#also I consider it to just be a subset or specification of being bi. not a replacement

[intersexwiki]

For archival purposes, the content under the cut follows:

Anon, that’s always been something that’s bothered me too.Like. Not even just people we’d typically consider REGs - like aspecexclusionists, multispec exclusionists, nonbinary exclusionists, transexclusionists, truscum, TERFs, etc. - do this, but people who would considerthemselves to be against gatekeeping also do too.

Especially when you consider just how much of the polyamcommunity is queer beyond their being polyamorous, and also consider the amountof shared history between polyamory and queerness (because when you see theformer you almost always see the latter as well - in terms of individuals andgroups/collectives), the amount of using “including polyamory” as a slipperyslope argument, as well as just the general disdain for “including polyamory”is... sketchy at best to me.

I guess it comes down to what we think the LGBTQ+ and queercommunities are as a whole. How do we define those? And with that definition,where do we put things like polyamory? And are we defining things well ifgroups with a lot of shared history and a lot of overlap in issues areexcluded?

Let’s take a look at some definitions of what exactly theLGBTQ+ community is and how those boundaries are put up, starting with theleast inclusive I’m willing to deal with and going from there:

1. The popular aphobic REG definition:

The LGBT community is for combating homophobia andtransphobia. Therefore, the LGBT community is for people who experiencehomophobia and transphobia.

I take huge issue with this, because I think that multispecantagonism has a lot of difference from homophobia and cannot be grouped as a“subset” of homophobia. There are issues that have to do specifically beingattracted to multiple genders - regardless of if the individual experiencesattraction to the same gender or not. The same goes for exorsexism being itsown separate issue and not a “subset” of transphobia, because of, for example,our genders being completely erased and believed to not exist at all.

Then, there’s the issues related to orientation beingexcluded entirely, such as aphobia, and the issues related to sex and genderbeing excluded entirely, such as perisexism.

Under this definition, only lesbians, gay people, bi people(with the caveat of bisexuality requiring attraction to the same gender, if notyou’re not bi, even if you’re nonbinary and (potentially) included because ofthat, because it’s totally fine to erase orientations if you include forsomething else???), and trans people (with, being completely generous and notincluding truscum or exorsexist beliefs on top of this, the caveat that ifyou’re nonbinary you must consider yourself trans) are part of the community.

While I despise this definition entirely, I do get thatthose who do favour it are exclusionary of polyamory as being a qualifier asbeing part of the community... because they’re exclusionary of quite a lot ofthings.

-

2. The one that essentially “MOGA”:

The LGBT+ community is a community for people ofmarginalized orientations and gender alignments/identities.

Basically, this boils down to... Having an orientation thatis not straight (and regarding split attraction, having at least oneorientation that is not straight) qualifies you for being part of the LGBTQ+community because you have an orientation that is marginalized. Also, having agender that is different from the gender you were assigned at birth qualifies youfor being in the LGBTQ+ community because you have a gender alignment/identitythat is marginalized.

This is better, but it still excludes issues surroundingperisexism. There are other issues I have with this one, but they’re alsoissues I have with the next definition, so I’ll leave this and move onto...

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3. IMOGA, MOGAI, or just typical unnamed inclusionism:

The LGBT+ community is a community for people ofmarginalized orientations and gender alignments/identities, AND because ofshared history and issues, also people who are intersex if they feel as thoughthey want to be part of our community.

Essentially, this is the above, but includes issuessurrounding perisexism, and therefore includes intersex people if they feelthat they want to be part of the LGBTQ+ community specifically because of theirbeing intersex.

This seems to be where a lot of inclusionists sit in termsof their definition for the community. And this set of beliefs is conducive tothe exclusion of things like polyamory, even though there are shared issuesbetween these two communities - like the given example of marriage equality.You might get a, “they’re separate but related communities,” when you bringthis up. That reads... similarly to, “aspec people should have their own communityseparate from the LGBT community,” to me. I suppose you could justify that,because polyamory isn’t an orientation and so it’s different. But I still takeissue with that.

For me, the big issue here is that in all of this discussionpeople have pointed out, time and time again, usually related to argumentsagainst the use of “queer community,” that the LGBTQ+ community is a coalitionof the lesbian community, the gay community, the bi community, the transcommunity, the queer community, and so on. And so... why are we drawing theborders here - at orientations and gender alignments/identities that aremarginalized... oh, plus intersex people because of shared history and issuesstopping there in terms of shared history and issues? Which brings me to...

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4. The definition I subscribe to:

The LGBT+ community is for combating pericishetero-society.Therefore, the LGBT+ community is a community consisting of many differentaligned groups or smaller communities that all differ frompericisheteronormativity, which individuals can choose to opt in or out of.

Same deal, where the LGBTQ+ community is a coalition betweenmany interconnected communities, linked together by differing frompericisheteronormativity.

And that covers... a lot.

Perinormativity: the assumption that everyone falls withintwo distinct categories biologically of “male” and “female” with all of sexchromosomes, gonads and other genitalia, and hormones being aligned from birthwith one of those categories.

Cisnormativity: the assumption that everyone identifies withthe gender that they were assigned at birth, and by extension, that there areonly the two binary genders of man and woman, and that people will present insuch a way as people can know which of the two binary genders you are.

Heteronormativity: the assumption that everyone is attractedto the opposite binary gender, and by extension, that they are only attractedto one gender, experience that attraction as both romantic and sexually, andexperience it regularly as part of day-to-day life, that there is a goal as theresult of this attraction to be in a romantic and sexual relationship thatlooks and works a certain way with a single individual.

Basically, besides perinormativity targeting prettyexclusively intersex people, cisnormativity doesn’t just target trans peopleand heteronormativity doesn’t just target gay people.

Cisnormativity’s primary target may be trans people, but italso harms nonbinary people regardless of if they consider themselves to betrans, and people who are GNC.

Heteronormativity’s primary target my be gay people, but italso harms multispec people regardless of if they are attracted to the samegender, aspec people regardless of other orientations they may have, polyamorouspeople, and - *gasp* - kinky people - how dare I!?

So yes, my view of the LGBTQ+ community is that it includespeople that tend to be not included by people who consider themselvesinclusionists. It includes people who are cis but are GNC. It includespolyamorous people, even if they’re cis and het with no split attraction. Itincludes kinky people, even if they’re cis and het with no split attraction.

Stay with me. I know this sounds out there but hang on.

It includes these groups because they directly opposepericisheteronormativity.

But that doesn’t mean I think cis people belong in transspaces and can speak on trans issues just because they’re GNC. And that doesn’tmean I think het people can belong in spaces for people of marginalized orientationsor can speak on issues surrounding marginalized orientations just becausethey’re polyam or kinky. Just as aspec people shouldn’t speak on issues aboutbeing gay or trans (if they’re not also gay or trans, that is), for example.

A coalition of many smaller communities.

Sure, we could say that the polyam community is separate butadjacent to the LGBTQ+ community since they do share a history and some of thesame issues. But why if we’re also including being intersex as part of thelarger LGBTQ+ community because of a shared history and shared issues (whichI’m 100% supportive of, by the way, as long as they would like to be included)should we exclude these other adjacent groups as being entirely separate? Whycan’t they exist within the larger umbrella of the LGBTQ+ community?

And really, quite often, they actually do exist within thelarger umbrella of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, my campus has a kinkcollection as part of our LGBTQ+ library. And this, as far as I know, is pretty commonplace. Because of a hugeshared history. Pride parades quite often have some form of kink pride - hell,there’s even a leather flag. Same goes for polyamory. And gender non-conformityhas similar connections.

There’s one part of the above definition I haven’t reallytouched on yet - besides for intersex people - and that’s the “whichindividuals can choose to opt in or out of.” That part is important. Not justin terms of the inclusion of intersex in the community because there are someintersex people who do not feel that being intersex makes them part of theLGBTQ+ community, but also in terms of, well, removing the boogeymen, so tospeak.

Being LGBTQ+, as much as so many people in the communityseem to be trying to say otherwise (only when it suits them, mind you) is thatthere are people who don’t belong who want to invade. The Straights will callthemselves trans, or nonbinary, or bi, or pan, or ace, or whatever just becauseit’s “trendy” to be LGBTQ+. And. Just. What???

It’s even more odd when you consider the whole “only when itsuits them” part. Because other times The Straights actually despise us and useour terms derogatorily. And... that doesn’t line up. If it were “cool” or“trendy” to be LGBTQ+, why would queer still be used as a slur? Why would “gay”have become a synonym for other derogatory terms like “stupid”? Why would “nohomo” have been such a huge thing?

Straight people, people who conform topericisheteronormativity, want to distance themselves from us at all costs. Tothe point of going way out of their way to be sure that people know they’rejust our allies and not one of us because they don’t want to be seen asactually one of us.

So those “straight frat boys who use aromanticism as anexcuse to fuck tons of women and then ghosts them all,” and “straight men whouse polyamory as an excuse to cheat on their girlfriends,” and “straight menwho have five girlfriends who all aren’t allowed to have other boyfriends,” and“straight men who get off on hurting their girlfriends,” and “cishet men whosometimes wear eyeliner,” aren’t going to call themselves LGBTQ+. Because theydon’t want to be one of us.

Sure, there will be het-attracted aspecs who are part of thecommunity, and straight polyamorous people who are part of the community, andstraight kinky people who are part of the community. But they’re the ones whodon’t conform to pericisheteronormativity. They’re the ones interested indismantling those systems. And hell yes I think that they’re just as deservingof a spot in the larger community discussions on how to accomplish that.

Anyway, that’s my position on the whole thing. Please directyour angry comments about how “wanting to hit your partner isn’t LGBT” or“wanting to fuck multiple people isn’t LGBT” to my ask box where they will doabsolutely nothing to change my mind or my position on the matter and will onlybe answered specifically in a nice tone if you want to pay me $20 to put inthat effort.

(And before anyone decides this includes pedophiles and people into bestiality... Nope! The object of your attraction being an individual who can’t consent doesn’t mean you’re going against pericisheteronormativity! Nothing in what perinormativity, cisnormativity, and heteronormativity are includes the age or species of individuals you’re attracted to!)

It's "interesting" that polyam people are usually one of the go-to "NEXT YOU'LL BE SAYING WE SHOULD INCLUDE THEM!" groups for regs, considering one of the primary arguments abt excluding anybody who isnt exclusively attracted to their own gender is basically "but they dont get marriage inequality!", when bigamy is an actual literal crime pretty much everywhere, and one that can lead to time in jail regardless of consensuality...

