
Just got Habit #2 from @joshuahallsimmons
Why is Habit #1 OUT OF PRINT?! (sorry, but a digital copy just ain’t gonna cut it)

Just got Habit #2 from @joshuahallsimmons
Why is Habit #1 OUT OF PRINT?! (sorry, but a digital copy just ain’t gonna cut it)
Star Trek: The Next Penetration
(porn parody script written by Ingrid Mouth)Data enters his quarters, and immediately senses something is awry. He scans the room, sees nothing out of place, and moves to a seat at his table. Ingrid, an alien stowaway, materializes behind him. She flips open his cranial control panel and presses a series of buttons.
Data: (motionless except for his face) What are you doing? Who are you?
Ingrid: Don’t worry, Your motor functions have been temporarily deactivated. I’m just making some adjustments.
Data: I am not in need of any adjustments. What do you hope to gain by perverting my functions?
Ingrid: Are you serious? In my culture, fully functional androids are LEGEND. A being with almost limitless energy, able to simultaneously process and apply data from thousands of species sexual histories simultaneously… (Ingrid sighs dramatically and slumps over Data’s shoulder, accidentally tapping his communicator badge.)
Data: Commander to bridge! Intruder alert!
Ingrid: No! Damn you! Well, this better be an epic quickie. (Ingrid taps a few last buttons on Data’s control panel and then slams it shut)
Ingrid: Your motor functions have returned. And your primary objective has been changed to “Anal.”
(Data stands, turns to Ingrid, and then throws her face down onto the table)
Ingrid: Yes!
(The door slides open, and Commander Riker enters the room.)
Riker: Stop right there! Wait, what’s going on here?(Data and Ingrid are frozen bent over the table with Data’s hand up Ingrid’s skirt.)
Riker: I see you’ve subdued the intruder? I didn’t know you…
Data: Uh, In my pursuit of discovering the nature of man, and in order to develop my own humanity, I have come to the conclusion that sexual contact is something I might seek to employ as a leisure activity.
Riker: You came to this conclusion in the last two minutes?
Data: Yes, sir.(Ingrid drops to her knees and unzips Data’s pants.)
Data: …And it may interest you to know, sir, that in many cultures group sex is considered a healthy and enjoyable bonding activity.
Riker: Is that so?(Ingrid begins performing oral sex on Data while Riker watches.)
Riker: In how many cultures is this the case, Commander?
Data: Multitudes. Particularly among groups engaged in collaborative, highly stressful leadership activities.
Riker: Well…we are seeking out new cultures, and…
(Riker joins Data and Ingrid. Ingrid unzips Riker’s pants, begins switching between the two. Fingering or vaginal sex is initiated. Then the door slides open again. Captain Picard is followed by Worf and another member of the security team.)
Picard: What is the meaning of this?
Data: Um…We are engaged in an Oolorean bonding ritual originally intended to strengthen the non-verbal communication abilities of tribal leadership.
Picard: Is that so. Number one?
Riker: Captain, as your first officer, I highly recommend that you engage in more leisure activity.
(Picard appears lost in thought. Ingrid crawls to Picard and engages in oral leisure activity, pulling him back towards Riker and Data. Picard reluctantly allows it)
Worf: Can’t you see she’s bewitched you? Or released insidious pheromones into the ship? This could be a trap!
(Sex continues. Worf is ignored)
Worf: If you don’t stop yourselves, I will!
(Worf pulls Ingrid out of the group and begins spanking her)
Worf: Who sent you! What is your mission?
Ingrid: I’m just here to fuck!
Worf: (continues spanking) Is that so? We’ll fuck it out of you, then!
(Worf begins fucking Ingrid roughly, the rest of the crew and the security officer join in. Gangbang until cum shots. Deanna Troi enters after Ingrid has been doused in cumshots.)
Troi: The pull of the sexual energy drew me out of a deep sleep. what…is…happening…here? (Worf and Picard hold Troi back from fucking Ingrid)
Picard: Counselor! Tell us! Does she mean us any harm?
Troi: No…she…just…wants…to…fuck…
Worf: Then for now we will keep her chained in security headquarters for further “observation.”
This needs to be the extended version of a tweet from @TNG_S8

@partyiningridsmouth and @joshuahallsimmons
If you two do not know about each other yet, you should. All of your work is amazing ( ^ not just these ^ ).

