#queerphobia

[fiemdblunt]

Today, I want to speak about the biggest inspiration for queer people in my country, who was killed today. I want to speak about Kesaria Abramidze.

The first trans person in Sakartvelo who publicly came out as transgender.

The woman that brought a massive amount of queer awareness into the general public despite the queerphobia constantly directed towards her.

The woman that smiled and never gave up despite the people that hated her.

The woman that did everything she could to become a mother.

The woman that loved art.

The woman that, despite poverty, hardship, and loneliness, lived a life she desired.

The woman that stood up for every marginalized group, and always for every woman.

She inspired me into being a man that I am today. A man who is not afraid of being trans no matter everything that is happening. A man who is not backing down from becoming comfortable in his body one day. A man who wants to help and guide other trans people. A man who does something kind for people. I stayed strong for my friend who was also grieving her today, but now I'm home and all of those feelings are pouring out. I will forever be proud of Kesaria and everything she has done not just for queer people, but people in general. She helped everyone, her kindness is endless.

We lost someone beautiful today. Rest in peace.

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[thelensart]

A thing that annoys me. The transes will understand

[thecommunalfoolboy]

Aphobia is craaaaazy, like queer people in general didn’t do anything but we REALLY didn’t do anything

[gayvampyr]

it actually enrages me that staff touts how progressive and queer-inclusive they are while they’re putting censors and “adult content” warnings on posts that even so much as say the word “homosexuality”, meanwhile the tag-spammed porn posted by bots has been flooding inboxes for the longest time but of course it’s those queers we need to focus our attention on. im tired. aren’t you tired

[creature-wizard]

Reminder that Project 2025 is a thing; basically, if a Republican presidential candidate is elected next year, they have every intention of instating a full-on fascist government. Among many other horrible things, Project 2025 intends to criminalize anything trans-related as pornographic, and imprison anyone putting out such "pornography."

We really, really gotta do whatever we can to make sure a Republican candidate isn't elected. I know we're probably gonna be faced with shitty choices yet again (and how I wish it wasn't so), but we cannot afford to let this happen.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

I made a design for Pride that I want to get as an iron-on transfer to put on the back of a shirt. It says "Genderqueer" in the GQ flag colours.

I messaged an Etsy store, sent them the design, and I've just received this reply:

Thank you for your interest in our printing services. At this time, we regret to inform you that we are unable to print designs related to LGBT, Pride Month, or similar themes. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

So I guess this is a suggestion NOT to use Mog Transfers on Etsy. I've emailed back asking why they are unable (or, I suspect, unwilling) to print LGBT things, and will reblog with an update if I hear back.

What the fuck.

[uncanny-tranny]

It's honestly frustrating that I've seen non-Russian queer people almost bragging about how they would be illegal in Russia, labeled an extremist or terrorist. Russian queers are in danger, their government has made it clear where it stands, and it's made this effort for the better part of a decade (even longer, perhaps). This will kill people, don't mistake this for a quirky little proclamation from a government, akin to somebody saying the sky is pink. Russian queer people were already expressing their fear, and the least we can do now is express our love for them, and advocate with them.

Russian queer people, I love you. I love you all so much. I am so sorry, I cannot begin to express the grief that I feel, and I hope that you are safe. Words cannot encapsulate how I feel as a non-Russian, and I cannot hope to comprehend how it feels to actually be in this situation.

[decolonize-the-everything]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Caroline J. Sumlin | Author & Speaker (@carolinejsumlin)

Her caption:

carolinejsumlin: White Supremacy is the umbrella system that runs our society. It is the foundation in which our society is built on. It is the machine of our society, but this machine cannot run without each part working seamlessly to do its job. Each part of the white supremacy machine is one of these systems of oppression (and many others I was unable to fit here). Now, this isn't to say that these systems of oppression couldn't operate on their own. They absolutely can and do in other cultures and societies. However, within our modern, western society that was built on and continues to be run by white supremacy, these systems strategically run to ensure white supremacy's goal: a pristine social order of pure whiteness. One we understand the depths of how white supremacy works and just how much it is impacting us from every corner of society, we can begin to dismantle it effectively, while freeing ourselves from falling for its devices.

This concept is something I've seen posted and over and over by different people (usually Black women though). The idea that it's not just that specific groups are consistently targeted but anyone who deviates from the narrow norm of White Supremacy becomes a target, which is why Black women with multiple intersecting identities are the worst treated people in pretty much every society worldwide.

Which is why I listen and follow and share so many perspectives of Black women btw. When the Combahee River Collective said "If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression." I didn't see any way that could be false and it's because of white supremacy.

