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The QUILTBAG Club (formerly the LGBT club)

Harlequin said:
I keep trying! No one ever posts any more, it's sad. :( I'm with you on the trawling for LGBT+ related things, though. I used to do that all the time and I'd imagine young LGBT+ people would still do it. Or similar things. IDK. Just having this here is good too!



"Per" and "pers" don't come across as "blank". Nothing is really going to come across as blank because simply by using non-standard pronouns you're going to mark yourself as Something Else.
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I disagree! As a person who actually uses/is around people who use non-standard pronouns a lot, I think some do come across in different ways. Maybe not necessarily completely blank, but certainly different... qualities? Feels? I don't know, pronouns are important and it makes sense!

Obviously, in a 99% standard-pronoun-type environment, sure, they're always going to sound like ~Something Else~. There is pretty much no escaping that though, and I'm sure Zhorken realises that. Around inclusive parts of the internet though, or inclusive RL spaces, the variety in what pronouns people use begins to show (and is, to me, both beautiful and fun). Anyway, I think the feelings pronouns have will differ for everyone. I know that I really latched onto the Spivak set because 'e' to me sounds really blank and basic and frank, if that makes sense, but still a little elegant because it's a nice letter!! ('ey' loses a bit of that, but maybe I just feel that way because I saw 'e' used first.)

Sie/hir to me feels far, far more marked, maybe mostly because they sound too close to she/her to me (you could say that 'e' sounds like 'he', but I don't hear it spoken aloud that much, so I don't notice), so I've never really looked at them and felt I'd feel comfortable using them for me personally. And I don't like 'they' because it feels too blank, no doubt because it's usually used for an unknown gender rather than a non-binary gender. It feels too unpersonal, I guess.

As for per/pers... to me they don't sound very marked at all, but not 'blank' like 'e'. They seem like they have some character!! but not necessarily a feminine or masculine character, if that's what you mean. I think it's probably best if you just use a set you feel you really like, rather than rely on other people's impressions, because there's probably someone around who'd think they seem really girly or something, and then someone who'd feel the complete opposite. I've come across people who dislike Spivak pronouns because they seem marked, the complete opposite to how I feel!! I think they suit you if you like them!

I've been thinking about how I identify a bit lately!! When I first started identifying as genderqueer there was a bit of a lull but now it's in my thoughts a lot again. I think... hmm, I'm not sure how to explain it, but sometimes I wonder if I identify as female a little bit? I feel like not many people would really get what I'm talking about if I explained, so I keep it to myself most of the time, but maybe I'll just ramble for a bit. I identify with female fictional characters a lot, I am much, much, much more interested in female characters in fiction than male (male characters have to try reeeeeeeeally hard to even secure my attention in the first place nowadays because they are usually sooooo yawnworthy), and, of course, I identify really strongly with female/perceived-female experiences. I don't really feel female at all, I'm just... really interested in femaleness? I don't know!

Also, I feel like if I said this to non-trans* people in my life who never reeeeally quite got it in the first place, it'll be like, justification to think "oh it's okay to treat em like e's female and think of em that way, then". :| I... guess I feel very much genderqueer but am simultaneously... invested in femaleness?? woo inventing my own terminology. I mean, regardless, I'm going to keep identifying with female characters in fiction, be fairly on the femme side etc., and really it doesn't matter that much if I can't figure out the right way to explain this to people who are at best only politely, bemusedly curious. I suppose I just shouldn't worry and have fun exploring my identity or something!!

Also also!! I mean apart from a moment when I was about 14 when I identified as asexual, I've never been much in that community at all, BUT lately I've been identifying a bit on the ace spectrum! I'm fairly sure I'm demisexual, and I would like to get into the ace community and read up. I think it would be valuable to me!!

The queer folks around my uni continue to be really really awesome. THIS PLACE IS GREAT too bad I'm super-super-shy..................

/what's new in the life of pretty-queer cirrus


ANYWAY. Super-glad there are posts here, I'm having fond memories of the LGBT club a few years ago when it was my favourite spot on the forums. :D Hi guys!!

EDIT: OOPS there was another page. I think personally I do a fairly okay job at coming across as genuinely androgynous a lot of the time, but I admit that it might be generally harder for a MAAB. :( I wouldn't really suggest neutral-colour or cut clothing because that generally gets pegged as male especially along with other masculine markers ... I'd say go for a mix of feminine and masculine markers! You have long hair, right? Bright clothes tend to confuse people into not knowing how to define!
 
Cirrus said:
Bright clothes tend to confuse people into not knowing how to define!
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They also help you fend off predators, attract a mate, and make you appear bigger than you actually are :D

Flora, it might be best to straight-up ask your friend, it sounds like it'd save you a lot of headache-inducing confusion. The moment could be awkward (okay, it probably would be a bit awkward either way), but you'd definitely laugh about it later and wouldn't have to keep analysing every little thing in an ultra-confused way.

