#are people oppressed for being lgbt? absolutely. but there's a difference between experiencing oppression and just dealing w an asshole

[batemanofficial]

this is part of a larger point that i don't feel i can make constructively on this website but i think a lot of people need to realize that internet skirmishes between relatively well-to-do white teenagers do not constitute an axis of oppression. i mean this as benignly as possible but some of you need to develop thicker skin

[kustas]

I’ve noticed wrt to fandom’s changing the source material, people have a growing issue with using the word ‘coded’ in place of ‘headcanon’. This can lead to people projecting and thinking certain characters are x minority coded and seeing the creators as actively malicious when they never intended to go that way, or if other fans make content of those characters that differ from it as well. This is especially awkward with the rise of manga since (LGBT) stereotypes and terminology differs.

well coding is absolutely a real thing but people have got to start learning the differences between coding, stereotypes, and character traits they project upon. I've seen instances of people hailing a character as representation when the character in question was a very uncomfortable stereotype...often it comes from younger people who might not have experienced the flavors of oppression that birthed said stereotype but man. it's important to know about these things

and like I said prior running with barebones lazy hints is how companies get away with doing the bare minimum and getting a reputation for being progressive which is scary

[freddiekluger]

Why Cap Being Internally Closeted Is Not Only Possible, But Valid Representation 

i wrote this to a lot of mitski and onsind, so you can’t blame me for any feelings that bleed through

now i don’t know if it actually exists, but i’ve heard of there being a lot of discourse surrounding the captains story arc regarding his sexuality- i believe the general gist is that having a queer character that remains closeted to themselves is either unrealistic or ‘bad’ representation, and as someone who really treasures the captain and relates to his story so far a lot, i thought i might break this down a bit. 

i’ve divded up every complaint i’ve heard about this into four main questions which i’ll be covering below the ‘keep reading’, because this is gonna be pretty comprehensive. full disclaimer i reference my experiences as an ex-evangelical non binary butch lesbian a couple times, and i spent a year studying repression and the psychological impacts of high demand sexual ethics for my graduating sociology paper, so this is coming with some background to it i swear

the big questions:

can you EVEN be gay and not know it????

but isn't this just ANOTHER coming out arc, and aren't we supposed to be moving beyond those?

but if cap can't have a relationship with a man because he's a ghost, what's the point?

since cap's dead, isn't this technically bury your gays, and isn't that bad? 

1. "but is it really possible to not know? Isn't that bad representation?"

short answer: no and no.

before i get into the validity of the captain's ignorance about his own orientation as 21st century rep, let's break down how the hell the captain can be so clearly attracted to men and still not even consider the possibility that he might be gay, as brought to you by someone who literally experienced this shit.

the captain's particular situation is both a direct result of the lack of information around human sexuality he would have had (aka clear messaging that it's actually possible for him to be attracted to men. i don't mean acceptable or allowed, i mean physically capable of happening- the idea that orientations other than heterosexual exist and are available to him, a man), and a subconscious survival mechanism. the environment in which he lives is outright hostile to gay people, while the military man identity he has constructed for himself doesn't allow for any form of deviation from societal norms, let alone one so base level and major. as a result of this killer combo of information and environment, instincts take over and the mind does it's best to repress the ‘deviant’ feelings until a. one of these two things changes, or b. the act of repression becomes so destructive and/or exhuasting that it becomes impossible to maintain. the key to maintaining a long-term state of repression of desire is diverting that energy elsewhere, and a high-demand group such as the military is the perfect place for the captain to do this (this technqiue is frequented by religions and extremist ideologies worldwide, but that’s not really what we’re here to focus on). 

while the brain is actively repressing ‘deviant’ feelings (aka gay shit), this doesn't mean you don't experience the feelings at all. when performed as a subconscious act of survival, the aim of repression is to minimise/transform the feelings into a state where they can no longer cause immediate danger, and something as big as sexual/romantic orientation is going to keep popping up, but as long as the individual in question never understands what they’re feeling, they’ll be able to continue relatively undisturbed. you know how in heist movies, the leader of the group will only tell each team member part of the plan so they can’t screw things up for everyone else if they get caught? it’s kind of like that.

this is how the captain appears to have operated in life AND in death, and it’s a relatively common experience for lgbtq people who’ve grown up in similar circumstances (aka with a lack of information and in an unfriendly-to-hostile environment), and accounts for how some people can even go on to get married and have children before realising that they’re gay and/or trans. 

personally, while i can now identify what were strong homo crushes all the way back to childhood, at the time i genuinely had no idea. there was the underlying sense that i probably shouldn't tell people how attached i was to these girls because i would seem weird, and that my feelings were stronger than the ones other people used to describe friendships, but like-like them in the way that other girls like-liked boys? no way! actually scratch that, it wasn't even a no way, because i had no idea that i even could. i even had my own havers, at least in terms of the emotional hold and devotion she got from me, except she treated me way less well than cap’s beau. snatches of the existence of lgbt people made it through the cone of silence, i definitely heard the words gay and lesbian, but my levels of informations mirrored those that the captain would have had: virtually none, beyond the idea that these words exist, some people are them, and that's not something that we support or think is okay, so let's just not speak about it. despite only attending religious schools for the first couple years of primary, until i got my own technology and social media accounts to explore lgbtq content on my own- option a out of the two catalysts for change- the possibility of me being gay was not at all on my radar. don’t even get me started on how long it took me to explore butchness and my overall gender, two things which now feel glaringly obvious. 

when shit starts to break down, you can also make the conscious choice to repress which can delay the eventual smashing down of the mental closet door for a time (essentially when the closet door starts to open, you just say ‘no thanks’ and shut it again by pointedly Not Thinking About It). in the abscence of identifying yourself by your attractions, it becomes quite common to identify with a lack- in my case, this meant becoming proud of how sensible and not boy crazy i was, and in the captain’s case, this means becoming proud of how sensible and not sensuous/wild (aka woman crazy) he was, identifying with his LACK of desire for women and partying (which, even in the 40s, involved the expectation of opposite sex romances and hook ups). i’m not saying that’s the only reason he’s a rule follower, but i think the contrast between About Last Night and Perfect Day pretty much support this. (the captain getting on his high horse about general party antics that he inherently felt excluded from because of underlying awareness of his difference & his tendency to project his regimented expectations of himself onto others, vs. joining in the reception party, awareness of how the environment supports difference in the form of clare and sam, and relaxing his own rules by dancing with men- the captain doesn’t mind a party when feels like he has a place there.)

so the captain was operating in a high demand, highly regulated environment (primarily the military, but also early 20th century England itself), with regimented roles, rules, and expectations. working on the assumption that he wouldn't have had out/disclosing lgbt friends, he would have had little to no exposure to lgbt identities, and what information he did receive would have been hushed and negatively geared. while my world started to open up when i started high school was allowed to have my own phone + instagram account, resulting in me realising something wasn't quite 'right' within a few years (making me a relatively early realiser compared to those who don't come out to themselves until adulthood), in life the captain never had that experience. he didn't receive the information he needed, his environment didn't grow less hostile. with the near-exception of havers related heartbreak, his well disciplined and lifelong method of repression never became destructive/exhaustive enough to permanently override the danger signals in his mind and allow him to put his feelings into words. neither of the most common catalysts for change happened for him, so he continued as usual, even after his death.

BUT, and here’s where we come to why this is actually great representation, arrival of mike and Alison represents the opening up of new world. for the first time, the captain is actively made aware of the fact that his environment is no longer hostile, and better than that, it’s affirming. he’s also getting access to positively geared information about lgbtq people and identities, so option a of the two catalysts for change is absolutely present, and resoundingly positive. 

the captain’s arc is also relatively unique as it acknowledges the oppressive nature of his environment, but actually focuses on the internal consequences, and the way that systems like those that the captain lived in succeed because they turn us into our own oppressors. for whatever reason, we repress ourseslves, and often can’t help it, and i find that the significance of the journey to overcome that is often overlooked in more mainstream queer media. perhaps it’s just not very cinematic, or it remains too confronting for cishet audiences, but ghosts manages to touch on it with a lovely amount of humour and hope. Jamie Babbit’s But I’m A Cheerleader is another favourite piece of queer media for the same reasons.

not only does it show this, but as the captain continues to get gayer and lean into some of his less conventional traits (like an interest in fashion and the wedding planning), it shows lgbt people who have been or are going through this that there CAN be a positive outcome. it takes a lot to unlearn all the things that have painted you as wrong, especially when a massive institution is desperate to continue doing so, but you can do it, you can be happy, and it's never too late. (i've been meaning to say that last point for ages for ages, but a mutual beat me to it here)

2. not just another coming out arc

i absolutely support the demand for queer stories that don’t center around coming out (it’s like shrodinger’s queer: if you’re not coming out on screen, do you really even exist?), but i don’t align with the criticisms that the captain should already be out. for the reasons mentioned above, the captain’s particular story is fairly different to the ‘young white teenager who mostly knows gay is fine, it’s just everyone else that’s got the problem, but have a unremarkably straight sounding soundtrack, a trauma porn romance, and a cishet saviour’ that we keep seeing. the captain’s ongoing journey with his sexuality emphasises the overaching theme of the show: recovering from trauma and humanity’s endless capacity for growth, and i think that’s worth showing over and over again until it stops being true.

additionally, while the captain’s journey regarding his gayness is a big part of his character and story, ghosts makes it clear that it’s not the ONLY part, and being gay is far from his ONLY characteristic or dramatic/comedic engine. the fact that i’m even having to congratulate ghosts for doing that really shows how much film and television is struggling huh.

while all queer media is, and should be, subject to criticism, i think if it helps even one person then it absolutely deserves to exist, and i can say i’ve found the captain’s journey to be the lgbt story i’ve found that’s closest to my own, which says a lot considering he’s a dead world war 2 soldier who hangs out with other ghosts including a slutty Tory, a georgian noblewoman, and a literal caveman. 

3. if captain gay, why he no have boyfriend???? 

another complaint that’s been circulating is that since the captain doesn’t, and likely won’t, have a boyfriend, that makes him Bad Representation because it follows the sad single gay trope. i kind of get the logic from this one, and a lot of it is up to personal interpretation, but part of me really enjoys the fact that the captain’s journey towards accepting himself is separated from having a relationship.

coming out is often paired with having romantic/sexual relationships (either as the reason or reward for doing so). my own struggle with repression didn't end the second that came out, and i still struggle with letting myself develop & acknowledge romantic feelings as a result of actively shutting them (and most other feelings in general) down for years, and statistics show that lgbtq youth in particular tend not to live out their 'teen years' until their twenties. by not giving cap a relationship straight away, ghosts separates the act of claiming identity and sexual orientation from finding a partner (two things which are, more often than not, separate), and also provides some very nice validation to folks who have yet to have the relationship they want, especially when lots of mainstream queer media is now jumping on the cishet media bandwagon of acting as if every person loses their virginity and has a life defining relationship at sixteen. it’s essentially a continuation of the earlier theme of “it’s never too late”, and who’s to say the captain won’t get a gay bear ghost boyfriend to go haunt nazis with??? people die all the time, it could happen.

(also, i think him and julian will have definitely shagged at least once. it was a low moment for both of them and they refuse to speak of it.)

lots of asexual/ace spectrum fans have come out to say how much they’ve loved being able to headcanon cap as ace, and while that’s not a headcanon i personally have, i think it’s brilliant that ace fans feel seen by his character- we’re all in this soup together babey (and sorry for cursing everyone still reading this with that cap/julian headcanon. i’m just a vessel)

4. “okay, but cap’s a GHOST- doesn’t that make this Bury Your Gays?”

this is a bit of a complex one, but i’m going to say no as a result of the following break down.

