User Profile

Gersande La Flèche

gersande@millefeuilles.cloud

Joined 2 years, 6 months ago

Why can't I read all these books!? 🍋‍🟩

🍵 Lots of nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry, classical literature, speculative fiction, magical realism, etc.

📖 Beaucoup de non-fiction et de fiction, de poésie, des classiques, du spéculatif, du réalisme magique, etc.

💬 they/them ; iel/lo 💌 Find me on Mastodon: silvan.cloud/@gersande

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2025 Reading Goal

66% complete! Gersande La Flèche has read 8 of 12 books.

Tim McCaskell: Queer Progress (2016, Between the Lines) No rating

How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the …

If we needed more evidence that we weren't in Kansas anymore, Ken Waxman's September 1976 cover story, "The Rise of Gay Capitalism," in glossy Toronto Life identified "gay purchasing power" as "real power," and described a new class of entrepreneurs that "serviced" the "booming gay market." [...] This time, Michael Lynch penned the review. "Alas, I don't recognise my gayness in the fact that we 'spend more money than straights on grooming, entertainment, clothes, drink, and travel.' If it's 'self-righteous' and 'left-wing' to question this characterization of gayness... then shucks mom I guess I'm self-righteous and left-wing. [...] And I wish — is this left-wing? — that Waxman had made a fourth Discovery: women. In this article, as in the 'gay marketplace,' women only exist as 'girls.' Telling evidence isn't it, that when gayness is defined as no more than consumerism, it aids and abets the macho exploitation of women."

Queer Progress by 

No one ever talks about "lesbian purchasing power" it's a real mystery... (Sarcasm.)

I need "Shucks mom, I guess I'm self-righteous and left-wing" on a t-shirt.

Tim McCaskell: Queer Progress (2016, Between the Lines) No rating

How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the …

In July 1976, Montreal hosted the summer Olympics. The games were a boondoggle, raking in money for contractors and leaving the city with a billion-dollar debt that would not be paid off for thirty years. [...] But for an increasingly visible gay community, the issue was repression. Under the guise of Olympic security, Montreal police launched a crackdown on gay establishments. It began with a raid of Montreal's Aquarius sauna and the arrest of thirty-five men as "found-ins" in a bawdy house, February 1975. In October, six gay bars were raided, including the city's most popular women's bar. [The police violence escalates and escalates for a paragraph...] In May, a local employee of the Olympic organizing committee leaked a directive confirming that "non-conforming elements" were to be "driven underground" in the Quebec City-Toronto corridor for the duration of the games. Guy Toupin, the Montreal police officer co-ordinating Olympic security, claimed the raids were only "a part of our normal police work." But he went on, "if such action helps us in turning up potential terrorists, so much the better."

Queer Progress by  (13%)

The more I find out about the Montréal Olympics the more I'm disgusted. Also, wasn't it over thirty years for the debt? We (people in this city) were still talking about it when I was in my late teens...

Tim McCaskell: Queer Progress (2016, Between the Lines) No rating

How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the …

Women in the workforce earned approximately 60 per cent of what men earned. Lesbians, independent of men, tended to be poorer. The commercial scene's orientation to men reflected this difference in disposable income.

Queer Progress by  (5%)

This was still the case in Montréal up into the 2010s (maybe also today?). Lesbian spaces tended to get shut down or gentrified out quickly, whereas spaces for gay men were more likely to endure.

Tim McCaskell: Queer Progress (2016, Between the Lines) No rating

How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the …

As we moved from the peripheries to the mainstream, there was a remarkable transformation in dominant LGBT politics, from one aimed at social transformation to one that celebrated social inclusion. Toronto's Pride parade now featured many of our traditional antagonists: the Conservative party, churches, some of the biggest corporations and banks, the police, and the military.

Queer Progress by  (3%)

Pride was a riot, is now a corporate/state exercise in pink-washing.

avatar for gersande Gersande La Flèche boosted
Julia Serano: Manifeste d'une femme trans et autres textes (Paperback, 2025, Cambourakis) No rating

« [...] cet essai de l'écrivaine américaine Julia Serano est l'un des piliers du transféminisme. …

En d'autres termes, les cissexuel·les conçoivent la légitimité de leur genre comme un droit de naissance. Il s'agit bien souvent de malhonnêteté intellectuelle quand dans notre société beaucoup de cissexuel·les (si ce n'est la majorité) tendent à considérer avec mépris les sociétés et cultures qui reposent sur des systèmes de classes ou de castes – alors que leur métier, leur statut social, leur situation économique, leur pouvoir politique, etc., sont prédéterminés en fonction d'un accident de naissance. Si, en Occident, la plupart des cissexuel·les critiquent le privilège de naissance comme un moyen de déterminer d'autres formes de classes sociales, ils et elles y adhèrent hypocritement dès qu'il s'agit de genre.

Manifeste d'une femme trans et autres textes by 

Tim McCaskell: Queer Progress (2016, Between the Lines) No rating

How did a social movement evolve from a small group of young radicals to the …

In June 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn in New York responded to a police raid with three days of rioting. The gay liberation movement sparked by Stonewall emerged in the 1970s. It was based on the liberal notion that sexuality should be an individual expression rather than a social obligation. But the movement also drew from the social solidarity promoted by socialism, Keynesianism, feminism, the civil rights movement, and anti-colonial struggles to produce the notion of "community." This allowed it to project political power to combat the moralizing discourses of law, religion, and psychiatry.

Queer Progress by  (3%)

This book starts off with so many bangers I have to physically restrain myself from typing in the whole book into quotes on here.

avatar for gersande Gersande La Flèche boosted

reviewed L'ombre de l'arbre abattu by Li-Cam

Li-Cam, Philippe Aureille: L'ombre de l'arbre abattu (Organic Editions) 4 stars

Et si les ombres avaient peur de nous et non l'inverse ? Et si elles …

"Et si, au détour d'une balade, une ombre qui n'appartient à personne te proposer de l'écouter ? Le ferais-tu ?"

4 stars

La nouvelle de ce livre est proposée dans un ouvrage qui constitue un objet d'art à part entière : illustrée par Philippe Aureille, publiée sur du papier cartonné, elle voit son texte s'adapter formellement à des illustrations couvrant parfois la majeure partie des deux pages, déclinant diverses représentations intrigantes ou déroutantes de bois et d'oeil(s) qui vous fixent.

L'histoire en elle-même se lit avec plaisir et curiosité. Elle emprunte aux registres du conte et de la légende pour donner la parole à une ombre, laquelle entreprend de bousculer les représentations communes que la personne à laquelle elle s'adresse partage avec les lecteurices. Le court récit est ciselé et poétique, un récit à tiroirs malgré son format très bref, dans lequel il est facile de se laisser entraîner, et qui n'a pas fini de déployer et d'étirer ses facettes alors que l'on referme le livre.

En résumé : un beau livre, …

started reading Easy Money by Ben McKenzie

Ben McKenzie, Jacob Silverman: Easy Money (2023, Abrams, Inc.) No rating

“Crypto is Vegas without the drinks, the dinner, or the show,” contend Gotham actor McKenzie …

So @leifur mentioned this book to me last year and I forgot about it until I was rewatching a video on YouTube that mentioned the O.C. and had Ben McKenzie in the included clips, Leif mentioned the book again and now I'm going to read it. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to be reading more fiction, lalalala, this is fine!)