My official signature is a cartoon cumshot. Books available here: www.etsy.com/shop/ingridmouth ❤️❤️❤️
Just finished Overshare Party…what a blast!

*giggles*

I did not realize Moebius did erotica!
Ok, this is the scary post.
This is the one where I threaten to undo myself.The recent attempts to compare Dolezal and Jenner, or to question why, if one can transition “from one gender to another,” the same should not be true of race, have been painful to watch.
As I said in my last post, one of the most painful parts of this for me personally has been watching how quickly trans supportive liberal allies (almost all of whom were white) leaped at the opportunity to start cross examining trans identity.
Seeing all this unfold hurts.
But there’s another part of this which is more insidious, more frightening, and more painful to look at.That’s the part of me that wondered “what if they’re right?”.
The problem I keep running into, is that while I can find well reasoned defense of the ways in which race and gender and not equivalent, I can’t find one that is both easy to understand and persuasive.
For me that is a REAL problem.
It’s a problem because the “you can’t be for one and against the other” argument is a simple as it is persuasive.
The people who are able to wrap their heads around the intricacies of race and gender sufficiently to see what’s wrong with all this, are the people who were already fully committed to the causes of trans and racial justice.
We can’t afford to have an argument that will sell only to the choir.
We need to do better.It took me 32 years before I’d learned how to trust people enough that I felt able to come out as trans.
No one comes out as trans without an awareness of just how much we are despised by much of the rest of society.
The “brave” trope may be worn threadbare at this point, but making the decision to step over that brink requires a serious commitment.Saying aloud that I am trans was hard, saying that I am a woman was even harder.
The idea of having to give that up, after how much it took to get here, is nearly unbearable.
I’m starting to realize however that this thing, this identity, I hold so tightly to, is built of the same material that the institutions that taught me to hate myself are built of.I’m starting to suspect that no matter how hard I’ve fought to get here, what I’m fighting for is just another part of the same old Corporate Colonial/Patriarchal cess pool, and I’m starting to realize that one of the biggest problems we face when discussing issues of social justice is that we are forced to fight on the enemy’s terrain.
That is, the problem is one of framing.
As a transgender person, when I say I identify as a woman, I must still use the language of a gender binary where male is the default, and female is defined in opposition to that default.
Cis gendered language does not allow for an accurate description of how I understand myself, because cis gendered language is constructed on the false premise of male vs female.
Not only does it fail to allow for trans identity, it fails to accurately describe what it means to be cis either!We start to see the cracks whenever we see a cisgender person object to being called cis, or when TERFs proclaim that we must “abolish gender” yet are unable to usefully express what that would actually entail.
The unease that they are experiencing when confronted with trans identities comes perhaps not from “transphobia*” per say, but rather from the subconscious churning that one feels when realizing that one’s sense of self if fundamentally built upon a lie!As a trans woman, the realization that I am not a cis man came relatively easily, but the process of building my trans feminine identity has been much harder.
It’s been hard because the only language available to me has been that of cis womanhood, and a great deal of that is frankly awful.
That should hardly come as a surprise, society isn’t known for thinking too kindly of women.
Every conversation I’ve ever had with the incredible cisgender women I count amongst my friends on this topic has revealed the inadequacy of the language to fully embrace or express the strength, intelligence, creativity or compassion of these people.
Elinor Burkett’s painfully bad “What makes a woman” piece in the New York Times illustrates this beautifully. Every cis woman I know who read it did a spit take over that mawkish piece of nonsense.
Equally, of the many great cis men I know, when confronted with definition of cis masculinity, they too find it a very poor fit.
However, if we accept a more fluid definition of gender, the difference between cis and trans becomes one of degree and not one of kind. Increasingly I want to say in response to those who reject my trans feminine identity “fine, then I don’t believe in cis (and neither should you)”.The sad truth is that everyone is hurt by this system.
For each time I see us explain that cis is not a slur, I see another trans person spit it out like a curse, and who can blame us?
We are the ones who have found this false dichotomy to be the most unbearable, and who, in our attempts to escape one unbearable gender role, find our only alternative is to adhere to another that, while more comfortable, is likely to get us spat upon, beaten, or killed.
If we don’t ever get to truly self identify, then why should you?
Accept you ill fitting cisness as we must accept our reviled transness.But this isn’t a zero sum game.
Gender is a construct, and it always will be.