Bury Your Gays (BYG), aka the trope where lgbtq characters are consistently killed off (and often with a heavy dose of trauma, while cishet characters survive) is probably one of my least favourite lgbt media tropes. BYG has two main points:

1. the lgbt character is killed, thus removing them from story entirely- hence the use of the phrase ‘killed OFF’ (killed off of the show/film)

2. the character’s death reinforces the perception that lgbtq people’s lives must end in tragedy, instead of being long and fulfilling, or are inherently less valuable. bonus points if the character is killed in a hate crime or confesses same-gender love right before they die (that one implies that queer love genuinely has no future!)

not every death of an lgbtq character is bury your gays, and i personally feel that the captain is an example of an lgbt death that isn’t. 

first of all, while the captain is dead, so are the vast majority of characters in ghosts. the premise of the show means that death is not the end of the line for its characters- for most of them, it’s the only reason we get to see them on screen at all. as such, the captain being dead doesn’t remove him from the story, so point one is irrelevant.

at the time of posting, we don’t know how or why the captain died, but we've had nothing to suggest his death was in any way related to his latent sexuality, so his mysterious death doesn’t actively play into the supposedly inherent tragedy of queer lives, nor the supposedly lesser value. that’s as of right now- since we don’t know the circumstances of his death it’s a little tough to analyse properly. while the captain’s life absolutely features missed opportunities and it’s fair share of tragedy, hope and growth (which seems to be the theme of this post) abounds in equal measure. the captain may not be alive, but we DO get to see him growing and having a relatively happy existence, that for the most part seems to be getting even better as he learns to open up and be himself unapologetically- that doesn’t feel like BYG to me.

while writng this, it’s just occured to me that death really is a second chance for most of the ghosts, especially with the introduction of alison. from mary learning to read, to thomas finding modern music, they’ve all been given the chance explore things they never could have while they were alive, and hopefully grow enough to one day be sucked off move on.

in conclusion,

i love the captain very much and i hope his arc lives up to the standards it’s set so far. i don’t know where to put this in this post, but i’d alo like to say i LOVE how in Perfect Day, the captain wasn’t used as an educational experienced for fanny at all. i am very tired of people expecting me to be the walking talking homophobe educator and rehabilitator, so the fact that it’s alison and the other ghosts that call fanny out while the captain just gets to have fun with the wedding organisation made me very happy.

here’s a few other cap posts that i’ve done:

the captain’s arc if adam and the film crew stayed

a possible cap coming out 

the captain backstory headcanon

if you’ve read this far,

thank you!

also check out @alex-ghosts-corner , this post inspired me very much to write this

[loveisharderthanitlooks]

Thoughts on S02E04

Owen was absolutely intolerable this episode. He really does have great hair though.

I love seeing Marjan being a badass on the rink and the four guys there to cheer her on. We don’t usually get to see women in TV dramas play sport and have the men cheer them on. It was cool. And so aggressive.

I think I like the arranged marriage storyline here. I mean, it’s not the best storyline they could have given her. But as Marjan points out, it is a very common practice in a lot of countries and cultures and a show with so much diversity should show diverse cultures. I appreciate that it was shown in a positive light. It’s not something that Marjan resents or feels oppressed by, she defended it because she believes in it and the positive aspects of it were nicely contrasted with the disaster of the wedding they attended.

That wedding scene was actually so gross.

It’s really jarring to see some people at the wedding wearing masks and remembering that the pandemic is happening in this world too. Especially after just seeing everybody at the derby with zero mask wearing or social distancing. Are the 126 anti-maskers?

If they don’t want to depict the pandemic, just pretend it’s over or it never happened. I mean, we’re all pretending that Austin is sitting on top of an active volcano and life is just continuing as normal. We can pretend the pandemic is over too.

Carlos has also followed his father into law enforcement. It’s interesting that both Carlos and TK have followed their father’s career paths. But while TK has followed his father’s path so closely they work in the same firehouse, Carlos has opted for a different branch. There’s a meta post there about TK’s need to be close to his father and Carlos’ need for distance from his.

The timing in this episode bugs me. Carlos and TK are at the farmer’s market in the middle of the day, cut to Marjan and Salim at the restuarant at night, cut back to Carlos and TK getting back from the farmer’s market to have their fight. What were they doing all day? How long does it take to drive home from the farmer’s market?

Carlos being uncomfortable introducing TK to his parents even though he’s out is really sad and I’m annoyed at TK for shouting at him, even though I think his feelings are valid too. It’s a pretty common issue for lots of LGBT+ people that even when they’re out it can be very difficult to be out around family, and as a gay person, it feels like TK should be a little more understanding of somebody being caught by surprise and introducing their partner as a friend.

Just because they’re both gay does not mean that they have had the same experiences growing up. I think TK forgets his privilege - he grew up in Manhattan, with liberal parents, he has always worked with his dad, and the 126 were handpicked by Owen as part of a diversity drive. I’ve no doubt he’s experienced prejudice, but nothing like Carlos would have as a gay Latino in Texas. As with Marjan, there are differences in their cultures and experiences.

Owen and Gwyn absolutely sucked at listening to TK and giving him advice. Thank goodness he’s in therapy and has learned how to communicate his feelings from a professional because his parents suck. It’s actually sad. The relationship between Owen and TK was so lovely in season one, but now Owen is completely focused on Gwen and Gwen might has well be his second wife for all the relationship she has with TK. I mean when she showed up at the station in the middle of their shift, TK was right there and they didn’t even acknowledge each other.

I just really love the relationship between Marjan, Paul and Mateo.

Marjan literally grinding an axe - perfection.

NOTHING phases Grace. Scorpions, guy choking in his dead friend’s ashes, guy in a gun case, Imp - she just rolls with it. The scene with the imp was amazing. I love that the rest of the call center operatives all listened in and then just went back to work. Like yeah, it’s a weird one but we get weird ones all the time here.

YOU LOOK AT BABY CARROTS WITH ENVY!! Nothing can ever top that line.

Thank you, your Grace. That was amazing. I DIDN’T FEEL A THING. Perfection.

Judd is the holder of Owen’s single brain cell.

Carlos and TK have such lovely chemistry. Massive kudos to Rafael and Ronen for how they portray their relationship.

I loved the talk between them. Communication is so sexy.

It’s not like I demand to see them kissing (especially in the midst of a pandemic) but if that had been a straight couple there would have been a kiss. All the straight couples have kissed. We know at least one other Tarlos kiss that was filmed and then cut. There should have been a kiss at that point.

Carlos’s hands are so big. I’ve never noticed that before.

The lyrics of the song when Marjan is walking down the hotel hallway is “for you”. I heard “fuck you” and I had to google it because I thought I was losing my mind.

Where Marjan’s storyline for this episode feels like it has wrapped up and complete, Carlos’s story doesn't and it’s something that will play out in future episodes.

I did not see the pregnancy plot coming. It’s not going to end well, is it? Lisa Edelstein isn’t going to stick around Lone Star forever. At some point she’s going to leave. Worst case scenario she dies and Owen becomes a single father to a baby. (Best case scenario, she returns to New York and Owen goes with her. TK stays with Carlos. Judd takes over as Captain.) Most likely scenario, the baby doesn’t make it. It plays into Owen’s belief that he’s invincible but those around him get hurt.

[bitch-in-a-bag]

can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

[daenerys-targaryen]

hi, i would like to know your opinion and thoughts on something more serious. it's ok if you don't want to answer but you have experience with it and i don't know who else to talk to. but i think i might be bi? i know there is nothing wrong with that but I'm very confused and it's really starting to have an impact on my mental health. it's just like... am i bi? or am i just admiring women in an artistic way? but i enjoy the idea of being in a relationship with one? idk i'm very confused and i'd just like some help

Hi! I’m humbled and honored you feel you can come to me for advice.

Firstly something you need to know is that sexuality is fluid. Meaning it’s ever changing. While I was still growing into adulthood I actually identified as asexual because I had absolutely no interest in sex or kissing or anything along those lines. I’ve since learned that my hesitation towards sex was more to do with trauma I experienced as a child rather than the disgust for the act of sex itself. Then getting into my teen years I identified as bisexual and I slowly started to realize my love for women. Nowadays I flip between bisexual and gay / lesbian because while I do enjoy the male physique and find them attractive, I don’t see myself ever living with one or building a life with one. I’ve tried to date a few here and there and... I just click so much more with women but I seriously cannot figure out men at all.

It’s okay to not know exactly what your sexuality is. It really is! Something else to remember is you don’t have to have a label. I’m sorry it’s affecting your mental health. I’ve never had my sexuality affect my mental health, and maybe that’s something you should talk to someone professional about? Unfortunately oppressed groups such as women and lgbt and people of color usually have some form of internalized hatred because society is fucked and conditions us into thinking we’re different when we’re not at all. I can’t think of any other reason why it would affect your mental health and that’s the best advice I could give. Sorry if this isn’t really an answer, I can’t tell you if you’re bisexual because I’m not you. I can’t tell you what you are because sexuality has different meanings for everyone. Two of my closest friends identify as straight but also can be attracted to women, so I classify them as bi but just girls who like men more. Quite honestly I still get confused over my own sexuality with my relationship with men, but I still count myself as bisexual because I do have physical attraction towards them. I hope that makes sense?

Hopefully this helped in some way :( Maybe you could find a therapist that specializes in lgbt therapy? I’m sorry I feel like this wasn’t helpful at all :(

[hello-robin-goodfellow]

THE DIFERENT CYCLES OF NOSTALGIA FILTER

Most of the nostalgia towards the past is based on Nostalgia Filter. The good stuff is remembered and the bad stuff ignored, forgotten or not even taken in account. When it's about a time period Two Decades Behind people will be nostalgic for it because they experienced it themselves, but from the viewpoint of a child or a teenager, when they didn't have to worry about all the adult stuff that depresses them nowadays, because the grownups took care of all that: taxes, work, bills, tragic news events,... If the nostalgia is about a time period people didn't directly experience themselves the romanticism is even more rampant. People will base their rosy posy image of that time period on stuff they have seen and read in books, comic strips, cartoons, TV series, films, old photos and/or fond memories of older family members. Usually they aren't aware that many things they now take for granted didn't always exist back then or were still considered highly controversial.

The glories of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome where the cradle of philosophy and science started, everyone is able to enlist in the army (well, if you weren't a woman or a slave, of course) and see the world while doing so. You can go and enjoy watching Olympic Games, a play in the theater or watch exciting gladiator battles in the arena, philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Virgil are respected as pillars of their societies, and people were opened to sex and LGBT as opposed to the close-minded Christians in later centuries. Not taken in account: class systems, people dying early of diseases we nowadays have proper treatment for, slavery, democracy only for rich upperclass males citizens, bloody battles, Roman military service had to be fulfilled several years! before you could retire and start a civilian life, women having no rights, not even allowed to watch sporting games, xenophobia was so prevalent that would make modern prejudices and bigotry look tame, scientific contributions were more based on superstitions and empirical and weren't always based on logic (see Plato's and Aristotle's works), pederasty was the only accepted form of homosexuality and it was punishable if a relationship did not fit in those criteria (also it was only tolerated in some city and states), Roman sexuality was still arguably patriarchal and not all sexual taboo was acceptable (ie. a wealthy man get away with his slaves while married women were expected to be faithful, oral sex was considered shameful).

The thousand years of Chinese dynasties up until Republic was the time where people dressed in beautiful colorful haifu with good etiquette and manners, scholars were appreciated, education was valued as opposed during the Cultural Revolution, the Tang Dynasty was the golden age of prosperity and where women has more rights than any other periods. Not taken in account: the Confucians were oppressive against the lower social classes, the caste system, education systems were corrupted with many scholars and students were promoted based on bribes rather than actual skills, women were still considered inferior in the Tang Dynasty, the royal court were so deadly and decadent that would make the place in wuxia media look tame, slavery, the rebellions and civil wars (ie. The Three Kingdoms, An Lushan Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion) that were very common that cost million of lives that went unheard of and resulted in many famine and diseases that led to cannibalism, footbinding was practiced since the Song Dynasty, xenophobia was prevalent including against their sister countries like Japan and Korea.

