#we stan the complex lived experience of having a transgressive identity here

[datamodel-of-disaster]

Queer identity is not just an aesthetic.

It doesn't exist separate from the lived reality of people's bodies, nor from the lived experience of sexual desire and contact.

Top surgery scars are healed wounds, not pretty tattoos. I'm all for romanticizing the transformation in art, draw them however you like, but then don't turn around and call people gross for talking about the realities of their own surgery recovery, including botched procedures, pain, or ugly scarring.

Queer sexuality is a lived experience of sexual attraction (or, yes, the lack thereof), not just brightly colored flags and thematic lighting. Like, sure, have fun with it, but... maybe don't go around plastering LGBTQ flags over all your fave characters and then start yelling about perverts when people talk about shipping them or write/draw smut featuring them.

Representation that only allows for aesthetic is not representation, it is censorship.

Sex is not gross. Bodies are not gross. Go outside. Touch grass.

If you draw and write and headcanon and cheerily meme about queer characters and then climb on your soapbox against any representation that is more physical than a flag and some sanitized suggestion, you are a hypocrite.

And no, I don't care about how sex-repulsed or triggered by body stuff you may personally be. No one is obliging you to consume content you don't like. But if you cannot accept that to be queer in the world is an intrinsically physical and sexual experience for many, and that representing that is not bad just because you don't like it, you don't get to play here.