Aiden, mid-20s, they/them he/him. This blog is often nsfw. I like cats, puns, videogames and cool art :)
I'm the average academic researcher with an unspecified day job
This post discusses slurs and reclamation of them, and I write them out in full here, so please engage at your own risk.
My relationship to queer identity is weird. I can call myself all kinds of words that I’d never be comfortable being called by so one else. My friends can say “sup queer” and I feel delighted and seen! But if a stranger calls me a gay, a queer, any word I usually identify with, I feel a primal rage. They can call me queer - that’s obvious - but the second there’s that “a” thrown in there, it feels derogatory.
The word faggot, for example, is the one I had thrown at me the first time I passed as a dude, out with my now ex bf. And I have such complicated feelings of gender euphoria and shame related to it. Gay was the biggest insult you could have hurled at you when I was in school, and it still stings if it’s used in an off way. Queer is the term my mum uses to denote anyone who is weird or bad or wrong in her tiny, tiny world view - and I have reclaimed it so thoroughly that she uses it a hell of a lot less now.
And I think wrestling with this is good! Knowing what terms I like, and how I want them to be used in regards to myself is great! Because I will never try to police the way another person wants to describe themselves and their identity. And when someone tries to take away the words I use for myself, or any words someone has reclaimed, I’ll argue the point to death.
This post discusses slurs and reclamation of them, and I write them out in full here, so please engage at your own risk.
My relationship to queer identity is weird. I can call myself all kinds of words that I’d never be comfortable being called by so one else. My friends can say “sup queer” and I feel delighted and seen! But if a stranger calls me a gay, a queer, any word I usually identify with, I feel a primal rage. They can call me queer - that’s obvious - but the second there’s that “a” thrown in there, it feels derogatory.
The word faggot, for example, is the one I had thrown at me the first time I passed as a dude, out with my now ex bf. And I have such complicated feelings of gender euphoria and shame related to it. Gay was the biggest insult you could have hurled at you when I was in school, and it still stings if it’s used in an off way. Queer is the term my mum uses to denote anyone who is weird or bad or wrong in her tiny, tiny world view - and I have reclaimed it so thoroughly that she uses it a hell of a lot less now.
And I think wrestling with this is good! Knowing what terms I like, and how I want them to be used in regards to myself is great! Because I will never try to police the way another person wants to describe themselves and their identity. And when someone tries to take away the words I use for myself, or any words someone has reclaimed, I’ll argue the point to death.
i think it’s appropriate, funny even, to trauma dump on ppl who are intentionally being an asshole to u.
“lmao u just don’t wanna be bald bc then u’ll look like ur dad”
“i mean yeah honestly it’s kinda traumatic bc i have a rough relationship with my dad. it was rough to go from ‘daddy’s little girl’ to ‘gross gender freak’ after i came out, i’m used to him being my biggest cheerleader even when we didn’t see eye to eye, so to lose his support overnight has been really traumatizing and i’m really sad about it. and like how do i find positive male role models if my own dad doesn’t want to be one for me? who’s supposed to teach me to shave or take me to my first suit fitting or teach me how to be a good man when he doesn’t even believe i am one? what happens when i actually do start to look like him and he still rejects me? it’s just been really stressful to deal with all the—”
BINGO
One time someone asked if my parents didn’t give me enough attention as a kid, and I kind of just paused for a sec, then said “well mom slept at the office and dad didn’t want me so probably not, actually?” And it turns out they just thought I talked a lot
I’ve inadvertently done this because I’m autistic and have been through enough trauma therapy that I can just talk about that stuff without getting upset now, so sometimes people say something jokingly and I give a perfectly honest answer. And I only notice when they go silent and stare at me like I’ve grown a second head, but even funnier is when they start apologizing. Because then you know they were making a joke at your expense. And they won’t be doing it again.
There was a salesman/account rep that everyone in my mom’s building disliked. He was apparently somewhere between “asshole frat boy” and “scummy used car salesman,” but he knew just where the line was and apparently enjoyed putting his toes on it, but never over.
They were stuck with him, basically.
One day, mom was sitting in the samples room, looking through some data with a couple of other people working at nearby stations, and this guy comes in, sees my mom, and decides he’s going to have some fun.
“Hey, nice hat!” he says. “Having a bad hair day? Dye job go bad?”
My mother sets down her work, and reaches up, taking off her hat. “No. Chemotherapy. ”
Now confronted with her bald head, he freezes, his life flashing before his eyes.
