Sylvia Rivera, born on July 2 in 1951, was a Latina American queer rights activist, member of the Gay Liberation Front, and community worker from the state of New York.

Rivera, who identified as a "half-sister", participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a socialist group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

At different times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, mainstream society and the assimilationist factions of the LGBT community were leaving behind.

Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19th, 2002, at St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins said this of her: "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".

• Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries

• Remember the radicalism of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson

• “Our armies are rising:” Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson

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Aid:

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Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

This may be the single worst and most heinous cooption of Pride I have ever seen.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2886858

I want to share with you all an essay that has been particularly influential on my way of thinking, kind of a skeleton key for how I think about a lot of issues of surrounding male sexuality, and one that might also serve as an entry point into people’s individual inquiries into theory generally or queer theory more specifically.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re at all interested, but this is a work of literary theory. Sedgwick is interested in analyzing the literature of a time in which the conceptualization of homosexuality was changing, and drawing conclusions from them. It’s all great stuff, but I understand not everyone here may find extended analyses of Thackery and Henry James to be their cup of tea, so I’m going to restrict myself to glossing the first section which summarizes most of the key theoretical concepts that she uses in her analysis.

Sedgwick starts off by discussing the work of Alan Bray in order to situate the historical perception of homosexuality in England. Prior to the 19th Century, homophobia was intense, but also theologized, a manifestation of the ultimate disorder and the Antichrist, but simultaneously not something highly relevant to people’s everyday lives: “sodomy was … not an explanation that sprang easily to mind for those sounds from the bed next to one’s own – or even for the pleasure of one’s own bed” (Sedgwick 184). This began to change as the eighteenth century gave way to the 19th as a much more secular and psychologized homophobia began to develop. Readers of Foucault will note that he makes a very similar argument in The History of Sexuality, and indeed Sedgwick references him later in the essay.

This shift coincided with new kinds of persecutions. Gay men had long been subject to “‘pogrom’-like” legal persecutions, which had a disproportionate effect due to their random nature, but now, with this new secular homophobia, all men, whether gay or not, became unable to determine whether their bonds with other men were free of any homosexuality. Thus this relatively small-scale legal violence could now have an effect that ramified out through society at large. Sedgwick calls this “homosexual panic”: “The most private, psychologized form in which many … western men experience their vulnerability to the social pressure of homophobic blackmail” (185). It is precisely because what is “homosexual” as a concept is arbitrary and forever shifting, unable to be pinned down, that a man can never be totally certain that he is clear of it and the consequences that come from being labeled with it. This is particularly true in the 19th century because “the paths of male entitlement required certain intense male bonds that were not readily distinguishable from the most reprobated bonds” (185). On one hand, society virtually mandated intense male bonds (boarding schools, the military, etc.), but on the other hand, absolutely forbade that these bonds cross over into homosexuality, ensuring continual anxiety on the part of men about their relationships transgression this invisible and constantly shifting boundary: “In these institutions, where men’s manipulability and their potential for violence are at the highest possible premium, the prescription of the most intimate male bonding and the proscription of (the remarkably cognate) ‘homosexuality’ are both stronger than in civilian society–are, in fact, close to absolute” (186).

If you’ve ever wondered why many all-male institutions (sports, the military, etc.) are on one hand virulently heterosexual and homophobic, yet, on the other hand, homoerotic or in some undefinable sense “gay,” this is why. These institutions mandate close bonds while absolutely forbidding them from being erotic in nature, in a way that casts a constant shadow of homosexuality over them. In turn, these institutions and the individuals involved must be at pains to constantly assert their heterosexuality to the extent that it in turn calls their straightness into question. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” All male relationships stand under the shadow of homosexuality by their very nature. The desire for intimacy between men, whether enforced or not, is always under the shadow of the prohibition of becoming too close. Meanwhile the constantly shifting and arbitrary nature of “homosexuality” keeps men from becoming to comfortable that they are safely outside boundaries of the dreaded gayness. Is wearing your hair long gay? Maybe! Dressing nice? Maybe! Washing your ass? Maybe! Having sex with a woman? Quite possibly! Who knows? Paradoxically it is only the openly homosexual man that is free of this double bind.

