Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.
A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”
This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:
1. Everyone does not already know.
2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.
Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.
I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.
I get that it can be frustrating to feel like your identity is being reduced to facts and figures for the benefit of red tape. But trust me, the researchers aren’t your enemy here. Most of us are queer too. All of us are just as frustrated by this crap as you are. We are doing our best, and I swear to you this work really is making a difference. Please don’t sabotage it.
I’m reblogging this because it only has 9 notes, and it should really, REALLY have a lot more.
Also, given the current US administration’s plan to stop collecting data on LGBTQ identities as part of the census, we are in need of accurate, useful data now more than ever.
Plus the ability to cite peer-reviewed evidence of these sorts of things and quantify the extent of “obvious” effects can be pretty important to researchers who are working in adjacent fields that don’t produce the sorts of headline soundbites that get mocked on social media.
And often headlines and summaries are misleading and reductive- a study about wage gaps across a variety of demographics might get headlined “Women Still Make Less Than Men, New Study Shows” when the bulk of the paper is about the intersection of race and gender identity, and I’ve seen people on Tumblr mocking a study about the flavor compounds in food across the Indian subcontinent, conducted by Indian scientists at an Indian university, as “LOL white people don’t know how to cook.”
And to add to this– it’s also important to be able to point to something and say, no, the problem is not that these people aren’t straight. Being able to point to actual science that says, “no, it’s not us, it’s you and how you treat us”– well, that’s a a good thing.
There are a lot of people out there who genuinely believe that being any
flavour of queer is intrinsically harmful to you. That unhappiness is a
natural result of being gay, that to be trans is to be mentally ill,
that bisexuals are confused and troubled. There are people who believe that you cannot be happy or well if you’re queer, and not all of those people are bad people. Some of them have what they perceive to be your best interests at heart, and they want you to be happy, to be well, to be physically, emotionally and mentally safe. And they still act in a way that causes harm, that damages lives, isolates kids and tells them that pain is what they should expect for being who they are.
It’s important to be able to say, “these policies kill kids”, to say, “no, this wouldn’t have happened anyway”, to say, “yes, it does matter what you do.”
A thought I have had:
A lot of the “IN OTHER NEWS WATER IS WET/etc” comes from that sense of frustration that this is in fact Shit We Know (because it’s our lives) and it is in fact frustrating to have these things treated like a revelation.
It’s useful to turn that frustration around into shapes that are less likely to get research shut down. Like “FUCKING FINALLY SOMEONE DID THE FUCKING RESEARCH”. Or “AT LAST. SOMETHING TO THROW AT THE STRAIGHTS.” or “WE HAVE SCIENCED THE THING NOW WILL YOU BELIEVE US?!”
Know that the researchers are, as OP notes, probably on your side! They have fought to get this stuff in order to have Data to back shit up.
Additionally, everything everyone else has said, and ALSO that even when we study things we’re Pretty Sure Of we more often than not discover that there was at least some aspect that we were wrong about, or had under(or over)estimated, or whatever, or a contributing factor nobody had considered, so it is actually important to Do The Damn Research in order to make sure we can do the BIGGER research.
But if you’re having that sense of ARGH WHY IS THIS EVEN IN QUESTION, like: this is fair! But it’s also pretty crucial to reframe the direction of the argh, to provide impetus for MORE of this kind of evidence-seeking, rather than less.
Another thing! Even if you are LGBTQ+ yourself, there’s tons of things you can learn from these studies. Like, for example, school bullying.
For a paper I was writing, I needed a statistic that basically said “LGBTQ+ teens get discriminated against and makes them mentally ill.” This was something I knew, and my LGBTQ+ friends knew. Obviously, right?
