the queer folks thread

pandacular said:
As they say, there's no hate like Christian love.
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Unfortunately, that's sometimes true.

That said, it isn't obvious to me which "side" stoneshit falls on based on those two comments. Your guess is likely correct, but I don't want to assume.
 
I love rainbow eucalyptus. Definitely not a bad idea for a queer themed composition.

I have an A. palmatum that has a mix of reddish-purple and pink leaves. If I can keep the pink leaves happy, and develop more of those sports, I’ll definitely be putting it in a blue pot to represent the bi flag!
 
Wires_Guy_wires said:
I think we should all be growing more rainbow eucalyptus.
Make a forest out of it with no straight trunks, call it a parade. I mean, comedy is one of the great tension breakers that have helped a great deal in the world.
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I have been trying that for 4 years now. I made good progress in 3 years and suffered a set back. Now I have a couple air layers growing again.
 
Wow, I just learned about this thread about half an hour ago.
My first thought was: Why do we have this thread?

I feel like this a lot, when I see the queer topic come up. In day to day life I always wonder: Have we not reached a state where everybody can be who they want to be? So why focus on someones sexual orientation; Why do people care who does what with whom, as long as all parties involved are happy about it. I have never been able to understand why people care so much about how other people live their life.

Then I started reading and I can only say: shit.
What a mess of a thread this has become. Sorry especially for the OP. Apparently some places are more accepting than others.

I still do not see that sexual orientation relates to bonsai (Same as politics and religion). These are things I feel could just as well remain private. But that is because I do not care what people want to do with their life. If you like creating cool little trees, great.

That being said, if there is a thread on it, people should butt out with judgemental narrow-minded worldviews. It is fine if one decides to live their life by the worldviews of 2000 years ago. It is not OK to force this medieval world perspective onto others who decide to use a modern perspective to life.

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Gabler said:
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Thx, that page shows that LEGALLY, many of the typical "western" country are very similar. I did some searching, and found this:
www.pewresearch.org

The Global Divide on Homosexuality Persists

Despite major changes in LGBT rights around the world, acceptance of homosexuality remains sharply divided by country, region and economic development.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org

Showing clearly big differences in public acceptance of LGBT between countries and groups. (Older, uneducated, right-wing, religious males have bigger problems with people that do not fit the tradition mold, than younger, better educated, left, atheist or female). USA globally speaking has an OK acceptance (72% of population feels homosexuality should be accepted by society) but in comparison to the most liberal countries in the world (Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany ~90%) there is a massive gap, reflecting a lack of freedom for some. This might explain why in my worldview this is not an issue anymore. I do not know a single person who is concerned about alternative sexual orientations.

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I think the purpose was in some capacity stated at the start of the thread. Have I ever felt like I would be chased with torches and pitchforks out of a bonsai scene for being openly gay? Absolutely not. On the contrary, do I think that a hobby that is overwhelmingly occupied by older, heterosexual men could be intimidating to approach for young queer people? Absolutely.

This subject is also not isolated exclusively to homosexuality either. To the chagrin of traditionalists the identity is a more complex structure than before. I'd like to believe all of the bonsai communities I'm a part of would be welcoming to transgender, nonbinary or any other number of people, but within a country the scale of the United States I cant help but think that wouldn't be true everywhere. In an ideal world my sexuality is entirely an afterthought, but we objectively don't exist in a society that equitable yet. My reason for participating in a thread this specific is for the purpose of making our presence within the art-form visible and fostering an environment in which nobody is unsure if they'll be welcomed warmly in their bonsai communities.

I'd also challenge the notion that our identities outside of bonsai artists are non-grata. Art is not brought into reality by blank slates, it is informed by experience, belief, passion. The extent to which its fruitful to express is uncertain, sure. But bonsai never would've existed if not for the Daoist philosophy of creating miniature recreations of mystical vistas in order to distill their potency. From there Buddhist and Shinto traditions further influenced the art into what we know as contemporary bonsai. Im certain across Europe and the Americas people have been inspired by the folklore of their heritage as well. My point being, we gain nothing from the supression of our identities. What the pratice of bonsai stands to gain from a vibrant community of individuals promoting the art is incalculable.
 
leatherback said:
Wow, I just learned about this thread about half an hour ago.
My first thought was: Why do we have this thread?