And as for how and where white supremacy exists:

I like this White Supremacy Pyramid, it pretty much encapsulates my understanding and belief of how its perpetuated and builds on itself -ultimately up to the genocide of groups that don't fit into the White Supremacist categories of ideal.

The "Pyramid of White Supremacy" is a component of assistant professor Erin Stutelberg's Diversity and the Self class. It's a one-credit course required for students majoring in elementary education at the Maryland college. Stutelberg said in a Friday statement to Delmarva Now that the violent Charlottesville rally took place as the course was being planned. She felt it needed to be brought up in class, but wanted to carefully do so.

She didn't want her students to think about white supremacy only "as men in robes or hoods or torches marching in streets" because it would give them the impression that it was separate from their lives. "Instead, I want students to explore the ways that race and racism are part of all of our lives," Stutelberg said.

Source

And while not everyone (including myself) agrees with the placement of absolutely everything, it's still decent enough to use so that's what I'm doing.

That to say white Supremacy exists and is perpetuated anywhere and everywhere, so it's up to us individually and collectively to hold ourselves responsible for where it's growing in ourselves, our communities, and countrymen.

I don't see how liberation or human rights will be won with anything but solidarity for the most marginalized communities there are.

How do you build white supremacist framework for future generations if the people here now refuse to hate each other enough to allow it?

[ftmtftm]

Thinking a lot about how exclusionary/reactionary ideology is so incredibly easy to fall into and act upon because it preys on and weaponizes people's existing insecurities. It gets people saying things like:

"I'm deeply dysphoric can't even access HRT yet because of transphobic policy so why should someone without dysphoria have access to resources before me?"

or

"I'm targeted by transmisogyny regularly. It is the biggest issue in my life. Therefore other trans people's issues are secondary and are either less important than or just side effects of transmisogyny, so why should I ally with them?"

or

"Ace people don't have laws attacking the ways they have sex like other queers because they don't have sex, why should I have community with them at all?"

or

"All men benefit from systemic privilege, even marginalized men. Men have everything handed to them by the patriarchy so why should I care about finding common ground with them when they are the ones oppressing me?"

or

"The word queer is a slur and it makes me uncomfortable so no one should use it for themself."

All of those lines of thinking follow the same pattern: "I am hurting, I am oppressed, I am beaten down, so why should I care about other people that either make me uncomfortable or I deem as having more privileges than myself"

And it is okay to hurt. It is also, genuinely, okay to only really feel passionate about issues that impact yourself. Compassion fatigue is real. It's very easy to get so swept into caring for others you forget to care for yourself.

But you can't let your pain harden you so much you stop viewing others as complex human beings trying to live their lives and start seeing them all as adversaries to your existence by virtue of existing themselves. That's no way to live.

[yagikidd57]

When people try to tell me I’m not queer because I’m asexual aromantic, i bust out laughing. I’m not sexually or romantically attracted to men, which is literally the bare minimum of heterosexuality. The average heterosexual experience is being romantically and/or sexually attracted to the opposite sex. I don’t even want to be romantically or sexually involved with men so how am I NOT queer? 🤔😭

Can people just grow up and stop gatekeeping queerness (who are you to tell someone whether or not they are queer.)!!!!!

[loveless-arobee]

Hey, aces, can we have a word?

I've seen a bunch of post venting about how sex is treated in this society by calling sex "unhygienic" or "dirty", or calling people who have sex "weird" or "disgusting".

I get the impulse to rant about how sex is pushed onto you. I do this about romance all the time!

But one thing you don't have to do for that is literally reuse homophobic talking points.

Sex is not unhygienic or dirty, as long as you practice proper hygiene and safe sex. I hope I don't have to explain to you in detail how this is just repeating homophobic talking points, especially against gay/queer men, right? The AIDS-crisis ringing a bell?

People who have sex aren't disgusting, freaks or weird. Even if you include AlloCisHets in that, the people you're mainly attacking with your words are queer people who have historically been (and even still are, in a lot of countries) murdered, assaulted, imprisioned and executed for having sex, and are even in more "accepting" countries where it's legal often still horribly mistreated. The AlloCisHet people don't care for what you have to say about how disgusting they are for having sex. Queer people do.

You can totally vent about not liking sex, and how society is pushing people to have sex! Just maybe don't do that by repeating straight-up queerphobic talking points. Because society is definitely not pushing queer people to have queer sex.

I say this as an aromantic gay man who has been made uncomfortable and felt unsafe in many general a-spec spaces by vents like this. Please remember that your oppressors aren't "people who have sex" but CisHetAllo-society that is pushing everyone into a very specific mold.

Thank you.

Also, if anyone wants to use this post to call aces in general homophobic: fuck right off. I'm just kindly pointing out a problem I've seen in the ace- and general a-spec community, if you use that as an excuse to be aphobic, you're going to be blocked. No discussion.

