i can’t decide if this is the single coolest girl in the world for making danger her middle name or the silliest for not seeing the raw power of “millipede danger” which is the greatest name i have ever heard
I went to the local aviary today and they had some really mean things to say about owls.
I feel this spawns a new interpretation, where Athena, despite being the goddess of wisdom, liked owls the way you love a really exceptionally stupid cat.
I went to the local aviary today and they had some really mean things to say about owls.
I feel this spawns a new interpretation, where Athena, despite being the goddess of wisdom, liked owls the way you love a really exceptionally stupid cat.
“it’s weird for queer minors to be friends with queer adults” oh my god. ohhh my god.
intergenerational community support, especially in a community that is split so much age wise as the queer community, is immensely fucking important. get to know older queers and younger queers. this is how communities frazzle out and die to infighting.
the hypothetical queer adult that people are mad over in the post this is refrencing is 35 years old. only 35.
its weird for any minors to be friends with any adults, queer or not. There should be no reason why unrelated adults or minors should be making close relationships in any sense outside of professional ones. I understand wanting education, but they can be taught when they are adults as well.
is this a joke.
That commenter seems to forget that children are human beings too
Has this person never been involved in hobbies or politics or religion or the arts or any environment that normal people interact in?
I think part of the problem is thinking there’s only one kind of friendship. The friendship I form with a kid is going to look different than a friendship I have with someone my own age or friendship with someone significantly older than me. But that doesn’t mean it’s not friendship. I mean, being kind to each other, talking about similar interests, giving each other support and advice when needed— these are good things, and there may be another type of relationship you could term this, but I think friendship works just as well.
Unless you’re the type of person who thinks that friends will inevitably take advantage of each other, or that a friendship always has potential to turn into a relationship. Because those are the circumstances where you would need to watch out with an adult becoming friends with a kid.  But just because those bad apples exist, doesn’t mean you should cut down all the apple trees. 
I think they’re the type of person who thinks all adults are looking to take (sexual) advantage of any person younger than they are, and can literally not fathom the concept of a community made up of people across all ages interacting with each other as being healthy, despite that being the standard way of living throughout pretty much all cultures throughout all of history.
They’re really going to have problems when they eventually graduate into the working world and have no idea how to socialize with most of the people around them.
Never mind that, you know, if a queer kid’s parents kick them out for being queer, it’s probably good if they have SOME other safe adults in their lives who might have, like, a couch they can crash on?
My adult friends were the ones who took me out to lunch when my dad died and told me they’d been there too, and what it was like. They mentored me in math and volunteer work and my job. One drove me to synagogue every week and added me to her family plan. They have life experience that no one my age could dream about—my tap teacher was even in the original Broadway cast of Hello, Dolly! I absolutely love my friends who are my age, but they’ve never asked me to help them name a hurricane.
I’ve only felt unsafe with adults a few times in my life, and I could see the danger signs BECAUSE I had much experience with good adults. Having adult friends throughout my childhood helped me learn how to be a good adult, too.
Knowing different kinds of people helps you grow and understand who you want to be. If I didn’t have so many good influences from my (adult) friends, I might have turned out a very different person. I’m forever grateful to them.
every word out of guillermo del toro’s mouth is the most hardcore thing i’ve ever heard and he says it all so casually like he doesn’t even realize how much of a gothic visionary he is
“Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing”
i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said “we’re not catholic here”. now every time i’m doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.
If the weekend comes and you can’t stand the thought of not having your time filled with survival requirements and/or the idea of socializing un-anesthetized scares/freaks/weirds the fuck out of you? Go see a therapist and tell them that. Tell them that you can’t stand the thought of doing nothing. Or doing something for no reason other than enjoying it. Tell them you can’t relax without chemical help, be it socially or just in general.
It is not normal. Everyone doesn’t live that way. Even all the people you go drinking with on the weekend? Not all of them need it. But you? You can’t have time off without it.
That’s not normal.
Look. I’m not hating on social drinking. Before the pandemic, my favorite thing to do with my friends was go to a local brewery and try all the weirdest beer I could find. But when that wasn’t an option, I wasn’t destitute. Boy howdy though there were some people I knew who were.
And more importantly, I’ve known people who got help. Some of them got therapy and some got on medication, and it was a world of difference. Some of them even can still drink and often do! But they aren’t driven to it by any need other than wondering what a beer that’s called “Girl From IPA-nena” tastes like.
So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.
I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.
See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.
I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.
Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.
In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.
They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.
Conservatives lost their damn minds.
Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.
When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.
Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America.
Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”
Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.
The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.
This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.
Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.
The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.
I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.
Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.
Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.
The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.
That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.
They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.
So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.
We have! To keep! Pushing back!
Someone reblogged this saying they’d never heard any of this before and they didn’t even know how to begin verifying it, so let me help!
Here’s a 1995 article from the NYT about Disney putting this policy into effect after promising to do so in 1994.
Here’s a wikipedia page about Disney’s unofficial Gay Days and how they’ve been protested by Christian groups.
I tried to find the book I read, but honestly so many different weird evangelical anti-Disney books came up when I was googling that I can’t be sure which one it was. 🙃
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