tragic when a thing gets hate for being ‘woke trash’ and you look into it and its not even that woke. like cmon man i was promised monacle popping gay commie propaganda. this is just a video game with a woman in it.
alcoholism is a problem in the lgbt community yes but there’s something weird and mentally disconnecting about trying to say that’s because there’s too many gay nightclubs or whatever instead of the reality that being lgbt is just genuinely oppressive and will push people to maladaptive coping mechanisms. like did we forget that people become alcoholics for a multitude of more reasons than because they went to a club once
alcoholic dyke here and i think a lot of nuance has been lost in this conversation.
i’ve been here for all of it (i don’t know if you have, OP, so forgive me if this sounds condescending at all) and i pretty much watched it happen and was annoyed and upset the whole time, ‘cause you are fundamentally correct–being marginalized is a hell all its own, that is the root of why we have higher death and addiction and suicide and mental illness rates. i don’t think anyone was ever insinuating otherwise, at least not anywhere i’ve seen it.
but from what i saw on this website & other online spaces vaguely adjacent, it went like this:
this post was made:
2. young queerfolk, alcoholics, disabled queers (with both physical & sensory sensitivities), and many other groups that fell in agreement with this for their own personal reasons added onto the sentiment. at the time (over a decade ago, give or take?) it was not the norm to have many other options besides 1. bar/nightclub or 2. GSA, if you were lucky enough to have one at your school/university.
3. of these groups that showed support for this sentiment were sex-repulsed asexual people who felt uncomfortable with the sexual nature & unspoken pressure to 'hook up’ at gay bars & night clubs.
4. around 2014, exclusionists on this website decided that it was trendy to violently abuse asexuals & aromantics for clout. every single thing the aroace community did on tumblr was met with meangirl backlash at best and relentless vitriol at worst. this more or less destroyed the aroace community and it has still not recovered to this day.
5. one of the most potent forms of propaganda leveled at the ace community was malicious reframing of sex-repulsion as a concept. the sex-repulsed ace is, obviously, just minding their own business and living their truth–but exclusionists intentionally framed them as virulent, homophobic prudes who went around telling the ~real~ queers where they were and were not allowed to have their Gross Faggot Sex, etc etc.
6. one of the most effective ways they propagandized this was by out-of-context circulation of posts like the one i posted above.
(and, occasionally, actual psy-ops where users would pretend to be asexuals and intentionally post cringey, anti-sex, anti-kink, homophobic nonsense and of course the 'no internet skepticism skills’ website believed it)
7. posts like this stopped being read in good faith. seeing a post like the above, tumblr users before the ace discourse instilled brainrot in half this website would see it and think “yeah! it would be awesome if we had more options.” after the ace discourse, the reaction a lot of those same people would have would be more like “i cannot believe the cringey aces on this website are still acting like gay bars and night clubs are depraved sex dens full of rambunctious horny dykes. they don’t even know how homophobic they are.”
8. miraculously, eventually, the ace discourse freaks all either 1. moved onto bi/pan lesbians (and so far are doing a pretty shit job) or 2. were run off the site/out of communities because people unpacked shit and realized they were on the wrong side of things.
9. arguments in defense of the original point came back out of the woodwork. “now that the ace discourse has died down, can we please fucking get back to rallying for more queer spaces other than bars and clubs? the autistics, the mobility aid users, the children and teenagers, the sex-repulsed asexuals, and the alcoholics deserve options for community too.”
10. presumably, these posts are circulating now, because they make good points.
i don’t think any queer alcoholic is going to genuinely say that gay bars are the reason we have a higher alcoholism rate. we have that because society wants us dead and you have to find a way to survive knowing that. but 1. the alcohol companies know that and intentionally prey on us, see them setting up their rainbow floats at pride every year and 2. the lack of sober queer spaces makes it hard, often nigh impossible to stay clean and sober. it’s hard enough to stay clean and sober as a cishet, alcoholics bleed friends like fucking crazy when we make the choice to stay sober or even just cut back. 12 step programs are largely bunk, but repeated studies have shown that the reason they work on accident is because they are a social space where addicts can find community without the pressure to use.
so if cishets struggle that hard, we struggle much harder. and, yes, the lack of sober queer spaces is a huge part of that. back in 2014, we addicts on tumblr were largely laughed out of every room we entered, every point of discourse we tried to spur on. i got a multitude of pretty violent threats on here back then for talking openly about intoxication culture and how addiction was a disability. and that was before the ace discourse ramped up.
so i think probably what’s happening is queer addicts are finally feeling emboldened again to discuss this and perhaps some nuance is being lost in the many, MANY layers of telephone over the years. perhaps some of them are remembering the shitty discourse and how they were swept under the rug and persecuted as homophobes/apologists because they, for their own reasons, dared to share similar opinions with asexuals in 2014.
