The Lit Student In Me Finds This Really Interesting, The Gen Z In Me Is Finally Glad To Understand Why

Join me in voting tactically to Stop The Tories, and together we'll make sure our votes are actually earned next time. Smart voters have political power. https://stopthetories.vote/

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StopTheTories.Vote

Your vote is your power. Find out how to use it tactically to Stop The Tories and influence the next government.

GUYS THIS IS A REALLY HELPFUL TOOL IF YOU LIVE IN THE UK!!!

Use your vote tactically in this coming election on July 4th so that you can vote for who you actually want to in the next one.

Please please register to vote and go to your local polling station (or by post/proxy) in this election. It's really important especially for trans/ queer/ disabled people/ any marginalised community really. We stand to lose even more rights and the slim protections than we do have if the Tories or even worse, Reform, gain power.

Please share this to any friends or family who are also eligible to vote and are unsure of who is the best vote in your constituency!

Let's get the Tories out!

If anyone at all is looking for a fantastic bit of queer media to watch this pride month (yes i am aware that it's nearly over but ive only just watched them myself) then please please check out:

Lingua Franca (2019) dir: Isabel Sandoval. The story of an undocumented Filipino trans woman living as a live in carer in New York

And

Carlotta (2014) dir: Samantha Lang. A film based on the life of an Australian trans icon and her friends and how they went from working class boys to household names. -A quick warning though this film is dark in places so please be cautious-

Both are centered around the trans experience, and I found both through looking at the work of actor Eamon Farren, and both are fantastic films that I wish were more well known.

IM SORRY BUT THOSE HANDS ARE SO WELL DONE!!!!! OH MY STARTS ITS BEAUTIFUL ART!!!!!!

The Fall (Part 1) - 2024

Inspired by the painting The Fall by Alan Stephens Foster. This one is called "Part 1" because I did two versions. As I couldn't decide which one to post, I'll post the two of them this week ("Part 2" will be uploaded this Saturday).

Working all week long (because I'm an artist).

Y'know, whenever people want to talk about why aspec people 'count' as an oppressed identity, they tend to go for the big stuff like corrective rape and conversion therapy. And like, we should absolutely talk about that stuff. Obviously those things are terrible and important and we need to raise awareness and deal with them.

But I feel like people often gloss over how… quietly traumatising it is to grow up being told that there is only one way to be happy— and that everybody who doesn't conform to that norm is secretly miserable and just doesn't know it— and then to gradually realise that, for reasons that you cannot help, that is never going to happen for you.

You're not going to find a prince/princess and ride off into the sunset. Or if you do, then it's not going to look exactly the way it does in fairytales. You're not going to get a 'normal' relationship, because you are not 'normal', and everybody and everything around you keeps telling you that that's bad.

You see films where characters are presented as being financially stable, genuinely passionate about their work and surrounded by friends and family, but then spend the rest of the plot realising that the real thing they needed was a (romantic and sexual) partner, to make them 'complete'.

You absorb the idea that any relationships you have with allo people will ultimately be unfulfilling on their side, and that this will be your fault (even if you discussed things with your partner beforehand and they decided that they were a-okay with having those sorts of boundaries in a relationship) unless you deliberately force yourself into situations that you aren't comfortable with, so as to make uo for your 'defects'.

You grow up feeling lowkey gaslighted because all the adults in your life (even in LGBT+ spaces. In fact especially in LGBT+ spaces) are insisting that it's totally normal to not be attracted to anybody at your age, and then you go to school and everybody keeps pressuring you to name somebody you're attracted to because they can't imagine not being attracted to anybody at your age.

And then you get older and realise that one day you're going to be expected to leave home, and that one day all your friends are going to be expected to put aside other relationships and 'settle down' with a primary partner and you don't know what you're going to do after that because you straight up don't have a roadmap for what a 'happy ending' looks like for someone like you.

(And the LGBT+ community is little help, because so many people in there are more than happy to tell you that you're not oppressed at all. That you're like this because you don't want to have sex, and/or you don't want to have any relationships, that your orientation is some sort of choice you made— like not eating bananas— rather than an intrinsic part of you that a lot of us have at some point tried to wish away.)

Even if you're grey or demi, and do experience those feelings, you still have to deal with the fact that you're not experiencing them the 'normal' way and that that's going to effect your relationships and your ability to find one in the first place.

If you're aiming for lifelong singlehood (which is valid af) or looking for a qpp, then you're going to have to spend the rest of your life either letting people make wrong assumptions about your situation (at best that your relationship is of a different nature than it actually is, at worst that the life you've chosen is really just a consolation prize because you 'failed' at finding a romantic/sexual partner) or pulling out a powerpoint and several webpages every time you want to explain it.

This what being aspec looks like for most people, and it is constantly minimised as being unimportant and not worth fighting against— even in aspec spaces— because we've all on some level absorbed the idea that oppression is only worth fighting against if it's big, and dramatic, and immediately obvious. That all the little incidents of suffering that we experience on a daily basis are not enough to be worth bothering about.

I mean, who gives a shit if you feel broken, inherently toxic as a partner, and like you're going to be denied happiness because of your orientation? Shouldn't we all just shut up and thank our lucky stars we don't have to deal with all the stuff some of the other letters in the acronym have to put up with (leaving aside the fact that there are many aspec people who identify with more than one letter)?

So you know what? If you're aspec and you relate to anything I've said above (or can think of other things relating your your aspec-ness that I haven't mentioned) then this is me telling you now that it's enough. Even if we got rid of all the big stuff (which we're unlikely to do any time soon because— Shock! Horror!— the big stuff is actually connected to all the small stuff) we would still be unable to consider our fight 'over' because what you are experiencing is not 'basically okay' and something we should just be expected to 'put up with'.

No matter what anybody tells you, we have the right to demand more from life than this.

Artemis Fowl

Trans and ace/aro rights lads

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

An astronaut

Any constructive criticism?

<3

i love pictures of the international space station which are just completely overexposed because that is just.. unequivocally an angel.