The Middle Ages are usually romanticized as a glorious past with chivalrous knights fighting for the honor of beautiful princesses, proving their worth in tournaments, stuffing themselves at royal buffets with the kind old king, and defending castles against malevolent invaders. Not taken in account: The Plague, wars, mercenaries and soldiers plundering farms and villages, filthy streets, people dying at a young age because of insufficient knowledge of diseases, the injustice of the feudal system, monarchs and the Catholic Church being oppressive towards people with other viewpoints, high illiteracy, people executed and tortured for audience's pleasure and often without anything resembling a fair trial, women considered being lesser in status than men, famine whenever harvests failed... Ironically, the part that was arguably good, the Byzantine Empire (with its extremely high literacy and such luxuries as running water) is usually overlooked or completely ignored.

The Renaissance and The Enlightenment are the time when society finally got out of the bleak, primitive and God fearing Dark Middle Ages and gained wisdom by discovering a lot of stuff. Kings and queens never looked more magnificent. Artists and sculptors painted the finest works and humanists, philosophers and Protestants learned humanity to think for themselves. You could enjoy a Shakespeare play, listen to baroque classical music or have a swashbuckling duel. Not taken in account: A lot of new thought and discoveries in the field of science were very slowly adapted into society. Mostly because a lot of royals, religious authorities and other government officials suppressed these "dangerous" new ideas. Compared to those "primitive" Middle Ages more people have been hanged or burned on the stake for their beliefs and/or on the assumption that they were witches during the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s than in the centuries before! The Reformation and Counter-Reformation divided Europe and caused many casualties. All the great books and art works created during this era were only enjoyed or experienced by the very rich. Wars still ravaged Europe, colonization exploited other continents, slavery became a real industry and absolutism made the monarchy and nobility so powerful and decadent that they didn't care about the lower classes. Duels weren't glorious at all, just a matter of killing off your opponent.

The Golden Age of Piracy is one big adventure where you could go on a boat trip with pirates and have fun attacking other ships, taking gold and bury or search for treasure on some Deserted Island. Men were real men with a Badass Beard and cool looking eye patches, hooks for hands and wooden legs. Not taken in account: scurvy, people forced to do what their captain told them, your ship being attacked by other ships and losing, keelhauling, loot just being spent instead of buried, anti-piracy laws could get you arrested and hanged, storms could destroy your ship, all the cool looking eye patches, hooks for hands and wooden legs were just practical solutions for grievous injuries suffered during fights, and the fact that most of the Caribbean economy was reliant on the slave trade. There were also plenty of brutal attacks on helpless villages, indigenous communities, plantations, civilian ships, and even colonial settlements. In addition to helping themselves to everything that wasn't tied down, pirates would also torture, murder, enslave, and/or rape men, women, and children indiscriminately just for their own sick pleasure.

America's Wild West is a fun era where you could roam the prairie on a horse, visit saloons and shoot outlaws and Indians. Not taken in account: slavery was not abolished until deep in the 19th century and still going on in many colonies or remote place in the American South, cowboys took care of cattle and didn't engage in gun fights, gun violence was just as illegal as it is nowadays and could get you arrested by local sheriffs, outlaws could actually remain on the loose for several years, Native Americans being massacred by white settlers and armies, black people having no basic human rights, The Ku Klux Klan was a respected organization...)

The mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th century were a classy time period where everybody was impeccably dressed and had good manners. You could take a coach ride or (later on) test the "horseless carriage", read some of the greatest novels in history, listen to the first records or even the great Caruso in person, admire the wonders of electricity and enjoy a world still untouched by modern industry. Life in the colonies was even more fun because you so many countries were still unexplored territory and the ideal place for adventure. Not taken in account: Victorian values were dominant, women couldn't vote, poor people couldn't vote, industrialization didn't have any health, safety or ethical rules to obey, child labor was rampant, workers had no rights, factories were very harmful to people's health and the environment, city rivers were open sewers, upper class had all the advantages upon the lower class, people could be sent to the poor house when they couldn't pay their debts, many novels were just pulp (think of it as the 19th century version of Internet) and music was strictly symphonic, the first automobiles were as dangerous as electricity, colonization was great for white Europeans but not as much for the oppressed native populations of Africa and Asia, animals were still hunted down as trophies, people who looked different were exploited in freak shows and circuses for spectators to Come to Gawk.

The Interbellum (1920s and 1930s): Between the two world wars, life was great. Everybody went to night clubs and/or revue theaters where they could enjoy great jazz music, girls and comedians. Movie theaters were a great place to be, because fantastic cinematic masterpieces were made. On the radio you could great music and serials, and newspapers published the best and most engaging comic strips ever printed. Not taken in account: From 1920 until 1933 alcohol was prohibited in the USA, so having an alcoholic drink was impossible without getting arrested or dying because of bad homemade brew. Crime was able to organize itself in a way that will probably never get untangled again. Many people got murdered in gangster violence. Jazz music was initially seen as "barbaric" just because it was made by blacks, and it had to be adapted to symphonic music to make it well-known. Hollywood in its early years was subject to more scandals than ever since, leading to a industry-wide censorship that lasted until the 1960s. The Great Depression between 1929 and 1940 caused major unemployment and poverty in many civilized countries, also forcing quite some people to start a life in crime. The "Dust Bowl" generated a desertification of the Midwest. Germany was particularly struck hard, because the country was still paying huge war debts to other countries, causing mass poverty and the ideal atmosphere for Nazism to gain voters. Many countries during this time period suffered under either Nazism, Fascism or Communism. From 1933 on Jewish, homosexual, Romani and left wing people were already persecuted in Nazi Germany, at the same time disagreeing in anything with Stalin meant a one-way ticket to Siberia. War was already brewing in Europe and the Far East, when Japan invaded China and South East Asia. Many countries were still colonies, which wasn't a great deal for the natives there. Afro-Americans were still second class citizens and the Ku Klux Klan was still quite powerful in many political circles.

The '40s and World War II, the time where the entire world was united against a common evil foe and soldiers could still fight a just cause. Everybody worked together to defeat the Nazis or Japanese, while enjoying great Hollywood films and jazz and big band records on the radio. Not taken in account: Not everyone was united against the Axis. Numerous people (even Lindbergh and Ford) didn't consider Nazism or Fascism anything bad or felt their country should stay neutral in the war. During the occupations many people on both sides were arrested, deported, and/or murdered. People couldn't trust anyone, because your neighbor might be a Nazi collaborator or a spy who would turn you in to the authorities. The Nazis banned American and English music and films in Europe, so you could get in big trouble if you tried. Also, you know, there was a big war on. Millions of young soldiers were drafted and died on the battlefield, cities were bombed and occupied by enemy armies, you could die any day, shortages were rife.

The '50s: The last truly great time period in history. Music, films, politicians were nice, clean and decent. There was a general optimistic feeling about the future, exemplified in sunny fashions, interiors and technology. The youth enjoyed some great rock 'n' roll on their transistor radios and the early TV shows show how happy and pleased everybody was. Not taken in account: the Cold War, the Red Scare, anti-communist witch hunts, the Korean War, the French Indochina War, many European countries tried violently oppressing the inevitable independence of their colonies, Afro-Americans were still second-rate citizens in the USA and had to fight for human rights, homosexuals were forced to keep their sexual identity silent in many countries, the traditional role of women as housewives was still encouraged in many Western countries, a lot of music in the hit parade was still the bland, square, formulaic and sappy crooner music popular since the 20s, adults were scared of early rock 'n' roll and actually did everything to suppress the youth from listening to it and becoming teenage delinquents, the TV shows and films of that decade were so escapist that they ignored every controversial element.

The '60s and The '70s, a great time when everybody was a beatnik or a hippie and enjoyed fantastic rock music, marijuana, LSD and free love. People chased bad guys with their own hands with cool funk and disco music playing in the background. The young demonstrated for more democratic rights and everything changed for the better. Not taken in account: the older generation looked down upon hippies, the Vietnam War cost many lives, The Cuba Missile Crisis nearly caused a nuclear war between the USA and USSR, Afro-Americans still had to fight for civil rights, just like today there were just as much idealistic but naïve demonstrators who merely wasted time smoking pot instead of actually doing something, drug casualties were just as rampant back then as they are today, people took the law on their hands because of the alarming crime rates, not helped by the extreme corruption of police forces, psychedelic rock, funk and disco are now confined to sit in the shadow of both rock-and-roll and modern pop music, to the point that for decades, these were considered as the most cheesy genres created by man, [[not all demonstrators were pacifistic in their approach and it's an open question whether everything actually changed for the better.

The '80s: Oh yes. A great decade for pop culture after the sordid '70s and before everything went to the gutter in the '90s: Everybody felt a bright future coming along, as demonstrated by good TV shows, groundbreaking technology, computers and videogames, colorful clothing, simple yet catchy pop music and finally a TV channel that showed your favorite bands 24/7. The Cold War came to an end, the Berlin Wall and Apartheid fell. Not taken in account: The early 1980s had many people fear the Cold War wasn't going to end well. The Latin American debt crisis. President Reagan wanted more nuclear missiles in Europe, envisioned the Star Wars defense system and the "Evil Empire" speech reflected the "Red Scare" at a time "the Bomb" was still making everybody nervous. The Cold War, Berlin Wall and Apartheid did fall, but only near the end of the decade. Unemployment and economic crisis were a huge problem in many Western countries in the early years of the decade and the high speculation led to a bubble which fatigued in 1987 and burst in 1989. AIDS caused many victims because governments were slow to inform the general public on this disease as most people at first dismissed as just a problem for blacks, gays and drug users. TV shows and movies were extremely escapist and PCs and video games were prohibitively expensive. MTV did bring music videos on TV, but the downside was that how a pop star looked and danced became more important than the music, which was now created by computers, becoming increasingly sappy and repetitive as samples became the norm, becoming a disadvantage for those who still wanted to use actual instruments, chords and tunes. Metal and rap were seen as crime-mongering and even "satanic" as a whole. Also drugs went artificial during this time, turning Florida into a Crapsaccharine World. The nuclear power plant explosion in Chernobyl caused another major fear among people about the dangers of nuclear power.

The '90s and The Aughts: Dude. The Cold War has ended, and though some pesky Arabs (and some nutcases in the West) will try to blow people up and some Central European countries will be at each other's throats, there is peace at last! Outsourcing has lifted the West from the heavy load of manual work for good and turn to technology, and anyways, isn't the Internet wonderful? Society and culture are now free to break all imposed boundaries: Music has become more authentic with the arrival of rap, hip-hop, grunge and pop-punk. TV and movies now address modern issues instead of being stuck in those stodgy 50s and 60s. Politicians at last agree on stuff and generally get along. Whatever. Not taken in account: While a couple of years in the late 1990s were quite peaceful, the years before were marked by the extremely chaotic rearrangement of the former Warsaw Pact nations and the decade after was dominated by the Iraq War and memories of 9/11. The "technological revolution" ultimately never became the boon it was supposed to be: Economically, the exodus of manufacturing jobs forced the middle class to live on debt, which would give way to an economic meltdown by the end of the 2000s while privacy would gradually become a major source of concern as personal data became readily accessible. During the 1990s, the Internet was very expensive and was the province of businessmen and geeks while during the following decade, online downloads and chatrooms became incendiary topics. Grunge and "gangsta rap" were better known at their peak for the demise of several of their stars than for the music while hip-hop and pop-punk would be regarded in retrospective as trashy as the bubblegum pop that dominated the late 90s. By increasingly appealing to the trendy set, TV and film became increasingly shallow. While ideological differences became a thing of the past, politics became more self-serving and conflicts became pettier. As a result, people began to feel a sense of disconnection, which eventually led to the rise of strongly ideological populist movements.

SOURCE:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe

EXTRA: IN THE DISTANT YEAR OF 2045.

The New '10s and New '20s : Remember that meme? Do you have a Harriet doll? I need her to complet my My Little Poney: Friendship is Magic and Equestria Girls collection. Do you want to exchange her for my Fluttershy doll? Oh, do you like Lady Gaga? Her music was so deep. “Oppan Gangnam style. Gangnam style. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Gangnam style. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Eh sexy lady. Op, op, op, op oppan Gangnam style. Ehh sexy lady, oh, oh. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh”. Oh, i love your funko pop of Baby Groot!  “ Gotta get that. Gotta get that. Gotta get that. Gotta get that that that. Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom (Gotta get that). Boom boom boom. (Gotta get that) Boom boom boom. That boom boom boom. That boom boom boom. Boom boom boom”. Avengers Assemble! 