This essay is particularly influential in queer literary theory, because it provides a framework for understanding the queerness inherent in texts that are not explicitly gay. Wherever men are, homosexuality follows them, relentlessly, inescapably. Those characters, good friends, is it truly totally platonic? Those two enemies whose hate for one another consumes them, say Batman and Joker, is there not something a bit erotic about their all-consuming obsession for each other? The domain of queer theory, then, is not merely the ghetto of officially queer texts, but rather everywhere. The very act of censoring, silencing and excising homosexuality from art only ensures that it is paradoxically ever present and inescapable, and this is true of the world, not only of the text.

I’ve long been interested in trying to expose people to a broader conception of theory on here (I’ve been" threatening to write an essay on what "The Death of the Author actually says for a long, long time ). If this stuff is interesting to you, let me know.

My sloptube feed is experiencing a dire lack of homosexuality, and its genders are too binary. Pls.

Bonus points if the channel is abt books

coming to the close of another (US) Pride month, and again we're still transfixed on Drag Queens being the only thing worth putting in the spotlight

nothing against drag, just generally tired that it's 2024 and it's still the same thing over and over again, and it wouldn't be so bad if it was just the tippy top of disconnected-from-culture corpos but even on the small scale the words 'Pride' and 'Drag' are treated as one-for-one interchangeable

i get why, Drag Queens present a personality and character that can more easily be attached to advertising, but still it's a drag (pun intended)

https://x.com/oldwitchsring/status/1802105054733664321

Back in the 00s, the anti-LGBT culture war targeted primarily gay people, and it primarily used religious arguments. The Bible condemns homosexuality, marriage is a sacred institution, it's a violation of Christians' rights to make their churches marry gay people, &c.

Clearly, it didn't work. During the 10s, when gay marriage was legalized, conservatives were dealt a pretty decisive blow on their anti-gay agenda, and so they shifted from targeting the LGB to targeting the T (they always targeted trans people, of course, but they really ramped it up during the 10s). With this change in focus came a shift in rhetoric. The right-wing certainly does argue for oppressing trans people on religious grounds, but you're a lot more likely to hear them use scientific-sounding justifications. They'll talk about chromosomes, about anatomy, about how "biologically there are only two genders," about "people trying to put their feelings above objective reality." They'll throw around words like "rational" and "reason." This of course ignores all kinds of actual science, such as the degree to which gender is culturally constructed, the existence of intersex people, how gender affirming care is the only dysphoria treatment shown to be effective, and a thousand other things. It's anti-scientific to its core, but it can fool a casual observer into thinking it's scientific if it's telling them what they want to hear. It's a bigotry for a materialist age, palatable to bazinga brains and nu-atheist Redditors, and maybe it's just anecdotal, but it seems to me to have more traction among a younger, hipper crowd than the religious arguments ever did.

I can't help but wonder if this pivot was concocted in some right-wing think tank somewhere.

Proven beyond all doubt by the recent survey

To run the HyperCard stack: Start up the page's emulated mac, open the "Disk" disk, and double-click the icon. I wasn't sure if this should go here or in games...

Programmed by CM Ralph in 1989, Caper in the Castro is likely the first LGBT game. It was distributed via BBS, and is 'Charityware', with the designer asking players to donate to the AIDS Charity of their choice.

You are the world famous lesbian private detective, Tracker McDyke. You are searching for a kidnapped drag queen, Tessy LaFemme. What you didn't count on was stumbling onto an even larger and more treacherous crime.

The game was changed to different locations and a heterosexual them released under the name "Murder on Main Street". This version is located here.

