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Representation Matters - Blog Posts
American Girl stories were the best tbh
Thank goodness!! Because we need artists like you!!!
I will keep drawing trans t4t horny furries who are fat and POC coded and look like the beautiful people in the world
Not my meme, stolen from Instagram! Full credit to asexual_alien and best.ace.scenario
The first thing that has ever made me believe I could actually be loveable as an autistic person was a dating sim where it turns out that the guy you’re dating has autism.
I cried.
Look at her opening doors to thousands of girls (if not more) around the world! 😍
Reblog if you genuinely support asexuals
It terrifies me that there’s so much raging passion in the lgbt+ community that insist on marginalizing asexuals and implying that asexuals don’t deserve to have safe spaces. There’s still so much acephobia so I just wanna know which blogs are genuinely supportive and a safe space for asexuals
She makes me so happy
Like, she’s Lawyer Barbie. She isn’t fat Barbie or a Barbie that has anything to do with food. No, she’s smart and secure and a lawyer.
SHARON ROONEY as LAWYER BARBIE BARBIE (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig
Hey hey shout to that character in the new Pixar movie that has an insulin pump
the thing about working on childcare these days is that I'm blown away by how open minded and genuinely curious these kids are. there are multiple openly queer kids, who are aware of the intricacy of the queer community and the multi-faceted nature of queer identity.
none of that was around 10 or 20 years ago. queerness wasn't even necessarily taboo during my childhood experiences, it just,,, wasn't taught or talked about, even from one child to another. I just didn't know it was a thing. but these little kids know about intersectionality!!!
and then when I was in high school, kids used 'gay' as an insult, but these kids at my job don't even blink differently when I told them the little queer flag pin on my messenger bag was the aroace flag. some of them ask what it means, because perhaps they've only heard of gay lesbian and trans. (and they've heard of gay lesbian and trans!!!!) I explain my flag and what it means, and it makes sense to them. that would have been alien for me as a ten year old.
some of these little lesbian girls and aroace and bisexual boys, the pan, poly, demigirl and nonbinary little ten year olds are the best friends that little me needed.
it's refreshing and heartwarming to see that the young ones of today are the kind of people this world needs.
PROTECT QUEER KIDS!!!! EMPOWER QUEER KIDS!!!!
Let me just add some color to the wlw side of tumblr…
There’s one actress in this post who has played a queer character on three… not one not two, three different shows
I’m so happy to see my request bring happiness to other Echo lovers 🥰
I personally feel left out as a Latina by the SW franchise. There is a great article about SW giving Latinx characters backgrounds with stereotypes associated with Latinx ppl.
Reading fics of my fav characters makes me feel like I belong in this community! I hope we see more strong women in The Bad Batch!
The following link is to a story written by @zoeykallus who has written a wonderful story about a latine , curvy reader falling in love with Echo, or actually already is and Echo already feeling the exact same for reader. It is just positivity and fluff all over the place and we can all use that. https://zoeykallus.tumblr.com/post/691524199228063744/request-hello-love-ive-been-enjoying-reading
OOOOF THIS ONE IS SO SOFT AND TENDER AND WE LOVE THAT FOR ECHO. Also, I adore Hunter telling him to stop shrinking himself (as someone that probably could use someone telling me that regularly). This is lovely! Thanks for the rec! :)
Participate in Fandom Friday to show your favorite creators from this week some love! :)
Challenges to the Future
As stated, books are great at taking the reader in and allowing them to experience something new. In the late 2000s and continued today, multiple researchers find that while the Harry Potter series focused prejudice specific to the wizarding world (blood status, class, speciesism), children who had read the series had translated the messages of equality into their own lives and lessened their prejudices of class, race, immigrants and others.
With an easy skim, two of my favorite children’s books/series are on this list: Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling (of course), and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. While this large list of 130 of the most frequently challenged books overall (2) does not give the reasons why by looking at the titles you can see these of Cuban-stories (anti-communism, immigration), children growing up (books that mention changing bodies, sex-questions), “attacks” on religion (books with a non-Christian focus: witchcraft mostly), and challenged due to LGBTQIA+ content are again about trying to keep children “pure” and to block them from learning about the world around them. The list focused on YA novels, noted as those written for a YA audience, with a YA main character or frequently on high school reading list (3) has a similar content of banned books but with the addition of some books that to some may just be traumatizing such as The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.
We know these stories, fiction or non-fiction, can improve young people’s mental health by knowing they are not alone with their feelings or questions, and that introducing someone to a different culture and mindset will increase communication, open-mindedness and reduce violence. I can understand not wanting to children exposed to things too early, but for most and as with my parents, what was seen as too old for me was not accurate and more of a personal desire. We must also remember that children are stronger than we think and children who grow without a diverse experiences will lose out not only because they will have less in life to enjoy but that as they interact with those who are different they have shown to be afraid and become violent.
(1) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-everyone-should-read-harry-potter/
(2) http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/childrensbooks
(3) http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/YAbooks
Oooooo THE HORROR
This week is apparently Banned Books Weeks and this year, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (pretty much the point of books in MY opinion) released the top 11 books so far calculated as the most banned in 2018. (1) (2)
George by Alex Gino*
A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller*
Captain Underpants series, written and illustrated by Dan Pilkey*
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Drama, written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier*
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
Skippyjon Jones series, written and illustrated by Judy Schachner
The Absolutely True diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman, illustrated by Kristyna Litten*
Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan*
It’s important to note that six of the eleven books (asterisked above) were challenged or banned because of LGBTQIA+ content. As books are meant to open your mind and bring you connection, the hateful reasons behind banning books remind us why PRIDE and representation are so important. This is especially true when looking at the statistics from the Trevor Project, that have found that LGB youth contemplate suicide 3x the rate of heterosexual youth and are 5x as likely to attempt. (3)
Going more off the serious side I cannot understand how a same-sex couple was the only reason listed as people’s issue with Captain Underpants. Seriously? I always thought they were stupid so I stopped trying to read them after a few but with everything else I remember finding (now the word I would use) distasteful, it was not any non-heterosexual relationships. What complete horsecrap.
(1) https://bannedbooksweek.org/11-challenged-and-banned-books/
(2) https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/22/us/banned-books-week-2019-trnd/index.html
(3) https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/
I think ppl need to stop dismissing films like “crazy rich asians” and “to all the boys I loved before” as “cool for representation but just rom com fluff.”
Because like damn guys, sometimes I just don’t wanna deal with super deep narratives about identity and misogyny. Sometimes I just can’t handle the secondary trauma of movies like the joy luck club and maos last dancer. Sometimes I just need to escape into a happy place of light humor and hot people. And sometimes I want that happy place to show ppl who look like me.
Don’t knock escapism representation y’all.
PLEASE hype Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as much as you hyped The Falcon and The Winter Soldier or Wandavision, it deserves all the love and REPRESENTATION MATTERS.
With all the Asian hate going around, THIS is our moment as a fandom to show love and support, and hype this the fuck up because it's gonna be BRILLIANT!
