From a 9th century Irish manuscript, the phrase ‘massive hangover’ (Latheirt) written in the ancient Irish text Ogham. The monk must have been having a very rough day…..
Look at this lad. Image: THX, Ltd.The Deep Note, the distinctive synthesized crescendo that is THX’s audio trademark, is one of the most iconic sounds in all of film. For the effects firm’s 35th anniversary, they’ve now shared the sheet music behind the sound.
This is an Anna’s Hummingbird; named after Anna Masséna, Duchess of Rivoli.
Also, evidently hand feeding Hummingbirds is a kinda popular thing. All you have to do is put sugar-water that’s been dyed red or any other bright, flower like color in your hand and stand around some hummingbirds.
It highkey looks like that hummingbird just attacked that person’s hand and is now drinking the blood though. Lol
…have you ever met a hummingbird? They want nothing more than blood.
“If we wanna talk about biology like using tha as a defense for being transphobic is actually a thing. Let’s look at something. I actually wrote a paper on trans athletes in sports and was direct to this article by my professor when i started writing it. But people don’t click on links that prove them wrong so here’s some excerpts:
“The public is by now used to the idea that sex is biological while gender is a social construct. But where in our biology does sex reside: in our genes, in our genitals, in our hormones? And is it even possible to separate biological sex from the environmental influence of gender?“
““It is very difficult to come up with an absolute line,” says Arthur Arnold, distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California Los Angeles“
“They found that other genetically male (XY) women had a double dose of a gene on the X chromosome, DAX1, that antagonizes male development, even if SRY is working. Then they found WNT4, another “anti-male” gene on the X chromosome that, if over-expressed, overwhelms the “pro-male” SRY. Rather than a singular bully that “imposed” masculinity, sex differentiation began to look more like a negotiation.“
“But the coroner actually found that Walsh’s cells were mismatched: some carried XY chromosomes, and some carried chromosomes with one X,“
“Walsh had mixed chromosomes, mixed internal sex organs and mixed external genitalia. As for her gender identity, the coroner, Samuel Gerber, offered his own assessment. “Socially, culturally and legally, Stella Walsh was accepted as a female for 69 years. She lived and died a female.”
“Martinez-Patino has androgen insensitivity syndrome. Her chromosomal sex is XY and she has male internal sex organs, but a genetic mutation means her androgen receptors don’t work….She developed as a typical female, and she and her family never doubted her gender..”
“But no study has ever shown that performance — say, finishing times in a race — correlates to athletes’ levels of testosterone. Testosterone is a complicated, dynamic substance: finishing a marathon causes it to plummet in men, while positive feedback from a coach can cause it to shoot up.“
“In one study of nearly 700 Olympians participating in 15 sports, 13.7 per cent of women had natural testosterone levels above the typical female range, 4.7 per cent were within the male range, and 16.5 per cent of men had levels below the typical male range…if hyperandrogenic women are overrepresented in elite sports, they themselves are still vastly outranked by female athletes who are winning with typical hormones.”
“there is little evidence that synthetic or “exogenous” testosterone behaves the same way as natural or “endogenous” testosterone“
I highly suggest reading the whole article but there’s your “biological sexes” analyzed by actual professionals who have studied this stuff. Because saying trans women have an unfair advantage is inherently transphobic. I don’t care what your reasoning is. If you see it as outsiders invading womens spaces you are transphobic.
Trans women are women! i know we say it a lot now but instead of wondering how they’r harming women, instead of arguing that it’s sexist to support trans women in womens sports, consider that they’re just fucking women who want to live their lives and have fulfilling careers. Instead of going “hmm they have an unfair advantage based on the fact i didn’t actually research this” consider that they are WOMEN just as woman as someone who identifies that way and has a uterus. It’s not unfair because they belong just like everyone else. If they are successful then they’re a successful female athlete done and done. end of story.
Cis women, there’s a lot of shit in the world out to get you, i feel that, but trans women are NOT one of them.
I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar – indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical – to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
I’ve gotten a few messages asking for (well, in some cases more “demanding”) elaboration, so: here are a few of the primary areas in which I’ve observed that arguments against bi inclusion and arguments against ace inclusion tend to exhibit significant overlap. There may well be others – these are simply the ones I’ve run into most frequently.
The Passing Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks don’t have any grounds to complain about discrimination and violence suffered in relation to their orientation, because a bisexual person is able to pass as straight simply by choosing partners of the appropriate gender. Therefore, any discrimination and violence that a bisexual person does experience must be construed as voluntarily undertaken, since they could have passed, and freely chose not to.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that being ace poses no particular barrier to seeking a partner of a socially acceptable gender, so any failure to do so must likewise be construed as voluntary.
