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hard rerecs on everything in the original post, and i’ll add:
music: jane remover, ezra furman, black dresses (🖤💔), arca
books: darryl (by jackie ess)
essays: in the absolute balloon, freedom of sex: the moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies
Apr 1, 2024
Related Recs
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i studied sociology and the wonderful v interdisciplinary field of gender studies, here is a combo of my favorite papers + some of the most interesting (if not bizarre) ones. obv they are both heavy fields and i don’t remember exactly what is in each so just be warned there may be difficult topics mentioned! also i am just copy/pasting some of these from old bibliographies and syllabi lol but if you google them most have free PDFs online. i tried picking stuff related to culture but apologies if this is too long, i am a soc/gs nerd!
articles:
the REAL meaning and origin of the term “male gaze” (and why I get SO mad when women today misuse it instead of saying internalized misogyny): Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” 1989
Dana M Britton “The Epistemology of the Gendered Organization” 2000
Dick Hebdidge “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” 2011 (book)
George Chauncey “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940” 1994 (book not article but super iconic / important)
Dean Spade “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law” 2011 (another book, v dense)
Joan Acker (def check out her other work if you like this one, I love her stuff) “From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions” 1992
Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (editors) ”Our History Has Always Been Contraband” 2023 (book about Black Studies comprised of essays/excerpts of theory and about history)
Evan B Towle and Lynn M Morgan “Romancing the Transgender Native Rethinking the Use of the "Third Gender" Concept” 2002
WEB DuBois “The Souls of Black Folk” 1903 (more people should read this)
J. E. Sumerau, Ryan T. Cragun, Lain A. B. Mathers ““I Found God in The Glory Hole”: The Moral Career of a Gay Christian” 2016 lol
Patricia Hill Collins “TOWARD A NEW VISION: RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER AS CATEGORIES OF ANALYSIS AND CONNECTION” 1993 (sorry for all caps)
Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman “Doing Gender” 1987
Laurel Westbrook and Kristen Schilt “Doing Gender, Determining Gender: Transgender People, Gender Panics, and the Maintenance of the Sex/Gender/Sexuality System” 2014 (MORE PEOPLE SHOULD READ THIS! it basically offers empirical evidence / explanation of of how transphobia actually perpetuates misogyny rather than simply “protecting women” or not)
Olúfemi O. Táíwò “Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics“ 2022 (book)
Cathy J Cohen “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens” 1997
Colin P Ashley “Gay Liberation: How a Once Radical Movement Got Married and Settled Down” 2015
Oct 15, 2024
from an essay i wrote on drezzdon:
I recall Mark Fisher using the term ‘magical voluntarism,’ the belief, under capitalism, that we can become anything we want to become. He also refers to it as ‘the belief that everything, including the material universe itself, is subject to individual will.’ All of a sudden I wanted to write. I watched a couple of drezzdon’s TikToks right after reading Mark Fisher as a kind of somatic ritual à la CAConrad. Though I am aware we lose ourselves in ‘magical voluntarism’ because this neoliberal project is such a success, that bones litter the Gaza Strip and tumours of red fucking meat cling to them, drezzdon’s TikToks made me feel more revolutionary. They gave me an active purpose. I could walk to the Conservative Club with the knowledge that the sky contains a ‘heaven,’ that ‘angels are near,’ before throwing eggs, plums, whatever modern rebellion looks like. I could write without constraint. Is our delusion not an act of resistance rather than compliance? And if it isn’t can’t we mobilise it as such?
Great acts of defiance have hardly been reported as righteous, I mean historically. Adam and Eve, for instance—their rebellion got me cum in my mouth, stomach, all over my stomach, got me the love of a man, as a man, as well as the knowledge of good and evil. It got me enough complicated moralism to make my life worth living, make it not seem too long. It gave us things to uncover, another major player in drezzdon’s work as well as Genesis.
Eve, Miss Universe, like literally, rounds the corner to see Adam criss-cross applesauce, his cock concealed by a fig leaf. Around it a bold red circle. She smiles, knowing nothing of bloodshed yet, no mutilation in colour. Being the archetype of feminine wiles, she revels in his embarrassment. Her cunt is wet. She cartoonishly stretches to feel her fig leaf brush gently against its lips and then lies next to him at the base of the great tree to nap. As she dreams of, what, nothing better, Adam lifts the fig leaf from his (and the first) average cock and penetrates the red circle, the canonical first bloody hole. He wonders why it was ever concealed. He wonders if his cock means anything but pleasure, knowing nothing of procreation. But we, like Eve, enjoy the unveiling, stripping our lovers piece by piece; we love what is secret, sexy, under, and perhaps that’s what the red circles are, the snippets of language. We undress the world, like Adam and Eve did, almost biblically, discovering and creating its malleability, its shadows. We revel in divine consequence and its sadomasochistic connotations.
In the middle of writing this essay I imagine ctrlcore’ing your body. You’re in the nude. I click and stretch red circles around each nut, ‘angels were here,’ meaning of course a traditional mode of reproduction, the feminine silhouette eager for your sperm—but what’s here now? ‘god,’ ‘god,’ in red arial font.
5d ago
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Incredible 80 page zine made entirely by Mira Bellwether in 2010. If it’s possible that ur ever gonna have a trans woman as a lover, read this! U don’t want ur mate to have to explain everything to you in the moment, and dontcha wanna be the best root u can? Also has lots of great shit abt the nature of a sexual relationship and how that can be a creative and generative space if everyone is feeling good and comfy and open.
buy the pdf online!
Jan 22, 2024
Top Recs from @sloane_shark
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sincerity is cool, caring is cool, you are all cool
Feb 28, 2024
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the first thing to be said is that this recommendation applies equally to everyone
the next thing to be said is that you have, inevitably, been suffering from a cocktail of depression and anxiety for more than a decade, and this has made you incredibly tired
what you need is to make NYE plans with a good friend you haven't seen in years; she will bring you out to the club and it will be fuckin rad; you'll buy some cute clothes and she'll do your makeup, despite these not being things you really ever do, and you'll forget how much you typically disdain your appearance for one night
next, you're going to have to just read for awhile, books and essays and youtube comments and text messages
after enough reading, you'll have your own thoughts and questions, and you'll inevitably see someone else asking the question "am i trans?"
reading this question will naturally lead to you asking yourself: "am i trans?"
the answer is yes
at this point, you have transitioned into a girl, and everything else is just showing off; decide on a new name; get a therapist and a doctor who are supportive; pump your body full of the hormones it needs; get some cute new clothes and burn your old shit; ask for help picking out and doing your makeup
stop treating your body like a shipping container for your sad brain; transform it into the hot girl your brain already knows you are
Feb 28, 2024
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Aug 8, 2024