@Nonilex
“Title IX, a half-century old #law bars #discrimination in schools based on #sex.”
My guess is this judge does not believe that sexual identity qualifies transgender as a legitimate sexual orientation. Based on my experience in my family, he’s made a bad call. 😞
So many wonderful new queer-themed books published so far this #PrideMonth. It really is most heartening . . . but I need more hours in the day to read them all! 🏳️🌈📚
I am reading an article about how every time ancient art depicts a goddess as sexually alluring, they always get labeled a "goddess of fertility". Even when there is no indication of children, pregnancy, or anything fertile.
The article argues that some goddesses were deities of sex and pleasure, without the maternal fertility aspect.
I am like 🤯 🤯 I have a whole entire archaeology degree and we never addressed this...
I mustn't let May go by without a nod to my 2009 article on the discovery, during the 19th century, of same-sex copulation among Maybugs (also known as Maybeetles, cockchafers, doodlebugs). Do look out for them at it in your garden! 🌈🌳
No cute bunnies or lambs in my files, I'm afraid. I do, however, have a lot of queer chickens. This is a painting of a hen-cock (c. 1900), a prize fighter, by English artist Herbert Atkinson. 🥚🐥🐔
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
And so: on average, young people like platforms less, hate them more, and have both less to lose and more to gain by leaving one platform for another. Sure, some young people are also burning with youth's neophilia. But even without that neophilia, young people are among the first to go when tech bosses start to ratchet up the enshittification.
Beyond young people, there are others who tend to jump ship early, like sex-workers:
Lovely colour plate depicting gynandromorph specimens in the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Produced by German entomologist Friedrich Klug in 1829. 🦋 🐞
The news that Gen Z users have abandoned Tiktok in such numbers that the median Tiktoker is a Millennial (or someone even older) prompted commentators to dunk on Tiktok as uncool by dint of having lost its youthful sheen:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools:
Pornographers didn't jump on home video because of its superiority as a medium for capturing flesh-tones. Home video was a good porn medium because it was easier to discreetly get into the hands of porn consumers, who could, in turn discreetly view it.
#Sex is cool, but 2am #nights where you are cuddled just talking, laughing, appreciating and getting to #know each other on a deeper level is the #best shit ever>>>
(Full disclosure: @WilWheatonRSS reads my name at the end because I was publicly enthusiastic about #RedTeamBlues, the first Marty Hench novel, on social media. If you haven't read it, add it to your queue. It doesn't matter which order you read them in.)
"It's complicated" is the most accurate non-spoily way to describe it. I also finished it waaay too quickly.
You will especially like it if you enjoy people talking about their passions. They may or may not align with your passions, and it doesn't matter because you /want/ to know more.
I like Marty. I have yelled at him for doing stupids, but I'm a geezer and sometimes it's about #experience, not brainpower.
He would be a cool person to know, and not because of his professional skillset, rather, because he's ... interesting.
In this book, I discover that I am not alone in this opinion. I also rediscovered that his #heart is bigger than his head.
There's #sex, #drugs. and .... #soul ... in this story. It's fictional, but packs a /lot/ of #fact. You can easily believe stuff could happen that way. And some of it did, though without Marty's participation.
I backed the #kickstarter; you can find the #audiobook on Libro.fm and support your local bookstore /at the same time/. You can also get the #ebook or a print copy in the usual places.
If you hurry, you can get /all/ the Cory Doctorow ebooks on #HumbleBundle. You won't be disappointed and your purchase supports @eff.
Just a reminder that, following the Royal Society event in Jan, my article 'Mendel's Closet: Genetics, Eugenics and the Exceptions of Sex in Edwardian Britain' has been made freely available until the end of Feb/LGBTQ+ History Month.
Today I'm writing about how sex selection emerged as one of the leading promises of 20th-c. biologists/eugenicists as they got to grips with sexological genetics. 😬
Ad for The Science of Life (by Julian Huxley, G. P. Wells, & H. G. Wells) in Popular Science Monthly (March 1931).
Gynandromorph bordered white moth from Charles Barrett's Lepidoptera of the British Isles (1901). 🦋
At 11am (GMT) next Wednesday (31 Jan) I will be discussing my article 'Mendel's Closet' as part of the Royal Society history of science seminar series. 🏳️🌈 🧬