Guest Post: There's something queer about Tumblr

Paul Byron, Macquarie University and Brady Robards, Monash University

Tumblr is a site that can leave many adults confused. But for more than 330 million users worldwide it is a visual medium for self-expression where anything from politics to fan groups goes.

What makes Tumblr special is the mix of content you will find there. Think of it as the long-form, image-centric version of Twitter – but more personal. A blog can feature sentences that describe a user’s day, and this could be scattered among photo sets of refugees being rescued at sea, cat gifs, pornography, or complex paragraphs that analyse Donald Trump’s presidency. Above all, Tumblr characterises itself as a space of creative freedom.

More young people are turning online for peer support networks.
shutterstock

Like most other social media platforms, it is also ripe with peer networking, community building, and opportunities to explore gender and sexual identities. And despite the panic that often surrounds the perceived effects of social media on young people – such as fears about Facebook and privacy, Snapchat and sexting, and Instagram and narcissism – Tumblr is often left out of the debate.

Perhaps that’s because it mostly appeals to a niche audience, and can be seen as the “weird” cousin of these major platforms. This makes it a perfect venue for queer and questioning youth to hang out.

It’s a queer world

In 2016, we organised a research project called Scrolling Beyond Binaries to explore the ways young people of diverse genders and sexualities use social media. We looked particularly at how young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and asexual (LGBTIQA+) people use the network. To do so, we surveyed over 1,300 people aged 16-35 who identified in these ways.

Compared to broader surveys of young people’s social media use, we found young LGBTIQA+ people are using Tumblr much more frequently.

Queer and gender diverse youth in Australia are using Tumblr more than their straight and cisgender peers.

There are some issues in comparing these studies – the number of people surveyed, where they lived, and their ages – but that 64% of our respondents used Tumblr is noteworthy.

So why are this many young queer and gender diverse Australians using Tumblr? For many, it offers an intricate network that supports safe explorations of identity and a sense of self.

For instance, writer and Tumblr user Jonno Revanche said it provides social connections that are otherwise unavailable due to geographic isolation and social anxiety. Others have used Tumblr to foster mental health support, such as Mea Pearson, who took to the platform to chronicle her experience with borderline personality disorder.

While care must be taken when associating mental health with queer identity, these matters often intersect. Evidently, many young people’s everyday dealings with key social institutions like family, work and school can be uncomfortable or even traumatic.

The view from Tumblr

Many of our respondents said that Tumblr was crucial to nurturing their individual identity. One person said it helped them identify as agender (loosely defined as without gender).

I actually learnt about agender and all the other genders from Tumblr. (20, agender, bisexual, rural)

One participant described how Tumblr assisted them in coming to terms with their pansexuality (attraction to all genders), and finding a space where this was more accepted and not reduced to bisexuality:

I came out as Pan on Tumblr a few years ago, when being Pan was seen as just a fancy way of saying Bi. I felt very alone for a long time, but found other Pan people to talk to. (22, non-binary, pansexual, urban)

Other participants attributed Tumblr to broadening their overall understanding of identity:

I had no idea that lgbt+ people existed (my parents are quite homophobic and very strict, so you could say I was very sheltered), and by using Tumblr I was able to fully immerse myself within its very lgbt+ culture. It also brought up words … I had never heard before, and through this I was able to “find myself” within a safe environment. (17, female, lesbian, urban)

I would’ve never realised my real gender or sexual orientation without tumblr. (25, trans masculine, asexual, regional)

For many Tumblr users, the platform is a supportive place. Engaging with online peer networks can be easier, and less risky, than talking to close friends. Young people reported making friends on Tumblr too, and most of them felt safe in doing so, citing the ability to block and unfollow others if needed.

I’ve made a lot of friends through there, and Tumblr helped me working out my own sexuality when I was younger. Because when I was younger I didn’t know anything, I thought there was just gay and lesbian and when I didn’t fit into any of those categories I was like “what the hell do I do now.” It was honestly, like going on Tumblr and [finding] there’s this thing where you can like more then one, I was like “woah, that’s amazing.” (19, trans male, queer, urban)

Disconnecting from Tumblr

At the same time, these digital spaces come with their own challenges. Although Tumblr is often used daily, it also seems to have a limited lifespan – which is unsurprising, given the intensity of interaction and content that many users report. Some respondents discussed their need to disconnect from the site to avoid drama, to free up time, or to spend more time in other social media spaces.

I stopped [using Tumblr] because I often used it to talk about my problems and it got to be really upsetting to have such a negative space. I feel like it just fed my mental health issues. (18, non-binary, bisexual, rural)

In this sense, Tumblr can be productive for a time but it can also become overwhelming. Users manage this by moving between platforms and taking breaks.

