#'it's okay for lesbians to feel this way towards bi women because *insert some of the most biphobic and creepy shit i've ever seen'

[sayitwityachest]

Lesbians and Bi women have differing and specific experiences- this is indisputable and needs to be respected. However, some women use this fact as a shield to be grossly misogynistic and biphobic. One of the best examples is this weird obsession with bi women and whether or not they are attracted to or will date a man at some point. God I've seen so many fucking posts with lesbians crying about this shit and talking about how valid they are for the resulting distrust and/or disgust in bi women in general for an experience they had or-OR SOMETIMES LITERALLY DIDN'T HAVE.

Here's a funfact: I'm a bisexual woman and i've felt the misery and rage they describe towards other bi women for "choosing" men/boys over me. It's terrible, it's all consuming, and most of all, it's completely pathetic. Now, that's not to say it isn't understandable to feel that way, but it's another thing entirely to take those feelings and decide that it's the other woman's fault (or in this case, all bisexual women LOL). It's definitely easier for me as a bisexual to look over those feelings and figure out that they are unfair and unreasonable for me to have, it's definitely easier for me as someone who not only has, but listens to and values, female bi friends to know my insecurities are not truly founded, but come from the fact that we grow up in a heterosexist society that only shows opposite sex relationships as an option and stresses to women and girls how a man is the best and most important thing you can have in your life. But just because it might be easier for me to sort through those emotions, doesn't mean it's not terrible, and it certainly doesn't mean that lesbians shouldn't be expected to figure their shit out instead of taking it out on bi women.

I've seen other bi women chime into these conversations like "this has happened to me, it sucks" only to be very swiftly struck down with "this is not something you as a bisexual can understand." (Usually said with more scorn and mocking) It's almost funny to be honest, the way some bi women on here try time and time again to be "good bis" just to keep getting shit on. How do these lesbians know how bisexual women feel? It seems we are constantly told we have no idea how they feel, and i'd have to agree that i have no way of guessing what it's like to be a lesbian, the same way they have no idea what it's like to be me. I can however, read the feelings they describe and recognize those very feelings inside of me, the ones that i know are wrong and come from a place of self-loathing. I can know that because i feel such strong attraction and chemistry to women, i only want to be with them, so any reasoning of "well bisexuals cannot understand because they can ChOoSE a 'het' relationship and access all heterosexual privileges, so no they don't understand how this really feels" just shows how little they understand bisexuals and obviously biphobia. No bisexual can access all het privileges because we are fucking bisexual. It doesn't matter how repressed or closeted we are because those themselves are not heterosexual privileges (just one example). And i know damn well that I won't have any of those privileges because i cannot be with a man, i can't do it. There are many times i wish i were capable of it, but i just don't see it as a possibility.

All this to say, I'm really fucking tired of this shit. I'm tired of having my own feelings and experiences explained to me. I'm tired of supposed feminists exposing their own blatant hypocrisy again and again and everyone applauds it. I am so tired of these straight women on radblr who think it's okay to be biphobic. i'm just so tired of all this shit.

"log off" maybe. but it happens irl too, all the time, at least on here i can see what other bi feminists are thinking and take comfort in that.

[pinkcloudsnightlightbell-remade]

[This post really doesn’t make sense but you should deffo have some experience with the game Resident Evil 2 : Biohazard (2019) -- here’s a short livestream of the 30-minute demo by some cool video journalists and a H U G E L Y Y influential horror gamer’s video of the demo, as well. (And here’s a favourite artist who is probably the very one you can blame for me wasting your time/gushing sm lol...) ]

Input/commentary is sincerely, absolutely, and aggressively, encouraged! ! 

Leon Scott Kennedy is nooooooooooot supposed to be any heterosexual woman`s fantasy because he is bisexual let me get into it

👉 First like the whole thing with Ada manipulating him? 

GOLD

but it’s unfair to Leon who’s actually incredibly...human?

