Thorn Wilde

I take it you're not familiar with European medieval ballads (the musical tradition, not the poetry form). Awful lot of verses is where it's at, my friend.

This read like a song. I kind of want to put music to it. Very beautiful.

I actually know two pairs of identical twins where one is straight and one is gay, hehe. This was a fun story the first time I read it, and it's a fun story now. Good job!

Morning, DiC! Hope you're all well.

Understandable. I know it's not for everyone.

Thank you, Parker. And thanks for doing the proofing! ❤️

Thank you!

Thank you, Wayne. That means a lot. ❤️

The boy sat up in bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He listened to the silence around him, listened for the tell-tale sound of his brother’s steady breathing and occasional murmurs through the thin wall between their bedrooms, but he couldn’t hear it. Something was wrong. He got out of bed and left his room, approaching his brother’s bedroom door. ‘Nathan? You in there, mate?’ There was no answer. The boy knocked harder. ‘Hey! Nathan!’ Still nothing. The boy opened the door, squinting into t

As a friend of mine often says, there's no such thing as ethics under capitalism.

Except SD. Fucking fascists.

The version I shared was also still picture. Live versions are often not great. Not because they're not good live (I've seen them twice and they're amazing), but because the recordings are bad, lol! Anyway, yeah, she's angry. She's a black woman who grew up in South London under Thatcherism at a time when neo-Nazis were very much a threat. Of course she's angry.

That's weird. It's a song by a band called Skunk Anansie, called Yes It's Fucking Political. It's from their official channel, I think, so weird you can't see it... If you want to hear it, look it up on Youtube and maybe you'll find a different version.

Relevant:

I always thought being queer and right wing is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, lol! I've never known a right-wing queer person who wasn't a white gay cis-dude, though I know they come in all shapes and colours. That said, like I said in my main post, the point here isn't to make a dig at GA. I'm trying to approach this issue from as philosophical a viewpoint as I can (though, as I've already pointed out, everything's political). I do know there's a definite tendency towards racism in the mainstream gay community. Sexism as well. I once tried to make the point that homophobia is a symptom of sexism. That did not make me any friends, because that was seen as a political statement.

Well put, and exactly what I'm getting at here. You see this stuff a lot in pop culture, where someone will accuse a film franchise or a TV show or a book series of becoming too political. Star Trek's an obvious example and one dude-bro Trekkies are constantly up in arms about. And the thing is, Star Trek has always been political. Gene Rodenberry was blatantly feminist, anti-fascist, and left-wing political, it's not hard to see if you're not blinded by biased fandom. The Earth part of the Federation is a socialist utopia, they literally have no money, but libertarian Trekkies argue that there's probably some equivalent of money somewhere, and so it's really a libertarian utopia. In The Next Generation, Starfleet uniforms are gender neutral; you literally see men wearing dresses in the background early on in the series (in the end they cut dresses all together because, tbh, they looked weird on everybody, male and female). Also in TNG, Rodenberry was adamant about wanting a gay character, but the network talked him out of it. And yet you have dude-bro Trekkies who will claim that there's no evidence that gayness even exists in the world of Star Trek. Which is why they got so upset about a prominent gay couple on Star Trek Discovery. That was a huge digression. The point is, people often don't see the politics in things until it's staring them in the face and it's too different from their own political views to ignore. And any excuse to claim that something you like has become politicised just so you can be outraged about it, whether it was political originally or not.

This is my personal blog. You can say whatever you want here. I've never gotten in trouble over political discussions in this space. We have more freedom to post about things like this on our blogs. Just be polite.

I'm not at all asking GA to change its rules. This is a philosophical discussion more than anything else. What is political? Why do we see it that way? Who decides? And is it possible to be queer and apolitical at the same time? It's also frustrating to know (as past discussions have shown) that if you're a gay cis guy, there are more aspects of your identity deemed apolitical due to the majority on this site than if you're lesbian, bi, or trans. Because what's political is in the eye of the beholder.

Omg, what's Chris's deal, amiright? And poor Nate, it almost seems like he's, gasp, feeling stuff!

I've been censoring myself. We all do, here on GA, those are the rules. No political discussion outside The Pit. But what's political? When someone complains about a public figure bringing politics into what they're doing (like Wil Weaton's fans losing their shit when he posted a picture on Instagram of his hand giving Trump Tower the finger), what they're really complaining about is them bringing the wrong kind of politics into it. There's no such thing as apolitical. Everything's political. Whether you see it that way is just a question of what your own views are, because we all like to think of ourselves as unbiased. Queer identities are inherently political. We fight daily for our rights, and if not for our own then for those of our siblings elsewhere. We've always been able to talk about homophobia on GA, we've been able to talk about Pride. There have been posts in The Lounge about marriage equality. And that's not because these things aren't political, but because they're politics we agree on. But I censor myself on things to do with my own identity. There are issues trans people face that I don't feel like I'm allowed to post about because it might violate the rules of no politics. We don't talk about transphobia the same way we talk about homophobia here. We talk about Pride, because of course we do. But Stonewall was a riot, and Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender sex worker of colour, threw the first brick. Marsha's entire existence was political. Pride is at its core political activism, but it's okay to talk about because it's all pink washed and dressed up in glitter. Can I talk about Marsha in The Lounge? This isn't a dig at GA. The rules are there for a reason, and I understand that. But some of these lines are pretty blurry. When do queer issues become too political to be talked about in a queer online community? Which prominent LGBTQ+ individuals throughout history have to be excluded because they were too political? A while back, a quote by Harvey Milk was shared in The Pit. I wanted to share it in the quote thread in the lounge but was cautioned against it. Because even though it was a message that literally all of us can agree on (can't remember exactly what at present, but it was lovely), Harvey Milk is in and of himself political and someone might take issue with that. Better safe than sorry. I exist as a trans person in a world where people want to deny people like me the right to go to the bathroom that corresponds with our gender. Where trans people are being excluded from protections against discrimination. Where trans people (especially trans women, especially trans women of colour) are murdered just because they're trans. I exist as a trans person in a world where many modern, developed countries won't let trans people change their legal gender without being sterilised first. Where in many more countries they can't change legal gender at all. I exist as a trans person in a world where prominent figures defend their right to misgender me because 'I can't tell them which words to use'. Which of these things can I talk about? Which of these things are political? The answer is, all of them. These things and everything else to do with every other queer identity. Everything about existing as a queer person is political because the world has made it so. Everything, everything is political. It's only a question of to whom.

Having lived it... Thank you for writing this. ❤️

Morning, DiC! Just got home from my shrink appointment, and having some sushi for lunch. Somehow, I managed to be in bed before 1am last night. (I know, wtf, Thorn? Who am I?) Glad the weather passed @Fae Briona! And hope everything's safe with you, @Kitt. Now I'm gonna try and get some writing done. Choir tonight. Hope you all have a nice day! ❤️

This is a very simple, very tasty recipe I like. And, as it turns out, I already wrote it down and posted it on my blog like four years ago, so, here:

Well, doc took some blood tests, so now we wait, I guess.