For more information about "Caper in the Castro": https://www.npr.org/2023/01/27/1151702216/how-the-first-lgbtq-video-game-was-given-a-second-life. C.M. Ralph maintains a website at https://www.cmralph.com/

The rainbow flag or pride flag is a symbol of LGBT pride and LGBT social movements. The colors reflect the diversity of the LGBT community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender. Using a rainbow flag as a symbol of LGBT pride began in San Francisco, California, but eventually became common at LGBT rights events worldwide.

Originally devised by the artists Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara and other activists, the design underwent several revisions after its debut in 1978, and continues to inspire variations. Although Baker's original rainbow flag had eight colors, from 1979 to the present day the most common variant consists of six stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The flag is typically displayed horizontally, with the red stripe on top, as it would be in a natural rainbow.

LGBT people and allies currently use rainbow flags and many rainbow-themed items and color schemes as an outward symbol of their identity or support. There are derivations of the rainbow flag that are used to focus attention on specific causes or groups within the community (e.g. transgender people, fighting the AIDS epidemic, inclusion of LGBT people of color). In addition to the rainbow, many other flags and symbols are used to communicate specific identities within the LGBT community.

Variations:

Original Gilbert Baker Design

Inspired by the lyrics of Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow, and the designs used by other social movements such as black civil rights groups from the 1960s, the Rainbow Flag was created. Baker hand-dyed and hand sewed this flag which flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day in June 1978.

Seven-color version due to unavailability of pink fabric

Following the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978, many people and organisations adopted the Pride flag that he helped to introduce to the community. The demand was so great for a rainbow striped flag, it was impossible for the 8-stripe design to be made in large quantities. Both Paramount and Baker struggled to obtain the hot pink fabric and so began manufacturing a 7-stripe version.

Traditional Gay Pride Flag

In 1979 the design was amended again. The community finalised this six-colour version and this is now the most familiar and recognisable design for the LGBT flag. Numerous complications over the odd number of stripes, including the desire to split the flag to decorate Pride parades, meant that one colour had to be dropped.

The turquoise and indigo stripes were combined to create a royal blue stripe and it was agreed that the flag should typically be flown horizontally, with red at the top, as it would be in a natural rainbow. This design continued to increase in popularity around the world, being a focal point of landmark decisions such as John Stout fighting for his right to fly the flag from his apartment balcony in 1989.

Progress Pride Flag

In June 2018, designer and activist Daniel Quasar released an updated version of the Pride flag. Combining the new elements of the Philadelphia design and the Transgender flag to bring focus on further inclusion and progress. This new flag added a chevron to the hoist of the traditional 6-colour flag which represents marginalised LGBTQ+ communities of colour, those living with HIV/AIDS and those who’ve been lost, and trans and non-binary persons.

This design went viral and was quickly adopted by people and pride parades across the world. The arrow of the chevron points to the right to show forward movement, while being on the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made for full equality, especially for the communities the chevron represents.

Intersex Inclusive Progress Pride Flag

In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK adapted the Pride Progress flag design to incorporate the intersex flag, creating the Intersex-Inclusive Pride flag 2021.

The intersex community uses the colours purple and yellow as an intentional counterpoint to blue and pink, which have traditionally been seen as binary, gendered colours. The symbol of the circle represents the concept of being unbroken and being whole, symbolising the right of Intersex people to make decisions about their own bodies.

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread
• ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 🍉 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

Happy pan visibility day! 🩷💛🩵

Due to some queer accounts on Instagram posting about celebrations of today, I had to get reminded that there are still some awful queer people focusing on discourse about that "bi vs. pan" shit.

There is a tendency for battle-axe bisexuals to state that "bisexual and pansexual mean the exact same thing" with the intent of equating the two because they want to invalidate anyone who identifies as pansexual instead of just identifying as bisexual, but I realized something... this is actually biphobic as hell, not bi-affirming like they think!

Of course, sexual orientation labels are neologisms for a person's own comfort, so being linguistically prescriptivist about them at all is absolute nonsense that anyone who perpetuates this "bi vs. pan" shit doesn't understand.