Ooh boy am I likely going to get some shit over fleshing outmy thoughts on this matter. But you know, I think it’s important I do moreproperly solidify my thoughts, and the easiest way for me to do that is towrite things out, so let’s do this… And this is probably going to be long,ramble-y, wordy, and whatnot, so it’s going under a cut.

Keep reading

[trndrcore]

Made myself a self indulgent pride flag because I’ve been questioning things lately and this made me feel better

No name, but it’s a cross between the bi flag and gay flag. Recently I’ve been noticing that my attraction is mostly towards men and nonbinary people, but very rarely I will be attracted to women too. Which I know is still considered bi, and I love my bi identity, but I just wanted to make a flag that was also acknowledging that my identity as a nonbinary transmasc is playing into my attraction and how I perceive my attraction towards others. So really it’s just for funsies but feel free to use it if you relate <3

[mdemontespan1667]

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen a marked increase in hate directed at my fellow writers of DARK fics by cowardly Anons. While each and every writer has undoubtedly held their own against the stupidity aimed at them, I have reached the point where I can no longer just Like and Reblog. So settle in and buckle up. This may be a long and bumpy ride.

1) First and foremost, YOU, AND ONLY YOU, ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MEDIA YOU CHOOSE TO CONSUME. It is not your place to decide A) What someone else writes and B) What someone else reads. I follow hundreds of Blogs on the site. The vast majority contain consensual sex, fluff, angsty etc. In other words not DARK content. Non-DARK content is incredibly easy to find. Even though DARK fics are becoming more popular they are still out numbered at least 100 to 1. You either have to be specifically looking for the DARK tag or following someone who consistently posts DARK fics to find them. So if DARK fics offend you unfollow the writer or filter out the DARK tag. If a DARK fic does somehow make its way onto your feed, be a damn adult and scroll past it. No one is standing behind you holding your eyes open making you read.

2) DARK fics are just another extension of “rape fantasy” which is a well documented (both scholarly and unscholarly) phenomenon. Rape fantasy “fics” have been found in print since at least the 1600’s. They were extremely popular during the Victorian period. In fact I’d be willing to bet that your mother, grandmother or great grandmother (depending on your age) read romance novels that, at the very least, contained dubious consent sexual situations. Do a quick search of the best selling romance books of the 70’s and 80’s. Most of them contained non-consent sexual situations. Today’s DARK fic is nothing new.

3) Rape fantasies/DARK fics have ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL RAPE. It does not in any way, shape or form mean a person wants to be violently sexually assaulted. Nor does it mean they want any other person to be violently sexually assaulted. It’s a fantasy. Make believe.

4) DARK fics aren’t written because the writer is “sick,” “disgusting,” “perverted,” etc etc etc. That’s it. That’s all.

5) DARK fics/Rape fantasies have always been a way for women to take control of their bodies. Historically (and even currently) women have had their sexuality suppressed. “Good” girls weren’t supposed to actually enjoy sex. Sex with their husband has been referred to as the “woman’s curse,” “wifely duty,” etc etc. Women who enjoy sex, actively pursue sex, have more than one sexual partner, or experiment with sex are referred to as sluts, whores, wanton, nymphomaniacs, unnatural, witches, the list goes on and on. Out of sexual repression and frustration the “rape fantasy” was born. Rape fantasies allow women to enjoy sex without the guilt. Most DARK fics include the woman orgasming, usually multiple times, which in and of itself is unusual in the real world. (Hell, women fake orgasms so they don’t hurt their partners feelings or are too shy to ask for what they need in bed). Rape fantasies give women the freedom to experience sexual acts they may have been told were “gross” ie receiving oral sex or “taboo” ie anal sex or multiple partners. DARK fics work the same way. In the enlightened age of 2021 women’s bodies are STILL being regulated. We are still being called sluts and whores for actively pursuing sexual satisfaction. DARK fics give us the opportunity to explore our sexual desires and needs in a guilt free environment. You have an earth shattering orgasm from having your pussy eaten until you cry? No shame because you didn’t have a choice. Get off from having your face fucked? No shame because you didn’t have a choice. See how this works? Rape fantasies/DARK fics are an escapist way to enjoy sex. To wallow in pleasure that you have no choice but to enjoy.

5) Some DARK fics pull in aspects of BDSM or rather subsets of BDSM. The BDSM community is a large and varied one. There are hundreds of kinks. One of the subsets includes Edge play which involves kinks such as pain, knife, fear, degradation, blood etc. DARK fics can also include some form of a Dominate/submissive dynamic. Again, it’s a subset of D/s relationships that delve into “consensual” non-consensual sex acts. Play or scenes revolve around the submissive being taken against their will, “forced” to engage and enjoy the sexual acts being performed. As with rape fantasies/DARK fics it allows the submissive to enjoy sex, in a safe environment, without the guilt. This is probably TMI but as a submissive myself Edge play allows me to fully experience my sexuality by allowing me to give control over to someone else. DARK fics serve the same purpose. (True BDSM ALWAYS involves willing partners and healthy power dynamics.)

6) People deal with trauma in a million different ways. DARK fics are a way for people to work through their feelings. NEITHER YOU NOR ANYONE ELSE GETS TO DICTATE HOW SOMEONE DEALS WITH THEIR TRAUMA. I will not expand on this because I have no idea how others deal with trauma and I will not make presumptions as to why they choose the methods they do.

7) It is perfectly normal to become sexually aroused or think a DARK fic “is hot.” It all goes back to allowing oneself to enjoy sex without the guilt. Having numerous partners at the same time, anal sex or female receiving oral sex are common themes in DARK fics. In the real world women who participate in multiple partner sex or anal sex are still, unfairly, seen as “dirty” or “slutty,” or “freaky.” However, men who engage in the same acts with women are not. DARK fics allow women the freedom they are denied.

8) Despite the reasons I have listed above, no one needs a reason or your permission, to write, read, and enjoy a DARK fic.

I apologize if I rambled on. But this subject pisses me off. It is neither mine nor any other writer's job to cater to what you deem acceptable.

(This post focuses on the cis female/male dynamic of DARK fics. “Female” could be replaced with gay, lesbian, trans, bi, asexual, pansexual, gender fluid or any other individual/gender who has been denied access to enjoy their own sexuality. I do understand that there are many other factors that affect those not considered cis female or male but, due to my own lacking, I don’t know enough to properly and respectfully address those factors. I apologize for this.)

[wearequeer-andwearehere]

hi hey hello i saw that post you made about helping about with gender/sexuality crises and i RAN here

long story short, (i’m afab) i’m a dude, but also feminine in a girlish way? just not a girl per se, she/her and girl makes me dysphoric, but my body doesn’t especially make me dysphoric except for my chest and when i’m, yk, aunt flo, my hooha makes me dysphoric?? so yeah?? i used to identify as genderfluid but idfk at this point man because like it feels like my gender shifts sometimes based on the clothes im wearing if that makes sense. also in terms of sexuality, i like men i think and masc-oriented people, and maybe women but i don’t think so, but romantic relationships are really awkward for me or at least super lovey-dovey ones are, and UHH yeah you know confusion. but i like male/masc-oriented people in the way a boy would and i feel a connection to mlm and nblm. so. yeah. confusion.

that was kind of a lot sorry KJSKSK

There is absolutely no need to apologise my friend!! I’m happy to help you out!!

How you dress/act =/= your gender. You can be very very feminine and still be a dude!

You don’t have to have extreme dysphoria or anything to be a dude. You can have zero dysphoria or only a little dysphoria and still be a trans dude!! Dysphoria does not define transness. If being a dude makes you feel true to yourself, be a dude!

Hmm, it’s possible you might be mutogender! Here’s the wiki page: https://lgbta.miraheze.org/wiki/Mutogender

Mutogender is a subcategory of genderfluid, in which one's gender changes in response to a specific situation. It can include things like one's location, the time of day, the individuals one is around, etc. It can be a gender on its own or an umbrella term.

I think there’s subsets that might include changing gender due to clothing but I can’t seem to find it :/ If you can’t find a label, you can always make your own!!

If you like male aligned people in a gay way, then you can identify as mlm/nblm/achillean!

Hmm, is it possible you might be aromantic? You can look under the #aromantic questioning tag on my blog, scroll through some aro blogs, see if you relate!

It’s also possible you could be unused to romance and realise you like it later, or you could be aro—both are possible. But if picturing yourself in a romantic relationship makes you uncomfortable, you might want to consider the aromantic label.

You don’t have to do traditional “lovey-dovey” stuff to be in a romantic relationship—if you are romantically attracted to someone and you have a relationship with them there’s nothing you *have* to do, do what makes you happy!

It doesn’t matter if you like women or not—you know you like men, so don’t worry if you’re gay or bi, you can be mlm/nblm!

Let me know if you have anymore questions!! I hope I could help, have a great day :DD

[woman-loving]

Im previous anon- I'm not very smart but I think I got it! But does that mean that literature I've seen calling bisexual people parasites on the gay community and stuff weren't real or were exaggerated? Or I guess taken out of context? Ive seen a lot of links and articles regarding radfem politics being extremely hostile to bisexual people (primarily bi women). I read a lot of links to ebooks on older lit from autismserenity and I can link a few if you want a look.

Lesbian feminism, which can be considered an offshoot or subset of the radical feminist movement (at least in the US, where I’m researched it the most), often had negative things to say about bisexuality. (Even though some of the people expressing these views may also have had bisexual proclivities.)

Some lesbian feminists, especially separatists, believed that any kind of energy you put into maintaining relationships with men translated into maintenance of patriarchy. (And hence all oppression, since radical feminists tended to believe that patriarchy was the source of all forms of oppression.) Women’s communities were seen as sites where alternative political bases could be developed, and were thought to be a means (perhaps the only means) of advancing a liberatory feminist revolution. Bi women were condemned as basically leeching “energy” out of women’s communities, by accepting emotional support from other women but then transferring it to men/patriarchy instead of back to women.

