#aro men discourse is WEIRD

[parkeryangs]

i love being aro btw i love being loveless i love being aroallo i love being an aro man :]

[professorsta]

I find it funny how weird people are with the alastor shipping debate. Some people (with a very condescending tone) are stating that fandoms cannot be controlled and will ship whoever they want (true but I doubt people who are on the fandom website aren't aware of the porn rule), or people on the other side telling those who ship alastor that they are purposefully being ignorant douchebags. I think alastor is of course being side lined in his sexuality. I don't believe thats a crazy concept considering it happened to gay characters getting shipped with women, happened to lesbian characters bring shipped with men. I think at the end of the day that argument ended on "you're not a morally bankrupt person for shipping a gay man with a woman, you're just probably lacking creativity and an imagination that exceeds your personal lived experience, as well as possible prejudice/bias that you can self reflect on," (again you're not a Stupid Bigot for needing to do this. We all have our subconscious biases we need to work and reflect on). Aro/ace people have a right to their feelings lmao even if you're partially right in that alastor will still be shipped. We can feel like the fandom is ignoring Alastor's core of who he is, his richness of characteristics, and his depth to pidgin hole him into a common archetype. Which i think is a fair opinion to have. Ones sexuality is a fundamental part of who they are, and ignoring Al being aro/ace strips him partially of his canon characteristics. You don't have to defend you're entire existence if you ship alastor tho. I was in the voltron fandom when keith and shiro were being shipped, ive been in the discourse trenches and couldn't care less about fake people kissing. But i can see how, you know, when you're excluded it can get annoying, and ones blog is a place to let go when the patience well has dried up. The character aren't real, but you're fellow queer members are. And they see how easily it is for you to forgot to engage with aromantiscm. A lack of interest and compassion in understanding our views and way of navigating the world. Its not as simple as "fandoms will ship whoever they want its not important" or "anyone who ships alastor should be harassed and shamed". Its a hard knock life for all of us. Lets see other's perspectives before judging? And maybe have some understanding for those in your community who are forgotten, who are just trying to make some noise, whether is be angry, sad, or desperate, just to be heard

[hollow-lime-green]

thank you for being so levelheaded with your t/b take!

I'm sorry if I'll come off as feeding the beast in your inbox and you're free to delete this but I think there's a lot to be said also how authors too choose to engage with the t/b discourse.

Authors find more and more creative ways of saying "my t/b ways are better than yours."

The "switching is the morally correct option because they are equals crowd" is especially annoying to me because real life gay people have strict t/b preferences!

I am one who has real life top bottom preferences and when these people go on their rampage around the fandom to say "actually me and my real life partners are equals so we switch and writing strict t/b is just bad writing" it makes me feel weird.

Not to mention the "heteronormativity" allegations around top/bottom preferences when there is a long history in real life-land again of queer people being accused by well meaning progressives of recreating heteronormativity because of their preferences.

I am simply tired of feeling bullied by some of these authors that. I don't care about the tags don't like don't read reign supreme. What I care about is people coming in and starting to make an environment where "correct and progressive smut" is the best smut.

I simply don't have patience for it anymore.

Sorry for the rant :/

nah, I think this is Good Discussion, and not Directionless Ragecycling. like you say, even the take of 'everyone is switches and that is Equality' is, in itself, imposing values on sexual preferences, which is never a good end game.

i think it's a good time to bring up how women/afab people get lost in this conversation, and how a lot of this is probably related to the yaoi/mlm dominated lens fandom. but consider - putting the yaoi aside for a moment - there are women who will never like penetration. physically, it's just not it, fam. around 30% of women can orgasm from only penetration/intercourse, i.e. bottoming in this context. in the 70%, there will be women who still like penetration even if it's not enough, and ones who dislike and do not want it. all good, homeslices. bodies are bodies, and a good partner is one who figures yours out and does what it needs. (that's true love sexual compatibility, dawg)

so, if we accept the premise that there are women who will have hard and fast preferences on penetration, that this is a fact of our bodies, that this is not strictly related to power or patriarchy - why are we unwilling to accept the same of gay/bi men? why do we impose politics on dick in ass?

[trump voice] because of woke

the answer is probably: it's complicated

first, a lot of people entangle sex and romance - in fandom and in life - and that is the big thing. sure, they are often connected, but by definition, not inseparable. which is why allo people can have a real empathy gap with aroace people. i am aro, but not ace, so that is my context of interpreting sex and sexuality, and i think it becomes pretty obvious when i talk about this stuff. not all of us are shackled to the idea that letting someone put something in you means you have to get married. sometimes it's just for funsies. and not letting them do that doesn't mean you don't want to get married.

second, people have implicit biases, they turn into stated politics/righteous beliefs, and they apply it to the Thing They are Into, which is fandom gayboys. they feel good about Being Right and it becomes a thing, a part of their Political Identity. but really all it is is just more sexual repression. and again i say, more people need to get freaky with it.

once you start reading and writing monsterfucking, vore, bloodplay, real D/S, etc., exploring tags that people look at and go "oh, hm. uh.", you can realize how small and tame t/b actually is.

conclusions:

t/b discourse is a result of a sexually repressed culture

future work:

once you read enough nonhuman nonpenetrative sex, you can let it go and have fun (sources cited: hades fandom)

[mobliterated]

Okay me angy here I go getting riled up again! If I see any more pisscourse about ace/aro not being part of the queer community, queer is a slur, men are inherently evil monsters, I’m just gonna assume you’re a TERF. Ace discourse back in the 10’s is exactly how TERFs started their rise to power.

