I Hate It When I Cant Even Write A Poem About Something Because Its Too Obvious. Like In The Airbnb I

“If I should fall, on that day

I only pray, Don’t fall away from me.”

I swear if we are gonna get a scene of Crowley’s fall in the next season, I will not be okay… I will not recover from that! 😫

I did add this piece to my InPrnt, if you wanna grab a physical copy! ♥️

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

A Post-Season 3 Recommendation List

So you're all caught up with Where the Stars Fell, and somehow, by some miracle, your to-listen list is not a mile long. Be not afraid! While you wait for news of season 4, here's a curated list of other incredible fiction podcasts to give a try (and don't forget some of the amazing shows we've crossed over with like @ameliapodcast, Forgive Me!, and more):

For... - bisexual disasters - sharp, snarky dialogue - personal growth whether you want to or not, buddy

Small Victories @wgc-productions

A recently recovered drug addict tries to start her new lease on life; too bad life has it out for her. This dramatic comedy follows Marisol through the ups and downs of a week in her life.

For... - deeply damaged women falling in love - enemies to... well, you'll see - You Can Never Go Back To Who You Once Where And Thank God For That

The Pasithea Powder @pasitheapowder

On a faraway world, Captain Sophie Green is recovering from a war that ripped her planet apart and left her personal relationships for dead. Among the many atrocities committed on both sides was the invention of Pasithea Powder, a drug with memory altering properties. Thankfully, the drug has been eradicated and only a handful of scientists—now political prisoners—know how to recreate it. When Sophie sees one of those scientists walking free, she has no choice but to turn to an estranged friend for help.

For... - a Filipina lead (you can never have too many) - nontraditional supernatural fantasy - a quirky and well-developed supporting ensemble

Hi Nay @hinaypod

Hi Nay, literally translated to “Hi Mom”, is a supernatural horror fictional podcast about Filipina immigrant Mari Datuin, whose babaylan (shaman) family background accidentally gets her involved in stopping dangerous supernatural events in Toronto.

For... - intricate, naturalistic world-building - guy who wants to clock out so fucking badly but can't because Plot - slow-burn mystery with a crazy twist

The Night Post @thenightpost

In Gilt City, conscripted couriers are both respected and shunned. They inhabit the borderlands between a growing industrial society and the untamed, arcane frontier that surrounds it. The Night Post is a weekly supernatural audio drama about survival, tradition, and the vast unknown.

For... - one country girl making do who loves her truck and brain dumping into an analogue audio device - ambiguous situationships - american gothic and the apocalypse

Breaker Whiskey @breakerwhiskey

In 1968, two women find themselves in rural Pennsylvania during what turns out to be some kind of apocalyptic event. By the time they discover that everyone else is gone, it’s too late to figure out what happened. Despite not liking each other at all, the women work together to survive, until six years later one of them sets out on her own, driving around the country to find other survivors. This is her, calling out to anyone who might listen.

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

Y'all ever open a book on a new subject, read a little bit, and have to put it back so you can process the way in which your mind was just expanded?

im just someones weird daughter

i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!

Know your history:

Gay:

Used to mean carefree

Then sexually deviant

Then prostitute

Then slut

Then sodomite

And THEN as we know it today but only as a slur

Reclaimed in the seventies

LGBT:

Invented in the nineties

Has faced constant backlash (from both straight, queer, and LGBT folks from being not inclusive enough or too inclusive)

Every year there are pushes to change to acronym

LGBTQ

LGBTQ+

LGBTQ*

LGBTQIA

Mogai

Alphabet soup

Queer:

Used to mean “other”

Became a slang term for “not straight” in the 1400s

Became a slur in the early 1900s

Reclaimed in the 80s.

Sudden push back from within the queer community to have it seen only as a slur in the 2010s, a push that can be traced back to terf ideology.

Is the only term that includes all non cishet people

Homosexual

A medical diagnosis

Used for decades to make queerness into a mental illness

Used as a slur for the latter half of the 20th century

Rejected by the queer community as an acceptable term for a brief period of time in the early 2000s before coming back into fashion.

Only describes the experience of cis gay men and cis lesbians

Think what you want, believe what you will, but every word we have ever used to describe ourselves is coated in blood.

Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is now available to purchase on Amazon and iTunes!! if you’re able to it’s $20 for the whole season and buying will hopefully show how much people care about the show! if not, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of other ways to show support :)