For trans activism to move forward you have GOT to learn to accept that not everybody who uses She/Her pronouns is going to be some short, white, skinny, passing person.
You’ve got to accept that there are tall, hairy, and fat trans women who “havent done anything” and still deserve to be fucking gendered correctly.
I’m sorry you had to hear this from me, but not everybody is going to appeal to your UwU soft trans catgirl sensibilities.
âUntitledâ (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is a 1991 piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Itâs a spilled pile of candy.Â
âUntitledâ (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) represents a specific body, that of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torresâ partner who died of AIDS in 1991. This piece of art serves as an âallegorical portrait,â of Laycockâs life.Â
The pile of candy consists of commercially available, shiny wrapped confections. The physical form of the work changes depending on the way it is installed. The work ideally weighs 175 pounds (79 kg) at installation, which is the weight of Ross Laycock when healthy.Â
Visitors are invited to take a piece of candy from the work. Gonzalez-Torres grew up Roman Catholic and taking a candy is a symbolic act of communion, but instead of taking a piece of Christ, the participant partakes of the âsweetnessâ of Ross. As the patrons take candy, they are participants in the art. Each piece of candy consumed is like the illness that ate away at Rossâs body. Â
Multiple art museums around the world have installed this piece.
Per Gonzalez-Torresâ parameters, it is up to the museum how often the pile is restocked, or whether it is restocked at all. Whether, instead, it is permitted to deplete to nothing. If the pile is replenished, it is metaphorically granting perpetual life to Ross.
In 1991, public funding of the arts and public funding for AIDS research were both hot issues. HIV-positive male artists were being targeted for censorship. Part of the logic of âUntitledâ (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is you canât censor free candy without looking ridiculous, and the ease of replicability of the piece in other museums makes it virtually indestructible.
As of late September 2022, the Art Institute of Chicago has changed their exhibit label on this piece to remove any mention of AIDS, Ross Laycock, death, or his relationship with Gonzalez-Torres (via willscullin on Twitter).
Left: old wall text. Right: new wall text as of 9/28/22.
The language theyâve changed to use, talking about âthe average body weight of an adult maleâ is the kind of careful language that art museums might use when we donât know for sure what something is about â but in this case we do know exactly what the Gonzalez-Torres intended this to be about. (Take it from the Smithsonian if you donât want it from me!) The museum hasnât attempted to offer any explanation why, although I cannot think of any unless they wanted to give in object lesson that erasure doesnât stop even in death.
Sacheen Littlefeather has passed away on October 2nd 2022 . While people remember her for her acceptance speech on behalf of Marlon Brando, know that she also ended the media blackout of the Wounded Knee occupation, won an Emmy & co-founded the American Indian AIDS Institute of San Francisco.
Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it’s incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they’re going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won’t offer them the freedom and safety they’ve been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.
Oh. Man.
I’m in my 40s now, but can STILL remember the first apartment I lived in alone.
The first week, I had nothing. NOTHING. I slept on the floor wrapped up in curtains, until a friend came to visit and was like “welp. This ain’t keepin’ on” and gave me a folding bed and a couple of blankets. There were part of it that were just… not fun.
You know what I did, though?
I made cookies. Because I wanted them, and nobody could keep me from using the kitchen. I got a cat, because nobody could tell me “no”. I took long, hot bubble baths because the bathroom - and the bathtub - were MINE and nobody else’s.
I turned MY music up and danced around MY living room all day (but was aware of the family with children downstairs, so shut down the one person party before it got too late).
I bought a cast-off couch for cheap and had friends help me bring it in, and sat on MY couch and sewed. And crocheted. And started to teach myself to knit. The only one there to tell me “no” was the kitten, and she loved playing with the yarn.
There were things about it that were exceptionally hard. I was a pregnant single waitress truly struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. But that’s not what stuck. What stayed with me, and what was important, was those little things that made being an adult worthwhile.
You will get out and you will get free and it still rains, sometimes, but you get to decide whether to stay in or put up your umbrella or just let it pour down your face while you stomp puddles. You get to choose. It’s not paradise, but it is, in the end, yours, which is such a relief. And all the things they say about the best of life being free - that’s true. You will have happiness of your own making.
The best part is no one from your family can get you there. You have a key that locks/unlocks a place you cultivate. And if you visit and your mom etc starts her bullshit, you can just go. Like you can leave and not come back for as long as you want.
There’s so much peace and joy and safety in just that alone.
[text ID: a comment pinned by âthelastpeanutâ, reading:
âIâm genuinely touched by the sudden influx of attention, but I want to humbly remind everyone that each protester you see in this video is now either in jail, in exile or in some form of hiding. Most canât escape, and now that the decades-old Hong Kong democracy movement has been completely crushed, theyâll likely live the rest of their lives under Beijingâs authoritarian rule. The protesters knew it would probably end like this, but they did it anyways, hence the rallying cry of âćŹçâ⌠âif we burn, you burn with usâ.
Most of my friends now suffer from PTSD, depression or perpetual anxiety. Words and ideas that were once debated in public are now whispered in private - or not at all - out of fear that a neighbour or co-worker or family member overhears and decides to report you. I donât think calling Hong Kong a police state is an exaggeration anymore, and itâs only the beginning.
Maybe itâs too late for Hong Kong, but you can still learn from what happened here. I hope you realise that youâre not alone, that your pain and yearning is shared by countless silent strangers, and that when enough people speak as one, you can move the needle of history. Iâve seen it happen.
Most of all, I hope you remember us.â
162K upvotes, no downvotes, 500 replies /end ID]
Hongkonger here.
I cannot begin to describe the feelings I have seeing this post here. Grateful, but sadden.
The information here is correct, though the shut down of the Apple Daily, the pro-democary paper was already months ago.
One of our biggest concerns now is the National Security Law, which allows the government to basically arrest anyone and ban anything that speaks against them. Movies and documentaries about the protests have been banned in Hong Kong. (e.g. ĺ°ĺš´'May You Stay Forever Youngâ and ć䝣éŠĺ˝ âRevolution of our timesâ, which got the Best Documentary award in Taiwanâs 58th Golden Horse Awards. )
A lot of our protestors are jailed. Our pro-democratic socities have disassembled. Our democratic politicians are facing charges or have been jailed. Candidates for our upcoming election for the legislation council are all more or less pro-beijing, and even publishing a poll that shows people are choosing not to vote for anyone this year risks breaking the law.
The situation is pretty bleak, and a lot of us have plans to leave Hong Kong because of it. Especially teachers, who are either unwilling to teach students propaganda and only information about how great China is, or fear that they will say something anti-China and will be reported and have to go to jail.
People mostly avoid talking about politics now. Whereas once we all talked about it openly, you can feel that we are all censoring ourselves now. And even if they do, it is mostly behind closed doors or whispered between friends or using really watered down facing.
(and whereas once I would talk and post about all this in IG, which is popular among HKers, I do not dare to now. Tumblr still seems safe. Hardly anyone know about Tumblr in HK)
Anyway, thanks for remembering us and reblogging this.
reminder. if you ship incest or support people who ship incest or dont care that people ship incest i am not your friend. that shit is harmful, nasty, and fetishizes normal family relationships. do not interact with me and do not expect respect if you do because you will not get it
and YES this includes people who were adopted! saying “oh but theyre not actually related so its not incest” invalidates adoptive families and still fetishizes normal healthy family relationships
Also it’s extremely insulting to Victims who sadly were molested/raped by family members that you are jacking off to their trauma
This is my personal blog.
I reblog and delete things, and this place acts as a hub for all my other blogs which are under construction into forever.
Want to know something? Just ask!
This is my personal blog.