STUFF 6 pieces of boneless chicken thighs 6 - 7 oz each, 2 - 2.5 lbs total ¼ cup honey ¼ cup light soy sauce 1 tbsp chili flakes crushed red pepper (optional) 4 - 5 garlic cloves 1 tbsp good quality chicken stock paste or 1 cube ½ yellow onion sliced thin (or 4 - 5 spring onions, sliced into big pieces) 2 whole star anise ¼ cup water 1 - 2 tbsp water 1 tbsp cornstarch Sliced green onion and sesame seeds, for serving
STEPS Add the chicken into the Instant Pot, and scrape in any leftover marinade in the bowl as well. Add the water and star anise and mix well.
Place the chicken, honey, soy sauce, and chili flakes in a bowl, and mix to coat well. Set aside. (If you’d like the chicken to be even more flavorful, you can let it marinate for about 1 hour, or up to 24 hours).
Set the instant pot to the saute setting. When the pot is hot, add about 1 tbsp of oil. Saute the onions and garlic cloves until the onions have softened and there’s some caramelization on the garlic cloves. Add the chicken stock paste (or crushed up cube) and mix it in with the onion and garlic.
Lock on the IP lid (vent closed) and set the IP to cook the chicken on high pressure for 7 minutes, and natural release for 5 minutes. Open the vent and allow the IP to depressurize.
Remove the chicken from the pot, and transfer them to a plate or a lined baking tray (if caramelizing - see below). Mash up the softened pieces of garlic cloves with a spoon or fork inside the cooking liquid.
Set the IP to saute. Mix the water and cornstarch together in a small bowl to make a smooth slurry.
When the cooking liquid starts to simmer, add half of the cornstarch slurry and stir through to thicken. Simmer for 1 minute. If you’d like to thicken the sauce further, stir in the rest of the cornstarch slurry and simmer for at least another minute. If you’re happy with the consistency of the sauce, let it simmer for a few minutes and then keep it warm until the chicken is ready.
Taste and season with more salt if necessary.
NOTES If you’re using smaller chicken thighs, you can reduce the cook time to about 6 minutes. If you prefer the chicken to be cooked to a point where it’s really soft, then cook the chicken for a further 1 - 2 minutes.
If you’re using bone-in (skinless or skin-on) chicken, increase the cook time to 11 - 12 minutes (for large chicken thighs), or 9 minutes for smaller chicken thighs.
If you’re doubling the recipe, double the amount of honey, soy, garlic, chicken stock, chili flakes and onion. But keep the amount of star anise the same, and you can eliminate the water altogether (because the marinate will provide enough liquid for the recipe). You may need more cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce.
So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”
Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”
So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.
That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.
When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I wasalso saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”
When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?
And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.
“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.
Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.
That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..
So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.
And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”
“Sex positivity” can be a confusing name because it sounds like it means “sex is always great and everyone should have it”. I think a lot of people get misled by that.
It’s the antithesis of “sex negativity”, which is the idea that sex is uniquely powerful and dangerous and morally laden among all human behaviours. That there’s a special moral virtue in being ignorant about sex, a virtue that you lose when you learn about or have it. That you can be kind to someone, cruel to them, save their life, or kill them, but that won’t change who you are nearly so much as if you have sex with them. It’s the idea that outside of very specific moral boundaries, sex is fundamentally immoral and degrading, no matter how its participants feel about it. That it’s fundamentally wrong to feel sexual desire, to entertain sexual fantasies, to seek sexual pleasure, or to reach orgasm, unless you’re in one of the very limited set of moral parameters that make that okay. Those parameters are usually things like whether the people involved are married or in a committed relationship, whether they’re the right sex/gender, whether it’s for the right motivation (some people think “only for procreation” and others think “never for money”) and whether the sex act is one society approves of.
And there’s a very specific set of societal expectations: Of course everybody WANTS sex, that’s what’s healthy and normal, and unless you’re very weird or very special, of course you will try as hard as you can to enter a relationship like marriage where sex is allowable so you CAN have it. Once you do that, you basically owe it to the person you’re married to TO have sex. It’s because everybody wants sex so much that we need all these rules! Obviously WITHOUT these rules, people would run mad and make all kinds of big mistakes, because people can’t tell for themselves what’s right or wrong.
Sex positivity doesn’t take the opposite tack and say that sex is always good. Rather, its basic principle is that sex is ordinary.It’s like anything else humans do, like eating or sleeping or speaking or touching people. It’s value-neutral. People get to decide how they feel about it and whether they want to have it. If we make a society built on sex-positive principles, the average person will have enough information and empathy to be able to make the choices that feel right for them and others.
Sex positivity means understanding that if someone doesn’t want to have sex, that’s their absolute right, and it has the same moral weight as if they do want to have sex.
Sex positivity means that if someone has sex, the most important thing is whether they genuinely understand what sex is, what its risks are, what their rights are, and how to make it safe and pleasurable–and whether, knowing all these things, they have freely chosen to have this sex at this moment. The same goes for anyone else involved in the sex. Sex-positive sex with other people depends on valuing everyone involved; everyone involved has to be able to form their own opinions, make their own decisions, and have their own needs and wishes respected.
We don’t currently live in a sex-positive society. A society where being attractive or sexy is mandatory, where promiscuous sex is viewed as compulsory, and where people are shamed and punished for not wanting to have sex, is not actually sex-positive. And the sex-positive movement itself, sex-positive people, can miss the mark and fail to live up to their own principles, by not making space for people who need the freedom to express very different desires and boundaries.
The key to sexual liberation is not the “sex” part. It’s the “liberation” part. It’s about giving everyone the same freedom.