It is still very, very much in the works, but there is an outside possibility that I might be doing something involving gender and sexuality, perhaps specifically asexuality, for a PhD next year (or the year after). I'm not asexual, but it's a very interesting perspective through which to look at gender dyanamics, and it's barely been looked at at all.
 
Dannichu said:
Flora, it might be best to straight-up ask your friend, it sounds like it'd save you a lot of headache-inducing confusion. The moment could be awkward (okay, it probably would be a bit awkward either way), but you'd definitely laugh about it later and wouldn't have to keep analysing every little thing in an ultra-confused way.
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Well, aside from the whole awkwardness aspect, none of my friends actually know I'm bi. (despite the touchy-feely-ness they all seem to think I'm straight. not that the touchy-feely-ness comes from my liking girls but that's beside the point) Actually, no one I know IRL (aside from Julie, who just knows because she's creepy/psychic/whatever) knows about that.

And yeah, it'd be especially awkward because she has a boyfriend. That would be very uncomfortable to deal with.
 
guys, i need a bit of advice.
see, we have a rainbow youth thing in my city, but i don't feel as though i would be welcome, as i am pansexual and its just not mentioned. i feel like its not a real sexuality and that people wouldn't know understand what it is, let alone give me good advice. i want to go, just to see what its like and make friends, but i'm really scared. advice?
 
that awkward moment when you're crushing on a guy and you realize it's completely pointless since you're too scared to ever come out of that lovely closet
oh well

also I had to explain to Mom what "homophobia" means yesterday
sigh
 
Automata heart said:
guys, i need a bit of advice.
see, we have a rainbow youth thing in my city, but i don't feel as though i would be welcome, as i am pansexual and its just not mentioned. i feel like its not a real sexuality and that people wouldn't know understand what it is, let alone give me good advice. i want to go, just to see what its like and make friends, but i'm really scared. advice?
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I think you'll be welcomed. My university's LGBT+ Society is inclusive of everyone who's a gender or sexual minority, and I'd imagine even if the rainbow youth thing in your city doesn't specifically mention pansexuality you'd be welcome if you came and explained what it is!

Cirrus I have some things I want to say to you but they will have to wait until later! because I am tired and thinking is a bit hard :(

in slightly less srs news, the date I posted about a while back went very well! There've been like, four since. One of them was last night! :3
 
I am no longer watching the show House. I just finished watching my most recent episode. Has anyone else seen this? It is messed up. In this episodethere is an asexual couple and House treats asexuality like a disease. Great. And my mom's been watching this show while I've been trying to explain my asexuality to her. Now House has gone and erased all my progress.
 
Yes! I saw it! I was furious. I had the same reaction; House has been going downhill slowly for years but it was never so ridiculously offensive. :| Uhg... now I feel bitter about House in general which is just sad because I used to love him... stupid writers.
 
For those who haven't watched the episode. Wilson has an asexual couple as patients, and House makes a bet with him that she's not asexual, that it doesn't exist and something can explain it. So he scans the guy and finds he has a brain tumor that is affecting his sex drive and giving him ED. Then his wife says she's not asexual, she just humored him. Basically they said it didn't exist. And they put this on national television.

Link to a story. I just saw this episode and I had no idea so I was seriously shocked when I watched it.
 
House got bisexuals wrong, then they did the annoying gay-tease a lot of mainstream shows do (looking right at you, Sherlock) to appeal to minorities without making the show too gay, I don't expect them to get anything right.

House M.d. is a great example of a show that should have quit while they were ahead.
 
i'm so surprised that aired. i thought people checked this kind of thing. but then again, i've only seen one show that had a gay male character and was actually treated like a normal character without them bringing attention to it all the time. (happy endings) and even that wasn't as good as it could be.
 
I'm with you on Sherlock doing a big gay-tease, but the scene in Belgravia with Irene talking to John and saying that he might well be straight but might also be in love with Sherlock was quite well done and seemed a great deal more meaningful than the usual 'lololol we're not a couple' such shows (including Sherlock) usually go for. But it lost all its Gay Points for making Irene a lesbian in love with Sherlock, because while you could argue that it's exactly the same thing as they did with John (and it pretty much is), I'd say it's way more offensive, if only because few if any heterosexual people get told they wouldn't be so if they only met the right man/woman.

Although the gay-tease is interesting - at the moment, there's a quite-bad yet charming crime drama airing called Rizzoli and Isles that's the most lesbianiriffic thing since Xena and the lesbian fans are mostly torn between loving it and shipping the leads to high heaven (sample scene) and being very annoyed that they should still be expected to look for scraps of lesbianism within mainstream TV like they did in the Xena years (mid-90's) instead of having actual gay women in gay relationships on television.
 