Not taken in account: The Syrian refugee crisis. The burning of the Amazon jungle. Donald Trump as the american president. Jair Bolsonaro as the brazilian president. The Covid-19 Pandemic. Navy oil in the beachs of the brazilian north east. The Brazilian Cinematheque getting closed. Height of murders of LGBTQ in Brazil. Disney monopolizing the american TV an Movie Industry.

@theroguefeminist @ardenrosegarden @witches-ofcolor @mademoiselle-princesse @butterflyslinky @anghraine @notangryenough @musicalhell @rollingthunder06 @graf-edel-weiss @princesssarisa @culturalrebel @irreplaceable-ecstasyy @im-captain-basch @iphisquandary @jonpertwee

[namegoesup]

Hey! I’m an asexual too 🙌 I was wondering, do you consider aces to be part of the lgbtq+ community? Cause I’ve seen it being a divisive topic, like some people don’t really welcome aces at all, and some say if you’re a heteroromantic ace then you don’t belong, and such.

uh hell yeah i do. in my humble opinion the lgbt community is for anyone who is not cisgender or who is not heterosexual. that's literally the only requirement u only have to meet one of the two criteria. asexuality is a sexual orientation that isn't the majority, just like homo/bi/or pansexuality. like there is no question about it for me, ace people 100% belong in the lgbt community. the struggles aren't the absolute same of course (as they are different for everyone) but there is a lot of overlap in areas shared by those already accepted in the lgbt community (being told something is wrong w u, that what u feel isn't natural, there's even a religious aspect in the sense that many people believe in the idea of "ur meant to procreate so u must be sexually attracted to fulfill that" or that "sex between a husband and wife is sacred" ect., experiencing sexual violence).,,and then i know people love to say that asexual people don't suffer from any oppression when our world revolves around sex, especially for young people today when relationships usually start out as hookups or at least are expected to ..,,or most people ,,,the majority of people.,,need sex to have a healthy and sustainable relationship.,,we are not part of the majority here. and that's why heteroromantic aces still belong.,,bc ur still not sexually attracted to someone.,,,

[andysnorwayaffairs]

Final Project

Pt 1; a perfect ending. feeling a rush of shared excitement - finally! just like me!

warmth, embraced, a queer kind of friendship. we sat in the grass and talked about how our lives were growing up, how our queerness was realized and how it affected the way we walk in the world. our stories are so similar yet so, so different. miles and miles of time away, you announce to your friends that you’re probably maybe gay. you start a spark in their minds, and soon after you’re deemed the trail blazer of coming out. you are brave, do you know it? you were the person who i wished for. so desperate for approval from others, and not meeting anyone like you, i took it upon myself to starve my queerness, the differentness, the part of me that i knew i could definitely be hated for. and i can’t stand the thought of being hated. and a part of me hated myself for who i was. i was taught that i couldn’t love like that, that it wasn’t *real*, that anything other than normal is impossible, wrong, destructive. so i listened, and i believed them. not completely, that is also true. that’s why i never stopped immersing myself in online queer culture, why i desperately searched for any sign of queerness in the online personas i followed and in the fiction that i read. we talked about this too, how we’d entrench ourselves in media and later realize that we were part of the group we were so obsessed with. finally... just like me

you opened your heart so quickly - your friends, they tell me that they’re so happy that you’ve met me. you open a window into your life and lend a hand to help me hop in. i see how you love others, and how they love you. we run through the lawn of a backyard riddled with ripe fruit and laugh like children at how sweet the juice is. we share a meal and spend hours talking about nothing and everything. i sometimes stop and listen to the chatter, and i feel complete warmth even when i cannot understand what is being said. we read the cards i brought and i learn how each of you sees love. i see the way you interact with your loved ones, the way you so deeply care to spend time with them. letting go, giggling in giddy joy, acting like absolute fools. finally, just like me

cried a farewell last night

thank you for offering me a bizarre, unfair amount of kindness

thank you for showing me a glimpse of your life, your entire world

thank you for extending a hand in friendship, in solidarity

thank you for being my friend

I feel like my time here, my glimpse into another person’s life, feels like a glimpse into an alternate timeline. A timeline in which I accepted myself from the beginning. A timeline in which I told a friend about my crush on Jen from Buzzfeed. A timeline when I refused to normalize myself, refused to uphold the boundaries that were unfairly placed on me. A timeline when I was brave. A timeline when I stopped being so damn scared. A timeline when I realized that my friends would still stay friends with me, and those who didn’t want to, I should let go of anyways. There will always be people who don’t match up with your values, your energies, your being. I won’t lie to myself and say that it wouldn’t hurt like a bitch, but it’s a hard fact of life that homophobes, transphobes, racists, xenophobes, ie bigots exist and there will be always be bullies and people who don’t care about you, who WANT to put you down, who want to hurt you. In a world of power, there will be those with some and those without. I was given a small window into my friend’s life and saw a life pathway built around friendships who learn and grow right alongside you. I’ve always thought about that – what if? What if I let go earlier? In my timeline, the forces around me were not as kind to me. I was told queerness was ugly, so utterly upside down. I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. Perhaps if I had a positive role model to tell me that it WAS okay, that it was beautiful and wonderful. Perhaps if I had a friend like them in my life who was the first to come out and encouraged others by simply living their life the way THEY want to, perhaps I would have had the courage to do so earlier. I can’t change the past.

But I can think about how the events of my past shaped my present, and how my present shapes my future. Thank God - I DID let go! There’s no race to live your truth, but oh god it feels so good to do it NOW. I’m so thankful that I found the bravery these people I know now have embraced so many years ago. I feel like my own person, like an entire human soul. I don’t feel the need to please anyone. This queer experience, of finding yourself and maybe even fearing yourself, but, ultimately, coming to love yourself despite dominant society failing you, that is a queer experience. Regardless of any experience, something we all share is having to live in a world that ultimately does not accept us, does not want us.

An ode to knowing that although things are different here, and that there’s no possible way that I could have had a similar timeline just simply because of how different our spheres and worlds are... despite this, despite the fear and self hate and internal violence I was forced into because of the life I was born into, despite all of this, I was still able to find myself and love myself and find others who love me for my whole humanness.

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world, for our lives and our safety and our happiness. I think the friends I’ve met here are doing that work. Through their love for each other and thus their refusal to conform, to stay quiet, to accept the norms in place.

Meeting this special friend may have been completely chance, but I believe fate had a little bit to do with it too. To give me this window, to let me see what beauty it is to allow a person to be themselves. The sooner, the better.

____ DISCUSSION

Pt 3:

It’s funny to see how these ppl’s reflections of their lives fit in line with exactly what we discussed through our readings and class discussions. Norway may be progressive in law, but not necessarily in practice. Each of the queer people I asked this about, or asked them to speak about their queer experience, expressed frustration at there not being much of a strong queer community here, and how they still experienced everyday oppression (you may call these micro aggressions).

Nordic model of inclusion + welfare, making this a space where it is looked down upon to discriminate for someone’s sexuality

A different relationship to Christianity

In the U.S., I grew up in a heavily queerphobic, heavily strict and monitored environment where I was even monitoring myself, reprimanding myself for all of the gay content I was consuming but allowing myself to keep doing it because I was “outside” of the community and thus could not be associated with it or have to think of the consequences.

In middle school I was fully aware that I had strong crushes on gay female celebrities but was petrified of sharing that information with anyone.

I shut myself down immediately, but continued to consume gay, lgbt, and trans media for years and years after, allowing myself to do this because I could convince myself that I was just “a straight girl” who was a big fan of the community.

After coming to college and experiencing true freedom from the expectations and values placed on me, it took me less than three days to come to the realization that I was in fact, extremely not straight. It took me 6 more months to fully feel comfortable admitting to myself and claiming the label that I was gay. It took me another year to “come out” to all of my friends and folx I really cared about.

-talk about how this is a divide between my experience and the experiences of the friends I made here. L & their friends came out when they were extremely young, in middle school actually. Our timelines diverge here.

Only recently, I began to make friends on the shared experience of our queerness. Meeting my close friends now, sharing intimate + tender moments. Loving each other and supporting one another the way family might do. A queer kind of love shared in these emotional bonds. A kind of love I had not experienced before my full acceptance and life as a queer person. Tender, radical love.

Meeting L, sharing on our experience of being queer and trans. And not to say that their life in Norway is so much better. The Nordic model may allow for some general acceptance, but queerphobia still has its roots in other malicious ways. Many of L’s friends still don’t use their pronouns. A is called the slur version of the word lesbian, and she recognizes that being a lesbian is not favorable to society. She wants to be a prof of gender studies at her uni but told me that since there is already one queer person on staff, she’ll never be hired on.

M telling me about how even tho queer ppl are accepted on the outside, and in the law, in practice, not so much.

-A telling me that people hate lesbians

-in Norwegian, the word for lesbian is also really similar to the slur, “fucking lesbian”

CONNECTION TO THE FIRST ARTICLE WE READ

Norway’s state feminism and inclusion of queerness is heteronormative, only assimilating those that fit into the family, hetero model (thinking to naked sculpture park, extremely family oriented)

Same sex has to still be straight – family, private, culturally straight.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Does dysphoria always mean that a person is transgender? For example, could a cis woman experience physical & social dysphoria, but still be a woman? I thought I was ftm for a few years, but being called a man felt off too. Then I started playing with genderqueer labels, but lately I've been wondering if I'm just a dysphoric cis woman. Is that a thing?

Lee says:

Identifying as trans is what makes someone trans. I actually recently read a book on gender dysphoria that said “Not everyone who is transgender experiences gender dysphoria, and not everyone who experiences gender dysphoria is transgender.”

Some cis people may experience dysphoria but not identify as trans, which seems to be more common with women and especially lesbians. Gay men also seem to have a higher rate of gender dysphoria than straight men, but they don’t seem to be able to be as open about it because of toxic masculinity.

A cis lesbian woman who got top surgery

The second question in this post is a cis gay man who wants bottom surgery

Is transitioning the only cure for gender dysphoria?

Can cis people have body dysphoria?

cisgender female who’d be happier without boobs

What are some examples of cis people experiencing gender dysphoria?

Cis With Dysphoria

Can cisgender people experience genital dysphoria?

Of course dysphoria is more commonly experienced by trans people than it is with cis people, and it’s experienced by many (and maybe even most) trans folk. But some trans people may not experience dysphoria, or label what they’re experiencing as dysphoria, so you don’t need dysphoria to be trans. 

Non-dysphoric trans people are still trans

More about non-dysphoric trans people

Non-dysphoric trans people

Gender euphoria

Do I have to have Dysphoria to be Trans?

I think it’s really invalidating and gatekeeper-y for someone to insist they know someone else’s gender better than they do.

If someone has questioned their gender and explored the trans community but ultimately decide that they’re cis but have dysphoria, who are we to say that’s invalid?

I think that it’s always best to believe someone when they state who they are, instead of trying to impose rules on their identity and claim they have to fit within certain guidelines to identity as either trans or cis.

If it isn’t okay to tell a trans person that they’re actually cis and in denial, it isn’t okay to tell cis people they’re actually trans and in denial.

So in the end, having dysphoria not having dysphoria doesn’t automatically make anyone trans or cis. Basically, yes, it’s possible to identify as a dysphoric cis woman or whatever makes you most comfortable.

Ren says:

There’s a lot of discussion about this (not all of it nice, or trans-inclusive). When it comes down to it, though, I’m not really sure that anybody can tell you what the answer is for you in particular.

A lot of people will say that it’s common for women to feel uncomfortable about their gender, because of misogyny, and also because a lot of womanhood is built on things that are inherently discomfiting (like sexualization and objectification). I can see where that argument is coming from, but I think it’s taking a lot of things for granted (like gender essentialism, i.e. the belief that gender is a static, unchangeable, unquestionable fact; a “universal female experience”, which simply does not exist; and the fact that being trans and otherwise queer can look and feel and be an infinite number of ways).

