Smarter than you

It’s around this time a decade ago that I’d say I quit being An Artist. In 2014 I had a little podcast project cooking and I went to a residency to try to think more about it and maybe do some writing, as well as make more connections in Calgary. I ended up pretty unsatisfied with the work I was doing and having trouble figuring out how to proceed. I edited one of the episodes I recorded there and shelved the rest.

Around this time I was sending applications for things like shows or school and not hearing back a lot. There are a couple of people who did try to advocate for me and my work; Kristy put me into the Alberta Biennial in 2015 with some work from a couple years before, and I MC’d one of the AGA’s big events, which was fun. But also, who else noticed?

This question of course makes me remember the opportunities that I’ve not known how to say yes to. In 2013 someone from a residency tried to invite me to do an international project and broke ass me not even working full time couldn’t imagine how that would be possible. Shout out to the people who actually emailed me over the decade about D&D for hire too, only like one or two of who I actually responded to.

Anyway in 2015 I fell in love. I got serious about making my lil D&D game rigorous even as I detached from the idea of being successful with it for any larger audience out of discomfort with the shape of the online scene. I got into barbecue and I became close with my best friend and with all the regulars going out after Manhunt every week. I built myself a foundation for the aesthetic richness of life at a smaller scale.

I’ve been talking with a therapist this year about trying to be satisfied in the there without the trappings of professionalism. I’ve come back to being pretty interested in trying to paint again, and I do think that stuff is getting in the way. For the holidays I tried to step back from any expectations of production or even really participation. I missed one party I should have gone to (I love to celebrate a divorce), but I really allowed intimacy to take over my whole activity space in a wonderful way. Of course I can’t help myself, I end up with ideas like “what if I got really serious about rope” that lead me back to the professional in a way that I don’t know what to do with.

But life is good. I’m busy on the board of our housing co-op, I love my artist-run-centre job even though it pays like shit, and my lover is working in tech so we’re doing fine. I love the way the ocean looks in a movie, I love cooking. A stranger told me they were “obsessed” with my dancing at the club last month. I’m sending out an invite to my quarterly salon this month.

This week I had a dream about hand-binding books of artist writing, so I thought I should post on my blog.

star-anise:

fozmeadows:
dukeofankh:
dukeofankh:
I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a “Porn Addiction Coach” to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.
Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn’t something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.
But my desire is good. It’s not something that I’m being accepted in spite of. It’s a positive thing. It’s a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I’d convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.
It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.
But it’s important to do. It’s important to leave relationships that don’t welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just…not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.
@kisstheashes
Oh don’t worry, I didn’t make it out of Evangelical Purity Culture thinking that girls had it peachy or anything. Our experiences are different, but both bad.
I have seen a lot of content about E.P.C. that very firmly centers the ways that purity culture dovetails with rape culture, the ways that women and women’s bodies were held responsible for the actions of men, and the ways that their own sexuality was erased under the burden of being cast as the pure, moral, oppositional force to the depredations of male sexuality. This is in no way meant to diminish that.
It is meant to focus on a part of this dynamic I don’t see commented on nearly as much though. In purity culture, men are perpetrators. A good man doesn’t radiate goodness, it’s more that he’s managed to contain the inherently evil toxicity that is his sexuality and hasn’t let it harm everyone around him as it naturally will if unchecked. When I look for other stories like mine, I already see stories by and for women, and a lot of them… haven’t really challenged those core assumptions about men. Which means that I can’t really find comfort and solidarity there.
The narrative I’ve run into a fair bit is “I was taught women were responsible for managing men’s horrible, evil sexuality, but I’ve learned that we’re not. Men are responsible for managing their own horrible, evil sexuality.” I very rarely run into specific positivity for masculine sexuality when I’m in circles discussing purity culture, because frankly, there are plenty of people who feel that masculine sexuality isn’t stigmatized enough.
So yeah. I was specific about gender for a reason. Not because I don’t understand other people’s positions, but because while I do, I don’t see so much stuff addressing my specific situation. So I figured I’d make some of the positivity I myself need.
In short: Not dismissing the harm done to women by Evangelical Purity Culture, this one was just more about my experience as a dude.
This is a really important thing to talk about, and I’m going to add that this is a significant way in which TERFism and its attendant dogwhistles dovetail with Evangelical purity culture, ie: the idea that evil bad predatory behaviour is stored in the penis. TERFy fearmongering about trans women being fundamentally dangerous derives from exactly the same toxic, fucked-up view of male sexuality - and of male existence - espoused by Evangelism: that all men are biologically predisposed to predation, violence and other sexual evils, such that they can’t ever really be trusted.
It’s a difficult thing to talk about, because demonstrably, gender-based violence directed against women by men is a widespread problem! But it doesn’t follow that a majority of men are bad by default; rather, it’s that many have been trained to entitlement and bad behaviour by patriarchal systems and misogynist ways of thinking, which are both things we have the power to change.
Attemping to affect this change and bring about equality is the core conceit of feminism, and we can see, very demonstrably, that it works. So if you fall into the gender-essentialist trap of believing that men are bad fundamentally, whether because of Evil Biology or Original Sin, then you’re not only saying that the long-term goal of feminism is impossible; you’re functionally agreeing with every disgusting, sexist rape-apologist who brushes off assault and misogyny as “boys will be boys” and “men are just like that.” You cannot hope to hold bad men accountable for their actions without acknowledging the existence of good men; that their misdeeds aren’t synonymous with their masculinity, but are rather choices they specifically have made.
So while it’s crucial to call out the ways in which women suffer from sexism and gender-based systems of violence and to name the misogyny inherent in their perpetuation, it’s also important to show how these systems are unnatural: that, rather than representing some default state of cruelty to which all men naturally revert, misogyny is instead taught - and that the teaching itself, while offering contextual authority to men, can also be harmful to them.
I haven’t been able to get this off my mind, even though I left my job years ago. As a queer woman, I got hired by a Christian organization to provide mental health counselling to a largely-Christian population. I thought I was there to help other LGBTQ+ people, but I also saw clients with other needs and concerns
and the straight cis men who were ashamed of their own desires haunt me
They bought wholeheartedly into the ideas that their sexual desires were inherently sinful and predatory and destined to doom their lives if they slipped up, in a way that forcibly reminded me of when I was trying to be a good Catholic girl and knew that the soft animal of my body absolutely could not be made to run in the correct direction of the treadmill my faith was yoked to
More than once I had to back up any specific discussion and just ask, “According to your conscience and faith, what would a healthy married relationship look like when it comes to sex? How would this desire factor into it?” Because it’s totally an enormous question, but it also often produced the facial equivalent to a computer blue screen of death, because they’d been told so often that male desire was ontologically incompatible with a healthy marriage, except also, they were supposed to want sex so much they’d destroy their own marriages over it???
I have feminism and queer culture and Chappell Roan telling me that my desire is good and okay, and I’m slowly getting less ashamed about it. And I just can’t help thinking: What about men? How sad would it be to be told your sexuality is inherently aggressive and predatory and exploitative? How do you feel like you’re bringing something valuable to a relationship that way?
It’s unfair and absolute crap.

