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When you think the Ashley Madison thing couldn't get worse...

It gets worse.

Initial reports of the Ashley Madison hack suggested they did one thing right. If I'm reading this report from Ars Technica correctly, they managed to screw even that up by having a second password table with MD5-hashed passwords.

Why is that bad? cryptographic hash functions create unique "signatures" from electronic data. They come in two different varieties. "Fast" algorithms are used to verify the authenticity of gigabytes of data. They're used to check the integrity of almost everything sent over the internet. They're designed to be run millions of times a second with minimal memory.

Standard practice for storing passwords is to store a hash "signature" instead of the raw (plaintext) password. You log into a site, it runs the hash function, and compares the signature with the signature stored in its database.

While fast hash algorithms like MD5 are great for checking things like Windows 10 or streaming video. They're bad for storing passwords. The state of the art in breaking passwords involves making millions of guesses. With MD5 and a graphics card, a password cracker can try over a billion guesses a second.

"Slow" hash functions such as bcrypt or PBKDF2 are designed to take an arbitrary length of time. Instead of a billion guesses per second, a cracker is limited to a few hundred.

While Ashley Madison used bcrypt for their primary password table, they had a second password table with millions of passwords in MD5. As of yesterday, 11.7 million passwords have been hacked.

Not that a matters that much. Users chose really bad passwords. The top 10:

• 123456
• 12345
• password
• DEFAULT
• 123456789
• querty
• 12345678
• abc123
• pussy
• 1234567

The rest of the top 100 seems to combine numbers, sex, and wishful thinking. Sometimes in one password.

Taking a step back: Handling gender dissonance in games with distance and abstraction

Introduction

I've been thinking a fair bit about gaming and some of my choices in games. Sometime over the last year, my partner noted that I've been running almost exclusively female avatars, and asked what was up with that. Earlier this week I found this essay by Riley MacLeod on responding to a certain type of masculinity as a trans man:

The male bodies in shooters disrupt, beg for attention, decide how a situation will unfold. They storm in and take what they want, destroying everything in the single-minded pursuit of their desires. They are greedy, unpopular children, behaving in all the ways men are told we have to but can’t, all the ways that wreak havoc, big and small, on ourselves and those around us in the real world. Stealth bodies let me share in what is; they have the dexterity to repurpose what’s provided to my own ends. They let me cooperate with a situation, ask me to take into account all the moving parts and my role in them. The way men behave in stealth games feels closer to what I hope my own masculinity is: thoughtful, adaptable, aware of myself and my effect on the world around me. Shooter masculinities close off possibilities, make an enemy out of the world; stealth masculinities place me firmly in the world and let me nurture it into something new.

In recent months, I find myself feeling much the same way from a different perspective. Even "stealth" bodies are, at times, painfully masculine. And I think the difference is as much to do with narrative and game design as character design. I find myself gravitating to games with more abstraction that give me more distance from the gender of the player character or protagonist.

I'll define a game as a set of rules for organized play including some method to keep track of game state, rules for manipulating that state, and likely a set of goals or outcomes. Open-ended and "open-world" videogames may not have a single defined victory condition, but they usually will have a set of iterative or intermediate goals and achievements.

What I intend to do here is describe abstraction, gendering of characters in games, and how I find myself responding as a non-binary/non-conforming person.

Abstraction: From Senet to Mocap

To start with, modern video games exist as an interesting synthesis of board/card games and cinema. I generally reject the idea that video games offer much that is new in terms of social impact. One of my grandmothers taught me to play contract bridge, the other repeatedly warned about the additive nature of playing cards as a gateway to alcoholism and gambling. The debates about games have changed in degree but not so much in character.

English Caricature of Whist Players (wikimedia)

Evidence of games dates all the way back to the neolithic. Equally as long, we have evidence of different degrees of abstraction with tokens that resemble animals. On one end of the scale, you have backgammon pawns or pips. Senet is a game ubiquitous Egypt starting from pre-dynastic times using primarily abstractly shaped tokens.

Senet Board (By Keith Schengili-Roberts, via Wikimedia Commons)

At the other end of the scale you have the Lewis "chessmen" (probably used for a different game) with figures representing different ranks. Chess is an interesting example with sets having different degrees of abstraction ranging from human and animal figurines to nonrepresentational Muslim "pepper-pot" pieces with the standard Staunton set approximately in the middle.

Lewis "Chessmen" (wikimedia)

Staunton Chess Set (Frank A. Camaratta, Jr.; The House of Staunton, Inc.; via Wikimedia Commons)

Early video games used a high degree of abstraction due to the limitations of the hardware. When publishers communicated gender, they used secondary text and artwork to do it. Pacman is masculine by virtue of name and secondary art work. We personify Pacman more by contrast to the ghosts. Advances in video and audio technology over the last 30 years has brought us to high-fidelity rendering on home hardware (warn:feminine android violence).

At this point, representation of gender in-game is a stylistic choice. Those choices tend to reinforce gender binaries to various degrees. However there are ways to get some distance from forced gender in games.

Pushed Gender: The Cinematic CRPG Protagonist

One of the areas that I'm struggling with as a gamer is the popularity of the cinematic CRPG/action protagonist. Game storytelling typically alternates between action sequences and menu-driven dialogues and cutscenes. In early versions, the game told the story purely through text. NPCs received limited voice acting for particularly important scenes first. Today, in a typical AAA game, storytelling cut-scenes can involve animation and vocal performance for all characters.

While this offers a more cinematic experience overall, the relationship of player to the performance becomes something akin to a stage manager shouting cues off-stage. At least for me, the use of player-character vocal and animated performance limits the degrees of freedom to imagine variation of the characters. In Mass Effect, Jennifer Hale owns Commander Shepard, I'm just picking which variations of Hale's performance I prefer. Which I should say isn't a slight against the quality of Mass Effect (at least the first two games), just a statement regarding how I perceive the player-character when animated and voice-performed.

The tension is particularly jarring for a player-character with even fewer options, Jensen from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The sexual tension driving the plot is hinted in the prologue and made explicit in the opening credit cinematic (warn: medical horror). Of course, you can "headcanon" and fanfic just about any interpretation of a character, but the more stuff on the screen, the further you have to go "off the page" to get to a bi or nonbinary interpretation.

