…so i took some photos while visiting Hitachi Seaside Park (Ibaraki, Japan) this past weekend and decided to plaster text all over them because i was feeling artsy fartsy and shit and if you reblog this post without this caption i will hunt you down and kancho you. 以上です。
for the longest time it struck me as odd, the way that the LGBT community at large upholds “visibility” as some kind of goal or ideal to be fought for. it wasn’t until recent years that i actually stopped and thought about it enough to realize why reference to and usage of “visibility” in this way bothers me so much. as someone who has always been and will always be hypervisible because of their race, it baffles me when people advocate for visibility as if visibility is what we all want; as if visibility is even a means to getting what we all want. this upholding of visibility as something important for all of us to fight for seems grossly negligent of the fact that some of us are already more visible than others and that that very visibility is part of what has gotten some of us bullied, turned away…
※ cw: dysphoria, genitalia mention ….so, in typical me fashion, i ended up coming out as non-binary to my psychiatrist the other day. i’d had no intention of coming out to him, but at the same time i had no intention of making any effort to not come out to him, so. *shrugs* i’d already come out to him as queer / bi / ace during my first appointment, so i already had some means of gauging what his reaction might be like. also, this is the same guy who is overly focused on “results” and “remission” to the point of being laughable / uncomfortable at times, so i already had reservations about the guy from the start.
unimportant meta announcement, but: #VesperSpeaks* …so every now and again i sit in front of my laptop and bang away at it like Keyboard Cat, usually resulting in long-winded rants or random posts about feels… or something. Tumblr being Tumblr, those posts are subsequently lost to the abyss that is this blog soon after i post them, never to be seen again without digging through tags. this page is a non-exhaustive compilation of some of the things i’ve “written” with videos sprinkled in, organized in descending chronological order by category. #LGBTQIA in Japan* i often get asks asking me about things related to Japan or the Japanese language and from time to time i write spontaneous posts related to my experiences in Japan. this page is a compilation of some of those posts. disclaimer: in case this isn’t already clear, please note that everything on this page and on…
me: these meds sure have helped me regain control over my depression and anxiety. finally back to my depressed-anxious-and-angry-but-not-worryingly-so self! psychiatrist: that’s good– but what if– WHAT IF we up the dose a bit. at this rate, there’s a good chance you could go into remission! me: remission lolololol nah, i’m good, i think. pyschiatrist: but– BUT don’t you want to TRY? you could feel even better! me: even better lolololololol no antidepressant is going to make me better cuz no antidepressant is going to make this world less of a shitty place, but thanks anyway lololol
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…??
got home from work, made dinner and sat down to watch another episode of Black Mirror on Netflix before bed, as one does. was totally not prepared for what turned out not to be the queerbaiting i first assumed it to be, but to instead be a heart-wrenching queer romance between a bi / multiple gender attracted black woman and a gay woman exploring intimacy for the first time. not only was the story itself a tear-jerker, the characters themselves were well-developed and included quite possibly the most in-depth and positive representation that i’ve ever seen of a bi black woman character in particular in popular media. even consent– something that a lot of media doesn’t put enough thought into– was handled fairly well (imho) and the episode certainly explored things that other media tends to only dance around if touch upon at all, all crammed into a 60 minute…
never not going to be bitter about having been essentially told to ‘shut up’ and ‘stay in my lane’ repeatedly by aro aces because i ‘already have enough [media] representation’, all based on them deciding for me that i’m an (allo)ro ace. let’s not forget the added irony that i am in fact not (allo)ro– the very premise of their claims which were subsequently used to fuel an inquisition against (allo)ro people in general, be they ace or not– but more importantly, i was being told this specifically over a show that is ripe with homophobic tropes, erases one of its lead characters’ bisexuality in addition to another lead character’s asexuality– all while simultaneously perpetrating biphobia; a show that also lacks a single non-binary character and in fact only has a couple of black characters because they were inserted into it as tokens. yeah, never going to not be bitter about that.
…so i randomly went to Book Off (used bookstore) today after work and happened to find two used books on gender studies / gender theory that not only ① explicitly discuss binarism and how society ignores those who are neither of the binary genders (male / female) nor either of the binary sexualities (gay / straight)– there’s also ② explicit mention of asexuality and the alphabet soup where the acronym LGBTIAQ is used and I is defined as “Intersex”, A as “Asexual” and Q as “Queer”. notably, these books were published in ① 2013 & ② 2006 and are original works by Japanese authors rather than books imported into Japan and translated into Japanese. below are super rough (because i’m starving, exhausted and need to go to bed damnit) English translations for the above snippets.
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…