Start out by drawing a line in the sand that (awful) people agree with. Now there’s proof that you can start boxing in certain identities. That means (general) you can start making specific definitions for things.

Queer is now a slur again. Queer actually hasn’t been reclaimed. People agree with that. You’ve just torn down an umbrella identity that everyone was able to gather under and unite behind.

LGBTQIA+ is actually the Correct Way to talk about the queer community. Actually we need to drop QIA+ because queer is a slur, intersex isn’t a sexuality/gender and is just a weird medical condition, and A stands for allies (instead of aro/ace bc we already decided that they aren’t part of the community) and we don’t want those sick CisHets infiltrating our community.

LGBT is now the proper accepted term. That means you must be Gay Lesbian Bisexual and/or Transgender to be part of the community. If you aren’t doing LGBT correctly then you are trying to infiltrate the community and steal resources (and those resources are never defined). Only LGBT people are safe.

Oh, except bisexuals. They’re dirty cheaters bc they get to pass as straight and thus aren’t Oppressed Enough like us Pure Gays. How dare they be into men. Only Good Gays get to be into men. If a lesbian ever thought about a man in any vague romantic/sexual way then they are Impure. Men are the true evil of the world bc patriarchy. The only type of man you’ll be safe with is a gay man bc they don’t want to SA you when they see your shoulders/ankles.

All men are the root of all evil, except our good example gay men, who coincidentally are usually white and follow the good gay stereotypes, which are feminine in nature. Femininity is Good and Safe. You can trust anyone who is Feminine, and you can distrust anyone who is Masculine. Men only exist to take advantage of women. Women must be protected at all costs.

Wait. We allow transgender people in the community. That means either a Dirty Evil Man is cosplaying as a woman, or a Pure Innocent Girl got taken in by the evils of masculinity and patriarchy. Trans people are bad since they are being taken over by Evil Men, and/or trying to infiltrate the community, which we already decided is bad. Trans people aren’t Pure. The T in LGBT gets dropped.

Also if you’re nonbinary someone pulled the wool over your eyes. It’s just a phase and you’ll fall into Woman Lite soon enough. There’s no such thing as an amab nonbinary person. Men are evil, and nonbinary is Woman Lite. If you dress in any way that’s not feminine or androgynous then you are doing it wrong.

Congrats, you are now a TERF.

And before you say “that’s not what happened!” I saw every single one of these talking points come out in real time. It was slow. It wasn’t sudden. It was pushing the boundary little by little until you boiled the frog. And now with acecourse coming up again I can all but guarantee that this cycle will happen again. So! Some things to look out for and deprogram.

All men are not inherently evil. All women are not inherently good. Masculinity isn’t inherently evil. Femininity isn’t inherently good. Queer is not a slur and is an extremely useful umbrella term for those who don’t know which label they fit under, or who don’t want a specific label. Yes, queer can still be used as a slur (I have been called queer in a derogatory way) but it is one the community has reclaimed. Trans people aren’t trying to trick you. Amab nonbinary people aren’t “lesser” than afab nonbinary people. Nonbinary is not Woman Lite. There is no such thing as a morally pure sexuality. The queer community is welcome for all who identify as queer; yes, even that person. Policing and oppression olympics is not a litmus test for “pure enough” for joining the queer community. The queer community is for Everyone. That’s it. That’s all.

[aro-rambles]

Hello! My Blog isn't aspec related so I thought I'd share my two cents here

The recent aro hate on this website is INSANE. As someone who is new to tumblr, seeing this in a predominantly queer-centred website is unfathomable.

Equating aro people to "no strings attached" is illogical and stems from the allo-amato notion that there are strings to be attached in the first place. Physical pleasure and emotional fulfilment are two completely separate concepts.

Portraying cishet aro men as people who are just leading on the poor women infantilizes women. This is just misogyny packed as discourse. If a cishet aro person is indeed being a dickhead, they're just a dickhead and we can all call them out on that like we call out any other dickhead

To the queer people equating aromanticism to pedophilia, how do y'all not remember that how gay men were treated back in the day? How we were cordoned off from society to "protect the children"? Do better, people

To the aspec people being accused of doing this just to be able to use a slur, fuck that. The exclsionists seem to have forgotten what a reclaimed slur means, or what queer means. Queer simply mean strange. Have they.. forgotten that aroace people are the queerest ones out there. Challenging not only heteronormativity but also allonormatovity and amatonormativity. They're the ones being called weird for not dating or having crushes or swooning over the random hot guy on the street or fantasizing about a white wedding. The ones treated as immature by their peers for not having a partner yet. And people think they aren't queer?

Fuck the exclsionists. I LOVE your posts. I'm sure I'm surrounded by people hating in anon in your ask box and I'm sending them all the hate in my heart. I love your blog and the aro community is one of the most inclusive I've seen on here. Love y'all and stay strongggg

ok so I'm very sleepy and my brain is like some sort of sauce currently so I'm gonna put numbers before each thing I say bc it's easier, don't worry about it

1 thank you for sharing your two cents, I think I agree with everything you said (can't be sure bc my brain is some sort of sauce currently but I'm sure I'd have noticed if I disagreed)

2 I want to go on The Slur Rant (tm) so bad but the internet is simply not prepared for it and I would rather not have to deal with the annoying fucks who'd disagree with me. not sure why I said this or why I got so aggressive at the end of that last sentence but here we are.