I doubt the aces saying this are being intentionally queerphobic. They are usually young and venting, and probably don't know the problematic history and implications behind the words they're using. Because they're oftentimes children. You know.

Have a nice day.

[oarfishing]

Alright, I'm sick of seeing TERFisms on my dash, so here's a handy list of TERF dogwhistles and talking points to think about before you reblog a post.

I've seen a few of these before, but it doesn't hurt to make more. Especially when we're seeing a lot of radfem rhetoric popping up in LGBT spaces from people who might not know better.

SCREENNAMES: these are terms that commonly appear in radfem usernames across the web

rad or radical

fem or femme

vulva, clit, uterus, womb, ovary, vagina, etc.

febfem

anything along the lines of "angry woman"

xx or chromosomes

wombyn, wimmin, womyn, etc.

LGB

feminist

BIOS: things that show up in radfem bios

♀ or ⚢

febfem

female separatist

female, human female, adult human female

xx

something along the lines of "the scary feminist you were warned about"; being an angry woman, being sick of being silenced, being an evil woman, being an angry lesbian

detrans (NOTE: detrans people are absolutely not always transphobic)

dysphoric female

males/men do not interact

LGB✂️

misandrist

feminist (NOTE: again, very few feminists are actually terfs, but this is commonly in terf bios alongside some of these other terms)

TERMS: terms that radfems use in their circles

TIM - trans-identified male, a way of saying transfems, trans women, and other trans people

TIF - trans-identified female, same as above but the other way around, less commonly seen

DSD - disorder of sexual development, a way to avoid saying intersex and to categorize intersex people as "still male or female" (you might see "males with DSD" or "females with DSD" for example)

females or males instead of women and men

alternatively, women and males to dehumanize men

"peaking" or "peaked" - referring to becoming radicalized as a radfem or TERF

womyn, wombyn, wimmin, wo**n, and any other spelling that takes "man" out of the term woman

mentally ill men/women

sex-based oppression

gender critical

"TIRF" - trans-inclusive radical feminist (don't be fooled by the name, they're very much not)

TRA - trans rights activist, derogatory

sex-based rights

female separatism/"women's land"

WBW - womyn-born womyn

autistic girls/children

troon - (ridiculous) slur for trans people

RHETORIC: general ideological themes in radfem rhetoric

men are inherently more violent than women

women don't or rarely rape men

(woman on woman rape is ignored by almost all radfems)

being nonbinary is a way to "stop being" your assigned sex while still acting as your birth sex

lesbians are not attracted to men/penises and can never have sex with men/penises (otherwise, you're bisexual)

men can and will never be lesbians

there is no such thing as a bi lesbian, only lesbians and bisexuals. labels are rigid and sex-based

all of the world's suffering is driven by men

women would be better off separate

an all-female society is utopia

sex is binary, and intersex people are "glitches" or "still male or female but DisorderedTM"

men should expect to be feared by women

female/female relationships are safer and more pure than straight or gay male relationships

men and women are more different than similar

intersex people should not be allowed in sports

intersex people and trans men are never in men's sports

terrible world events wouldn't have happened if women were in charge

men are stupid and aggressive

being a man is not a positive thing

men's problems are lesser than women's

penises are disgusting and vaginas and vulvas are beautiful

trans women are performing at being girls

trans men see themselves as above lesbians

attraction is sex-based

porn is rape

porn is inherently violent

watching porn makes you predisposed to inflicting abuse

BDSM is inherently violent and misogynistic

transitioning children (whether socially or medically) are being abused

"bitch" and "cunt" are slurs against women

only gay men can say faggot and only lesbian women can say dyke

When you see a few or more of these together, RUN! It's a terf.

[ugly-anarchist]

The thing about love is that I've met many people, and each and every one of them had a different definition of the word love. But, the thing that they all agreed on was that love is what made someone human, or good, or that it was the most important thing in life. The issue here is that by saying "love is what makes us human" it creates an "us and them" dynamic based on what that person defines as "love". And that's very dangerous.

The "us and them" dynamic has been used as a tool of oppression since the dawn of civilization. Whether you like it or not, whether you think your definition of love is correct or not, for a very long time the definition of love has been used to dehumanize and oppress people. Instead of dismantling the root cause of what allowed people to do that, you're just redefining the word love to include more people in "us". And I think that's really fucked up.

One of the ways that homophobes demonized queer people is that they said queer love wasn't real love and that the only real love was between a man and a woman. Yeah, that definition of love isn't correct and it's objectively wrong to describe it that way, but why does not feeling "real" love make someone bad?

