62 posts tagged gender
bisexual guys are assumed to be secretly gay
bisexual girls are assumed to be secretly straight
both are assumed to secretly like men
see what i’m getting at?
Don’t forget that gay men are gay because they lacked a “strong male figure”. And lesbians either haven’t found the right man or are gay because of a guy.
(via turnerrs)
I’ll be honest: this is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. I am a little, teeny, eensy bit worried about it.
But lately I’ve been thinking about these things that I’ve done and that have happened to me and thinking about them specifically in terms of an ulcer I haven’t tried to heal yet. I’ve wondered how many people will read this and think, “Ah.” I don’t think I’m alone.
So I’m going to share this story, knowing from past experience that sharing stories builds strength, and hope it’s still true.
See, when I was younger I wanted to be invisible.
I recently received an email from an anonymous fan sharing how she pulled a Hawkeye Initiative themed prank on her CEO to illustrate a problem with some artwork.
My personal compliments to her and her accomplice on a mission well done; they perfectly took they perfectly took the concept of The Hawkeye Initiative one step farther, and effected actual change. I hope this gives you as much of a laugh as it did me (the artwork is currently my desktop), and inspires you to be unafraid to stand up and take action in your own awesome way.
Now, excuse me while I go play my new favorite mech game. :)
-SkjaldmeyjaAnonymousFan8675309:
I work with an all-female team of data scientists, in the gaming industry. This makes me the professional equivalent of Amelia Earhart riding the Loch Ness Monster.
I love my job. Our company in particular is great. Firstly, our game (HAWKEN) is beautiful and people love it. Secondly, half of our executive branch is female. Half of them are punk rock, and all of them are badassed. Our gender awareness standards, compared to the industry at large, are top shelf. We are talking Amelia Earhart in Atlantis, at a five star resort, getting a mani-pedi from Jensen Ackles. I have it good.
For the last six months of my tenure at Meteor Entertainment, there has been only one thing I did not love about my job. This
picture:
Our CEO loves this picture. It is to all appearances his favorite piece of comic art for the game. He had it blown up poster-sized, framed, and displayed on the out-facing wall of his office. There, it looms over the front room like a ship’s figurehead. It is the first thing workers and visitors see when they enter the building and the last thing they see when they leave. This little lady’s undermeats have been the open- and close- parens to my work world for the last six months.
I loathe this picture.
Why do I loathe it? How, you ask, can I stay mad at a sweet young belle who has so obviously taken a break from her important welding to offer me a piping hot cup of coffee and/or a vigorous hand job? (And probably, given her apparent safety consciousness, simultaneously?) If you don’t already know the answer, you might want to check out things like #1ReasonWhy, and the Bechdel Test, and also this, and this, and this and this, and all these other things. (And while we’re talking you should check out this other bullshit right here.)So at our office holiday party, while our CEO was having everyone in the company sign it, I stand there grinding my teeth into tiny shards. Until, suddenly, it came to me: a vision.
And so it came to be that I approached Sam Kirk, a wickedly funny co-worker who shared my sentiment. Sam, turns out, is a very talented artist who can be bribed-slash-inspired using a medley of feminist indignation, hysterical giggling, and two $90 bottles of añejo tequila.
A month-and-a-half later, our vision was a reality. I give you:
Bro-sie The Riveter.
I want to make it completely clear that everything in this prank that required actual talent was done by Sam. Find this, and more of Sam’s art, at TheRealSamKirk.com.
We blew (ahem) Brosie up poster sized. We framed him. And then, at 7:30 on Monday, April 1st, we snuck into our CEO’s office and switched them.
I stood in the entryway, dizzy with joy. It was glorious. There Brosie stood, proud, nipples testing the air like young gophers in springtime, the post-apocalyptic breeze gently swaying his banana hammock. Brosie said, loud and proud: “Get ready, world! I am here to lubricate your joints and tighten your socket.”
I basically spend the next few hours having a joy-induced neurological episode.
As the morning progressed, Brosie (ahem) revealed himself to our co-workers. The air resounded with startled, suppressed gargles of mingled joy and horror. Some take pictures. Some instantly turn and flee. Several men blush and grin in vindicated solidarity. Several women ask us for prints. At this point I am in total rapture. This is the moment I have been dreaming about for six months.
Yet somehow everyone in the office manages to keep quiet about it. Until, finally, our CEO arrives.
We hear a loud: “What the hell is this?!” And then all goes quiet. Ten minutes pass. We panic.