That’s one angle of how bisexuality was treated as parasitic in lesbian feminism, although we could look at other dimensions of the bisexual discourse there, too. However, there have also been ambivalent and negative attitudes toward bisexuality in other gay communities and politics. I don’t think it’s accurate or fair to frame lesbian feminism as the original or exclusive source of anti-bisexual attitudes among gay people. Bi women’s engagement with and reaction to lesbian feminism is historically important (a lot of early bi-specific organizations were created by bi women who had previously participated in lesbian feminism), and these same anti-bisexual discourses and ideologies continue to circulate among women-loving women. So I do think it’s valuable to learn about this history. However, it’s also important to consider how other discourses and ideologies can contribute to anti-bisexual attitudes too. For example, butch and femme identities were widely rejected by lesbian feminists; affirming these as “lesbian-only” identities wasn’t historically part of a lesbian feminist agenda. We should look for better explanations for what’s going on currently with this debate then just chalking it up to “radfems.”

Personally, I don’t even like to use the term “radfems” when talking about radical feminism and lesbian feminism in the 1960s-80s.

If you’d like to share some links, I’d be happy to look at them. If I may ask, how did you come to my blog? Did someone share one of my posts somewhere?

[arokaladin]

Can we talk about the pressure on people with less well known or ‘newer’ identities to represent *specifically* that identity and the shame that might come with questioning?

The idea of being an ‘ex-gay’ is something that’s considered to be pretty fringe, and would be mocked even by most decently educated straight people. But ‘detransitioner’ is a label that even queer cis people will use quite seriously (often incorrectly, aka to mean they used to identify as trans, rather than to mean they have medical transition regret, and in a way that adds further stigma to real trans experiences). And of course there are people whose entire personality is based in how they used to think they were asexual. 

(I had to ask tiktok to stop showing me videos from this one girl who seems to be quite popular because most of her content from what I can tell is about how much she hated being ace and how she has all this supposed inside gossip about the ace community being cultish and lesbophobic because she ~used to be one~ but god. lets not get into that ok?)

All of this, along with the fact that ‘obscure’ labels are targeted even more by the ‘just a phase’ argument, even within the queer community, makes things so much harder for people who are re-questioning or even just using a different label under same umbrella. People can be hesitant to talk about their experiences out of fear of proving the stereotype. I think I’ve seen a few people touch on this. However the other effect is that when you are comfortable in a label with this kind of stigma, there’s pressure to be really loud about how comfortable you are, and constantly be reaffirming your identity to outsiders. You kind of have to be aro/enby/bi/whatever else before you get to be queer, because you feel a responsibility to be a role model for this specific part of yourself that is least represented. 

Personally, I started this blog when I was what? 16? I was barely confident in my own aromanticism, still working on unlearning a lot of things, and was inspired to start posting here so I would have a space to vent and work through those feelings. I was always open about my age and the fact there were plenty of things I didn’t have answers for, but nevertheless I got absolutely tons of asks from people wanting advice. My community was so small that I was simultaneously a baby aro, and being cast in the role of community elder just because I was out of the questioning stage. 

As well as an overwhelming number of people wanting advice, I also regularly got asks (and even direct messages) from people who were venting, a lot of the time obviously depressed, and often not even asking a question but just using me as a place to send negative feelings. It got so bad that a few times I had to make posts asking people asking people to stop. People did this to me because our community was so tiny and lacking visibility that some teen’s inbox was possibly all they had, and I was well aware of that. 

I think in part this is why I started many projects within aro activism that I never continued with (aside from my executive dysfunction and the aforementioned fact I was 16). I felt like I had to be the one to bring certain resources into being, because most of the time nothing of the kind existed. 

Nowadays I’m the least certain of my identities I’ve been since I originally questioned. I genuinely think I am still aro, but I’ve been pretty shaken up all round recently and it’s made me realise how upset I would feel if that did change (even though I still wish feel ashamed of my aroness sometimes and still fight the desire for a ‘normal’ amatonormative life) I’m honestly pretty terrified of losing community were my labels to change too much, even though logically I know my friends wouldn’t drop me if I turned out to be a slightly different kind of queer, let alone just a slightly different type of aspec. And I think this is probably in part because of how outwardly adamant I’ve had to be about my identity for years. 

I guess it’s worth noting the role of the ‘Discourse’ in this: being constantly under attack has meant the aro and ace communities specifically have had to become pretty isolated. A lot of us don’t trust even other queer people, for good reason, and a lot of us again keep to even smaller subsets of the community to avoid other bigotries. And the way the internet is encourages the urge to divide yourself up and put the parts in boxes. But I think the pressures I’ve talked about would exist even without those factors. 

I’m not sure if I have a conclusion to this, because I’m still thinking about it a lot. I’m not sure how we fix a problem like this because I’m not sure there’s technically any problem to fix. A lot of it is just the growing pains of a small community. I would like to start a dialogue, however. Does anyone else feel this way? How do we accept possible future re-questioning without telling ourselves this might be just a phase, or rolling back our progress accepting our aromanticism? How do we create spaces needed to vent, and discuss difficult topics, without burning each other out or creating a crab bucket? How do we vent about burnout without depicting the aro community as toxic? What do we do to fill the absences left by non-existent elders? I don’t know but maybe we can figure some things out. 

[22degreehalo]

Tbh hot take but. The LGBTQIA+ community has been really harmed by the fact that the term 'lesbian' is supposed to represent a specific and clearly-defined subset of queer experience (women exclusively attracted to women), but is also used as a catch-all term for literally ANYONE who isn't a cis man.

Like. It is actually really, really hard to avoid the term. If you're not a cis man and are in any way a) attracted to women, b) NOT attracted to men, OR c) gender non-conforming, it IS the default term used by most people.

The sheer breadth is especially obvious when referring to trans men. Few people who believe in trans men don't acknowledge bi women (and to a lesser extent aspec women), and yet it is ALWAYS framed as a question of being transmasc or being a butch lesbian. It is almost NEVER acknowledged that bis or aspecs or even gnc straight women could become trans men. 'Lesbian' is expected to sum up the entire queer experience.

And that has a really shitty effect where literally anything done by bis, aspecs, transmascs, or gnc women will be named Lesbian and presumed to 'belong' to lesbians. And yet despite this ravenous claiming, the lesbian community is NOTORIOUSLY exclusionary, even wielding the term 'gold star lesbian' to exclude others who otherwise fully fit the narrow criteria of lesbian.

So if you're not a cis man and in any way outside the cisheteronormative ideal, but don't consider yourself a lesbian, you're fucked. Your community is TINY and things that could be empowering and helpful for you are gatekept away because they're not 'for you', even if they describe you perfectly, or may even have been made by other people like you. And you can say 'fuck it' and claim it anyway, but you invite harrassment and make it even harder to find safety or acceptance.

A lot of this is outright acknowledged and morally justified on the basis that lesbians are the most 'in need', and that exclusive attraction to women is the most progressive/feminist position. In the end, it all comes down to hierarchies of who is inherently superior and who just needs to suck it up. But that hierarchy isn't even based in reality - statistics continually show, for example, that bisexuals have worse outcomes across the board than gay people. It's just a collective idea, regardless of reality, that 'lesbian' means 'most in need.'

That is why we get aroace lesbians. And nb lesbians. And he/him lesbians. And now, most controversially, bi lesbians.

Because all of these groups are constantly called lesbians anyway. All of their experiences are gathered up under the term 'lesbian'. 95% of empowering and helpful and supportive material - words and ideology and fiction and all-around CULTURE - are adjective-form lesbian. Why shouldnt they get to be noun-form lesbians, too? How can everything you do be lesbian, but not be a lesbian yourself? How can you get by knowing that anything you create would be gatekept from you?

But, that also creates a self-catalysing situation. The more people attach themselves to the term, the less community there is for anyone who doesn't. 'Make your own community' becomes harder and harder.

I don't say this to attack lesbians. But when the debate turns to the idea that the word 'lesbian' is being defined out of existence... mate, it's because lesbians are treated as the DEFAULT. And there are actually a lot of benefits to that that non-lesbian-identifying bi girls and aroace girls and nbs and transmascs don't get.

It is, honestly, a bad situation. It's mainly bad for the above groups, but I also really am sympathetic to lesbians who want a more cleanly-defined identity. It's a shitty situation for those, too. But it's also a pretty inescapable fact that there are lesbians who encourage all of this to happen because it benefits them when lesbians are on top. Often because they fully believe that they are the most oppressed and don't want to ever feel like they owe anything to people not like them.

And all of this, together, is why we DESPERATELY need the word 'queer'. We need a word that acknowledges our shared experiences without privileging one particular specific experience over all others. We need vague terms and we need specific terms - expecting any terms to do BOTH is just asking for trouble.

We should be coming together as a community to support one another, but over and over we're drawn into stupid infighting just over the use of this one goddamn word. It doesn't need to be this way. If we could just get used to using 'queer' when it actually applies, SO MANY problems would immediately get resolved.

[stfudiscoinfernoed]

what about pan people who believe they're a spectrum of bisexuality? (just asking on opinions) how does that still make them biphobic and why?

I think its better when people view pansexuality as an extension of bisexuality but it still has its issues.

To start, the origin of pansexual (as a sexual orientation) will still be biphobic and transphobic. If we move past that and go “hey that was bad but pansexual can still be a useful and meaningful term if we consider it to be a subset of bisexuality” then the question becomes what subset. I’ve explained why viewing bi as 2 or more and pan as all is problematic in other posts so I won’t go in depth here, but the long and the short of it is that difference is reliant on nonbinary inclusion and that’s just not good. The better subset to choose would be viewing pan as “attraction to all genders but no preference.”

Even so that begs the question: if we legitimize a term for “bisexual with no preference for gender” are we going to see “bisexual but a preference for women,” “bisexual with a preference for men,” and “bisexual with a preference for nonbinary people” pop up? Or even more specific terms that reference both your own gender and the genders you prefer or don’t prefer? What then becomes of bisexuality? The strength of bisexual is that is a broad term that makes no assumptions about your personal gender or the preferences you have.

This is on top of how preferences change for a variety of reasons and creating a term based around preferences would either lead to people switching labels frequently and feel distressed about it or creating a label specifically for “preferences change over time.” Can you see how this could leads itself to a neverending spiral of new terminology?

And of course, that is also on top of the reality that many bi people face stigma both inside and outside the lgbt community for having gender preferences, because that supposedly shows they are “actually straight” or “actually gay.” Pansexual being defined as “bi with no preference” really ignores this happening..

I apologize for this incredibly long response, but I hope this shows how viewing pansexuality as a subset of bisexuality, while better than viewing it as a completely separate sexuality, is still harmful.

