#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 :]

[codecicle]

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

[the-delta-quadrant]

"aces and aros are technically queer/LGBTQ+, but not all of them identify that way. they are welcome if they feel a connection to the queer community."

while this might be true, it bothers me that aces, aros and some other identities after the T get that caveat but the others don't. there are many lesbians, gay men, bi and trans people who don't identify as queer/LGBTQ+, but no one ever says "lesbians are technically queer but some don't identify as queer". it seems to only be us weirdos after the T who get the caveat.

also, have you considered why aces and aros aren't identifying as queer? maybe more of us would identify as queer if unconditional inclusion was actually modelled for us. "if they feel a connection to the queer community" - how was i supposed to feel connected to this community when ace inclusion was never modelled for me? when i was a baby ace 9 years ago, i thought i was cis and straight, and the only queerness that was portrayed to me was LGBT, nothing else, not even nonbinary people. where exactly was that connection meant to come from? how was i meant to feel a connection to a community that was constantly discoursing over my existence?

i only felt a connection to the community when i realised i was enby. only after that i learned that my asexuality was queerness all along. my queer gender was literally the stepping stone for a connection to the queer community based on my asexuality.

ace and aro exclusion needs to be unconditional. it doesn't feel like inclusion of aces and aros get this weird caveat but most other identities don't. it feels like aces and aros are still held to higher standards and that LGBT(no +) people are more inherently and unconditionally queer than aces and aros.

either everyone should get that caveat or no one.

[dyketubbo]

lesbian related discourse tires me out sm. first it was aro/ace lesbians then it was nonbinary lesbians then it was he/him lesbians and it/its lesbians and now its bi/pan/mspec lesbians like when are all of you going to realize that the lesbian experience is extremely diverse and has never been as strict as "women who only identify as women who love exclusively women who only identify as women". like this goes for many identities but lesbians end up at the forefront a lot and it makes me wonder if any of you actually give a shit about queer history because istg lesbian separatism has been reinvented like 50 times in the past decade.

stop convincing each other that the queer experience is nothing but strictly defined boxes and labels that can always be condensed into one sentence. lesbians can experience a lack of sexual attraction and a lack of romantic attraction and lesbians can be nonbinary and lesbians can be gnc and when you actually go into what those last two mean you should realize that yes this means sometimes lesbians are men because genderfluid and bigender and trigender and transmasc and whatever gender lesbians exist and when you actually goes into what THAT means you should realize yes actually people combining labels like mspec and lesbian makes perfect sense because of fucking course orientation and gender and whatever else you consider to be apart of your queer experience is all fluid its all up to personal interpretation

its not shit like bi lesbians or mogai or aroace people or gnc people or "trenders" or it/its users or whatever fucking bonafide weirdos that are ruining the community its the people who want to sort everyone into neat little boxes because they cant handle that sometimes you arent going to understand other peoples experiences. its fine if mspec lesbians dont make sense to you. its fine if it doesnt make sense to you how someone could use it/its, if it doesnt make sense how a lesbian could consider himself transmasc, if it doesnt make sense how someone could seriously mean "my gender feels like a star", if whatever queer experience you run into doesnt make sense.

someone's identity does not have to make sense for you to respect them as a person and realize that exclusionary behavior is nothing but a crabs in a bucket type mentality. not only have "weird" queer people existed since fucking forever, but even if they didnt the human experience is diverse and we still dont know everything about the world and why the fuck would you decide that no actually if it cant be understood it must be bad and you need to find out reasons for it to be bad. focus on the people who are actively hurting others, taking advantage of vulnerable people, dont become one of them. dont become one of the people who scorns anything they dont understand and hurts innocent people in the quest of getting rid of anyone who they deem is abnormal. its fucked up and being any type of exclusionist is fucked up.

bi lesbians, as an overall community, is just a bunch of people who decided that a complicated label fits their complicated attraction and thats Fine. it is literally fine. being a lesbian was never about being strictly a woman who strictly loves other women who are strictly women. its about loving women in a gay/queer way, whatever that means for the individual. if an individual person is using it in a transphobic way, then thats a fault of the person, not the label. but at its core, all the identity is about is about recognizing that attraction is complicated and identity is complicated and not everyone is comfortable putting themself in neat boxes for other people to scrutinize until they Get It.

to any mspec lesbians (and hell, any mspec gays) who are reading this: im proud of you and theres nothing wrong with recognizing that your identity is complicated and maybe even contradictory. its Your experiences and no one has the right to say that youre inherently a bad person simply because they heard some strawman arguments and decided to believe in fallacy over reality. and because its probably obvious why im making this yeah maia arson crimew is literally fine its an absolute legend actually and i hope that its okay. fuck anyone who was a piece of shit to it because they cant handle someone being openly complicated and contradictory and unabashedly "Weird"

[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

[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”!!!!!!