I feel like this a lot, when I see the queer topic come up. In day to day life I always wonder: Have we not reached a state where everybody can be who they want to be? So why focus on someones sexual orientation; Why do people care who does what with whom, as long as all parties involved are happy about it. I have never been able to understand why people care so much about how other people live their life.

Then I started reading and I can only say: shit.
What a mess of a thread this has become. Sorry especially for the OP. Apparently some places are more accepting than others.
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Thank you for joining in this discussion in a positive and productive way, Jelle. It was definitely a bummer to see this thread go in a weird direction, especially as I specifically asked those who don't have friendly things to say about queer people to keep that to themselves (which as you mention should go without saying).
leatherback said:
I still do not see that sexual orientation relates to bonsai (Same as politics and religion). These are things I feel could just as well remain private. But that is because I do not care what people want to do with their life. If you like creating cool little trees, great.
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I made this thread just to discuss...well, whatever. I didn't have anything in particular in mind. I often see the attitude you mention, namely that discussions of gender, sexuality, and any number of intersectional identities should be left private. I think where this view falls short is that what it ends up meaning is that "the other" should be left private, while folks discuss "the default" without second thought. One example is people ascribing heterosexual relationships to young children who are play friends.

...but also you're certainly not wrong (in my experience!) that Europeans are much less interested--either positively or negatively--in gender identity than Americans. Perhaps it's because it's more in the past of Western Europe, perhaps it's a cultural difference, I couldn't say.

One thought I had about the intersection of bonsai and broader queer theory is the idea of masculine vs feminine design characteristics. I see quite a few people who try to avoid using these particular terms in bonsai design, but they really don't bother me. I understand that the masculine and feminine of bonsai is not necessarily the same as that of wider society, but I would say that queer folks tend to have spent more time thinking about gender and this (false?) duality, and thus might have interesting to add to that discussion. Now whether that leads to a better tree is a different story 🤭
 
pandacular said:
masculine vs feminine design characteristics.
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I've wondered about that.

For some background, I joined the gaming club in undergrad, and I soon discovered about two thirds of the club fell under the queer umbrella. It was a normal Thursday if I was the only "cis-gendered" person attending board game night. At least a significant portion of those folks would be uncomfortable with our use of the terms masculine and feminine to describe trees.

I also studied anthropology in undergrad—I wasn't just there to play games—so I spent a bit of time studying sex and gender in a relatively sterile academic context. Culture is, essentially, the way we orient ourselves in the world. To the extent that gender is an cultural construct, it therefore exists, at least in part, as a navigational aid to help people get through the hardships of life. It's therefore unsurprising that there are many people who resist the subversion of gender norms. For those people it's disorienting and therefore frightening. Gender norms are so deeply ingrained, that they extend beyond male and female humans to describe other things. In this instance, design principles in bonsai trees.

It's clear to me that there's a real, non-trivial difference between male humans and female humans, and the distinction between man and woman isn't a mere byproduct of cultural conditioning. Female humans bear a disproportionate cost for sexual intercourse. That's it. That's the difference. We like to think that birth control has equalized the sexes, but even when we (mostly) eliminate the risk of pregnancy, it's clear that, at a minimum, there is a difference in the psychological cost of sexual intercourse, even absent a difference in the physiological cost.

That disparity has consequences with more ramifications than I can count. The cultural ideas of gender appear to have developed as a sort of a roadmap to help navigate those complex and complicated consequences. As it turns out, those same concepts of masculine and feminine are a useful shorthand for a number of other difficult concepts, so we apply them by analogy, for example, to bonsai trees.

That extension of the concepts can be illustrative of the cultural struggle we're currently facing in the West. How many threads do we have here where users complain that the "Rules of Bonsai" are too rigid? In a sense, it's no different than having "Rules of Gender" that are too rigid.
 
