crustacean critter

@KimAffirms @its_hipolita I have taken all of that into account and I do appreciate that perspective, my perspective and experience with the text is simply different, and I am critiquing that perspective you’re describing. I have too read that passage, I read the whole book last year! 🥺

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Remember too that if Moby-Dick had contained explicit and overt descriptions of male-to-male copulation, it could not have been published in its day. So a certain amount of reading for subtext is not only permissible but necessary.

The whole "dead white men classics" shit from booktok people is absurd because I read Moby Dick and one of the first things Ishmael does is get into a tensely homoerotic two-men-one-bed situation with Queequeg and even goes "it's like I'm his wife... jk haha... unless?"

@redfresds @its_hipolita i don’t know why she got all mean 😪

@redfresds @its_hipolita i don’t think we’re doing anyone any sort of justice by making claims that gendered bonding activities are inherently sexualised or homoerotic. like it’s cool you have your fantasies and of course sometimes they are based in reality but like, keep them to yourself maybe

an important test of a relationship that I don’t see discussed very much: spending time together with other people around— friends, family, in general social or professional settings are you a good team? and, are you a good unit?

@durgaddiction @its_hipolita i’m saying reading the relationship as inherently homoerotic, reading the author as homosexual and the relationship an expression of repressed and/or necessarily hidden due to persecution sexual desires, is projecting into the text. that’s my attitude personally, maybe i’m wrong

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Nobody is saying they literally get married, but you can't say it's projecting it into the text when it is an explicit comparison made in the text

@69cloroxshots @its_hipolita thankyou for holding my hand, what a sweet display of nonsexual male intimacy even though you are straight and i am homosexual. i disagree with your reading however ☺️💝

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Hum... I'll hold your hand when I say this, but... As a straight guy whose Moby-Dick is their favorite work of fiction... That book is gay as shit, man. Melville himself was very likely a gay man and a lot of that comes through in his work.

@johnofgauntlet @its_hipolita hahahaha maybe so 🥲🥲😅😅

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita This reminds me of Carmela Soprano getting up in arms when meadow says Billy budd is gay

@durgaddiction @its_hipolita i read it as a simile not as a literal ‘this equals that’ statement

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Then how could you say it's reading it into in the text, it's pretty explicitly said in the text that it parallels a romantic relationship

@AdamMartinTime @its_hipolita 💯

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Just a bit of transcendent squeezing with the lads 😉

@baked_into_a_pi @its_hipolita see, when i read this, as a homosexual, i read it as a simile, not a literal statement. 🙂

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita

@Vat_city @its_hipolita does he actually say that? 😮

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita “Oh strapping Queequeg, how large and beautiful is thy harpoon!”

@durgaddiction @its_hipolita yup!

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Did you read the book

@lakejeneva @_DVAMP1_ @its_hipolita and that was because innocuous nonsexual male intimacy was already being culturally reinforced to us at a young age to be always innate of homosexuality.

@lakejeneva @_DVAMP1_ @its_hipolita men being intimate in any manner whatever is homosexual. i’m saying this as a homosexual. when i was a kid i wanted to hug my male friends and cuddle them during sleepovers, but because this was seen as gay they eventually distanced themselves and in some cases even beat me up..

@war_dev1l @its_hipolita i would like to see them! do you have a link or should i look it up myself? also the tweet you’re replying to was a bit of a joke ftr :pp

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita yes! and the author, melville, was one of those guys! wait until you see the kinds of letters he was sending to nathaniel hawthorne

@AdamMartinTime @its_hipolita it’s so funny, im homosexual but i literally didn’t see that as anything other than a meditation on the transcendence of unified collective effort 😅😅😅 but it definitely does sound quite sexual when you’re reading it like that!

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita

@aimlessnova @its_hipolita i’m sure i must have missed those, as i suppose i had no thought to consider the text as containing those implications. perhaps ill find them when i read it again ☺️ but yes you are right about the broad trend towards males rejecting any male intimacy as gay in today’s world💔

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita You definitely have a great point! I think what threw me was the "straight people dont struggle to engage in non-sexual same sex intimacy" part as I was like "unfortunately yes they do"— & there are a few other ways in which they're implied to have some romantic linkage in text.

@Tlacuwise @its_hipolita well, no, actually i am a homosexual myself so i assure you i have no issues whatever in recognising homoeroticism. my view is that viewing every instance of male intimacy as homosexual is actually in a way homophobic — the idea that men cannot be close without it being gay.

@deepdwellerr @its_hipolita Maybe it’s a reflection if your own blockages, that you can’t recognize amevident homoeroticism. Got bad news about your “Funny uncle Bill and his best friend Joe, who he invites to every family gathering.”

@aimlessnova @its_hipolita should be destigmatised, but so should it being simply intimate. i liked the scene coz Ishmael talks to how male intimacy can be so generative without being homosexual, so i guess for these reasons i flare up a bit when i see this narrative 😅😅

@aimlessnova @its_hipolita like when i read moby dick that bedroom scene stuck w me bc as a kid i slept and cuddled with other boys and it felt very nice and intimate, only for them to eventually distance themselves out of shame when they learned it was supposedly gay to do so. sure, it being gay itself..