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Becoming Nicole
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You’re Beautiful
Tell someone they’re beautiful today!
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Periodical Political Post *18
Queer News
- Australia criticized over failure on gay marriage
- Slovenia to vote on marriage equality this week
- Trans Day of Remembrance Those We’ve Lost
- Mexican school celebrates skirt day for equality
- Colombian court about to legalise gay marriage
Other News
- Half of this High-School branded sex offenders
- Religious kids harsher, less generous than others
- Porn watchers are less sexist than other men
- Beyond he & she: Rise of non-binary pronouns
- Art or Porn: 100 years of over-baring censors
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Blinders
What happens when appreciation gives way to attraction, and attraction to physical expression? In Blinders, starring Luke Worrall, Nathaniel Brown, and Byrdie Bell, a young man stumbles into another man’s arms, leaving his girlfriend in the lurch.
The short film’s trailer, soundtracked by Home Covers’ “The Flame,” opens with an illuminated, androgynous Worrall nude under white sheets. “The point I find interesting is that with many models, their beauty transcends handsomeness or prettiness or sexual attraction,” says writer-director Jacob Brown, an editor at the New York Times and himself a former male model. Regardless of whether or not the couple reunites, the short begs the question: who is the primary victim of beauty—the possessor or the beholder? Read on…
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Let’s party like it’s 2007
Dang, this is as old as this blog. Remember about the whole emo craze? Good times! And then there was this of course. And whatever this is…!?
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Teasing Tuesday *7
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Is Steven Universe too Queer for the Queen?
Cartoon Network hits like Adventure Time and Steven Universe might be the most progressive kids’ shows in the history of cartoons. Adventure Time features an on-going, complicated but charming romance between two of the female protagonists and Steven Universe is the kind of fantasy adventure where even the villains are treated with kindness and sympathy, and where one of the major characters is literally the physical embodiment of a committed gay relationship.
So it’s going to be pretty upsetting for fans of the show—not to mention the collected hivemind of fanart, “feels,” and animated GIFs known as Tumblr—to hear that some of the show’s more explicitly queer content is being censored from the show’s broadcasts in the UK.
As reported by Pink News—and shown in the Tumblr comparison video below—Cartoon Network UK has been editing moments of mild sexuality—as in suggestive looks and the occasional shimmy, not, like, full-on magical-alien-rock-women bacchanalia—out of its broadcast of the show.
The highlighted moment comes from “We Need To Talk,” an episode in which a giant space woman’s jealous lover manipulates her into having quasi-explicit magical sex in front of her boyfriend as part of a complicated emotional power play. (And if that’s not weird enough, the resulting fusion dance turns them into a sort of multi-eyed Flashdance monster.)
But it’s not the Jennifer Beals homages or bizarre relationship drama that upset the censors; rather, a couple of longing looks between the characters Rose Quartz and Pearl were apparently too saucy for British audiences to handle. (It’s also possible that the watchdogs felt that the “Fuck you” look Pearl shoots mid-dance at her romantic rival Greg was so clear as to be borderline obscene.)
Cartoon Network UK blamed the lack of a British TV rating system for the cuts, telling reporters, “The U.S. broadcast system requires that shows are marked with a rating–in this case PG (parental guidance necessary). In the UK, we have to ensure everything on air is suitable for kids of any age at any time. We do feel that the slightly edited version is more comfortable for local kids and their parents.” (Said locals are apparently completely okay with the unedited heterosexual kissing that closes out the clip.)
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A Very Queer Word of the Year: The Singular “They”
Bad news for people who have been arguing that the gender-neutral pronoun “they” doesn’t make any sense because it’s not grammatically correct: a crowd of over 200 linguists who met at the American Dialect Society’s annual meeting last Friday evening have chosen the singular “They” as the most significant term or word in the past year in a landslide vote.
Using a singular they is common habit in English & American speech, as in “That cat loves their owner,” but has risen to prominence again as a useful way to refer to people who don’t use the pronouns “he” or “she.”
