Apologies for my absence.  I’ve been using a rather old, albeit reliable, Dell laptop for the last year or so and the hard drive has finally decided it’s had enough (I can’t blame it, really).  So, I’ve taken my “good” laptop (quotation marks because it’s a Vaio) in to PB Tech to be repaired after all this time and it looks like the faults with this one are minor.  Maybe I shouldn’t have waited a year to do this.  Anyway, my internet presence will be minimal until that’s done.  It should be another few days.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Auckland’s anniversary weekend.

My mother has always treated me like owing her my existence is some sort of privilege, when in reality every day I spend living in her house is another day I totally regret. I can’t fucking stand her.

nogods-nomasters-nopants:

anticapitalist:

The political views of various composers, according to political compass.

Writers and artists have been generally more engaged in the big political debates of their day than composers, and their views are often more easily discerned through their works. So how well can we tell the positions of the great composers ?

Woody Allen quipped that every time he heard Wagner, he was overcome with the urge to invade Poland. The positions of most others are less clear in their work, although we can hear the difference between the assertive nationalism of Wagner and the gentle folk nationalism of Dvořák or Grieg. In the case of opera, of course, there are more clues. Mozart’s, for example, dealt with class war (The Marriage of Figaro) and the liberal values of the Enlightenment. Biographies often provide helpful political information as well. Some composers, like Bartók, were known to have championed the underdog and sometimes clashed with the authorities as a result. Others, like Stravinsky, Mascagni and Puccini, enthusiastically embraced fascism. Still others, like Smetana and Tchaikovsky, were tolerant individualists who kept their distance from mass movements.

Because of the relative paucity of information, our composers’ political chart is largely for amusement. People like Schubert, Bach, Debussy and Donizetti, who don’t seem to have left any hints of their politics, have been left out altogether.

laughingalonewithautoresponder:

gaymzee:

“i’m so depressed,” posted the caucasion heterosexual cisgender teenage girl on her blog

“I’m so depressed” posted the person who is clinically depressed and who cannot help their depression despite their privilege because depression does not exclusively affect certain groups.

j-wells:

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey

Noted.

tylercoates:

occupythedisco:

I think the reason I find geek culture so obnoxious at times to engage in is because the people are for the most part the same privileged dips that inhabit mainstream culture, but with the added detriment of a victim complex. They’re still largely white and center their race, they’re still largely straight and center their sexuality, they’re still largely cis men who center their gender. They challenge nothing about the status quo and what bodies get to be placed at the center of it, they offer nothing radically different to the typical narratives about which groups of people are and are not important and they can be just as hostile to groups who try to find a place in their space as the mainstream is, in some cases even worse. But for some reason they think the fact that they like Battlestar Galactica instead of Monday night football makes them radical alterna-gods who are too good for this sinful Earth.

BOOM.

Maybe.  I think what I mean is that I just can’t figure out how or why I like people or enjoy their company anymore, which isn’t to say that I don’t always.  I think I’m a man with high expectations and that’s unfair, seeing as I’m unlikely to be able to live up to those expectations myself, in my current state of whatever state I’m in.  I ramble a lot.

I think I need to adjust my understanding of friendship and liking people and enjoying their company because I’m not really getting a lot of enjoyment out of any of these things at the moment.

mikroblogolas:

freibiergesicht:

livingdemisexually:

On identifying as queer

My sexuality is not normative. But it looks normative. My romantic interest is primarily in men and male identified people and I’m a cis woman whose appearance is pretty femme. When I spend time with the people I date, we look like a straight couple.

But sexual attraction is a whole different story for me. Visually, I prefer stereotypically feminine bodies, though ones that are different from mine. (I’m hourglass shaped, with moderately full hips, a moderately defined waist, and very large breasts. Visually, though, I find bodies with very full hips, a very small waist, and medium breasts most attractive.)

