#btw being ace is critical to me and informs everything i write.

[lunarharp]

into the deep end - 29k T orufrey fic.

the sweet oblivion of the victim, the poisoned freedom of the other.

for one moment - it had felt like two parts returned - the needed reunion of two disparate halves. no more secrets, no more pain.

the moment you get to give back what you never wanted to take. that moment, under the night-blooming flowers, when they had both let out the same single broken sigh of relief.

but they were never whole to begin with, were they?

qifrey swore he wouldn't say 'sorry' to this man any more if he could help it - sorry is cheap now. he didn't want to be in a position ever again where you only have 'sorry' left. so he just looks down into the threads of his blanket, strains his eye until it hurts, feeling his insides - his throat, heart and head - burn with pain. he expects more, but olly says nothing.

olly says nothing.

[radiqueer]

I’ve been trying to figure out how to contribute to the “born this way” conversation, but I’m not fully sure how to articulate my ideas. For me I feel like my identity... like I feel I was “born this way” like I’ve had intermittent dysphoria for as long as I can remember. But also as far as mspec labels go I could ID as pan, or poly, or Omni, but I’ve always felt bi fits and that’s the identity I choose. My partner tho, feels that they, more than anything, chose to be bi (1/2)

My partner feels that they had no inclination towards being anything other than a straight man until well into their thirties, when, due to a lot of factors, they decided any company was good company and decided to see if they liked being with men. They had a good experience, and they feel they could have left it at that but CHOSE to continue to pursue their attraction to men, and then much more recently, in doing their own research about gender identity and being around me (2/3 oops)

They chose to question their gender identity (which as of right now is inconclusive), and my partner feels happy as a bi questioning person, but also felt happy as a straight man and could have remained so but chose to be happy a different way. Idk it’s complicated/messy and I don’t really get it but it’s how my partner feels and I believe them. And then Political lesbianism is a thing. Idk it’s hard for me to wrap my head around I wish I could contribute more. It’s def not one size fits all tho

this makes a ton of sense, thanks for sharing!

I feel like - in a lot of ways, being queer and identifying as queer changed me as a person. it changed everything, from the way I think about and approach new topics, the way I see myself and the world, my politics, my tastes in books and art. queerness is fundamental to me, but I can conceive not being queer. if I didn’t know it was an option to identify this way, if I didn’t grow in a home that encouraged me to question and pursue new avenues, I would be a different person. and I cannot with any certainty say that I would definitely identify as queer at some point, if not at 14 then at 17, 19, 25, 40. I think I am happier for being queer, because it is relieving to share an experience and a community (things which have been difficult for me in the past) with people who love and support me. I like having a voice and an opinion on issues. I like my politics. I don’t like being discriminated against, but who does?

there are so many ways to have a fluid identity. you can be the same person all your life with the same experiences and label yourself differently over time. like your partner. one could be happy in one’s assigned roles but happier in a different set that they sought out and choose (kudos to your partner for keeping an open mind and allowing themselves to be happy in a non-normative way, btw), you can have a fluid identity that changes with time, you can be one thing and identify as another, you can refuse a labels on principle, you can be a political lesbian (or it’s equivalents, I suppose? I don’t know if we have something analogous to political lesbianism in other queer subgroups. I think certain parts of the ace community are the closest we’ve come) 

the problem is the idea that there’s only one way to be and feel about queerness and identity and labels. which, IME, is what the BTW crowd seeks to do - normalise us because we are an expression of naturally occurring human diversity. we deserve equality because we are people, just slightly different, and we didn’t choose to be this way any more than you did. it’s not our fault! give us some money! [/s]

people who are written over by this narrative, in no particular order:

questioning people who don’t even know whether they’re straight - they may or may not be

nb people who are often told we are special snowflakes, a symptoms of the excesses of liberal/left wing politics. that we wouldn’t exist if not for the internet [true of me if not for you / ymmv]

bisexual and mspec people

people with fluid identities

people who choose to present a certain way

political [orientation]

people who are choosing to not labels themselves out of fear

people whose identity is informed by trauma

etc

the problem is the dichotomy that seems to be essential to this debate - that you can only have one or the other, that people on one side keep trying to erase the opposing narrative. I frankly don’t know. I’ve only been a part of this debate for a few months and all my thoughts about BTW are informed by personal experience and what I have stumbled across on tumblr. not a comprehensive start by any means. but ime it’s always the BTWs who are trying to shove differing narratives away, and not the choicers. maybe @korrasera and i have different experiences! in fact, I think we have very different experiences 

The problem I’m trying to highlight, the whole reason I made this post, is that I’ve never seen someone suggest that only BTW is valid. In fact, the only times I’ve ever seen people discussing BTW was to specifically suggest that we have to do whatever we can to erase it as an idea because they perceive it as being inherently exclusionary, as though the existence of people who were BTW meant that people could not be queer, gay, lesbian, or trans without having been born in that state. I think it’s a reasonable assumption to consider such intentions as being somewhat noble, since they’re meant to criticize and deconstruct social constructs of legitimacy, but I literally never see the topic raised without it being ‘let’s get rid of the idea that BTW people exist, it’s not true and it hurts the cause’. 

[emphasis added all mine; taken from this post]

I have a different experience. I’ve seen BTW discussed as the only right way to be, and not only by exclusionists (I wouldn’t be able to find receipts on this - I remade my blog recently, and lost all my likes and the people I was following). even when I talk to people irl, I’m forced to resort to a narrative I don’t have any stake in to get my point across, a narrative that doesn’t help me. it’s frustrating and alienating. and I still don’t think we should do away with BTW. I think we make room for people like me to exist and talk, and define clearly what it means so more people can figure out whether or not they fit.

I read around some while I was writing this post, so here’s some stuff tangential but essential to my thoughts:

this post about the relationship of radfems to what constitutes essential womanhood

this post by the same user about why some people may choose a certain labels

another post by the same user

this post, which possibly everyone has read, but I was thinking about this part (emphasis mine)

My girlfriend Marna has been a queer activist since the late 80s. She’s told me about the incredible deliberation and debates LGBTQ+ activists had, in the late 90s and early 00s as the community began to see past the AIDS crisis and immediate goals of “surviving a plague” and “burying our dead.” There were a lot of things we wanted to achieve, but we had to decide how to allocate our scarce reserves of money, labour, publicity, and public goodwiil. Those were the discussions that decided the next big goals we’d pursue were same-sex marriage equality and legal recognition of medical gender transition.

From hearing her tell it, it seems like it was actually a wrenching decision, because it absolutely left a lot of people in the dust. A lot of people, her included, had broad agendas based on sexual freedom and the rights of people to do whatever they wanted with their bodies and consenting partners—and they agreed to put their broader concerns aside and drill down, very specifically, onto the rights of cis gays and lesbians to marry, and the ability to legally change your sex and gender.

As a political tactic it was terrifically effective. […]

Activists of 20 years ago chose to sideline and diminish efforts to blur and abolish the gender binary. Efforts to promote alternative family structures, including polyamorous families and non-sexual bonds between non-related adults. Efforts to fight the Christian cultural message that sex is dirty, sinful, bad, and in need of containment. Efforts to promote sexual pleasure as a positive good.

I couldn’t tell you why these posts stuck out to me while I was writing this, but they do a better job, by and large, of contextualising what I’ve said here