A practise several languages introduced over the last few years. Swedish speakers for example can use “hen” when the gender of a person is unknown or the classic pronouns don’t apply.
Ben Zimmer, a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal who presided over the voting on Friday afternoon, said in a press release: “In the past year, new expressions of gender identity have generated a deal of discussion, and singular they has become a particularly significant element of that conversation,” Zimmer said. “While many novel gender-neutral pronouns have been proposed, they has the advantage of already being part of the language.
Other contenders for the 2015 title of Word of the Year were “on fleek,” “ammosexual,” “ghost,” and “thanks Obama.” For a full list of the nominees and winners in each category, read the American Dialect Society’s press release here.
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One proud Mom
It sucks that coming-outs are still a thing. It sucks that some people have to announce their romantic and/or sexual preferences as if they’re plague-ridden.
But you gotta deal with the time and society you live in so if you’re in a country where dogmatic religion and “traditions” still play a big role in many people’s lives you’ll hopefully have a mother as supportive as Drake’s.
She was so proud of her son that she took out a newspaper’s ad to announce her son’s coming out. Kinda weird? Yeah. Probably done with the best intentions? Very likely.
You can read more about it here if you want and watch Drake’s coming out video below.
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Periodical Political Post *19
Queer News
- New Zealand rules out blanket wiping of gay sex convictions
- Switzerland closer to granting gay couples adoption rights
- Italian senators propose jail for gay couples using surrogates
- Handball federation bans Sweden from wearing rainbow
- Nearly half of homeless youth in Washington D.C. are queer
Other News
- British ISP Sky switches on ‘porn filter’ by default
- Police investigate little boy over a spelling mistake
- Thousands gather in Poland to protest surveillance laws
- The richest 1% own more than 99% of world’s population
- Minecraft porn (!?) is a thing and growing fast
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When no Bathroom is right
A transgender boy was suspended from his high school in South Carolina for using the boys’ restroom — after being told that he can’t use the girls’ bathroom either.
He used to use the girls’ bathroom when he started his transition but that prompted complaints about a boy being in the girls’ bathroom. So the school allowed him to use the boys’ restroom for the following three years of middle-school without anyone raising an eyebrow.
This changed though when he started High School and was seen by a teacher using the same bathroom. “He must’ve looked at his records and saw the sex on his records because that’s the only way he could’ve known,” the student’s mother said. The next day, the boy was called in by administrators and told he must use the girls’ bathroom or go to the nurse’s office.
“If he started using the girl’s bathroom in 12th grade, it’s going to create a problem. I felt like that would be dangerous,” his mom said. “The nurse’s office is downstairs on the first floor of the school and the school has three stories.”
The boy was holding it, which his mother worried was unhealthy. So she told him to keep doing what he had been all along and use the boys’ bathroom. After the student was seen by teachers using the boys’ bathroom about 2 weeks ago, he was suspended. “They did not give me a copy of the write up,” his mother told the station. “They did not talk to me.”
The student’s mother enrolled him in an online school, but it means the student is missing out on all the activities he was involved in, including having to drop out of a school play.
“Let the transgender kids be themselves,” she told the station. “Let them be safe and let them be comfortable. Let them have their education in an environment where they are not harassed or felt to be unsafe.”
No explanation was given as to why the teacher was in the students’ restroom. The mother said she received an email from the Department of Education, which seemed to indicate the school was in the wrong
Why gendered bathrooms are a thing to begin with? Who knows. But this boy, and many like him, certainly know what it feels like to not belong.