But the study also said the following:
The bullying based on their identity, or repeated discrimination from other children, is a problem that does contribute to the development of depression and anxiety
[Here is the statistical amount of that impact]
And one mitigating factor that can decrease this effect by some ridiculously high number is parental acceptance
Of course, yeah, if you asked an LGBTQ+ person if they would have felt less terrible if their parents were accepting, they would say yes. But the study revealed that, due to the threat of homelessness, as well as acceptance making it easier for students to cope with the stress of school bullying, parental education would have way more impact than school bullying programs. Also, because LGBTQ+ kids face unique challenges of often being forced into independent living, then the LGBTQ+ political movement should be working together with youth activism.
And this is just one example. So it’s important to read these studies if you have access to them, because it’s not just obvious stuff! If you’re open to learning things to spite Straight people, because copying down statistics with proper citations is delightful, you can also better guide your own activism to be more effective.
And I mean. Isn’t the entire field of science basically just “water is wet” anyway? That’s what scientific research is.
•14 **kickstarter exclusive** Limited Edition monochrome variant pins! Miss them now and miss out! (Backers are going to be able to add-on more to their order post-campaign if they wish)
•14 Embroidered patch designs!
•A free ‘We Fight As One’ sticker and holographic postcard print with every pin or patch pledge level!
We are wayyyy over funded at this point so you’re guaranteed to get some goodies! Thank you for supporting the campaign, sharing, and tagging friends!
3 short days remain!!! Reblog to save a life (or an lgbt person that needs one)
IT IS TIME. Ends tonight (Wednesday into Thursday) at 12:01 AM EST! If you want the variants and gifts, back now or forever hold your peace!
For the rest of you, pins will be around for preorder soon, but the kickstarter rate is truly the best you’ll be able to get them at! See you at the end!
This is your 12 hour warning! I’ll be posting all evening to remind you 🙂
four hours to go now and I just gotta decide which ones I want…
[Image: A series of pin mockups on a black background, with a shadowed ‘NK’ behind them. Each pin depicts a raised left fist. The fingers, thumb and wrist of each pin are separated to show the colors of the Pride flag in question, with the top of the flag corresponding to the left side of the wrist and thumb, and the bottom corresponding to the pinky and right side of the wrist. The More Color More Pride pin is the only exception, with the black and brown stripes clutched in the palm section, actively protected by the rest of the fist. The pins depicted, from left to right, are: Intersex, Asexual, Bisexual, More Color, More Pride, Aromantic, Pansexual. Bottom row: Genderqueer, Genderfluid, Rainbow, Trans, NonBinary, and Lesbian. In the middle, white lettering reads: NerdyKeppie Forever In Solidarity Enamel Pins.]
The Early Bird options, which include an exclusive pronoun patch that will never be offered anywhere else, are only available for the first twenty-four hours.
I am so, so excited to finally get to launch this Kickstarter; we’ve been working on this project for literally months. Making the art, looking for the right pin maker, getting all of our ducks in a row, and it’s finally, finally here.
All of my love forever to @dadhoc, who made the project’s video in absolute record time.
Thank you so much to everyone who helped us get this project off the ground. We literally could not have done it without you.
Update: We’re funded at $600! Our first stretch goal is before us! $750 will unlock the Asexual and Pansexual pride pins! WHERE MY SPACE ACES AT?!
Update: We funded at $750! Our next goal is at the $1,000 level, which will unlock a free pride fist sticker with each order that goes out! So to recap, if you are an early bird backer and we hit this next goal you will get a free pronoun patch AND a free sticker.
To quote Jake Peralta: Noice.
Update: *90 minutes* into the kickstarter and we’ve funded at the $1,000 level. Every order now gets a free pride sticker. Hooray! The next unlock is at $1,300 and is for Genderqueer and Nonbinary pins! ENBY POWAH!
At 2.5 hours into the Kickstarter, we have hit FOUR stretch goals.
As of now, every order can pick from: Rainbow, Trans, More Color, More Pride, Bisexual, Ace, Pansexual, Genderqueer, Intersex, Aromantic or Non-Binary pins!
At $2000, we unlock Genderfluid and Lesbian pride, and at $2500, the community gets to vote on the next 2 pins we add!