And the other thing is that (and I probably have made it really clear) Resident Evil and the fandom are so ... weird and racist but I like seeing all the changes from the remake as well as (to a lesser degree) backtracking through the games where Leon’s appeared

I love seeing him in 2019 being completely off-the-bat friendly towards Claire and then flirting -- and it being okay with me???? I went ahead and looked up tags on here and @/mikaeled had a drawing of the RE 2 protagonists 

The first protagonist, Claire, is drawn with the bi flag colours

The second protagonist, Leon, got the ace flag

THAT made me want to tap into fandom a little bit more and I went on Twitter and Pixiv and got to see some weird fantasies of being a really controlling Leon but on the other hand saw amazing depictions of Claire being in a loving relationship with a Leon whose kindness lined up with my first exposure of him. (The other day I had a similar experience looking up lesbian/bi claire redfield on this hellsite and someone wrote that Claire is a lesbian -- big big yes -- but added in the tags that “Leon is a trans bi guy!”)

So.

Why not get into it a bit while I’m overcaffeinated?

👉 Leon and Ada is ... weird and people can read weird, bad things into it especialllllllllly if you consider “yellow fever” but it can also be smth super cute where a bi guy and a really cool girl he meets allows him to survive the events of RE 2 (1998) because she is literally mourning the death of her boyfriend in Umbrella. I think that Capcom unbeknownst to their demonic loudmouth staff have created some really thoughtful chances for representation and that helped them get so big--so Ada and Leon are good

But like...

Claire is right there! Leon and Claire become friends like that and tbh they make my bisexual heart melt as individuals. As a couple I feel hope imagining the ways they’d buck the trend of alienation and the threat of abuse...I feel like I care nothing for the fandoms, the creators, and even a majority of the games’ plot points, but here Leon and Claire are, making me feel so much pride because they show that there’s a way for men and women to be ... healthy while in love. They’re the couple that’d be great peer parents (Shirley is a big part of their game they’re protagonists of, and I love how she is written both in 1998 and 2019 which parallels how Moira Burton is written--and completely diverges from the tragedy of the pigeonholey writing of Ashley Graham) and then while they’re wonderful supports to Shirley and are intimately “””together””” in many aspects of life I believe that they’re the type to not even date because the intimate devotion and protection or sticktoitiveness of a friendship ends up building first, because it matters more. Which is not to say that when they do get into a relationship it’s anything but one that is rare.

It’d be r.a.r.e.!!

look at this ... fucked me up 

👉 In regards to this rare kind of love, the key isn’t sympathy or understanding and cooperation even through struggles ranging from PTSD to personality clashes through the years, nor is it chemistry and attractiveness (yeah I will go on record that they’re for better or worse based off of Caucasian models who are paid to be taken pictures of in real life and it fucking shows like I’d be a dishonest bisexual if not just a bad bisexual if I said I didn’t wanna ram both of them into a mattress shut up).To me it’s how Claire is as much of a hero as a typical Die Hard movie hero and YET no more of a hero compared to Leon who is, very clearly, atypical. That’s the biggest part. I love the atypicality. Leon’s seen as hot but approachable and even “a little baby who’s an incompetent rookie cop” but he isn’t... the usual cop, a.k.a. a batt*rer and a **pist and a vio*ent threat and a pig... He’s known to be a soft kind person in the remake.... so to me... 

I love him for Claire but I love the possibility that Leon Scott Kennedy’s bi and gender-nonconforming, and asexual (being demisexual) and not-cisgender and completely proud. I love that he could be this and he IS as good as this ...and he supports lesbians and bi women and alll trans and gnc and nb people unequivocally, maybe,,? Yes? Sbshshdjdjd 

Granted this is all a LOT. Let me defend myself and say that perhaps this is a hyperfixation for me but I’m the type that likes to mix into some of the emotions a tiny nugget of logic so let me make the disclaimer that, ya boi isn't an easy 'n convenient character that's hot into which I as a reader can insert myself... For me I’ve pieced something together that brings comfort and makes some sense. I like to think that he is a survivor of gay-bashing, ostracization, financial abuse, emotional abuse, ****, humiliation, public threats, familial bullshit such as custody battles and gaslighting and is transgender but he’s proud... he’s proudly trans and perhaps he is touchaverse and in terms of sexuality is bi/pansexual while in terms of who he has dated before it’s very messy as he is very aggressively misandrist and hates men and perhaps he’s very stone when he is in a mewd -- and perhaps transphobia makes him go into a rage and he has actually gotten in lots of trouble before as a kid which came back to bite him and he’s lost family and found family and best friends and the loss really hurt and made his choice to go to police academy ring hollow by the end of his training and made him a big believe in social justice and in defending people who society left behind and in therapy and self-change and in accountability (he ISN’T a selfinsert prOMISE!!) but he’s been through a lot aaaaaaaa lotttttt like idk hes just a dude sure

he’s just a dude.b,ut theres a reason zombies don;t faze him!

