my personal favourite romantic trope is mutual pining but specifically between two exes who are convinced the other person is over them. it’s so much funnier than normal mutual pining

I hate... fanon archetypes. You know how people sand down their blorbos to fit into the same handful of incorrect quote templates and then they forget their actual canon personalities because they've gone too long without engaging with the source material? I hate it. I hate it. He would not fucking say that. The joke was slightly funny when it was on the office or whatever but we've all heard it over and over with different characters pasted into it how are you still laughing please let me out

The funny character has no other personality traits. Also he's incompetent now. The one who's kind of prickly is just weirdly mean OR sad and did nothing wrong, take your pick. Gotta have the Sunshine Boy. Woman 1 is yass slay badass. Woman 2 is the rest of the cast's Mother. If there's only one woman, she can be both. Do you want to kill yourself yet

I didn't say a fandom but you thought of one, didn't you? That's because they all do this. All of them. You search the main tags for the media of your choice and you will find them there. The same incorrect quotes you've been hearing for years. It's like a time loop. It's my own personal torment nexus

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”

This is good information for people who carry on with the “queer is a slur” rhetoric and don’t comprehend the push back.

ive been saying for years that around 10 years ago on tumblr, it was only radfems who were pushing the queer as slur rhetoric, and everyone who was trans or bi or allies to them would push back - radfems openly admitted that the reason they disliked the term “queer” was because it lumped them in with trans people and bi women. over the years, the queer is a slur rhetoric spread in large part due to that influence, but radfems were more covert about their reasons - and now it’s a much more prevalent belief on tumblr - more so than on any queer space i’ve been in online or offline - memory online is very short-term unfortunately bc now i see a lot of ppl, some of them bi or trans themselves, who make this argument and vehemently deny this history but…yep

Or asexuality, which has been a concept in discussions on sexuality since 1869. Initially grouped slightly to the left, as in the categories were ‘heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘monosexual’ (which is used differently now, but then described what we would call asexuality). Later was quite happily folded in as a category of queerness by Magnus Hirschfeld and Emma Trosse in the 1890s, as an orientation that was not heterosexuality and thus part of the community.

Another good source here, also talking about aromanticism as well. Aspec people have been included in queer studies as long as queer studies have existed.

Also, just in my own experiences, the backlash against ‘queer’ is still really recent. When I was first working out my orientation at thirteen in 2000, there was absolutely zero issue with the term. I hung out on queer sites, looked for queer media, and was intrigued by queer studies. There were literally sections of bookstores in Glebe and Newtown labelled ‘Queer’. It was just… there, and so were we!

So it blows my mind when there are these fifteen-year-olds earnestly telling me - someone who’s called themself queer longer than they’ve been alive - that “que*r is a slur.” Unfortunately, I have got reactive/defensive for the same reasons OP has mentioned. I will absolutely work on biting down my initial defensiveness and trying to explain - in good faith - the history of the word, and how it’s been misappropriated and tarnished by exclusionists.

i wish birds brought ME presents

No, but think about this.

The crows she feeds obviously have their own little lives. They go about their business, and they spot *pretty thing* or /unique thing/ in question. What gets me is that the *first* thing on their minds as recipient of this thing is the little girl that feeds them.

They spot a thing, and immediately must think, “that nice girl with delicious foodstuffs must have this to show my gratitude.”

It’s actually more than that, though, if you read the articles or watch the videos. This has taken place over YEARS- it started with these birds following this little girl around because she was a messy eater and it has turned into a ritual for the family. They have a water station and food stations where they daily set out things for these birds and sometimes (but not always), these birds leave ‘payment’ behind for the food.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

These birds are not just taking food and leaving shinies. These birds are watching over this family now. Their lives have become involved. These crows are keeping track of this girl and her mother even when they are out of the yard. How do we know?

One of them is a photographer, and one day while she was photographing some stuff on a bridge, she dropped her camera’s lenscap over the edge. There was no way she could get it back, so she left it. When she got home, the lenscap was sitting on the edge of one of the feeding stations, waiting for her.

Not only were the birds following and watching over her, they were smart enough to realize she dropped an Important Thing and cared enough to bring it back to her.

I could not have asked for more

Non cooking spray stick

Non spray stick cooking

Non cooking stick spray

Great job team hit the showers

You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.

curious friends and family: hey why does your kid have golden eyes

paladin who for sure fucked the dragon instead of killing it, thinking fast: dragons uh. reincarnate. surprised you didn’t know about that. it’s a common fact that i definitely did not make up. no further questions

That right there is a good solid burger patty with the intriguing addition of middle eastern spices 👀👀👀 (and as we all know variety is the spice of life, and spice is the variety of food.) I’m also intrigued by how she put the patty in the pita(?) which makes it a sort of burger panini. It looks good and I am going to have to try it.