Generally, I would say that if your gender doesn’t feel right, it’s for a reason, and you should listen to that reason, and try to follow it. It sounds like that’s what you’ve been doing, which is great - but also that your journey thus far hasn’t been very fulfilling or productive for you, and it makes sense that it’s been a frustrating experience because of that.

Here is the advice I would offer. Let’s say that you can be a dysphoric cis woman. If that’s the case, what does being a cis woman mean to you? Likewise, what does your dysphoria mean to you? What are the changes you want to make in order to reduce that dysphoria, if any, and what do those changes mean to you?

A butch lesbian can consider herself a cis woman, experience dysphoria, and make changes to alleviate it - maybe the same changes that a genderqueer person or trans man would make. What would make that person trans is the decision to use the word.

If you find comfort and community and fulfillment in the word trans, then I would encourage you to keep exploring nonbinary identity - there is more out there than genderqueer. You may also consider looking into different ways that traditionally cis, but otherwise queer women experience gender: butch women, lesbians, and bi women have a rich history of expressing and understanding gender in very different ways from the traditional cis non-queer woman. It may be there that your journey takes you, and that is okay.

Here’s some resources that might give you some insight into other nonbinary identities and other queer gender experiences:

Non-binary resources

NB Flowchart

What am I?

Harper says:

I’m going to add on something a little contrary to your advice Ren, but I’d absolutely second the latter half of your advice: if a transgender embodiment is right for you, absolutely go ahead and embrace that, it is nothing to be ashamed of or shy away from if it is for you.

However, I’d absolutely say some cis women experience dysphoria, and I’d also say this is a point that can be made (and something that can be felt) without being gender essentialist at all.

Although dysphoria is often the grounding experience for a lot of trans people, and it is often the reason that many trans people seek medical assistance with their transitions.

However, if we’re going to talk about dysphoria, we need to first approach it from a wider approach. We are all living in the same world and so are subject to the same material and social forces. Each of these forces will impact us and affect us in different ways. These forces can be understood largely in terms of oppressive forces that systematically benefit the ruling class: rich, white, straight, cis men. In such a world, misogyny is a force that dictates which bodies are allowed to exist, and for what purpose.

I won’t make any rulings on what is and isn’t dysphoria, but an appreciation of dysphoria rooted in being non-consensually gendered (at birth: ”It’s a boy!”, “It’s a girl!”) can be a way forward. This notion always then reflects back onto constructions of gender that uphold cis heterosexuality: certain bodies are made to be girls, or women; and girls and women are aspects of a class that is made to always and only reflect back onto men for their advantage.

This is a violent and non-consensual state of affairs, and it is not one that will come with any comfort for anyone who doesn’t benefit from it: LGBT people, women, and so on. It doesn’t surprise me, at all, that a dysphoric experience can be attributed to an individual’s experiences within womanhood, and also to an individual’s experiences being otherwise gendered.

For example, as a trans lesbian, I experience dysphoria given the world’s instance that I should not be a woman (the “usual” dysphoria that comes with being trans). I also experience dysphoria when I dress in a way that makes me look “straight”. If I don’t dress in a way considered gay, or lesbian, etc., I get distressed, dysphoric. This latter dysphoria is completely within the axis of being a woman and the pressures that comes with to make myself available and centered around men: through the way I act and the way I dress.

I also know several cis women (admittedly all lesbians, so perhaps that limits the scope of my argument here), who experience dysphoria. Being cis doesn’t mean you can’t have a troubled relationship to gendered forces, and it doesn’t mean you can’t question them. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t, at any point, and for any reason, re-analyse your position to gender: to consider a transgender identity, or to re-consider your identification in sexuality.

I think, therefore, that the notion that “dysphoria means you’re trans” can be unhelpful; diverting women from a way of conceptualizing their profound discomfort to a world that aggressively sexualises and oppresses them. It can also divert attempts at solidarity within a community of trans and cis women, and between women and trans people as a whole. Dysphoria, and conversations about our lived experiences, can then be used to form a more cohesive (and less lonely) class appreciation of what it’s like to live under white heteropatriarchy.

In the meantime, see our dysphoria page, and the above links. Hope this helps somewhat!

[landofsomethingsomething]

It’s so god damn easy to tear people down. People do it every day. It’s simple, it’s satisfying, it’s cathartic, it feels like balm to people who have been wronged, to people who have suffered, to people who have to live their lives outside this virtual space in fear and in real danger, in abusive households and abusive communities and situations that do not foster kindness, empathy, or the extension of good faith toward strangers. Being able to lash out safely from behind a screen at people that are safe to lash out at and who feel like a source of your continuing oppression -- that’s novel, at first. It’s invigorating. It’s freeing. The ability to be angry, to say angry things, to express your hurt and rage at any number of nameless or unnamable things is so fucking seductive it’s no wonder so many lgbt+ people have spent time in that place, have had periods of their lives where they engaged in this behavior and said what they wanted and lashed out without thought and allowed others so similar to them to enable their behavior. 

It’s so easy to find lgbt+ people who are in pain. To take these people who are in pain and to give them targets. To mold young people and your peers and take advantage of their trauma (so like your own!) and whip it up, normalize it within your group, foster it on any number of available platforms. Focus it on whoever you deem deserving at any given time. Actions speak louder than words. Context is irrelevant. Dialogue is weak. Abusers are abusers are abusers, except when you’re the abuser, because the abuse you have suffered justifies your actions. Your abuse makes you relatable. Your abuse is more important, more valid, more meaningful, more deserving of the care and empathy of others regardless of your coping mechanisms. 

It’s so damn fucking easy to just say whatever you want on the internet. It’s so easy to paint a group with whatever paintbrush you like, because no one fact checks, no one cares about context, no one concerns themselves with nuance, no one views the words on the screen in front of them as coming from another human being with an entirely separate lived history full of its own tragedy and triumph and biases and triggers and needs and understanding and hard fucking learned lessons. 

We separate into teams and look for ways to score points against the other side. We make ourselves willfully ignorant so we don’t have to switch sides, or even better, remove ourselves from the game entirely. We busy ourselves with tearing our enemies down with unattainable standards, ignore our own hypocrisy, and look to our side to tell us we’re right, we’re right, this time we are right and we will not be silenced and we will not be bullied and we will not let them win. 

Our actual abusers don’t see any of it. They don’t care. They go on living their lives. We take our rage and our pain and our frustration out in arenas we understand, in the places we feel safe, and the people we lash out at are the people who should be our friends, our allies, our brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings who have suffered so much in a world that denies our sexuality, denies our gender, denies our expression, denies our right to exist. 

We know our abusers won’t listen. We know our pain is nothing to them, a drop in a bucket. So we hurt the people that can’t help but listen, because our stories are so alike. 

I went through an angry phase. I spent a few years screaming at people I felt deserved it, too. Some of them did and some of them didn’t, and doing so brought me short term satisfaction and a deep sense of power that I had not experienced anywhere else. A deep resonance with my own identity that I was powerless to exhibit anywhere in my real life, because family is complicated, friends are the choir and speaking up about microaggressions at work gets queer people fucking fired every fucking day, and you need that god damn money to eat. to live. to pay for your fucking brain pills. 

So. 

When you have a platform and a fandom and you feel that thrill of being heard, finally -- I get it. 

But here’s the thing. 

Your abuse never justifies levying abuse on others, strangers, people whose context you do not know and whose stories you have not heard. 

Your emotions are valid. You are free to feel however you like. If you need to vent in private, among friends and colleagues and people you feel safe with, by all means. 

Your favorite characters and your favorite ships and your favorite relationships and your fanfiction and your fanart may be how you express yourself or vent or cope. Your Shit means different things to different people, and to some, it means nothing at all. Let it fucking go. Your shit is not the bar of lived experience other people in fandom must meet to be considered sufficiently oppressed to spare them your bullying. 

Your trigger and your context and your trauma is your own. It does not belong to anyone else. It is your responsibility to understand your limits and respect the rights of other creators, just as it is the responsibility of creators to properly tag and label their work to spare those whom it might upset the indignity of reliving their trauma within a space that is supposed to be safe for them. A space that for some may be the only safe space they have. A space that for some may be the only escape available to them. A space that, for some, may be the only way they can begin to express themselves, furtively, in stolen moments in an oppressive environment. 

Fandom is where so many of us found ourselves. It’s full of us, lgbt+ people in various life stages, expressing ourselves in communities dedicated to content that made us feel enough to find ourselves here in the first place. It’s where children currently are discovering labels for feelings they have never had the words to talk about before. It’s where adults go in the midst of their busy lives to contribute to a body of work motivated by nothing but emotion for the source, for the community, and/or for the hope of encouraging feedback from their peers, their fans, their heroes, all three. It’s where everyone goes and discovers there are people out there just like them, after all. 

It’s where people are picking their teams and suiting up and getting in line and hurting people just like them, every day. 

It’s where people are putting the feelings and wellbeing and sanctity and rights of fictional characters over those of actual human beings who committed the grave sin of enjoying a thing a different way, or for different reasons.

Fandom is full of amazing connection and moments I wouldn’t trade for the world. I wouldn’t be married to my amazing wife right now without it. But it’s also a battlefield in a bubble where I watch oppressed people tear each other apart every single day, while of course, in the meantime, outside the filmy fucking boundary between this world and the real one, the same privileged sorts continue to dominate every aspect of mainstream media, the white house is full of incompetent, hateful people, some of whom are literal nazis, white nationalists feel safe enough to wear swastikas on public transit in liberal epicenters, gay men in russia are being sent to death camps, the police are murdering people of color indiscriminately without fear of personal or professional consequence, the supreme court is one death or retirement away from setting back civil rights in the united states a century, trans people have to watch a nation of frightened pissbabies scream about the sanctity of public bathrooms while they themselves suffer from an increased rate of being literally fucking murdered simply for existing, gay teenagers ostracized from conservative families sleep homeless in the street with winter fast approaching, hurricanes devastate a dozen nations because this century has paved a political landscape where corporate profits prevail over basic human rights  -- and you know what, fuck it, let’s make it a little personal -- 

half my family has never acknowledged the fact that I have been married for a year because they don’t believe it is a legitimate marriage because I and my wife are both women, my wife and I went to the hairdresser the other day and when we checked in with the same last name we were asked if we were sisters (and upon clarifying, the woman who was to cut our hair loudly and incredulously gasped, “is that legal here?”), one of my best friends, a woman I have known since high school (that’s 17 years ago, for those keeping count) was told she would have to undergo a thorough and lengthy process via working with HR, her boss and the owner of her company before she could represent herself as her correct gender at work - and even after she jumped through all those hoops, she was told she was absolutely not allowed to use the women’s restroom under any circumstances - When I told my father about my engagement, he tearfully turned to me and said “but you’re supposed to marry a guy, and have babies” - and because this was my father, who I have always had a good relationship with despite remaining closeted most of my life, who I have always and still deeply love despite the shit that comes out of his mouth sometimes, who worked 12 hour days in construction to support me after divorcing my mother when he was nineteen years old - I actually fucking felt guilty. 

The memory of how I felt in that moment will follow me until I fucking die, and when I log on to this website at the end of the day and just want to fucking relax and spend time yammering about things I like with people who like those same things, when I just want to spend time in this space that makes me feel good, when I just want to create content for the joy of creating it and the joy of seeing others enjoy the thing I created -- the fucking last thing I want is to see myself, my wife, my close friends and fandom friends alike being put on blast by petty people leveraging a nebulous, ever-changing definition of purity, backed by a group of people I know have suffered and hurt and feel justified hurting others because of it. 

Fandom is where we go to escape the hellish fucking bullshit that is reality, for fuck’s sake.

I don’t fucking care who hurt you. Visiting pain upon others in the aftermath is your choice. Bullying others because a group of impressionable, hurting people looking for a leader will follow you into the trenches here on a battlefield where we should all fucking know better is your choice. 

Your feelings aren’t always your choice. That’s fair.