LOVE THAT. That part.

👉 to sum up: i support the remake fans not being uncritical and loving on the cast of characters and leon specifically! there’s a reason he recently bucked the trend of masculinity and (21 years of fandom and 21 years of problematic annoying fans, perhaps also writers, aside) has always been objectifiable, that is, seen as hot/a sidepiece/specifically desirable for women--but just /: not /: women /: as in /: Women slash str8s /: . . . .RETCH lmao he’s a gun toting hero that is very atypical but not in a disempowering manner -- rather, in an empathetic and emotional one and I want to see the RE2 protagonists heal through a life changing care and tender friendship rather than bonding through liferuining catastrophes 💓💓💓but what I am trying to say in the end is that they are so inspiring both together and as individual protegonists due to their abiliy to weather thru struggles that I as a qtwoc immigrant in America can identify with🤧 

[📍]  tl;dr   -- - 💓cute pan pew pew man is loving and cute ! :> also claire is 💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓 so cute...........................pls support/refute my theory

[stimmyvillainarchive]

WHY does the android app gotta suck so much, when i click the faq link it just like refreshes the page,,,, this happens with all links in bios on the andoird app :[

NNNN lovin this broke ass app.

I’mma go ahead and paste the FAQ just under the cut, hopefully you should be able to read it now :’))

(FAQ is written by Mod Joker)

“Are requests open?”

We get this ask a lot. And while I don’t mind answering, it does get a lilll annoying sometimes since we’re essentially repeating ourselves constantly. Before you ask, please check our ask box! It will ALWAYS give our request status!

From now on if we receive requests when they’re closed, we’re going to delete the message entirely. You’re free to ask again when they’re open, but we need breaks!

“Can allistic/neurotypical people follow?”

Yes! So long as you’re respectful of stimming and understand it’s not an aesthetic or something to make fun of.

“It says there’s two mods, but I only really see Mod Joker post.”

There is! But Mod Boo is rather, well, shy. We both are, tbh. I’ve just gotten used to talking a lot on this blog. And to tell ya the truth I invited her to mod this with me because she considered making a blog but wasn’t sure how she’d do it, and was worried she’d be too awkward/quiet. But she actually tends to see your messages a lot! She just tends to let me handle things. But if you ever wanna talk to her, just say the message is specifically for her and I’m sure she’ll get back to you. She’s very friendly and tbh one of the best people to talk to!!

“How do you make gifs?”

I use the same method stimmybby uses! His tutorial’s right here!

“How do you make banners?”

I use photoshop and for backgrounds (depending on what type of background), I use paint tool SAI. I made a tutorial on how I do it here!

“Can we use your banners for posts that aren’t stim related?”

Absolutely! So long as credit is given and you’re not in our dni, then use it as you like! Discourse posts, art, vent posts, promo posts, whatever floats your boat!

“Can I use your gif/s?”

As long as there’s credit to us for the gif/s and you don’t apply to our dni, you’re free to!

“How can I credit you?”

There’s a few ways! Such as

- Including the credit in the post and/or under the cut (this is the best way people can access the original post and see the credit!

- Include the credit in the post’s captions

- Include the credit in the tags

- Include a link in the post to another post that has the credits in it

- Saying you got the gif/s from us in the post

“What are bad/wrong ways to ”“credit”“ you?”

- Saying “I don’t own these gifs”

- Saying “credit to the original owner(s)/gifmaker(s)

- Straight up not saying you took these gifs from people/including in no credits

- Claiming the gif/s are yours/you made them

If I see any of these I WILL publicly call you out on it and you WILL be blocked immediately thereafter. That block will not be lifted.

“What does REG mean?”

Reactionary Exclusionary Gatekeeper. Meaning people who try to exclude certain queer people from queer spaces. Such a biphobes, transphobes, aphobes, panphobes, and so on.

“What does TERF mean?”

Trans/Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Meaning radfems who are transphobic and are violent towards trans people (especially trans women).

“What does SWERF mean?”

Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist. They’re radfems who try to exclude sex worker from their feminism and often treat women attracted to men as less worthy.

“What’s the ADT community?”

ADT stands for “Actually Dysphoric Trans/Transgender” and was created by transmedicalists/truscum to break off from the trans community. It’s an insult to the trans community, an insult to the creator of the transgender pride flag (it’s removed the white that was there for people who ID as non-binary/outside the gender binary), and is there purely to start drama and create rifts in a community that’s already got enough enemies for simply existing in a transphobic world

“He/Him lesbians don’t exist/they’re transphobic towards trans men”

As a trans man who doesn’t think the world revolves around me and who understands that what lesbians decide to do it literally none of my goddamn business: get the fuck over yourself you whiny pissbaby

“What do you mean by people in the true crime community?”

People who sexualize, romanticize, excuse, and/or support serial killers and their actions/crimes. This doesn’t include people who are INTERESTED in the topic of crimes, serial killers, etc but acknowledging how these people are disgusting and their actions are unforgivable.

“Why are you anti-cgl?”

Cause we hate pedophiles and are decent human beings.

“You’re bigoted to kinksters just like homophobes are bigoted to gay people!”

I hate to break it to ya bud but I’m proudly kinkphobic and you’re a giant homophobe!!

“I’m a SFW cgl(re)/littlespace blog so I’m following/interacting uwu”

No the fuck you aren’t!! You’re a kink blog, there’s no such thing as a “sfw kink” even if you’re remaining two braincells are too busy fighting over the last pacifier to tell you some fuckin common sense. Your ass is getting blocked and I’ll also be using your blog to take a look at the people you interact and block them too just for safe measure! Eat a cactus, fuck nugget

“You hate lesbians if you hate TERFs”

You owe every lesbian an apology for assuming they’re all mysogynistic, LGBT+phobic pieces of horseshit like you are. Eat a dick.

“aces/aros aren’t LGBT uwu”

Wow… that’s so wrong Alexa play Fuck You by Lily Allen

“Me/Someone I know/(insert user/s) has been blocked. Why?”

There can be a number of reasons why you’re blocked, and I’m not afraid to block people as I want this place comfortable and safe for the mods and followers. So there’s several reasons as to why.

- You apply to our DNI (see BYF)

- You’re a (insert harmless children’s cartoon) critical blog (I tend to block those due to them saying LGBT+phobic things)

- You get into kin drama

- You’re an ace discourse, pan discourse, bi discourse, and/or overall REG discourse blog (this does not mean I block inherently block discourse blogs! I block the shitty ones)

- You’re a spam/porn/etc bot (if I’ve gotten this wrong, lemme know! I tend to block shady and empty blogs for this reason unless their desc/url/etc says it’s empty/weird for a reason)

- You’re a blog that frequently posts/centers around one or more of my triggers

- You’re an aesthetic blog (though I tend to soft block for them. But this is NOT an aesthetic blog and stimmy is NOT an aesthetic)

- You’re an “anyone can interact” stim blog

- You’re a stim blog that steals/doesn’t credit the gifs they use

- I feel you and I are going to argue and I’m just saving us the trouble of future unpleasant encounter/s

- You’ve been shitty to my friends or just been shitty to people in general and I’ve noticed it

HOWEVER I’ve made slip ups in the past! If you feel you don’t apply to any of these, you can contact me through my main and ask why. Sometimes I don’t always remember why I blocked somebody (sadly there’s a lot of shitheads on this site I’ve needed to block) or I’ve confused one blog for another person’s blog. Or maybe the person was more chill than I thought. Please contact me yourself rather than ask somebody else to do it though so I can get all the details! Even if I don’t lift the block, I won’t report you for block evading or anything.

“You used to be kidheart friendly and now you’re not, why’s that?”

Sadly, Raven (the creator of Kidhearts) has proven to be a bully sympathizer and feels it’s okay to compare agere to kinks/cgl and sides with regressionuncensored. She condones bullying/harassment/the sexualization of minors and I am not nor will ever be okay with that.

“But Raven sai-”

I don’t care what she says. She made it abundantly clear that she supports regressionuncensored and I don’t care that it came back to bite her in the ass. Bullies deserve no support, no sympathy, no nothing. And if you side with her than don’t come near this blog. This is agere safe and I will not allow people who support sexualizing it to interact. Kidhearts WILL be blocked on the spot, no questions asked.

