lmfao
masculinity is a prison, time doesn’t exist, gender isn’t real, virginity is a construct, and Jesus wasn’t white.
me @ dinner parties
do you ever think about chuck palahniuk writing “we don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression… the great depression is our lives” in the early 1990s as a young gay man living in america at the peak of the aids epidemic
like i know the main thing i’ve seen people talk about is the obvious homoeroticism between the narrator and tyler and, y’know, how a fight club is the epitome of constructing intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men BUT if you think about it in the context of the time palahniuk was living in as a gay man there is SO much more to it than that
he wrote a book that’s all about grappling with death and pain and wanting to take them into your own hands… literally the first line of the book ends with “the first step to eternal life is you have to die.” it’s the narrator visiting all these different support groups for different diseases like cancers and blood parasites as a ~tourist in order to feel healthy and alive and free (note: most people who died of aids didn’t die of the virus itself but of opportunistic infections and aids-related cancers). it’s about how “on a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.” like yes it’s intricate rituals, but it’s very specifically men sharing bodily fluids and blood. it’s about reclaiming death and using it as a symbol.
it’s about feeling abandoned and forgotten and ignored by the establishment and wanting to burn everything down because of that, about an entire generation of gay men trapped in a great spiritual depression, waging a war, a revolution, for their lives but one that was not acknowledged publicly for years while they suffered. it’s about living double lives, becoming someone Different under the cover of darkness, someone Stronger and Braver who could rage against the system the way you never even dreamed of doing in the daylight
it’s about being a member of A Club (where the initiation is a kiss that burns your skin) that exists everywhere and nowhere, and being able to immediately pick out someone else who’s In The Club just by looking at them even though no one around you has a clue, and you just nod at each other and acknowledge your shared experience and save your actual interactions for secret back rooms and basements—except pretty soon other people can tell there’s something Unsavory going on with you because you start exhibiting physical signs that you can’t hide anymore including bloody lesions on your face.
it’s about “only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes” + david wojnarowicz wearing a jacket in 1988 that said “if i die of aids – forget burial – just drop my body on the steps of the fda”. it’s about “his name is robert paulson and he is fortyeight years old. his name is robert paulson, and robert paulson will be fortyeight years old, forever” + this panel from the AIDS memorial quilt that reads “my name is duane kearns puryear. i was born on december 20, 1964. i was diagnosed with aids on september 7, 1987 at 4:45 pm. i was 22 years old. sometimes, it makes me very sad. i made this panel myself. if you are reading it, i am dead.”
literally every line of this book (and the film) mean More if you read it through this lens. “you aren’t your name. you aren’t your family. … everything you ever love will reject you or die.” taking the sentence “i am the toxic waste byproduct of God’s creation” that is the worst thing anyone could fear about themselves (and like.. it’s literally homophobia. especially re: gay men during the aids crisis) and weaponizing it because it means you have nothing to lose. tyler saying fuck the police and telling the police commissioner that “the people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. we’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. we make your bed. we guard you while you’re asleep.”
anyways it’s not just homoerotic, it’s gay in a very specific way grounded very specifically in the moment in time when it was written and in the generational trauma of the aids crisis thanks for coming to my ted talk
Man, as an undiagnosed Autistic/ADHD kid growing up pre-internet around a lot of ultra-far-right, ultra-religious folks, I KNEW I was different, and assumed that meant I was wrong, and that I’d better adopt the positions and behaviors of those around me if I wanted to be “normal” and accepted.
From the time I was able to speak, any time I expressed my true thoughts and feelings, I was either laughed at, angrily told I was wrong, ridiculed, or bullied. And if everyone around me agreed on things that I didn’t believe, I MUST have been the one who was wrong, right? So I developed some truly horrible takes and behaviors by mimicking the people everyone else seemed to look up to, in an effort to appear “normal.”
Of course, I also had it drilled into me from an early age that unless I forced myself to believe in things I didn’t, that I would spend eternity being tortured in the Hell I no longer believe in. Not sexist or homophobic enough? You’re going to burn in Hell. Did you even THINK about sex or IMAGINE a naked girl outside of wedlock? Going to Hell if you get hit by a bus before begging forgiveness. Think evolution makes sense? Hell. Don’t believe strongly enough in every word of the Bible, or don’t take the parts literally that the Powers That Be have decided are to be taken literally? Hell. Take the parts literally that the Powers That Be have decided are to be ignored? Hell. If you have a girlfriend or get married, and, as a man, don’t take charge of and dominate your relationship or household enough? Free ticket to Hell (and also you’re not a “real man”).
Sure, it sounds ridiculous, but when it’s drilled into you from an early age, it’s hard to break away from. I don’t know if all of it was what they were TRYING to teach, but it’s what I learned from them.
