i spent so much time being told that i “wasn’t ready for relationships” and that i was “too nervous” or “not mature enough” to handle them that i began to believe it. i tried so hard to better myself and do self-reflection and work at understanding why i had such a problem with being in relationships with others that i never considered the possibility of being aro-spec. moral of the story: please don’t let others tell you why you feel the way you do!! explore! research! find what’s right for you, because you are so valid and deserve to be happy!
The argument for a queer reading of Doctor Faustus is shaky, but there are still elements in the play that can be read through a queer lens, especially in light of the fact that evidence exists to suggest Marlowe himself had homosexual leanings. “Sodomy was linked in the popular imagination of the Renaissance with sorcery and heresy”, and indeed, Faustus is immediately entranced by Mephistopheles when he first conjures the demon. It is, in face, the promise Mephistophele’s servitude that helps to cement Faust’s decision to sell his soul, and he even goes so far as to say “had I as many souls as there by stars, I’d give them all for Mephistopheles”.
The two only grow more inseparable in the next scene, in which Faust passionately swears his allegiance to Lucifer by drawing up a contract in blood and saying that it is done out of his love for Mephistopheles. The demon responds with a strangely devoted aside to the audience: “O what will not I do to obtain his soul!” and the two dissolve into a hellish camaraderie of professions of devotion peppered by endearments such as “my Faustus” and “sweet Mephistopheles”. When Mephistopheles grows tired of Faustus’s obsession with the nature of heaven, he claims that the firmament is “not half so fair as thee or any man that breathes on Earth”, then quickly rationalizes this affectionate statement by posturing that heaven was made for men, therefore men must be superior.
One of the most compelling exchanges between devil and man happens when Faustus, newly sworn into Lucifer’s allegiance, demands that Mephistopheles produce him a wife, for he is “wanton and lascivious”. Mephistopheles scoffs at this request but brings him a wife all the same, a devil dressed as a woman. There’s something to be said for this trussing up of carnal desire in the gruesome, fulfilling garments of femininity, this broad gesture towards the closeted nature of sexual expression in the Jacobean period. When Faustus takes offence at the joke, Mephistopheles leads him away from the sacrament of marriage with a seductive “if thou lovest me, think no more of it” and promises that he will provide Faustus with a myriad of lovers “beautiful as was bright Lucifer before his fall”. With the human feminine out of the picture, Mephistopheles provides Faust with a lover in the conjured form of Helen of Troy, who is in all probability a devil in disguise herself since Faustus states later that it isn’t within the abilities of Hell to resurrect bodies of the dead or command their true spirits. In the end it is demons Faust is taking to bed night after night, demons whose gender is either presented as masculine or meaningless, and a demon who commands the heart of our tormented protagonist.
That One Time I Banged Out a Queer Reading of Doctor Faustus in Two Nights and Got a B on the Paper, by S.T.Gibson (via sarahtaylorgibson)
So anyway I saw Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) yesterday and I liked it a lot. It made me emotional, I was mouthing along to the songs, Rami malek is fucking wonderful. Queens a big BIG thing in my family and so I know that there were some historical inaccuracies but honestly? It was a fun, inspiring portrayal of an amazing man. Its well shot, the actors are great. Maybe the dialogue gets clunky but it’s still good.
And then I see that it’s only got 50 odd percent on Rotten Tomatoes which, whatever, critics suck. THEN I read a review to see what everyone’s mad about and let me tell you I am fuming.
I read an economist article that worried that stopping other biopic in 1985 “might prevent an excellent performance from being a prize-winning one, of the sort that earned Oscars for Tom Hanks in “Philadelphia” (1993) and Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013).”
What. The. fuck. One of my favourite things about this film is that it didn’t show the horrible, pain-porn, graceful and yet horrific decline into aids that every other film about queer men in the 80’s milks out. The LGBT community knows about the aids crisis. Everyone knows that Freddie died of AIDS related illnesses. I’m so fucking sick of gay tragedies.
