Dan Q

Tag: sexuality

The Better Bundo Book

Today, I received my long-awaited copy of A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a book inspired by the US Vice President’s family pet not to be confused with Marlin Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, which it satirises. In case you’ve been living under a rock: the family of US Vice President Mike Pence have a pet rabbit called Marlon Bundo (and who doesn’t appreciate some punmanship in their pet’s name) and they wrote the latter book that attempts to explain, through the eyes of Marlon Bundo, what the Vice President does. And then John Oliver, who’s become a bit of a master of doing nice things in a dickish way, released the former a few hours earlier and subsequently thoroughly outsold the Pence book.

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo
I wasn’t fast enough to get an order in on the first (hugely-oversubscribed) print run and had to wait on both the reprint plus international shipping.

This self-proclaimed “better Bundo book” tells a different (educational and relevant) story: in it, Marlon Bundo falls in love with another boy rabbit but their desire to get married is hampered by the animals’ leader, the Stink Bug, who proclaims that “boy rabbits can’t marry boy rabbits; boy rabbits have to marry girl rabbits!” With the help of the other animals, the rabbits vote-out the Stink Bug, get married, and go on a lovely bunnymoon… a cheery and uplifting story and, of course, a distinctly trollish way to piss off the (clearly anti-LGBT) Mike Pence. This evening, I decided to offer it as a bedtime story to our little bookwork. At four years old, she’s of an age at which the highly-hetronormative narratives of the media to which she’s exposed might be only-just beginning to sink in, so I figured this was a perfect vehicle to talk about difference, diversity, and discrimination. Starting school later this year means that she’s getting closer to the point where she may go from realising that her family is somewhat unusually-shaped to discovering that some people might think that “unusual” means “wrong”, so this is also a possible step towards thinking about her own place in the world and what other people make of it.

Ruth reading with Annabel and John.
Our little bookworm, along with bookworm-junior and their mother.

Her initial verdict was that it was “sweet”, and that she was glad that the Stink Bug was vanquished and that Marlon and Wesley got to live together happily-ever-after. I explained that while the story was made-up, a lot of what it was talking about was something that really happens in this world: that some people think that boys should not marry boys and that girls should not marry girls, even if they love them, and that sometimes, if those people get to be In Charge then they can stop those people marrying who they love. I mentioned that in our country we were fortunate enough that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls, if they want to, but that there are places where that’s not allowed (and there are even some people who think it shouldn’t be allowed here!). And then I asked her what she thought.

“They’re like the stinky Stink Bug.”

That’ll do.

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo× Ruth reading with Annabel and John.×

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How Russia’s Hilarious, Homoerotic “Satisfaction” Became a Nationwide Meme of Solidarity

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

How Russia’s Hilarious, Homoerotic “Satisfaction” Became a Nationwide Meme of Solidarity (The New Yorker)

Masha Gessen writes about a series of recent recent Russian parody videos, started by air-transport cadets as a spoof of the music video for “Satisfaction,” by Benny Benassi, from 2002.

A few weeks ago, fourteen Russian first-year air-transport cadets made a parody of a fifteen-year-old music clip, and now it’s all a lot of Russians can talk about. This is a story of spontaneous solidarity, self-organization, and, ultimately, just possibly, the triumph of freedom over bureaucracy.

The original clip, set to the 2002 track “Satisfaction,” by the Italian d.j. Benny Benassi, is itself a parody: of music videos, erotica, and advertising. It features a series of scantily clad young women working with tools, starting with a hammer and graduating to a masonry drill, a belt sander, and an angle grinder. The screen features names and technical descriptions of the tools while the women pose with their bodies contorted and their mouths open, as though they were in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. In their parody, the air-transport cadets used an all-male cast, the interior of a well-worn student dorm, and the kinds of tools that are found there: a broom, a clothes iron, a spray jar of glass cleaner. Mostly, though, they used their own very young bodies, dressed in underwear, with belts, neckties, and military caps arranged in apparent homage to Tom of Finland.

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Why BoJack Horseman’s Representation of Asexuality is Important

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Todd talks about his asexuality in Bojack Horseman.

Netflix’s BoJack Horseman was quickly put on many people’s radars when the newest season released in September addressed asexuality. During the new season, Todd Chavez explicitly comes out to BoJack saying that he is asexual. As someone who is asexual, this representation means a lot to me. Not only am I actually being represented, but he specifically said the word asexual multiple times. Even though it had seemed the series was building to this scene, I still did not expect it to deliver. It was first indicated during the season three episode “Love And/Or Marriage,” when Todd rejected having sex with his friend, Emily. Initially watching this scene I did not have asexuality on my mind. I just came to terms with the fact that asexuality was something that would never be represented in media. Naturally, I explained it away as Todd likely being interested in another person and feeling like he would be “cheating” on said person if he were to sleep with Emily. But this arc gets a more definitive continuation in the season three finale, “That Went Well,” when Todd tells Emily, “I’m not gay. At least I don’t think I am, but I don’t think I’m straight either. I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.” This scene and everything it stands for took BoJack Horseman from a show I enjoyed to one of my favorite shows of all time. Throughout the yearlong wait for season four, I constantly watched this scene. I rewatched it at least once a week, and more often than not, I cried while watching…

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Love Is Love Is Love Is… [cut the mike]

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This week, a video of a 12-year-old girl coming out as gay to her Mormon congregation in Eagle Mountain, Utah, went viral — and it’s easy to understand why. Savannah is adorable. She wears a red tie, which is already a statement, since wearing pants to church as a woman can be controversial. She stands in front of a room of adults delivering her testimony about how her Heavenly Parents “did not mess up when they gave me freckles. Or when they made me gay. God loves me just this way because I believe that he loves all of his creations.”