3 I'm sure there was something else I wanted to say before what I'm gonna say next but I forgot, sorry

4 my dude you are not in fact surrounded by hate in my askbox!! there's actually more nice messages than anything else <2 and also whenever I get anon hate I just block on sight now so it's fine. but yeah I would like to thank everyone for the kind words and everything. I love yall except for the ones who rather I didn't, in which case take your pick, we got uhhh cherish, appreciate, like but stronger, and. :3 (<- consider this a verb).

5 thank youuuuuuuu <222

6 sorry I took a while to answer this ask hope you see it even though I'm posting this at horrible hours gdhdjdjdk

[scarletspider-lily]

this bullshit discourse around cishet aromantic men is driving me insane and im not aromantic or aspect in the slightest but i gotta rant. because it's just getting very ridiculous at this point, because people make assumptions about everyone and also want to twist the definition of being queer- for some reason?? 1) "well- well they dont get oppressed!! >:(" sorry, pause, why the FUCK are we making "oppression" a part being lgbtq+ ? is this some new fucking requirement?? are you people okay?? i dont give a fuck if some queer child has had the best life ever in a super inclusive area from the second they were born, i would be happy for them?? maybe you should too? listen, ive faced oppression for being bisexual, and have felt envious of those with accepting family and whatnot, but what im not going to do is discredit my fellow queer person for facing "less" or no oppression at all for their identity. crazy take, but i think the goal should be to reduce queer oppression...

and oppression is not... some fixed scale type of thing, someone was trying to say that being asked "when will you get married?" to aro people wasn't oppression. as if that is not the only thing aro people face, as if instituitions like marriage dont exist, with certain economic benefits aro people can't partake in, and social constructs making certain people seem "weird" and straight up ostracized from social groups if they choose not to partake in romance.

2) amatonormativity is a thing, look it up. i get that it may be frustrating if you are allo to accept that youve been taught a lot of stuff about romance that seems magical and all encompassing and you dont want to give it up, but no one is asking you to do that. i used to be taken aback at some things aro folks pointed out, but as ive read more, ive realized that romance is wonderful to some people but shouldnt be held up as the ultimate pedestal in society. so, romanticize romance and whatnot if you personally want to, but understand that certain social constructs may harm people, especially those who do not want relationships for whatever reason. plus, learning about amatonormativity has helped me positively go about my own relationships- platonic and otherwise! 3) im gonna piss people off with this one, but please stop with the bullshitty radfem takes about cishet men being the ultimate spawn of satan, or something. the jokes here and there were one thing, but some of you guys actually believing that most of what cishet men do is inherently evil is legitimately concerning and this doesnt do much to actually help any matters. no, the man choosing to have another hookup this week or continuing to fuck a female friend-with-benefits isnt the ultimate enemy here against women. most takes on "hookup culture" generalize a lot of people's experiences, and i know there is research backing multiple perspectives on this, but at the end of the day what needs to be realized is that you cannot stop two consenting people from doing things together. it has no impact on you, and does not have a grand impact on society. unless you have definitive proof that whatever evil man you're talking about is "using women", there's no point to what you are saying, and if there is such a man, cishet aro men still are legitimate in their identity. would you exclude gay people from the community because of gay people who do bad things? would you do that for most identities? no? what makes this so drastically different, then? dont pull the oppression argument again for the love of god anyways, i hope all the cishet aro men and aro people in general are having a nice day. you will always be a part of the lgbtq+ community. dont let anyone tell you otherwise, or discredit you for the amount of "oppression" you face, as im sure they dont know half of any struggles you have. and if you (or any queer person in general) do happen to have few struggles, im very happy for you, as that's how it should be!!

[takerfoxx]

First time really wading into this discourse, but as a cishet aro man, I do appreciate the wave of support and acceptance and everything, I really do, but does anyone else find it kind of weird that whenever the topic comes up, it's always cishet aro men that get singled out? Like, cishet aro women also exist and ought to be an equal part of the conversation. It's not our sex that's the point of contention here, come on.

[spark1edog]

it’s interesting to me how spot on i was about my queer identity as a child and how much being like. online. shaped how i related to it.

when i first came out and started figuring this stuff out i came out as Bisexual and Genderqueer. which later became demibiromantic graysexual and Bigender/Nonbinary

(it definitely took me a lot longer to figure out the gender i will say lol)

i started to have a lot more Guy Days than Girl Days very soon after starting to explore that, and i think i probably ided as demiboy for a while?? but yeah

i went in a lot of circles with the sexuality bc of discourse and influence from friends and whatnot (i had a few people who i would meld my worldview around and when they told me my label was Wrong or Not Valid i listened and changed that shit)

so during the ace discourse phase i ided as staunchly Bisexual TM. there was a very small time where i considered that i might be a lesbian and that dissolved pretty quickly, not because i Wasn’t Attracted to women or anything but i never really got the chance to act on it and i felt more aligned with gay men anyway, but yeah i spent a while as Gay Man TM and flip flopped between gay and bi for a while

and i eventually discovered sex irl in a toxic relationship and i was like well cleeeeearly im not Asexual TM (lie) and after that’s when my sexuality got a little?? narrower? i have only ever really been attracted to one person at once generally but i really lost a lot of trust and confidence when i got out of that relationship, and when i got into my current one, i had some weird unresolved aspec stuff that i finally had the space to sort out.

i came out as grayrose to myself and when i was looking back thru some old journals i found little comments and stuff calling my old self aro and stuff, and i felt really?? vindicated(?) in a way. validated? either way. i had to fight for my aroaceness, if only against myself and my insecurities. i don’t feel shame about it anymore tho so that’s good lol

[polychaeteworm]

(currently only on mobile)

Note: if you send me a donation request that looks like a copy paste I'm reporting you.