I'm going to let you guys in on a secret: I've only watched the first two episodes of Sherlock and then I lost interest, but then I got a Tumblr and I watched every other episode in .gif form at least thrice over.

Blastoise Fortooate said:
To be entirely fair, saying that Sherlock does a gay-tease is like saying the Chinese built an pretty nice wall.
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Dannichu said:
I'm with you on Sherlock doing a big gay-tease, but the scene in Belgravia with Irene talking to John and saying that he might well be straight but might also be in love with Sherlock was quite well done and seemed a great deal more meaningful than the usual 'lololol we're not a couple' such shows (including Sherlock) usually go for. But it lost all its Gay Points for making Irene a lesbian in love with Sherlock, because while you could argue that it's exactly the same thing as they did with John (and it pretty much is), I'd say it's way more offensive, if only because few if any heterosexual people get told they wouldn't be so if they only met the right man/woman.
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My problem with Sherlock is Moffat, one of the creators, because he is a boring boor. No jokes I watched the fan reactions and clips and gifs of the last episode (Reichenbach) and I honest-to-god thought they were building it up to John and Sherlock getting together in season three. I was really pleased with this idea because you never see two characters just get into a gay relationship without it being the focal point of the show, so I was thinking it was awesome how with-the-times this show was but then Moffat gave this gr8 interview saying PFFFFT NO SHERLOCK ISN'T GAY HOW CAN YOU EVEN THINK THAT ALSO HE'S NOT ASEXUAL BECAUSE ASEXUALS ARE B O R I N G

That really surprised on more than one level because: he said if Sherlock was gay he wouldn't live with John because essentially he'd just be so consumed with lust he wouldn't be able to work or something (because gays have no self control obvs) which is just stupid, and then he goes and says making him asexual would be boring. Totally, because a heterosexual reading of Sherlock Holmes is really novel and exciting and hasn't been done to fucking death. (I personally read him as asexual homoromantic in the original novels and so on but that's me)

The whole Irene episode was just terrible in general and completely misses the point of having her beat Sherlock by having him come in and save the day like the manly man he is (so manly he converts lesbians to the true sexuality aw yeah). Also the completely boring reading of Holmes being hot for her when Watson makes a point of saying he respects her, not 'wants to bone her', which is much more significant since Holmes is a huge mysoginist asshole and he was beaten by a woman :v lol 2012 somehow managed to be less progressive than victorian times. Especially bad since he paraded it as a big feminist move which is just worth the largest eyeroll in the world.

My big problem with shows like this is that they're making money off the fact that being gay is edgy is trendy with 'the kids' and all that, without wanting to commit to actually having them be gay like it's not big deal because whoa, joking about poofs is funny, but having them on the show could make us lose a lil bit of profit and that's unacceptable. And they know gays will watch the show even without an overt relationship because we'll eat up any scraps they throw at us.
Basically big corporations are scared of breaking out of the true and tested safety mold because it's clearly about profit and not about telling a story. Maybe Gattiss will manage to make the show less of a crashing predictable bore but probably not.

Also yeah I'm complaining about the lack of normal gay male representation in the media but it's nothing compared to lesbian representation. In every show you have the stock non-threatening pet gay but I'm drawing a blank trying to come up with a show with a lesbian character. They always seem to be bisexual (and then always end up with a guy of course) or just not there? I've heard Glee has a lesbian in it but that's the only show I can think of and I'm not sure you're want to be associated with that trainwreck.

All in depressing state of affairs in GayTV where they make you believe they're progressive but we've barely moved on from Mr Humphries-style mockery (no insult meant to john inman, bless his soul, or the show itself, but in 40 years we should have moved on).

EDIT: whoops sorry for my tl;dr bad essay it's 3am and i'm ranting
 
Yessss to all of this. Actually, the Irene thing was an exceptionally bad case of 'lesbians on TV' because if she hadn't said it, nobody would've known and she'd have just been another River-style 'I fancy everyone' character. But the "I am gay" bit felt off not only in her fancying Sherlock and, within the episode, talking about how she loved dominatrixing (or whatever) a bunch of different men, is that, aside from a "lol, she's unconcious, she likes that", we don't see her have an emotional connection to any women at all!

Moffat /is/ a bit of an idiot when he tries things like 'feminism' and 'equality'. Shame, because he's actually a very good writer, and with Gatiss around, he's usually a bit less obnoxious. I think, possibly within the ASEXUALS ARE BORING speech, there was also a bit defending his choice to make Irene be helpless and saved by Sherlock in the end, and I can't remember exactly how it went, but it was to the effect of "In the original, Irene only got married to her husband and left, which is boring and un-feminist" ...and I actually can't remember what he said after that, because I am certian it was something along the lines of "and having her get captured and recued by Sherlock is MORE feminist!", but that's so ridiculous it can't be right :/ But, as anybody who saw the Immensely Problematic Doctor Who Christmas episode saw, when Moffat puts on his Feminism Hat, things go wrong ("Women are better than men because they have babies!"/"I started follwing you home and refused to stop until you married me, look at how romantic I am!").