[aromagni]

Communication Breakdown: Why we feel hurt & how to mend the gap (Carnival of Aros)

The asexual community is kind of like the aromantic community’s older sibling. They’ve been around longer and thus are stronger and more recognized. Ideally, the ace community would be the helpful, protective older sibling. Instead, we often feel mocked if not outright ignored.  We are and ought to be two different communities, but there’s an undeniable link between us and we can be stronger together.

Aro erasure by the ace community: 

The ace community is complicit in helping to perpetuate misconceptions about aros.  One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that aro and ace are basically the same thing, or they think aromantic is just a subset of asexuality; this really erases allosexual aros.  This misconception is a result of stuff like labelling something as aro when it only pertains to ace issues; saying something includes aros but it’s basically all about asexuality and aromanticism is just a footnote; misusing aro terminology; talking over aros about aro issues rather than listening to what we have to say.

People need to stop using asexual as an umbrella term to imply aromantic is also included; instead, specifically mention aromantic as well, or use a-spec which includes both.  Especially with communities irl, there’s this tendency to call something ace and think aros will assume they’re included….but we’re not.  Aro allos won’t feel included at all; even as an aroace person, if something is only labeled ace then I will expect to have to educate on aro issues and fight to make sure aros are recognized.

The specific intersection of being both aro and ace is interesting.  Aroaces are pulled towards one community or the other, prioritizing one of their identities.  I know being aro is far more important to me than being ace, and thus I interact almost exclusively with the aro community.  There are a lot of aroace people, which is likely a large part of why there is so much confusion of what is aro vs. what is ace.  If you’re aroace but don’t interact with the aro community, please don’t talk over us about aro issues.  I encourage you to join us and learn more, but I also challenge you to untangle ace from aro and help combat the misconception that they are the same.

I am both ace and aro, but when I come out to people who are unfamiliar with my identities, I make a point of saying that while I individually am both, there are people who are ace but not aro, and there are people who are aro but not ace.  I encourage members of the ace community to do the same if they are comfortable; in the same breath that you explain aces can still feel romantic attraction, explain also that there are aros who feel sexual attraction.

Why we feel hurt and alienated:

There’s this concept called respectability politics which is basically when marginalized groups try to fit in with the mainstream and do so by policing other marginalized groups; it’s at the root of exclusion within the lgbtqa+ community.  Gay people excluded bi people, then they excluded trans people, now they exclude ace people….and then aces exclude aros; we’re too invisible to be attacked by anyone else.

When you’re on the defensive, it’s easy to try a deflect those attacking you towards someone else, whether you realize you’re doing it or not.  Exclusionists try to dehumanize aces by claiming sex is part of “what it means to be human”…then sometimes alloromantic aces will try to combat that by claiming “we can still love”.  While there’s many types of love, the implication is clearly romantic love; it implies that aro people aren’t human and perpetuates the harmful stereotype that aros are cold and heartless.  Instead, we need to dismantle the belief that people need to meet a certain quota of relationships in order to be considered human.

Additionally, ace spaces often feel so dominated by romance that it is alienating.  I’ve met a lot of alloro aces in college but basically no aros; the more I interacted with aces, the more alienated I felt from the ace community.  I am sometimes romance repulsed and I’ve had ace friends who outright refused to acknowledge or accommodate my romance repulsion at all.  Overall I relate far more to allo aros than I do to allo aces; I feel my aro identity is ignored in ace spaces and it is really alienating.

How to be better aro allies in general: 

Educate yourselves, listen to aro people, and then educate others and promote visibility of aromanticism too

Lean into your discomfort, accept when you’ve made a mistake, and learn from it.

Explicitly include us in things, especially in events and organizations irl; I mean *actually* include us rather than merely tolerating our presence.

Remember that romance repulsion exists and make spaces welcoming for people with romance repulsion like you would do for people with sex repulsion

Avoid amatnormative language; don’t assume everyone wants to date, and don’t diminish friendships.

Please get your vocabulary right; don’t take aro terms and misuse or ridicule them without understanding the context; don’t say something is aro when really, it’s only ace.

Vocab Discrepancies:

A-spec is inclusive of both the aro and ace spectrums.  If you’re only talking about the ace spectrum, then use ace-spec.

Queerplatonic relationships are NOT romantic, though they can be sexual.  I’ve seen people use it to mean a nonsexual-romantic relationship which is misappropriating a term by and for aro people.  While it is purposefully vague and anyone can use it, it must be remembered that it is for non-romantic relationships, and that it is an aro term.

Aplatonic means not experiencing platonic attraction such as squishes. This is a useful term because without romance, it is often important to have terms to describe how we feel with platonic relationships.  I’ve seen this frequently mocked in general.

Allo: Remember that just like there are alloromantic aces, there are also allosexual aros.  If you specifically mean alloromantic allosexuals, you can just use allos.

Conclusion:

Overall, I think a lot of why aros feel ostracized by aces is a lot like why aces feel ostracized by the overall queer community: we feel invisible and ignored, we feel excluded by the things they say, we feel like no one is listening, and it hurts because we feel we should belong but we don’t feel included.  I think the root cause of this gap between us is a communication breakdown: the ace community unthinkingly says things which make aros feel erased, so we recede because we don’t feel listened to; and then the ace community is genuinely surprised to learn that aros don’t feel included by ace as an umbrella term.  We branch off and form our own community, but we are still inherently linked.  We’re both still fighting for visibility, inclusion, and building community spaces for ourselves, and we’ll get further if we work together and make everyone feel included.  Remember to listen to us and help broadcast our voices; no one likes feeling invisible, and us aros are even more invisible than you.

[jackawful]

Here's the thing: "butch and femme are lesbian-exclusive identities" is a claim that has to be backed up with like...reasoning and evidence if you're going to make it. The vast majority of the time, what's used to back it up is just straight-up wrong about bi women and the nature of our ties to, and participation in, lesbian culture. Often when I've seen this stuff I've been too upset to respond well to specific arguments, let alone compile them, but I have a little bit of distance and feel the need to put this all in one place. So here's a list of actual reasons people give for this assertion, what they imply about bi women, and why the prospect of people just accepting them bothers me:

Butch and femme are identities about performing gender specifically for other women and not men, which is an experience only lesbians have. The implication here - sometimes explicitly spelled out depending on who's writing it - is that bi women, as women attracted to multiple genders (usually) including men, automatically and inherently perform at least some of our gender expression for the benefit of men. This isn't true! Judging from both my own experience and that of a lot of bi women I've talked to, performing gender for men is usually something that happens due to internalized misogyny, and something we work to overcome if it's even something that effects us in the first place. Often, the goal isn't even to perform gender for other women - it's to perform it for ourselves, in a way that flags that we're queer and will hopefully attract other women. It's actually really disturbing and misogynistic to claim that women who are attracted to men inherently shape how they dress and act to please/appease men, cause that's a really unhealthy and damaging thing under patriarchy, even for straight women. This argument also ignores butch and femme lesbians who do their gender expression primarily for themselves, a sentiment I've seen in a lot of published writing on both identities.

Butch and femme were created by and for lesbians in lesbian bars during the 30s-60s, so bi women, who were not present, using the terms in the modern day would be ahistorical. Plenty of other people have made plenty of good, accurate points refuting and complicating this narrative of history: the use of the terms in ball culture, evidence of the words in Polari cant, the continuous use of fem(me) by gay and bi men into the modern day, the way the meanings of "lesbian" and "bisexual" gradually shifted into their modern usage through the 60s-80s, the participation of people we would now consider bisexual women in lesbian bar culture, etc, etc, etc. It's pretty clear to me that this is a flattened, simplified conception of a queer history that is actually very complex and hard to trace - if you want sources, I'll dig them up on request, but it may take a while. But one more thing bothers me about this argument: personally, as a butch/masc woman who specifically has trauma tied to being forced into the traditional housewife role, it would have been much, much more difficult for me to find men who would accept me as I am had I lived in the 30s - so difficult that, in that different cultural context, I may have identified as a 100%-attracted-only-to-women lesbian, especially since "bisexual" wasn't even a cultural concept at the time. And beyond that, I've been raised in a working class environment. I probably have more in common with the lesbians that went to lesbian bars than literally anyone middle class or above. Beyond that, even if this simplified historical narrative were 100% accurate, there is literally no reason these terms would have to remain the same in the modern day. Language changes.

Lesbians need a lesbian-only vocabulary/everyone's taking everything away from lesbians already/our culture is being destroyed by everyone just being considered "queer" and making this vocabulary lesbian-exclusive is the only way to stop this. I usually see this as a tacked-on addition to the two points above, but I have come across it on its own a few times, usually from T/ERFs or crypto-TE/RFs. And I think there's a reason I see this one more in radfemmy spaces: it's reactionary. It's drumming up fear that one's culture will be erased if anything ever changes about it, and a desire to return to an imagined ideal past where there were no culture-stealing invaders. And it's directed at other LGBT people, not like...straight cis people (you know, the ones that hold power in our society?). I worry that it's the first step into a lot of other nasty rhetoric, especially the "lesbian not queer" facet of it, which is something TER/F groups have often used to claim that The LGBTQ Community has betrayed the L by accepting the T (and less commonly, the B). Like, I know there's a subset of people out there who will plug their ears and immediately discount this if I say "this is TE/RF rhetoric" but...it is, and it's dangerous, especially because it's that rhetoric that exists where TERFiness and fascism overlap. And man, on a personal level? It sucks to be the target of that. It sucks to be painted as an invader and an enemy and a thief to a group that by all accounts should be where I can find my siblings. Bi women connecting with the history and culture behind identifying as butch/femme takes nothing away from lesbians, it doesn't dilute the terms, and in fact, it can only contribute to the survival of butch/femme culture because it means there are more self-identified butches and femmes in the world. So even if you're unconvinced by the rest of this post, I'd really prefer you Not with this.

And that's...actually pretty much all I've seen used to back this up, actually. If you have an argument that doesn't boil back down to one of these three, I'm open to hearing it. If "bi women can't be butch or femme" is a thing people are going to believe and spread, I want there to be discussion with some depth to it, and I want it to be respectful of what bi women actually feel and experience.

Also, a note: I've used "bi women" as a shorthand here, but this definitely all applies to other multisexual (pan, queer, etc) women.

