It’s that time of year again! Pumpkins, ghosts, goblins, werewolves. All manner of spooky creatures, books, movies, music, etc. to celebrate the time of the year dedicate to horror!
To celebrate the best season, the best month, and the best holiday, we’re holding a raffle.
Do you like horror (of course you do)? How about an almost entirely LGBTQ cast with LGBTQ developers (this is getting obvious)? Now let’s make it a visual novel with heavy sci-fi elements and maybe also a dating sim.
This is the concept of Love Shore. Taken from their Kickstarter, “Love Shore is a visual novel game that takes concepts we’ve always loved in sci-fi, action, and horror and blends them together to create something wild. It features a queer, diverse cast, a seemingly endless city, and a story of coming into yourself and doing what you think is right…with a heavy dose of drama and violence mixed in for good measure”.
A demo is available and they have met their goal for Kickstarter! However, that does not mean the work is over and we were able to get a chance to talk to Emmett and Son from the development team about the history of the game and where to go from here.
Continue reading “Love Shore: A Diverse Cast, A Diverse Narrative”
A ‘slacktivist’ is someone who chooses to do all or most of their activist work through online mediums such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and so on. These people are often disregarded as lesser and lazy activists when compared to those who are able to do activism work offline. For example, UrbanDictionary.com defines slacktivism as, “The act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem”. The example given is people signing online petitions as opposed to getting involved in neighborhood watches or other offline activities. The concept of ‘slacktivism’ and that people who focus their ideas online are ‘slacktivists’ is extremely problematic and downplays the importance and reach of online activism.
The idea of slacktivism is rooted in ableism. Not everyone has the ability to mentally or physically engage in activism offline. For example, someone who has to deal with social anxiety may not be able to attend marches or large gatherings. Someone who suffers from a pain disorder may not be able to walk in marches or stand for long periods of time. Implying that people who participate in online activism are inherently lazy, ignores the fact that some of these people may not be able to physically attend activist events, no matter how much they want to. These people do important work in the ways they can, such as online work that is so quickly discredited without thinking about the reasons someone may not be able to attend or do offline work.
The idea of slackitvism is also classist. I live in an area with no public transportation. There is no way for me to attend many meetings, marches, and so one without a ride. The idea that people who participate in online activism have the means to travel or to take time off of work in order to participate in offline work is classist. For example, people may not be able to take off work in order to attend offline events and thus may spend valuable and limited free time doing online work. For people in areas with limited resources, the closest areas that have a large enough resource pool may be hours away. These people may not have the resources in order to set up their own grassroots organizations or the money and time to travel and thus, resort to online activism in order to be a part of events and causes they feel are important to them.
And countless others. In fact, the internet saved my life repeatedly and continues to do so. I’m not alone either. I can safely say that millions of people have had their lives deeply and personally touched by those whose faces they may never see, voices they may never hear, and bodies they may never touch. People constantly disregard internet relationships (both intimate and friend) because of the lack of physical. While some of us may eventually meet these people, some of them we may not for whatever reason. Does that diminish the value, love, acceptance, and so on we feel in these relationships? Absolutely not. People criticize how people often have their heads in their phones, tablets, or other devices, as opposed to interacting with those around them. They talk about how people are always on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or other forms of…SOCIAL… media. These people are being social. In fact, they are possibly being more social than they could be with those around them.
I met both of my partners online, relatively. Most of my friends I have met through the internet. I have friends who have been my friends for almost ten years. These are people who experienced me at my worst, people who were at my side when I was going through the most troubling and traumatic times in my life. People who were there for me and cared for me when others were not. When I first tried to come out to my family as trans*, I was rejected. I was mocked. I was humiliated. I found solace in those who loved me online. Even before then, I was able to quell my loneliness with the internet. Before the internet, I didn’t think people like me existed. I’m not talking about just trans*, but trans* people LIKE me. In media, there were no femme trans guys. There were no cross-dressing men who had happened to be assigned female at birth. I didn’t exist. I was a freak among freaks in my head. That all changed when I found people like me online, not just one, or two, but communities FILLED with them.
Trigger Warning: Trans*phobia, transmisogyny
Following trends like #CognitiveCissonance and #FuckCisPeople, #DearCisFeminism has quickly been spreading like rapid fire across Twitter. This hashtag, like the others, is to call into question the double standards that feminism has towards its acceptance of hateful and oppressive ideology while pushing trans* people, especially trans women, out of the picture. Tweets covered broad topics anywhere from the dominance of butch/masculine people in feminist discourse (while rejecting femme/feminine people as upholding the patriarchy), the refusal to call out TERFs (like Brennan) on their misogynistic and bigoted statements, and how cis feminism often ignores women of color, sex workers, the poor, and others while focusing on their own middle class white cis needs.
Trigger Warning: Trans*phobia, transmisogyny, cissexism
This piece will not be about how Brownworth exploited a minor to show her his genitals for journalism. This piece will not be about how Brownworth has been attacking trans women about calling her out on her pedophilia for profit either. This piece will focus on going into the very root of her beliefs and exposing her for the trans*phobic, transmisogynist that Brownworth is by virtue of her own writing, interviews, and views. Just like I did with the Brennan interview, I plan on doing the same with Brownworth. If you want to know more about the previously mentioned, the TransAdvocate and Sophia Banks have done very well for documenting this and her harassment. I may touch upon those in this article, but that is not my focus as two very prominent women have already covered that (and continue to).
Brownworth says she is an ally of trans women and trans* people. However, for an ally, she spends her time around people like Brennan and other TERFs. When called out on twitter, she falls back into these people for support against these ‘vicious’ trans* people. Often, she resorts to the same TERF tactic of saying anyone calling her out is harassing, stalking, and obsessed with her. She uses the same fear mongering tactics employed by those who wish to keep trans* people, usually trans women, from peeing in peace (as an example). I feel nothing better suits this and proves this point than her piece on the Michigan Womyn’s Music Fest (Michfest/ MWMF), minus all of the stuff on Twitter of course.
Continue reading “Faces of Trans*Phobia: Victoria Brownworth”
Trigger Warning: Trans*phobia, transmisogyny, cissexism
On September 2, the hashtag #CognitiveCissonance made its way around twitter, mostly from trans* people. Started by @AmyDentata, the obvious word play on cognitive dissonance was made to point out the hypocritical and double-standard that many cis people have towards the identities, presentations, and lives of trans* people. For example, the idea that trans women must present en femme to really be women and that trans men must be masculine to truly be male. Cognitive cissonance was a witty way to expose every day trans*phobia and cissexism.
Cognitive Cissonance became a trend through accident. Being a writer, who enjoys bringing comedy into what she writes, the original tweet was based in snark and wordplay (obviously). What started as an off-the-cuff joke turned into a massive twitter following in the trans* twitter world. Something about the simplicity and catchiness of #cognitivecissonance caught on like a wildfire. People began basing their own tweets off of Amy’s original tweet. “I guess maybe the phrase just happened to describe that phenomenon succinctly enough to drive the point home”, she mentioned when asked why she felt the hashtag became so popular, “I think trans people, myself included obviously, are sick of the double-standards, hypocrisy, and two-faced behaviors that result from cissexism and all the beliefs that go with it.”
GenderTerror 