12-year-old girl comes out as gay to her Mormon congregation

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On This Day In 1999

Looking Back

On this day in 1999 I sent out the twenty-eighth of my Cool Thing Of The Day To Do In Aberystwyth emails. I wasn’t blogging at the time (although I did have a blog previously), but these messages-back-home served a similar purpose, if only for a select audience. You can read more about them in my last On This Day to discuss them or the one before.

For technical reasons, this particular Cool Things Of The Day appears to have been sent on 27th October, but in actual fact I know that the events it describes took place on 5th November 1999. The obvious clue? The fireworks! I knew that Cool Thing Of The Day as shown here on my blog was out-of-sync with reality, but this particular entry gives a great indication of exactly how much it’s out by. And no, I can’t be bothered to correct it.

Back in 1999 I started as a student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University), moved away from home, and had a fantastic time. One bonfire night, I called up two new friends of mine – Rory and Sandra – and persuaded them that we should wander over to nearby Trefechan and climb the hill (Pen Dinas) there to watch the fireworks. It was a wild and windy night, and certainly not the conditions to climb an unknown and occasionally-treacherous hill, but we weren’t dissuaded: we set out!

You know those films or sitcoms where the protagonist (usually through their own stupidity) ends up on a date with two people at the same time, trying to keep each unaware of the other? That’s what I felt like at the time: because (though neither of them knew this at the time) I had an incredible crush on both of them. Of course: back then I was far shyer and far less-good at expressing myself, so this remained the case for a little while longer. Still: my inexperienced younger self still manged to make it feel to me like a precarious situation that I could easily balls-up. Perhaps I should have better thought-out the folks I invited out that night…

A storm blew in furiously, and the fireworks launched from the town scattered around, buffeted and shaken and only occasionally still flying upwards when they exploded. The rain lashed down and soaked us through our coats. We later found ourselves huddled around a radiator in The Fountain (under its old, old ownership), where the barman and the regulars couldn’t believe that we’d been up Pen Denis in the

Looking Forward

A little later, I got to have a ludicrously brief fling with one of the pair, but I was fickle and confused and ballsed it up pretty quickly. Instead, I fell into a relationship with my old friend-with-benefits Reb, which in the long run turned out to be a very bad chapter of my life.

Trefechan – exotically across the river from the rest of Aberystwyth – didn’t seem so far away after a few more years in Aberystwyth… only a stone’s throw from Rummers! But for three new students, just a couple of months into their new home, lost and drunk and fumbling their way using an outdated map and seeing by firework-light, it was an exciting adventure. In 2004, SmartData (my employer at that time) moved into their new premises, right over the road from The Fountain and in the shadow of Pen Denis. The Technium turned out to be a pretty good place for SmartData, and it suited me, too. Some days in the summer, when it was warm and sunny, I’d leave work and take a walk up Pen Dinas. It wasn’t the same without the fireworks, the company, or the mystery of being somewhere for the very first time, but it’s still a great walk.

Sometimes I’d go up there in the rain, too.

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

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Three Films I’d Watch (if anybody made them)

Here are three ideas I’ve had for movies recently. If only the movie studios would stop making pap like Dredd 3D (or as I call it, Judge Dreddful) and take on some of my ideas, perhaps I’d find myself at the cinema more often.

So here are my three pitches:

Knights of the Living Dead

A twist on the Arthurian legends. With zombies.

King Arthur’s trusted White Knight (Lancelot) on a “routine” quest to oust Brandin, a corrupt ruler of a nearby township, who is accused of evil sorcery. Lancelot rallies the townpeople but Brandin escapes to his lair in a cursed cemetery. Lancelot slays Brandin, but – an an effort to decode a riddle Brandin made about the source of his power – lifts an enormous metal plate over a mysterious tomb, exposing the world to a dangerous plague that turns those affected into monstrous zombies.

Knights of the Living Dead
Knights of the Living Dead

Under instruction from the Church, Arthur and his knights set out to find the Holy Grail, which has the power to defeat the curse, questing through zombie-infected lands. There’s lots of hacking and slashing and eating of brains, Lancelot shags Guinevere, Arthur dies a heroic death to let the others escape (hinting at the time that he knows about the affair and wants them to be happy together), and ultimately the knights use the Grail to save the world from the zombie plague.

