CJ’s Comments (group member since Sep 30, 2022)

CJ’s comments from the Queereaders group.

As a trans person, I want to remind everyone in this supposedly LGBTQ supportive group that Rowling is a virulent transphobe who uses her wealth to harm trans people and by extension all queer people, and supporting her work supports the harm she does.

I loved The Darkness Outside Us, so much so I reread it shortly after reading it the first time. The way the author writes the relationship between the two main characters is fantastic. I have the sequel, keep meaning to make time to read it.

My short, non-spoiler review of it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Scrolling before taking a nap

Reading The Firebourne Blade by Charlotte Bond this morning as part of my Pride month reading.

After that I'll finish up Someone Like Us by Dinaw Megestu, an very interesting novel about Ethiopian-American immigrant experience. If I have time today I'll start Gabe Novoa's new one, These Vengeful Gods.

I am not trying to do anything too ambitious reading-wise for Pride, but I have some books by various LGBTQIA+ authors lined up that I hope to get to this month. Currently working on Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott, and just checked out The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow and Even the Worm Will Turn by Hailey Piper from the library, so those are next.

These Vengeful Gods by Gabe Cole Novoa, which was released this month. "ALL GODS MUST DIE in this searingly relevant YA from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Bargain and Most Ardently. In a world bound by violence, a teen descended from the god of Death must keep their true identity a secret as they fight their way through a gladiator-style competition towards victory and rebellion against the gods who murdered their family." Author is Latine. queer and trans.

Just finished City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Now trying to finish Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho, but it's more romance than SF, and the romance is kind of dull.

Good luck with studying, Dee! I feel you with the whole mood stuff.

I'm having a slow morning, still bouncing back form my last round of chemo. Putting together a June TBR for all my reading projects (reading is my main hobby since getting cancer). Eating yogurt with berries for breakfast and mustering up the energy to go make some coffee.

I'm glad you're safe and were able to leave. Being institutionalized is a scary, if not traumatic, experience, due to having your autonomy and agency are so completely taken from you, it is genuinely dehumanizing and no, don't assume you could have gotten better treatment. What you experienced is very common. Do take time to allow yourself to process what you've been through. It may not seem like that much right now, but what you have been through is a big deal.

I have experience with being institutionalized from when I was a teen. It was not a safe place for me as a queer and neurodivergent person. I'm glad you felt safe, but that is not the case is many situations, especially here in the US with how the rights and dignity of both LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people--especially young people--are under attack. So again, glad you felt safe there but I would recommend others be very careful with who they open up to in those places. A lot of adults working in these institutions will act like they can be trusted but will be collecting information that patients give them and that info can be used against the patients, especially if there is a parent or other caregiver who is ideologically opposed to the patient's identity or choices. These are scary times and we all need to be careful.

Waiting on my dinner in the oven

There's a Trans Right Readathon starting tomorrow, March 21, through May 31, Trans Days of Visibility. From the official page (google
"Trans Rights Readathon"):

The Trans Rights Readathon is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st. We are calling on the reader community to read and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, and 2Spirit authors and characters.

I signed up to read 4 books. I'm pretty swamped this month reading-wise, but I hope to complete some of these.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Your Body is Not Your Body edited by Alex Woodroe
There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt
Màgòdiz by Gabe Calderón

Is anyone else here participating?

☆Vee☆ wrote: "how has nobody said hell followed with us by aj white"

Yeah, but fair warning, it's a rough read. A transmasc mutual on Bluesky said he had to DNF it as it brought up too much past trauma for him.

Speaking of Gabe Cole Novoa, I liked The Diablo's Curse but LOVED The Wicked Bargain, the book that Diablo is the sequel for, which features a transmasc nonbinary Latine protagonist. I'm nonbinary and felt the transmasc and nonbinary rep in it was on target, insightful and very affirming (it also has low spice pan rep).

Hi, Andres. If you're open to queer YA with trans rep, I highly recommend Gabe Cole Novoa's books, especially The Wicked Bargain

Bill wrote: "I'm ending the month, and year by reading a forgotten gay classic Two People by Donald Windham,"

Wow, I never have heard of that. I've added to my Kindle shopping list!

Currently reading for the first time one of the most popular science fiction novels, Hyperion by Dan Simmons and since this is a safe space for this kind of criticism, allow me to go off:

I read the first part (this novel is like a collection of novellas) and it's about Catholic priest who goes a planet called Hyperion where he encounters a humanoid species that Simmons describes with very pejorative, ableist and racist terms. The priest proceeds to obsess over the humanoid species' sex, genitals and ability to sexually reproduce. It's so fucking gross. It's like a TERF's social media feed, but from 30 years ago.

So after reading the first part, I googled Mr Simmons to learn he is a right-winger, Islamophobe and queerphobe, which means he's probably on the gender critical bandwagon too. So disappointing. I hope the rest of the novel isn't this deprived, because as a big SF fan I would at least like to understand why this novel is so popular.

