#the inherent loneliness of queerness... yeah FELT

[aousboom]

Do you think people like me can find eternal love?

LOVE IN THE BIG CITY (2024)

[the-ace-lesbians]

This may be a weird ask, I don’t usually ask folks stuff so feel free to ignore! But I have always known intellectually that I’m ace and I used to be able to identify more with that concept, but I feel like I don’t know how to accept it truly as a part of myself. Especially as I’ve gotten older and my peer group has aged and sex has gotten more normal. I know how to conceptualize it but I don’t know how to feel it and accept it without still feeling so other, if that makes sense? I haven’t ever really met anyone I’m able to relate to or talk about it with which makes it harder. Just looking for some advice or understanding. Thank you!

Hello! I don't think it's weird to ask at all, looking for a little advice from your community is a good thing, in my opinion, and the ask box is there for anyone to ask or share or anything like that!

I think accepting asexuality as an integral part of yourself is a hard thing to do. It's very, very much, for me, like the struggle for younger me to accept being a lesbian - I knew that it was true. I was happy to say it. But it didn't quite click in my soul for a while. I think, for being a lesbian, it was because of the state of society. Homophobia abound, comphet, the societal pressure to marry a man, and just general misogyny always implying men were the constant end goal in everything anyone deemed 'a woman' did, you know?

For being asexual, I feel a similar thing is true. Sex is everywhere, it's considered not only something that must be done, but that should be expected to see, engage in, revel in, surround yourself in. So when you exist outside of that overbearing concept, there's this inherent inability accept it inside yourself because it's like -

'Oh, here I am. Purposefully putting myself apart from others,'

Queer identities always feel othering because of our society, it's something I feel is just... integral to it all? I'm not saying to be queer is to be other, or different, or lonely, it's more like to be queer is to exist in a world where people will tell you it's other, different, and lonely, even if your lived experience is the opposite of, but anyone constantly being told that is going to have a sort of cognitive dissonance moment.

The feeling of loneliness or being othered is real. I dare say in many ways it's normal for asexuals, as well as any other queer identity. There have been many times where I wished I was simply not asexual because the ostracization from all directions is too much, I've even posted vent art I made about it on this blog.

I do understand you. Being asexual can sometimes feel like being stunted, or left behind, or just so intrinsically different from others that it's sort of a weird road block, and there's this question of, how do I embody something that sets me apart - at least, for me.

I'm not sure if any advice I can give you would help exactly, because everyone's own journey in accepting and being and internalizing who they are is different, and comes about in different ways. I can tell you that my personal journey for that was turning to sex positivity, learning about it, and in the end when I was even more disinterested in it for myself, I went, 'yeah, okay, so my boundaries and consent are always a hard no for this'. Once I had established a hard belief in consent and learned about the intricacies of sexual identity and the likes, the idea of where my own boundaries and interests sat really felt like just nothing.

It was like, okay, so, I'm not sexually attracted to anyone. Some people are mainly into feet, or balloons, or some other really specific niche - once I realized and accepted the variety and spectrum of human sexuality, the fact that I sat inside my own niche was just nothing out of the ordinary.

Of course, that was my own personal journey! It was also largely spurred on by being sex-averse (yeah, a sex-averse stone butch sex-positive asexual is a crazy mix), so this isn't a one size fits all solution, and maybe your own journey could come from a completely different thing. Maybe finding a specific label, or figuring out exactly where your lines are drawn, or acknowledging your sexuality online or to people you know in real life, can start making it feel more real, and more like you instead of a concept.

You'll have a community here regardless of where your journey is on the road, or how you got there, or where you end up, chief.

[samuell2]

Funeral Parade of Roses ("I feel like I'm high" -Eddie)

This may have been a bad choice to watch at Library West. Oh well.

If Yukio Mishima was a gifted director instead of a writer, this may have been something he would have produced. Weird, gay, bloody, full of masks. Ticks all the boxes.

I loved this film because it was artsy and dark and fascinating while still being funny as hell. In terms of the dark and thematic bits, the concept of masks throughout was pretty fascinating. It seemed to imply, at least in part, that transsexuality is one of the many performative masks people don to cope with their loneliness and issues-- a mask that happens not to "resemble their facial features", but is not inherently different from the ones others wear. That idea is also reinforced by the presence of clown and circus-like music throughout, especially during scenes with Eddie and her friends. This seems like sort of a problematic idea to me, but I don't really have the knowledge of queer culture to properly judge it. The idea that it was Eddie's rejection as a man by her mother and the subsequent stabbing episode that caused the him to become a "gay boy" also seems a little dated (insofar as it implies that queer people are just queer because of some horrible trauma), but then again, the interviews throughout the film emphasize the opposite perspective, that many "gay boys" were simply doing what they felt like and enjoyed, without a particular reason. That's pretty wholesome. And overall I thought it was really cool for a film to address and follow the gay club scene. Obviously Japan is pretty socially conservative even today, but I've noticed that quite a bit of Japanese media is willing to engage with topics like this-- Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen and Murakami's Kafka on the Shore are just a couple of the works I've encountered with transgender characters. I know Mishima's Forbidden Colors also explores gay bars and queer culture.