“I’ve left a community on the dni list, can I follow/interact?”

Yes!

“Why are you anti-(insert thing on blacklist here)?”

Camp Camp: It’s racist + antisemitic

Dragon Maid: It’s pedophilic

Killing Stalking: It’s homophobic, ableist, sexist, perpetuates rape culture, and fetishizes abuse

Your Lie in April: It romanticizes child abuse and it literally starts off with a gross pedo joke when we meet the love interest in episode one

Split: It’s ableist

Hetalia: It’s antisemitic

Harry Potter/J.K. Rowling’s works: Actually there’s nothing inherently bad about the story. I just don’t like it. HOWEVER: I can’t stand J.K. Rowling as she’s a TERF/overall LGBT+phobe, and racist. So none of her creations will be featured here.

Sonic Boom: Nothing inherently problematic. I just can’t stand the show because it just fuckin sucks

13 Reasons Why: It romanticizes suicide and the creators refused to listen to actual mental health experts and have made the show potentially dangerous to anyone who even slightly deals with suicidal thoughts/urges

Detroit Become Human: It’s racist + antisemitic

Voltron: Legendary Defender: It queerbaits/it’s LGBT+phobic

“REG is a transphobic term”

I, Mod Joker, am trans. Try again.

“A-specs aren’t LG-”

*buzzer sound* wrong. So sad for you

“You’re not LGBT+ because you DARED disagree with me because you actually acknowledged that tumblr didn’t credit the community sweaty uwu”

We get this shit because a lot of you assume I’m ace or at the very least a-spec. And… Ya couldn’t be far from it. I’m a pan, genderfluid trans man. Even with all your gatekeeper (sorry, BULLSHIT) logic; I’d still be attracted to multiple genders and not be cis. I’m p queer. So no matter which way you slice it, I’m part of LGBT+. Die mad about it.

“You’re comparing aphobes to TERFs and SWERFs you fucking transphobe!”

Wow I didn’t realize setting boundaries meant that I viewed y'all in the EXACT same light. I’m so glad I have the lovely aphobes that have told my friends that they should kill themselves to set me straight.

Asking people not to interact doesn’t inherently mean I think they’re the EXACT same thing.

“Mod Joker is a gif-thief and reposts people’s content without properly crediting them!”

I have made this entire post explaining that’s wrong. Idrc if the post is too lengthy for you. Don’t talk shit if you don’t even have all the details.

Additionally, if you send me somethin about this in a negative light I’m IP blocking you. One strike and you’re out. If you want to believe people with false info and false accusations then that’s your baggage. Not mine.

HOWEVER if I’ve accidentally mis-credited, forgot to/messed up on crediting a person for their gif/video, or so on let me know! I’ll make mistakes, but I never do it intentionally.

[becomingmac]

My So Called Life

I realized I never put my story on here. *for TL;DR will be in bold for people who doesn’t care to read. 

Adolescents: This story starts at a young age, It starts with my dad. My father wanted a boy. As a toddler we played rough games, I played Sega and played only football games. I wore shirts out of the boy section, I loved spider-man, Pokemon and Dragon ball Z. All things that related to boys. My grandmothers and my mom dressed me as girl, in pink, in dresses, capris, and other stuff that girls liked. But me, I didn’t like any of that. Barbies were a no. Girl coloring books were no. I thought care bears are the closest I got to them. I had Barbie sheets despite not wanting them. I was five years old when a girl punched me for liking blue and she told me that wasn’t a girl’s favorite color. I moved towards having friends that were boys. But never the popular boys though I envied them for all the girls wanting to be around them. Girls became more beautiful the older I got. I wanted them to see me the way they saw boys that they liked. Muscular, cool hair, boys clothing that was simple. But that wasn’t me. The older I got the more I was told I was a disappointment by my grandmother for not liking dresses and not wanting to have anything to do with being feminine. I had to wear bras despite not wanting boobs, I had to wear girly deodorant besides not wanting to smell girly.