The solution is not to abolish it, but rather to rebuild it, and to do so purposefully.
Those of us in the trans community have all had to learn how to redefine ourselves in the most fundamental of ways, it’s time for the cis community to do the same.
What we need to do is to re-frame our understanding of everyone’s gender identity so that cis, trans, and non binary identities can become mutually supportive rather than antagonistic.I have told cis people “You shouldn’t need to understand what it means to be trans before you accord me my basic humanity”, what I should add is “You need to understand my transness so that you can accord a basic humanity to yourself”.
——————
*Or perhaps this is the best possible understanding of transphobia – The existential threat that trans identity embodies to the prevailing social paradigm, manifest as an individual’s need to either reject trans identity, or begin to seriously deconstruct their own.
——————–
Post script.
I had thought to touch on issues of race, and I believe that there are functional parallels here.
I suspect that a big part of overcoming racial divisions in this country, and around the world, is going to require that those of us who are white develop a fundamentally different understanding of whiteness than we currently have, one that is supportive of the identities and lived realities of people of color.
I’m also sure that if this is the case I, as a white person, am not going to be able to provide a lens through which to understand what such a shift would look like, and so I shall humbly leave that to those people whose lived experience it is, to lead the way.
Well thought, written, and presented. I’ve always believed those who can see more sides to a topic than most should go into law and argue for those less fortunate to amend, write new, and defend legislature.
Review: Black River by Josh Simmons
Author’s note: The contents of this review may be triggering due to discussion of both physical and sexual violence.
There’s been a “recent” uptick in post-apocalyptic
literature, from the resurgence of the zombie flick and revival of the Mad Max franchise to YA stories like The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner series. It seems that post-apocalyptic
stories echo the societal anxieties of the time in which they’re written, but most
of the stories that reach mainstream penetration focus on the action packed
adventures of people in peril. Very few get down to the bleak, day to day like
Josh Simmons’ latest full-length graphic novel Black River. In 112 pages of black and white comics, Simmons follows
a collection of women through the horrors of actually surviving in the
apocalypse.Simmons’ story is a something of a trickster when it isn’t
being abjectly wretched. A windfall of food, booze, and supplies fall upon the
group at the beginning of the story, along with the promise of a long lost
paradise – a city with running water, electricity, and all the amenities of
modern life. But this setup lures the reader into something of a false sense of
security, because immediately thereafter, Simmons starts ratcheting up the
terror. A run-in with a crazed gang at a “comedy club” in a burned wasteland of
a town goes about as expected, but when the women are ambushed in the night by
a gang of cutthroat psychopathic men, the physical and sexual violence ramps
up. A revelation at the end of the book
calls into question the reader’s understanding of the whole comics’ chronology
and storytelling.There’s a lot of moving pieces in this narrative, but a few
things stick out that I think are compelling. Simmons seems to be making
something of a statement against the violent nature of men. The men in Black River are all disgusting pigs,
minus one ill-fated man who starts out with the group of women. That women are the only rational actors in the
book is telling, although even they will kill with abandon if given the
opportunity. The sexual violence against these women is chilling and a
prevalent part of the narrative, and the most emotionally affecting. In one gut-wrenching scene, one of the women,
Suzie, who has recently been raped and returned to a pen where all the women
are being held after their abduction, grasps and pulls at her breasts, sobbing,
“I never wanted them. I never wanted these fucking things.”Simmons seems to lavish attention on moments of physical
violence, whereas the sexual violence and rape is implied but never seen
(Simmons seems to imply that this horror is best left to the reader’s
imagination). Simmons will spend multiple panels setting up violent shots, only
to dwell on the gore, the dead, and the dying. This is surprising given the way
male violence is cast in Black River.
The effect is unnerving. Also unnerving are Simmons backgrounds; swirling and
ominous clouds follow the group across broken landscapes. These beautifully
rendered backdrops play host to relatively simple character design and
illustration. In some ways, these landscapes are an integral part of the mood
of the book, because they are so prevalent.Black River,
unlike the many other post-apocalyptic stories, doesn’t give its reader the
satisfaction of a glimmer of hope. Nothing is going to get better. No one is going
to survive.——–
Josh Simmons is a cartoonist whose previous full-length
graphic novel, House, was a 2007
Ignatz nominee. You can find more of Simmons’ work at jhscomics.Fantagraphics is a publisher of alternative comics, manga,
and archival editions of historic comics. You can find more of their publishing
slate and catalog here.Also: