Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Hey, gay working class and gay rural interests, aesthetics, and culture belong within the wider LGBT+ community. Country music belongs in gay spaces. Camo and trucker caps and work boots belong in gay spaces. Trucks and doorless jeeps and shitty old beaters belong in gay spaces. GEDs and high school educations and blue collar jobs belong in gay spaces. Being broke and looking like shit belongs in gay spaces. The community isn’t owned by the wealthiest San Fransisco and New York gay-geoisie. Their interests, appearances, and beliefs do not define queerness.
Me: It’s important to remember to be inclusive of gay people from rural backgrounds.
Parts of Tumblr.com: I have literally never heard of classism and thus have no frame of reference for the idea that I should be nice to people with stereotypically low class interests and so I will make fun of those interests now.
Me: Ah so I see I have overshot where y’all are at
Everyone in the notes: Yas! I love farms! Love them chickens, farm core is my life!
Bitch we all know you like farm asthetique. What we want is support for the Actual rural southern queer community. The trailer park/pre-used prefab queers. The ones who are never going to get more than a 10th grade education and work dirty blue collar jobs with hard labor. And remember that this whole ass time we often have to lie about who we are so we can keep the shitty hard labor jobs that fuck up our bodies. And remember that these communities are also black and Hispanic communities?? I see y'all in the notes “this is so white, this is so white” like the entire South isn’t full of poc and queer poc who struggle even harder because of all this??
Broke: everyone in the rural south is white homophobic racists
Woke: the rural south has large populations of queer poc who get no support and no acknowledgement within broader queer culture past the “gay cowboy” asthetic
This comic from Lilo the Autistic Queer (@A_Silent_Queer on Twitter) made me smile today. There is no one way to look trans, and no one way to transition. However you choose to express your authentic self is good and doing what makes you happy regardless of what cis people think is good.
Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”
Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in TheUmbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.
Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.” This includes having short hair again. During the interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?
Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.
ELLIOT PAGE for TIME Magazine › 2021 interview by Katy Steinmetz, photography by Wynne Neilly