On the lighter side, some scenes and images I loved:

Eddie and her friends passing around the joint and then dancing in front of a Beatles portrait-- this is just so comically 1960s. Plus one of Guevara's friends is basically cosplaying John Lennon.

The scene where Leda and Eddie have their final confrontation, facing off in a western duel and trading insults in goofy speech bubbles. Genuinely funny as hell.

"Applause Requested"

The recurring image of a rose between someone's asscheeks (there's probably some thematic analysis here but it's just striking on its own)

The freeze on Eddie's breasts in the beginning of the film, the point where we realize Eddie is not biologically a woman.

I could ramble on, but yeah, safe to say this was a super interesting and bizarre film. Hope we see more like it.

[moonshotpress]

Let's talk about my questioning phase.

I am a cis guy, but I went through about a year recently when I thought I might be nonbinary. Before I say what I want: Nonbinary is a valid identity. This is just my personal thought process, not saying this is best for anyone else, just where I ended up. My story should not be generalized to invalidate anyone for identifying however they like.

The main thing that I want to say is that despite all the fear mongering on the right, it was the rigidity of male gender roles that led me into questioning my identity, NOT the feeling that a nonbinary or trans identity was something I desired. What I respected and envied in Nonbinary folk was their assurance in the fact that what they were and how they wanted to present was valid.

Ironically enough, it was that acceptance that made me realize I didn't actually want to change. I asked some questions in enby forums about how to present as nonbinary, yet leaning masc... and what I got was basically "yeah that sounds rad, present how you want!". Which made me realize that, I had actually been looking for another prescription to follow, when I actually needed to give myself permission to let go of other people's opinions and just live to make myself happy.

I had been bullied and psychologically tortured my whole adolescent life into believing that I was not a real man due to my interests, physique, and career. I felt like when I was trying to pass as a man (sorry for appropriating this, but it feels apt) everyone could see that I was fake. But I was trying to be a certain type of man. I was performing looking like a respectable man, rather than being the man I wanted to see in the world. (religious trauma really did not help this)

It was an exhausting act, but my wife put it into perspective for me when she asked what gender I would choose if I were raised a woman. Putting the choice back in my hands made me realize that I didn't want to become nonbinary, I wanted to be myself. I was and remain a man, but now I get to decide what that means. And that kicked off a process of figuring out what that means.

I'm sure none of this is revolutionary on a site like this. What I wish that conservatives understood is that if they want to "save gender", stricter social policing of gender roles is not the way to get there. It's like that Emo Phillips sketch where you draw smaller and smaller social boxes until despite all the common ground you share you have one thing to other them and call them a heretic. They are manufacturing the very epidemic they want to stop by being so rigid. By which I don't mean to imply that queerness is inherently driven by trauma or anything just that a lot of guys are unsure of themselves due to how gender is policed in society. leading to Male Loneliness, Inceldom, etc. None of that is anything that feminism has done to men. That's all patriarchy sleeping in the bed it made.

To be clear, I think gender is something that serves people, not the other way around and it's not something that needs saving. But as someone who went through a questioning phase and ultimately decided he is actually cis, I don't really see my experience represented much online. Maybe I am unique, but I think it's more likely that guys can't talk about this uncertainty and discomfort in identifying with a label that was used as a cudgel on us our whole life. Once we go back, it's not safe to discuss ever having been there. I want to de stigmatize that process, and affirm anyone who is going through a questioning process, you can come out on the other side and still love yourself and affirm your LGBTQIA comrades. Whatever label you put on yourself is valid, but if Cis is what's feeling right for you, that doesn't mean you're going backwards. Either way, once you take control of your labels, you're about to begin a beautiful transformation into who you were meant to be.

But this only works if you see Nonbinary and Trans identities as valid. Otherwise, you're just turning on your heels and walking back into Plato's cave.

[ciaran-archive]

Sorry to pry but can you elaborate on the authenticity post and what you don’t like about Ender’s Game? I don’t mean this in an accusatory way btw I genuinely wanna hear you complain about it.