[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.

[sunlitmcgee]

Will you all execute me if I say that combined with that post I just Rb'd, the post I made a few days ago about how it's weird to only care about minorities if you want to fuck them, and the general reaction to the arophobic poll about aro cishet men, I'm really hoping we avoid a resurgence of the aroace discourse of ages pass? Because sometimes I see stuff here that makes me worry we're edging back there again. And it's not cool.

Sex is a part of the human experience.

But not all humans desire to be sexual.

Read the room. Learn to put away the horny.

[transmultiphobia-discussion]

Just came across an anti-lesboy video on my fyp on tiktok (which is a bit weird, because I'm actually largely on the true queer liberation, fully inclusive side of tiktok where I've genuinely come across people saying everything from "hey transmascs face violence too" to "hey support allo aros", stuff that's "controversial" because of bigotry everywhere from twitter to tumblr to facebook).

I'm just so frustrated. That's a label primarily used by multigender people, and secondarily by monogender transmasc and nonbinary people. Very rarely it might also be used by a closeted transfem or transfem egg.

Like no, there's not actually an epidemic of cishet men identifying as lesbian because you've heard a lesbophobic cis guy joke about being a lesbian once. Hell, even if you've heard it many times, THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT LESBOY IS A GENUINELY HELD IDENTITY. If you can't tell the difference between someone being a lesbophobic dick and someone just going about their lives like... it's almost as if you never learned that you can't identify safe people based on their identity but have to judge their ongoing actions and patterns of behavior!

(Not at you tbc, ranting at anti-lesboys.)

Like hmm I wonder why someone who is both a man and a woman attracted to solely women, as an example, might identify as a lesbian. No one tell these fuckers about straight lesbians/straight gays, I stg. Or someone who is abro (I still am waiting for the other shoe to drop and to see someone call my sexuality "just the bi cycle" when by it's very nature it is multiple separate sexualities with fluidity between them, sometimes occurring at the same time, in large part because of my system's plurality making our identifies overlap and intertwine and mix). Or a member of a system (especially a median system).

Or any other number of the extremely marginalized and erased identities that usually use the term.

Like you (again at anti lesboys) could at least try and make an effort to understand why people might use the word and accept it even if you don't understand. I'm so tired of, in general, people automatically assuming bad faith about identities, especially taking all their info about them from people who clearly hate those identities. Like somehow at least the trans community and most of the queer community knows you shouldn't believe genocidal transphobes or even pickme class traitor trans/queer people when they start spouting off about trans identity being about child molestation, but suddenly when people are spouting off about lesboys being cishet men and drinking the nonmen loving nonmen radfem koolaid and being openly and cruelly derisive surely they must be the experts.

At the very least, it's taught me to only ever accept information about any identity from people who are not immediately claiming it's harmful and making mean girl quips about it. I don't actually at this point believe an identity itself can be harmful, only actions (which, tbc, I'm not including "hate group ideology" as identity here), but if I want to learn about an identity I'm certainly not going to take it from the ones calling it anything from queerphobic to ableist (plural discourse shit for example) to sexually predatory to whatever, even if it's coming from a member of a minority group.

There might be cases where I find the identity label is being used to justify harmful actions, at which point I condemn the actions and recognize that it's a bad faith usage of a label which still may be legitimate. If I can't find any good faith usage, I recognize that it's probably a dogwhistle or otherwise harmful, but continue to understand that a good faith usage could arise or I could simply be unaware of it due to erasure.

Anyway tangent aside I'm just very upset, probably a bit triggered from personal queerphobia trauma and general personal trauma but just

Why can't people not be utterly shitty about what are largely microlabels anyway? Why can't people just be kinder? :(

yeahhh tiktok has been on an anti-lesboy tangent lately, I haven't seen much of it myself but I have heard about it from users over here. it's something I've been fighting against for years now, and while things have seemed to have gotten better, other sites like tiktok are cycling through it. still pretty sad to see

[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!!

[trans-androgyne]

This isn’t really enlightened commentary but after lurking in the tags since 2021-ish, I’ve noticed this weird cycle that transandrophobia / anti-transmasculinity deniers go through when trying to convince people that acknowledging ATM exists is somehow worse than those who are ATM themselves.

Pretty generally it’s “oh are those transmascs bitching again? just detrans already you [cunt/bitch]. I’m a trans guy and I don’t think ATM is real so you must be a trender a woman who hasn’t realized she’s a radfem yet. I know your gender/life better than you do.” -> “you’re saying trans guys can be affected by [medical misogyny]? you’re calling me a woman by talking about [pregnant trans guys]. men don’t face [medical misogyny] so you’re not a man (but i am)” -> repeat endlessly. put new things in the brackets of the second one depending on what anons are projecting about this week.

As someone who had a friend who got sucked into truscum discourse at a really young age, it’s pretty much just the same shit? A lot of “well this transmasc has different experiences than me, time to invalidate them because I am the True Transsexual here”, misogyny, really charged sexual language/discussions of AGAB, and an almost religious adherence to “REAL (trans)men don’t have problems. If you are (trans)masc and you step out of what I think you should say/how you should dress/what you should call yourself I will just call you [female/a woman/a girl].”

I do think the peak of truscum discourse had less rape/SA pregnancy threats (I’m not calling them “jokes” because they weren’t) but it’s eerie how it’s all just the same broken record of people being defensive essentialists? Even eerie to see the cycle being repeated by people who now disavow transmeds but are fine going “my bigotry/exclusionism is good because these queer people deserve it this time.”

You could probably tie it all into the rise of Aphobia around the same period (hell, the whole “Aro men are evil” thing recently happened!) but I’m not aspec so I don’t want to step on toes there. I think your anons have made this abundantly clear, I’m so sorry you have to deal with these projecting anons but I’m so thankful your blog is here. It’s such a good resource and I don’t think I’d be able to really chew on all of this without it.

Thank you, no I appreciate your analysis a lot. The parallels to truscum culture are especially pertinent as I got an anon yesterday calling me a tucute for talking about transandrophobia lol.

[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.

[angelicdevil]

Really saw someone say “If that [aro] poll was about ‘can cishet aro men say the f slur’ the results would be different.”

Y’all slur discourse weirdos think that bi men and lesbians can’t say it. Considering you’re trying to replace “are queer” with that those are very weird implications

[klavierpanda]

Intro Post

Hello! I'm panda, check out my gender. I use they/xe/þei primarily and if you want to only use one set that's okay. I am very, very aro. I'm not cis but I'm not trans either. I'm very normal about Omori, Star Trek, Mathematics and trains (lying).

Mutuals if you consistently reblog/post shipping content, please that tag it as #shipping

Meaning of my url

My incredible boyfriend is @tesco-brand-aromantics <2

Mutuals can ask for my discord

Pillowfort (in case Tumblr dies)

I got these from here

I kindly ask NSFW/18+ blogs, discourse heavy blogs, and shipping centred blogs to not interact

Please don't refer to me with words like "bro" or "dude". Whilst they may be "gender neutral" in your vernacular, they aren't really in mine.

https://www.tumblr.com/klavierpanda/741935276808617984

Opinions/stances:

Gender dysphoria is not a necessary condition to be transgender

I support all "weird" and "contradictory" queer identities of good faith, e.g. mspec gays/lesbians, lesboys/turigirls, xenogenders, queerhets, etc

Sex and romance are not intrinsically bad. Whilst the way that society at large interacts with them is flawed, completely getting rid of them is not the solution

Trans men face a unique form of oppression and "transandrophobia" is a good term to describe it

"Narc abuse" isn't real. There are ways of describing your abuse and abuser which do not demonise personality disorders

I'm both anti-monarchy and anti-unionist (not against trade unions, but the UK being united)

I support informed self-diagnosis

Alterhumanity, nonhumanity, and therianthropy are real

Tone tags are not useless just because you personally don't find them helpful

Making fun of British people is not the progressive win you think it is. You are just playing into the deeply rooted classism. You are not funny (that includes saying "Bri'ish")

The previous point goes doubly if you're making fun of non-English Brits

Sex repulsion/aversion is not an excuse for sex negativity

I hope you enjoy your say!

Sideblogs:

Maths blog: @lipshits-continuous

Omori blog: @omori-in-odd-places

Maths gimmick blog: @maths-terms-identifier

Railway blog: @a-queer-rail-fan

BYF and personal tags under the cut:

Before you follow:

I am from the UK so I use British spelling. This is important if you block certain tags like "bright colours" as Tumblr won't filter those out if you only block the American spellings. If you are unsure of the British spelling of a particular word just send an ask!

I tag triggers as #[trigger] tw

If you would like me to tag any triggers, please ask and I will try my best

Tagging my aro specific posts with ace tags or otherwise talking over said posts will result in you being blocked immediately

Don't hesitate to tag me in a post you think I'd enjoy/send me asks as I enjoy recieving both! (anon is currently on)

Anyone can reblog my yearning posts if they would like to, just be mindful that if they are tagged with nblm I am yearning over a guy

This blog (and all of my blogs) is endo safe

Personal tags:

#panda’s post - general post tag

#ask panda - asks

#panda’s edits - images I’ve edited/memes I’ve made

#panda’s box - for my all time favourite posts

#pandacore - posts with me vibes

#panda’s music - original music/arrangements I have made

#my rock <2 - posts about my boyfriend

[treeofnonsense]