Safe spaces

At a time when young queer and gender diverse people are in the spotlight, with support programs coming under fire and human rights being trampled upon in political crossfires, they continue to find and build their own safe spaces.

LGBTIQA+ young people should feel safe and empowered in everyday physical spaces, and many do – often with support from a wider community of peers who share similar experiences.

But until the world becomes more friendly for queer and gender diverse people, we expect they’ll continue to find safety, community, identity, and friendship on Tumblr.

Paul Byron, Associate Lecturer, Macquarie University and Brady Robards, Lecturer in Sociology, Monash University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Is This Irony or Just Odd?

An article in Monday's Washington Post about "homophily" -- "a somewhat grand word to describe the idea that birds of a feather flock together" -- entitled "Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You" reminded me of the old joke about the Harvard professor who, in 1972, couldn't understand how Richard Nixon won re-election by a landslide because everybody he knew had voted for McGovern. ("Don't Blame Me: I'm from Massachusetts," said the famous bumpersticker.)

The article, by Shankar Vedantam, includes this tidbit (note the last sentence below):

Ever larger numbers of people seem to be sealing themselves off in worlds where everyone thinks the way they do. No Walter Cronkite figure unites audiences today, the sociologist noted. We can now choose cable stations, magazines and blogs that see the world exactly as we do. If the research on homophily is right, those heavily e-mailed partisan screeds from the op-ed pages are largely talking to those who agree with those points of view to begin with.

What's odd -- or ironic, I don't know which -- is that, according to the Post's calculations, Vedantam's page A2 article is number two on the list of the 20 most emailed article from the Post's web site.

Anomalies?

In a blogpost about what he calls "anomalous responses" in the days after the 9/11 attacks, Tim Hulsey describes the way in which humor served as a leavening among the many other emotions that people felt. Specifically, he remembers jokes told in bad taste, and he remembers them fondly.

Tim writes in "Bad Taste and 9/11":

In the 1930s, Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively about the "carnivalesque" -- which in its broadest sense is a way to live in opposition to the tyranny of "official" society, and in its more narrow sense is a safety valve for impulses that do not lend themselves to strict control. According to Bakhtin, the medieval carnival provided a safe space for ordinary citizens to mock the rigid dogma of the medieval Church through scatological and sexual humor. Free for a brief time from strict social roles, peasants could lampoon priests, women could dance in the streets, and cats could look at kings. The carnivalesque, in short, reminds us that everyone in the power structure is human, and therefore subject to the same infirmities, foibles and peccadilloes as everyone else. (Of course, Bakhtin's real target was not the medieval Church, but Soviet totalitarianism under Stalin, an ideological tyranny which left no room even for social safety valves -- and which therefore had little use for Bakhtin's scholarship.)

In the days after 9/11, my friends and I shared a carnivalesque perspective without knowing it. Of course, we did not seek refuge from governmental or religious tyranny as such. Instead, we fled from something more nebulous, a tyranny of popular sentiment that permitted ordinary citizens to do no more than weep and pray. We were told that Americans had to sympathize with the victims and trust our president unconditionally; anything more or less from that standard line and we were practically playing into the terrorists' hands. Still, my friends and I had to "cock a snook" at this atrocity for the same reason little boys have to tell jokes about Helen Keller (or in extreme cases, Anne Frank). We had had enough of plaster saints and cardboard leaders, of souls soaring in the ether. The sick humor about the victims reminded us of the fact and perhaps the finality of the body: It was anti-spiritual, at a time when a certain mysticism on matters of life and death was considered almost mandatory within the American body politic.

His post reminded me of a news report I read about a recent scholarly book about jokes told in Germany during the Nazi era. David Crossland sums up the books findings in Der Spiegel:

A new book about humor under the Nazis gives some interesting insights into life in the Third Reich and breaks yet another taboo in Germany's treatment of its history. Jokes told during the era, says the author, provided the populace with a pressure release.

The Times of London gave a few examples of jokes collected in the book:

Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line, he comes across a man with his hands by his side. “Why aren’t you saluting like the others?” he barks. “Mein Führer, I’m the nurse, I’m not crazy!”

The vanity of leading Nazis was fertile territory. In one cartoon Göring has attached an arrow to the row of medals on his tunic. It reads “continued overleaf”

In another, a commentator notes: “The new race will be slim like Göring, blond like Hitler and tall like Goebbels.”

Two Berliners meet in early 1945. “What will you do after the war?” asks one. “I'll finally go on a holiday and will take a trip round Greater Germany,” his friend replies. “And what will you do in the afternoon?”