Pre-teen: This body wasn’t mine and I didn’t want it. I began having crushes on all (not all but like most) my friends at the age of 11. But they all wanted boys so I pretended not to like them and liked boys. I made up lies and rumors, to cover up what I felt. At thirteen I learned about being a lesbian and I thought this was it. But don’t tell my friends they wouldn’t get it. I began to like my best friend. I tried to tell her, but she didn’t get it. I had my first girlfriend and I hid her away from everybody. She was proud to be with me but I didn’t feel the same. It was simply because I didn’t really like her and when everyone found out they didn’t act shocked. I told them I was bi so I seemed less strange to them. Girlfriend #2, When we would talk, I would take on the masculine role. That was me, the man. Another friend came out… or I outed. But she stayed with boys. Boys who were a mess and I didn’t understand. Again, I was not muscular, my voice wasn’t getting deeper and I wasn’t comfortable with me. I began dreaming about being what these girls wanted. Handsome, tall and muscular. But girlfriend #2 came back and forth. To feel the way I wanted I started doing.. unconventional things. 

Teenage: Girlfriend #2, dumped me because I got a haircut and she told that I no longer looked like a girl and she wanted nothing to do with it. Eventually she came back and we spent months together. She left me for someone who looked even more manly and was athletic. Things I wasn’t more of.I began cutting off my hair more and more. Eventually I was getting called Sir. My grandmother began complaining that I had too short of hair. But I finally came out to them and they understood and eventually I was out to everyone. My dressing turned manlier and honestly then and now, Boy jeans are fantastic. Truthfully, I felt relieved that I could dress how I feel and have my hair feel the way that I wanted. But I became embarrassed to dress on the boy’s side because I was a girl. But as equally hating the women’s side because I didn’t belong there. Bathrooms started getting uncomfortable and having to wear a band dress became uncomfortable. My favorite super heroes were all male and I related to them so much. My ships were heterosexual couples and I wanted to be the men in them. I was constantly being told “If you were a boy, I would date you.” Girlfriend #3, She made me into something masculine, taught me how to dress fully comfortably on how I wanted to look. I was 16, I was introduced through one of my friends to a Person #1and Person #2. Person #1 wanted help on figuring out how to be manly and how to officially come out. The more P1 explained to me all the terms and one stuck with me, Genderqueer. Genderqueer is (noun): a Person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders. Was this me? I began talking about my feelings to Friend 1 and she told me whoever I was, she’d still be my friend. P2 and talked and she told me she didn’t see it but I felt it. I started getting mistaken more, hardly having boobs was truly helping me. My mother was angry and she said that it made her feel sad that people weren’t seeing her daughter and for me to stop cutting my hair. I made my own mother embarrassed of me. Eventually I told Girlfriend #3 what I was thinking and what if I was this term, and what if I was a boy. she said that we wouldn’t be together because she could never see herself with a man. So, I buried my feelings deep down to continue in my relationship. Now I felt more weight I didn’t understand on my shoulders. The more I buried my feelings down, I began feeling unhappy, I was seeking attention from other girls, especially one. But she had a boyfriend. But Girlfriend #3 was still around, we were trying to keep things together, though she was cheating with someone more feminine then me. Why wasn’t I the girl I was supposed to be? I began to hate my relationship more and more every day. Bye girlfriend #3.  [Insert Complicated mess that is me and Friend 1] Again still a lot of people telling me that I was a better boyfriend than their boyfriends. Sorry your boyfriends sucked.