However, to illustrate my point coherently, a common definition of "pansexual" is a sexual orientation which entails not regarding gender in your attraction. If a battle-axe bisexual asserts something like "Well, bisexuality means not regarding gender too!", then they are literally invalidating every fucking bisexual person that regards gender in their attraction (and there are tons of those). There are many bisexual people who will explicitly say that they regard gender.

To grasp at straws so hard to invalidate people who identify as pansexual that you'll shit out a misconceived biphobic myth that invalidates numerous bisexual people is basically saying "being indirectly biphobic to own the goofy MOGAI pans."

I identify as both bisexual and pansexual simultaneously, so every time this kind of discourse comes up, especially when people have the intent to put bisexuality and pansexuality as "at war" with each other makes me double facepalm.

No one should invalidate anyone's identity. No one should invalidate their own personal interpretation of it. Pansexual people should respect how bisexual people identify themselves. Bisexual people should respect how pansexual people identify themselves. Everyone should just respect other people's labels PERIOD!

Bottom line is that the LGBTQ+ community needs to get over label discourse and policing entirely. You'd think "respect people in how they personally identify" wouldn't be a controversial take for queer people BUT... here we are.

Love all of my m-spec buddies, BTW!

A while ago I was kinda surprised that my attractions shifted predominantly towards men. I knew I was bi for years and was alright with that but, still was predominantly attracted to women. Then for the last couple of weeks my interest in women picked up. Now, I feel myself shifting interest to men again but, not as strongly as the last time.

I guess upon reflection, my growing romantic attraction to men is what probably drove the recent increase in my attraction to the same sex. That was a more recent development that happened in the last year when I tried browsing OLD sites again. I started looking at the men I saw as potential long term partners in a way I only thought about with women until that point.

Does anyone else deal with this too?

Edit: Sorry if the response time was a bit laggy, my shit was longer than usual today.

Hopefully he just want to watch a movie as a pretext bc this shit is quirky. I got a second hand projector with some dead pixels and an HDMI snaking across the room to my laptop that plugs into a little dinky USB speaker I got at a recycling center for free that is plugged into a double jack behind my comfy chair.

Also I got no Netflix or nothing just a Plex my friend put up. Inshallah he likes the weird Almodovar movie I got my pal to put on there, or its just pretext how I said.

The brilliant team name is courtesy of emizeko, I claim no credit for that.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2425113

We have to stop Project 2025...

But I feel powerless at times.

Over 400 artists, bands, and entertainers sign an open letter denouncing anti-trans legislation and policies. Of course like any open letter or petition it's just symbolic. But it was heartwarming to see that Fred Penner and the two surviving members of Sharon Lois & Bram were among the signatories.

bottom text

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2006727

A landmark of trans and feminist nonfiction, Whipping Girl is Julia Serano’s indispensable account of what it means to be a transgender woman in a world that consistently derides and belittles anything feminine. In a series of incisive essays, Serano draws on gender theory, her training as a biologist, her career in queer activism, and her own experiences before and after her gender transition to examine the deep connections between sexism and transphobia. She coins the term transmisogyny to describe the specific discrimination trans women face—and she shows how, in a world where masculinity is seen as unquestionably superior to femininity, transgender women’s very existence becomes a threat to the established gender hierarchy.

Now updated with a new afterword on the contemporary anti-trans backlash, Whipping Girl makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activists must work to embrace and empower femininity—in all of its wondrous forms—and to make the world safe and just for people of all genders and sexualities.

you can order a copy here with code SERANO20 for a discount

embarrassingly i've never read this, but a new edition is the perfect time to change this! it's one of the big books people always talk about as a must read for understanding transphobia and transmisogyny, so now i'm doing that and i feel pretty comfortable recommending others do so as well

I believe I generally understand the concept of the (trans, not Star Trek) usage of "The Prime Directive" but as a cis person, I don't really seem to get why. If a person you know and are close to starts to act or talk in a way like they are possibly trans, why is it... not proper, for lack of a better term, to genuinely tell them "I think you might want to seriously explore these feelings"? It feels like you should? Like you should be reassuring to someone who feels like this?