Getting Distance: The Isometric RPG

Shadowrun Hong Kong, Establishing Shot

"Isometric" RPGs are named for the bird's-eye, top-down perspective on the scene. The genre is currently undergoing something of a revival, with Pillars of Eternity and Shadowrun Returns as new games, and remasters of the classic Baldur's Gate series also on shelves. Some common features of the genre include:

• "Isometric" perspective.
• Control of multiple characters.
• A "primary" plot line centered on the player character.
• "Secondary" plot lines centered on companion characters, sometimes more interesting than the primary character arc.
• Primarily text-based storytelling, usually shorter than provided by cut-scenes.
• Character customization primarily via pre-generated portrait images.
• Reduced or minimal voice acting.

While I don't know of any that allow you to specify a nonbinary character at creation, Shadowrun games have a "shadow" character portrait with obscured details.

Shadowrun Hong Kong Character Creation

The visual distance from the character makes it easier to imagine androgyny, while the multiplicity of game identities opens the door for some fluidity.

Vehicles: You are the Machine

Vehicle games put most of the action as the driver/operator/pilot of a vehicle. The game may or may not offer character icons or a character model, but they don't interact directly within the game world. With the perspective centered on the vehicle rather than a humanoid character, the physicality of the human character can be completely re-imagined.

In Euro Truck Simulator 2, all of the game mechanics are achieved at the wheel of the truck or through a text-based management interface. There is a character icon that appears in some views, but the game offers a fair variety of photographic choices with a range of age and ethnicity. If you twist the camera round far enough, you can get a view of your pragmatically dressed character model. Voice performance is limited to increasingly emphatic yawns when you stretch a driving shift out too far.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 (Yes, those are bi-pride colors.)

In Eve Online, you are the immortal cyborg pilot of a set of space ships. The development of Eve is an interesting case. Several years ago, the company announced the development of "walking in stations." The project went as far as new character-creation tools and two rooms of "captains quarters." Players objected strongly to the shift in focus combined with planned microtransactions, and development was dropped. Eve Online is intensely social, almost every action involves cooperation or competition with other players. However the community rejected the idea of basing that sociability on virtual avatars.

Eve Online

Both games offer a role-playing component. Choices professional development unlock skills and goals over time. However that role-play doesn't involve interactions between animated human bodies. With sexuality and gender presentation kept off the screen, I can imagine anything I want behind the metal and chrome.

Conclusion, the tl;dr

Taking a step back from the cinematic perspective of many contemporary AAA titles helps me work with the dissonance between the publishers ideas about gender and my own ideas about gender.

100 years ago today: trans arrest

The Seattle Star reported that Professor Eugene de Forest was "confronted with the charge of masquerading as a man.

(de Forest:) "Before God, I have never harmed or done wrong to a living being. Born with a handicap of a strange personality, which makes me wish to appear as a man, I have done my very best with the life God has given me. All I ask is to have the right to earn an honorable livelihood, and to live in peace without hurt to any one." (quoted verbatim)

tw:transphobia

Mushroom Mushroom!

Possible bolete. Wet weather brings out the mushrooms.

Experimenting with bi-pride colored trucks. The small bits of utopian control we seek for in games.

(divisors z) → (Listof Natural)
z : Integer
Returns a list of all positive divisors of the integer z. The divisors appear in ascending order.

Another reason why Racket rocks, because optimizing trial-division for large numbers.

It makes solving the Fermat Exponent problem easy:

Apparently, there was a period of time in Beethoven's transition from classical formalist to bombastic romanticist (possibly accompanied by severe hearing loss and disillusionment with Napoleon) when musicians said, (translated from 19th-century German), "What the heck, Beethoven! This isn't music! My kids could write this!"

Elsewhere:

• Dragon Con followup: Female heroes and femininity | Feministe
• Charles Blow on bisexuality, gender, and fluidity Sexual Attraction and Fluidity - The New York Times
• Worth thinking about: Crossdreamers: Felix Conrad Talks about Transgender Research, Crossdreaming and Beach Clubbing
• I'm about halfway through this article on nonduality: True Nonduality and the Neo-Advaita - You are not done yet!

Octavia Butler's DAWN Optioned for TV

Butler's Dawn has been optioned for television. Producer Allen Bain:

I definitely want to stay true to the material and honor the legacy of Octavia Butler, because I think that's important and I do think that's possible in 2015. I think my predecessors have broken a lot of ground in television and the distribution channels have changed, so you can actually make TV now that you couldn't 15 years ago. Back then a show had to be episodic in the sense that you could tune in any day, it didn't matter if you knew the backstory, and you could watch it from beginning to end and be satisfied. That's changed tremendously in the last 15 years or so.

It's Not a Race

A comic by Justin Hubbell about taking baby steps with genderqueer transitions. Just read the whole thing.

Readopting Linux: Edimax EW-7811Un Installation

I had some problems with this one. (It gave me trouble on Windows as well.) I found instructions that worked for me here, about halfway down: wireless - Is there a standard WiFi driver for the Edimax EW-7811Un? - Ask Ubuntu

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install git build-essential linux-headers-generic dkms
git clone https://github.com/dz0ny/rt8192cu.git --depth 1
cd rt8192cu
sudo make dkms

Re-adopting Linux: Updating a few Things

• How to Build Emacs on Linux Focused on Ubuntu, possibly generalizable to Debian.
• Installing 32-bit binaries for GOG.com games. Libraries needed for some games in the GOG library.
• How to Install LibreOffice 5.0 in Ubuntu and Derivatives

On history and the meaning of bisexuality

Is it really progress that in 25 years, stereotypes about my sexuality have gone from "anything that moves" to "binary only?"

150 years ago when scientists were describing human sexuality, they were trying to distill complex cultures down to a handful of words. There were men loving men and women loving women. There were men and women who loved both. There was butch and femme. There were "normal" guys and feminine fairies. There were gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who "crossdressed" full-time and part-time. Anne Lister put on a suit and a masculine name to cruise the red light district. There were trans people who fully transitioned (to the extent that was possible) and married. Their spouses may or may not have been co-conspirators.

And all this was further complicated by colonialism and contact with cultures that don't do gender and sexuality the same way, which scientists still don't understand.

So scientists did what scientists do, they created a theory. Then they created words to describe that theory, out of loanwords from another language which made their theory seem less like making shit up. Then they overgeneralized without really questioning about what the people they described really wanted.