College: I became increasingly not comfortable in my body again. I began changing the way that I dressed, I switched to shorter shorts like frat boys. I might as well be one because that’s how douchy I look. I met Girlfriend #5, who was so much better than any girl I met. She matched my intelligence, she had an interesting life and we shared interests. Towards the beginning I told her about my gender problems and she said “boy or girl, I’ll love you no matter what. It doesn’t matter to me, You’re still you.” I had never cried so much like a baby. Her little sister I feel like she knew, in some way somehow “I’m girlie girlie and you’re boye boye.” [Fast forward like two years] As of march the conversation started popping up more and maybe because I didn’t feel like the person I was supposed to be. I would say things like “I don’t know, I’m not a girl.” Eventually I came to the terms of Non Binary. It just made sense, I wasn’t a boy or a girl. She supported that decision. I told my family, they were okay with it. My mom named me Thor. But it just didn’t feel right. I began feeling overwhelmed and unhappy. My grandmother she told me “You know what I don’t like about you? You’re not girly and you think you’d dress the way I want to make me happy.” I began thinking of what my life would be like as a male. A man, that’s a dream. At UTSA, I made a friend 2, I never paid a lot of attention to him but he was very nice to talk too. The conversation started over Gender Dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), or gender identity disorder (GID), is the distress a person experiences because of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In this case, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender. I made some comments on how I felt. Things like that I loved having short hair. Always being drawn to Boy gendered things. The happiness of being mistaken for a boy. How I had a name picked out if one day I decided I was a trans man. “That’s not normal, Cis people don’t say that. Oh yeah, and by the way I’m trans.” From that moment on, I began questioning my life. Who was I really? Why can’t I be Veronica? I wanted to be someone else. Anyone else, but Veronica because I wasn’t Veronica. I had never been. I stayed up sleepless on how I felt. I cried constantly because I didn’t understand myself even more now. I wasn’t the person I was supposed to be. I wasn’t muscular, I wasn’t tall, I wasn’t any of the things I wanted to be. And all I wanted was to be me. Girlfriend #5, she started noticing the crying and she started talking about this man she followed named Chella Man. Little by little she showed me more. Until one day I said “What if that’s me?” and she’s like “he has a ted talk lets watch it.” Chella Man, he was known as the boy named Rachel. I related to him and I started to understand him. Chella man identifies as Gender Queer. He talks about the difference between gender identity and presentation. While he was gender queer. He presented himself as a man with male pronouns. He said this way he didn’t have to get rid of his feminine qualities and he got to express his masculine qualities. There was a lot of crying but “No matter who you are, I am always going to love you and I’ll be here every step of the way.” I sobbed like a baby. That’s me, and that’s who I wanted to be. I reached out to Friend 2. He talked to me about himself and his life before. He showed me somethings that he wrote and they really hit home. I found out who I am and I felt all the pressure go away. While one thing still bothered me, how would my family take it? Later one night I wrote out this long facebook message about who I was along with that video. I lied to everyone though, I told them that I didn’t know which pronouns I wanted. I wanted He/Him. The decision of not telling them bothers me. But I assured them that I was still going to be me. Because I am me. GF #5 and I started looking up names and making me comfortable with male pronouns and other words like Boyfriend (I hear big time rush in my head right now) We even choose a name, Mateo Aiden Carranza. MAC just like my uncle and my dad. I started by buying a binder and continuing my conversations with Friend 2. I told my three best friends about my decision and my name change and immediately they went into helping me. “can I call you Matt for short?” “love you no matter what, bb.” “Is that how you would like me to address you?” “It doesn’t bother me.” “you’re an inspiration.” I started reading things online and researching how to go about everything. I released a video on snapchat asking people to help me. Everyone supported, and people started asking how to help. But It didn’t help the way I felt, and it caused me to spiral – Quit my job, went through a break up, tried to die. The usual problems. I came out to my family. I started realizing somethings such as I constantly compared myself to Boys from the age of 5 to even the ones I see now. I created doubts and faults of myself that way. I had no way of being them. I lead myself down a path where I pretended to be someone else. Someone who tried so hard to be happy with the cards they were dealt, but man they were some shitty cards. Being Veronica was exhausting. It made me realize this whole, I didn’t care who I was because GF #5 made me feel like it didn’t matter, I could have been like a furry and she probably would have been down with it. But I’m happy now. Got a decent job, I love the people I work with and I got to start fresh with them. Started T as of this week. I have the support of all of my family. Schools aright. But yeah. I still have the rest of my journey ahead.

Always Forward, Never Back. 

[shadowofthelamp]

It’s difficult to really pin down the moment that I realized I wasn’t straight. In many stories I’ve seen, people either always knew, or had a lightning moment when they saw someone that just lit up their heart and they know for certain that they’re attracted to people of the same gender as them.

I didn’t have that.

In fact, I didn’t have much of anything, as my questions came over months and months of wondering.

But I did have a moment when I realized that things might be okay if they turned towards something not the norm.

My best friend from first through fifth grade had a crush on a different boy every month. She’d gush about his hair, his eyes, his voice, his tetherball skills. I’d doodle on the other side of her giant sketchpad and nod politely, wondering when we could go back to playing out our grand tales through My Little Ponies or Webkinz. She’d always pester me if I’d found anyone, but I always told her ‘not yet’.

She asked, once. “You think you… y’know… like girls?”