Gonna tag some more public blogs who I think might be interested in this: @bisexualfemme @beautifullybutch @bilations @dykebisexual @lesbianthor @feminismandmedia

[alyonsphoto-blog]

Small Business Business Intelligence Tools - Is it a Scam?

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[sketch-y-squiggles-blog]

What Does Business Intelligence Success Mean?

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[janiedean]

Hi Janie! So, I admit to a bit of ignorance pertaining the whole “anti”-debacle. I’ve seen anti and anti-anti posts that say the same thing, sometimes it’s about morally offensive things, sometimes about completely unrelated stuff and I can’t make heads nor tails of it, especially since there isn’t really a wealth of actual information? Just rants... *sigh* If it’s possible, do you think you could explain what the problem is? (Does that need to be in plural?) and the „sides“? Thank you! ❤️

anon you asked the question of the century I’m afraid X°D THAT SAID let’s... see if I can make this understandable.

so: the anti debate is... pretty much tied to the whole ‘politics in fandom discourse’ and you can’t separate the two of them sadly. of course I come from the not anti side of fandom so what do I know. anyway, premise:

what happened is that in the last two/three years, whether we liked it or not, the debate in fandom has moved from ‘my ship is better than yours’ to ‘my ship is better than yours because it’s more progressive/woke’, which has gone hand in hand with the political fandom views of any media product, ie ‘you can’t watch that because it lacks representation’ or ‘that show is crap because it’s not woke enough or doesn’t treat that topic well’ and so on, and with a tendency to think that if you ship anything you want it to be canon because it only is worth anything if it becomes such (which imo is bullshit but never mind);

this has moved on to also judging people based on their ships, as in: ‘ship X is wrong because it’s problematic for X reason therefore if you ship it you support X irl and you’re problematic and you need to be stopped’. such as ‘thor/loki is wrong because it’s incest so if you ship thor/loki you’re okay with incest irl and you want to bang your siblings if you have any’, which is a ridiculous notion but this goes also hand in hand with the fact that people have suddenly decided to trash all the psychology that confirmed how violent videogames don’t influence reality and now think that liking something problematic influences you irl because they don’t grasp the difference between fandom and mass-media consumption of a mass-media product;

they also don’t grasp the concept of catharsis through media nor of the really basic concept that most normal people who see themselves in fiction don’t take the entire package but relate to specific things;

keeping THAT in mind:

the whole ‘anti’ thing, as ‘people being opposed to a ship or a trend’ is basically people saying that you cannot ship a thing or be into a problematic character or kink because it says something about you and not about your fictional preferences and actively go around being assholes to people who ship the thing while at the same time gatekeeping/policing their own ships which are of course Purer Than The Others and bringing politics into it, too;

this also goes with a frankly problematic (AND I’M USING THE WORD NON-IRONICALLY) attitude that those people have of equating age gaps with pedophilia always and considering children people older than thirteen/fourteen, which automatically makes them think of people who ship age gaps even in between adults pedophiles (I kid you not a friend who’s over thirty in a rship with a person fifteen years older got told that their rship was pedophilia because their partner was an adult when they were a child at some point in their lives. I mean, IMAGINE THAT.);

to give the to-go example these days because it’s sadly the worst: sw sequel trilogy fandom. rey/kylo has been targeted by antis as the to-go Most Problematic Ship because in order:a) enemies to lovers as a trope which is of course abusive if the good side is a woman (more on that later) b) both are white (so it’s racist to not ship her with the non-white people in the light side *roll eyes*)c) they have a ten years age gap (so it’s pedophilia even if rey’s of age and she kicked his ass more than once)d) he’s not technically good looking so it sets people’s worst instincts offe) these people don’t buy into the fact that people can be redeemed so they decided he’s absolutely Not Redeemable and so onf) it’s an m/f couplenow, rey/lo is admittedly a fairly tame ship as far as problematic goes - it’s honestly your typical enemies to friends to lovers trope that’s been in media since the beginning of time, but according to these ppl it’s The Worst and if you dare being into it you must be a pedophile, racist, misogynist (or internalized misogynist), straight person (because of course only straight ppl ship m/f) - and yes, being straight is a problem but more on that later. but since you can ship her with finn (black) or you could ship finn and poe (black and latino actors) if you’re not into either you’re problematic. too bad that if you ship finn and poe (WHICH I DO) these days it’s... let’s just say I’ve seen a list of ‘problematic f/p writers’ where the reasons for the PROBLEMATIC was that they took a fluff ship and wrote it dubcon. oKAY. also pre tlj fandom was full of block lists for r/eylo shippers where you’d get the name plus ALL REASONS WHY THEY HAD TO BE HARASSED OUT OF FANDOM which you will imagine does not sit well with me since that’s... like... the most fascist thing you could do (NO REALLY BAN LISTS OF PERSONE NON GRATAE WITH REASONS WHY THEY WERE IS A THING THAT HAPPENS IN DICTATORSHIPS AND SOCIETY WHERE EVERYTHING IS CENSORED LIKE BANNED BOOKS) in this circumstance, but hey, if you’re anti-reylo and you’re doing the above you’re just doing the work of the lord because you’re saving people from the Horrible Problematic Ship, and meanwhile I don’t want anything to do with a fandom where people do block lists for how you write your fanfic IN GENERAL. like, concrit is more than welcome but lists? please don’t fucking kid me;

I used r/eylo as an example because it’s the epitome of what anti-shipping ends at, but there’s also sh/eith from voltron which is two guys, with a seven years age gap but both are adults now and were older than 15 when they met, who have the sweetest less problematic relationship ever and people who ship.. the other rival ship decided that it’s pedophilia, SUPPORTS INCEST on the grounds of one of the two tell the other ‘you’re like a brother to me’ SERIOUSLY and that it’s abusive and by shipping it you’re a pedophile. k;

also, this entire thing ties with the fact that these people seem to think that having sex when older than fourteen is somehow bad, which means that if you write someone under the age of 18 (and sometimes NOT EVEN THAT see voltron above) you’re automatically a *pedophile* even if teenagers aren’t children and fictional characters are fictional and never hurt anyone, and that goes hand in hand with the fact that these people seem to largely be against kink;

specifically: ‘bdsm is abusive’ (???), ‘you can’t be a feminist if you like kink’ (OKAY???), ‘if you read/write noncon fanfic you have a problem and you’re terrible’ etc, with a specific subset being against specific kinks that play on a certain angle ie daddy kink and so on which are PEDOPHILIA now, which is again an extremely puritanical way to see the world, not progressive;

at this point we have a situation where a bunch of *antis* specifically target people who are into *problematic* things whether it’s ships, characters, kinks and so on and are going like THINK OF THE CHILDREN half of the time. the children being them, of course.

at this point we have the other discourse we need to have ie about the age and sexuality of the people involved in fandom and why it matters:

now: a lot of fandom is made up of women. it’s statistics. a significant statistical part of the old guard (25+-30+ people ie my generation plus the previous 40+ older generation) is cis women (who can be straight or bi but are attracted to men) who went into fandom writing m/m slash. a significant part of this group is into either problematic ships or kink and such on. but in our understanding of fandom, the key terms were ship and let ship + your kink is not my kink + don’t like don’t read. as in: outside your usual MY SHIP IS BETTER THAN YOURS wank was generally understood that people liked things different than yours and that you had no business being an ass over it, and back in the day warnings were at the beginning - when I went into fandom warnings were not a thing. now there’s warnings everywhere which is GOOD and guess why ao3 was made by... the old guard/old fans, which of course are not very pleased with being told they’re pedophiles or perverts for shipping a thing or, *drum rolls*, that they fetishize gay men by shipping m/m or writing m/m porn, and are fairly vocal about it;

on the other side, this new wave of younger fans who thinks is progressive along with older fans who are assholes/most likely grooming the youngers (because this anti shipping thing is seriously cult-like at this point) calling the old generation all the stuff above and pushing the idea that they want ‘old straight ciswomen out of fandom’ because ‘they have gross ideas and THEY DON’T WANT TO READ OUR GROSS FIC’ and such things. we can also talk for ten years about how the new wave has decided that straight = insult but again, tumblr politics. all goes hand in hand;

so basically the sides are ‘younger fans who thinks they are progressive but are actually being puritan af’ vs ‘older fans who want to do their damned thing’ with some people obviously crossing into the others’s territory;

(and mind that not counting SW, most of the anti drama happens in fandoms for... animated cartoons and the likes - vo/ltron, ste/ven universe and so on, which says a lot about the age discourse, but nvm that);

now, the problem is that by telling some woman older than you that she can’t safely explore her sexual fantasies/kinks in fiction about fake characters you’re basically doing the same thing as policing women’s sexual fantasies that has been going on since the dawn of time, so it’s actually hella misogynist, and the fact that it goes with people saying that you can’t be a feminist who likes kink and that kink is abuse/misogynist... is still policing women’s sexualities, irl and fictionally, and that’s what they’re doing at the end of it;

on top of that, they’re also policing what non-straight, non-female fans who ship problematic stuff do and most of all, there’s the shipping to cope bush of thorns.

about shipping to cope:

now, this entire system had to, at some point, deal with the very true fact that a lot of people who are into problematic stuff/kinks/noncon (not all of them of course) engage with that material to work out their issues - a lot of the time it’s abuse victims writing it to elaborate on their abuse and take control of it and so on and usually... a lot of them aren’t even straight (honestly, almost everyone I know who ships th/ramsay ie noncon torture ship that I personally don’t like myself is... not straight, and a lot of them do ship to cope) and telling them you cannot handle your recovery with whichever system they see fit is... RUDE at best. which is why there’s antis who are like ‘shipping to cope is fine but JUST IF IT’S TO COPE’ which means that in order to be given the green light you have to out yourself and tell people you were abused and other antis who are like ‘SHIPPING TO COPE IS WRONG BECAUSE YOU JUST MAKE IT WORSE’ which is... not a thing that happens to everyone and actually every psychologist worth their salt in the world disagrees (or better: for some people it’s bad to do but for others it’s cathartic, and the latter shouldn’t be not able to do it because the former can’t blacklist or because kids on the internet decided that shipping to cope is bad);

so a lot of antis are actually crossing into the territory of wanting to police how people handle their own experience of abuse (honestly once someone told a friend who explained them from a professional pov the valid of problematic/violent art as a cathartic, healthy way to deal with you shit, and who told them that they were an abuse victim who dealt with it in different ways, to GO ON GOOGLE AND LOOK UP HOW IT WORKS and that person knew shit about it period just to say one) and telling people they can’t process their abuse in THAT way but just in THIS way, feeding into the idea that there’s a right way to process abuse and a wrong way to react to it which in turns becomes good victim vs bad victim;