The way you choose to express and react to and process and deal with those feelings IS your choice.

Your actions are your choice.

So try to be kind. Try to be empathetic. Understand your feelings and understand when you are being manipulated and for god’s sake, when other queer people come out in droves to tell their stories, try to think critically, even if they are on the other “team.” Block content that upsets you. Use tools available to you to keep yourself safe! Blacklist tags. Blacklist URLs. Block people. Be frank about your triggers if you are able and try to give people the benefit of the doubt -- and if you can’t, put space between you and them, and then use the myriad of tools available to you to put a wall in that space. 

I know all about the kind of catharsis that comes from being a “mean gay.” I know all about constructing a set of rules within a group and then judging others outside that group by that context and punishing them when they fail purity tests they knew nothing about. I know all about fighting disrespect with disrespect and anger with anger and logging out at the end of the day to go cry -- not because I was sad, but because I was so fucking angry I couldn’t process the emotion any other way. 

I also know all about walking away from that life, that toxicity. I know about taking a break. I know about reading, a lot, for months and years, about experiences both like and very much unlike my own. I know about resolving to be better. I know about cutting out the people who made me worse, and keeping the people who encouraged me to be better. 

I know how much my life improved when I endeavored to keep my venting and negativity among friends who could actually support me, in places where I couldn’t hurt anyone, and present a positive force to the public, instead. To lift up the things I like and to block and move on with the things I don’t. To let creators have their space and their platform here in this one place where we can each carve out some small part for ourselves and feel like we are in control for once in our fucking lives. I know I stopped crying so much. I know my hobbies stopped making me so angry, all the time. I know that the only times I have been truly, deeply upset in my time in this fandom have been when I have been targeted or those I care about have been targeted. 

I know how fucking hard it is to tear yourself away. 

I know how fucking worth it it is. 

Take care of yourselves. 

[feminismforlesbians]

I mostly see accounts of people who were terfs in their youth and changed their mind. What made you go the other way?

@bluegone  

I’m finally back at my laptop. 

(I had this huge essay going in reply to this and then realized that absolutely no one would read of all it and started from scratch).

I’d have to agree with some of the people who commented on this through replies or reblogs while I was away—-I have never seen someone who was a “terf in their youth” shift entire ideologies into liberal feminism. You’ll see a lot of people apologize profusely for being a transphobic cis gay before opening their eyes to tumblr dot com and becoming an instant trans inclusionist. That means that as young 14, 15, 16 year olds (their youth) they had never heard of gender identity vs sex or else didn’t know that attraction based on sex, which was their natural attraction, was a bad thing. It doesn’t mean they were “terfs”. It means they were young gay or bisexual kids who hadn’t ever been exposed to gender theory before and now have subscribed fully to it, apologies for the past crime of feeling sex-based attraction always ready to be offered up. They didn’t change their minds from one ideology to another; they simply subscribed to one without comparison to anything else. 

I actually fully engaged in one movement, then consciously made the decision to subscribe to a different one. 

I’ve been on this hellsite for a very long time. I’m 21 now and I was either 14 or just newly 15 when I first ~made an account. The mainstream “LGBT and feminist movement” on here is liberal trans-inclusive ace-inclusive feminism. It’s large, it’s the default, it’s the social justice community you participate in unless 1) you know there’s a different one you value and you find it or 2) you find a different one through the mainstream and value it (a la me). This mainstream collective has enjoyed trends such as monosexual privilege, gender bang pt 1, mogaii, split attraction model, gender bang pt 2, “q*eer”, and others. I was involved in all aforementioned and the others in between. I believed myself to be bisexual when I first started, because I knew I was attracted to girls and I assumed I was attracted to guys. The monosexual privilege, mogaii, and split attraction model trends all did fantastic jobs of reinforcing this internalized heterosexism but also created a substantial amount of internalized lesbophobia. Gender bang pt 1 and the split attraction model together also created some short-lived but intense body sex dysphoria (wherein I would find myself browsing through packers and binders and shutting my eyes while using the restroom, despite still knowing myself to be a woman) because between the pressure to hyperdefine every aspect of my attraction and to deconstruct my gender, I went through the extra identity crisis that was never needed. This is all a very compressed version of the experience, and is more of a background for the events that started the momentum to my switch in ideologies. 

The tumultuous gender and sexuality crises that I personally experienced as a result of these trends lasted from about the ages 14 to 18; I didn’t start to drift away from the libfem community until I was 20. It was not the personal crises that made me leave, and it’s not my crying about them, about my individual woe-is-me tale that makes me a “terf”. It’s the foundation, though, and that’s why it’s worth mentioning. So you are aware I am not talking out of my ass when I describe things in the libfem community, like language used, priorities made, or the effects on young and/or gay people. I’m not talking out of my ass because I was fully subscribed to it for years; enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. It was my community. 

By the time I was about 18-19 I had finally just let myself be a girl and the sex dysphoria had dissipated along with the frantic attempts to gender-trend myself so that I could make my sexuality “make sense”; I knew I was attracted to girls and though I assumed I must have been attracted to guys, I couldn’t describe how and gender-trending seemed to be the answer. I let that go, the gender-trending part, and then I was just a “cis” bisexual girl. I was okay with that; I accepted that trans people were The Most Oppressed. I knew (and still know) that trans people are deserving of safety, and health care, and that dysphoria can be life threatening. I was content with the standards that trans people came first. Trans women are women and trans men are men, check your cis privilege, and so on. 

And then somewhat of a trio of things of happened in quick succession: there was finally that “duh…I’m a lesbian” moment, a wave of gender theory craze that I call gender bang pt 2, and then I got involved in the ace diskhorse. When I finally let myself be a lesbian it was like…learning to fly. For about two seconds. I just felt free from the discomfort and frustration and pain I’d put myself through trying to convince myself I was attracted to men when I really just wasn’t. And then I came out as a lesbian on here, on this hellsite, and I got people telling me, immediately, that that was great as long as I wasn’t One Of Those Lesbians. The terfy ones. Suddenly it became imperative that every time I talked about women I said and trans women. It was with my own internal freedom to be attracted only to women that I finally saw that the reverse was true in this community I was a part of. I was friends with straight women, bisexual women, pansexual women, q*eer women, q*eer nonbinary people, and many trans people. And they were all attracted to men. And what I watched was how normalized and encouraged attraction to men was—how the “thirst” for men was being called empowering and sexy and “q*eer”. Maybe it is empowering and sexy (it’s certainly not “q*eer”), but not when attraction women was either hush hushed or practically infantilized. Attraction to men was loud and suggestive and sexual and humorous and encouraged; attraction to women was…not. This I noticed first. Men and women. And then I noticed something else. It was okay to connect men to penises. It was assumed, by nearly every person around me, that when one “thirsted for that dick” they were talking about a man and that was okay. If someone said “I really want to fuck her”, without even citing whether “cis” or trans, the entire community was on alert. If someone were to say “I would eat her out”, there would be goddamn riots in the name of transphobia. This was where I started think that it was kind of fucked up that people could be “transphobic” in talking about men and penises have it celebrated as feminist, and then utterly destroyed for talking about women and vulvas. This was where I started to wonder why it was okay for my straight female friend to talk about her thirst for men using explicit details involving dick, but it wasn’t okay for me, a lesbian, to have a sexual attraction to vulvas. This was where I started to want to ask questions about sex-based attraction (but I didn’t, because you don’t ask questions in libfem communities. You just accept, validate, and welcome everybody and shut your goddamn mouth if you don’t.)

This overlapped with the gender bang pt 2, which was a reinforcement of the gender theory that had been prevailing for a while but was more significant to me at the time. While I was now starting to wonder why people attracted to men could specify male genitalia in their attraction and lesbians weren’t permitted to do the same for women, there was beginning a larger push to pretend like biological sex didn’t exist at all. There was a push for people to believe that only gender, a concept of personal identity, factored into attraction. It was a push that made it so a woman was only a woman because she said so, and to speak of biological sex was to be transphobic. It was a push that deconstructed my womanhood and my sexuality in one blow. It was a push that further amplified discussions of “dick”, except now where my lack of participation in such talks would have been unnoticeable, it was a “red flag”. It was upsetting. It wasn’t trans people that were upsetting to me, or trans women, or trans “validity”. I wasn’t angry about the fact that trans people existed, I didn’t wish them ill or dead. I was angry that my femaleness, my womanhood, the part of who I was for which this movement claimed to stand for—feminism—was now the enemy. It was being erased. I was angry that my sexuality, which I had had barely a breath to revel in, which I had had denied to me through all this other genderist bullshit, was now treated as a “risk factor” for being a transphobe—the ultimate evil. I couldn’t say any of this, though, I couldn’t ask any questions, I couldn’t differ even slightly in opinion, or disagree with something or have some fucking boundaries, because this is the libfem circles we are talking about. So, instead, I just buried my thoughts because part of me felt that maybe I was evil for thinking that way. 

And right around then I stumbled into the ace diskhorse. Yes, that one area within liberal feminism where there is the slightest variety—I say slightest because in fact, if you openly suggest ace exclusion as a libfem, you will be decimated just as you would for criticizing genderism. However, I say variety, because there are a decent amount of libfems who are ace exclusionists but subscribe to literally everything else in libfem rhetoric. That’s where I found myself, on another tiny blog, lurking curiously in these trans-inclusive gender-not-sex q*eer ace-exclusive posts. (Mind, I am ace exclusive. But that’s not what makes me a terf. Just an aphobe, apparently). This was where I learned that, hey, it was possible to not agree with every single little thing that the tumblr mainstream declared “valid”. I had never strayed away from the mainstream because I didn’t know of any other circle except, you know, terfs, which were obviously evil—so why would I have ever bothered to look at a so-called terf’s blog or in a “terfy” tag? I hadn’t. I hadn’t ever seen anything but the tumblr mainstream all very forcefully agreeing with each other, supported by kawaii banners and not much else. Yet here was the tiny ace-exclusive corner, where people actually discussed like, concepts, and constructs, and facts, and histories, and actual manifestations of oppressions. I saw people actually asking goddamn questions. 

A few times, I would see an ace-inclusive libfem telling an ace-exclusive libfem that they were evil fucking aphobes that were “just as bad as terfs”. Privately, I would think, no, no I’m not like a terf. Terfs are evil! They want to kill trans women and are total fetishists! I don’t want to kill anyone, I know trans people. Just because I think maybe being female matters and that maybe it’s okay to be attracted to sex, does not mean I’m a terf. 

So it was all happening in congruence: I was a lesbian finally free from her own internalized lesbophobia, looking to embrace and revel in my sexuality after hating it for so long, as the community I trusted told me that it was wrong to desire vulva but empowering to suck dick. I was starting to look up and outside and thinking about asking questions just as I discovered that questions could be asked. I was thinking.

I can identify a moment that could be called the catalyst. 

I was perusing my ace-exclusionist corner, and an ace-exclusionist libfem had made a post about asexuality that a “terf” had dared agree with. There was no mention of trans people or sex or gender on either end and still the libfem said:

“go get hit by a truck and die, terf”

It was so brutally violent and since the “terf” had said nothing that was trans or gender or sex related, I thought that this must mean that terfs are so universally evil they’re worthy of fucking death threats just for commenting on a post. And then I worried the thoughts I’d been having, the anger about devaluing my sex and sexuality in the name of trans activism, were terfy. And so I clicked on that terf’s blog, to see how maliciously cruel and hateful these terfs were so that I could reaffirm my previous loyalty to trans-inclusive feminism. 

Except what happened was that I clicked on that terf’s blog and she wasn’t the spawn of Satan. I clicked on people she reblogged from and people they reblogged from and soon found myself lurking in honest-to-God terf circles. It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t evil. No one was asking for the rapes and murders of trans women. No one was fetishizing women. There were black terfs and brown terfs and disabled terfs and lesbian terfs and bisexual terfs and young terfs and older terfs. These terfs weren’t at all the kawaiied pasteled hivemind that libfem was. They actually talked about things; they explored, explained, and support ideas, history, facts, and values. It was invigorating. They didn’t all agree all the time all at once and no one was threatening lives for having a different perspective. Their commonality? In the most basic definition, these trans exclusive radical feminists believed in sex-based oppression, in sex-based attraction, and in the prioritization of women in feminism. Obviously there’s much more to it than that; that’s what made it so fascinating, this movement that had a foundation and entire layers of analyses and arguments and facts and history and convictions. 