I loved this film because instead of being a glorification of his death it was a celebration of his life. You want to know when Freddie Mercury informed the public he had AIDS? The day before he died. He didn’t want to be a poster boy, a spectacle. He was a person outside of his illness.
Queer people don’t exist to die peacefully on your screen, leaving you with a hopeful majestic quote about how really everything’s going to be a alright. Growing up gay I truly thought I wouldn’t be able to be happy. Why? Because in every portrayal of a queer character they either died horribly or died alone.
So yes. I like this film. I like having a film about a queer person that focused on their life instead of their death
Controversial opinion maybe, but I feel like people should really let up on pretending that “romantic attraction” is something that’s ever going to have a one-side-fits-all definition.
There’s absolutely a distinction between romantic and platonic relationships, but I think saying that the line exists, and that it exists in the exact same place for everyone, is really different – and the source of a lot of pain and confusion for people who are trying to figure out their identities, or even just understand other people’s. It’s why the distinctions between close friendship/queerplatonic relationship/romantic relationship are very blurry and often sound the same, and why people tell each other that someone else’s name for what they have or want is wrong, because it looks like the other kind of relationship that they have or want – because one of those things can look a lot like another, depending on the participants. And it’s also why there are people who say they can’t figure out what their orientation is due to people keep giving them different or contradicting definitions – because unlike, say, sorting out which gender(s) you’re attracted to (which is still complex, but more empirical), figuring out the category or strength of attraction is a lot less objective and a lot more personal.
I have read a lot of definitions of romantic attraction that made me feel very broken, because to me they defined what I want out of platonic relationships. But since I’m very romance-repulsed, and I was being told that was romance, it made me wonder if the relationships I wanted were something I’d ever actually get to have and still be comfortable with. It took me years to break things down enough to acknowledge that those things could exist in platonic relationships too, because I’d spent a long time seeing some them get called romantic. However, I am obviously in no place to tell the (allo) people who wrote those definitions that their idea of romance is wrong – to them, those things do characterize their romantic relationships, and likely are a way they distinguish them from their platonic ones, and it’s okay for them to say so! Our lines just fall in different places. The thing that is less okay is to make blanket statements about what is and isn’t romantic or platonic, because there are pretty much always going to be people that feel differently.
Being a very affectionate person who craves (and I’d like to think reciprocates) a decent amount of intimacy, I know that I have important relationships that some allo people would say have things in common with their romantic ones, even though I never want to have a romantic partnership in my life. Being those things and aromantic, I know that there are probably other aros out there who look at what I want and have and would personally be uncomfortable being in those kinds of relationships, even though I categorize them as platonic. None of us – not me, not the allo people, and not the other aromantics – are wrong. But pretending that a romantic relationship is something that has a solid definition would dictate that somebody has to be, if we’re all looking at the same level of intimacy and seeing different things. And someone’s going to come out of that feeling broken, because they don’t fit into a box that actually varies wildly in size depending on the person. Which is why I think it would be for the best if people started acknowledging that these lines vary for different people.
any other aroaces have a Weird relationship w gender, esp womanhood?
like ik mine’s already extra complicated bc im nonbinary (like idk im simultaneously part woman and absolutely not a woman at all. and also ive had years of thinking i was a woman and still get called one?).
but even (at least i think) unrelated to that, i’ve always felt weird about looking “girly” because i didn’t want men to look at me as romantically/sexually. so i’d dress masc to try and make me not seem available to them (and also to fit my gender identity- two birds one stone). or i’d go a brand of cutesy but very non-conventionally-attractive girly when i was too nervous to dress masc
like kinda vaguely related to how i’ve heard some butches describe their relationship to womanhood (but not exactly!!! bc theirs involves not only not being interested in men but ALSO being interested in women instead. and that second part adds a whole new note to their experience which i dont experience personally and will not claim to). bc of how much womanhood is related to being available to men (and also being unavailable to women. but, yknow, that part doesn’t quite apply to me)
I edited the let’s go lesbians clip to be just the “let’s go lesbians!” part without the trivia questions and whatnot for a fun alarm tone. I figured yall might have fun with it too
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