“For stage 4 breast cancer,” my mother says, never changing expression.
He is now actively praying for death, as every other person in the room has stopped their work, and are staring at him.
“The prognosis is six to eight months,” mom says. She doesn’t say ‘until I die,’ but it hangs there. She picks up her work. “So I really should get back to this.”
Apparently he was mass reported to his employer before he got out of the building by multiple lab heads. They never saw him again.
*chanting like a mantra* I am an adult who studies physics i am an adult who studies physics i am an adult who studies physics i am an adult who studies physics
Stepping outside the bit for a moment, it does make me genuinely sad that so many people don’t know about Cecil or Welcome to Night Vale, and not in a like nostalgia way, in a “dear god all of these queer teens are missing out on a core part of our media history and that’s awful” kind of way.
Like I am not lying, Welcome to Night Vale really was fucking groundbreaking queer representation that was, and still is, widely loved FOR A REASON!! If you legit have never heard of it, please give it a listen!! It’s a stellar, diverse podcast full of heartfelt moments and fantastic humor and good ol’ horror that’s made me cry and laugh and helped me get to sleep when I’ve been having horrible anxiety more times than I can count, and on top of that I will never be able to describe how, in 2012 when all of the big mlm ships on tumblr were us cringey little queer teens desperately praying for something deep down we really thought we’d never get, breathtakingly refreshing it was to listen to the FIRST EPISODE and hear Cecil openly admit to being in love with another man like it was the most normal thing in the entire world. It was everything, it really was.
Yeah, Cecil got sexy-maned all to hell and we can look back on that fondly and critically, but Welcome to Night Vale was to podcasts what Korrasami and the Ruby/Sapphire wedding were to cartoons and the absolutely dismissive tone a lot of people are using when talking about it breaks my heart. This isn’t just about remembering our sexyman roots, it’s about remembering and loving a revolutionary piece of queer media that was REALLY POPULAR like it was on fucking NPR, sold out shows, best selling books, the works!! Welcome to Night Vale changed the landscape of queer media, proved in it’s own corner that stuff with queer people in it COULD sell and find wide audiences! Like this was coming out back when fucking Glee was the standard for gay rep, I’m not kidding, Night Vale was everything.
It was, and is, loved for a reason. Cecil is winning on tumblr FOR A REASON. You deserve to find out why.
(And also just like, most Reigen fans on this website HC Reigen as queer and ship him with Serizawa and so, y’all please, trust me, if you love serirei then boy do I have a fantastic queer couple for you. You want silly himbo paranormal husband shenanigans? I can give them to you. Pls come with me. You’ll like this, I promise.)
Yes, WTNV kicked off the audio drama renaissance and was groundbreaking in foregrounding a queer love story in 2012 and made a huge mark in tumblr culture at the time. However none of this has to do with sexyman credentials. What makes Cecil the Ultimate Tumblr Sexyman is that he’s a perfect illustration of how when presented with just a voice and some descriptions of truly bizarre outfits, tumblr will still overwhelmingly draw a skinny white man in a suit.
like, if you’re a bomb disposal guy and your team has a cool bomb-disposal robot which you’ve given a cutesy name to, you may hesitate to put that robot in harm’s way, which is NOT OPTIMAL in the bomb-disposing field.
it also doesn’t help if you hold funerals for the robots after they get exploded (this happens pretty regularly).
anyway nobody has worked out how to stop humans from pack-bonding with literally inanimate objects and they probably never will. (like even knowing it’s a problem, I *still* think those EOD robots deserve funerals).
In 2007, the US military rejected a multi-limbed anti-mine robot because it’s demise was too inhumane.
ALT
oh perfect, this is EXACTLY what I was talking about
Scientists in films: this alien/AI is not human and therefore undeserving of any kindness or sympathy
Scientists irl: This is my friend Robob he’s five feet long, has ten legs and was built to explode mines and if anybody hurts him I will tear apart time and space to get revenge
the amount of people i’ve seen saying cecil isn’t a true tumblr sexyman is insulting. i did NOT spend my entire 2013 scrolling past 50 drawings a day of the most sexyman ass skintight waistcoat and purple tie alexandria’s genesis looking indigo eye and tentacle tattoo sleeved twink tagged as “#wtnv” on mobile in the era where you still had to install xkit to block tags for you to tell me that cecil gershwin palmer isn’t a tumblr sexyman. know your fucking history.
ALT