Naming sexuality was based on the 19th century conceit that naming something is equivalent to understanding it. That those names didn't accurately describe the people or things involved is pretty typical for the 19th century. At least half of our post Victorian language to describe sexuality involves misnomers and euphemisms. Colonial place names range from the wildly optimistic to the wildly inaccurate. This practice taken up by 20th century city planners who named neighborhoods and streets after plants that didn't exist on site.

English has been described as a language that mugs other languages for nouns in dark alleys. I think modern English is even more macabre. English assaults other languages, takes their coats and hats, and goes dancing. Usually we don't notice this. Democrats favor a proportional system and Republicans claim to be populist. Mass hysteria doesn't involve a giant uterus. We use the word depression to describe a clinical mental illness, an economic phenomenon, a geologic feature, and a weather system. Language is conventional, it is almost never logical.

But, let's turn back to the 19th and early 20th century. "Homosexuality" included Lister's cross-dressed cruising and drag, a concept that Mae West went to jail for putting on the stage. (The New York state legislature would ban explicit homosexuality from the stage until the 1970s.) "Heterosexuality," included elements of gender-deviance as a kink. "Bisexuality" included elements of both heterosexuality and homosexuality, often treated as a transitory or deceptive homosexuality.

The point is that those words were coined to describe cultures and lifestyles that included a wide range of genders and gender expressions. The denotation of those words may be "attraction to the same sex" "attraction to both sexes." But the connotation of those words always implied that we were swishy or butchy people who wore the wrong clothes, spoke in the wrong registers, and made "normal" people nervous.

Biphobia Exists: September 1, 2015

• On Reddit: over a hundred examples of negativity aimed at bi men
• Drexel University: bisexual and questioning women at higher risk for eating disorders
• Northern Illinois University: study funded to research microaggressions against bi women
• YouGov: a third of young Americans place themselves in the middle of the Kinsey Scale
• After Ellen: Label your sexuality allready!

Link Cleanup: August 31, 2015

• Objections to Fun Home not about trigger warnings.
• Some freshmen object, other like it.
• Brit Mandelo on Tiptree/Sheldon as a lesbian writer

Re-adopting Linux: Making the Switch

Choices Choices

One of the things that makes Linux unique is the variety of choices in distribution various groups offered. I had been running various distributions in virtual machines for some time, so I wasn't totally unfamiliar.

Currently I'm working with Xubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu that uses XFCE as the primary desktop environment. Ubuntu has most of the software packages I want in reasonably current versions, has a large number of people banging on it, and is officially supported by Steam. XFCE is a nice, simple, and clean user interface. I have the hardware to run practically any desktop environment but have a fair bit of experience with XFCE under VirtualBox.

I also considered Linux Mint, but the live DVD didn't work well with my video hardware (GeForce 750Ti).

Testing

I used a live DVD to test out Netflix before committing to an install.

1. pop the DVD in
2. reboot
3. download chrome
4. login to Netflix
5. test with debugging console.

Installation

Installation was very easy. I resized my NTFS partition, then rebooted into Windows 7 a couple of times to run disk checks.

The only real problem I've had is that my USB WiFi adapter has been starting to glitch. I'm almost positive this is a hardware fault because it glitches under Windows 7 as well. I'll get three or four hours of service, then it starts throwing errors. Unplugging and reconnecting the device usually works. A replacement is on order.

Installation was actually easier than setting up the same hardware on Windows 7, where both video and WiFi adapter demanded searching for updated drivers. This included the chicken/egg problem that you need the drivers to have an operating system to search for the drivers. With the exception of the glitchy network adapter, everything has just worked so far.

Maximum Product Of Two Primes Less Than N: Racket and C++

Maximum product less than n of two primes

Racket

C++ (Sieve Omitted)

Linux Revisited Again

She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes

— traditional

I seem to be coming back around to linux again, and feel like putting down some of my own thoughts about the decision. While the "year of desktop linux" has been a running joke for the last two decades, I think we're now getting to the point where the decision is less of an issue.

I should probably clarify that my home computer is a home-built Frankenstein built on an installment plan: I buy an upgrade, and I install it.

The Politics: Why not Windows 10?

Privacy. It seems that with Windows 10 that Microsoft has gone opt-out rather than opt-in on certain forms of data reporting. While it looks like a lot of this can be turned off, the recent finding that parental modification was turned on by the upgrade disturbs me. Of course, I'm 44, own my computer, and am not accountable to my parents. But it opens the question about what other kinds of reporting might be turned on as a useful feature by a future update.

Why Linux? The Hobbies

At the moment, two of my hobbies involve writing and programming. In both cases the workflow I prefer to use is slightly better supported on Linux.

Writing

Currently my preferred workflow includes markdown or emacs org-mode and pandoc. Both emacs and pandoc have been ported to Windows but linux remains the primary platform of support. Windows introduces some annoyances to the process.

Programming

My programming hobby involves solving simple puzzles in multiple programming languages. Most of the programming languages I work in have Linux as a primary platform and Windows as a secondary platform. In Common Lisp for example, SBCL offers a bit better features and performance compared to any of the open-source lisps for Microsoft Windows. Working through cygwin for gcc and clang is something I find to be a bit awkward.

There are exceptions. Racket has always impressed me on any operating system. Microsoft has F and C#, but I don't have an investment in learning them.

Question 1: Games?

One of the reasons I went to Windows 7 in building my Frankenstein was access to AAA MMORPG and RPG games. I think that's less compelling to me now than it was previously for a couple of reasons.

The first is that I've had a loss of faith in game design lately. Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 were huge disappointments. Generally speaking, take away the cinematic cut-scenes and the primary game mechanic involves cutting your way through dozens of dehumanized mobs to get from spawn point to goal. Even Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls series hinges on boss fights and ambushes to move the story forward. So I'm no longer as interested in playing those games as I've been in the past.

Images via pixelcurious.

And on the other side, Valve and GOG.com have made great strides in bringing new games and back-catalog releases to OS X and Linux. 20 out of 54 of my Steam games have Linux ports, along with about half of my GOG.com titles (including three of the games I've been playing the most this year.) Playonlinux has moved WINE gaming forward a fair bit. It's an area where the last few years have seen a lot of progress.

Question 2: Streaming Video?

Late last year, Netflix got support via Google Chrome, so that's taken care of. Still, a big test before install involved watching videos through a liveCD.

