a friend just sent me this song and it is the funniest, most Japanese– yet simultaneously universal song ever about coming across public displays of affection as a single person and being annoyed about it. thought i’d share. lol translated lyrics below.
Saint Harridan, an Oakland based clothing company born from a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 with the aim of creating clothing that helped masculine women and gender diverse people express their authentic selves, officially closes its doors for the last time today… in a tear-jerking farewell message, owner Mary Going shared the above video saying:e We hope that our contribution will lend itself to the next wave of the un-doing of the gender binary and the dismantling of the narrow boxes into which we have previously been crammed. We have been so very proud to reflect and serve this community. Collectively, we have all contributed to this revolutionary momentum. At Saint Harridan, we have had the privilege to hear your stories and share your life’s milestones: weddings, job interviews, college tours, proms, high school graduations and even burials. You showed up looking like you felt, dressed in a way that lent…
back in October i was contacted by an esperantist from Madagascar who’d just come to my city for a year as part of a scholarship program. we arranged to meetup at a restaurant and ended up talking about random shit for literally 4 hours, which was great because it’d been a while since my not-that-social ass had talked to anyone in Esperanto offline, but damn. she is so talkative and i’m… not the most talkative person. anyway, i never intended to come out to her or anything, but i also had no intention of actively avoiding it either and yeah. how it ended up happening and how things have gone so far has been vaguely interesting, so commence word vomit. (ĉi tiu blogaĵo estas anglalingva, sed mi esperantigos ĝin se iu tion deziras.) that night when we’d met at the restaurant i randomly mentioned at some point that i had…
…so, i’ve just started watching Yuri!!! On Ice (i’m only 3 episodes in), but already there’s something that’s kind of annoying me about it. you know, how Victor keeps putting poor Yuri into really awkward, sometimes overtly sexual, situations that in real life would typically be viewed as sexual harassment or otherwise in appropriate but that is obviously considered to be more than okay by the people making the anime (and anime / manga in general) and is considered to be “cute”, “hot”, “relationship goals” by fans.
one of my least favorite things to do is attempt to explain in Japanese to a (usually LGB) cisgender Japanese person that: 1. no, セクシャリティー / “”sexuality”“ is not the same thing as gender. they usually get it once i explain it, but it’s still ugh because that inevitably spills over into: 2. no, オネエ / “onee” and / or ニューハーフ / “newhalf” is not synonymous with “transgender” and then when i use the word トランスジェンダー / lit. “transgender” from English– because i refuse to use any of the other Japanese words available– the person i’m talking to automatically thinks of ニューハーフ / “newhalf” (if i’m lucky) even when i’m not talking specifically about women who happen to be trans. i hate how bothトランスジェンダー / transgender and 性同一性障害者 / people with gender identity disorder– the most common way to refer to trans people in general– seemingly always make people think…
minamina0013: queerascat: minamina0013: queerascat: …as much as i love this thread of posts in theory, my tired ass can’t help but sit here wondering why anyone need even get married at all to do or have any of the above things, the few actual legal matters that were mentioned aside. also, this uplifting of “aromantic relationships” and marriage as “the New Platonic Ideal” feels incredibly uncomfortable… @queerascat I agree I think a lot of those things could be achieved by simply being roommates. It’s pretty funny that what they’re dubbing as “the New Platonic Ideal” already has a name, it’s called “friendship”. Aromantic relationships could be called friendships if that’s how you want to label it but personally as an aro I would consider a relationship with another aro as queer platonic. Our relationship may not be romantic but I wouldn’t say that my QPP(s) and I are just ‘friends’ who…
anonymous said: Branching off of your Cis-Trans binary video, does anything else about how gender is discussed estrange you? For me, settling on quoigender hasn’t been a comfortable experience, as it doesn’t provide the luxury or comfort of certainty. Coupled with ableism, aro- and acephobia, being quoigender and thus “see, not a real girl(TM) after all” makes gender itself alienating. I can’t “celebrate my gender identity” when I not convinced that I even have one, and suggesting that I should is insulting. ( re: this video / blog post ) there’s quite a lot surrounding gender and how it’s often discussed that bothers and / or alienates me, including the assumption that everyone knows their gender or even has one at all. that said, as someone who does have a gender, knows what it is and is comfortable in it, i admit that i am privileged in that regard and thus am…
libentianimo said: So there’s a book called Ashlesha by Jer Keene that has an aro/ace character. As in, they EXPLICITLY say the word aromantic and asexual to describe him, and explain what aromantic and asexual mean. Nearly all of the characters are queer-some are bi, some are gay, some are undefined, there’s a nonbinary trans character, and the majority(including the main character) are people of colour. The plot is amazing, too-scifi meets political conspiracies meets action thriller. It’s absolutely AMAZING. this is the book, i believe? it does sound interesting and has a lot of positive reviews on Amazon. thank you for the recommendation. 🙂
anonymous said: hi, so i have a question, ive been studying japanese for a while-6 years- but still dont have the hang of it and actually had to drop out of the japanese program at my school because the anxieties from my now retired teacher were so bad it was messing up all my grades, needless to say, after spending a semester in japan for abroad a year out of being in the program i was more confident and aware of what i have to work on, now ive come to the conclusion of wanting to teach there and i would love to join the jet program to start, but im pretty sure i left a bad impression dropping out of the major with my JPN teacher who is still here, and she discouraged me from going abroad while i was still in her class, plus my friends who left…
that feel when someone asks you how you are and you respond saying that you’re “tired”, knowing full well that they’ll take what you said differently from how you meant it. but that’s okay. because you’re fucking tired. you don’t have the energy to do anything about their understanding of the word anyway. hell, you yourself may not even know what kind of tired you are that day. are you depressed tired? are you anemic tired? are you queer tired? are you gaslighted tired? are you black tired? are you expat tired? are you anxious tired? are you one of the Many Other Kinds of tired? are you All Of The Above And More tired? ah yes, that’s right. you are a unique concoction of All The Above And More tired, further compounded upon by having to persevere through life as if you aren’t actually tired at all. when life…