Quite honestly, I find stereotypically male bodies kind of funny looking and definitely not sexy (sorry guys!). Those are the bodies I am most likely to be sexual with, but it’s not because of physical attraction - it’s because I form romantic attractions that lead to me wanting a physical relationship in order to please that person.

Complicated, right?

That’s what demisexuality is. Complicated. I’ve never identified as queer because I look so normative. I’m cis and can easily pass as straight even though that’s not quite accurate. But my sexuality is not normative. It’s complicated and misunderstood. It’s part of the reason I’ve struggled so much with dating. Maybe queer does fit. I’m still not sure.

I think this is basically an extremely normative non-ace narrative, tbh.  Or at least, this could have pretty much been written by me (without the demi stuff) when I was 25.  At the time I was in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship with a man who I wasn’t physically attracted to, but I did enjoy sex with him and as a result desired sex with him.  But I didn’t find “male bodies” (using the language of the OP, referring to cis male bodies) aesthetically attractive at all.  I discovered in my later 20s that I did have the ability to shallowly be sexually attracted to people - including men - based just on their looks/body but that is a relatively recent development over the time I’ve been sexually active.   

This shows just how much is strange in the way a lot of demisexuals/grey-aces talk about attraction.  

It’s pretty normative for hetero/bi women to enjoy sex with men, particularly men they like/are in love with, without finding themselves turned on by their bodies alone.  Because the mainstream elements in Western culture hypersexualize (certain types) of bodies, objectification, commodification, etc.   All of us are really programmed to see women’s bodies (at least some of them) as at the very least, aesthetically pleasing, if not also inherently sexual.  (Which is one reason I can be skeptical of some women who ID as bi but their only interest in women seems to be limited to finding Angelina Jolie or other such icons hot.  It was a reason I’ve waffled on IDing as bisexual myself on and off for a long time.  I wasn’t sure if I could separate an aesthetic/sexual attraction to women that was part of how patriarchy trains us to view women from a genuine desire on a sexual and romantic level.  I’ve mostly figured that out now but I still think a lot of women uncritically take their aesthetic attraction to idealized women as a signifier of sexual orientation and I’m not really sure it is?  Tangent.) 

So much of demisexuality in a concept is this very….limited attempt to separate in a very literal, boring way all the weird complex things that make up “attraction”.  They say you can be sexually aroused via having sex with someone but that doesn’t mean you have sexual attraction to someone, because you don’t get sexually aroused just by their body alone.  That is extremely common for a lot of people to the point where separating it off as a unique way of interacting with sexuality is pretty much meaningless.  And this explanation above seems to think that finding womens’ bodies aesthetically pleasing someone gives one same-sex attraction even though they admit they are not romantically and thus not sexually attracted to women.

The OP’s sexuality is actually, in my experience, very normative and yet she insists it’s not.  And goes one step further to imply it’s queer.  There’s no winning that argument because she’ll say, “But I don’t feel normative.”  Hey that’s sexuality in general?  Or being human in general?  Most of us don’t see ourselves as normal.  Being cis and straight can still feel really fucking weird, particularly if you’re a woman, because our culture has all these unrealistic and bizarre messages about what sexuality and sexual attraction is.  I used to think my sexual attractions/sexual orientation was totally bizarre and unique and special too, until I started talking really openly with a lot of other people who identified in all kinds of different ways and realized, “Wow, they’re just like me too!”  So maybe the problem is not that demisexuals are unique or non-normative but that how our culture talks about sexuality is just not diverse enough to make a lot of people feel included.  But the response to that shouldn’t be “Here’s this new thing and it’s totally unique” but instead a broadening of how we understand sexuality in general.

Bolding mine. But I love everything else freibiergesicht says above as well.

Also — not to sound like a broken record or anything — it really speaks to the problem with mainstream and sex-positive discourse about sexuality that practically the only places that self-identified demisexuals are able to share their experience of sexuality and feelings of alienation are in ace/demi spaces on the Internet.

I’m still not sure where I stand on the use of the descriptor “demisexual”, but this is all interesting reading nevertheless.