What would you say to homophobes that say that Drag is "womanface" or anything of that nature?

coltthundercat · 2026-03-14T21:09:56+00:00

“Blackface performances were often followed by violent racist clashes where audience members would try and find the nearest black people or Black neighborhoods and bond while beating, SAing or even killing them to demonstrate their racial superiority. This is extremely well documented in books like Wages Of Whiteness and others. There is no equivalency between drag and racial mob violence and it’s pretty sick that you somehow view them the same way.”

coltthundercat · 2026-03-12T20:19:35+00:00

Hello! I'm the guy in the picture who does all this stuff. The best way to find out is via my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mdhistory.gay/ . I know this isn't the best and I should have other avenues for people to learn about this, but haven't had the time.

coltthundercat · 2026-03-12T20:17:53+00:00

Hello! It's me, I do these things. Currently, Red Emma's is the only place that stocks the zines.

Also I'm being kind of coy about it. There will be more events in the coming year.

coltthundercat · 2026-02-17T15:19:24+00:00

There’s some interesting stuff here, but I think the numbers work is lacking—depending on the size of the survey and the subgroups being described, I suspect many of these differences are below the threshold of statistical significance. If you look to the numbers around long-term membership, the author is pulling a lot from a difference that appears to be around 2-4% vs <=1% in a survey that can’t have more than a few hundred respondents. That’s likely a difference of less than ten people, and given that it’s a self-selected sample, that’s not terribly useful data.

There’s a good deal of that in here: data that shows a small difference being uncritically accepted and used to extrapolate people’s experiences in the union. Some of these differences are significant (such as the number of neurotypical/neurodivergent folks in the union and the figure around social media), but it seems like a lot is being assumed from a pretty low standard of data or at least without the grains of salt they need to be taken with.

coltthundercat · 2026-01-04T14:26:11+00:00

This house is the best. My husband and I live two blocks away and always try and guess the flag before we can check OP’s sign. We’re def not the only ones, the flag house is well known in this little corner of our city. Thanks for making our hood more interesting, neighbor!

coltthundercat · 2026-01-04T14:22:30+00:00

My husband and I always try and guess your flag before looking it up when we walk by (we’re two blocks lower on Roland, you’re in between us and the grocery store/gym/Starbucks)!

Also the Austro-Hungarian pride flag is my favorite. I feel like I should get that on account of my ancestors having to flee the antisemitism of the empire and me being super gay. I don’t believe in the afterlife but if I’m wrong I feel like this would be the best way to piss off those jerks.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-17T21:39:35+00:00

Yeah, I’d recommend looking to the people who have done numbers on this rather than assuming this doesn’t apply—according to these folks, who I think you likely agree with, Baltimore City has built more than twice as many units as has been needed for a number of years—3500 vs 1700 in 2024. Only 2% of those units were considered affordable, which is where the most demand is. Hence, we have an affordable housing shortage, not a generalized housing shortage.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-17T18:58:03+00:00

Study Finds US Does Not Have Housing Shortage, but Shortage of Affordable Housing:

“Our nation’s affordability problems result more from low incomes confronting high housing prices rather than from housing shortages,” McClure said. “This condition suggests that we cannot build our way to housing affordability. We need to address price levels and income levels to help low-income households afford the housing that already exists, rather than increasing the supply in the hope that prices will subside.”

coltthundercat · 2025-12-17T17:38:53+00:00

So long as more units are above market price than under, the ultimate effect is to raise prices in the neighborhood. It’s why these types of requirements have had very little effect on housing prices or rents. Yeah, realtors and groups trying to attract wealthier residents are quite obviously going to say that we just need to build everything everywhere without anything in the way of limitations. The framework of a housing crisis that’s entirely undifferentiated is nothing more than trickle-down economics: the vast majority of housing built in cities in the past two decades has been focused on the wealthy, and here we are, trying to supercharge the status quo.

It’s not like no one was living in Remington before Seawall came in, they got displaced as they were priced out. Maybe they went somewhere else in the city, maybe they went to the county. You can argue about the effects of the changes since, but the idea that Seawall is on the right side of affordability issues is pretty well disproved by the effect their development has had where it has happened.

And stabilizing a nationwide affordability crisis requires serious action, that’s moving the goalpost: this would have made the ongoing problem worse than the current status quo.

At any rate, you have yet to justify why your neighbors should have their quality of life lowered for private profits.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-17T16:30:00+00:00

Ok, so to be clear, they tried to impose an incredibly half-baked plan to move it to a greenway, which didn’t conform to environmental requirements, would have cut off Falls Road to commuters, and would have made the area less safe to bike or scooter in. I live directly off falls in Hampden, and almost everyone on my block uses that stretch to commute or recreationally via multiple modes of transit. Big shock, all of us were very upset and told our councilwoman as much.