December 8th is Pansexual and Panromantic Visibility Day

I'm pan, I love being pan and I know there are other pans here. Hope my fellow pans have a great day!

But because I encounter so much confusion and ignorance about what being pan means, I'm going to talk a bit about being pan here:

We pans are our own orientation and identity and not a variation of bisexuality (whether the bi person defines their bi-ness as being "attracted to both genders" or "attracted to my own gender or other genders." or even "attracted to all genders"). This is why we have our day of visibility and also our own day of awareness (May 24). Unfortunately our current communal language is rather limited and biased toward the identities specifically represented in "LGBT" which make people knowingly or unknowingly try to shove all queer identities under those letters, which imo is bad and hierarchical, as it gives more visibility and thus more validity to the identities specifically included in LGBT as opposed to other identities that are assumed under those four "umbrella" (I hope people see how patronizing and problematic that is). Other more inclusive, less hierarchical language like "multisexuality" and GSRM (Gender, Sexual and Romantic Minorities) have not been widely accepted, perhaps for good reason. I hope as a community we continue to evolve in this regard as more expansive, informed and inclusive language is badly needed for pan and other less represented identities.

Being pan means gender isn't a defining or major factor, if at all in your sexual and/or romantic attractions. As a pan person with some life experience, I will further add I do not want gender to be a defining dynamic in my sexual and romantic relationships. Some other pans are more comfortable with letting their relationships conform to social norms around gender roles--I and other pans are not.

You will likely see a number of pans who also identity as being on the ace/aro spectrum and/or as trans or nonbinary, myself included. Because a lot of surveys done in the queer community have not included pans or have not recognized us as distinct from bisexuals, we lack the data to say how many. But these intersections of identities reveal how much many of us pans are at odds with cishetnormativity with its expectations of gendered sexual and romantic behavior.

A common and quite insulting misconception about pans is that we're "down for anything." First of all, pan is a normal, valid human sexual and romantic orientation, so it excludes behaviors like pedophilia and beastiality, just like hetero, gay and bi identities do. That pedos and other creeps try to pass themselves off as pan to normalize their harmful behavior hurts us pans as a community and we reject it.

Pan also mean just because we're pans doesn't mean we're attracted to just anyone and will have sex will anyone. This is creepy and gross to assume of us and is too often used to excuse predatory behavior in our community. Don't do it. We pans absolutely have preferences (just not ones defined by gender) and the agency and right to chose our own intimate partners. Everyone needs to respect that of us as they would anyone else.

Since many non-pans do not really understand us or even try to, we are very underrepresented in media and also in the identification of queer historical figures. A lot of times people assume that making a character bi "covers" pan as well without learning what makes us different, or a creator will make a character pan out of laziness rather than really understanding the pan experience. I hope in the future this will improve.

This morning I'm finishing up Dawn by Octavia Butler and will then read Annie Bot by Sierra Greer next. Both are library loans I want to take back this weekend when I pick up my giant get-me-through-the-holidays haul of new library loans.

Also will soon be reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for another group's BotM. Never read it and because I have an Audible sub, I have access to Tim Curry's audiobook of it. Curry is hands down my favorite audiobook narrator and it's such a loss he can no longer record audiobooks due to his health.

Other upcoming reads: As Many Ships as Stars by Weyodi Oldbear, which will finish up my personal Indigenous Writers challenge I started last month, and Ice by Anna Kavan which is part of my personal end-of-the-year tbr clean-up.

Hi, Matt and céad míle fáilte! (I only speak a little Irish, but I'm roughly fluent in Scottish Gaelic)

I love PKD too. What's your fav novel by him?

Hi Kestrel and welcome! There are a lot of young folks here but also some other older queers like myself. I'm pan/ace, NB and autistic myself.

If you like trans writers and horror, and aren't adverse to reading YA/YA-adjacent, I can highly recommend Andrew Joseph White if you haven't already read his work. A more adult horror trans author I also love in Hailey Piper.

Yeah, after I returned the ebook to the library, I bought a used copy and am still waiting for it to come.

But I'm genuinely baffled by how Trouble and Her Friends is so overlooked now. Now having read it, I see it very probably having been one of the sources that the Wachowskis drew on for The Matrix (among various things the two works share, like the intersection of queer existence with cyber culture, Trouble... uses Alice in Wonderland as an analogy for virtual existence on the internet--I need to do more research to see if there was an earlier work that made a similar analogy). Yet the Wachowskis have never mentioned it to my knowledge (and I was a snoop and checked to see if Lilly follows Scott on social media, and no, not as far as I can tell). Nor have I see any article on the making of The Matrix mention it. Yet it won the Lamdba award so queer creatives in 1990s, even closeted ones like the Wachowskis at the time, would have likely known of it then.