Hidden in the Open: A Photographic Essay of Afro American Male Couples
This is soo good! Trent Kelley has compiled over 100 images revealing a long legacy of Black male couples. These are some of my faves. Check out his flickr page for more amazing images.
constantly crying because being queer and trans* and polly means every relationship is without a road map or guild and we arent raised or taught how to deal with the situations we find ourselves in and the pain and sorrow and bliss that come from them.
so its pretty damn amazing that we keep trying to form connections and keep on breathing and fighting and believing in the next kiss and the person whose hand you hold when you sleep.
we wont ever “get it right” but its about so much more than that
or i hope it is
basically gay marriage should be legal but it’s basically the least pressing queer issue there is. coincidentally it’s the one that allies care most about. haha ok come back to me when you care about the rates of homelessness and violence and suicide among queer youth
Baby cured of HIV for the first time
Doctors announced this weekend that they effectively cured a baby born with HIV, paving the way for a huge change in how we treat infants born with the virus and perhaps in the number of children with HIV/AIDS.
There have been reports in the past of babies clearing the virus without treatment, and a few years back doctors cured an adult man with leukemia of HIV using a bone marrow transplant, but this is the first case of curing a baby born with the virus.
The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with H.I.V.
If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world. That could give a lift to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible, though some experts said the findings in the baby would probably not be relevant to adults.
This is absolutely incredible.
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If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia and classism it would actually give children a better way to deal with the very same power dynamics they will face as adults, while also giving adults more responsibility to challenge the intolerance that is rooted within our society overall.
Amanda Levitt at Fat Body Politics (October 5th, 2012)
One of the first posts I ever reblogged on FYSE, I love it so much because you can really see that the clitoris and penis are the same thing.
… and they both look like dinosaurs.
(Source: sleepyeyedbitch)
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Don’t hang out with people who don’t love you. Don’t try to impress people who aren’t worth it. Don’t try to win people over who aren’t worth it. Focus on yourself, and focus on the people who are really awesome and who love you. Don’t hang out with people who make you feel like shit. Don’t spend your energy on them.
Beth Ditto (via vincentwilde)
(Source: assesdo)
Beretta James, Dex Hardlove and Delvin Deluge part one is now up on FTMFUCKER.com!
“Kissing makes everything better” Dex Hardlove taunts after tattooed hottie Delvin Deluge and Dex throw an unsuspecting Beretta James into the back their truck and drag her into a dirty abandoned basement. Delvin and Dex strip her of her clothes, face fuck her with their hard cocks, and make her into their personal fuck toy. Things get interesting when Dex notices Delvin’s wet hungry hole, and gives his boy what he deserves, more fucking and orgasms!
This ftm on ftm on femme scene features Dex Hardlove’s first scene with a girl and Delvin Deluge’s first porn scene ever as well as Beretta James first scene with trans men! It’s filthy, hardcore and hot, if you’re not already a member, this is a scene you can’t afford to miss!
TRIGGER WARNING: This scene is a consensual pre negotiated hardcore fantasy featuring misogynist language, abduction, rough sex and BDSM themes. Enjoy!
i’m an avid fan of porn…but this is quite disturbing…for the mere fact that these dudes cannot feel anything.
This is so troubling there aren’t even words to describe…
Acting out a rape scene, kidnapped a random person off…
Video removed because I don’t want that disgusting video on my blog. This is fucking horrific. Who thought this would be a good idea? I hope ftmfuckers gets the fucking backlash of the century over this shitshow.
PS This makes me think of Kael T Block, who actually is a rapist and a “porn star”
I am a multiple rape and molestation survivor, and can even publicly attest to have had a forced sexual interaction with Kael T Block himself.
I am also a sex-positive person who has performed in concentual rape-play scenes both on and off camera with co-workers, sex partners, and lovers.
THERE IS A MAJOR, MAJOR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONCENTUAL RAPE PLAY AND REAL RAPE.
And you, a random person on Tumblr, has come forth to try and claim that this video is ”like Kael T Block.”
WELL, IT’S NOT.
There IS a trigger warning for this trailer. There is a statement of consent for this trailer. The scene, shot and directed by James Darling, was CREATED BY THE PERFORMERS THEMSELVES. Beretta, Dex, and Delvin as a group came up with this concept.
YES, THERE ARE REALLY PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WANT TO LIVE OUT A KIDNAPPING AND RAPE FANTASY IN THE SAFETY OF FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND ARTISTIC COLLABORATORS. These performers were paid actors given a chance to come up with their own ideas for a porn scene, and this is what they WANTED. They designed the script. They gave consent. They had safe words, dental dams and condoms, lube, lighting, a set, after-care, open communication,and ethical porn-making practices.
They are not “sick.” It is NOT “horrific.” It’s not “disturbing” or “disgusting.” IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, THAT’S TOTALLY OKAY. But sex positivity means that you don’t “YUCK PEOPLE’S YUM,” and you CERTAINLY don’t call them disgusting and compare them to real life rapists, when they actually created a very safe space for this kind of play - which is actually a very common practice within the BDSM community, of which these 3 performers all participate in.
