postgenderfemmerobot:

i want science fiction and fantasy to engage more critically with concepts of beauty, desirability, and attraction as it pertains to dehumanized (but human) bodies. people of color, (and black people specifically), disabled people,  trans women. which of our bodies are acceptable and which are not. which bodies survive into the future and which don’t. who among us are disappeared from the past, and from alternate timelines, and strange non-existent worlds?

i suppose i would just like to understand the mechanisms at play that make it so  skin tinged bright green from copper based blood is considered attractive when brown skin is not? 

why gigantic, pointed ears or tails or fur but not amputated limbs? 

hobbits but not little people? dwarves but not someone small because of muscular dystrophy or ALS?

alien languages cool but deaf accents awkward? 

why are hearing aids or cochlear implants or service animals less conceivable in scifi futures than bionic people, when it is we, the disabled, who have become masters of integrating biology and technology?

it’s been said before. but the oppressed — and i think this is especially true of black people and disabled people — live lives closest to scifi realities, even though we are consistently written out of sci fi futures. 

if we interrogate our attractions, romantic or aromantic, sensual or sexual or asexual, who we want to sit next to, who we will hold hands with, who we stare at and who we avert our gaze from, it becomes clear how much institutions use concepts of beauty and desirability  to uplift the humanity of some folks and to gut it out in others.

what i’m trying to say is that a lot of us have the ability to love and like and be into a lot of things, but our internalised -isms makes us accept or believe certain bodies as ugly or wrong at face value. 

we generally use ugly to mean less human, and i think there’s potential for scifi to really wrestle with that and unpack it.

Asexuality and Aromanticism in Writing

dullhypotheses:

If you’re writing an aromantic and/or asexual character, and the whole point of your narrative or your story is to show that they need “the right one” to “fix them” or to “spark something within them”, please do us all a favor and STOP. Not only is it untrue, but it is also offensive and bigoted to think so, write so, and justify so through your writing. You are writing on a very, very dangerous slope, and I suggest you nope out of there as quickly as possible because you are portraying a whole group of people wrongly. Yeah, yeah, it’s fiction, whatever, right? Wrong. By writing in such a way, you are denying that aromantic and asexual people exist, and that we’re all just waiting for the right one to come make us realize that we’re allosexual or alloromantic all along.

If you’re writing an aromantic and/or asexual character with the whole point of your narrative or your story showing that they just need “someone to come fix them”, and you get called out on it, then you react with “wow I’m sorry some people found this offensive, but that’s exactly what I was saying!”, please just STOP. Seriously. Stop. Don’t do that. Go home. Go do your research. Stop looking at asexual and aromantic people like they’re broken and they need The One to come fix them. Please just stop.

It may not mean that much to you, and it may not even matter to you that you’re wrong, but people from the ace and/or aro spectrum already face these things on a daily basis. We already have our families and friends telling us that we’re weird for not feeling romantic attraction and/or sexual attraction. We already have people telling us we’re broken. To have to read it, to have to see it on media, and to have it be justified through your character’s life matters to us. There are so little representation of aro and/or ace people as it is, so please represent properly. 

So, yeah, in the end, if your story is out to prove that asexual and/or aromantic people just need ~~The Right One~~ to come fix them, it’s messed up, and you should probably check yourself before you wreck yourself.

(Source : hrrrrrystyles)

(Source : bbnnt)

dividedconsciousness:

consecratedcreations:

mjwatson:

If you claim to be a feminist and you shame girls for wanting to do traditional things like take their husband’s last name or be a house wife then you are doing it all completely wrong.

Feminism isn’t an elite group who defeats gender norms, it’s a group who accepts ALL women’s choices.

Amen.

Feminism isn’t an all welcoming choosey choice group of people who empower women who for doing things, it’s a political movement designed to grasp the cause of sexism at the roots and analyse why women make the choices that they do and if they are overall beneficial or detrimental to the liberation of women.

(Source : breakyoursoulapart)

calgaras:

Smile

some-sort-of-interesting-person:

The Bechdel test is actually the craziest shit because at first you’re all like “two female characters discussing something other than men, alright, easy peasy, what a low fucking bar” and then you start to pay attention and you realize that like 80% of the films you watch don’t pass this simple test and it’s just

what the everloving fuck is wrong with our society

(Source : literaltortoise)

groupinou:

The earth is mostly water because kyogre kicked groudons ass

inn0vation:

I think one of the saddest things is when two people really get to know each other: their secrets, their fears, their favourite things, what they love, what they hate, literally everything, and then they go back to being strangers. It’s like you have to walk past them and pretend like you never knew them, never even talked to them before, when really, you know everything about them.

bellatrysh:

Source

overlypolitebisexual:

“man bun” because piling your hair into a lump on your head is somehow different than a regular bun when men do it

Paintings by Nicola Samori

(Source : nicolasamori.com)