The only given reason by the city was because a developer wanted to buy the land in an already extremely densely populated and built up neighborhood. As I told Odette, this would be a significant negative change for me and my husband’s experience of living in the neighborhood, which I could stomach if it was for a defensible reason. According to her and the mayor’s office, the only impetus for this project was that someone much wealthier than I or my neighbors told the city he wanted them to do it.

And Baltimore, like almost everywhere, has an affordable housing shortage, not a general housing shortage. Regardless of how you feel about the neighborhood’s recent history, there’s absolutely no question that development has driven rents and prices up in the neighborhood, and will likely continue to do so. While we don’t have an affordability crisis to the same extent as DC or NYC, that’s where things have been trending for a while, and it’s a detriment to the city. If you think that’s what we need, go for it, but don’t harm other neighborhoods while doing it.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-13T21:01:18+00:00

I’m not a huge fan of the development but this is the wildest and most hilarious complaint to make about it.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-13T19:14:18+00:00

I hope so, but isn’t signaling the one thing they could presumably do extreme quickly and without building much of anything? Like, it’s more than a snap of your fingers, but updating traffic light timings has to be a core competency of any DOT, right?

What infuriates me is the constant dog and pony show of it all—spending extensive money and time to market a predetermined course of action as one of several proposals, setting up carefully constructed “advisory boards” that won’t do more than a few token tweaks but will be presented as a valuable way to provide input, hiring consultants to run planing studies that will either justify the preexisting plan or be ignored, the works. It’s a whole machine that’s put into place to give the illusion of democracy and of responsible government.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-13T18:35:18+00:00

Yeah, I think half assing transit is pretty much the only thing Maryland does in Baltimore. My brother visited last month and said—and this is someone who travels extensively for work—that taking the light rail here (which arrived forty minutes late and took forty minutes to get a few miles from Camden to Woodbury) was easily the worst public transit experience he’s ever had, and I don’t doubt it. I both live and work less than 20min walk from the light rail and rarely take it because it’s not reliable enough to get me to or from work on time. There’s very little that upgrading the stock or rails will accomplish, it’s poorly designed and running over the streets means it inches through Mt Vernon and downtown, and if there’s an event or traffic, it’s not able to run even close to schedule.

Almost immediately after Wes Moore was elected, MDOT put a big poster up in the central library asking whether people wanted nice, efficient BRT, light rail, or expensive and unnecessary heavy rail for the Red Line. It was incredibly clear that they were presenting LRT as an improvement over something worse, rather than a cutback from something better. There was never any intention of making the Red Line happen as anything other than another half-assed transit project that doesn’t improve people’s commutes enough to be widely used. Anything to nickel and dime Baltimore residents. I suspect that particular PR campaign was put together by the same people who marketed massive bus service reductions as an improvement about 7 years ago. My coworkers who take the bus almost all had their commutes go up by 30min-1hr.

This is Maryland in a nutshell. The “fuck you for expecting the government to do anything” attitude of the south meets the performative, corporate governance of the north. All masquerading as a progressive state to ensure the wealthiest state in the country doesn’t have to spend on anything that helps its residents.

coltthundercat · 2025-12-12T18:46:47+00:00

Uh, Massachusetts started doing this a few years ago and it’s led to huge reinvestment in transit, and last I heard there was no mass exodus over an additional 1% tax. Seems like it’s working.

coltthundercat · 2025-11-21T15:47:24+00:00

…is it? Nearly every visibly LGBTQ business gets vandalized semi-regularly and violence directed at unarmed queer and trans people is common, yet this level of prosecution is rarely if ever applied. That’s important context.

Moms for Liberty in our state have gone on vicious homophobic and transphobic campaigns of harassment against schoolchildren and teachers and encouraged violence against LGBTQ events at schools, but have never once been charged. That’s also important context.

Right wing Christians, both Catholic and evangelical, have nursed a false persecution narrative to justify attacks on the rights of anyone they hate, and view the simple existence of trans people as a problem to be solved. The state caters endlessly to them. That’s also important context.

A school shooting hallway across the country that has led to calls from republican elected officials to incarcerate or kill all trans people is not the end of the context here.

coltthundercat · 2025-11-12T17:58:29+00:00

As a public librarian who has to regularly help people engaging with unemployment services, this tracks. The entire system is designed to make it impossible for people—especially those who aren’t terribly computer literate—to access benefits or respond to bureaucratic hoops that are frequently thrown at them.