Hello I'm Orn, I'm the alien system host of a 33 year old human body with 8 alters inside, this is just my blog though. Bodily Native Lakota. I'm partnered irl with an akita mix therian who helps me with my disabilities (service dog energy). I work at a garden center with an attached farm market so I do post root porn and plant pics from time to time. I'm very committed to the honorable harvest and making sure my garden is an actual eco system. My soil be alive and my plants be pollinated

I'm a mixed media artist and I know more mediums then I can remember to count. I give advice compulsively so if you have a weird art supply question my inbox is open and anons are on. I know all about glue, polymer, proper glitter use, and UV colors. You can also ask me anything about plants and I will info dump you an essay. If it's about a plant I don't know I will research it and still give you my thoughts and best guesses.

Aro/ace-spec, into men as a man and women as a women. I'm still just utterly alien in general and I don't really love the way most humans do.

If you are here to question my right to use the pronouns that I do, I will not be discussing the physical configuration of my sex to justify my right to use shi/hir. I only discuss my physical transition on a case by case basis and will not support a precedent of questioning if someone has a right to their pronouns on the basis of their body.

You can assume in good faith that I'm not perisex and fuck off, because that's all you're getting on the subject. These pronouns came from a personal paracosmic origin for me specifically and have nothing to do with my body or how it might be fetishized. I'm just an alien slamming English words together independent of discourse and I'd like to be left out of it thanks. I have other pronouns you can use if you have personal trauma.

I support all people with cluster B disorders, my partner system has BPD. You are all worthy of love and safety.

I'm a green wizard and I've been doing weird art based magic for about 11 years

On this blog you'll find a nice mixed bag of the following: Precambrian explosion and Paleo fun, garden center adventures, speculative biology, green magic and experimental occult content, 420 weed posting, plants, pendantic info dumps, artwork(both mine and not), web 1.0 tech nostalgia and autism/did/disability content!

I was formally diagnosed with the demand avoidant flavor of ASD when I was 7 and can't live alone but remain very independent in spite of my support needs.

I have lots of trouble wording things and as an alter I've become hyper verbal out of a fear of being misinterpreted. ABA therapy abused my system into having a pretty convincing mask so I try to give myself a break here.

Writing conversationally helps me continue to be able to speak verbally so I write way more than people expect. I understand that it can be overwhelming but I can't help it. Sorry!

Human body conditions I'm running with include: DID, hypermobility, fibromyalgia, ASD, dyspraxia, low vision/legal blindness, irlen syndrome, complex synesthesia, hyperphantasia, and really uncontrolled maladaptive daydreaming

I grow cannabis in a legal state and use it to treat my various issues.

I am posic and objectum. I am mostly attracted to plants, but old technology too. I currently have a courting/platonic relationship with a Philodendron Solleum Named Basaran and a committed platonic partnership with a large MFC office printer named Leviathan. I've had several committed romantic relationships with older computers, but currently don't have an alive and well computer partner.

Other blogs I'm connected to:

My irl human(dog) partner is @guromechanical TW: don't go here if you're not fucked in the head 18+

@neurotheascars Saira's side blog, trauma holding alter, goth aesthetics and vent posts. TW for syscourse, traumacore, unreality and blood/SH specifically. If you are a Saltburn, traumacore, or otherwise dark gothic blog it is most likely Saira that has followed you.

If Saira is co-fronting or informing a post here, it will be tagged with ⚔️

Saira has more severe difficulty with communicating and needs a bit more patience than me.

[lordofseagulls]

#oh good we got to 24k#time to ramble in the tags#so lately I've been seeing the resurrection of the good ole 'no romo' discourse#only now it's dressed in progressive terms like 'qpr'#now to be fair i support qpr wholeheartedly#im ace and might be somewhere on the aro spectrum too so i get it. i do#but it doesn't apply to these particular characters#whose creator is very weird about sexuality and especially female sexuality#to this day he keeps claiming that scully's child was the result of the immaculate conception#whenever scully experienced desire she got punished for it by the narrative#this isn't ace representation. this is the case of a catholic man being weirded out by sex#*columbo voice* and one more thing ☝🏻#this isn't the case of 'he was a boy she was a girl' either#the argument 'why can't men and women just be friends' isn't valid here because they Are friends#they're friends they're partners they're also lovers#eventually‚ reluctantly‚ the narrative allows that last thing to happen#no matter how hard chris carter tried to backtrack#and judging by her various interviews GA takes great offense at scully being perceived as sexless#okay ramble done. i think#i have yet to write my All Things essay. there will be more of that#but later

x files studies but this time I tired to achieve that VHS feeling. I very vaguely remember watching some episodes as a kid, and I think this is as close as I've ever got to recreating that memory of a small, grainy tv in a dark room

[lesfagspectrier]

ECLIPSE / THORN ! 25 , Fae/Faer or Neii/Nem/Ner/Nenef ! AroAce Sekhet High Femme Lesbian !