As the persecution of the Jews worsened, they relied upon humour: Levi and Hirsch meet in the African jungle, each with a rifle. “What are you doing here?” asks Hirsch. “I’ve got an ivory carving business in Alexandria and I shoot my own elephants,” says Levi. “And you?” “I manufacture crocodile leather goods in Port Said and shoot my own crocodiles — and what happened to our friend Simon?” “He’s turned into a real adventurer. He stayed in Berlin.”

With the retrospect of 60 years, these jokes-- collected in the book, "Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead," by film director and screenwriter Rudolph Herzog -- seem mildly funny but somewhat perplexing, since we don't know the personalities involved. (Imagine someone making a joke about James Webb's charisma 60 -- or 6 -- years from now.) But for people in Nazi Germany, telling them entailed great risks: some people were executed for repeating these jokes, others were jailed. Employers would likely sack anyone who created a hostile business environment by making fun of Hitler.

In times of crisis -- as I noted in my earlier piece on "homo ludens" (playful man) -- human beings survive through their higher faculties, including joking about their plight. Call it whistling past the graveyard, but this is something that goes far deeper. And we should acknowledge and appreciate it rather than feign shock and offense about it.

9/11 Remembered

On Saturday night, while driving near the Pentagon, I suddenly came upon several shafts of light shooting into the sky. From the off-ramp of I-395 to Columbia Pike in Arlington, I saw that one of the Pentagon's five walls had been bathed in blue light, with a huge American flag draped over the middle. Until then, I had been unaware that the commemoration of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had begun. This was certainly a dramatic reminder.

The airwaves are full of news reports, documentaries, and dramatizations regarding the events of five years ago. They bring to mind nothing less than the similar surfeit of remembrances on significant anniversaries of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. (The two events are quite similar in the way in which Americans were glued to their televisions and radios for several days, eager to obtain any tidbit of news.)

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I wrote an essay for The Metro Herald in Alexandria that must have seemed dissonant at the time. Perhaps it still seems so. But I thought I would repost it here as my own contribution to the recollections that begin with the question, "Where were you when you heard...?"

From The Metro Herald, September 21, 2001:

Playtime as the Guardian of the Soul
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
Metro Herald Charlottesville Bureau Chief

(Charlottesville, VA, September 16, 2001) --- In his brief but brilliantly insightful 1970 book, A Rumor of Angels, Peter L. Berger describes how we can find evidence for the existence of God in the everyday actions and interactions of people. This is not a book about tabloid “miracles”; no statues that bleed nor satanic faces in rising smoke here. No, it is about average people, sometimes in extraordinary situations.

Berger discusses the people of Vienna at the end of World War II. Their country had been devastated, first by Nazi occupation, then by war. Like other cities in Central Europe, Vienna lay in ruins. Buildings were destroyed, streets were upended, the city was home to wandering refugees and returning soldiers.

Amid all this, however, one of the city’s first actions was to reopen the Stadtöper, the city opera house, and begin musical performances. Concerts and recitals were presented even before the holes in the roof were repaired. Audiences could see the stars from their seats.

Berger uses this example, among others – such as reports of concentration camp inmates who played and sang music despite their imprisonment – as evidence of the human impulse to retain hold of our humanity even during great crises. It is no accident that “the humanities” – literature, music, drama, painting, sculpture, and the rest – are called just that: humanities. Human, humane, humanities. These are intrinsic to defining ourselves as human. We rise above beasts because we have humanity. We seek to better ourselves, to escape the bounds of earthly reality. Instead, we create our own reality. We are greater than our circumstances.

More recently, we have seen this impulse at work in Israel during the Gulf War. Who can forget televised images of Isaac Stern playing his violin in a concert hall, under the threat of a Scud missile attack, with the entire audience wearing gas masks?

Berger talks about “homo ludens”: man at play. He notes how through sport (and, by extension, theatre, movies, music, etc.), people slip beyond the constraints of time and space and bring themselves closer to God. We don’t think about it this way. We think of playtime as mundane. Far from it; it is transcendent.

What prompts me to discuss at length a book I haven’t read in more than 20 years? It stems from my disappointment in one response to the terrorist attacks on the United States. Specifically, I feel the cancellation of sporting events, concerts, and theatrical performances more than four days after the attacks was ill-advised.

It is understandable that, in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, regularly scheduled events should be canceled or postponed. The situation was fluid; no one knew what might happen; Americans wanted to remain near their TVs to keep informed; and, not least, there was a sense that amusement would show disrespect to the dead and the survivors.

Yet it is also important, for reasons of our own humanity, that life should return to normal as soon as possible. To postpone everyday life, in all but the localities most immediately affected by the attacks, risks feeding survivor guilt, self-pity, and a sense of victimhood. None of this is healthy, nor is it humane. We need upliftment – sports, arts, and entertainment provide it.

