(no subject)

[olivermoss]

Yesterday I finally made it out to Iridescent Daydream. If you've been following me for a while, you may remember the queer artist pop ups I used to go to. They were often at community centers, bars, food pods, etc. They've now got a permanent location. I went on Saturday because they still post about having pop ups so I didn't know if the store kept regular hours, they do. They just also have days when additional artists are either in the store or on the sidewalk.

I finally made it out and yeah I guess I went to the pop ups a lot because some of the artists were like 'Hey, been a while.' Some also liked the Wonderwood Springs shirt I was wearing and asked if I'd been up since they put in mini-golf. (Wonderwood is an art thing in No Po, sort of an art walk through and cafe, and now also mini-golf) I haven't, not yet. I did my best to find some stuff to buy, but it took a bit because it's all so femme focused. There were a lot of things I could buy, take pictures of and other people I interact with online would love them, but not so much my vibe. There is almost nothing m/m, masc or even butch. It's all very 'that peach cross section is obviously a vagina'. No plaid, no mothmen butts, no cowboys being frequently, secretly... etc.

Anyway, point of the post is... I really don't have the time for yet another project but I could make some ftm, masc, butch, m/m, etc stuff and I've been sketching some things out. I expect nothing to come of this, but I do know how to do digital art and printing, I do have a button maker and have sold at events before. But, honestly, with the vibe being so boob and peach focused across dozens of artists, would something contrasting even be welcome? IDK. So much queer stuff here is so femme focused it's overwhelming. Of the 70 or so artists I've interacted with at these events, only 2 carry anything m/m or ftm and it's like 1 or 2 items out of several dozen.

I really want to support artists and stuff like this, but unless the vegan baked goods people are there it's hard to find stuff I'd actually want. But, they did give me a logo sticker of their store for free because they recognized me.

Comments

[dine]

it's disappointing that vendors are so skewed - I'm sorry there's not much there for you (aside from maybe pastry). if you had time and interest and wanted to work on potential merch, I bet you're not the only person who might appreciate that - however, if you're already busy with multiple other projects, I can definitely see not adding this right now

[olivermoss]

I'm going to work on some designs, but I suspect that some people would welcome it and some... would not want the vibe disturbed and I'm not sure I want to put up with that.

[dine]

oh, I can totally see and understand that. why add aggro to your life unnecessarily?

[mistressofmuses]

It's cool that they have a permanent location now.

But that is discouraging about just how femme-focused everything is. :/

I think having alternatives would be great! Even as someone who likes a fair amount of femmey stuff, I also really like stuff that *isn't*. Of course, finding the audience that I'm pretty sure exists might be trickier, because it sounds like the culture there is so tipped away from masc stuff.

(But even for people who could potentially like both, or would prefer something that at least feels more neutral... It feels like a cycle, where all you can find is femme stuff, and so if you even sorta like it, you get it, and then it looks like the femme stuff is all that sells... Idk, I'm maybe reading too much into it, but that's how it seems sometimes.)

[olivermoss]

The event / group / location is so established now that it's definitely settled into a vibe.

Yeah, it is a cycle, which is why I try to support other stuff when I can. It just feels like there is never any space for m/m or masc stuff, but if you even try to say that it's like... people get really aggro. And it's like, if I am wrong just point out how I am wrong and point me to the spaces.

[mistressofmuses]

People get so defensive! Like saying "oh, I'd love something more masc" is taken to somehow mean "so you hate femmes? you want nothing femme to exist anywhere at all and for femme queers to have nothing available to them ever?"

Paraphrasing that one twitter response: "wtf, no. That is a whole new set of words!"

I'm not sure why "more choices for more people" is such a contentious stance!

[olivermoss]

It makes sense that craft stuff would skew somewhat femme, but the skew is really, really out of whack both there and at all the craft events I've gone to. And, it's just everywhere in queer spaces here and we can't talk about it without just... aggro rhetoric. Trans men are men and men aren't oppressed... So it's fine that a coordinated effort by other groups pushed us out of our one meeting space, can't even mention it because that's mean to the groups that sent out emails telling people to come just to fluff numbers and force us out.

thisisfine.jpg

I don't even want to engage with all that. I want to find spaces and support them, want to build things not deal with discourse

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I do realize that craft stuff is going to fall more to the femme side than the masc, but it still feels weird for it to be SO dramatic. I could get a 75-25 split, but 99.9-.01 is... super out of whack.

(It also feels... idk, extra wrong, because I want queer spaces to feel a lot less binary than this makes them feel. Not because masc and femme aren't genuine categories, and not because women and men cease to be women and men just because they're queer... but having places only have things that fall very far to one side feels like it's just... a new box. Most of the queer people I know have interests that fall all over the place when it comes to how those interests are "typically gendered", and queer spaces would be where I'd want to see that NOT be treated as weird.
I feel like I'm making my point clumsily, but I hope you get what I'm saying.)

The way trans men or otherwise trans masc people (and to an extent other masc queers, like butch lesbians or masc cis gay men...) tend to always be given the short straw, and are pushed aside is... really terrible. I keep seeing it, and I am so sorry it's something that's so widespread.

Intracommunity ~discourse~ is fucking toxic, and this idea that "men cannot be oppressed, therefore trans men cannot be, and masculinity is always a source of societal privilege" is extremely reductive and misses the actual experience of so many people. Worse, it DOES bring about such an aggro response to even TRY to discuss this sort of thing, which just shuts things down before they can even start, and is antithetical to having a healthy and inclusive wider community.

Building things and supporting them is SO much more positive and productive than dealing with endless discourse about who "deserves" space. I want more spaces to exist that welcome more people, and I'm sorry that so few are what they should be.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it is weird that things keep winding up in a different narrow box. I've been to lots of queer craft events not run by this group and it's the same split. I've found some cool things, but I've been searching them out. Also, I'd have thought that stuff that is both queer + femme would be more... varied in and of itself.

I'm just so tired of aggro discourse and people acting like everything is fine, community is welcoming, if you have a problem then something is wrong with you, etc.

[mistressofmuses]

It's really annoying that the split seems so omnipresent! It does feel like a really reductive box to push a lot of people into, when it seems like it would be low-risk, possibly high-reward to offer at least a FEW additional options. (Or seems that way to me, though obviously I'm not there or running these businesses and events.)
Though also true: queer + femme could be a LOT of different stuff... Why is it too much to ask to have something that isn't pastels + suggestive looking fruit or yet another wink-wink-it's-scissors-get-it design? Like... that stuff is FINE, but it's not what I'm looking for. I like girls, but I'd rather have a mothman butt too, frankly. :(

The aggro response to ANY criticism of the community is... exhausting. If you can only keep up the "everything is fine, everyone is welcome, we all get along perfectly and are so mutually supportive" attitude if you ALSO forcibly exclude everyone who dares mention that they don't feel fine/welcome/supported... then you're just making the problems worse.
Yes, the community as a whole has to deal with a lot of bad-faith shit, and there are people who try to troll these spaces with outrageous demands in the hopes of creating ragebait, and there are people who are just shit-stirrers, and there are national political concerns that are very real...

But chucking out multiple demographics as a whole (and dismissing ALL of the members who dare complain as just having individual problems) is NOT the way to improve anything for anyone.