(Source)

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

They are actually my everything

recently someone rolled their eyes and told me everyone's neurodivergent these days. i once spent 5 hours zoned out staring at my new wallpaper slowly peeling off the wall. i was too burned out to get up and fix it but it was bothering me so i couldn't leave it, either. i just sat there and watched the paper crawl downwards.

that whole time i was thinking about how fucked up the show danny phantom is because i think the kid might have actually died? or is a lich? or maybe exists in a limbo between two worlds? he was just 14! does he ever get to actually pass on? did his particles fry?

the wallpaper remained half-peeled for 3 weeks. also, i have only seen like 3 episodes of danny phantom.

something my therapist and i have talked a lot about is that kids with mental illness and/or neurodivergence almost always know, even before the diagnosis. we just know. we can tell there's something ... different about us. i don't know how to explain it. a sense of displacement, of alienation. like everyone else is getting secret, important messages - and we just can't. like the floor is a laser grid, and everyone else is a gymnast, and we can't even see where the heat is coming from; only feel it cut off the parts of our life that someone-else would have had easy access to.

cut off like how danny died(?) in the portal, i mean. its like you become... not a person, but not a corpse. something like that changes you.

i thought i was possessed. real-life full-of-demons possessed. it was the way i was raised. there was no other explanation for it, because i did the math - i saw how people talked about neurodivergence, and i was at-once "not bad enough" and also "too broken." therefore (obviously) i had let an evil spirit into my body. i guess that's kind of like danny phantom too?

i keep thinking about how when people are experiencing mental pain, they often secretly wish something horrible would happen to them, just for the "excuse". depression and anxiety are some of the more common mental illnesses, so they're treated like a small wound. like if you slap a bandaid on the situation, that person will just-pull-through. they are not seen as life-altering, much less life-threatening. they're a minor inconvenience, like needing glasses or being unable to process dairy. everyone is depressed. being neurodivergent these days is kind of the same.

if everyone is special, nobody is. it's kind of annoying, because - if it's true so many of us exist like this, why not make the world a better place for us? why not have more access to things like affordable testing, learning centers, and outreach programs? why not make adult life more manageable for those of us still struggling? why not acknowledge that adhd medication has been scarce for a while now, and that it is absolutely horrible that it's forcing thousands of people into a sudden and non-prescribed withdrawal? if there's nothing really different about us - why isn't the world shaped to fit us? why would we have to "just get over it"?

and why did his parents even have a death tube in their basement to begin with? the kid is obviously intelligent, just tell him "hey, this is a death tube, it's got death inside of it." maybe put a sign up. or safety railings! that shit was obviously not osha-compliant.

in the show, they frame it as danny's mistake, and then he has to deal with the consequences.

i haven't been able to eat anything but my safe foods in weeks. in my monthly "check in" meeting with my boss, he said - you just seem distractable. like, easily. there are no guardrails on my life. either i keep myself in a stranglehold of perpetual control, or it dissolves in the rain. it's a joke with my friends - well, you know her. she'll forget. it's a joke, and it's funny, and i'm laughing. my boss wrinkles his brow. you're a perfect worker, but you miss that 5%.

it would be nice if everyone did understand, is the thing.

Omg I'm sick of otome isekai mls looking identical, they're so generic and like it's especially worse when they keep telling us they're so handsome and like magical, and then they just wear the most boring outfit with like one of two short hair styles.

mfw when the so-called handsome ml is just an average looking man with short black hair and red eyes

French people raised half a million. Half a fucking million for the family of the cop who murdered Nahel Merzouk, an Algerian boy.

Well we don’t know the value of an Algerian life in France but we sure now know the reward for killing one.

To all the French people who say France is not racist fuck you. To all the Europeans who pretend to be so much better than the US a huge fuck you. To all the people getting a hard on over France fuck you. To all the people who even think about mentioning how destroying public property is bad fuck you. Fuck everyone who is not revolted by what happened.

yaaay more incorrect quotes :3

this is so upsetting, PLEASE rb to spread awareness