To compare this completely safe, sane, cathartic experience, A VALID, ethical, and feminist form of pornography, to an actual misogynist rapist is incredibly triggering and heartbreaking to someone like me, who has been on both sides of the story, including having been abused by the same person you are comparing one of my personal favorite porn scenes to.
To me, this scene, and consentual rape play in general, is something that heals, something that makes me feel my own emotions, something that helps me cope with my own history of abuse, and something that turns me on - knowing that Berratta and the two men in this scene were SAFELY exploring a very real, very scary fantasy.
Rape is certainly real and not to be joked about or made fun of - but consentual non-consent is not humor, or a joke to be taken lightly - it’s an intense form of sex that real people participate in and deserves to have a place at the table in indie, ethical, feminist, and queer, and any intersection, pornography.
Sincerely,
A survivor, and whole-hearted supporter of consentual non-consent.
Courtney Trouble
p.s. In the spirit of sex-positivity and education, here is some Safe-For-Work information from Wikipedia on the basics of rape play:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_(BDSM)#Consensual_non-consent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_fantasy
and maybe this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157344779X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=157344779X&linkCode=as2&tag=erosophia-20
(Source: ftmfucker.com)
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When it comes to sex, we all have boundaries. Seriously. I don’t care if your boundary is “no more than four girls at once.” It’s a boundary, and it’s worth talking about. When you’re having sex with someone, you are culpable for two things: your boundaries, and their boundaries. You need to make sure you’re comfortable, and it is just as important that they are comfortable. You need to ask for sex, and they need to ask for sex. That’s how it works. A healthy sexual relationship, even if it’s a casual one-time sexual experience, is based in that communication: being able to articulate desire, and being able to act on someone else’s.
People are going to hate me for this but…
I’m disturbed that the investigators working on the Amanda Todd case are making it about bullying. Of course, bullying is a very serious issue and you shouldn’t bully people, especially to the point of suicide. But focussing on bullying in the case is like treating the symptom, not the disease. And this applies to every other case out there.
Amanda Todd was blackmailed, by a pedophile/sexual predator.
That’s the entire reason why this case, and many other cases in the world that aren’t well known, exist. The focus should be on the blackmailer/sexual predator, not the bullies that were a result of the blackmail and sexual harassment.
Additionally, Canada, where Amanda was from, is quite different from the US. In America, anyone can go onto the US National Sex Offender Public Registry to find out if there’s any convicted or suspect sexual predators in their area. In Canada, we don’t have that luxury. The sex offender registry is classified according to the RCMP, and we have no access to it. Imagine if this tool was available to her, there may have been a chance she could have found him on the registry and protected herself and reported him for sexual exploitation of a minor.
A lot of people on here have been comparing her case to other individual’s who’s stories are not well known. And while I do wish all cases to receive the same amount of attention, you can raise awareness while, pardon my language, not being an asshole.
It doesn’t matter that Amanda may or may not have masturbated and flashed her breasts on camera multiple times. That doesn’t suddenly make her less of a victim of blackmailing and pedophilia. She is just as much of a victim as anyone else. Also, legally, just because you censor her nipples from the screen capture of her flashing her breasts doesn’t suddenly make it legal. By law, that is still child pornography, and you can be charged for possessing such an image. Stop it. It is not okay to do that.Amanda is not the only one. The suspect of the case, “Kody Maxson” was in court recently, twice.
He has also blackmailed another young girl, Peyton, on the same sites Amanda frequented. Kody is part of an online community that celebrates rape and blackmail, by filming young girls on video chat sites. He even won a “blackmailer of the year” award from that community.
Please. This is not about bullying. This is about sexual predators, a very serious issue, especially to someone like myself, who is a survivor of child sexual abuse. It is not about ‘who’s story is sadder’ or ‘who’s more of a victim’, it is about pedophiles out there who could be hurting you or your family and friends. This can happen to anyone of any gender, orientation, ethnicity, social class, and any other identities.
signal boost because people are seriously forgetting why this happened in the first place.
Reading the news about it made me feel so uncomfortable because it was being shelved as bullying. Grooming, stalking, and harassment by a paedophile =/= bullying.
ugh i saw her on the front page of some paper yesterday, and the story inside was this long ass story about her ‘mistake’ of showing her body and shit. it was disgusting and i only read the last paragraph and ran out crying.
i hate people
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A racist woman is not a feminist; she doesn’t care about helping women, just the women who look like her and can buy the same things she can. A transphobic woman is not a feminist; she is overly concerned with policing the bodies and expressions of others. A woman against reproductive rights — to use bell hook’s own example, and an issue close to your heart — is not a feminist; she prioritizes her dogma or her disgust over the bodies of others. An ableist woman is not a feminist; she holds some Platonic ideal of what a physically or mentally “whole” person should be and tries to force the world to fit inside it.