Request Count: 0 style guide !!

I make icons here! You may remember me as les4lesbushfire, but I deactivated that blog because I was getting harrassed for being, well, a lesbian. Anon is turned off because no one knew how to behave last time. Though, I understand if you are shy, so just lmk if you don't want your ask to be posted. I'll consider you 'anon' in the post. :)

Note: This is a blog for icons, not discourse. I am not tolerating any sort of bullshit here anymore.

Guidelines under the cut ! [ divider credit 1 ] + [ divider credit 2 ] + [ flag in my header is t4t les4les ] + [ tipjar ] + [ flag blog ] + [ pronouns.cc ]

will NOT do:

any mspec 'lesbian'/'gay' content.

or any 'lesboy'/'trans man lesbian' content.

pansexual/polysexual/omnisexual content.

anything with the toothpaste mlm flag. i use the gilbert baker flag by default.

i will also not use the generic blue/white mlm flag. i know i have in the past, but it's always annoyed me. it's just another case of men seeing something women made for themselves and being like "BUT I WANT ONE!!!" like an overgrown toddler who can't have the coolest batman toy like little timmy does.

arospec/acespec icons of minors. i'm 25. that's weird.

any 'queer' flags. i just don't like the term.

icons of a character that goes against their already pre-established sexuality. (example: i will not do lesbian harley quinn icons, since she is a bisexual character.)

any piece of media that doesn't have official art. i'm not using fanart for icons.

i personally don't do bi/sapphic poison ivy icons. i am in the firm belief that she is a lesbian, but if you want to hc her otherwise, that's your perogative. i just won't make icons.

also since i'm talking about dc, i won't do icons of janet from hr. no real reason, she just pisses me off.

i do have a long list of things i won't do- but some are the mcu, harry potter, hades, hazbin hotel, helluva boss, hetalia. i do have a laundry list of media i won't do, so just ask if you're not sure.

i do ship icons, but no pedophilic/incestuous/abusive ships.

jsyk:

i really, really do not care abt the whole 'playersexual' thing. hc the characters how you want, i could care less. if you want, like, cait from fallout 4 on the lesbian flag, that's perfectly fine. i'll do it.

i don't necessarily have a whitelist, as i am willing to do icons of fandoms i'm unfamiliar with. though, my favorites to do are pokemon, tf2, dc, cookie run, fallout, and call of duty.

also, i can do icons of ocs! just send in pictures!

when doing aro/ace content, i use flags i've or gendernull has created. if you'd rather have the original, just lmk!

i'm an adult so i also make nsft icons- so, like, if you want soap from cod on a puppyplay flag, that's fine!

on the flipside, i do make agere content. though, it's all nonsexual. all of it. if you sexualize it, i'm beating down your door with a battering ram and then beating you with it.

also, i use the black/white/blue aroace flag.

[mspec-to-aspec-pipeline]

@pantasticenby -> @mspec-to-aspec-pipeline

Url and header inspired by this post.(link)

So, it’s been two years since I last logged into tumblr, and since then, I’ve realized some things about myself:

I’m not aceflux, I’m just ace.

I’m on the aro-spectrum as well; nebularomantic(link) to be exact.

Pan as a label no longer fits me (hence the url change), but bi-angled does.

I am, in fact, a we! Not gonna talk about it much, and don’t ask me my opinion on syscourse. All systems are welcome here; if you don’t like it, you can leave.

Still Ram, still a they/them (although I don’t really care about singular vs. plural usage anymore), still a neurodivergent nonbinary guy.

I’m back because I missed coining weird, niece terms for my queer experience and making flags for them. (Coining masterlist here)(link) Likely won’t be posting much else.

I decided to remake this blog rather than just changing my url for the sake of everyone who’s ever linked one of my terms. The links will break if I change @pantasticenby .

I’m disappointed (but not surprised) to learn that queer discourse is still a prominent feature of tumblr, and I’m too old and too tired to deal with it. So, let me get this out of the way:

Queer isn’t any more of a slur than gay or lesbian.

Censoring and arbitrarily policing queer people who reclaim slurs puts the power back in the hands of the queerphobes.

I’m out here fagdyking it up, and you will not stop me.

Gatekeeping is stupid. Policing queer identities and queer language is stupid. Go touch grass.

A-specs are queer. Yes, even aroallo cishet men.

“Weird,” “cringe,” and “contradictory” labels are valid. Queerness is about non-normative relationships with sexuality/romance/gender/sex. Stop trying to make a new norm to conform to, and accept that there will always be queer experiences that you don’t quite understand.

Transition is for anyone who thinks their life would be improved by it, regardless of identity or dysphoria.

I’m not giving you a free pass to misgender me by handing out auxiliary pronouns. If you genuinely have difficulty using they/them for whatever reason, I’ll be patient with you, but I’m sick of gatekeepers using disabled people and non-native English speakers as an excuse to be transphobic.

Transandrophobia and transmisogyny are both real, and neither experience invalidates the other.

If you disagree with me on any of these fronts, that is a you-problem. I’m done playing along with bad-faith discourse and people taking out their internalized queerphobia on the weirder queers.