As an aromantic person, I've been subjected to that "us and them" dynamic my entire life. Many people in the modern age still think that romantic love is what makes someone human. I think that we should be dismantling the idea that a subjective, vague word that can be redefined so easily is the bridge between "human" and "not human".

There's many ways to describe the full spectrum of human emotion. Love isn't the only word to describe kindness, care, and affection. The word "love" isn't nearly as important as you think it is.

Nothing "makes us" human. Humanity is in our DNA and no one should be treated less like a human for any reason.

[eeldritchblast]

They’re Not “Playersexual”, You’re Just Biphobic

(I was going to save this until September 23 because I thought that would be an appropriate date, but the Ask I got included in this essay just put me over the edge. So, here it is now. Buckle up.)

Bisexuality/Pansexuality is the attraction to people regardless of gender. About 4% of the USA alone (over 13.6 million people) openly identify as bisexual, according to Gallup’s latest polling. But unfortunately, bi/pan identities are so scary to some folks that they need to make up terms to avoid calling their favourite characters such. Thus, the term “playersexual” was born: a term to describe a game character who is attracted to the player character... regardless of gender.

If that sounds like it’s just a circuitous way of describing a bi/pan character, it’s because it is.

I first heard of the term “playersexual” almost a decade ago, from a Dragon Age fan complaining that Dorian was gay and thus it was “unfair” that she couldn’t romance him as female character. This fan said they wished BioWare would go back to Dragon Age II’s model of everyone being “playersexual” for “equality”.

Now, if you’ve actually played DA:2 and you’re not a bigot, you’re probably rolling your eyes just as hard as I did when I first read such a ridiculous statement. Well, prepare for this next one:

“When you make a male Hawke, Anders and Fenris are gay and Merrill is straight. Opposite is true if you make a female Hawke.”

These people are so afraid of bisexuality that they cannot even fathom its existence. They can believe in dragons and magic, but they cannot believe that a character is simply bi/pan. I find this especially hilarious for Anders, considering he had a canonical boyfriend, as confirmed both in-game and in The World of Thedas: Vol. 2 book.

I truly thought we were past this nonsense in 2023. I really, truly thought that. But then Baldur’s Gate 3 was released in full, and suddenly these same fuckers came out of the woodwork to bend over backwards avoiding calling these characters anything except bi/pan.

Note how in the above Ask, the anonymous questioner actually doubles down on avoiding addressing these two characters in particular as bi/pan!

“Playersexual” doesn’t even truly work for the characters of Baldur’s Gate 3 regardless, because the definition is oriented around attraction to the player character… which these characters are not exclusively attracted to. Here are some examples that prove otherwise:

If neither Lae’zel nor Astarion/Gale/Wyll are in a romance with the PC, Lae’zel will say she plans on propositioning one of the men for sex at the night of the tiefling party. She also flirts with Karlach in party banter.

Shadowheart expresses interest in Karlach, (“I like her. She looks like she could throw me over her shoulder and carry me to safety, should the need arise”) as well as Halsin if he leaves the party, (“he may have been misguided, but I liked looking at him.”)

Astarion flirts with nearly everyone in the party, but to just pick two examples: he mentions Wyll is the type of princely figure he used to dream about marrying, and says to Shadowheart “such a grim name for such a beautiful flower”.

Gale used to date Mystra. He also debatably flirts with Astarion by offering him some blood, after Cazador’s battle.

Wyll flirts with Lae’zel in party banter, and also refers to Halsin as a “delight” and “hunk”.

Karlach seems to have a little crush on Jaheira by the way she reacts to meeting her. She also says of Halsin, “everyone in this camp wants to climb that oak”.

Please keep in mind these are just a few examples I’ve picked out from screening through the dialogue, and there’s even more that prove the attraction to different genders these characters have is not related solely to the player. It’s just part of their identities.

In the Ask sent to me above, the anonymous questioner said they “cannot see Karlach as anything except lesbian and Astarion as gay.” This is just as bad as saying they are “playersexual” in my opinion, because yet again it’s erasing their bisexuality/pansexuality. Worse yet, it’s doing it because of the way the characters act. You cannot measure queerness based on actions and appearances being in line or not with queer stereotypes—it’s not a scale! And bi/pan folks are just as queer as lesbian and gay men, by virtue of simply being bi/pan!

All in all, I think this entire “playersexual” debate boils down to the fact that some people still refuse to see bi/pan identities as anything but “discount straight”. And that’s why people are rightfully angry when folks try to further this myth by pretending bi/pan characters don’t actually exist.

[rottingwithers]

“Genderqueer people aren’t human” Hell yeah I’m not a human! I’m a cryptid and I’m going to eat you!