I lurked and I lurked and I lurked and then I said fuck it, and I made a blog. I believe that gender is a social construct, that biological sex is fact, that sex-based oppression exists; I don’t want trans people dead, I don’t think trans people don’t deserve health care, I don’t think trans people don’t deserve safety. There’s more, but those are the baselines. 

So I guess now I’m a terf that switched sides. And apparently deserving of things like getting hit by a truck and dying. Comes with the territory when you decide to be part of a movement that asks questions and doesn’t deny reality. 

[girlxfriday-blog]

just let ‘em talk about it

I’m just gonna use my lil tumblr as a platform to talk about something. so, I joined SKAM fandom recently, one of my best friends who I met through a different fandom six years ago advised me to try SKAM. she warned me about how.. shaming... the fandom can be. I joined after we watched S3 together by writing a ABO fic which I ended up being quite proud of, considering I’ve only ever wrote for kinkmemes before, not multichaptered ‘proper’ fics. I also felt I explored ABO dynamics well, writing Isak as an omega who comes to embrace being an omega but very much being his own person, independent, intelligent, and Even as an empathetic, sensitive yet strong alpha. I certainly didn’t want to ‘police’ myself but it was important to me to consider how it might be to be an omega or an alpha in a ABO AU. Thankfully, no one ‘came’ for me the way some people have experienced in SKAM. The worst comments I got were from people who don’t like multishipping, which, ok, that’s your choice to not read anything except straight up Even/Isak.

My real bugbear is to do with the ever-difficult top and bottom discourse, always something that causes issues in fandom but it is quite strange in SKAM. Tops and bottoms exist in LGBT relationships and LGBT culture. This may be something tumblr wants to pretend doesn’t exist because it ‘forces gender norms’ or w/e, but as someone who has spent a lot of time on U.K gay scenes with gay and queer men, in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham… it exists. It’s totally ok for a guy to identify as a top or a bottom. They’re not being oppressed by gender norms by doing so. It’s healthy and normal if a queer guy chooses to do this, just as it’s healthy and normal if they choose not to. This fandom is young, sure, so I totally get that people may have very limited experience of sex, particularly LGBT sex, especially LGBT and queer men’s sexual lives and experiences, because the majority of those in the fandom are female but it does bother and worry me that young, perhaps sexually inexperienced women are acting as moral police over a very common, very significant part of LGBT culture such as sexual identities. As a hardened, older, 80% lesbian, 20% pansexual mess with friends of every persuasion, many nights and sometimes mornings spent in gay bars, gay villages, gay communities, with queer men, and women, and everyone in between… let me tell you, it’s ABSOLUTELY ok for someone to be solely a top or solely a bottom, as fine as it is for someone to be versatile…

…not only that, but think about it. If you feel it’s ‘unfair’ for someone to be portrayed solely as a bottom, think about why that is. Is it because you see bottoming as less? Unequal? Not as ‘strong’ as a top? What’s so bad about bottoms and bottoming? The answer is: not one single thing. Being a bottom doesn’t make you weak, doesn’t mean you have less power in the relationship, doesn’t make you lesser or more feminine… and if you are attributing ‘femininity’ to your bottom, upset that someone writes a character solely as a bottom, are we saying that all women and any man who chooses to be penetrated during sex is somehow ‘less’ because of that? It’s extremely misogynistic. So, yeah, I like bottom Isak, and I’ll write bottom Isak, and I’ll read it, that’s my choice and I make no apologies for my preference to view Isak in that way. I couldn’t care less if someone wishes to headcanon, view and write Isak as vers or a top, cool, go for it sweetheart. I will never hate on you for that or make shitty comments on that topic but I expect not to receive shitty comments myself, to be able to enjoy fandom how I wish, without being made to feel like I’m somehow perpetuating gender norms by choosing to use these labels and do so without shame.

I’m aware a while ago when there were photos coming out online of Tarjei looking super buff I tweeted, jokingly, that I’d never write top Isak, regardless of how buff and ~heterosexual~ Tarjei is/appears to be… that was a point I was making, that just because someone is muscular and tall or whatever doesn’t equate to them being a top, being a top or a bottom is a preference, not a characteristic and it’s ridiculous to assume people are something from the way they look. I’ve been targeted myself because of how I look, questions about my sexuality, intrusive questions, being told I’m a liar, I’m a straight girl, how could I possibly be a lesbian? Yet 9 times out of 10, it’s a girl I’m taking home, not a guy even if I don’t ‘look’ gay. I’m also writing fic about Isak, not Tarjei, so it doesn’t matter if Tarjei is the prettiest twink in the world or the most muscular, masc presenting guy ever. It’s Isak I choose to write about.

I get that it’s cool to go against the grain, and sure, I accept that bottom!Isak is much more widely written than the alternative which must be frustrating if you prefer top!Isak but don’t use that to bring down bottom!Isak, using sociological discourse to prove a point when really, it is just a sexual preference. No one is better than the other or worse than the other for their preference of their depiction of Isak. I will champion bottom!Isak, submissive!Isak, because it’s my preference, but I will never bring down top!Isak or dominant!Isak authors, tweeters, posters, because you don’t need to tear something down to big something else up.

[vixianna]

Hey, I just wanted to say that I really loved your post explaining the different aspects of marginalization. One thing that struck me though was when you mentioned that an aspect of invisibility is silencing tactics and preventing oppressed groups from developing language to describe their oppression. I think this is absolutely happening in Ace Discourse, but I wanted to know your thoughts on situations where maybe the invisible group is coopting a hypervisible group's language? (/1)

I’m not talking about the word “queer” because I think that that has a much more far reaching definition by now, but terms like “coming out” or the recent argument around using the chant “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” by aces. Do you feel that language of marginalization is universal enough to have such language shared across groups like that? For example if, such as your example, Asian groups started using terms created by black groups, to describe their marginalization? (/2)

Hey there anon! I waited a few minutes to make sure all your messages came in, so I hope this is your full question. 

The answer is “it depends”. Some language of marginalization is universal, but some is not. “Racism”, “anti-X race” language, “X normativity”, ect are much more universal and is based around talking about roots of oppression itself. Specific language that quantifies a unique expression of a group’s oppression, for example “mammy” stereotype or “lotus flower” stereotype, are not shareable. Even if the root is an exoticification, othering, depersonalization, ect process, they are not the same stereotypes, nor do they have the same exact implications  even if they have the same root. 

Both of the phrases you talked about fall into different categories. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” is a radical rallying cry. It’s purpose is political and aimed at LGBT+ liberation and meant to be focused on straight cis oppressors. It’s not appropriate to use for intracommunity brouhaha, no matter how satisfying it might be for people on either side to say it to someone else.(and this is mostly aimed at inclusionists, don’t do this please.)

On the other hand, “coming out” describes a general LGBT+ experience. It’s about “leaving the closet”, becoming visible when heterosexuality is the assumed default and assumed state of everyone. This isn’t an experience specifically tied one LGBT+ identity. The experience is about refusing invisibility. Some group members then become hypervisible as a result of claiming their identity, but others are then rendered invisible. That is, the forces of oppression then try to deny their existence. This is similar to being in the closet(a state of invisibility), only this time it’s directly coercive and enforced through violence. NBs are typically subjected to enforced invisibility when they attempt to come out. 

The question then becomes, are aces/aros denying invisibility by stating their orientation, and are they then assaulted by being rendered either hyper or invisible? 

I haven’t seen anyone in discourse claim ace/aro identities are “visible”, in fact even the most determined exclusionist say Ace/Aro problems are “mostly about visibility”. So, we know they are “unknown”. Do ace/aros when they assert their existence get subjected to violence meant to either render them silent, deny their existence, or ignore their presence? And I’d say the answer to that is yes. Not just in the discourse, in fact, rarely in the discourse on tumblr itself(though there is a growing concerning movement regarding this among discoursers that I’m going to address when it comes to conversations about radicalization of politics mmhm. Omg I keep promising more posts whhhyyyyy...) Generally, Ace/Aro are subjected to social violence/backlash intended to deny their existence, deny their reality, ignore their experiences, ect. That sort of behavior is subsets of “invisibility making”. That being the case, I think the usage of “coming out” is appropriate when talking about ace/aro labels. (when seen in the context that “coming out” describes a LGBT+ experience surrounding their manifestation of normativity and normativity enforcement.) 

As a final note, I’d like to talk about the coopting of language as a consequence of enforced invisibility. A direct way to enforce invisibility is to remove, ridicule, suppress, ect the language of the oppressed.(and this is especially useful for enforcing internalized powerlessness on the group in question as well.) Language is power, and the denial of language removes the person’s ability to accurately describe, relate, and change the situation they find themselves in. This is the underlying insidious danger around Newspeak in 1984. To remove the ability to even think crimes, to render thoughtcrime(the idea of rebellion and the destruction of the oppressive system) impossible. Enforced invisibility around NB genders is meant to directly prop up the system of binarism over which a lot of patriarchal foundations rest. (Binarism, that there is only two genders, as opposed to being binary. They are very different things. Binarism is a tenant of radfem terfs for example) Enforced invisibility around ace/aro identities is likely used to reinforce heterosexism. You can not merely “opt out” of the system by “not experiencing” these things/desires. You MUST have these desires, so that these desires can be uncatalogued and you sorted properly. So that this proper sorting can be used to enforce other kinds of violence against you. This, btw, is ultimately why I think the system of heterosexism doesn’t like ace/aro IDs. You are not allowed to “opt out”. 

A result of the denial of language though, is the group in question then trying to make their own. If this language and experiences aren’t allowed to be discussed/recognized/are actively fought against, you leave the groups with little choice but opt to use other language. The group will likely recognize that the language of the oppressor group doesn’t fit, it’s why they tried to make their own. They will then opt to use language from a different group, typically groups rendered hypervisible(as their language and culture is plastered with neon and put under a microscope.) 

This isn’t something I support or think should be done, but it’s like my octopod friend says about the difference between primary and secondary aggressor in abusive situation(though they know more about this than I do, the comparison is apt.) “Mutual abuse” doesn’t exist. There is a primary and secondary aggressor. They might be hard to differentiate, but it exists. Once the primary aggressor and abuser stops, the secondary aggressor’s behavior stops. The secondary aggressor’s behavior is dependent on the violence of the primary aggressor, the primary aggressor enacts abuse for internal reasons. 

In this way, the coopting of hypervisible groups language is a result of the primary aggression of enforced invisibility. If these groups were allowed to develop language of their own, they would stop using hypervisible groups language. Now, hypervisible groups aren’t the primary aggressors here, they aren’t the abusers(heterosexism is the abuser here), but as a result of the different way this abuse manifests, you see different behavior from each group. I’d also like to state that playing into enforced invisibility to counter productive. I see a lot of discourse going out of the way to ridicule aro/ace language or NB language. I see a lot of discourse around how “problematic” a term is, often for the implicit purpose of rendering a group silent. I even see discourse that directly contradicts the idea that the group in question exists and has specific experiences to relay that need language. 

This is especially unfortunate coming from other LGBT+ people, because all of the nasty angry screaming they do about Aces/Aros “Stealing” LGBT+ language is only exacerbated by their refusal to allow specific ace/aro language, or their constant regular ridicule of that language(and this is truly mostly aimed at exclusionists. There is a lot of ridiculing of Aro relationships and their language/words for it. And there is a lot of language and posts aimed at claiming aceness isn’t real/doesn’t need to be an ID/isn’t a coherent experience. The latter of which as an enforced form of invisibility is what a lot of inclusionist discoursers have been referring to as “gaslighting”. I can pull up specific examples if need be, but generally claiming an experience doesn’t/isn’t happening, or doesn’t need specific words for it involves enforcing invisibility.). If you want Ace/Aros to stop using “LGBT” language, you have got to let them develop their own words. Without ridiculing it because you think it’s “dumb” or “what everyone experiences”. Without denying that these things happen to them or they are feeling this way. Without being threatened and claiming that every attempt at actualization is Xphobic(this only happens on tumblr, but I’d thought I’d mention it) using tedious, ignorant, illogical statements. Let them make their own language, and they’ll stop using yours. 

