After the 2016 General Election in the United States, the tensions between two economically distinct economies have started to rise in the public consciousness. In effect, the perception of minorities, impairments, and any deviation from the cis white heterosexual agenda has been challenged in terms of their acceptance within an American ecosystem and structure.
As a 90’s baby I look back at the old cartoons and listen to old hits, reminiscing the good ole days. I joke around with the children at my job, telling them how the best shows were on cartoon network . I expressed that my favorite shows were the Power Puff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Dexter laboratory , and other hit TV series.
As I continued to share my stories, one kid goes “I like Loud House”. Of course I did not know what he was talking about , but another child replies ” It’s that Gay show! My father said I cannot watch it”. Then it clicked. I remember this being a controversial topic on Facebook before the shows premier. The show contains a married, biracial , Gay, male couple that has a child.
In this blog I will explain what makes this show inappropriate .
Point #1 It goes against the social norm : How dare you show a child who is the product of the american dream two men together! That’s absurd ! How dare we show children that there is more to life than just mommy and daddy. Boys cannot be feminine ! They must be rough. If my child see’s this he will not be the man I want him to be! (sarcasm)
Point #2 STICK WITH YOUR OWN RACE! : How dare we promote outside our race ! ( Sarcasm)
Point #3 THIS GOES AGAINST OUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ! : who cares.
Point #4 How can you reproduce if your gay : Well if there’s a will there’s a way……. who cares
At the end of the day no one said you had to be gay, but just respect them as humans. The world must embrace change! Whose to say your way of living is right!? If anything I see it as this, we are letting people finally be themselves. Many people have been killed, have been shunned, have killed themselves,or have had something tragic done to them because they were considered ” not normal” ( Much like blacks were considered way back when but I shall not go there 😀 ). Now we have same sex marriages, Tv shows, Gay parenting, etc! All of these things that were considered abnormal are now part of our norm and should be! At the end of the day we are people. Accept it!
Halloween is one of the most popular, semi-significant holidays for people of all ages because of its openness to all genders, races, classes, and sexual orientations. It is a time for everyone to have fun whether it be going door to door asking strangers for tasty treats or drinking so much that you fall off of your feet. But for others it may be a time of difficulty because of the criteria that it demands from the group of people who go out and drink. Long ago are the days when we could get away with wearing a scary or ghoulish outfit and go out with our friends. Now, a certain expectation of body exposure is means of attire. This has the potential to create certain barrier for certain people, specifically transgender people. A friend of mine, who’s name due to privacy and respect will not be shared, and who is fairly popular at UMBC, was stressed out about his attire because it wasn’t able to express her body the way that she had wanted it to be expressed to the world. A side note, bodies are our ways of communicating in the world and a person felt that because her body was not what she expected it to be, and exposing costume created a feeling of disapproval and dissatisfaction. In order to take away some of the stress I reminded her that it does not matter how people understand your bodies message to be, but rather to fully understand it yourself and have people who are close to you be the ones to genuinely understand your bodies message and the way you wish to be perceived.
Television can sometimes be the most reflective form of cultural mirroring that can show what society truly thinks of certain people, and the behavior that they find suitable for those types of identities. Dramas and comedies often reveal stereotypical tropes of characters that can often be unrealistic and uncomfortable to experience, while live-action news programming can show the true thoughts that organizations from around the world are attempting to pump into the minds of humans in our society. The least drastic form of television that I would expect catastrophe from would definitely be a game show. I mean, really?
In the way gender and sexuality operates in our world, often times they are highly construed and mistaken for each other. Are they related? Yes. But they are still separate things. Because these identities are often mistaken in this way many people have this idea that being transgender is an identity that’s ‘chosen’ to receive some kind of access to heterosexuality and that to be validated as a trans person you need to be engaged in this effort to be on some end of the gender binary only performing gender in ways that are widely accepted in a hyper policed way, this includes heterosexism as it relates to transess. In fact there’s a whole other level of heterosexism that is applied to trans people.
