like on one hand you hate westerners but on the other hand you’re jealous of how much more lgbt friendly they are. you want to appreciate your culture and origins but you also realize that homophobia, racism and nationalism are rooted in modern day patriotism. you have to turn to western media and history for any lgbt content
some people trying to act like this post is an example of “who has it worse omg” olympics… and that’s not it.
no one is denying that the west - whether US or even just Western Europe - isn’t full of homophobia, that people don’t get abused or discriminated or killed because of their sexuality/identity.
but you know, me, as a proud Slav - which is also really easy to misinterpret but those who know me are well aware of what I mean - I have never heard of something like Gay Straight Alliance. you mean you can talk about gay people existing… in school? you can talk about identities? you can be gay in school? you don’t have to sit through hours upon hours of religion classes and get brainwashed into believing homos are the literal devil?
frankly, for a very very long time I didn’t know there was something like being gay. as an actual sexuality? love? no, it was something perverse no one talked about. no “gay cousin” jokes, no “that one lesbian aunt that grandma doesn’t like”.
nada.
you have TV shows with gay characters - some as a joke, we’re aware, and we’re against that too. but here, a gay character in a polish tv show/movie? if not shown to be disgusting, even if some attempt is made to make them /normal/ you think all the media is not shitting on the show? mothers don’t turn off the tvs with disgust? actors don’t get shit for playing a gay guy or a lesbian?
you have historical figures you can call gay? I learned of Oscar Wilde I nearly fainted in the school bathroom, I couldn’t believe, a gay person, and we read his works during classes, good gods, maybe there is hope. then you uncover Polish lgbt+ figures, covered by dust and shame, buried in history. don’t bring them up. don’t use their names, because people will not understand. a wrong person will hear and a book with polish literature for high schoolers lies on the corridor, set aflame.
we’re barely having actual pride parades here - and nothing amazing and great and supported by media, no, it’s difficult and scary, and wonderful, yes, until the Others stop us in the streets. police will look the other way. media will shit on you, not the attackers.
it’s getting better. we’re growing and blooming as a community, but we’re dying as nations.
we’re fighting off racism and xenophobia and racism and bigotry on every step - in others and in ourselves too, because as OP said, you love your culture but you see, kurwa you see how terribly soaked it is in hatred. every bit of your identity, national or not, you have to untangle, wash, wrangle, try to remove the stains, try to make okay.
and then one of the sides will hate you anyway.
allow us to talk about our experiences without jumping to ridiculous conclusions. the west treats us as subspecies anyway. try to think beyond what your propaganda taught you.
it’s even weirder to comprehend if you’re a slav growing up in a western country. Because on the outside, in school and in society you’re somewhat accepted. You see gay tv shows, you walk past and you see gay people holding hands. But in your family, it’s different. Even if they’re not religious they will be uncomfortable with gay people, they’ll talk within themselves how the other day they ‘saw two homos on the street and isn’t it horrible what the world has come to?’.
Chances are, you didn’t learn about expressing or understanding sexuality from your family, or even from television you watched at home. You learnt it from the internet and you made sure to erase your history super quickly because you were taught that being gay was dirty and wrong, or you learnt it in school and you were shocked, or you saw two gay people holding hands in the street and you asked and your father went on a rant about how those homosexuals are everywhere now.
I remember when the only gay representation I saw in the slavic world was the band TATU, and then how I was so fucking devastated when I learnt it was all an act and how now because of them every slavic person assumes that lesbians are just having a phase, or its all for show because it can’t ever be real.
When you live in the western world and you see gay parades that are happy and people are celebrating their sexuality and going against oppression in a way that is freeing, and then you see the gay parades in your home countries and they’re protected by police that do a shit job because people get through and pelt rocks at gay people anyway. That it’s less of a celebration of sexuality and more of a loud protest saying: I am here, I exist, I might be putting my body in danger and I might face the worst insults for this but I am here and I exist
I’m actually a bit broken over the fact that tatu being the only glimmer of representation and then subsequent heartbreak over it being an act is actually a common experience
I would do indecent things for the opportunity to read good fic about the Harrowing of the Iron Hells. (I wish I could say I would write it, but I have absolutely zero idea how to do so and I’m still wrestling with the handful of fics I do have some idea how to write. I would say maybe, but only with full disclosure that ‘maybe’ is on a timeline of like, “sometime in the next two decades” and not any time soon.)
Am I still thinking about Olorin at the fall of Angband? Why yes I am. Will I be thinking about this for a GOOD LONG WHILE? Why yes I will. I think that in Aman, as one of Irmo’s servants, he was inclined to abstraction - heartless in the way that young angels can be. Morgoth’s reign in Middle-Earth is doubtless a dreadful thing and the revolt of the Noldor is dramatic but doomed, all these things will work themselves out.
After cleansing Morgoth’s fortress, he comes to understand several things - what war does to the innocent, that even the guilty can suffer, that the decisions of the Valar are not as clear-cut as he had taken them to be. (This last realization, once he has processed it, brings him much closer to Manwe).
For the spirits imprisoned in Angband are not all innocent. Some have made terrible bargains, some have fallen very far from whatever semblance of humanity they once had. There are wights and wraiths in the lightless passages: bloodless, unbreathing things that steal the bodies of the unwary. Namo’s grim servants face these things with the impassivity of Judgement, but Possibility (Irmo) and Mercy (Nienna) have equal roles to play.
“Who cannot weep, come learn of me.” What use did Irmo’s young dreamer ever have for tears? But after coming out of the pits of Angband with his arms full of child ghosts*, Olorin needs something. It might help, to learn to weep.
(Gandalf was always good with children. I think of him with the hobbit-children of the Shire, setting off fireworks to make them laugh. Fire gets plenty of association with craft and technology, in both good and evil applications. But in Gandalf, the bearer of the ring of Fire, we see fire as courage and comfort, “rekindling hearts in a world that grows chill.”)
People who write Bilbo as a stuttering, super shy wall flower who cries if you look at him in the wrong way, know I‘m outside your house ready to strike.
this is the little shit who fucking insulted a dragon and went YOLO up the stairs
I’m kinda torn from seeing communist on tumblr addressing their friends as ‘comrades’. Because it got completely different meaning than when eastern europeans do it.
You are making it unironical, while here calling another person a comrade really means:
some of you have never met an actual slavic person or tried to understand the nuances of slavic countries and are instead content with consuming western propaganda about us and it really shows
“What do you have to tell me about the state of your soul? Your loves, your nervous crisis, your metaphysical tortures, your lesser concerns, your urbane sensations, and the countless idiots there are in life. Tell me, don’t stay silent, don’t keep quiet.”
— César Vallejo, from a letter to Óscar Imaña written c. January 1918