My Daughter’s Hand

A tale of love, homophobia, and the meaning of family, inspired by a true story.

In the news this week, a Hong Kong businessman has offered the equivalent of £40M to the man who can woo and marry his daughter. The problem? She’s a lesbian, and is already married (although same-sex unions are not recognised in Hong Kong) to her girlfriend of many years.

My first thought when I heard this news story was that she should find a man who’s willing to “marry” her, and split the money between the two of them. Hell: for £20M, I’d fly to Hong Kong and marry her for a fortnight. Where’s my plane ticket.

Hong Kong corporation heiress Gigi Chao (right) with her wife Sean Eav.
Hong Kong corporation heiress Gigi Chao (right) with her wife Sean Eav.

But then I thought of an even better variant on the story. In my version, a (disowned, unless she recants and marries a man) lesbian daughter has her partner dress as a man and pretend to be a suitor. There are slight overtones of the story of Hua Mulan, a legendary Chinese heroine who pretended to be a man in order to take her aged father’s place in the army, during a conscription drive.

In any case, the partner, disguised as a man, succeeds in impressing the father, and the father eventually comes to admire this young “man” and gives his blessing to marry his daugher. But as the wedding approaches, their secret is exposed when they’re caught having sex. However: after much soul-searching the father sees that he liked his daughter’s partner as a person when he believed that she was a man, and so he agrees to accept her into his family as a woman, too.

It’s a story about combating homophobia with deception, I guess.

The Bone Wars

Back when Richard Owen and Gideon Mantell  and were rocking up the early British palæontology scene, in the late 19th Century, their USA contemporaries Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh were embroiled in a bitter rivalry of dinosaur proportions.

Marsh and Cope.
Marsh and Cope.

These gentlemen were in such a rush to get the fame of collecting the most dinosaur bones, that they resorted to ludicrous (and somewhat shocking) measures: using dynamite to blow away hillsides (probably destroying many fossils as they went), spying on one another (to such an extent that they would sometimes operate through fake companies to try to evade each other’s spies), and bribing people to keep quiet about the locations of big finds.

Their rushed efforts led to some ludicrous mistakes. Cope – a neo-Lamarckist – famously assembled his Elasmosaurus skeleton backwards, with the head on the “tail” end, among other mistakes (Wikipedia even has a tag to label naive Victorian-era drawings of dinosaurs, I recently discovered).

I have a vision for a film in the style of A Dangerous Method, which I enjoyed earlier this year, telling the dramatised story of these men and their rivalry. There’s already been a comic book and even a board game about them: isn’t it time for a movie, too?

What do you think? Would you watch these movies?

Marsh and Cope.×

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Poly and the Census – Success! (almost)

You may remember the long-running story of my letters to the Office of National Statistics, and the more-concentrated effort by another blogger, in regard to the automatic “correction” of supposedly-“erroneous” data in the 2011 census, like somebody having multiple partners or identifying as neither gender. You don’t? Well here’s a reminder: part one, part two, part three, part four.

Well: we’ve finally had some success. A response has been received from the ONS, including – at last – segments of business logic from their “correction” code.

It’s hard to tell for certain what the result of the correction will be, but one thing’s for sure – Ruth, JTA and I’s census data won’t have passed their validation! Their relationship validations BP2, BP2a, and BP2b state that it is logically-impossible for a person to have a spouse and a partner living with them in the same household.

I should invite them around for dinner sometime, and they can see for themselves that this isn’t true.

I also note that they consider it invalid for anybody to tick both or neither of the (two) gender option boxes, although again, it’s not clear from the data they’ve provided how the automatic correction occurs. Increasingly, I’m coming to suspect that this might actually be a manual process, in which case I’m wondering what guidelines there are for their operators?

One good piece of news from this FoI request, though: the ONS has confirmed that the original census data – the filled-in paper forms, which unlike the online version doesn’t enforce its validation upon you – is not adjusted. So in a hundred years time, people will be able to look back at the actual forms filled in by poly, trans, and other non-standard households around the UK, and generate actual statistics on the frequency with which these occur. It’s not much, but it’s something.

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Hug An Asexual

It’s asexual awareness week. Go hug an asexual.

Or, if you’ve not got any asexual people around you, that you’re aware of (remember, though, that some asexuals are closeted), here’s a special mission for you:

    1. If you need to, brush up asexuality with this short but informative FAQ (link got broken, here’s the nearest equivalent page).
  1. Raise awareness of asexuality this week by making somebody aware of it, by dropping it into a relevant conversation. If an opportunity presents itself – perhaps somebody says “…if they’re straight, or gay…”, take the opportunity to add a few more to their list, and don’t forget to add asexual.

While asexual people don’t face the same kind of discrimination as other minority sexualities (for example, I’ve never heard of “a-bashing”), they’re still widely-misunderstood and often asked stupid questions like “How do you know you don’t like sex if you’ve never tried it?” (if you don’t know why that’s a stupid question, I refer you to the aforementioned FAQ)

So yeah: go hug an asexual today. In a non-sexual way, I’d suggest.

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