The Performativity Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from queer communities because sexual orientation is purely performative; i.e., being gay is defined in terms of currently having a sexual partner of the same gender. A bisexual person who has a partner of a different gender is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person, and must therefore be regarded as straight. Conversely, a bisexual person whose current partner is of the same gender must nonetheless be regarded with suspicion, because they could “turn straight” at any time simply by leaving that partner.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that their orientation has no discernible performative component; an ace person is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person who simply isn’t involved in a sexual relationship at that particular moment, so ace folks must therefore be regarded as straight by default.
(An astute reader may notice that the passing argument dovetails neatly into the performativity argument: those who choose not to seek partners of a socially acceptable gender may be dismissed because any violence and discrimination they experience is a consequence of their voluntary failure to pass, while those who do seek such partners are performatively straight and therefore to be shunned. It’s a neat little system.)
The Mistaken Identity Argument
It has been argued that, while bisexual folks may suffer discrimination and physical and sexual violence, they’re not targeted by such acts because they’re bisexual. Any discrimination and violence a bisexual person suffers in relation to their orientation is suffered because they were mistaken for a gay person. Any effort on their part to discuss such experiences is therefore to be regarded as appropriative, in spite of the fact that they personally experienced it. In short, a bisexual person’s own experience of violence and discrimination doesn’t truly “belong” to them: it “belongs” to the purely hypothetical gay person their persecutors allegedly mistook them for.
This argument is applied to ace folks practically verbatim – no particular adaptation is necessary.
I’ll add The Contribution Argument, which involves one of these gatekeeping behaviors:
1) rewriting history to erase bisexual and asexual contributions to political LGBTQ rights movements, and then claiming that bisexuals and asexuals have never done anything for the community at large
2) arguing that modernday bisexuals and asexuals should be excluded from current political movements because our goals are distinct from, or even contradictory to the goals of the LGBTQ rights movement at large
3) interpreting any attempt on the part of bi/asexuals to make safe spaces for ourselves within the community as an attack on LG safe spaces, generally by reframing bi/ace pride as homo/lesbophobia, or by dismissing accusations of bi/acephobia as inherently homo/lesbophobic
In other words, arguing that bisexuals and asexuals, rather than being contributing members of the community, are parasites on the community, leeching from, and undermining the community and its goals.
The Contribution Argument is an interesting one because it goes way beyond popular biphobia.
It’s often been asserted that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from the LG community because that community is specifically for folks who experience homophobia, and bisexual folks don’t experience homophobia, save by misidentification. (See the Mistaken Identity Argument, above.)
However, anybody who’s over the age of 30 can tell you that the positioning of the experience of homophobia as the community’s great unifier is, itself, a relatively novel development.
Up until quite recently (and by “recently” I mean as recently as the mid 1980s), even lesbians were routinely characterised by the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism as unwelcome parasites, riding on the movement’s coattails and contributing nothing in return.
Not only is identifying the experience of homophobia – defined narrowly as discrimination against those who are actively involved in sexual relationships with persons of the same gender – as the sole qualifier for inclusion a totally arbitrary place to draw the line, it’s baldly ahistorical.
Historically, a great many folks who do experience this type of homophobia have routinely been left out in the cold by mainstream activism for gender and sexual minorities – and the Contribution Argument, as you’ve outlined it here, is one of the primary tools that’s been used to justify that exclusion.
this post is literally just “why won’t those big meanie gays let asexuals in their club??? :(” written in the form of a jargon-filled essay for a philosophy class
I love your wording; because that’s precisely it. Its the “gay club.” As in, its the same fuckers who wanted us bi people to be excluded. It’s the same people who argued that we should drop the “T” to focus on the “gay movement.”
Newsflash: no one wants an invitation to that party. No one is “invading.” No one wants to be included in your “gay club.”
What we want is shits like you to quit perpetuating intra community bigotry and hatred in the LGBT+; because the only ones treating it like a “club” are those of you that check the “queer credentials” of everyone looking for a safe space and stamp their hands with “gay enough I guess” to let us pass through the gates. (Not that we get the same treatment as the ~VIP cis gays~ anyway.)
Anyway, nice to know that you people are still ignoring when bi ppl speak and repurpose that biphobia as ace hatred in the same breath :)))))) kinda :))))))) reinforces the points above :))))))))))
Steel Phoenix Studios 