There's Always Dual-Boot

And if all else fails, I'm not burning any bridges by dual-booting.

Bridge hands problem in C++

Notes: Fun Home, Republican Fibs, and a Party of Losers.

Fun Home: Some incoming Duke University freshmen object to Fun Home as an entirely optional reading. Eliel Cruz responds:

This bubble of ignorance that conservatives live in when they treat LGBT stories as “other” isn't just bad for academics, however—it’s also dangerous to our country's ongoing struggle for equality. Excluding LGBT people from one’s worldview means it’s easier to see them as less than deserving of empathy—or less than human.

Ted Cruz gets it wrong. Sgt. Phillip Monk wasn't fired:

One military training instructor who worked for me and counseled young airmen told them: “Homosexuals were the downfall of Rome, and now they’ll be the downfall of the military, and the military will fall because of their lust and greed.” About 13 trainees filed a complaint against him. Those complaints went straight to my boss, who told me we had to do something about it.

I went to legal, and legal said, “You have to do something about this.” We had a zero tolerance policy on discrimination. I went back to my staff and told them. Monk said, “He’s got freedom of speech!” But we had to discipline the instructor. It wasn’t even a huge punishment. It was a warning.

Monk was up in arms. He came to me and said, “You know, ma’am, I can tell we’re not gonna agree on this. My replacement is already coming in. Do you mind if I take leave while this happens?” I said, “Sure, it’s your prerogative.” He walked out of my office, filled out the paperwork, gave it to me, and I approved.

George R. R. Martin tells his side of the Hugo Losers Party:

Windows 10 turns Parental Monitoring on by Default

"This weekend we upgraded my 14-year-old son's laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Today I got a creepy-ass email from Microsoft titled 'Weekly activity report for [my kid]', including which websites he's visited, how many hours per day he's used it, and how many minutes he used each of his favorite apps."

-- Windows 10 automatically spies on your children and sends you a dossier of their activity - Boing Boing

Useful feature for parents, boo for making it a default settings change.

5 Horror TV and Movie Themes in a Major Key

Tiptree at 100

August 24 would be the 100th birthday of Alice Sheldon, aka James Tiptree, Jr. aka Raccoona Sheldon.

• What James Tiptree Jr. Can Teach Us About the Power of The SF Community | Tor.com
• Where to Start with the Works of James Tiptree, Jr. | Tor.com
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - Lightspeed Magazine

Naming the Love that Dares Not Speak It's Name

Just because you're writing about bisexuality in a science fiction and fantasy context doesn't mean you have to use the word explicitly. "Bisexuality" comes to us via a Victorian context of medicalization and psychoanalysis. If we can imagine dragons, we can imagine worlds where that never happened. Some examples:

Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword: From the perspective of the cyborg protagonist, gender is an uncivilized social convention. As such, sexual relationships are defined more by the ways in which they do or do not involve the caste system of her (self-applied pronoun) culture.

Door into Ocean: Primarily a mono-gendered and mono-sexual culture. However male outsiders are absorbed into the primary culture of Shorah.

The Broken Kingdoms and The Kingdom of the Gods: Nahadoth's gender-fluidity is clearly described, as is the triad sexuality among Nahadoth, Itempas, and Yeine.

The Mirror Empire: Describes a five-gendered cultured with polyamorous relationships across all five genders.

An SF&F work doesn't have to use the words gay, lesbian, or bisexual in order to provide us with radical visions of those realities.

Hugo Awards

Last night discussed how this nonsense has brought fandom together in a big way. Puppies are like the giant squid fr Watchmen #HugoAwards

— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) August 23, 2015

John C Wright has lost six Hugos in one night making him the most efficient loser in Hugo history #HugoAwards

— Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) August 23, 2015

Winners: Lightspeed (semi-pro zine), Julie Dillon (artist), Ms Marvel Vol. 1 (graphic story), Orphan Black (short-form drama), The Dalek (presenter), Guardians of the Galaxy (long-form drama), Three-Body Problem (novel).

Infinite Crisis on Infinite Darkseid

Care of the hyperbolic tiling generator.

Wonder Woman performs a same-sex marriage

Two on bi men and femininity

Two on bi men and femininity. First: I'm a male, cross-dressing bisexual, married to a woman.

Second: Eliel Cruz and friends:

Bridge Hands

The bridge hands problem on programming praxis in Common Lisp.

Ariah

I can tell you that Ariah embodies the true potential of Bildungsroman in terms of the protagonist’s journey to adulthood, and that its intelligent, powerful, emotive discussion of gender, sexuality, culture, racism, imperialism, language, family, love, autonomy and personhood, among other things, is evocative of the best aspects of both Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. That these books have been nominated for, and won, some of the most prestigious awards in the field should, I hope, convey my full meaning: that Ariah deserves a place among them. But none of that tells you how it made me feel.

On Queerness, Subversion, Autonomy, and Catharsis: B.R. Sanders’ Ariah Reinvents the Bildungsroman | Tor.com

Bi News: Weekend Stuff

Half of adults in Great Britain between the ages of 18 – 24 describe themselves as not exclusively heterosexual according to a YouGov poll.

More women are identifying as bisexual, fluid, or no-label on dating site Her.

Sense8 was renewed for Season 2.

International bisexual conference held in Nottingham.

Two Puzzles

Two puzzles, one solved.

First: Help Us Decipher This Inscription - Medieval manuscripts blog

+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+

Second: Mathematicians discover a new way to tile pentagons (but not The Pentagon.)

Canids being Canids

A lot of people are thinking the dog is dumb for walking around with a box in front of its face.

But you see, we are the dummies, because the dog has his box, and for those few minutes, while the dog has his box, everything is as the doggie world should be, because the dog has his box. And all other things such as trees, walls, and tires are just tears in the rain, compared to the relationship between the dog, and his box, and the box and the dog.

At least until the squeaky not-a-rat toy shows up. That jerk.

Speaking of dogs:

Today on the Sun

Discovering Solar Dynamics Observatory daily video feeds.

American Truck Simulator trailer

No plot? No problem!

I am taking a bit of a conscious break from the standard RPG storytelling method/mechanic of addressing problems through mass violence. I don't regard this as inherently bad, just bad for me at this time. Although there are some interesting experiments in narrative.