Here in Charlottesville, Virginia, a weekly event called “Fridays After Five” – free music downtown, with food and beverages and crowds – was first announced to go on as scheduled, then modified with a public demonstration of support for the victims, then canceled unexpectedly and replaced with a candlelight vigil. The confused result was that virtually nothing happened: Charlottesvillians were unable to reassert their humanity and celebrate their lives, nor were they able to effectively reflect on, and make tribute to, the fallen.

That same night in Charlottesville, however, Live Arts, a local theatre company, went ahead with the opening performance of W;t, a play about cancer and the life of the mind, by Margaret Edson. (It earned the Pulitzer Prize for drama.) Artistic director John Gibson spoke to the audience before the curtain rose, explaining – almost apologetically – why Live Arts had gone on as scheduled. His comments were gratuitous. That the show went on spoke for itself; it demonstrated again the vitality of the human spirit recovering from, and overcoming, crisis.

Writing in The New Republic in November 1914, shortly after the start of the Great War – what we now call World War I – Rebecca West said, in a warning to those who would use the war as an excuse to set aside what makes us humane in favor of that which makes us brutish: “Decidedly we shall not be safe if we forget the things of the mind. Indeed, if we want to save our souls, the mind must lead a more athletic life than it has ever done before, and must more passionately than ever practise and rejoice in art. For only through art can we cultivate annoyance with inessentials, powerful and exasperated reactions against ugliness, a ravenous appetite for beauty; and these are the true guardians of the soul.”

She was right then; we should heed her words now. Life, in all its fullness, must continue unrelentingly. If not, the terrorists have won the day.

For those who might be interested, you can find other posts that relate to 9/11 and its aftermath elsewhere on this blog, including:

"Swedish TV, the PATRIOT Act, and Charlottesville" (January 1, 2005)

"PATRIOT Act Violates Civil Liberties, DOJ Says" (April 5, 2005).

"PATRIOT Act Reform Caucus Announced" (April 27, 2005).

"GMU Students Plan Terrorist Strike in Northern Virginia" (April 14, 2005)

"Diverse Coalition Brings PATRIOT Act Concerns to Congress" (April 19, 2005)

"Abolishing Cash: Fantasy or Nightmare?" (June 16, 2005)

"Everything Old Is New Again" (September 23, 2005)

"Reading" (September 20, 2005), about books that gained relevance after the attacks, originally published on September 28, 2001.

"There Is Nothing Like a Dane" (February 5, 2006)

"My Lunch with Dick Cheney" (June 19, 2006)

The Therapeutic Society: Can't We All Just Get a Life?

You know the therapeutic society has progressed beyond tolerability when people demand counseling for digging up misdeeds by distant ancestors.

A London Sunday Telegraph story, reprinted in Saturday's Washington Times, reports:

Genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history.

Britain's Society of Genealogists is one of several organizations concerned that amateur historians are not sufficiently prepared for the secrets they might uncover in their family records and could need counseling to help them through the emotional process.

"People can be dealing with many serious things -- from discovering your ancestor was a rapist who was deported to Australia to finding out you are adopted," said Else Churchill, a genealogy officer at the society.

Has all of Western society gone daft? Or are amateur genealogists so weak-kneed that they all get the vapors when that skeleton falls out of the family's closet? ("Don't open that closet, McGee! You'll end up on a shrink's couch for years to come!")

George F. Will addressed this issue more broadly in a recent column. Noting a new book by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel called One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance, Will writes:

Sensitivity screeners remove from texts and tests distressing references to things like rats, snakes, typhoons, blizzards and . . . birthday parties (which might distress children who do not have them). The sensitivity police favor teaching what Sommers and Satel call "no-fault history." Hence California's Department of Education stipulating that when "ethnic or cultural groups are portrayed, portrayals must not depict differences in customs or lifestyles as undesirable" — slavery? segregation? anti-Semitism? cannibalism? — "and must not reflect adversely on such differences."

Experts warn about what children are allowed to juggle: Tennis balls cause frustration, whereas "scarves are soft, non threatening, and float down slowly." In 2001 the Girl Scouts, illustrating what Sommers and Satel say is the assumption that children are "combustible bundles of frayed nerves," introduced, for girls 8 to 11, a "Stress Less Badge" adorned with an embroidered hammock. It can be earned by practicing "focused breathing," keeping a "feelings diary," burning scented candles and exchanging foot massages.

The "self-esteem" "experts" who recommend that children juggle with scarves should themselves start juggling with knives. Then, later, we can nominate them for a well-deserved Darwin Award.