Just to clarify
Things that don’t make someone a bad person:
- Drinking
- Doing drugs
- Having sex
- Not having sex
- Having opinions
Things that make someone a bad person:
- Drinking and then punching every person you see in the face
- Killing people and using their bodies to transport drugs
- Having sex with unwilling participants
- Not having sex and saying people that have sex are sluts/whores/etc.
- Forcing your opinions on others as fact and ignoring the effects of your beliefs on others
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People of all sexes have the right to explore femininity, masculinity—and the infinite variations between—without criticism or ridicule.
Leslie Feinberg (via joshuahudson)
My Experience With Anti-Choicers
luffykun3695 submitted:
I wanted to talk a little about my own experiences with Pro-Life and Pro-Lifers. This issue is very close to my heart for a multitude of reasons and I wanted to put myself out there and share my experience. I made this a text post because it was too long to submit to the ASK box.
To start off, I am a twenty-one year old bisexual (cisgendered) female, and a bit of a geek. I am also caucasian and attended a primarily white suburban school filled with conservative students and teachers, even though I am about as liberal as they come. I also happen to suffer from seven chronic illnesses.
It is due to these illnesses that I cannot have children of my own. I have the ability to conceive, but if I were to try and carry a pregnancy to term, my uterus would rupture and both I and the fetus would die. I was told this information shortly after my fifteenth birthday. The really sad thing is, I love children and I want them but I am afraid that the same disease that keeps me from birthing them will make adoption companies wary of giving kids in the future. It is because of all of these things I am pro-choice.
I have been in a relationship with a man for the last five years. We met in High School. I am extremely cautious about my birth control. I have been on the pill since I was thirteen due to irregular periods and I always take the medication on time. I make sure to use condoms as well whenever I am on an antibiotic or my period, et cetera. I am not stupid about sex. Sadly, none of these things seem to matter.I’ll tell you about the first time I realized how little my life mattered to the anti-choice set I was seventeen years old. It was around the time of the 2008 election and my government class was debating about the presidential candidates. There was a boy who stated he supported McCain because he “was not a baby-killer” and I was taken aback. I knew people felt this way but it was strange hearing it from the mouth of a sixteen year old boy. He went on to talk about how he loved Sarah Palin because she did not want to allow any abortions even in the case of incest or medical complications and I nearly had a heart-attack.
I asked him how he could be alright with this. “I would die if I were to try and have a child, what would you have me do?” I asked him and he looked me straight in the eye and said “If you were a real woman, you would die for your child.”
No smile. Dead Serious. The boy wanted me to die for a clump of cells.
It wasn’t until other people, including my teacher (who was adopted and said this made him pro-life) began parroting his statements that I realized how rampant this ignorance was. I had shake off my shock and bring out my claws. I said a lot of things in defense of pro-choice that day, but I barely remember any of them. The only thing I really remember is when I went home that night. I cried for hours in my mother’s arms because I was terrified of the fact that people would let me die for their beliefs so easily.
Now, I am an articulate pro-choice advocate but I still feel this fear when people speak of restricting abortions on those with medical problems. Personally, I feel everyone should have access to safe abortions and not just those of us with disabilities, but I am sure many people can understand why I feel a particular fear. I will never understand how a potential life is more important than an existing one.Yes, I could simply abstain from sex for the rest of my life but is that really living? I am an autonomous human being who desires the love and companionship of my life-partner and wishes to treasure that closeness. I feel pleasure from sex, both emotional and physical and I don’t want to trade that for someone else’s religious views. I take every precaution necessary, but even if I didn’t who has the right to tell me what I am doing with my boyfriend is wrong? Who has the right to dictate if I live or die? Isn’t that what your “God” is for? You claim “He” gave us free will, well I plan on using mine.
Thanks for sharing this.
Emphasis added.
This is what it all boils down to. The idea that women are mere vessels and that denying this makes you not a “real” woman.
(Source: stfuprolifers)
I’m Sick To My Stomach (tw: violence against trans person, murder, transphobia)
because another black trans* woman is dead three blocks from where Paige Clay was found murdered in April and major Chicago news outlets won’t even give her the basic respect of using her chosen name.
Because our young black girls are dying at an alarming rate and even the queer community doesn’t want to talk about it
Because my own people (queer people and black people) are throwing these women into the streets and their blood is running there now
Because my black and brown trans* sisters are being murdered in the streets and the cis white gay rights movement is worried about how soon we can get married (which is important) but ignores the need for trans* folks to have housing options when they’re kicked out of their homes, which is far too often
Because gay men are still tossing around the t-slur that these women probably heard as they died
And it’s disgusting. Because nobody cares. The queer community will not speak of these women, and neither will the black community. I used to think it would take a rash of murders to wake people up, but I don’t know anymore. Because that rash is here. Tiffany Gooden was not the first. And I’m so afraid she won’t be the last. It kills me to think that my sisters are dying like this. Brown and queer and beautiful and with nobody to empower them. It absolutely kills me.
(Source: writingrhythmandretail)