But yes - the state of homosexuality on TV at the moment isn't excellent. Apparently there's a lesbian couple on Grey's Anatomy that are taken relatively seriously, and I think lesbian fans think it's well-written, but there was a LOT of anger when one of the characters first came out and got together with another woman, for the writers to write her out of the show three episodes later when they decided they wanted to do a lesbian storyline, but with a more attractive character. I have no idea what the Glee situation is (one of the cheerleaders is gay and the other bisexual and into a guy last I checked? And I don't know what Kurt's up to these days), and there's some apprehension because an American remake of Bad Girls might be going ahead - there's a lesbian storyline that runs through the first 3 series of Bad Girls (a UK drama set in a women's prison that aired in the 90's), which is regarded to be one of the best lesbian storylines of all time, and all information that's been released about the remake sounds like they're /trying/ to ruin it. In terms of other TV shows with lesbians, I think the Naiomi/Emily storyline on Skins was seen as excellent, and that's about all I can think of. But I don't think it's that much better for guys, I can only think of a couple of TV shows with an actual gay couple in - Torchwood had Jack and Ianto of course, but it was Massively Problematic, Six Feet Under had David and his boyfriends, and while he was messed up beyond all reckoning, so was everybody else on that show, so. Will and Grace opened the door for gay male characters, but Will was noticably far more undersexed than Grace and had, like, two boyfriends through the entire run?

But all this leaves gay people (and queer people who're represented even less) in the most ridiculous situation - I quite like watching TV shows with a whole bunch of subtext, and it's fun and enough to stop me thinking (as much) "hey, what about some /actual/ gay characters?" - and I guess it's only until everyone refuses the Subtext Crumbs and demand that the TV networks do better that they will. :/
 
after reading these posts I will continue to avoid Sherlock then
sigh Moffat.

I have no idea what the Glee situation is (one of the cheerleaders is gay and the other bisexual and into a guy last I checked? And I don't know what Kurt's up to these days),
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aaand since it was mentioned Glee is still terrible
Kurt and Blaine are still together but there's this other guy from Blaine's old school who's a bit of a tool and is into Blaine or something and Kurt is not pleased
But the thing with Santana and Brittany haha god. Santana was like, forcibly outed by the Straight White Main Character Guy (who does my fucking head in) because she's a bit mean to him. Then she comes out to her grandmother who pretty much disowns her. And all through this, Brittany, y'know the girlfriend, has like one line. And it was probably something "dumb" because errything she says is meant to be laughed at or some shit.

there's probably some stuff I forgot but bwah i dunno why i even watch glee but it is ENTIRELY Tailsy's fault
 
I agree with pretty much all of this!! It's a shame that Moffat's become so dodgy in various ways, I remember when he was just the-one-who-writes-creepy-episodes and nobody expected any of this. And I am really not someone who should be trusted with knowing Doctor Who storylines, but there was a... Sally? Sally Sparrow?? In Blink? I remember her being pretty awesome. :C

Dannichu said:
I have no idea what the Glee situation is (one of the cheerleaders is gay and the other bisexual and into a guy last I checked? And I don't know what Kurt's up to these days)
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Glee is weeeeird with its gayish situations. Again, Glee isn't really my thing either, but as far as I've been able to tell, Kurt/Blaine is where everything is happy and Santana/Brittany is where everything is sad?? It's pretty telling that the storyline with two girls is the one where they choose to make their actual sexualities really vague, make them interested in several people at once leading to thrilling ~drama, and where nobody seems to really like them being into each other. Meanwhile, Kurt/Blaine is the most popular ship and have a really fun relationship. :( Still, I think there are things to like about it? When I was watching it kind of got played for laughs and was definitely really ambiguous.

Phantom: I heard about the House thing! :C Honestly, how ridiculous. House is always praised as this clever pop culture-friendly show and then it just totally messes up. I've really stopped looking at popular shows and things for actual inclusiveness.

EDIT: right, yeah, the being disowned by her grandmother part... I guess in a way it's good? Since Kurt's dad being won round and everyone loving him after a while was a bit unrealistic in representing a lot of coming out situations. But Glee seems to imply that Kurt should be a gay role model!! look be proud of who you are it'll be okay!!!!!!!! and then the lesbian character seems to just have really awful things happen to her continuously @_@

Brittany's entire character is just played for wacky laughs so yeah there is just nooooooo good going to come out of looking at her for character development in any way.
 
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