Eliel Cruz writes about femininity and bisexual men

There are spaces for gay men, lesbian women, bisexual women, and trans women to express femininity. There are few, if any, arenas in which bisexual men, queer in our own right, have the space to express femininity without fear of our sexuality being nullified. There is a deeply ingrained misconception that a man can’t be romantically involved with another man and still be interested in women as well. That is because masculinity, or at least the most basic stereotype of it, is meant to be dominant and to attract femininity. Femininity, on the other hand, is weak and attracts masculinity. Male bisexuality, even when it is embodied in a traditionally masculine person, already blurs the lines between those outdated and severely limiting misconceptions. Add femme behavior, and you’ve really got a problem.

— Eliel Cruz on Bisexuality and Femininity for men

Also on Slate:

• Leading LGBTQ suicide-prevention workshops in the American South.
• Sexual orientation in women: Why so little scientific research?

Ozymandias

Three from Delany

Delany is having a busy month with a new edition of three early novels and a homage anthology. So, he's giving more interviews.

From The New Yorker:

In the contemporary science-fiction scene, Delany’s race and sexuality do not set him apart as starkly as they once did. I suggested to him that it was particularly disappointing to see the kind of division represented by the Sad Puppies movement within a culture where marginalized people have often found acceptance. Delany countered that the current Hugo debacle has nothing to do with science fiction at all. “It’s socio-economic,” he said. In 1967, as the only black writer among the Nebula nominees, he didn’t represent the same kind of threat. But Delany believes that, as women and people of color start to have “economic heft,” there is a fear that what is “normal” will cease to enjoy the same position of power. “There are a lot of black women writers, and some of them are gay, and they are writing about their own historical moment, and the result is that white male writers find themselves wondering if this is a reverse kind of racism. But when it gets to fifty per cent,” he said, then “we can talk about that.” It has nothing to do with science fiction, he reiterated. “It has to do with the rest of society where science fiction exists.”

Interview with SciFi Signal part 1:

In 1962, the idea of starting off a science fiction novel with an adolescent girl in the middle of a discussion of Da Vinci and Christianity contrasted with Buddhist iconography, against a background of renaissance art history, atomic devastation, and political atrocity, was a way to alert a reader to something a little unusual, and—indeed—that it might be something you had to dig for a bit.

I don’t think it necessarily works that way today. I suspect the closest that the current three- and four-star Amazon reviewers will get is to wonder if this has anything to do with the stuff the various puppies in their several emotional states might have been on about last year—and they would probably be a little surprised that the answer was, “Yes, it actually does,” only not in the way they are used to, so that, as they go on, it doesn’t strike them as terribly interesting. Now I’m the last person who can complain that they’re in any way mistaken. But a few readers who are interested in either writing or the genre’s history may find something there to think about.

The extended answer to the last question discusses Gay ideolects

So now I’m ready to answer you last query as directly as I can, “What kind of question are you never asked”: To which my answer is, “There are a set of questions that always seem to me to be—or at least to begin—as aesthetic bad manners, and, yes, I balk at them, even as I eventually—once I watch others start to come to terms with them—try, indeed, to do so myself. They get their impetus from someone taking the easy way out. The way I learned to adjust comes largely form the street—as well as from summer camp. In summer camp, largely from the white kids around me, I learned to curse. “You taught me language, and the profit on’t is I know how to curse.” And a fouler mouthed bunch of kids you couldn’t find. And in Harlem, on the black ghetto streets where my black friends taught me a whole other set of “bad words” which we used just much as the hip-hop kids today—nigger, and all the other ethnic slurs, though the ones reserved for us clearly were the most powerful. (As they are today.) Harlem was a crowded and condensed neighborhood, and people—all sorts of people—lived shoulder to shoulder. Though I went to school on the very white East Side, I lived in the black ghetto. And by the time I was six, seven, or eight, I knew there were a fair number of men who would come out dressed as women, wearing make-up and nail polish—and my best friend on the street, Johnny, a black kid who lived with his mother but who had no father, as two or three of my friends didn’t, was mad to wear nail polish and lipstick so that, to keep the peace, sometimes his mother would let him. I thought it was strange, but he was smart and fun—and so we were the two who ran away from home together . . . when we were six.

...

Those languages subgroups are good to use to face the parts of the world that folk don’t want to face. At least I’ve found all of them a help.

My mother was the one who told me: “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” Well, yes, they could—but that is when other people took them more seriously than, perhaps, they should have. But soon I had words to use in the same way that the kids in the summer camp, the black kids on the street, and the only slightly older black transgendered young people (who most mistook for gay) used them. I still do, today even more—all three. Those were the idiolects I thought in (first) and tried to speak in as a child. (And sometimes just practiced the transgender one, in the privacy of my imagination: no, I had no one actually to use it with. Johnny, by now, had moved out of the neighborhood and probably the city. Those are the languages I did not dare mix until I became an adult—on paper as much or more than in the air. The ironies each have at their disposal allows each to do things the others can not. Add to them the range of accepted analytical language, and the music of that linguistic quartet is a great part of what an American writer might be.

Charon Names: Star Trek, Star Wars, and Octavia Butler

The New Horizons team the first map of named Pluto and Charon features to the IAU. The IAU has final approval over the names, but they set the categories so I don't see a problem.

Craters (Fictional Explorers)

• Kirk
• Spock
• Sulu
• Uhura
• Skywalker
• (Leia) Organa
• Vader
• Alice
• Nemo
• Kaguya-Hime
• Nasreddin
• Ripley

Mons (Authors)

• Clarke
• Butler
• Kubrick

Chasma (Fictional Ships)

• Marcoss
• Argo
• Nostromo
• Serenity
• Tradis

Queers Destroy Science Fiction

The Queers Destroy issue of Lightspeed has been released and is available as trade paperback and ebook.

Brown Dwarf Aurora

(artist's rendition)

Hallinan discovered in 2006 that brown dwarfs can pulse at radio frequencies, too. This pulsing phenomenon is similar to what is seen from planets in our solar system that have auroras.

Powerful Auroras Found at Brown Dwarf | NASA

A phenomenon used to brilliant effect in Peter Watts's Blindsight.

APOD: Stripped Galaxy

A distant galaxy is stripped of gas as it collides with a supercluster. Hubble image via APOD

Revisiting Chasing Amy

I can't figure out a pull quote from this one, so I'll leave it at Society’s Bisexual Hangups: How Chasing Amy Is Still Ahead of Its Time at the Mary Sue

Best Security Practices

Best scurity practices from a study done by the google security blog.