We are both suddenly and painfully aware that we have, in fact, just punked the CEO of our company. He is by all accounts an awesome dude. He is also a late-50s ex-army guy who happens to determine our employment futures in an at-will state. Meep.
Twenty more minutes pass. And then our CEO comes up to my desk, taps me on the shoulder, and says this:“That was a brilliant prank. You called me on exactly the bullshit I need to be called on. I put up pictures of half-naked girls around the office all the time and I never think about it. I’m taking you and Sam to lunch. And after that, we’re going to hang both prints, side by side.”
Ruby Underboob and Brosie the Riveter, together at last
Yeah. That happened.
This wonderful experience has taught me two things that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and in gaming. It taught me this:
Lots of men (like Sam) are already sympathetic to the stupid, constant crap women put up with in gaming/STEM, and they are ready and willing to call that crap onto the carpet.
And, most importantly, many of the guys who are behind that stupid, constant crap are totally decent, open-minded human beings who just don’t realize they’re doing it. You know how sometimes you don’t realize how much you and your girlfriend are talking about shoes or menstruation until some dude walks into the room? Well sometimes guys don’t realize how much they’re talking about titties.
We just haven’t been around enough for them to notice.
There is only one solution to that, ladies. Bust out your baby-Gap tee and your protective welding goggles, and let’s turn this damn industry into the environment we want it to be. It’s hard work, and yes, there are a couple genuine assholes along the way. But if Ruby Underboob can brave the occasional droplet of molten metal, so can we.
Speaking from experience, it’s worth it.—K2
About our CEO, Mark Long:
Mark has a long and storied history with, among other things, research, games and comic art. He’s a partner in the RoqlaRue gallery in Seattle, representing “chick art.” Mark considers himself a feminist activist. He is proud to have created a graphic novel trilogy with Nick Sagan (Carl’s son) that features a female hero so strong, Hillary Swank is attached to star as her.
Mark and I are now in an open dialogue about gender in comics and gaming.
Strong Families is a home for the 4 out of 5 people living in the US who do not live behind the picket fence—whose lives fall outside outdated notions of family, with a mom at home and a dad at work. While that life has never been the reality for most of our families, too many of the policies that affect us are based on this fantasy. From a lack of affordable childcare and afterschool programs, to immigration policy and marriage equality, the way we make policy and allocate resources needs to catch up to the way we live.
We see the trend of families defining themselves beyond the picket fence—across generation, race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality—as a powerful and promising development for the US, and we want to help policy makers catch up.
Our vision is that every family have the rights, recognition and resources it needs to thrive. We are engaging hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in our work to get there.
(via redefiningbodyimage)
Kristin Stewart is having none of your gendered bull shit
I love her.
#I remember when I hated her #I’m so sorry kstew #I was wrong #you are wonderful
(via msjosephinemarch)
“
It’s time for a serious intervention in masculinity. It’s not enough to not be a rapist. You don’t get a cookie or a Nobel Peace Prize for that. If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men who are willing to do the hard work required to unpack and interrogate the ideas of masculinity they were raised with, and to create and model new masculinities that don’t enable misogyny. Masculinities built not on power over women, but on power
with women.
[…]
Toxic masculinity is damaging to men, too, positing them as stoic sex-and-violence machines with allergies to tenderness, playfulness, and vulnerability. A reinvented masculinity will surely give men more room to express and explore themselves without shame or fear.
”ADVICE VLOG #2: IS IT OK TO BE PART OF A BODY-POSITIVE MOVEMENT AND STILL FEEL SHITTY ABOUT MYSELF?
I get this kind of question a lot. The short answer: yes. Of course it is. Everybody feels shitty about themselves. I feel shitty about myself today, for instance. It happens! It’s like, part of the cycle of being human.
This is a really short video, but if you have any follow-up questions, feel free to ask me.
Things I neglected to include in this video that I want to say here: If you feel shitty about yourself for a while or your shitty feelings make you want to hurt yourself, please reach out. You deserve love and support. Like, you really, really do. Everybody does. You can call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) if you need to talk to someone about how you’re feeling.
The modern term two-spirit as it applies today was coined in 1990 in Winnipeg as a term for any LGBTQ+ individual who is indigenous to the Americas regardless of if their tribe had a history of gender-variant/third-gender individuals or not. The term is often taken incorrectly to mean “Native American transgender person” when that is a grossly simplified reduction in what it means.