I can’t stop you from interacting or using my terms/flags, but I can block you and wash my hands of the situation.

[codecicle-archive]

Yo I wanna say this now because somebody was brave enough to follow me with this take (they're blocked now) but bi-lesbians and mspec lesbians are valid as fuck and I love them. Please fuck off and never talk to me again if you think otherwise man because mspec lesbians and everything that comes with them have been around since the dawn of the queer community and they aren't leaving anytime soon. They deserve their place here as much as the rest of us and useless infighting within the queer community will only divide us further and let the nazis win. I'm not here to argue over who's "valid enough" and "queer enough" to be oppressed based of a caard you saw on twitter end of fucking story <3

[deciduouswaves]

I do think it's mostly TERF instigators with sock puppet accounts making the worst and most inflammatory posts:

I haven't seen any of the anti intersex, anti trans masc, or anti trans femme discourse in my local Discords (ones where people are only invited if someone has met them in person) or in-person queer groups.

And maybe some of that is just luck and having friends with good intersectional lenses, but I can't imagine such a profound difference without non-community actors stirring shit up here.

Like... This on the heels or overlapping with the whole trying to split off the asexual and the bisexual and pansexual communities off from the rest of the queer community and also trying to break off the trans community from the rest of the queer community.

Seems a weird coincidence that we see those attempts simultaneous with the rise of fascist movements... Unless...?

It is a basic fascist playbook to try to break alliances between target minority groups which would be powerful if they worked in solidarity.

And nothing is making me turn my back on any of those groups.

Trans men are my brothers,

Trans women are my sisters,

Intersex and nonbinary and pan and bi and aro and ace folks are my siblings and friends and allies.

In my little corner of the world, lesbians are why those who survived managed to survive AIDs under Reagan, they are the reason we have queer historical continuity, they are the heart of the movement and my role models. And gay men getting into public office signaled to all of us that a brighter future was possible.

We are here, we are queer.

Get used to it.

This is just such a fucking exhausting attitude. You can say trans women deserve better (because they do!) without putting down other trans people.

You are familiar with the difficulties faced by your community, because you're a part of it, and are therefore more likely to see those issues and live through them yourself. You are clearly unaware of the issues trans men and transmascs face, because it's not a community you're a part of or familiar with, and you're choosing to decide that means they don't deal with any difficulties.

It's cruel, it's unnecessary, and it's not reality. It's unhelpful. You are rightfully upset about a real issue but lashing out at the wrong people.

[ouidamforeman]

This may make me look like an idiot bc I can’t articulate myself BUT!!!!!!!! Big Queer Good Omens meta incoming

I want to talk about This Neil Gaiman ask for a minute because I figured out why I really like his blanket response to this “discourse” a lot but still somewhat disagree on the nuance, and why fandom attitudes about this bother me much much more than his open ended response like this one

Under a read more because im going to get Insane

First of all this is going to be riddled with my own viewpoints on queerness as a transmasculine nonbinary person who reads too much theory so if u disagree please be polite lol

So like. To begin with I really don’t think Neil is obligated to understand these nuances or even comment on them, let alone explain them to fans desperate for validation, so the fact that he’s been able to answer so eloquently is pretty impressive considering how vicious fandom is. But I want to specifically talk about what I think he means here and why that seems to bother fandom so much sometimes, and how fan interpretation of these ideas he presents can get Really weird and interesting imo.

In my view, Neil is answering this from a Doylist perspective, as in like. To the real life human audience, angels and demons are inherently queer because they don’t fit into traditional human definitions of genders and sexualities. This especially comes across in his insistence that Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t gay because they aren’t human men, but they ARE queer. This literally just looks to me like him saying “yeah so no angels and demons fit into these categories so they’re definitely queer from our perspective but I understand ‘gay’ as being two men and i don’t think that fits because it’s narrow” and while I disagree on some nuances here for reasons I’ll get into I think this makes total sense as an author describing how, from his perspective, an audience is intended to view these nonhuman characters.

However, I’m much more interested in a more Watsonian explanation of how A&C are queer, one that’s much more relativistic and honestly not something I expect Neil to go over every time he gets another ask about this???? My opinion has always been that A&C choosing human queer masculinity is significant and that it gives evidence to them being nonbinary, transmasc, gay, ace, aro, anything that people headcanon really. Because they are presenting themselves as queer in a HUMAN way in universe imo, which makes them queer not just by the standards of the audience but by the standards of other angels and demons in the story? I think that the fact that they were created as sexless and genderless and then CHOSE human gender presentations, whether nonbinary or not, that reflected themselves, and then them being in love with each other in a human way IS what makes them queer, not Just the idea that an angel without a gender or sexuality/romantic or other relationship orientation is inherently queer from the average human’s perspective. People who just want them to be Human Cis Gay Men are really missing this idea I think.

The thing is though. And I don’t think this is Neil’s problem to solve or whatever, nor does it mean “stop liking that angels and demons are genderless”. The thing that annoys the shit out of me. Is that fandom, even queer fandom, took Neil’s Doylist explanation of celestial beings’ gender status and just didn’t think any further about it. To this day people insist that A&C MUST be nonbinary forever just because they’re an angel and demon and were made that way. Like literally just inventing Fantasy Biological Essentialism again which is annoying as hell to me, another nonbinary person. Again, the fact that they were created without any sense of gender or biological sex and then chose any humanish gender for themselves at all whether nonbinary or not is what makes them queer in universe I feel. I think the “they’re an angel and demon so they’re inherently nonbinary and can’t be anything else” is shit tbh.

