Jul. 1st, 2017

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2tvHhCR:
So far the clearest tambour stitching tutorial I’ve found! We’ll see yet if I can master this.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
Going up to Gananoque Ontario to sit around and enjoy scenery (there's three ways to pronounce the town name: the wrong way, the right way, and the gannon-oak-way, to transcribe a joke that only works aurally). It's Canada Day, it's the 4th of July, and it's my 15th anniversary with Dude. So.
In 2002 my middl-little sister was going to the Jersey Shore to meet up with some pals for the 4th of July so I hitched a ride down to see this guy in Jersey City that I'd been talking to. :)
OK I've broken my mobile browser so I'm just gonna post this and go.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2sxAAMD:
You know, I knew there were individual people who were this terrible, but seeing these actions being defended en masse with fervent hatred towards Jews paired with demands for loyalty tests has me feeling like I’m living in some sort of anti-Semitic David Lynch movie. 
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2t2pp1H:
ngoziu:

Canada Day: North America’s July pregame.

for those of us in border towns it’s the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, if you like yard parties and fireworks

one year I went to a party at someone’s Lake Erie lakefront house and I went in the water with a cooler full of beer (the cooler floated, just about an inch below the surface, and we went out really far because the sandy lake bottom doesn’t drop off for a good long way so it’s shallow for a long distance) and we watched fireworks over by Toronto across the water, and sang O Canada only we changed every instance of the word “Canada” to “labia” for stupid inside-joke purposes, and then because of the way scheduling fell, one of the US municipalities was having fireworks that night too, so we turned around and watched that too, and I was the only one who could actually sing the Star-Spangled Banner but damned if we weren’t all going to try too, and I think my bathing suit top fell off at some point there, and it was in general just a really good party. (these were roller derby peeps, so.)

I myself am about to drive to the vicinity of Kingston Ontario, be drunk for the weekend in a seaside resort (ok lakeside, river-side, seaway-side, whatever), and then come back in time to get drunk and shoot sparklers on the 4th, so– 

uh I guess sort of consider this my sign-off. (I’m using a borrowed computer while my lappy is in the shop.) I should really go pack. I love y’all. Happy Canada Day.

In the BUF we refer to this whole weekend as the Friendship Festival because there’s a big cross-border party though nowadays it’s a lot harder to do than in former years.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2tbVt1A:
The Thruway is less boring when you’re in the passenger seat. Going out of town for our 15th anniversary, see y'all later!
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2twxkFu:
beachdeath:

i worry that the way we talk about stonewall decontextualizes the event itself - that saying “the first pride was a riot” implicitly disconnects the raid on stonewall from the fact that similar raids on gay bars had been happening for decades prior, and that lgbt activists had been actively resisting police violence all the while, at the risk of their lives and livelihoods and reputations.

police oppression of gay people did not begin in 1969, and gay resistance to police oppression did not begin with the stonewall riots. that’s not to minimize the extreme importance of stonewall, of course, or the indelible contributions to our history and safety that were made by activists like sylvia rivera and marsha p. johnson and miss major griffin-gracy and stormé delarverie. but they were standing on the shoulders of decades and decades of leaders and activists who had come before them, who had fought and died and endured total brutality at the hands of homophobic police.

gay bars, as much as they were allowed to exist in the decades prior to stonewall, were persistently targeted by undercover police officers and by violent raids. in los angeles, from the mid-1940s onward, the LAPD employed out-of-work actors to pretend to be gay and infiltrate these spaces, solicit men for sex, and then book them on charges of public indecency.

the police department would give these officers quotas to meet on a weekly basis - round up and jail a certain number of homosexuals, or else. frequently, they would arrest men simply for appearing gay, or for having the bad luck to walk through a park or use a bathroom known as a gay cruising spot. this policy was a cash cow like none other, because these men would always plead guilty, would always agree to pay hefty fines in order to settle the matter and keep it quiet and avoid having their reputations ruined.

and the police would stop at nothing to bully people into pleading guilty. it was commonplace for police to handcuff their charges, shove them into the backseat of their cruisers, and then drive in circles for hours, looping to the outskirts and back, intimidating and harassing them all the way. by the time they finally pulled up at the police station and booked their charges, they would be so shaken by the abuse they’d just experienced that they’d plead guilty without a second thought, cough up whatever money they could spare in order to go free. 