Okay. I am going to bed. We are 4 hours into this Kickstarter and have unlocked ALL TWELVE of the original designs, as well as the sticker add-on!
As of now, we’ve added Lesbian & Genderfluid to the pins that people can select as their backer rewards. Once we hit $2500, our backers will vote on which pins we’ll release next, in which order, and we’ll set new stretch goals with even more amazing stuff.
You all are absolutely incredible, and I am beyond delighted. It’s absolutely no secret that our supporters on Tumblr are the greatest, and the numbers so far on the Kickstarter bear that out. YOU FOLX are the ones who have pushed us this far – the big push at the beginning? Something like 75% from Tumblr. You all absolutely rock.
And now I’m going to get some sleep. Hopefully when I wake up, I get to post the survey. ❤
New weapon! This design is meant to be a uniting force & message of strength for the entire LGBTQ+ community! I had a lot of fun designing a completely absurd massive sword with opalescence as well. There’s a matching pin and patch in this design currently being funded on my Orientation & Gender Armory Kickstarter! (Click to back!)
We Fight As One!
This print will be added to my redbubble after the campaign. If you’re already backing the kickstarter stay tuned tomorrow for an announcement related to this design. Hope you love it as much as I do!
Psyops, especially professionally managed and government backed psyops, are very, very tricky business.
We have few existing examples of their orders, but one order we do have is the order to destroy queer solidarity by pitting us against ourselves, so that we would not participate in elections and political processes.
For that order to have been made, and then this political sinkhole to open up within months, is simply too obvious a connection to ignore. Some major social media pages focuses on queer rights have since been confirmed as Russian plants{1,2}.
The distaste for {subgroup} pride has always been prevalent in queer spaces. We try to fight it, but everyone in a queer group has issues. There is no way to avoid it. And sometimes, the attempts to keep things calm end up looking like favoring some groups in particular. In 2013, it was bis. 2014, nonbinaries. 2015, aces. 2016, nonbinaries and intersex. 2017, kink and polyamory. In 2018 it seems to be queers and pans.
All of these tensions and targets are always at risk, but until summer of 2015, when Russian operations launched, they had always been fairly subdued.
However, if you know what you’re doing (and farmed operatives do know what they’re doing) it only takes the lightest touch to set mild tensions into abject wildfire. {3}
Much like racial tensions were stoked to achieve the alt-right not by creating the movement whole cloth, but just slightly heating things until the movement coalesced on its own, I believe a similar slow boil took place in this context.
Remember, the goal of the psyop was to destabilize the US political process by electing Trump.
That means that people on the fence needed to be frightened into conservatism, and people who could not be frightened into it needed to be discouraged from voting or outright suppressed.
Empowering radical feminists gives more Trump votes- albeit not many more- and encouraging everyone else to be at each other’s throats takes away any counter votes against Trump.
Given that Russian operatives are known to have targeted queer groups, known to have targeted radical feminist groups, and known to have shifted as many people rightward as possible while setting the rest to in fighting, it is a completely reasonable conclusion that, although Russian operatives didn’t invent ace exclusion, they helped to popularize it very quickly.
This does not mean all ace hate is from Russia or all aphobe blogs are Russian plants. They don’t need to be. With two dozen blogs and six months of salary, even I could completely reshape the tumblr political environment. All you have to do is use your multiple identities to post positive content the implicitly supports the aggressive content from your other blogs, and have one blog in your network Get Big- have a fight with a popular blogger for example. Eventually, through the blog that got exposure, your other blogs, which are all incestuously interacting with themselves, will be found by and appeal to various different groups.
Within 2 months, you’ve now got 4 or 5 different groups of people saying either (x) is bad, or (x) doesn’t matter leave me alone. At that point actual people in the (x) group will start defending themselves, and you’re basically done.