To reiterate, I think Neil is responding about this from a Doylist perspective aka “to the real life audience all angels and demons are queer because they don’t fit into human genders and sexualities” but I am focused much more on the Watsonian idea that A&C are queer in universe bc angels and demons can choose their gender presentations like humans can and everyone else hasn’t figured it out bc they haven’t been on earth to figure out what gender even is. I feel fandom gets weird about this because lots of people still see gender as something solely internal and inherent, when I genuinely don’t think that’s all it is. It’s internal feeling, external projection/behavior, and both of those as a reflection of social experience all at once. The feelings and internal sense of Knowing your gender or lack thereof is inherent to your self identity, but your gender is also informed by what you understand genders as, and what presentations you understand and have access to! Aziraphale and Crowley can be Human Genders because, because they’ve been on earth, they 1)know what gender is, 2)can see those feelings reflected in themselves, and 3)through that understanding choose how to present based on their feelings! They don’t just have to be genderless celestial beings in the sense angels are if they don’t feel like it anymore! They can be like “oh actually I’m a queer man” or “oh I’m nonbinary but in the way that I’m among humans and I’m not a man or woman.” I just feel like only considering them queer from a human or angel perspective but not both is sort of undermining the themes in the text against bioessentialism in favor of the instant validation of “oh they’re angels so they must be nonbinary.” Perhaps having any human gender presentation is queer to the average angel. Our internal feelings and sense of self knowledge as queer people is inherent. How we act on those things and assign meaning and labels to them can be anything! A&C can be anything they feel like! They don’t have to be the classic celestial beings above gender! I feel like they would love and have fallen into human gender customs just from so long on earth, and that doesn’t mean they can’t be nonbinary or agender. It means they, as a part of humanity, saw and understood human genders and realized what gender they were in relation, whatever you headcanon that to be. And that’s more queer than “god made them without sex and gender so I guess their species makes them inherently one thing”!!!!!!

[thefirstknife]

have you seen the biphobia going around about eris? its super fucking gross

Sorry, forgot about this ask in the middle of all the other stuff that's been going on. If I understand it correctly, this is about the ongoing discourse about the ship between Eris and Drifter. I'll go a bit in depth about this because it's been gaining traction recently.

I've definitely seen some biphobic sentiments, yeah. People are really weird when it comes to bisexuality and this fandom is not any different, unfortunately.

The thing to remember, however, is that there is no canon for Eris' sexuality. There is a lot of speculation, but she has never been confirmed as any sexuality. I personally believe she must be some form of wlw, due to the sheer amount of her close relationships with women; Ikora, Mara, Sai Mota, Eriana-3, the Awoken in general (who are a matriarchal society) and so on.

A post with some details on this + links to other posts about it. Not linked here, but this has been further explored in the Witch Queen Collector's Edition book where Eris explicitly says she felt an "emotional debt" to Mara, that they had some tensions in their relationship that "remained private," and that when Eris was wounded, Mara "treated the wounds in what I interpolate was a moment of reconciliation and perhaps genuine tenderness between them."

I find it hard to believe that Eris is not wlw. However, that could mean many things. She could be a lesbian, she could be bisexual/pansexual, she could be ace or aro or both with a preference for women, or biromantic or... You get the idea. We ultimately have no idea and we're only left with speculation.

More under for length:

Some people insist that she must be a lesbian and only a lesbian and that any other interpretation is wrong. I disagree with this! There are so many other options that people should be allowed to explore and we shouldn't insist that she is canonically and objectively one thing when we don't really know. Until there is an unambiguous canonical proof for her sexuality, everyone should be allowed to HC her as they please, as long as they're not entirely erasing her closeness with women.

The same applies for people insisting that she is canonically bisexual. We don't know! I see her as bisexual (mostly because she's my blorbo and I see my blorbos as bisexual). I don't have any hard proof that she is and neither does anyone else. Canon doesn't say either way.

While some people tend to have a visceral reaction to the possibility of her being bi which I would definitely classify as some form of biphobia, there's a difference between people just being biphobic and people expressing their disdain for how Eris' in-game interactions are now largely revolving around men.

As I've said above, Eris has always had incredibly important and close relationships with women. It doesn't matter which type of a relationship they are (platonic, romantic, queerplatonic). Eris has always been heavily surrounded with other women and relied on mostly women with her interactions. Some people are reasonably upset that this has been slightly pushed aside in favour of Eris interacting more with Drifter and Crow and Zavala, rather than women.

She wasn't present at all in Season of the Lost which Bungie explained as them being limited with how many characters can be active in a given season. This is reasonable to me, someone will have to be cut. I do think that cutting Eris from Lost was a mistake however, and that they should've at least kept some of her content in lore, if not in gameplay and cutscenes. It was one of the most crucial turning points that involved her long-time antagonist (Savathun), her long-time friend (Mara) and the people she feels closely connected with (the Awoken).

In Witch Queen, Eris was there, but her appearance was fairly limited and didn't involve a lot of interactions with Ikora, which is odd. Mara showed up again and had no interactions with Eris, again. Eris was mostly interacting with Zavala and Crow and, finally, Drifter who by far gets the most screentime with Eris and has been getting it since Arrivals.

