Eliyes

Title: Mental Minefield
Summary: Random fictional people expressing opinions about gender perception and navigating a relationship. Oh, and Shakespeare stuff that might not be true (like a lot of Shakespeare stuff).


( I'm doing drag for you, I hope you appreciate it. )
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1. Rictor/Shatterstar (comicsverse, now)

( BoomBoom was visiting X-Factor Investigations )


2. Bucky!Cap

( What Captain America could expect on October 11th )


3. Flash family

( Iris explains some things )

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Most people have seen K. Beaton's ooh Mister Darcy ooh strip, and/or one or more of the many many parody/homages of it.

This is my favourite so far.


K. Beaton, Eat Your Heart Out by ~Lady-Liesl on deviantART

(Not least becuse I have always loved Lady Liberty and Blind Justice as a couple. The only person Lady Liberty goes with better than Blind Justice is, in my opinion, me. I'd totally wear a blindfold for her! And I'm a Libra, so the scales are no problem! Oh, Lady Liberty. *dreamy sigh*)

About a year ago in Chemistry we had to fill out a questionaire. The first question was to check male or female. This one kid then asks “what if you don’t know what you are?” My teacher replied,”go to the bathroom and check.” My reply? “How do you know which bathroom you have to use?” The rest of the class just stared at me until the teacher finally said, “Well played” - MLIA

Congratulations, gay Americans who wish to serve in the military!

"We're trained to see only male or female and to plot people into those categories when they actually don't fit neatly at all. But if we pause, watch and listen closely we'll see the multiplicity of ways in which people are sexed and gendered. There exists a range of personal identifications around woman, man, in-between--we don't even have names or pronouns that reflect that in between place but people certainly live in it."

-- Minnie Bruce Pratt

Good job! Looks like New Hampshire might be next. :}

Gay marriage is now legal in Vermont!

ETA a much longer article about it, and an article which predicts which states will go for gay marriage in the years to come, and when.

Over at In One Ear... there are a few (very bitter) parodies of giving advice for writing minorities in comics. Here's a link to the one about writing gays. Needless to say, the advice lampoons the actual practices. The Marvel ones had me nodding and naming names at every point. I'm not as strong on the DC tropes, really, because Marvel was what I was reading a lot more of when I was young and optimistically looking for queer role models in my favourite forms of media. eta: Just to make this a little clearer: I'm only addressing the Marvel ones in the rest of this post. (Even though I actually have more variety of DC characters who are gay or bi represented in my icons! X3)

The interesting thing is that, while the handling of Northstar is the main target of these "suggestion"/criticisms on nearly every point, the first one applies not to him, but to Iceman. (I'm pretty sure it's never happened to Northstar, because what would mean admitting he'd gotten laid at some point in his life. *headwall*)

The poster boy for #4 is arguably Arnold Roth, boyhood-and-beyond friend of Steve Rogers. Yes, that's right, folks: Captain America went to art college and roomed with a gay man. The best part for me is that Cap is totally okay with this when he finds out. I'm also impressed that neither Arnie nor his long-time lover Michael die of AIDS. Instead, they suffer the type of traumas supporting characters in a superhero book often find themselves in, getting kidnapped a lot. Baron Zemo kills Michael, but Arnie dies of bone cancer -- and with him, Cap's last living tie to his past, alas. They aren't the only gay characters to show up in Captain America, either. For example, the WWII heroes Destroyer and Union Jack II were a couple (unfortunately, Union Jack was killed by a car accident in 1953 -- dying in Destroyers arms ;_;). Two long-term loving gay couples.

Right now, Marvel has some very visible homosexual heroes around: Wiccan and Hulkling over in Young Avengers, Karolina Dean in Runaways (she turns point #1 on it's head: her spouse is an alien shape-shifter who is naturally male but usually appears female to please Karolina, who is only attracted to women), and in the X-books there is (or was, depending on current state of alive-ness) Sunfire II, Northstar, Karma, and Anole. Moondragon and Captain Marvel IV are a f/f couple, although Moondragon is currently physically an actual dragon (but they're both telepaths, so They Have Their Ways). Also, Electro (the Spiderman villain) is now canonically bisexual, as is Marlo (Rick Jones's wife). That's all in the main continuity: in the 1602-verse, Angel falls in love with "John Grey", whom he believes to be male, and in the Ultimates! universe, Northstar and Colossus are a couple.

Only tangentially related: this is an awesome post discussing how being a queer fan and being a fan of slash are not the same thing. I'm often frustrated with how a lot of slash fans use the "gay" label, and how many slash writers depict exaggerated stereotypes of what they think being gay is like, and this post touched on some of the roots of the problem.

Passing along the link to a news story a day after I saw it, because I needed some time to calm down.

Okay.

Imagine that, however close to where you live bars are usually found, there's this one bar. Maybe you've been in a few times with friends, if you're a bar-going person. Maybe you've just passed by it on your way to someplace else.

But now -- now you find out that this bar has just obtained the legally-supported right to turn away anyone who does not fit their clientele. Now, this is not because they have a private membership, no no -- nor is it a case of bouncers not letting in people who aren't hot/rich/important/young/old enough.

No, this bar bans people on the basis of their sexual orientation, and have the state's permission to do so. They are doing this because their supported clientele were made uncomfortable by the presence of people of a different sexuality than their own, which has been on an upswing over the last year, apparently.

Now, I'm wondering how one checks that, exactly. Is there a test you have to pass at the door? Does someone need to vouch for your sexual preferences? What if you're new to the area?

The thing is, it's a gay bar. If this was a bar banning homosexuals, gays would be pissed, it would be a human rights violation, flagrant discrimination, etc. (Oh, and from the sounds of it? Lesbians are also not particularly welcome. I'd be willing to bet they're not necessarily opening their arms to bisexuals, either.)

The reason for the ban has to do with the gay patrons no longer feeling safe, and the straight patrons treating them like animals in a zoo. This would be because of rude straight patrons, and maybe trying to educate them on a little basic etiquette would be better, in my opinion -- besides, from my (admittedly limited) experience of bars and clubs, everyone looks at everyone like they're animals in a zoo -- or meat on display. Or else they just ignore everyone in favour of their friends, maybe play a little pool and listen to the band.

Am I the only one who thinks this is silly? And seriously, how would they check?

The article is here.