But sexual diversity is just as diverse in the trans community as it is in the cis population. I can only speak deeply about my own experience, and I realize it is but a mere single experience in a sea of many others and I do not speak for other trans people, though I feel like my story is relevant to this topic. My personal experience with my gender identity and sexual identity, has been a long and arduous journey that starts out in the closet as being reluctantly bisexual, often leaning towards my attraction to women. Then I was introduced to concepts of there being more than two genders, and it struck me. There were months of tears, denial, and confusion. Once exposed to different genderqueer, nonbinary, and trans identities that I suddenly felt aligned with I couldn’t go back to a reality where my sexuality was the same in relation to my gender identity ever again. Ultimately this ended up being a positive thing, something freeing, something that just ended up feeling more comfortable. But my initial reaction was fear, uncertainty, and feeling disingenuous because of the way the world saw identities like mine and I reflected that back into the way I saw myself. I still do feel internal conflict, I still get scared that I, in no way, have all of the answers about my identity, but as I come into my gender identity I find that I’m making progress in establishing peace with my bisexuality. It’s as if I didn’t want to identify as bisexual before, something about seeing myself as a ciswoman before I knew about the trans identities that fit me, dating a man really did not sit with me well, it just wasn’t me and it isn’t. I’m finding that being trans and accepting it has essentially worked me into actually being more comfortable about my bisexuality. Now I find new complications in grieving my previously thought of lesbian/queer woman identity, but again I can’t go back, it’s just not me. I am a transmasculine person who is bisexual and with that I am queer and transgender. I think it’s a timeline and identity that defies this heterosexist view of trans people, as different stories and sexual identities of many trans people do. I wanted to provide my own experience as an example of how transness does not equate to gayness. There are certainly many other narratives out there that proclaim trans does not equal gay as well and encourage people inside and outside the LGBT community to realize that there is no one way to be trans or queer and that there is no reason someone can’t be both.
Now and days, I have been thinking about being more political aware and like any curious person I decided reading The Washington Post would be a good place to start (only online, of course). Continue reading
For Halloween this year my girlfriend and I decided to go as Shaggy and Velma. While looking for clothes in a thrift store, my girlfriend started playing with the idea of going as a sexy Velma. Going along with it I suggested I go as a sexy Shaggy as well. Continue reading
It’s that time of year again. When all the “ghouls and goblins” come out to play. Or, should I say “sluts and sex–crazed men” come out and frolick about. Slut shaming has become a very negative stigma centered around Halloween time. Continue reading
The appropriation of words have been used to shun or shame people from their community or their individuality. I can list a bunch of words that have been used as slurs against people to dehumanize them like, nigger, queer, fruit, fag, bitch, slut, tranny, and the list goes on. There is something important about a community reclaiming a word that has been used to shame them for just being themselves. It creates resistance from the oppressor without violence. It’s simply taking the word and using it towards themselves but in a positive way. It may be weird for the first couple times but grab a group of your gay friends and call each other queers, beautiful queers that run the world. For African Americans reclaiming the word nigger has changed the way black people communicate with each other. By reclaiming the word nigger they changed the last two letters with just an “a” for the more laid back and stylistic approach. African American’s didn’t just reclaim a derogatory word but revamped it to give it a little more flavor. The act of reclaiming a word that has been used to shun a group is also means of survival and learning how to change or adapt to the given environment. It allows humans to take control of an issue and use it for their benefits instead it being against them. I’m proud to know that these words have such great meaning and history behind them and that these words are more than just words but experiences that people have with them.
Having been around various forms of sex work I have become quite used to cosmetic surgery. I spent a lot of time drawing parallels while reading Susan Stryker’s “Frankenstein” piece. I think about the times in which we allow ‘unnatural’ bodies to coexist peacefully and when we view them as threats. Continue reading