My Name is N/The Swede, and other links

A few years back, a US literary agent considered making a first attempt to sell My Name Is N to American publishers. (The book is titled The Swede in the US.) But the agent hesitated, saying the mainstream crime fiction market couldn’t stomach a gay male hero. She suggested that I rewrite the book to make the protagonist straight.

I thought seriously about it. But in the end, I decided to be true to the man I based my protagonist on. Hugh Swaney was a legendary homicide detective on the US west coast. I’d spent a week interviewing him, taking notes on his life and work as he was dying of Aids. He was the toughest man I’ve ever come across (including many in the special operations community I’ve met over the course of my military career).

— Robert Karjel comments on negative reviews regarding the bisexuality of his protagonist for My Name is N. (Guardian)

Also:

• A reason why I'm a bit nervous around police. Gay man dies in custody after being denied medication. (Advocate)
• The true meaning of the word cisgender (Advocate)

And this is why I don't do Marvel: Hercules

When asked about previous hints of bisexuality and an alternate Hercules' romantic relationship with an alternate Wolverine in the 2012-2013 "X-Treme X-Men," series, Alonso responded, "Hercules and James Howlett’s relationship in 'X-Treme X-Men' took place in a unique alternate universe, similar to how Colossus was gay in the Ultimate Universe, but is straight in the 616. Same goes for Hercules here."

And this is why I don't do Marvel. (Marvel Addresses "Hercules'" Sexuality - Comic Book Resources )

Quitting problem sites with uBlock (or adblock if you prefer)

I figured out how to use uBlock to better block myself out of problem sites. I've had a bit of a problem with tumblr due to both high volume and noise. So diving into the world of Adblock filter syntax, I came up with the following. uBlock doesn't actually do a blanket site-wide rule. I had considered

The only necessary line is tumblr.com##body. This hides the content of the page (everything in the body html tag). The rest of the rules are there to help block files that are loaded by the header, scripts, and css. There are a handful of objects that get pulled in by an inline script.

Individual users can be whitelisted as username.tumblr.com as needed.

You can do the same thing with tumblr.com * * block in advanced mode, but you still need to block the body tag because uBlock will still render first page.

Similarly, when was the last time that youtube comments were actually useful: www.youtube.com###watch-discussion

Need some B52s.

One-swap sorting problem in common lisp.

One-swap sorting problem in common lisp.

Given an array of unique integers, determine if it is possible to sort the array by swapping two elements of the array. For instance, the array [1,2,6,4,5,3,7] can be sorted by swapping 3 and 6, but there is no way to sort the array [5,4,3,2,1] by swapping two of its elements. You may use O(n) time, where the array has n integers, and constant additional space.

Sex & Gender Identity: An Intro

Sex & Gender Identity: An Intro

From cisgender to transgender, the terminology associated with gender identity can be confusing. Here's a look at some of the most common terms defined.---Watch more videos on TestTube! | New Videos Daily!

Posted by TestTube on Monday, July 27, 2015

quick links

Quick links:

• Boy Scouts ends ban on gay adults | GLAAD. It's nice but I still feel very disconnected from scouting.
• Sexuality is fluid — it's time to get past 'born this way' - New Scientist
• Strange Bright Spots on Ceres Create Mini-Atmosphere on Dwarf Planet

Gamer Motivation Profile

This has been making the rounds this week. Quantic Foundry has expanded the Bartle Test looking a different factors. You can take the Gamer Motivation Profile or read about how they created it.

(Since I'm a creative/immersive/mastery gamer, here's moar truck:)

Yakety Max

It had to be done, so someone did it.

There's a hole in the cosmos...

The cold spot in Cosmic Microwave Backgrand data.

There's a hole in the cosmos
Dear Liza, Dear Liza
There's a hole in the cosmos
Dear Liza, a hole.

— BBC - Earth - The largest thing in the universe

And in other news, interstellar space has balls. (Buckyballs.)

Fermi visualization of blazar gamma ray flare...

More explanation: GMM: Fermi Spots a Record Flare from Blazar 3C 279

Interesting article on gender in children's games

Toca Hair Salon 2

“Research can bite you in the ass a little bit, because of what’s been popular so far. You can fall into the trap of ‘if I want to create something that girls are going to like, it’s gotta have pink, it’s gotta have baking, it’s gotta have princesses’,” she said.

— Debbie Sterling, GoldieBlox (Diversity in children's apps: "Gender depictions tend to be very stereotyped" | Technology | The Guardian)

Euro Truck Simulator 2

Number Puzzle: Racket Solution

A Number Puzzle | Programming Praxis Racket Solution

Gas Station Problem in Racket

Racket solution to the gas station problem:

Pluto flyovers from New Horizons Data

Water-ice mountains on Pluto. Astronomy Picture of the Day

Virtual Truck!

Jenner at ESPYs

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/IA9I8WUIXs

— ELIEL CRUZ (@elielcruz) July 16, 2015

TEDx: Bisexuality and Beyond

A nice TEDx presentation on bisexuality. Πsexual!

Pluto!

From Pixel Curious

Ordered words Problem

My racket solution to the Ordered Words Problem on Programming Praxis:

EDIT: A C++ solution.

EDIT EDIT: A Common Lisp solution.

bi-geek-pan linkspam 14 July 2015: OitNB, language documentary, factor, macros, african science fiction

bi

• Why Won't "Orange Is The New Black" Acknowledge That Bisexuals Exist
• Why Do I Sound So Gay? - The Daily Beast
• Bisexual Banter — Morgan talks about what he found most confusing as...

geek

• Factor, a practical concatenative language
• Fear of Macros a nice introduction to macro programming in Racket.

fan

• Why Africa is the new home of science fiction | Books | The Guardian

Don't be silly...

Last year, the New York Times published an article, “The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists“. Think about that for a second, and then imagine replacing the word “bisexuality” with aspects of your own identity — “The Scientific Quest to Prove Gay Exists” or “The Scientific Quest to Prove Black Exists” or even “The Scientific Quest to Prove Femininity Exists.” Kristal noted that a common thread she finds among the bisexual community is that their sexuality is flat out denied. “Almost all of the out bisexuals I know have been told they don’t know who they really are, that they don’t exist, that they’re really gay or really straight.” That they’re “selfish” or “greedy.”