(and then you wonder why they hate kylo ren... who’s a Bad Victim under the definition of the word but hey whatever)

and this is all thrown under the rug of ‘we need to police problematic attitudes in fandoms’ which is 100% bullshit because if you run into someone specifically problematic you should explain them on a one-on-one basis, not do the witch hunt, and you should never presume to police how people handle their own shit, never mind that 90% of the time the so-called problematic material is consumed by a small percentage of people and you can choose to like, not read it;

and by the way, 90% of the actually problematic fandom trends don’t get called out because it wouldn’t be progressive (I can talk for ages about how it’s really worrying that ppl headcanon characters as X following stereotypes that are actually hurtful for the category in question but since the hc = a minority then it’s always okay) but that’s an entire other problem;

tldr: the anti side, as much as they want to think they’re not doing it, are actively policing the content that other people put online based on supposed ‘moral’ standards which 90% of the time aren’t even true (a 16yo in a relationship with a 20yo is NOT pedophilia period) and even going as far as ‘I’ll press charges to the FBI because X wrote underage fic’ when according to the US law if it’s fictional characters it doesn’t count as such and it only does if real recognizable minors are involved (and in that case it shouldn’t be happening in the first place) and those people might be whoever, and for all they support feminism they also end up being incredibly misogynist.

or, just because I like to use my own experiences as an example: this year I had the horrid idea of replying to a post made obviously by anti people where I told them that straight women writing m/m ie what they’re attracted to of course have more in common with a guy into guys in that sense and not with a lesbian since they’re not attracted to women and that writing m/m wasn’t inherently fetishizing shit. since then I’ve had people:

informing me I MUST have internalized homophobia

assuming shit about my sex life that wasn’t even true including which positions I like in bed (because of course straight women only identify with the gay bottom so they’re capitalizing off that experience when some of us don’t)

assuming I was disgusted at the idea of writing lesbian sex (false, I wrote it when I was in the mood)

informing me that writing fanfic about canonical m/m characters wasn’t activism and I shouldn’t presume I was one for that (I never said I considered it such) but at the same time these people think reporting incest fic to ao3 is... activism, but nvm that

telling me that I was a sad old bitch who needed to find a husband and grow up (I MEAN NOT EVEN IN THE FIFTIES) (I’m 29 btw hardly old) because it was the only way my life could have had sense

informing me that of course I was that horrible since I’m italian and all italians beat their wives (NOT XENOPHOBIC AT ALL)

accusing me of writing torture porn with gay characters to get off (never wrote torture porn once in my life, not with gay characters nor any character)

(most ppl I know into torture porn aren’t straight btw)

telling me that I didn’t understand my own attraction to men

assuming that my parents must have thrown me out of the house at some point, that I had no friends and that I never got laid

and in another occasion I got sent fanart of a ship that I said upset me because I had the gall to tell people to leave the shippers alone but hey what do I know

and a bunch of other stuff I won’t bother you with but that to me sounds hella misogynist (I mean, GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN AND FIND A HUSBAND, srsly?). spoilers: I never write noncon, I’m into a few kinks but most are literally harmless, the wildest thing I’m into writing is... 100% consensual d/s sex, the most problematic thing I’m into is thor/loki and I hadn’t shipped it until I realized that... it was cathartic (ps: no, I don’t think irl incest is okay as a general thing) and for the rest I’m famous for... being the person who almost never kills people in fandom X°D I mean, I got that shit and I laughed about it, but what if they sent it to an abuse victim or someone who actually got kicked out of the house? who knows, but sure af they only seem to care about victims when it’s convenient to them and when the victims agree. *shrug* but the above is absolutely okay if you tell that to a straight cis woman who doesn’t particularly feel like writing f/f sex (which is ANOTHER plot point but never mind that I can’t possibly go into how tumblr has decided that f/f relationships without sex are the Thing Everyone Should Aspire To and everything else is a problem including lesbians having kinky sex). anyway, that was all antis. heck, a round of the shit above was started because an anti-ship blog found an oldass ask related to that wank, so.

tldr: the point is that we’re always talking about the same old dumb fandom war ie my ship is better than yours and my fave is better than yours, but now the arguments aren’t just about ships, are about which one is most moral or pure or non-problematic and if you dare being into anything else for your own reasons in your own life (I forgot friends who’ve been told they abuse their partners because they’re into kink, WHAT A DAY) when the *else* is fictional (ie doesn’t exist) and you don’t even do the thing irl or would want to but just want to explore it fictionally, then you are that problematic thing and so *you* are problematic and guess what, there’s a nice witch hunt starting and -

ops.

HOW SURPRISED I AM.

I mean, it’s 90% wanting to censor people and all of that time it’s useless that they dress it as ‘FIGHTING PEDOPHILES’ because thing is, now that everyone rolls their eyes at it because you think ‘right, real pedophiles or people who ship the wrong voltron ship,’ actual pedophiles have free reign and actually whenever I see a post to report a real one it has very little notes in comparison to OMG REY/LO IS PROBLEMATIC and stuff, and the one time I got linked one I checked because I didn’t trust tumblr and let me tell you I wish I didn’t. anti shipping or being anti kink is just... 90% wanting to be puritans without knowing that you’re a puritan and you’re still policing women’s sexualities and abuse victims’s reactions and you’re not helping anyone.

and you sound like those soccer moms from the 90s who thought playing tekken made their kids violent or that marilyn manson’s music caused the columbine shootings which is a thing that has been disproved since two weeks after it happened. and these people have no idea that media influences you to the point you let it and that fiction is not reality. *shrug* and that was my offer to this contribution, I know I’ll get roasted at this point but I’m beyond giving two fucks at this point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[a-polite-melody]

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this more, and really it’s incredible that anyone could even for a second believe that the “discourse��� is supposed to be “only about the cishets” because there’s damage being done to so many groups of LGBT+ people who aren’t exclusionists’ claimed target.

The supposed target of the “discourse”:

Cis het-attracted aspecs (ie. cis heteroromantic asexuals and cis aromantic heterosexuals), or as exclusionists put it, “the cishets”.

Other groups harmed in some way or capacity because of the “discourse”:

(Feel free to add other groups or add points to what I have here if I’ve forgotten something or not thought of something!)

Cis Aromantic Asexual People

Someone who is both aromantic and asexual is in no way het-attracted, so they are not cishet. To make the claim that they are also cishet, you would need to assume that het-attraction is the default, and therefore someone who feels no attraction is just a variation on the het default. This perpetuates heteronormativity.

Also, a lot of the stuff from the next section applies to cis aromantic asexual people.

Aromantic and Asexual People Who are Not Cis, Not Het-Attracted, or Both (ie. Otherwise LGBT+ Aspecs)

There are a number of ways these groups are harmed.

1. The aspec part of their identity is treated as being not important. A fantastic example of this is the exclusionist statement that aspec orientations are modifiers onto whatever other orientation a person has. Aspec people are told by things like this that they shouldn’t be prioritizing their aspec orientation. That it’s something about them that isn’t important to the overall scheme of things. The only part that’s important is their other orientation. And if someone is trans or nb and aroace, they are told their orientation isn’t important at all, the only important thing is their gender.

2. Aspec resources, programs, initiatives, etc. would be taken out of LGBT+ spaces. Most LGBT+ spaces have, for years, had resources and spaces dedicated to asexuality (and to a lesser degree aromanticism). By trying to exclude cis het-attracted asexual and aromantic people, you’re saying that the asexual and aromantic parts are not part of the LGBT+ community and shouldn’t have these resources, spaces, etc. You are taking away what aspec people have already in place within the LGBT+ community - things that have been in place for years with no controversy at all - and saying they weren’t there in the first place and if they were they were put there by force.

3. The aspec part of their identity is treated as being dirty, shameful, or an adult topic. So, of course there’s the ever brought up “being aspec is TMI and should only be talked about with a partner”. Since that one is brought up so often, I’m going to talk about some other things. Asexuality: People have made claims that acespec people are simply people who “just don’t want to fuck”. There are claims that an acespec person who feels sexual drive or libido isn’t really acespec. Or that someone who is hypersexual due to trauma can’t be acespec. This is taken even further to claim that asexual and acespec people can’t consent to sex. Aromanticism: People have made claims that arospec people are simply people who “fuck and don’t call the next day”. Arospec people are portrayed as sexual opportunists and even as sexual predators because they don’t feel romantic attraction though some feel sexual attraction.

4. Having their gender or orientation invalidated and/or erased.

Many people who are not cis, not het, or aren’t either of these things have been called cishet by exclusonists. This is really a point for every single section on this post, but to avoid some redundancy I’m only going to put it here. 

People Who Identify Their Orientation and/or Gender as Queer

The point that queer is still used a slur and thus shouldn’t be pushed onto people against their will is a good point, however it’s been extended beyond that to extremes that are harmful.

1. Continually telling people not to push queer onto people when they make a post about their own community or own identity.

We get it. We aren’t doing that in these posts. Let us talk about being queer.

2. Claiming that people shouldn’t be calling themselves queer in the first place.

Queer was reclaimed by many people decades ago. Those of us who are comfortable reclaiming the word are keeping it for ourselves and taking pride in the fact that the community historically worked hard to largely reclaim queer.

This also ignores that in much of the rest of the world outside North America, queer is often the most common way for LGBT+ people to refer to themselves and their community.

Multispec People

Again, this is going to require a numbered list.

1. The assertion that the community is for SGA and trans people.

This claim invalidates multispec people who aren’t SGA. Even if these people would be included because of their gender, these people shouldn’t have their orientation invalidated in order to create a talking point for the “discourse”.

2. The assertion that the community is only for fighting homophobia and transphobia.

This claim invalidates biphobia and other multispec antagonism as being their own distinct problems. They are not a subset of homophobia. There are specific issues that multispec people face for being multispec. People who may be accepting of gay and lesbian people, or who may be gay or lesbian themselves often perpetuate multispec antagonism. My family is a shining example of this. I constantly am bombarded with, “but you’re actually straight!” AND, “but you’re actually gay!” depending on who I’m with or currently attracted to. My family is extremely accepting of gay and lesbian people, but tell me that bi people aren’t real and don’t exist. That’s not at all a subset of homophobia.

