It is also important to draw your attention to the price of the feather boa.)

(Nice.)

My reasoning is thus: if I show up with a complete costume ready to go, someone will have to look me in the eye and say "We don't believe in that," at which point I'll be finding a new garage. But if they let me dress the eagle, then people in town get to have the joy I've been missing since the start of the month.

I listen to a lot of hype-up jams on my way over. I hate confrontation. I also don't wanna have to find another garage. I want to believe that this decision isn't actively antagonistic, but I'm not particularly hopeful.

I talk through the A/C issue with the guy at the desk, hand over my keys, then take a deep breath.

"Who's in charge of the eagle?"

"Oh, that's all Dylan. Second bay from the end."

I walk down the row of hydraulic lifts and find a disarmingly smiley middle-aged man pouring fluid through a funnel. I introduce myself and explain that, since the Pride parade is this Sunday and the eagle seems to be missing a costume, I have taken the liberty of making one myself, and can I get his blessing to go put it on?

Dylan grins this absolutely giant grin and goes

"Oh hell yeah."

So that's what's up now.

Happy Pride.

UPDATE: I called this morning to figure out when the car was gonna be done and the desk guy talked me through it all and then said:

"Hey also: thanks for making that costume for the eagle. People can be touchy about it, but the guys love what you did. And it’s so smart to put "Love is love" on the shirt. Because we’re all for the LGBTQ community, but of course there's people who come in here who aren't. And what are they gonna do? Disagree with something like that?"

I admitted I’d been nervous to ask about it, and we had a laugh, and then he told me they actually have a monthly budget for the eagle now. There’s a spreadsheet full of holidays and everything.

Anyway, I’ve still gotta get my wheel bearings replaced.

(Source)

THE MARRIAGE EQUALITY BILL HAS PASSED IN THAILAND.

It will be published in Thailand’s Royal Gazette for 120 days and become law.

HAPPY PRIDE TO THAILAND!!!!!!! 🏳️‍🌈

It's sad at the end of May seeing people reblog the "here it comes!" Pride logos post. You didn't notice that brands have decided it is no longer safe to openly support LGBT rights. The past 2 years have shown a dramatic decline in corporate sponsorship of Pride. And no, we don't care about the corporations, but you should care that they think the general public will oppose their support of LGBT rights. Anyway pay attention. The logos didn't change for Pride. It's bad.

“Institutions will fail us but community is where we hold power”

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation. the goal, for them, was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-deprivation that so many of us learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

Don't you fucking love this awesome Pride flag created by Rachel Lense for NASA? It's specifically made up of NASA images as follows: White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites, orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength. (c) NASA/Rachel Lense

twitter historically sucks but man this is a banger of a tweet

we DO grow old and happy. btw.

And you find love and it stays with you.

Older women are so, so beautiful, and older trans women are no exception. Celebrate the beauty of our elders! Celebrate trans beauty!

^^^

I wanted to share some more of these, specifically trans women of color. The images I'm posting are from a project called To Survive On This Shore and it's an interview project. I am only posting a handful so it's so worth checking out!

This is Linda, 60

Alexis, 64

Helena, 63

Kendrah, 72 (!!)

Tasha, 65

It was deeply healing to me to discover this project. The site has selected photos and attached interviews and it's definitely worth your time. I didn't include any because the focus of this post imo is transfems but there are a lot of beautiful interviews with transmasc people too if you're interested! But that'll have to be another post 💖

do you guys think John Singer Sargent may have been gay

I dony want to impose my little faggot gaze on history but I think maybe…..

I just went on Wikimedia commons and looked at a ton of his art and he has a "male nude" category but not a female one 💀

(there might be another reason for that but yeah)

His portraits of women also seemed to me to focus much more on their outfits than his portraits of men, which were more zoomed in on faces. This could simply be a consequence of women's fashion being cooler (and therefore more fun to render beautifully like he did), or maybe a result ofJohn Singer Sargent being a man himself. On the other hand, though, it could suggest that his appreciation of women's beauty and men's beauty was different. This on its own doesn't necessarily mean anything about his sexuality, but it does remind me (gay) of how my own affects my art.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Art_works_by_John_Singer_Sargent

He did create female nudes but the difference between his female nudes and his male nudes is striking. His female nudes are more like “this is a beautiful artistic depiction of the female form” and his male nudes are like “this is a guy in the sexiest kinkiest pose I could think of”.

I got curious and

Vs

i mean

I’m going to be honest, these male nudes do not look staid and reticent to me, they look confidently unapologetically horny

smth about this post seems very dismissive abt people’s identities, nothing wrong with kink but the whole ‘heteroflexible 23 yr old who can’t drive’ thing was unnecessary and seems kinda biphobic. why is this hypothetical person heteroflexible specifically? what about that identity makes you cringe so hard?

this post is absolutely about you

Asexuals were always part of pride and it really fucking shows when people think it's a recent term.

Although not going by the term "asexual" yet, asexuality was spoken about alongside homosexuality as far back as the 1890s. Asexual history is just as vital to queer history as any other term and I'm so tired of watching us being treated like a new thing

This image is so so fucking important to me

Reblog this, cowards

rights received

gay rights pt2

Pt 3

THE AGE OF PINING IS OVER

Me taking my hypothetical children to pride:

See that man in the dog mask? He's playing a game of make believe with his friends to have fun, just like we do! See how his tail is wagging?

See that man with a gun? He's part of a violent institution that serves the ruling elite and upholds white supremacy. Fifty years ago he would have been raiding all these bars and arresting us all. He could shoot you in the face right now and probably not even lose his job. If he tries to talk to you, remember to say, "I won't speak with you unless I have an attorney present."

Yesterday, I was helping my friends sell art in the park, when a couple of girls came up to us and asked (immediately regretting it) “is this the transfem picnic?……..” to which we got to respond “no this is the transmasc yard sale.” We then proceeded to have 15-20+ beautiful women swarm our stand of 4 creatures. Life is beautiful.

i’m at the transmasc yard sale

i’m at the transfem picnic

i’m at the combination transmasc yard sale transfem picnic