Talk to me about ace friendo - 1, 8, 20, 21, 28, 33, and 34 🤍💜

THANK YOUUUUU I GET TO RAMBLE IT'S GOING TO BE LOONG

1. Which labels do you use?

Asexual and aromantic cis(???how do you define cis???) woman. There are probably some microlabels under the ace/aro umbrellas that could describe me but I don't tend to dive into microlabels anymore - I've found that defining myself by those feels more like cutting myself up to fit into little boxes rather than finding a space I'm comfy in. I'm okay with being referred to as gay when it's a joke or as part of a group (ie "one of the gays" "gay people in your phone") and I'll count myself as a member of the LGBT community if directly asked (though I'm always a little hesitant because they don't always want to include me back). I don't use queer because I've never had it thrown at me and don't feel I have the right to reclaim it.

8. Describe your gender without using any words traditionally related to gender:

I don't know how, but you got the right answer with the wrong equation.

20. Do you feel like you "fit in" with the queer/Pride community overall?

Yes and no. I'm very thankful for the community because it's the only place I've felt able to be my full self, but on the other hand there is definitely a disconnect for a few reasons. One is that I live in a non-urban conservative area, and a lot of Pride stuff seems to default to urban and liberal. I've never been to a Pride parade - not because I want to but because there aren't any where I live. People forget those of us who live in the boonies I think - or they actively look down on us, which sucks. Sometimes the discourse feels so above my head - they're talking stores taking down their Pride decorations while I haven't even noticed the change because they NEVER do that here in the first place.

The other thing is that there was definitely a pushback towards asexuals specifically being considered LGBT a few years ago. Don't know the exact timeframe (I thankfully wasn't around online during that time) but the ripple effects can still be felt. I think the idea is that we were actually just heterosexual imposters in disguise or something - it's stupid - but it's made me very nervous about joining any LGBT groups. I always have to check to see if the LGBT+ actually includes the A, y'know? Add to that the fact that the LGBT community naturally talks a lot about sex and romance (understandable, I'm not trying to change it, on a logical and ideological level I think talking about these things frankly is good) and I can sometimes feel alienated there. Some LGBT people seem to think that sexual freedom means "everyone should have sex all the time" and like ... no. It means the freedom to choose whatever you want. If you're forcing something on me you're just as bad as everyone else.

21. What message would you give to your younger self?

Measure your life's value in happiness, not money.

28. Do you experience both romantic and sexual attraction? Do you experience them the same across any gender(s) you are attracted to?

I definitely do not have the sexual attraction, for anyone. I can tell generally when someone is supposed to be hot, but only because I've learned from experience what is socially accepted as "hot". I can definitely find people beautiful but it's in the same way I'd find a landscape beautiful - I want to stare at it, maybe I want to draw it, but nothing else. I've noticed I tend to find women beautiful more often than men; I don't know if that's because I'm more familiar with the biology, because women tend to dress up more due to societal pressures, or just a weird preference. But again, it never progresses beyond aesthetic appreciation and there have definitely been guys I like to look at too so it's not 100% reliable.

Romantic is harder. When you take out everything physical, I have a hard time telling the difference between a romance and a close friendship. I'm dense as a brick when people flirt with me because I literally cannot tell they're not just being friendly. I know I'm not upset by being single like some people seem to be, but I do get lonely without friends. There are people I want to get to know better and do stuff with - is that wanting friends? Romantic attraction? I DUNNO MAN! Most people do not seem to have this problem, so I assume I'm different and slap the aromantic label on myself. It works.

33. What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/want to recognize/celebrate?

I'm proud of my own independence when it comes to relationships. I don't need a significant other or a sexual partner to be "complete," contrary to what the world says. If you want those things, by all means, but for those people who are ace/aro, who aren't ready for a relationship, or are learning to just exist as themselves alone for the first time, I want to be living proof that it is possible to be happy on your own. You are not half of a person if you are single. You are a whole person. Just you is enough.

34. What are you needing most right now (what would make your life easier or more fulfilling in regards to existing as queer)?

I need a new wardrobe. Been having Gender Thoughts(TM) thanks in no small part to some of my mutuals going through it and I'm now realizing that a lot of my clothes don't really fit who I am in my head anymore. My family was kinda poor growing up and I learned not to waste things, so I have a lot of old clothes and hand-me-downs still left over, many of which are pretty classic feminine. I want to try getting some more masculine stuff and see how that feels. (if uh... if any of you have advice for going slightly more masc please let me know, this is new to me and I am confuzzled)

Living in an area where I don't see Trump 2024 signs, blue-line cop stuff, and Confederate flags every four feet would be nice too, but that's a longer-term goal.