(Rules: If you want to argue with me you need to send me $20 to pay for the research and analysis it will take to seriously engage with you; otherwise, make your own post. No accusing me or anyone else of being a sexual predator without proof. No death threats, suicide bait, or invocations of harm like “I hope you die”/”somebody ought to kill you”)
When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.
But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.
As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.
The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork. In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.
That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.
It’s been half a decade and I still haven’t found an articulation of the complexity of “representation” as concisely and precisely mindblowing as @hungrylikethewolfie’s here.
Mix 6 tbsp honey and 3 tbsp oyster sauce in a bowl. Chop the garlic and add with the star anise, a pinch of chilli flakes and a pinch of salt. Mix well.
Coat the ribs in the sauce and leave for at least 2 hours to marinade.
Heat the oven to 160° and put the ribs on a baking tray for 90 minutes. Turn occasionally and brush more sauce over them.
Turn the heat up to 200° for 15 minutes, keeping an eye on them as they can burn.
Cut into individual ribs and serve with whatever sides you want.
So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.
Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm.Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.
That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.
It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.
Did you just say emotional straight men are qu*er? Did you deadass just say that cishet men are part of the lgbt community? And y’all wonder why so many people hate it?
(sigh) I’ll repeat myself:
For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:
Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”
It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.
To reiterate: One way that toxic masculinity is kept as the default pattern of behavior for straight men is that they are punished, quickly and efficiently, for any show of vulnerability. Dismantling the structures that enforce traditional gender roles is one way to ensure that LGBT people are welcomed in society.
The world would be much more accepting if Joe Cishet didn’t feel the need to correct every single deviation from the toxic behaviors he believes are required.
The purpose of the queer coalition is to end the practice of, “you must have [X list of traits] to participate in these parts of society.”
Can cishet men be queer?
Why does it matter?
Being queer isn’t about what specific identity or traits you have. It’s about saying, “HEY! Average isn’t the pinnacle of human existence! We didn’t build this world so everyone could strive to be just like their neighbors! People can be different and we can celebrate that difference, not shun it!”
Can a cishet man “be queer?” I dunno. I don’t think that’s important.
Can a cishet man “live a queer life?” Hell yes he can.
Can a cishet woman “be queer?” Wrong question.
Can a cishet woman “live a queer life?” Hell yes.
These aren’t “straight people appropriating queer culture.” They’re not taking it away from us, not picking and choosing bits of it to share with their cis het friends. These are people joining queer culture.
They’re not part of the LGBT community. They ARE part of the queer community.
this is a long-ish, text-heavy post but please read it, especially the last addition ^
Queer is a coalition, not a demographic.
^ This is why allies are part of the broader queer community while lesbian TERFs, exclusionists, etc. aren’t.
My mom’s friend who corrects anyone who gets my sibling’s pronouns wrong, who actively supports queer kids in her classroom, who welcomed her daughter’s trans girlfriend into her family? She is part of the queer community regardless of her sexuality, and anyone who says she can’t be needs to think about their definition of community. And by the same definition, TERFs aren’t part of the community because they choose not to be, because trying to control other people and justify their own bitterness and bigotry is more important to them.
“Can cishet people be queer?”
Listen. Listen. In 2007, I went to see a gay performance artist named Tim Miller. At that time he did pieces talking about the two major issues that had affected him as a queer man: surviving the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s as his friends dropped dead around him, and the fact that he wanted to marry his partner, who was Australian, and every time said partner came to the US there was a concern he’d be deported because his relationship made him “a risk for overstaying his visa.” Marriage would have given him a green card, but guess what you couldn’t do in 2007! Even if you got married in Maryland, it didn’t count for immigration purposes because it wasn’t federally recognized.
So one of the stories he told that night was about his high school German teacher, who was a butch lesbian. He ended the story with a line I have never forgotten:
“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, have to stick together.”
This was a performance piece he’d first written IN 1994.
So: a man who survived a queer genocide says yes, you fucking well CAN be cishet and queer. I think he’d know.
(If you’re wondering: yes, he and the partner did finally get to get married. Assuming they’re both alive and well, they’ll celebrate 30 years in 2024.)
Ten years ago this October, I came out as Queer.
At the time, I identified as a cishet man, although I usually added some witty disclaimer like “but I’m not very good at it” or “but I don’t have a fucking complex about it” or something like that. Queer was my way of a) showing support to the community that had been there for me my entire life, and b) ditching the vague qualifiers.
It would be another eight months before the implications of this really kicked in. I had gone to see my mother on her deathbed, and taken all of the needful stuff out of my purse and put it into my pockets. When I got back to the car, I started putting everything back in my purse, and I was grouchy about it, because I hate having lots of stuff in my pockets. And I said to myself I should have said screw it and just taken the purse in with me, because the only surprise would have been that I had the audacity to bring it with me, not that I had one.
And that’s when it hit me that I was, in fact, Queer.
Since then it’s been… a journey. I now identify as trans/non-binary, and there are times I suspect I may just be a woman, but I have such a poor grasp on gender that I really don’t know. I’d never really thought about it before. I’ve come to realize that I’ve always had some level of body dysphoria, but I honestly don’t know if it’s connected to gender. (It… doesn’t feel like it, but again, still not clear on the concept.) I did one of those face-app gender swap things and there was a weird ache looking at it.
And I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I hadn’t started with Queer. I wouldn’t have gotten this far if the Queer community hadn’t bumped into the little sissy nerd and gone “Oh, hey, you can hang with us.” I wouldn’t have gotten this far if a huge chunk of the It Gets Better Project videos didn’t explicitly go out of their way to say “And all of this is for the nerds, too, and the weirdos, and the folks who are always told they don’t belong.”
You can have my Queer when you reincarnate as a quicker shot.