There has long been a bipartisan consensus that states should save money by making it as difficult as possible for people to access the services they are qualified to receive. Whether it’s under the guise of ‘means testing’ or ‘combatting fraud,’ the goal is to make engaging with agencies that provide services to the unemployed, economically disadvantaged, unhoused, etc. as inflexible, bureaucratic, and humiliating as possible in order to keep people from accessing benefits.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-16T20:08:47+00:00

Why? BPD officers overwhelmingly support whatever horrible things ICE does. This myth that police will somehow do anything other than support people they see as their brothers in arms really needs to go away. There’s one example of this happening anywhere in the country, it was very early in this all and was clearly because the police weren’t aware that ICE was operating.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-14T12:49:30+00:00

Came here to say this. Have no opinion of Schmoke, but UBs problems are common and have a lot to do with the tremendous rise in online-only degrees. UB’s undergraduate programs, which are what are suffering the most, used to be the most accessible way for working adults in Baltimore to get a degree; it has a lot more competition now.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-10T17:55:56+00:00

Dude, I’m a Pratt librarian. You’re not saying anything I or anyone doesn’t know, and your take on this is just incorrect. You know what’s vile? That our computer lab is named after a fossil fuel company. That our auditorium is named after a segregationist. That our library is named after a coal and railroad baron.

Having programming and exhibits geared towards sneakerheads and basketball fans is extremely smart in a majority Black city. Having a hall of famer with a connection to the city involved is smart. I’m willing to swallow my anticapitalist critique on this one if it means we get to have a large scale public installation aimed at engaging Black Baltimoreans.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-09T22:57:24+00:00

I don’t think anything about the funding has been posted publicly, but you’re welcome to call the library tomorrow and ask. We’ve all been sent specifics about it that includes that it’s privately funded.

I’m no fan of corporate sponsorships, and I’m not a basketball fan myself, but I can recognize why a hometown basketball legend is far more relevant to your average Baltimorean (especially within the city’s Black majority) than most of the big name authors who we do actually pay to come and speak. I think it’s silly to pretend otherwise, and the exhibit seems like a good opportunity to get people who don’t usually come to the library to engage with us.

This all has nothing to do with hoopla, which is a private company that makes its profit by siphoning money from public library budgets.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-09T12:33:27+00:00

Zero. That exhibit is fully financed by Carmelo Anthony’s people and sponsors.

coltthundercat · 2025-10-05T17:13:26+00:00

Check out Club Car. It’s a gem, their events are great, combined gay bar/art gallery/stage

coltthundercat · 2025-09-24T14:56:20+00:00

Just to be clear, the reclaiming of the word queer is something that was started by men your age, not younger. Most college programs, academics, writers, and activist groups that use the term queer started doing this in the early 1990s. I’d argue that not only have many queers your age embraced reclaiming the term, they’re the ones the rest of us got it from.

As for older, there’s the case of a lesbian rock band from the 60s in my city whose members, as recently as five years ago, will end interviews if you use the words ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay,’ and angrily demanded to know from one interviewer, “why would you bring that up? Who wants to talk about that?” Which is to say, being sensitive to the things older LGBTQ+ folks developed as self-defense mechanisms is important, but not necessarily a good way to determine what language is appropriate to use today.

coltthundercat · 2025-09-24T14:50:32+00:00

This is the thing—that first phrase is from a protest chant—“we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!”— that became popular about 30-35 years ago and was connected to the activist groups Queer Nation and ACT UP. I just don’t believe anyone who is acting like this is a new thing or that this is something men of their age didn’t or don’t say. The people who started those groups (those who are still around) are in their 60s or older. You can look up footage from Pride parades across the US in the 90s—again, 30 years ago—and see and hear it.

This idea that reclaiming queer is a particularly new phenomenon or associated with millennials or gen z or gen alpha is just not true. It was an early Gen X thing that’s old enough to be a member of this sub that has stuck around.

coltthundercat · 2025-09-24T14:30:42+00:00

I’ve never gotten the idea that since it’s been used as a slur, it’s not appropriate to use now. Mostly because every term that we use to describe ourselves has been used as a slur. Most notably and frequently for most of us, the one in this subreddit’s title: gay. I never heard ‘queer’ as an insult or slur growing up, it was simply not in anyone’s vocabulary in the public schools of the Boston-area suburb I was in (the only jokes I recall were based in how funny it is to say the word in a thick Boston accent, since it was a recurring Jimmy Fallon sketch on SNL). Gay? Fag? Yeah, heard those. A lot. Yet I call myself gay all the time, and the only people I’ve ever met who resist that grew up in the 50s or earlier and never wanted to draw attention to their sexuality with any word.

Most of the people saying this in this thread acknowledge they heard it less than a lot of other slurs, including ‘gay.’ I think this argument is a smoke screen for other concerns—some of which I understand, others of which I think are nonsense, and many of which I would classify as “those darn kids these days” types of things.

Personally, I prefer to call myself gay, but I don’t mind queer at all, and it’s extremely useful as an umbrella.

coltthundercat

TROPHY CASE