sundries, nighttime linkspam edition

[rm]

How not to come out: announcing your bisexuality? Good. Saying the lyrics to your song could be about 'a boy, girl, tranny, whatever'? Tacky. At best.

Best C&D ever: The National Pork Board is concerned with the marketing practices of unicorn meat.

London has pterosaurs!

Need another reason to think BP is evil? They are burning turtles and actively working to stop people rescuing them.

The Family & Medical Leave Act will now apply to same-sex partners and their children. Thank fuck.

Why is Doctor Who the best show? Let the venn diagram show you.

Some asshole shot a goose in a public park here with a crossbow. But the goose is okay now, although he's been named Target.

On Angel: "Supersymmetry." Out of the clear blue sky Fred and Wesley are vengance buddies, Lillah's jealous and hey, Connor, you're a creepazoid. Gunn will surely hate and blame Fred for this fuckery forever and they are now doomed. I'd know that even if Gunn hadn't said as much. Also, yum, misogyny in academia.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's murky, and I certainly have less of a right to weigh in on it than you do, but I see it used far too often, both in and outside of the queer community to mean "ugly woman" and that's not helping anyone and I think additionally complicates the negative meanings of the word. I don't think it's something a cis person who is not identified with trans issues in some ways should be using in mainstream media at this juncture.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Right. It's a slur used against trans women more often than not, or sometimes cis women of varying orientations, more than it includes my set. (We're either nonexistent, Really Serious lesbians, or confused straight girls. *eyeroll* )

All of which is to say that my actual horse in the race is somewhat limited as well.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And yet, I hear the reclaiming sense of it far and away the most often from friends who are FtM.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and that's part of what put me off of it.

My whole existence doesn't get summed up in a less-than-human gross-out trope in the same way. The people I fear because I am trans -- cismen, mostly straight -- are less likely to notice me. If they do, my risk is less acute than it is for a trans woman. Much as invisibility and dismissal is a bummer, I'm uncomfortable with appropriating the struggles of people under the other half of the umbrella. For all the shit I go through, it doesn't hold a candle.

It describes me to some extent, and I'm not ready to march against using the word anywhere ever -- it is in a lot of ways more tenable than me using the word "fag" to describe myself -- but I'm sort of 60/40 on the whole thing these days.

It's also possible I worry too much.