You disappear, delete all those blogs, and don’t have to worry because the change was already made, and yeah, it will probably settle down in a few years, but that’s a few years my opponent isn’t operating at full capacity.
Or, if you’re lucky, you’ve artificially created a controversy on a long scale, the kind of thing you used to only be able to do if you owned one of the 3 major news companies and had a couple of friendly looking government agents on your show spouting your lines.
In any case, two months going 60-80 hours a week, anyone can at least start a fan war. 6 months with an entire trained team and a government budget? That’s enough to start a real war, maybe two.
3 years and multiple government agencies working multiple separate ops? Well, at that point, it’s a miracle there’s even a ghost of the US left at all.
So, the resurgence of radfems and the dissolution of queer coalition could, certainly, have been a coincidence that was always going to occur. But, in the full context of what was happening at the time?
There probably wasn’t an op targeting ace people or anything that dramatic. Just targeting lesbians and encouraging them to “return to their roots” and become radical separatists was more than enough to achieve the shitshow we see today.
Note: The correct response is not to write off all intracommunity problems as Russian interference, or your enemies as Russian agents. The correct respose is to reject their message and embrace solidarity.
Solidarity is the nly counterweapon that has any effect on their actual goals.
[Image description – Images of the trans, rainbow, nonbinary, genderqueer, lesbian, intersex, pan, aromantic, asexual and bi pride flags with the text: Be the loud and proud queer you wish you would have known when you were younger. End description.]
im really tired of people within the LGBTQ+ community pointing fingers at each other and saying “you don’t really belong because you benefit from [insert type of privilege here]”
a cishet asexual still suffers from marginalization. their sexuality has been pathologized as a mental illness right along with gayness and transness. in a hypersexual heternormative culture where we’re told we must enjoy sex and we must be in relationships, an asexual person is made to feel as if they’re broken, as if they don’t exist, as if forcing sex and intimacy on them is a corrective measure to “fix them”
a straight trans woman still suffers from marginalization. being able to “pass” as a woman while also being in a relationship with a man does not negate the fact that trans people face the most violence out of anyone in the queer community, must face a society that enforces a standard of womanhood that may not necessarily apply to them, and must navigate a political climate that seeks to banish them from public spaces and paint them as criminals
a bisexual man in a relationships with a woman still suffers from marginalization. compulsory heterosexuality not only erases this identity but enforces this idea that bisexuality is a phase or a kink that can soon be grown out of. bisexuality is the largest subset of the LGBTQ+ community yet has the least amount of representation and leaves bi people more likely to have mental illnesses. being constantly recloseted when you date different genders has psychological and emotional consequences
individuals in a polyamorous relationship still suffer from marginalization. they exist in a society that hails monogamy as the only acceptable relationship model and attempts to make polyamorous individuals feel as if their relationships are abnormal, deviant, and inappropriate for children. they are treated as the example of what not to do, seeing as how society fails to acknowledge the breadth of relationship models that don’t necessarily have to include just two people.
examples like these can go on and on and on and on
these critiques also exist without the context of race, ethnicity, immigration status, ability, and/or religion. we’re so focused on worrying about whether certain queer identities even belong in the LGBTQ+ umbrella yet fail to see how whiteness, Christianity, citizenship laws, access to disability services, etc. further compound on the experiences of those who are told by a cishet world that we are abnormal.
and that’s what it comes down to: there is a formula for privilege in our society, and part of that formula involves being straight, being cis, wanting to marry, desiring sex, and believing in only two genders. queerness was always meant to represent those who live in opposition of those formulas, in opposition of systems that enforce and perpetuate those formulas.
our job is not to gatekeep our community because that is childish and unproductive. our job is to understand the systems that oppress us, figure out how to navigate/change these systems, and advocate for all people who fall victim to the violence and oppression that these systems were created to enforce.
we don’t do that by telling people that they don’t belong in our communities bc “they’re not as oppressed as we are.” this isn’t the oppression olympics. this is a time to fight, to love, and to advocate.
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 