no, going to a gay bar doesn’t turn queers into alkies, but it sure as shit is a lot easier to not die of alcohol poisoning at age 27 when you have the choice to walk into a social club or a cafe instead of a bar.
eating an apple outside really is the closest you can get to smoking without smoking. some would think thats vaping but vaping is closer to eating a comically large lollipop in public
bwyta afal tra tu allan wir yw'r agosaf gallwch chi ei gael at ysmygu heb ysmygu. bydd rhai yn meddwl mai fepio ydyw ond mae fepio'n agosach at fwyta lolipop hurt o fawr yn gyhoeddus
Don’t worry guys, fish don’t feel pain! When they’re harmed they only experience an unpleasant stimulus that they do their best to avoid any means necessary! It’s just a stimulus picked up by the nerves that’s sent to the spinal cord and the brain, it doesn’t count!
Nearly blocked someone for a vaguely annoying reply they made in 2017 then remembered 2017 was 9 years ago. They will live. We can change *opens their blog* nevermind they got worse. Guards
Meet the Full Human Party. The Wizard was a magic spell that became self-aware. The Saint was an eldritch horror. The Paladin was the idle thoughts of a bored god. The Ranger was a shapeshifter. Somehow, only the Barbarian who was raised by wolves was an actual, full human.
The problem with giving advice to angry and suffering people is that rather frequently the thing they need to know to improve their position is the last thing they want to hear and not something they have the capacity to internalize or accept
Unfortunate truths you can tell people that would help if they could hear what it means and not just what it sounds like
You were the victim, and it wasn’t fair, but it’s over now. Nobody came to save you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late for anyone to go back and do it different.
You’re suffering over something that cannot be resolved. You’re allowed to feel angry, or outraged, or betrayed, but there will eventually come a time that you don’t feel that so violently anymore, and you’re going to want to have something good left to go back to.
You can’t make anyone love you the way you need to be loved. That’s how a lot of good things end. Not with a clear sign, something blocking the road that says “do not proceed”, just a splitting of the path that’s still moving somewhat in the same direction.
You can’t fix them. Nothing you can do will fix them. And if they fix themselves, they can’t do it for you- they have to do it for themselves as well, because otherwise a day may come when they’re alone, and as long as they live, they are their only true constant. So you can support, and you can encourage, but the hardest part is up to them. And sometimes they can’t do it even with your help.
Sometimes letting go of someone feels like mourning at their funeral before they’ve died, and every time you see them after it’s like talking to a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead. Sometimes that happens. You’ll both still wake up tomorrow anyways.
I understand that you’re afraid, and that you’re afraid for good reasons. And I understand that being brave isn’t as easy as just turning that fear off, and you would if you could in a heartbeat. But the thing is, as long as that fear is able to dictate your choices, it will have power over you. If you don’t believe you can try to fight it, if you accept that it will always be in charge, you let the frightening thing stay present in your life. It will exist as long as you stay paralyzed. And that sounds cruel, but it isn’t something anyone can fix for you.
The person you may let yourself become after experiencing the terrible thing may very well grow into a much bigger, much more terrible thing, and someday it will swallow the first terrible thing whole. And all that will be left is something far worse for someone else. And you will not be able to shrink it down by explaining where it came from, because terrible things that are dead and gone are never as terrible as terrible things that are alive right now in front of you.
No matter how much or how little I love you, I still do not have the ability to help you the way you need to be helped. I might be the helper you want, but I am not a helper you can get. If you are to be helped at all, you will need to accept that it will come from someone else.
do you ever think about how if you dive into the ocean and go deeper and deeper you will pass through layers of darker and darker blue until everything is black and cold and the pressure will be so intense that it will kill you without protection but if you keep going you will find little glowing specks of light, and if you go up into the sky and go higher and higher you will pass through layers of darker and darker blue until everything is black and cold and the pressure will be so intense that it will kill you without protection but if you keep going you will find little glowing specks of light
sometimes a post makes you get out of bed at 230am to spend a quick hour on something like this
[Image description: A color image in portrait orientation. The background transitions smoothly from a starfield on black at the top, through dark blue, medium blue, lighter blue, then back to medium, dark, and another starfield at the bottom. In the very center is a black silhouette of a human figure, appearing to float on its back as on the surface of water. Above it in the blue “sky” area are a curved, thin white line like the contrail of a jet aircraft, and two small black silhouettes of seabirds. Below in the deep dark blue, just before the starfield, are some silhouettes of fish. /end description]