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Face Friday *13
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Periodical Political Post *20
Queer News
- South Dakota passes anti-trans student restroom bill
- Horrific anti-gay bills advance in Georgia and Virginia
- Swiss Christians try to ban gay marriage by stealth
- It gets better for queer kids in US schools… sometimes
- US politician compares queer people to paedophiles
Other News
- US police recorded protected attorney-prisoner calls
- Police destroyed citizens’ reports of police misconduct
- The anti-democratic hypocrisy of US voter ID laws
- Teenager sues TV station over broadcast of his penis
- Today’s teenagers compared to older generations
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Wonderwear Wednesday *18
Jessie Montgomery from Helix Studios
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Tempera Thursday *3
Art by Brandon McGill
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PWR BTTM
PWR BTTM is an American queer punk duo composed of Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins. Gender and sexuality are major topics in the music of PWR BTTM. Bruce and Hopkins identify as queer, and address this in the music they make. They discussed the subject of creating “queer” rock music in an interview with Village View:
“We’re queer people, and our truth is that and the music we make, and what we say in our music is representative of who we are . It is us making ourselves feel less alone through our work. Sexuality has always been a part of rock music but that didn’t necessarily mean that it was queer. One of the things that made me excited about writing about my own sexuality and asserting it was doing that in a queer voice and using that to tell a queer story.”
I want a boy, to keep the bed warm while I shower
I want a boy, to keep the bed warm while we’re watching TV
I want a boy, to keep the bed warm when the whole house is freezing
I want a boy, who isn’t anything like me
I want a boy, who doesn’t like to go out shopping
I want a boy, who thinks it’s sexy when my lipstick bleeds
I want a boy, who can go all night without stopping
I want a boy, who knows exactly what he needs
So if you think that you’re the boy for me and I’m the boy for you
Drop me a line at ob8419@bard.edu
Tell me a little bit about yourself, send a picture or two
Hurry up now, because it’s only getting colder
Submitted by Chimel
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Captain Josh
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Periodical Political Post *21
Queer News
- Boy raped with broom in ‘No Gay Thursday’ attack at US school
- Straight man attacked for ‘looking pretty gay’ in Canada
- China’s censors bans depictions of gay people on television
- Court in Rome, Italy recognizes same-sex couple adoption
- Switzerland narrowly rejects block of same-sex marriage
Other News
- Turkey’s biggest newspaper gets taken over by regime
- Russian faces year in prison for denying existence of god
- French bill would force companies to decrypt data for police
- UK law requires WhatsApp, iMessage to break encryption
- Worth watching: John Oliver about abortion and US voting
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The List
A ten-year-old pulling down a classmate’s pants would be considered a prank in most places. Not an excessively funny one, sure; but a prank nonetheless. Yet in some countries a mix of “zero tolerance” policies and the idea that our bodies are gross, disgusting things we have to hide and be ashamed of led to practise that ruins the lives of kids every day: They get placed on public sex-offender lists. And many of them will have trouble escaping that stigma for the rest of their lives.
15-year-old Christian from Alabama committed suicide after facing expulsion and registration on a sex offender registry for streaking during a high school football game
One morning in 2007, Leah DuBuc, a twenty-two-year-old college student in Kalamazoo, began writing an essay for English class that she hoped would save her life. She knew that people like her had been beaten, bombed, shot at, killed. The essay aired details about her past that she’d long tried to suppress; by posting it on her class’s server, where anyone who Googled her name could find it, she thought she might be able to quiet the whispers, the threats, and possibly make it easier to find a job. Her story, she warned, “is not a nice one, but hopefully it will have a happy ending.”
DuBuc had grown up in Howell, Michigan, a small town of berry and melon farmers. In high school, she had thrived. She had earned straight A’s, written for the school newspaper, led Students Against Driving Drunk (she voted to change the name to Students Against Destructive Decisions, she says, to stress that “there are lots of bad decisions that can get you killed”), and performed in “Grease” and “Once Upon a Mattress,” while working part time as a cashier at Mary’s Fabulous Chicken & Fish. “High school was bliss for me,” DuBuc said recently. “I tried not to dwell on the stuff that wasn’t good.” But, as she was about to start her freshman year at Western Michigan University, she got a call from a close childhood friend, Victoria, who asked, “Did you know you’re on the public sex-offender registry?”
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Encryption
“Now I can masturbate to photos of your family!”
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