in less extreme cases, police officers would simply verbally abuse the men they’d arrested, but just as often, the officers would physically beat, sexually abuse, or rape these men. oftentimes, the sexual abuse and rape would be part of the arrest itself - an officer would solicit sex from a man, the man would turn him down, and the officer would force him into sex anyway and then report that the man had initiated it.

like, this was daily fucking life for lgbt people for decades before stonewall. and fledgling gay activists fought it with everything they had, early. in 1952, the los angeles mattachine society established the Citizens Committee to Outlaw Police Entrapment after one of their founders, dale jennings, was stalked home by an officer, sexually assaulted in his own bedroom, and then booked for public indecency. rather than simply plead guilty, jennings chose to contest the charges and take them to trial - a totally unprecedented move - with the aid of socialist lawyer george shibley. and the jury voted 11-1 for acquittal, and he walked free. in 1952. seventeen years before stonewall.

but this shit kept happening, everywhere, for decades - new york city didn’t end its policy of police entrapment of lgbt citizens until the mid-1970s. and all the while, there was organized resistance. all the while, organizations like the mattachine society and street transvestite action revolutionaries fought back. 

it’s super, super convenient for heterosexual society to claim that there was just one inciting incident, and one moment of spontaneous, courageous resistance, that sparked the gay rights movement as we know it today. but we can’t fall into that trap. there were decades of brutal, violent police oppression, and there were decades of structured, well-organized resistance to that oppression. 

for a long time, the gay struggle against police violence was the only fight there was. in the late 1940s, at the dawn of formal organization, nobody was agitating for their right to live openly as gay or avoid employment discrimination or get married or adopt children. the movement emerged in opposition to the systematized detainment and torture and rape of gay people by police. 

and that is why lgbt people don’t owe the police shit, and why any police department with the audacity to demand time and space in a pride parade needs to be met with loud, unequivocal resistance. not because of one raid or one riot, but because of decades and decades of unapologetic brutality.
dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
via http://ift.tt/2td1g77:
violent-darts:

lemon-badgeress:

naamahdarling:

I cannot B E L I E V E people in comments complaining about this.
I am saying this as a white person, so maybe other white people will listen.
White queers. As a community. Need. To. Support. Black. And. Brown. LGBT. People. And. Recognize. Their. Historic. Contributions. To. Our. Fucking. Ungrateful. Community.
Black and brown queer folks have been on the front lines of every single battle for LGBT equality, have been hit hardest, have paid the most. Have fought fights that benefit us all, and are STILL forgotten, spoken over, ignored. Written out of their own history.
Fuck. That.
It is time to recognize that they have been here for us.  ALWAYS.
Not time to complain that the new flag is “ugly” because the rainbow is a beautiful spectrum with special meanings for each color, and then these other ugly colors are up there ruining it.
Black belongs on the flag.
Brown belongs on the flag.
Show some class and some fucking respect, and some humility in the face of your own community’s history.
You’ll still be able to get basic rainbow flag paraphernalia if you want it. Easy. You can still use the basic flag for your own purposes if you want.
Don’t fucking complain about people who want to use the new one, who find meaning in it.
Honestly, I’m ashamed and sad for all of us that this wasn’t done long, long ago.

Honestly the only thing I don’t like about this design is that the black and brown stripes are both at the top. I would prefer it if one were at the top and one were at the bottom, both aesthetically and so they weren’t shoved off to one part? But otherwise I’m all behind this.

THANK YOU for articulating that - or wait, brown in the middle, between orange and red or orange and yellow? Or something. *visually nitpicky*

Yeah, I don’t like the visual look of it with them both shoved at one side, it’s, I dunno, I don’t super love it aesthetically– but more importantly, I already own a bunch of rainbow flags and shit, and I’m wondering… could I DIY include this awesome update by adding, like, black and brown pennant streamers? Would it be disrespectful to kinda retrofit stuff on my own? I totally get the thing and why it’s a thing and I am Into It, so– 

anyway. Pennant streamers are probably the best DIY solution for retrofitting existing gear, is all I’m thinking, because if you try to add stripes you’re changing the proportions of the thing and it’s just not likely to work. 

Profile

dragonlady7: self-portrait but it's mostly the DSLR in my hands in the mirror (Default)
dragonlady7

January 2024

S M T W T F S
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 2627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 07:20 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios