Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there.
This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy.
Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs.
Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed.
We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely.
Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed.
Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you’re curious” and in the same breath means “fuck off.
Crunk Feminist Collective (via wargasmmm)
This, this, this, THIS.
Just yes.
(Source: tranarchism.com)
Deep Canadian mine yields ancient water
Scientists working 2.4 kilometres below Earth’s surface in a Canadian mine have tapped a source of water that has remained isolated for at least a billion years. The researchers say they do not yet know whether anything has been living in it all this time, but the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen — the right stuff to support life.
Micrometre-scale pockets in minerals billions of years old can hold water that was trapped during the minerals’ formation. But no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth’s crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years.
“We were expecting these fluids to be possibly tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years of age,” says Chris Ballentine, a geochemist at the University of Manchester, UK. He and his team carefully captured water flowing through fractures in the 2.7-billion-year-old sulphide deposits in a copper and zinc mine near Timmins, Ontario, ensuring that the water did not come into contact with mine air.
To date the water, the team used three lines of evidence, all based on the relative abundances of various isotopes of noble gases present in the water. The authors determined that the fluid could not have contacted Earth’s atmosphere — and so been at the planet’s surface — for at least 1 billion years, and possibly for as long as 2.64 billion years, not long after the rocks it flows through formed. The study appears today in Nature.
‘Extremely strange’
“The isotopic compositions that they see in these samples are extremely strange, and the preferred explanation in the article seems to me the most likely one,” says Pete Burnard, a geochemist at the Centre of Petrographic and Geochemical Research in Vandœuvre-les-Nancy, France. “For the moment, I think we have to conclude that there are 1.5-billion-year-old fluids trapped in the crust.”
The findings are “doubly interesting”, Ballentine says, because the fluid carries the ingredients necessary to support life. The isolated water supply, he says, provides “secluded biomes, ecosystems, in which life, you can speculate, might have even originated”. His colleagues are now working to establish whether the water does harbour life.
The findings may also have implications for life on Mars, Ballentine says, though he acknowledges that the idea is speculative. The surface of Mars once held water and its rocks are chemically no different from those on Earth, he says. “There is no reason to think the same interconnected fluids systems do not exist there.”
Such a numinous picture.Indian Little Red Riding Hood by Dmitry Grebenkov
Pearl necklace.
(Source: greypudding)
we say it every year — we say why on earth do we celebrate our mothers once a year when we can honor them daily? but we don’t honor mothers daily. we continue to live in a world that guarantees the subjugation, exploitation, and desecration of the mother. we continue to live in a world which bites the hands that feed it, which sucks dry the lactating tit that nourishes and sustains it. we not only don’t honor the mother, we treat her like a subhuman. we don’t afford the mother real space to chase unfulfilled desires, to savor the remnants of her earliest, wildest dreams. we have tamed the mother. the mother’s carnality has been driven underground. the mother lives in the shadows of a planet in denial. the mother gives and gives and gives and, she tells us, she’s willing to give some more. she says she is working, sacrificing, working, praying, sacrificing. she says these things will someday culminate in a reverberation that hits the souls of every sentient being. the message will be clear, she says. the great deficit of care cannot be mended without a shift in consciousness. the great deficit of care cannot be mended until every sentient being resurrects their own wellspring of maternity. it is in this way that we truly honor the mother. it is in this way that we finally begin to accept the powers of our own tenderness. it is in this way that we embrace the traces of our mothers within us.
I so wish someone would write this. Wish it would be taught in schools.What if people told European history like they told Native American history?
The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded,…
I have visited this place. It’s beautiful. Post brings back memories. Thank you.Sagano Bamboo Forest, Japan
This stunning bamboo forest is located in the Arashiyama district on the west outskirts of Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the most amazing natural sites in the country. An interesting fact about Sagano Bamboo Forest is the sound that the wind makes while it blows through the bamboo. Amazingly enough, this sound has been voted on as one of the “one hundred must-be-preserved sounds of Japan” by the Japanese government. Another interesting fact – the railing on the sides of the road is composed out of old, dry and fallen parts of bamboo.
Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things.
also “feminist porn” is a shitty worn out argument because major porn company’s interests are directed at making a profit, and they do that by supplying the type of porn men (the target audience) want
the amount of porn being produced by women or that could be considered “progressive” or “feminist” pales in comparison to the mainstream porn industry which is easily accessible, free and what men as a whole want to see and what is most commonly consumed across the board.
so feminist porn does not even have the potential to become a major contender and arguing this is the case is a classic liberal cop out and a removal from reality
feminist porn, if it even has any merit, will not thrive or even hope to replace the porn most popular today until feminist ideals come to the forefront of male desire and consumer demand. and that has never been and certainly isn’t the case now.
also most producers/directors/writers who do work on so called feminist porn also work on mainstream porn sooo I think that says a lot about how different “feminist” porn is (not to mention that it still has stupid awful tropes that mainstream porn has and so forth)
Not to mention that many self-identified feminists are asserting that adopting male porn tropes is a sigil of their freedom to fantasize whatever they like. Freedom without discernment is just another shackle.
May Day: Bangladesh crowds demand worker safety
Bangladeshi activists shout slogans and wave flags during a procession to mark May Day or International Workers Day in Dhaka. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis joined May Day protests Wednesday to demand the execution of textile bosses over the collapse of a factory complex, as rescuers warned the final toll could be more than 500.
Photograph by: MUNIR UZ ZAMAN , AFP/Getty Images
Borderland
between 申 - when shadows start to lengthen
and 酉 - when the light of day ferments to gold.
In this
borderland
between 季春 - the lees of spring
and 孟夏 - the burst of summer.
Tilted rays shine through the tree flowers and newborn leaves
lighting them like a sea of stars
among the branches dark.
~miaokuancha
