Thorns

Age poll!

Apologies to those who already did it, feel free to do the poll for people who already did the poll.

And this is the last of my links posts for a while!

Content note: rape
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The Disabled Gaming Resource

Do Some Trauma Survivors Cope by Overworking?

The Consequences of Untreated Pain

Treatment Overview from the American Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society

The world of estranged parents' forums: The Missing Missing Reason Understanding the behaviour of toxic/abusive people

We are not the same – on Raphael, Jughead and Aro/Ace representation

stop pitting detransitoners against happily transitioned people

Physician, know thy own queer history
"A reflection on current sex-negative and exclusionary trends in LGBTQ+ discourse as the unfortunate consequence of 20 years of campaigning for same-sex marriage and legal gender transition, and therefore a focus on respectability politics and neglect of sex positivity and sex education" I think I linked to the dreamwidth post because of the comments.

Issues with "women and nonbinary" submission calls

The History of Homosexuality in Japan: Part 1

Non binary characters in Japanese media

When making inclusion resources for women and nonbinary folk, please consider including trans men Note that not all trans men feel this way! But it's a point of view worth noting.

(yes I did come across some of these researching Hakuoki fic, shh)

The Story is a Spell. The Story is a Curse.
It matters who writes us.

Shock and Care: an essay about art, politics and responsibility

Otaku Blog And Proud
A Japanese woman's complex feelings on Japanese media.

Slash and sex scenes

MM Romance Readership Survey: Results

(Really wishing dreamwidth had a queue/delayed posting right now)

Inspired by this post about aging:

I think seeing people in their 20´s and 30´s as “old” is pretty unhealthy... Let people enjoy being young adults, stop making teenagers anxious that their life ends the minute they hit twenty, or adults feel like they can’t have fun anymore.

Yeah, like...there are changes that tend to happen as you get older, and power dynamics to be aware of. But there isn’t this clear line between Being Young and Being Old, where you become a Grownup with the same tastes and needs (or lack thereof) as All Other Grownups.

The world is controlled by grownups...but by conventionally minded, privileged grownups.

The progression we're taught to expect is that young people get along with each other, but not with adults. And then they grow up into conventional adults and enjoy a world designed for and controlled by people like them.

But to the extent that this narrative applies at all, it's only to conventional, privileged people who fit comfortably into mainstream society.

An unconventional young person finds the world frustrating on two levels: the grownups in charge don’t understand or accept them, but neither do most people their own age. Such a young person finds pressure to be “normal” doubly crushing: not only do they find conventional grownup roles impossible, they also can’t fit into “proper” roles for people their age. The only way to find happiness is to accept themselves and find other like-minded misfits.

And such a young person doesn’t suddenly become a conventional adult who is happy to fit entirely into the mainstream. It often gets easier once they get older, partly because the world is designed for grownups (if not ones like us) but partly because we generally have more ability to control our own lives and avoid, say, toxic parents or stifling social environments. Forcing ourselves to be Normal is just as impossible and soul-destroying for misfit adults as it is for misfit teens.

Saying that unconventional grownups are pathetic and predatory, or even just boring, is damaging to us and to the young people who will grow into us. They need to see that they have a future, that they can become adults and still hold onto who they are, and what they need. Yeah, being unconventional or even disprivileged doesn’t make the power dynamics between older and younger people go away, and that’s something we need to be careful of, but being older doesn’t make all the other distinctions go away either.

Signed, a 39 year old queer, disabled, nerdy weirdo who hasn’t stopped being all those other things just because I’m pushing 40.

Inspired by a pervocracy post:

“I’m not attracted to X, so I won’t date them”: okay then, you go ahead and do that

“I’m not attracted to X, and I demand that people who are X hear and validate this statement and give me their official permission to not be attracted to them”: please no

“I’m not attracted to X, and I demand that the entire world hear and validate this statement and declare X objectively unattractive”: you can stop now

...[I think there’s] a lot of people who never internalized that they can make choices about their sexuality.

I see this a lot when I get asks saying “men should do [very specific behavior] in relationships with women,” where it’s obvious the asker just wants her boyfriend to do that behavior but has no tools for expressing that. The universal, objective rules of society may be up for debate, but the fact that such rules exist is not.

My thoughts, including sexual trauma discussion.
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Inspired by this essay about the misremembering of Captain Kirk, I had some extra thoughts on tumblr and then I had some EXTRA extra thoughts and decided it was probably time for a proper post.
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Inspired by a broader conversation I had yesterday with moonvoice and the blog of the original translator of Hakuoki into English who turned out to be a somewhat bro-ish straight dude who made the game "more accessible" by making the protagonist Chizuru less passive and submissive.
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