Then add in all the toxic masculinity of the far right, and you’ve got a truly horrible package of crap. Like, imagine every horrible ultra-far-right and downright out-of-touch-with-reality evangelical, and toxic-masculinity tweet you’ve ever seen, and that was what was shoved down my throat my entire childhood and young adulthood as The Only True And Correct Way Of Thinking And Behaving.
And again, no Internet, no real exposure to other types of thought for the most part, and when I DID meet someone who thought differently, they were a Bad Influence, who wanted to Tempt Me Away From Righteousness.
And again, deviating from any of that–even THINKING in contradiction to any of it–was punishable by an eternity of torture in Hell. God was always watching, always judging, and anything less that perfect holiness in thought, belief, and action meant I would spend eternity in Hell.
But I couldn’t STOP thinking it all seemed wrong–especially when I started finding and reading books with alternate views–so I lived in a state of constant terror, because no matter how much I pretended and tried to force myself to believe, I doubted everything I had been taught.
And again, was I supposed to take it all literally? I don’t know. But my autistic brain took it at face value. Hell awaited if I wasn’t a perfect enough Christian.
I remember how any time I came home from school to an empty house, I was terrified that the Rapture had happened, and that I wasn’t pure enough to be taken up with everyone else.
If you didn’t grow up like that, I don’t know if you can understand just how traumatizing it can be, especially for a neurodivergent kid who already knows they’re Not Like Everyone Else, and who is desperate to be what literally everyone in their in-group tells you is The Right Kind Of Person.
Eventually I rejected all that, but after literally decades of masking, outwardly adopting a lot of attitudes I didn’t agree with, trying to force myself to believe things I didn’t, and mimicking what I now understand were shitty behaviors (because of being constantly told, “that’s how a man is supposed to act”), although I knew who I didn’t want to be, I didn’t actually know who I was, who I wanted to be, or how to become that person.
And even after I rejected most of that, a lot of the toxic masculinity remained. I quit college and joined the Army at eighteen for several reasons, but one of those reasons was to prove myself “manly.” I cannot even begin to describe the degree of toxic masculinity and far right nationalism in the Army at the time (Maybe it has changed in the past forty years), but spending my late teens and early twenties there just reinforced a lot of what I’d been taught growing up.
It was only later, after I completely rejected religion and much of the other stuff I’d been taught growing up that a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long-ass tunnel, and I’m still going through it.
I was fortunate enough to make some friends who challenged me on a lot of that stuff, who in some cases recommended learning resources, and who were patient with me while I worked through figuring out what I really felt and believed. And it made a huge difference.
Tumblr has also been a great resource for me to correct some of my decades of conditioning–I say conditioning, but maybe brainwashing is a better word. There are a lot of shitty takes on here, sure, but also a lot that have caused me to reevaluate myself as a person and make conscious changes to myself and my belief system over the past few years. Mostly from younger people, because let’s face it; most of my generation has stuck with the sexist, nationalistic, transphobic, racist, pro-capitalist ways of thinking they learned in their youth.
I’ve come a long way from the person that I was–I’m embarrassed to even mention some of the behaviors I used to think were okay because people around me made it seem like those behaviors were expected and admired–but I’m sure I still have some bad takes I don’t even recognize as bad yet, and that I’m going to work on.
The worst part is knowing how many other people I hurt with my toxicity.
I feel like I’m in a constant state of deprogramming myself. It’s exhausting.
I just want to read a few books per week, learn multiple languages, and a couple of instruments, become more proficient at advanced mathematics, write essays and books, exercise regularly, sleep eight hours per night, eat really healthily, have an active social life including enjoying all of my close relationships, and be really sexy. Is that really so unreasonable
Capitalism says you have More Important Things To Do
You don’t have to understand why other people love you, you just have to accept it when they do. Whether or not to love you is their decision to make. So stop trying to decide what you’re worth on behalf of other people. You don’t get to make that choice for them.
You ever sit there doing something with your hands, listening to a podcast or audiobook or something, and suddenly realise that’s your natural state to be. This is what you’re supposed to be doing, crafting something nice while listening to another human’s speech and thoughts. How people have done this for as long as there’s been people, from crafting arrow heads from rocks while listening to grandma tell the tale of the mammoth hunt, to having a friend read aloud from a book while you’re all fixing horse reins and doing needlework, to you sitting there doing whatever you’re doing, with youtube open on the background.
Hi random internet people who read this. I haven’t been here in a while, and might disappear again. *shrug* I haven’t been doing well lately (like most of us, I think). But I’m trying to hang on, trying to do small things to take care of myself and those around me. Small things.
Tumblr gives me moments of beauty and hope and humor; I’ve missed it. If you’re reading this, thanks for helping create something weird and cute and wonderful.