3. The claim that the acronym has only ever been LGBT, and that’s it.

While many exclusionists have moved on from this acronym to LGBTPN, there are still some people who stand behind “just LGBT”, which is exclusionary of pan and ply people. To shove these orientations under the B would be incorrect, as they are not subsets of bi. They are their own orientations. If the acronym was LGMT, where M stood for multispec, then you could lump pan and ply with bi because multispec is inclusive of all of these. Also, even in LGBTPN, people who identify as omni are still excluded.

4. The new “discourse” claim that bisexual people were never the targets of an exclusionary movement.

I have a whole post on this.

5. The use of talking points from bi discourse.

Topics of passing privilege are brought up in this “discourse”, which was a talking point used against bi people with an “opposite” gender partner back in the bi discourse. Seeing this rhetoric brought back up again is not only hurting us just from having to see it again, but it gives legitimacy to those original arguments biphobes used against us, which puts us at risk of being targeted by these people again and having new people rally behind them.

Transgender People

Here’s another list. This is the start point of where I know I’m going to leave out things because I have no experience being trans, or any of the identities further down on the list.

1. The new “discourse” claim that transgender people were never the targets of an exclusionary movement.

I have a whole post on this - same as the one under 4 on the multispec list.

2. The use of TERF rhetoric.

Similarly to how having talking points from bi discourse come up harms bi and other multispec people, having TERF rhetoric come up can be traumatic to trans people who have had it used against them, and adds legitimacy to the arguments, meaning that new TERFs, TERF supporters, and TERF and sympathizers are being made.

3. Having “cishet” become a dogwhistle which is no longer useful.

I try hard not to use cishet as a term too much beyond when I make a post directly about another post I saw and want to use similar wording, or when I quote from exclusionist rhetoric. The reason I go to these lengths is because trans and nonbinary people have been talking about how cis exclusionists using cishet to refer to “cishet aspecs” sounds like (and sometimes is) a way for them to distance themselves from their cis privilege. It also is thrown around so often that people tend to roll their eyes or pay no attention to the term cishet any longer because of how frequently and incorrectly it’s used.

I try not to do the same because trans people should be able to have their own language that is helpful for them, and I don’t want to devalue it. If I slip up, please let me know.

This point is also relevant to the next section.

Nonbinary People

Another list, and another thing I am not, so I absolutely encourage corrections and additions here too.

1. The assertion that the community is for SGA and trans people.

This claim invalidates nonbinary people who don’t consider themselves trans.

2. The assertion that the community is only for fighting homophobia and transphobia.

This claim invalidates exorsexism as it’s own thing. Exorsexism isn’t just a subset of transphobia. There are binary trans people who are truscum/transmedicalists who perpetuate exorsexism.

3. The claim that the acronym has only ever been LGBT, and that’s it.

While many exclusionists have moved on from this acronym to LGBTPN, there are still some people who stand behind “just LGBT”, which is exclusionary of any nonbinary people who don’t consider themeslves to be trans. Forcing them to be lumped under the T is disrespectful to their orientation.

Intersex People

There are exclusionists who have been claiming that, since there are cis, het-attracted intersex people, that the LGBT+ shouldn’t include intersex people, similarly to how they try to exclude aspec people. They claim that intersex people have come to a consensus that they don’t want to be included anyway, which is untrue. There are intersex people who don’t want to be included. There are intersex people who do. We shouldn’t be closing off our spaces to intersex people who do want a place here.

Questioning People

I made a post about this earlier today.

Basically, there’s no way to even begin to claim that the “discourse” is only about “the cishets”. It isn’t. You’re affecting and hurting many, many people - beyond just cis, het-attracted aspecs. Pretty much every member of the LGBT+ community that doesn’t subscribe to exclusion is harmed. You aren’t fooling me, and I don’t think you’re fooling too many other people by claiming “it’s only about the cishets” either.

[merrysithmas]

The twitter post on nonbinary gender that you posted....ever since you started specifically posting about nonbinary gender, I've been wanting to ask you its meaning because I had never come across it. But I was scared and embarrassed to ask you cause i thought you'd get mad at me. Sometimes I want to educate myself but then you don't know who to talk to or ask about things. And also thank you because through your blog I am learning so much about gender.

oh thank you!!! thank you so much for sending this and asking. i am always here for questions and thank you for having an open heart and a kind soul. i know sometimes it can be intimidating to learn – and it shouldnt be. we live in a very divided world right now, and i wish people would be more receptive to questions and bridge building.

it is my personal philosophy there is a difference between anger and hate – anger can be channeled into action and example and good. hate makes you have a commonality with all the other evil sectors in this world and i refuse to be a part of it.

as for nonbinary gender – basically this is an umbrella term which means “is not male or female”. nonbinary people are included under the T or “trans” letter in LGBTQ because their assigned sex (AFAB, AMAB assigned female/male at birth) does not align with their gender. however, many nonbinary people do not consider themselves trans and consider themselves simply nonbinary. but many do consider themselves trans. it is up to personal choice.

there are several nonbinary genders: agender (feeling like one does not have a gender at all, genderless), genderfluid (fluid gender which switches to more female or male depending), genderqueer (a catchall term for many of these identities or some combined), nonbinary (feeling neither totally male or female, or feeling both, or feeling both but one more than the other, or feeling a new gender which is male/female combined), Two Spirit (a term specifically for use only for certain people from various indigenous societies/cultures which describes a lauded subset of people who have two genders or a conduit between genders), demigender (feeling partially male or female), etc. the list goes on.

i know a lot of people will scoff at this and think - “oh that isnt REAL” “there are only two genders”. well guess what? it is real. it has been my life for literally as long as i can remember back into childhood. it wasn’t until a few years ago i discovered the term for it, and it wasn’t until last week that i decided i want to use gender neutral pronouns. i remember one day when i was in highschool i asked myself “am i trans??” i remember being so scared i cried for a day and repressed it so hard. i have never aligned or fit in in that way. i remember telling my mom as a kid i wasn’t a boy or a girl. i remember always struggling so hard trying to decide who to be. i remember doing a google search as a kid and reading about Two Spirit people of various indigenous cultures and thinking — my god. it’s “me”. it was the first thing i ever saw that spoke to an understanding of my identity, and i felt such immense comfort i cant even describe it to you.

but now, after coming out to myself and the world i am literally the happiest with myself i have ever been in my entire life. i finally feel like i am not living inside myself, that when people meet me they know exactly who i am because im not hiding it anymore. my whole life i always had this little voice in my head saying “the person they think they are meeting/seeing isnt the whole you and they will never really know you, no one does”. i am “out” to my family and friends who matter and i am so proud of myself. im not afraid of being visible. in fact, i want to promote it.

im a future doctor and i can tell you with 100% certainty there is biological basis for separation of gender and sex. whether it it hormone levels, chromosomal activity, genome structure, brain chemistry, brain physiology and anatomy, or likely an infinitely complex amalgamation of all that and more. but one doesnt have to be a doctor to have credit in saying this: i can tell you, just as me, a nonbinary person - i am real. and i dont want to hide or suffocate anymore. society’s rules and binaries are truly blind. they leave out so, so many people. and we are at a revolution in our culture right now that i hope is going to change that exclusion forever. i hope people will see other people free and realize the strictures and rules they were brought up to live behind arent all that exists.

i always say it like this: if you are cisgender (a person whose gender matches their sex at birth) it is not your job to “understand” a trans or nonbinary person. because you literally cant. you can’t pass judgment on something you literally cannot experience. a cisgendered person’s brain is not built with the chemistry/function of someone who experiences a nonbinary life. there is nothing wrong with that. but the job of a cisgendered person is to say: “i will never understand what that feels like, but i will -believe- it is real because trans and nonbinary people have the dignity of personhood, they are PEOPLE, just like me, and if they tell me this is how their bodies work it must be how it is working inside of them.”

and one more thing - gender identity has nothing to do with gender presentation. which means, a nonbinary person who dresses femme, wears make up and has long hair is just as nonbinary as a masculine presenting nonbinary or androgynous nonbinary person. a cisgendered woman who wears tshirts and baseball hats because that is what makes her comfortable is still a woman. a cisgenderd man who wears makeup is still a man. a trans woman who wears suits is still a woman. a transman who likes makeup is still a man. your gender is in your head, your sex/genitals are in your pants, and your aesthetic preference is just how you hapoen to like to decorate your body.

sexual orientation is separate from all of this, and is simply who you are attracted to. a cisgendered woman can be attracted to women: lesbian, poly, pan, bi. a nonbinary person can be bi, pan, poly too. a transman can also be bi, gay, pan, asexual, etc. a cisgendered man can be hetero or gay.

dysphoria is psychological and physical discomfort with ones sex/genitals/body/body function because it does not align with one’s gender. some trans/nonbinary people experience and many dont! so for instance as a nonbinary person i sometimes get intense dysphoria over my chest (breasts) and menstruation. more often than not i deal with it, sometimes im even proud of it, i am proud of surviving as a female-bodied person in this misogynistic world! im proud of the perspective it gives me on humanity. but if i could get rid of them would i? most days, most likely! ive always wanted to get rid of my breasts, i legit hate them. but some days i can deal. i console myself by saying all genitals are homologous to each other - male and female gentials are essentially the reverse of one another and so the same. they dont dictate who you are. if a woman with cancer gets an oophrectomy does thay make her not a woman anymore? of course not! if a man has his testicles removed is he no longer a man? am i a woman because i have a vagina? nope! gender isn’t one’s body. as a nonbinary pansexual person my identity is pretty firmly in the grey area lol. i consider myself an attractive androgynous. i am proud of who i am and what i look like, even when im not totally content.

i hope some of this helps and i hope you will spread acceptance! sorry this got so long but i wanted to give a real answer. always feel free to ask anything else, weird or not weird, i promise i wont get offended. :)

[a-polite-melody]

It's "interesting" that polyam people are usually one of the go-to "NEXT YOU'LL BE SAYING WE SHOULD INCLUDE THEM!" groups for regs, considering one of the primary arguments abt excluding anybody who isnt exclusively attracted to their own gender is basically "but they dont get marriage inequality!", when bigamy is an actual literal crime pretty much everywhere, and one that can lead to time in jail regardless of consensuality...