WHY YES I WOULD LOVE TO BITCH ABOUT ENDER'S GAME

my fatal flaw as a person is that i cannot stop thinking about ender's game . like this book lives in my head in a way that far better books i've read just don't and i think that's partly because it did so much to me.

i read it when i was, 13, i think? like. i was just kind of figuring out that i was queer, i was weirdly uncomfortably obsessed with m/m relationships, even the vaguest implication of lesbianism made me feel sick and awful, i was pretty depressed, i had very few friends, and i wasn't....in a good place at all.

and i read ender's game and it kind of maybe saved my life? it showed me that being alone and being lonely weren't inherently a death sentence. it allowed me something i still don't have a name for. ender and valentine and peter felt like facets of a reality i nearly had, and in their reflection i could be something more like myself. who knows where i would have been but for ender's game!

it also fucked me up so bad.

one of the core messages of ender's game - and of a lot of OSC's other work - is that you cannot be truly Original, and you can't Create Anything Worth Creating, if you derive from the work of others. to make something Really Great you must isolate all your creativity and not allow anything else to influence it or it will be tainted and suspect forever. like not in those words but in that essence, that was clearly one of the subtexts of the book.

the other core message is "it is necessary for adults to hurt children; it is irresponsibly stupid as a child, especially a clever child, to trust that adults will ever not hurt you" and combined with the valorized loneliness of the first message it kind of.......still messes me up? and one of the reasons it fucked me up was because i was so bad at adhering to its lessons.

and that's my problem with ender's game at the end of the day: it's like drinking nuclear waste water when you're dying of thirst. like yeah it'll save your life but it'll also teach you how to justify doing the worst things possible (to yourself and others) and i was damned lucky that fiction was my first outlet for those urges and justifications because good god i don't like thinking about what it would've been like directed at myself without any barriers! and it was pretty bad even so!

OSC is also wildly unreasonably and rabidly homophobic so there's, uh, that. To Deal With.

the thing about authenticity is that it doesn't really exist. there's no true self, only selves less articulated or entirely unacknowledged for whatever reasons. sometimes those selves aren't given form because they have nothing to do with us. but we exist in a constant state of becoming; we are built in relation to our surroundings, and we can never strive to be free of influence. isolation is its own form of torture.

there are no authentic cultures either, only arbitrary markers we place in our pasts to delineate the "real" from the "influences" like every culture isn't a snapshot of its moment in time. things are always changing and turning into something new. they rarely become more "themselves" because the idea that you can strip away everything an outsider gave you and still end up with something either real or worth having is....kind of sad, really? do you want to know the person you are without everyone you've ever loved?

it's one thing to talk about capitalism and the commodification of the self and cults of personality and another to act like the very act of articulating your identity in a series of labels/aesthetics/shiny online things inherently corrupts your "soul". this process exists offline also; we are always building ourself to be approved of or disapproved of or reacted to or ignored by the people around us.

but people get really bogged down in the idea of authenticity and the specter of a real self that can be accessed by jumping through various hoops (go offline! go on instagram! make a succulent garden! get a tiktok! buy this thing!). and then they start acting superior because they don't need the internet to feel like their "real self" - as a friend said, sounds like they have a surprising amount of ability to be their real self with parents and bosses and cops - like i'm sorry! some of us are queer and trans and autistic and can't access an offline social group! and even if i did i would prefer to be online a lot of the time: the internet is full of spaces where i'm safe and in control, and that's just harder irl. and my experiences aren't any less valuable than those of someone with different ones.

...anyway, that's on authenticity.

[blueline-studies]

okay but the dark academia aesthetic is obviously like derived from the very preppy and strict cultures of english and american (particularly in the northeast) private and boarding schools but like didn't really grow in popularity until dead poets society came out because it was immediately grabbed onto by queer people. the movie may not be outwardly queer, but anyone that isn't viewing it through an incredibly heteronormative lens just knows you know? and the idea of having to hide from strict headmasters or whatever (which straight kids also often had to do) felt like a way to romanticize the anxieties and fear and loneliness of being queer and having to hide your identity and your love, especially in that time. also, it gave queer academics a type of community in a very "wealthy, straight, white, cis-man" type world of academia. so yeah basically dark academia is inherently gay and also probably would not exist in the form we have now without dead poets society.

Imagine doing a gay (maybe not officially) film in the 80s once and then BAAM SOME TEENAGERS ON TUMBLR FIND IT AND ALL OF SUDDEN YOURE THE FACE OF GAY DARK ACADEMIA