From what I've seen, people are mostly upset about this sudden shift with Eris being mostly paired up with men in lore and gameplay, while her ties to women are either cut entirely, reduced significantly or kept for special lore pieces and then not brought up again for an extended period of time. I've not seen many instances of people just vehemently disagreeing that Eris should never be with a man and that it's impossible for her to be bisexual. Even if she is bisexual, her relationships with women should still matter and not be pushed aside.

Another thing that people have an issue with (me included) is the way some of her lore with Drifter is presented. I don't mind if the plan is for them to be romantically involved. I would be more than happy if my two faves were both bi and were together. The problem I (and others) have is that there's been significant backtracking in the lore between Eris and Drifter since they first interacted in Arrivals.

In Arrivals, they first meet when Drifter is ready to pack and leave the system due to the Pyramids arriving. He always said that it was what he would do when the Darkness comes knocking again. He has always been adamant about being ready to skip town when the main threat returns. Drifter is notoriously afraid of everything and traumatised. He was 100% ready to leave. Until Eris came to ask for his help.

The two sit. They speak. They listen. Linkages forged in Light and Dark of traded secrets as the Derelict hangs in orbit around the Earth. Pacts are made. Soon, there is only the silence of knowing left between them.

They connect. Deeply. They share incomprehensible traumas that have been going on for centuries and they're both people others distrust because of how close they are to Darkness, despite their best efforts to use that closeness to help.

Obviously, since it's their first time working together, things weren't smooth. They sometimes annoyed each other. Contact event dialogues from Arrivals and Prophecy dialogues often had them bickering over their different methods and approach to the threat; Eris is serious, Drifter tries to deflect with humor. It annoys her that he's joking, it annoys him that she is constantly doom and gloom. This makes sense, since it's their first time working together. It takes time to adjust.

In Beyond Light, they work together again and things are smoother between them. They still have their differences, but Eris admits that he is a good ally, a valuable member of the team, that his perspective brings a lot to the table and that they both understand the need for balance. Again, this makes sense. They've worked together for months at this point.

We don't hear from them a lot in the meantime, but we do get some minor hints. For example, Eris seems to have picked up on Drifter's habit to end sentences with "Trust." This would imply that they kept on communicating and that they've been friendly.

It's very strange when they get the spotlight again in Season of the Haunted and they are... bickering again. I thought they moved past that for the most part? It's been 2 years! In the Eidolon Pursuant set, Eris is uncharacteristically distrustful of Drifter, a man whose help she bet on to save the system from both Savathun's interferences and the Darkness itself. She even believed that Drifter would feed her rotted screebs, for some reason, despite the fact that they must've shared meals while working together on Europa. She is surprised when he tells her he wouldn't do that to her and that he is a good cook. She would've reasonably known this?

In this season, they've been bickering again on comms in a very childish way. They keep calling each other derogatory nicknames, despite knowing the other doesn't like them. Their relationship tends to jump all over the place from deep respect to childish bickering and back. It can be jarring. In comparison with the first lore I linked (Whispering Slab), it's so incredibly odd to hear Drifter mocking Eris for "calling him" when she is literally just speaking on a public communication.

Drifter simply isn't like this? And it shows in the lore tab from the seasonal lore book, titled "TRUST" as a callback to Drifter's catchphrase which Eris picked up on. He respects and trusts Eris. He is comfortable around her and minor jokes at his expense (and at hers!) are fine. He respects her space and her orders. He also thought of her and her expertise first to help them with relics.

I appreciate this type of an interaction that makes sense with how long they've been working together. It also makes sense with their personalities; Drifter really isn't the type to continue aggravating someone he respects and Eris isn't the one to tolerate someone being openly aggravating to her. She very clearly disliked Cayde for how he acted with her and she never backed down from her disdain. Drifter is similar in that he tends to use (and overuse) humor to deflect from his pain and trauma, but he doesn't do so when the other person is someone he likes and respects. He is especially not like that in private settings.

A lot of people dislike the way Drifter and Eris sometimes act like the classic trope of a toxic m/f relationship where they have to tease and hate each other because they're actually in love. It's immature and goes against their characterisation. I completely understand people who dislike the ship because this dynamic is being presented in lore sometimes and very often in fandom. That dislike is not inherently biphobic and it has merits especially when lore also cuts all of Eris' relationships with women in order to put Drifter in the center and have him being mean to her. It just makes no sense that Drifter would do this and that Eris would tolerate it. And it also makes no sense that she would ignore her close connections with Ikora or Mara in order to spend time with a man who is mean to her.

However, sometimes people go too far with it and instead of criticising these aspects, they simply criticise the idea of Eris liking a man. Even if their reasons are all I've mentioned above, the way a critique is framed can make a difference between that critique being reasonable or biphobic. Eris can like whoever she wants and her relationships with women aren't less valuable if she likes a man as well.

I definitely wanted to make a comprehensive post about the issue because some of the criticisms of this relationship are valid, especially when that relationship comes at the expense of us not getting more lore on a much more established friendships and relationships in general that Eris has with female characters. I think people wouldn't mind the focus on her and Drifter in the lore if we also got some new lore of her and Mara or Ikora.

It's important to understand what aspect of this people have a problem with, because for the most part, it's NOT simply about Eris possibly being bisexual. But also, people should be careful with how they phrase these criticisms because it can definitely be read as biphobia.