who only by moving can balance

Kew: Queer Nature

2023-10-14T22:03:31Z

This afternoon we spent some time bimbling around Kew, with the specific aim of visiting the Queer Nature Event. This is not going to be a detailed review, but I do have some opinions.

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Overall: I'm glad we went to see it; I'm glad we didn't actually pay for it specifically (hurrah my Kew membership, continuous since I lived 20 minutes away on the tube); and if nothing else I'm still arguing with it in my head.

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<3

2022-02-09T22:58:13Z

still experiencing a wee burst of relief and delight and awe every time Duolingo just casually includes queer people. (not unlike starting crying, when we saw Fun Home, at Ring of Keys, and just... not stopping.)

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name of my next band^Wqueer social network

2019-10-08T21:25:54Z

eligibility

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Quick links

2018-06-02T22:01:11Z

1. realsocialskills t-shirt, Pride edition, orders open until (I think) the 21st.

2. this train is a Good Boy (tl;dr Victoria Station got evacuated on Thursday... because nobody turned the fire alarms off before the Flying Scotsman came to visit.)

3. A friend linked to the blog Cerebral Sexuality elsenet and I am intending to sit down and have a poke through it at some point.

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sub/Cultural semiotics of clothing

2015-05-21T17:43:17Z

So a few weeks back I acquired the twinkiest jeans, as discussed: blue metallic sparkly "super-skinny" jeans with an enormous blue faux-rhinestone button fly. I was wearing them for the interaction with the splendidly queer nurse, and I mentioned to my mother that part of the reason I'd thought it might be even a tiny bit okay for me to ask him about his partner was that I was wearing clothing that read as sparklegay too.

My mother, who had been great up to that point (and as we know is generally great these days), said something to the effect of "Ugh, I don't think it's fair that any one group should get the monopoly on bits of clothing and what they mean."

That's the context; this is my attempt to put my thoughts in order enough to e-mail her an explanation. (It's extremely focussed on the context of choosing to make legible otherwise invisible characteristics; obviously I'm leaving a very great deal out for the sake of Explaining Stuff To My Mum.)

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between "green thread"/and "broccoli" you find/that you have pencilled "sunlight"

2015-05-01T10:59:20Z

(The Word, Tony Hoagland.)

This morning I have been Making A Contribution To Medical Science, and consequently I have a plaster with a dinosaur on it. The ?nurse was very apologetic about it being paediatrics plasters, until I went DOES IT HAVE A DINOSAUR ON, at which point we were excitable at each other about Sophie the stegosaurus. As we were getting to finishing up paperwork, having spotted the quearring also, I tentatively enquired as to whether I might ask an intrusively personal question. "... yes," he said, warily. "You've been very carefully saying partner..." I said, and he ducked his head and looked at his ring and said "yeah, husband, we've been together for ten years and married for five", and then we had a cheerful little discussion about queers and how his husband's one of very few male midwives in the country, and they've just bought a house together and are looking forward to the long weekend, and CATS and PAINTING THE HALLWAY and in general domestic bliss, and it was lovely.

And I am updating you all on this from Homerton College Cambridge Cambs, where I am sat in the sunshine in a scented garden next to a sundial and a water feature gently applying desensitisation therapy and leeching eduroam, and when I am done I shall pack up my computer and head over the railway bridge to have lunch with my mum.

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"We need to be careful about giving children access to the Internet"

2014-04-01T16:56:57Z

I was a queer teen under section 28. I say I was brought up by the Internet, and what I mean is: the Internet told me that people like me could exist, and exist happily and without judgment, at least some of the time.

And now, after that thoroughly vile FB conversation, I am going to go to Bar Wotever and watch my girlfriend sing cock rock, because I'm an adult now.

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Being legibly queer

2012-11-28T01:35:19Z

It's... something I'm not, by and large, in that I bind and I don't wear female-coded clothing, but that doesn't change the fact that I've got waist-length hair an an alto voice and hips like whoa. And honestly, most of those things I don't mind? But I don't really know, most of the time, how to make myself read queerer than what I already do, how I already dress, in my armour of DMs and cargo shorts and corduroy trousers.

But.

But then Jesus & His Judgemental Father sent me a patch to go with the two albums I ordered from them (one for me, one for the library). And I bought the kind of jacket I've always secretly wanted - heavy cotton, lots of pockets - and I've sewn the patch onto the arm, and I've put all my pin buttons onto the lapels, and I've been going out in public with a rainbow flag and a badge that reads "genderqueer" and.

And I feel scared but I also feel safer for it.

I'm surprised - perhaps I shouldn't be - by how similar this feels to the summer I started spending time in public visibly unshaven. But it does, and I am, and -

- thank you. Thank you, so much, to every single one of you who's made it possible, made it easier, for me to do this. Thank you.

This song is for every teenager who's ever come out... and for every one who hasn't.

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Seeking recs for queer media

2012-01-24T15:12:07Z

Novels. How-tos. Autobiographies. Histories. Films. Poetry. Plays. Any and all of the above! Anything else you can think of! If you were stocking an LGBT+ lending library from scratch, what would you include? (Let's say top ten - or maybe top three - items. I am working with a limited budget here.)

Already on my list is Whipping Girl and most things by Kate Bornstein (for all I have an uneasy relationship with her work).

Thank you for crowdsource - this is a project I am trying to get off the ground & am currently a bit low on brain to do the research myself!

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