I want to make this for my family, but my mom’s pretty iffy on beef that is anything but well done (dry as fuck) so I’m wondering how to cook it throughly enough without burning the bread.

You can cook it in very thin pita with a thin layer of minced beef/lamb so that the meat is cooked brown all the way through in only 1 minute per side.

But also! Red Meat is "Well Done" at 160F/72C (white meat is 165F/75C). Bread actually doesn't even toast until 255F/123C!!

So, if you make the full size patties in a frying pan on a low-medium heat, or an oven set to 300F/150C, it will take about 20 minutes to cook instead of only 3 minutes, but it will DEFINITELY not burn the bread, and the meat will be VERY well done.

Here is the oven based recipe I suggested elsewhere on the post

@bananafosters In case you are interested also!

Confirmed: delicious

I'm curious as to what the spices/seasonings in the beef are cause I wanna make this myself so bad

There's always fresh Parsley and Lebanon 7 spice (sabaa baharat), and then in the tiktok there's also onion, garlic, and jalapeno. A lot of people also put in tomato, or tomato paste.

My favourite 7 spice is equal parts:

But really, as long as you have the italicized ones, the others can be up to you. Some people use paprika and turmeric, some people use sumac and mint. It's really variable.

Also if you don't want to mix it yourself, a good Garam Masala will have all of these spices and a few more, and makes an excellent ready-to-use substitute.

note that's coriander seed, not leaf (aka cilantro) - coriander seed is amazing, smells like a paradise lemon and is really good in porridge (aka oatmeal) - we're one of those people who can't eat the leaf, but the seed is really delicious and fragrant

internet shaquille made a super accessible video on how to make these, including the spice mix and what to use if you can't access the exact ingredients! it's quite similar advice to what the commenters put above, just in one handy video for your reference

I’m bored and nosy. Please reblog this with the book you’re currently reading.

The beginning and the ending.

This story is already full of everything I need.

Reblogging again because I'm mildly obsessed with this diptych. The artistry is obviously fantastic, but the symbolism is killing me.

Beginning: First we have Yuuri looking upwards but with his arms closed in upon himself, showing his yearning to shine but also the barriers he's creating for himself. Victor visibly depressed. Both of them isolated. And their respective spotlights and crossed shadows creating a large ❌ and indicating that this is not the way forward.

Ending: Yuuri and Victor respectively help each other find happiness. Yuuri shows himself fully to the world, and Victor finds more fulfillment in a supportive role than he ever did when he was alone under the spotlights. Both their spotlights on the ice form a heart 💜💙

This is truly a spectacular artwork! 🥹

(For those of my followers who don't know what this is about: Yuri!!! on Ice is an anime that was released in 2016 about (fictional) Japanese figure skater Yuuri Katsuki and Russian figure skater Victor Nikiforov. A heartwarming story tackling subjects such as battling through social anxiety and depression to achieve success and happiness. Season 1 ended at 12 episodes with a possible hope for a second season, and confirmed news about a movie being in the works. Titled Ice Adolescence, it was probably going to be a prequel to the series. An animated teaser was released, but due to Covid and other studio issues, the production had been postponed until further notice. Just a couple of days ago, there was an official announcement that the movie was definitely cancelled. Under the circumstances, this was not exactly unexpected news but disappointing nonetheless. 😔)

When your partner has a praise kink but you're Montessori trained so you know that praise is an ineffective way to encourage development and it's much more productive to acknowledge their effort so that they learn to effectively give themselves feedback so they can develop a healthy intrinsic motivation instead of deriving their self worth from labels put on them by other people .... "baby it's amazing how much you could last today compared to last week"

(i have a feeling this poll will get way more views than some of my other ones so I am once again asking you to fill out https://forms.gle/66bRngwjD2fzWX7p6 if you know anything about the character)

If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

i have maybe the worst type of cuteness aggression about fiction characters that im attracted to

i see guy from shows and im like ''awwh hes so cute i need to see him curled up in a ball on the floor clutching his organs and sobbing inbetween haggard breaths''

hes so pretty i need to see him writhing in agony and gasping inbetween rough sobs and covered in his own blood and visibly injured

fun fact: Boston Museum of Science calls their evening lecture series “SubSpace”, which would be a totally innocuous math term except for the fact that, to make sure you know these lectures are higher-level and not aimed at their usual audience (kids), they chose to subtitle it “SubSpace: Adult Experiences”

me at the SubSpace wearing a leash and "free use" written on my tits in sharpie: wow I never knew Riemannian manifolds were so interesting