Gabler said:
At least a significant portion of those folks would be uncomfortable with our use of the terms masculine and feminine to describe trees.
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Definitely. I was thinking about this watching a Mirai video, where Ryan brings up this design dichotomy and makes a clear disclaimer about their use as a term of art and not a claim about how people are or ought to be. The terms don’t make me uncomfortable personally both because I recognize that in the culture I live in they are far from normative and also because I enjoy playing with this paradigm—I enjoy feminizing myself or at other times emphasizing masculinity. Certainly though, these terms can be painful reminders to those who are unable to “pass” and have suffered because of that.
 
pandacular said:
One thought I had about the intersection of bonsai and broader queer theory is the idea of masculine vs feminine design characteristics. I see quite a few people who try to avoid using these particular terms in bonsai design, but they really don't bother me. I understand that the masculine and feminine of bonsai is not necessarily the same as that of wider society, but I would say that queer folks tend to have spent more time thinking about gender and this (false?) duality, and thus might have interesting to add to that discussion. Now whether that leads to a better tree is a different story 🤭
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KikurageOtomo said:
... My point being, we gain nothing from the suppression of our identities. What the practice of bonsai stands to gain from a vibrant community of individuals promoting the art is incalculable.
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I'm not one of those guys who has ever played with feminizing myself OR pretending to be more butch than I am by nature. I have, though often been caught up in other's being confounded by my orientation: From the gay employer who hired me even though I didn't come out to him (I wanted him to hire me for my qualifications, not my orientation), to co-workers who couldn't comprehend that I was willing to do the nitty-gritty as a carpenter/contractor "even" though I'm gay, to the 6-year old girl who said, "But he can't be gay! He's a carpenter!"

I haven't suppressed my identity in over 40 years., but I have always been puzzled by the notion of masculine vs feminine traits in trees or in pots.
I know straight women who are far better auto mechanics than I ---I have no interest.
I am much more willing to get my hands dirty than almost any heterosexual man I know at my very large "bro" gym.
I've known many straight guys with better aesthetic judgment than many women.

We are capable, each of us, of being very gentle in one moment and very aggressive in the next. Do we use "masculine" and "feminine" to describe flavors? I don't think so. The distinction isn't even useful in trying to categorize colors, except when we operate out of our narrow Western cultural prejudices.

As many people have said over the years, the bravest people in the fight for gay rights have been the drag queens (from the first minutes of Stonewall) and the trans activists currently----not the muscled guys in the leather bars and bath houses!
 
Totally agree with everything you’ve said, Perry. People—queer or otherwise—are unlikely and unwilling to fit into boxes. I do think that ideas of what is feminine and what is masculine do more harm than good societally particularly as they tend to be ascribed to “woman” or “man” without much choice in the matter, but I think there is some value, from a design/fashion/style perspective in these groupings. It’s not too different than a color pallet, if you can look past the weird pressurey aspects of it.

I do not think these terms are the best, but they are the ones we have in the bonsai world.
 
stoneshirt said:
Hate...Try Spraying your Convictions,without using that Word,and you would be at a Loss of Words.Wise men do not Hate.But they do get Repulsed by Human Degeneracy.Oh,and don't get me wrong,I'm not a Christian.I follow the Buddha.....
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I have known Buddhists all my life. You are no Buddhist!
Had you been one you would have thought about people going through many lifetimes as animals or human. In some lives, one can be male, others one can be female. So if love transcends worlds and life cycles and a partner happens to change his/her sex in their next life and the two happen to meet again then what?
BTW I am not a Buddhist, I just happen to study religions.
 
Cajunrider said:
No.
This might just be your Freudian slip.
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Those who refuse to tolerate gay and lesbian people around them call homosexuality a choice. It's only a choice if you're bisexual. It's therefore clear to me that outspoken homophobes are compensating for their own attraction to others of the same sex.
 
Gabler said:
Those who refuse to tolerate gay and lesbian people around them call homosexuality a choice. It's only a choice if you're bisexual. It's therefore clear to me that outspoken homophobes are compensating for their own attraction to others of the same sex.
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I've never gotten the obsession with the "it's not a choice" messaging. I'm not at all saying I disagree. But even if it is a choice, why and how does it affect others? Is it relevant to the discussion of justice if it's a choice?

I certainly agree with you that the loudest homophobes tend to have their own issues that they refuse to sort out.

But anyway, this is the sort of trolling that the ignore list was made for.
 
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