Ooh boy am I likely going to get some shit over fleshing outmy thoughts on this matter. But you know, I think it’s important I do moreproperly solidify my thoughts, and the easiest way for me to do that is towrite things out, so let’s do this... And this is probably going to be long,ramble-y, wordy, and whatnot, so it’s going under a cut.

Anon, that’s always been something that’s bothered me too.Like. Not even just people we’d typically consider REGs - like aspecexclusionists, multispec exclusionists, nonbinary exclusionists, transexclusionists, truscum, TERFs, etc. - do this, but people who would considerthemselves to be against gatekeeping also do too.

Especially when you consider just how much of the polyamcommunity is queer beyond their being polyamorous, and also consider the amountof shared history between polyamory and queerness (because when you see theformer you almost always see the latter as well - in terms of individuals andgroups/collectives), the amount of using “including polyamory” as a slipperyslope argument, as well as just the general disdain for “including polyamory”is... sketchy at best to me.

I guess it comes down to what we think the LGBTQ+ and queercommunities are as a whole. How do we define those? And with that definition,where do we put things like polyamory? And are we defining things well ifgroups with a lot of shared history and a lot of overlap in issues areexcluded?

Let’s take a look at some definitions of what exactly theLGBTQ+ community is and how those boundaries are put up, starting with theleast inclusive I’m willing to deal with and going from there:

1. The popular aphobic REG definition:

The LGBT community is for combating homophobia andtransphobia. Therefore, the LGBT community is for people who experiencehomophobia and transphobia.

I take huge issue with this, because I think that multispecantagonism has a lot of difference from homophobia and cannot be grouped as a“subset” of homophobia. There are issues that have to do specifically beingattracted to multiple genders - regardless of if the individual experiencesattraction to the same gender or not. The same goes for exorsexism being itsown separate issue and not a “subset” of transphobia, because of, for example,our genders being completely erased and believed to not exist at all.

Then, there’s the issues related to orientation beingexcluded entirely, such as aphobia, and the issues related to sex and genderbeing excluded entirely, such as perisexism.

Under this definition, only lesbians, gay people, bi people(with the caveat of bisexuality requiring attraction to the same gender, if notyou’re not bi, even if you’re nonbinary and (potentially) included because ofthat, because it’s totally fine to erase orientations if you include forsomething else???), and trans people (with, being completely generous and notincluding truscum or exorsexist beliefs on top of this, the caveat that ifyou’re nonbinary you must consider yourself trans) are part of the community.

While I despise this definition entirely, I do get thatthose who do favour it are exclusionary of polyamory as being a qualifier asbeing part of the community... because they’re exclusionary of quite a lot ofthings.

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2. The one that essentially “MOGA”:

The LGBT+ community is a community for people ofmarginalized orientations and gender alignments/identities.

Basically, this boils down to... Having an orientation thatis not straight (and regarding split attraction, having at least oneorientation that is not straight) qualifies you for being part of the LGBTQ+community because you have an orientation that is marginalized. Also, having agender that is different from the gender you were assigned at birth qualifies youfor being in the LGBTQ+ community because you have a gender alignment/identitythat is marginalized.

This is better, but it still excludes issues surroundingperisexism. There are other issues I have with this one, but they’re alsoissues I have with the next definition, so I’ll leave this and move onto...

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3. IMOGA, MOGAI, or just typical unnamed inclusionism:

The LGBT+ community is a community for people ofmarginalized orientations and gender alignments/identities, AND because ofshared history and issues, also people who are intersex if they feel as thoughthey want to be part of our community.

Essentially, this is the above, but includes issuessurrounding perisexism, and therefore includes intersex people if they feelthat they want to be part of the LGBTQ+ community specifically because of theirbeing intersex.

This seems to be where a lot of inclusionists sit in termsof their definition for the community. And this set of beliefs is conducive tothe exclusion of things like polyamory, even though there are shared issuesbetween these two communities - like the given example of marriage equality.You might get a, “they’re separate but related communities,” when you bringthis up. That reads... similarly to, “aspec people should have their own communityseparate from the LGBT community,” to me. I suppose you could justify that,because polyamory isn’t an orientation and so it’s different. But I still takeissue with that.

For me, the big issue here is that in all of this discussionpeople have pointed out, time and time again, usually related to argumentsagainst the use of “queer community,” that the LGBTQ+ community is a coalitionof the lesbian community, the gay community, the bi community, the transcommunity, the queer community, and so on. And so... why are we drawing theborders here - at orientations and gender alignments/identities that aremarginalized... oh, plus intersex people because of shared history and issuesstopping there in terms of shared history and issues? Which brings me to...

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4. The definition I subscribe to:

The LGBT+ community is for combating pericishetero-society.Therefore, the LGBT+ community is a community consisting of many differentaligned groups or smaller communities that all differ frompericisheteronormativity, which individuals can choose to opt in or out of.

Same deal, where the LGBTQ+ community is a coalition betweenmany interconnected communities, linked together by differing frompericisheteronormativity.

And that covers... a lot.

Perinormativity: the assumption that everyone falls withintwo distinct categories biologically of “male” and “female” with all of sexchromosomes, gonads and other genitalia, and hormones being aligned from birthwith one of those categories.

Cisnormativity: the assumption that everyone identifies withthe gender that they were assigned at birth, and by extension, that there areonly the two binary genders of man and woman, and that people will present insuch a way as people can know which of the two binary genders you are.

Heteronormativity: the assumption that everyone is attractedto the opposite binary gender, and by extension, that they are only attractedto one gender, experience that attraction as both romantic and sexually, andexperience it regularly as part of day-to-day life, that there is a goal as theresult of this attraction to be in a romantic and sexual relationship thatlooks and works a certain way with a single individual.

Basically, besides perinormativity targeting prettyexclusively intersex people, cisnormativity doesn’t just target trans peopleand heteronormativity doesn’t just target gay people.

Cisnormativity’s primary target may be trans people, but italso harms nonbinary people regardless of if they consider themselves to betrans, and people who are GNC.

Heteronormativity’s primary target my be gay people, but italso harms multispec people regardless of if they are attracted to the samegender, aspec people regardless of other orientations they may have, polyamorouspeople, and - *gasp* - kinky people - how dare I!?

So yes, my view of the LGBTQ+ community is that it includespeople that tend to be not included by people who consider themselvesinclusionists. It includes people who are cis but are GNC. It includespolyamorous people, even if they’re cis and het with no split attraction. Itincludes kinky people, even if they’re cis and het with no split attraction.

Stay with me. I know this sounds out there but hang on.

It includes these groups because they directly opposepericisheteronormativity.

But that doesn’t mean I think cis people belong in transspaces and can speak on trans issues just because they’re GNC. And that doesn’tmean I think het people can belong in spaces for people of marginalized orientationsor can speak on issues surrounding marginalized orientations just becausethey’re polyam or kinky. Just as aspec people shouldn’t speak on issues aboutbeing gay or trans (if they’re not also gay or trans, that is), for example.

A coalition of many smaller communities.

Sure, we could say that the polyam community is separate butadjacent to the LGBTQ+ community since they do share a history and some of thesame issues. But why if we’re also including being intersex as part of thelarger LGBTQ+ community because of a shared history and shared issues (whichI’m 100% supportive of, by the way, as long as they would like to be included)should we exclude these other adjacent groups as being entirely separate? Whycan’t they exist within the larger umbrella of the LGBTQ+ community?

And really, quite often, they actually do exist within thelarger umbrella of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, my campus has a kinkcollection as part of our LGBTQ+ library. And this, as far as I know, is pretty commonplace. Because of a hugeshared history. Pride parades quite often have some form of kink pride - hell,there’s even a leather flag. Same goes for polyamory. And gender non-conformityhas similar connections.

There’s one part of the above definition I haven’t reallytouched on yet - besides for intersex people - and that’s the “whichindividuals can choose to opt in or out of.” That part is important. Not justin terms of the inclusion of intersex in the community because there are someintersex people who do not feel that being intersex makes them part of theLGBTQ+ community, but also in terms of, well, removing the boogeymen, so tospeak.

Being LGBTQ+, as much as so many people in the communityseem to be trying to say otherwise (only when it suits them, mind you) is thatthere are people who don’t belong who want to invade. The Straights will callthemselves trans, or nonbinary, or bi, or pan, or ace, or whatever just becauseit’s “trendy” to be LGBTQ+. And. Just. What???

It’s even more odd when you consider the whole “only when itsuits them” part. Because other times The Straights actually despise us and useour terms derogatorily. And... that doesn’t line up. If it were “cool” or“trendy” to be LGBTQ+, why would queer still be used as a slur? Why would “gay”have become a synonym for other derogatory terms like “stupid”? Why would “nohomo” have been such a huge thing?

Straight people, people who conform topericisheteronormativity, want to distance themselves from us at all costs. Tothe point of going way out of their way to be sure that people know they’rejust our allies and not one of us because they don’t want to be seen asactually one of us.

So those “straight frat boys who use aromanticism as anexcuse to fuck tons of women and then ghosts them all,” and “straight men whouse polyamory as an excuse to cheat on their girlfriends,” and “straight menwho have five girlfriends who all aren’t allowed to have other boyfriends,” and“straight men who get off on hurting their girlfriends,” and “cishet men whosometimes wear eyeliner,” aren’t going to call themselves LGBTQ+. Because theydon’t want to be one of us.

Sure, there will be het-attracted aspecs who are part of thecommunity, and straight polyamorous people who are part of the community, andstraight kinky people who are part of the community. But they’re the ones whodon’t conform to pericisheteronormativity. They’re the ones interested indismantling those systems. And hell yes I think that they’re just as deservingof a spot in the larger community discussions on how to accomplish that.

Anyway, that’s my position on the whole thing. Please directyour angry comments about how “wanting to hit your partner isn’t LGBT” or“wanting to fuck multiple people isn’t LGBT” to my ask box where they will doabsolutely nothing to change my mind or my position on the matter and will onlybe answered specifically in a nice tone if you want to pay me $20 to put inthat effort.

(And before anyone decides this includes pedophiles and people into bestiality... Nope! The object of your attraction being an individual who can’t consent doesn’t mean you’re going against pericisheteronormativity! Nothing in what perinormativity, cisnormativity, and heteronormativity are includes the age or species of individuals you’re attracted to!)