— Don't Be Silly, You're NOT Bisexual! | Styleite

Related:

Boy Scouts

Well, they finally did it: Boy Scouts executive committee endorses ending ban on gay leaders - The Washington Post

Boy Scouts of America votes to end ban on gay adults - BBC News

It's about 20 years too late to get me hooked back into Scouting as an adult volunteer. Now if they stop discriminating on the basis of religion, I might start buying popcorn. I'm not currently an atheist but still don't feel comfortable with that policy.

Euro Truck Simulator 2: Loving the Portraits

As part of my disenchantment with combat games, I seem to be getting into sims. So when I saw there was a Euro Truck Simulator 2 demo, I had to try it out. (Yes, I'm a gaming bottom feeder, and a few years behind.)

A criteria I have for games is "do I get to wear pants" (as opposed to bikini mail)? I can't tell if I'm wearing pants in this game. But I do get a nice selection of character portraits that are not obviously fantasy material. I wonder, but can't confirm, that some of the icons might be members of the development team. Still, it's a nice change.

Programming Puzzle: Phonebook Problem in Racket and C++

My weekend puzzle, solutions to the Partitioning The Telephone Book problem at Programming Praxis.

• Racket code (pastebin)
• C++ code (pastebin)

(I'm an amateur, especially with C++. Do not emulate.)

Dr Who Series Trailer

Yes!

Shutter 13 Spoilers

Honestly, I've been on the fence when it comes to Shutter for a while. A lot of weird for the sake of weird that didn't seem like it was going anywhere (my love of Cassius the KitKat Clock/Robot aside). But first of all, we have Alain busting out of the frame after being put on the sidelines:

And then we have the big reveal...

Bi/Geek/Fan Link Post: Desiree Akhavan, Gender Duality, and Sense8

Bi

Desiree Akhavan

Desiree Akhavan (Inappropriate Behavior) discusses her lgbt-friendly film projects

A lot of people came in and did something on par with blackface—I call it "gayface": when straight actresses walk in with, like, a backward baseball cap and baggy jeans and do their impression of a lesbian, as though a lesbian would not be a real human being. So, that happened a couple of times, and I remember thinking, This is both hilarious and really telling of how most people approach films with gay protagonists.

Paganism

Humanistic paganism is hosting a series of guest posts on gender. Issues with Masculine/Feminine Duality in Paganism is of interest. I think gender duality is best abandoned personally.

Geek

Masculine Fragility in Games

I've been pondering a bit about my relationship to games, partly due to this article on masculine fragility undermining innovation in games. Two personal data points there, the ultra-macho, omnipresent Wildstar narrator and running into Scooter in Borderlands. Or maybe I'm just getting a bit tired of games based on killing dozens of mobs to reach the next objective, checkpoint, or cutscene.

Next Space Telescope

In other news, astronomers plan a 12-meter space telescope. The article hints that installation on the moon is a possibility. IMO the moon's potential as a base for astronomy is one of the best reasons to go back.

Fan

Sense8

Jamie Clayton (Nomi) and Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Lito) discuss character relationships in Sense8.

“The thing that I love about Nomi and Amanita’s relationship is it’s such a middle finger to anyone who has you know a more conservative view of what a relationship is supposed to look like,” said Clayton, who jokingly referred to the couple as Nomanita. “Their interracial, and they’re trans and they’re lesbian. And so it’s this new way of looking at healthy love and saying it doesn’t have to look like what you were taught it was supposed to look like. And I love that. I think it’s extremely important.”

— Jamie Clayton (Nomi)

“I thought it was real and beautiful. Love is like this,” he said. “I see that it really helps in the understanding of someone that can be away from these two couples to feel the connection and how close we are when it comes to love. So how close we are altogether because we are all looking for that kind of love, a pure love you know? So I really love it.”

— Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Lito)

Nomi and Lito talk positive LGBTQ relationships, being authentic, and the orgy scene from Netflix’s ‘Sense8′ | Brad Kutner @ Gay Richmond News

Sense8: Jamie Clayton and Miguel Silvestre on the show's relationships

“The thing that I love about Nomi and Amanita’s relationship is it’s such a middle finger to anyone who has you know a more conservative view of what a relationship is supposed to look like,” said Clayton, who jokingly referred to the couple as Nomanita. “Their interracial, and they’re trans and they’re lesbian. And so it’s this new way of looking at healthy love and saying it doesn’t have to look like what you were taught it was supposed to look like. And I love that. I think it’s extremely important.”

— Jamie Clayton (Nomi)

“I thought it was real and beautiful. Love is like this,” he said. “I see that it really helps in the understanding of someone that can be away from these two couples to feel the connection and how close we are when it comes to love. So how close we are altogether because we are all looking for that kind of love, a pure love you know? So I really love it.”

— Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Lito)

Nomi and Lito talk positive LGBTQ relationships, being authentic, and the orgy scene from Netflix’s ‘Sense8′ | Brad Kutner @ Gay Richmond News

Desiree Akhavan talks about filmmaking and bisexuality

Desiree Akhavan describes auditions for Inappropriate behavior:

A lot of people came in and did something on par with blackface—I call it "gayface": when straight actresses walk in with, like, a backward baseball cap and baggy jeans and do their impression of a lesbian, as though a lesbian would not be a real human being. So, that happened a couple of times, and I remember thinking, This is both hilarious and really telling of how most people approach films with gay protagonists.

— We Talked to Filmmaker Desiree Akhavan About Putting More Bisexual Women on Our Screens | VICE | United States

Two Programming Links

Two programming links:

NASA fixed a bug in New Horizons a week before it hurtles by Pluto. They're working with a nine-hour delay.

Grant Rettke discusses lisp, forth, and minimalist programming.

Dune at 50

Soon, Herbert’s research into dunes became research into deserts and desert cultures. It overpowered his article about the heroism of the men of the USDA (proposed title “They Stopped the Moving Sands”) and became two short SF novels, serialised in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, one of the more prestigious genre magazines. Unsatisfied, Herbert industriously reworked his two stories into a single, giant epic. The prevailing publishing wisdom of the time had it that SF readers liked their stories short. Dune (400 pages in its first hardcover edition, almost 900 in the paperback on my desk) was rejected by more than 20 houses before being accepted by Chilton, a Philadelphia operation known for trade and hobby magazines such as Motor Age, Jewelers’ Circular and the no-doubt-diverting Dry Goods Economist.

— Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world | Books | Hari Kunzru @ The Guardian

An interesting 50-year retrospective of Dune.

Masculine Fragility and Gaming

“I want Fallout and Skyrim and Dragon Age and all the rest without the combat,” added user homieomorphism. “Why can’t I use magic to explore a beautiful world? Why can’t I use diplomacy to unite and pacify warring factions? I’m so sick of it, honestly. It’s to the point where I just [try to] minimize time spent in fights [so I can] enjoy the dialogue and art that much more.”

That particular conversation intrigued me, so I joined in. I added that I thought much of this discontent was founded in a fundamental inability to choose violence or non-violence. I want a choice in how to act in a video game. I want to be able to CHOOSE to be violent, but I also want to be able to choose NOT to be violent. I want both of those choices to be perfectly viable and nuanced. I want to be able to change my mind and my play style at any time. This is a part of true character customization, which should have as much to do with how you interact with NPCs as it should with customizing your avatar’s physical appearance. As one user wrote, “#we have barely scraped the surface of what video games are capable of.”

— Fight Club: How Masculine Fragility Is Limiting Innovation in Games | Sheva @ FemHype

The Advocate on Cara Delevingne

Bisexual advocates are calling foul on Vogue after a profile of model turned actress Cara Delevingne insinuated Delevinge’s sexuality might be a “phase.”

...

“The only way to combat this kind of misinformation is by calling out media outlets which repeat these stereotypes uncritically,” Julie Rodriguez, the bisexual woman who started the petition demanding an apology from Vogue, tells The Advocate. “I do think that Vogue's misstep in this article came from a place of ignorance, not hate — so my hope is that the petition helps educate the editors and writers of the publication, so they can do a better job of reporting on bisexual celebrities in the future.”

— Why Does Vogue Think Bisexuality Is a Phase? | Eliel Cruz @ Advocate.com

A link to the petition: Petition: Tell Vogue Magazine: Being LGBT Isn't a "Phase"!

Cisgender in the OED

In a small milestone of transgender progress, the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary have added the word "cisgender" to its pages. The venerable reference tool, generally considered the dictionary of record, now defines the word as "designating a person whose sense of personal identity corresponds to the sex and gender assigned to him or her at birth."

— The Word "Cisgender" Is Now in the Oxford English Dictionary | Bitch Media

Gender is like Calculus, Not Addition

tw:bullying, suicide

Two quotes by bi women this week...

Two quotes:

“The idea that queer women only form relationships with other women as a result of childhood trauma is a harmful (and false) stereotype that lesbian and bisexual women have been combating for decades…As a bisexual woman myself, I’ve experienced hurtful comments like this many times. People are quick to assume queer women’s identities are a ‘phase’ and to refuse to recognize the important relationships in their lives — an attitude which can cause depression, result in families rejecting their daughters (or forcing them into abusive conversion ‘therapy’), and even put young women at risk of suicide. Vogue should have taken this opportunity to combat negative stereotypes, not reinforce them.”

— Julie Rodriguez, quoted by inquisitr commenting on a Vogue writer's "just a phase" comment

"I don't want to have to deny my sexuality in order to be me. But I don't want to have to be defined by it. I'm fundamentally opposed to trying to edit myself to be palatable or popular. I don't give a f**k. I fight, but I shouldn't have to."

— Amber Heard quoted in Sunday World

I forgot where I got this but it's pretty cool.

Don't say this to your bisexual partner...

— Don’t Say This To Your Bisexual Partner @ Emphasize This

Yes, don't do that.

A great commentary on transphobia...

Call them what they want to be called. You can do it, we do it all the time. Think of it this way: David Evans woke up one day and said "Everyone call me The Edge." And everyone said, "Fine, The Edge, are we talking the noun or the verb?" And it's not just that. Over the past 20 years. We've agreed to call this man, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, just Diddy, and now Puff Daddy again, and most people don't even like him.

Facebook's names policy

The woman responsible for facebook's gender options was kicked off facebook for using the name she had on her nametag at work.

Facebook is a vital tool for community, especially for those of us who are marginalised. It withholds our access to friends and support in order to enforce their policy, and in so doing we are faced with a stark choice between a name we do not identify with and do not want to use, or being disconnected. If we make the choice to stay we find ourselves increasingly recognised by other people by that forced name.

By forcing us to change our names on the site, Facebook changes the names we are known by in real life — whether we like it or not.

— My name is only real enough to work at Facebook, not to use on the site Zip @ Medisum

Fun with Klein Bottles

— Hunt for the Elusive 4th Klein Bottle Carlo Séquin@Numberphile - YouTube

RBG

RBG out there like… https://t.co/8WGQlFrbAl

— BFF (@YrBFF) June 26, 2015

History

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

— Justice Kennedy's Majority Opinion

Go home nature, you're drunk!

Biologists realize they have been drawing the precambrian beastie upside-down and backwards since the 1970s.

Ancient mini-monster head mystery solved — here's how we did it

Two views of masculinity

Two views of masculinity:

This is something that I have been discussing with close friends and working on what this means for myself. As somebody who is considered an academic in some sense, a lot of figuring this out means I’ve been reading loads of research articles, books, and articles online to look at loads of different perspectives and see how that looks next to the many conversations that I have had with close friends and family. The academic portion of this journey has proved to be difficult as a consequence of the white history of the term “queer” and the lack of theorization of queer masculinity for Black women that is not solely described as one for Black lesbians. As a Black person whose gender identity is queer masculine, I have been wrestling with what this means to me and working on constructing a queer masculinity that is decolonized. And by that I mean depatriarchalized, a masculinity that isn’t defined by or nested in patriarchal domination.

— Under Construction: Decolonized Queer Masculinity(ies), Shay @ Decolonize all the Things

So, so, so many people, especially musicians, have done this before me. I wear dresses on stage and to occasional fancy dress events because I do not enjoy neckties. I wear dresses to embrace femininity (adjective) but not to re-assign my gender to female (noun). I think that it is absurd to think that there is a rigidity to the identity of CIS and Heterosexual males and females -- that for a man to wear a dress or for a woman to wear pants must mean that they are LGBTQ.

— Is It Really That Strange For a Guy to Wear a Dress?, Miles Robbins @ Huffington Post