inspired by an old blog post and a New Year's meme, i decided to document the last decade of my journey re: identity as a #Black, #Queer, #Nonbinary & #Asexual person in the form of a video...
This is brief rundown of why YouTube/Google is the Pink Capitalist Piece of Shit that we all knew it was to begin with, highlight the hypocrisy and injustices dealt to YouTube's LGBTQIA Creators and viewership alike.
…..annnd look what i randomly* stumbled across at the bookstore tonight. Ash Hardell’s “The ABC’s of LGBT+” in Japanese! even Amazon Japan doesn’t seem to have it yet, but somehow Kinokuniya has it? which makes absolutely no sense, but hey! not complaining. it’s a complete translation of Ash Hardell’s book, including a lot of ace and non-binary terminology such as aceflex, quoiromantic, genderfluid and maverique transliterated phonetically into Japanese approximates.** even the [English] pronouns section is translated into Japanese, which i kinda have feelings about as to how helpful that and / or phonetic translations will be for Japanese people who will be approaching this book from a cultural and linguistic context that is not the same as that of a native English / germanic or romance language speaker. that said, at a glance, there does seem to be added explaination of English grammar to help non-English speakers better understand gender…
did you know that October 10th is World Mental Health Day? i’ve recently tried out BetterHelp.com, a great resource for online therapy. if you’re interested in trying online therapy or looking for a new therapist, check it out maybe? it’s been over 3 months since i started antidepressants. i made a video about my [mis]adventures with turning to professional help via medication for the first time back in July. it being World Mental Health Day and all, now’s the perfect time to finally update you all on the continuation of my [mis]adventures in mental health shit– now with an added dab of online therapy on top! in the interest of complete transparency, this video is a sponsored by BetterHelp and the above link is my personal referral link and anything generated from it will come back to me. that said, i would only ever accept sponsorship on a video if…
adventures-in-asexuality I have been enjoying your thoughts on visibility! I’ve often thought of it as kind of the ability to access narratives about yourself (or about other people, I guess, but my priorities here are inherently centered on people being able to find narratives about themselves, or about who they want to be) – a bit broader than just fiction narratives, including things like healthcare narratives or relative narratives or what you have. I have said the word ‘narrative’ too much. ( re: this post ) thanks for sharing your thoughts. 🙂 i’ve actually never re+ally thought of narratives or the ability to access them as visibility, but as representation…. but now that you mention it, i guess it totally is a form of visibility, just not in the way that i usually think of visibility… …which i guess is part of the frustration that i have with usage of…
anonymous said: i know yokohama has SHIP, an ngo which mostly does hangout type stuff, but they probably know someone ( re: this post ) !!!!! anon, thank you!! i already know of SHIPにじいろキャビン and have no idea why i didn’t even think of them at the time of answering the other ask… just further proof that i need more sleep, i guess… *sigh* anyway, as you said, SHIP is an NPO that runs the only LGBTQIA community center that i know of in Yokohama and hosts an assortment of monthly LGBTQIA events. i went to one event and checked out their community center once, but then work and finances got hectic and i haven’t been back since, sadly…. they seemed like good people, though. upon getting this ask, i immediately thought about dropping by there after work sometime to ask about counseling services, but then i went to their website…
anonymous said: Vesper, do you know of any LGBTQ (or LGBTQ-competent) counseling services in Japan? Specifically in the Yokohama/Tokyo area, but online resources would also be appreciated. anon, you must be psychic, because you have impeccable timing. i just had a discussion with my psychiatrist about this the other day and was going to keep on procrastinating writing about how it went, but your ask was the nudge i needed to get off my ass and write The Thing. you may be interested in reading The Thing, but in the interest of saving you some time, here’s a spoiler alert: my psychiatrist wasn’t all that helpful. if you’re looking for counseling services in English, he seems skeptical about there being anyone in the Yokohama / Tokyo area (in so far as he knows) who offer services specifically dealing with LGBTQIA people or the issues that we face. as for counseling…
anonymous said: i was wondering, do people in japan know about asexuality or intersex , graysexuals , aromantics…? they know about lgbt but what about these? is there any kind of awareness to it? ( i discovered that im ace flux and still questioning whether demisexual or graysexual, but also that im biromantic seemingly and was wondering if it would be a problem there? are people accepting or aware of them or just lgbt?) it’s hard to make a broad generalization about an entire country of people, but generally speaking, i’d say that awareness of intersex people, the ace spectrum and the aro spectrum– and indeed, LGBT everything– is behind where it is in, say, the US. at the same time, Japan is a very diverse place. within the same country, even among the same demographic of people, awareness can vary greatly. everything i’m saying and about to say is…
blaqueer: gaywrites: Yesterday in Philadelphia, LGBTQ activists and city officials gathered to kick off Pride month by raising a new official flag. It’s the traditional rainbow flag we all know, with two additions: a black stripe and a brown stripe. The flag is part of a local initiative to address a history of racism in the city’s LGBTQ neighborhood and community groups. It’s the first time an American city has embraced the flag with brown and black stripes. G Philly covered a leaked video last year that showed a White local club owner repeatedly describing Black patrons as n-words. Backlash to the video, combined with the collective’s ongoing activism, ultimately led to a city council bill that gives the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations the authority to penalize discriminatory businesses. Amber Hikes, a queer Black woman, now heads the Office of LGBT Affairs, and the office’s new commission includes mainly…
ever so aptly timed with YouTube’s second attempt at spotlighting LGBTQIA YouTube with the hashtag #ProudToBe, the first ever Pride Academy was held at YouTube Space Tokyo today. the name of the event itself being a play on one of YouTube’s programs for creators, Creator Academy. the event was aimed at encouraging and offering support to LGBTQIA people in Japan who might be interested in creating a channel on YouTube– regardless of the content that they chose to put on their channel. another aim of the event was to host a 交流会 (networking event) after the presentations in the hopes of fostering community among LGBTQIA youtubers in Japan by giving them a chance to meet each other. to that end, Google promoted the event at its booth during Tokyo Rainbow Pride this past May and i was pleasantly surprised to see the turn out, given the current state of LGBTQIA…
