Blogaround

Captain America. Image source.

1. Labels must be allowed to die (posted July 10) "The result is that these glossaries contain a bunch of labels that are otherwise effectively dead. People only learn about these labels by reading glossaries, or by encountering other people who read the glossaries. The glossaries mislead people into thinking that individual neolabels are more established than they really are."

This is a very important point. I have long believed it's *not actually useful* when well-meaning people in queer spaces list off every queer identity they can think of in order to "be inclusive."

2. Ambassadors From Aceland (posted September 14) "We can’t talk about where our “first time” happened, because that would be confusing and not “ace enough”. We can’t talk about why we want kids, because we all know how babies are made and people wouldn’t understand."

3. Why Woody Is Actually Captain America (posted October 8) "Cap and Woody also share the weirdly very specific plot point of having to un-brainwash their recently armless friend."

4. One Child Policy: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted October 7) This week John Oliver discusses China's one-child policy (which ended in 2016, changing to a two-child policy). I'm glad he's talking about this; it's good for his American audience to be informed about how things are in China.

A few things I want to add (source: I live in China- I'm in Shanghai, a huge international city, please note that the situation would be different in rural areas):

The one-child policy started in 1980, which means that the vast majority of Chinese people my age (young adults, around 20 or 30 years old) don't have brothers or sisters. (They have cousins.)

This means that families put all their hopes for the future on their one child. And they pour all their money and resources into the child's education. It's extremely competitive, and it puts a lot of pressure on the kids- they need to do well in school, they need to get a good job, they need to get married and have a child of their own.

There are Chinese people my age who aren't interested in having children, but their parents try to pressure them into it (because otherwise they won't have any grandchildren). And this is even more of a problem for gay Chinese people. (China doesn't have same-sex marriage.) Sometimes a gay man and lesbian woman will get married ("lavender marriage") just to keep their families happy.

And after 30-plus years of the one-child policy, Chinese people feel that it's normal to have one child. Now the policy has changed, and they can have 2, but a lot of people feel that financially it's just not realistic to have 2 children. The one-child policy caused everything for kids to become so expensive, and parents feel like they *have to* spend so much money and enroll their kid in all kinds of tutoring programs and everything, and doing all that for 2 kids would be way too hard.