[cerullos]

You don't have to answer. Reading the responses to that reblog about ace struggles made me really sad. The way you talk about the ace thing in general makes me sad. And I really like you, actually. I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. And a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist. Ad infinitum. This doesn't have to be the oppression olympics. Intersectionality is the only way out of this mess.

And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence. Is that as bad as being electrocuted? No. But is that the point here? Why say that? Why amplify that kind of divisive message? We just want to belong somewhere. You can believe this or not, but we’re dying here. The LGBT community has been the only safe place I’ve known my entire life. To figure out years later that I was labeling..

myself wrong? It was the most terrifying feeling I’ve ever experienced. It still is. It’s like we don’t exist. One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.

Straight people see us simply as gay, and treat us that way. So we’re getting electrocuted too. Sexual, gay people tell us we’re ‘cis/het’ liars trying to steal their community. So we have no safe space. We can’t find partners. Our friends, family, and fellow LGBT ppl don’t understand us or even believe in our existence. We are constantly questioning out own existence. I don’t mean to flood you. I realize that’s what I’m doing. But I’ve seen this kind of post coming from your direction a few…

times now. And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly. You’ve got a lot of followers. And being ace has made me full on suicidal in the past. So just. Think about it. Gay ace is a real thing. Can you see how you might have…

privilege over a person like that? everyone in my life sees me as gay. I fall in love with women. and yet here we are. can’t you see how I might want to be in your shoes? At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.

Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.

okay, this is long but i’m going to try to keep my answers as succinct as possible. i don’t know if this was your intention, but elements of this message feel vaguely guilt-tripping, despite the fact that none of what you’ve mentioned here presents an argument i haven’t already seen and strongly disagreed with.

“ I know some in the ace community are homophobic fucks. a lot of ppl in the gay community are transphobic. And a lot of trans people are biphobic. And a lot of bi people are sexist […] This doesn’t have to be the oppression olympics. ”

two things: one, you’re referring to lateral aggression in every instance but the first. what i mean by lateral aggression is that it occurs between two people–within the same community–who experience oppression along different axes (e.g. a straight trans person and a cis gay person). in contrast, a cis straight ace man who engages in homophobia and/or transphobia is not “laterally aggressing” his victim, he’s oppressing them. the reason LGBT people have become so vocal against inclusion of cis straight aces is because their oppressors are now gaining entrance to their exclusive spaces, and speaking over them. and whereas a lesbian can voice her discomfort with this on tumblr, she’s forced to stay silent at her local GSA for her own safety.

two, this isn’t an issue of a “handful” of violently homophobic people in the ace community. the founder of aven–david jay–was a homophobic white cishet man, and the platform on which he built his activism was homophobic. moreover, oppression against (straight, cis) ace people is not enforceable, because who is and isn’t ace depends entirely on the decision to identify as such! there are (as the ace community has been told many, many times) plenty of LGBT people (if not most) who have a complicated relationship with sex and sexual attraction due to abuse/assault, compulsive heterosexuality, dysmorphia, etc. none of these people can be considered “allosexual,” even if they (for perfectly valid reasons) decline to share this information publicly! these people deal with many of the same issues you’ve mentioned here (e.g. choosing between getting dumped or engaging in sexual acts when they would rather not), although they would likely attribute this to homophobia, misogyny and rape culture, not aphobia.

also: the “oppression olympics” is nonsensical and offensive and i wish y’all would stop passing that term around. yes, the LGBT community’s history is absolutely rooted in oppression of same-gender attracted and trans individuals! and yes, the community exists to actively oppose legislation that exists to oppress them, and to provide resources for those affected. the community was not founded in order to provide comfort to people who feel outcast from society for [x] reason. when you make this claim (or when you sarcastically liken the community to an exclusive “club” one gains entrance to by virtue of being oppressed) you miss the point entirely. it’s watering down the mission statement and end goal of this community, plain and simple.

“And it’s true. Ace people have not faced systemic oppression. It’s hard to systemically oppress someone when you systemically refuse to acknowledge their existence.”

i find this argument (which is repeated often) to be ridiculous when the LGBT community has years of coherent history, and AVEN (and the popularization of identifying as asexual in the first place) has only gained prominence within the last decade or so. on top of that, as any oppressed individual will tell you, (and, again, something that has been repeated very often and rarely acknowledged) hypervisibility is dangerous to the oppressed! black and latinx trans women and gay men are the most endangered members of the LGBT community because it is impossible for them to “hide” themselves.

this alone should make it clear to you that what the LGBT community want and what the ace community want are two very different things–so what exactly would their shared goal in activism be? what purpose would expanding the community to include straight cis aces serve other than comforting individuals who resent being excluded? LGBT people may share the ace community’s desire for representation in media, but visibility–within the context of their everyday lives–is exactly what’s getting them killed. the pulse shooting is obviously the most recent example of this, but it’s one of many.

“One person was shitting on people who say they’re ‘gay ace’. Why? Can’t I still fall in love with women, despite not experiencing sexual attraction? Don’t you think I would rather enjoy sex with my partner? Being able to give her what she needs? Not being left again and again? Loneliness is a very real pain. And gay ace people exist. I exist. And let me tell you, we’re lonely as fuck.”

you’re introducing a very different argument here, and one i obviously don’t agree with. if you’re a gay ace, you belong in the LGBT community. i’m sorry you’ve been told otherwise. but if this entire passage (and the several paragraphs following it) are meant to convince me of this, i don’t know what to tell you? i’ve said before that–based on my history and  relationship with sex and sexual attraction–i could easily identify as an ace lesbian. i don’t, for some of the reasons listed above, and personal reasons of my own–and i don’t benefit from failing to identify as ace in any material way.

“And I feel like maybe this will make you think a bit about what it might feel like to not ever experience the thing EVERYBODY is talking about. Building their lives around. To feel like your broken. Like you’re gonna die alone. Being constantly told you’re not real, your feelings aren’t valid, your struggle is silly.”

i’m genuinely sorry you’re feeling this way, but again, if you think this is an experience LGBT people (ace or otherwise) don’t share, then i’m not the one turning a blind eye here.

“At least you’re real. At least you have a community. At least you have *some* representation that rings true to your experience. At least you could get a girlfriend that loves you and build a life without either getting dumped for not putting out or subjecting yourself to sex when your body doesn’t want it.”

you need to consider that you are making assumptions about what i want from a relationship based on the fact that i don’t publicly identify as ace. this is another thing we’ve been repeating constantly: you cannot do that, and therein lies one of the issues with asexuality as a framework for oppression. also, even on the off chance that i had a perfectly healthy relationship with and desire for sex (which–as i’ve said–very few people in the LGBT community do) none of us can just “get a girlfriend.” to suggest it’s more difficult for ace people is ridiculous when LGBT people have had to resort to dating apps and LGBT-exclusive spaces in order to find people to date in the first place. and before you say that similar spaces don’t exist for aces: they need to be built, just like ours were. the onus is on adult aces, not “allo” LGBT people.  

and, again, what an ace person would potentially want from an ace-exclusive space is not what an LGBT person (provably, historically) would want from an LGBT-exclusive space. ace condemnation of sex and sexuality is valid at the individual level, but it can be suffocating (and, yes–oppressive) to LGBT people who have fought long and hard to take pride in their sexuality. telling LGBT people that their love and “PDA” is “dirty” and “impure” is nothing new or progressive, it’s textbook homophobia, and those attitudes are damaging to us.

“Anyways. I’m not writing this because I want you to answer anything. I’m just hoping you’ll read it and think about it a bit, maybe. If you have, thank you. I really like you Christine. Not trying to be a bitch. But I doubt I’m the only one whose feelings get hurt when you amplify the ‘ace people are cis/hets trying to crash the LGBT community’ noise. - With love in my heart, from a long time follower.”

look…i hate to tell you this because i don’t think you mean any harm, and i’m not trying to attack you–but, as i think i said earlier, none of the arguments you’ve presented here are new to me. these are arguments that have been addressed and derailed by LGBT people (many of them ace themselves) multiple times, to no end. what you’ve mentioned here highlights an important point, and that’s “hurt feelings.” those are the stakes for straight cis aces–those are not the stakes for LGBT people (and i include LGBT aces in this statement). but i haven’t “learned” anything from these messages–i’ve never plugged my ears and ignored the arguments of straight cis aces, i’ve listened to them very carefully. and they’ve informed my opinion on this matter–an opinion that hasn’t changed and will not change. if that’s upsetting to you, you can unfollow–i won’t hold it against you!

[boyjadzia]

I really need to sleep but I can’t because the discourse is haunting me.

People really need to actually listen to transmasculine people and trans men when we talk about our experiences with masculinity and femininity. There is literally no other way to understand it; you’re not going to get it by assuming it’s the same as cis men’s (or women’s), but you’re also not going to get it by assuming that it’s just the exact reverse of transfeminine people and trans women’s experiences. It isn’t. It really, really isn’t, and it’s so frustrating and hurtful for me to see over and over again that whenever we try to bring this subject up, our posts get derailed by people (generally not trans women) claiming that our descriptions of our experiences— descriptions that make no attempt at generalization, no attempt at prescriptivism�� are transmisogynistic and violent towards women at large, because we dare assert that maybe our experiences of masculinity don’t always align with the same privilege that cis men experience for being men.

If you’re not a transmasculine person/trans man, especially if you’re also not a transfeminine person/trans woman, and you feel hostile towards trans men who say they don’t feel like they had male privilege before transitioning— an experience that you have literally no authority to discredit— you really need to do some self-reflection and think about why your immediate instinct is to write a trans man’s claim to being oppressed by cis men, in a way that is specifically a result of those cis men’s cis male privilege, off as yet another symptom of male privilege and abuse. Because time and time again I see people try to explain this— that they did experience misogyny, however misdirected, before transitioning from those same cis men people want to group them with, and that they absolutely do not intend this to be a general statement about the nature of how one’s gender is perceived or privileged pre-transition– and get shouted down by claims that actually, saying that must necessarily imply the opposite for trans women, and therefore is transmisogynistic and sexist garbage.

Please, I am urging everyone, you have to understand that gender and the ways in which it interacts with gendered power structures is far far far more complex than a simple “you’re one or the other” privilege/oppression dynamic. There is literally no law out in the real world that says that if trans men are capable of not having male privilege before transitioning, it means trans women must always have it. Trans men and trans women are not opposites. We have vastly different experiences that do not benefit from being compared to one another. The power dynamic that exists between trans men and trans women does not influence the one that exists between trans men and cis men, or the one between transness and cisness.

There is nothing radical or revolutionary about hating trans men, especially for speaking to our own experiences with gender non-conformity and oppression by cis people. There is nothing radical or productive about telling trans men that they’re bad people for being male (because as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what cis people say). Please let us talk about this oppression without automatically conflating it with the privilege trans men have for not being subject to transmisogyny. I’m so tired. I’m so sick of being told I’m a bad person for being transmasculine by cis people, only to have the rest of the LGBT community turn around and agree that I’m a bad person for being transmasculine, and in particular that because I want to talk about the complexities of my experience I’m actively hurting others. Like I’m not even a binary man, I don’t really consider my experience to be “manhood” but I’m still so exhausted by this. You all are always putting words in our mouths, as though saying “my gender non-conformity is not privileged” or “my life pre-transition was heavily influenced by the misdirected misogyny I experienced” is somehow the same thing as saying “I was socialized female.” No one is saying that, no one is claiming that trans men have the same experiences as cis women. This is precisely why you need to actually hear what we’re saying, because you’re just deliberately not getting it, you’re deliberately choosing to interpret what we say about our own lives as an attack on others’. And that’s not helping anyone.