Wishing you all a sex-positive 2025

For the first time in my adult life I now own a television, really incredible whet they are doing with those these days. Anyway I’m a movie guy now here is my letterboxd

adam waldron-blain’s profile

adam uses Letterboxd to share film reviews and lists. 294 films watched.

boxd.it

Been thinking a lot about how guys like Spica in The cook, the thief, his wife, and her lover are the reason why for instance a quiet but beautifully shot film like Past lives has all of its dark scenes totally crushed to shit by horrible visible compression artifacts if you try to stream it from amazon.

zaubermaerchen:

me when i see someone censor the word kill in real life / a website where it’s allowed

yukoncornholio:

So one of the reasons the feds haven’t ordered arbitration is almost certainly because they know that Canada Post’s demands are so unreasonable and unconscionable that any arbitrated agreement would be nullified on appeal, because even the middle ground between CUPW and Canada Post is unreasonable and unconscionable.
It’s not just pay either. It’s -everything- and the accusation that the Post wants to “gigify us is the absolute truth.
They want to change everything, from the way our assignments work, to the way our routes are measured and organized, all with the aim of getting us to do more, in less time, for less money, with less control over how it happens.
10 years ago, the average urban route in a residential neighbourhood had about 300 points of call across 13 km.
Now, it’s 600 points of call across 24km.
and they’re literally saying to us "we need you to do more, and we’re not going to pay you for it” and it’s already happening in places like Montreal and Vancouver.

ladygolgotha:

The menswear guy making fun of people in the MAGA sphere trends pretty often on here and sure, it’s funny to see these people get mocked, but essentially going “you fail to follow the traditions and codes of the established fashion of the wealthy Western bourgeoisie” isn’t really Owning The Fascists. It’s not really qualitatively any different from “BLUE HAIRED SJW WITH PRONOUNS GETS OWNED!!” type slop. It’s just a bourgeois-progressive making fun of bourgeois-reactionaries in the framework of bourgeois culture. It does not engage with the actual material forces or philosophy behind them, and instead criticizes them on the basis that they lack the correct signifiers associated with those who in the liberal framework are supposed to be in power, people who are wealthy enough to hire tailors to create custom-made or custom-fitted clothes for them in the conventional style popular with everyone else who is wealthy and in charge. The function of this wealthy fashion is to serve as a uniform for the bourgeoisie, to create a clear distinction between them and the proletariat who cannot afford to spend hundreds or thousands of United States dollars on clothes, much less a single blazer. Then, to assert that these MAGA reactionaries are wrong because they lack the bourgeois uniform is to say that a proletarian can never be correct unless some circumstances allow them to don the bourgeois uniform.

I understand that we don’t want to give undue credit to liberal-posting, but there’s more there. In a very real way the signature appeal of conservatism and fascism is the promise of return to an ideal past, and so we are obliged to remind one another that that past is fake and made up by people who don’t know shit about it. And it’s not the headline, but dieworkwear takes a moment at the end of most of his threads to remind us that fashion is fun when it includes rebellious play on the borders of that bourgeois uniform, often by people who are in some way excluded and celebrating that fact. The reactionaries are not lacking the uniform, they exemplify it, and all of their “flair” is often the stultifying parts of it.

It is in fact good to make funny posts sometimes. But yea he should stop with the king of Spain.

johnplayerandsons:

why is everything polyester

Joshua Schwebel - Momus

Joshua Schwebel speaks to long-time collaborator Lauren Wetmore about their shared interest in closing the gap between how art is discursive

Momus

mostlysignssomeportents:

You should be using an RSS reader
ALT
On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I’ll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.
No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren’t really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.
I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, “What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?”
It’s frustrating, but my general answer is, “Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic.”
There’s very little you can do as a consumer. You’re not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can’t agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.
I’ve been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:
https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest
I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c
Molly’s talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:
But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…
Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that “there’s a lot more of us than there are of them” is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.
And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly’s excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.
This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.
It’s RSS.
RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, “Really Simple Syndication”) is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public “feeds.” For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired’s RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they’re published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired’s feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn’t even get to know that you’re monitoring its feed.
Keep reading

Smarter than you

I Like:

You should be using an RSS reader