i don’t know why, but it only just occurred to me that in referring to myself as a “queer ace”, as i sometimes do, i may be inadvertently giving off the impression that i don’t think that aces are inherently queer…? that “queer” modifies my aceness rather than encompasses it…??
i’m extremely busy and low on spoons right now, so i’ve been silently keeping a very weary eye on the ongoing situation regarding YouTube’s age-restricted censorship of LGBTQIA content. as youtuber after youtuber responded to the censorship of their videos and the outcry from youtubers and non-youtubers alike grew, i’ve remained silent because, as i said, i’m extremely busy and low on spoons– but also because i glanced at Creator Studio, the backend of YouTube for content creators, and saw no change in my video listing or anything else that indicated restriction. well, my exhausted, weary (and wary) ass turned on “Restricted Mode” tonight. 29 out of 65 of my videos and 4 entire playlists have been marked as potentially inappropriate for young viewers. and you know, if i weren’t barely functioning, struggling to even find the time to eat and sleep right now, i’d most certainly be livid and…
…really frustrated with how i can’t say that i’m anemic without people in general– but especially doctors– automatically relating my anemia to the assumed fact that i have a uterus that makes my life hell once a month. like seriously, could you not? the socially established association of a medical condition with a specific gender, with a specific sex, with a specific bodily function is so inescapable that as an AFAB person who’s assumed to be a woman, the second i mention being anemic to a doctor their thoughts automatically go to assumptions about my gender / sex / bodily functions and my anemia immediately gets chalked up to anemia due to blood loss. so inescapable that here in Japan at least iron supplements are often marketed specifically towards women. so inescapable that if i mention being anemic to a woman and she’ll immediately offer up earnest words of empathy…
so i’m at Starbucks using Starbuck’s free wifi while i work on stuff, as usual, when i randomly go on Tumblr and see the name of a familiar website, Black Lesbian Love Lab, being recommended to me. i didn’t know they were on Tumblr, so i clicked on the recommendation to check it out and was brought to the above page telling me that i’m unable to access @blacklesbianlovelab because of stipulations in the wifi service’s terms of use? wtf? i’m immediately reminded of the fiasco not that long ago when Tumblr marked the entire #lesbian tag NSFW, which i thought they’d fixed but? at the very least this seems like a remnant of that? although the wifi service itself is also involved, i can still access the BLLL website without issue and the content of the Tumblr blog by no means warrants it being treated like a porn blog. again,…
it’s incredibly ironic (and by “ironic” i mean “funny as hell”) that the very same people who call non-binary people “special snowflakes” with the implication that we are attention seekers are the very same people who go out of their way to actively seek out people like me to send these random cries for attention to. sometimes i literally get essay-length messages that amount to nothing more than “LOOK AT ME! LISTEN TO ME! STROKE MY EGO BY ACKNOWLEDGING ME!” and like… it never ceases to amaze me how oblivious these people are to the irony of their actions.
queerascat: …you know you have a problem when 3 out of the 4 hats that you own are exactly the same hat in exactly the same colors (black / gray / white) just in different patterns / materials. to be fair, though, the latest (solid black) one was half the price of the others despite being the same brand and everything, so of course i’m going to buy it. i mean, solid black is my thing– if anything, you’d have thought it’d have been the first hat i’d have bought, right? hmph. ;( more random thoughts about hats because i’m exceptionally longwinded tonight, apparently. …is it odd that i only got into hats once my hair started falling into “wow, your hair’s long feminine!” category in people’s eyes? like, before that i never even really gave hats any thought. now it’s almost like i feel a need to wear a hat…
ended up at Tsutaya today thanks to this post and what a haul! mission Read All The Queer Manga will continue this winter vacation with: 「一人交換日記」 / “Exchange Diaries” by 永田カビ / Kabi Nagata 「しまなみ誰そ彼」/ “Shimanami Tasogare” by 鎌谷悠希 / Yuhki Kamatani turns out that “Exchange Diaries” was just released two days ago, so perfect timing…! it’s a follow-up to my favorite comic essay 「 さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ」 / “The Private Report On My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness” (translation not mine) which i read a while ago and meant to write a post about, but never got around to. in brief, it’s an autobiographical comic essay about suddenly finding oneself lonely but completely inexperienced with relationships or intimacy at 28 years old, but at the same time having no actual drive for sex and not understanding why that is so going to a lesbian brothel because hell, what if i’m a lesbian??? it’s more complicated than…
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…