I shrugged, twirling the string of my hoodie between two sweaty fingers. Her room was always too hot. “I’unno. I don’t think I really like much of anybody.”

She nodded sagely, two months younger but more worldly and wise. “Well, they always know, so probably not. You’ll find a guy someday. How about you just write down what you like, and I’ll draw you one?”

I listed out as much as I could think of, and it wasn’t until years later I realized she’d drawn a guy version of Ginny Weasley.

Media, and in particular fiction, needs representation. Representation of people of every race, gender, sexuality, and mental illness. Not just queer-coding for the sake of grabbing queer watchers while simultaneously ridiculing them for expecting to be treated like people, but actually treating queer couples the same as straight ones.

On March 15th, 2015, the children’s show Steven Universe revealed that one of the main characters, Garnet, was a fusion of two women. In the victory song when she’s allowed to reunite, she is described as stable, a conversation, and, as her song went, ‘made of love’. I was sixteen, and had been wondering about myself due to another work of fiction, a webcomic called Homestuck with a cast of multiple queer characters, male and female. Seeing two women dance, kiss, and show joy at being allowed to be together- on a children’s show, that I would have killed to see as a child- made me break down into tears. My hands curled around the fabric on the bottom of the same style of hoodie I’d been wearing since fourth grade.

I was seeing myself for the first time, and I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been missing it. There’s something incredibly powerful, realizing that you’re not broken. Even if I’d realized earlier and had a supportive family, the gaping black hole of healthy queer relationships in the media I chose to consume- largely children’s fiction, as the positive messages helped me cope with my depression, but that’s a different story altogether- would crack something deep within me. “If no one wants to show people like me, calling them corruptive, evil, sexual, then what’s wrong with me? They can’t all be wrong, can they?”

My friend wasn’t trying to hurt me, by suggesting I couldn’t be gay because gay people ‘always knew’. She was in second grade, and simply had never seen anything suggesting otherwise. To her- and to me- gay people were sassy, flamboyant, and often very sexual, and I was none of those things.

I’m online very often, and I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of stories that mark the episode Jailbreak, where Garnet is revealed to be a healthy lesbian relationship, as a turning point in realizing their own sexuality. Garnet is powerful, strong, the leader of the team- and gay. If I’d had a Garnet in my life, at age five or eight or fourteen, then I may have not felt empty. I might not have forced myself to create interest in boys that I knew deep down I didn’t care for, just in an attempt to feel like I wasn’t ‘wrong.’

Steven Universe was a godsend to me, and I can only hope that it will inspire the next generation of kids to be confident in who they are.

We’re made of love, and it’s stronger than your ignorance and hate.

As we talked about with Alison Bechtel and the urge to find connections between her father and her, and how he might have fared if he'd lived a few more years, connecting her story with his, I like thinking that a lot of the people who saw and were impacted by Jailbreak are all connected in some small way. I know that I was affected that night, listening to Garnet sing about how because of her love she was stronger and better than the people that opposed and tried to separate her parts. I don't know if I cried then, although I certainly did later when I realized how important it was to me. 

The first three times I saw the scene of her parts racing towards each other, I rewound it over and over. Surely they couldn't have inserted that small kiss sound effect. Surely they were just close friends. This was a kid's show, the only media I'd seen queer people like me in that didn't end in disaster before now was a webcomic made for older teens with blood and cussing. But there she was, with a song proclaiming that "You're never going to stop what we made together, we are going to stay like this forever... I am made of love, and this is who I am." 

This relates to gender in that if gay and bi characters are rare, lesbians tend to be even more so. Lesbians are reduced to sex dolls or tragic stories that should have gone out of date fifty years ago. We're told that our experiences are 'basically the same as gay guys' and that we should be happy that gay guys are getting representation because clearly, that's all gay people, right?

On page 203 of Fun Home, Alison picked up "Word is Out", a transcript of a documentary interviewing gay men and women. That was her moment. Like me, she didn't know that she was gay as a child, just that there was something about her that was off. Different. Queer, to use both meanings of the word.

Queer is an interesting word. I've used lesbian for the past two years, until the past few months. I feel that it unites me with the people who've come before. 

I don't understand the struggle of everyone, and I don't imagine I ever can, but I being part of a wider community is something that's become important as I try to find myself beyond just simple labels.