- There are trans* two-spirits
- There are cis two-spirits
- There are heterosexual two-spirits
- There are homosexual two-spirits and everything in-between and beyond.
- Some indigenous LGBTQ+ individuals choose not to identify as two-spirit.
The one thing that is required to identify as two-spirit is also identifying as indigenous to the Americas.
There is no singular two-spirit identity. It varies from tribe-to-tribe and from person-to-person. There are pictures that are passed around amongst queer blogs faster than a dirty magazine in a middle school locker room and the vast majority of them are prime examples of the misunderstanding and subsequent misunderstanding of our identities.
Every person who takes on the identity has their own reasons for doing so.
I’m Digatisdi. I’m a gay, male-bodied two-spirit. From what I know, my tribe never had a specific concept relating to being two-spirit. I took on the identity because of the gender roles I was raised partaking in. As my mother and grandmother are Cherokee, I grew up performing mostly women’s gender roles— except for bow and spear hunting which I’m rather good at, but I digress… I cannot go into further specifics because of incidents in the past where people have copied my exact words to prove they were raised Cherokee and can take on the identity when they were not and can not do so.
When a non-native takes on the identity, they are barging their way into a space where they do not belong. They are not welcome here and we are generally hostile to settlers who decide they’re two-spirit.
The identity is complex and varied. A lot of discourse surrounding queer issues ignores us but frankly I’d rather the identity be ignored by the mainstream than constantly misrepresented and romanticised in the consistent ”look at what we did to those poor spiritual simpletons” way that it often is. Opinions on this last bit may vary but I feel that if your information on this subject came solely from Wikipedia you should not speak on it— especially if you are not indigenous.
I get it, sometimes it gets obnoxious that people ship everything, I totally understand that. We all have a lot of feelings, I get it, this is tumblr, everyone is bursting with feelings all the time, but I wanna talk about love in Tolkien’s books (specifically the trilogy, because The Hobbit is a whole ‘nother thing that I am not emotionally prepared to talk about right now OR EVER).
Not everyone sits in bed at night thinking wistfully about Legolas and Gimli braiding their hair into their hair as a sign of affection
like I dobut the number of people who are all “lord of the rings is just about manly men being manly and occasionally falling in love with women!! god!! can’t bros just be BROS!!!” are blowing my mind right now, I genuinely do not believe we read the same books, also like what’s up with your restrictive gender norms?? Seriously:
“
“As soon as teenage girls start to profess love for something, everyone else becomes totally dismissive of it. Teenage girls are open season for the cruelest bullying that our society can dream up. Everyone’s vicious to them. They’re vicious to each other. Hell, they’re even vicious to themselves. It’s terrible.
“So if teenage girls have something that they love, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t it better for them to find some words they believe in, words like the ‘fire-proof and fearless’ lyrics that Jacqui wrote? Isn’t it better for them to put those words on their arm in a tattoo than for them to cut gashes in that same skin? Shouldn’t we be grateful when teenage girls love our work? Shouldn’t that be a fucking honor?
“It’s used as the cheapest, easiest test of crap, isn’t it? If teenage girls love a movie, a book, a band, then it’s immediately classified as mediocre shit. Well, I’m not going to stand for that. Someone needs to treat them like they’re precious, and if nobody else is ready to step up, I guess it’s up to us to put them on the path to recognizing that about themselves.”
”a character from The Devil’s Mixtape. (via valjeans)
Every now and then, something comes along on your dash that opens your eyes and makes you question assumptions you didn’t even realize you were making.
This former teenage girl fell in love with Rush, RPGs, Russian literature, ancient history, sci fi flicks, and Led Zeppelin. I’d say she had pretty good taste. So why have I always defaulted to marginalizing or dismissing the tastes of other teenage girls? Why have I always counted the large teenage female presence in fandom as a black mark against it, or at least something that needs to be explained or surmounted for older fans to participate or engage? Why have I assumed that teenage girls as a whole are incapable of critical analysis or meaningful engagement with the same media that I enjoy, when it was the critical analysis and meaningful engagement of a teenage girl that got me into much of the same media I enjoy now?
Wow. Talk about not even recognizing the patriarchy at work.
(via sabrea)
seriously, this just made me feel like a fucking asshole, which is always a sign that i’ve learned something important.
(via methodistcoloringbook)
I think I like the commentary above more than even the quote itself. It’s cool when just a quote can make people really rethink their positions.
(via feministdisney)
(via friendswaffleswerq)
